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Weapons of Mass Destruction: Rhetoric and Realities

2003; Procon Ltd.; Volume: 02; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.11610/connections.02.1.08

1812-2973

Ronald Higgins,

Nuclear Issues and Defense

Whether or not the elimination of weapons of mass destruction from much of the world (WMD) eventually proves practicable, it is surely necessary to reduce if not eliminate the current flow of loose, emotive, and sometimes extravagant language about them.Such rhetoric, whether from political, official, or media sources, not only misleads and may alarm public opinion but could also lead to clumsy and even dangerous thinking in the policy-making process itself.Far too much recent talk has obscured the fact that WMD can vary hugely in nature, size, reliability, delivery systems, practical military usefulness, and destructiveness.They are not the same in either the scale or the nature of their impacts.Nor are their effects on individuals always or necessarily more atrocious than those of so-called conventional weapons.However dreadful the hostage deaths in the Moscow theatre from BZ gas (if such it was) were, they were not obviously more horrific than a fiery death from napalm or through multiple lacerations from anti-personnel mines or carpet-bombing.This paper seeks to explore some of the misleading statements being employed about WMD in relation to Iraq in particular and, to a lesser extent, to other so-called "terrorist states," named by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as including Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Syria.Whatever eventually happens in Iraq or elsewhere in the "war on terrorism" (which is really a necessary international campaign rather than a "war"), the need for careful distinctions and cool reasoning about WMD will clearly remain crucial to the framing of foreign and defense policy.To criticize loose talk about WMD is not to underestimate either their destructiveness or the waves of disproportionate public terror they can inflict.The latter is, after all, the first aim of a terrorist campaign.Nor does such criticism neglect the genuine difficulties facing democratic politicians in getting complex messages across to an often complacent or skeptical electorate.But extravagance may well magnify skepticism, whereas precision should help to keep threats from both WMD and conventional weapons in rational perspective, along with the full range of possible responses.A degree of care about language-and logic-is especially necessary amidst the understandably inflamed emotions and rampant suspicions that followed the atrocities of 9/11, Bali, Moscow, and Mombasa.Anger, fear, and horror at the very