It is well over a month since India tested five nuclear weapons, and three weeks since Pakistan retaliated with its own tests. Although the anti-nuclear movement has had more than enough time to mobilise, the response has been remarkably restrained. Given that India carried out its first test on Buddha's birthday, at the very least the more spiritual people in the movement should have been provoked into strong action by such sacrilege.
True, Greenpeace went through the motions and organised a small demonstration outside the Indian Consulate General in Sydney. A few of its international officials travelled to New Delhi and Islamabad to join rather feeble local protests and to speak at seminars attended by military officials. Rebukes were sent to the Indian and Pakistani governments. But representatives of the anti-nuclear movement also did their best to spread the blame for the tests to the United States, France and Britain. It was their fault for hanging on to their own nuclear weapons.
Compare this response with the furious indignation and sheer nastiness that greeted the 1995-96 French nuclear tests on Mururoa atoll in Polynesia. The Mayor of Cairns urged people to send stuffed cane toads to President Chirac; the French Consulate in Perth was fire-bombed; environmental groups circulated lists of French-owned companies so that people could boycott their products and services; and a number of public figures made the kind of offensive statements about French people that they themselves would have denounced bitterly had they been made against non-Europeans.
Although they may have been personally opposed to the tests, many French residents of Australia felt as threatened by these outbursts as Asians now feel about Hansonism. A few decided to return to France. A number of French restaurants thought it advisable to erect large banners outside their premises proclaiming their disapproval of President Chirac's actions. Even ordinary Australians with French sounding surnames or who drove Renaults were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable.
There was something very peculiar and disturbing about all this ugliness, not least because those most actively involved appeared blind to their double standards. In May 1995, only a few weeks before France announced it would resume testing, China carried out its own nuclear test. As has been the case with the present Indian and Pakistani tests, the anti-nuclear movement was marvellously effective in suppressing its rage.
The French press asked, quite reasonably, why reaction to the Chinese test in Australia and other countries had been so muted compared to the hammering that France was receiving. When Greenpeace sent Rainbow Warrior II and a contingent of activists to French Polynesia in an attempt to disrupt the tests, the respected Paris newspaper Le Monde pointed out that the organisation confined itself to attacking soft targets. Le Monde questioned whether Greenpeace was morally justified in only taking action against "open, transparent democracies".
In fact, Greenpeace is a talented exponent of what can be called "virtual danger"; exploiting situations which appear dangerous on television, or in self-serving press releases, but which are most unlikely to have any hazardous consequences. The one apparent exception, France's 1985 infamous bombing of Rainbow Warrior I in Auckland harbour which inadvertently killed a Greenpeace photographer, was a crazy plot that went horribly wrong.
Nevertheless, realising that it was vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy, Greenpeace made a big fuss about its piddling protests when the Chinese tested a further nuclear device in August 1995. Six of its members unfurled a banner in Peking's Tiananmen Square and were quickly deported. They went quietly, making no attempt to engage in the kind of obstructive contests with the Chinese military that their compatriots in Polynesia were playing with the French.
The unfortunate truth is that nuclear programs of non-Western nations simply do not arouse the passions of the people in anti-nuclear and environmental organisations. It seems that bombs on our side are much worse than bombs on any other side. It is fair to ask "why?"
After all, contemporary Western democracies have been more responsible than China, India or Pakistan in their conduct of international affairs and military matters. They are rather more constrained by a public opinion which desires peace, and which is worried about nuclear weapons. In contrast, a Times of India poll conducted in six major cities immediately after the first set of Indian nuclear tests showed that they were extraordinarily popular, with 91 per cent of people interviewed stating their approval. And because Western governments are less corrupt, and generally more effective at controlling potentially devastating threats, there is less likelihood that nuclear materials may eventually fall into the wrong hands.
Perhaps those in the anti-nuclear and environmental movements don't accept any of this, and genuinely believe that nuclear-armed governments in the Third World pose less of a danger than does France, or other NATO powers. I suspect that more than a few activists really do hold such a loony view of things, which is one of the reasons I am dubious about the diagnoses and solutions they offer for other problems.
Alternatively, it is possible that the silence of the anti-nuclear activists has a very different explanation. They could be subconsciously expressing a colonialist view of the world, one in which non-Europeans are morally and intellectually inferior to Europeans, and therefore have to be judged by different standards. So whenever they do something naughty -- like developing nuclear or chemical weapons -- it would be unreasonable to complain too loudly. Better to blame the Western nations who must have been responsible in the first place.
Or perhaps there is yet another reason. Maybe the anti-nuclear movement has become paralysed by "political correctness", and is terrified that any strong actions against India or Pakistan will be seen as "racist".
I look forward to a satisfactory explanation of the selective nuclear outrage. In the meantime, I am making my own protest. I have sworn off tandoori chicken until India renounces nuclear testing. And if China resumes its test program, I will include Peking Duck as well.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment