Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

  • Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter

    Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter

    For most Americans, nuclear weapons are a distant concern, and deciding what to do about them is a low priority. As a culture, we are relatively comfortable possessing nuclear weapons, believing that they are, on balance, a good security hedge in a dangerous world. We leave it to our leaders to determine what should be done with these weapons. But our leaders may be moving in exactly the wrong direction.

    Seymour Hersh reported in the April 17, 2006 New Yorker magazine that the US government is developing plans for the possible preemptive use of nuclear weapons against Iranian nuclear facilities. Although George Bush dismissed such reports as “wild speculation,” he did not deny them. The reports should awaken the American people to some relevant issues. First, our political and military leaders are considering the preemptive first-use of nuclear weapons, an act that would undoubtedly constitute aggressive war and a crime against humanity. Second, these leaders hold open the possibility of using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapons state, despite official pledges not to do so. Third, the decision about whether or not to use nuclear weapons preemptively rests in the hands of a single individual, the president.

    The framers of our Constitution could not have imagined the circumstances of the Nuclear Age, in which the possibility exists of one leader triggering a nuclear holocaust, yet they wisely stipulated that the consent of Congress, the political arm of the people, would be necessary to initiate any war.

    We need an open and vigorous discussion in every village, town and city about the anti-democratic and anti-Constitutional tendencies inherent in the presidential control of nuclear weapons. Without such discussion, we relegate the fate of the country and the world to the whims of a single individual.

    In addition, an equally fundamental question must be confronted – have nuclear weapons increased or decreased our security as a nation? In today’s world, nuclear weapons are a far more powerful tool in the hands of a weak actor than in the hands of a powerful state. Thus, Pakistan can deter India and China can deter the US and Russia. A powerful state, such as the US, has everything to lose and very little to gain from the possession of nuclear weapons. This concern isn’t being effectively addressed in the US.

    The more the US relies on nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that other countries will do so as well. The most reasonable course for the US to take is to provide leadership to bring the world back from the nuclear precipice by working to achieve global nuclear disarmament.

    An argument can be made that a small number of nuclear weapons are needed for deterrence until they are all eliminated. But any threat or use of nuclear weapons for purposes other than minimum deterrence will certainly encourage other states to seek their own nuclear arsenals, if only to prevent being bullied by nuclear weapons states. This is the position that North Korea and Iran find themselves in today.

    Current US nuclear policy favors allies, such as Israel and India, and threatens perceived enemies, such as Iran and North Korea. We are already engaged in an aggressive, illegal, protracted and costly war against Iraq, initiated on the false basis that it had a nuclear weapons program. Iran, because of its uranium enrichment, is currently within US gun sights.

    There is no conceivable US use of nuclear weapons, with their powerful and unpredictable consequences, that would not turn the US into a pariah state. The US engenders animosity by pushing beyond the limits imposed by minimum deterrence and failing to take seriously its disarmament obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also creates a climate in which other states may seek to develop nuclear arsenals and in which these weapons may end up in the hands of terrorists. This should be a major concern for all Americans because it could lead to US cities being the targets of nuclear weapons used by extremist groups.

    Polls show that Americans, like most other people in the world, favor nuclear disarmament. However, as a nation, we neither press for it nor question the nuclear policies of our government. But we refrain from such actions at our peril, for a bad decision involving nuclear weapons could destroy us. Inattention and apathy leave the weapons and the decision to use them beyond our reach.

    Thus, we continue with nuclear business as usual, drifting toward the catastrophic day when our policies will lead either to nuclear weapons again being used by us or, as likely, against us by extremist organizations that cannot be deterred by threat of retaliation. We are long past time to bring our nuclear policies back onto the public agenda and open them to thoughtful public discourse.

     

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

  • Remembering Camilla

    We first met you when you were ninety
    or thereabouts, slender, verging on frail.

    In your softness there was a core of firmness
    like a full wind within a sail.

    You chose to live in harmony with what you
    knew was true.

    We were enchanted by your sweetness,
    though you surely meant only to be you.

    You brought us the lesson of the hungry wolves
    that live within us like fighting brothers.

    We can choose to feed our avarice, or we can choose
    compassion to meet the needs of others.

    The seasons turn and life, with all its trials,
    moves on far too fast.

    The brightness of the flower, rich and vibrant now,
    all too soon is past.

    Too soon you slipped away from life,
    leaving us behind

    with memories of your gentle presence,
    warm and kind.

  • On Seeing Chick Streetman’s Play: Touch the Names

    I didn’t think that I would cry, or even That I could, but the words of mothers,

    Fathers, friends and lovers penetrated deep.

    Each name on that polished black granite Wall Is still connected to our lives.

    The saddest messages of all were those From the children that the dead men

    Never knew.

    I sat there thinking about those who lied To send these young men off to face their deaths.

    I thought about the politicians who are doing It again, as though they’d learned nothing,

    Less than nothing, from the Wall.

    Different places, Vietnam and now Iraq, But the outcomes are the same.

    Some died in jungles, some in arid deserts, Some from roadside bombs.

    In the end, what’s left are memories and names, And some slim hope we shall not fail

    Our children yet again.

  • Your Role in Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    Your Role in Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    Future historians, looking back at our time, may be perplexed at humanity’s tepid collective response to nuclear weapons. Of course, if there are future historians, it will be a positive sign, for it will mean that humanity has survived the nuclear threat that has confronted the world since the onset of the Nuclear Age in the mid-twentieth century.

    Nuclear weapons, a human invention, make possible the end of civilization and the human species, along with most other life on the planet. In light of this threat, humanity has done very little to safeguard its future. Why, future historians may ask, has humankind been so slow and ineffective in its response to a threat of this magnitude? By examining this question now, we may encourage greater awareness of the threat and creative initiatives for overcoming the most serious dangers of the Nuclear Age.

    While nuclear weapons were created secretly in the US nuclear weapons program, the Manhattan Project, since then the threat has not been hidden, but rather quite open. In his first speech to the public after the use of the atomic bomb to destroy Hiroshima, US president Harry Truman thanked God that the bomb had come to America rather than to its enemies and prayed for divine guidance in its use. Since the use of the bomb and the ending of the Second World War appeared to have a causal relationship, many celebrated the advent and use of nuclear weapons.

    Others, grasping the destructive power and potential of nuclear weapons, after hearing of Hiroshima, immediately warned humanity of the peril it now faced. Albert Camus, the great French writer and existentialist, wrote in Resistance: “Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”

    Within four years of the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States, the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons. In less than a decade from the destruction of Hiroshima, both the US and USSR went from fission bombs to fusion bombs, increasing the power of nuclear weapons a thousand-fold. Many scientists warned against the leap to thermonuclear weapons, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific leader of the Manhattan Project, but their warnings went unheeded.

    A seminal warning of scientists, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, was issued in 1955. It concluded: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    More than 50 years later, we live in a world of nuclear double standards, with one set of rules for the nuclear weapons states and another set of rules for the rest of the world. With the Bush doctrine of preventive war demonstrated against Iraq, it is little wonder that other countries named by him as part of the “Axis of Evil,” North Korea and Iran, would be interested in acquiring nuclear arms. In the case of these countries, the likelihood is that they seek nuclear weapons to deter a pre-emptive US attack against them, and would themselves be deterred from using their weapons by threat of retaliation.

    The longer states cling to nuclear deterrence for their security and the more states that acquire nuclear weapons, though, the more likely it is that nuclear weapons or the materials to make them will end up in the hands of terrorist organizations. Such organizations will not be subject to deterrence because they will not be locatable to retaliate against. This means that nuclear weapons will have more value and will be more likely to be used in the hands of terrorists than in the hands of states. This is the paradox of nuclear weapons: In addition to being immoral and illegal, they are more likely to undermine than enhance the security of powerful states.

    Most people, including the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, do not appear to understand this, and thus they cling tenaciously to these weapons that may prove to be the source of their own destruction. National leaders of the nuclear weapons states justify these weapons in terms of deterrence, but without being able to articulate who it is that they are deterring. In the end, they rationalize the weapons as necessary in the event that conditions were to change in the future. They fail to grasp that the only safe number of nuclear weapons in the world is zero. And they seem to believe that these weapons enhance their prestige in the world, because they are weapons possessed by powerful and once-powerful nations, including all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

    The only way in which this situation may change is by education and advocacy within the nuclear weapons states. The United States, as the strongest nuclear power and as the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, has a special responsibility to lead the way toward a world free of nuclear weapons, but its leadership shows little inclination to do so. The Bush administration has shown contempt for international treaties to control and reduce nuclear arms and to prevent their proliferation. Among these treaties are the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which it has abrogated; the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which it refuses to submit to the Senate for ratification; and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament and is at the heart of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

    The US is following a breathtakingly hypocritical path with regard to nuclear weapons. It tells other nations not to develop these weapons, but seeks new designs for its own nuclear arsenal to make its weapons more reliable and serve specific functions, such as “bunker-busting.” It threatens sanctions against Iran for its uranium enrichment program, while promoting a nuclear deal with India, a known nuclear proliferator, which would provide India with US nuclear technology and allow India to have international safeguards on only some of its nuclear reactors and thereby increase the size of its nuclear arsenal even more rapidly than it is already doing. It threatens North Korea for developing nuclear weapons, but turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

    Our dilemma today is that there appears to be no way for the vast majority of humanity, which favor a world free of nuclear weapons, to bring pressure to bear on the leadership of the US and other nuclear weapons states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. Nuclear weapons are cowardly because they kill indiscriminately and from a vast distance, but it is equally true that a significant percentage of humanity lacks the will and courage to confront the leaders of the nuclear weapons states about abolition of these weapons.

    The words “nuclear weapons” are flat and dull, and do not convey the horror that is the weapons themselves. People may not act unless they can empathize with the victims and potential victims of these weapons. Perhaps we have become flat and dull people, living only within the bubble of nationalism and losing touch with our humanity. To achieve change, more and more people are going to have to wake up to the great threats of the Nuclear Age and make the abolition of nuclear weapons a high priority in their lives.

    Once individuals do wake up, there is much they can do to educate themselves about nuclear weapons issues. A starting point is the website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, www.wagingpeace.org. At that website, one can find extensive background information on nuclear weapons issues; sign up for a free monthly e-newsletter, The Sunflower, which provides regular updates on key nuclear issues; and join the Turn the Tide Campaign to receive regular action alerts to change US nuclear policy. To become involved internationally, visit the website of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (www.abolition2000.org) and the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Eliminate Nuclear weapons by the year 2020 (www.mayorsforpeace.org).

    Once you become educated on these issues, you can start spreading the word, changing from a passive member of a polity to an active force for peace. To abolish nuclear weapons, so essential for our common future, will require more from all of us and far less tolerance of political leaders who think that “business as usual” will get us through the Nuclear Age unscathed. A commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons is a commitment to all life, including a future not yet born. It is nothing less than a solemn responsibility that all living humans share to pass the world on intact to future generations. We must not shirk that responsibility.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • India, Iran, and US Nuclear Hypocrisy

    India, Iran, and US Nuclear Hypocrisy

    The Bush administration has approached nuclear non-proliferation with Iran and India by two very different measures. Iran, a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has been threatened with sanctions, if not actual violence, for its pursuit of uranium enrichment, although there is no clear evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. India, on the other hand, has now been offered US nuclear technology, although India is not a party to the NPT, is known to have tested nuclear weapons and is thought to possess a nuclear weapons arsenal of 60 to 100 weapons.

     

    The Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entered into force in 1970, is at the heart of worldwide nuclear non-proliferation efforts. The US was one of the original signers of the treaty, and was one of the major supporters of its indefinite extension in 1995. The principal goal of the treaty is to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation by assuring that nuclear weapons and the materials and technology to make them are not transferred by the nuclear weapons states to other states.

     

    The five nuclear weapons states parties to the treaty (US, Russia, UK, France and China) all made this pledge. They also pledged “good faith” negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. The 183 non-nuclear weapons states that are parties to the treaty pledged not to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons and the materials and technology to make them.

     

    A problem arises with the treaty because it also promotes peaceful nuclear technology – which is inherently dual-purpose, capable of being used for peaceful or warlike purposes – as an “inalienable right” for all nations. Iran claims to be exercising this right, arguing that it is pursuing uranium enrichment for nuclear power generation and not for weapons purposes. The Bush administration disputes this claim, and insists Iran must stop enriching uranium altogether, a policy inconsistent with its proposed deal with India, a country that has already developed nuclear weapons.

     

    India never became a party to the NPT, and conducted its first nuclear test in 1974, which it claimed was for peaceful purposes. India did not test again until 1998, when it conducted a series of nuclear tests and announced to the world that it had become a nuclear weapons state. Pakistan followed India with nuclear tests of its own. While India and Pakistan were not restricted by the NPT because they had never joined the treaty, they were initially sanctioned by the US and other states for going nuclear. But now this has changed. Mr. Bush wants to provide nuclear technology to India in exchange for India allowing international safeguards at 14 of its 22 existing nuclear power reactors by the year 2014. This makes little sense, as it would leave eight of India’s reactors without safeguards, including those in its fast breeder program, which would generate nuclear materials that could be used in weapons programs.

     

    The Bush administration seeks to reward India for non-cooperation with the treaty and for developing a nuclear weapons arsenal, while Iran is threatened with punishment for being part of the treaty and seeking to exercise its rights under the treaty. The implications of the hypocritical US approach to proliferation are to leave countries questioning whether their participation in the NPT is worthwhile. This approach is likely to lead to a major breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the international regime that supports it.

     

    To prevent such a breakdown, a number of important steps should be taken, which will require US leadership. First, there should be a worldwide moratorium on uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, subject to international inspections and verification. This means a moratorium by all countries, including the US and other nuclear weapons states.

     

    Second, all current stocks of weapons-usable uranium and plutonium in all countries should be placed under strict international controls.

     

    Third, there should be no “nuclear deal” with India until it agrees to give up its nuclear weapons program and dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Congress should turn Bush down flat on this poorly conceived and opportunistic deal.

     

    Fourth, the US should give up its plans to develop new nuclear weapons such as the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which signal to the rest of the world that the US intends to keep its nuclear arsenal indefinitely.

     

    Fifth, the Non-Proliferation Treaty should be replaced by two new treaties: a Treaty to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, which sets forth a workable plan for the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons under strict international controls; and an International Sustainable Energy Agency that develops and promotes sustainable energy sources (such as solar, wind, tidal and geothermal) that can replace both fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

    The alternative to this ambitious agenda, or one similar to it, is a world in nuclear chaos, in which extremist terrorist organizations may be the greatest beneficiaries. This is the direction in which current US nuclear policy, with its flagrant disregard for international law, is leading us. The double standards in US dealings with Iran and India are the latest evidence of this misguided policy.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and a leader in the global movement to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Turning Away from the Nuclear Abyss

    Turning Away from the Nuclear Abyss

    “Is elimination of nuclear weapons, so naïve, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not.”

    • Robert S. McNamara, former US Secretary of Defense

    “I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

    ”If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.”

    • Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Lecture

    The world is following a sure and steady path toward the nuclear abyss. It is being led in this direction not so much by small rogue states as by the most powerful of all states, the United States of America. US nuclear policies are placing the world on a collision course with disaster. The US seeks to deter and inhibit states deemed to be unfriendly to US interests from developing nuclear arsenals, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the nuclear programs of states deemed to be friendly to US interests. Moreover, US policies assume an unquestioned right for the US and other established nuclear weapons states to maintain this status. Such continued and blatant double standards cannot hold.

    The US initiated a war against Iraq on the false premise that it had programs to create nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Further, the US has developed contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya.(1) At the same time the US protects Israel’s nuclear program from international censure, and seeks to change US non-proliferation laws in order to provide nuclear materials and technology to India and Pakistan, two countries that developed nuclear weapons outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

    The only real hope to avoid lurching into the nuclear abyss is that people throughout the world, and particularly those in the US, will demand that these weapons be abolished before they abolish us. It is a daunting task, but one that is necessary if we are to save civilization and life on earth. In light of the modest gains that have been achieved to date in relation to the enormity of the challenge presented by nuclear weapons, the task is all the more essential.

    Deterrence Is a Failed Strategy

    For most of the Nuclear Age, the security of powerful nations has rested upon a theoretical construct known as deterrence. Deterrence theory posits that nuclear attacks can be prevented by the threat of nuclear retaliation. For the most powerful nations, the theory has spawned threats of massive nuclear retaliation, sufficient to destroy not only the attacking nation, but likely civilization and much if not all life on Earth.

    One of the great fallacies of strategic thinking in the Nuclear Age is that deterrence theory is based upon rationality. The theory holds that a rational actor will not attack an enemy that could massively retaliate against one’s own country. But what would happen if there were irrational actors in the system? What would happen, for example, if the leader of a small nation in possession of nuclear weapons believed irrationally that he could attack a more powerful country with impunity? What would happen if a leader was suicidal and didn’t care about the prospects of retaliation? In such cases, deterrence would fail and the nuclear threshold would again be crossed with devastating consequences that cannot be fully foreseeable.

    In addition to being a theory based upon only rational actors, deterrence theory requires that it must be physically possible to retaliate against an attacker and that a potential attacker must understand this. Thus, deterrence theory has no validity against a non-state terrorist organization such as al Qaeda. Should such an organization obtain nuclear weapons, deterrence would be of no avail. The only security against a terrorist nuclear attack is prevention – preventing nuclear weapons or the materials to make them from falling into the hands of terrorists. There is no tolerance for error.

    In the case of non-state extremism, security cannot rest upon deterrence. This means that a powerful country does not increase its security by adding to the quality or quantity of its nuclear arsenal. Rather, the opposite is the case. The fewer nuclear weapons there are in the world, the less possibility there would be for one or more of these weapons to fall into the hands of an extremist organization. The same is true of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

    Nuclear Weapons and Power

    The advent of nuclear weapons represented a enormous leap in the power of weaponry. The development of these weapons by elite scientists during World War II successfully tapped the potentially vast power inherent in Einstein’s theory, E = mc2, for destructive purposes. While humans have always devised destructive weapons, nuclear weapons moved the bar of destructiveness to new heights. With nuclear weapons, a single weapon could destroy a city, as demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who created or obtained these weapons seemed to possess a unique and special power of death over life. In the aftermath of World War II, this power was possessed at first only by the United States, but over the next decades other countries would join the nuclear club: the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and, most recently, North Korea.

    But the power conferred by nuclear weapons is ghostly and illusory, for it cannot be used without causing death and destruction on such a massive scale that the attacker would be branded by all the world as cowardly and inhuman. In the case of the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US justified its attacks both to its own people and to the world as necessary to end a long and brutal war in which it had been the victim of an unprovoked attack. Since then, nuclear weapons have dramatically increased in power, but the ability to use the weapons has been curtailed by psychological constraints against such massive killing. This has been true even when a nuclear-armed country is losing a war, as was the case with the US in Vietnam or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

    Nuclear weapons are more useful to relatively weak actors than to those who are already powerful in other ways. For example, they may give North Korea the ability to deter the United States, and Pakistan the ability to deter India. Beyond the possibility of deterrence, nuclear weapons in the hands of an extremist organization would provide the potential to bring even the most powerful countries to their knees by destroying their cities.

    The Logic of Self-Interest

    A further negative consequence of reliance upon nuclear weapons is that a nuclear weapons state must not only be concerned with safeguarding its own nuclear arsenal and weapons grade nuclear materials, but must also be concerned with the capacity of all other nuclear weapons states to protect their arsenals and nuclear materials. It must be assumed that extremist groups would seek to prey upon the weakest links among the states in possession of nuclear weapons.

    It is in the self-interest of the most powerful states to lead the way to nuclear disarmament. The logic for this position can be set forth as follows:

    1. Large nuclear arsenals are like dinosaurs in having little adaptability to changing strategic circumstances.
    2. The more powerful the nation in conventional terms, the less utility for security is provided by a nuclear arsenal.
    3. Weaker countries, particularly those threatened by more powerful adversaries, have the greatest incentive to develop nuclear arsenals for purposes of deterring a nuclear armed adversary.
    4. The more states that develop nuclear arsenals, the greater the danger will be that these weapons or the materials to make them will fall into the hands of non-state extremists.
    5. Non-state extremists will not hesitate to use these weapons against far more powerful states without fear of retaliation.
    6. It is strongly in the security interests of powerful states to minimize the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremist groups.
    7. The nuclear policies of the most powerful nuclear weapons states must have zero tolerance for nuclear weapons or materials from any state falling into the hands of extremist groups.
    8. Preventing extremist groups from obtaining nuclear weapons can only be achieved by dramatically reducing the number of nuclear warheads in the world and bringing the remaining weapons and materials to make them under effective international control.
    9. To achieve this will require a high degree of international cooperation with leadership from the principal nuclear weapons states.
    10. Only the United States, as the world’s most militarily powerful state, can effectively initiate such cooperative action, and it is strongly in US security interests to do so.

    A Failure to Heed Warnings

    From the very beginning of the Nuclear Age, prophets have warned of the dangers to humanity. The warnings have been passionate and numerous. They have come from individuals in all walks of life – scientists, physicians, literary figures, philosophers and generals. Albert Einstein warned, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    But such warnings seem to have fallen on deaf ears among our political leaders. Despite the end of the Cold War, reliance on nuclear weapons for the security of powerful nations has not diminished. The United States appears intent upon developing a Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), a move that will ensure not only the reliability but the continuation of the US nuclear arsenal for many decades into the future. In doing so, we are sending a message to other nuclear and potential nuclear weapons states that these weapons are useful. With the US abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), Russia has improved the capabilities of its missile delivery system to assure that its nuclear-armed missiles would not be intercepted by the US missile defense system. China has responded by modernizing and expanding its nuclear arsenal.

    In the sixty years of the Nuclear Age, there has been no fundamental shift in thinking among those in possession of nuclear weapons. The weapons are deemed necessary to prevent others from initiating a nuclear attack, even in post-Cold War circumstances in which nuclear weapons states do not view each other as enemies, with the exception of India and Pakistan. Rather than seize the opportunity to dramatically reduce and dismantle their nuclear arsenals, the principal nuclear weapons states seek to assure the reliability of the weapons and their delivery systems. In doing so, they fail to close the door on nuclear proliferation to other states and extremist organizations. They leave open the possibility of future nuclear attacks.

    A Unique Responsibility

    On the fifth anniversary of the United Nations Millennium Summit, Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, issued a report, “In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all.” In this report, the Secretary-General stated, “…the unique status of nuclear-weapon States also entails a unique responsibility, and they must do more, including but not limited to further reductions in their arsenals of non-strategic nuclear weapons and pursuing arms control agreements that entail not just dismantlement but irreversibility. They should also reaffirm their commitment to negative security assurances. Swift negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty is essential. The moratorium on nuclear test explosions must also be upheld until we can achieve the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.”(2) The Secretary-General urged the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to endorse these measures at the 2005 NPT Review Conference, but unfortunately the nuclear weapons states, led by the United States, exercised their power in such a way as to assure that the Review Conference ended without agreement and in failure.

    The “unique responsibility” of the nuclear weapons states falls to them both because of their power and because of their obligations. The Non-Proliferation Treaty itself lays out the basic responsibility of the nuclear weapons states: “…to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament….”(3) Following the entry into force of the NPT in 1970, the US and USSR continued to improve their nuclear arsenals for the next three decades. But at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, they agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament, including an “unequivocal undertaking…to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….”(4) This promise, like others made over the years, proved to be little more than words, as the US worked against progress on nuclear disarmament in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament and at the 2005 NPT Review Conference.

    The ICJ Opinion

    In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The Court found that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.”(5) The Court went on to indicate its inability to determine the law in the particular instance when the survival of a state was at stake. It found that “in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”(6) It is important to note that the Court was not saying that under such circumstances the threat or use would be lawful, but only that it could not make that determination.

    The Court then took the unusual step of going further than asked and unanimously concluding, “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”(7) The Court left no doubt that the nuclear disarmament commitment set forth in Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was a legal commitment binding upon the nuclear weapons states.

    Barriers along the Path

    There have been legal and moral barriers, as well as those of practicality and security, along the twisted path leading to the nuclear abyss. But despite promises, obligations and apocalyptic warnings, the nuclear weapons states continue to move surely and steadily down this deadly path. Legal, moral and practical barriers have not been sufficient to move the leaders of nuclear weapons states to step away from this path. It is perhaps worth contemplating what might lead to a change in direction.

    Changing Direction

    Determining what needs to be done is not the difficult part of the task. Many important proposals have been put forward for changing directions and moving away from the nuclear abyss. One example of these was the seven-step proposal by Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the 2005 Nobel Peace Laureate. He called for the international community to take the following seven steps:

    1. A five-year hold on additional facilities for uranium enrichment and plutonium separation;
    2. Speeding up existing efforts to modify the research reactors worldwide operating with highly enriched uranium and converting them to use low-enriched uranium, not suitable for making bombs.
    3. Raising the bar for inspection standards to verify compliance with Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations.
    4. Calling upon the UN Security Council to act swiftly and decisively in the case of any country withdrawing from the NPT.
    5. Urging states to pursue and prosecute any illicit trading in nuclear material and technology.
    6. Calling upon the five nuclear weapon states that are parties to the NPT to accelerate implementation of their “unequivocal commitment” to nuclear disarmament.
    7. Acknowledging the volatility of longstanding tensions that give rise to proliferation, in regions such as the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, and take action to resolve existing security problems and, where needed, provide security assurances.(8)

    ElBaradei emphasized that all steps required a concession from someone, and that none would work in isolation. As ElBaradei stresses, concessions must come from all, including the nuclear weapons states, which must change their policies. At present, the nuclear weapons states seek to prevent proliferation, but are failing to fulfill their disarmament obligations. They seem content to live indefinitely in a world of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” This is a short-sighted perspective, one that is not sustainable. Until this is recognized by the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, there is not much hope to achieve a balanced approach to preventing nuclear proliferation and achieving nuclear disarmament.

    The Need for Leadership

    If the world is going to move in a new direction, away from the nuclear abyss, certain qualities of leadership will be needed. These include:

    Imagination: the ability to imagine the consequences of remaining on the path we are on.

    Respect for human dignity: the recognition that nuclear weapons and human dignity are incompatible.

    Vision: the ability to see another way forward, a world in which security can be obtained without reliance on nuclear weapons.

    Courage: the willingness to challenge the business-as-usual ingrained attitudes of the defense establishment and its so-called security experts.

    One notable leader of a nuclear weapons state, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to office with these qualities and proposed in the mid-1980s that nuclear weapons be abolished by the year 2000. Unfortunately, he was not in a position to act alone, but needed the support of the United States. He came close to achieving this when he met with US President Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavic Summit in 1986. The two leaders talked seriously about eliminating all nuclear weapons, but their agreement faltered on the issue of missile defenses, which Reagan was committed to implementing and Gorbachev feared.

    We cannot count on another political leader to emerge with these qualities. Rather than waiting for such a leader to come along and save humanity, ordinary people must become leaders and create the necessary political will that leaders of nuclear weapons states will have no choice but to act nobly and in the interests of all humanity. Awakening the people of the world to accept this responsibility is the work of civil society organizations committed to these issues. It is certainly the greatest challenge of our time.

    1. Excerpts from the Nuclear Posture Review, submitted to the Congress on 31 December 2001, can be found at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm.
    2. In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all, Report of the Secretary-General, United Nations General Assembly, A/59/2005, 21 March 2005, p. 28.
    3. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, entered into force March 5, 1970.
    4. Final Document Issued by 2000 NPT Review Conference, 20 May 2000. Federation of American Scientists website: http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/npt/docs/finaldoc.htm.
    5. Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, United Nations General Assembly, A/51/218, 15 October 1996, p. 36.
    6. Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, United Nations General Assembly, A/51/218, 15 October 1996, p. 37.
    7. Ibid.
    8. ElBaradei, Mohamed. “Seven Steps to Raise World Security,” Financial Times, 2 February 2005.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of many studies of peace in the Nuclear Age, and a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Leader or Follower? Powell Chose the Latter

    Leader or Follower? Powell Chose the Latter

    Colin Powell is coming to Santa Barbara to give a talk on “Leadership: Taking Charge.” His presence in the community and his topic provide an opportunity to consider what it means to be a leader.

    In the military model, with which Mr. Powell is most familiar, leaders give orders and followers obey. It is a hierarchical structure in which one must be an obedient follower as well as an order giver or relayer of orders from above. In this model, leadership is based principally upon the authority of one’s role. Generals give orders to colonels; colonels to majors; and so on. In the hierarchical chain of command, the commander-in-chief is at the top of the ladder, and the young recruits at the bottom of the ladder. The private who efficiently follows orders will move up the ladder. Military leadership places a premium on obedience and loyalty: doing what one is told to do. Armies run on obedience to orders.

    In the US military, as with most militaries, soldiers are, however, also subject to the law. They are informed in military handbooks that they have a duty to refuse to obey illegal orders. Examples of such orders might be to kill prisoners of war, commit torture or to bomb civilian populations. What is a soldier to do when confronted with such illegal orders? Obey or disobey? Remain silent and carry out the order, or speak out and inform the world of the illegal orders?

    A tension is created between the hierarchical following of orders and the duty to break the chain of command when it comes to illegal orders. It is easier to build a career within the military by going along and not challenging orders from above. To speak out and challenge orders, on any grounds, runs the risk of ending one’s career within a hierarchical system. One cannot be both a “good soldier” who follows orders, regardless of their legality, and also one who does his duty to refuse illegal orders.

    Colin Powell has always been a good soldier. He impressed his superiors in the military and in the upper reaches of government sufficiently to become the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was then appointed Secretary of State by George W. Bush. He was also well regarded by the public as a man who was both reasonable and responsible. When Mr. Bush initially took his case for war against Iraq to the United Nations, the Security Council balked at giving Mr. Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq, and chose instead to “remain seized” of the matter. Despite the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq was engaged in programs developing weapons of mass destruction, the United Nations inspectors were not finding such weapons or related programs on the ground in Iraq.

    To Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State who was widely regarded by the general public as the most trustworthy member of Bush’s cabinet, fell the task of making the case for war against Iraq at the UN Security Council. On February 6, 2003, Powell went before the Security Council and presented the members with false and misleading evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Relying upon the clearly faulty intelligence about aluminum tubing for a uranium enrichment program, Powell told the Council, for example, “We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program. On the contrary, we have more than a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.”

    There are times when being a leader means doing what is right, regardless of the consequences. Powell could, perhaps, have stopped a needless and illegal war. He chose, instead, to use his goodwill as a messenger presenting the Bush administration’s case for war to the United Nations Security Council and, at the same time, to the American people. He chose obedience to authority and loyalty to his “chain of command” over respect for truth, human life and international law.

    In the end, Powell must carry a heavy weight on his shoulders, for he might well have prevented the invasion of Iraq by taking the bold and courageous step of resigning his office. He could have then told the truth to the American people, rather than making a false case for war, even if it meant simply reflecting the ambiguity and doubts of the intelligence on which he drew. Ironically, Powell’s assertions at the UN met with strong rebuttals by UN inspectors, but his prestige and the public’s confidence in him seemed to reassure the American people and the Congress.

    The American people should be highly skeptical of General Powell. He had a critical moment to be a leader and he chose instead to be a follower. Rather than leadership for peace, he joined in promoting misrepresentations that led the United States into a war that has now resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Sadly, Mr. Powell has proven that he is not a man to look to for leadership, nor one to pontificate about it. He owes the country an apology, which would require self-reflection and courage, two other traits of a good leader.

    Mr. Powell is now free from the constraints of military hierarchy and enjoys the rights and responsibilities associated with being a US citizen. Even if he had been in some way convinced of the truthfulness of his statements about Iraq at the time they were made, he must by now surely have serious doubts about their veracity. With these doubts arises a solemn responsibility (and opportunity) to express them publicly, thereby breaking his silent assent to the continuing tragedy of the Iraq war and reasserting his claim to leadership.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of many studies of peace in the Nuclear Age, and has been a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons. This article was published in the Santa Barbara News-Press on February 12, 2006.

  • Iran, International Law, and Nuclear Disarmament

    Iran, International Law, and Nuclear Disarmament

    Iran has been accused of secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Although Iranian leaders claim to be enriching uranium only for peaceful nuclear energy purposes, these claims have been treated with derision by the West. Despite the fact that most experts believe that Iran is still years away from developing a nuclear weapon, there are media reports suggesting that Israel and the US are making plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, should Iran not give up its uranium enrichment program. Given this possible military scenario, and the recent vote by the Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council, what is Iran likely to do?

    First, Iran will continue to assert its right under Article IV the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue a peaceful nuclear energy program. Article IV refers to the “inalienable right” of states to nuclear energy. The parties to the treaty are promised assistance from more technologically advanced countries in pursuing this right. While this may be considered an untenable stipulation in the treaty, it is, nonetheless, the way the law stands. In accord with the treaty, in exchange for pursuing this right, Iran must agree to inspections of its nuclear facilities to assure that there has been no diversion of nuclear materials for making weapons. In fairness, if this aspect of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is to be altered, it must be done for all states, not singling out Iran for special punitive treatment. Currently, uranium enrichment plants are operating in China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Netherlands, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. Of these, Germany and Japan are non-nuclear weapons states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and thus have a similar relationship to the treaty as does Iran.

    Second, Iran will assert that under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States and the other nuclear weapons states have not fulfilled their obligations for “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament. It will point to the 1996 International Court of Justice advisory opinion that states: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” And it will point out the blatant refusal by the nuclear weapons states to carry out their Article VI commitments, including the plans by the United States to develop the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a new type of nuclear warhead to extend the viability of the US nuclear arsenal.

    Third, Iran will question the unequal treatment that it is receiving as compared to another Middle Eastern country, Israel, which is thought to possess some 200 nuclear weapons. Iran will note that there is not only a double standard between nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” but also a double standard between Israel and other countries in the Middle East. It will rightly point out that there have long been calls for a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone, including at the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference, which have been largely ignored by Israel and the Western countries.

    Article X of the Non-Proliferation Treaty allows for a party to withdraw after giving three months notice if it decides that “the supreme interests of its country” are being jeopardized by the treaty. With threats of an attack against Iran if it does not cease its uranium enrichment, and the example of Israel developing a nuclear arsenal outside the NPT, it would not be unreasonable for Iran’s leaders to conclude that Iranian interests were better served by withdrawing from the treaty. Should they reach this conclusion, they may also point to the precedent of the Bush administration’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 on grounds that US national interests were being jeopardized by that treaty.

    The Non-Proliferation Treaty is the most widely adhered to treaty in the area of arms control and disarmament. Only four countries are not parties to this treaty – India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea – and all have developed nuclear arsenals.

    To effectively preclude Iran from leaving the treaty and possibly developing a nuclear arsenal, and avoid risking the significant dangers involved in preventive military strikes, larger problems must be solved. First, the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime must be made universal, applicable to all states, bringing in the four states currently outside the treaty. Second, the nuclear weapons states, both within the treaty and those currently outside of it, must begin the good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament required by the treaty. These negotiations must be aimed at a Nuclear Weapons Convention that provides for the phased and internationally verifiable elimination of all nuclear weapons from all national arsenals. Third, all enrichment of uranium and reprocessing of plutonium, fissile materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons, must be brought under strict and effective international control.

    If this sounds utopian, it is surely no more so than believing that the current set of double standards, those that allow some states to continue to possess nuclear weapons while seeking to prevent others from having them, will be maintainable indefinitely. It is also certainly no more utopian than believing that preventive war, such as that waged illegally against Iraq, is a reasonable answer to every suspicion of nuclear weapons proliferation.

    The only safe number of nuclear weapons in the world is zero. The only way to reach this number is for the nuclear weapons states to become serious about the “unequivocal undertaking” to eliminate their nuclear arsenals that they made at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Until they do so, the prospects are high of countries like Iran following North Korea’s example of withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursuing nuclear weapons programs.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of many studies of peace in the Nuclear Age, including Nuclear Weapons and the World Court.

  • Supplemental Study Guide: Hold Hope, Wage Peace

    The supplemental study guide for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s book Hold Hope, Wage Peace is available as a PDF download at this link.

  • Why Nations Go Nuclear

    Understanding the reasons why a country chooses to go nuclear are complex, variable and speculative, but I would offer as a hypothesis four principal, though often overlapping factors: fear, security, enhancing the country’s bully potential or countering another country’s bully potential, and prestige. North Korea seems to be pioneering a fifth reason: to use the weapons as a bargaining chip to gain security guarantees and financial concessions. Each country that chooses to go nuclear will certainly reflect some or all of these reasons in their decision, although they may be in different combinations or proportions for different states. The reasons that the current nuclear weapons states went nuclear provide insights into these dynamics.

    Existing Nuclear Weapons States

    The first country to develop nuclear weapons was the United States, initiating the world’s first nuclear weapons program in anticipation of US involvement in World War II. President Franklin Roosevelt had been warned by Albert Einstein that a possibility existed for the Germans to develop nuclear weapons. Roosevelt and his advisors were motivated by fear that the German scientists would succeed in their quest for nuclear weapons, and that US nuclear weapons would be necessary to assure the security of the United States and the Allied powers by deterring the Germans from using theirs with impunity.

    Germany never succeeded in developing nuclear weapons and was defeated two months prior to the testing of the first US nuclear weapon. The United States quickly found another use for its nuclear arms, using the bombs against two cities in a nearly defeated Japan. Evidence suggests that this militarily questionable act was also intended to keep the Soviets from playing a larger role in the defeat and occupation of Japan and generally to send a warning message to the Soviet Union. Thus, while fear and security may have been the initial impetus for the US developing nuclear weapons, their use was subsequently overtly justified as saving US and Allied lives and bringing the war in the Pacific to a faster conclusion. At the same time, the US was flexing its muscles before the world, and demonstrating the bully potential of these weapons.

    The next country to develop nuclear weapons was the Soviet Union. Although the US and Soviet Union were allies in World War II, there were early signs that this relationship would not hold in the post-WWII period. The US use of nuclear weapons at the end of the war, when combined with the fact that the US kept the project secret from the Soviet Union, must have created the fear for Soviet leadership that the US would use its new weapons to dominate them. While many US political leaders thought that it might take decades for the Soviet Union to go nuclear, it actually took them only four years. Driven by fear of US domination, they sought security in the deterrence potential of the weapons, while at the same time adding to their prestige and bestowing upon themselves the bully potential of the weapons.

    Despite sharing in the Allied victory in World War II, both Britain and France emerged from the war with less power and prestige than they had going into the war. Britain, as a wartime ally of the US, had played a role in the development of the bomb in the US Manhattan Project, and thus its scientists were privy to the secrets of creating nuclear weapons. First Britain and then France went ahead with developing their own nuclear arms. Both countries could have chosen to remain under the US nuclear umbrella, but both chose instead to develop their own nuclear arsenals. Their reasoning was said to be based on the fear that a US leader would not be willing to sacrifice New York in an exchange with the Soviet Union in order to retaliate against a Soviet attack against London or Paris. Thus, both Britain and France, chose to go nuclear out of fear and a lack of trust in placing their security in the hands of the US. At the same time, they bolstered their waning prestige in the world, and increased their bully power against their remaining colonies and other weaker states.

    China, the final permanent member of the UN Security Council, chose also to go nuclear, fearing that without nuclear weapons its security was threatened by both the US and Soviet Union and that it would remain subject to their bully potential. China announced from the onset of its nuclear status that it did not intend to develop more than a minimum deterrent force and that it would not use nuclear weapons first. It sought only a small but sufficient nuclear retaliatory force to prevent the US or Soviet Union from using nuclear weapons against it. Fear and security appeared to be the driving force in China’s decision to go nuclear, although it enhanced its international prestige in the process and also gave itself some increase in bully power on a regional level.

    These five states – the US, Soviet Union (now Russia), UK, France and China – were the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the five states that were named as nuclear weapons states in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). While other states joined this treaty as non-nuclear weapons states and agreed not to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states promised, among other things, to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. The International Court of Justice later ruled that these states were obligated by the NPT “to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    Today the NPT has become nearly universal. Only four states are outside the treaty structure: Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. The first three never joined the treaty, and the latter withdrew from the treaty in 2003. Israel’s official position is the ambiguous statement that it will never be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, but it is widely understood that Israel possesses some 100 to 200 nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery. Israel has had a troubled existence and has engaged in many wars with its neighbors, all of which it has won with its high-tech military forces. Israel’s decision to go nuclear may be best understood as a desire to enhance its security by implicitly threatening ultimate recourse against hostile neighboring countries, and by reducing or eliminating the bully power that the US or Russia might seek to use to alter Israeli policies. However, by going nuclear, Israel has raised the fear level of its neighbors and their desire to enhance their security, potentially by going nuclear themselves.

    India held the position for many years that it was willing to remain a non-nuclear weapons state, but not in a world where some states continue to possess and refuse to give up their nuclear arms. Indian leaders have used the term “nuclear apartheid” to describe the two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” India is thought to have initially secretly tested a nuclear device in 1974. It openly tested nuclear weapons in 1998. While fear and security may have played some role in India’s decision to go nuclear, particularly vis-à-vis China, there was a sense that India was motivated to a large degree by prestige. The country seemed to go wild with celebration in 1998 when India conducted its open nuclear weapons tests, as though this were validation of its emergence into “great power” status.

    India also had some potential to use its nuclear arms to bully Pakistan in their dispute over Kashmir, but this possibility was erased immediately when Pakistan followed India in publicly testing its own nuclear arms. For Pakistan, reasons for going nuclear certainly included fear of India, the desire to enhance its security, and prestige. The people of Pakistan, like those of India, exploded in celebration upon its successful nuclear weapons tests in 1998. A.Q. Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s bomb, is a national hero in Pakistan, despite being the mastermind of a major international black market nuclear proliferation scheme.

    The final country that claims to have gone nuclear is North Korea. This country again fits the pattern of developing nuclear weapons out of fear of attack, principally by the US, and thus to enhance its security. In the case of North Korea, there is the added element of creating these weapons as a bargaining chip to gain security assurances from the US and also development aid. The long-standing six-party negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear arms point to North Korea’s desire to trade its nuclear arms capability for nuclear energy plants and US security assurances. Thus, for North Korea, prestige and bully potential seem less significant than security promises and development aid.

    Why Nations Do Not Go Nuclear

    There are currently 191 member states of the United Nations. Of these, only nine have chosen to go nuclear. Thus, the overwhelming majority of states in the international system have chosen not to go nuclear. Why nations go nuclear needs to be weighed against why nations do not go nuclear. Among the reasons why nations choose not to go nuclear are the following:

    1. Technological capability. Many nations, particularly poorer nations, lack the technological capability to develop nuclear arms. While this leaves out many states, there are at least 44 states with nuclear reactors on their territory, suggesting potential technological capability and access to nuclear materials for bomb production.
    2. Security Alliances. Alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) provide a nuclear umbrella for member states, and thus act as a disincentive for an alliance member to go nuclear.
    3. Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT is the centerpiece of nuclear arms control and disarmament efforts. In joining the treaty, non-nuclear weapons states agree not to develop or acquire nuclear arms. There is, however, a reciprocal pledge by the nuclear weapons states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, and the failure of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill this obligation may be eroding viability of the treaty.
    4. Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) Agreements. Such regional agreements now cover the entire southern hemisphere of the planet. Such agreements now exist for Antarctica, Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Africa and Southeast Asia.
    5. Perception of Negative Consequences. National leaders may perceive that they would suffer negative consequences by going nuclear, such as a loss of economic support, including development aid, disruption of alliances, and becoming targets of other states’ nuclear arsenals.
    6. National Self-Image. Some states may not have as goals being nuclear weapons states, preferring to provide leadership toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

    Incentives and Disincentives to Going Nuclear

    Among the principal incentives for a state to go nuclear are threats by a current nuclear weapons state or a regional security environment that is uncertain. When the US president named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” he provided incentive for them to develop nuclear arms. These incentives were enhanced by the leaked 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review that called for developing contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against seven states (Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria), five of which were non-nuclear weapons states (although North Korea subsequently chose to go nuclear).

    Four of these states ( Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria) are in the Middle East, one of the most dangerous security environments in the world and an area in which one nuclear weapons state currently exists ( Israel). Since the US Nuclear Posture Review came out, Iraq was attacked and invaded by the US and its “Coalition of the Willing,” and Libya has chosen on its own to give up its nuclear weapons program. Iran and Syria, however, are still viewed as possible regional candidates to develop nuclear weapons, as is Egypt. Like India and Pakistan, these states may choose to go nuclear rather than continue to live with the unbalance and uncertainty of implied and overt threats to their security by the US and Israel.

    The greatest disincentives to these states going nuclear would be to establish a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East or, more broadly, a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone, combined with credible pledges by the US and other nuclear weapons states to provide security assurances to non-nuclear weapons states. It seems clear that so long as Israel remains the sole state in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, there will be strong incentives for other states to seek nuclear weapons as an equalizer, much as the Soviet Union sought to do against the US or Pakistan sought to do against India.

    Several states have come into possession of nuclear weapons and chosen to give them up. South Africa clandestinely developed a small nuclear arsenal when it felt beleaguered due to its policy of Apartheid. When South Africa chose to give up its policy and practice of Apartheid, it also made the decision to give up its nuclear arsenal. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus inherited nuclear weapons upon the break up of the Soviet Union, and all chose to turn these weapons over to Russia for dismantlement. This was accomplished with incentives and security assurances from the US and Russia. Argentina and Brazil were two countries that were moving toward developing nuclear weapons, but were dissuaded from doing so by regional security arrangements and gave up their programs. These examples all show that the development or acquisition of nuclear arsenals can be reversed.

    Unraveling the Nuclear Knot

    What is now needed are disincentives that would unravel the current knot of nuclear weapons states. The greatest disincentive to continue to possess nuclear weapons may be the possibility that other states will also continue to retain their weapons, leading to nuclear weapons or the materials to create them falling into the hands of terrorists. The possibility of a terrorist group in possession of nuclear weapons should give even the most powerful country in the world, the United States, incentive to seek the global elimination of nuclear weapons as rapidly as possible and to bring the materials to make such weapons under strict international control.

    Russia has suggested many times that it is prepared to further reduce its nuclear arsenal by agreement with the United States to under 1,500 nuclear weapons. Thus far, the US has not indicated an interest in reducing the number of its deployed strategic weapons to under 1,700 to 2,200 weapons. Further, the US has failed to accept its obligation to move forward on the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. Under the Bush administration the leadership for progress in achieving nuclear disarmament has been severely lacking.

    It would seem that only the United States, due to its military and economic power, has the capability and convening power to bring together the nuclear weapons states and lead them in creating a Nuclear Weapons Convention that would set forth obligations for phased nuclear disarmament with adequate provisions for verification and international control. We can only hope that such leadership will be forthcoming before nuclear weapons proliferate to other countries and are again used.

    Although the United States may be needed for the actual implementation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, the world cannot wait for the US to take action on this issue, particularly knowing of the Bush administration’s hostility to fulfilling its obligations under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the steps set forth in the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament in the Final Document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference. While US initiative remains dormant, other states must fill this void with innovative collective measures to move ahead with a Nuclear Weapons Convention. This idea has been most seriously embraced by civil society groups, such as the Abolition 2000 Global Network and the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons by the year 2020.

    With the failure of the 2005 NPT Review Conference to make any progress and the failure of the 2005 High-Level Summit meeting at the United Nations to reach any agreement on nuclear disarmament issues, both due to US opposition, the world stands at a deadlock on nuclear disarmament issues. The United Nations Conference on Disarmament has not addressed nuclear disarmament issues for eight years, also largely due to US opposition.

    There are only two possibilities to change this situation. The first is the awakening of the American people to put pressure on their government to cease being an obstacle to nuclear disarmament efforts and start being a leader in these efforts. The second is for the international community to unite in putting pressure on the US from outside. At this point in time, neither of these possibilities appears promising, and thus we drift toward nuclear the “unparalleled catastrophes” that Einstein warned would occur unless we can change our thinking.

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons. This paper was prepared for The Istanbul Workshop on Nuclear Dangers in the Middle East, 17-21 November 2005.