Neck Deep In Nukes

Life is becoming one big Xanax moment. First, there was the Pakistani bomb--and its twin, the Indian bomb. The came the North Korean bomb. And, one must never forget the Iranians and their quest for a Mahdi Bomb. That is a whole bunch of atoms waiting to fission.

Making life more anxiety producing is the basic consideration that all these actual or short-term potential atomic weapons--with one exception--are possessed by governments with a past history of less than responsible conduct. The prospect of "physics packages" in the hands of North Koreans, Iranians, or Pakistanis is one which is not conducive to sound sleep.

Comes now disturbing indications that another country headed by individuals whose commitment to peace, security, human rights, and other good things is at best debatable. The country in question is Burma--or, if you insist, Myanmar. Since the Australian defense analyst and scholar Desmond Ball first mooted the matter a bit over a year ago, more information has come out of the reclusive dictatorship. The skinny has come the usual way, from defectors and other malcontents finally fed up with the repressive regime and its evil effects upon the Burmese population.

As the information has fallen into an ever more complete mosaic, one cannot escape the conclusion that there is a good or better probability that Burma is pursuing an atomic weapons capacity with the assistance of North Korea and the (likely) knowledge and tacit agreement of China. The junta which has been running the Burmese show for over twenty years believes that a nuclear capability would insulate it from further Western meddling as well as provide a sovereign anodyne against any hypothetical future adventure in regime change.

While this view may be considered charitably as paranoid, there is little reason to reject the contention that the junta sees itself as under threat and facing the real possibility of an American led invasion of the Iraq 2003 style. An additional consideration which may be weighing on the minds of the junta members is the possession of an "ambiguous" nuclear capability of the Israeli model would confer real diplomatic advantages in the Southeast Asia Game of Nations.

At first sight the notion of Burma going after the Big Bomb seems more than a tad risible. Where is the complex of industry, research, and development facilities, universities that seem to be a necessary component of getting the bomb? Isn't Burma a backward, primarily agricultural place with little advanced technology, or, at least, very little technology of an indigenous nature?

Yes. Burma is all of that--and less. It has no industrial base worthy of note. It is agricultural. No first rank (or even fourth rank) universities blot its landscape. It isn't even filled with uranium ore.

However, getting your very own atomic bomb is not as difficult as many crack it up to be. For sure, the details can be difficult to master as the North Korean fizzle yield tests show, but, really all that is needed to acquire a personal capacity to plant mushroom clouds is found in three categories.

The first requirement is political will. The regime must be willing and able to run great risks, pay heavy prices in sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and a general bad rep. It must be willing to sacrifice the better interests of its citizens along the way. Even face the prospect of both covert and overt actions aimed at stopping the quest.

The Burmese regime has shown repeatedly over the past decades that it possesses the necessary political will. The members of the junta may be brutal, corrupt, inefficient, and generally incapable of living up to the Boy Scout Oath, but they have political will out the ying-yang.

The second requisite is money. Bombs do not come cheap. Neither does the technology necessary to produce a working nuclear weapon. The fact that Burma would be pursuing the bomb against the restrictions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that is, "illegally," increases the expense.

Fortunately, the junta has massive amounts of money at its disposal. The exploitation of the country's hydrocarbon reserves and the assorted pipelines running across Burma have provided heaps and gobs of the money to the companies responsible as well as to the regime. The exact amount accruing to the junta can not be stated with precision but is in the billions. There have been more than enough billions to date (with more quite literally in the pipeline) to fund an ambitious nuclear acquisition program.

The third necessity is technical assistance from a state having reasonable competence in nuclear activities. Pakistan had help from China. Iran got aid from both Pakistan and North Korea. The North Koreans have been forced to take a more go-it-alone route, but they are good at the long, hard march sort of thing.

Burma has North Korea. A hermit-to-hermit or pariah-to-pariah program. The North Koreans constitute a not inconsiderable resource. They have a demonstrated competence in most of the stages of the nuclear fuel cycle as well as a very high skill level in building hardened facilities far removed from prying eyes (even those of the overhead variety.) Since the North Koreans do not run on an eleemosynary philosophy, their help has not come cheap. Fortunately, the petrodollars provide the junta with the necessary ways and means.

To get from North Korea to Burma requires crossing China. Not that this presents a significant obstacle. The Trolls of Beijing will abide by any UN sanction regime provided it does not hinder their political, diplomatic, or economic interests. Turning a Nelsonian eye to shipments of material and people between Burma and North Korea in no way hurts the interests of China either short- or long-term. Best of all, the well neigh onto impenetrable Chinese cloak of secrecy will do much to assure that no prying outsiders will gain verifiable knowledge of what and whom is going from where to where.

Probably the Burmese regime has to pay handsomely for an understanding Chinese attitude, but, what is money for? It is not beyond the realm of plausibility that the Trolls of Beijing would welcome a UN sanction effort directed against the foreign companies involved in exploiting Burmese hydrocarbon resources, as the forced withdrawal of the French and American companies would be to the benefit of China.

The proliferation of relatively inexpensive and efficient uranium enrichment methods as well as the availability of proven designs of plutonium production reactors go a very long way to easing the task of the Burmese. It is a simple algorithm: The more countries that develop means of making fissionable materials and fabricating even 1950s style bombs of Hiroshima or Nagasaki level yield, the easier it becomes to join the nuclear club.

There is another fact to keep in mind. Not every country, not every public, not every leader of state or opinion has the visceral fear and loathing of nuclear weapons as afflicts most people in the West. The Trolls of Beijing, for example, or the Men of the Kremlin, take a far more measured view of nuclear weapons even in the hands of governments given to acting on ideological True Belief then is the case in most of the West. As a consequence, there is not likely to be a great hue and cry over the possibility of Burma getting the bomb.

Given that both Beijing and Moscow are not all that het up over the looming probability of the Iranians gaining their Mahdi Bomb. this certainly is no surprise. There is another consideration which bears mention.

That consideration is the demonstrable impotence of the US. Even though President Obama swears up and down that he personally is committed to the dream of a world free of nuclear weapons, there is little in practice that the US can do to inhibit proliferation. Iran and North Korea have shown clearly that one can pursue the bomb with impunity regardless of the huffing and puffing emanating from Washington, or London, or Paris. Even a country as small and remote as Burma has found out that sanctions are made to be broken or evaded, and the US is today what Mao said it to have been over forty years ago--a paper tiger.