Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Lawrence Wittner

  • Bush’s Nuclear Addiction

    George W. Bush might have kicked his alcohol and drug habits, but he still appears to have at least one serious addiction–to nuclear weapons.

    Last year, Congress refused to fund the administration’s ambitious proposal for new nuclear weapons, largely because both Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed that the world would be a safer place with fewer—rather than more–nuclear explosives in existence.

    But, undeterred by last year’s rebuff, the Bush administration recently returned to Congress with a proposal for funding a new generation of “usable” nuclear weapons. These weapons are the so-called “bunker busters.” Despite the rather benign name, the “bunker buster” is an exceptionally devastating weapon, with an explosive power of from several hundred kilotons to one megaton (i.e. a thousand kilotons). To put this in perspective, it should be recalled that the nuclear weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki had explosive yields of from 14 to 21 kilotons. “These weapons will bust more than a bunker,” remarked U.S. Senator Jack Reed. “The area of destruction will encompass an area the size of a city. They are really city breakers.”

    In addition, the Bush administration has requested funding for the “Reliable Replacement Warhead.” If continued beyond the planning stage, this program would lead to the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on upgrading U.S. nuclear warheads and might result in the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing, which has not occurred since 1992.

    Of course, it is not unusual for the leaders of nation states to crave nuclear weapons. After all, the history of the international system is one of rivalry and war and, consequently, many national leaders itch to possess the most devastating weapons available. This undoubtedly accounts for the fact that, today, there are eight nations that possess nuclear weapons, a ninth (North Korea) that might, and additional nations that might be working to develop them.

    Even so, there is a widespread recognition that the nuclear arms race–indeed, the very possession of nuclear weapons–confronts the world with unprecedented dangers. And, for this reason, nations, among them the United States, have signed nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties. The most important of them is probably the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, in which non-nuclear nations agreed to forgo the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear nations agreed to move toward nuclear disarmament. As late as the NPT review conference of 2000, the declared nuclear weapons states proclaimed their commitment to an “unequivocal undertaking . . . to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

    Thanks to these agreements and to independent action, there has been a substantial reduction in the number of nuclear weapons around the world.

    Furthermore, even if nations were to disregard these treaty obligations and cling doggedly to their nuclear weapons, how many do they need? The United States possesses more than 10,000 nuclear weapons–a number that, together with Russia’s arsenal, constitutes more than 90 percent of the world total. Does it really need more? And how are they to be used?

    President Bush, of course, wraps all his military policies in the “war on terror,” and his nuclear policies are no exception. But how, exactly, are nuclear weapons useful against terrorists? Terrorists do not control fixed territories that can be attacked with nuclear weapons. Instead, they are intermingled with the general population in this country and abroad. Unless one is willing to attack them by conducting a vast and terrible nuclear bombardment of civilians, dwarfing in scale any massacre that terrorists have ever implemented, nuclear weapons have no conceivable function in combating terrorism.

    Indeed, adding to the stockpile of nuclear weapons only adds to the dangers of terrorism. Terrorists do not have the knowledge or materials that would enable them to build their own nuclear weapons. But, the more nuclear weapons that exist, the more likely terrorists are to obtain them from a government stockpile–through theft, or purchase, or conspiracy. Therefore, as Congress has recognized, the United States would be safer if it encouraged worldwide nuclear disarmament rather than the building of additional nuclear weapons.

    In this context, Bush’s voracious appetite for new nuclear weapons is, to say the least, remarkable. In addition to his repeated attempts to get Congress to fund a U.S. nuclear buildup, he has pulled the United States out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (thereby effectively scrapping the START II Treaty, negotiated and signed by his father), opposed U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (negotiated and signed by President Clinton), pressed Congress to smooth the path toward the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing, and dropped further negotiations for nuclear disarmament.

    These repeated attempts to escape from the constraints of nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements and acquire new nuclear weapons suggest that Bush has what might be called a nuclear addiction.

    There are other signs of this addiction, as well. Indifferent to everything but acquiring their desired substance, addicts typically lose their appetite for the fundamentals of life, even eating. In a similar fashion, the president has proposed a budget that severely slashes funding for U.S. health, education, and welfare programs and redirects it to the military, including his pet nuclear projects. But how long can a society be starved of health, education, and welfare before it collapses? Impervious to reason or to the consistent public support for funding in these areas, Bush does not seem to consider this question. Instead, he presses forward with his demand for . . . more nukes!

    When the 2005 NPT review conference opens this May at the United Nations, Bush’s lust for nuclear weapons seems likely to be criticized by many nations. It is already being assailed by numerous peace and disarmament organizations, which are planning a massive nuclear abolition march and rally in New York City on May 1, the day before the NPT review conference convenes. And popular sentiment is not far behind. A recent AP-Ipsos poll reports that two-thirds of Americans believe that no nation should possess nuclear weapons, including the United States.

    Is George Bush able to accept the idea of a nuclear-free world? It’s certainly possible. But, first, it might take a decision by him to buckle down and kick his nuclear addiction.

    Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition (Stanford University Press).

    Originally published by the History News Network.

  • Does the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Have a Future?

    This May, the United Nations will be holding a review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a key nuclear arms control and disarmament agreement to which 188 countries are now parties.

    Originally proposed by the U.S. and Soviet governments, the NPT was signed at the United Nations in 1968 and went into force in 1970. Under its provisions, non-nuclear nations agreed to renounce the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear-armed nations agreed to divest themselves of their nuclear weapons through good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. In this fashion, nations on both sides of the Cold War divide signaled their intention to halt the nuclear arms race and move toward a nuclear-free world.

    For decades, there was substantial progress along these lines. Non-nuclear nations refrained from building nuclear weapons. And the nuclear powers signed a series of important nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties: the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; two Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties; the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty; two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties; and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. At times, they even reduced their nuclear forces unilaterally. As a result, by the late 1990s, no additional nations belonged to the nuclear club, while the number of nuclear weapons deployed by the nuclear nations or in their stockpiles declined dramatically.

    Starting in 1998, however, the nuclear arms race began to revive. Determined to place their nations within the ranks of the nuclear powers, the governments of India and Pakistan exploded their first nuclear weapons that year. Since then, they have engaged in dangerous and mutually threatening nuclear buildups. Other non-nuclear nations, including North Korea, took the first steps toward going nuclear, though the extent of their progress along these lines remains uncertain.

    The nuclear powers also began to abandon their NPT commitments. In 1999, the U.S. Senate stunned much of the world, including U.S. allies, by rejecting ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Taking office in 2001, the administration of George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the ABM Treaty, opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, began deployment of a missile defense system, pressed for the development of new U.S. nuclear weapons, and abandoned negotiations for nuclear disarmament. Responding sharply to U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and U.S. plans for missile defense, the Russian government announced its intention to deploy a new generation of nuclear missiles. And China might not be far behind.

    Why has there been a reversal of earlier progress toward a nuclear-free world?

    A key factor behind the turnabout is the decline of popular pressure for nuclear disarmament.

    Rival nations–and before their existence, rival territories–have always gravitated toward military buildups. This is based on the assumption–what might be called the “old thinking”–that national security is best achieved through military strength. Not surprisingly, then, in a world of competing and sometimes hostile nations, governments are tempted to develop nuclear weapons to secure what they consider their “national interests.” Thus, beginning during World War II and continuing during the Cold War, a growing number of rival governments commenced developing powerful nuclear arsenals.

    Fortunately, however, the nuclear arms race of the Cold War era inspired widespread public resistance–resistance that took the form of mass movements for nuclear disarmament, feisty antinuclear marches and rallies, and public critiques of nuclear weapons by religious bodies, scientists, and cultural leaders. Polls found public opinion strongly opposed to nuclear buildups and nuclear wars. As a result, governments were pushed, often reluctantly, into agreements for nuclear arms control and disarmament.

    But, since the end of the Cold War, the mass nuclear disarmament movements of the past have declined dramatically and public concern about nuclear weapons has dwindled. Furthermore, much of the lingering public concern has been manipulated by cynical government officials to bolster their own policies—as when the Bush administration exaggerated the Iraqi government’s readiness to wage nuclear war in order to justify its invasion of Iraq. Thus, freed of the constraint of popular pressure for international nuclear disarmament, governments gradually jettisoned their NPT commitments.

    The situation, however, may be changing once more. Just as the nuclear arms race of the Cold War era inspired massive popular protest, the reviving nuclear arms race of recent years is beginning to generate substantial public opposition.

    Much of this public opposition is crystallizing around the May 2005 NPT review conference at the United Nations, where nuclear and non-nuclear nations almost certainly will condemn one another for reneging on their treaty commitments. United for Peace and Justice (the major peace coalition in the United States), along with Abolition 2000 (a group focused on the nuclear issue), is laying plans for a nuclear abolition march and rally in New York City on May 1, the day before the review conference convenes. Noting that the NPT is “in serious disarray,” the organizers of these events have called for “a massive demonstration” to “demand global nuclear disarmament and an end to nuclear excuses for war.” Large antinuclear meetings and other related events are taking shape in numerous American cities, with prominent speakers drawn from political, academic, and cultural life.

    International organizations are also focusing their efforts on the NPT review conference. Stressing the importance of the gathering, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War is mobilizing for it as part of a Campaign for a Nuclear-Weapons-Free 21st Century. Mayors for Peace, an organization of top municipal officials from more than 600 cities around the world, has become particularly active in pressing the case for nuclear abolition. Headed by Hiroshima’s mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayors for Peace will be sending a substantial delegation to the NPT review conference for this purpose.

    Thus, at this time of widespread uncertainty about the future of the NPT–and, more broadly, about the future of nuclear arms control and disarmament–there are signs that popular pressure is developing to put the world back on track toward nuclear disarmament. Whether this pressure will prove powerful enough to save the NPT remains to be seen. But there is certainly movement on this front. Fortunately, in the most dangerous of circumstances, people have a tendency to rise to the occasion.

    Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition (Stanford University Press).

    Originally published by the History News Network

  • Nuclear Folly

    According to recent news reports and as hinted in the president’s State of the Union Address, the neocons who dominate the Bush administration are gearing up for another pre-emptive military attack, this time upon Iran. The ostensible reason for such an attack is that the Iranian government is developing nuclear weapons.

    In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which regularly inspects Iran’s nuclear operations, has not found any signs of nuclear weapons. Although the IAEA has reported that Iran has produced enriched uranium–which can be used for either civilian or military purposes–such production has been halted thanks to a November 2004 Iranian agreement with France, Germany, and Britain. Thus, although it is possible that Iran might produce nuclear weapons some time in the future, this is hardly a certainty. Nor is it clear that the Iranian government has ever planned to produce them.

    Ironically, in the midst of this delicate situation, the Bush administration is busy dismantling the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This treaty, signed in 1968 by officials of the United States and of almost all other countries, obligates non-nuclear nations to forgo development of nuclear weapons and nuclear nations to take steps toward nuclear disarmament. The Bush administration reveres the first obligation and wants to scrap the second.

    In late December 2004, news accounts quoted an administration official as saying that the final agreement at the NPT review conference in 2000–which commits the declared nuclear weapons states to an “unequivocal undertaking” to abolish nuclear weapons–is a “simply historical document,” which does not reflect the drastic changes in the world since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Thus, he said, the Bush administration “no longer supports” all of the thirteen steps toward disarmament outlined in the 2000 agreement and does not view it as “being a road map or binding guideline or anything like that.”

    For those who have followed the Bush administration’s nuclear policy, this position should come as no great surprise. The administration has not only abandoned efforts toward negotiating nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements with other nations, but has withdrawn the United States from the ABM treaty (signed by President Nixon) and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (signed by President Clinton).

    It has also championed a program of building new U.S. nuclear weapons, including so-called “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes,” and of facilitating the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing. Only an unexpected revolt in Congress–led by Representatives David Hobson and Pete Viclosky, the Republican chair and ranking Democrat of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Committee–blocked funding for the Bush administration’s proposed new nuclear weapons in 2004. Political analysts expect the administration to make another effort to secure the funding this year.

    For the Bush administration and its fans, this evasion of U.S. obligations under the NPT makes perfect sense. The United States, they believe, is a supremely virtuous nation, and nations with whom it has bad relations–such as Iran–are “evil.” In line with this belief, the U.S. government has the right to build and use nuclear weapons, while nations it places on its “enemies” list do not.

    As might be expected, this assumption does not play nearly as well among government officials in Iran, who seem unlikely to fulfill their part of the NPT agreement if U.S. officials flagrantly renege on theirs. At the very least, the Bush administration is offering them a convenient justification for a policy of building Iranian nuclear weapons.

    Other nations have drawn this same conclusion. In the fall of 2004, Helen Clark, the prime minister of New Zealand, warned: “First and foremost we need to keep before us the essential bargain that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty represents. While we will willingly contribute to non-proliferation and counter-proliferation initiatives, those initiatives should be promoted alongside initiatives to secure binding commitments from those who have nuclear weapons which move us further towards the longer-term goal of nuclear disarmament.”

    Much the same point was made in early January 2005 by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the IAEA. Calling upon all countries to commit themselves to forgo building facilities for uranium enrichment and nuclear reprocessing for the next five years, ElBaradei added: “We should not forget the commitment by the weapons states to move toward nuclear disarmament.”

    In fact, ElBaradei’s evenhanded approach to nuclear issues has angered the Bush administration, which is now working to deny him reappointment as IAEA director.

    The responsibility of all nations under the NPT will undoubtedly receive a good deal of discussion at the NPT review conference that will convene at the United Nations this May. Certainly it will be interesting to see how the Bush administration explains the inconsistencies in its nuclear policy.

    Unfortunately, by then we may well have another bloody military confrontation on our hands. Like the war in Iraq, it will be sold to us on the basis of the potential threat from a nation possessing weapons of mass destruction. And, also like the war in Iraq, it will be unnecessary–brought on by the arrogance and foolishness of the Bush administration.

    Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition (Stanford University Press).

    Originally published by the History News Network.

  • Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove- A Book Review

    Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove by Peter Goodchild (Harvard, 2004)

    Although most people would prefer to forget it, ever since the atomic bombing of Japanese cities in August 1945 the world has lived on the brink of nuclear annihilation. And no individual played a more important role in fostering the nuclear arms race and its terrible dangers than Edward Teller, a Hungarian emigre physicist.

    In “Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove,” Peter Goodchild–an award-winning television producer for the BBC and the author of a biography of Robert Oppenheimer–provides a detailed, informative biography of Teller. Drawing upon interviews he conducted, manuscript materials, and secondary sources, Goodchild sketches a revealing portrait of this gifted and extraordinarily influential figure.

    Although Teller was born into a relatively privileged, comfortable, Jewish professional family in Budapest, he underwent an unhappy childhood. His mother was often worried and over-protective and, thus, he grew up a very serious child, frightened of everyday situations. Indeed, Teller himself recalled that “the consistency of numbers” was “the first memory I have of feeling secure.” And there was much to feel insecure about. Within short order, the Teller family life in Budapest was disrupted by World War I, a postwar Communist revolution, and a tide of post-Communist anti-Semitism. Though he was unusually bright, Teller recalled that, at school, he had no friends among his classmates, was ridiculed by some of his teachers, and “was practically a social outcast.” Not surprisingly, he “reached adolescence still a serious child with no sense of humor.”

    As Teller moved on to Germany to attend university classes and do physics research, his social acceptance and social skills improved markedly. Thrown together with other brilliant scientists, many of them as maladjusted as he was, Teller developed genuine warmth, humor, and charm. Nevertheless, his childhood difficulties deeply marked his subsequent career. Goodchild argues, convincingly, that Teller’s “thirst for acceptance–with the hurt and anger he felt when it was denied”–became “a defining feature” of his life.

    With the Nazi rise to power, Teller left Germany for Britain and, soon, for the United States, where he settled comfortably into an academic career. In 1939, along with two other Hungarian emigre physicists, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, he met with Albert Einstein and helped convince him to warn President Franklin Roosevelt that the German government might be developing an atomic bomb. This proved to be the beginning of the Manhattan Project, the secret wartime atomic bomb program. Teller worked on the project, which drew together many of the scientists who, in later years, would clash over nuclear weapons policy. Expecting to be appointed head of the theoretical division at Los Alamos, Teller was bitterly disappointed when he did not get the post.

    He was also chagrined when his plans for work on the “Super”H-bomb were disrupted. For these setbacks, he blamed the director of the Los Alamos lab, Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist whose influence, popularity, and cliquish behavior he began to resent. When Szilard asked Teller to circulate a petition at Los Alamos urging that the bomb not be used against Japan, Teller was ready to do it, but was dissuaded by Oppenheimer. Indeed, Teller reported back to Szilard that, in light of the need to convince the public that “the next war could be fatal,” the “actual combat use” of the weapon “might even be the best thing.” It was the first sign of his hawkishness and, also, of a complex relationship with Oppenheimer, that characterized his life in the following decades.

    With the end of the war, Teller –deeply pessimistic about postwar relations with the Soviet Union– pressed scientists to continue their nuclear weapons work. Initially, to be sure, he supported nuclear arms control and disarmament measures like the ill-fated Acheson-Lilienthal Plan. But, increasingly, he championed the development of the H-bomb– a project in which he hoped to play a leading role. As Goodchild shows, by developing the H-bomb, Teller was responding both to his fear that the Soviet Union might conquer the world and to his jealousy of Oppenheimer, then widely lauded as the “father of the atomic bomb.”

    The two issues, reflecting his anxiety and his ambition, soon became intertwined, for Oppenheimer and his circle proved to be major obstacles to getting the U.S. government to move forward with the H-bomb project. Gradually, however, Teller won the struggle. Particularly after the first Soviet nuclear test in the fall of 1949, powerful political figures, including President Harry Truman, lined up on the side of constructing an H-bomb. All Teller had to do was to figure out how to build it. Ironically, despite his vigorous weapons work at the Livermore laboratory, it was a problem that confounded him for years. Furthermore, the mathematician Stan Ulam may have been responsible for the necessary conceptual breakthrough. Nevertheless, Teller received the lion’s share of the credit and, ultimately, became known as “the father of the H-bomb”— a weapon a thousand times as powerful as the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima.

    Nor was the creation of the H-bomb Teller’s only victory over his putative enemies. In 1954, he teamed up with other foes of Oppenheimer (and of nuclear arms controls) to destroy his rival’s career and influence. Oppenheimer had applied to the Atomic Energy Commission to reinstate his security clearance, and this triggered a dramatic, highly-publicized loyalty-security hearing. Although Teller’s friends urged him not to testify, he rejected their advice. Thus, during the hearing, he asserted that, based on Oppenheimer’s actions since 1945, he thought it vital for national security to deny clearance to him. This also turned out to be the decision of the board, which cut off Oppenheimer from government programs he had once directed and terminated his lingering influence upon them.

    For Teller, it proved to be a pyrrhic victory. When the AEC surprised him by publishing the transcript of the loyalty-security hearing, many of Teller’s scientific colleagues –shocked by what they considered his betrayal of human decency–cut him off as well. Teller was devastated by their response. As he recalled: “If a person leaves his country, leaves his continent, leaves his relatives, leaves his friends, the only people he knows are his professional colleagues. If more than ninety per cent of them come around to consider him an enemy, an outcast, it is bound to have an effect. The truth is it had a profound effect.”

    Teller, however, proceeded to make new friends, particularly within the ranks of the military-industrial complex, who appreciated the positions he had taken and recognized his utility as a champion of new nuclear weapons programs. And he proved to be a good investment. Urging Congress and the President to spurn the idea of a nuclear test ban treaty, Teller argued that “it would be a crime against the people” to stop nuclear testing when he and other weapons scientists stood on the brink of developing a “clean” bomb. “Peaceful nuclear explosions,” he told President Dwight Eisenhower, could be used to uncover deposits of oil, alter the course of rivers, and “perhaps even modify the weather.” Eisenhower was greatly impressed, and suggested that it might be a good idea to share the “clean”; bombs with the Russians, an idea that Teller, naturally, resisted. Under Teller’ direction, his colleagues at Livermore devised ever wilder schemes to prove that nuclear testing could be hidden and, therefore, a test ban was not possible. These included exploding weapons in deep caves, building a gargantuan shield to hide x-rays from earthbound observers, and planning nuclear tests on the far side of the moon. Although much of the public was growing concerned about the nuclear fallout from testing, Teller assured Americans that fallout was “not worth worrying about.” Nuclear test radiation “need not necessarily be harmful,” he declared, and “may conceivably be helpful.”

    One of the zanier ventures promoted by Teller involved the use of H-bombs to blast out a deep-water harbor in northern Alaska. In the late 1950s, the influential physicist encouraged activities that included using nuclear explosives to create diamonds, to mine oil, and with the assistance of 26 nuclear devices to carve out a new canal adjacent to the Panama Canal. He even opined that it would be hard to “resist the temptation to shoot at the moon. . . to observe what kind of disturbance it might cause.” Eventually, these grandiose ideas took shape in Project Plowshare.

    To implement its first component, Project Chariot, Teller flew off to Alaska to propose exciting possibilities that included using nuclear explosions to construct dams, lakes, and canals. Ultimately, Teller narrowed down the Alaskan venture to using nuclear weapons to blast out a giant harbor near Cape Thompson. Although commercial interests in Alaska liked the idea, local scientists were critical and the local Inuit people –32 miles from the site of the planned nuclear explosions — were not at all eager to have their community turned into a nuclear wasteland. Responding to the surge of protest against Project Chariot, the Kennedy administration scrapped it. Goodchild reveals, however, that these apparently irrational schemes had a hidden logic, for “Chariot was intended as a cover for military activities.” Faced with the prospect of a nuclear test ban, Teller was promoting “peaceful” nuclear explosions as a means of continuing the testing of nuclear weapons.

    Teller’s fierce faith in nuclear weapons became ever more evident in the 1960s and 1970s. He testified before Congress against the Partial Test Ban Treaty and also spoke out against it on television. In addition, he championed the development of an ABM system that would employ nuclear explosions to destroy incoming missiles, held an underground nuclear test at Amchitka Island that set off the most powerful underground explosion in American history, and lobbied hard against the SALT treaties of Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. “He . . . was becoming so wildly hawkish,” recalled Marvin Goldberger, one of Teller’s early students, “that no one wanted him around except the extremists in the Pentagon.”

    Teller’s plunge into extremism carried over into the debate over the hazards of nuclear power. When the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant occurred, releasing dangerous amounts of radioactivity, Teller reassured a congressional committee that, “zero is the number of proven cases of damage to health due to a nuclear plant in the free world.” The day after his congressional appearance, Teller was hospitalized with a heart attack, and even this became grist for his propaganda mill. In July 1979, under a two-page headline in the Wall Street Journal reading “I WAS THE ONLY VICTIM OF THREE MILE ISLAND,” there appeared a large photo of Teller, along with his explanation that the cause of his health problem “was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous.” Goodchild then goes on to say: “An editorial in the New York Times accused Teller of propaganda…It then pointed out something Teller had not mentioned: that the sponsor of the advertisement, Dresser Industries, had manufactured the valve that had stuck open and started the emergency.”

    Although Teller had substantial influence on U.S. public policy through the 1970s – fostering the H-bomb during the Truman years, purging Oppenheimer and sabotaging a test ban treaty during the Eisenhower years, excluding underground nuclear testing from the test ban treaty during the Kennedy years, securing the deployment of an ABM system during the Johnson years, and keeping the U.S. government busily engaged in the nuclear arms race during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter years – he came into his own after the 1980 election victory of Ronald Reagan. Teller arranged for the appointment of a protégé of his as the president’s Science Advisor, became a member of the White House Science Council, met with the president at the White House on nuclear issues, and did as much as any other individual to convince him that the creation of a Star Wars anti-missile system was vital to the national defense. The Russians, Teller told Reagan, were about to deploy “powerful directed energy weapons” in space, thus enabling them to “militarily dominate both space and the earth, conclusively altering the world balance of power.” Thus, “urgent action” was needed to build an anti-missile system that would be powered by nuclear weapons explosions and could be deployed within a few years.

    As is well-known, Reagan swallowed this anti-missile proposal hook, line, and sinker though, in fact, Teller’s claims for it had little relation to reality. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, was more dubious about the project, but he did approve a modified version, Brilliant Pebbles, also championed by Teller. Republicans in Congress also rallied behind the idea of missile defense, and during the Bill Clinton years–used their newfound strength in that legislative body to keep the project alive and the appropriations flowing to America’s weaponeers. Thereafter, George W. Bush, taking office, ordered the deployment of the new system and, a week before Teller’s death in 2003, awarded him the President’s Medal of Freedom, this nation’s highest civilian award. Along the way, Teller’s brainchild helped to sabotage an agreement at Reykjavik to eliminate strategic nuclear weapons, caused the scrapping of the ABM treaty, and resulted in expenditures of over $100 billion. And there is still no indication that it works.

    Overall, Goodchild’s book provides a fascinating, well-researched, and at times sympathetic study of an extraordinary individual. Unfortunately, though, the author has a much better grasp of Teller’s life than he does of his times. Thus, he makes some glaring historical mistakes. Among them are the claims that, before Japanese surrender, the U.S. government provided assurances to the Japanese government of the emperor’s safety and that “Soviet armies invaded Czechoslovakia” in February 1948. Even so, “Edward Teller” is a book well worth reading. Provocative and convincing, it highlights the importance of the personal dimension –including personal neuroses–in the history of the nuclear arms race.

    Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is “Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present” (Stanford University Press, 2003)

    Originally published by the History News Network

  • The Revolt Against the Bush Administration’s Nuclear Double Standard

    In late November, when Congress refused to appropriate money to fund so-called “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes,” this action represented not only a serious blow to the Bush administration’s plan to build new nuclear weapons, but to the administration’s overall nuclear arms control and disarmament policy.

    That policy has been to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by nations the Bush administration considers “evil.” The military invasion of Iraq, like the gathering confrontation with Iran and North Korea, reflects, at least in part, the administration’s obsession with preventing nations potentially hostile to the United States from acquiring a nuclear capability. This focus upon blocking nuclear weapons development in other countries has some legal justification for, in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, non-nuclear nations agreed not to develop nuclear weapons.

    But the NPT also calls for nuclear nations to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons they possess. Indeed, in the meetings that fashioned the treaty, the non-nuclear weapons states demanded a commitment to nuclear disarmament by the nuclear powers. And they received it — not only in the form of the treaty’s provisions, but in the formal pledges made by the nuclear powers at the periodic treaty review conferences that have been held since the NPT went into effect.

    It is in this area that the Bush administration has revealed itself as the proponent of a double standard. At the same time that it has assailed selected nations for developing nuclear weapons, it has withdrawn the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, effectively destroyed the START II treaty, and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has also raised the U.S. nuclear weapons budget to new heights and proposed the building of new U.S. nuclear weapons, including the “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes.” As Senator Kerry pointed out during the recent presidential campaign, this is not the kind of policy that will encourage other nations to abide by their commitments under the NPT.

    The surprising congressional move to block the Bush plan for new nuclear weapons is but one of numerous signs that this double standard cannot be sustained. As a special high-level U.N. panel has just warned: “We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.” Nor is the breakaway from the NPT limited to the non-nuclear nations. Just the other day the Russian government announced its development of a new nuclear missile. Appropriately enough, the U.N. panel condemned the nuclear powers for failing to honor their commitments, and called upon them to restart the nuclear disarmament process.

    Furthermore, of course, terrorists have been actively seeking nuclear weapons, and might well obtain them. Thousands of tactical nuclear weapons — many of them small, portable, and, therefore, ideal for terrorist use — are still maintained by the U.S. and Russian governments. No international agreements have ever been put into place to control or eliminate them. In fact, it remains unclear how many of these tactical nuclear weapons exist or where they are located. In Russia, at least, they are badly guarded and, in the disorderly circumstances of the post-Soviet economy, they seem ripe for sale or theft.

    The revolt against the Bush administration’s double standard could come to a head in May 2005, when an NPT review conference opens at the United Nations, in New York City. Nuclear and non-nuclear nations are sure to exchange sharp barbs about non-compliance with NPT provisions. Furthermore, more than a hundred mayors from the Mayors for Peace Campaign, which has drawn together the top executives from 640 cities around the world, are expected to come to the U.N. to lobby for nuclear disarmament. They will be joined by United for Peace and Justice, the largest peace movement coalition in the United States, and over 2,000 organizations in 96 different countries. Together, they have launched Abolition Now, a campaign calling on heads of state to begin negotiations in 2005 on a treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

    Ultimately, then, the Bush administration might be forced into accepting a single standard for dealing with the threat posed by nuclear weapons — one designed to lead to a nuclear-free world. Certainly, there are plenty of signs that people and nations around the globe believe that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.

    Mr. Witnner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition (Stanford University Press).

    This article was originally published by the History News Network.

  • Gorbachev Wages the Good Fight Against WMDs

    The term statesman, in its positive sense, can be applied to only a few current and former heads of state. One of them is Mikhail Gorbachev.

    The former Soviet president spoke out forcefully in London last week at the kickoff of a new campaign called Come Clean. Launched by Greenpeace, Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other non-governmental organizations, the campaign is designed to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. “If they exist, sooner or later there will be disastrous consequences,” he said. “It is not enough to safeguard them. They must be abolished.”

    This forthright repudiation of such weapons is not an afterthought for the man who once ruled the world’s largest nation. Quite the contrary. He began speaking out against nuclear dangers even before he assumed the top leadership post in the Soviet Union and initiated the transformation of his country into a relatively peaceful, democratic society. Addressing the British parliament in December 1984, Gorbachev declared that “the nuclear age inevitably dictates new political thinking. Preventing nuclear war is the most burning issue for all people on earth.”

    After becoming Soviet party secretary in March 1985, Gorbachev stepped up his attack upon nuclear weapons. Speaking to the French parliament that October, he declared that, as there could be “no victors in a nuclear war,” the time had come “to stop the nuclear arms race.” Faced with the “self-destruction of the human race,” people had to “burn the black book of nuclear alchemy” and make the 21st century a time “of life without fear of universal death.” In January 1986, Gorbachev unveiled a three-stage plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons around the world by the year 2000.

    As these elements of such thinking were put into place, Eduard Shevardnadze, the new Soviet foreign minister, exulted. Henceforth, he wrote, Soviet security would be “gained not by the highest possible level of strategic parity, but the lowest possible level,” with “nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction … removed from the equation.” The world was well on its way to the INF treaty, the START I treaty, and the end of the Cold War.

    American conservatives, of course, have dished up a very different version of events. In it, Gorbachev and other courageous Soviet reformers are simply airbrushed out of the picture. Instead, the Reagan administration’s military buildup is said to have overawed Soviet bureaucrats and “won” the Cold War.

    But this triumphalist interpretation has nothing behind it but the self-interest of U.S. officials. None of the Soviet leaders of the time have given it any credit whatsoever. Gorbachev himself shrugged off the idea of Soviet capitulation to U.S. power as American political campaign rhetoric, but added: “If this idea is serious, then it is a very big delusion.”

    What did move Gorbachev to take his antinuclear stand was the critical perspective on nuclear weapons advanced by the mass nuclear disarmament campaign of the era. Meeting frequently with leaders of this campaign, he adopted their ideas, their rhetoric and their proposals.

    “The new thinking,” he said, “absorbed the conclusions and demands of … the public and … of the movements of physicians, scientists and ecologists, and of various antiwar organizations.”

    Although President Reagan also deserves credit for fostering nuclear disarmament and the end of the Cold War, it is not for his dangerous and expensive weapons systems. As Colin Powell observed, what Reagan contributed was “the vision and flexibility, lacking in many knee-jerk Cold Warriors, to recognize that Gorbachev was a new man in a new age offering new opportunities for peace.”

    Gorbachev’s sincerity in seeking nuclear disarmament is further exemplified by his activities since leaving public office in 1991. Time and again, he has spoken out against the dangers of nuclear weapons. In January 1998, he joined an array of other former national leaders who signed an appeal for nuclear abolition.

    It is sad to see how far the U.S. government has strayed from that vision. Although the Bush administration talks about the danger of WMDs, they are only the WMDs of other nations. It has no plan for comprehensive nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, it has withdrawn from the ABM treaty, rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is currently promoting legislation to build new nuclear weapons.

    What this nation badly needs is a farsighted statesman like Mikhail Gorbachev.

    Lawrence S. Wittner teaches at the University at Albany. His latest book is “Toward Nuclear Abolition.”

  • New Nukes, Anyone?

    This May, before Congress adjourns for its Memorial Day recess, the Senate and House of Representatives are scheduled to vote on the annual defense authorization bill. This bill is expected to include several provisions in the Bush administration’s budget proposal that make preparations for the building of new nuclear weapons.

    New nuclear weapons? Yes; there is no doubt about it. Armed with only 10,000 nuclear weapons, the U.S. government wants some more.

    The Bush administration has requested $27.6 million to develop a nuclear “bunker buster,” plus another $9 million for “advanced concept initiatives” that seem likely to include work on new, “small-yield” nuclear weapons. The President also proposes an allocation of $30 million toward building a $4 billion “Modern Pit Facility” that would churn out plutonium triggers for the explosion of thermonuclear weapons. And the administration wants another
    $30 million to dramatically reduce the time it would take to prepare for conducting nuclear test explosions.

    Those who have followed the Bush administration’s pronouncements regarding nuclear weapons won’t be surprised by these proposals. The administration’s 2001 Nuclear posture Review widened U.S. nuclear options by suggesting possible use of nuclear weapons against countries that don’t possess them. The following year, the Nuclear Weapons Council, an administration committee, remarked that it would “be desirable to assess the potential benefits that could be obtained from a return to nuclear testing.” In
    2003, the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Security Administration began a study of building a nuclear “bunker buster,” and the head of its nuclear division proposed taking advantage of the White House-prompted repeal of the Congressional ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons.

    Meanwhile, of course, the administration has scrapped the U.S. government’s long-term commitment to nuclear arms control and disarmament-made in the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and reiterated as late as the NPT review conference in 2000–by withdrawing from the 1972 ABM treaty and refusing to support ratification of the 1996
    Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

    These shifts in nuclear policy are designed to get the U.S. armed forces ready to wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review made it clear not only that nuclear weapons would continue to “play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States,” but that they would be employed with “greater flexibility” against “a wide range of target types.” Strategic nuclear weapons were fine for deterrence purposes. But their capacity to annihilate vast numbers of people had horrified the public and, thus, had led government officials to write them off as useful war-fighting implements. Battered by popular protest, even the hawkish Ronald Reagan had agreed that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” But this abandonment of nuclear options stuck in the craw of the militarists who garrison the Bush administration, who were (and are) determined to build “usable” nuclear weapons.

    “Bunker buster” and low-yield nuclear weapons should be seen in this context. The former is designed to burrow into the ground to destroy military targets protected by rock or concrete. The latter–sometimes called “mini- nukes”–would also have greater utility on the battlefield than would larger nuclear weapons, with their vast, frightening destructiveness.

    In fact, they would still be enormously destructive. Although advocates of the “bunker-buster” have claimed that this nuclear weapon–because it explodes underground–is a “clean” one, in reality it is quite deadly. The nuclear weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki had explosive yields of from 14 to 21 kilotons; by contrast, the “bunker buster” has a yield
    of from several hundred kilotons to one megaton. If exploded underground, its effects would not be contained there. And if exploded in a city, it would create vast devastation through blast, fire, and radiation. As U.S. Senator Jack Reed observed: “These weapons will bust more than a bunker. The area of destruction will encompass an area the size of a city. They are really city breakers.” Even the “mini-nukes” will create huge swathes of destruction
    where they are used, as well as vast clouds of radioactive nuclear debris that will drift for many miles on the wind until this radioactive fallout lands on innocent people below.

    Furthermore, these “usable” nuclear weapons blur the dividing line between conventional war and nuclear war. Indeed, this is just what they are designed to do. And given the Bush administration’s penchant for waging war on the flimsiest of pretexts, it is hard to imagine that these weapons will not be used in the future–for “pre-emptive” wars or worse.

    In addition, by building, testing, and using new nuclear weapons, the U.S. government will encourage other nations to do the same. At the least, building and testing the weapons will put the final nail in the coffin of efforts at nuclear arms control and disarmament. The U.S. government has not conducted nuclear tests since 1992 and was the leading force behind the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, signed by President Clinton. When the U.S. government resumes its nuclear test explosions, that will certainly provide the signal for other nations to scrap that treaty and commence their own nuclear buildups.

    Ironically, despite the Bush administration’s professed “war on terrorism,” developing these new weapons will also sharply enhance terrorist dangers. Because of their small size, mini-nukes are relatively easy to steal and transport by terrorists. Indeed, what weapon of mass destruction would be more available and appealing to bloodthirsty fanatics–whether of the domestic or foreign variety–than the new nuclear weapons that the Bush administration plans to develop?

    All in all, then, the Bush plan for building new nuclear weapons is a disaster. That Congress should even consider it seriously shows the degree to which this country has succumbed to the military madness fostered by the Bush administration.

    Even so, all is not lost. In 2003, the Democrats in Congress put up a fairly good fight against the first stages of the Bush administration’s plan for new nuclear weapons–so good that, together with some Republicans, they managed to block a number of the plan’s key features. This forced the administration to go back to Congress this year, to try again.

    So the battle is joined–this month! If you sit it out and tamely let the Bush warriors get ready for nuclear war, you have no one but yourself to blame.

    *Lawence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition (Stanford University Press). This article was originally published on ZNet.

  • The Two Sides of the Nuclear Coin

    Despite George W. Bush’s repeated warnings about nuclear proliferation, he and his fellow Republicans deserve much of the blame for it. Ever since the advent of the Bush administration, it has charged that other nations are acquiring nuclear weapons. Justifying war with Iraq, the administration hammered away at that nation’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. It has also assailed North Korea and Iran for their nuclear programs. On Feb. 11, in a major policy address, President Bush called for new steps to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. The world must act, he said, to “confront these dangers and to end them.”

    At the same time, the administration has virtually scrapped the longstanding U.S. policy of nuclear disarmament — exactly the policy that, over the decades, has provided the key to halting nuclear proliferation.

    In 1965, when the U.S. and Soviet governments worried about the prospect of nuclear weapons spreading to dozens of nations, they teamed up to submit nonproliferation treaties to the UN General Assembly. Non-nuclear nations immediately objected to these proposals, arguing that they would merely restrict the nuclear club to its current members (then the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China). Alva Myrdal, Sweden’s disarmament minister, insisted that “disarmament measures should be a matter of mutual renunciation.” Willy Brandt, West Germany’s foreign minister, argued that a nonproliferation treaty was justified “only if the nuclear states regard it as a step toward restrictions of their own armaments and toward disarmament.”

    Unlike the Bush administration, U.S. and Soviet leaders of the time recognized that nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament were two sides of the same coin. As a result, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that emerged from the United Nations was substantially broadened. Non-nuclear states pledged “not to make or acquire nuclear weapons.” And nuclear nations agreed to take “effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Further, when it signed and ratified this treaty, the U.S. government pledged not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that had endorsed the NPT and that were not allied with a nation possessing nuclear weapons.

    With this bargain struck between the nuclear haves and have-nots, nearly all nations signed the NPT. Over the next 30 years, only one additional nation (Israel) developed nuclear weapons. To some degree, the success of this nonproliferation policy reflected citizens’ campaigns for nuclear disarmament that stigmatized nuclear weapons and encouraged the signing of nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties. But it also resulted from the mutual renunciation features of the NPT, which paired abstention from building nuclear weapons by most nations with nuclear disarmament and non-threatening behavior by the others.

    Unfortunately, the NPT began unraveling in the late 1990s. The Republican-dominated U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a landmark measure negotiated and signed by President Clinton. Given their control of Congress, the Republicans also managed to advance plans for a national missile defense system, a venture that contravened a key arms control measure, the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Meanwhile, India, pointing to the failure of the nuclear powers to divest themselves of their nuclear weapons, became a nuclear nation in 1998. This act provoked Pakistan to do the same.

    After the presidential election of 2000, U.S. policy tilted sharply against nuclear disarmament and other pledges made in the NPT. Ignoring the commitments made by his Democratic and Republican predecessors, Bush pulled the United States out of the ABM treaty, ordered the deployment of a missile defense system and rejected the test ban treaty. The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review called for sustaining and modernizing nuclear weapons for at least the next half-century. The review also included contingency plans for U.S. nuclear attacks upon non-nuclear nations, among them North Korea. In the fall of 2003, the Bush administration pushed legislation through Congress to authorize the development of new, “usable” nuclear weapons.

    Given this repudiation of NPT commitments, it’s not surprising that North Korea has pulled out of the NPT and, perhaps, has begun building nuclear weapons. Nor is it surprising that a number of other nations might be working to develop a nuclear weapons capability. If the nuclear powers cling to their nuclear weapons and threaten their use, then other nations will inevitably try to join the nuclear club.

    As Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has observed: “We all have to be moving away from nuclear weapons. It can’t be just a mandate from the United States that everybody goes in one direction while we go in another.” But this is exactly what the Bush administration — in yet another example of its go-it-alone foreign policy — is pressing for.

    Nuclear proliferation cannot be halted without nuclear disarmament. As the old song goes: “You can’t have one without the other!”
    *Mr. Wittner teaches history at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press). He is a writer for the History News Service.

  • What About the WMDs that Do Exist?

    Now that it’s acknowledged by all but hardcore supporters of the Bush administration that weapons of mass destruction were not present in Iraq at the time of the U.S. invasion, it’s time to take a look at such weapons that do exist.

    According to the authoritative Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, there are more than 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Eight nations are known to possess them (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel). And a ninth (North Korea) might have some as well.

    The vast majority of these nuclear weapons are in the hands of the United States and Russia. Each of these nations maintains more than 2,000 of them on hair-trigger alert, ready at a moment’s notice to create a global holocaust in which hundreds of millions of people would die horribly. Even the much smaller nuclear arsenals of the other nuclear powers have the potential to cause unimaginable destruction.

    Recognizing the unprecedented dangers posed by nuclear weapons, the nations of the world have signed a number of important nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements over the past four decades. These include the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 1972 and two Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties, the first in 1972, the second in 1979.

    After a short hiatus occasioned by the revival of the Cold War, they were followed by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I, in 1991 and START II, in 1993), and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT, in 1996). These agreements limited nuclear proliferation, halted the nuclear arms race and reduced the number of nuclear weapons.

    The lynchpin of these agreements is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, in which the non-nuclear signatories agreed to forgo development of nuclear weapons in return for a pledge by the nuclear powers to move toward nuclear disarmament. A few non-nuclear countries, such as India, kept their options open by refusing to sign the treaty. But the overwhelming majority of nations signed the agreement, because they considered it a useful way to reverse the nuclear arms race.

    As late as the year 2000, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty promised an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.” This included taking specific steps, such as preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty and ratifying and putting into force the CTBT.

    Although the U.S. government is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty — indeed, initiated it and lobbied hard for its acceptance — the Bush administration has decided that it will not be bound by the treaty’s provisions. It has pulled out of the ABM Treaty, an action that also has the effect of scrapping the START II Treaty. The administration has also rejected the CTBT and this past fall pushed legislation through Congress to begin building new nuclear weapons. A resumption of U.S. nuclear testing, halted in 1992, seems in the offing.

    How long other nations will put up with the flouting by the United States of the world’s arms control agreements before they resume the nuclear arms race themselves is anybody’s guess. But it probably won’t be very long.

    As in its other policy initiatives, the Bush administration has fallen back on the “war on terror” to justify its abandonment of nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties. But, as Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has noted, terrorist groups will not be affected by nuclear weapons. “A nuclear deterrent is clearly ineffective against such groups,” he declared this past October. “They have no cities that can be bombed in reply, nor are they focused on self-preservation.” By building additional nuclear weapons and provoking other nations to do the same thing, the Bush administration has enhanced the prospect of “loose nukes” becoming available to terrorists and other fanatics.

    Wouldn’t the United States be safer if there were fewer nuclear Weapons — or none? That’s what poll after poll has shown that the public thinks. And that’s what both Republican and Democratic presidents have argued since the advent of the nuclear era. Even Ronald Reagan, an early nuclear enthusiast, came around to recognizing the necessity for building a nuclear-free world.

    Evidently the Bush administration thinks otherwise. While talking loosely (and misleadingly) of nuclear dangers from “evil” regimes, it has jettisoned the U.S. government’s long-standing commitment to nuclear arms control and disarmament. Unless this policy is reversed, the world faces disasters of vast proportions.

    *Lawrence S. Wittner is a professor of history at the State University of New York/Albany and author of “Toward Nuclear Abolition” (2003). This article was orginally posted in the History News Service.