'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict
Accidents Waiting To Happen
‘When an irresistible force such as you…..’ the song goes. But when it is not ‘you’ but a nuclear submarine or an orbiting satellite that in the immensity of the world’s oceans or the vastness of outer space comes into contact with one of its own, then the potential result could have earth shattering consequences. In the course of a week a British and a French nuclear submarine collided, and U S and Russian officials argued the toss over who was to blame for a huge satellite collision that spewed clouds of debris into space, threatening other unmanned spacecraft in nearby orbits and those of us below – for the next ten thousand years.
As far as the nuclear submarines were concerned, both the UK and French nuclear deterrent operations depend on complete secrecy, despite both countries' membership of NATO. Naval analyst Richard Cobbold noted that procedures would be in place to ensure that French and British submarines were routinely kept apart. But, with both nations keeping at least one nuclear-armed submarine constantly at sea for the past 40 years, he said it was no surprise that they had eventually ended up in the same area of ocean. "Even in an ocean the size of the North Atlantic the submarines are eventually going to be in the same patch of water at the same time," he said.
The UK-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament described the incident in more dramatic terms. They called it "a nuclear nightmare of the highest order."
"The collision of two submarines, both with nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons onboard could have released vast amounts of radiation and scattered scores of nuclear warheads across the seabed," said CND chair Kate Hudson. "The dents reportedly visible on the British sub show the boats were no more than a couple of seconds away from total catastrophe."
This again shows how the concept of the Nation State or at least the ‘sovereignty’ of the Nation State has run its course in our world. It doesn’t matter whether you talk about Global Warming, Global Economics, or these collisions, what becomes clear is that nations have become more than just an excuse for war, they have become accidents waiting to happen.
So many nations were created by cartographers and not the indigenous people that it is even harder to see the sense behind them. Not only do nations provide structures that multinationals can exploit, thereby propelling us into the present financial mess, nations also ensure that ecological issues cannot be properly addressed and that entire peoples can be held to ransom, as in the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe. But now, because of these same structures we must add the distinct possibility of our extinction because of an accident for which there is no conceivable insurance.
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