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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 506
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WCL 506 Dcember 2005
Weasel words
Perhaps the most notable of all weasel words are those that have helped to sustain 50 years of the Cold War and its successors: "the nuclear deterrent". Employed as soon as the threat of atomic bombs became clearly a politcial weapon, the term entered into conventional speech - and thinking - without any serious consideration of its implications. Even when the "enemies", potential or imagined, had also begun to build H-bombs, the term continued to be used, although with a difference. The Russians (and the Chinese) had "hydrogen bombs!", NATO had "the nuclear deterrent".
The effrontery of apologists for weapons of mass destruction knew no bounds. The NPT – the defective treaty intended to halt the spread of nuclear weapons noted already in 1963 that five states possessed nuclear weapons. Accordingly, the militaristic gang who wished to keep them permanently have suggested that the treaty recognized not just the fact, but also the legitimacy, of their possession. And, of course, since the states that signed the treaty so long ago have failed to carry out its provisions, the apologists for nuclear war have used that lapse of time as an argument for indefinite delay.
The contrast in the supposed differences in purpose of the holders of these weapons was never made explicit. The verbal dexterity or double-talk sank into public consciousness to such an extent that even opponents of weapons of mass destruction were gulled into arguments about the rights and wrongs of using or even having "the nuclear deterrent". That enabled proponents of mass-murder and the illegal weapons to pose as upholders of the status quo, defenders of the proper state of things, as opposed to the radicals who would do away with "what has kept us safe for so long".
These longer phrases constituted more weasel words of the established order, which was temporarily shocked in 1996 when a ruling of the International Court of Justice took away from the devotees of nuclear mass-murder the flimsy pretence of legality and legitimacy. But true to their allegiance to the Orwellian capacity of making words mean what they want them to mean, the rulers of the nuclear states have managed to nullify the ruling, either by ignoring it or occasionally by arguing that it really did not prohibit nuclear war, but rather accepted nuclear weapon states as somehow have a greater legitimacy than others – perhaps because of their greater capacity to commit legality!
Another weasel word or great celebrity is "nation", a more cuddly and less legalistic term than "state". The world has perhaps two or three thousand nations, but their rulers control the fewer than 200 states that run the United "Nations". When the old Soviet empire demanded and got three votes in the United Nations General Assembly it made a mockery of the whole idea, but no one challenged the emperor who had no clothes. Tyrants rule states but clothe themselves in national garments and nationalism still flourishes, subduing lesser nationalisms.
Obscurity is all in the world of nation-state politics. Spies, diplomats, politicians, civil servants, are devoted to their weasel words, knowing that public memory is short and that when their crimes of omission and commission are uncovered years (or only months) later, there will always be wriggle-room and they will not be called to serious account for their misdeeds. The most recent example is the exposure of the British sale of Norwegian heavy water to Israel, helping the spread of nuclear weapons Britain was pledged to prevent. But of course, we are still fighting in Iraq to bring peace to the country.
John Roberts
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