Guest Opinion by The Rev. Robert Moore: Bush wants to end the spread of nuclear materials but will continue to build new nuclear weapons.
By: The Rev. Robert Moore
How can you say to your neighbor, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
Matthew 7:4-5, part of the Sermon on the Mount
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 essentially cut a deal between the nuclear and non-nuclear nations. If the non-nuclear signatories agreed not to obtain nuclear weapons, the nuclear states the United States, Soviet Union, France, Britain and China would agree to eliminate theirs.
In Article 6 of the NPT, the nuclear states pledged to eliminate their nuclear arsenals "at an early date" under "strict and effective international control." Yet not a single one of those five nuclear states has fulfilled its obligation to eliminate its arsenal. Moreover, the two remaining nuclear superpowers Russia and the United States today retain over 25,000 nuclear warheads, immense overkill, between them.
But the worst violator of the principle advocated by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is our own U.S. government. Not only is the Bush administration planning to retain over 10,000 nuclear warheads indefinitely, it has plans to keep building new warheads for the next 50 years. Right now, it is beginning to fund and develop new mini-nuke and "bunker-buster" nuclear warheads.
Even worse, the Nuclear Posture Review issued last year outlines the Bush administration’s radical new doctrine of using nuclear weapons first in many contingencies. It eschews nuclear deterrence, the bipartisan policy that has undergirded U.S. policy for most of the nuclear age, in which the only purpose of our nuclear weapons is to deter their use against the United States by possible adversaries.
Instead the Nuclear Posture Review envisions the first use of nuclear weapons in a wide variety of situations. Seven nations are named as possible targets. When coupled with the radical new Bush policy of unilateral pre-emptive strikes i.e., shoot first, ask questions later the implications are truly horrifying. Clearly, it is the Bush administration that has a nuclear "log" in its eye.
This same hypocritical double standard is in the just-announced Bush administration proposal to stop the spread of nuclear materials. In response to recent revelations that such materials had proliferated more than previously known, President Bush proposes to mandate that the nations that are prospective suppliers stop exporting such technology. Yet he resists stopping production of such materials by the United States, despite the huge stockpiles we still retain.
Isn’t it time to take the nuclear log out of our own eye, so we can see to take the relative "speck" out of our neighbor’s eye? Only then will our call to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and materials have moral and political authority. I would suggest that the president not only let Jesus change his heart, but change his mind and his policy on this central issue of human survival in the nuclear age.
The Rev. Robert Moore is executive director of the Coalition for Peace Action and a member of the Princeton Clergy Association.