Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Devon Chaffee

  • Freedom or Force on the High Seas? Arms Interdiction and International Law*

    North Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime and announcement of a nuclear weapons program was an unfortunate development, which the international community must work to reverse. Some US officials are, however, advocating for a policy of interdicting [1] North Korean ships – a policy that would do more harm than good to international stability by undermining the International Law of the Sea.

    The International Law of the Sea is one of the most comprehensive and well-established bodies of international regulatory norms in existence. The Law of the Sea regime (LOS) is buttressed by longstanding international norms, and formal legal agreements, critical to creating a more secure international environment. [2]

    The Law of the Sea grants several freedoms, including the right to navigation on the high seas and rights to transit [3] through international straits, exclusive economic zones (EEZ), and the territorial and archipelagic waters of another state. The regime does bar a select number of illegal activities, including piracy, slave trade, illicit traffic in narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances, and unauthorized broadcasting, and grants states the right to intervene in such activities. [4]

    There is nothing in the LOS regime that explicitly prohibits transit of weapons of mass destruction or gives States rights to interdict such transit. On the contrary, a number of States, including the United States, have actively opposed the development of such prohibitive norms or interpretations of international law that would inhibit the transit of weapons of mass destruction by the seas or air, and cite the rights and privileges established in the Law of the Sea to affirm their unhindered military use of the oceans. Nuclear weapon states such as the US, UK and France have continuously worked to ensure that their ability to transit nuclear weapons is not hindered by regional nuclear weapons free zones or UN efforts to create a Nuclear Weapon Free Southern Hemisphere. The US, UK and France, along with Japan, have also asserted their rights to transit nuclear materials – in particular reprocessed plutonium – through the high seas and through the EEZ’s of coastal States. In addition, a number of States, including the United States, France, Israel, China, Russia and Italy, export missile technology transiting through the oceans to do so.

    In contrast to this general assertion of rights to transit nuclear weapons, missile technology [5], fissile materials and other materials related to weapons of mass destruction, the US is currently advocating for the selected interdiction of such materials to and from certain states of concern to the Bush Administration as a means to stem proliferation. Ten countries have now joined what is known as the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which met in Madrid, Spain in early June and in Brisbane, Australia in the beginning of July 2003 [6]. Members of PSI include: Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

    However, there are limitations to the transit that countries can legally inhibit in their territorial waters and EEZs and even stricter limitations on what can be intercepted on the High Seas.
    The legal implications of arms interdictions on the oceans depend greatly on the nature of interdictions and the way the interdictions are undertaken. Some States have agreed to export controls amongst themselves, such as those laid out in the Missile Technology Control Regime. However, the States of concern to the US, such as North Korea, China, Pakistan and Iran, are not members and so are not bound by these controls. It might be legal to interdict shipments on the High Seas that have been deemed by the Security Council or the Law of the Sea Tribunal to violate the Law of the Sea and to constitute a threat to the peace. This option is pursued in a recent strategy issued by the Council of the European Union calling on the EU to support a Security Council Resolution that would arms interdictions “when appropriate.” [7] Also, in territorial waters it might be possible for the coastal State to determine the transit of missiles or WMD to be a threat to its security and thus prohibit such transit deeming it to be non-innocent passage.
    Any interdictions outside those explicitly allowed in the existing International Law of the Sea regime would clearly violate the freedom of navigation on the high seas and the right of innocent passage through territorial waters.

    Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has recognized that there is a “very real difficulty in terms of vessels that might be going through the high seas because international law requires that those ships should not be intercepted,” [8] and that there might therefore “need to be some change to international law to facilitate these types of interdictions, to stop illicit trade.”[9] However, changing the Law of the Sea would be a long process requiring extensive negotiations and would unlikely yield the discriminatory approach desired by the PSI of allowing transit by certain States but not others.

    The likelihood that the US and PSI will thus develop an interdiction strategy outside international law is reinforced by the current trend in US policy towards dismantling norms that prevent the US from exercising its military dominance. The US has moved away from multi-lateral non-proliferation solutions, withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, abandoned START II, failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and stalled efforts to improve the Biological Weapons Convention regime. The controversy over the UK and US use of intelligence in Iraq will also bring into question the legitimacy of intelligence information used to justify interdictions regarding the existence of arms and material shipments and their intended destination and/or use.

    Restricting the transit of weapons of mass destruction would be a positive development in furthering arms control and stemming proliferation, if such norms were carefully developed by the international community and applied uniformly. International law cannot, however, maintain its integrity if applied whimsically or discriminately, or if defined by a small “coalition of the willing.” While PSI membership may appear to be an easy way for leaders of certain countries to get back into the good graces of the Bush administration after disagreements over Iraq, if they contribute to the degradation of LOS it will likely come back to haunt them. If leaders of the states participating in the PSI attempt to exchange LOS norms for selective nonproliferation measures, they should realize that such a trade-off could eventually restrict their own country’s access to international waters. If members of the international community begin to allow the erosion of the Law of the Sea to suite the policy goals of the sole existing superpower, they should not expect that such concessions would be easily reversed.
    * This article is a summary of a longer piece pending publication in Science for Democratic Action, the newsletter of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

    **Devon Chaffee is the Research and Advocacy Coordinator of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    1. Interdicting: intercepting ships and ensuring that no proscribed activities are being conducted.
    2. Such formal agreements include the four 1958 Conventions that resulted from the Geneva Conference on the law of the sea, to which the US is a party, and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which President Ronald Reagan decided not to sign onto for fear that it could interfere with certain US sovereign prerogatives. The US has however signed the 1994 Agreement relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
    3. Transit through territorial waters is limited to innocent passage. According to the 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea “Passage is innocent so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state.”
    4. In addition to their codification into the law of the sea through the 1958 and the 1982 Conventions, the prohibition of these activities has been codified by a series of multilateral treaties including: 1965 Agreement for the Prevention of Broadcasts Transmitted from Stations outside National Territories; General Act for the Repression of the Slave Trade, 1890;
    5. See UN Register of Conventional Arms, http://disarmament.un.org/UN_REGISTER.nsf and Nuclear and Missile Trade and Developments, The Nonproliferation Review, Center for Nonproliferation Studies,http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol05/53/db53.pdf
    6. Chairman’s Statement, Proliferation Security Initiative, Brisbane Meeting, July 9-10, 2003.http://www.dfat.gov.au/globalissues/psi/
    7. Strategy against Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and its corresponding Action Plan adopted by the Council of the European Union on April 14, 2003.
    8. “N Korea Ships Face more Scrutiny,” BBC, June 11, 2003.
    9. Sonni Efron and Barbara Demick, “11 nations to Discuss Blocking Shipments of Weapons Materials,” Los Angeles Times. June 12, 2003.

  • North Korea’s Withdrawal from Nonproliferation Treaty Official

    On January 10th 2003 North Korea announced its intent to become the first country ever to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Though North Korean officials argued that its withdrawal was official immediately, according to Article X of the treaty the withdrawal was not official until today, three months after the notification was issued. This unfortunate event highlights the severe implications of the Bush administration’s refusal to engage North Korea diplomatically. It also draws attention to concerns about the uncertain future of the NPT regime.

    Under the NPT North Korea and other countries not possessing nuclear weapons at the time agreed not to develop or obtain nuclear weapons and the nuclear powers agreed to disarm and not to spread nuclear weapons to other states. Now that North Korea is officially not a party to the NPT, there are few legal obstacles preventing it from developing nuclear weapons and selling such weapons, technology and materials to other countries.

    North Korea had announced its intent to withdraw from the NPT regime once before in 1993. At that time the United States engaged in bilateral negotiations leading the DPRK to retract its withdrawal days before it officially went into effect.

    When North Korea again announced its withdrawal in January its statement of intent clearly called for further negotiation initiatives with the United States. These requests did not, however, result in the skillful diplomatic maneuvering that was employed during the 1993 crisis. Instead, the Bush administration has refused all requests for bilateral talks, urging a multilateral approach that has, thus far, proved entirely unfruitful.

    North Korea now joins India, Pakistan, Israel, as the only countries not currently within the NPT regime. Few of these countries have faced serious consequences for such remaining outside of the regime.

    Although some sanctions were originally imposed on India and Pakistan after they conducted nuclear tests in 1998, these sanctions have been largely abandoned. The nuclear status of India and Pakistan is increasingly accepted by the world’s major powers. They have been allowed to enter into certain international nuclear research institutions, from which they were previously excluded, and the U.S. is investigating ways to aid these countries in securing their nuclear arsenals.

    It currently appears unlikely that the U.N. Security Council will take any punitive action in response to North Korea’s NPT withdrawal. This seeming complacency of the international community in regards to nuclear proliferation begs the question: what is preventing other nuclear aspiring nations, such as Iran, from following North Korea’s lead and withdrawing from the NTP regime?

    As the United States continues to wage a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, in part due to Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction programs, increasing alarm is voiced by other nations accused of such proliferation. It is likely that nations such as Iran will accelerate their nuclear weapons programs due to fears of such U.S. aggression. This is particularly so as the Bush administration continues to increase its emphasis on its own nuclear weapons technology, ignoring its disarmament obligations under Article XI of the NPT. Though these issues will likely be discussed at the upcoming preparatory meeting for the NPT Review Conference this May, the Bush administration is increasingly distancing itself from arenas pushing to find diplomatic solutions to the threat of weapons of mass of destruction.
    * Devon Chaffee is the research and advocacy coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Human Rights Defenders Visit the Foundation

    In areas of conflict and oppression working for peace and human rights can be dangerous and even life threatening. To help ameliorate such situations, foreign activists can, under certain circumstances, provide an international presence that pressures oppressive governments not to crack down on local human rights workers. Two such international activists, Claudio Valls and Andrew Miller, recently visited the Foundation and spoke about their experience providing protective accompaniment in Colombia with Peace Brigades International (PBI).

    Andrew, co-director of Peace Brigades International/USA, began the talk by giving an overview of PBI as an organization. PBI’s mission is to work to open a space in which conflicts can be addressed in a nonviolent way in regions where there is oppression and conflict. The organization currently has four active projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Indonesia and Colombia. PBI works only upon the request of local organizations working for human rights, social change and the development of civil society, and which use nonviolent means. PBI’s establishes its presence by placing volunteers in the area of conflict, who physically accompany local activists and network with the local officials and embassies. Andrew explained that the work of the volunteers on the ground is reinforced by an emergency response network maintained by PBI country groups around the world. These country groups network with their federal officials who can put pressure on the oppressive government not to harm the activists accompanied by PBI. The organizational structure of PBI is unique in that it works by consensual process and uses non-hierarchical structures.

    Claudio, a Santa Barbara resident who previously worked at the Foundation, is currently volunteering with PBI on a one year stint in Colombia. Claudio gave the talk’s participants a feeling for what it is like for PBI volunteers in the field. “Sometimes we go into an area where the authorities have told us that we would have government protection, and it turns out the area is not even controlled by the military but by guerrillas,” he explained. This is dangerous because the guerilla and paramilitary groups that are active in Colombia are not susceptible to same kind of international pressure that the Colombian government is. PBI volunteers, such as Claudio, undergo a training and selection process that evaluates there language ability, their ability to work in a group and their ability to hold up in high pressure situations. According to Claudio there are certain “red flags” that volunteers look for that signal the need to alert their emergency response network. Such signs could include direct threats against the activists PBI is accompanying or public statements by the government criticizing the work of the activists.

    Though it is difficult to gauge success in their work, Claudio and Andrew feel that PBI accompaniment has saved many lives. When PBI is fully successful it diffuses the threat to the local activists and allows them to continue their work. At other times, the accompaniment buys activists enough time to get out of the area where they have been threatened.

    That PBI activists are able to use nonviolent means to protect local activists trying to work for a more just society is a formidable accomplishment. That those working with PBI struggle to take the international support given to repressive regimes and turn it into effective and restraining influence is a sign that they have a profound sense of responsibility to their international community.

    For more information about PBI see their website athttp://www.peacebrigades.org

  • Deploy First. Develop Later? Why Bush’s Plan to Deploy Flawed Missile Defense Meets Little Resistance

    On December 17, the Bush administration announced that the President has directed the Secretary of Defense to proceed with fielding an initial set of missile defense capabilities in 2004. According to military officials, these capabilities will likely include ground-based interceptors at Fort Greeley, Alaska, Aegis warship-based missiles and possibly ground-base interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force base. This announcement has provoked much criticism concerning the lack of reliability of system, the increased amount of funds necessary for this rushed deployment to occur and the destabilizing effect of the system on the international community. However, even given these significant problems, international and domestic opposition seem unlikely to be strong enough to prevent the planned deployment from occurring.

    Deploying an Unproven System

    In normal U.S. military procedure all systems are tested and demonstrated to be operationally effective before any new weapon is deployed. Yet this practice seems to have been side stepped, as pointed out by Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in Bush’s haste to deploy a missile defense system in less than two years. Levin was quoted by the New York Times as saying that Bush’s plan, “violates common sense by determining to deploy systems before they have been tested and shown to work.”

    Representative Tom Allen and Reprehensive Edward J. Markey joined Levin’s criticism of the system in a letter addressed to President Bush also signed by prominent Nobel Laureates. The letter referred to the deployment plan as being “little more than a political gesture,” given the technological hurdles that have yet to be overcome.

    There has, in fact, been little to no assurance that this initial missile defense will be effective. Bush’s announcement of deployment in 2004 follows a recent unsuccessful $80 million test on December 11, where the interceptor failed to separate from its booster rocket, missed its target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere. According to defense analysts from the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), none of eight ground-based interceptor tests have adequately simulated reality.

    Increased Cost

    Bush’s recent deployment commitment is accompanied by a rise in cost of missile defense development, adding to existing concerns that missile defense is taking valuable resources away from more pressing federal programs. Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predicts that the new missile defense deployment plan, “will cause missile defense budget to grow by over 10 percent to over $9 billion, making it the largest single weapon program in the budget. “

    Increased missile defense spending means fewer resources for public health and education, as well for other defense programs that actually address existing terrorist threats, particularly nonproliferation efforts through the Nunn-Lugar Comprehensive Threat Reduction programs.

    The Tempered Response

    Regardless of these many considerable flaws in Bush’s deployment plan, opposition in Congress remains weak. Most Democrats are offering only muted criticism of the missile defense programs and Democrat Joseph Lieberman broke with party leaders to give a full endorsement of Bush’s announcement of the 2004 deployment commitment.

    There was some international negative feedback concerning Bush’s missile defense announcement. Russia’s Foreign Minister announced that U.S. missile defense efforts have entered a “new destabilizing phase.” In general, however, the Minister’s comments were hardly severe.

    Though there has been significant opposition in Greenland to the proposed use of Thule Air Base for the missile defense system, officials from Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, and Great Britain appeared open to increased involvement in the future of missile defense deployment. France gave no response to the missile defense announcement, and the overall international reaction to Bush’s announcement was tempered, particularly among European allies.

    Why no fuss?

    The source of the political will for the Bush administration to deploy the missile defense system is clear. Such deployment will allow Bush to run for president in 2004 having fulfilled his campaign commitment to deploy a missile defense. It is also clear that large special interest contractors that benefit from missile defense and that annually contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to both Republican and Democratic federal campaigns are encouraged by the deployment. As reported in the Boston Herald on Wednesday, December 18th, Raytheon Co., a major missile defense contractor that has recently been suffering from a drop in stock value, warmly welcomed the President’s announcement to deploy in 2004.

    It is, however, startling that the announced deployment of an ineffectual, unreliable, exorbitantly expensive, and potentially destabilizing missile defense system has met such little resistance from U.S. and foreign policy makers. The lack of international response may stem from the system’s lack of promise in being effective in countering any potential opponent’s offensive systems. If the system is not effective, there is little reason for nations outside of the United States to voice strong opposition to the initiative and risk any political costs that would result from coming into conflict with the Bush administration.

    This is, however, the very reason that domestic leaders should be up in arms due to lack of independent oversight of the system, and the potential insecurity that could arise due to the inclusion of an ineffectual defense system within our defense strategy. But there seems to be a lack of commitment among U.S. policy makers to exert any significant control or oversight on the expanding missile defense. Though this lack of opposition is illogical from the stand point of sound spending and national security, from a political cost-benefit perspective it is clearly understandable. Opposition efforts could lead to enemies within the Bush administration, loss of campaign funding from contractors and possible loss in public support in exchange for little more than a clean conscience.

    This lack of political will and incentive indicates that in order to bring elected officials back in line, U.S. citizens and citizens around the world must step up their efforts to let their officials know that they will not tolerate irresponsible spending and premature weapons deployment. If a severe increased sense of public accountability is not soon created within the U.S. Congress regarding missile defense spending, there is little hope that the administration will be prevented from wasting an increased amount of federal funds on the deployment of an ineffectual missile defense system.

  • US Defense Bill Funds Study for a New Nuclear Weapon

    On November 12, 2002 Congress approved the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2003, H.R. 4546; a bill that authorizes funds for the Defense Department and for the nuclear weapons activites of the Energy Department. Though the final version of this defense bill still contains some serious setbacks for nuclear disarmament, several dangerous aspects of the original version of the bill that was originally approved by the House of Representatives were ultimately removed.

    The defense bill funds a request by the administration for $15 million to begin the first year of a three-year feasibility study on another new nuclear warhead, called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), or “bunker buster.” Though the Senate had deleted the funds in its original version of the defense bill, the funding was ultimately approved in conference. The proposed study of this new weapon is chilling because creating more “usable” tactical nuclear weapons increases the chance that the United States will eventually break the taboo on nuclear weapons use.

    The bill does require the Defense Department to submit a report before it will have access to the funds. The National Academy of Sciences will conduct a study for Congress on the short-term and long-term effects of using a nuclear earth penetrator on the nearby civilian population and on U.S. military personnel who may carry out operations in the area after such use.

    The final authorization bill fully preserves the current prohibition on developing nuclear weapons with yields of less than five kilotons, also known as “mini-nukes.” The original House version of the defense bill threatened to weaken the 1993 Congressional ban and would have allowed research to begin on developing these new nuclear weapons.

    The final bill also toned down language originally approved by the House that would have required the Energy Department’s Nevada Test Site to be able to resume nuclear testing within 12 months. Instead, the final bill simply requires the administration to prepare cost estimates of being able to resume testing within 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. Test readiness continues to be an issue of great concern, particularly as Defense Secretary Edward Aldridge has recently urged the nuclear weapons laboratories to reassess the need for nuclear testing.

    The significant initiative for advancement of nuclear weapons technologically over the course of this defense bill’s negotiation was startling. That the Democratically controlled Senate had a clear impact on toning down the nuclear weapons language of this year’s defense bill is of equal concern. The Republican-controlled Senate may not have the same influence on the 2004 military spending bills.

  • North Korea and the Bush Administration’s Proliferation Folly: Nuclear Admission Demonstrates Militarism is not a Solution

    The Bush administration’s recent announcement of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) admission to developing a nuclear weapons program has thrust the fact that Iraq is not an isolated nuclear weapons proliferator into the center of the war debate. The announcement highlights startling questions as to the administration’s lack of a consistent and comprehensive nonproliferation strategy and has evoked serious accusations as to why Congress was not told about the DPRK’s admission prior to voting on the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.

    The parallels between the DPRK and Iraq’s nuclear weapons program are undeniable. Both countries are known to have had programs to develop nuclear weapons and have been designated as members of the “axis of evil” by the Bush administration. The United States even came close to war with North Korea over their nuclear weapons program in 1994.

    In fact the DPRK’s weapons program may be far more advanced than Iraq’s. North Korea has enough plutonium to construct an estimated six nuclear weapons within six months, is pursuing technology to enrich uranium, and has consistently resisted the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) push for full inspections. Iraq, on the other hand, is not thought to have the materials necessary to build a nuclear weapon, and has stated that it will allow United Nations lead weapons inspections.

    Yet the administration has made clear its commitment to find a diplomatic solution to crisis with North Korea and to pursue the option to use force against Iraq, without providing convincing answers as to why its response to the two nations should differ so greatly.

    This glaring inconsistency puts a spot light on the fact that the Bush administration’s Iraq policy does not provide a comprehensive, long-term solution to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. If we must wage war on Iraq because of the threat of nuclear weapons, why not Israel, which is thought to possess approximately 200 nuclear weapons? Why not Pakistan, which is nuclear capable and is thought to have provided North Korea with enrichment technology? Why not China which provided Pakistan with that technology in the first place? It is clear the United States cannot and should not take pre-emptive military action against each of these proliferators.

    On the other hand, if the Bush Administration is confident that diplomacy is the correct option for North Korea, Israel, India, Pakistan and other potential proliferators, why not Iraq? The very fact that the United States is treating Iraq differently from other proliferators is infuriating many countries, particularly Arab ones, and threatening US interests in the region. This was made very clear in the recent Security Council emergency session on Iraq where country after country condemned Iraq’s violation of disarmament obligations, but also opposed the US push for authorization for the use of force against Iraq.

    Though the administration claims that its militant Iraqi policy proves that it is hard on proliferation, the White House has, in fact, impeded effective arms control not only by thwarting multilateral treaties such as the CTBT and the protocol to the Biological weapons convention and but also by providing insufficient funds for efforts to control nuclear materials. The administration’s expectation that other nations will embrace disarmament and nonproliferation principles while the United States continues to disengage from multilateral solutions and advance its nuclear weapons technology seems clearly unreasonable.

    Congress Kept in the Dark

    Democrats in Congress have, through their aids, voiced criticism that they were not told of North Korea’s admission to its nuclear weapons program while they were considering the resolution authorizing the administration to use force against Iraq. The Washington Post quoted one aid as stating, “Senators are concerned and troubled by it…This cloud of secrecy raises questions about whether there are other pieces to this puzzle they don’t know about” (October 19, 2002).

    Informing Congress about the DPRK’s admission could have delayed the vote on the war resolution to allow further consideration of the precedent that would be set in Iraq and how that could affect US policy towards proliferators such as the DPRK. Congress would have been forced to address the Iraq situation in the broader context of global proliferation through the concrete example of North Korea.

    The White House’s explanation for the delay is that analysts were still considering a response to the DPRK. Yet when the announcement was eventually made no planned response was released, and the administration is clearly still in the process of consulting other nations.

    Though Congress had been briefed on evidence of North Korea’s nuclear weapons effort, the outright admission by the DPRK significantly increases pressure on the United States to deal with the program in a timely manner. Keeping such clearly relevant information from Congress during a debate on whether the United States should go to war is likely to damage even further the credibility of the administration’s intelligence claims.

    Solution Remains Unclear

    Exactly what the DPRK hoped to get out of the admission that it has an active nuclear weapons program is still far from clear. It may be that the Kim John Il felt he had little left to lose in relations with the United States besides nuclear power reactors its deteriorated electrical grid cannot accommodate and heating fuel shipments which make up less than five percent of the country’s yearly energy needs.

    North Korea has responded to criticism by pointing out that, by neglecting for years its commitment through the 1994 Agreed Framework to make significant efforts to end hostile relations and normalize diplomatic and economic ties, it was the United States that first violated the bilateral pact.

    Some analysts suggest that North Korea made the announcement in preparation to make significant concessions in dismantling its nuclear weapons program. Such negotiations will depend on the commitment of both the Kim regime and the Bush administration to finding a peaceful resolution to this looming conflict, and the ability of Bush administration to navigate diplomatic avenues without relying on military action.
    *Devon Chaffee is the Research and Advocacy Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • United Nations Launches Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education

    If disarmament and non-proliferation goals are to be furthered the public must be educated about these issues on a wide scale, particularly in areas of conflict. To help bolster such education efforts the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs launched the U.N. Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education Wednesday October 9 after two years of work and deliberations.

    In March 2000 a group of experts from around the world were appointed to examine existing disarmament and nonproliferation education and training programs, and to give recommendations for furthering such work, particularly through the U.N. system. The resulting analysis stems largely from consultations with non-governmental, academic, research and media communities from throughout the world.

    Though the study’s 34 recommendations are varied, they include specific actions that can be taken to increase the availability and distribution of disarmament education resources; to improve collaboration between organizations currently working on disarmament education; and to take advantage of appropriate education technology.

    The study emphasizes that there must be education efforts at all levels, from young school children to military personnel, and that different methods must be used to reach the public on all levels, with particular sensitivity to cultural and language differences

    The First Committee of the United Nations will now begin discussing the document, and it is hoped that the study will lead to an increase in the available resources for effective disarmament education initiatives.

    The study calls for increased action by a number of actors, including municipal leaders; religious leaders and institutions; grassroots organizations; and a number of U.N. actors. While impact of some of its suggestions may be difficult to measure, any steps taken by the U.N. General Assembly, the Department of Disarmament and Public Information, U.N. affiliated organizations, U.N. member states, and international non-governmental organizations will be clearly visible.

    Disarmament education is a key step in moving towards a more peaceful and non-violent global environment. It is hoped that the study’s suggestions will be enthusiastically implemented.

    U.N. Undersecretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Jayantha Dhanapala and Director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, William C. Potter, stated, in a recent International Herald Tribune article:

    “Young people live in a world ravaged by conflict and awash in arms. In an age of weapons of mass destruction, they also must contend with the fear of total annihilation. As diplomats and educators we have a responsibility to provide them with hope founded on reality. Disarmament and nonproliferation education is an important but underused tool to accomplish that end.”
    *Devon Chaffee is the Research and Advocacy Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • A Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Symposium on International Law and the Quest for Security

    As the future of the international legal order hangs in the balance in the United Nations Security Council, it is necessary for government officials, academics, activists and citizens to engage in constructive dialogue about the role that the global legal order is to play in global security. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation sponsored a symposium entitled International Law & the Quest for Security enabling such timely discussion to take place at the University of California at Santa Barbara on October 25, 2002.

    The keynote speakers were Richard Falk, professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton and Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, his Excellency Arthur N.R. Robinson, President of Trinidad and Tobago, and John Burroughs, Executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy. They were accompanied by a variety of panelists with varying backgrounds in international law. The resulting conversation was constructive and cutting edge as the participants proceeded to challenge one another’s assumptions about the future of the world legal order.

    Detoured or Derailed?

    Professor Falk set the tone for the first half of the symposium by expounding upon the crisis of security that the international community is currently suffering. He illustrated how US policies on Iraq challenge the very notion the territorial state and threaten to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council. Falk ended his initial remarks by posing the question of whether Sept. 11 and the events that have ensued have derailed or simply detoured the post-Cold War progress in fortifying a global legal order.

    The four members of the panel that followed, monitored by Professor Peter Haslund, Director of International and Global Studies Program, Santa Barbara City College, approached the issues addressed by Falk from a variety of perspectives. Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director of Western States Legal Foundation and a nuclear weapons abolition activist, drove home the severity of the US military’s enthusiasm for nuclear weapons by quoting from various military documents and speeches. She also urged the audience to organize around a set of values that differ from this militaristic approach instead of focusing on particular issues or weapon systems.

    Cecelia Lynch, an associate professor of political science at UC Irvine, commented on historical trends of social movements and described the tensions between the environmental, peace, humanitarian, and anti-globalization movements today. Professor Lynch also emphasized the need to increase the responsibility of the state for welfare and to decrease the emphasis on militarism.

    Though many of those at the symposium concentrated on evaluating recent US policy, particularly its aggressive stance against Iraq, Professor Manou Eskandari, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Santa Barbara City College, pointed out that, “unilateralism is not just an American problem.” Eskandari also criticized the Security Council as being less than a truly a global forum, and called for democratization of the United Nations.

    Marc McGinns, a senate lecturer in Environmental Studies at the UC Santa Barbara, took an environmentally-based approach to the issues of human and global security. McGinns addressed the tensions between manmade international legal systems and the law of nature claiming that “we are making war against the earth” with our consumption habits. Highlighting the stark inequalities in world consumption, and its destabilizing effects on world security, McGinns put forth the questions, “What’s it to be? Justice or just us?”

    Debating the International Criminal Court

    In the afternoon session of the Symposium the discussion focused on the International Criminal Court (ICC), the statute of the Court having come into force this past July.

    His Excellency President Robinson, who was instrumental in getting the ICC back on the U.N. agenda in 1989, started off the afternoon by delivering a powerful speech delineating his personal involvement in the struggle to establish the ICC. Identifying the Court as a means of establishing standards of behavior he stated, “it is necessary that rules must be devised whereby humankind can live with one another because, with the advances that will take place in science and technology, a new world war of this kind will result in the destruction of humanity.”

    Dr. Burroughs began his talk on opposition to the ICC by pointing out the accuracy of Professor Eskandari’s position that there are other nations besides the US the establishment of the Court. Burroughs pointed out that China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and the United States—the five most populated countries in the world—have not ratified the ICC statute. He then went through the major objections to the court that Marc Grossman, US Under secretary of State, has outlined, displaying the pitfalls of each objection.

    Burroughs’ remarks were followed by an engaging discussion of the value of the ICC as a new element of international law. While panelists such as Judge Paul Egly supported the ICC as a “wonderful document,” Professor Lisa Hajjar, assistant professor of the Law and Society Program at UC Santa Barbara, challenged the ICC approach to international criminal law. Hajjar favored the use of universal jurisdiction in national courts, such as was used in the case against ex-Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. She described this approach as being a more decentralized and democratic and suggested that the establishment of the ICC could actually impede the pursuit of universal jurisdiction in national courts.

    In his remarks, Stan Roden, a practicing attorney from the local community, described how the ICC was consistent with the rights guaranteed in the US constitution. Professor Eskandari questioned this somewhat nation-centric approach asking if the ICC would be any less legitimate if it did not adhere to US constitutional rights.

    Dr. J. Kirk Boyd, a Visiting Professor at UC Santa Barbara, spoke mainly about the Bill of Rights Project, which is working to create an international composition of human rights, consolidating existing documents. Boyd described this project as part of an effort to prevent crimes such as those to be tried under the ICC, creating an international environment where such crimes would become less likely.

    As the symposium wound down, participants enthusiastically welcomed an unexpected appearance by Daniel Ellsburg, releasing the Pentagon Papers to the press during the Vietnam War. Ellsburg voiced his opinion that we are at much risk of nuclear weapons going off in the next weeks or months than we were during the Cold War, emphasizing the need for a long-term approach to weapons proliferation.

    The symposium was wrapped up with the conclusions of David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Richard Falk who synthesized the varying points made throughout day. Falk also left the audience with the hopeful idea of “politics as the art of the impossible,” reminding participants of the importance of continuing to engage in dialogue and action to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts in the face of extreme militarism.
    * Devon Chaffee is the Research and Advocacy Coordinator at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Bush Abandons Biological Weapons Inspection Agreement

    Last week the Bush administration announced that it has no intention of cooperating with international efforts to verify compliance to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). This latest move in a series of similar policy decisions indicates a disinterest in weapons inspections and brings into question the Bush administration’s commitment to a comprehensive regime of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

    In December 2001 the Bush administration rejected a draft Protocol to the BWC and pulled out of protocol negotiations, stating that it would return in a year with creative solutions to solve the negotiation impasse.

    The promised innovative solutions, however, were never proposed. Instead, the Bush administration stated last week that it had abandoned any efforts to come to an agreement over the protocol and that it would not return to discussions over the BWC until 2006, when the next review conference of the treaty is scheduled. As an alternative to the protocol the administration only offered guidelines for unilateral measures that countries can take to reinforce the BWC, with no international verification structure.

    The BWC announcement follows the Bush administration’s opposition to a verification structure for the recent strategic nuclear weapons reduction treaty with Russia, as well as displays of relative ambivalence about United Nations inspections in Iraq and recent signs that North Korea may be ready to allow unfettered inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Cuba has also recently announced its intention to sign on to the Non-proliferation Treaty, further evidence that US designated “rogues” are noting the importance of participating in multilateral non-proliferation efforts.

    International inspections have served as indispensable instruments of treaty verification, assuring countries that arms control agreements are indeed being adhered to. Without enforcement measures the weight of any international treaty is greatly reduced.

    Bush’s short-term enforcement alternative to inspection regimes seems to be the use of pre-emptive, unilateral force. This policy, however, falls short of a sustainable solution. Threatening a US invasion of every country suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction is impractical, inconsistent with international laws and norms, and unacceptable to the international community.

    Refusing to participate in reciprocal regimes de-legitimizes all US stated commitments to non-proliferation efforts and creates an atmosphere of distrust is likely to agitate, not ameliorate, the perceived need for state actors to possess weapons of mass destruction.

    Representatives from the international community have put decades of work into trying to develop lasting systems that would rein in the unnecessary threat caused by weapons of mass destruction. It is true that the regimes negotiated are not ideal and could be improved upon through creative diplomacy. The Bush administration, however, seems intent on unraveling the fruits of these nonproliferation and disarmament efforts while offering no sustainable alternative.

    For an in-depth critique of the Bush administrations policy towards the BWC see:http://www.stimson.org/pubs.cfm?ID=66

  • Peacful Tomorrow: Organization of Family Members of Sept. 11th Victims Speak Out at NAPF Event

    On September 24th, Kelly Campbell, who lost her brother in-law to the September 11th attacks, spoke at an event held at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation on how she and other family members of Sept. 11th victims came together in their grief to promote peaceful options in search for justice. These individuals formed an organization called September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows (www.peacefultomorrows.org) in an attempt to prevent others from suffering the pains of loss they have in the midst of US military retaliation. “Our grief,” they said, “is not a cry for war.”

    To make clear the connection between their own suffering and the suffering of victims of the “War on Terror,” Peaceful Tomorrows has sent delegates to Afghanistan to meet Afghan civilians who have lost love ones in the US bombing campaigns. These delegates returned with the Afghans’ message of “do not forget us,” and they continue to be in contact with their Afghan sister families.

    According to Campbell, delegates who traveled to Afghanistan were shocked by the stark contrast between the lack of aid for Afghans devastated by US bombing and the outpouring of support and compassion from around the world to their families after the Sept. 11 attacks. To address this injustice, Peaceful Tomorrows advocates for government funded aid to Afghan civilians accidentally bombed by US forces, urging the administration to take responsibility for detrimental effects of its military campaign.

    Representatives from groups in the local community working on Afghan issues, such as the revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), were also present at Tuesday’s meeting, and joined Campbell in strategizing on effective means to reach the media and policy makers with their important message.

    In addition, the participants discussed the links between the military campaign in Afghanistan and the Bush administration’s push to wage war on Iraq, which would no doubt have a devastating impact on the Iraqi civilian population. In a letter to President Bush the Peaceful Tomorrow members stated:

    “We know that war in Iraq would cause the suffering of many thousands of innocent Iraqi families, people who, like our family members on September 11th, will find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. A war would also place our military personnel in harm’s way, causing deaths and the suffering of more American families. It is out of concern for our own service people and for the Iraqi citizens that we implore you to pursue a resolution of the situation in Iraq without war.”

    After the NAPF event Campbell flew directly to Washington D.C. to meet with Congressional representatives to oppose war against Iraq.