USA to develop 'mini nukes' considers itself outside international law

USA to develop 'mini nukes' considers itself outside international law
Interview - Richard Butler

A few days ago, the US Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal a long-standing ban on the development of small nuclear bombs - so called mini-nukes.

RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER UN CHIEF ARMS INSPECTOR: I can't overstate the seriousness of it. It is absolutely shocking. If this becomes the policy of the United States Government, if it passes through the Congress and the Bush Administration, which wants it to be the policy, if it implements it, it will involve the United States walking away from, tearing up, solemn obligations that it's made for 30 years now under international law, and on which the world relies - an obligation to progressively reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world so that they don't spread to other countries. Instead of honouring that obligation, this would involve tearing it up, walking away from it and, in fact, making new nuclear weapons, going in exactly the opposite direction.

RICHARD BUTLER: The Bush Administration. It's been clear now for about two years that George W. Bush and the people around him want to have nuclear weapons in the regular battlefield arsenal of the United States armed forces.

RICHARD BUTLER: ...The United States is about to bring that inequity to a height and it will have nothing to say, nothing that it can credibly say to any other country - "You may not have these weapons" - or indeed to a terrorist group, if it itself walks away from what it has solemnly promised under international law. I welcome your calling attention to this. People must debate this. This is a very serious move.

RICHARD BUTLER: ... It won't happen because the way in which the Security Council was trashed on trying to get it support for the invasion of Iraq, this wasn't obtained, and under international law that invasion therefore is outside the law, some would say plainly illegal....

MARK DAVIS: Well, I guess you'd have to say clearly the Americans don't care what the consequences of a treaty…

RICHARD BUTLER: Well, I've talked to senior members of the Bush Administration and if the viewing public are asking "Well, why are they behaving this way?" Well, one can say they're just plainly selfish or this is the consequence of September 11 and so on. Not really. It's this - this administration has a view of the special character of the United States, the singular and exclusive character that is new. I've talked to them about it and they make this plain. They say "We are the sole super power, we're therefore the exceptional country, we're outside of international law. Others have to obey the law and obey the rules, but we don't." I mean, I'm not making that up. If they were sitting here tonight, Mark, the people I've talked with would readily agree. They'd say "Yeah, that's right, that's who we are. We are the exceptional country and we don't have to obey the law because we're different." Now, that's where this is proceeding from. And I ask you to recognise what happens when the most powerful country, the same as the most powerful people within a domestic society, consider themselves to be above the law. What happens? Citizens, or countries, decide that the law itself is no good and that's what will happen in the nuclear area......

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