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  • Is Japan Being Too Polite About Nuclear Disarmament

    Is Japan Being Too Polite About Nuclear Disarmament

    Why is it that when the leaders of the G-8 go to Japan, they scrupulously avoid visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The Japanese government doesn’t invite their guests to these cities that suffered the atomic bombings in 1945, and the guests don’t go out of their way to make such a visit. Perhaps Japanese leaders think it would be impolite for the guests, many of whom have control of nuclear arsenals, to see first-hand, in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums, the destruction that these weapons have caused. But then again, it might be highly educational for them.

    Nuclear weapons have become surrealistic. It has been nearly 63 years since they were used in warfare. For most people, they are out of sight and out of mind, but not for all people, and particularly not for the leaders of the G-8. They still talk about nuclear strategy, nuclear proliferation and nuclear umbrellas. What they should be talking about, though, is nuclear disarmament, and this doesn’t happen much in these dark closing days of the George W. Bush era.

    Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, came to Tokyo and proclaimed that the US “has the will and the capability to meet the full range, and I underscore full range, of its deterrent and security commitments to Japan.” One wonders how such a statement is received in Japan. Does it make the Japanese feel secure to know that the US is prepared, if necessary, to retaliate with nuclear weapons on behalf of Japan? The steady refrain of the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, is “Never Again!” But as long as there are nuclear weapons in the world, “again” cannot be ruled out.

    North Korea’s test of a nuclear weapon was worrisome, but surely the way forward with North Korea is not the threat of their nuclear obliteration by the US in the event they attacked Japan. At any rate, retaliation would give very little solace to Japan if it were attacked again with nuclear weapons. The key is nuclear disarmament, not only by North Korea, but by all nuclear weapons states. Why isn’t Japan pushing harder to achieve this goal?

    An appropriate Japanese response to Condoleezza Rice, and to George W. Bush, whose policies Rice was articulating, would have been: “Thank you very much for the offer, but we don’t want to sit under your nuclear umbrella and have you threaten massive annihilation in our name. We know what it means to be attacked by nuclear weapons, since we suffered this fate by your hands at the end of World War II. We stand with the hibakusha in calling for a world free of nuclear weapons. We want you to get on with serious nuclear disarmament talks now.”

    Taking it even a step further, the Japanese could have responded that no one should have control of nuclear weapons without witnessing the artifacts at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums and without meeting survivors of the atomic bombings and hearing their stories. In fact, no country should have nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Until Japan takes such a posture, it will remain just another country that directly or indirectly supports the nuclear status quo with all its dangers.

    The people of Japan should be proud of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so magnificently rebuilt after the tragedies of the US atomic bombings, and they should be proud of the spirit and courage of the hibakusha. Japan has a key role to play in ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity, but it will not be successful in this role by being a polite host, keeping its powerful guests away from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and failing to demand more from its G-8 partners in ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor of the World Future Council.

  • Ten Years of the International Criminal Court

    “For nearly a half a century — almost as long as the United Nations has been in existence — the General Assembly has recognized the need to establish such a court to prosecute and punish persons responsible for crimes such as genocide. Many thought that the horrors of the Second World War — the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations, the Holocaust — could never happen again. And yet they have. In Cambodia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Rwanda. Our time — this decade even— has shown us that man’s capacity for evil knows no limits. Genocide is now a word of our time too, a heinous reality that calls for a historic response.” — Koffi Annan, then UN Secretary-General

    July 17 marks the 10th anniversary of the Diplomatic Conference in Rome that established the International Criminal Court — a major step in the creation of world law. Citizens of the world have usually made a distinction between international law as commonly understood and world law. International law has come to mean laws that regulate relations between States, with the International Court of Justice — the World Court in The Hague — as the supreme body of the international law system. The Internatiional Court of Justice is the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice that was established at the time of the League of Nations following the First World War. When the United Nations was formed in 1945, the World Court was re-established as the principal judicial organ of the UN. It is composed of 15 judges who are elected by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council.

    Only States may be parties in cases before the World Court. An individual cannot bring a case before the Court, nor can a company although many transnational companies are active at the world level. International agencies that are part of the UN system may request advisory opinions from the Court on legal questions arising from their activities but advisory opinions are advisory rather than binding.

    Citizens of the world have tended to use the term “world law” in the sense that Wilfred Jenks, for many years the legal spirit of the International Labour Organization, used the term the common law of mankind: “By the common law of mankind is meant the law of an organized world community, contributed on the basis of States but discharging its community functions increasingly through a complex of international and regional institutions, guaranteeing rights to, and placing obligations upon, the individual citizen, and confronted with a wide range of economic, social and technological problems calling for uniform regulation on an international basis which represents a growing proportion of the subject-matter of the law.” It is especially the ‘rights and obligations’ of the individual person which is the common theme of world citizens.

    The growth of world law has been closely related to the development of humanitarian law and to the violations of humanitarian law. It was Gustave Moynier, one of the founders of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a longtime president of the ICRC who presented in 1872 the first draft convention for the establishment of an international criminal court to punish violations of the first Red Cross standards on the humane treatment of the sick and injured in periods of war, the 1864 Geneva Convention. The Red Cross conventions are basically self-enforcing. “If you treat my prisoners of war well, I will treat yours the same way.” Governments were not willing to act on Moynier’s proposition, but Red Cross standards were often written into national laws.

    The Red Cross Geneva conventions deal with the way individuals should be treated in time of war. They have been expanded to cover civil wars and prisoners of civil unrest. The second tradition of humanitarian law arises from the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and deals with the weapons of war and the way war is carried on. Most of the Hague rules, such as the prohibition against bombarding undefended towns or villages, have fallen by the side, but the Hague spirit of banning certain weapons continues in the ban on chemical weapons, land mines and soon, cluster weapons. However, although The Hague meetings made a codification of war crimes, no monitoring mechanisms or court for violations was set up.

    After the First World War, Great Britain, France and Belgium accused the Central Powers, in particular Germany and Turkey of war atrocities such as the deportation of Belgian civilians to Germany for forced labor, executing civilians, the sinking of the Lusitaniaand the killing of Armenians by the Ottoman forces. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919 provided in articles 227-229 the legal right for the Allies to establish an international criminal court. The jurisdiction of the court would extend from common soldiers to military and government leaders. Article 227 deals specifically with Kaiser Wilhelm II, underlining the principle that all individuals to the highest level can be held accountable for their wartime actions. However, the USA opposed the creation of an international criminal court both on the basis of State sovereignty and on the basis that the German government had changed and that one must look to the future rather than the past.

    The same issues arose after the Second World War with the creation of two military courts — the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Some have said that these tribunals were imposing ‘victors’ justice on their defeated enemies, Germany and Japan. There was no international trial for Italians as Italy had changed sides at an opportune time, and there were no prosecutions of Allied soldiers or commanders.

    In the first years of the United Nations, there was a discussion of the creation of an international court. A Special Committee was set up to look into the issue. The Special Committee mad a report in 1950 just as the Korean War had broken out, marking a Cold War that would continue until 1990, basically preventing any modifications in the structure of the UN.

    Thus, during the Cold War, while there were any number of candidates for a war crime tribunal, none was created. For the most part national courts rarely acted even after changes in government. From Stalin to Uganda’s Idi Amin to Cambodia’s Pol Pot, war criminals have lived out their lives in relative calm..

    It was only at the end of the Cold War that advances were made. Ad hoc international criminal courts have been set up to try war crimes from former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. Just as the Cold War was coming to an end, certain countries became concerned with international drug trafficking. Thus in 1989, Trinidad and Tobago proposed the establishment of an international court to deal with the drug trade. The proposal was passed on by the UN General Assembly to the International Law Commission, the UN’s expert body on international law. By 1993, the International Law Commission made a comprehensive report calling for a court able to deal with a wider range of issues than just drugs — basically what was called the three ‘core crimes’ of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

    By the mid-1990s, a good number of governments started to worry about world trends and the breakdown of the international legal order. The break up of the federations of the USSR and Yugoslavia, the genocide in Rwanda, the breakdown of all government functions in Somalia, the continuing north-south civil war in Sudan — all pointed to the need for legal restraints on individuals. This was particularly true with the rise of non-State insurgencies. International law as law for relations among States was no longer adequate to deal with the large number on non-State actors.

    By the mid-1990s, the door was open to the new concept of world law dealing with individuals, and the drafting of the statues of the International Criminal Court went quickly. There is still much to be done to develop the intellectual basis of world law and to create the institutions to structure it, but the International Criminal Court is an important milestone.

    René Wadlow is the Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens and the editor of the online journal of world politics and culture www.transnational-perspectives.org

  • Learning From Past Disasters, Preventing New Ones

    *This article is the foreword to the book Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents are Rarely Accidental by Dr. Marc Gerstein with Michael Ellsberg.

    I have participated in several major organizational catastrophes. The most well known of them is the Vietnam War. I was aware on my first visit to Vietnam in 1961 that the situation there — a failing neocolonial regime we had installed as a successor to French rule — was a sure loser in which we should not become further involved. Yet a few years later, I found myself participating as a high-level staffer in a policy process that lied both the public and Congress into a war that, unbeknownst to me at the time, experts inside the government accurately predicted would lead to catastrophe.

    The very word catastrophe, almost unknown in the dry language of bureaucracy, was uttered directly to the president. Clark Clifford, longtime and highly trusted adviser to U.S. presidents, told President Lyndon Johnson in July 1965: “If we lose fifty thousand men there, it will be catastrophic in this country. Five years, billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of men-this is not for us. . . .”

    But it was for us, casualties included, after Johnson launched an open-ended escalation just three days later. In time, Clifford’s estimates were all exceeded: Before our ground war was ended in eight years (not five), the cost in dollars was in hundreds of billions, over five hundred thousand men served in Vietnam in a single year (1968) out of three million altogether, and — uncannily close to his predicted figure — more than fifty-eight thousand soldiers had died. Clifford’s prophecy in his face-to-face session with the president at Camp David — “I can’t see anything but catastrophe for our nation in this area” — could not have been more urgent in tone or, tragically, more prescient.

    And Clifford’s was not a lone voice. Johnson’s vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey, had used almost the same words with him five months earlier; others, including Johnson’s career-long mentor Senator Richard Russell, had also made the same argument. Yet Johnson went ahead regardless.

    Why? I have pondered and researched that question for forty years. (The documentation in the Pentagon Papers provides no adequate answer.) But one seemingly plausible and still widely believed answer can be ruled out. The escalation in Vietnam was not the result of a universal failure of foresight among the president’s advisers, or to a lack of authoritative, precise, and urgently expressed warnings against his choice of policy.

    The nuclear arms race, in which I was intimately involved between 1958 and 1964 as a RAND Corporation analyst serving the executive branch, is a moral catastrophe on a scale without precedent in human history, even though its full tragic potential has not yet occurred. The arms race involved — under both Democratic and Republican administrations, soon joined by the USSR — the mutual construction of a physical and organizational capability for destruction of most of the world’s population within a matter of hours. That project — building two matched and opposed “doomsday machines” and keeping them on hair-trigger alert — is the most irresponsible policy in human experience, involving as it does a genuine possibility of creating an irreversible catastrophe for humanity and most other living species on a scale that the world has not seen since the dinosaurs perished sixty million years ago. Even if the system were decommissioned totally — and it is not yet remotely close to being dismantled — such a course of action would not cancel out the fact that over the past sixty years, a moral cataclysm has already occurred, with ominous implications for the future of life on earth.

    I have been trying since 1967 — when I realized that the Vietnam War must end — to understand how we got into that war, and why it was so hard to end it. Since 1961, even earlier, I have viewed the nuclear arms race as an ongoing catastrophe that has to be reversed, and a situation that has to be understood. I assumed then, and still believe, that understanding the past and present of these realities is essential to changing them. In my life and work, I have tried to do what Dr. Gerstein’s book is trying to help us do: to understand these processes in a way that will help us avert them in the future.

    A major theme to be gained from this important book is that organizations do not routinely and systematically learn from past errors and disasters — in fact, they rarely ever do. This intentional lack of oversight can partly explain why our predicament in Iraq is so precisely close to the Vietnam experience, both in the way that we got into the war, deceptively and unconstitutionally, and in the way the war is being conducted and prolonged.

    It might not seem surprising that after thirty years, a generation of decision-makers and voters would have come along that knew little about the past experience in Vietnam. What is more dismaying is to realize that much the same processes — the same foolish and disastrous decision-making, the same misleading rationales for aggression — are going on right now with respect to Iran, with little political opposition, just three years after the invasion of Iraq, and while the brutal and tragic consequences of that occupation are still in front of our eyes every day.

    One reason for this folly is that many aspects of disasters in decision-making are known only within the organization, and not even by many insiders at that. The organizations involved tend not to make relevant and detailed studies of past errors, let alone reveal them outside the organization. In fact, the risk that such a study or investigation might leak to the outside is a factor sufficient to keep inquiries from being made in the first place. Making or keeping possibly incriminating documentation earlier, at the time of the decision, or later is similarly sidestepped.

    This deliberate decision within organizations not to try to learn internally what has gone wrong constitutes what I have called, with respect to Vietnam, an anti-learning mechanism. Avoiding improved performance is not the point of the mechanism. But because studying present and past faulty decision-making risks may invite blame and organizational, political, perhaps even legal penalties, those outcomes “outweigh” the benefits of clearly understanding what needs to be changed within the organization.

    The valuable cases studies, analyses, and information in the pages of this book were not provided by the organizations involved. This compendium arose from the accounts of individual whistle-blowers, journalistic investigations, and in some cases congressional action- and from Dr. Gerstein’s own initiative in collecting and analyzing the data. Did any one of the organizations detailed herein conduct a comparable study? Quite possibly not a single one. And even if they did, they certainly didn’t publish the results in a way that would allow other organizations and individuals to learn from their mistakes.

    Societally, then, we don’t have an easy way to learn from organizational mistakes of the past. That’s one reason that disasters are so likely, and why comparable disasters occur again and again, across organizations and even within the same organizations. In the case of Vietnam, Americans did not learn from the French or Japanese occupations before ours. Nor did Republicans under Nixon manage to learn from Democratic missteps before theirs. Specifically, there was no systematic study of the Pentagon Papers, which were available within the Defense Department to the Nixon administration, but no one ever admitted to having read them or even to directing their staff to analyze possible lessons from them. (I personally urged Henry Kissinger, in a discussion at the Western White House in 1970, to do both of these, or at least the latter, but he later claimed he had never read anything of them or about them, though he had a copy available to him.) As far as we know, Secretary of Defense Laird, Henry Kissinger, and others had no interest in the documentary record and analysis of twenty-three years of decision-making in the same geographic area, against precisely the same adversaries. And so they ended up committing many of the mistakes made by those who’d gone before, with the same results.

    This “anti-learning” phenomenon also explains why it is possible to reproduce our experience in Vietnam years later in Iraq, and now, from Iraq to Iran. In sum, there is strong and successful resistance within many organizations to studying or recording past actions leading to catastrophe — because doing so would reveal errors, lies, or even crimes.

    There is no substitute for the kind of comparative study analysis Dr. Gerstein shares on these pages. I hope this book is read widely; if we are to avoid the kinds of disasters and catastrophes described, we first need to understand them. Flirting with Disaster is a pathbreaking, indispensable step toward such a goal.

    Daniel Ellsberg Berkeley, California July 2007

    Daniel Ellsberg is a Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org)

  • Saving Humanity from the Fiery Threat of Nuclear Annihilation, Through the Power of Women

    In my youth, I wrote stories about the possible destruction of the beautiful planet on which I lived, deceiving readers into thinking that I was an embittered old man.  I leaped into the future as far as I could see, and I saw creatures coming from other worlds with the weapons to destroy the world around me.  I was haunted by the screams of my father, who had to kill other men in hand-to-hand combat in the global war that raged from 1914 to 1918.

    In 1943, I was drafted into the American army to stop Hitler and his murderous followers from conquering Europe.  I was trained to shoot and stab other men, just as my father had been trained in his generation.  I was selected as a war correspondent to write about the atrocities suffered by other men in bloody battles where they had lost their arms and legs, and sometimes their brains and testicles.  I lived through glorious days after I came home unwounded, but I had to face the grim realities created by scientists who had acted on the wild possibilities I had envisioned in my science fiction stories.

    In 1932, I had published a story titled “Red April 1965” about a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union—and I was confronted early in April of 1965 by a madman who rushed into my office screaming about the imminent occurrence of such a war on the very date when I had predicted it.  The war did not happen then, but I still had a deep fear that atomic bombs would destroy our civilization.

    In 1948, I wrote speeches for President Harry Truman, who had used nuclear weapons on Japan to save the lives of thousands of civilians and end the Second World War as quickly as possible.  After his action, the world embarked on a nuclear arms race, which has continued for many years.  Life on earth is under the fiery threat of annihilation.

    In 1982, David Krieger asked me to join him in founding the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization, which has become a voice of conscience for the community, the nation, and the world.  Its message is that nuclear weapons threaten the future of all life on our planet, and that it is the responsibility of all of us, working together, to end this threat forever.  Nuclear weapons were created by humans, and they must be abolished by us.  Peace in a world free of nuclear weapons is everyone’s birthright.  It is the greatest challenge of our time to restore that birthright to our children and all future generations.

    In 1983, I was invited to go to Moscow by the Council of Citizens, a nonpartisan organization based in New York.  In Russia, I was given an opportunity to speak to 77 Soviet leaders in the Kremlin.  I urged them to take the initiative in getting rid of nuclear weapons.  I said that I hoped my own government—the U.S. government—would do that, but I was afraid that American leaders would not do it.

    The Soviets listened to me, and my speech was quoted in Pravda.  I was interviewed by Radio Moscow, but the Soviets told me that if they discarded their nuclear weapons, they would be regarded as “weak” in many parts of the world.  I felt that my mission to Moscow did not have the positive results I had hoped for.

    Now, I believe that a worldwide initiative by women has the best possibilities of ending the nuclear threat.  Courageous women are making a difference in all nations; in fact, many countries have elected women to the highest offices in their governments.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has many notable women on its board of directors, its council of advisors, its associates, and staff.  Its development and progress is largely due to the generosity and activities of these women.

    The Foundation’s financial survival was largely dependent on the gifts of Ethel Wells, a Santa Barbara resident.  In the 1980s, the Foundation coordinated an International Week for Science and Peace.  Mrs. Wells reasoned that scientists were at the heart of creating constructive or destructive technologies, so she contributed $50,000 for a prize for the best proposal for a scientific step forward.  The winning proposal came from the Hungarian Engineers for Peace and called for the formation of an International Network of Engineers for Peace.  A short time later, the engineers joined with a group of like-minded scientists and established the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.  That organization continues to thrive with a large list of supporters.

    In 1995, friends of Barbara Mandigo Kelly, my wife, established an annual series of awards through the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to encourage poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit.  These awards are offered to people in three categories—adults, young persons 13 to 18 years old, and youth 12 and under.  Thousands of poems have been received from people of all ages, from all over the world.  The prize-winning poems have been published in book form, in anthologies and on the Foundation’s website.

    For many years, the Foundation offered prizes, financed by Gladys Swackhamer, awarded for essays by high school students all over the world, who shared their thoughts on nuclear policy and peace issues.  Many of these essays have been published in magazines in many places, and the authors include many young women from a wide variety of backgrounds.

    The necessity for cooperative action was highlighted recently in an article published in the Wall Street Journal signed by four men who have served in high positions—George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Senator Sam Nunn.  They expressed the belief that “We have arrived a dangerous tipping point in the nuclear era, and we advocate a strategy for improving American security and global security….We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe.”  [Emphasis added.]

    I think the time has come for the formation of a Women’s Task Force for Nuclear Peace, composed of leaders of women’s organizations with millions of members around the world.  The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is prepared to work in cooperation with these organizations to awaken humanity to the urgent need of preserving life on earth.

  • Questions for the Candidates

    Article originally appeared in the International Herald Tribune

    There has been unusual interest throughout the world in the U.S. presidential race.

    Skeptics, of whom there are quite a few, say the campaign is just a marathon show that has little to do with real policymaking. Even if there’s a grain of truth in that, in an interdependent world the statements of the contenders for the White House are more than just rhetoric addressed to American voters.

    Major policy problems today cannot be solved without America – and America cannot solve them alone.

    Even the domestic problems of the United States are no longer purely internal. I am referring first of all to the economy. The problem of the huge U.S. budget deficit can be managed, for a time, by continuing to flood the world with “greenbacks,” whose rate is declining along with the value of U.S. securities. But such a system cannot work forever.

    Of course, the average American is not concerned with the complexities of global finance. But as I talk to ordinary Americans, and I visit the United States once or twice a year, I sense their anxiety about the state of the economy. The irony, they have said to me, is that the middle class felt little benefit from economic growth when the official indicators were pointing upward, but once the downturn started, it hit them immediately, and it hit them hard.

    No one can offer a simple fix for America’s economic problems, but it is hard not to see their connection to U.S. foreign policies. Over the past eight years the rapid rise in military spending has been the main factor in increasing the federal budget deficit. The United States spends more money on the military today than at the height of the Cold War.

    Yet no candidate has made that clear. “Defense spending” is a subject that seems to be surrounded by a wall of silence. But that wall will have to fall one day.

    We can expect a serious debate about foreign policy issues, including the role of the United States in the world; America’s claim to global leadership; fighting terrorism; nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and the problems caused by the invasion of Iraq.

    Of course I am not pretending to write the script for the presidential candidates’ debates. But I would add to this list of issues two more: the size of America’s defense budget and the militarization of its foreign policy. I am afraid these two questions will not be asked by the moderators. But sooner or later they will have to be answered.

    The present administration, particularly during George W. Bush’s first presidential term, was bent on trying to solve many foreign policy issues primarily by military means, through threats and pressure. The big question today is whether the presidential nominees will propose a different approach to the world’s most urgent problems.

    I am extremely alarmed by the increasing tendency to militarize policymaking and thinking. The fact is that the military option has again and again led to a dead end.

    One doesn’t have to go very far to find an alternative. Take the recent developments on nonproliferation issues, where the focus has been on two countries – North Korea and Iran.

    After several years of saber-rattling, the United States finally got around to serious talks with the North Koreans, involving South Korea and other neighboring countries. And though it took time to achieve results, the dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program has now begun.

    It’s true that nuclear issues in Iran encompass some unique features and may be more difficult to solve. But clearly threats and delusions of “regime change” are not the way to do it.

    We have to look even deeper for a solution. “Horizontal” proliferation will only get worse unless we solve the “vertical” problem, i.e. the continued existence of huge arsenals of sophisticated nuclear weapons held by major powers, particularly the United States and Russia.

    In recent months there seems to have been a conceptual breakthrough on this issue, with influential Americans calling for revitalizing efforts aimed at the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have now endorsed that goal.

    I have always been in favor of ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. On my watch, the Soviet Union and the United States concluded treaties on the elimination of a whole class of nuclear weapons – Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) missiles – and on A 50 percent reduction of strategic weapons, which led to the destruction of thousands of nuclear warheads.

    But when we proposed complete nuclear disarmament, our Western partners raised the issue of the Soviet Union’s advantage in conventional forces. So we agreed to negotiate major cuts in non-nuclear weapons, signing a treaty on this issue in Vienna.

    Today, I see a similar and even bigger problem, but the roles have been reversed. Let us imagine that 10 or 15 years down the road the world has abolished nuclear weapons. What would remain? Huge stockpiles of conventional arms, including the newest types, some so devastating as to be comparable to weapons of mass destruction.

    And the lion’s share of those stockpiles would be in the hands of one country, the United States, giving it an overwhelming advantage. Such a state of affairs would block the road to nuclear disarmament.

    Today the United States produces about half of the world’s military hardware and has over 700 military bases, from Europe to the most remote corners of the world. Those are just the officially recognized bases, with more being planned. It is as if the Cold War is still raging, as if the United States is surrounded by enemies who can only be fought with tanks, missiles and bombers. Historically, only empires had such an expansive approach to assuring their security.

    So the candidates, and the next president, will have to decide and state clearly whether America wants to be an empire or a democracy, whether it seeks global dominance or international cooperation. They will have to choose, because this is an either-or proposition: The two things don’t mix, like oil and water.

    Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, is president of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies in Moscow.
  • The Non-Proliferation Treaty Turns Forty

    The Non-Proliferation Treaty Turns Forty

    July 1, 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) being opened for signatures. The true purpose of this treaty has always been two-fold: to prevent nuclear proliferation and to achieve nuclear disarmament; in other words, to create a level playing field in which there are no nuclear weapons. In the preamble to the treaty, the parties declare “their intention to achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to undertake effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament.”

    The treaty recognized five states as nuclear weapons states: the United States, Soviet Union (now Russia), United Kingdom, France and China. Three countries never joined the Treaty – Israel, India and Pakistan – and all three have subsequently developed nuclear arsenals. One country, North Korea, withdrew from the treaty and tested a nuclear device in 2006.

    Thus, at the 40-year anniversary, the number of nuclear weapons states in the world has not quite doubled. Actually, four other states became nuclear weapons states during this period, but gave up their nuclear arsenals. South Africa developed a small nuclear arsenal and then dismantled it. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus inherited nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union broke apart, but turned them over to Russia for dismantling.

    The greatest failure of the NPT at the 40-year mark is in the area of nuclear disarmament. In 1968, when the NPT was opened for signatures, there were 38,974 nuclear weapons in the world. By 1986, the number of nuclear weapons reached its height at 70,481 nuclear weapons. By the time the NPT turned 25 (from its entry into force in 1970), there were 40,344 nuclear weapons in the world, more than when it was opened for signatures. There remain some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the world, with over 95 percent of these in the arsenals of the US and Russia. Yet, there are some hopeful signs.

    Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has created an International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament with the purpose of forging a global consensus on how to reinvigorate the NPT at its 2010 Review Conference. “We cannot simply stand idly by” Rudd said, “and allow another review conference to achieve no progress – or worse, to begin to disintegrate. The treaty is too important. The goal of nuclear non-proliferation is too important.”

    In Europe, 69 members of the European Parliament from 19 European Union member states issued a Parliamentary declaration in support of the Nuclear Weapons Convention, a draft treaty for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Angelika Beer, a member of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Security and Defense, said, “Only a serious commitment to disarmament provides the moral ground for demanding non-proliferation from others.”

    In their endorsement of the Nuclear Weapons Convention, the parliamentarians stated, “We take seriously the universal obligation, affirmed by the International Court of Justice, to achieve nuclear disarmament in good faith in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    It is also hopeful that over 2,300 mayors of cities from throughout the world have recognized the particular danger that nuclear weapons pose to cities. They have joined the Mayors for Peace 2020 Campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

    Despite the United States voting against every one of the 15 nuclear disarmament measures to come before the 2007 United Nations General Assembly, there is hope on this front as well. Both major party candidates for US president have endorsed the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, and have indicated that they would take steps to realize this goal. With serious US presidential leadership for achieving the nuclear disarmament obligation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, there will hopefully be far more to celebrate on the 50th anniversary of the treaty.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and a councilor of the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org).

  • Cold War Has Thawed Only Slightly

    Article originally appeared in Columbia Tribune

    At the conclusion of their April 2008 summit, Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin agreed the Cold War was over and that another Cuban missile crisis would be “unthinkable.” Standing nearby were U.S. and Russian military officers, each holding a briefcase from which their respective president could quickly transmit a launch order that, in about three minutes, would cause hundreds of ballistic missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads to begin their 30-minute flights toward Russia or the United States.

    Regardless of public expressions of friendship, the United States and Russia continue to operate under policies that assume each could authorize a nuclear attack against the other. The failure to end their Cold War nuclear confrontation causes both nations together to maintain a total of at least 2,600 strategic nuclear warheads on high-alert, launch-ready status, whose primary missions remain the destruction of the opposing side’s nuclear forces, industrial infrastructure and civilian/military leaders.

    Most Americans don’t know these weapons exist. They have no idea a single strategic nuclear warhead, when detonated over a city or industrial area, could ignite an enormous firestorm over a total area of 40 to 65 square miles. The vast nuclear arsenals have effectively been hidden from public view and removed from public knowledge, thus making it easy for smiling U.S. and Russian presidents to proclaim “peace in our time.”

    Another Cuban missile crisis might be “unthinkable,” but the continued U.S.-Russian nuclear confrontation means it certainly isn’t impossible. Presidential assurances to the contrary, the relations between Washington and Moscow are worse than at any time since the fall of the Soviet Union. And nuclear weapons remain at the heart of U.S.-Russian political disagreements.

    Eleven months before the April 2008 summit, Putin revealed Russian tests of a new ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads were a response to the planned deployment of a new U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Bush said the U.S. system is designed to intercept Iranian missiles aimed at America. Russia argues Iran has no long-range missiles and is not soon likely to have them – and even if it did have them, the sites for the proposed U.S. radar and interceptors are hundreds of miles north of where they should ideally be located.

    The U.S. system, however, would be in an ideal spot to track European-based Russian nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. X-band radar in the Czech Republic and missile interceptors in Poland are to be located between 800 and 1,000 miles from Moscow. If the situation were reversed, it would be the geographical equivalent of putting Russian missiles on the northern edge of Lake Superior. Russia views the proposed U.S. system as a direct threat to its strategic nuclear weapons and warns it will target its missiles at the Czech and Polish sites where the system is to be based.

    Russian arguments are supported by two respected U.S. physicists, George Lewis and Theodore Postol. They say the U.S. missile defense system would be able to track and engage almost every Russian missile launched toward the United States from Russian sites west of the Urals. The physicists said the only obvious reason for choosing Eastern Europe for a missile defense site is to place U.S. interceptor missiles close to Russia, making it possible for the European-based radar and interceptors to be added as a layer against Russia to the already developing U.S. continental missile defense.

    Russia is also deeply threatened by constant efforts to expand NATO and encircle Russia with U.S. military bases. Despite vehement Russian objections, Bush continues to insist the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia be allowed to join NATO. Should this happen, NATO military forces will be positioned on the borders of Russia. If Ukraine joins NATO and accepts the deployment of U.S. anti-missile defenses on its territory, Russia has threatened to target it with nuclear warheads.

    NATO, which began as an anti-Soviet alliance, is locked in a Cold War mentality that regards Russia as the enemy and keeps nuclear weapons as a primary military option. Four hundred eighty U.S. nuclear bombs (a force larger than the entire deployed nuclear arsenals of France, the United Kingdom, China or Israel) are stored at eight European NATO bases. These forward-based U.S. weapons are intended for use, in accordance with NATO nuclear strike plans, against targets in the Middle East or Russia.

    The Cold War will not really end until the United States and Russia stand down their high-alert, launch-ready nuclear arsenals and finally cease their nuclear confrontation. This surely will not happen as long as the United States continues to push for NATO expansion while ignoring Russian concerns about its proposed European missile defense system.

    Steven Starr is an independent writer who has been published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies. He recently retired from the medical profession to work as an educator and consultant on nuclear weapons issues.

  • Start Worrying and Learn to Ditch the Bomb

    This article was originally published by The Times

    During the Cold War nuclear weapons had the perverse effect of making
    the
    world a relatively stable place. That is no longer the case. Instead,
    the
    world is at the brink of a new and dangerous phase – one that combines
    widespread proliferation with extremism and geopolitical tension.

    Some of the terrorist organisations of today would have little
    hesitation in
    using weapons of mass destruction to further their own nihilistic
    agendas.
    Al-Qaeda and groups linked to it may be trying to obtain nuclear
    material to
    cause carnage on an unimaginable scale. Rogue or unstable states may
    assist,
    either willingly or unwillingly; the more nuclear material in
    circulation,
    the greater the risk that it falls into the wrong hands. And while
    governments, no matter how distasteful, are usually capable of being
    deterred, groups such as al-Qaeda, are not. Cold War calculations have
    been
    replaced by asymmetrical warfare and suicide missions.

    There is a powerful case for a dramatic reduction in the stockpile of
    nuclear
    weapons. A new historic initiative is needed but it will only succeed by

    working collectively and through multilateral institutions. Over the
    past
    year an influential project has developed in the United States, led by
    Henry
    Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn, all leading
    policymakers. They have published two articles in The Wall Street
    Journal
    describing a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and articulating
    some
    of the steps that, cumulatively taken, could help to achieve that end.
    Senator John McCain has endorsed that analysis recently. Barack Obama is

    likely to be as sympathetic.

    A comparable debate is now needed in this country and across Europe.
    Britain
    and France, both nuclear powers, are well placed to join in renewed
    multilateral efforts to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in
    existence.
    The American initiative does not call for unilateral disarmament;
    neither do
    we. Instead, progress can be made only by working alongside other
    nations
    towards a shared goal, using commonly agreed procedures and strategies.

    The world’s stockpiles of nuclear weapons are overwhelmingly controlled
    by two
    nations: the United States and Russia. While Washington is in possession
    of
    about 5,000 deployed warheads, Russia is reported to have well over
    6,000,
    making its stockpile the largest in the world. It is difficult to
    understand
    why either the American or Russian governments feel that they need such
    enormous numbers of nuclear weapons.

    Hard-headed Americans, such as Dr Kissinger and Mr Shultz, have argued
    that
    dramatic reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in these arsenals
    could
    be made without risking America’s security. It is indisputable that if
    serious progress is to be made it must begin with these two countries.

    The US and Russia should ensure that the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
    of
    1991 continues to provide the basis for co-operation in reducing the
    number
    of nuclear weapons. The treaty’s provisions need to be extended.
    Agreement
    should be reached on the issue of missile defence. The US proposal to
    make
    Poland and the Czech Republic part of their missile defence shield has
    upset
    the Kremlin. It has been a divisive issue, but it need not be. Any
    missile
    threat to Europe or the United States would also be a threat to Russia.
    Furthermore, Russia and the West share a strong common interest in
    preventing proliferation.

    Elsewhere, there are numerous stockpiles that lie unaccounted for. In
    the
    former Soviet Union alone, some claim that there is enough uranium and
    plutonium to make a further 40,000 weapons. There have been reports of
    nuclear smuggling in the Caucasus and some parts of Eastern Europe.
    Security
    Council Resolution 1540, which obliges nations to improve the security
    of
    stockpiles, allows for the formation of teams of specialists to be
    deployed
    in those countries that do not possess the necessary infrastructure or
    experience in dealing with stockpiles. These specialists should be
    deployed
    to assist both in the monitoring and accounting for of nuclear material
    and
    in the setting up of domestic controls to prevent security breaches.
    Transparency in these matters is vital and Britain can, and should, play
    a
    role in providing experts who can fulfil this important role.

    The Non-Proliferation Treaty, for 40 years the foundation of counter-
    proliferation efforts, in in need of an overhaul. The provisions on
    monitoring compliance need to be strengthened. The monitoring provisions
    of
    the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol, which
    require
    a state to provide access to any location where nuclear material may be
    present, should be accepted by all the nations that have signed up to
    the
    NPT. These requirements, if implemented, would have the effect of
    strengthening the ability of the IAEA to provide assurances about both
    declared nuclear material and undeclared activities. At a time when a
    number
    of countries, including Iran and Syria, may be developing a nuclear
    weapons
    programme under the guise of civilian purposes, the ability to be clear
    about all aspects of any programme is crucial.

    Bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into effect would, similarly,

    represent strong progress in the battle to reduce the nuclear threat.
    The
    treaty would ban the testing of nuclear weapons, ensuring that the
    development of new generations of weapons ceases. However, it will only
    come
    into force once the remaining nine states who have not yet ratified it
    do
    so. Britain, working through Nato and the EU, must continue to encourage

    those remaining states that have not yet agreed to the Treaty – India,
    Pakistan, Egypt, China, Indonesia, North Korea, Israel, Iran and the
    United
    States – to ratify it.

    A modern non-proliferation regime will require mechanisms to provide
    those
    nations wishing to develop a civilian nuclear capability with the
    assistance
    and co-operation of those states that possess advanced expertise and
    that
    are able to provide nuclear fuel, spent-fuel management assistance,
    enriched
    uranium and technical assistance. But, in return, proper verification
    procedures must be in place and access for the IAEA must not be impeded.

    Achieving real progress in reducing the nuclear weapons threat will
    impose
    obligations on all nuclear powers not just the US and Russia. The UK has

    reduced its nuclear weapons capability significantly over the past 20
    years.
    It disposed of its freefall and tactical nuclear weapons and has
    achieved a
    big reduction of the number of warheads used by the Trident system to
    the
    minimum believed to be compatible with the retention of a nuclear
    deterrent.
    If we are able to enter into a period of significant multilateral
    disarmament Britain, along with France and other existing nuclear
    powers,
    will need to consider what further contribution it might be able to make
    to
    help to achieve the common objective.

    Substantial progress towards a dramatic reduction in the world’s nuclear

    weapons is possible. The ultimate aspiration should be to have a world
    free
    of nuclear weapons. It will take time, but with political will and
    improvements in monitoring, the goal is achievable. We must act before
    it is
    too late, and we can begin by supporting the campaign in America for a
    non-nuclear weapons world.

  • Debating Article VI

    Debating Article VI

    Christopher Ford’s article, “Debating Disarmament, Interpreting Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” (Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 14, No. 3, November 2007), ends with a disclaimer, “The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of the State Department or the U.S. government.” Ford’s views, however, seem extremely closely aligned with those of the State Department, which he joined in 2003 and where he currently serves as the United States Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation.

    Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) states: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” This article is the principal tradeoff in the NPT, in which the non-nuclear weapon states are given the promise that the playing field will be leveled by “negotiations in good faith on…nuclear disarmament.”

    When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) considered the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons in 1996, the judges unanimously concluded, based upon Article VI of the NPT, that “[t]here exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” [Emphasis added.]

    In his article, Ford seeks to substitute his judgment for that of the ICJ, the world’s highest judicial body. He dismisses the view of the Court on the nuclear disarmament obligation as mere dictum, “generally… regarded as having minimal authority or value as precedent.” But, in fact, the Court viewed this portion of its opinion as essential to close the gap in international law that they found in the threat or use of nuclear weapons “in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

    Ford uses his impressive rhetorical skills to place emphasis on the word “pursue,” making the claim that “pursuit” of negotiation in good faith is all that is required of a party. He uses the term “pursue” to mean “to seek” or “to chase,” rather than in the sense of “to carry something out” or “to continue with something,” meanings that the ICJ likely had in mind in their reaching their opinion that negotiations must not only be pursued but brought “to a conclusion.”

    It seems unlikely that the non-nuclear weapon states would have been (or now would be) satisfied with Ford’s view of “pursue.” Like the bold lover on the Grecian Urn in Keat’s famous Ode, the non-nuclear weapon states would be denied their reward “[t]hough winning near the goal.” In other words, they could only watch as the nuclear weapons states pursued the goal of negotiations on nuclear disarmament without real hope that the goal would ever be reached.

    Article VI of the NPT makes far more sense when the emphasis is placed on the “good faith” of the parties in pursuing (as in carrying out) negotiations for nuclear disarmament. Ford’s parsing of words literally deprives Article VI of meaning as he seeks to exonerate the US for its failure to act in good faith.

    Ford is predictably also dismissive of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament that were adopted by consensus in the Final Document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference. He argues, “Structurally, contextually, and grammatically…the 13 Steps amount to no more than any other political declaration by a convocation of national representatives: their statement of belief, at that time, regarding what would be best.” Since the United States has also been dismissive of the 13 Practical Steps, Ford is certainly in line with US policy on this point.

    The 13 Practical Steps call for, inter alia, ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), applying the principle of irreversibility to nuclear disarmament, conclusion of START III, preserving and strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and “[a]n unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”

    The United States has, in fact, failed to ratify the CTBT, explicitly not applied the principle of irreversibility in negotiating the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) in 2002, failed to negotiate START III with the Russians, withdrawn from the ABM Treaty to pursue missile defenses and space weaponization, and not made the “unequivocal undertaking…to which all states are committed under Article VI.”

    Despite Mr. Ford’s protestations concerning Article VI and his argument that “the United States has made enormous progress” on nuclear disarmament, the facts remain that the US still relies heavily on its nuclear arsenal, is the only country capable of leading the way toward a world free of nuclear weapons, and has not done nearly enough to rid the world nor its own citizens of the existential threats posed by nuclear weapons. The US, for example, has continued to maintain a significant portion of its nuclear arsenal on hair-trigger alert, has sought to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, has failed to initiate a policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons, and in 2007 voted against all 15 nuclear disarmament measures that came before the United Nations General Assembly.

    From a practical point of view, this means that other nuclear weapons states will continue to rely upon their nuclear arms for what they believe provides for their security. In fact, as the nuclear weapons states continue to rely upon these weapons, other states will choose to provide such “security” for themselves, and nuclear weapons will proliferate, eventually ending up in the hands of extremist organizations that cannot be deterred from using them against even the most powerful states. In other words, while Mr. Ford’s rationalizations and analysis (“…it would be unfair and inaccurate to extend any special Article VI compliance criticism to the United States”) may provide comforting justifications for some, they in fact contribute to a sense of nuclear complacency that undermines US security and progress on nuclear disarmament.

    It will not be possible to maintain indefinitely the double standards on which the NPT was formulated and which can only be cured by achieving the nuclear disarmament provision in Article VI of the treaty. This will require substantially more effort than pursuing good faith negotiations; it will require actual good faith. US leaders would do well to set aside Mr. Ford’s approach to papering over US failures to act in good faith with a thin veneer of rhetorical justifications and legal advocacy, and get down to the serious business of leading a global effort to eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and is a Councilor of the World Future Council.

  • Remarks at Occidental College

    Remarks at Occidental College

    Acceptance speech for Alumnus of the Year award at Occidental College on June 14, 2008

    Thank you. It’s great to be back at Oxy after these many years, and I am very honored to be recognized in this way. Being here brings back wonderful memories.

    I’d like to begin by sharing a poem.

    THE ONE-HEARTED

    The one-hearted walk a lonely trail. They hold the dream of peace between the moon’s eclipse and the rising sun. They set down their weapons, carrying instead the spirits of their ancestors, a collection of smooth stones.

    At night, they make fires, and watch the smoke rise into the starlit sky. They are warriors of hope, navigating oceans and crossing continents.

    Their message is simple: Now is the time for peace. It always has been.

    Since the Vietnam War, when I was a soldier by chance, not by choice, I have fought against militarism, against the needless slaughter of innocents in the false name of security, against the induction of young men, and now young women, into the military on the false premises of valor and necessity. I have fought for justice, for there can be no peace without justice, and I have fought for conscience, for conscience above all else makes us human, and no military machine has the right to dictate or suppress the conscience of any person.

    During our lifetimes, our country has initiated aggressive war on far too many occasions, including the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for which there has been no accountability. Even worse, if this is possible, our country and others have engaged in a mad nuclear arms race, preparing for omnicide, for the annihilation of all, in naïve reliance on the theory of deterrence. Even now, with the Cold War nearly two decades behind us, with no explanation but lethargy and inertia, leaders of the nuclear weapons states, and particularly leaders of the United States, continue to hold the world, including our own children and all future generations, hostage to the furious and untamed nuclear might we have created and unloosed upon the world.

    There is no goal more worthy of our attention and action than that of ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. I have had the privilege of friendship with Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project as a matter of conscience and the 1995 Nobel Peace Laureate. His great refrain until he died at the age of 96, echoed from the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, to which he was the youngest signer, was this: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”

    I have had the privilege of knowing many hibakusha, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who have warned repeatedly that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist. If we must choose, must we not choose humanity, the vitality of life, all the great accomplishments of the past and the future’s rich potential, over the raw, indecent and murderous power of nuclear arms?

    What is it that breeds ignorance and apathy in our country, a country that claims to be the world’s greatest democracy? What is it in our makeup and education that allows us to remain complacent in the face of world-ending weapons of our own making? What is it that makes us celebrate our genius in creating the tools of our own demise? Are our imaginations too weak and our vision too blurred to understand the fate that awaits us if we do not control and eliminate this threat to our common future?

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which I helped to found and have led for the past 26 years, works to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen international law and empower a new generation of peace leaders. You can find out more at www.wagingpeace.org. I urge you to join us in this work to build a better future for humanity.

    There is an Indian Proverb which states, “All of the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” We must nurture, with all our human capacities, the seeds of peace and human dignity which have been tended so poorly for so long.

    The time has come for new energy and leadership to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity, to restore and maintain peace, to live up to the highest standards of human rights, and to repair America’s tattered image in the world. This is a moment of hope for our country and the world. Change is coming, if we choose it. Now is the time for the one-hearted: “Their message is simple: Now is the time for peace. It always has been.”

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He was recognized on June 14, 2008 as the Occidental College Alumnus of the Year.