PRESIDENT Bush yesterday spent five hours in Afghanistan, most of it at the very heavily defended Bagram airport. He could not venture any further because his safety could not be guaranteed outside of about 50 square miles of Afghanistan.
While there he stated emphatically that Iran would not be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon.
Bush was on his way to visit the United States’ two major allies in the area, India and Pakistan. Both are nuclear powers, having acquired nuclear weapons ‘illegally’, and both have refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In Pakistan, Bush the alleged champion of democracy, will be meeting President Musharraf. He came to power through an illegal military coup which overthrew the elected government of the country.
Under his rule Pakistan went on to illegally acquire nuclear secrets from the US, and built a nuclear bomb, while some of its military men and nuclear scientists formed a ring to sell nuclear material to countries such as North Korea and Libya.
They sought to sell nuclear material to Iraq, but its leader Saddam Hussein refused to buy.
Under Bush’s New World Order, Saddam has been overthrown, because of his alleged but non-existent threat to the world from WMDs, while Pakistan’s Musharraf is an indispensable ally, and his nuclear salesmen have simply been placed under house arrest.
The word now is that Bush’s relations with India are set to blossom, after a lukewarm period, dubbed a leftover from the time when India had close relations with the USSR.
India also has acquired nuclear weapons, and has tested them, and now has the means of delivering them on the territory of Pakistan and many neighbouring countries. It could even hit US troops on the Indian Ocean Island base of Diego Garcia.
It has never been a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and its relations with Pakistan are so volatile that war between the two could easily become an exchange of nuclear bombs.
In fact in the last round of hostilities between the two states over Kashmir, Indian generals publicly stated that with a population of one billion people, India could afford to lose 200 million in a nuclear exchange, whereas Pakistan’s entire population would be wiped out.
All this is no problem at all for Bush, who insists that North Korea must be disarmed and that Iran faces war if it proceeds with its nuclear programme to generate electricity.
In fact, US diplomats have been spelling out that India has been given the role of being the US’s strategic partner in Asia, to check the rise of Chinese power.
To this end, India is to be given access to US nuclear technologies, without signing the non-proliferation treaty, and that it will be supplied with enough nuclear fuel to develop a series of nuclear power stations that will enable India to become a full member of the US’s ‘nuclear world order’.
What effect this will have on Pakistan, India’s nuclear and political rival, the US State Department has not quite got round to working out yet.
The message however is clear. Possession of nuclear weapons and the means of delivery depends on whether you are an ally of the US or not, as Israel, Pakistan and India know.
The message for Iran, North Korea and other states is that they must acquire an arsenal of nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them as quickly as they can, or else they will be attacked for the crime of not understanding that they are second class nations, that have no right to have a nuclear development programme.
