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  • Much Ado about Something: North Korea’s Missile Tests

    North Korea’s missile tests triggered condemnations from capitals worldwide and may soon be taken up by the UN Security Council. But do these launches really represent an escalation of North Korea’s threat to global security? The answer is both yes and no.

    First the facts. The launch of the long-range Taepodong missile had been anticipated for weeks; the United States and Japan had already threatened dire consequences if North Korea followed through. While its estimated range includes Alaska, the rocket had never been tested, and Tuesday’s failure early in its flight offers no evidence it’s ready for prime time. The 1998 test of an earlier Taepodong version was more successful, overflying Japan before failing in its third stage. North Korea has successfully developed and deployed the shorter-range Nodong (Rodong) missile, several of which were also launched on Tuesday. But the accuracy and reliability of these missiles is mediocre.

    North Korea almost certainly has enough fissile material for six to ten nuclear weapons and has probably fashioned at least one explosive device. The 1994 agreement with the United States freezing North Korea’s nuclear program (the “Agreed Framework”) collapsed at the end of 2002, freeing North Korea to expand these capabilities. But North Korea is not known to have conducted a nuclear test and is not likely to have yet fashioned a nuclear warhead small, light and durable enough to ride any of its missiles.

    In short, a credible North Korean nuclear threat to North America is a long way off. Vancouver is safe. So why all the fuss?

    First, if left unchecked, North Korea is on course to develop these capabilities eventually. While this prospect may be at least a decade away, uncertainty over North Korea’s technological prowess shortens the “worst-case” time estimates.

    Second, North Korea’s missiles can now reach Japan, a core Western ally; and North Korea continues to sustain considerable conventional capabilities, including thousands of artillery tubes at the demilitarized zone that could devastate Seoul, South Korea’s capital. North Korea has little rational reason to unleash these forces offensively; but their existence is threatening nonetheless.

    Most importantly, though, the missile tests are a demonstration of Pyongyang’s sustained will and current mood. While the North Korean regime does not respond predictably to either confrontation or overtures, its one consistent behavior over the past fifteen years has been to act provocatively whenever engagement is stalled and US interests are focused elsewhere. Such has been the circumstance this spring.

    Pyongyang’s diplomatic brinkmanship has born fruit in the past. The 1998 missile test deepened short-term tensions but got Washington’s attention: resuscitated engagement led to North Korea’s 1999 unilateral moratorium on missile tests, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s visit to Pyongyang in 2000, and negotiations (not concluded) to eliminate North Korea’s missile program entirely. In 2002-3, with such engagement shunned by the more hostile Bush Administration, Pyongyang exercised a more aggressive brinkmanship, breaking out of the nuclear freeze agreement just as Washington was gearing up for war with Iraq, thereby maximizing prospects for minimal US response. The Bush Administration blinked, and North Korea’s nuclear capabilities have been expanding since.

    Similar conditions prevail now. A renewed engagement effort in 2005 through the so-called “Six-Party Talks” led to a statement of agreed principles in September, but when that consensus proved fleeting the Bush administration retreated to a posture of slow siege, applying economic and political pressure where it could (such as on counterfeiting operations) but resisting direct engagement. Meanwhile, the Pyongyang regime has undoubtedly noticed how Iran, skillfully following North Korea’s own playbook, has parlayed a far less advanced nuclear program into increasing attention and sweetened offers – now including the prospect of light-water reactors similar to those promised to North Korea under the Agreed Framework but terminated when that deal collapsed. A new provocation from Pyongyang was almost inevitable.

    What’s the best response? North Korea’s frantic gesticulations do demand attention – ignoring them would simply encourage Pyongyang to escalate down the road. The question is not how seriously to take the missile tests, but rather how to take them seriously. Knee-jerk counter-threats and aggressive posturing hardly answer the need. Indeed, the compounding failure of the recent policies of the United States and its allies must be a principal focal point.

    Many Bush officials came to power highly critical of their predecessors’ 1994 deal with North Korea, convinced it was giving up too much for too little, and were at best ambivalent to that deal’s subsequent collapse. But they have now presided over North Korea withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), expelling International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring, recommencing nuclear fuel reprocessing, declaring itself to be nuclear armed, and breaching its moratorium on missile tests – in effect giving up much more for much less.

    The call by ex-Clinton defense officials Ashton Carter and William Perry for a pre-emptive US attack on the Taepodong expressed a frustration with the ineffectualness of current US policy as much as with North Korea itself. This restiveness is increasingly shared by knowledgeable Republicans in both houses of the US Congress, some of whom have renounced the Bush Administration’s refusal to meet North Korea directly. But what would a fresh approach entail?

    A first step is to recognize clearly that the collapse of the 1994 nuclear freeze agreement allowed North Korea to cross key thresholds in its ambitions: what had been a national proliferation problem has metastasized into a regional security problem with important economic, energy and social dimensions. Previously, solving the North Korean nuclear issue has been seen as a way to catalyze greater East Asian regional security cooperation; now, such cooperation is a prerequisite. Abating North Korea’s nuclear ambitions requires, more than ever, grappling with the “hermit kingdom’s” long-term regional role.

    From a human security perspective, this also means facing honestly the difficult dilemmas posed by the poverty and oppression millions endure just because they happen to live on the northern portion of the Korean Peninsula. Neither human rights resolutions nor unqualified food aid are long-term answers – the human security imperative compels a comprehensive solution.

    An immediate need is for the United States and China to find an enduring common ground. And, indeed, the missile tests may make China more amenable to US calls for more coercive pressures. Decision-makers in Beijing are no doubt frustrated and angry, not least because Tuesday’s launches (as in 1998) will bolster support for US-Japan missile defense cooperation many Chinese regard as really aimed at them. The tests were also a slap in the face, coming on the heels of the announcement that China and North Korea would soon exchange top-level visits.

    But US and Chinese concerns in Korea are far from convergent; in particular, Beijing won’t support actions aimed at “regime change” in Pyongyang. In Washington, though, the missile tests are likely to reinforce hardline positions that view regime change – through either pressure or patience – as a necessary prerequisite to a final solution. Many of this persuasion are also most vocal in concerns over a “rising China.” Hence, the further ascendance of this approach will tend to push China farther from, rather than closer to, US positions on North Korea, neutralizing the effect of the missile tests themselves. Less directly involved states, such as Canada, can play important roles to smooth these frictions in US-China coordination.

    Another pressing need is to find a way to sustain meaningful engagement between North Korea and the United States even when public diplomacy is stymied. When circumstances prevent engagement through the front door, it should be pursued around the back. Canada, with both diplomatic ties to Pyongyang and a trusted voice in Washington, is uniquely situated to facilitate such private contacts.

    What is not needed are more grandiose overstatements of the threat North Korea currently poses or more chest-pounding warnings of further dire consequences to follow. That’s North Korea’s game. It’s time to change the rules.

     

    Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D. is Director of the Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia.

  • Humanity’s Future: Creating a Global Republic of Conscience and Creativity

    All my life, I have felt connected to the stars. As a boy, I walked at night in the garden of my grandfather King’s house, looking up at the dazzling lights in the sky. One world was not enough for me. I wrote stories about the explorations of the stars that I knew human beings would undertake. My tales landed me in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and in a book entitled Pioneers of Wonder.

    As I went through my long life I encountered one glorious being after another. I began to become aware of the tremendous role played by humanity in the development of the amazing planet called the Earth.

    I became aware of the spiritual wisdom of the saints and prophets; the writers of the Gospels and the soaring poets, ranging from Rumi to Shakespeare; the creators of great music, ranging from the singers of songs in all languages to the deep composers, Bach and Puccini and Beethoven, realizing that there were no limits to the creations pouring forth from the human soul. I found everlasting pleasure in the lines of William Blake—The one “who kisses joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”

    I have just put together a book, which encompasses my life’s experiences with the many kinds of writing I have composed—beginning with my imaginary trips to the far stars and the pains of hunger endured with many people in the dark days of the 1930s. When I went to the University of Kansas City, my professors encouraged me to shift from science fiction to the practice of journalism.

    My last story for an interstellar magazine was called “Star Ship Invincible.” It described what happened to a group of people who attempted to travel from Earth to Jupiter in a new vessel built to be strong enough to pass through any pressures brought against it. But that ship was not invincible after all. It fell into a Black Hole, a void in space that could not be passed through.

    The ship was absorbed into another universe from which it could not escape. The attempts of human beings to go into other dimensions were not achievable. They could not tell what had happened to them. They had traveled beyond their finite limits.

    My next experience was to write a story about a man caught in the tortures of hunger—whose only solace came from a recording of human laughter. In a day of desperation he tried to sell that recording to an old pawnbroker, but the old man did not find it worth more than a few dollars. The old man was wounded by the anguish in that roar of laughter. “Shut it off,” the broker said. “Please shut it off.”

    The young man went back into the freezing night from which he had come. The old man was alone with the echoes of that defiant mirth in his shop filled with the precious things sold to him by people who were dying of thirst and hunger. That was the state of the world for many people in those years of pain and poverty.

    That story was broadcast on the NBC radio network and reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, edited by Edward O’Brien in England. It caught the attention of editors on the Kansas City Star, and I was hired by that paper as a reporter although I had never taken a course in journalism. The managing editor, C. G. Wellington, said he was reluctant to take me on—because I reminded him of Ernest Hemingway, a writer he had employed there in 1917. Wellington said Hemingway had promised him to make a lifetime career on the Star—and then had run off to be an ambulance drive in World War I.

    Hemingway came to Kansas City soon after the publication of his great book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, based on the Civil War in Spain when General Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic and created a dictatorship there. Hemingway visited the Star on a night when Wellington was not there—and I had a chance to show him some of my stories. “You’ve got good stuff, kid,” Hemingway said. “But if you want to get anywhere, you’ll have to get out of Kansas City. The world is changing fast, kid. You have to go places.”

    I followed his advice and went to New York in January 1941. I landed a job on the Associated Press staff in Rockefeller Center, and dealt with news pouring in from all parts of the planet. Then I was appointed to a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. In January 1943, I was drafted into the United States Army and became a war correspondent.

    I landed in Normandy in 1944 and rode with General George Patton’s Third Army across France and into Paris. The liberation of Paris on a golden day in August was one of the most exhilarating joys of my life. The Nazi forces which had occupied that beautiful city in 1940 retreated from our troops in disarray. As they retreated, they were fired upon by the Free French under the command of General Charles de Gaulle.

    We were aware of the fact that Adolf Hitler, the Nazis’ leader, had ordered the German general in command of Paris to set fire to the city. But he had refused to do so. Hitler kept asking: “Is Paris burning?” but no answer was given to him. The innate humanity of a German officer was more powerful than Hitlerism.

    I was one of the American soldiers who were received with hugs and kisses when we entered the city. I appreciated the warm welcome given to us by the French people, particularly the French girls.

    We rushed into the bars, followed by the girls. While we drank bottles of champagne, we rejected the offers of the girls for unlimited sexual services. When I shouted: “I’m a married man!” the girls murmured: “When the war’s over, you can go back to your wife, but you’re over here now. You ought to be grateful for what we can give you now.” I didn’t take advantage of the offers. I wanted to survive—and get back to my wife in New York with a good body. On our honeymoon, she had given me everything a woman could give to a man, and I hoped we would have many years of such enjoyments.

    When the Nazis surrendered, I flew home. I had received a Certificate of Distinguished Service from Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, one of Gen. Eisenhower’s deputy commanders, and I returned to the AP with a sense of recognition that I had given three years of my life to the struggle against Nazism. Many of my friends had been wounded or killed—and I had interviewed many wounded men as a War Correspondent. Yet, I had not been crippled or injured. I thanked the Lord of the Universe for the blessings he had given me, but I had not received the punishment I expected.

    The AP did not give me the raise in salary I expected. Barbara and I celebrated my return by deep lovemaking and we had produced a wonderful child, a boy we named Terence Francis Kelly. The cost of living was rising and so I moved from the AP to the National Housing Agency, where I served as an information specialist and earned a much larger salary. During the war a housing shortage had developed, and President Truman had launched a large-scale building program designed to meet the needs of millions of veterans and others whose lives had been disrupted by the war.

    I liked the Housing Agency and I knew that its work was important. But I could not resist a tempting offer from a public relations agency, the Fitzgerald Company, which had been founded by a friend of mine. I left that agency to become a consultant to the National Book Publishers Council and then to serve as the U.S. director of the Study of World News conducted by the International Press Institute, which had received a large grant from the Ford Foundation.

    Before I joined the Study of World News, I served as the Washington director of Averell Harriman’s 1952 campaign to become the Democratic candidate for president. Harriman had the kind of experience that I thought a president should have. He had been the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, the Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the director of Truman’s Security Agency, and one of the administrators of the Marshall Plan, which had revived Europe after the war. I went with him across the United States in a chartered plane, and wrote speeches for him indicating that he was dedicated to the liberal program on which Truman had won his victory in 1948. But the nomination went to Adlai Stevenson, who had been elected governor of Illinois that year.

    Stevenson offered me a place on his staff, but I was eager to get out of politics and I became vice president of the Fitzgerald agency again. Then I leaped over to take part in the Study of World News, which had been started by the Ford Foundation under the leadership of Lester Markel, Sunday editor of the NY Times.

    The study got under way in September of 1952, when staffs were organized in Zurich, Switzerland; New York; and Madras, India. W. MacNeil Lowry, formerly chief Washington correspondent for the Cox newspapers, was given operating responsibility for the entire project. Lowry asked me to take charge of the work in the United States.

    Arrangements were made with a group of ten leading researchers in American journalism schools, headed by Dr. Ralph Casey of the University of Minnesota, to measure the amounts of foreign news printed in American papers. The news flowing on agency wires from all over the world was surveyed by the IPI staff in New York. The wire reports of all the major news agencies were made available by the agencies for study during the same weeks.

    Ninety-three of the American papers were put on the list through a statistical sampling method used by Dr. Chilton Bush, head of the Institute for Journalistic Studies at Stanford University. The list gave fair representation to morning and evening papers, papers in different regions of the countries, papers representing a cross-section of American journalism.

    For purposes of comparison with this list, a separate list of large papers was prepared. Papers in Europe and India were selected by the IPI staff in consultation with editors involved. Forty-eight papers in Western Europe and 28 in India were chosen for examination. The communist papers in the Soviet bloc and in China were not included however. It was assumed that these papers were instruments of government propaganda.

    When all the phases of the IPI studies were completed in the spring of 1953, the IPI had the largest assemblage of facts and ideas about the handling of news around the world. The reports eventually released by the IPI showed the gaps and discrepancies in the handling of such information—and created enduring controversies about the prejudices shown by editors who favored certain countries and disfavored others.

    Lester Markel had declared in 1952 that “the main objective of the Institute is to bring out greater world understanding through a better flow of information.” My participation in this vast project led me to believe that the task was almost impossible.

    In my 92 years on this planet, I have been a professor of communication and disseminator of information to illuminate the tremendous tasks of the human species. I have been appalled by the human capacity for evil and uplifted by the enormous capacity for good.

    We are evolutionary giants with origins linked to the cosmic explosion that brought the universe into being. We are composed of whirling atoms and glowing molecules beyond our comprehension. Albert Einstein, the greatest thinker of the 20th Century, who brought us into the nuclear age, which may destroy us all, decided that we were created by a Spirit we could never understand. We can never understand how far we have come and how far we may have to go.

    We are electromagnetic fields of energy and yet many of us may become Glorious Beings rising like mountains on new horizons. As the poet William Blake said, we can kiss joy as it flies and live in eternity’s sunrise. We can respond to the never-ending allurements we were born to enjoy.

    I have come here tonight to talk about humanity’s future and to hear your views on what the future may hold for us. When I was a young writer of science fiction, I walked in darkness, fearing the terrible disasters that might lie ahead of us. Yet, I went from one great experience to another.

    My mother gave me the name of King. That was her maiden name—Martha King—and she wanted me to have it. She married a man named Kelly, who sacrificed much of his manhood on a battlefield in France, and she did not want me to be completely identified with an Irish name and Irish history. So I have gone through life with a resounding name—Frank King Kelly. When I am down, overwhelmed by the awful things I have endured, I shout my name out loud: “Frank King Kelly!” and I feel related to all the Kings and Kellys in the amazing history of humankind!

    How was it possible for me as a boy to endure the blows of bullies in my first years in school? Why was I given a scholarship at the U. of Kansas City? How did one of my stories get into a collection of Best American Short Stories when I was 21? How did I get the advice I needed from a great writer, Ernest Hemmingway, who urged me to get out into the world and overcome my fears?

    When I went to New York, I couldn’t sell enough stories to survive there, even though I got some unexpected income by writing about the frustrated lives of girls in New York and Washington. I was given a chance to write these “true stories” for a magazine edited by a man who was a friend of one of my professors in Kansas City. He persuaded me to put more “zing” in those stories—and I made enough money to live well in New York until I got a good job on the AP staff. One of my stories was featured in a volume of these “true romances,” and I wrote about them in an article for the Atlantic Monthly entitled “Synthetic Sin.”

    In Manhattan I became a special correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other papers across the country. I wrote an article about the successful campaign against prejudice being conducted by a state commission against discrimination, which had been fighting against racial, religious, and national group prejudices for 2 ½ years. Commission Chairman Charles Garside disclosed that the AFL Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, and Express and Station Employees had repealed regulations that had restricted Negroes. The union had also eliminated from its constitution all the provisions that restricted membership to White persons.

    I was happy to write about such actions because I hated the treatment then given to Blacks, immigrants, and other minorities in American society. When I was a reporter on the Kansas City Star, I rode ambulances from the General Hospital to the scenes of fires, murders, and accidents. When we saw Black people in any of those painful situations, the ambulance went speeding by. The ambulance drivers told me: “We don’t stop for Blacks. They’ve got their own hospitals and their own ambulances.” I was horrified by the separation of human beings in the city where I had been born.

    I tried to get the city editor of the Star to let me do a series of articles on the brutality I had seen at the city jail, where police officers routinely beat homeless men who were arrested for wandering in the streets. “We can’t get the cops down on us,” he said. “We need their help in many places.” I saw the corruption in the police force and other agencies, but I quickly gave up my efforts to expose what needed to be done. I found out that I wasn’t a crusader.

    When I was offered a job as a researcher and speech writer for President Truman, I knew he had been elected with the backing of a notorious political machine—the Pendergast organization, run by Boss Tom Pendergast. My liberal friends urged me to keep away from that organization. “If you work for Truman, you’ll be regarded as a crook or subnormal mentally,” one of these friends said.

    But I had been told by reporters who investigated Truman that he was not personally involved in any of Pendergast’s chicanery. Pendergast had endorsed Truman because he was widely admired for his personal integrity. My wife and my literary agent, Mary Abbot, were convinced that Truman was a fine man. They admired the work he had done in trying to eliminate overcharging by the corporations, which had made huge profits in World War II.

    When I got a call from the White House in the spring of 1948, asking me to do research and writing for Truman in the Presidential campaign that year, I was reluctant to take it seriously. I didn’t know anyone on his staff. I was astonished when I learned that Kenneth Birkhead, one of my friends who had been a student with me at the University of Kansas City, had recommended me. He had told Clark Clifford and Bill Batt, the two men who were organizing Truman’s “whistle stop” train trips, that I was a fast writer who had written articles for many newspapers and I shared Truman’s ideas about giving full rights to people of all colors and creeds.

    So I went to Washington, helped to draft the Democratic platform, wrote drafts of many of the speeches Truman delivered from the backend of his campaign train, and shared in Truman’s unexpected triumph at the polls.

    I hadn’t sought any appointment on Truman’s White House staff. I was prepared to go back to the Fitzgerald agency, but my friends at the Atlantic Monthly had persuaded the president of Boston University to offer me an appointment as a professor of communications there. The Atlantic press had just published my first serious novel—a book entitled An Edge of Light, about my role as an AP editor in New York—and they said that a professorship at Boston University would give me a stable income and enough free time to write books.

    On the night in November when Truman’s so shocking triumph set off celebrations by delighted Democrats in Washington and other cities, Barbara and I drank champagne together and packed our few belongings into suitcases and prepared to move to a house in a Boston suburb. We didn’t realize that we would spend only a few months in Boston. When I arrived at the university, a secretary told me: “A Senator with a fancy name has been calling you from Washington. I’ve put a note on your desk.”

    The Senator was Scott Lucas of Illinois. He told me that he was scheduled to be the Majority Leader of the Senate, succeeding Alben Barkley of Kentucky, who had been elected Vice President on the Truman ticket. He said he needed a speech written and asked me to join his staff in January of 1949.

    The president of Boston University was negative toward the idea when I talked to him about it. “You want to run back to Washington when you’ve just been appointed here as an associate professor?” Daniel Marsh said, angrily. “I won’t give you a leave of absence for any such purpose.”

    My friends at the Atlantic Monthly were negative also, and urged me to stay in Boston. Members of the White House staff said, however, that Lucas would be a key factor in getting Truman’s proposals enacted by a Senate largely controlled by conservative Southern Democrats.

    I stayed four months on the faculty in Boston, and I found my students responsive to my arguments for the kind of progressive agenda offered by Truman. Truman had strongly supported the formation of the United Nations; he had desegregated the American armed forces; he had favored an expansion of the social security system and a national health program. In his inaugural address in January 1949, he had declared that every human being had a right to “a decent, satisfying life.” He offered encouragement to the rising movement for women’s attainment to the highest positions in every field.

    I found that the students I had in my classes at Boston University—most of them war veterans—backed the creation of international laws to bring principles of justice into the world community. They admired Truman’s willingness to confront critics and reactionary opponents. I finally returned to Washington to work for the Senate leader and to participate in struggles against McCarthyism, the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and other bigots.

    I had lived through the oppressive years when one-third of the people had lived in poverty and despair while the federal government under President Hoover had been virtually paralyzed. I favored a new democracy with places for everybody.

    But Senator Lucas was defeated when he ran for re-election—beaten by a man named Everett Dirksen, whose nickname was “the Wizard of Ooze.” The American Medical Association sponsored pamphlets denouncing Truman’s health plan and many doctors took part in the opposition to Lucas because he had supported that plan.

    After Lucas was rejected by the voters, I stayed on for two years with his successor as the Senate Leader, Ernest McFarland of Arizona. McFarland was a good-hearted man, but he was not a very progressive legislator. I left my job as the staff director of the Senate Majority Policy Committee, and plunged into other activities.

    I helped the American Book Publishers Council repel attempts by right-wing groups to censor books, and I served as the U.S. director of an International Press Institute study of international news. That study revealed that many American newspapers carried only small amounts of news from other countries—and revealed that many Americans were not aware of significant developments in other parts of a rapidly changing world.

    When the Soviet Union succeeded in putting a man into space, I urged my fellow Americans to applaud that achievement. I was an advocate of cooperation between the two powerful nations. I proposed that a statue be presented to the people of the Soviet Union as a gift from the American people just as the gift to the United States of the Statue of Liberty from France symbolized friendship between two great nations.

    My proposal came to the attention of leaders of the U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. Citizens’ Dialogue, which had been promoting exchange visits since 1979 to create “trust and understanding” between the two countries. I was one of 29 Americans invited to make a trip to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1983. I made a speech in the Kremlin, emphasizing the dangers of nuclear weapons. I said that those weapons endangered the survival of life on earth.

    I also told the Soviets about my participation in efforts to establish a National Peace Academy. The Academy was dedicated to the education and training of professional peacemakers and to the dissemination of information about the developing art of peaceful conflict resolution. I had participated in a citizen’s movement with 30,000 members, which led to the approval of the Peace Academy project by both houses of Congress and the construction of a U.S. Institute of Peace on the mall in Washington.

    The part of my speech in Moscow, which aroused the most discussion, was my suggestion that either the U.S. or the Soviet Union should dismantle half of its nuclear weapons and invite the world to witness that event. “Would not that nation open a new era, with humanity set free from the nightmare of a nuclear war?” I asked the Soviet leaders who took part in our dialogue. Afterwards, a Soviet official approached me and said that he personally liked the idea. Then he added: “But wouldn’t the nation that endorsed such a proposal be accused of weakness?”

    I said that I didn’t think that the building of thousands of such bombs should be considered a sign of strength. The arms race is a road to planetary suicide, I said. Why do you consider the present situation as a state of progress? The American people believe that you are prepared to inflict catastrophic blows on the Western countries—and you believe that we are prepared to kill millions of men, women, and children in the Soviet nations.

    When I visited Moscow and other parts of the Soviet Union in 1983, the Soviets like Brezhnev were believed to be firmly in control of enormous forces. None of the commentators predicted the rise of a Gorbachev and the rapid disintegration of the Soviet empire. No one predicted that Ronald Reagan, a right-wing Republican, would take big steps to end the Cold War.

    On my visit to the Soviet Union in 1983, I found that the people there had a deep fear of another war. Many young people had seen films and television programs that depicted how many things Americans had—houses, cars, many personal possessions. The Soviet young people no longer believed in the promises of communism. They wanted to be free to pursue happiness in the American style. When I came back and reported on their commitment to peace and their friendliness toward Americans, many people in Santa Barbara thought I had been brainwashed and deceived. When I reminded them that President Truman had predicted to me that the Soviet system would collapse—and that Russia would seek friendly relations with the United States—many Americans did not accept such a hopeful view of the future.

    Like Truman, however, I had come close to death many times, and I shared his deep feeling that human beings could be “glorious beings,” eventually capable of building a global society. I shared his admiration for the poem by Alfred Tennyson entitled” Locksley Hall,” written in 1842. Truman carried a copy of it in his wallet, and frequently referred to it.

    The English author wrote:

    “For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
    Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that could be;
    Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
    Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
    Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
    From the nations’ aerial navies grappling in the central blue;
    Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
    In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world…”

    I was amazed by Tennyson’s predictions in that poem and pleased by Truman’s long look forward. But I, too, had expected human beings to build a planetary organization and enter into a global acceptance of all creeds and cultures.

    When I worked on the Democratic platform, which Truman advocated in his 1948 campaign, we approved statements supporting “the effective international control of all weapons of mass destruction, including the atomic bomb.” Truman insisted that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified steps to end the most terrible war in history but he did not want to place such power in the hands of national leaders in any conflict in the future. If Truman’s plans for international control over nuclear weapons had been adopted, the insane nuclear arms race of the last 50 years could have been avoided—and humanity could not have been brought to the brink of annihilation in later confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

    That 1948 platform also endorsed Truman’s recognition of the state of Israel and the help he had given to the new Jewish nation to survive during the bloody conflicts in Palestine.

    Truman was accused of acting emotionally—succumbing to the pleas of Eddie Jacobson, his former partner in a clothing store, and other Jewish friends—or of pandering to the wealthy American Jews who gave large amounts of money to his candidacy and other nominees of the Democratic Party. But I and others who worked on that 1948 platform knew that the president was genuinely convinced that the Jewish people should have a homeland. His primary motivation came from his reading of the Bible. His religious faith came from the scriptures in that book regarded as holy by Jews and Christians.

    Truman was one of the few American leaders who tried to save the Jews from Hitler’s concentration camps. In April 1943, after he learned that Jews had been herded into slaughter houses “like animals,” he voiced his indignation in a fiery speech to 125,000 persons in a Chicago stadium. Saying that “no one can any longer doubt the horrible intentions of the Nazi beasts,” Truman urged all the governments then at war with the Nazis to help the Jews before it was too late. He asked for the opening of “free lands” for the Jews and other persecuted minorities.

    If his plea had been heeded, millions of lives could have been saved—including thousands of the most gifted people who ever lived on this planet. It is still impossible to accept the failures of many of the people (including myself) who did little to save the human beings destroyed by the racist Nazis. “Today—not tomorrow—we must do all that is humanly possible to provide a haven and a place of safety for all those who can be grasped from the hands of the Nazi butchers.” He begged all of us to “draw deeply on our traditions of aid to the oppressed—and our great national generosity.” He said: “This is not a Jewish problem, it is an American problem—and we must and we will face it squarely and honorably.”

    We did not face it squarely and honorably on the scale that it called for. We did finally join other nations in crushing Hitler’s Nazis and the Japanese warlords. As a member of General Patton’s Third Army, I had the joy of liberating Paris from the German occupation forces in 1944. I must note that it was the humanity of a German general—commander of the Nazi forces in Paris—that kept Paris from being destroyed. Hitler had ordered that general to set the city on fire, but he refused to do it. Hitler died in the wreckage of his bomb shelter in Berlin.

    In the years since World War II, there have been many savage events on our planet. The United Nations—created by Truman and other farsighted leaders in 1945—has not been as effective as its founders and supporters hoped that it would be. The destructive forces that have been manifested all through the long history of human beings have produced wars, persecutions of minorities, mass killings, the committing of tortures against international law, have made me wonder whether we will ever evolve into the “glorious beings” we were designed to be.

    But we now have an International Bill of Rights drafted by leaders in many countries—and there is a growing awareness of the fundamental value of every person in the developing world culture. President Truman in his inaugural address in 1949 declared that every person is entitled to “a decent, satisfying life.”

    The fact that we live in a nuclear age when enough weapons exist to destroy all nations and bring down our whole civilization must awaken in every one of us a sense of personal responsibility for getting rid of those weapons. The leaders of the nuclear powers are not carrying out that vital task. So we the people must demand action to get every government to act for human survival.

    The Declaration if Interdependence adopted by this Institute on July 4 thirty years ago indicates the right path for humanity’s future. Let me remind you of the 10 points in that great statement:

    1. To explore the classical and renaissance traditions of East and West—and their continuing relevance to emerging modes and patterns of living;
    2. To renew the universal vision behind the American Dream through authentic affirmations of freedom, excellence and self-transcendence in an ever-evolving Republic of Conscience;
    3. To honor through appropriate observance the contributions of men and women of all ages to world culture;
    4. To enhance the enjoyment of the creative artistry and craftsmanship of all cultures;
    5. To deepen awareness of the universality of humanity’s spiritual striving and its rich varieties of expression in the religions, philosophies and literatures of humanity;
    6. To promote forums for fearless inquiry and constructive dialogue concerning the frontiers of science, the therapeutics of self-transformation, and the societies of the future;
    7. To investigate the imaginative use of the spiritual, mental and material resources of the planet in the service of universal welfare;
    8. To examine changing social structures in terms of the principle that a world culture is greater than the sum of its parts and to envision the conditions, prospects and possibilities of the world civilization of the future;
    9. To assist in the emergence of men and women of universal culture, capable of continuous growth in non-violence of mind, generosity of heart, and harmony of soul. I call these persons “glorious beings”;
    10. To promote universal brotherhood and to foster human fellowship among all races, nations and cultures.

    Many of the topics were the subjects of long dialogues I had in the 1950s with Raghavan and Nandini Iyer when I served as vice president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The Iyers—and their brilliant son, Pico—certainly had the qualities of “glorious beings” and I want to express my gratitude for the inspirations they gave to me and to many others, including the founders of this Institute.

    In closing, I want to thank all of you who participated in our meeting here tonight. You affirm my belief in the statement of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said: “The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end”

    We are all rising together in Eternity’s sunrise!

    Frank K. Kelly, Senior Vice President, is a former speech writer for President Truman and staff director of the U.S. Senate Majority Policy Committee. He served for 17 years as Vice President of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

  • Humanity’s Future: Creating a Global Republic of Conscience and Creativity

    All my life, I have felt connected to the stars.  As a boy, I walked at night in the garden of my grandfather King’s house, looking up at the dazzling lights in the sky.  One world was not enough for me.  I wrote stories about the explorations of the stars that I knew human beings would undertake.  My tales landed me in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and in a book entitled Pioneers of Wonder.  


    As I went through my long life I encountered one glorious being after another.  I began to become aware of the tremendous role played by humanity in the development of the amazing planet called the Earth.


    I became aware of the spiritual wisdom of the saints and prophets; the writers of the Gospels and the soaring poets, ranging from Rumi to Shakespeare; the creators of great music, ranging from the singers of songs in all languages to the deep composers, Bach and Puccini and Beethoven, realizing that there were no limits to the creations pouring forth from the human soul.  I found everlasting pleasure in the lines of William Blake—The one “who kisses joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”


    I have just put together a book, which encompasses my life’s experiences with the many kinds of writing I have composed—beginning with my imaginary trips to the far stars and the pains of hunger endured with many people in the dark days of the 1930s.  When I went to the University of Kansas City, my professors encouraged me to shift from science fiction to the practice of journalism.


    My last story for an interstellar magazine was called “Star Ship Invincible.”  It described what happened to a group of people who attempted to travel from Earth to Jupiter in a new vessel built to be strong enough to pass through any pressures brought against it. But that ship was not invincible after all.  It fell into a Black Hole, a void in space that could not be passed through.


    The ship was absorbed into another universe from which it could not escape.  The attempts of human beings to go into other dimensions were not achievable.  They could not tell what had happened to them.  They had traveled beyond their finite limits.


    My next experience was to write a story about a man caught in the tortures of hunger—whose only solace came from a recording of human laughter.  In a day of desperation he tried to sell that recording to an old pawnbroker, but the old man did not find it worth more than a few dollars.  The old man was wounded by the anguish in that roar of laughter.  “Shut it off,” the broker said.  “Please shut it off.”


    The young man went back into the freezing night from which he had come.  The old man was alone with the echoes of that defiant mirth in his shop filled with the precious things sold to him by people who were dying of thirst and hunger.  That was the state of the world for many people in those years of pain and poverty.


    That story was broadcast on the NBC radio network and reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, edited by Edward O’Brien in England.  It caught the attention of editors on the Kansas City Star, and I was hired by that paper as a reporter although I had never taken a course in journalism.  The managing editor, C. G. Wellington, said he was reluctant to take me on—because I reminded him of Ernest Hemingway, a writer he had employed there in 1917.  Wellington said Hemingway had promised him to make a lifetime career on the Star—and then had run off to be an ambulance drive in World


    War I.


    Hemingway came to Kansas City soon after the publication of his great book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, based on the Civil War in Spain when General Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic and created a dictatorship there.  Hemingway visited the Star on a night when Wellington was not there—and I had a chance to show him some of my stories.  “You’ve got good stuff, kid,” Hemingway said.  “But if you want to get anywhere, you’ll have to get out of Kansas City.  The world is changing fast, kid.  You have to go places.”


    I followed his advice and went to New York in January 1941.  I landed a job on the Associated Press staff in Rockefeller Center, and dealt with news pouring in from all parts of the planet.  Then I was appointed to a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard.  In January 1943, I was drafted into the United States Army and became a war correspondent.


    I landed in Normandy in 1944 and rode with General George Patton’s Third Army across France and into Paris.  The liberation of Paris on a golden day in August was one of the most exhilarating joys of my life.  The Nazi forces which had occupied that beautiful city in 1940 retreated from our troops in disarray.  As they retreated, they were fired upon by the Free French under the command of General Charles de Gaulle.


    We were aware of the fact that Adolf Hitler, the Nazis’ leader, had ordered the German general in command of Paris to set fire to the city.  But he had refused to do so.  Hitler kept asking: “Is Paris burning?” but no answer was given to him.  The innate humanity of a German officer was more powerful than Hitlerism.


    I was one of the American soldiers who were received with hugs and kisses when we entered the city.  I appreciated the warm welcome given to us by the French people, particularly the French girls.


    We rushed into the bars, followed by the girls.  While we drank bottles of champagne, we rejected the offers of the girls for unlimited sexual services.  When I shouted: “I’m a married man!” the girls murmured: “When the war’s over, you can go back to your wife, but you’re over here now.  You ought to be grateful for what we can give you now.”  I didn’t take advantage of the offers.  I wanted to survive—and get back to my wife in New York with a good body.  On our honeymoon, she had given me everything a woman could give to a man, and I hoped we would have many years of such enjoyments.


    When the Nazis surrendered, I flew home.  I had received a Certificate of Distinguished Service from Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, one of Gen. Eisenhower’s deputy commanders, and I returned to the AP with a sense of recognition that I had given three years of my life to the struggle against Nazism.  Many of my friends had been wounded or killed—and I had interviewed many wounded men as a War Correspondent.  Yet, I had not been crippled or injured.  I thanked the Lord of the Universe for the blessings he had given me, but I had not received the punishment I expected.


    The AP did not give me the raise in salary I expected.  Barbara and I celebrated my return by deep lovemaking and we had produced a wonderful child, a boy we named Terence Francis Kelly.  The cost of living was rising and so I moved from the AP to the National Housing Agency, where I served as an information specialist and earned a much larger salary.  During the war a housing shortage had developed, and President Truman had launched a large-scale building program designed to meet the needs of millions of veterans and others whose lives had been disrupted by the war.


    I liked the Housing Agency and I knew that its work was important.  But I could not resist a tempting offer from a public relations agency, the Fitzgerald Company, which had been founded by a friend of mine.  I left that agency to become a consultant to the National Book Publishers Council and then to serve as the U.S. director of the Study of World News conducted by the International Press Institute, which had received a large grant from the Ford Foundation.


    Before I joined the Study of World News, I served as the Washington director of Averell Harriman’s 1952 campaign to become the Democratic candidate for president.  Harriman had the kind of experience that I thought a president should have.  He had been the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, the Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the director of Truman’s Security Agency, and one of the administrators of the Marshall Plan, which had revived Europe after the war.  I went with him across the United States in a chartered plane, and wrote speeches for him indicating that he was dedicated to the liberal program on which Truman had won his victory in 1948.  But the nomination went to Adlai Stevenson, who had been elected governor of Illinois that year.


    Stevenson offered me a place on his staff, but I was eager to get out of politics and I became vice president of the Fitzgerald agency again.  Then I leaped over to take part in the Study of World News, which had been started by the Ford Foundation under the leadership of Lester Markel, Sunday editor of the NY Times.


    The study got under way in September of 1952, when staffs were organized in Zurich, Switzerland; New York; and Madras, India.  W. MacNeil Lowry, formerly chief Washington correspondent for the Cox newspapers, was given operating responsibility for the entire project.  Lowry asked me to take charge of the work in the United States.


    Arrangements were made with a group of ten leading researchers in American journalism schools, headed by Dr. Ralph Casey of the University of Minnesota, to measure the amounts of foreign news printed in American papers.  The news flowing on agency wires from all over the world was surveyed by the IPI staff in New York.  The wire reports of all the major news agencies were made available by the agencies for study during the same weeks.


    Ninety-three of the American papers were put on the list through a statistical sampling method used by Dr. Chilton Bush, head of the Institute for Journalistic Studies at Stanford University.  The list gave fair representation to morning and evening papers, papers in different regions of the countries, papers representing a cross-section of American journalism.


    For purposes of comparison with this list, a separate list of large papers was prepared.  Papers in Europe and India were selected by the IPI staff in consultation with editors involved.  Forty-eight papers in Western Europe and 28 in India were chosen for examination.  The communist papers in the Soviet bloc and in China were not included however. It was assumed that these papers were instruments of government propaganda.


    When all the phases of the IPI studies were completed in the spring of 1953, the IPI had the largest assemblage of facts and ideas about the handling of news around the world.  The reports eventually released by the IPI showed the gaps and discrepancies in the handling of such information—and created enduring controversies about the prejudices shown by editors who favored certain countries and disfavored others.


    Lester Markel had declared in 1952 that “the main objective of the Institute is to bring out greater world understanding through a better flow of information.”  My participation in this vast project led me to believe that the task was almost impossible.


    In my 92 years on this planet, I have been a professor of communication and disseminator of information to illuminate the tremendous tasks of the human species.  I have been appalled by the human capacity for evil and uplifted by the enormous capacity for good.


    We are evolutionary giants with origins linked to the cosmic explosion that brought the universe into being.  We are composed of whirling atoms and glowing molecules beyond our comprehension.  Albert Einstein, the greatest thinker of the 20th Century, who brought us into the nuclear age, which may destroy us all, decided that we were created by a Spirit we could never understand.  We can never understand how far we have come and how far we may have to go.


    We are electromagnetic fields of energy and yet many of us may become Glorious Beings rising like mountains on new horizons. As the poet William Blake said, we can kiss joy as it flies and live in eternity’s sunrise.  We can respond to the never-ending allurements we were born to enjoy.


    I have come here tonight to talk about humanity’s future and to hear your views on what the future may hold for us.  When I was a young writer of science fiction, I walked in darkness, fearing the terrible disasters that might lie ahead of us.  Yet, I went from one great experience to another.


    My mother gave me the name of King.  That was her maiden name—Martha King—and she wanted me to have it.  She married a man named Kelly, who sacrificed much of his manhood on a battlefield in France, and she did not want me to be completely identified with an Irish name and Irish history.  So I have gone through life with a resounding name—Frank King Kelly.  When I am down, overwhelmed by the awful things I have endured, I shout my name out loud:  “Frank King Kelly!” and I feel related to all the Kings and Kellys in the amazing history of humankind!


    How was it possible for me as a boy to endure the blows of bullies in my first years in school?  Why was I given a scholarship at the U. of Kansas City?  How did one of my stories get into a collection of Best American Short Stories when I was 21?  How did I get the advice I needed from a great writer, Ernest Hemmingway, who urged me to get out into the world and overcome my fears?


    When I went to New York, I couldn’t sell enough stories to survive there, even though I got some unexpected income by writing about the frustrated lives of girls in New York and Washington.  I was given a chance to write these “true stories” for a magazine edited by a man who was a friend of one of my professors in Kansas City.  He persuaded me to put more “zing” in those stories—and I made enough money to live well in New York until I got a good job on the AP staff.  One of my stories was featured in a volume of these “true romances,” and I wrote about them in an article for the Atlantic Monthly entitled “Synthetic Sin.”


    In Manhattan I became a special correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other papers across the country.  I wrote an article about the successful campaign against prejudice being conducted by a state commission against discrimination, which had been fighting against racial, religious, and national group prejudices for 2 ½ years.  Commission Chairman Charles Garside disclosed that the AFL Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, and Express and Station Employees had repealed regulations that had restricted Negroes.  The union had also eliminated from its constitution all the provisions that restricted membership to White persons.


    I was happy to write about such actions because I hated the treatment then given to Blacks, immigrants, and other minorities in American society.  When I was a reporter on the Kansas City Star, I rode ambulances from the General Hospital to the scenes of fires, murders, and accidents.  When we saw Black people in any of those painful situations, the ambulance went speeding by.  The ambulance drivers told me: “We don’t stop for Blacks.  They’ve got their own hospitals and their own ambulances.”  I was horrified by the separation of human beings in the city where I had been born.  


    I tried to get the city editor of the Star to let me do a series of articles on the brutality I had seen at the city jail, where police officers routinely beat homeless men who were arrested for wandering in the streets.  “We can’t get the cops down on us,” he said.  “We need their help in many places.”  I saw the corruption in the police force and other agencies, but I quickly gave up my efforts to expose what needed to be done.  I found out that I wasn’t a crusader.


    When I was offered a job as a researcher and speech writer for President Truman, I knew he had been elected with the backing of a notorious political machine—the Pendergast organization, run by Boss Tom Pendergast.  My liberal friends urged me to keep away from that organization. “If you work for Truman, you’ll be regarded as a crook or subnormal mentally,” one of these friends said.


    But I had been told by reporters who investigated Truman that he was not personally involved in any of Pendergast’s chicanery.  Pendergast had endorsed Truman because he was widely admired for his personal integrity.  My wife and my literary agent, Mary Abbot, were convinced that Truman was a fine man.  They admired the work he had done in trying to eliminate overcharging by the corporations, which had made huge profits in World War II.


    When I got a call from the White House in the spring of 1948, asking me to do research and writing for Truman in the Presidential campaign that year, I was reluctant to take it seriously.  I didn’t know anyone on his staff.  I was astonished when I learned that Kenneth Birkhead, one of my friends who had been a student with me at the University of Kansas City, had recommended me.  He had told Clark Clifford and Bill Batt, the two men who were organizing Truman’s “whistle stop” train trips, that I was a fast writer who had written articles for many newspapers and I shared Truman’s ideas about giving full rights to people of all colors and creeds.


    So I went to Washington, helped to draft the Democratic platform, wrote drafts of many of the speeches Truman delivered from the backend of his campaign train, and shared in Truman’s unexpected triumph at the polls.


    I hadn’t sought any appointment on Truman’s White House staff.  I was prepared to go back to the Fitzgerald agency, but my friends at the Atlantic Monthly had persuaded the president of Boston University to offer me an appointment as a professor of communications there.  The Atlantic press had just published my first serious novel—a book entitled An Edge of Light, about my role as an AP editor in New York—and they said that a professorship at Boston University would give me a stable income and enough free time to write books.


    On the night in November when Truman’s so shocking triumph set off celebrations by delighted Democrats in Washington and other cities, Barbara and I drank champagne together and packed our few belongings into suitcases and prepared to move to a house in a Boston suburb. We didn’t realize that we would spend only a few months in Boston.  When I arrived at the university, a secretary told me:  “A Senator with a fancy name has been calling you from Washington. I’ve put a note on your desk.”


    The Senator was Scott Lucas of Illinois.  He told me that he was scheduled to be the Majority Leader of the Senate, succeeding Alben Barkley of Kentucky, who had been elected Vice President on the Truman ticket.  He said he needed a speech written and asked me to join his staff in January of 1949.


    The president of Boston University was negative toward the idea when I talked to him about it.  “You want to run back to Washington when you’ve just been appointed here as an associate professor?” Daniel Marsh said, angrily.  “I won’t give you a leave of absence for any such purpose.”


    My friends at the Atlantic Monthly were negative also, and urged me to stay in Boston.  Members of the White House staff said, however, that Lucas would be a key factor in getting Truman’s proposals enacted by a Senate largely controlled by conservative Southern Democrats.


    I stayed four months on the faculty in Boston, and I found my students responsive to my arguments for the kind of progressive agenda offered by Truman.  Truman had strongly supported the formation of the United Nations; he had desegregated the American armed forces; he had favored an expansion of the social security system and a national health program.  In his inaugural address in January 1949, he had declared that every human being had a right to “a decent, satisfying life.”  He offered encouragement to the rising movement for women’s attainment to the highest positions in every field.


    I found that the students I had in my classes at Boston University—most of them war veterans—backed the creation of international laws to bring principles of justice into the world community.  They admired Truman’s willingness to confront critics and reactionary opponents.  I finally returned to Washington to work for the Senate leader and to participate in struggles against McCarthyism, the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and other bigots.


    I had lived through the oppressive years when one-third of the people had lived in poverty and despair while the federal government under President Hoover had been virtually paralyzed.  I favored a new democracy with places for everybody.


    But Senator Lucas was defeated when he ran for re-election—beaten by a man named Everett Dirksen, whose nickname was “the Wizard of Ooze.”  The American Medical Association sponsored pamphlets denouncing Truman’s health plan and many doctors took part in the opposition to Lucas because he had supported that plan.


    After Lucas was rejected by the voters, I stayed on for two years with his successor as the Senate Leader, Ernest McFarland of Arizona.  McFarland was a good-hearted man, but he was not a very progressive legislator.  I left my job as the staff director of the Senate Majority Policy Committee, and plunged into other activities.


    I helped the American Book Publishers Council repel attempts by right-wing groups to censor books, and I served as the U.S. director of an International Press Institute study of international news.  That study revealed that many American newspapers carried only small amounts of news from other countries—and revealed that many Americans were not aware of significant developments in other parts of a rapidly changing world.


    When the Soviet Union succeeded in putting a man into space, I urged my fellow Americans to applaud that achievement.  I was an advocate of cooperation between the two powerful nations.  I proposed that a statue be presented to the people of the Soviet Union as a gift from the American people just as the gift to the United States of the Statue of Liberty from France symbolized friendship between two great nations.


    My proposal came to the attention of leaders of the U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. Citizens’ Dialogue, which had been promoting exchange visits since 1979 to create “trust and understanding” between the two countries.  I was one of 29 Americans invited to make a trip to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1983.  I made a speech in the Kremlin, emphasizing the dangers of nuclear weapons.  I said that those weapons endangered the survival of life on earth.


    I also told the Soviets about my participation in efforts to establish a National Peace Academy.  The Academy was dedicated to the education and training of professional peacemakers and to the dissemination of information about the developing art of peaceful conflict resolution.  I had participated in a citizen’s movement with 30,000 members, which led to the approval of the Peace Academy project by both houses of Congress and the construction of a U.S. Institute of Peace on the mall in Washington.


    The part of my speech in Moscow, which aroused the most discussion, was my suggestion that either the U.S. or the Soviet Union should dismantle half of its nuclear weapons and invite the world to witness that event.  “Would not that nation open a new era, with humanity set free from the nightmare of a nuclear war?” I asked the Soviet leaders who took part in our dialogue.  Afterwards, a Soviet official approached me and said that he personally liked the idea.  Then he added: “But wouldn’t the nation that endorsed such a proposal be accused of weakness?”


    I said that I didn’t think that the building of thousands of such bombs should be considered a sign of strength.  The arms race is a road to planetary suicide, I said.  Why do you consider the present situation as a state of progress?  The American people believe that you are prepared to inflict catastrophic blows on the Western countries—and you believe that we are prepared to kill millions of men, women, and children in the Soviet nations.


    When I visited Moscow and other parts of the Soviet Union in 1983, the Soviets like Brezhnev were believed to be firmly in control of enormous forces.  None of the commentators predicted the rise of a Gorbachev and the rapid disintegration of the Soviet empire.  No one predicted that Ronald Reagan, a right-wing Republican, would take big steps to end the Cold War.


    On my visit to the Soviet Union in 1983, I found that the people there had a deep fear of another war.  Many young people had seen films and television programs that depicted how many things Americans had—houses, cars, many personal possessions.  The Soviet young people no longer believed in the promises of communism.  They wanted to be free to pursue happiness in the American style.  When I came back and reported on their commitment to peace and their friendliness toward Americans, many people in Santa Barbara thought I had been brainwashed and deceived.  When I reminded them that President Truman had predicted to me that the Soviet system would collapse—and that Russia would seek friendly relations with the United States—many Americans did not accept such a hopeful view of the future.


    Like Truman, however, I had come close to death many times, and I shared his deep feeling that human beings could be “glorious beings,” eventually capable of building a global society.  I shared his admiration for the poem by Alfred Tennyson entitled” Locksley Hall,” written in 1842.  Truman carried a copy of it in his wallet, and frequently referred to it.


    The English author wrote:


    “For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,


    Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that could be;


    Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails,


    Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;


    Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew


    From the nations’ aerial navies grappling in the central blue;


    Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled


    In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world…”


    I was amazed by Tennyson’s predictions in that poem and pleased by Truman’s long look forward.  But I, too, had expected human beings to build a planetary organization and enter into a global acceptance of all creeds and cultures.


    When I worked on the Democratic platform, which Truman advocated in his 1948 campaign, we approved statements supporting “the effective international control of all weapons of mass destruction, including the atomic bomb.”  Truman insisted that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified steps to end the most terrible war in history but he did not want to place such power in the hands of national leaders in any conflict in the future.  If Truman’s plans for international control over nuclear weapons had been adopted, the insane nuclear arms race of the last 50 years could have been avoided—and humanity could not have been brought to the brink of annihilation in later confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union.


    That 1948 platform also endorsed Truman’s recognition of the state of Israel and the help he had given to the new Jewish nation to survive during the bloody conflicts in Palestine.


    Truman was accused of acting emotionally—succumbing to the pleas of Eddie Jacobson, his former partner in a clothing store, and other Jewish friends—or of pandering to the wealthy American Jews who gave large amounts of money to his candidacy and other nominees of the Democratic Party.  But I and others who worked on that 1948 platform knew that the president was genuinely convinced that the Jewish people should have a homeland.  His primary motivation came from his reading of the Bible.  His religious faith came from the scriptures in that book regarded as holy by Jews and Christians.


    Truman was one of the few American leaders who tried to save the Jews from Hitler’s concentration camps.  In April 1943, after he learned that Jews had been herded into slaughter houses “like animals,” he voiced his indignation in a fiery speech to 125,000 persons in a Chicago stadium.  Saying that “no one can any longer doubt the horrible intentions of the Nazi beasts,” Truman urged all the governments then at war with the Nazis to help the Jews before it was too late.  He asked for the opening of “free lands” for the Jews and other persecuted minorities.


    If his plea had been heeded, millions of lives could have been saved—including thousands of the most gifted people who ever lived on this planet.  It is still impossible to accept the failures of many of the people (including myself) who did little to save the human beings destroyed by the racist Nazis.  “Today—not tomorrow—we must do all that is humanly possible to provide a haven and a place of safety for all those who can be grasped from the hands of the Nazi butchers.”  He begged all of us to “draw deeply on our traditions of aid to the oppressed—and our great national generosity.”  He said:  “This is not a Jewish problem, it is an American problem—and we must and we will face it squarely and honorably.”


    We did not face it squarely and honorably on the scale that it called for.  We did finally join other nations in crushing Hitler’s Nazis and the Japanese warlords.  As a member of General Patton’s Third Army, I had the joy of liberating Paris from the German occupation forces in 1944.  I must note that it was the humanity of a German general—commander of the Nazi forces in Paris—that kept Paris from being destroyed.  Hitler had ordered that general to set the city on fire, but he refused to do it. Hitler died in the wreckage of his bomb shelter in Berlin.


    In the years since World War II, there have been many savage events on our planet.  The United Nations—created by Truman and other farsighted leaders in 1945—has not been as effective as its founders and supporters hoped that it would be.  The destructive forces that have been manifested all through the long history of human beings have produced wars, persecutions of minorities, mass killings, the committing of tortures against international law, have made me wonder whether we will ever evolve into the “glorious beings” we were designed to be.


    But we now have an International Bill of Rights drafted by leaders in many countries—and there is a growing awareness of the fundamental value of every person in the developing world culture.  President Truman in his inaugural address in 1949 declared that every person is entitled to “a decent, satisfying life.”


    The fact that we live in a nuclear age when enough weapons exist to destroy all nations and bring down our whole civilization must awaken in every one of us a sense of personal responsibility for getting rid of those weapons.  The leaders of the nuclear powers are not carrying out that vital task.  So we the people must demand action to get every government to act for human survival.


    The Declaration if Interdependence adopted by this Institute on July 4 thirty years ago indicates the right path for humanity’s future.  Let me remind you of the 10 points in that great statement:


    (1)    To explore the classical and renaissance traditions of East and West—and their continuing relevance to emerging modes and patterns of living;


    (2)    To renew the universal vision behind the American Dream through authentic affirmations of freedom, excellence and self-transcendence in an ever-evolving Republic of Conscience;


    (3)    To honor through appropriate observance the contributions of men and women of all ages to world culture;


    (4)    To enhance the enjoyment of the creative artistry and craftsmanship of all cultures;


    (5)    To deepen awareness of the universality of humanity’s spiritual striving and its rich varieties of expression in the religions, philosophies and literatures of humanity;


    (6)    To promote forums for fearless inquiry and constructive dialogue concerning the frontiers of science, the therapeutics of self-transformation, and the societies of the future;


    (7)    To investigate the imaginative use of the spiritual, mental and material resources of the planet in the service of universal welfare;


    (8)    To examine changing social structures in terms of the principle that a world culture is greater than the sum of its parts and to envision the conditions, prospects and possibilities of the world civilization of the future;


    (9)    To assist in the emergence of men and women of universal culture, capable of continuous growth in non-violence of mind, generosity of heart, and harmony of soul. I call these persons “glorious beings”;


    (10)    To promote universal brotherhood and to foster human fellowship among all races, nations and cultures.


    Many of the topics were the subjects of long dialogues I had in the 1950s with Raghavan and Nandini Iyer when I served as vice president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.  The Iyers—and their brilliant son, Pico—certainly had the qualities of “glorious beings” and I want to express my gratitude for the inspirations they gave to me and to many others, including the founders of this Institute.


    In closing, I want to thank all of you who participated in our meeting here tonight.  You affirm my belief in the statement of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said:  “The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end”


    We are all rising together in Eternity’s sunrise!

  • Britain’s Nuclear-Weapons Fix

    The determination of Britain’s political elite to maintain the country as a nuclear-weapons state is rooted in a half-century of military planning to which the possibility of tactical and first use of nuclear weapons is central. In just five words, Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom’s chancellor of the exchequer and would-be successor to Tony Blair, has intentionally reignited the debate over the future of Britain’s nuclear weapons. In a wide-ranging speech on 21 June 2006 focusing on global markets, financial services and economic policy, he included as part of his prognosis for UK security in the 21st century the commitment to “retaining our independent nuclear deterrent”.
    As so often with New Labour, the way the entire speech was “spun” by Brown’s aides was revealing. This element was, they indicated, key among all the topics the chancellor covered. As Andrew Rawnsley commented: “It has enraged the left of the Labour Party. It was contrived to do just that. It was unashamedly designed – Mr Brown’s acolytes make no pretence otherwise – to try to make the Chancellor a more appealing figure to Middle England” (see “Why Gordon Brown decided it was the time to go nuclear”, Observer, 25 June 2006).
    In the coming weeks and months there may well be a debate on plans to replace Trident – Britain’s submarine-carrying ballistic nuclear-weapons system – and it is probable that Labour will, in due course, make its decision. There could be some discussion in parliament and there might even be a vote, though few doubt the outcome. “Middle England” will no doubt remain comforted by Britain preserving its civilised, semi-great-power status by retaining the capacity to kill tens of millions of people.
    The wider point, though, is that there is a vigorous attempt to confine the debate to the limited theme of a “deterrent”. Indeed, the entire debate is constructed along the very narrow premise that Britain’s nuclear weapons offer, and have always offered, nothing more than a last-ditch deterrent protection against a would-be enemy threatening the country with annihilation.
    During the forty-five-year cold war, that enemy was seen to be the Soviet Union. This now presents some difficulties in that the much-missed “evil empire” has disappeared, removing the original point of possessing the bomb. It isn’t clear, for example, how Trident could have prevented the London bombings of 7 July 2005. After all, nuking the home towns of the young bombers – Leeds and Dewsbury – in retaliation would have been a bit excessive, even for New Labour.
    Still, George W Bush has neatly constructed an “axis of evil” to replace the late, lamented Soviet Union. This offers his closest ally Tony Blair (and his successor as British prime minister) the opportunity to argue that Trident’s successor is designed to deter threats from those Islamofascists in Tehran, the world-conquering James Bond-hating hordes of North Korea, the Taliban when they take over Pakistan, the Naxalites when New Delhi finally falls and, of course, that historic enemy – the French.
    Every part of this construct, however, is still underpinned by the doctrine of “deterrence”. Middle England must rest secure in the knowledge that our nuclear weapons are “good” nuclear weapons and would only ever be used as weapons of final response – after, perhaps, not just Middle England but also the furthest bits of Wales, Scotland and even Northern Ireland had been turned to radioactive dust.
    The problem with this is that it is one of the great myths of the nuclear age. Ever since the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki performed the same destructive tasks that had previously required thousand-bomber raids (such as the devastating fire-bombing of Tokyo), the nuclear age has been replete with the idea that nuclear weapons are usable as weapons of war. This has been central to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato’s) nuclear planning, as well as to the Warsaw Pact (and now Russia).
    Nato as an alliance, and Britain as a state, have long planned to fight nuclear wars at levels falling far short of a cataclysmic central nuclear exchange. This also means that Nato and Britain have had, and still maintain, policies that can envisage “first use” of nuclear weapons.
    On the eve of what could possibly be a period of open debate about the role of Britain’s nuclear weapons, it might be useful to trace this somewhat hidden history. This could serve the purpose of revealing matters that successive governments prefer to avoid discussing in public, and thus help ensure a more interesting debate.
    This debate must consider two distinct issues: Nato as an alliance of which Britain is a prominent member, and Britain’s long-term pursuit of policies for nuclear first use outside the Nato area.
    The early days
    Britain commenced its nuclear-weapons programme shortly after the end of the second world war. It tested a fission (atomic) bomb in October 1952 and a crude fusion (hydrogen) bomb in May 1957. By the end of the 1950s Britain had developed a strategic nuclear force based on the V-bomber medium-range jet bombers: the Valiant, Victor and Vulcan.
    From the mid-1960s, Britain began to develop a force of ballistic-missile submarines capable of deploying the United States’s Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The first such submarine, Resolution, started to patrol in June 1968, and control of the UK strategic nuclear force passed to the Royal Navy in July 1969.
    Britain also developed a range of tactical nuclear weapons, principally bombs, deployed on a number of land-based and carrier-based strike aircraft from the late-1950s onwards. These included the Scimitar, Buccaneer, Jaguar and Sea Harrier, and the Lynx and Sea King helicopters. US-made nuclear depth-bombs were carried by Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft and US-made Lance missiles; in addition, nuclear warheads, and nuclear artillery shells, were deployed with the British Army.
    At its peak, in the early 1980s, Britain deployed some 400 of its own nuclear weapons together with several scores of US nuclear weapons. With the ending of the cold war, most of the types of nuclear weapons declined fairly rapidly, but two major types of British nuclear weapon remained in service until the late 1990s: the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile and the WE-177 tactical nuclear bomb.
    In the 1990s, these were replaced by Trident, another submarine-launched missile. This is deployed with two warheads, a powerful strategic warhead many times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb, and a “sub-strategic” or tactical warhead that has around half the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
    Since the 1950s onwards, Britain has operated a twin-track policy of committing nuclear forces to Nato and having them available for independent deployment and possible use.
    Nato’s nuclear planning
    Although the early nuclear weapons of the 1940s and early 1950s were essentially strategic – intended for use against the core assets of an opposing state – the development of nuclear weapons intended for tactical use within particular war-zones was an early feature of the east-west nuclear confrontation. By the late 1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union were developing relatively low-yield freefall bombs as well as early forms of nuclear-capable artillery. Over the next twenty-five years, a remarkable array of tactical nuclear weapons was developed and deployed, covering almost every type of military posture.
    As well as freefall bombs, short-range battlefield missiles were developed along with nuclear-tipped anti-aircraft missiles and several types of nuclear artillery and mortars. Nuclear landmines known as atomic demolition munitions were developed that could be emplaced to destroy major bridges or tunnels or even block mountain passes. At sea, submarines were equipped with nuclear-tipped torpedoes, surface ships carried anti-submarine nuclear depth-bombs which could be delivered by missile or helicopter, and aircraft carriers could fly off strike aircraft carrying several kinds of nuclear bomb. There were even air-to-air missiles such as the US Genie, that were nuclear-armed.
    By the 1980s, there were around 20,000 tactical nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and the Soviet Union, based in more than fifteen countries and on warships and submarines throughout the world. In the great majority of cases, the presumption was that if such weapons were used, they would not necessarily involve an escalation to an all-out nuclear war. In other words, nuclear war-fighting could be controlled. In Europe, perhaps the tensest region of the cold-war nuclear confrontation, both alliances had policies of the first use of nuclear weapons in response to conventional attack. (For a full discussion, see the relevant chapter, “Learning from the Cold War”, in Paul Rogers, Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century, Pluto Press, 2002).
    For Nato in the 1950s – before the Soviet Union had developed a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, the posture was codified in a military document MC14/2, colloquially termed the “tripwire” posture. Any Soviet attack against Nato would be met with a massive nuclear retaliation, including the use of US strategic nuclear forces; this assumed that the US could destroy the Soviet Union’s nuclear forces and its wider military potential without suffering unacceptable damage itself.
    By the early 1960s, the Soviet Union was developing many classes of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, making it less vulnerable to a US nuclear attack. In such circumstances, MC14/2 became far less acceptable to western military planners, who consequently sought to develop a more flexible nuclear posture for Nato. This became known as “flexible response”. It involved the ability to respond to Soviet military actions with a wide range of military forces, but also with the provision that nuclear weapons could be used first in such a way as to force the Soviet Union to halt any aggression and withdraw. Once again, it embodied the belief that a nuclear war could be fought and won.
    The new flexible-response doctrine was progressively accepted by Nato member-states in 1967 and 1968. It was codified in a document entitled Overall Strategic Concept for the Defence of the NATO Area, or MC14/3. It was a posture with one particular advantage for the United States: that it might avoid nuclear weapons being used against its own territory.
    A US army colonel expressed this rather candidly at the time, writing that the strategy: “recognizes the need for a capability to cope with situations short of general nuclear war and undertakes to maintain a forward posture designed to keep such situations as far away from the United States as possible” (see Walter Beinke, “Flexible Response in Perspective”, Military Review, November 1968).
    Flexible response was to remain in operation for most of the last quarter century of the cold war, including periods of considerable tension in the early 1980s. Operational plans for nuclear use were (and are) developed by the nuclear activities branch of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (Shape) near Mons in Belgium, operating in conjunction with the US joint strategic target planning staff responsible for the SIOP strategic nuclear posture from its base in Omaha, Nebraska.
    By the early 1970s, flexible response was well established under Nato’s nuclear operations plan which embraced two levels of the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Soviet forces: selective options and general response. Selective options involved a variety of plans, many of them assuming first use of nuclear weapons against Warsaw Pact conventional forces.
    At the smallest level, these could include up to five small air-burst nuclear detonations intended as warning shots to demonstrate Nato’s intent. At a rather higher level of use were the so-called pre-packaged options involving up to 100 nuclear weapons. The US army field manual at the time defined such a package as: “a group of nuclear weapons of specific yields for use in a specific area and within a limited time to support a specific tactical goal … Each package must contain nuclear weapons sufficient to alter the tactical situation decisively and to accomplish the mission” (see Operations: FM 100-5, US Department of the Army, 1982).
    While these different levels of selective use were thought to be possible ways of winning a nuclear war, the possibility remained that this would fail, and a more general nuclear exchange would result. This was the second level of use of tactical nuclear weapons; it was termed a general nuclear response in which Nato nuclear forces in Europe would be used on a massive scale along with US strategic forces.
    Thus, by the end of the 1970s, Nato had developed a flexible-response strategy that involved detailed planning for the selective first use of nuclear weapons in the belief that a limited nuclear war could be won. By the early 1980s, with highly accurate fast ballistic missiles such as the Pershing 2 being deployed by the United States, there were indications that Nato was even moving to a policy of early first use of nuclear weapons.
    One indication of this came in a remarkably candid interview given by the Nato supreme commander, General Bernard W Rogers. He said that his orders were: “Before you lose the cohesiveness of the alliance – that is, before you are subject to (conventional Soviet military) penetration on a fairly broad scale – you will request, not you may, but you will request the use of nuclear weapons…[emphasis in the original].” (International Defense Review, February 1986).
    The long-standing Nato policy of the first use of nuclear weapons was not promoted widely in public, where all the emphasis was placed on nuclear weapons as an ultimate deterrent. Even so, the policy was made clear on relatively rare occasions. One example is evidence from the UK’s ministry of defence to a parliamentary select committee in 1988: “The fundamental objective of maintaining the capability for selective sub-strategic use of theatre weapons is political – to demonstrate in advance that NATO has the capability and will to use nuclear weapons in a deliberate, politically-controlled way with the objective of restoring deterrence by inducing the aggressor to terminate his aggression and withdraw.”
    With the ending of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91, there was some easing of Nato nuclear policy. This included the withdrawal of a substantial proportion of Nato nuclear weapons from western Europe as the Soviet Union withdrew from its former satellites in east-central Europe. The possibility of first use was considered increasingly unlikely, but not abandoned as a facet of Nato policy.
    Although the Soviet Union is no more, Nato nuclear planning still involves a policy of first use, British nuclear weapons remain committed to Nato and the United States still maintains tactical nuclear bombs at one of its remaining bases in the UK, Lakenheath in Suffolk, eastern England.
    Britain’s independent targeting
    Since the 1950s, Britain has deployed nuclear weapons on many occasions outside the immediate Nato area of western and southern Europe and the north Atlantic. This included the basing of RAF nuclear-capable strike aircraft in Cyprus in the 1960s and 1970s, regular detachments of V-bombers to RAF Tengah in Singapore in the mid-1960s, and the deployment of Scimitar and Buccaneer nuclear-capable strike aircraft on the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers from 1962 to 1978. Nuclear weapons were also carried on four task-force ships during the Falklands/Malvinas war of 1982.
    This long history of “out-of-area” deployments of nuclear weapons by Britain is matched by a number of indications of a willingness to use them in limited conflicts. In one of the few published studies of British tactical nuclear targeting, Milan Rai wrote in his 1994 paper Tactical Trident (Drava Papers): “Sir John Slessor, Marshall of the RAF in the 1950s, and one of the most influential military theorists of the period, believed that ‘In most of the possible theatres of limited war . it must be accepted that it is at least improbable that we would be able to meet a major communist offensive in one of these areas without resorting to tactical nuclear weapons’.” This statement was made by a senior military figure rather than a politician, but similar comments did come from more official government sources. In 1955, the then defence minister (and later prime minister) Harold Macmillan stated in the house of commons: “.the power of interdiction upon invading columns by nuclear weapons gives a new aspect altogether to strategy, both in the Middle East and the Far East. It affords a breathing space, an interval, a short but perhaps vital opportunity for the assembly, during the battle for air supremacy, of larger conventional forces than can normally be stationed in those areas.”
    Such an idea of a small nuclear war was further expressed during the 1957 defence debate by Macmillan’s successor as defence minister, Duncan Sandys: “one must distinguish between major global war, involving a head-on clash between the great Powers, and minor conflicts which can be localised and which do not bring the great Powers into direct collision. Limited and localised acts of aggression, for example, by a satellite Communist State could, no doubt, be resisted with conventional arms, or, at worst, with tactical nuclear weapons, the use of which could be confined to the battle area.”
    This historical context raises the question as to whether the smaller sub-strategic Trident warheads, or indeed the more powerful strategic versions, might be used independently of Nato. Britain reserves this right, and one of the more detailed assessments of the range of options for sub-strategic Trident warheads was made in the authoritative military journal International Defence Review in 1994: “At what might be called the ‘upper end’ of the usage spectrum, they could be used in a conflict involving large-scale forces (including British ground and air forces), such as the 1990-91 Gulf War, to reply to an enemy nuclear strike. Secondly, they could be used in a similar setting, but to reply to enemy use of weapons of mass destruction, such as bacteriological or chemical weapons, for which the British possess no like-for-like retaliatory capability. Thirdly, they could be used in a demonstrative role: i.e. aimed at a non-critical uninhabited area, with the message that if the country concerned continued on its present course of action, nuclear weapons would be aimed at a high-priority target. Finally, there is the punitive role, where a country has committed an act, despite specific warnings that to do so would incur a nuclear strike (see David Miller, “Britain Ponders Single Warhead Option”, International Defence Review, September 1994).
    It is worth noting that three of the four circumstances envisaged involve the first use of nuclear weapons by Britain.
    Such issues rarely surface in the public arena, but concern has been expressed in parliament that the government has not been sufficiently clear about the circumstances under which British nuclear weapons would be used in post-cold-war circumstances. For example, the house of commons defence select committee noted in 1998: “We regret that there has been no restatement of nuclear policy since the speech of the then Secretary of State in 1993; the SDR [Strategic Defence Review] does not provide a new statement of the government’s nuclear deterrent posture in the present strategic situation within which the sub-strategic role of Trident could be clarified. We recommend the clarification of both the UK’s strategic and sub-strategic policy.”
    This was, in part, in response to comments made to the committee by the then secretary of state for defence, George (now Lord) Robertson. He had told the committee that the sub-strategic option was “an option available that is other than guaranteed to lead to a full scale nuclear exchange”. He envisaged that a nuclear-armed country might wish to “…use a sub-strategic weapon, making it clear that it is sub-strategic in order to show that … if the attack continues [the country] would then go to the full strategic strike,” and that this would give a chance to “stop the escalation on the lower point of the ladder”.
    This statement indicated that “a country”, such as Britain, could consider using nuclear weapons without initiating an all-out nuclear war, and that the government therefore appeared to accept the view that a limited nuclear war could be fought and won. It was evidently not the clear statement that the committee sought, and it did not indicate the circumstances in which such weapons might be used. In particular, it did not appear to relate to whether Britain or British forces had already been attacked with nuclear weapons, or whether nuclear weapons would be used first in response to other circumstances.
    The Iraq wars
    At the same time, there had been no evidence to suggest that Britain had moved away from the nuclear posture of the cold-war era that included the possibility of using nuclear weapons first. Indeed, just as the cold war was winding down, the first Iraq war in early 1991 was one occasion when British nuclear use might have been considered. As the UK forces embarked for the Gulf in September 1990, the Observer reported that Britain was prepared to retaliate to an Iraqi chemical attack with nuclear weapons: “A senior officer attached to Britain’s 7th Armoured Brigade, which began to leave for the Gulf yesterday, claims that if UK forces are attacked with chemical gas by Iraqi troops, they will retaliate with battlefield nuclear weapons. The Ministry of Defence refused to confirm this last night, but it is the first unofficial indication that British troops might be authorised to use nuclear weapons to defend themselves if attacked” (see Observer, 30 September 1990, front page).
    More than a decade later and prior to the start of the second Iraq war in 2003, the then secretary of state for defense, Geoff Hoon, was questioned by members of the select committee and appeared to indicate that Britain maintained this policy. In relation to a state such as Iraq he said: “They can be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons.”
    This exchange did not make clear whether this would be in response to a nuclear attack initiated by a state such as Iraq. Hoon was questioned on this point on 24 March 2002 on the Jonathan Dimbleby programme on ITV. He was asked whether nuclear use might be in response to non-nuclear weapons such as chemical or biological weapons. He replied: “Let me make it clear the long-standing British government policy that if our forces or our people were threatened by weapons of mass destruction we would reserve the right to use appropriate proportionate responses which might … might in extreme circumstances include the use of nuclear weapons.”
    Later in the exchange, Hoon made it clear that he could envisage circumstances in which British nuclear weapons were used in response to chemical or biological weapons. He was later asked by Dimbleby: “But you would only use Britain’s weapon of mass destruction after an attack by Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction?” Hoon replied: “Clearly if there were strong evidence of an imminent attack if we knew that an attack was about to occur and we could use our weapons to protect against it.”
    The implication of this is clear – that there are circumstances where Britain would consider using nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack involving chemical or biological weapons and would even consider using nuclear weapons to pre-empt such an attack.
    A time for air
    Britain has deployed nuclear forces for almost fifty years. For most of that time, they have been primarily committed to Nato, which has maintained a nuclear-targeting posture that includes the first use of nuclear weapons. Britain also retains the capability to use nuclear weapons independently.
    Although the publicly acknowledged “declaratory” policy remains one of “last resort” use of nuclear weapons, the “deployment” policy involves the idea of nuclear war-fighting that falls far short of responding to a nuclear attack on Britain. This is the long-standing reality. It could certainly liven up the forthcoming debate on replacing Trident if this enduring feature of British nuclear-weapons policy got a really thorough airing.

     

    Paul Rogers is a professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. Paul Rogers has continued to focus on trends in international conflict, developing an analysis of the linkages between socio-economic divisions, environmental constraints and international insecurity.

  • Prospects for Preventing Nuclear Proliferation

    Prospects for Preventing Nuclear Proliferation

    Also published in Volume 8, Number 1-2, Winter/Spring 2006 of “Global Dialogue”

    In 1945, the United States became the world’s sole nuclear power, and almost immediately used its new weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the creation of the first nuclear weapon by the United States, all further development of these weapons has constituted some form of nuclear proliferation, either horizontal proliferation to other countries or vertical proliferation within a country already possessing nuclear weapons.

    Many scientists who worked on the Manhattan Engineering Project – the US nuclear weapons development program – warned the government that use of nuclear weapons against Japan launch a dangerous nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. They were right. It took the Soviet Union just four years to succeed in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, conducting its first nuclear test in 1949.

    During the four year period from1945 to 1949, the US continued to develop and test its nuclear arsenal, engaging in a kind of unilateral nuclear arms race. Once the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons in 1949, a bilateral nuclear arms race began, concluding only with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.

    In the decade and a half following the Soviet Union’s development of nuclear arms, the UK, France and then China also developed nuclear weapons. By 1967, the five declared nuclear weapons states formed an exclusive club. They were the only states with nuclear weapons, and they were all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. As such, these nations had considerable prestige in the world. They all justified their nuclear arsenals on the basis of deterrence – the threat to retaliate to a first-strike nuclear attack – and all but China, which had pledged “No First Use” of nuclear weapons, held open the possibility of responding to a conventional attack with nuclear force.

    Among the five nuclear powers, there was a great deal of posturing by means of atmospheric nuclear tests and missile launches, first by the US alone, then by the USSR, and finally by the other nuclear weapons states. They all played the game of comparing explosive force and missile sizes, demonstrating their power through these highly visible means. Australian physician and nuclear activist Helen Caldicott characterized this posturing as “missile envy.”

    At the height of the nuclear arms race, there were more than 60,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Today there are still some 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and more than 95 percent of these are in the arsenals of the US and Russia. The trend is in the right direction, but the pace of reductions has been agonizingly slow.

    The unwillingness of the nuclear weapons states to give up their reliance on nuclear arsenals or their options for vertical proliferation, and to move with greater rapidity toward a nuclear weapons-free world, remains a significant incentive to horizontal proliferation. This is extremely dangerous, and particularly so in a world in which extremist groups seek nuclear weapons capabilities to threaten massive destruction of powerful states.

    Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

    In the mid-1960s, following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the US, UK and USSR forged ahead with a treaty to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They feared a far more dangerous world in the event of proliferation to many states. In negotiations with non-nuclear weapons states, they agreed to a trade-off in which the non-nuclear weapons states would not develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons states would in turn make three commitments: first, end the nuclear arms race at an early date; second, engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament; and third, assist the non-nuclear weapons states in developing nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968 and entered into force in 1970.

    Despite making this agreement, the nuclear weapons states subsequently demonstrated little effort to stop the nuclear arms race or to engage in good faith negotiations for total nuclear disarmament. Instead, they focused their efforts on partial measures of arms control, such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT) and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START). Through these negotiations, the nuclear arms race continued largely unabated and there were no good faith efforts to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

    On the third part of the bargain, assisting with the development of “peaceful” nuclear technology, the nuclear weapons states were more helpful, particularly when profits could be made by selling nuclear reactors. The problem with this part of the bargain was that nuclear reactors used enriched uranium and produced plutonium that could be used in weapons programs. In other words, nuclear energy programs, particularly those involving enriching uranium and plutonium separation, have actually aided in nuclear weapons proliferation.

    Over the years, many countries, and finally nearly all countries, became parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. A few, however, stayed outside the treaty so as not to be bound by it. Israel was one of these, and is widely understood, although has not admitted, to have developed an arsenal of some 200 or more nuclear weapons. Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona reactor in Israel, released information on Israel’s clandestine nuclear program to British newspapers, and subsequently was kidnapped, secretly tried and served 18 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Even after his release from prison, Vanunu is not allowed to leave Israel or speak with foreign journalists. Israel still refuses to confirm the existence of its nuclear arsenal.

    India and Pakistan also never became parties to the treaty. India was always clear that it was willing to forego the nuclear option, but not live in a world of nuclear apartheid. In other words, India was prepared to be a non-nuclear weapons state in a world where no state had nuclear weapons, but would not do so in a world where some states reserved nuclear weapons status for themselves but denied such status to others. India first tested a nuclear weapon in 1974, and then tested more extensively and openly in May 1998. Immediately following India’s 1998 nuclear tests, Pakistan conducted its own nuclear tests, sending a message back to India that it too could play the nuclear game. India and Pakistan, two rival states that have warred many times over the disputed territory of Kashmir, are now engaged in a nuclear standoff.

    The last state thought to have developed a small nuclear arsenal is North Korea, a country that withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in January 2003. No one is certain that North Korea actually has a nuclear arsenal, but it claims to have developed nuclear weapons and it has the technological capability and the weapons-grade nuclear materials from its nuclear reactors to have done so.

    The 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference

    By the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a Review and Extension Conference was held in 1995, 25 years after the treaty had entered into force. Some states parties to the treaty and many civil society organizations argued that the treaty should not be extended indefinitely because that would be akin to giving a blank check to the nuclear weapons states who had been so lax in fulfilling their disarmament obligations under the treaty. These states and groups argued that instead of an indefinite extension, the treaty should be extended for 5 or 10 year periods with automatic extensions if the nuclear weapons states had achieved concrete progress on nuclear disarmament.

    Under heavy lobbying and arm twisting by the United States, the treaty was extended indefinitely. To reach this outcome, certain additional promises were made. Among these were the following points listed in the Final Document of the conference:

    First, completion of negotiations for a universal and verifiable Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty no later than 1996;

    Second, The immediate commencement and early conclusion of negotiations on a treaty banning production of fissile materials; and

    Third, the “determined pursuit by the nuclear-weapon states of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons….”

    The document also made reference to UN Security Council Resolution 984 (1995), which provided security assurances to non-nuclear weapons states, and called for further steps that would be “internationally legally binding.”

    While the international community did manage to complete and open for signature a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by 1996, the treaty required the ratifications of all nuclear capable states. As of this time, there are still about one-quarter of the 44 states in this category that have not ratified. The United States was the first to sign the treaty, but the US Senate rejected ratification in 1999, and the Bush administration has been hostile to the treaty and has not resubmitted it to the Senate.

    The Bush administration’s opposition to the CTBT is best understood in relation to its interest in developing a new generation of nuclear weapons, such as “bunker busters” and low yield nuclear weapons. This is reinforced by the administration’s efforts to reduce the time needed to resume nuclear testing from 36 months to 18 months, suggesting that it is holding open the possibility of breaking the current moratorium on underground nuclear testing.

    There have not been negotiations in the UN Conference on Disarmament on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. Nor have there been any efforts to provide legally binding assurances against the use of nuclear weapons on non-nuclear weapons states. Given this lack of progress, it is hard to argue that there has been a “determined pursuit…of systematic and progressive efforts” by the nuclear weapons states to achieve nuclear disarmament. In fact, the Bush administration’s secret Nuclear Posture Review, released to Congress at the end of 2001, states that US nuclear policy includes a possible nuclear response to a non-nuclear attack against the US or its allies.

    2000 NPT Review Conference: 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament

    At the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the parties agreed by consensus to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. This was viewed as an important step forward on the path to achieving nuclear disarmament. These steps included the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, the establishment in the Conference on Disarmament of a subsidiary body to deal with nuclear disarmament issues, preserving and strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, applying the principle of irreversibility to nuclear disarmament, and an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….”

    Unfortunately, the nuclear weapons states have not taken these steps seriously. In the world community, the United States has been the country least responsive to these steps, putting up obstacles to nearly all of them. The US opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, opposed a verifiable Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, opposed a subsidiary body to deal with nuclear disarmament in the Conference on Disarmament, abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and made nuclear disarmament completely reversible in the one agreement they did reach with Russia.

    The 2002 Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT), entered into by the US and Russia, calls for reducing deployed strategic nuclear weapons from about 6,000 on each side to about 2,000 on each side by the year 2012, but makes no provision for destroying these weapons or otherwise making the reductions irreversible. After 2012, the treaty ends with no further prohibitions on the size of nuclear arsenals. In some respects this treaty may even promote proliferation by allowing both sides to keep many nuclear warheads in reserve, and therefore potentially more vulnerable to theft by extremist groups.

    2005 NPT Review Conference

    The most recent NPT Review Conference in 2005 ended without progress and without a Final Document demonstrating even a modicum of agreement. The US opposed any mention of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament in the agenda of the conference, giving the impression that they wanted to rewrite history, blotting out any memory of the progress made in the year 2000.

    The 2005 NPT Review Conference was almost surrealistic. In the basement of the United Nations where the conference was taking place, there was a broad corridor leading to some of the conference rooms. At one end of this corridor were a group of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki earnestly pleading for progress on nuclear disarmament so that their fate would not befall others in the future. At the other end of the corridor was a representative of the United States handing out slick brochures claiming that the US was leading the world in nuclear disarmament. Conveniently removed from the timeline in one of these brochures was any mention of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty being opened for signatures in 1996 or of the agreement on the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament in the year 2000. George Orwell’s presence seemed alive and well in the US promotional literature.

    Nuclear Double Standards

    The original intent of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was to stop proliferation and put an end to nuclear double standards by achieving nuclear disarmament. The nuclear weapons states have, however, largely made it clear that they are committed to double standards rather than to fulfilling their obligations to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    In an attempt to quell proliferation, while maintaining nuclear double standards, George W. Bush has promoted a Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which he first announced in Krakow on May 31, 2003. The PSI was described in a White House press release as “a broad international partnership of countries which, using their own laws and resources, will coordinate their actions to halt shipments of dangerous technologies to and from states and non-state actors of proliferation concern – at sea, in the air, and on the land.” The original members of the PSI were all European states except Australia and Japan, and included the three Western nuclear weapons states – the US, UK and France. A PSI “Statement of Interdiction Principles” was adopted on September 4, 2003. The first and key principle is: “Undertake effective measures, either alone or in concert with other states, for interdicting the transfer or transport of WMD, their delivery systems, and related materials to and from states and non-state actors of proliferation concern.”

    On April 28, 2004, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1540, which called upon states to “refrain from providing any form of support to non-State actors that attempt to develop, acquire, manufacture, possess, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery.” The resolution also called upon states to establish domestic controls to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons and their means of delivery, as well as border and export and transit controls.

    Resolution 1540 was in effect a Security Council effort to further the Proliferation Security Initiative, seeking to enforce controls against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Proliferation Security Initiative, its Statement of Interdiction Principles and Security Council Resolution 1540 all seek to prevent proliferation by means of international cooperation and, if necessary, the use of force. They also seek implicitly to maintain the nuclear double standard, since they make no reference to the current arsenals of nuclear weapons or the need for their dismantlement.

    A key question for the international community and for any thinking person concerns whether proliferation can be prevented in a world composed of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” Those who promote the double standard initiatives, seem to believe that they can hold back nuclear proliferation while continuing to rely themselves on nuclear weapons for security. Their argument, however, leaves no room for inevitable errors and misjudgments.

    Zero Tolerance

    So long as nuclear weapons and materials exist in the world, there is the possibility that they may proliferate to other states or non-state actors. In the hands of non-state extremist groups, the prospects of deterrence by means of retaliatory threat are zero. Deterrence is a psychological theory, which requires rationality and also fear of retaliation. It cannot work against a terrorist organization that cannot be located. Nor can it work against groups or individuals who are prepared to die for their cause. Therefore, the tolerance level for nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremist groups is also zero.

    The more nuclear weapons in the world, the greater the possibility that some will be obtained by extremist groups. The fewer nuclear weapons in the world, the less weapons-grade nuclear materials and the greater the international controls, the less likely these weapons will fall into the hands of extremists groups.

    Zero tolerance requires zero nuclear weapons and full international controls. It requires implementation of the Article VI nuclear disarmament obligations in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Viewed in this light, the PSI and Security Council Resolution 1540 may be viewed as band-aids, possibly comforting but unlikely to solve the problem.

    We have already seen that the criminal ring headed by Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan, was quite active in spreading nuclear technology and materials for proliferation. It appears that his ring was stopped in time, but it is not fully certain how much damage was done by Khan’s efforts or what their results will be in the future.

    Iraq, Iran and North Korea

    In his 2002 State of the Union speech, George W. Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “Axis of Evil.” These states, along with some others, had already shown up in the US Nuclear Posture Review as states for which the US was making contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons. In 2002, Bush and other US administration officials began talking about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. Subsequently, in March 2003, the US invaded Iraq, initiating a war of aggression against that country and using the justification in part of nuclear proliferation.

    Following the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction were found. Surely, the war against Iraq has put other states on notice that nuclear weapons may be useful to them to prevent a US attack. This suggests that, while nuclear weapons may not be particularly useful to a powerful state, they would have deterrent value to a weaker state to prevent the attack of a more powerful state. This may be the lesson drawn by both Iran and North Korea.

    Iran is relying on the Article IV provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (nuclear energy as an “inalienable right”) in maintaining its right to enrich uranium for nuclear reactors. This points to the inherent contradiction in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which seeks both to prevent nuclear proliferation and promote nuclear energy.

    In the case of North Korea, it has withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, undertaken reprocessing of its spent fuel to extract plutonium, and claims to have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons. Six party talks have taken place for several years between the US, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. The North Korean negotiators have been clear that they are seeking security assurances and development aid from the US in exchange for giving up their nuclear programs and returning to the NPT. After several years of negotiating, little progress has been made, although it would seem that the conditions set forth by the North Koreans are reasonable.

    Incentives to Proliferate

    There are many countries that could develop nuclear arsenals, but have chosen not to do so. Among these are Canada, Sweden and Japan. Decisions by Canada and Sweden were taken early in the Nuclear Age. Japan is a good example of a virtual nuclear power. It has the technological capability to make nuclear weapons and tons of reprocessed plutonium for doing so, but has thus far foregone the option as it currently falls under the US nuclear umbrella. If Japan did decide to become a nuclear weapons state, it could become a major one in a matter of months. North Korea’s advances in its nuclear arsenal and missile technology may play a key role in determining whether Japan decides to join the nuclear club in future years.

    Some states have developed or obtained nuclear weapons and given them up. South Africa actually developed a small nuclear weapons arsenal and then destroyed it just before the end of apartheid. Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan inherited nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union split apart, but agreed to transfer all of their nuclear weapons to Russia for dismantlement. Brazil and Argentina had nuclear programs and were on the path to creating nuclear weapons, but gave up these programs.

    Among the major incentives to proliferation are threats of nuclear attack, threats of conventional attack by a more powerful state, and national prestige. These incentives suggest that nuclear weapons serve the purposes of the weak more than they do the strong. They suggest that strong states would better serve their national security and their citizens by leading the way toward nuclear disarmament rather than clinging to nuclear arsenals. By their very act of reliance on their own nuclear arsenals, the nuclear weapons states provide incentives for other states to join them in the nuclear club. A two-tier system of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” is ultimately unstable and untenable.

    A Return to the Basics

    Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty calls for “good faith” negotiations by the nuclear weapons states to achieve nuclear disarmament. The International Court of Justice in 1996 ruled: “There 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.”

    At the 2005 NPT Review Conference, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation called for the following eight commitments as the minimum necessary to revive nuclear disarmament in the non-proliferation regime.

    • Commitment to total nuclear disarmament and to good faith negotiations. This is the basic commitment of Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
    • Commitment to a timeframe for achieving nuclear disarmament. This is a necessary commitment to indicate to the international community that the nuclear weapons states are indeed acting in good faith.
    • Commitment to No First Use. Without this commitment there will always be pressure for some non-nuclear weapons states to consider developing nuclear arsenals to provide deterrence against larger nuclear weapons states.
    • Commitment to irreversibility and verifiability. This is one of the key steps of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. It would close the door to reversing the progress made in disarmament efforts, and would be a strong confidence building measure.
    • Commitment to standing down nuclear forces. This would dramatically reduce the possibility of using nuclear weapons inadvertently, currently a serious danger to humanity.
    • Commitment to no new nuclear weapons. This would be another sign of good faith on the part of the nuclear weapons states, indicating that they are not basing their policies on the double standard of asking others not to develop new nuclear weapons while doing so themselves.
    • Commitment to a verifiable ban on fissile materials. This is one of the 13 Practical Steps and would rein in the amount of fissile material being created that could be used for nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons states should commit to placing their stores of weapons-grade fissionable materials under strict international control and to the elimination of this material.
    • Commitment to accounting, transparency and reporting. These are essential for building confidence and providing a baseline for verification of the disarmament process.In addition to these eight commitments for achieving nuclear disarmament, the Foundation called for five additional commitments for closing the loophole created by the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s promotion of the so-called “peaceful” uses of atomic energy. These are:
    • Commitment to a global ban on spent fuel reprocessing and reduced reliance on nuclear energy. Reprocessing of spent fuel may be good for nuclear industry, but it creates far more weapons-grade material that could be used for military purposes.
    • Commitment to bring uranium enrichment and plutonium separation facilities under strict international control. It is primarily enriched uranium and separated plutonium that can be converted to weapons use. These controls must be placed on all states, not only the non-nuclear weapons states.
    • Commitment to regulate and store spent nuclear fuel under strict international control. There need to be high standards of control for the regulation and storage of spent fuel in order to keep it from being reprocessed for weapons use.
    • Commitment to make the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Additional Protocol mandatory for all states. The IAEA Additional Protocol places states under a higher set of standards for safeguarding nuclear materials. Currently the Additional Protocol only applies to non-nuclear weapons states, and this should be universalized to apply to nuclear weapons states as well.
    • Commitment to highly restrict the trade of all nuclear materials and technology. The trade in nuclear materials and technology creates possibilities for proliferation through theft or enhancement of a country’s nuclear programs.These final five commitments can help to create a far stronger barrier between the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and the military uses. They are critically important steps in keeping nuclear materials from being diverted to weapons programs. These commitments complement the eight commitments above to revive nuclear disarmament. Both sets of commitments are mutually reinforcing.

      Evaluating the Prospects for Preventing Proliferation

      If it is true that these commitments are needed to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons, then it may be unlikely that proliferation will be prevented. Most of the nuclear weapons states seem comfortable continuing with the double standards that have characterized their behavior, and seem unwilling to make the necessary commitments. The nuclear weapons states appear comfortable asking for commitments from others, but not in making commitments themselves. Over time, this promises to be a recipe for international failure in preventing nuclear proliferation.

      It is noteworthy that the nuclear weapons states at the bottom of the nuclear pyramid – namely, China, India and Pakistan – have all indicated a willingness to go to zero nuclear weapons if the other nuclear weapons states would do so. Additionally, Russia has offered to reduce its nuclear arsenal below the levels agreed to in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, but the US has not accepted these lower levels.

      In the end, preventing proliferation will depend upon changes in the policies of the most powerful nuclear weapons state, the United States. The US sets the tone for the world. If the United States does not show leadership in this area, proliferation will certainly continue. At the present, the US non-proliferation effort is based entirely on double standards. It continues to rely upon its nuclear arsenal, while seeking to develop and implement mechanisms to prevent others countries from doing as it does. The US even seeks to develop new nuclear weapons, a form of vertical proliferation.

      Given the US aversion to serious nuclear disarmament measures and its failure to provide leadership to the other nuclear weapons states to fulfill their disarmament obligations, nuclear proliferation appears inevitable. This is not only due to the narrow policy positions of the Bush administration. It was also true, in a less extreme form, during the Clinton administration. The great irony of this is that the country most likely to be the target of a terrorist nuclear attack is the United States.

      This leads to the conclusion that the United States is acting against its own best interests in not ending nuclear double standards and making phased and negotiated nuclear disarmament a priority of its nuclear non-proliferation program. Perhaps at some point US leaders will awaken to the likelihood that their nuclear posturing is making it more likely that their cities and citizens will become the victims of their own nuclear policies.

      Hopefully, this awakening will not be the result of a nuclear attack, and that it will be possible to prevent such an attack against the US or any other country. This may be possible if we employ imagination, reason and leadership, and seek the necessary international cooperation.

      1. Caldicott, Helen. Missile Envy. New York, Bantam, 1984.

      2. 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document, Part I, (NPT/Conf.1995/32 (Part I), p. 10.

      3. 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document, Vol. I (NPT/CONF.2000/28 (Parts I and II)), Part I.

      4. “Statement on Proliferation Security Initiative,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, September 4, 2003.

      5. Proliferation Security Initiative: Statement of Interdiction Principles, adopted in Paris, September 4, 2003.

      6. S/RES/1540 (2004).

      7. Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, United Nations General Assembly, A/51/218, 15 October 1996.

      8. Krieger, David and Carah Ong, “Back to Basics: Reviving Nuclear Disarmament in the Non-Proliferation Regime.” Santa Barbara, CA: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 2005, pp. 13-15.

      9. Krieger and Ong, Op.Cit., pp. 16-17.

      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.

  • Disarming Our Nuclear Minds

    Speech at the World Peace Forum, Vancouver, British Columbia, June 28, 2006

    It’s a great honor to be part of this panel and to have the opportunity to share these words with so many people I respect and admire.

    I find it telling that I am one of the most active young people I know of in the United States currently working for nuclear disarmament; yet, until perhaps two and-a-half years ago, I knew virtually nothing about nuclear weapons. That’s not because I was apathetic. Nor is it because I wasn’t engaged. I was very engaged, in fact, from a relatively young age, in a variety of environmental and social concerns affecting the health and well-being of all living things on the planet.

    But I was – am – also a product of post-Cold War United States society, which has instilled in people the twin notions that the threat of United States involvement in a nuclear war is a thing of the past, and to the extent that nukes are still a problem, the locus of that problem certainly is not in the US. I, as virtually everyone else of my generation, unquestioningly accepted this appalling conventional wisdom, to such an insidious degree that I wasn’t even aware I was accepting it.

    I’ve taken recently to saying to my US colleagues that we shouldn’t view our task only as being to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors, or nuclear waste, but also to stop the proliferation of nuclear minds. Nuclear minds regard nuclear weapons entirely as abstract and are thereby emotionally divorced from their toxic and deadly effects, as I was. The United States is not only the world’s primary source of nuclear weapons proliferation; I would venture to say that it is also the world’s primary source of proliferation of nuclear minds.

    Disarmament of nuclear minds means making not only the potential consequences of nuclear weapons, but also their gruesome ongoing consequences, imaginable and concrete. Though the dominant discourse around nuclear weaponry tends to make them seem highly technical and exclusively the domain of experts and policy-makers, the importance of nuclear disarmament is really not at all difficult to grasp, either conceptually or – more importantly – in our bodies. This is particularly so given the powerful windows into understanding them that are tragically available to us.

    By far the greatest success I’ve had in reaching the young people I work with has been in telling the stories, to the best of my ability, of the Hibakasha, downwinders of nuclear testing, the subjects of the United States Human Radiation Experiments, the indigenous peoples who suffer under the system of “nuclear colonialism” within the claimed boundaries of the US and other countries, and the many other direct victims of the Nuclear Age. Their stories convey the true character of nuclear weapons in the most intimate way possible.

    Every time we allow nuclear weaponry to be framed primarily in terms of scientific jargon or abstract policies, I think we lose ground. Every time we frame nuclear weapons from the perspective of the victims of the Nuclear Age, we align ourselves with the best interests of life on the entire planet. As I have said before in this connection, if we in the United States – as elsewhere in the world — do not collectively begin to understand the Nuclear Age from the perspective of the victims of the Nuclear Age, we will all leave this earth as victims of the Nuclear Age.

    The notion of disarming US nuclear minds dovetails nicely with the main project I’d like to tell you about today, which I’m involved with through the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Youth Empowerment Initiative. That project is a national network of young people titled, appropriately enough, “Think Outside the Bomb.”

    The Think Outside the Bomb network formed at a week-long conference in Santa Barbara, CA, in August 2005, which was attended by roughly 50 young people from across the US, as well as representatives from Kazakhstan and the Marshall Islands. The conference attendees have coordinated a wide variety of projects since that time, including a second, one-day “Think Outside the Bomb” conference in Washington, DC, last November, which was attended by close to 200 people.

    This fall, as the next major step in the network’s progression, we will be conducting three additional conferences. These will take place in Santa Barbara, CA, from October 20-22; in New York City from November 4-5; and in Atlanta, Georgia, at some point in either October or November. The goal of these conferences is not only to feature hundreds of young people in attendance, but for each of these young people to leave these conferences as their own individual units of nuclear disarmament within the greater worldwide movement for nuclear abolition.

    So I come to you bearing good news. A coordinated national movement for nuclear disarmament is beginning to emerge among young people in the United Sates, and the Think Outside the Bomb project is one of the ways this is powerfully manifesting. There is, of course, an incredible amount of work still to be done in building this movement. I invite you to visit our table in the back of the room for more information on Think Outside the Bomb and on the other programs of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and its Youth Empowerment Initiative, or to approach me individually after this panel.

    I look forward to sharing many more experiences with all of you as we realize a nuclear-free world, sooner rather than later, in the years to come. And I thank you for listening.

    Will Parrish is Youth Empowerment Director at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Globalizing Security: A Challenge For Your Generation

    Thank you, Dean Einhorn. Distinguished guests, members of the faculty, families and friends, honoured graduates,

    Today, in a remote village in Darfur, a young woman named Aisha is packing up to leave town. While the situation has started to quiet down, there are rumors that the same militia group that killed her father and mother last year might be planning another raid. Aisha is not sure of her destination, but she is desperate to get her younger brother and sister to a safe place.

    There are many such stories, each with a different twist. Lives in the balance, lives needlessly lost. In a rural area of Zambia, a young man named Mitambo has watched many of his friends grow sick or die from HIV/AIDS, and worries about the future of his village. In the Gaza Strip, a young man named Hassan mourns the loss of his younger brother, unable to understand what drove him to become a suicide bomber. In Cincinnati, a young man named Steven is grieving at the news that his older brother was killed in Fallujah.

    Here in Constitution Hall is a young woman named Susan. In the six years since she began her university training, the international landscape has changed radically. The terrorist attacks of September 2001 marked the beginning of her undergraduate sophomore year. The split at the UN Security Council over Iraq´s suspected weapons of mass destruction became a case study for her junior year. Developments in North Korea and Iran have made for lively classroom debates throughout her graduate studies. Susan is looking forward to receiving her diploma today. She plans a career in international relations, and is eager to make her world a safer place.

    Aisha, Mitambo, Hassan, Steven and Susan. All these young people are in their twenties. Their names are fictional, but their circumstances are very real. And now that you have heard their stories, I would like to talk to you about the major challenge of the 21st century: how to re-shape our approach to security in a way that takes into account the hopes – and the fears – of each of these young people, and in fact of all their fellow human beings around the world.

    Let me say at the outset that, to do this, we must think and act differently. We must globalize our concepts of security. We must develop a system of security that fits with these concepts. But most importantly, we must act accordingly.

    The story of the past few generations can be read as a series of efforts to build institutions that could resolve conflicts peacefully and, in parallel, to limit the scope of war and prohibit certain types of weapons.

    After the devastation of the First World War, the League of Nations was formed. But it could not prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler, or the atrocities that claimed millions of lives.

    After World War II, the United Nations was born. Principles for maintaining international peace and security were agreed upon. Economic and social development for all. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Centralization of the authority to use force, in the UN Security Council. And limitations on the conditions under which States could justify using force in self-defence.

    The United Nations and its institutions have had many successes, in regulating various aspects of our increasingly interconnected lives: international trade, civil aviation, postal standards, labour practices, and so forth.

    But the overall success of the United Nations as a body is measured most often in terms of its performance in keeping the peace – particularly its role as a peacemaker in terms of conflict prevention and conflict resolution, and as a peacekeeper in the aftermath of conflicts. Here the UN record is mixed. The UN can point to some success stories, such as in the case of Namibia, in which sustained and active UN engagement led to the country´s transition from occupation to independence. Or the case of East Timor, which through similar UN involvement has become a free and independent nation.

    The problem is how to make such successes the norm. In too many cases, such as the Middle East or South Asia, we find ourselves incapable of finding solutions to conflicts that have gone on for decades. And too often we fail to act when intervention is clearly needed – such as during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when nearly 1 million people were slaughtered in just over 3 months.

    What about our scorecard on limiting the scope of war or prohibiting the most destructive types of weapons? Here the record is also mixed. As far back as the Hague Conventions of 1899, efforts were made to limit the effects of armed conflict — through, for example, protecting people who are not part of hostilities, and prohibiting methods and means of warfare that cause unnecessary suffering.

    The Biological Weapons Convention of 1975 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, which outlawed the production and use of these weapons, were major steps forward.

    But the irony is that we still have not outlawed the “big guns”: nuclear weapons. Under the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – the five countries that had nuclear weapons at the time – China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States – committed themselves to &quote;negotiate in good faith” effective measures for the elimination of nuclear weapons and, in the meantime, to share peaceful nuclear technology with any other countries party to the Treaty. In return, those other countries agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons.

    On the one hand, efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons through the NPT treaty regime can be viewed as a remarkable success. With the exception of India, Israel and Pakistan, every country in the world has joined the NPT. The vast majority of NPT members have stood by their commitments. And the number of nuclear warheads has been reduced by more than 50 percent from its Cold War peak.

    On the other hand, in recent years, we seem to have come to an impasse, and many see the NPT regime as faltering. You might say that, while we started on the right track, we have lost our sense of direction. Today we have eight or nine countries that possess nuclear weapons – and more than 20 other members of alliances that continue to rely on these weapons for their security. Some countries are actually announcing programmes for modernizing their stockpiles, and some have even spoken of the possibility of using such weapons – all the while insisting that they are off-limits to others.

    This is a dilemma worth reflecting on. As an international community, we have no difficulties in cooperating when it comes to regulating shipping, coordinating the use of airwaves, or jointly fighting epidemics. But when it comes to how to resolve our differences, our approach dates back to the Stone Age, still rooted primitively in who carries the biggest club.

    In 1974, I was like you today – waiting to receive my graduate diploma from the New York University School of Law.

    It is now over thirty years later. My generation has had its successes and failures. But I also believe we have learned a number of lessons and insights that you may reflect on as you prepare to take over.

    The first lesson is that international peace and security cannot be achieved through business as usual with our existing norms and institutions. Clearly, these norms and institutions – whether the NPT or the UN Security Council – are far from perfect. They need to be strengthened in a variety of ways.

    But beyond the re-engineering of these norms and institutions, we need a complete change of mindset. Most importantly, our approach to security can no longer be centred on the idea of “Us Versus Them”. It must instead be anchored on the idea of the unity of the human family.

    Our world today is marked by asymmetry. Twenty percent of the world´s population consumes 80 percent of the resources. And 2 out of every 5 people still live on less than $2 per day.

    Given that SAIS just completed its “Year of Energy”, let me explain this asymmetry in another way. The average American has 1,800 watts at his or her disposal – powering everything from air conditioners to iPods. By contrast, your average Nigerian has to make do with only enough power for a single 8-watt light bulb.

    In the past, with little travel or communication between countries and peoples, this sort of imbalance could endure for centuries.

    This brings us to Lesson Number Two: in our era of globalization, this imbalance is no longer sustainable. Television and the Internet have made this imbalance glaringly visible. In some cases, that imbalance in living conditions is leading to a sense of injustice – a fertile breeding ground for conflicts and the emergence of extremist groups. And increasingly, the insecurities of one country or region become the insecurities of all.

    In the final year of World War II, President Roosevelt said, “We have learned that our own well being is dependent on the well being of other nations far away.” This reality is now ever more apparent. Chaos mathematicians sometimes describe what is known as “the butterfly effect” – the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings in Washington DC can affect the initial conditions of a chain of meteorological events that ultimately bring about, say, a sandstorm in the Sahara. Today, one can equally speak about the same butterfly effect of insecurity. The recent terrorist attacks in Europe, which could be traced back to the sense of humiliation in parts of the Middle East, are a case in point. Security is no longer as simple as building another wall. Globalization is forcing us to realize that, whether we like it or not, we are all in the same boat.

    When we look at nuclear weapons through this lens, Lesson Number Three becomes obvious. Nukes breed nukes. As long as some nations continue to insist that nuclear weapons are essential to their security, other nations will want them. There is no way around this simple truth. Here, too, the playing field will need to be leveled, one way or another.

    As recently as a few decades ago, the control of nuclear technology and nuclear material was a sensible strategy for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We are still working vigorously – and must continue to work – to maintain and improve those controls. The proposal to bring under multinational control those facilities capable of producing weapon-usable nuclear material – a proposal endorsed in various forms by many world leaders – is just one such improvement.

    But ultimately, as more countries gain advanced engineering capabilities, these controls, in and of themselves, are no longer enough. Advances in communication have simply made it too easy to share knowledge and technology. And regardless of how diligently we work to block the illicit trade in nuclear technology to nations – or worse, to extremist groups who seek this technology – there will be limits to how much can be controlled.

    When it comes to nuclear weapons, we are reaching a fork in the road. Either we must begin moving away from a security system based on nuclear weapons, or we should resign ourselves to President Kennedy´s 1960s prediction of a world with 20 to 30 nuclear-weapon States. Efforts to control the spread of such weapons will only be delaying the inevitable – a world in which each country or group has laid claim to its own nuclear weapon. Mutually Assured Destruction will once again be the absurd hallmark of civilization at its technological peak.

    Is that really the world we want to live in?

    To date, no one has seriously taken up the challenge of developing an alternative approach to security that eliminates the need for nuclear deterrence. But only when such an alternative system is created will nuclear-weapon States begin moving towards nuclear disarmament. And only when nuclear-weapon States move away from depending on these weapons for their security will the threat of nuclear proliferation by other countries be meaningfully reduced. And finally, only when both groups of countries shift their focus – from a security system based on the build-up of armaments to a security system that addresses the root causes of insecurity, ranging from poverty and repression to unresolved conflicts – will we be able to improve global security.

    Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to develop this alternative system of collective security. The good news is that, as tough as it may sound, this is not “Mission Impossible”. As graduates of the School of Advanced International Studies, you are equipped with the right skills and the broad outlook to take on such a challenge. The globalization of security will require creative diplomacy, innovative technology and above all leadership.

    Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the exact nature of such an alternative system. But I can tell you some of the features that will be essential to its success.

    At its root, this new system of collective security requires a basic belief that we are all part of one human family.

    This requires a re-arrangement of our global priorities. In 2004, the nations of the world spent over $1 trillion on weapons, and less than 10% of that amount – a mere $80 billion – on official development assistance. Experts tell us that, for an additional $65 billion per year, we could cut world hunger in half, put programmes in place for clean water worldwide, enable reproductive health care for women everywhere, eradicate illiteracy, and provide immunization for every child.

    With those kinds of numbers, it doesn´t take a nuclear scientist to figure out a smarter approach to improving our security situation. To quote President Eisenhower, speaking with far-sighted vision in 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies… a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

    If we can focus on giving our less fortunate neighbours the opportunity to raise their living standards – the chance to compete, to regain their sense of dignity and self-respect – the likelihood of conflict will immediately begin to drop.

    This new system of collective security should incorporate a deterrence based primarily on the interdependence of nations, through the exchange of people, ideas and goods. Armed conflict must become too costly to be anything but the very last option. We must find ways to make nuclear weapons relics of the past.

    Secondly, this alternative system of collective security must include institutions capable of maintaining international peace and security. The United Nations Security Council now holds this responsibility. The Security Council must be representative of the global community it serves. It must be structured in a way that makes it agile in its responses to crises. It must be consistent in its actions. It must have the resources to carry out its mission. And it must make it a high priority to resolve conflicts that have continued to fester for decades. We should not forget, however, that at the end of the day, international institutions are constellations of states, and states are made up of people who should be the focus and the drivers of any system of security.

    Third, we should initiate a series of dialogues to promote mutual understanding and respect. To correct misconceptions. To understand and address causes of hostility. These dialogues should be tailored especially towards young people – young people like Aisha, Mitambo, Hassan, Steven and Susan – because a mindset of mutual respect and understanding will be essential to the effort of your generation to put in place an equitable global security system.

    In the 1960s, Timothy Leary coined the famous phrase: “Turn On; Tune In; Drop Out” – calling on the younger generation to disengage from society and seek enlightenment through psychedelic drugs.

    I would call on you to do exactly the opposite, to engage and become part of the solution – in other words, “Turn Back; Tune In; Reach Out”. Turn Back from an approach to security that relies on nuclear deterrence. Tune In to the security needs of your fellow human beings around the globe. And Reach Out to make those needs your own, so that the dream of peace and security can finally become a reality. Every one of you can make a difference.

    Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2006: the future rests in your hands. May God bless you with the wisdom and courage necessary to lead us to a safer and more humane world.

    Thank you.

     

    Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei is the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He also shared the 2005 Noble Prize for Peace with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

  • End U.S.-Iranian Nuclear Standoff by Ending Double Standards

    End U.S.-Iranian Nuclear Standoff by Ending Double Standards

    The Bush administration is being hypocritical about Iran, approaching it with very different standards than it has for Israel, India or even itself.
    If the United States expects Iran to fully adhere to the rules set forth in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, then Washington should be expected to do so as well. This treaty requires the United States and other nuclear powers that are parties to the treaty to enter into good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. The United States is not doing so.

    In 1999, the US Senate failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Bush administration has not resubmitted this treaty to the Senate. For the past five years, the US has opposed a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. In 2002, the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

    The Bush administration has also sought to develop new nuclear weapons — such as the “bunker buster” — and has generally thwarted negotiations leading to transparent and irreversible nuclear disarmament.

    Further, the Bush administration has indicated its intent to rely on nuclear weapons for the indefinite future. It also has made not-so-veiled threats to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states.

    These policies violate the spirit if not the letter of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And they perversely encourage states such as Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear arsenals.
    Nevertheless, the Bush administration claims Iran is acting illegally under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This 1970 treaty encourages the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. In Article IV of the treaty, it refers to the “inalienable right of all Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”
    As a result, Iran argues that, as a party to the treaty, it is within its legal rights to develop a nuclear energy program, including a program that involves the enrichment of uranium. Uranium enriched to 6 percent to 8 percent U-235 may be beneficial for use in nuclear reactors for generating power. However, if uranium is enriched to higher levels of U-235 — 80 percent to 90 percent — it may be used as fissionable material in nuclear weapons.

    While Iran has begun enriching, it is nowhere near the level needed for nuclear weapons. But that possibility cannot be ruled out. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has tried for three years to find out about Iran’s nuclear program. So far, Iran has provided inadequate transparency, according to the IAEA.
    Iran has cooperated with IAEA inspectors, voluntarily subjecting its facilities to the more comprehensive inspection requirements of the Additional Protocol to the IAEA agreement. However, when the United States threatened to take the matter to the U.N. Security Council, Iran responded by ending its voluntary adherence to the Additional Protocol, and raising the possibility of withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether.
    The United States must lead by example. It must work toward a world free of nuclear weapons. The United States should seek universal standards so that all uranium enrichment for all states, including for United States and its allies, is placed under strict international control and verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    Maintaining nuclear double standards under international law is not sustainable. It is just plain bad policy.

     

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Find out more at the Foundation’s website and its blog.

  • Why Nuclear is Nonsense

    Ever heard the story of Chicken Licken? One day, whilst walking in the woods, an acorn fell on Chicken Licken’s head. ‘Oh no!’ Cried Chicken Licken ‘the sky is falling in. We’re all doomed.’ In a state of panic, Chicken-Licken ran off to warn his friends.Duck Luck, Turkey Lurkey, Hen Len and Goose Loose were all told the terrible news and joined in the state of panic.

    As the animals ran round in an increasing state of agitation salvation suddenly seemed to appear in the form of Fox Lox. ‘Don’t worry’ said the fox ‘I will provide you shelter. Come with me and we will all be safe’. So the animals duly followed Fox Lox to his home and made their way underground into the shelter of his lair. This came as great news to Fox Lox’s family, who couldn’t believe that lunch had walked into their home on its own two feet.

    A great feast was had, but the sky had never been falling in. The lesson we offer to our children from this fable is that if you allow yourself to be thrown into a panic by stupid, irrational ideas you bring about your own, self-inflicted, disasters. So it is with the Prime Minister’s claims that nuclear power is back with a vengeance and that it is our only hope of addressing both energy security and the challenge of Climate Change.

    Let us be clear about where we are now. If you, me or Chicken Licken wanted to we could go out and build a nuclear power station today. Nothing in existing energy market rules prevents this. It is simply that the economics of nuclear power do not stack up and never have done. The generation that believed that nuclear would provide ‘atoms for free’, ‘energy too cheap to meter’ soon discovered that nuclear power has never broken even let alone reduced energy costs. The scale of its costs was only ever masked by subsidies from the defence budget for nuclear weapons grade material. It was the nuclear arms race that kept the show on the road.

    Today, we know that the clean-up costs for the last generation of nuclear waste will be between £56 – £80 billion until the year 2080. We are yet to have estimates of the cost beyond that date. The nuclear lobby has only been rejuvenated by the Government’s decision that the taxpayer should meet these costs rather than the industry itself. So much for competitive markets.

    Blair’s announcement that nuclear is back with a vengeance needs therefore to be read in the coded terms that his pronouncements usually require. What it means is that the taxpayer will be asked to fork out huge subsidies for the changes that appear to make nuclear economically viable. In Finland, it meant the Government agreeing that the industry would only be liable for its waste for the first 30 years. The tax payer will take responsibility for the 1000 that follow.

    The danger is not just in the inherent stupidity of Blair’s claims, but in the knowledge that the nuclear industry will run off with the cash for all other energy options. So, before going down this path, just look at the economics of other choices. MPs have recently had a briefing about the construction, within the North Sea, of an offshore super-grid of wind generators. It would cost less than £2 million to construct, but with larger costs of around £1.5 billion for the construction of an internal grid. In total it would deliver 10 GW of energy – the equivalent of four nuclear power stations. It could supply carbon-free energy for Britain, Germany and the Netherlands (the three countries they are seeking to involve in the project).

    Even if you do a value for money comparison of existing energy choices, the nuclear option comes out as a very poor choice. For every pound you put into nuclear the energy output from other sources is streets ahead.

    Wind power gives you up to 1.7 times more kilowatt hours per pound and so does gas fired industrial co- generation. Combined Heat and Power systems in people’s homes gives up to 6.5 times as many kilowatt hours and the ‘heat from waste’ systems give up to 9 times as much energy. Most profitable of all are the savings that come from simply reducing the amount of energy we currently throw away. Here – in the area people call ‘negawatts’ – you can get 10 times more for your money than in any pursuit of the nuclear folly.

    Britain currently throws away twice as much energy as the country uses. We do so in a hopelessly inefficient generating system and National Grid. Already, other parts of continental Europe have moved into decentralised energy systems that are infinitely more efficient. Denmark has 50% of its national energy needs met from decentralised energy and the Netherlands has over 60%. By far the most adventurous country in the EU is Germany. It is creating new markets in renewable energy systems that are likely to steal a march on almost everyone else.

    Some 80% of the new buildings going up in Berlin generate their own energy. This isn’t because German citizens have suddenly become ethically enlightened in a way that rest of us haven’t. It follows directly from the Renewable Energies Act passed in Germany in 2004. What the Germans did was to change the market rules. People now get paid four times as much for energy that they supply into the energy system (from renewable resources) as for the energy they take out. Suddenly it becomes profitable for developers to include energy generation in every building they put up. Little surprise then that Germany should have 88% of the current EU market for installed photovoltaic energy systems.

    A sad reality, discovered by almost all of those who seek to incorporate renewable energy systems into their own homes in the UK, is that virtually all of the technology and know-how has to be imported. Germany has created a market, for both its manufacturing and for the skill training of its young people, that Britain barely seems to comprehend. Blair’s obsession with light touch regulation and non intervention in markets basically throws manufacturing to the wolves and skill training out of the window. It is the refusal to lead into genuinely sustainable alternatives that allows Bair to run with ‘the sky is falling in’ declaration that nuclear is the answer.

    Many in the country (and the Party) believe that Blair had sold his soul to the nuclear lobby some time ago.It was just a question of softening up the public into acceptance and getting rid of ministers who might put up a coherent case against him. It is, however, an option locked into the follies of the past rather than visions of the future; the delusions of someone who clearly needs to get out more.

    Despite Blair’s promise that he would learn to listen more, following Labour’s losses in the local government elections and our collapse of support in the opinion polls, it is clear that he continues to listen only to the corporate lobbyists who have led Labour into much of the mess we now face. The Prime Minister has clearly entered the David Icke phase of his political career, believing in his own ability to walk on waffle. Perhaps it is the time for Blair to get out too.

    In Parliament, Alan is a leading campaigner on wide ranging issues about the environment and the economy. The New Statesman dubbed him, “The man most likely to come up with the ideas”. He has consistently put the multinational GM food companies on the defensive and fought for a safer, healthier environment. Alan is also involved in anti-poverty campaigns and ones supporting industrial democracy and common ownership. He is Chair of the All Party Warm Homes Group, and Treasurer of the Socialist Campaign Group.

  • Let Mordechai Vanunu Go

    On leaving Israel/Palestine today, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, who has spent the last 10 days in Israel-Palestine campaigning for an end to the detention of Mordechai Vanunu, said:

    “I believe it is sad and shameful that the Israeli Government continues to detain Mordechai Vanunu for this the 20 year of his internal exile within Israel. He has no secrets. He is no threat to Israeli security. I therefore call upon the Israel Government to uphold Mordechai Vanunu’s human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of movement and let him go.

    I also support his call for a Nuclear Free Israel, Middle East and world and call upon the Israeli Government to open Dimona for inspection, and to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty.

    During my visit I have travelled to Jenin Refugee Camp, Hebron, and Bethlehem in the Israeli Occupied Territories. I have witnessed the daily suffering of the Palestinian people living under an increasing and worsening oppressive Israeli occupation.

    I believe there is a great desire for peace amongst all the people, but in order to move into serious dialogue and negotiations urgent steps, and the political will; particularly from the Israeli Government, need to be taken. I therefore make the following Appeal:

    1. I call upon the International Community, European Community, the United States of America, to intervene to end the 40 year occupation by Israel and to end the Palestinian suffering in Palestinian camps for 60 years. The International Community must not be intimidated and silenced by threats of being anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli, but must be bold in demanding Israel upholds it obligations under International Law.
    2. The way for peace must be for Israel to end the occupation and recognize and respect all the national and international human rights of the Palestinian people.
    3. I call upon the Palestinian people to use the methods of Jesus Christ, Badshan Khan, Gandhi, Martin Luther King of nonviolent resistance to the occupation and apartheid system, which continues to cause so much suffering to their people. And for the International Community to support such a nonviolent resistance by the Palestinian people.
    4. I call upon the Israeli Government to uphold International Court of Justice and dismantle the Apartheid wall, and the Apartheid system of injustice. To recognize the democratically elected Government of the Palestinian people and enter into serious dialogue with their new ‘partner for peace’.
    5. I call upon Israeli Government, European Union, United State, to restore Foreign Aid as the withdrawing of this, is in effect. a collective punishment of the Palestinian people, many of whom already live under great poverty and hardship, due to the continuing illegal occupation and colonization of the Palestinian Territories.
    6. I call upon all Israeli and Palestinian people to continue to hope and believe and act for peace, and to do everything in their power to begin to build trust and friendship amongst each other. Nuclear Weapons, militarism, and emergency laws will not build trust, but overcome the fear of each other, and continuing the great work already being done by both Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, and many others, will bring peace. The Israeli Government can help this process by making it possible for people to actually meet each other, and build a grassroots peace movement together.

    I have great hopes for both Israeli-Palestinian and leave strengthened and upheld by the love and affection I have received from my many Israeli and Palestinian Friends.

    Shalom/Salam,
    Mrs Mairead Corrigan Maguire Nobel Peace Laureate

    Peace People 224 Lisburn Road, Belfast. BT9 Northern Ireland – UK. www.peacepeople.com Tel: (44) (0)2890 663465 Fax: (44) (0)2890 381987 Email Info@peacepeople.com

    Mairead Corrigan Maguire received the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize and the 1991 Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. She recently participated in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2006 International Law Symposium, “At the Nuclear Precipice: Nuclear Weapons and the Abandonment of International Law.”