Contemporary nuclear issues in a nutshell

Nuclear, nuclear, nuclear. We don’t do anything else but talking about it. And these past few weeks have been extremely prolific in this sense. The President of the United States Barack Obama has contributed a lot. Here is a summary of his contributions, garnished with a few personal opinions on the subject.

First, Obama reminds us that the nuclear threat is serious and for this reason he proposes a new missile shield to protect the US allies and personnel in Europe and in the Middle East. The shield would consist of a land-based platform and should be set in Romania, according to the latest news. But how does a missile shield have anything to do with nuclear power? The anti-missile platform is meant to shield against a particular type of missile that Iran has been testing lately. It’s called Shahab 3, and is able to carry nuclear warheads. The issue has been for a long time centre of a fired debate, mainly concerning the relationship between Russia and the US and how the creation of this missile shield might damage any progress made since Obama came to power and sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Moscow to push the button to reset relations between the two countries. Talks on a missile shield, after all, started under President George W. Bush, and at that time contributed to an embitterment of the relations between them. Russia did not want to give up its sphere of influence in Poland and Czech Republic, and saw the advance of the US in that area as a threat to its security. That plan was eliminated at the end of last year, in the midst of change in international policy suggested by the new Obama’s administration, but has now been replaced by a new one that does not seem too different from the previous. And Russia, once again, does not seem particularly well impressed. Romania is still part of that region, on which Russia has a major interest. The issue is complicated, but is it really such an impossible riddle? Why no one seems to be able to come up with a straightforward solution? Why no one proposes a US-Europe-Russia joint missile shield? It does not even sound like an extremely utopian idea, since Putin proposed something similar in 2007.

Second issue, Obama suggests an increase of reliance on nuclear power as an energy source. And here, once again, the debate is quite controversial. Why has the US the permission to use nuclear energy for “civilian purposes” while the same freedom is not granted to Iran? Obviously there is a big difference between Iran and the US in terms of credibility and reliability, but it does not sound too fair to use different measures to judge countries. Other valuable arguments against Obama’s proposal come from environmentally-friendly groups. Their big question that no one seems willing to answer to is where would all the nuclear waste produced by a new nuclear station go, and how safe would the station be. On the other end, the availability of other energy resources, especially coal, oil and natural gas, is not unlimited, and it is time to start thinking about serious alternatives. If we want to put it in terms of political strategy, moreover, it would be nice, from a Western point of view, to get rid of the uncomfortable dependence on Russia for what concerns the supply and delivery of those resources. A brilliant idea which has not received enough attention by the media and which definitely deserves to be developed further is the concept of installing solar panels in Africa to obtain solar energy. It is clearly a concept that needs to be refined, but the idea of trying to stimulate the economy of Third World countries through the development of joint programmes with countries with more stable economy could be a winning one. The fact that the EU has decided to invest in the business through the Desertec Industrial Initiative is promising, indeed. Being these operations new in their kind, furthermore, they would leave room to think carefully about the best ways to prevent the system from getting tainted by corruption, as it happened in Ukraine. It would be a way to make gradually more independent African economy and to permit its countries to pay off somehow their debts. But, even in this case, the more obvious solution seems to go against the current trends.

The third Obama-nuclear related event is his statement on the dramatic cuts envisaged for the US nuclear arsenal. Well, the news seems good, but not extremely positive. A part of the nuclear weapons will still be available, which means no big change in international politics. Once again, why can the US have nuclear weapons and Iran is not allowed to? Saying that the part of weapons which will be kept is only meant for deterrence does not really represent an about-face. Nuclear arms have been there for a long time as a deterrent tool. Even before the fall of the USSR. It is very difficult, anyway, to imagine the US starting to use nuclear weapons, even in the case of a nuclear attack by Iran. The consequences in terms of losses and international equilibrium would be appalling. The US would probably try its best to find alternative ways to respond, before deciding to recur to the use of its nuclear power.

All these issues are out there. People talk and discuss them. Those who are in power, however, appear to be too reliant on those discussions, and not able to solve the situation, to take clear stands, to look at the obvious and to forget about excessive punctiliousness. Debates are important, but sometimes politicians should remember that there are urgent issues that need to be faced with high priority. The nuclear issues are part of those.

Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.

Julius Caesar