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North Korean Nuclear Conflict Has Deep Roots

Democrats and Republicans have been quick to use North Korea’s apparent nuclear test to benefit their own party in these final weeks of the congressional campaign, but a review of history shows that both sides have contributed to the current situation.

There is more than 50 years of history to Pyongyang’s attempt to gain a nuclear weapon, triggered in part by threats from Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower to end the Korean War.

In 1950, when a reporter asked Truman whether he would use atomic bombs at a time when the war was going badly, the president said, “That includes every weapon we have.”

Three years later, Eisenhower made a veiled threat, saying he would “remove all restraints in our use of weapons” if the North Korean government did not negotiate in good faith an ending to that bloody war.

In 1957, the United States placed nuclear-tipped Matador missiles in South Korea, to be followed in later years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, by nuclear artillery, most of which was placed within miles of the demilitarized zone.

It was not until President Jimmy Carter’s administration, in the late 1970s, that the first steps were taken to remove some of the hundreds of nuclear weapons that the United States maintained in South Korea, a process that was not completed until 1991, under the first Bush administration.

It is against that background that the North Korean nuclear program developed.

North Korea has its own uranium mines and in 1965 obtained a small research reactor from the Soviet Union, which it located at Yongbyon. By the mid-1970s, North Korean technicians had increased the capability of that reactor and constructed a second one. Pyongyang agreed in 1977 to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the first reactor.

It was in the 1980s that the North Korean weapons program began its clandestine growth with the building of a facility for reprocessing fuel into weapons-grade material and the testing of chemical high explosives. In 1985, around the time U.S. intelligence discovered a third, once-secret reactor, North Korea agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Five years later, U.S. intelligence discovered through satellite photos that a structure had been built that appeared to be capable of separating plutonium from nuclear fuel rods. Under pressure, North Korea signed a safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1992, and inspections of facilities began. But in January 1993, IAEA inspectors were prevented from going to two previously unreported facilities. In the resulting crisis, North Korea attempted to withdraw from the NPT.

The Clinton administration responded in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed plutonium from fuel rods, it would be crossing a “red line” that could trigger military action. The North Koreans “suspended” their withdrawal from the NPT, and bilateral talks with the Clinton administration got underway. When negotiations deadlocked, North Korea removed fuel rods from one of its reactors, a step that brought Carter back into the picture as a negotiator.

The resulting talks led to the 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea would freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program. In return, it would be supplied with conventional fuel and ultimately with two light-water reactors that could not produce potential weapons-grade fuel.

However, a subsequent IAEA inspection determined that North Korea had clandestinely extracted about 24 kilograms of plutonium from its fuel rods, and U.S. intelligence reported that was enough material for two or three 20-kiloton plutonium bombs.

During the next six years of the Clinton administration and into the first years of the current Bush administration, the spent fuel from North Korea’s reactors was kept in a storage pond under IAEA supervision. As late as July 5, 2002, in a letter to Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the administration was continuing with the 1994 agreement but holding back some elements until the IAEA certified that the North Koreans had come into full compliance with the NPT’s safeguards agreement.

In November 2001, when the Bush administration was absorbed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, intelligence analysts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory completed a highly classified report that concluded North Korea had begun construction of a plant to enrich uranium. A National Intelligence Estimate of the North Korean program confirmed the Livermore report, providing evidence that Pyongyang was violating the agreement.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration waited until October 2002 before confronting the North Koreans, who at one meeting confirmed they were following another path to a nuclear weapon using enriched uranium.

Soon thereafter, the United States ended its participation in the 1994 agreement. North Korea ordered IAEA inspectors out, announced it would reprocess the stored fuel rods and withdrew from the NPT. Earlier this year, Pyongyang declared it had nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration then embarked on a new approach, developing a six-nation strategy based on the idea that bilateral U.S.-North Korea negotiations did not work and that only bringing in China and South Korea, which had direct leverage over the Pyongyang government, would gain results.

First Published in the Washington Post

October 15, 2006
Statement on North Korea

The Middle Powers Initiative (MPI) deplores the nuclear test by North Korea and urges all parties to exercise restraint and place their faith in diplomacy rather than ratcheting up bellicosity. MPI is dedicated to the promotion of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation through diplomacy and the rule of law. We deplore the proliferation of nuclear weapons as well as the failure of the nuclear weapons states to demonstrate adequate leadership in fulfilling their legal duty to work for and obtain the universal elimination of nuclear weapons.

MPI agrees with Secretary General Kofi Annan that North Korea’s action “aggravates regional tensions . and jeopardizes security both in the region and beyond.” We support Mr. Annan’s view that “serious negotiations be renewed urgently in the framework of the six-party talks.” We are encouraged that UN Secretary-General-elect Ban Ki-moon has indicated his willingness to visit the region to assist in the development of a diplomatic solution to this crisis.

It is also useful to recall the European Union’s strategy against WMD proliferation, adopted in 2003, which states, “The more secure countries feel, the more likely they are to abandon [WMD] programs: disarmament measures can lead to a virtuous circle just as weapons programs can lead to an arms race.”

We welcome the unanimity of the Security Council in adopting Resolution 1718 in response to the North Korean test. The challenge to and responsibility of the Security Council – and all nations – now is to ensure the diplomatic aspects of the resolution – in particular, the call for the resumption of the Six Parties talks – are favored over the punitive aspects.

Further steps towards increased militarization and nuclearization on the Korean Peninsula cannot result in anything but a disaster. Only diplomacy anchored to the bedrock principles of international law can offer an effective solution. We applaud Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s statement last week that, “The government of Japan has no position at all to consider going nuclear. There is no need to arm ourselves with nuclear weapons, either.” In a similar vein, South Korea’s emphasis on negotiations over confrontation is extremely satisfying. China – which stands to lose much in terms of economic development and military security in the event any of its neighbors “go nuclear” – has a special role in solidifying the diplomatic track.

We encourage the Government of North Korea to return to the Six-Party Talks, along with the governments of China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. We note that the North Korean government has reaffirmed its support for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and for the September 19, 2005, “statement of principles” on negotiations over the crisis. We call on the parties to refrain from any further provocative actions that could derail the renewal of these talks, including further nuclear tests or any threats to use force against any of the parties. The six parties should also explore the possibility for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in North East Asia.

MPI believes the Government of the United States must take a leadership role in advancing diplomatic solutions and finally engage North Korea in one-to-one talks leading to a full integration of North Korea into the world community as a non-nuclear weapon state with appropriate security assurances that give it confidence that such weapons have no value. Such a course – long overdue – would help diffuse tensions and create the necessary political space. The United States must remain conscious of its singular capacity to strengthen or weaken the international order based on the rule of law. Whether one supports or rejects the political system of North Korea, it remains a sovereign state and thus has a right to peace and security. However, its pursuit of nuclear weapons degrades its standing among nations and must be changed. Only by offering integration into the international community will peaceful change be possible and only by ending North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons will its integration be possible.

The actions by North Korea clearly demonstrate the folly of rejecting arms control treaties in the belief that treaties undermine national sovereignty. The record demonstrates consistent improved national and international security through arms control treaty law. Specifically these actions demonstrate the need for the full entry-into-force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and of its monitoring agency. This throws into sharp relief the lack of wisdom exhibited by powerful counties such as the United States, India and China in failing to ratify the CTBT. A CTBT, coupled with a fully-respected nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would establish a vital international norm against testing and any further dangerous developments of nuclear weapons. In fact, a vital CTBT would lower the currency of nuclear weapons, establish measures to ensure compliance with a ban on nuclear testing and lead us all to a much safer world.

Founded in 1998, MPI (www.middlepowers.org) is dedicated to the worldwide reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons, in a series of well-defined stages, working primarily with “middle power” governments. MPI is a program of the Global Security Institute (www.gsinstitute.org).

October 10, 2006
Public Policy and Good Citizenship

Public policy in any society has both normative and empirical dimensions. The normative dimension tells us who we want to be, while the empirical dimension tells us who we are. The difference between these two dimensions may be thought of as the gap between desire (or pretense) and reality.

Let me give a few examples. Our normative goal is to provide a good education for every American. When we take an empirical look at how we’re doing, however, we find that many young people are not, in fact, getting a good education. Classes are overcrowded, many students drop out of school early, and many who stay in school slide through without even learning the basics: reading, writing and arithmetic. Even worse, many students leave school without having developed skills in critical thinking, which has profound consequences for our democracy.

Another normative goal in our society is for every person to receive equal justice under the law. But when you look at the statistics, it seems to me that the rich get far better treatment in our legal system than the poor. Death rows are filled with poor people, while the rich who commit similar crimes are often saved from paying the ultimate penalty, and sometimes from paying any penalty at all, by the work of high-priced lawyers. It is rare that corporate executives who are caught cheating the public and their employees are brought to account for their crimes.

Still another normative goal of this country is embodied in the words of the Declaration of Independence, where it talks about “all men being created equal.” We know that even as the Declaration was being written most of the founders of the country were slaveholders and the only people allowed to vote were the same color, gender and social class as the founders, that is, white male landowners. It has been a painful struggle in this country, and the struggle continues, to reach the normative goal of treating people equally under the law.

It seems to me that citizens in a democracy should take on the challenge of examining where we fall short of achieving our stated goals and should develop strategies to move our society from where we are to where we profess we wish to be. In developing such strategies, it is necessary to identify and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving our stated goals.

A number of stated goals of our country are set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution, arguably our most important founding document. I’d like to read you this one paragraph Preamble:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

This paragraph provides an excellent starting point for considerations of public policy. It tells us first, who it is that seeks to accomplish these goals: “We the people.” That is where the ultimate power to achieve these goals should reside. It is a power that can be delegated to elected representatives, but it cannot be given away. Without a watchful, caring and astute citizenry, democracy will wither and fade. So, each of us, as a part of that civic body “We the people,” has a share of the responsibility for the future of our country and also the world.

The goals in the Preamble are lofty: “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” We should note that it is possible for these goals to be in conflict or at least to compete for resources. For example, there is certainly tension between providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare. This is an area of public policy that deserves particular attention. The Congress currently allocates to the military more than half of the portion of the budget that it has discretion to distribute each year, while many Americans lack adequate nutrition, shelter, healthcare and education. In addition to the more than $500 billion that goes to the military directly, there are also the resources needed to support the maimed and traumatized veterans and to pay the ongoing interest on the large portion of the national debt attributable to past wars.

We also need to ask ourselves the question of whether the “common defense” can be maintained by military means alone. The world has changed since our country was founded in the 18th century. Today terrorism is a far more realistic threat to the people of the United States than is the military force of another country, but we are still behaving in many respects as though our security can be assured by military force. If a terrorist group were successful in obtaining a nuclear weapon and transporting it to an American city, it could destroy the city, just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed more than 60 years ago. That is why I am a strong proponent of a public policy that seeks total nuclear disarmament. This would have to be done in a phased, controlled and verifiable manner, but doing so is virtually the only way to assure that nuclear weapons will not end up in the hands of terrorists who will use them against US cities.

I want to say a few more words about nuclear weapons because I feel that they are they greatest threat to our common defense, common welfare and common future. Our leaders argued until recently that our country maintained nuclear weapons in order to deter a potential adversary from attacking us with nuclear weapons. Obviously, if we could succeed in abolishing nuclear weapons worldwide, these weapons would not be needed for deterrence. Further, equally obviously, these weapons provide no deterrence value against terrorists who cannot be located to retaliate against, or who are suicidal and don’t care if they are retaliated against.

A few things that are not so obvious about nuclear weapons are that they are anti-democratic, extremely costly and cowardly. Nuclear weapons concentrate power in the hands of a single individual. Mr. Bush talks about using them preemptively. What if he decided to use a nuclear weapon or to initiate an all-out attack with nuclear weapons? There would certainly be no democratic checks and balances once the missiles were launched.

The US alone has spent over $6 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems since the onset of the Nuclear Age. I think its worth considering what this country might be like and how it might be viewed in the world if even a modest portion of this enormous amount had been spent in improving the common welfare and helping other countries to improve theirs.

Finally, nuclear weapons may be the most cowardly weapon ever created. You deliver them from afar, and in reality a country would only choose to use them on a country unable to retaliate in kind. These weapons kill massively and indiscriminately: men, women and children; young and old; healthy and infirm; civilians and combatants. They are certainly a coward’s weapon, and that is a bad match if you happen to have cowards and fools in high office, which experience suggests cannot be rule out.

In the end, it is not weapons or technology that makes a country great. Greatness exists in ideals and in people. We are a country with great ideals, but we are not living up to them and too many of our people do not have the dignity of having their basic needs met. It is a disgrace that the administration would request and the Congress would provide tax cuts for the rich while more than 40 million Americans are without healthcare. If we truly want to be a great people, we must invest in our people and we must be more generous in our interactions with the world. Our greatness will not be measured by wealth or military might, but by healthy and well educated citizens. The most important measure of a country’s greatness is the way it treats the least among them: the poor, the homeless, the dispossessed.

We have made it public policy in our country that international law is part of the law of our land. You’ll find this in Article VI(2) of our Constitution, where it says that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land.” One such treaty to which the US is a party is the United Nations Charter, in which it makes war illegal except in cases of self-defense (and then only for a limited period of time before turning the matter over to the UN itself) or when authorized by the United Nations Security Council. In the case of the war against Iraq, neither of these conditions was met and therefore the war was and remains illegal. Our young men and women are being sent to fight and die in an illegal and aggressive war. This is a tragedy for the families of these young people, and shameful for our country. It is bad public policy to allow leaders to commit aggressive warfare without any repercussions. Leaders should be held to account.

Another treaty that is the law of our land is the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which we agreed to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. In the year 2000, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty agreed unanimously to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Unfortunately, the United States under its current leadership not only has not fulfilled any of these 13 steps, but it has been the major obstacle in the world to progress on achieving them.

Other treaties that should be the law of the land, but which this administration has refused to support are the Kyoto Accords on Global Warming, the Treaty for an International Criminal Court, and the treaty banning landmines. By our lawless and unconstructive behavior in the international community, the United States has lost much of the respect and good will it had earned by its earlier support for the United Nations, by its generosity in the Marshall Plan, and by its support for international law in general and human rights law in particular.

Our public policies say a lot about us. They tell us who we are as opposed to who we pretend to be. Thomas Jefferson thought that each generation must have its own revolution. I think that we need not go that far, but that each generation must rethink its values and decide what it wants to be. Because of our might and background, US leadership is needed in the world, but it must be leadership that reflects the best of who we are onto a broader stage. We need leadership that is rooted in law, diplomacy and human dignity. We need a society in which force is not a first resort, but a last resort. To achieve such a society we need citizens who are educated to think for themselves and to think critically, and we need leaders with wisdom and humane values who will emerge from such a thoughtful citizenry.

Public policy should encourage a good public education for all citizens and the development of good citizens who take civic responsibility seriously. To move our society in this direction, we need to make some important changes in public policy that will include the following points:

1. Devoting more of our public resources to public education, with the goal of creating an informed citizenry capable of making intelligent decisions on issues of public importance.

2. Campaign finance reform, with the goal of taking the influence of big money and corporate preferences out of politics.

3. Increasing the accountability of public officials who violate the public trust.

4. Imposing appropriate legal penalties for white collar crime, with the goal of encouraging integrity in corporate leaders.

5. Providing an economic safety net for all citizens who fall below the poverty line.

6. Being good international citizens by providing leadership in both word and deed in upholding international law, including the United Nations Charter, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Principles of Nuremberg, the International Criminal Court, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and many other important treaties.

The battles for the future of our country will be fought not in far-off lands and not with weapons of mass destruction, but on the field of public policy within our country. The leaders in these battles will be those who accept the responsibilities of citizenship and leadership. I encourage you to be courageous, compassionate and committed in playing your part.

David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.

October 5, 2006
Ehren Watada, an American Hero

I write in praise of Ehren Watada, a brave young man who has placed truth, honor and the law above blind obedience to authority. Watada, a 1st lieutenant in the US Army, has refused orders for deployment to Iraq on the grounds that he is bound to uphold the Constitution of the United States and not follow illegal orders. By taking this stand, he is putting the war, its initiators and those in charge of conducting it on trial while putting himself at risk of incarceration.

Watada has taken the position that the war in Iraq is an illegal war of aggression, and that the conduct of the war and occupation has also followed a pattern of illegality directed from above. In a recent speech to the Veterans for Peace National Convention in Seattle, Lt. Watada said, “Today, I speak with you about a radical idea. It is one born from the very concept of the American soldier. The idea is this: that to stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it.”

Lt. Watada’s idea is one that has echoes from Nuremberg. It was at Nuremberg that the victorious allied powers, including the Untied States, held Nazi leaders to account for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Among the principles that derived from the Nuremberg Trials was one that said it is not an adequate defense to such crimes to argue that one was only following orders.

Watada is taking a courageous and principled stand by refusing to follow orders to participate in an illegal war. He is exercising his rights as an American citizen, an officer in the United States Army and a human being with the capacity for thought and reflection. He is making it clear that he did not check his conscience at the door when he joined the military three years ago, and is unwilling to be placed in a situation where he will have no choice but to commit war crimes.

Referring to the crimes of the Iraq War, Lt. Watada stated, “Widespread torture and inhumane treatment of detainees is a war crime. A war of aggression born through an unofficial policy of prevention is a crime against the peace. An occupation violating the very essence of international humanitarian law and sovereignty is a crime against humanity.”

By his courage, Watada challenges our complacency. Certainly it is easier for most Americans to go along with an unjust and illegal war than to challenge it. That is what happened for years during the Vietnam War. That is what is happening now during the Iraq War, almost as if we had learned no meaningful lessons from the Vietnam War. Watada is challenging the code of silence in the military and in our society. He rightly points out that the crimes being committed in Iraq are funded with our tax dollars. “Should citizens choose to remain silent through self-imposed ignorance or choice,” he argues, “it makes them as culpable as the soldier in these crimes.”

Lt. Watada is holding up a mirror to American society, one into which we need to take a hard look. Are we a people willing to go docilely along with yet another illegal war? Are we a people who condone torture and the denial of basic human rights and justice in the name of the false idol of fighting terrorism? Are we a people unwilling to recognize our own misdeeds that have led to the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and American soldiers?

Lt. Watada is threatened with a Court Martial for refusing to deploy to Iraq and also for making statements deemed to be contemptuous of the President and other top government officials. One such statement was: “I was shocked and at the same time ashamed that Bush had planned to invade Iraq before the 9/11 attacks. How could I wear this [honorable] uniform now knowing we invaded a country for a lie?”

Ehren Watada makes me proud to be an American, something the political leadership of this country has not done for a very long time. He is a young man with the courage to say that he will not fight in an illegal war. He is willing to risk his freedom in order to awaken others to the immensity of the tragedy we are inflicting on the people of Iraq and upon our own soldiers.

Watada has said, “I am not a hero.” I disagree. He is a hero in a time that cries out for authentic heroes, those who act with integrity, conscience and courage.

It is not Ehren Watada who should be on trial, but the leaders who planned and prosecuted this illegal war. Lt. Watada is giving us a wake-up call, and an opportunity to realign our values with those of our Constitution, the Principles of Nuremberg and the Geneva Conventions. Now is the time to break our silence, and bring to account the leaders who have violated our trust, broken our laws and demeaned America in the eyes of the world.

David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.

September 26, 2006
Disarmament is a Two-Way Street

The Bush administration’s current confrontation with Iran over what it claims is that nation’s nuclear weapons development program raises the question: Can the disarmament of one country occur in isolation from the disarmament of others?

That question seemed to be answered by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. Signed by almost all countries of the world, including the United States, it provided that the non-nuclear nations would forgo building nuclear weapons, while the nuclear nations would divest themselves of their own nuclear weapons.

But, upon taking office, the Bush administration quickly abandoned the U.S. commitment to the NPT. It withdrew the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, moved forward with the deployment of a national missile defense system (a revised version of the Reagan administration’s “Star Wars” program), and opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (negotiated and signed by President Clinton). Furthermore, it dropped negotiations for nuclear arms control and disarmament and, instead, pressed Congress to authorize the building of new U.S. nuclear weapons—for example, the nuclear “bunker buster” and “mini-nukes.”

Nor are the Bush administration’s more recent actions in line with the U.S. government’s alleged commitment to nuclear disarmament.

This past March, President Bush traveled to India, where he cemented a nuclear deal with the Indian government. India, of course, recently became a nuclear weapons nation, having spurned the NPT, conducted nuclear tests in 1998, and developed its own nuclear arsenal. Yet the agreement rewards India for its defiance of international norms. By supplying U.S. nuclear fuel and technology to India, the agreement facilitates a substantial expansion of that nation’s nuclear weapons complex. At the same time, it does not require India to stop producing nuclear material for weapons or to place Indian nuclear reactors under international inspection. As this U.S.-India agreement flies in the face of U.S. legislation that bans nuclear exports to nations that have not signed the NPT, the Bush administration is now pressing Congress to revoke such legislation. The Republican-led Congress seems likely to do so.

In addition, the Bush administration is promoting legislation in Congress that will fund the development of what is called the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), as well as a sweeping modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons labs and factories. Although the RRW is billed as an item that would merely update existing U.S. nuclear weapons and ensure their reliability, it seems more likely to serve as a means of designing new nuclear weapons. And the quest for new nuclear weapons seems likely to lead to the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing and the final breakdown of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Furthermore, the Bush administration has come out in opposition to a pathbreaking treaty to create a nuclear weapons-free zone in Central Asia. Signed earlier this month by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the agreement commits the signatory countries not to produce, buy, or allow the deployment of nuclear weapons on their soil. According to Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, the U.S. government’s opposition to the Central Asia treaty is based upon its reluctance “to give up the option of deploying nuclear weapons in this region.”

Another sign of the Bush administration’s double standard when it comes nuclear weapons is its unwillingness to consider the idea of a nuclear weapons-free zone for the Middle East. Israel, after all, has developed a substantial nuclear arsenal, but the Bush administration has studiously ignored it. The contrast with the administration’s reaction to Iraq’s possible development of nuclear weapons is quite striking.

In a letter published in the Washington Post on September 7, Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action—the largest peace organization in the United States–observed that the Bush administration’s nuclear nonproliferation policies were “incoherent and contradictory.” The administration, he charged, “is rewarding India’s nuclear weapons program with a deal to share technology; doing next to nothing about Pakistan’s veritable nuclear Wal-Mart; winking at Israel’s nuclear arsenal; unilaterally dropping out of arms control treaties . . . ; and ignoring our own obligations to pursue nuclear disarmament under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

Certainly, the Bush administration has been quite selective about which nations should have nuclear weapons and which should not. And most nations—including Iran–know it.

The U.S. government would be far more convincing—and perhaps more effective with respect to diplomacy for creating a nuclear-free Iran—if it recognized that nuclear disarmament is a two-way street

Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).

First published by the History News Network

September 25, 2006
Bush Seeks Immunity for Violating War Crimes Act

Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate — and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.

The ”pardon” is buried in Bush’s proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ”pardon” provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.

Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national.

Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future ”prosecutors and independent counsels” might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called ”special prosecutors” prior to the statute’s reauthorization in 1994) aren’t for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.

Gonzales also understood that the specter of prosecution could hang over top administration officials involved in detainee mistreatment throughout their lives. Because there is no statute of limitations in cases where death resulted from the mistreatment, prosecutors far into the future, not appointed by Bush or beholden to him, would be making the decisions whether to prosecute.

To ”reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act,” Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn’t apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002.

When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again.

What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted.

Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.

Elizabeth Holtzman, a former New York congresswoman, is co-author with Cynthia L. Cooper of The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens.

September 23, 2006
Next Year in Jerusalem

On 7 September 2006, upon hearing of her unanimous appointment as the next Israeli Supreme Court President, Justice Dorit Beinisch said she would preserve “the Supreme Court’s culture of values.” She went on to say, “As for the talk of eroding public confidence in the court system, everyone from all walks of life comes to Court to ask for its help.” She said the Supreme Court had no political agenda and protected basic values. I found these interesting comments from Justice Beinisch, who just the day before sat in the Israeli Court (together with Justices Chesine and Brunis) hearing the third appeal of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower, against his restrictions.

In l986, Mordechai Vanunu, acting out of conscience, revealed to the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons program. Sentenced to 18 years in prison, the first 12 years in solitary confinement in a tiny cell, and eventually was released in April 2004, having completed the entire 18 years. Upon his release, the Israeli Government imposed draconian restrictions on his freedom. He is forbidden to speak to foreigners or foreign press or to leave Israel. Each year for the past two years, on the 2lst of April, these restrictions have been renewed and Vanunu remains a virtual prisoner, living within a couple of square miles of East Jerusalem and under constant security surveillance everywhere he goes.

On this, my fourth visit to support Mordechai Vanunu (whom I have nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize), I attended the Israeli Supreme Court hearings on Vanunu’s restrictions on 6 September 2006. Vanunu’s defense lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, argued that in all the interviews Mordechai gave to the international media since his release in April 2004, there were no new secrets revealed and nothing he said was endangering the security of the State. He said that the Supreme Court stated in its judgment last year, that “the no breaches of restrictions together with the ‘passing of time’ factor are the base in deciding the continuing or ending of the restrictions.” Now after two-and-a-half years and in light of the fact that Mordechai did not breach the restrictions for eight months, Feldman argued, the Court should consider the ending of the restrictions. Mr. Feldman said that the ban on Mordechai to leave the country is a serious breach of his fundamental constitutional human rights. The attorney for the State came to the Court with four or five men, secret expert witnesses from the Secret Services and from the secret Israeli Nuclear Committee, to give the three judges a testimony behind closed doors, without Mordechai and his lawyers present, as they have done in the previous discussions in the Supreme Court. Their aim would be to convince the Court that Vanunu still has more information to reveal and he is a serious danger to the security of the State.

Justice Beinisch, said that there is no need to hear these secret testimonies as their position was well accepted by the previous bench of the Court, and “it is accepted on this bench too.” The attorney for the State disputed Feldman’s statements, arguing that “Vanunu is still a danger to the State security; he has more unpublished information and he wanted to make it public.” He also said that it is not true that Vanunu did not breach the restrictions in the past eight months and that he has material on that, but he wants it to be heard in closed doors. Mr. Feldman said only if the State has a proper order should it make it closed doors evidence. In the end, the Court asked the State to obtain the certificate for secrecy and make a new date to continue the hearing of the appeal.

One thing was clear from both the State Attorney and from the Judge’s statements in the Court, that with or without Vanunu breaching the restrictions, eight months or a year’s time (since the previous decision of the Court) is not enough time to end restrictions. The President of the Court said that “the Court in its decision left the term ‘time’ undefined” and asked the State what is their position to how much longer the restrictions could continue, but there was no clear answer from the State Prosecutor as to how long was long enough!

As I sat in the Israeli Court, I was surprised at one of the comments by President Beinisch to the effect that two years of restrictions do not seem too long! I thought to myself that it is, two-and-a-half years of restrictions, plus 18 years in prison (12 in solitary) and every day that goes by now, Mordechai Vanunu is a virtual prisoner, whose life is constantly in danger, being re-punished again and again (itself an action forbidden by law). How long is it going to be before it is finally long enough? Vanunu has no secrets; Israel and the world know it. His situation is now worse than a prison term, when at least he could look forward to getting out at a given time. Now he knows the Israeli government, directed by the Security Services of Israel, can keep him in Israel forever if they like, and no one outside Israeli, or inside, apart from the Israeli Supreme Court, if they really are a Court of Justice, can do anything about it! Vanunu has gone (yet again, as this is the third appeal!) to the Israeli Court to ask for its help, and the question is: Will they help give him justice NOW, and if not now, WHEN? Or must he live out the rest of his life incarcerated within Israel, a victim of secret court hearings, and security bureaucrats, and a victim of an allegedly democratic country with a sham justice system, offering no hope to Vanunu or any of its citizens who come looking for justice from their Courts of Justice.

Both inside Israel and in the international community, many people wait and watch to see if President Beinisch and her two Justice colleagues will have the courage to uphold international law and basic common decency and justice and restore Mordechai Vanunu’s right to his basic freedom of speech and movement. The result of this appeal will indeed give us an indication of the future strength of Israeli justice for those who go to ask for its help. We wait in hope that we may yet see JUSTICE IN JERUSALEM.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, is Hon. President of Peace People, Northern Ireland

September 18, 2006
Curb This Deadly Trade

As the UN general assembly opens this week, it has its best opportunity in years to make a life-saving difference to people all over the world. An opportunity to stop human rights abuses, limit the threat of terrorism, and reduce suffering for millions. The opportunity is a draft resolution for an international arms trade treaty that would place tough controls on sales.

The treaty would make it illegal to sell weapons to human rights abusers; make it harder for weapons to end up in the hands of criminals and terrorists; and help regulate a trade that is spiralling out of control – $900bn spent on defence versus only $60bn on aid. Every day over 1,000 people lose their lives through armed violence.

We have seen the appalling consequences recently in the Middle East: the Israeli army flattening civilian targets with precision-guided 1,000lb “bunker-buster” bombs and forcing almost a million people to flee their homes; Hizbullah rockets fired into civilian areas in northern Israel, killing people and forcing others to leave. Both are war crimes, and largely perpetrated with weapons imported from other countries.

Israel’s military hardware, including its deadly cluster bombs, is overwhelmingly American-made. And hi-tech British components were used in the Apache helicopters that have fired rockets at cars on crowded streets, and the F-16s that devastated southern Lebanon. For its part, Hizbullah doesn’t manufacture the Katyushas or Khaibar-1 missiles it fired indiscriminately into Israel.

Six-year-old Abbas Yusef Shibli picked up a cluster munition while playing with friends because it looked “like a perfume bottle”. When it exploded in his hand, he suffered a ruptured colon, a ruptured gall bladder, and a perforated lung.

Nicaragua, my birthplace, is still awash with weapons, the legacy of a bloody conflict – fuelled by the US arming the Contras – in which more than 40,000 civilians were killed. Nicaragua is now one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere.

For decades, the US provided millions of dollars in military aid to oppressive governments in Latin America; many of those countries now have high levels of armed violence. As a human rights campaigner, I have advocated on behalf of countless victims of conflict, from Latin America to the Balkans to the Middle East. I can attest to the devastating effect on the civilian population, particularly on women and children.

Some nations still try to block the treaty’s progress – though their arguments are flawed. The resolution from Britain, Finland, Japan, Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica and Kenya, would not undermine states’ sovereignty or ability to lawfully defend themselves with force. It would not hamper law enforcement to provide security for their citizens. Arms importers and exporters would simply have a clear set of rules to abide by, rather than the current hotch-potch of uneven and conflicting regulation.

The treaty would promote real security. It would help to stop armed groups that pay no heed to international law equipping themselves. An Amnesty International report last year detailed shipments of more than 240 tonnes of weapons from eastern Europe to governments in Africa’s war-torn Great Lakes region, and on to militias involved in massacres, mutilation and mass rape.

More than 50 countries have voiced support for an arms trade treaty, but to make it happen we need a majority of the 192 member states. Today Britain hosts a meeting of diplomats to discuss tougher arms controls. For once the international community can act pre-emptively to prevent carnage, not be forced to mop up afterwards. It is an opportunity that the UN must seize.

Bianca Jagger is goodwill ambassador for the Council of Europe

September 17, 2006
Nuclear Weapons: The Narrowing North-South Divide

“Nuclear bombs.violate everything that is humane; they alter the meaning of life. Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?” — Arundhati Roy

North and South are approximations, reflecting both a geographic and economic divide. There is no monolithic North, nor South. There is South within North and North within South, inasmuch as in the North there exists much poverty and in the South there is a stratum enjoying great wealth in most societies. In general, though, the North tends toward industrialization, wealth, dominance and exploitation, while the South, which has a long history of domination by the North in colonial and post-colonial times, tends toward poverty, including extreme and sometimes devastating poverty. Within both South and North powerful subcultures of militarism and extremist violence have emerged that, when linked to nuclear weapons, threaten cities, countries, civilization and the future of life.

Nuclear weapons have been primarily developed and brandished by the North, and used to threaten other countries, North and South. The South, which for the most part has lacked the technology to develop nuclear weapons, has begun to cross this technological threshold and join the North in obtaining these weapons of mass annihilation. The original nuclear weapons states – the US, Soviet Union, UK, France and China – were largely of the dominant North, although the Soviet Union had major areas of poverty and China, although geographically in the North was the exception, reflecting the poverty of the South after having been subjected to humiliating colonial domination and exploitation.

Israel, an outpost of the North surrounded by oil-rich but underdeveloped countries of the South, surreptitiously developed a nuclear arsenal. India and Pakistan, coming from a background of poverty and colonial domination, developed nuclear arsenals after it became clear that the other nuclear weapons states were intent upon indefinitely maintaining their nuclear arsenals rather than fulfilling their obligations for nuclear disarmament. Both countries were clearly on the Southern side of the economic and colonial divide, as was the final nuclear weapons state, North Korea, which is thought to have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The world is at a critical nuclear crossroads. In one direction lies an increasing number of nuclear weapons states and nuclear-armed terrorist organizations, a world of unfathomable danger. In the other direction, lies a nuclear weapons-free world. It is the responsibility of those of us alive today on our planet to choose in which direction we shall travel. We do not have the option of standing still, with North and South, rich and poor, dominant and exploited frozen in time and inequity. Terrorism is inherent in the possession and implicit threat of use of nuclear weapons by any country. Such state terrorism creates the possibility that extremist non-state actors, who can neither be located nor deterred, will gain possession of these weapons or the materials to make them and threaten or use nuclear weapons against even the most powerful, nuclear-armed countries.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Metaphor

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a metaphor for the North-South divide on nuclear weapons. The United States viewed the explosions from above. In fact, the US sent a camera crew in a separate airplane to record from the air the bombing of Hiroshima. In considering the bombings, the United States focused on technological achievement, the efficiency and power of the bomb, and bringing the war to a rapid conclusion. US politicians and opinion leaders wrapped the bomb in ribbons of mythic goodness and Americans today continue, to their own peril, to treat the bomb as a historically favorable outcome of fortune, scientific skill and determination to prevail. US President Harry Truman invoked God in his first public comment on the bomb: “We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.” In the view of Truman and many Americans, God had delivered to the Americans a war-winning tool of dominance, perhaps absolute dominance. This was and remains the view of the North, the rich, powerful, dominant and aloof.

The Japanese, despite the closer fit of the country with the North than the South, viewed the bomb from the uncomfortable position of being beneath it and victimized by the full fury of its force. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over 210,000 men, women and children were killed instantly or given short-term death sentences due to the explosive force of the bombs, the fires that were set in motion by the bombs and the deadly radiation released by the bombs. The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked without warning and the vast majority of those who perished in those destroyed cities were civilians. For more than 60 years the survivors of the atomic bombings have fought for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The memorial cenotaph at Hiroshima carries these words: “Never Again! We shall not repeat the evil.” Those who survived the bombings, the hibakusha, reflect the view of the South, the poor, powerless, dominated and exploited.

The Metaphor of Master and Slave

Another metaphor that is apt is that of master and slave. If nuclear weapons are instruments of absolute dominance, they create a master-slave relationship. The master doesn’t need to use the bomb to exercise his power. He only needs to make known his willingness to do so. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki etched into the minds of people everywhere the fact that the US was willing to use the bomb, should circumstances dictate. The US had proven its commitment to power by its ruthless destruction of undefended cities. It sent a message regarding its will to dominance of extraordinary clarity, intended primarily to the Soviet Union, but to people everywhere as well.

Other states, primarily in the North, followed the US and developed their own nuclear arsenals: first, the Soviet Union, then the UK, France and China. These five states, the victors in World War II and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, became the first five nuclear weapons states. They developed policies of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which they believed held each other’s nuclear arsenals in check. In their dangerous nuclear posturing, they placed at risk not only their own citizens but the future of life on the planet. They called this posturing deterrence, but more objectively it might have been called state-threatened nuclear terrorism.

In every aspect of pursuing and perfecting nuclear annihilation, the nuclear weapons states have exploited the South, including the pockets of poverty within their own borders. It has been the poor and disempowered, often indigenous peoples, of the South who have paid the heaviest price in health and future habitability of their lands for the mining of uranium, the atmospheric and underground testing of nuclear weapons, and the dumping of the radioactive wastes in their backyards.

But by the mid-1960s the nuclear weapons states, which continued to increase the size and power of their own arsenals, became worried that the world would become far more dangerous if nuclear arms spread to other countries, and particularly to countries of the South. They believed that the further proliferation of nuclear weapons would disrupt the patterns of dominance in the post-colonial relationship between the North and South that was developing with the collapse of overt colonialism.

The Two-Tier Structure of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Thus, it was the US, UK and USSR that proposed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the mid-1960s. By 1968, the treaty was ready for signatures and the three initiating nuclear weapons states were eager to sign. The treaty required the non-nuclear weapons states to agree not to acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons states to agree not to provide nuclear weapons or the materials to make them to the non-nuclear weapons states. But it went further. To sweeten the deal for the non-nuclear weapons states, the nuclear weapons states agreed in Article IV to assist them with the “peaceful” uses of nuclear technology; and also agreed in Article VI to “good faith” negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament.

When the Non-Proliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970, the non-nuclear weapons states had every reason to believe that the treaty would lead to nuclear disarmament on the part of the nuclear weapons states, thus leveling the playing field, rather than creating a permanent two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” a structure that would assure the dominance of the North. As it turned out, the nuclear weapons states did not fulfill their nuclear disarmament obligations under the treaty, and continued to build up their nuclear arsenals for two more decades before making any serious attempts to reduce them in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Many leaders in the South recognized the spiritual bankruptcy and extreme dangers of nuclear weapons, as well as the threats to humanity posed by the Cold War nuclear arms race. States of the South, for the most part, were content to forego nuclear weapons in the interests of other forms of security. Nearly all states of the South became parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and most of the states in the Southern hemisphere entered into agreements to create regional Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones in Latin America and the Caribbean; the South Pacific; Southeast Asia; and Africa. Nearly the whole of the Southern hemisphere is now part of the series of Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones that are committed to keeping nuclear weapons out of their regions. While this was going on, the nuclear weapons states turned a blind eye or, in some cases worse, assisted Israel in developing a nuclear arsenal.

By the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a review conference of the parties took place at five year intervals and a Review and Extension Conference was scheduled for 25 years after the treaty’s entry into force. The Review and Extension Conference took place in 1995 at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The nuclear weapons states, led by the United States, pushed for an indefinite extension of the treaty to make it permanent. A few courageous states of the South and many civil society organizations took issue with this position on the grounds that the nuclear weapons states had not fulfilled their obligations for good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. Under such circumstances, they argued, an indefinite extension would be akin to giving these states a blank check to continue with business as usual. The opponents of an indefinite extension pressed for extensions for periods of years, in which the nuclear weapons states would be required to make progress toward achieving the goal of nuclear disarmament.

The Indefinite Extension of the Treaty

At the end of the 1995 Review and Extension Conference, the nuclear weapons states prevailed and the treaty was extended indefinitely. The nuclear weapons states reaffirmed their Article VI commitment “to pursue good faith negotiations of effective measures relating to nuclear disarmament.” They also promised “determined pursuit.of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons.” But their pursuit of these goals has been far less than “determined.”

What the opponents of the indefinite extension feared would happen, has indeed transpired. In the light of little tangible progress on nuclear disarmament or sincerity on the part of the nuclear weapons states, India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons in 1998, announcing that they would not live in a world of “nuclear apartheid.” India, a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, had tested what it called a “peaceful” nuclear device in 1974. In 1998, India clearly crossed the line into the status of nuclear weapons state. There was cheering in the streets of India, and this would be matched by the wild excitement demonstrated in the streets of Pakistan following their nuclear tests. A very dangerous region of repeated crises and violence over the disputed territory of Kashmir had now taken on a nuclear dimension, one with the possibility of taking tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, of innocent lives.

In the year 2000, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty met for their sixth five-year review conference and the first since the 1995 Review and Extension Conference. After much jockeying for position, the parties to the treaty agreed unanimously to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. These steps included ratification of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, preserving and strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and negotiations for a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons states committed to an “unequivocal undertaking.to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals, leading to nuclear disarmament.” But despite the agreement of the nuclear weapons states to these and other steps for nuclear disarmament, they have accomplished almost nothing to demonstrate that their words were anything more than additional empty promises.

At the seventh Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in the year 2005, there was virtually no progress. The delegates spent the first ten days of the meetings trying to reach agreement on an agenda, and then could only take note of the failure to make progress on any of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Much of this failure can be attributed to a single incompetent leader in the North, George W. Bush, who has promoted new uses for nuclear weapons use while expressing implacable hostility to international law in all its forms.

The Tragic Policies of George W. Bush

The policies of George W. Bush have opened the door to preemptive or preventive uses of nuclear weapons, and have made clear that under his leadership US nuclear policy contemplates the use of nuclear weapons as opposed to a more limited policy of deterrence. Mr. Bush has opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and encouraged funding to reduce the time needed to make the Nevada Test Site ready for testing from three years to about 18 months. Bush also withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, despite protests from both Russia and China. In addition, Bush pushed the Russians into signing the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) in 2002, a treaty which provides for reducing the number of actively deployed strategic nuclear weapons on each side from about 6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200 by December 31, 2012. Among the many problems with this treaty are that it has no provisions for verification or irreversibility, no timetable other than the end date, and no means to continue the treaty beyond 2012, when both sides could immediately and dramatically expand their nuclear arsenals.

In his first State of the Union speech, Mr. Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil.” Despite the fact that the three countries formed no axis, Bush lumped them together and branded them as evil. Once a country has been tarred as evil, it is far easier to commit atrocities against its people, as Mr. Bush has demonstrated in the aggressive war he has pursued against Iraq. North Korea has withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in order to pursue a nuclear weapons program. Iran, as yet still a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has been pursuing uranium enrichment, a potential step toward the development of nuclear weapons, but one that has been allowed under Article IV of the treaty and has been exercised by other non-nuclear weapons states parties to the treaty.

In these early years of the 21st century, the North continues to find uses for nuclear weapons that threaten the countries of the South. What the countries of the North, perhaps particularly the United States, don’t seem to grasp is that nuclear weapons are likely to be their undoing in a time of non-state extremism. While it may be possible to deter another country from using nuclear weapons (this is arguably the principal reason that North Korea and Iran would pursue nuclear arsenals), it is impossible to deter a non-state terrorist organization from using nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence has its limits, and one clear limit is that a country cannot threaten or retaliate against organizations that cannot be located or whose members are suicidal. The longer the US and other nuclear weapons powers continue to rely upon nuclear weapons for their security, the greater the likelihood that these weapons will find their way into the hands of terrorist organizations intent on inflicting damage on the nuclear weapons states.

Need for New Leadership

Mr. Bush has embarked upon what appears to be a highly unsuccessful “Global War on Terrorism,” a war that seems to be stimulating and breeding terrorism rather than eradicating it. It is a war pitting extremists against extremists, made more dangerous by the possibility of nuclear weapons being used by the North on countries of the South, or by terrorist organizations obtaining nuclear weapons and using them in the form of a nuclear 9/11. The possibility of nuclear weapons again being used in war has perhaps not been greater since their last use at Nagasaki. The clash of fundamentalists has pushed the door to nuclear annihilation open wider than ever. Common sense and reasonable concerns for security suggest that it is time to close that door by eliminating nuclear arsenals. The leadership to do this must come from the North, particularly from the US and Russia, the most dominant of the nuclear weapons states, which together possess over 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, the leaders of the nuclear weapons states don’t appear to recognize the imperative to end the nuclear weapons era, and continue to cling to their nuclear arms as instruments of dominance. Einstein recognized early in the Nuclear Age that these new weapons required a change in thinking. He famously said, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” That is the nature of our drift, toward catastrophe, but a catastrophe in which the likelihood of the dominant powers becoming the victims is as great as their further victimization and dominance of the South. Nuclear weapons give more power to the relatively weak than they do to the powerful. With nuclear weapons, the weak can destroy the powerful. The powerful, on the other hand, would certainly destroy their own souls by attacking the weak with nuclear weapons. In the end, nuclear weapons are equalizers and equal opportunity destroyers.

The question that the North needs to consider seriously is whether it wishes a world with many nuclear powers, including non-state actors, or a world with no nuclear weapons. What exists between these poles, including the current nuclear status quo, is not sustainable. It must tip in one direction or the other. If it tips toward many nuclear weapons powers, the price will be widespread annihilation. If it tips in the direction of eliminating nuclear weapons, humanity may save itself from destruction by its most powerful and cowardly tools of warfare.

In the Nuclear Age, the South has attempted to pull itself up by its bootstraps, while the North has wasted huge resources on the development of its weaponry in general and on its nuclear weaponry in particular. The United States alone has spent over $6 trillion on its nuclear arsenal and its delivery systems since the beginning of the Nuclear Age. It is worth contemplating how our world might have been different if these resources had been used instead to eradicate poverty and disease and provide education and hope in the far corners of the world. Would the North still be resented, as it is now, by the politically aware poor and dispossessed?

In analyzing the North-South divide in nuclear weaponry, one realizes that this divide has benefited neither the North nor the South, and is bound to end in disaster for all. But the same is true of the North-South divide absent nuclear weapons. A relationship of domination, enforced by any means – military, economic or political – is not sustainable. This divide is perhaps most dangerous when it could ignite a nuclear conflagration, but it is still dangerous when the divide breeds terrorism in response to structural violence. It is not only the nuclear divide that must be ended by the elimination of nuclear weapons, but the greater divide between the North and South that must be closed. The world cannot continue indefinitely half-slave and half-free, half mired in poverty and half indulged in abundance. Resources are not limitless and modern communications make each half aware of the status of the other half.

The Narrowing Nuclear Divide

Nuclear weapons, the ultimate weapon of cowardice, may be seen as a symbol of what separates rather than what unites the world. Nuclear weapons turn the North into cowards and bullies and the South into victims that may most effectively find their heroism and personhood in acts of resistance. Ending the nuclear threat by eliminating nuclear weapons will lead to finding more equitable and decent ways of settling differences between states of the North and South, ways that will in the end benefit both sides of this divide.

In 1955, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and nine other distinguished scientists issued an appeal, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. This appeal concluded with these thoughts: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

More than fifty years later, the warning in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto rings true. Nuclear weapons confront humankind with the risk of universal death. We are challenged, North and South alike, to end this risk to humanity and to the human future. To effectively end this risk will require that peoples of North and South to join hands and form a bond rooted in their common humanity and their common concern with protecting and passing on the planet and all its natural and man-made treasures in tact to future generations.

The starting point for this effort, the elimination of nuclear weapons, may seem to some like a sacrifice on the part of the nuclear weapons states, but will, in fact, assure their own security as well and liberate their people from the soul-crushing burden of being complicit in threatening the massive annihilation of innocent people. The greatest challenge of our time, for North and South alike, is to eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate humankind and to redirect the resources being spent to create, maintain and improve these weapons to programs that will uphold human dignity by assuring that basic needs are met and education provided for all of the world’s people.

David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.

September 15, 2006
Emerging from the Nuclear Shadow

“At any given moment in history, precious few voices are heard crying out for justice. But, now more than ever, those voices must rise above the din of violence and hatred.”

These are the memorable words of Dr. Joseph Rotblat, who for many years led the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a global organization working for peace and for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Rotblat passed away last year in August, the month that marked the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was 96. In the final phase of his life, he consistently voiced his strong sense of foreboding about the chronic lack of progress toward nuclear disarmament and the growing threat of nuclear proliferation.

The startling development of military technology has entirely insulated acts of war from human realities and feelings. In an instant, irreplaceable lives are lost and beloved homelands reduced to ruin. The anguished cries of victims and their families are silenced or ignored. Within this vast system of violence — at the peak of which are poised nuclear weapons — humans are no longer seen as embodiments of life. They are reduced to the status of mere things.

In the face of these severe challenges, there is a spreading sense of powerlessness and despair within the international community, a readiness to dismiss the possibility of nuclear abolition as a mere pipe dream.

Peace is a competition between despair and hope, between disempowerment and committed persistence. To the degree that powerlessness takes root in people’s consciousness, there is a greater tendency to resort to force. Powerlessness breeds violence.

But it was human beings that gave birth to these instruments of hellish destruction. It cannot be beyond the power of human wisdom to eliminate them.

The Pugwash Conferences that were Rotblat’s base of action were first held in 1957, a year that saw a rapid acceleration in the nuclear arms race that came to engulf the entire planet. On Sept. 8 of the same year, my mentor, Josei Toda, issued a call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The day was blessed with the kind of beautiful clear sky that follows a typhoon, as Toda made his declaration at a gathering of some 50,000 young people in Yokohama:

“Today a global movement calling for a ban on the testing of atomic or nuclear weapons has arisen. It is my wish to go further; I want to expose and remove the claws that lie hidden in the depths of such weapons. . . . Even if a certain country should conquer the world using nuclear weapons, the people who used those weapons should be condemned as demons and devils.”

Toda chose to denounce nuclear weapons in such harsh, even strident, terms because he was determined to expose their essential nature as an absolute evil — one that denies and undermines humankind’s collective right to live.

Toda’s impassioned call issued from a philosophical understanding of life’s inner workings: He was warning against the demonic egotism that seeks to bend others to our will. He saw this writ large in the desire of states to possess these weapons of ultimate destruction.

The idea that nuclear weapons function to deter war and are therefore a “necessary evil” is a core impediment to their elimination; it must be challenged and dismantled.

Because Toda saw nuclear weapons as an absolute evil, he was able to transcend ideology and national interest; he was never confused by the arguments of power politics. Today, half a century later, the language of nuclear deterrence and “limited” nuclear war is again in currency. I am convinced that Toda’s soul-felt cry, rooted in the deepest dimensions of life, now shines with an even brighter universal brilliance.

If we are to eliminate nuclear weapons, a fundamental transformation of the human spirit is essential. Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki more than 60 years ago, the survivors have transformed despair into a sense of mission as they have continued to call out for nuclear abolition. As people living today, it is our shared responsibility — our duty and our right — to act as heirs to this lofty work of inner transformation, to expand and elevate it into a struggle to eliminate war itself.

In 1982, as Cold War tensions mounted, the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) organized the exhibition “Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World” at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. It toured 16 countries, including the Soviet Union and China and other nuclear weapons states. It was viewed by some 1.2 million visitors in total. SGI members also actively participated in the global Abolition 2000 campaign. The purpose of these and other efforts has been to arouse the hearts of people seeking peace.

To further deepen this type of grassroots solidarity, I would like to call for the creation of a U.N. Decade of Action by the World’s People for Nuclear Abolition and for the early convening of a World Summit for Nuclear Abolition. Such steps would both reflect and support an emerging international consensus for disarmament.

Needless to say, it is young people who bear the challenges and possibilities of the future. It would therefore be valuable to hold a gathering of youth representatives from around the world prior to the annual U.N. General Assembly, giving world leaders an opportunity to hear the views of the next generation.

Affording young people such venues and opportunities to engage as world citizens is critical to building the long-term foundations for peace.

Crying out in opposition to war and nuclear weapons is neither emotionalism nor self-pity. It is the highest expression of human reason based on an unflinching perception of the dignity of life.

Faced with the horrifying facts of nuclear proliferation, we must call forth the power of hope from within the depths of each individual’s life. This is the power that can transform even the most intractable reality.

To emerge from the shadow of nuclear weapons we need a revolution in the consciousness of countless individuals — a revolution that gives rise to the heartfelt confidence that “There is something I can do.” Then, finally, we will see a coming together of the world’s people, and hear their common voice, their cry for an end to this terrible madness of destruction.

Daisaku Ikeda is president of Soka Gakkai International, and founder of Soka University and the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research. This column runs on the second Thursday of every month.

September 14, 2006