Iran restarted work on its nuclear program today. This
comes after talks have stalled out. Tomorrow the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) is supposed to meet and decide what further actions should be
taken against Iran. This could even lead to a referral to the Security Council
which may result in further sanctions.
Also on the nuclear front, the six party talks with North
Korea have become somewhat of a stalemate. They are taking a three week recess
in order to regroup before continuing the talks.
These talks are of importance, and we should take warning
by the failed attempts. This could very well lead to the world once again living
with the cold-war era style fears of a nuclear war. It is ironic how two of the
three nations that President Bush coined “the axis of evil†are now the center
of failed nuclear talks. The third part of the axis, Iraq, we are already in.
With the failing talks with Iran, we need diplomacy now
more than ever. The scariest part is our chief diplomat, who is far less than
diplomatic. You can almost be certain John Bolton will sit there and try his
bullying tactics on Iran and further alienate any chances for a compromise.
The major concern would lie in a low-level atmospheric
detonation. Korea has previously test fired missiles and had them detonate in
the atmosphere. While people joke about that as being a failed test, what if it
in fact was a successful test?
Early this year, a congressional study was done on the
impact of a nuclear detonation in the atmosphere. With nuclear detonation comes
Electro-Magnetic Pulse. If a nuclear missile did detonate in the atmosphere
above the Midwest, then electronic devices within about 1,000 square miles would
fail. Look at this threat a little closer and what it would mean:
-
All vehicles manufactured in the last 25 years would be
useless -
Communications would shut down
-
Power grids for virtually the entire nation would fail
-
Communication with our military abroad would fail.
In fact if this type of attack did take place, we would be
back to fighting in the 18th century.
There would also still be nuclear fall out, but not at the
levels of a direct hit. It would result in gradual radiation poisoning that
would take a longer amount of time to detect. With communications failed, we
would also not know exactly what happened.
So next time you hear about a test missile exploding in the
air, don’t think of it as a failure, but rather as a possibility.
Hopefully our President will see the urgency of reaching a
diplomatic solution to this possible catastrophe and try to avoid it.
Unfortunately, he has a cowboy style attitude that might result in further
failures of the talks and lead us back into the cold-war era.