Revisiting Hiroshima

By Noam Chomsky 

08/02/05 "ICH" -- -- THIS month’s anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompts only the most sombre reflection and most fervent hope that the horror may never be repeated.

In the subsequent 60 years, those bombings have haunted the world’s imagination but not so much as to curb the development and spread of infinitely more lethal weapons of mass destruction. 

A related concern, discussed in technical literature well before 9-11, is that nuclear weapons may sooner or later fall into the hands of terrorist groups.

The recent explosions and casualties in London are yet another reminder of how the cycle of attack and response could escalate, unpredictably, even to a point horrifically worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 

The world’s reigning power accords itself the right to wage war at will, under a doctrine of "anticipatory self-defence" that covers any contingency it chooses. The means of destruction are to be unlimited. 

US military expenditures approximate those of the rest of the world combined, while arms sales by 38 North American companies (one in Canada) account for over 60 per cent of the world total (which rose 25 per cent since 2002).

There have been efforts to strengthen the thin thread on which survival hangs. The most important is the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which came into force in 1970. The regular five-year review conference of the NPT took place at the United Nations in May. 

The NPT has been facing collapse, primarily because of the failure of the nuclear states to live up their obligation under Article VI to pursue "good faith" efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. The United States has led the way in refusal to abide by the Article VI obligations. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, emphasizes that "reluctance by one party to fulfil its obligations breeds reluctance in others."

President Jimmy Carter blasted the United States as "the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including antiballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating ‘bunker buster’ and perhaps some new ‘small’ bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states." 

The thread has almost snapped in the years since Hiroshima, repeatedly. The best known case was the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, "the most dangerous moment in human history," as Arthur Schlesinger, historian and former adviser to President John F. Kennedy, observed in October 2002 at a retrospective conference in Havana.

The world "came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear disaster," recalls Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s defence secretary, who also attended the retrospective. In the May-June issue of Foreign Policy, he accompanies this reminder with a renewed warning of "apocalypse soon." 

McNamara regards "current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous," creating "unacceptable risks to other nations and to our own," both the risk of "accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch," which is "unacceptably high," and of nuclear attack by terrorists. McNamara endorses the judgment of William Perry, President Bill Clinton’s defence secretary, that "there is a greater than 50 per cent probability of a nuclear strike on US targets within a decade."

Similar judgments are commonly expressed by prominent strategic analysts. In his book Nuclear Terrorism, Harvard international relations specialist Graham Allison reports the "consensus in the national security community" (of which he has been a part) that a "dirty bomb" attack is "inevitable," and an attack with a nuclear weapon highly likely, if fissionable materials — the essential ingredient — are not retrieved and secured.

Allison reviews the partial success of efforts to do so since the early 1990s, under the initiatives of Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Richard Lugar, and the setback to these programmes from the first days of the Bush administration, paralysed by what Sen. Joseph Biden called "ideological idiocy."

The Washington leadership has put aside nonproliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq. The threat and use of violence is stimulating nuclear proliferation along with jihadi terrorism.

A high-level review of the "war on terror" two years after the invasion "focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists, schooled in Iraq over the past couple years," Susan B. Glasser reports in The Washington Post. "Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to anticipate what one called ‘the bleed out’ of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe. ‘It’s a new piece of a new equation,’ a former senior Bush administration official said. ‘If you don’t know who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?"’

US terrorism specialist Peter Bergen says in The Boston Globe that "the president is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism, but this is a front we created."

Shortly after the London bombing, Chatham House, Britain’s premier foreign affairs institution, released a study drawing the obvious conclusion — denied with outrage by the government — that "the UK is at particular risk because it is the closest ally of the United States, has deployed armed forces in the military campaigns to topple the Taleban regime in Afghanistan and in Iraq ... (and is) a pillion passenger" of American policy, sitting behind the driver of the motorcycle. The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity. While speculation is pointless, reaction to the threat of another Hiroshima is definitely not.

On the contrary, it is urgent, particularly in the United States, because of Washington’s primary role in accelerating the race to destruction by extending its historically unique military dominance. 

Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. ©2005 by Noam Chomsky

Breaking This Threat Down To Numbers.

Strategy for Pandemic Needed, Experts Say

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 31, 2005; Page A01

Public health officials preparing to battle what they view as an inevitable influenza pandemic say the world lacks the medical weapons to fight the disease effectively, and will not have them anytime soon.

Public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, strategies for quarantining and treating the ill, and plans for international cooperation, but these efforts will take years. Meanwhile, the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades -- the H5N1 "bird flu" in Asia -- is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, almost by the month, global health officials say.

If the virus were to start spreading in the next year, the world would have only a relative handful of doses of an experimental vaccine to defend against a disease that, history shows, could potentially kill millions. If the vaccine proved effective and every flu vaccine factory in the world started making it, the first doses would not be ready for four months. By then, the pathogen would probably be on every continent.

Theoretically, antiviral drugs could slow an outbreak and buy time. The problem is only one licensed drug, oseltamivir, appears to work against bird flu. At the moment, there is not enough stockpiled for widespread use. Nor is there a plan to deploy the small amount that exists in ways that would have the best chance of slowing the disease.

The public, conditioned to believe in the power of modern medicine, has heard little of how poorly prepared the world is to confront a flu pandemic, which is an epidemic that strikes several continents simultaneously and infects a substantial portion of the population.

Since the current wave of avian flu began sweeping through poultry in Southeast Asia more than 18 months ago, international and U.S. health authorities have been warning of the danger and trying to mobilize. Research on vaccines has accelerated, efforts to build up drug supplies are underway, and discussions take place regularly on developing a coordinated global response.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will spend $419 million in pandemic planning this year. The National Institutes of Health's influenza research budget has quintupled in the past five years.

"The secretary or the chief of staff -- we have a discussion about flu almost every day," said Bruce Gellin, head of HHS's National Vaccine Program Office. This week, a committee is scheduled to deliver to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt an updated plan for confronting a pandemic.

Despite these efforts, the world's lack of readiness to meet the threat is huge, experts say.

"The only reason nobody's concerned the emperor has no clothes is that he hasn't shown up yet," Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, said recently of the world's efforts to prepare for pandemic flu. "When he appears, people will see he's naked."

Other scientists are sounding the alarm as well.

The most outspoken is Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. In writing and in speeches, Osterholm reminds his audience that after public calamities, the United States usually convenes blue-ribbon commissions to pass judgment. There will be one after a flu pandemic, he believes.

"Right now, the conclusions of that commission would be harsh and sad," he said.

In hopes of slowing a pandemic's spread, public health specialists have been debating proposals for unprecedented countermeasures. These could include vaccinating only children, who are statistically most likely to spread the contagion; mandatory closing of schools or office buildings; and imposing "snow day" quarantines on infected families -- prohibiting them from leaving their homes.

Other measures would go well beyond the conventional boundaries of public health: restricting international travel, shutting down transit systems or nationalizing supplies of critical medical equipment, such as surgical masks.

But Osterholm argues that such measures would fall far short. He predicts that a pandemic would cause widespread shutdowns of factories, transportation and other essential industries. To prepare, he says, authorities should identify and stockpile a list of perhaps 100 crucial products and resources that are essential to keep society functioning until the pandemic recedes and the survivors go back to work.

Deadly Potential

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since late 2003, 109 people are known to have been infected with the emerging H5N1 virus in Asia. About half -- 55 -- have died.

Ironically, for the current H5N1 strain of avian flu to gain "pandemic potential," it will have to become less deadly. Declining lethality is a key sign that the microbe is adapting to human hosts. That is one reason the 34 percent mortality observed in the most recent outbreak -- a cluster of cases in northern Vietnam -- has scientists worried.

Pandemic influenza is not an unusually bad version of the flu that appears each winter. Those outbreaks are caused by flu viruses that have been circulating for decades and change slightly year to year.

Pandemics are caused by strains of virus that are highly contagious and to which people have no immunity. Such strains are rare. They arise from the chance scrambling and recombination of an animal flu virus and a human one, resulting in a strain whose molecular identity is wholly new.

In the 20th century, pandemics occurred in 1918, 1957 and 1968. Although the 19th-century record is less certain, there appear to have been four flu pandemics -- in 1833, 1836, 1847 and 1889. On a purely statistical basis, the nearly 40 years since the last one suggests the time may be ripe.

The microbe called influenza A/H5N1 appeared in East Asia in 1996 and has flared periodically since. It is highly contagious and lethal in chickens, but it can be carried without symptoms in some ducks -- a combination that helps keep it in circulation.

Birds occasionally infect humans, and scientists recently found evidence that the virus is sometimes passed person to person. That form of transmission is now difficult and rare, but the virus could evolve so that it becomes easy and common.

If H5N1 never becomes easily transmissible in human beings, it will never become a pandemic. If it does become transmissible, the consequences are difficult to imagine. But history provides some clues.

The "Spanish flu" in 1918 and 1919 was the biggest and, along with AIDS, the most important infectious disease outbreak of the 20th century. It is on the short list of great disasters in human history.

At least 50 million people, and possibly as many as 100 million, died when the world's population was 1.9 billion people, one-third its current size.

The Best Defense

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tests are underway at three U.S. hospitals on an experimental vaccine against H5N1. But it is not the first H5N1 vaccine.

When a slightly different strain of the virus surfaced in Hong Kong in 1997, killing thousands of chickens and a half-dozen people, researchers used viruses from birds and people to make experimental vaccines. But neither offered much protection in lab tests, and nobody knows why.

Instead of working on the problem, researchers dropped it. First SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), and then a different avian flu strain that arose in Europe (H7N7), took their attention.

"The urgency around this issue kind of dissipated," said John Treanor, a physician at the University of Rochester and one of the leaders of the vaccine project. "I think it's an example of how unpredictable things are. We got distracted."

The urgency is back.

As the first, small hedge against disaster, the government last fall ordered 2 million doses of H5N1 vaccine from Sanofi Pasteur, one of the country's three flu vaccine makers, even though nobody yet knows whether it works.

A half-dozen other countries are also working on pandemic vaccines. But making enough to fight an outbreak is a tall order.

About 300 million flu shots are made worldwide each year. The vaccine protects against three flu strains. If the global production capacity were directed to make only H5N1 vaccine, the output could be 900 million shots.

Unfortunately, virologists are almost certain people will need two doses about a month apart to mount a successful immune response against a wholly new strain such as H5N1. That would cut the theoretical number of recipients worldwide to 450 million. If each shot requires a larger-than-usual amount of vaccine to work, the number will be even smaller.

Can the world produce more flu shots? Not easily.

Because nearly all flu vaccine is made by growing the virus in fertilized chicken eggs, special factories and a steady supply of eggs are required. Consequently, a key element of pandemic planning is getting more people to get yearly flu shots, which will give companies a larger market and an incentive to expand their plants.

Around the world, flu vaccine production has risen by just one-third in the past decade. New plants in Brazil, South Korea and the Netherlands will boost global production by an additional 25 percent in the near future.

In theory, even a modest amount of vaccine might be useful. Fighting disease outbreaks is like fighting fires. You do not have to hose down the whole world to put the fire out, but you do have to hose down the perimeter to keep it from spreading. It might be possible to contain an H5N1 outbreak at its source if the surrounding population were immediately vaccinated.

Would the United States, Europe and Japan be willing to donate their precious vaccine supply to mount this long-shot defense? This is perhaps the biggest unanswered question in pandemic flu planning -- and one likely to be answered only at the moment of truth.

Officially, it is a possibility.

"If it was done in consultation with the WHO [World Health Organization] -- and with other governments that would make contributions, as well -- we would be more likely to consider it," said Gellin at HHS. But observers both in and out of the government said, not for quotation, that they doubt the U.S. government would ever send a significant amount of its vaccine stockpile overseas.

Only One Drug

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the absence of a vaccine, the only pharmaceutical bulwark against H5N1 is oseltamivir. It can shorten the illness's duration, and if taken immediately after exposure, it can even prevent infection. But the world's supply of the drug is limited.

Sold as Tamiflu, it is manufactured by just one company, the Swiss giant Roche, in a laborious, expensive process that takes eight months.

Twenty-five countries have ordered oseltamivir to stockpile, and five others have expressed interest, a Roche spokesman, Terence J. Hurley, said recently.

The United States already has a stockpile, but it is enough to treat less than 1 percent of the population. The government has ordered enough to treat 3 million more people, or about 2 percent total.

At a congressional hearing in late May, the company's medical director, Dominick A. Iacuzio, said it will begin producing oseltamivir in the United States soon. The company says it could supply 13 million more courses of treatment in 2006 and an additional 70 million in 2007 -- provided the government orders them.

Would having lots of vaccine or oseltamivir make a difference?

In a study published last year, Ira M. Longini Jr. of Emory University ran a mathematical model of what might happen if a pandemic such as the 1957 Asian flu, which was caused by a virus far milder than bird flu, hit the United States.

He and his colleagues estimated that with no vaccine or antiviral drugs, there would be 93 million cases and 164,000 deaths. Vaccinating 80 percent of people younger than 19 -- the group most responsible for spreading the virus -- "would reduce the epidemic to just 6 million total cases and 15,000 total deaths in the country."

Giving that group eight weeks of oseltamivir would have the same effect, at least temporarily. But it would take the equivalent of 190 million courses of treatment -- more than anyone thinks the country will have in the next few years.

Somewhat more realistic is deploying the drug to where the outbreak begins. One researcher, Neil M. Ferguson of Imperial College in London, said in an interview that results of his not-yet-published mathematical modeling "are encouraging."

But unless antiviral drugs squelch a pandemic at the outset, their ultimate usefulness will be small. Without widespread immunity through vaccination or infection, the virus will simply move into a population when the drugs run out.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/30/AR2005073001429.html?referrer=email

The New Face of War: How War Will Be

Fought in the 21st Century

Reviewed by Eric Haseltine

Dr. Eric Haseltine is the Associate Director for Research at the National Security Agency. This article is unclassified in its entirety.

Fight Makes Right?

A conservative writer unmasks the perils of unchecked American militarism.

by Norman Kelley - July 28, 2005

China Build Up Could Mean Threat To U.S.

By Pamela Hess
Jul 20, 2005, 19:00 GMT

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The Pentagon released Tuesday the long-awaited annual Chinese military power report, painting a picture of a nation bent on building up its military and learning the technological lessons of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

China`s primary military focus remains Taiwan, specifically its interest in forcing the island nation to reunite with mainland China.

\"It`s a very straightforward description of ... a significant military buildup that`s been taking place,\" U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday.

China has arrayed most of its most advanced weaponry and highly trained personnel across southeast China, postured to prevent Taiwan independence or \"to compel Taiwan to negotiate a political settlement on Beijings terms,\" the report states.

It includes an expanding force of ballistic missiles, both long and short range, cruise missiles, submarines, and advanced aircraft.

While China`s focus is now Taiwan, the Pentagon report notes that China`s military could easily pose \"a credible threat to other modern militaries operating in the region\" if it continues its build up.

\"The pace and scope of China`s military build-up are, already, such as to put regional military balances at risk. Current trends in China`s military modernization could provide China with a force capable of prosecuting a range of military operations in Asia -- well beyond Taiwan.\"

For now, however, the report says China has only limited abilities to project convention military power beyond its borders. The People`s Liberation Army is buying new weapon systems and writing new doctrine, however, that could take it well beyond China`s shores.

\"In the future, as China`s military power grows, China`s leaders may be tempted to resort to force or coercion more quickly to press diplomatic advantage, advance security interests, or resolve disputes,\" the report warns.

Publicly, however, Beijing adopts a posture of non-confrontation, saying it wants to develop China`s economic power and supports a policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. China also has a \"no-first-use\" nuclear policy.

Last week a Chinese general told reporters that if the United States drew its forces within striking distance of Chinese territory in an attempt to defend Taiwan, the country should use nuclear weapons against American forces.

The officer, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, is an instructor at China`s national defense university and said he was expressing his personal opinion only.

China, however, is investing in its strategic nuclear missile force, both in numbers and capabilities.

\"It is fielding more survivable missiles capable of targeting India, Russia, virtually all of the United States, and the Asia-Pacific theater as far south as Australia and New Zealand.\"

It has about 20 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles and about 20 medium-range missiles to counter regional threats.

China is also investing in space forces. In 2004 alone it launched 10 satellites into orbit and hopes to have more than 100 satellites in orbit by 2010.

At the same time it plans to field an anti-satellite laser.

\"The Defense Intelligence Agency believes Beijing eventually could develop a laser weapon capable of damaging or destroying satellites,\" the report states.

The Pentagon for its part is focusing a large measure of its ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review deliberations on the threat posed by China and the possibility of having to fight a conventional or nuclear war against the country.

The task of deciding what U.S. forces will be needed to counter or dissuade a Chinese threat is made more complicated by the fact that the U.S. government has no idea exactly how much China is investing in its military. In March, a Chinese government spokesman announced China would increase its \"publicly disclosed-defense budget\" in 2005 by 12.6 percent, to approximately $29.9 billion, double the amount it spent in 2000.

\"When adjusted for inflation, the nominal increases have produced double-digit actual increases in China`s official defense budget every year since the mid-1990s. However, the officially published figures substantially underreport actual expenditures for national defense,\" the Pentagon report states.

The report estimates that all told, China could be spending $90 billion in 2005 on military accounts, making it the third largest defense budget in the world. It is dwarfed by the U.S. defense budget at $420 billion.

Speaking at the Pentagon Monday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard told reporters he doesn`t believe China poses an aggressive military threat because of its keen interest in economic growth.

\"I think that China is a country that is growing in power and economic strength, but understands that military conflict of any kind is not conducive to her medium- and longer-term goals,\" Howard said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency believes China`s leaders recognize \"that a war could severely retard economic development.\" Tawain is China`s single largest source of foreign direct investment.

The report also warns of \"serious and numerous\" consequences if the European Union lifts the arms embargo it has had in place against China since the 19898 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

It would significantly improve China`s access to military and dual use technologies; expertise in doctrine and training, and allow China to set up joint vetnrues with European companies to improve its space, radar, early-warning aircraft, submarine technology and electronics for precision guided munitions.

It would also give China, as a major new customer for weaponry, economic leverage over Russia, Israel and other countries to expand the number of systems they will sell to Beijing.

\"Such an acceleration of China`s military modernization would have direct implications for stability in the Taiwan Strait and the safety of U.S. personnel; it would also accelerate a shift ion the regional balance of power, affecting the security of many countries,\" the report states.

Lifting the embargo would also give China more technology and advanced weaponry to transfer or sell to countries of concern, including Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

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