Tuesday, 6th September 2011
Crumbling regimes teach global nuclear lesson
A copy of this article was printed in The Scotsman on Tuesday 6 September 2011
As the UN this week marked its annual International Day against Nuclear Tests, I was reminded that, despite a 25 year effort, Colonel Gaddafi’s nuclear programme never got beyond the embryonic stage. We should be thankful for that, because other peoples who have suffered under brutal dictatorships still bear the lasting scars of the efforts of ruthless leaders to harness their own nuclear arms capability.
I have spent the past decade working extensively in eastern Kazakhstan in an area known as The Polygon, where, between 1949 and 1990, the Soviet Union tested many hundreds of nuclear bombs, using the local population as human guinea pigs. Cynically, the military scientists would wait until the wind was blowing in the direction of the remote Kazakh villages before detonating their weapons. KGB doctors would then closely study the effects of nuclear radiation on their own people.
The one and a half million people of The Polygon now suffer from a ‘genetic multiplier effect.’ When a man and a woman who have both been affected by radiation have a child, the genetic malformation in the baby is multiplied. Sometimes the damage may skip two generations, but then it will return with a vengeance. It may take until 2080 before the genetic impact begins to wear out, although no-one knows for sure.
As Kazakhstan struggles to come to terms with the military madness of a now irrelevant 20th century geopolitical divide, Gaddafi and his like are a reminder that the spectre of nuclear weaponry is still a 21st century problem. Now, more than ever, the international community, guided by the UN, must be tough on dangerously aggressive and unstable regimes like those in Iran and North Korea who are rapidly developing nuclear weapons.
We have seen regime after ruthless regime across the Middle East topple during the Arab Spring and its aftermath, just as the leadership of the former Soviet states was swept away in 1991. Ultimately, and hopefully soon, the long-suffering populations of North Korea and Iran will also receive respite from the tin-pot criminals who name themselves leaders at present.
When those leaders do fall, we owe it to those peoples and the generations that succeed them, to ensure that their long-term futures are not blighted by the radioactive contamination of the 21st century nuclear arms race.
STRUAN STEVENSON MEP
Struan Stevenson is a Conservative MEP for Scotland. In 2010 he was appointed by the Kazakh Presidency of the OSCE as the Personal Representative of the Chairman in Office with responsibility for the Ecology and Environment of Central Asia.
