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  • Turning the Tide: The need for a Pacific Solution to Aid Conditionality

    Greenpeace Pacific, Suva, June 2002

    Excerpted from Teresia K. Teaiwa, Sandra Tarte, Nic Maclellan and Maureen Penjueli

    Chapter Two: THE NUCLEAR SUPERHIGHWAY
    Japanese aid and the transhipment of radioactive materials through the Pacific
    By Nic Maclellan

    Japan is a major donor of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to Pacific island nations, doubling its aid to the region between 1987 and 1995. By 1999, Japan was the largest bilateral aid donor to Tonga, Vanuatu, Samoa and the Solomon Islands, and the second largest donor to Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Palau, Nauru and Tuvalu (1). Since 1991, Japan has participated in OECD donor coordination meetings with Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the European Union, the United Nations, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, as OECD countries contributed over US$7.7 billion in aid to the region in 1995-9. In spite of this, only about two per cent of overall Japanese ODA – about $138 million a year – goes to the South Pacific, and there have been reports that aid to island countries will be reduced if current plans to slash the ODA budget are implemented (2).

    Since 1989, Japan has been a post-Forum dialogue partner with the Pacific Islands Forum (formerly the South Pacific Forum) – the sixteen-member body that links Australia, New Zealand and the independent island nations. For some years, Japan has been the third largest contributor to Forum Secretariat activities, after Australia and New Zealand. Between 1988 and 2000, Japan contributed US$6.7 million to the Secretariat, with the latest grant in 2001 amounting to US$401,000. Forum Secretary General Mr. Noel Levi CBE notes: “Japan’s financial support, through extra-budgetary funding, has been fundamental to the implementation of our key programs.”(3)

    Japan also contributes funds to other regional inter-governmental organisations, such as the South Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP) and the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA).

    Japan’s aid program and diplomatic efforts support broader national interests, as noted by Japan’s Fisheries Minister in July 2001: “Japan does not have a military power, unlike US and Australia … Japanese means is simply diplomatic communication and ODA. So, in order to get appreciation of Japan’s position, of course that is natural that we must do, result on those two major truths (sic) (4).” As mentioned in Chapter One, Japan is seeking the support of the growing islands’ bloc at the United Nations, in its efforts to secure a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Japan also seeks ongoing access to Pacific fisheries and forest resources. Japanese corporations are interested in rights to the island nations’ undersea mineral wealth in the 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) – signing an agreement in February, 2000 for deep ocean mineral exploration in EEZs around the Cook Islands, Fiji and the Marshall Islands.

    Close diplomatic and development ties throughout the 1990s have not ended island concern over environmental and resource issues involving Japanese corporations, including whaling, tuna and the transhipment of plutonium, MOX fuel and high-level radioactive wastes through the Pacific. In 2000, Japan offered to establish a US$10 million “goodwill” trust fund for Forum Island countries to address concerns over a possible fire, sinking, collision or accident involving nuclear materials. The issue is subject to ongoing negotiations between the Pacific Islands Forum and the nuclear nations involved in reprocessing Japanese spent nuclear wastes.

    Japan and nuclear energy

    Japan has a large nuclear power industry, and arranges for its spent nuclear fuel to be reprocessed at the British reprocessing plant at Sellafield and the French reprocessing plant at La Hague. (Reprocessing involves chemically separating uranium and plutonium from used nuclear fuel, in order to reuse the plutonium). The reprocessing companies – COGEMA in France and British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) in Britain – are government owned and controlled, while ten Japanese energy corporations make up the Overseas Reprocessing Committee (ORC). These three companies own the British-based shipping firm, Pacific Nuclear Transport LTD (PNTL), which carries nuclear wastes by sea on vessels such as Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal.

    Japan started transhipment of nuclear wastes to Europe back in 1969, but the program escalated in the 1990s as it attempted to develop a plutonium-fuelled fast breeder reactor. In coming years, Japanese nuclear corporations plan to ship 600 tonnes of spent fuel to France. After reprocessing, the separated plutonium and high level radioactive wastes are scheduled to be shipped back to Japan, because supply nations vetoed the use of aircraft for safety reasons. Depending on the route, the ships pass through the EEZs of Pacific or Caribbean island nations.

    Japan maintains massive stockpiles of separated plutonium in Europe (20.6 tonnes in France and 6.9 tonnes in Britain, as of late 2000). Japanese corporations Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) hope to bring these stockpiles of weapons-usable plutonium from Europe to Japan by the year 2010. Shipping radioactive wastes back and forth across the oceans allows Japan’s nuclear industry to avoid responsibility for the build-up of nuclear pollution in Japan, as there is no viable method for the long-term storage of high-level nuclear wastes.

    A shipment of plutonium from Europe to Japan in 1992 aboard the Akatsuki Maru brought international condemnation, culminating when the United States government ordered Japan to send an armed escort vessel with the plutonium transport ship (5). The Akatsuki Maru, carrying a tonne of plutonium, passed between Australia and New Zealand, and then through the waters of Pacific island nations, including the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and the Federated States of Micronesia.

    Because of concerns after the Akatsuki Maru shipment and public opposition to the use of plutonium in Japan, reprocessed materials are now transported as mixed plutonium/uranium oxide (MOX) fuel, to be burnt in light water nuclear reactors. Many Japanese citizens are opposed to Japan’s plutonium economy, because of concerns over nuclear proliferation, cost and pollution. There are many safety problems with Japan’s reprocessing and nuclear industry, exemplified by the December 1995 fire and accident at the Monju prototype fast breeder reactor, the March 1997 fire and explosion at Tokaimura reactor, or the April 1997 leak of heavy water coolant at the Fugen plutonium-fuelled reactor. Confidence was also shaken by the corporate and government failure to respond quickly to the September 1999 Tokaimura nuclear accident (Tokaimura hosts four nuclear power plants and was the site of Japan’s worst nuclear accident, which killed two people and exposed at least 439 others to radiation) (7).

    The demand for MOX shipments has faltered, in the face of Japanese citizen opposition. In February 2001, the Governor of Fukushima Province, Eisaku Sato, acknowledged the “impossibility of MOX use at present.” Governor Sato stated: “The JCO criticality accident [at Tokaimura in 1999] and the MOX fuel data falsification problem heightened prefectural citizens anxiety and distrust over government nuclear policy, and the acceptance of the MOX use program in the prefecture has yet to recover (8).” The same month, TEPCO announced that it had suspended construction of all new nuclear power plants.

    The data falsification Governor Sato referred to seriously undermined Japan’s MOX program. The first 1999 shipment from the UK’s British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) facility at Sellafield erupted in scandal when, while en-route, it was revealed that BNFL had deliberately falsified vital quality control data. For the next three months BNFL and Japanese authorities denied that quality control data for the MOX fuel had been falsified. However, after a legal challenge was mounted by Japanese NGO’s (supported by Greenpeace), BNFL finally admitted that falsification had taken place during the manufacture of the MOX fuel. The Japanese government and owners of the MOX fuel, Kansai Electric, rejected BNFL’s view that it remained safe to load the fuel into nuclear reactors and in early 2000 demanded it be returned to the UK. After negotiating for over six months, it was announced in July 2000 that the UK government had agreed to the return of the MOX fuel. BNFL agreed to a compensation package with Kansai Electric, whereby a total of 110 million UK sterling would be written off to fund direct compensation, new fuel, and the cost of a return transport. It was announced that the transport would take place within 2-3 years. This return shipment departed from Britain on April 26, 2002 – the sixteenth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

    The Japanese and British Governments recognise the sensitivity of this return shipment, conducted three years after the fact. The Agreement for the return, signed by both parties on July 11, 2000, stated that: “maximum consideration will be given to the relationship with coastal states.” However, as recently as January 30, 2002 the Japanese Foreign Ministry stated to a member of the Japanese Parliament that all three routes between Japan and the UK remained an option for this shipment and they will be used in a balanced way.

    At the time of writing, the Pacific Pintail and a second armed nuclear transport ship, the Pacific Teal, are loading the plutonium MOX in Japan. The ships’ route was still unknown, and countries along the three possible routes were on alert for incursions into their territorial waters and EEZs.

    Evidence that the consistent opposition of en-route states is having an impact on Japan’s plans for future shipments has emerged over recent years. In early 2001, it was revealed that the Japanese Government was considering the option of moving plutonium and vitrified high level waste from Europe via the Northern Sea Route, north of Russia. While Greenpeace is opposed to such plans, it is noteworthy that one of the motives for this is the view of the Japanese Foreign Ministry that opposition in the South Pacific, Caribbean and Latin America is growing. The Northern Sea Route would avoid these regions. Further evidence that opposition from coastal states is impacting the Japanese nuclear program also comes via the Japanese Foreign Ministry. It intervened directly during 2000 and 2001 to prevent the signing of new reprocessing contracts between utilities and the French company Cogema, citing growing opposition from en-route nations. If signed, such contracts would lead to tens of shipments of spent nuclear waste fuel from Japan to Europe.

    In spite of the vulnerable financial situation of Japan’s plutonium economy, island nations have not yet been able to halt the transhipment of nuclear wastes. At the 1992 South Pacific Forum, leaders expressed their concern over the shipment of plutonium through Pacific waters, an expression of concern that has been repeated in every Forum Communiqué over the last decade.

    There is widespread concern that an accident could threaten Pacific fisheries, tourism and other vital industries, especially as the nuclear industry in Japan and Britain has recently been rocked by a series of scandals over safety. In the Japanese Diet (Parliament) on July 2,1999, questions were raised about whether Japan, Britain and France made any arrangements before the shipments, as required under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs admitted: “No arrangements exist. This has never been discussed between the three countries.” Some larger countries, like New Zealand, have sought and received assurances that the shipments will not pass through their EEZs, but these guarantees have not been given to small island Pacific states, which straddle the route to Japan through the Tasman Sea and central Pacific (9).

    Under international law, ships have the (debatable) right of “innocent passage” through EEZs. Negotiations to revise the existing international liability regime, known as the Paris Convention, are underway, however there are a number of constraints:

    • Unlike France and Britain, Japan is not a party to the 1960 Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy or the 1963 Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage
    • Non-OECD members such as Forum members states can only accede to the Paris Convention with the unanimous consent of all state parties
    • The Paris Convention does not cover economic loss arising from the perception of risk after an incident or accident. This is a key concern for island nations, as discussed below.

    In the mid-1990s, some Pacific island governments considered unilateral initiatives to restrict nuclear transport ships from passing through their EEZs (10). For example, in September 1997 Solomon Islands Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulafa’alu stated that his government was considering legislation to charge fees for nuclear waste shipments passing through his country’s waters. Media reports quoting diplomatic sources stated that in retaliation, Japan was considering suspending a $14 million ODA grant to build a new terminal at Honiara’s

    Henderson International Airport. Although the Japanese embassy then officially denied the claim, Ulafa’alu’s legislation never got off the ground (11).

    Diplomatic pressure from the nuclear states on individual Pacific governments has led to a co-ordinated Forum initiative. Instead of trying to ban outright the nuclear shipments through the region, the Forum has asked for negotiations on prior notification, compensation and liability schemes in cases of accident.

    Australia – Fuelling the Controversy

    Throughout all of the diplomatic efforts in relation to the shipments, the concerns of the en route nations have been undermined by the very unhelpful role played by Australia. Indeed, successive Australian governments have condoned the passage of the nuclear transports. Australia sells uranium, the basic fuel for nuclear reactors, to electricity utilities in Japan. Official reports show that thousands of tonnes of Australian uranium and its by-products are held by Japan – in the form of natural uranium, enriched uranium, and depleted uranium, as well as irradiated and separated plutonium. Australian Obligated Nuclear Material (AONM) is traded under bilateral and international agreements which means that Japan needs permission from Australia before it can take part in nuclear material transfers. However, permission has been granted for both the transfer of the materials, and the shipments themselves, via a “generic consent” which covers this and every other plutonium shipment, without subjecting that particular shipment, or the Japanese plutonium program, to any scrutiny whatsoever.

    Forum Negotiations with Shipping States

    Even though concerns were raised formally after the Akatsuki Maru’s plutonium shipment in 1992, Japan, France and Britain dragged their feet over addressing Forum concerns. Formal consultations on the issue only commenced in 1999, involving Forum Secretariat officials and ambassadors, plus government officials of the three shipping nations (Britain, France and Japan), and nuclear industry representatives (12).

    After a mandate given by the 1998 Forum meeting, the first round of discussions on nuclear shipments was held in Suva, Fiji in August, 1999. Ironically, at the time, two shiploads of MOX fuel were passing through the region (13). In spite of agreement to continue dialogue, the second round of discussions in Auckland, New Zealand, was not held until September, 2000 – one year after the first meeting. At this consultation, in Auckland, New Zealand in September 2000, the three nuclear powers claimed that existing international maritime law on “innocent passage” allows nuclear transhipment through islands EEZs. They refused to acknowledge any liability for potential accidents beyond the existing international regime.

    In February 2001, at the time of another MOX shipment, the Forum publicly expressed its concern over the slow pace of negotiations:

    “At the Forum meetings in Kiribati and Palau, island leaders noted the continuation of discussions with France, Japan and the United Kingdom on the current liability regime for compensating the region for economic losses caused to tourism, fisheries and other affected industries as a result of an accident involving a shipment of radioactive materials, even if there is no actual environmental damage caused. The Forum has noted that amendments to existing international liability regimes were currently under negotiation and that, once concluded, would take some time to enter into force. It is therefore necessary that discussions focus on intermediate innovative arrangements or assurances to address the Forum’s concerns. The Forum has reaffirmed its desire to continue these discussions with France, Japan and the United Kingdom. Pacific Islands Forum Leaders have also called for a high-level commitment from the three shipping states to carry the process forward.(14)”

    A third meeting with the shipping states and nuclear industry representatives was held on 3-5 July 2001 in Nadi, Fiji. It was the first time that substantial discussion and negotiations occurred, and Forum concerns were addressed.

    A central issue from Forum member countries is not only the potential catastrophic environmental consequences of an accident involving a shipment of radioactive materials and MOX fuel, but also economic impacts arising from any incident where there is no release of radioactivity (“…even if there is no actual environmental damage caused.” ) (15). Cook Islands Prime Minister Dr. Terepai Maoate has noted that for his and similar countries, a nuclear waste shipment accident would “create immediate and widespread perception of danger and ruin a booming tourism industry” (16).

    There are precedents for such economic losses, as shown with the resumption of French nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll in 1995-6. International hostility to the testing and public perceptions of nuclear hazards caused a significant drop in tourism to many Pacific countries, even though they are some distance from the nuclear test sites. Tourism to French Polynesia dropped 20 per cent in the last quarter of 1995 in comparison to the previous year, but other Pacific countries were also affected: tourism for the period to the Cook Islands dropped 14.7 per cent, New Caledonia 6.9 per cent and Fiji 3.4 per cent. Japanese honeymooners and tour groups are an important source of tourism revenue, but Japanese tourism to the South Pacific dropped 36.9 per cent in the last quarter of 1995, in large part because of concern over nuclear hazards (17).

    While giving assurances on the prevention of incidents and response to an accident, the three shipping nations refuse to give commitments on compensation and liability, especially for economic losses caused by perceived dangers from a nuclear accident. Japan has maintained a rigid position that it will not provide compensation for economic loss; concerned that so-called “misreporting” of a nuclear accident may increase the economic losses. Such commitments from the shipping states will only come after sustained political pressure.

    Japan’s Trust Fund

    Japan has responded to ongoing pressure over the issue by offering to pay an initial grant of US$10 million into a “good will” trust (funded by Japanese nuclear corporations). The trust fund was announced publicly at the October 2000 Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Kiribati. Annual interest of some US$500,000 from this Pacific Islands Development Cooperation Fund could be used to finance projects for Forum Island Countries in the fields of environment, energy and tourism.

    A more controversial element of the fund was the announcement that “the principal of the trust fund would be available to cover the costs of the initial response to incidents during shipment of radioactive materials and MOX fuel through the region (18).” However, the UK and France are worried that the trust fund has been linked to the nuclear shipments, and Japan is seeking to revise its original advice that the fund has any connection to nuclear transport accidents, in order to avoid liability. The Japanese Government has not publicly clarified details of the Trust Fund and is still negotiating the details of the MOU and a Management Council to govern its operations.

    Even this gesture has not mollified critics of the nuclear shipments, who call for a complete cession of all transport of nuclear materials through Pacific waters. Motarilavoa Hilda Lini of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) has noted: “We are concerned that our governments’ position could be compromised by accepting Japan’s offer to establish a US$10 million ‘goodwill’ trust fund to placate concerns about the plutonium shipments threat to Pacific fisheries, tourism and other vital industries. US$10 million is peanuts. It will not cover a fraction of the costs incurred by a nuclear accident at sea. (19) ”

    It is worth noting that the domestic liability agreements in Japan in relation to nuclear accidents are far more generous than what has been offered to en route states.

    Japanese Lobbying

    In an effort to prop up their troubled nuclear industry, Japanese government and industry lobbyists now argue that nuclear power is a solution to global warming and subsequent sea-level rise – key issues of concern for small atoll states in the Pacific. Nuclear corporations have hired public relations companies like Burson-Marsteller to soften public opinion, saying there are no hazards from the shipments. Delegations from COGEMA and BNFL have toured the South Pacific, and company officials have lobbied at Pacific Island Forum meetings. Australia and Britain also included nuclear experts in their delegations to the 1999 South Pacific Forum in Palau, to lobby against any restrictions on the transport of plutonium and nuclear wastes.

    A delegation of nuclear officials from Japan, France and Britain toured the Pacific between 7-19 August 1999, to lobby on the issue. The delegation, which travelled to the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, included representatives from BNFL, the French nuclear company Transnucleaire, the British Embassy in Tokyo, the Japanese Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Industry, and the Overseas Reprocessing Committee, which links Japanese energy corporations. The “atomic energy counsellor” from the UK Embassy in Japan was part of this delegation, assuring Pacific officials of the safety of nuclear shipments – BNFL pays 500,000 pounds a year to the British government so that one of their former employees can work as a diplomat in the British Embassy in Tokyo, to promote the British nuclear industry.

    Public opposition to the shipments was apparent when community and environmental groups joined students from the University of the South Pacific (USP) in a rally at the Embassy of Japan in Suva on August 11. The USP students from Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu were gathered outside the meeting between Pacific island ambassadors and the French, British and Japanese nuclear officials. Churches and NGOs in Fiji also placed newspaper advertisements calling for an end to all shipments of plutonium and high level wastes through the region (20).

    Summit Diplomacy

    Japan has long had close historic and cultural ties with Micronesian countries such as Palau (21). But there have been increased diplomatic efforts with all Forum leaders since th- 1988 Japan-Pacific summit hosted by Japanese billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa (who was jailed as a Class A war criminal between 1945-48) (22). Official Japan-South Pacific summits have been described as “an apparent fuseki attempt to obtain support from Forum members in a bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council” (23). (A fuseki move, in the Japanese game of go, involves placing stones in an area as wide as possible at the start of the game).

    On October 13-14, 1997 leaders from the member nations of the South Pacific Forum met in Tokyo with the Japanese government, at the inaugural Japan-South Pacific Forum Summit (24). Addressing the summit, then Chair of the South Pacific Forum Sir Geoffrey Henry, spoke of the islands “enduring concern” over both “adverse climate change and sea level rise”, and “the shipment of plutonium and radioactive wastes through the region.” The final Summit Communiqué “noted continuing concerns over shipment of plutonium and high level wastes” but diplomatically acknowledged “Japan’s sincere efforts in dealing with the Forum island countries concerns”! The Summit Communiqué listed a range of issues of concern and co-operation – economic and private sector development, public sector reform, fishing, climate change, youth exchanges and more – but contained no action agenda or plans for implementation.

    The next Japan-South Pacific Summit was held as the Pacific Area Leaders Meeting (PALM) in April 2000, in Miyazaki, Japan (25). Before travelling to Miyazaki, Pacific leaders attended a lunch in Tokyo hosted by Japanese corporations, the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Japan Employers Federation Association, the Japan Association of Corporate Executives and the Japan Foreign Trade Council.

    The official summit issued the “Miyazaki PALM Declaration: Our Common Vision For The Future”, outlining joint co-operation in economic, trade and aid issues. Japan announced it would continue support for the Tokyo office of the Pacific Islands Centre, created in 1996 to encourage Japanese business investment and tourism in the Pacific. The Japanese government would send more than 3000 JOCV volunteers to the Pacific islands over the next five years. Japan also pledged a funding package worth US$4 million, including about $1 million for information technology training and support, $2 million for “human security” projects (AIDS, malaria and eradication of infectious diseases), and $1 million in support of a Partnership Program to fund student exchanges and training through the Forum Secretariat (Japan has since offered to pay for a staff position at the Secretariat to administer this program) (26).

    The summit issued a special statement on environmental co-operation, pledging Japan-Pacific co-operation on climate change, biodiversity and environmental education. However, a notable silence in the summit communiqué was nuclear issues (unlike the 1997 summit communiqué, which officially detailed South Pacific concerns over the transhipment of plutonium and high level wastes through the South Pacific and Japan’s commitment to act on these concerns).

    At PALM 2000, Japanese officials lobbied hard on nuclear issues, arguing that nuclear energy is a valuable tool in reducing the use of fossil fuels and the generation of greenhouse gases that cause warming of the earth and sea level rise. On April 24, 2000 Pacific leaders and officials met in Tokyo with Japan’s Federation of Electric Power Companies to discuss energy and environment issues. Challenged about Japan’s carbon dioxide emissions, Japanese officials advanced spurious arguments that nuclear power was cheaper than solar and wind power, that the MOX fuel system contributed to nuclear disarmament and that nuclear power provided a key solution to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels! (27)

    The next day, Pacific journalists, Forum officials and two Pacific Island leaders (Cook Islands’ Prime Minister Dr. Terepai Maoate and Niue Premier Sani Lakatani) travelled by bullet train to the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station, about 140 miles west of Tokyo. After a tour of the nuclear power plant, Maoate stated: “I have learned a lot of things that I didn’t know about nuclear power stations. I am convinced of the safety measures that have been shown to us, of the plant itself. (28)” Opposition politicians in the Cook Islands questioned Dr Maoate’s request that the Japanese nuclear industry looks into whether small and safe nuclear power plants might be used in the Pacific (29).

    Following the PALM 2000 Summit, Japan sent three missions to the region to investigate potential economic, political and cultural exchanges. The missions visited Palau and the Marshall Islands (November 2000), Fiji, Tonga and Samoa (March 2001) and Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu (May 2001). Diplomatic exchanges are being extended – each year, the Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum is invited to Japan by the Japanese government, for high-level discussions with Japanese leaders.

    In February 2001, the President of Kiribati, Teburoro Tito, visited Japan over six days in his capacity as Forum Chair. In meetings with then Prime Minister, Yoshiro Mori, President Tito agreed on the “need to bridge their differences over Tokyo’s whaling and nuclear fuel shipments” (30). Tito also expressed support for Japan’s bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. During the visit, Japan’s Foreign Minister told Tito that Japan would send a mission to Kiribati to survey whether Japanese ODA could be used to improve the country’s electricity supply. Japan and Kiribati have close ties, with Kiritimati (Christmas) island hosting a Japanese tracking station to monitor rockets launched from Tanegashima Space Centre in Kagoshima Prefecture. The two countries are extending their co-operation over Japan’s space program, with the planned construction of a rocket landing area in Kiribati.

    The visit erupted in controversy on Tito’s return to Fiji, after a newspaper quoted him as saying that the Forum should “revise” its policy towards nuclear energy, that nuclear power helps reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses and that nuclear power generation “is a matter of survival” for Japan (31). The Forum and the Kiribati government quickly issued statements that the President had been misquoted and reaffirmed the Forum and Kiribati’s opposition to nuclear power (32). However, the incident highlights public concern that Japanese ODA is being used to woo Pacific leaders to soften their opposition to the plutonium economy.

    With the issues of global warming and sea-level rise high on the agenda for Forum island countries, the island nations have resisted the integration of nuclear power into the climate change negotiating process. The official intergovernmental Pacific Islands Regional Submission to the 9th Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) session in 2000 stressed: “Nuclear energy sources are neither appropriate nor acceptable for use in the region, or for designation as a Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol.(33)”

    Concluding Remarks

    Of the four cargoes of plutonium, either in the plutonium dioxide or MOX form, transported to Japan during the last ten years, not one gram of plutonium has yet been used. In total the British-flagged transport vessels have travelled a total of over 120,000 kilometers to deliver their cargoes of weapons usable plutonium to Japan. Although each of these transports have been justified by Japan, as well as the British transporters, as essential for Japan’s energy program, not one gram of plutonium fuel has been loaded into in a nuclear reactor. Not one kilowatt of electricity has been generated. Increasingly in Japan, the nuclear electrical utilities are signaling that this program makes no economic sense. So, as with the deliberate deception by BNFL of their Japanese clients, the Japanese government and utilities are deceiving en-route governments and their citizens by continually claiming these shipments are required for energy purposes.

    The international nuclear industry is in trouble. The number of nuclear power plants under construction is dropping and nuclear power generation is being phased out in many industrialised countries, such as Germany. The nuclear industry has not found a solution for the long-term storage of plutonium and high level radioactive waste, which lasts for thousands of years (though many nuclear corporations are still pushing to use the vast “empty” spaces of the Pacific as a dumping ground for nuclear wastes). Few people today believe the myth that nuclear power is a cheap, safe energy source. Pacific islands are already living with the radioactive legacies of fifty years of nuclear testing by France, Britain and the United States, and are calling for compensation and clean-up. Meanwhile the nuclear industry is desperately trying to avoid any liability for the hazardous business of shipping nuclear wastes back and forward across Pacific fishing grounds.
    (1) Sandra Tarte: Japan’s aid diplomacy and the Pacific Islands (NCDS, Canberra, 1998).
    (2) In November 2000, a senior LDP policy maker, Shizuka Kamei, called for a 30 per cent reduction in ODA, and in December a study group of LDP, New Komeito and New Conservative party politicians has recommended “a qualitative cut in the overall size of the ODA budget” in the 2001 fiscal year; and “Study group considers reduction in Japanese development assistance”, Japan Times, December 9, 2000; “Japanese government opts for selective aid policy” IPS/PINA Nius, December 16, 2000.
    (3) “Japan funds for Secretariat”, Forum Secretariat Press release 3001, April 3, 2001.
    (4) Japanese Fisheries Minister Masayuki Komatsu, head of Japan’s whaling delegation at the International Whaling Commission, explaining Japan’s use of ODA as leverage in negotiations over the South Pacific Whale Sanctuary, quoted on ABC radio, July 18, 2001.
    (5) “Japan’s plan to ship plutonium has big and little lands roaring”, New York Times, October 5, 1992.
    (6) Frank von Hippel and Suzanne Jones: “The slow death of the breeder reactor”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol.53, No.5, September/October 1997.
    (7) Dr. Jinzaburo Takagi: Criticality Accident at Tokaimura (CNIC, Tokyo, 2000). See also: “Tokaimura accident, Japan – third party liability and compensation aspects”, Nuclear Law Bulletin No.66, December 2000 (OECD Nuclear Energy Agency).
    (8) “Outlook for MOX use now completely unclear”, Asahi Shimbun February 26, 2001; “MOX use this year now hopeless for Kashiwazaki Kariwa”, Denki website (electricity utility daily newspaper), February 26, 2001.
    (9) In a statement by Foreign Minister Phil Goff opposing a shipment of MOX fuel to Japan, it was noted that ‘the shipment is unlikely to go through New Zealand’s EEZ as assurances that this would not occur have been sought and given in the past’. See “New Zealand condemns nuclear shipment to leave France”, Pacnews, Thursday, January 18, 2001.
    (10) Jon Van Dyke: “The legitimacy of unilateral actions to protest the ocean shipment of ultrahazardous radioactive materials”, mimeo, December 1996.
    (11) “Solomon Islands may charge for Pacific nuclear waste shipments”, Radio Australia, September 19, 1997;
    “Japan may suspend support for Honiara airport terminal”, SIBC and Radio Australia, November 10, 1997;
    “Japan denies reports its is reconsidering grant to Solomon Islands”, Pacnews, November 11, 1997.
    (12) The Forum has established a “Forum Working Group on Liability and Compensation for the Shipment of Radioactive Materials through the Region”, to represent Forum member countries at negotiations.
    (13) “Pacific protests plutonium MOX shipments”, Pacific News Bulletin, August 1999, p 1.
    (14) Forum Secretariat Press release, February 23, 2001.
    (15) Forum Communiqué, 30th Pacific Islands Forum, Koror, Palau, 1999 (emphasis added).
    (16) “PM insists Japan’s US$10 million trust fund separate from liability regime”, Pacnews, December 1, 2000.
    (17) Robert Keith Reid: “After the Bomb” in “Selling the Islands – What’s Hot for Tourism?”, Islands Business, June 1996, p29.
    (18) “Trust Fund for the purposes of cooperation between Japan and Pacific Island Countries”, Section 32-33, Forum Communiqué, 31st Pacific Islands Forum, Tarawa, Kiribati, October 2000.
    (19) “Stop plutonium shipments – strengthen the conventions” PCRC Media release, January 20, 2001.
    (20) Fiji Times, August 11, 1999.
    (21) For an overview, see His Excellency Kuniwo Nakamura (former President of Palau), “How best to cultivate solidarity between Japan and Pacific Island countries”, speech to Pacific Islands seminar, Tokyo, February 9, 2001. See also “Japan, Palau ties praised in Tokyo meeting”, PINA Nius Online, August 9, 2001.
    (22) “Sasakawa’s interest adds up to dollars”, Islands Business, February 1990. Today, the Sasakawa Pacific Islands Nations Fund (SPINF) contributes to development programs, especially in Hawai’i and Micronesia.
    (23) Yomiuri Shimbun, March 3, 1997.
    (24) Nic Maclellan: “Japan’s aid diplomacy” Pacific News Bulletin, November 1997.
    (25) Nic Maclellan “PALM 2000: Japan-South Pacific summit” Pacific News Bulletin, May 2000.
    (26) “Japan funds for Secretariat”, Forum Secretariat Press release 3001, April 3, 2001.
    (27) “Island leaders impressed with nuclear power”, Islands Business, June 2000, p43.
    (28) Ibid.
    (29) “Cook Islands investigates nuclear power as energy source”, Radio Australia, June 22, 2000. By January 2001, Dr Maoate was calling for more action to establish a liability and compensation regime in case of accident in Pacific waters: “PM calls for a nuclear spillage compensation regime”, Pacnews, January 24, 2001.
    (30) BBC Monitoring Asia-Pacific, February 20, 2001.
    (31) “Tito calls on Pacific to revise nuclear stand”, Fiji Daily Post, February 26, 2001.
    (32) A Forum Secretariat letter to the media and environmental NGOs on February 28, 2001 states: “President Tito did note that the Forum had taken no stand on the question of nuclear energy, apart from the Forum’s continuing concern with the shipment of nuclear materials through the region. He also made it clear that the region opposed nuclear materials that would be harmful to our people”. See also “Kiribati position on nuclear energy”, Pacific News Bulletin, May 2001, p12.
    (33) CROP: Pacific Islands Regional Submission to the 9th Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), 2000.

  • The Nuclear Issue After the Posture Review

    We have to look reality in its ugly face. The drive for the elimination of nuclear weapons is not going well; indeed, it is going very badly. The campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons, pursued by INES, Pugwash and many other organizations, has not only come to a halt, but the use of these weapons may become a routine part of military strategy, according to the recently disclosed Nuclear Posture Review.

    What is all the more worrying is the loss of support from the general public. This is evident, for example, from the results of a public opinion poll in the UK, which has been conducted systematically, every month, for the last 20 years. The graph presents the combined response to two questions: (1) What would you say is the most important issue facing Britain today? (2) What do you see as other important issues facing Britain today? At one time, over 40 per cent put nuclear disarmament and nuclear weapons as the most important issues, but the percentage of such answers decreased rapidly, and ever since the end of the Cold War has remained very low, at about 1 per cent. I do not have corresponding statistics for other countries, but from various indicators it would appear that the response in the US would be similar. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the great majority of the people came to the belief that either the nuclear threat has disappeared altogether, or that the deterrent effect of existing nuclear arsenals will take care of the threat. Neither of these beliefs is justified, as should be obvious today, when two nuclear powers are poised for a military showdown over Kashmir.

    To me the situation is reminiscent of that I experienced 40 years ago, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I do hope that, like that crisis, it will be resolved without a nuclear exchange. Should such a nuclear exchange happen, however, with the inevitable immense loss of life, hundreds of thousands, millions perhaps, there would be such an upsurge of public opinion, that an agreement on the elimination of nuclear weapons would soon be reached.

    My question is, why, oh why, do we have to wait for such a disaster to actually happen? Why could we not use our imagination, to take these steps now, to prevent it happening?

    Clearly, we have not succeeded in putting this over to the public. I do not wish to diminish the past achievements of anti-nuclear organizations. Although it is impossible to provide concrete proof, I am convinced that these organizations deserve some credit for the fact that a nuclear war has been avoided so far. Mikhail Gorbachev told us so directly, but we cannot rest on past successes. Our job has not been done; and, although the prospects are bleak, we must pick ourselves up and resume our campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons. In this paper I am urging the renewal of a mass campaign, and I propose that it be based mainly on judicial and moral principles.

    The revelations in the Nuclear Posture Review shocked us: it abandons the previous doctrine of nuclear weapons being viewed as weapons of last resort, and spells out a strategy which incorporates nuclear capability into conventional war planning. It is a major and dangerous shift in the whole rationale for nuclear weapons.

    Actually, the revelations in the NPR should not have come as such a surprise. They are obviously much influenced by the events of September 11th, but in reality they are an egregious expression of the policy that has been pursued covertly by the United States ever since, or even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in contradiction to the official line of pursuing nuclear disarmament.

    At the core of this duplicitous and hypocritical policy is the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Ironically, it was introduced by the scientists who initiated the atom bomb project.

    The scientists in the UK who initiated the research ss myself among them — were humanitarian scientists: we pursued scientific research for its own sake but with the underlying expectation that it would be used for the benefit of humankind. The thought of working on a weapon of mass destruction would have been abhorrent to us in normal circumstances. But the circumstances were not normal: we knew that a war was imminent, a war between democracy and the worst type of totalitarianism, and we were afraid that it the bomb could be made, and was developed in Germany, it would enable Hitler to win the war and impose on the world the evil Nazi regime. At the time we thought that the only way to prevent this happening would be for us — the Western Allies — also to have the bomb and threaten its use in retaliation. I developed the concept of nuclear deterrence in the summer of 1939, even before the start of World War II.

    It took me a little while to appreciate the fallacy of the deterrence concept. Our aim was to prevent the use of the atom bomb by anybody; we hoped that the threat of using it in retaliation would do the trick. This might have worked with a rational leader, but Hitler was not rational. I am convinced, though cannot prove it, that if Hitler had had the bomb, the last order from his bunker in Berlin, would have been to drop it on London, in the full knowledge that this would bring terrible retribution upon Germany. This would have been in the spirit of his philosophy of Götterdämmerung.

    At it happened, this thesis was never put to the test: Hitler was defeated by conventional weapons, before the atom bomb was manufactured in the United States. But the fact remains that the concept of nuclear deterrence was used from the very beginning, and has been with us ever since. Its variant, extended deterrence, i.e. the threat to use nuclear weapons even against a non-nuclear attack, is — in my opinion — the greatest obstacle to the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    By July 1945, when the first bomb was ready for testing, many scientists who initiated the Project were strongly opposed, on moral grounds, to the use of the bomb on civilian populations. They used this moral argument in their petitions to the US President and government.

    The petitions were rejected. The politicians and the military leaders had their own ideas about the bomb; moral scruples hardly figured in them. The desire to bring the war to an end was undoubtedly an important factor, but perhaps even more important was to demonstrate to the world — and, particularly, to the Soviet Union — the newly acquired military might of the United States, and this required such use of the bomb that would utilize its devastating power to the maximum effect.

    That the Soviet Union was thought of as the main enemy became evident soon after the end of the War, but I personally happened to find this out much earlier, directly from the mouth of General Leslie Groves, the head of the whole Manhattan Project. In a casual conversation, at a private dinner in Los Alamos which I attended, he said: “You realize, of course, that the main purpose of the Project is to subdue the Russians.” The date of this event, March 1944, is significant. This was the time when the Russians were our allies, in the common fight against Hitler. Thousands of Russians were dying every day, holding back the German forces at Stalingrad, and giving time for the Allies to prepare for the landing in France.

    Two months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in October 1945, General Groves outlined his views on the US policy on nuclear weapons in a blunt statement:

    “If we were truly realistic instead of idealistic, as we appear to be (sic), we would not permit any foreign power with which we are not firmly allied, and in which we do not have absolute confidence, to make or possess atomic weapons. If such a country started to make atomic weapons we would destroy its capacity to make them before it has progressed far enough to threaten us.”

    Fifty-seven years later, this realism is spelled out in the NPR.

    The “idealistic” sentiment lamented by General Groves was the worldwide reaction to the destruction of the two Japanese cities, a reaction of revulsion, shared by the great majority of people in the United States. From the beginning, nuclear weapons were viewed with abhorrence; a moral stand that evoked an almost universal opposition to any use of nuclear weapons; I believe this is still true today. This feeling found expression in the United Nations in the very first resolution of its General Assembly. The Charter of the United Nations was adopted in June 1945, two months before Hiroshima, and thus no provision is made for the nuclear age in the Charter. But when the General Assembly met for the first time in January 1946, the first resolution, adopted unanimously, was to set up a Commission, whose terms of reference were to:

    “… proceed with the utmost despatch and enquire into all phases of the problem, and … make specific proposals … for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”

    The United States government could not openly oppose this objective, but it tried its best to kybosh it. The campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons began in the United States immediately after Hiroshima and was spearheaded by the scientists from the Manhattan Project. They set up working parties which studied specific proposals for the control of atomic energy in all its aspects. The outcome was the so-called Acheson-Lilienthal Report, which recommended the creation of an International Atomic Development Authority with the power to control, inspect and licence all nuclear activities; it also made specific proposals, such as:

    “Manufacture of atomic bombs shall stop;

    Existing bombs shall be disposed of pursuant to the terms of the treaty.”

    The Acheson-Lilienthal Report was the basis for the Baruch Plan which expounded the official stand of the US Government, and was presented to the UN Atomic Energy Commission, in June 1946.

    It began in apocalyptic language:

    “We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business.

    Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work our salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear. Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect World Peace or World Destruction.”

    Fine words, strong sentiments, but alas not followed by deeds.

    The Baruch Plan incorporated certain conditions to the treaty which were obviously designed to be unacceptable to the Soviet Union, such as the removal of the right of veto by the permanent members of the Security Council. And sure enough, the Baruch Plan was rejected by the Soviets and the UN Atomic Energy Commission ended in failure.

    This pattern of dissembling has characterized the nuclear policy of the United States government ever since. On the one hand, the US government feels obliged to pay lip-service to the policy of nuclear disarmament leading to the abolition of nuclear weapons, bowing to the pressure of world opinion expressed in resolutions adopted year after year by large majorities of the United Nations General Assembly. This has led to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which all but four members of the United Nations are now parties. Under the terms of the NPT, the 182 non-nuclear countries have undertaken not to acquire nuclear weapons, and the five overt nuclear states have undertaken to get rid of theirs. There was some ambiguity in the formulation of the relevant Article VI of the NPT, which provided the hawks with an excuse for the retention of nuclear weapons until general and complete disarmament had been achieved. But — again under pressure of public opinion — this ambiguity was removed two years ago in a statement issued after the 2000 NPT Review Conference. This statement, signed by all five nuclear-weapon states, contains the following:

    “…an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”

    Thus, the United States and the other official nuclear states — China, France, Russia and the UK — are formally and unequivocally committed to the elimination of all nuclear arsenals. The creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world is a legal commitment by all signatories of the NPT.

    On the other hand, there is the de facto nuclear strategy of extended deterrence, which implies the indefinite existence of nuclear arsenals.

    Since the end of the Cold War, the actual US nuclear strategy has been increasingly orientated towards the use of nuclear weapons, along the lines originally advocated by General Groves. Immediately after the end of the Cold War, the US policy, supported by many NATO countries, envisaged the use of nuclear weapons as a last resort only; this means against an attack with nuclear arms. But the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review, under the Clinton Administration, for the first time made explicit mention of the use of nuclear weapons in response to an attack with chemical or biological weapons. The current Nuclear Posture Review goes further still, it makes nuclear weapons the tool with which to keep peace in the world.

    If this is the purpose of nuclear weapons, then these weapons will be needed as long as disputes are settled by recourse to military confrontations, in other words, as long as war is a recognized social institution. Such a policy is unacceptable in a civilized society on many grounds: logical, political, military, legal, and ethical. In this paper I am mainly concerned with the last two, legal and moral.

    US nuclear policy is self-defeating on logical grounds. If some nations — including the most powerful militarily — say that they need nuclear weapons for their security, then such security cannot be denied to other countries which really feel insecure. Proliferation of nuclear weapons is thus the logical consequence of the US nuclear policy. The USA and its allies cannot prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by other countries while retaining them for themselves. The policy of extended deterrence undermines the non-proliferation policy.

    There is yet a further aspect of the logical argument which strikes at the very basis of deterrence. This is the assumption that both sides in a dispute think and behave rationally; that they are capable of a realistic assessment of the risks entailed in a contemplated action. This would not be the case with irrational leaders. I mentioned this earlier in relation to Hitler. Even a rational leader may behave irrationally in a war situation, facing defeat; or may be pushed into irrational action by mass hysteria, or when incited by religious fanaticism or nationalistic fervour. This is exactly the situation facing us today. Deterrence would certainly not apply to terrorists, who have no respect for the sanctity of human life.

    The policy of extended deterrence is unacceptable on political grounds. It is highly discriminatory in that it allows a few nations — in practice, one nation — to usurp to themselves certain rights, such as policing the world by imposing sanctions on nuclear proliferators, or directly threatening them with military action: such action should be the prerogative of the United Nations. Indeed, it goes against the very purpose of the United Nations, an organization set up specifically for the maintenance of international peace and security.

    The policy of extended deterrence also means a permanent polarization of the world, with some nations being offered protection by a powerful nuclear state; while others may be protected by another nuclear state, or have no protection at all.

    The policy is not credible on military grounds in relation to terrorist attacks. As the events of September 11th have shown, a major threat to security comes from terrorist groups, a threat which includes the use of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones. The thousands of nuclear weapons still in the arsenals are useless against terrorists for the simple reason that terrorist groups do not usually present an identifiable target, unless the killing of thousands of innocent people is seen as collateral damage and thus acceptable. At the same time, the very existence in the world of nuclear weapons, or nuclear-weapon-grade materials, increases the threat, because these materials may be acquired by the terrorists, in one way or another.

    Extended deterrence is unacceptable on legal grounds. The United States, together with 186 other nations, that is 98 per cent of the UN membership, have signed and ratified the NPT. After the clarification at the 2000 Review Conference, the situation is perfectly clear: the policy of extended deterrence, which requires the indefinite retention of nuclear weapons, is in direct breach of the legally binding Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is a sine qua non of a civilized society that nations fulfil their legal commitments and adhere to international treaties.

    But above all, the nuclear deterrent is not acceptable on ethical grounds. The whole concept of nuclear deterrence is based on the belief that the threat of retaliation is real, that nuclear weapons would be used against an act of aggression; otherwise, the bluff would soon be called. George W. Bush must show convincingly that he has the kind of personality that would enable him to push the button and unleash an instrument of wholesale destruction, harming not only the alleged aggressor but mainly innocent people, and potentially imperilling the whole of our civilization. I find it terrifying to think that among the necessary qualifications for leadership is the readiness to commit an act of genocide, because this is what it amounts to in the final analysis. Furthermore, by acquiescing in this policy, not only the President, but each of us, figuratively, keeps our finger on the button; each of us is taking part in a gamble in which the survival of human civilization is at stake. We rest the security of the world on a balance of terror. In the long run this is bound to erode the ethical basis of civilization.

    This erosion has probably already set in. Here I have to tread with caution, because I can only speak as a layman who has been observing events over many years. It seems to me that people cannot go on for decades living under the threat of instant annihilation, without this having an effect on their psyche. I cannot help the feeling that the increase of violence in the world — from individual mugging, to organized crime, to groups such as al-Qaeda — has some connection with the culture of violence under which we have lived during the Cold War years, and still do. I am particularly concerned about the effect on the young generation.

    We all crave a world of peace, a world of equity. We all want to nurture in the young generation the “culture of peace,” which we keep on proclaiming. But how can we talk about a culture of peace if that peace is predicated on the existence of weapons of mass destruction? How can we persuade the young generation to cast aside the culture of violence, when they know that it is on the threat of extreme violence that we rely for security?

    I do not believe that the people of the world would accept a policy that is inherently immoral and is bound to end in catastrophe, a policy that implies the continued existence of nuclear weapons. But the resolutions for nuclear disarmament, passed every year by large majorities in the General Assembly, are completely ignored by the nuclear-weapon states, which in practice means the United States government.

    In saying this, I have made a distinction between the US government and the US people, because I am convinced that the latter share with the great majority of people all over the world an abhorrence of the use of nuclear weapons.

    There are groups within the US community, such as the military-industrial complex identified by President Eisenhower, with vested interests in pursuing a policy based on the continuing possession of nuclear weapons by the United States. The influence of these groups on the Administration may wax and wane, but it appears to be particularly strong in the Administration of George W. Bush, with its main characteristic of unilateralism.

    The defeat of Communism in the Cold War, and the triumph of the open market economy, gave a great fillip to the capitalist system, despite its ugly faces of greed and selfishness. Profit making has become a main driving force for those groups, and protection of property a necessary upshot. The most powerful country in the world, economically, technologically, and militarily, feels the need for even greater security by seeking more protection against an attack from outside, and by the suppression — if need be, with military means — of the acquisition of greater military power by countries seen as an enemy. A ballistic missile defence system — which may include nuclear interceptors — is considered necessary to prevent any missiles reaching the territory of the USA. But even with a defence system 100 per cent effective, which is technically unlikely, the possession of a few thousand nuclear warheads is still considered necessary to deter other countries from acquiring these means of protection for themselves.

    It is in the interaction with other countries that the unilateralist tendencies are so pernicious. The interests of the United States must come first and foremost. International treaties, even those already agreed to, can be ignored or unilaterally revoked, if they do not serve these interests. During the first year of the George W. Bush Administration we have seen a whole string of steps along the unilateral path: abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); refusal to sign the Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention; withdrawal from the Kyoto Agreement on the Environment; opposition to the International Criminal Court; etc. etc.

    These negative measures, which weaken international treaties and agreements, are accompanied by steps designed to increase the military strength of the USA. They include a considerable increase in military expenditure, particularly in the nuclear field. They include the decision not to destroy mechanically the warheads which were due for dismantlement in accordance with the START agreements. These have now been replaced by the treaty that has been signed in Moscow today, a treaty that has been hailed as a momentous step towards world peace, but is nothing of the kind. Any reduction of weapons of mass destruction is of course, greatly welcome, but in this case the reduction is illusory. The warheads withdrawn from the arsenals under the Bush-Putin treaty — over the unnecessarily long period of ten years — will be kept in storage as a reserve force, which could be quickly activated; either side having the right to withdraw from the treaty on 90 days notice.

    The steps also include the development of new and greatly improved warheads, a programme that started covertly under Clinton and now continues more overtly under Bush.

    In the early 1990s — after the end of the Cold War — there was a period of goodwill when both sides agreed to take measures to reduce the enormous nuclear arsenals. As part of this, the United States Government decided to halt the production of new nuclear warheads and to end nuclear testing.

    There is a general assumption that new nuclear weapons cannot be developed and made militarily usable without their being tested. Hence, the great importance of the CTBT, which was signed by President Clinton, but its ratification was rejected by the then Republican majority in the Senate. Initially, this was thought to be a rather petty vengeance against Clinton, which would soon be rectified, but since then it emerged that the main reason was the perceived need for further testing of new, or modified old warheads.

    The retention of a nuclear arsenal necessitates an infrastructure to ensure the safety and reliability of the warheads in the stockpile, as well as the capability to resume testing at short notice. An adequate core of scientists and engineers would be employed to carry out these tasks. This was the origin of the Stockpile Stewardship management Program which began in 1994, with a budget recently increased by the Bush Administration to $5.3 billion.

    The Stewardship Program includes the task to “maintain nuclear weapon capability; develop a stockpile surveillance engineering base; demonstrate the capability to design, fabricate and certify new warheads.” This brief is broad enough to allow the scientists to do almost anything as long as it does not openly entail nuclear testing and the actual production of new nuclear warheads. Considering the role which scientists played in the nuclear weapons establishments during the Cold War, it is a fair assumption that they will go to the limit of their brief.

    The development of new warheads is not allowed, but this obstacle can be circumvented by taking an old weapon and introducing a number of modifications, each of which is permitted under the terms of the Program but which in the end produces a more usable weapon, although eventually it would have to be tested, to give the military people confidence in the improved product. With President Bush’s contempt for international agreements, there can be no doubt that he will authorize new nuclear testing, when he decides that this would be in the interest of the United States, as was confirmed in the opening statement to the Preparatory NPT Review Conference that was held a few weeks ago.

    There are persistent rumours, reported in articles in reputable journals, that work in Los Alamos has resulted in the development of new warheads. Most of the military research in the national laboratories, Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia, is carried out in secrecy, making it impossible to say how reliable these rumours are, but they seem credible. Certainly, there is much more activity going on in Los Alamos, with new buildings being erected, as I have seen myself during a recent visit to Los Alamos (although I did not go into the tech area). And, of course, we know that much more money has been allocated for research there.

    The persistent rumours are about the development of a new nuclear warhead, of a very low yield, almost overlapping the yields of conventional high explosives, but with a shape that will give it very high penetrating power into concrete, a “bunker-bursting mini-nuke,” as it has been called. The additional property ascribed to it is that it is a “clean” bomb, in the sense that the radioactive fission products are contained. This claim needs to be treated with caution; considerable doubt has been expressed about the prevention of the release of radioactivity.

    But the main worry about this bomb, even if its attributed characteristics should prove to be correct, is the political impact. If it is “clean,” and its explosive yield can be made so low as to be within the range of that of conventional explosives, then the distinction between the two types of weapon will become blurred. The chief characteristic of a nuclear weapon is its enormous destructive power, which classifies it as a weapon of mass destruction, unique even in comparison with the other known weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological. This has resulted in a taboo about the use of nuclear weapons in combat, a taboo that has held out since Nagasaki. But if at one end of the spectrum a nuclear bomb can be manufactured which does not differ quantitatively from ordinary explosives, the qualitative difference will also disappear, the nuclear threshold will be crossed, and nuclear weapons will gradually come to be seen as a tool of war, even though their main characteristic, of potentially the existence of the human race, will still remain. The Nuclear Posture Review makes this a real possibility; the situation has become even more dangerous.

    The wording of the Nuclear Posture Review was no doubt strongly influenced by the events of September 11th. These events came as a terrible shock to the people of the United States. Having never been subject to an attack on the American Continent they suddenly found themselves vulnerable; the “splendid isolation” was breached; a near panic ensued on a mere rumour of an attack with a biological weapon.

    In the campaign that I am urging, to put the nuclear issue back on the public agenda, we should make use of the very arguments and tactics employed by President Bush in the actions against terrorism. In order to be able to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks, he had to build up a coalition of many countries for the military campaign in Afghanistan, even though the military burden was carried almost entirely by the United States. He also had to build up a moral case for the campaign, by presenting the terrorists as evil men, in contrast to the coalition who are the virtuous people.

    By calling for help from other countries President Bush acknowledged the failure of his own unilateralist policy. An example of this is the event that took place today in Moscow; despite his contempt for international agreements, President Bush felt obliged to sign a new international treaty. Even though this treaty is a sham, we should exploit this in our efforts to put the elimination of nuclear weapons back on the agenda. No Man is an Island, particularly in a world which — thanks largely to the fantastic progress in technology — is becoming more and more interdependent, more and more transparent, more and more interactive. Inherent in these developments is a set of agreements, ranging from confidence-building measures to formal international treaties; from protection of the environment to the clearance of mine fields; from Interpol to the International Criminal Court; from ensuring intellectual property rights to the Declaration of Human Rights. Respect for, and strict adherence to, the terms of international agreements are at the basis of a civilized society.

    Without this, anarchy and terrorism would reign, the very dangers the coalition was set up to prevent.

    In line with this the world community has the right to call on the US government to take the following steps immediately:

    • ratify the CTBT;
    • retract its notice to with draw from the ABM;
    • reject any notion of weaponization of space;
    • take its nuclear weapons off alert;
    • adopt a no-first-use policy;
    • all this in preparation for the implementation of its commitment to nuclear disarmament, under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    An even stronger argument towards the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world should be based on the moral objections to nuclear weapons. President Bush insists that the campaign against terrorists, following the September 11th events, has a strong moral basis; a “moral crusade” he called it initially, and although this was quickly dropped, because of its unfortunate historical connotations, it is still presented as a struggle between good and evil, with the USA being on the side of the angels. But such a claim can be sustained only if the US policies and actions are demonstrably guided by ethical considerations. The hypocritical policy of preaching one thing and practicing just the opposite hardly comes under this category. The use of nuclear weapons, and even the threat of using them, is generally viewed as highly immoral; a moral stand is completely incompatible with the readiness by the President to push the nuclear button. If the United States is to insist in calling itself a leader of a campaign based on moral principles, then it should denounce any use of weapons of mass destruction; and it should implement the policy of their total abolition to which it is in any case committed legally.

    A campaign for abolition, based on moral principles, will be seen as a fanciful dream by many, but I trust not by INES, an organization committed to ethical values. You will not submit to a policy which may result in the deaths of many thousands or millions of people, potentially threatening the very existence of the human species.

    The situation is grim; the way things are moving is bound to lead to catastrophe. If there is a way out, even if seemingly unrealistic, it is our duty to pursue it. Arguments based on equity and morality may not cut ice with hardened politicians, but they may appeal to the common citizen. If we can bring to the notice of the general public the grave dangers inherent in the continuation of current policies, at the same time pointing out the long-term merits of policies based on equity and morality, we may succeed in putting the nuclear issue back on the agenda of public concern.

    A colossal effort will be required, a sustained collective campaign by INES, Pugwash, and other kindred organizations. I hope that they will find the courage and the will to embark on this great task, to restore sanity in our policies, humanity in our actions, and a sense of belonging to the human race.

     

    *This paper has been presented by Sir Joseph Rotblat on 24 May 2002 at the occasion of the INES seminar “New Security Challenges: Global and Regional Priorities” in Bradford, UK. The seminar was organized by INES together with Scientists for Global Responsibility and the Department of Peace Studies of the University of Bradford.

  • Stopping a Nuclear War in South Asia

    Stopping a Nuclear War in South Asia

    Two nuclear-armed countries stand on the brink of war and the world seems paralyzed as it watches events unfolding in what seems like slow motion. It is a war that could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust taking millions or tens of millions of lives, and virtually nothing is being done to end the standoff. The US and the UK have advised their citizens to leave the region and the UN is pulling out the families of UN workers in the region, but the UN Security Council has not yet even put the matter on its agenda let alone put forward any constructive solution.

    The US has sent its Secretary of Defense to the region, but has lifted sanctions on the sale of military equipment to both countries that it imposed after they conducted nuclear tests in 1998. At the same time, the US continues to demonstrate its own reliance on nuclear weaponry, announcing on June 1st that it will resume production of plutonium “pits” used to trigger nuclear warheads.

    Here is what Indian novelist Arundhati Roy has to say about the situation:

    “Terrorists have the power to trigger nuclear war. Non-violence is treated with contempt. Displacement, dispossession, starvation, poverty, disease, these are all just funny comic strip items now. Meanwhile, emissaries of the coalition against terror come and go preaching restraint. Tony Blair arrives to preach peace and on the side, to sell weapons to both India and Pakistan. The last question every visiting journalist asks me: ‘Are you writing another book?’

    “That question mocks me. Another book? Right now when it looks as though all the music, the art, the architecture, the literature, the whole of human civilization means nothing to the monsters who run the world. What kind of book should I write? For now, just for now, for just a while pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That’s what nuclear bombs do, whether they’re used or not. They violate everything that is humane, they alter the meaning of life.

    “Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?”

    Arundhati Roy is absolutely right. It is because we tolerate these men and their dangerous, inhumane and genocidal policies whether they be in the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India or Pakistan — that nuclear war is possible and increasingly likely.

    But what should we do now, while these men remain in control of the future of the fate of the people of India, Pakistan and the rest of the world? Here are a few modest suggestions:

    Call for the UN Security Council to take charge of the situation as a matter of highest priority, require Indian and Pakistani forces to stand down their nuclear forces, move back from their front line positions, interpose UN Peacekeeping forces between them and require mediated talks between the leaders of the two countries.

    Call for the permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, UK, France and China) to immediately cancel the sale and delivery of all military equipment to both India and Pakistan.

    To deal with the continuing dangers of nuclear war, so easy to visualize in the India-Pakistan standoff, we should also call for all nuclear weapons states to immediately commence good faith negotiations for the elimination of all nuclear weapons as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice.

    Forty years ago, the world stood by helplessly as the US and former Soviet Union almost stumbled into nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We obviously failed to learn the lesson then that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to be left in the hands of any military force. Now we run the risk that acts of terrorists in the Kashmir conflict could trigger a war in South Asia that could quickly escalate to nuclear war. Similar conditions exist in the Middle East.

    The potential for war in South Asia must be defused now before it erupts into large-scale conflict that could go nuclear. But it is not enough to only defuse the present crisis. The world must also become deadly serious about putting away forever these dangerous instruments of annihilation and genocide, before these instruments become seriously and massively deadly in wars that no one can truly desire or in the hands of terrorists.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • New Security Challenges: Ten Themes

    New Security Challenges: Ten Themes

    The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, in cooperation with Scientists for Global Responsibility and the University of Bradford Department of Peace Studies, held a seminar on “New Security Challenges: Global and Regional Priorities” at Bradford University on May 23-24, 2002. The following ten themes emerged from the seminar.

    1. The new security challenges after September 11th are also the old security challenges. One major exception is the greater awareness of the increased vulnerability of the rich nations to determined terrorists. The vulnerability itself has not changed in a major way, but the determination of terrorists to exploit the vulnerability has notched up.

    2. It remains critical for the rich nations to redefine security so that it takes into account the interests of not only the rich, but also of those at the periphery. Disparity, poverty, inequity and injustice are fertile breeding grounds for terrorism. The rich countries should be spending more of their resources to alleviate these conditions of insecurity rather than pouring their resources into military solutions.

    3. Building the Castle Walls higher is a security strategy that is bound to fail. The rich cannot build these walls high enough to protect themselves from suicidal terrorists. Missile defenses, for example, are no more than a Maginot Line in the sky that cannot protect against terrorists and will not provide security against the threats of 21st century terrorism. Terrorists will simply go under or around the Castle Walls as the Germans went around the French Maginot Line in World War II.

    4. There is a greater probability that weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological) will be used against the most powerful countries. The availability of these weapons, due to the continued reliance on them by the most powerful nations, creates a new “balance of power” that turns the strength of the powerful against themselves.

    5. There is an increasing sense that international law is failing due to the strong opposition to international law solutions being demonstrated by the United States. At a time when international law and international cooperation are more needed than ever to achieve greater security, the United States is failing in its leadership.

    6. From a regional perspective, both Europe and Russia are failing to demonstrate a meaningful restraint on US actions subverting international law. In this sense, they are failing in their own leadership and are making themselves potential accomplices in crime under international law.

    7. The international system is not doing very well in implementing nonviolent methods of conflict resolution. One reason for this is continued reliance by the most powerful countries on military solutions to conflict. The United States alone has raised its military budget by nearly $100 billion since Bush became president.

    8. There is a need to strengthen and empower international institutions to act even in the light of uncertainty. Their actions, however, must reasonable and legitimate, taking into account principles such as right intention, precautionary principle, last resort, proportionality, consistency and right authority.

    9. There is a critical need to separate reality from illusion regarding security. The major sources of media continue to serve power and the status quo and fail to provide adequate perspective on key issues related to peace and security.

    10. There is a continuing need to activate public opinion for global and humanitarian interests. This means that the independent voices for peace, justice, development and sustainability of civil society organizations are of critical importance in providing alternative perspectives to those of governments and the mass media on issues of peace and security.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Deputy Chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.

  • International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) and INES Against Proliferation (INESAP) Statement on Nuclear Dangers

    India and Pakistan stand on the brink of war over Kashmir with serious dangers of nuclear war between the two countries.

    We call upon the international community, through the United Nations Security Council to immediately intervene diplomatically to prevent war and with peace keeping forces, if necessary, to ensure that neither country uses nuclear weapons under any circumstance.

    In this context we express our strong dissatisfaction with the United States Nuclear Posture Review and with the United States withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and the recently signed nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia. This treaty, reflecting the United States Nuclear Posture Review, does far too little too slowly and continues to set the example to the world that nuclear weapons are useful even for the strongest nations.

    We urge the United States and Russia to return to the negotiation table to agree to deeper cuts, the irreversible destruction of dismantled warheads, and the immediate de-alerting of their nuclear arsenals.

    We further urge that all five declared nuclear weapon states begin multilateral negotiations to fulfill their obligation for an “unequivocal undertaking” to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons in the world, including those of India, Pakistan and Israel. The leadership of the United States and Russia, as well as that of the United Kingdom, France and China, is essential to achieve these ends and to present nuclear weapons from being used again.

  • U.S. Can’t Ignore Nuclear Threat

    Originally Published in USA TODAY

    I’m worried that we’re about to make the same mistake we made a decade ago.

    In August of 1991, when a coup by Soviet hard-liners fell apart, then-president Mikhail Gorbachev gave credit to live global television for keeping world attention on the action, and Time magazine wrote: ”Momentous things happened precisely because they were being seen as they happened.”

    But if good things can happen because a lot of people are watching, bad things can happen when few people are watching. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the media moved off the story of the nuclear threat — and we moved into the new world order without undoing the danger of the old world order.

    In the wake of Sept. 11, people are realizing that the nuclear threat didn’t end with the Cold War. Soviet weapons, materials and know-how are still there, more dangerous than ever. Russia’s economic troubles weakened controls on them, and global terrorists are trying harder to get them.

    When President Bush (news – web sites) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (news – web sites) meet in Moscow next week, they will sign a treaty to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on each side. They need to reduce a lot more than that. Some of the poisonous byproducts of the two powers’ arms race are piled high in poorly guarded facilities across 11 time zones. They offer mad fools the power to kill millions.

    At a Bush-Putin news conference two months after the terrorist attacks, Bush declared: ”Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.” He also has told his national security staff to give nuclear terrorism top priority.

    Where’s the money?

    But it’s hard to see this priority in the budget and policies of the administration. Not a dollar of the $38 billion the administration requested in new spending for homeland defense will address loose weapons, materials and know-how in Russia. The total spending on these programs — even after Sept. 11 — has remained flat at about a billion dollars a year, even though, at this rate, we will still not have secured all loose nuclear materials in Russia for years to come.

    But what worries me most is not the lack of new spending, but the lack of new thinking. Where are the new ideas for preventing nuclear terrorism?

    We can’t just keep doing what we’ve been doing, and we can’t just copy old plans; we’ve got to innovate. If we are hit with one of these weapons because we slept through this wake-up call from hell, it will be the most shameful failure of national defense in the history of the United States.

    Waning public interest

    Unfortunately, public pressure for action is weak, partly because media attention on nuclear terrorism has begun to fade. And it’s fading not because the threat has been addressed or reduced, but because the media cover what changes, and threats don’t change much day to day. They just keep on ticking.

    The media need to stay on this story because it’s harder to get government action when there’s not much media coverage. If something’s not in the media, it’s not in the public mind. If it’s not in the public mind, there’s little political pressure to act. If public attention moves off this nuclear threat before the government has moved to reduce it, we will be making the same mistake we made after 1991.

    Leadership, however, means being out in front even if no one’s pushing from behind. Bush and Putin need to think bigger and do more. They need to reduce the chance that terrorists can steal nuclear weapons or materials or hire away weapons scientists. They need to work together as partners in fighting terror and encourage others to join. They need to launch a worldwide plan to identify weapons, materials and know-how and secure all of it, everywhere, now — if we are to avoid Armageddon.
    *CNN founder Ted Turner last year established the Nuclear Threat Initiative, dedicated to reducing the threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He has pledged to provide $250 million to fund its activities.

  • How do you design a “Keep Out!” sign to last 10,000 years?

    This article was first published at Salon.com

    Imagine you’re part of an archaeological expedition 6,000 years from today, stomping around the desert in an area known long ago as Yucca Mountain, Nev. You are looking for the remnants of a once flourishing civilization, a nation state that apparently called itself the USA back in 2002. You’re 10 days into your quest, not finding much of anything, when one of your team runs up, all sweaty-faced and panting, insisting that you come see what he’s discovered.

    You follow your flushed, jabbering colleague around a rocky outcropping, and there, vividly etched on a granite monolith, is a towering reproduction of Macauley Culkin in “Home Alone,” hands to face, mouth agape; or maybe it’s one of Francis Bacon’s shrieking pope paintings or Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

    You don’t recognize any of these startling cultural icons from the distant past; you don’t know who made them, or what they symbolize. Hell, you don’t even know that they’re cultural icons, but the whole scene briefly scares the bejesus out of you. Then, like Howard Carter stumbling on the tomb of Tutankhamen, you experience a serious rush of exhilaration, aggravated by a serious case of the heebie-jeebies, as you realize that you’ve just chanced on a history-making breakthrough, a discovery of earthshaking significance.

    So, which do you do? 1) Immediately pack up the entire expedition and evacuate the area never to return? 2) Waste no time in commencing a major archaeological dig and cementing your place in history?

    Amazingly enough, the folks over at the U.S. Department of Energy are banking on curious humans (or whomever) from future millennia to go for Door No. 1.

    As it becomes increasingly likely that, despite Nevada’s protests, President Bush will get his wish for Yucca Mountain to become the nation’s central nuclear waste repository (the House has approved it by a 3-1 margin; the Senate may vote on it as early as next week), the doings of the DOE, which will be charged with building the facility, warrant greater attention.

    For the last two decades, it has been the daunting, if not nutty, business of the department to study and design warning monuments for radioactive waste sites, such as Yucca Mountain or the already functioning Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M. When I heard about this eerie undertaking, I called the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management’s Yucca Mountain Project (YMP) to see what I could learn about the harebrained — I mean, farsighted — scheme.

    The YMP has a toll-free line staffed by real people, specifically established to field questions from yo-yos like you and me. When I called, a very nice, patient, soft-spoken woman named Jenny McNeil picked up the phone.

    “You know,” McNeil told me, “there has been a lot of research, since the ’80s, in an effort to come up with plans for monuments that would transcend specific cultures and languages.”

    Ms. McNeil was a kind soul, and her voice had a definite calming effect, but she wasn’t a fount of information, so I called Sandia National Laboratories where, in 1991, the monument plan was first described in a study produced by the lab for the DOE. I talked to an official there (who asked not to be quoted by name). “Is this something that’s actually going to happen,” I asked him, “or is it a dead subject?”

    “Oh, no, no, no,” the Sandia official told me. “It definitely will happen.”

    The monuments are intended to last for thousands of years — the waste may stay toxic for as long as 100,000 years. If everything goes as the DOE hopes, an archaeological expedition tens of centuries hence will take one look at these structures and hightail it in the other direction — just like we do now whenever we come across mysterious ancient monuments covered with strange inscriptions and odd images.

    What are they thinking?

    And they are big thinkers over at the DOE. They’re not talking about slapping up a few signs with a red circle and diagonal line over a mushroom cloud or a glowing mutant, or even something slightly more ambitious like that unnerving black obelisk in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” No, what the DOE has in mind is more on the order of Stonehenge, but with a better class of stone — granite — and magnets.

    Magnets? Of course. You need magnets to “give the structure a distinctive magnetic signature.” (I knew that.) But also because they nicely complement the “metal trihedrals” (three-sided pyramids) that will provide that all important “radar-reflective signature.” Very Captain Kirk, and more and more fascinating as you get further into its psychotic science fiction novel aspects.

    Anyway, according to a report in the May/June issue of Archaeology magazine, in a reverse archaeology exercise, the DOE brought together “engineers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and linguists to design effective warning structures capable of lasting 10,000 years … Using archeological sites as ‘historical analogues.’” A summary analysis of the DOE report on the Environmental Protection Agency Web site explains that “The conceptual design for the PIC (‘Passive Institutional Controls’) markers” includes a berm surrounding the area, 48 granite monoliths, “thousands of small buried markers, randomly spaced and distributed,” an information center located aboveground, and “two buried storage rooms.”

    You’ll note there’s no provision for a gift shop or children’s play area, but I suspect those design oversights can be easily corrected at the same time they put in the handicapped ramps.

    So, you might ask, “What’s this thing going to run us?” Calm down, taxpayers, it’ll be a pittance. The materials will be cheap, says the EPA, pointing out that “materials of high economic value are less desirable because they may encourage removal and/or destruction of markers.” Good point — that’s where the Egyptians slipped up. No gold facings for us.

    Figure the whole job’s going to cost a mere $150 to $200 million. Chickenfeed for those of us who don’t fancy our future relatives looking like phosphorescent iguanas.

    To get a closer view of one of these proposed hot zone follies, come, let’s take a walk through, and for god’s sake, don’t touch anything.

    According to the EPA document, the “inner core” of the 33-foot-tall berm “will consist of salt.” OK, sure. Salt. Most people turn and run at the sight of salt. This berm surrounding the “repository footprint” (I love wonk-speak) is the first line of defense. The thought, I guess, is that if our year 8002 archaeologists first begin to dig into the berm, they’ll strike the mound of salt. “Salt!” someone will bellow. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” And the expedition leader will try to control the ensuing frenzy. “Better clear out,” he’ll say. “I don’t like the looks of this. Fill the shakers then let’s beat it!”

    But if curiousity gets the better of our explorers, and they just walk right over the berm and head for the monuments, they’ll first come across 16 structures that will “consist of two granite monoliths joined by a [5 foot] long tendon, with a buried truncated base, [22 feet] high, including the tendon, and a [25 foot] high right prism that will be [4 feet] square. The upper stone will weigh approximately [40 tons], and the base stone will weigh approximately [65 tons].” And that’s just the first bunch.

    Farther in, at the “perimeter of the controlled area,” are 32 more granite monoliths. Altogether, these 48 100-ton puppies alone will cost about $30 million according to the EPA estimate. But given how government contracts go, we can safely triple that and still be under the actual cost. Shipping extra. Seems like a lot until you consider that the price includes engraving.

    No, there’ll be no monograms, no floral patterns, but each monument will be inscribed with “messages in seven languages: the six official United Nations languages (English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic) and Navajo.” Navajo? Great. The Hopis are going to be so pissed. With all due respect to the Navajo, a fine people we’ve done everything in our power to drive into extinction (there are about 250,000 now living in the U.S.), please raise your hand if you think our relatives 6,000 years down the pike are likely to be reading Navajo. Heck, why not Sanskrit or Eskimo?

    And what are these inscriptions going to say? Will they be your basic banal warnings, the type of thing we paid so much attention to as kids, or maybe something more effective, like the first chapter of “The Bridges of Madison County”?

    The DOE plans to separate the messages “into different levels of complexity,” assuming, I suppose, that even 6,000 or 8,000 years from now there will be slow readers who don’t much cotton to subtlety. Always thinking ahead, the DOE plans to road-test the inscriptions to check “the comprehensibility of messages among a cultural cross section of the U.S. population.” Sounds reasonable, but let’s take it a step further. When a Lakota Sioux gentleman doesn’t comprehend a “No Trespassing” sign written in Navajo or Arabic, what’s our next move?

    Images, of course! One surface of the polished, four-sided monuments will feature “diagrams.” That’s fine. Pictures are good, and a welcome respite from all the reading, but at the risk of second-guessing the experts, may I suggest a simpler, more surefire alternate plan? A 15-foot-tall reproduction of Lucien Freud’s ghastly-but-true portrait of Queen Elizabeth, or perhaps a collection of stills from “Glitter” starring Mariah Carey, or anything from the brushes of Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light, accompanied by 500 words from Lynn Cheney’s novel, “The Body Politic,” translated into Urdu.

    Trust me, there is no conceivable circumstance, now or at any time in the future, under which a sentient being confronted with such a display would not be deeply alarmed and motivated to gallop in the opposite direction. Just a suggestion, free of charge.

    Now we get to the good part: the buried storage rooms and information center. To cook up these, the DOE once again turned to the ancients for inspiration. They considered Newgrange, a passage grave in Ireland thought to be more than 5,000 years old; the Great Pyramids at Giza, Egypt, 4,500 years old; rock art done by Australian Aborigines 25,000 to 35,000 years ago; and the Acropolis in Greece, which has been standing for 2,400 years.

    Not to bring up an unpleasant subject or be tiresomely pedantic, but given that the stuff we intend to plant at Yucca Mountain may remain seriously nasty for, like, 100,000 years, how does the longevity of any of the above apply to this project? Well, remember that the EPA only requires that the warning monuments last 10,000 years. After that anyone who wants to go nosing around the boondocks is on their own.

    Where were we? Oh yes, the buried rooms and info center, cozy granite spaces with no restroom facilities and no seating. The roofless information center will have its walls inscribed with details about “the disposal system and the dangers of the radioactive and toxic waste buried therein.” There is no provision for videos, pets are allowed — granite’s very forgiving when it comes to messes. The center will sit up high to facilitate good drainage — always a plus for rooms without roofs where incontinent pugs may forget themselves.

    The two buried storage rooms are another matter. If you liked those old movies about the building of the pyramids as much as I did — humongous blocks sliding hither and thither, hysterical slaves getting sealed into secret chambers — you’re going to love these. The rooms will be constructed of huge granite slabs “joined by fitting the pieces into slots … to eliminate the need for mortar, grouts, or metal fasteners.” This is a good call. The three-year-old grout on my tub is already doing disgusting things, and don’t get me started on zippers.

    My favorite part is the entrance to these rooms. It will be a plugged hole, two feet in diameter. Once our archaeologists of the future pull the plug and wriggle into the room, they’ll find “tables, figures, diagrams and maps” engraved on the walls. However, if we look at the current, up-swinging weight statistics for U.S. adults and children and figure that the trend will continue over the next several thousand years, we must assume that we’ll then be looking at a population that resembles overinflated pregnant manatees, and their likelihood of getting through a 2-foot aperture is slim to none. Of course, they did manage to get Winnie the Pooh out of that hole. Maybe we could inscribe that chapter next to the plug.

    Then, buried all around the site, will be the “thousands” of small inscribed warning markers, made of “granite, clay and aluminum oxide.” The DOE experts based this idea on the Code of Hammurabi, an inscribed stone slab found in Iraq (don’t tell Dubya it was found in Saddam’s country or we’ll have a replay of the pretzel horror) and Mesopotamian clay tablets. I figure our markers will feature Jewel’s poetry on one side and select excerpts from Nancy Reagan’s “My Turn” on the other.

    That’s about it. Your tax dollars at work.

    Now, I’m not a scientist, so maybe this whole project makes a lot of sense to someone. A scientist, for example. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be a wet blanket or soft on terrorism. Building these monument thingies sounds like a patriotic hoot. I think they’ll look very cool and be inexpensive to maintain.

    I guess we just have to accept that, as with so much our government does, the whole plan’s a little kooky, but in a sweet way. Apparently none of the experts who were consulted suggested that putting up our own Stonehenge might accomplish the same thing that the original Stonehenge (or Newgrange, or the Pyramids) has — endless poking about, drilling and excavating by experts, nonexperts, tourists (and their pets) and freelance goofballs.

    In fact, I’m guessing that Yucca Mountain or the Carlsbad site might be selected, a few thousand years down the road, as a perfect spot for some futuristic version of our own Harmonic Convergence celebrations of a few years back. In which case, we might want to tack on a few million for stadium seating and some bathrooms.
    *Douglas Cruickshank is a senior writer for Salon. For more articles by Cruickshank, visit his archive.

  • Teacher Training Follow-Up Workshop

    On April 27th, a 5-hour teachers training workshop was held at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for people interested in pursuing a career in Peace Education.

    As an issue of global significance, peace education is a powerful engine of social change that has been widely ignored by the public school systems and politicians. Leah Wells, the facilitator and organizer, introduced the advantages of studying peace as a permanent part of high school and college curriculum, and revealed the necessity of peace education to local educators, community members and activists.

    As the Peace Education Coordinator, Leah has been an influential advocate of Peace Education being implemented in school curriculums nation-wide. She teaches Solutions to Violence, a nonviolence curriculum developed by Colman McCarthy at the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, DC, in two local high schools, including a private Catholic school and one continuations school. Twenty people attended this teacher training workshop, including educators, writers, documentarians, students, activists, and local non-profit leaders.

    One of the goals of the workshop was to discuss methods of teaching students how to be peacemakers on an individual, local, state-wide, national, and global level. The most important element of peace studies is that it is not only a worthwhile academic endeavor but also a way of life. The group discussed methods of confronting some of the problems that implementation of peace education faces, like lack of funding and viewing nonviolence as a credible and plausible response for addressing personal, local, national and global issues.

    Those who attended the workshop learned about the different philosophies of giving grades and how to encourage students to assume responsibility for their education, as well as concrete lesson plans and nonviolent teaching techniques which can be implemented immediately in any classroom!

    A crucial issue concerning students and potential educators is the under-representation of Peace Studies in high school, college and university curricula, as well as the lack of credential programs for future peace educators. Because of this, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has begun to consult with educational institutions on beginning Peace Studies programs across the country.

    Due to the infectious enthusiasm of the attendees and their desire to further explore certain critical issues, a follow-up workshop has been scheduled on June 15th, 2002 at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to discuss other classroom strategies, lesson plans, and, more importantly, ways of taking action to promote Peace Education. In addition to the follow-up workshop, the NAPF Peace Educators Network was formed out of the need to assemble and communicate with others involved in peace education.

    Those who attended received a list of resources including recommended reading lists, internet websites, and a contact list of teachers currently teaching peace nation-wide. If you are interested in attending the follow-up workshop or have questions about how to take action, contact the NAPF Peace Education Coordinator Leah Wells at 805-965-3443, or via email at education@napf.org.

  • The Myth of Peace

    If history is any indication, the United States may be subject to the violence of war within my lifetime, I am 42. Military scholars say that war and its resulting violence on a civilian population is unavoidable. We are told that peace just isn’t obtainable in the Middle East, or in other war torn countries across the globe; that violent conflict will always be a fact of life as we try to control territory and natural resources. We are given example after example how, throughout history and including today, violent conflict is inevitable and in some cases necessary.

    Some people are quick to defend the notion that there is nothing to be done about civilian death and destruction caused by violent conflict, that in times such as these, war is best left to the experts. It is true that only war experts know how to successfully conduct war, that to win a conflict is to win by any means, and that includes civilian casualties. Talking heads for the military tell us that they are working to reduce the number of civilian casualties through more efficient means of killing-smarter bombs, better technology. But, the truth remains that while any military is good at killing, it is inept at not targeting civilians. After all, to target civilians is to terrorize a population and to attack an enemy’s infrastructure. With this illogic, there is no such thing as a non military target.

    Yet, if we leave war to the war experts, who will oversee the peace process? Who are our peace experts? Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld? They have been buddies since their early thirties, and they have amassed power by putting their friends in important positions throughout the government and the military. They are war experts dictating military policy for this country, yet there is not a diplomat for peace between the two of them. There is no peace equivalent to the Department of Defense, we have no such office or branch of government that we can go to in times such as these. Our nonexistent Department of Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution Services didn’t just get an additional $40 billion infusion into an already huge capital, operating, and maintenance budget-that was our Department of War. Blind military spending appears to be a priority for our country, with no visible way to counteract or slow it down. The peace dividend has long since been chucked out the window.

    And, what has become of our domestic programs that deal with our children’s education; our failing health care system, our weakened social security, our declining environmental health, and our loss of morale as citizens of this country?

    It wasn’t the destruction of the twin towers on September 11, 2001 and the threat of terrorism that is causing this country’s morale to plummet. It is the lack of hope that things will ever get better in the lifetime that is ahead. There is no clear way out, no end in sight.

    That is because we are spending billions of dollars on high tech toys of destruction for a group of people who want to see major conflict, so that they can use their toys against military targets, and civilians if necessary. They want to see this conflict happen just like a six-year-old boy with a firecracker wants to see it explode.

    Civilian Casualties

    Let the facts speak for themselves: World War II resulted in killing 61 million people, 67% of those killed (40 million) were civilian. Violent clashes and wars world wide for the 1950s resulted in 4.6 million people killed, 50 percent being civilian (2.3 million). In the 1960s, 6.5 million people were killed, 56% were civilian (3.64 million). The 1970s saw fewer people killed (3 million), but most of them were civilians (2 million). The 1980s saw 5.5 million people killed through violent conflict around the world, with over 4 million being civilian. Conflict and wars of the 1990s left 5 million people killed worldwide, half were civilian. From WWII to 2000 we have seen 85.6 million killed, with 63 % of those being civilian (54 million).

    The Gulf War

    The Gulf War has seen 200,000 casualties, both civilian and military, by the end of the conflict. But, ten years after the end of this conflict, 10,000 American service men and women had died from the Gulf War Syndrome. Of the 600,000 troops that had served in the Gulf War, 230,000 have applied for medical assistance since the end of that conflict. A combination of things are suspected causes of this widespread illness. It is believed that either untested anthrax vaccinations, the transfer of toxic poly-hydrocarbons from plastic packaging of MRE’s (meals ready to eat), or troop use of depleted uranium munitions (which was never disclosed to the troops who were using them) have caused severe illness. Whatever the cause, this is a better kill and injury rate than any enemy could hope to level on our troops.

    Because of sanctions on Iraq, 500,000 children have died from diarrhea and malnutrition from the lack of clean water, a direct result of targeting civilian infrastructure by the U.S. military.

    Why are these numbers significant?

    As technology improves and as dollars increase, the efficiency of killing also improves. But improving the efficiency of killing doesn’t reduce the number of civilian deaths, it increases the number of civilian deaths. The number increases because there is a greater tendency to use these weapons on lesser known targets. If it can be claimed that a “smart bomb” (remember- bombs are only as smart as the people who use them) can “surgically” remove a military target within tight civilian quarters with minimal civilian casualties, then the tendency to use these weapons in tight civilian quarters will increase, resulting in higher numbers of civilian deaths.

    The myth of Peace

    Civilians do not wage war. Indeed, war and military police actions are argued as necessary to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure. So, civilians agree to support the military in promise that the war will not touch them. Civilians are confident that their families will not suffer the losses of their enemies. Most civilians who have experienced war however, come to know that war only means to reduce profits and production, bringing only pain, suffering, and agony down the road. But nonetheless, these civilians have been convinced that their experts have exhausted all other diplomatic avenues and have come up empty handed. The leaders come back to say “Sorry, war is inevitable. Prepare for war,” and the civilians feel they have no other choice.

    How many times have you heard someone say that it is in our “human nature,” to go to war? That the human species is violent and war like and there is nothing that we can do about it? That might makes right, to the winner goes the spoils?

    To say that it is in our human nature to kill others and that war is inevitable perpetuates the myth that war is forever our way. It is not our nature to kill others who don’t agree with us or who think differently from ourselves. But, it is our human nature to be fearful of others who have opposing ideas or who are different from ourselves. This fear may go in two directions: Our fear may sway into curiosity or it may sway into anger and violence.

    Another trait of our “human nature” is to divide ourselves into leaders and followers. Leaders can choose to go to war for entire populations and will not hesitate to call upon the followers to do the dirty work. It is not our human nature to go to war, but it is in our human nature to be led into war.

    Therefore, if we can be led into war, we can be led into peace.

    People are not warlike creatures. It is the random individual who sees value in herding the masses into violence. Every war is lead by someone who has convinced a critical mass of people that war is the only option. This is true with either side of any war or violent conflict. And, it is the same for peace. In any conflict that has not escalated into violence or where violence has ceased, a leader has led a critical mass of people to great change.

    The war in the Middle East is being perpetuated not because Israel and Arab leaders can’t come to an agreement, but because the concept of peace is being used incorrectly. The myth of peace begins within the very roots of the Judeo-Christian religion. Peace in this religious sense is an unattainable time/place. Peace is symbolized by the phrase, “when the lion lays down with the lamb,” which indicates that all life on Earth will be as one, living in harmony for the rest of all eternity.

    This peace does not exist, nor will it ever exist on this Earth inhabited by our wonderfully fallible human species. Peace is not the cessation of conflict, and a resulting agreement in totality. For the Mideast, the lion may never lay down with the lamb. Peace is a continuing evolving process that produces nonviolent results. Peace can revert to war or it can be sustained through constant communication, but it can never be stagnant or absolute.

    Peace begins when violence ends. That doesn’t mean that the conflicting ideas will suddenly disappear. It means that when people stop doing violence to each other-stop killing-negotiations can begin. In the simplest terms, peace is a process where no one is dying from an act of aggression. This is a real living peace that is attainable and quite possible when built upon the hard work of conflict resolution and diplomacy. Peace is not a time/place. Peace is a process that is ongoing and never without tension.
    *Dane Spencer, a Landscape Architect by profession, has been active with peace issues since 1986 when he became involved with the Seattle/Tashkent Peace Park. Constructed in the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union and the capital of Uzbekistan, the Peace Park is an example of citizens working together to promote diplomacy instead of tired war rhetoric and cold war politics. Recent U.S. posturing has rekindled Dane’s interest in the promotion of non-violence and his contemplation of peace.

  • Congress and Courts must not let Bush kill missile pact

    Originally Published in Legal Times

    The president’s plan to terminate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia was always a bad idea. It has only gotten worse with recent revelations that the Pentagon has submitted to Congress a document calling for contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against Russia, China, and a number of other countries. Unfortunately most members of Congress, including those opposed to termination, are under the impression that this is a done deal which they are powerless to reverse. But there is still time for Congress to act as a body before the president’s decision becomes effective next June — as a historical precedent illustrates.

    In December 1978, President Jimmy Carter decided to terminate the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954 between the United States and Taiwan. Court challenges to his authority to do so without congressional consent went all the way to the Supreme Court. It is generally believed that Congress “lost” this case, Goldwater v. Carter (1979), and that the resulting Supreme Court decision precludes further challenges to unilateral presidential treaty termination. In fact, Goldwater embodies no such obstacle — and indeed suggests a course of action that Congress might follow, thus proving that its role in treaty termination is still very much alive. As then-Justice William Rehnquist, quoting Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit, stated in his Goldwater concurrence, “Congress has a variety of powerful tools for influencing foreign policy decisions that bear on treaty matters.”

    In the first stage of the Goldwater constitutional debate between 24 members of Congress and President Carter, Judge Oliver Gasch of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the plaintiffs had standing to invoke the aid of the judiciary, and that their suit was not barred by the political question doctrine. Regarding the substantive question of treaty termination authority, on which the Constitution is silent, Judge Gasch first reviewed the history of two centuries of treaty termination. He found that, while there had been some apparently unchallenged instances of unilateral termination by the president, most of these “involved commercial situations where the need for the treaty, or the efficacy of it, was no longer apparent.” More significant, he found that “[t]he great majority of the historical precedents involve some form of mutual action, whereby the President’s notice of termination receives the affirmative approval of the Senate or the entire Congress.”

    The Sole Organ?

    President Carter invoked his foreign affairs power in support of his position. He cited the famous — or infamous, depending on one’s view — dictum in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp (1936) that the president is “the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.” Judge Gasch dismissed the president’s argument in the following terms: “While the President may be the sole organ of communication with foreign governments, he is clearly not the sole maker of foreign policy. In short, the conduct of foreign relations is not a plenary executive power.”

    In further support of the plaintiffs’ position, Judge Gasch relied on the constitutional status of treaties as the supreme law of the land and the president’s obligation to faithfully execute the laws. The president “alone cannot effect the repeal of a law of the land which was formed by joint action of the executive and legislative branches, whether that law be a statute or a treaty,” he wrote. The judge also quoted these words — a prescient comment on what has come to be known in common parlance as the imperial presidency — of Justice Felix Frankfurter: “The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.”

    In conclusion, Judge Gasch wrote that “the President’s notice of termination must receive the approval of two-thirds of the United States Senate or a majority of both houses of Congress for it to be effective under our Constitution.”

    President Carter appealed, and the D.C. Circuit reversed in a per curiam opinion with concurrences. After reviewing a number of arguments in support of reversal, the per curiam opinion (filed by Chief Judge Wright) concludes, “Viewing the issue before us so narrowly and in the circumstances of this treaty and its history to date, we see no reason which we could in good conscience invoke to refrain from judgment . . . .” Perhaps more important for purposes of guiding Congress today, the opinion also takes pains to point out that the Senate had not, “since the giving of the notice of termination, purported to take any final or decisive action with respect to it, either by way of approval or disapproval.” This implies that had the Senate taken a final or decisive action of disapproval, the result might have been different.

    No Single Voice

    Chief Judge Wright, with Judge Edward Tamm concurring, would have dismissed the complaint for lack of standing. They also pointed out that “if Congress wants to participate directly in a treaty termination it can find the means to do so.”

    Judge George MacKinnon, though concurring in part, thunderously dissented from the per curiam opinion’s reasoning. He chastised the majority for rendering “an obviously expedient decision” with which, he said, history “will not deal kindly.” He reviewed the 200-year history of treaty termination at length and concluded that reliance upon “miniscule precedent forcibly illustrates the great weakness in the President’s claim to absolute power in the present circumstances.” And he added, in a passage particularly relevant to the contemporary state of affairs, that “[foreign affairs become our national affairs. Hence, to the extent that we complacently grant to the President unbridled power in the international realm, we increase his power nationally, to an ever expanding degree.”

    The Supreme Court had the last word in Goldwater, but it turned out to be a rather garbled one. It ordered the judgment of the D.C. Circuit to be vacated, and remanded the case to the District Court with directions to dismiss the complaint. The individual justices were somewhat more verbose.

    Justice Lewis Powell Jr. agreed with the Court’s result, but would have dismissed the case as not ripe for judicial review. He thus disagreed with Justice Rehnquist (with whom Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices Potter Stewart and John Paul Stevens concurred) that the issue was nonjusticiable on the grounds that it constituted a political question. On the contrary, Powell wrote words that, like the D.C. Circuit’s per curiam opinion, might offer some guidance to Congress today. He stated, “If the Congress, by appropriate formal action, had challenged the President’s authority to terminate the treaty with Taiwan, the resulting uncertainty could have serious consequences for our country. In that situation, it would be the duty of this Court to resolve the issue.”

    Justice Harry Blackmun, joined by Justice Byron White, held that it was indefensible for the Court to have decided the case without briefing and oral argument; they would have set it for oral argument and given it “the plenary consideration it so obviously deserves.” Justice William Brennan Jr., accusing Justice Rehnquist of profoundly misapprehending the political question principle as applied to foreign relations, would have affirmed the “prudently narrow” judgment of the D.C. Circuit solely on the ground that the power to recognize and withdraw recognition from foreign regimes is the president’s alone. Justice Thurgood Marshall concurred in the result, without joining the statements of any of his brethren or issuing one of his own.

    Plan of Action

    So what is the lesson in this convoluted judicial history for the current dispute between Congress and the president? First, it is not possible to discern a coherent reason for the Court’s action in Goldwater. Given the fact- based but divergent opinions of Powell and Brennan, the nonsubstantive opinions of Blackmun and White, and the Sphinx-like silence of Marshall, it is impossible to extract from the judgment a majority rule that would provide guidance to a Court considering a new challenge to presidential termination.

    Second, and equally important, some of the concurring and dissenting judicial voices suggest a plan of action for Congress. Congress can act, as an institution, to pass legislation or a sense of the Congress (or of the Senate) resolution, or to hold hearings, to assert its role in foreign affairs and indicate its strong objection to allowing the president to unilaterally terminate the ABM treaty. Such steps might work to stop the president’s action. And if they do not, they would at least provide a stronger basis for judicial intervention than existed in Goldwater.

    If Congress fails to act, it will only risk — in the words of Justice Frankfurter — “the accretion of dangerous power” taking another giant step forward.
    *Peter Weiss is president of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, based in New York.