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  • General Lee Butler Addresses The Canadian Network Against Nuclear Weapons

    “… nuclear weapons are the enemy of humanity. Indeed, they’re not weapons at all. They’re some species of biological time bombs whose effects transcend time and space, poisoning the earth and its inhabitants for generations to come.”

     

    “… today we find ourselves in the almost unbelievable circumstance in which United States nuclear weapons policy is still very much that of 1984, as introduced by Ronald Reagan. That our forces with their hair-trigger postures are effectively the same as they have been since the height of the Cold War.”

     

    Full text of speech:

     

    Let me begin by simply expressing my appreciation to those of you in the room who have labored in this vineyard for so many years, most I suspect, simply understanding intuitively what took years for those of us, presumably experts in this business, to appreciate.

     

    And that is, that at the heart of the matter, nuclear weapons are the enemy of humanity. Indeed, they’re not weapons at all. They’re some species of biological time bombs whose effects transcend time and space, poisoning the earth and its inhabitants for generations to come.

     

    So for those of you in the NGO community, I tell you right at the onset, that I personally take heed and encouragement from what you have done so assiduously all these years. I say in the same breath that for most of my life, certainly my years in uniform, I’d never heard of NGOs, and now I suppose I am one!

     

    I think in that regard that I would begin by recalling a comment from what I understand was a Reform Party member at the hearing yesterday, who observed at the outset of his comments (a bit acerbic I might add, but that’s okay, we tend to be a lightning rod for that kind of view): “Say, weren’t you and McNamara two of those folks who used to advocate all this business, deterrence, etc.?” I think Bob would join me in saying that we’re guilty as charged, if the charge is that we now consider it our responsibility to reflect, free from the emotional cauldron of the Cold War, and with greater access to the principals and the archives of that period. Guilty of the responsibility to reappraise our positions and certainly guilty of a keen sense of obligation to understand and to expound upon the lessons that we draw from that experience.

     

    I recall the words of a wonderful American novelist of the Deep South, Flannery O’Connor, who once put this delicious line in the mouth of one her characters. “You should know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” And in deference to our interlocutor yesterday, yes it can certainly appear odd. I appreciate that and that is why I am infinitely patient with people who are either surprised, shocked, or in some cases outraged that someone like myself or perhaps like Bob McNamara now express views that in an earlier part of our life we might have seen as antithetical.

     

    But truth, in my own case, took me almost 40 years to grasp. What I now see as the truth of the nuclear era as I understand it in retrospect. It required 30 years simply to reach the point in my career where I had the responsibilities and most importantly, the access to information and the exposure to activities and operations that profoundly deepened my grasp of what this business of nuclear capability is all about.

     

    What I have come to believe is that much of what I took on faith was either wrong, enormously simplistic, extraordinarily fragile, or simply morally intolerable. What I have come to believe is that the amassing of nuclear capability to the level of such grotesque excess as we witnessed between the United States and the Soviet Union over the period of the 50 years of the Cold War, was as much a product of fear, and ignorance and greed, and ego and power, and turf and dollars, as it was about the seemingly elegant theories of deterrence.

     

    Let me just take a moment and give you some sense of what it means to be the Commander of Strategic Nuclear Forces, the land and sea-based missiles and aircraft that would deliver nuclear warheads over great distances. First, I had the responsibility for the day-to-day operation, discipline, training, of tens of thousands of crew members, the systems that they operated and the warheads those systems were designed to deliver. Some ten thousand strategic nuclear warheads. I came to appreciate in a way that I had never thought, even when I commanded individual units like B52 bombers, the enormity of the day-to-day risks that comes from multiple manipulations, maintenance and operational movement of those weapons. I read deeply into the history of the incidents and the accidents of the nuclear age as they had been recorded in the United States. I am only beginning to understand that history in the former Soviet Union, and it is more chilling than anything you can imagine. Much of that is not publicly known, although it is now publicly available.

     

    Missiles that blew up in their silos and ejected their nuclear warheads outside of the confines of the silo. B52 aircraft that collided with tankers and scattered nuclear weapons across the coast and into the offshore seas of Spain. A B52 bomber with nuclear weapons aboard that crashed in North Carolina, and on investigation it was discovered that one of those weapons, 6 of the 7 safety devices that prevent a nuclear explosion had failed as a result of the crash. There are dozens of such incidents. Nuclear missile-laden submarines that experienced catastrophic accidents and now lie at the bottom of the ocean.

     

    I was also a principal nuclear advisor to the President of the United States. What that required of me was to be prepared on a moment’s notice, day or night, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to be within three rings of my telephone and to respond to this question from the President:

     

    “General, the nation is under nuclear attack. I must decide in minutes how to respond. What is your recommendation with regard to the nature of our reply?”

     

    In the 36 months that I was a principal nuclear advisor to the President, I participated every month in an exercise known as a missile threat conference. Virtually without exception, that threat conference began with a scenario which encompassed one, then several, dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands of inbound thermonuclear warheads to the United States. By the time that attack was assessed, characterized and sufficient information available with some certainty in appreciation of the circumstance, at most he had 12 minutes to make that decision. 12 minutes. For a decision, which coupled with that of whatever person half a world away who may have initiated such an attack, held at risk not only the survival of the antagonists, but the fate of mankind in its entirety. The prospect of some 20,000 thermonuclear warheads being exploded within a period of several hours. Sad to say, the poised practitioners of the nuclear art never understood the holistic consequences of such an attack, nor do they today.

     

    I never appreciated that until I came to grips with my third responsibility, which was for the nuclear war plan of the United States.

     

    Even at the late date of January 1991, when the Cold War had already been declared over with the signing of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty in Paris in December of 1990, when I went downstairs on my first day in office to meet my war planners in the bowels of my headquarters. I finally for the first time in 30 years was allowed full access to the war plan. Even having some sense of what it encompassed, I was shocked to see that in fact it was defined by 12,500 targets in the former Warsaw Pact to be attacked by some 10,000 nuclear weapons, virtually simultaneously in the worst of circumstances, which is what we always assumed. I made it my business to examine in some detail every single one of those targets. I doubt that that had ever been done by anyone, because the war plan was divided up into sections and each section was the responsibility of some different group of people. My staff was aghast when I told them I intended to look at every single target individually. My rationale was very simple. If there had been only one target, surely I would have to know every conceivable detail about it, why it was selected, what kind of weapon would strike it, what the consequences would be. My point was simply this: Why should I feel in any way less responsible simply because there was a large number of targets. I wanted to look at every one.

     

    At the conclusion of that exercise I finally came to understand the true meaning of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this was the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life. I was sufficiently outraged that as my examination proceeded, I alerted my superiors in Washington about my concerns, and the shortest version of all of that is, having come to the end of a three decade journey, I came to fully appreciate the truth that now makes me seem so odd. And that is: we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.

     

    The saving grace was that truly the Cold War was ending at this very moment and therefore I was faced with a decision of great personal consequence. Now having fully to appreciate the magnitude of our nuclear capability and what it implied, when joined in an unholy alliance with its Soviet counterpart, what was I to do? Awaiting in my inbox were $40 billion of new strategic nuclear weapons modernization programs, wanting only my signature. What should be our goals for the next rounds of arms control negotiations? How hard should I fight to maintain the budget of strategic forces, to keep bases open in the face of base closure commissions? And what to do with the nuclear war plan in all of its excess? My conclusion was very simple, that I of all people had the responsibility to be at the forefront of the effort to begin to close the nuclear age. That mankind, having been spared a nuclear holocaust, had now as its principle priority to begin to walk back the nuclear cat, to learn the lessons of the nuclear dimensions of the Cold War, in the interest that others might never go down that path again.

     

    The substance is that I withdrew my support for every single one of those $40 billion of nuclear weapons programs and they were all cancelled. I urged the acceleration of the START I accords and that Minuteman 2 be taken out of the inventory at an accelerated pace. I recommended that for the first time in 30 years bombers be taken off alert. The President approved these recommendations and on the 25th of September 1991, I said in my command center and with my red telephone I gave the orders to my bomber troops to stand down from alert. I put 24 of my 36 bases on the closure list. I cut the number of targets in the nuclear war plan by 75%, and ultimately I recommended the disestablishment of Strategic Air Command, which the President also approved. I took down that flag on the first of June 1992.

     

    As you can imagine, I went into retirement exactly five years ago with a sense of profound relief and gratitude. Relief that the most acute dangers of the Cold War were coming to a close, and gratitude that I had been given the opportunity to play some small role in eliminating those dangers. You can also imagine, then, my growing dismay, alarm and finally horror that in a relatively brief period of time, this extraordinary momentum, this unprecedented opportunity began to slow, that a process I call the creeping re-rationalization of nuclear weapons began, that the bureaucracy began to work its way. The French resumed nuclear testing, the START 2 treaty was paralyzed in the US Senate for three years and now in the Duma for three more. The precious window of opportunity began to close, and now today we find ourselves in the almost unbelievable circumstance in which United States nuclear weapons policy is still very much that of 1984, as introduced by Ronald Reagan. That our forces with their hair-trigger postures are effectively the same as they have been since the height of the Cold War.

     

    Even if the START 2 treaty were ratified, it is virtually irrelevant, its numbers 3000 to 35000 works meaningless. The former Soviet Union, today Russia, a nation in a perilous state, can barely maintain a third of that number on operational ready status, and to do so devotes a precious fraction of shrinking resources. NATO has been expanded up to its former borders, and Moscow has been put on notice that the United States is presumably prepared to abrogate the ABM treaty in the interest of deploying limited national ballistic missile defense.

     

    What a stunning outcome. I would never have imagined this state of affairs five years ago. This is an indictment. The leaders of the nuclear weapons states today risk very much being judged by future historians as having been unworthy of their age, of not having taken advantage of opportunities so perilously won at such great sacrifice and cost of re-igniting nuclear arms races around the world, of condemning mankind to live under a cloud of perpetual anxiety.

     

    This is not a legacy worthy of the human race. This is not the world that I want to bequeath to my children and my grandchildren. It’s simply intolerable. This is above all a moral question and I want to reiterate to you and to those who may be watching these proceedings a quote that I gave yesterday to the joint committees. I took this quote to heart many years ago. It is from one of my heroes, one of my professional heroes – General Omar Bradley, who said on the occasion of his retirement, having been a principal in World War II and having witnessed the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: “We live in an age of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living.” We have a priceless opportunity to elevate, to nudge higher, the bar of decent, civilized behavior, to expand the rule of law, and to learn to live on this planet with mutual respect and dignity. This is an opportunity we must not lose. My concern was such that I could not sit in silent acquiescence to the current folly. And so, I have come back into the arena to join my voices with yours, to serve in the company of distinguished colleagues like Bob McNamara and Ambassador Tom Graham who share these concerns and convictions.

     

    Thank you for the opportunity to join you today. Thank you for the work you have done over these many years. It is a privilege to have this opportunity to talk with you.

     

    Thank you.

     

    —speech given by General George Lee Butler in Montreal, March 11, 1999 to the Canadian Network Against Nuclear Weapons

  • The Cost of an Afghan ‘Victory’

    Ten years ago, on February 15, 1989, as the last of the 115,000 Soviet soldiers crossed over from Afghanistan into Soviet Tajikistan, there was quiet celebration in Washington as well as Riyadh and Islamabad. Officials in these capitals visualized Moscow’s retreat as the first, crucial step in the re-emergence of an independent Afghanistan ready to ally with the United States. The US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance had played the central role in training, arming and financing the Afghan mujahedeen to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.

    With the Soviet withdrawal accomplished–a severe blow to Moscow in the cold war–Washington put Afghanistan on the back burner. But the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991 gave a second wind to the mujahedeen movement, which acquired a momentum of its own. Its seizure of power in Kabul in April 1992, following the fall of the leftist regime of Muhammad Najibullah, paved the way for the rise of the Taliban Islamic movement two years later and its capture of Kabul in September 1996.

    Today the Taliban controls 90 percent of Afghanistan and rules the country according to its interpretation of the Sharia, Islamic law–an interpretation that even the mullahs of Iran find repulsive. Unique in the world, the Taliban regime deprives women of education and jobs. It has allowed the training camps near the Pakistani border–originally established by the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI)–to be reopened to give guerrilla training to fundamentalist volunteers from Xinjiang, China; Bosnia; Algeria; and elsewhere to further their Islamist agenda through armed actions in their respective countries. The Taliban has rebuffed Washington’s demands that it hand over Osama bin Laden, a Saudi veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and a fugitive extremist accused of masterminding the US Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam last August, which killed 257 people, including twelve Americans. The US government has offered a $5 million reward for his capture.

    Did the founders of US policy in Afghanistan during the Carter Administration (1977-1981) realized that in spawning Islamic militancy with the primary aim of defeating the Soviet Union they were risking sowing the seeds of a phenomenon that was likely to acquire a life of its own, spread throughout the Muslim world and threaten US interests?

    Perhaps not, but it was not as if they had no choice. When Moscow intervened militarily in Afghanistan in December 1979, there were several secular and nationalist Afghan groups opposed to the Moscow-backed Communists, who had seized power twenty months earlier in a military coup. Washington had the option of bolstering these groups and encouraging them to form an alliance with three traditionalist Islamic factions, two of them monarchist. Instead, Washington beefed up the three fundamentalist organizations then in existence. This left moderate Islamic leaders no choice but to ally with hard-liners and form the radical-dominated Islamic Alliance of Afghan Mujahedeen (IAAM) in 1983.

    The main architect of US Policy was Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor. A virulent anti-Communist of Polish origin, he saw his chance in Moscow’s Afghanistan intervention to rival Henry Kissinger as a heavyweight strategic thinker. It was not enough to expel the Soviet tanks, he reasoned. This was a great opportunity to export a composite ideology of nationalism and Islam to the Muslim-majority Central Asian states and Soviet republics with a view to destroying the Soviet order.

    Brzezinski also fell in easily with the domestic considerations of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator of Pakistan. After having overthrown the elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1977, Zia was keen to create a popular base for his regime by inducting Islam into politics. One way of doing this was to give aid to the exiled Afghan fundamentalist leaders in Pakistan.

    As for Saudi Arabia, the remaining member of the troika, it had long been a bulwark of anti-Communism, its rulers lavish in their funding of antileftist forces around the globe–be it in Angola, Mozambique, Portugal or Italy. The fact that the population of Afghanistan was 99 percent Muslim was an additional incentive to Riyadh.

    The US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance’s financing, training and arming of the mujahedeen–recruited from among the 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan–was coordinated and supervised by the CIA. The day-to-day management rested with Pakistan’s ISI. All donations in weapons and cash to the campaign by various sources–chiefly Washington and Riyadh–were handled by the CIA. These amounted to about $40 billion, with the bulk coming from the United States and Saudi Arabia, which contributed equally.

    The volunteers underwent military training and political education. Both were imparted by the ISI. In the political classes the mujahedeen were given a strong dose of nationalism and Islam. The fact that the Soviets were foreign and atheistic made them doubly despicable. The intention was to fire up militant Muslims to fight Soviet imperialism. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles in the later stages of the jihad, the mujahedeen made a hash of Soviet helicopter gunships, a critical tool of the USSR’s counterinsurgency campaign.

    From the start the ranks of the Afghan mujahedeen were complemented by non-Afghan volunteers eager to join the anti-Soviet jihad. The very first to do so was Osama bin Laden, then a young civil engineering graduate from an affluent family of construction contractors in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. He devised a scheme encouraging non-Afghan Muslims to enrol in the jihad. The 30,000 who did so in the eighties consisted of an almost equal number of Arabs and non-Arabs. Bin Laden, who attracted 4,000 volunteers from Saudi Arabia, became the nominal leader of the Afghan-Arabs. He developed cordial relations with the heads of the more radical constituents of the IAAM, including Mullah Mohammed Omar of the Hizb-e-Islami (Khalis group), who was later to emerge as the Taliban’s supreme leader. Besides participating in guerrilla actions, bin Laden constructed roads in mujahedeen-controlled areas and refurbished caves as storage places for arms and ammunition. Working closely with the CIA, he also collected funds for the anti-Soviet jihad from affluent Saudi citizens.

    On the wider propaganda front, Brzezinski’s successors continued his intensive radio campaign (through Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe) to arouse and heighten Islamic consciousness and ethnic nationalism in Central Asia in order to undermine the Moscow-directed Soviet system. The glaring contradiction of the US policy of bolstering Islamic zealots in Afghanistan while opposing them in neighbouring Iran seemed to escape both Brzezinski and his successors.

    In the end, the Soviet Union collapsed, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the interreligious or interethnic tensions among its citizens, which the US policy-makers had tried to engender in Muslim-majority Central Asia and Azerbaijian.

    Following the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Afghan-Arabs, including bin Laden, began drifting back to their homes in the Arab world. Their heightened political consciousness made them realize that countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt were just as much client regimes of the United States as the Najibullah regime had been of Moscow. In their home countries they built a formidable constituency–popularly known as “Afghanis”–who combined strong ideological convictions with the guerrilla skills they had acquired in Pakistan and Afghanistan under CIA supervision. Having defeated Soviet imperialism in Afghanistan, they felt, naively, that they could do the same to US imperialism in say, Saudi Arabia, with its strong links to Washington since its inception in 1932.

    During the 1990 Kuwait crisis, the stationing of more than 540,000 non-Muslim US troops on the soil of Saudi Arabia–considered sacred as the realm containing Mecca and Medina, the birth and death places of the Prophet Muhammad–angered many pious Saudis, especially the ulema (religious scholars). They argued that under the Sharia it is forbidden for foreign forces to be based in Saudi Arabia under their own flag. Their discontent rose when, having liberated Kuwait in March 1991, the Pentagon failed to carry out full withdrawal from the kingdom.

    Among those who protested vocally was bin Laden, who established a formal committee that advocated religious-political reform. In 1993 King Fahd created a Consultative Council, all of whose members were appointed by him and served in a merely advisory capacity; this step failed to pacify bin Laden. During the Yemeni civil war of April-July 1994, when Riyadh backed the Marxist former South Yemeni leaders against the government in Sana, bin Laden condemned the official policy. The authorities stripped him of his Saudi citizenship and expelled him from the country.

    But bin Laden’s banishment (to Sudan) did not deter other Islamic radicals from pursuing their agenda. In November 1995 they detonated a bomb at a Saudi National Guard base in Riyadh, killing five US service personnel stationed there. Of the four Saudis arrested as suspects, three turned out to be “Afghanis.” They were found guilty and executed.

    However, what put the US military presence in Saudi Arabia in the limelight was the truck bombing on June 25, 1996, outside the Al Khobar complex near the Dhahran air base. The explosion killed nineteen American servicemen and injured more than 400. This occurred a few weeks after bin Laden had arrived in Afghanistan from Sudan, which he was forced to leave when its government came under pressure from Washington and Riyadh.

    Bin Laden then called for a jihad against the Americans in Saudi Arabia. “The presence of American crusader forces in Muslim Gulf states…is the greatest danger and [poses] the most serious harm, threatening the world’s largest oil reserves,” he said. “Pushing out this American occupying enemy is the most important duty after the duty of belief in God.”

    After the Al Khobar bombing the Saudi authorities grudgingly admitted the presence of some 5,000 American troops on Saudi soil. They were part of the force in charge of 170 US fighters, bombers and tank-killers parked in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Well-informed Saudi watchers, however, put the number of American servicemen in the kingdom at 15,000-20,000, including several thousand in civilian dress, based in Dhahran, Jedda and the defence ministry in Riyadh.

    What is the basis of the US military presence in Saudi Arabia, and what are its aims? When on August 6, 1990, King Fahd invited US troops to his kingdom, it was to bolster Saudi defences against the threat of an Iraqi invasion following Baghdad’s occupation of Kuwait. Once the US-led coalition had expelled the Iraqis from Kuwait, this mission was accomplished. So there was no more need for foreign troops, nor was there any official explanation for their presence.

    The unofficial explanation is that the purpose of the US warplanes stationed in Saudi Arabia is to enforce the no-fly zone in southern Iraq. This rationale is flawed in at least three respects. First, since Washington has publicly acknowledged defence agreements with Kuwait and Bahrain, why not limit the stationing of warplanes to those countries and exclude Saudi Arabia because of its special religious significance to Muslims worldwide? Second, the southern no-fly zone was not imposed until August 1992, seventeen months after the end of the Gulf War, ostensibly to prevent Saddam Hussein’s regime from persecuting the Shiite population of southern Iraq–so this could not have been the reason American aircraft were stationed there before that time. Finally, with one or two aircraft carriers of the US Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain, permanently plying the Persian Gulf, is there really a need to station US warplanes on Saudi soil–and thus provide fuel to the likes of bin Laden, who claims that the kingdom is “occupied” by US troops in the same way Afghanistan was by Soviet soldiers?

    This leads one to take seriously the explanation offered by those defence experts–such as former Middle East specialist at the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies–who claim inside knowledge of joint Washington-Riyadh strategy devised and implemented after the armed uprising in Mecca in November 1979. In case there’s an antiroyalist coup, they say, the United States would need seventy-two hours to marshal its full military might to reverse the coup. For many years the Saudi defence ministry has been purchasing sophisticated weapons systems, chiefly from the United States. But the Pentagon was reportedly alarmed by the account of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of the US-led coalition in the Gulf War, that suggested the Saudi military, especially the air force, was incapable of operating the sophisticated weaponry it possessed. Thus the presence of US military officials at key Saudi military facilities is considered indispensable in order to insure swift coordination and secure communications in case of an emergency.

    It was against this background that bin Laden and his acolytes articulated the thesis that their country was occupied. Since then the events in the Persian Gulf, centered around relations between Iraq and the United States, have strengthened the views of Islamic militants. In the midst of the deepening Baghdad-Washington crisis of February 1998, which resulted in the build-up of a US armada in the Gulf, they published an assessment that applied to the entire Middle East.

    On February 23,1998, under the aegis of the International Islamic Front (IIF), Shaikh bin Laden, Aiman al Zawhiri (of jihad al Islami, Egypt), Abu Yasser Ahmad Taha (of Gamaat al Islamiya, Egypt), Shaikh Mir Hamzah (of Jamiat al Ulema, Pakistan) and Fazl ul Rahman (of Harkat al jihad, Bangladesh) issued a communiqué laced with the kind of language used earlier against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

    “For more than seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbours, and turning its bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples,” it stated.

    “Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the Crusader-Zionist alliance, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres…Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.”

    Then came the fatwa (religious decree): “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies–civilians and military–is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] and the Holy Mosque [in Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim [again]. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, ‘And fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,’ and ‘fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.’” This was open season on Americans to all those who agreed with the IIF’s stance. Following the Washington-London air strikes against Iraq in mid-December, bin Laden called on Muslims worldwide to “confront, fight and kill” Americans and Britons for “their support for their leaders’ decision to attack Iraq.” Earlier, spurning the US demands to hand bin Laden over to Washington, the Taliban government had proposed that the evidence against him be passed on to it so that he could be tried in Afghanistan under Islamic law. The United States refused to cooperate. So in late November, the Taliban supreme judge declared bin Laden innocent.

    A decade after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the mood among US and Saudi decision makers has turned from quiet satisfaction to perplexed hand wringing. In the words of Richard Murphy, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East and South Asia during the two Reagan administrations, “We did spawn a monster in Afghanistan.” The “monster” of violent Islamic fundamentalism has now grown tentacles that extend from western China to Algeria to the east coast of America, and its reach is not likely to diminish without a great deal of the United States’ money, time and patience, along with the full cooperation of foreign governments.

  • Imagine Peace

    Imagine Peace

    “Can you imagine a world in which the hungry are fed, the cold are clothed, the homeless are housed? Can you imagine a world that is peaceful, a world in which war is only a memory?”

    “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”—President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

    Try to imagine such a world! What would it look like? What would it feel like? How would a peaceful world differ from our present world? How would your own life be different than it is now? How would the resources be used that were once devoted to ever more deadly armaments?

    These are important but rarely asked questions that call upon us to use our imaginations. They call upon us to examine the priorities of our own societies, and to think seriously and creatively about our own commitment to ending war and building peace.

    I imagine that peace would be built on justice. People would be treated fairly. The hungry would be fed, the cold would be clothed, the homeless housed. There would be no children dying of preventable diseases, and no illiteracy, because societies would prevent these conditions from arising.

    If everyone had adequate food, shelter, health care, and education, there would not be so many angry and alienated people. Parents would not despair for the lives and futures of their children. Peace would brighten the future.

    What if societies allocated adequate funds to protect the environment and develop environmentally friendly technologies to replace dangerous and damaging ones? What if there were a societal ethic that the environment is a common heritage that we humans must steward for all forms of life and for future generations?

    There are reliable estimates that everything I have envisioned above could actually be accomplished for only a small percentage of current world military expenditures. It has been suggested that for approximately $40 billion annually, some 5 precent of current world military expenditures, poverty in the world could be ended.

    In a peaceful world, people would treat each other with respect. Diversity would be appreciated. People would be entitled to their own beliefs. They would find ways to cooperate. Borders would be far less important than they are now. There would be a general recognition that we all share one Earth and the responsibility to preserve its abundance and beauty for future generations.

    Even in a peaceful world, there would still be conflicts. People and nations would disagree, but there would be conditions assuring that differences would be settled without resort to violence. If this commitment could be trusted—and over time we would come to trust it—there would be no need to expend outrageous amounts on military forces and weapons systems.

    In a peaceful world, some nations might still maintain military forces, but they would be for defensive purposes only. It would be a very different orientation. Weapons and delivery systems would be designed for defense, and thus would not be threatening to neighboring countries.

    In a peaceful world, the purpose of governments would be to serve all of the people, not to favor the powerful at the expense of the disempowered. Governments would protect the Earth and the heritage of those yet unborn, and find ways to settle differences without resort to violence.

    If we cannot imagine such a future, we certainly cannot begin to believe in its possibility. I believe in the power of imagination. If we can imagine a future, it is possible to create it. We may not know today how to get from here to there, and it may seem a very long way away. But we can begin the journey.

    Knowing that something is possible is a long step forward on the journey toward achieving it. There may be failures and backtracking along the way, but a peaceful world is a powerful vision, one that ultimately will not be denied.

    The Spring 1999 issue of Waging Peace Worldwide focuses on “Building a Culture of Peace.” The authors are all pioneers in this effort, an effort that takes not only imagination, but compassion, courage and commitment. As you read the articles, I encourage you to ask yourself the question, “What role will I play in bringing such a world into being?”

  • NATO’s Expansion: Provocation, Not Leadership

    NATO claims that by bringing Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the 16-member Organization, the new NATO will “meet the challenges of the 21st century.” But 50 American former Senators, diplomats and officials maintain that NATO expansion would be “a policy error of historic proportions.” George Kennan, the father of the U.S. containment policy on the Soviet Union, says: “Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

    Why is NATO so determined to enlarge? Why is the opposition so strong? Why is the U.S. Senate rushing to judgment on such a controversial step?

    I am an opponent of NATO expansion. I see the expansion of a nuclear-armed Alliance up to Russia’s borders as provocative, not an act of leadership for peace. In fact, NATO’s expansion undermines the struggle for peace.

    I want to set out my reasons in three main categories: instilling fear in Russia; setting back nuclear disarmament; and undermining the United Nations.

    Instilling Fear In Russia

    It is claimed that the idea of NATO expansion started with the leaders of Central and Eastern Europe who wanted to look West in confidence rather than East in fear. President Clinton was impressed with this stance and U.S. policy set out reasons for widening the scope of the American-European security connection.

    NATO expansion would respond to three strategic challenges: to enhance the relationship between the U.S. and the enlarging democratic Europe; to engage a still evolving Russia in a cooperative relationship with Europe; and to reinforce the habits of democracy and the practice of peace in Central Europe.

    Secretary of State Madeleine Albright set out the case cogently: “Now the new NATO can do for Europe’s east what the old NATO did for Europe’s west: vanquish old hatreds, promote integration, create a secure environment for prosperity, and deter violence in the regions where two world wars and the Cold War began.”

    Russia’s early objections to NATO expansion were met by NATO’s assurances that it wanted a strong, stable and enduring partnership with Russia based on the Founding Act on Mutual Relations. Russia would be consulted; a Russian military representative arrived in Brussels; the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council began meeting at the ministerial level. NATO insisted it was moving away from forward defense planning and reducing its military capability.

    But that is not what Russian leaders see. They maintain that, despite Moscow’s disbanding of the Warsaw Pact, deeper reductions in nuclear and conventional forces than in the West, the hasty withdrawal of half a million troops from comfortable barracks in Central Europe to tent camps in Russian fields, the most powerful military Alliance in the world started moving toward Russian borders.

    Offered only membership in a limited “Partnership for Peace” rather than full membership in the new NATO, Russia is now having a much harder time achieving the goals of Russian democrats.

    Russians are little impressed with Western benign assurances. And their apprehension increases at the prospect of more East and Central European countries joining NATO in the next expansion wave. Worst of all, they fear the entry of the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—Russia’s intimate neighbors—into NATO. A Charter of Partnership has already been signed between the U.S. and the three Baltic nations in which Washington has promised to do everything possible to get them ready to join NATO.

    How can the West expect the Russians, a proud people who have suffered the ravages of war throughout the 20th century, to calmly accept such isolation? They see a ganging-up of nations against Russia as a travesty on the end of the Cold War.

    Why, Russians ask, cannot the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) be the guarantor of security for the whole of Europe? The OSCE was started a quarter of a century ago to serve as a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between East and West. As a regional arrangement under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, the OSCE was established as a primary instrument for early warning, conflict prevention and crisis management in Europe. In the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, the OSCE was called upon to contribute to managing the historic change in Europe and respond to the new challenges of the post-Cold War period. It was believed that the OSCE would replace NATO as the principal security watchdog in Europe. Russia would like to have NATO subservient to the OSCE. But in NATO’s resurgence, the OSCE is fading.

    Why? One reason is because all states in the OSCE have equal status and decisions are made on the basis of consensus. This does not sit well with the lone superpower in the world whose military might exceeds the combined power of most of Europe.

    Why should the U.S.— exercising its military might through dominance of an expanding NATO — create such a permanent source of friction with Russia? NATO expansion is a backward step in drawing Russia into the community of nations.

    The expansion process should be stopped and alternative actions taken:

    • Open the European Union to all the countries of Europe
    • Develop a cooperative NATO-Russian relationship that implements arms reductions and builds trading relationships
    • Setting Back Nuclear Disarmament
    • The setting back of nuclear disarmament is the most serious consequence of NATO expansion. Global security will suffer. In fact, it is NATO’s insistence that “nuclear forces continue to play an essential role in NATO strategy” that poses such a threat to peace in the 21st century

    The nuclear weapons situation in the world is at a critical stage. Nearly a decade after the end of the Cold War, more than 35,000 nuclear weapons remain in the world. No new nuclear negotiations are taking place; the Conference on Disarmament is paralyzed. The Russian Duma, fearing NATO’s expansion, has not ratified START II; START III is immobilized. Some Russian politicians and militarists, concerned about Russia’s crumbling conventional force structure, are once again talking of nuclear weapons as a vital line of defense for Russia. Even if START II were ratified, there would still be at least 17,000 nuclear weapons of all kinds remaining in 2007. More than 8,500 will be in Russia.

    Under Gorbachev, Russia started to move down the road to nuclear disarmament, starting with a no-first-use pledge and other unilateral moves. When he came to power, Boris Yeltsin projected a sweeping foreign policy on democracy, a market economy, the slashing of weapons, a pan-European collective defense system and even “a global system for protection of the world community.” “A new world order based on the primacy of international law is coming,” Yeltsin said.

    Such talk has ceased as Russia, ever more desperate for hesitant Western financial assistance, became mired in constant economic and political crises. Instead of offering a 1990s Marshall Plan-scale of help to Russia (which would be in the economic and political interests of the West, not least in cleaning up the “loose nukes” peril), the West offers an expanded NATO. Since Russia so desperately needs the new eighth seat at the G7 Economic Summit, its protests, though not its resentments, are weakened.

    Despite the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a new technology race in the quest for more innovative nuclear weapons, led by the U.S., has broken out. Since the U.S. so clearly intends to keep producing better designed nuclear weapons, there is virtually no hope that other nations will forego seeking the technology to allow them to keep up with this race. The world is poised to enter the 21st century in a “cold peace” atmosphere in which the CTBT will go unratified by some of the required states and the NPT may begin to unravel.

    The continued retention of nuclear weapons by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council who insist that they are essential to their security and that of their allies, while denying the same right to others, is inherently unstable. This is an essential point made by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) whose unanimous call for the conclusion of nuclear weapons negotiations continues to be rejected by the Western NWS and the bulk of NATO.

    NATO’s continued deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe, even at reduced levels, along with a refusal to respect the ICJ and enter into comprehensive negotiations, is in direct violation of the pledge made by the Nuclear Weapons States at the time of the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995: to pursue with determination “systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons.”

    To lessen fears of the growth of a nuclear-armed Alliance, NATO insists that it has “no plan, no need and no intention” to station nuclear weapons on the territory of new members. That is not the point. Not stationing nuclear weapons in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic does nothing to get them out of Western European countries. Nothing less than the removal of all of NATO’s nuclear weapons from all of Europe will suffice to demonstrate NATO’s sincerity.

    Though NATO operates in great secrecy, it is clear that the Alliance has no intention of renouncing nuclear weapons, is determined to maintain a nuclear war-fighting capability, and is prepared to use low-yield nuclear warheads first. It is unacceptable that NATO even refuses to release the Terms of Reference used for its current review of the Strategic Concept.

    The expansion of such a nuclear-armed Alliance is not an aid but a challenge to the development of peaceful relations with Russia. A nuclear NATO sets back peace.

    Undermining the United Nations

    The evolution of a world system is imperative if civilized life is to continue in the coming millennium. The United Nations is the essential centre-piece of that system. Its over-arching purpose is to maintain international peace and security. For this reason, the Security Council is given strong powers to enforce its decisions.

    But the UN is undermined by military alliances that threaten force as a standing policy. The long years of East-West animosity during the Cold War virtually immobilized the UN’s efforts to maintain peace. In despair during one of the worst moments of the Cold War, former UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar castigated the nuclear superpowers for their militarism, contrasting it to world poverty of vast proportions—”a deprivation inexplicable in terms either of available resources or the money and ingenuity spent on armaments and war.” He criticized governments for ignoring their own signatures on the UN Charter: “We are perilously near to a new international anarchy.”

    Despite the end of the Cold War, the world still spends $800 billion a year on the military, most of this amount is spent by the U.S. and its NATO allies. NATO expansion will send arms expenditures even higher. NATO has already said that new members will have to make a “military contribution.”

    Estimates of the cost of NATO expansion vary from $27 billion to several hundred billion dollars over the next decade, though the U.S. Administration, fearful of a taxpayers’ backlash, has been playing down the U.S. share of the bill. Whatever the final cost, the many billions of dollars to be devoted to new military hardware, thus enriching the leading arms merchants of the world, is a direct theft from the fifth of humanity that is poor and marginalized and that needs but modest investment in their economic and social development to stabilize regional conditions. This is the old anarchy writ new.

    The UN has shown time and again that promoting disarmament and development at the same time enhances security. In the post-Cold War era, human security does not come from the barrel of a gun but from the quality of life that economic and social development underpins.

    Sustainable development needs huge amounts of investment in scientific research, technological development, education and training, infrastructure development and the transfer of technology. Investment in these structural advances is urgently needed to stop carbon dioxide poisoning of the atmosphere and the depletion of the earth’s biological resources such as the forest, wetlands and animal species now under attack. But the goals for sustainable development set out in the 1992 Earth Summit’s major document, Agenda 21, are blocked by political inertia, which countenances continued high military spending.

    It is clear, as the Director-General of UNESCO put it, that “we cannot simultaneously pay the price of war and the price of peace.” Budgetary priorities need to be realigned in order to direct financial resources of enhancing life, not producing death. A transformation of political attitudes is needed to build a “culture of peace.” A new political attitude would say No to investment in arms and destruction and Yes to investment in the construction of peace.

    A nuclear-armed NATO stronger than the United Nations is an intolerable prospect. Yet the residual militarist mentality in the world continues to sideline the UN and even force it into penury. The lavishness of NATO contrasted to the poverty of the UN mocks the most ardent aspirations of the peoples of the world.

    The Role of Civil Society

    Put in strategic terms, the risks of NATO expansion far outweigh any possible contribution to security. The issues are complex and need careful examination and extended public debate. A headlong rush into this abyss could indeed be a “fateful error.” The U.S. Senate needs to hear from informed citizens before giving its advice and consent to such an ill-considered policy.

    Is it too late to stop NATO expansion? Has the U.S. Administration gone too far to pull back? Could a five-year waiting period be invoked for time for sober reflection? What is so sacred about getting expansion done in time for NATO’s 50th anniversary in 1999?

    If NATO expansion is to be stopped by the U.S. Senate, civil society will have to mobilize as never before. The enlightened elements of the public will have to lead the way. Much of government seems mesmerized by the superficial appeal of the politics of an enlarged NATO.

    It was once said of King Philip of Spain: “No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence.” The stakes are too high today for trial-and-error. We must shake the Government and Congress of the United States of the belief that NATO expansion serves the people’s interest. It does not. It serves only the interests of the producers of arms. NATO expansion is folly. We must proclaim this from the roof-tops and help both government and public recover the vision of a de-militarized world.

  • Needed: An Updated Strategy for Nuclear Security During the Disarmament Process

    The continuing success of the global efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament is impressive. Awareness of the true dimensions of the continuing nuclear threat has been raised, yet success in these efforts has revealed an inherent danger in the disarmament process. Security programs developed for the armament process are not, in many cases, adequate for the disarmament process.

    Nuclear weapons security is designed to provide a continuity of protection from manufacture to installation in a potential delivery system or in a ready-for-use storage site. Security comprises a series of special function jurisdictions, each with a unique set of handling or processing requirements.

    It is a compartmentalized security system, meaning that each facility maintains its own security. The least dangerous element (in terms of loss to an adversary or accidental detonation) is the initial step of mining, refining, and converting raw materials for use in the weapons making efforts. Security in this activity is routine industrial plant security as these facilities are not likely to be targets. The most danger begins when the materials are combined to become the components for nuclear weapons. Security requirements at these manufacturing facilities increases and is adjusted to meet the specific needs of the facility depending on its function within the system.

    Therefore, as each function is accomplished and material is passed to the next facility, security responsibilities change commensurately. The ultimate recipients, the military, in turn, provide their own security.

    Superimposed on this system of security arrangements is a number of specialized support groups which provide unique functions that supplement facility security. They provide unique functions not provided by facility security. The most utilized of these services is provided by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Transportation Safeguards Division (TSD). TSD trains, equips, and controls a group of security specialists known as “Couriers” who provide safe, secure transport of fabricated nuclear materials. Other security support services are provided by Explosive Ordinance Disposal teams (EOD), the Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) and a multiplicity of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. These groups work together through a series of interagency agreements and protocols that establish lines of authority and jurisdictional responsibilities. The security system now in place has evolved as the nuclear industry grew to meet the demands of the military for weapons. The system was designed and implemented for serialized, unidirectional (manufacture to use) purposes. Whether or not the same system will be adequate for the disarmament process is an open question. The mounting body of evidence suggests it will not.

    The bureaucracy that created the nuclear security system is multifaceted, and, in some cases, duplicative and unnecessary. Responsibility for its programmatic development is vested in many bureaus within DOE and DOD. These bureaus and subordinated groups are now competing for dominance and the limited funds that are available to maintain their status quo as they struggle to realign their missions to counter the known and perceived terrorist threats. New divisions and ad hoc specialized groups are being created within the existing agencies and, consequently, more competition is engendered for the limited human and monetary resources. The net effect of these developments is that nuclear security, already questionable in many areas , will continue to deteriorate due to the perception that the need for this specific security system diminishes as disarmament efforts become more successful. Already, under the guise of Civil Defense, the Pentagon is flexing its muscle in the competition as it assumes a role in the training of civilian agencies for chemical, biological, and nuclear emergencies. Fifty-two million dollars have been authorized by Congress for this program, yet the diffuse nature of the efforts across so many agencies offers little promise for improving protection against threats of misappropriation where the residual materials of nuclear disarmament are concerned. The focus on specific security regimens is being lost in favor of more generic types of security presumably more capable of countering a broader range of threats to our national safety.

    This type of political and bureaucratic reaction is not responsive to the operational requirements for well-founded security and is not conducive to developing means that will neutralize the dangers from the growing terrorist threat.

    For the conditions existing in the political environment today, there is a primary and essential need to increase awareness of the operational realities related to security in the nuclear disarmament effort so that deficiencies can be identified and corrected. This has to be done as a prerequisite to the dismantling process. The vital issues must be raised in ways that will motivate the government and people throughout our society to take appropriate and effective action.

    More concerted efforts must be made to identify and isolate each perceived or real threat in context with the unique security problems it creates. This level of attention will, in turn, assure that effective deterrents for specific threats can be developed and put into place.

    A prerequisite for the disarmament process to achieve its purpose with minimum risk is an understanding of the complexities arising from the shift in attitudes that avoids considering the significance of independently treating, in depth, the threats specific to nuclear security . The security of nuclear materials cannot be relegated to a dependency upon the generalizations of a generic security program.

    Everyone Gets into the Terrorist Game, – David E. Kaplan, U.S. News and World Report – Nov. 17, 1997, Based on DOE’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), begun in the 1970’s, copy-cat units are being established by the FBI (DEST -Domestic Emergency Support Teams), The State Department (FEST – Foreign Emergency Support Team), Public Health (MMST – Metropolitan Medical Support Teams), DOE (two spin-offs to NEST (Best – Biological Emergency Search Team and CEST – Chemical Emergency Search Team) and also the Marines with CBIRF -Chemical Biological Incident Response Force.

    Eye on America, CBS Evening News, Nov.25, 1997, Report by Rita Braver on security problems at Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility

    Taking Civil Liberties – Washington Whispers, U.S. News and World Report – Jan. 12., 1998 pg 15

  • Groups win Landmark Nuclear Weapons “Cleanup” Victory

    WASHINGTON, DC/SAN FRANCISCO, CA — To settle a lawsuit brought by 39 environmental and peace organizations including the Oakland-based Western States Legal Foundation and Livermore’s Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has signed a landmark agreement which will increase public oversight of its efforts to address severe contamination problems in the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

    The settlement, which was delivered to Federal District Court Judge Stanley Sporkin today, ends nine years of litigation charging that DOE failed to develop its “cleanup” plans properly. DOE faced a contempt of court hearing before Judge Sporkin for not complying with a previous legal agreement in the case.

    “From the perspective of protecting the nation’s water, air and land, this settlement is superior to the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement DOE originally agreed to prepare,” said David Adelman, a Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer who represented the plaintiffs. “We now have the data, the resources and the processes necessary to make DOE’s environmental work more accountable to the public.” The Washington, D.C. law firm of Meyer & Glitzenstein provided pro bono litigation counsel.

    Key elements of the settlement include:

    • Creation of a regularly updated, publicly accessible database including details about contaminated facilities and waste generated or controlled by DOE’s cleanup, defense, science and nuclear energy programs, including domestic and foreign research reactor spent fuel, listing characteristics such as waste type, volume, and radioactivity, as well as transfer and disposition plans;
    • DOE funding for at least two national stakeholder forums to assure the database is comprehensive, accurate and useful;
    • Completion of an environmental analysis, with public input, of plans for “long-term stewardship” at contaminated DOE sites to ensure protection of the public and the environment;
    • Establishment of a $6.25 million fund for non-profit groups and tribes to use in monitoring DOE environmental activities and conducting technical reviews of the agency’s performance;
    • Payment of plaintiffs’ legal fees and expenses incurred to litigate this case; and
    • Continuing federal court oversight to assure adherence to the agreement.

    “I’m really excited! This is a major victory both for the environment and for public participation,” said Marylia Kelley, of Tri-Valley CAREs in Livermore, California, one of 39 plaintiff groups.” We have won access to the tools the public needs to monitor DOE’s compliance with the nation’s obligation to address the radioactive and toxic legacy of nuclear weapons production.” DOE’s “cleanup” program is slated to become the largest environmental project in U.S. history, with an estimated total cost of more than $250 billion.

    “Since the mid-1980’s we’ve been asking for a breakdown of DOE-generated waste by program and facility,” added Jackie Cabasso of Oakland’s Western States Legal Foundation, a plaintiff and communications coordinator for the lawsuit. “DOE is currently gearing up its nuclear weapons research and development activities — the same kinds of activities that created this environmental disaster. Now, for the first time, using DOE’s own data, we’ll be able to demonstrate the link between cause and effect, a powerful argument against any further nuclear weapons design and production.”

    Many of the groups first sued DOE in 1989, claiming that the agency must conduct a thorough analyses before moving ahead with plans to address the radioactive and toxic legacy of nuclear weapons production and modernize its facilities. The next year, DOE signed a legal agreement promising a full public review of its proposals. In 1994, however, DOE leaders decided to abandon the Environmental Restoration Programmatic Environmental Impact

    Statement process without consent of the plaintiffs or Federal Court Judge Sporkin, who had approved the initial settlement. In April, 1997, plaintiffs went back to Judge Sporkin seeking enforcement of the original agreement.

    In a series of court hearings, Judge Sporkin made it clear that he expected DOE to abide by its commitments. Earlier this year, he ordered DOE to “show cause” why it should not be held in contempt for failing to conduct the environmental analysis. In depositions taken by the plaintiffs, former Energy Secretary James Watkins and other former senior DOE officials strongly backed plaintiffs claims. The discussions which led to today’s settlement were conducted at Judge Sporkin’s urging.

    PLAINTIFF ORGANIZATIONS

    The Atomic Mirror, CA

    Bay Area Nuclear (BAN) Waste Coalition, CA

    Citizen Alert, NV

    Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, NM

    Citizens Opposed to a Polluted Environment, CA

    Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, NM

    East Bay Peace Action, CA

    Energy Research Foundation, SC

    Friends of the Earth, Washington, DC

    Greenpeace, Washington, DC

    Hayward Area Peace and Justice Fellowship, CA

    Lane County American Peace Test, OR

    Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, NY

    Livermore Conversion Project, CA

    Los Alamos Study Group, NM

    Nashville Peace Action, TN

    Natural Resources Defense Council,Washington, DC

    Neighbors in Need, OH

    Nevada Desert Experience, NV

    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, CA

    Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, TN

    Peace Action, Washington, DC

    Peace Farm of Texas

    Physicians for Social Responsibility, Washington, DC

    Physicians for Social Responsibility – Greater SF Bay Area, CA

    Physicians for Social Responsibility, CO

    Physicians for Social Responsibility, NM

    Physicians for Social Responsibility, NY

    Plutonium Free Future, CA

    Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, CO

    San Jose Peace Center, CA

    Seattle Women Act for Peace/Women Strike for Peace

    Shundahai Network, NV

    Sonoma County Center for Peace and Justice, CA

    Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, CA

    Western States Legal Foundation, CA

    Women Concerned/Utahns United

    Women for Peace – East Bay, CA

    Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom – East Bay Branch, CA

  • The Nuremberg Promise and the International Criminal Court

    The Nuremberg Promise was the hope that someday there would be standards and effective mechanisms to hold all individuals accountable for acts constituting the most serious crimes under international law. At Nuremberg, justice was imperfectly done. The victors applied standards of accountability to the leaders of the defeated nations that they refused to apply to themselves. Nonetheless, Nuremberg established standards of accountability that were applied to Nazi leaders for crimes of unimaginable magnitude. The promise of Nuremberg was that these standards would become applicable to all leaders of all countries, and would be applied fairly by a strengthened international community. The manifestation of the Nuremberg Promise was imagined to be a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) capable of upholding and enforcing these standards.

    For nearly fifty years after the Nuremberg Trials, progress on creating an International Criminal Court was virtually non-existent. The international community was bogged down in the rivalries of the Cold War and its proxy wars. With the end of the Cold War, however, the climate changed, and proposals for creating an International Criminal Court were suddenly back on the international agenda. It was the small island nation of Trinidad and Tobago that actually brought the need for establishing the Court back to the United Nations General Assembly Legal Committee out of their concern for bringing international narcotics criminals to justice. And then, in the early to mid-1990s, a major breakthrough was achieved in setting up temporary International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.

    With extraordinary leadership from Abdul Koroma of Sierra Leone, the United Nations General Assembly Legal Committee began drafting a statute for a permanent International Criminal Court. To the surprise of many analysts, the work at the United Nations on a permanent ICC actually culminated in a Conference of Plenipotentiaries in Rome during the summer of 1998, and from this conference came the Rome Statute on an International Criminal Court.

    For a number of years high-level representatives of the United States appeared eager to create a permanent ICC. This was not surprising since the United States was one of the major proponents of the Nuremberg Trials. As the Rome Conference grew closer, however, the United States grew more reluctant to commit itself to the creation of the ICC. Its price for participating in the Court was the assuredness that no U.S. military personnel would be held to account by the Court for the commission of war crimes. When the United States failed to get its way on this point, it ended up joining only a handful of countries, including China, Iraq and Libya, in opposing the creation of the Court.

    Was the U.S. position reasonable? Of course not. The U.S. was pushing for a double standard — one rule of law for itself, and another set of rules for everyone else. The international community, including most of the U.S.’s closest allies, joined the vast majority of states in voting to establish the Court. As has happened in many others areas of international law, including recently and prominently the Landmines Treaty, the U.S. chose not to join the treaty if it could not dictate its terms.

    At Nuremberg there were three classes of crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The Rome Statute lists four classes of crimes in Article 5: the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. One of the biggest problems with the Rome Statute is that it allows parties to the treaty to opt out of being subject to the Court’s jurisdiction for war crimes for a period of seven years. Thus, once the Rome Statute enters into force, states will have seven years to decide whether or not to accept the jurisdiction of the Court for war crimes. This could potentially allow individual leaders to escape the Court’s jurisdiction for war crimes by opting out of the war crimes provision.

    The Rome Statute has also not defined the crime of aggression, which at Nuremberg was referred to as a crime against peace, and the Court will not have jurisdiction over such crimes until a definition is agreed to by the international community. One cannot help recall the twenty-year struggle at the United Nations to come up with an agreed upon definition of aggression. Apparently this definition does not have wide enough support for purposes of including it in the Rome Statute, in part because it lacks sufficient precision for use in a criminal statute.

    The Rome Statute provides in Article 13 that the Court may take jurisdiction over cases by referral of a State Party, by referral of the Security Council, or by initiation of the Prosecutor. However, Article 12 of the Statute provides that the Court can take jurisdiction over cases initiated by either a State Party or by the Prosecutor only if the State where the alleged conduct occurred or the State of which the accused person is a national are Parties to the Statute or have accepted the jurisdiction of the Court. This means that when an accused leader commits crimes against his own people, as Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein have done, the Court can only take jurisdiction if the State is a Party to the Statute, has accepted the Court’s jurisdiction or if the Security Council refers the case to the Court. These loopholes create a potential shield of impunity for criminal leaders whose States would be unlikely to become Parties to the treaty or do not otherwise accept the Court’s jurisdiction.

    The delegates to the Rome Conference also considered providing jurisdiction to the Court if the State that had custody of a suspected criminal had ratified the treaty. This would have allowed a country like the UK to have turned over to the Court a suspected violator of crimes against humanity and war crimes, such as a future Augusto Pinochet, if the UK was a party to the treaty and had custody of the suspected criminal. However, since the Rome Statute fails to provide for this, a suspect apprehended in the UK or any other country Party to the Statute would not be able to turn him or her over to the Court unless the State where the acts occurred or the State of nationality of the accused had ratified the treaty. The future Pinochet, assuming his crimes took place in a State that had not ratified the Statute, could not be turned over to the Court by the UK or any other country that apprehended the suspect.

    It should be noted that the Rome Statute provides in Article 24 that “No person shall be criminally responsible under this Statute for conduct prior to the entry into force of the Statute.” This provision would preclude the Court’s jurisdiction over Pinochet, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, and Henry Kissinger for all criminal acts committed before the Statute enters into force.

    Will the Court fulfill the Nuremberg Promise? The Court’s limitations, brought about by compromise and fear on the part of States, will prevent it from completely doing so. On the other hand, the very existence of the ICC will be a step forward. Each time that someone is brought to account for crimes under the Court’s jurisdiction, it will strengthen the international norms against committing such crimes.

    The most important function of the Court, however, is not to punish, but to prevent such crimes. And it is only by knowing with some certainty that the commission of the statutory crimes will result in punishment that the crimes will be prevented. So long as the jurisdiction of the Court is not universal, aggression is not defined, and States can opt out of the war crimes provisions, there will still be a broad shield of immunity for international criminals to hide behind.

    The decisions made recently in the UK to arrest Augusto Pinochet come closer to fulfilling the Nuremberg Promise than the Rome Statute of the ICC. The arrest and potential extradition of Pinochet for crimes against humanity sends a strong message to all potential violators of international law. The human rights activist and Nobel Peace Laureate, Jose Ramos Horta, has called the arrest and potential extradition of Pinochet the most important event in human rights since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights fifty years ago.

    The Nuremberg Promise was the promise of courage in holding to account the greatest of the world’s criminals. Nuremberg stood for individual accountability and the tearing down of the shield of State protection for criminal leaders. At Nuremberg it did not matter whether the acts committed were legal under the law of the state where they were committed. It only mattered that the acts were illegal under international law. It did not matter that the accused person was a state official at the time of commission of the crimes. It did not matter that the accused was a Head of State or Head of Government. It did not matter that the person was only following orders. It only mattered that the person violated international criminal law. Nuremberg was about doing justice in the hope that the application of individual accountability would prevent future crimes of such magnitude.

    The Statute of the ICC will strengthen the place of the individual in international law. The Statute provides in Article 26 for jurisdiction “over natural persons,” and dictates that “[a] person who commits a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court shall be individually responsible and liable for punishment….” These terms of reference are important in providing for individual responsibility for violations of international law. The Statute further provides in Article 27 that it shall “apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity.” This Article goes on to state, “In particular, official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute, nor shall it, in and of itself, constitute a ground for reduction of sentence.” These Articles will bring into international statutory law the most central of the Nuremberg Principles, and thus solidify the responsibility as well as accountability of the individual under international law.

    Among other notable features of the Rome Statute is the provision that none of the crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC shall be subject to any statute of limitations. Thus, an individual who commits any of the crimes under the Statute will be subject to arrest and trial for as long as he or she lives.

    In some respects the most important words in the Rome Statute are found in the Preamble which raises a cry for “an end to impunity” and states that “it is the duty of every State to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes.” The Preamble further states that the Court is established “to guarantee respect for the enforcement of international justice.”

    The Rome Statute itself does not quite match up to the lofty ideals expressed in its Preamble. But it does provide standards for States to live up to in their own enforcement of international law. Perhaps the Rome Statute has already begun to play a role in the life of the international community, even before its entry into force, by providing a beacon that was followed by the judges in Spain who asked for the extradition of Pinochet and those in the UK who appear poised to grant that extradition.

  • U.S. Military Action Undermines the Rule of Law

    When it was first announced by President Clinton that the United States would launch a military strike against Iraq, I wondered about the legality of this attack under international law. I carefully read President Clinton’s speech announcing the attack, and found a reference to a UN Security Council resolution that condemned Iraq’s defiance of the UN inspection team by a vote of 15 to zero. Upon review of the resolution, however, I found that it contained no authorization for the use of force against Iraq. Nor did any previous Security Council resolution, except for the 1991 resolution authorizing the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, an issue clearly not relevant to the current situation.

    President Clinton announced that the purpose of the military action was “to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.” Clinton and his security advisors, who he announced were unanimous in their recommendation to attack, were responding to a report filed by Richard Butler, the head of the UN inspection team in Iraq.

    But this is what the Washington Post wrote about Butler’s report, “Butler’s conclusions were welcome in Washington, which helped orchestrate the terms of the Australian diplomat’s report. Sources in New York and Washington said Clinton officials played a direct role in shaping Butler’s text during multiple conversations with him Monday at secure facilities in the U.S. mission to the United Nations.”

    The article in the Washington Post also pointed out that a “companion report” by the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed “broad satisfaction with Iraq’s cooperation.”

    What this suggests is that there were reasonable differences of opinion about Iraq’s cooperation with the UN, and that there was improper collusion between Richard Butler, the head of the UN inspection team who is supposed to act in a neutral manner, and U.S. officials. If this is true, Butler was clearly acting in an improper manner and bears some of the responsibility for the military action against Iraq. If it is true, Kofi Annan should act immediately to fire Butler.

    President Clinton justified the attack as being necessary “to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.” This justification raises many questions. What was the “national interest” that was being protected? How was it determined? Should any country have the right to attack another country in the name of national interest without proper authority under international law?

    The behavior of President Clinton and his “security team” sends the wrong message to the international community. It is a similar message to the one they sent when they attacked a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which they unconvincingly claimed was a chemical weapons factory.

    The message we are sending to the world is that we are the big boys on the block, and we are willing to throw our weight around regardless of the law. The Russian Duma referred to our attack in a nearly unanimous vote as “international terrorism.” This does not bode well for our future relations with the Russians.

    The Pakistani Parliament unanimously characterized the military action against Iraq as “an attaack on humanity and the Islamic world.” This does not bode well for our relations with other Islamic nations.

    Of the many consequences of our attack against Iraq, I believe the most serious is our undermining of the rule of law. For any use of force against Iraq, we should have had express authority from the UN Security Council, which in all of its resolutions on this matter indicated clearly that it would “remain actively seized of the matter.” By choosing not to do so, we once again demonstrated our willingness to defy international law for vague reasons of national interest.

    The bottom line is that our attack against Iraq was bullyism, and undermines international law. It did not serve the interests of the United States, nor of the world. Kofi Annan had it right when he said, “This is a sad day for the United Nations and for the world.”

  • National Cancer Institute’s Management of Radiation Studies: A Congressional Investigation

    The role of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the study assessing the public health impacts of exposure of the American people to fallout from atomic bomb tests detonated at the Nevada Test Site in the l950s was the focus of a recent congressional investigation.This investigation also assessed the NCI’s role in management of three studies of Chernobyl exposed populations. The congressional investigation found:

    I. Researchers at the NCI substantially delayed the release of the Nevada Test Site fallout report, despite data that showed that significant numbers of children across the nation received doses of radiation that were much higher and posed greater health risks than previously believed.2

    II. The NCI neither involved the public in its Nevada Test Site bomb test fallout study nor adequately responded to governmental requests for information developed through the study.3

    III. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the NCI management performed little oversight or tracking of the project. As a result, they failed to ensure that the report was completed in a timely fashion and that important issues were addressed in an open manner.4

    IV. The NCI Nevada Test Site fallout report does not meaningfully inform the American public of the impacts of the radioactive fallout from the weapons testing program.5

    V. The management failures of the I-131 study have been repeated in a NCI-led international effort to study the effects of radioiodine releases on thyroid cancer in the areas surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 6

    [As a result of these and other factors, it is uncertain whether the Chernobyl studies will be able to locate and screen those intended to participate, depriving these people the benefits of medical screening and the study, of its subjects so essential to meaningful results from these studies on the causal link between I-131 exposure and thyroid disease and cancer- Ed.].

    Conclusion:
    This congressional investigation on the NCI’s role in management of both the NTS fallout study and the three Chernobyl exposure studies raise some serious concerns with regard to openness and management by the NCI. These studies have been jeopardized by mismanagement within NCI.

    Personal Observations:
    As a person significantly exposed to environmental radiation emissions from the both NTS fallout and a Department of Energy nuclear weapons facility during the l950s, I applaud this comprehensive congressional investigation into the past management by NCI of radiation exposure studies.

    It is my sincere hope that this excellent and comprehensive analysis will result in significant restructuring of management within NCI within these contexts, and adherence to a consistent policy of openness and public involvement on the part of all federal agencies involved in assessment of public health impacts of environmental radiation exposure.

     

  • General Lee Butler on NATO’s Nuclear Policy

    Jean-Pol Poncelet
    Minister of Defense
    Belgian Ministry of Defense
    Belgium
    Via Fax: 32-2-550-29-19

    Dear Defense Minister Poncelet,

    German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s suggestion that NATO revise its nuclear doctrine is most welcome. As you discuss these matters with your colleagues it may be that my own experience in thinking through this question as the Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the U. S. armed forces during the Gulf war might be helpful. I was equally engaged in the matter of prospective nuclear response to attack by WMD during my tenure as Commander-in-Chief of U. S. Strategic Command during the period 1991 to 1994.

    As you are keenly aware, the Gulf War presented us with the very real possibility of confronting such an attack by the forces of Iraq. We went through the exercise of imagining how it might unfold and examining a variety of response options. My personal conclusion was that under any likely attack scenario, a nuclear reply by the United States and its allies was simply out of the question.

    First, from a purely military perspective, the coalition forces had the conventional capability to impose any desired war termination objectives on Iraq, to include unconditional surrender and occupation. For a variety of reasons, we elected not to go to that extreme but it was clearly an option in the face of a WMD attack.

    Second, given our conventional superiority, and the nature of the war zone, the use of nuclear weapons simply made no tactical nor strategic sense. General Powell noted in his memoirs that several weapons would have been required to mount any sort of effective campaign against military targets, an option that Secretary Cheney immediately rejected – and understandably so. Further, whatever the immediate battlefield effects, the problems of radioactive fall-out carrying over into friendly forces or surrounding countries were unfathomable.

    Third, the larger political issues were insurmountable. What could possibly justify our resort to the very means we properly abhor and condemn? How could we hold an entire society accountable for the decision of a single demented leader who holds his own country hostage? Moreover, the consequences for the nonproliferation regime would have been severe. By joining our enemy in shattering the tradition of non-use that had held for 45 years, we would have destroyed U.S. credibility as leader of the campaign against nuclear proliferation; indeed, we would likely have emboldened a whole now array of nuclear aspirants.

    In short, in a singular act we would have martyred our principal foe, alienated our friends, destroyed the coalition so painstakingly constructed, given comfort to the non-declared nuclear states and impetus to states who seek such weapons covertly.

    In the end, we tried to have it both ways, privately ruling out a nuclear reply while maintaining an ambiguous declaratory policy. The infamous and widely misre-presented letter from Secretary Baker to Baghdad was ill-advised; in fact, Iraq violated with impunity one of its cardinal prohibitions by torching Kuwait’s oil fields.

    When I left my J-5 post in Washington and took up this issue as CINCSTRAT, I found all of the foregoing cautions to be relevant across a wide spectrum of prospective targets in a variety of so-called rogue nations. I ultimately concluded that whatever the utility of a First Use policy during the Cold War, it is entirely inappropriate to the new global security environment; worse, it is counterproductive to the goal of nonproliferation and antithetical to the values of democratic societies.

    Please forgive this rather abrupt intrusion into your deliberations. Obviously, I would not take such a liberty if I did not believe it was warranted by the import and the urgency of the issue.

    Warm regards,

    Lee Butler
    General, USAF (Retired)
    11122 Williams Plaza
    Omaha, NE 68144

    The letter was sent to the following official:.

    Jean-Pol Poncelet
    Minister of Defense
    Belgian Ministry of Defense
    Belgium
    Via Fax: 32-2-550-29-19

    Art Eggleton
    Minister of Defense
    Canadian Department of National Defense
    Canada
    Via Fax: 613-995-8189

    Hans Haekkerup
    Minister of Defense
    Royal Danish Ministry of Defense
    Denmark
    Via Fax: 45-33-32-0655

    Akis Tsohatzpoulos
    Minister of Defense
    Greek Ministry of Defense
    Greece
    Via Fax: 301-644-3832

    Eduardo Serra Rexach
    Minister of Defense
    Spanish Ministry of Defense
    Spain
    Via Fax: 34-91-55-63958

    Joris Voorhoeve
    Minister of Defense
    Dutch Ministry of Defense
    The Netherlands
    Via Fax: 31-70-345-9189

    Ismet Sezgin
    Minister of Defense
    Turkish Ministry of Defense
    Turkey
    Via Fax: 90-312-418-3384

    Jose Veiga Simao
    Minister of Defense
    Portugese Ministry of Defense
    Portugal
    Via Fax: 351-1-301-95-55

    Beniamino Andreatta
    Minister of Defense
    Italian Ministry of Defense
    Italy
    Via Fax: 39-06-488-5756

    Rudolf Scharping
    Minister of Defense
    German Ministry of Defense
    Germany
    Via Fax: 49-228-12-5255

    Dag Jostein Fjaevoll
    Minister of Defense
    Norwegian Ministry of Defense
    Norway
    Via Fax: 47-23-09-2323

    George Roberston
    Minster of Defence
    UK Ministry of Defence
    United Kingdom
    Via Fax: 44-171-218-7140

    Alain Richard
    Minister of Defense
    French Ministry of Defense
    France
    Via Fax: 33-1-47-05-40-91
    Hallder Asgrimsson
    Minister of Foreign Affairs
    Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs
    Iceland
    Via Fax: 354-562-2373

    Alex Bodry
    Foreign Minister
    Ministere de la Force Publique
    Luxembourg
    Via Fax: 352-46-26-82