Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: International Issues

  • North Korean Nuclear Conflict Has Deep Roots

    Democrats and Republicans have been quick to use North Korea’s apparent nuclear test to benefit their own party in these final weeks of the congressional campaign, but a review of history shows that both sides have contributed to the current situation.

    There is more than 50 years of history to Pyongyang’s attempt to gain a nuclear weapon, triggered in part by threats from Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower to end the Korean War.

    In 1950, when a reporter asked Truman whether he would use atomic bombs at a time when the war was going badly, the president said, “That includes every weapon we have.”

    Three years later, Eisenhower made a veiled threat, saying he would “remove all restraints in our use of weapons” if the North Korean government did not negotiate in good faith an ending to that bloody war.

    In 1957, the United States placed nuclear-tipped Matador missiles in South Korea, to be followed in later years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, by nuclear artillery, most of which was placed within miles of the demilitarized zone.

    It was not until President Jimmy Carter’s administration, in the late 1970s, that the first steps were taken to remove some of the hundreds of nuclear weapons that the United States maintained in South Korea, a process that was not completed until 1991, under the first Bush administration.

    It is against that background that the North Korean nuclear program developed.

    North Korea has its own uranium mines and in 1965 obtained a small research reactor from the Soviet Union, which it located at Yongbyon. By the mid-1970s, North Korean technicians had increased the capability of that reactor and constructed a second one. Pyongyang agreed in 1977 to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the first reactor.

    It was in the 1980s that the North Korean weapons program began its clandestine growth with the building of a facility for reprocessing fuel into weapons-grade material and the testing of chemical high explosives. In 1985, around the time U.S. intelligence discovered a third, once-secret reactor, North Korea agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

    Five years later, U.S. intelligence discovered through satellite photos that a structure had been built that appeared to be capable of separating plutonium from nuclear fuel rods. Under pressure, North Korea signed a safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1992, and inspections of facilities began. But in January 1993, IAEA inspectors were prevented from going to two previously unreported facilities. In the resulting crisis, North Korea attempted to withdraw from the NPT.

    The Clinton administration responded in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed plutonium from fuel rods, it would be crossing a “red line” that could trigger military action. The North Koreans “suspended” their withdrawal from the NPT, and bilateral talks with the Clinton administration got underway. When negotiations deadlocked, North Korea removed fuel rods from one of its reactors, a step that brought Carter back into the picture as a negotiator.

    The resulting talks led to the 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea would freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program. In return, it would be supplied with conventional fuel and ultimately with two light-water reactors that could not produce potential weapons-grade fuel.

    However, a subsequent IAEA inspection determined that North Korea had clandestinely extracted about 24 kilograms of plutonium from its fuel rods, and U.S. intelligence reported that was enough material for two or three 20-kiloton plutonium bombs.

    During the next six years of the Clinton administration and into the first years of the current Bush administration, the spent fuel from North Korea’s reactors was kept in a storage pond under IAEA supervision. As late as July 5, 2002, in a letter to Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the administration was continuing with the 1994 agreement but holding back some elements until the IAEA certified that the North Koreans had come into full compliance with the NPT’s safeguards agreement.

    In November 2001, when the Bush administration was absorbed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, intelligence analysts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory completed a highly classified report that concluded North Korea had begun construction of a plant to enrich uranium. A National Intelligence Estimate of the North Korean program confirmed the Livermore report, providing evidence that Pyongyang was violating the agreement.

    Nonetheless, the Bush administration waited until October 2002 before confronting the North Koreans, who at one meeting confirmed they were following another path to a nuclear weapon using enriched uranium.

    Soon thereafter, the United States ended its participation in the 1994 agreement. North Korea ordered IAEA inspectors out, announced it would reprocess the stored fuel rods and withdrew from the NPT. Earlier this year, Pyongyang declared it had nuclear weapons.

    The Bush administration then embarked on a new approach, developing a six-nation strategy based on the idea that bilateral U.S.-North Korea negotiations did not work and that only bringing in China and South Korea, which had direct leverage over the Pyongyang government, would gain results.

    First Published in the Washington Post

  • Next Year in Jerusalem

    On 7 September 2006, upon hearing of her unanimous appointment as the next Israeli Supreme Court President, Justice Dorit Beinisch said she would preserve “the Supreme Court’s culture of values.” She went on to say, “As for the talk of eroding public confidence in the court system, everyone from all walks of life comes to Court to ask for its help.” She said the Supreme Court had no political agenda and protected basic values. I found these interesting comments from Justice Beinisch, who just the day before sat in the Israeli Court (together with Justices Chesine and Brunis) hearing the third appeal of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower, against his restrictions.

    In l986, Mordechai Vanunu, acting out of conscience, revealed to the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons program. Sentenced to 18 years in prison, the first 12 years in solitary confinement in a tiny cell, and eventually was released in April 2004, having completed the entire 18 years. Upon his release, the Israeli Government imposed draconian restrictions on his freedom. He is forbidden to speak to foreigners or foreign press or to leave Israel. Each year for the past two years, on the 2lst of April, these restrictions have been renewed and Vanunu remains a virtual prisoner, living within a couple of square miles of East Jerusalem and under constant security surveillance everywhere he goes.

    On this, my fourth visit to support Mordechai Vanunu (whom I have nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize), I attended the Israeli Supreme Court hearings on Vanunu’s restrictions on 6 September 2006. Vanunu’s defense lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, argued that in all the interviews Mordechai gave to the international media since his release in April 2004, there were no new secrets revealed and nothing he said was endangering the security of the State. He said that the Supreme Court stated in its judgment last year, that “the no breaches of restrictions together with the ‘passing of time’ factor are the base in deciding the continuing or ending of the restrictions.” Now after two-and-a-half years and in light of the fact that Mordechai did not breach the restrictions for eight months, Feldman argued, the Court should consider the ending of the restrictions. Mr. Feldman said that the ban on Mordechai to leave the country is a serious breach of his fundamental constitutional human rights. The attorney for the State came to the Court with four or five men, secret expert witnesses from the Secret Services and from the secret Israeli Nuclear Committee, to give the three judges a testimony behind closed doors, without Mordechai and his lawyers present, as they have done in the previous discussions in the Supreme Court. Their aim would be to convince the Court that Vanunu still has more information to reveal and he is a serious danger to the security of the State.

    Justice Beinisch, said that there is no need to hear these secret testimonies as their position was well accepted by the previous bench of the Court, and “it is accepted on this bench too.” The attorney for the State disputed Feldman’s statements, arguing that “Vanunu is still a danger to the State security; he has more unpublished information and he wanted to make it public.” He also said that it is not true that Vanunu did not breach the restrictions in the past eight months and that he has material on that, but he wants it to be heard in closed doors. Mr. Feldman said only if the State has a proper order should it make it closed doors evidence. In the end, the Court asked the State to obtain the certificate for secrecy and make a new date to continue the hearing of the appeal.

    One thing was clear from both the State Attorney and from the Judge’s statements in the Court, that with or without Vanunu breaching the restrictions, eight months or a year’s time (since the previous decision of the Court) is not enough time to end restrictions. The President of the Court said that “the Court in its decision left the term ‘time’ undefined” and asked the State what is their position to how much longer the restrictions could continue, but there was no clear answer from the State Prosecutor as to how long was long enough!

    As I sat in the Israeli Court, I was surprised at one of the comments by President Beinisch to the effect that two years of restrictions do not seem too long! I thought to myself that it is, two-and-a-half years of restrictions, plus 18 years in prison (12 in solitary) and every day that goes by now, Mordechai Vanunu is a virtual prisoner, whose life is constantly in danger, being re-punished again and again (itself an action forbidden by law). How long is it going to be before it is finally long enough? Vanunu has no secrets; Israel and the world know it. His situation is now worse than a prison term, when at least he could look forward to getting out at a given time. Now he knows the Israeli government, directed by the Security Services of Israel, can keep him in Israel forever if they like, and no one outside Israeli, or inside, apart from the Israeli Supreme Court, if they really are a Court of Justice, can do anything about it! Vanunu has gone (yet again, as this is the third appeal!) to the Israeli Court to ask for its help, and the question is: Will they help give him justice NOW, and if not now, WHEN? Or must he live out the rest of his life incarcerated within Israel, a victim of secret court hearings, and security bureaucrats, and a victim of an allegedly democratic country with a sham justice system, offering no hope to Vanunu or any of its citizens who come looking for justice from their Courts of Justice.

    Both inside Israel and in the international community, many people wait and watch to see if President Beinisch and her two Justice colleagues will have the courage to uphold international law and basic common decency and justice and restore Mordechai Vanunu’s right to his basic freedom of speech and movement. The result of this appeal will indeed give us an indication of the future strength of Israeli justice for those who go to ask for its help. We wait in hope that we may yet see JUSTICE IN JERUSALEM.

    Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, is Hon. President of Peace People, Northern Ireland

  • The Modern Successor to the Slave Trade

    For many years, I’ve been involved in the peace business, doing what I can to help people overcome their differences. In doing so, I’ve also learnt a lot about the business of war: the arms trade. In my opinion it is the modern slave trade. It is an industry out of control: every day more than 1,000 people are killed by conventional weapons. The vast majority of those people are innocent men, women and children.

    There have been international treaties to control the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons for decades. Yet, despite the mounting death toll, there is still no treaty governing sales of all conventional weapons from handguns to attack helicopters. As a result, weapons fall into the wrong hands all too easily, fuelling human rights abuses, prolonging wars and digging countries deeper into poverty.

    This is allowed to continue because of the complicity of governments, especially rich countries’ governments, which turn a blind eye to the appalling human suffering associated with the proliferation of weapons.

    Every year, small arms alone kill more people than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. Many more people are injured, terrorised or driven from their homes by armed violence. Even as you read this, one of these human tragedies is unfolding somewhere on the planet.

    Take the Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed violence recently flared up again, and millions have died during almost a decade of conflict. Despite a UN arms embargo against armed groups in the country, weapons have continued to flood in from all over the world.

    Arms found during weapons collections include those made in Germany, France, Israel, USA and Russia. The only common denominator is that nearly all these weapons were manufactured outside Africa. Five rich countries manufacture the vast majority of the world’s weapons. In 2005, Russia, the United States, France, Germany and the UK accounted for an estimated 82 per cent of the global arms market. And it’s big business: the amount rich countries spend on fighting HIV/Aids every year represents just 18 days’ global spending on arms.

    But while the profits flow back to the developed world, the effects of the arms trade are predominantly felt in developing countries. More than two-thirds of the value of all arms are sold to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

    In addition to the deaths, injuries and rapes perpetrated with these weapons, the cost of conflict goes deeper still, destroying health and education systems.

    For example, in northern Uganda, which has been devastated by 20 years of armed conflict, it has been estimated that 250,000 children do not attend school. The war in northern Uganda, which may be finally coming to an end, has been fuelled by supplies of foreign-made weapons. And, as with so many wars, the heaviest toll has been on the region’s children. Children under five are always the most vulnerable to disease, and in a war zone adequate medical care is often not available.

    The world could eradicate poverty in a few generations were only a fraction of the expenditure on the war business to be spent on peace. An average of $22bn is spent on arms by countries in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa every year, according to estimates for the US Congress. This sum would have enabled those countries to put every child in school and to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015, fulfilling two of the Millennium Development Goals.

    This year, the world has the chance to finally say no to the continuing scandal of the unregulated weapons trade. In October, governments will vote on a resolution at the UN General Assembly to start working towards an Arms Trade Treaty. That Treaty would be based on a simple principle: no weapons for violations of international law. In other words, a ban on selling weapons if there is a clear risk they will be used to abuse human rights or fuel conflict. The UN resolution has been put forward by the governments of Australia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Kenya, and the UK. These governments believe the idea of an Arms Trade Treaty is one whose time has come.

    I agree. We must end impunity for governments who authorise the supply of weapons when they know there’s a great danger those weapons will be used for gross human rights abuses. Great strides are being made towards ending impunity for war criminals. It cannot be acceptable that their arms suppliers continue to escape punishment. No longer should the peace business be undermined by the arms business. I call on all governments to put the control of the international arms trade at the top of their agenda.

  • The Middle East and the World Five Years After 9/11

    This is an excellent moment to evaluate what has happened since September 11, 2001. Five years have passed since the dramatic attacks on the highly symbolic American targets, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The US Government has launched wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. A third war, with likely graver consequences, is threatened in the months ahead against Iran. In a speech given in Atlanta, Georgia in early September, President Bush declared that “America is safer” than it was five years ago, “and America is winning the war on terror.” Bush also insisted that this is not only a war against Islamic extremism, but is also “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” a struggle that “threatens all civilized nations.” The American president claimed that “today the civilized world stands together to defend our freedom..to defeat the terrorists” and thereby “secure the peace for generations to come.” A sober appraisal of the facts do not support the American president on any of these contentions.

    Much of the world, including the peoples of the Middle East and countries long allied do not share such a self-congratulatory interpretation of the American role in the post-9/11 world. According to independent polls taken in a variety of countries the Bush approach to world order is not popular elsewhere. When asked if they approved of the American ‘global war on terror,’84% in Egypt, 77% in Turkey, and 74% in Jordan responded ‘No.’ Similar results were found among America’s traditional allies. 76% of those polled in Spain and 57% in France expressed their overall disapproval of the American response to September 11th. A reliable survey of world opinion also found that in recent years that far more people fear the role of the United States in the world than that of al Qaeda.

    What has troubled thoughtful observers more than anything else has been the stubborn American insistence that the only viable response to the 9/11 attacks was to declare ‘war’ on a violent adversary such as al Qaeda, a shadowy transnational network without either a distinct territorial base or allegiance to any specific state. This mistake was further compounded by extending the orbit of the war far beyond al Qaeda to encompass all forms of non-state violence within the operative definition of the ‘terrorist’ threat. Such an extension of the conflict by the US Government encouraged such countries as Israel, Russia, and China to treat self-determination movements within and near their borders as belonging to the war against terror. Both the futility and injustice of treating the Palestinians, the Chechens, and the people of Xingiang as part of the same struggle as that unleashed by the 9/11 attacks was to distort and deflect a more genuine and focused pursuit of security for the United States, as well as give governments around the world an unconditional mandate to engage in uncontrolled violence and oppression against non-state movements seeking human rights and self-determination.

    Additionally, two closely linked counter-terrorist policies were enunciated by President Bush that further escalated and spread the war zone: states that ‘harbored’ terrorists within their borders would be held as responsible as the terrorists, and would be regarded as legitimate targets for attack; and if a state does not join the US in the counter-terrorist war, then it will be viewed as an enemy (“You are either with us or you are with the terrorists). This logic was initially applied, with some plausibility, to justify attacking Afghanistan, and overthrowing its Taliban government. This seemed reasonable to many moderate oberservers at the time, although stretching the limits of international law, because Afghanistan did seem to provide a safe haven for the leadership of al Qaeda, as well as providing the site for extensive terrorist training facilities that led more or less directly to the 9/11 attacks. It did seem necessary at the time to destroy this al Qaeda base of operations to lessen the prospect of future attacks. Waging war against Afghanistan as a whole was always more problematic, especially if considered a precedent for future wars. It is true that the Kabul government had few friends among governments, and the Taliban regime had surely committed some severe Crimes Against Humanity that shocked the world. The American claim that it was rescuing the people of the country from oppression and famine seems much shakier after five years than it did at first. The latest reports indicate the highest ever production rates of narcotic drugs, a revival of the Taliban and armed struggle, and much evidence of corruption and warlordism arising from the American-led occupation. Beyond this, the main rationale for the war was the opportunity to capture the al Qaeda leadership so that it could not plan and carry out further terrorist attacks, a mission pursued so incompetently as to ensure failure. Five years later al Qaeda is still a potent force, although its operational base has mutated in some respects, relying on likeminded extremist groups around the world, and Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri are still at large.

    But worse than Afghanistan, in many respects, was Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was undertaken despite the absence of a connection with the perpetrators of 9/11, a conclusion now even acknowledged by US governmental investigations. The argument that Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed an intolerable threat because of its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction never convinced either the UN Security Council, world public opinion, or most of America’s most trusted allies, and yet the invasion of this country went ahead. The attack on Iraq was widely regarded as illegal, immoral, and imprudent in the extreme. This impression was reinforced by the subsequent failure of the invaders to find any weapons of mass destruction, despite pre-invasions claims of hard evidence that such arsenals existed. Criticism of the Iraq undertaking also mounted as the brutality and incompetence of the occupation became unmistakably clear. Instead of liberation, what ensued under the American-led occupation seemed crudely abusive of the Iraqi people and their culture. Rather than diminish 9/11 kinds of activities, the Iraq experience has significantly strengthened anti-American violent extremism in the region. Three years after the invasion, Iraq remains ravaged and war torn, caught in an escalating spiral of violence that threatens to spill over its borders, dangerously agitating relations throughout the region between Sunnis and Shi’ias. In going forward with its Iraq policy, and refusing to acknowledge the failure of the occupation, the United States has damaged its credibility as a global leader, as well as weakened the authority of the United Nations and of international law generally. The precedent of recourse to war in a situation other than self-defense fundamentally rewrites the Charter restrictions on aggressive war that were such a central aspect of the laudable effort to construct a world order after 1945 that was less prone to war. This resolve to prevent future wars was led by American diplomacy after World War II, which also featured the punishment of surviving German leaders at Nuremberg for their role in planning and waging aggressive war.

    Most regrettable is the missed opportunity to react in a constructive fashion to the 9/11 attacks. Immediately after these attacks there was a world display of solidarity with the United States, including even demonstrations of support in Tehran and the Palestinian Territories. Had the United States taken advantage of this climate of opinion it could have pursued those charged with violent acts, including those of 9/11 by reliance on greatly enhanced law enforcement, sustained by much improved transnational framework of police and paramilitary cooperation. Looking back on the five years, most of the success in weakening al Qaeda, and preventing further terrorist attacks, has resulted from police and intelligence efforts. In contrast, the war paradigm has proved dysfunctional, wasting enormous resources and lives, undermining the legitimacy of the struggle, and inducing many young persons to opt for political extremism.

    The recently concluded Lebanon War gives added weight to this set of conclusions. Israel launched an aggressive war against Lebanon, implicitly relying on the American doctrine that a territorial state will henceforth be held fully responsible and punished for the acts of non-state actors that operate within its borders. The real adversary of Israel was supposedly Hezbollah, which was historically a resistance movement dedicated to the removal of the Israeli presence from Lebanese territory. It should be recalled that Hezbollah was formed in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and its refusal to withdraw from the southern part of the country. As the 2006 war demonstrated anew, military superiority often cannot be translated into political outcomes when the adversary, as was the case with Hezbollah, was a well-entrenched, indigenous political movement, with a strong base of popular support. Israel managed to cause much destruction and suffering, but in the end Hezbollah was not defeated. It emerged stronger, and Israel’s military credibility was weakened. American support for Israel’s war, and its role in neutralizing efforts to obtain an early ceasefire in the UNSC added a vivid new justification to those forces opposing the post-9/11 tactics adopted by the United States, and now imitated by Israel with American backing.

    The tactics relied upon in Lebanon represent more than practical failures. They represent a long step backward with respect to international law and morality. What Israel claimed it was entitled to do was to launch a full-scale war against a relatively defenseless state on the basis of a routine border incident. Because of the difficulty of using war as an instrument against armed resistance forces, the Israel/American policy relies on disproportionate and indiscriminate force to intimidate an adversary, inflicting massive doses of collective punishment on civilian societies. This is essentially a terrorist logic: inflicting so much suffering on the government and people of Lebanon that it will be compelled to decide on the basis of its self-interest that it must surrender to Israeli demands with respect to Hezbollah. But the logic backfired, and the political leverage of Hezbollah within Lebanon is probably greater than it was before the war began.

    My main argument is that war and excessive force have been ineffective in achieving their goals and dangerously destructive of world order. The United States and Israel have persisted with such an approach in the Middle East since 9/11 despite this record of unsuccess. There are three main explanations. The first explanation has to do with the outlook of political leaders. Major states are governed by individuals with a military mentality who are not sensitive to the limits of power when dealing with the sorts of conflicts that exist in the contemporary world. Because of this constricted imagination, the more military efforts prove unable to reach their anticipated goals, the more ardent will be their pursuit. Instead of adjusting to the failure, and switching to more effective political means and police efforts, the tendency as in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza is to intensify the military approach, and expand the war zone.

    The second explanation is the unwillingness of the leadership in Washington to address the legitimate grievances that give rise to political extremism. Far more expedient than attacking countries, would be exerting pressure on Israel to reach a fair outcome of the conflict with the Palestinian people. Ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, as agreed unanimously in the Security Council almost forty years ago, would diminish the appeal of extremism in the region, and greatly reduce the resentment of the American role that is so widely felt by the people of the Islamic world.

    The third explanation is the most important, yet difficult to document. The response to 9/11 established a political climate that allowed the neoconservative foreign policy advisors of President Bush to implement their long advocated grand strategy in the Middle East in conjunction with the conduct of the global war on terror. This grand strategy pre-existed 9/11, and focused on the shift from Europe to the Middle East as the main strategic battleground to shape the future of the world. This outlook led to giving the highest foreign policy priority to gaining hegemonic authority in the region to safeguard control over its energy resources, to guide its ideological evolution, and to prevent anti-Western political behavior by its leading governments. Neoconservatives, in collaboration with right-wing Israelis, had believed for many years that their long-term interests in the region could only be protected by achieving ‘regime change’ through military intervention in a series of countries they regarded as problematic including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and most of all, Iran. 9/11 created the political mandate that had been previously lacking. Among the problems with this approach was an over-estimation on the role of military superiority, and the tension between a successful counter-terrorist policy and the grand strategy objective of controlling the region. But despite the setbacks in Iraq and Lebanon, this policy has not been abandoned by the Bush administration, and underlies the intensifying confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program.

    From these perspectives, there never should have been a global war on terror, and there certainly should not have been an American/Israeli partnership to reconfigure by force of arms the internal political governing arrangements in a series of countries perceived as hostile. Unfortunately, the region and the world are more dangerous than five years ago, and future prospects are not encouraging. Whether internal political change in the United States can generate a more constructive approach will determine whether the decline in global security of the past five years can be reversed in the next five.

     

    Richard Falk is the Board Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

  • Assessing the United Nations After the Lebanon War of 2006

    Of course, we all breathe a bit easier with the news of a ceasefire in Lebanon even if its prospects for stemming the violence altogether are not favorable at this time. And after dithering for 34 days while the bombs dropped and the rockets flew we need to acknowledge that the United Nations, for all of its weaknesses, plays indispensable roles in a wide array of international conflict situations. It is notable in this instance that despite Israel’s discomfort with UN authority, and the reluctance of the United States to accept any UN interference with its foreign policy priorities, as in Iraq, both countries were forced to turn to the UN when Israel’s war against Lebanon ran up against the unexpectedly strong Hezbollah resistance. At the same time this is certainly not a moment to celebrate the UN for fulfilling its intended role as dedicated to war-prevention and the defense of states victimized by aggression. Perhaps, it is an occasion to take stock of what to expect from the UN in the early part of the twenty-first century, concluding that the Organization can be regarded neither as a failure nor as a success, but something inbetween that is complicated and puzzling.

    After World War II a mood of relief that the war was over was mingled with satisfaction (that the German and Italian fascism and Japanese militarism were defeated) and worry (that a future major war might well be fought with nuclear weapons, and even if not, that military technology was making wars more and more devastating for civilian society). One hopeful response was the establishment of the United Nations on the basis of a core agreement that recourse to force by a state, except in cases of strict self-defense was unconditionally prohibited. This norm was supposed to be supplemented by machinery for collective security intended to protect victims of aggression, but this undertaking although written into the UN Charter has never been implemented.

    The victorious countries in World War II plus China were designated as Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and given the right to veto any decision. The intention here was to acknowledge that the UN could not hope to ensure compliance with international law by these dominant states, and to avoid raising expectations too high it was better to acknowledge this deference of ‘law’ to ‘power’ restricted the role of the UN. But what was not anticipated in 1945, and has now again damaged the reputation of the UN, was the realization that the Organization could serve as an instrument for geopolitics in such a way as to override the most basic restraints on war making built into the UN Charter, but this is exactly what happened in the context of Israel’s war on Lebanon.

    The UNSC stood by in silence in the face of Israel’s decision to use the pretext of the July 12th border incitement by Hezbollah, involving only a small number of Israeli military personnel, to launch all out war on an essentially defenseless Lebanon. A month of mercilesxs Israeli air attacks on Lebanese villages and cities has taken place, while the UN refused even to demand an immediate and total ceasefire to the obvious dismay of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. And even this benchmark is indicative of just how low expectations have fallen with respect to UNSC action when there exists any serious friction between the UN Charter and the policy priorities of the United States as the controlling member of the Organization. It should be recalled that it was the US Government that declared the UN ‘irrelevant’ in 2003 when the Security Council at least stood firm, and refused to authorize an unlawful invasion of Iraq. With Iraq, too, the experience, more than anything else, underscored the fallen expectations associated with the UNSC. It was then applauded for not mandating aggression against Iraq, but when the invasion went ahead anyway in March 2003, the UNSC was complicit with aggression by way of silence, and went even further later on, acting as a junior partner in the American-led occupation of Iraq. The point being stressed is that the UN is unable to prevent its Permanent Members from violating the Charter, but worse, it collaborates with such violations in support of its most powerful member. The UN has become in these situations, sadly, more of a geopolitical instrument than an instrument for the enforcement of international law. This regression betrays the vision that guided the architects of the UN back in 1945, chief among whom were American diplomats.

    It should be also recalled that when German and Japanese surviving leaders were criminally punished after World War II for waging aggressive war at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials the prosecutors promised that the principles of law applied to judge the defendants associated with the defeated countries would in the future we applicable to assess the behavior of the victorious power then sitting in judgment. This Nuremberg Promise has been long since forgotten by governments, but it should not be ignored by public opinion and citizens of conscience everywhere.

    Nothing illustrates this fallen condition of the UN better than the one-sided UNSC Res. 1701 ceasefire resolution finally approved by unanimous vote on Aug. 11th. This resolution, although in some respects a compromise that reflects the inconclusive battlefield outcome, is tilted in many of its particulars to favor the country that both wrongfully escalated the border incident and carried out massive combat operations against civilian targets in flagrant violation of the law of war: Res. 1701 blames Hezbollah for starting the conflict; it refrains from making any critical comment on Israeli bombing and artillery campaign directed at the entire country of Lebanon; it imposes an obligation to disarm Hezbollah without placing any restrictions on Israeli military capabilities or policies; it places peacekeeping forces only on Lebanese territory, and is vague about requiring the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces; it still fails to censure Israel for expanding the scope of its ground presence in Lebanon by 300% to beat the ceasefire deadline, and it calls for the prohibition of ‘all’ attacks by Hezbollah while requiring Israel only to stop ‘offensive military operations,’ leaving the definition of what is offensive in the hands of policymakers in Tel Aviv and Washington.

    We learn some important things about the United Nations from this experience. First, it is incapable of protecting any state, whatever the circumstances, that is the victim of an aggressive war initiated by the United States or its close allies. This incapacity extends even to proposing resolutions of censure. Secondly, the UNSC, while not actually supporting such claims of aggressive war, will collaborate with the aggressor in the post-conflict situation to ratify the effects of the aggression. This combination means effectively that the Charter prohibition directed at non-defensive wars applies only to enemies of the United States. Any legal order that achieves respect treats equals equally. The UN is guilty of treating equals unequally, and thus constantly undermines its own authority.

    There is another disturbing element that concerns the manner in which states aligned with the United States are using force against non-state actors. Such states, of which Israel is a leading example, engage in what a law commentator, Ali Khan, has called ‘punitive self-defense.’ UN Charter Article 51 deliberately tried to restrict this option to claim self-defense by requiring ‘a prior armed attack,’ which was definitely understood, as being of a much more sustained and severe initiation of violent conflict than an incident of violence due to an isolated attack or a border skirmish. More concretely, the events on the borders of Gaza and Lebanon that gave rise to sustained Israeli war making did not give Israel the legal right to act in self-defense, although it did authorize Israel to defend itself by retaliating in a proportionate manner. This distinction is crucial to the Charter conception of legitimate uses of international force.

    What punitive self-defense means is a deliberate policy of over-reaction such that there is created a gross disproportion between the violence inflicted by the non-state actor, in the Lebanese instance, Hezbollah, and the response of the state actor Israel. It also means, contrary to the UN Charter and international law, that every violent provocation by a non-state actor can be treated as an occasion for claiming a right to wage a full war based on ‘self-defense.’ This punitive approach to non-state adversaries completely negates a cardinal principle of both international law and the just war tradition by validating disproportionate uses of retaliatory force.

    This discouraging interpretation of what to expect from the United Nations in war/peace situations should not lead to a cynical dismissal of the Organization. We need the UN to step in, as in Lebanon, when the arbiters of geopolitics give the signal, and help with the post-conflict process of recovery and reconstruction. But we should be under no illusions that this role adequately carries out the vision of the UN contained in its own Charter or upholds the most basic norms of international law.

    How can this situation be improved? There are three areas of effort that are worthy of attention:

    –perhaps, most important, is the recognition by major states that war is almost always a dysfunctional means of pursuing their security interests, especially with respecte to addressing challenges posed by non-state actors; in this regard, odd as it may seem, adherence to the limits imposed by international law may serve national interests better than relying on military superiority to override the restrictions on force associated with the UN Charter; note that the United States would have avoided the worst foreign policy disasters in its history if it had not ignored these restrictions in the Vietnam War and the Iraq War; in their essence, limiting war to true instances of self-defense is a practical restriction on state sovereignty agreed upon by experienced political leaders;

    –of secondary importance is for the members of the United Nations to take more seriously their own obligations to uphold the Charter; it may be appropriate in this spirit to revive attention to the so-called Uniting for Peace Resolution 337A that confers a residual responsibility on the General Assembly to act when the Security Council fails to do so; this 1950 resolution was drafted in the setting of the cold war, with an intention to circumvent a Soviet veto, but its use was suspended by the West in the wake of decolonization, which was perceived as making the General Assembly less supportive of Western interests than had been the case in the early years of the UN; in present circumstances, the General Assembly could be reempowered to supplement the efforts of the Security Council where an urgent crisis involving peace and security is not being addressed in a manner consistent with the UN Charter; along similar lines, would be an increased reliance on seeking legal guidance from the International Court of Justice when issues of the sort raised by the Israeli escalation occurred;

    –and finally, given these disappointments associated with the preeminence of geopolitics within the UN, it is important for individuals and citizen organizations to act with vigilance. The World Tribunal on Iraq, taking place in Istanbul in June 2005, passed ‘legal’ judgment on the Iraq War and those responsible for its initiation and conduct. It made the sort of legal case that the UN was unable to make because of geopolitical considerations. It provided a comprehensive examination of the policies and their effects, and issues a judgment with recommendations drafted by a jury of conscience presided over by the renowned Indian writer and activist, Arundhati Roy. Such pronouncements by representatives of civil society cannot obviously stop the Iraq War, but they do have two positive effects: first, they provide media and public with a comprehensive analysis of the relevance of international law and the UN Charter to a controversial ongoing war; secondly, by doing so, they highlight the shortcomings of official institutions, including the United Nations in protecting the wellbeing of the peoples of the world.

    Richard Falk is chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation board and Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara

  • Perspective on the 2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict

    The first casualty of war is the truth. For this reason it is important to provide some clarity regarding the latest Middle East conflict. The short version is Iran’s August 22nd deadline for a uranium enrichment response is expected to disappoint the US and Israel. As a result, the conflict we now see is to cut off what Israel perceives are the two arms of Iran (i.e., Hamas and Hezbollah).

    While the book American Hiroshima elaborates in detail why this is happening, it is important to revisit what has happened since July 12th. In addition, I must note that war is rarely started by a single event. The seeds for war are often the product of many events that precede the actual use of military aircraft, tanks and ships. The BBC has an excelent timeline of events leading up to this conflict.

    A key fact in determining what is going on is to look at is the number of civilians killed and held in prison by each side. Israel’s position that a single soldier being held captive by the Palestinians, or two soldiers being held by Hezbollah is an act of war cannot be taken seriously when Israel is simultaneously holding thousands of captured Palestinians. The mainstream media conveniently fails to mention this point. The cross-border dimension of the kidnapping may also be distorted by the mainstream media as from what I can tell Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev (the Israeli soldiers) were captured near Ayta al-Sha’b which is actually in Lebanon. When we remember that the first casualty of war is the truth and this war is about something far more than soldiers being kidnapped, then we should not be surprised by the distortions of the truth to create war propaganda. History is also helpful and in 1998 Amnesty International wrote “By Israel’s own admission, Lebanese detainees are being held as bargaining chips; they are not detained for their own actions but in exchange for Israeli soldiers missing in action or killed in Lebanon. Most have now spent 10 years in secret and isolated detention.”

    Another source of sanity during war is the United Nations. Regardless of what individuals may think about the UN, this organization has an impressive track record of correctly identifying who has started a war and when a war is violating international law. The US is unfortunately on the wrong side of this litmus test with respect to invading Iraq and Israel is on the wrong side with respect to invading Lebanon (see the comments by UN official Jan Egeland in the article Israel Breaks Humanitarian Law).

    In brief, what has happened is Hezbollah initiated Operation Truthful Promise on July 12, 2006. This was not an act of war but a plan to capture Israeli soldiers to swap them for three Lebanese held by Israel. Israel used the event to launch Operation Just Reward, which was interestingly renamed Operation Change of Direction. My sense is the Israeli and US leadership renamed the operation when they concluded the July 12 events provided the cover story to go after Hamas, Hezbollah and produce an incident to justify war with Iran. The bombing attacks then starting on July 13 and hundreds of civilians have been killed. July 13 is the formal beginning point for the start of the war. Israel also invaded Lebanon soon after the air attack began although Israel reports the invasion started on July 23 (which is more likely the date the US and British Special Forces became actively involved in joint operations with Israeli Special Forces). In any event, Israel desired an event to use as an excuse to attack both Hamas and Hezbollah and so far the American people are still fooled by the mass media.

    Stepping back, why is this happening? The reason is the leadership in Israel and the United States see Hamas and Hezbollah as the two arms of Iran (which is without question the case for Hezbollah). Before launching an attack on Iran’s population of 68+ million people, a clean up operation of Hamas and Hezbollah is is seen as necessary to minimize “near enemy” attacks. At a minimum Israel and the US neo-cons seek to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine, degrade Hezbollah, and accelerate the timetable for war with Iran. On July 16 a senior US official reported in the Washington Post that “eight cabinet ministers or 30 percent of the government is in jail, another 30 percent is hiding, and the other 30 percent is doing very little.” This means the first objective of the invasion has essentially been accomplished. You may be wondering about Syria and yes Syria is a factor. However, Iran is the bigger concern for Israel. Iran has the potential to join Israel as a nuclear power in the Middle East and statements from Iran’s defense minister indicate they are already a nuclear military power or at a minimum very close to being one.

    Hezbollah responded to the invasion with artillery rocket bombardments in Israel. For the record, Hezbollah had previously launched rockets and in the past Israel quickly responded with attacks from aircraft launched guided missiles. Iran is widely believed to be Hezbollah’s rocket supplier. The international community previously deemed this response by Israel as appropriate. It may be helpful to remember that Israel, even without the United States, is a military powerhouse and even a combined Hamas-Hezbollah force is a gnat without the means to threaten Israel’s national security. So now we see the Israeli Air Force and Israeli Sea Corps forces pounding away at Lebanon. Iran’s President is on record that if the invasion crosses Syria’s border, Iran will conclude that they are next and immediately join the fight. The US is pretending to have Condoleeza Rice work for a peace agreement after her initial statement rejecting an immediate ceasefire did not play well internationally. No matter what she says, the fact is the United States is sending the bombs that are being used to kill civilians in Lebanon. A few days ago I thought how hypocritical President Bush is as I read the front page story about a Canadian family in Lebanon that was killed by an Israel air strike. To drive the point home, it is hypocritical to supply the bombs for free and simultaneously position yourself as a neutral peacemaker.

    What is next? The case made in American Hiroshima strongly suggests that you will see incidents to justify an attack on Iran. Since Iran has declared Syria as a trigger point, the Israeli and US leadership may decide to focus on incidents to justify attacking Syria. President Bush will need to complete face-to-face meetings with key leaders in the region so that Saudi Arabia and other Arab leaders do not interrupt the oil flow. Behind the scenes, the security efforts for all US nuclear power facilities are being increased. Unfortunately, unlike Iraq, Iran has been known to possess a weapons of mass destruction capability for over a decade. The mainstream media is conveniently forgetting to mention this so that many Americans will continue to be asleep as the violence in the Middle East escalates.

    What should caring and loving people in Israel, the US, and the Arab world do? To start, the current “solutions” of more killing will only guarantee that an American and global Hiroshima will someday happen. Violence produces more violence and only love can break the cycle of destruction. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, and the US fail to see this reality and the fact that nuclear weapons will do more to empower the weak than protect the strong. Israel should therefore immediately deal with its neighbors in a humane and respectful manner. Hamas and Hezbollah should immediately stop attacking Israel as this only leads to more suffering for everyone. Military action should stop and full prisoner exchanges should begin. A two-state solution is possible and fundamentalists committed to violence can be policed by the forces for peace when acts of kindness are initiated and reinforced. Israel can exist in peace, but the path that US and Israeli leaders have taken is leading to the horrific events.

    Upon reviewing the history of violence, you can better understand why Jewish citizens and many more people around the world have protested against the war Israel started on July 13. So what do we in the US specifically do now? To start, we have a special responsibility because the US government is in charge of any expansion of the current violence. In February 2005, the Israeli Cabinet agreed not to attack Iran without a “green light” from the US. This means we can pressure our government not to expand the war to Syria or Iran with letters, phone calls, and direct action. The US Congress has officially supported Israel’s illegal invasion with SR 534 on July 19th and HR 921 on July 20th.

    We could use an angel of reason and perhaps one will appear. We have confronted dark times like 1962 in the past and managed to step back from the abyss. May peace return to the Middle East but let’s not rely only on prayers and participate in direct action. Please send the Internet address for this information to your friends and family. When contemplating what you will do to stop the killing, please remember that silence is permission.

     

    Dave Dionisi is responsible for National Awareness for Freedom From War. He is a long-time supporter and an advocate for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Dave is the author of American Hiroshima, a book about how to prevent the next 9/11 attack in the United States.

  • The Empire Leaves Beirut to Burn

    In the year 551, the magnificent, wealthy city of Berytus — headquarters of the imperial East Mediterranean Roman fleet — was struck by a massive earthquake. Then, the sea withdrew several miles and the survivors, ancestors of the present-day Lebanese, walked out on the sands to loot the long-sunken merchant ships revealed in front of them.

    That was when a tidal wall higher than a tsunami returned to kill them all. So savagely was the old Beirut damaged that the Emperor Justinian sent gold from Constantinople as compensation to every family left alive.

    Some cities seem forever doomed. When the Crusaders arrived at Beirut on their way to Jerusalem in the 11th century, they slaughtered everyone in the city. In World War I, Ottoman Beirut suffered a terrible famine; the Turkish army had commandeered all the grain, and the Allied powers blockaded the coast. I still have some ancient postcards I bought here 30 years ago of sticklike children standing in an orphanage, naked and abandoned.

    An American woman living in Beirut in 1916 described how she “passed women and children lying by the roadside with closed eyes and ghastly, pale faces. It was a common thing to find people searching the garbage heaps for orange peel, old bones or other refuse, and eating them greedily when found. Everywhere women could be seen seeking eatable weeds among the grass along the roads … ”

    How does this happen to Beirut? For 30 years, I’ve watched this place die and rise from the grave and die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace.

    I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.

    They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-colored skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis — in some of their cruelest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside — tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties — 240 in all of Lebanon at the start of last week — with Israel’s 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.

    And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the capture of its soldiers by Hezbollah.

    I walked through the deserted city center of Beirut last week and it reminded more than ever of a film lot, a place of dreams too beautiful to last, a phoenix from the ashes of civil war whose plumage was so brightly colored that it blinded its own people. This part of the city — once a Dresden of ruins — was rebuilt by Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister who was murdered a mile away last year.

    The wreckage of that bomb blast, an awful precursor to the present war in which his inheritance is being vandalized by the Israelis, still stands beside the Mediterranean, waiting for the last U.N. investigator to look for clues.

    At the empty Etoile restaurant — where Hariri once dined with Jacques Chirac — I sat on the pavement and watched the parliamentary guard still patrolling the facade of the French-built emporium that houses what is left of Lebanon’s democracy. So many of these streets were built by Parisians under the French mandate, and they have been exquisitely restored, their mock Arabian doorways bejeweled with marble Roman columns dug from the ancient Via Maxima a few meters away.

    Hariri loved this place and, taking Chirac for a beer one day, he caught sight of me sitting at a table. “Ah, Robert, come over here,” he roared and turned to Chirac like a cat that was about to eat a canary. “I want to introduce you, Jacques, to the reporter who said I couldn’t rebuild Beirut!”

    Now it is being unbuilt. The Martyr Rafiq Hariri International Airport has been attacked several times by the Israelis, its glistening halls and shopping malls vibrating to the missiles that thunder into the runways and fuel depots. Hariri’s wonderful transnational highway viaduct has been broken by Israeli bombers. Most of his motorway bridges have been destroyed. The Roman-style lighthouse has been smashed by a missile from an Apache helicopter. This small jewel of a restaurant in the center of Beirut has been spared. So far.

    It is the slums of Haret Hreik and Ghobeiri and Shiyah that have been leveled and “rubble-ized” and pounded to dust, sending a quarter of a million Shiite Muslims to seek sanctuary in schools and abandoned parks across the city. Here, indeed, was the headquarters of Hezbollah, another of those “centers of world terror” that the West keeps discovering in Muslim lands. Here lived Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Party of God’s leader, a ruthless, caustic, calculating man; and Sayad Mohamed Fadlallah, among the wisest and most eloquent of clerics; and many of Hezbollah’s top military planners — including, no doubt, the men who planned over many months the capture of the two Israeli soldiers 10 days ago.

    But did the tens of thousands of poor who live here deserve this act of mass punishment? For a country that boasts of its pinpoint accuracy — a doubtful notion in any case, but that’s not the issue — what does this act of destruction tell us about Israel? Or about ourselves?

    In a modern building in an undamaged part of Beirut, I come, quite by chance, across a well-known and prominent Hezbollah figure, open-neck white shirt, dark suit, clean shoes. “We will go on if we have to for days or weeks or months or … ” And he counts these awful statistics off on the fingers of his left hand. “Believe me, we have bigger surprises still to come for the Israelis — much bigger, you will see. Then we will get our prisoners and it will take just a few small concessions.”

    I walk outside, feeling as if I have been beaten over the head. Over the wall opposite there is purple bougainvillea and white jasmine and a swamp of gardenias. The Lebanese love flowers, and Beirut is draped in trees and bushes that smell like paradise.

    As for the huddled masses from the bombed-out southern slums of Haret Hreik, I found hundreds yesterday, sitting under trees and lying on the parched grass beside an ancient fountain donated by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid. How empires fall.

    Across the Mediterranean, two helicopters from the USS Iwo Jima could be seen, heading through the mist and smoke toward the U.S. embassy bunker complex at Awkar to evacuate more citizens of the American Empire. There was not a word from that same empire to help the people lying in the park, to offer them food or medical aid.

    Across them all has spread a dark gray smoke that works its way through the entire city, the fires of oil terminals and burning buildings turning into a cocktail of sulphurous air that moves below our doors and through our windows. I smell it when I wake. Half the people of Beirut are coughing in this filth, breathing their own destruction as they contemplate their dead.

    The anger that any human soul should feel at such suffering and loss was expressed so well by Lebanon’s greatest poet, the mystic Khalil Gibran, when he wrote of the half million Lebanese who died in the 1916 famine, most of them residents of Beirut:

    My people died of hunger, and he who

    Did not perish from starvation was

    Butchered with the sword;

    They perished from hunger

    In a land rich with milk and honey.

    They died because the vipers and

    Sons of vipers spat out poison into

    The space where the Holy Cedars and

    The roses and the jasmine breathe

    Their fragrance.

    And the sword continues to cut its way through Beirut. When part of an aircraft came streaking out of the sky over the eastern suburbs at the weekend, I raced to the scene to find a partly decapitated driver in his car and three Lebanese soldiers from the army’s logistics unit. These are the tough, brave non-combat soldiers of Kfar Chim who have been mending power and water lines these past six days to keep Beirut alive.

    I knew one of them. “Hello, Robert. Be quick because I think the Israelis will bomb again, but we’ll show you everything we can.” And they took me through the fires to show me what they could of the wreckage, standing around to protect me.

    A few hours later, the Israelis did come back, as the men of the small logistics unit were going to bed, and they bombed the barracks and killed 10 soldiers, including those three kind men who looked after me amid the fires of Kfar Chim.

    And why? Be sure — the Israelis know what they are hitting. That’s why they killed nine soldiers near Tripoli when they bombed the military radio antennas. But a logistics unit? Men whose sole job was to mend electricity lines? Then it dawns on me. Beirut is to die. It is to be starved of electricity now that the power station in Jiyeh is on fire. No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive. So those men had to be liquidated.

    Beirutis are tough people and are not easily moved. But at the end of last week, many of them were overcome by a photograph in their daily papers of a small girl, discarded like a broken flower in a field near Ter Harfa, her feet curled up, her hand resting on her torn blue pajamas, her eyes — beneath long, soft hair — closed, turned away from the camera. She had been another “terrorist” target of Israel and several people, myself among them, saw a frightening similarity between this picture and the photograph of a Polish girl lying dead in a field beside her weeping sister in 1939.

    I go home and flick through my files, old pictures of the Israeli invasion of 1982. There are more photographs of dead children, of broken bridges. Yes, how easily we forget these earlier slaughters. Up to 1,700 Palestinians were butchered at Sabra and Chatila by Israel’s proxy Christian militia allies in 1982 while Israeli troops, as they later testified to Israel’s own court of inquiry, watched the killings. I stopped counting the corpses when I reached 100. Many of the women had been raped before being knifed or shot.

    Yet when I was fleeing the bombing of Ghobeiri with my driver, Abed, a week before last, we swept right past the entrance of the camp, the very spot where I saw the first murdered Palestinians. And we did not think of them. We did not remember them. They were dead in Beirut and we were trying to stay alive in Beirut, as I have been trying to stay alive here for 30 years.

    I am back on the seacoast when my mobile phone rings. It is an Israeli woman calling me from the United States, the author of a fine novel about the Palestinians. “Robert, please take care,” she says. “I am so, so sorry about what is being done to the Lebanese. It is unforgivable. I pray for the Lebanese people, and the Palestinians, and the Israelis.” I thank her for her thoughtfulness and the graceful, generous way she condemned this slaughter.

    Then, on my balcony — a glance to check the location of the Israeli gunboat far out in the sea-smog — I find older clippings. This is from an English paper in 1840, when Beirut was a great Ottoman city. “Beyrouth” was the dateline. “Anarchy is now the order of the day, our properties and personal safety are endangered, no satisfaction can be obtained, and crimes are committed with impunity. Several Europeans have quitted their houses and suspended their affairs, in order to find protection in more peaceable countries.”

    On my dining-room wall, I remember, there is a hand-painted lithograph of French troops arriving in Beirut in 1842 to protect the Christian Maronites from the Druze. They are camping in the Jardin des Pins, which will later become the site of the French embassy where, only a few hours ago, I saw French men and women registering for their evacuation. Outside the window, I hear again the whisper of Israeli jets, hidden behind the smoke that drifts 20 miles out to sea.

    Fairouz, the most popular Lebanese singer, was to perform at this year’s Baalbek festival, cancelled like all Lebanon’s festivals. One of her most popular songs is dedicated to her native city:

    To Beirut — peace to Beirut with all my heart

    And kisses — to the sea and clouds,

    To the rock of a city that looks like an old sailor’s face.

    From the soul of her people she makes wine,

    From their sweat, she makes bread and jasmine.

    So how did it come to taste of smoke and fire

     

    Robert Fisk, who writes for The Independent of Britain, has lived in Beirut 30 years.

    Originally printed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

  • Britain’s Nuclear-Weapons Fix

    The determination of Britain’s political elite to maintain the country as a nuclear-weapons state is rooted in a half-century of military planning to which the possibility of tactical and first use of nuclear weapons is central. In just five words, Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom’s chancellor of the exchequer and would-be successor to Tony Blair, has intentionally reignited the debate over the future of Britain’s nuclear weapons. In a wide-ranging speech on 21 June 2006 focusing on global markets, financial services and economic policy, he included as part of his prognosis for UK security in the 21st century the commitment to “retaining our independent nuclear deterrent”.
    As so often with New Labour, the way the entire speech was “spun” by Brown’s aides was revealing. This element was, they indicated, key among all the topics the chancellor covered. As Andrew Rawnsley commented: “It has enraged the left of the Labour Party. It was contrived to do just that. It was unashamedly designed – Mr Brown’s acolytes make no pretence otherwise – to try to make the Chancellor a more appealing figure to Middle England” (see “Why Gordon Brown decided it was the time to go nuclear”, Observer, 25 June 2006).
    In the coming weeks and months there may well be a debate on plans to replace Trident – Britain’s submarine-carrying ballistic nuclear-weapons system – and it is probable that Labour will, in due course, make its decision. There could be some discussion in parliament and there might even be a vote, though few doubt the outcome. “Middle England” will no doubt remain comforted by Britain preserving its civilised, semi-great-power status by retaining the capacity to kill tens of millions of people.
    The wider point, though, is that there is a vigorous attempt to confine the debate to the limited theme of a “deterrent”. Indeed, the entire debate is constructed along the very narrow premise that Britain’s nuclear weapons offer, and have always offered, nothing more than a last-ditch deterrent protection against a would-be enemy threatening the country with annihilation.
    During the forty-five-year cold war, that enemy was seen to be the Soviet Union. This now presents some difficulties in that the much-missed “evil empire” has disappeared, removing the original point of possessing the bomb. It isn’t clear, for example, how Trident could have prevented the London bombings of 7 July 2005. After all, nuking the home towns of the young bombers – Leeds and Dewsbury – in retaliation would have been a bit excessive, even for New Labour.
    Still, George W Bush has neatly constructed an “axis of evil” to replace the late, lamented Soviet Union. This offers his closest ally Tony Blair (and his successor as British prime minister) the opportunity to argue that Trident’s successor is designed to deter threats from those Islamofascists in Tehran, the world-conquering James Bond-hating hordes of North Korea, the Taliban when they take over Pakistan, the Naxalites when New Delhi finally falls and, of course, that historic enemy – the French.
    Every part of this construct, however, is still underpinned by the doctrine of “deterrence”. Middle England must rest secure in the knowledge that our nuclear weapons are “good” nuclear weapons and would only ever be used as weapons of final response – after, perhaps, not just Middle England but also the furthest bits of Wales, Scotland and even Northern Ireland had been turned to radioactive dust.
    The problem with this is that it is one of the great myths of the nuclear age. Ever since the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki performed the same destructive tasks that had previously required thousand-bomber raids (such as the devastating fire-bombing of Tokyo), the nuclear age has been replete with the idea that nuclear weapons are usable as weapons of war. This has been central to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato’s) nuclear planning, as well as to the Warsaw Pact (and now Russia).
    Nato as an alliance, and Britain as a state, have long planned to fight nuclear wars at levels falling far short of a cataclysmic central nuclear exchange. This also means that Nato and Britain have had, and still maintain, policies that can envisage “first use” of nuclear weapons.
    On the eve of what could possibly be a period of open debate about the role of Britain’s nuclear weapons, it might be useful to trace this somewhat hidden history. This could serve the purpose of revealing matters that successive governments prefer to avoid discussing in public, and thus help ensure a more interesting debate.
    This debate must consider two distinct issues: Nato as an alliance of which Britain is a prominent member, and Britain’s long-term pursuit of policies for nuclear first use outside the Nato area.
    The early days
    Britain commenced its nuclear-weapons programme shortly after the end of the second world war. It tested a fission (atomic) bomb in October 1952 and a crude fusion (hydrogen) bomb in May 1957. By the end of the 1950s Britain had developed a strategic nuclear force based on the V-bomber medium-range jet bombers: the Valiant, Victor and Vulcan.
    From the mid-1960s, Britain began to develop a force of ballistic-missile submarines capable of deploying the United States’s Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The first such submarine, Resolution, started to patrol in June 1968, and control of the UK strategic nuclear force passed to the Royal Navy in July 1969.
    Britain also developed a range of tactical nuclear weapons, principally bombs, deployed on a number of land-based and carrier-based strike aircraft from the late-1950s onwards. These included the Scimitar, Buccaneer, Jaguar and Sea Harrier, and the Lynx and Sea King helicopters. US-made nuclear depth-bombs were carried by Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft and US-made Lance missiles; in addition, nuclear warheads, and nuclear artillery shells, were deployed with the British Army.
    At its peak, in the early 1980s, Britain deployed some 400 of its own nuclear weapons together with several scores of US nuclear weapons. With the ending of the cold war, most of the types of nuclear weapons declined fairly rapidly, but two major types of British nuclear weapon remained in service until the late 1990s: the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile and the WE-177 tactical nuclear bomb.
    In the 1990s, these were replaced by Trident, another submarine-launched missile. This is deployed with two warheads, a powerful strategic warhead many times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb, and a “sub-strategic” or tactical warhead that has around half the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
    Since the 1950s onwards, Britain has operated a twin-track policy of committing nuclear forces to Nato and having them available for independent deployment and possible use.
    Nato’s nuclear planning
    Although the early nuclear weapons of the 1940s and early 1950s were essentially strategic – intended for use against the core assets of an opposing state – the development of nuclear weapons intended for tactical use within particular war-zones was an early feature of the east-west nuclear confrontation. By the late 1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union were developing relatively low-yield freefall bombs as well as early forms of nuclear-capable artillery. Over the next twenty-five years, a remarkable array of tactical nuclear weapons was developed and deployed, covering almost every type of military posture.
    As well as freefall bombs, short-range battlefield missiles were developed along with nuclear-tipped anti-aircraft missiles and several types of nuclear artillery and mortars. Nuclear landmines known as atomic demolition munitions were developed that could be emplaced to destroy major bridges or tunnels or even block mountain passes. At sea, submarines were equipped with nuclear-tipped torpedoes, surface ships carried anti-submarine nuclear depth-bombs which could be delivered by missile or helicopter, and aircraft carriers could fly off strike aircraft carrying several kinds of nuclear bomb. There were even air-to-air missiles such as the US Genie, that were nuclear-armed.
    By the 1980s, there were around 20,000 tactical nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and the Soviet Union, based in more than fifteen countries and on warships and submarines throughout the world. In the great majority of cases, the presumption was that if such weapons were used, they would not necessarily involve an escalation to an all-out nuclear war. In other words, nuclear war-fighting could be controlled. In Europe, perhaps the tensest region of the cold-war nuclear confrontation, both alliances had policies of the first use of nuclear weapons in response to conventional attack. (For a full discussion, see the relevant chapter, “Learning from the Cold War”, in Paul Rogers, Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century, Pluto Press, 2002).
    For Nato in the 1950s – before the Soviet Union had developed a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, the posture was codified in a military document MC14/2, colloquially termed the “tripwire” posture. Any Soviet attack against Nato would be met with a massive nuclear retaliation, including the use of US strategic nuclear forces; this assumed that the US could destroy the Soviet Union’s nuclear forces and its wider military potential without suffering unacceptable damage itself.
    By the early 1960s, the Soviet Union was developing many classes of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, making it less vulnerable to a US nuclear attack. In such circumstances, MC14/2 became far less acceptable to western military planners, who consequently sought to develop a more flexible nuclear posture for Nato. This became known as “flexible response”. It involved the ability to respond to Soviet military actions with a wide range of military forces, but also with the provision that nuclear weapons could be used first in such a way as to force the Soviet Union to halt any aggression and withdraw. Once again, it embodied the belief that a nuclear war could be fought and won.
    The new flexible-response doctrine was progressively accepted by Nato member-states in 1967 and 1968. It was codified in a document entitled Overall Strategic Concept for the Defence of the NATO Area, or MC14/3. It was a posture with one particular advantage for the United States: that it might avoid nuclear weapons being used against its own territory.
    A US army colonel expressed this rather candidly at the time, writing that the strategy: “recognizes the need for a capability to cope with situations short of general nuclear war and undertakes to maintain a forward posture designed to keep such situations as far away from the United States as possible” (see Walter Beinke, “Flexible Response in Perspective”, Military Review, November 1968).
    Flexible response was to remain in operation for most of the last quarter century of the cold war, including periods of considerable tension in the early 1980s. Operational plans for nuclear use were (and are) developed by the nuclear activities branch of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (Shape) near Mons in Belgium, operating in conjunction with the US joint strategic target planning staff responsible for the SIOP strategic nuclear posture from its base in Omaha, Nebraska.
    By the early 1970s, flexible response was well established under Nato’s nuclear operations plan which embraced two levels of the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Soviet forces: selective options and general response. Selective options involved a variety of plans, many of them assuming first use of nuclear weapons against Warsaw Pact conventional forces.
    At the smallest level, these could include up to five small air-burst nuclear detonations intended as warning shots to demonstrate Nato’s intent. At a rather higher level of use were the so-called pre-packaged options involving up to 100 nuclear weapons. The US army field manual at the time defined such a package as: “a group of nuclear weapons of specific yields for use in a specific area and within a limited time to support a specific tactical goal … Each package must contain nuclear weapons sufficient to alter the tactical situation decisively and to accomplish the mission” (see Operations: FM 100-5, US Department of the Army, 1982).
    While these different levels of selective use were thought to be possible ways of winning a nuclear war, the possibility remained that this would fail, and a more general nuclear exchange would result. This was the second level of use of tactical nuclear weapons; it was termed a general nuclear response in which Nato nuclear forces in Europe would be used on a massive scale along with US strategic forces.
    Thus, by the end of the 1970s, Nato had developed a flexible-response strategy that involved detailed planning for the selective first use of nuclear weapons in the belief that a limited nuclear war could be won. By the early 1980s, with highly accurate fast ballistic missiles such as the Pershing 2 being deployed by the United States, there were indications that Nato was even moving to a policy of early first use of nuclear weapons.
    One indication of this came in a remarkably candid interview given by the Nato supreme commander, General Bernard W Rogers. He said that his orders were: “Before you lose the cohesiveness of the alliance – that is, before you are subject to (conventional Soviet military) penetration on a fairly broad scale – you will request, not you may, but you will request the use of nuclear weapons…[emphasis in the original].” (International Defense Review, February 1986).
    The long-standing Nato policy of the first use of nuclear weapons was not promoted widely in public, where all the emphasis was placed on nuclear weapons as an ultimate deterrent. Even so, the policy was made clear on relatively rare occasions. One example is evidence from the UK’s ministry of defence to a parliamentary select committee in 1988: “The fundamental objective of maintaining the capability for selective sub-strategic use of theatre weapons is political – to demonstrate in advance that NATO has the capability and will to use nuclear weapons in a deliberate, politically-controlled way with the objective of restoring deterrence by inducing the aggressor to terminate his aggression and withdraw.”
    With the ending of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91, there was some easing of Nato nuclear policy. This included the withdrawal of a substantial proportion of Nato nuclear weapons from western Europe as the Soviet Union withdrew from its former satellites in east-central Europe. The possibility of first use was considered increasingly unlikely, but not abandoned as a facet of Nato policy.
    Although the Soviet Union is no more, Nato nuclear planning still involves a policy of first use, British nuclear weapons remain committed to Nato and the United States still maintains tactical nuclear bombs at one of its remaining bases in the UK, Lakenheath in Suffolk, eastern England.
    Britain’s independent targeting
    Since the 1950s, Britain has deployed nuclear weapons on many occasions outside the immediate Nato area of western and southern Europe and the north Atlantic. This included the basing of RAF nuclear-capable strike aircraft in Cyprus in the 1960s and 1970s, regular detachments of V-bombers to RAF Tengah in Singapore in the mid-1960s, and the deployment of Scimitar and Buccaneer nuclear-capable strike aircraft on the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers from 1962 to 1978. Nuclear weapons were also carried on four task-force ships during the Falklands/Malvinas war of 1982.
    This long history of “out-of-area” deployments of nuclear weapons by Britain is matched by a number of indications of a willingness to use them in limited conflicts. In one of the few published studies of British tactical nuclear targeting, Milan Rai wrote in his 1994 paper Tactical Trident (Drava Papers): “Sir John Slessor, Marshall of the RAF in the 1950s, and one of the most influential military theorists of the period, believed that ‘In most of the possible theatres of limited war . it must be accepted that it is at least improbable that we would be able to meet a major communist offensive in one of these areas without resorting to tactical nuclear weapons’.” This statement was made by a senior military figure rather than a politician, but similar comments did come from more official government sources. In 1955, the then defence minister (and later prime minister) Harold Macmillan stated in the house of commons: “.the power of interdiction upon invading columns by nuclear weapons gives a new aspect altogether to strategy, both in the Middle East and the Far East. It affords a breathing space, an interval, a short but perhaps vital opportunity for the assembly, during the battle for air supremacy, of larger conventional forces than can normally be stationed in those areas.”
    Such an idea of a small nuclear war was further expressed during the 1957 defence debate by Macmillan’s successor as defence minister, Duncan Sandys: “one must distinguish between major global war, involving a head-on clash between the great Powers, and minor conflicts which can be localised and which do not bring the great Powers into direct collision. Limited and localised acts of aggression, for example, by a satellite Communist State could, no doubt, be resisted with conventional arms, or, at worst, with tactical nuclear weapons, the use of which could be confined to the battle area.”
    This historical context raises the question as to whether the smaller sub-strategic Trident warheads, or indeed the more powerful strategic versions, might be used independently of Nato. Britain reserves this right, and one of the more detailed assessments of the range of options for sub-strategic Trident warheads was made in the authoritative military journal International Defence Review in 1994: “At what might be called the ‘upper end’ of the usage spectrum, they could be used in a conflict involving large-scale forces (including British ground and air forces), such as the 1990-91 Gulf War, to reply to an enemy nuclear strike. Secondly, they could be used in a similar setting, but to reply to enemy use of weapons of mass destruction, such as bacteriological or chemical weapons, for which the British possess no like-for-like retaliatory capability. Thirdly, they could be used in a demonstrative role: i.e. aimed at a non-critical uninhabited area, with the message that if the country concerned continued on its present course of action, nuclear weapons would be aimed at a high-priority target. Finally, there is the punitive role, where a country has committed an act, despite specific warnings that to do so would incur a nuclear strike (see David Miller, “Britain Ponders Single Warhead Option”, International Defence Review, September 1994).
    It is worth noting that three of the four circumstances envisaged involve the first use of nuclear weapons by Britain.
    Such issues rarely surface in the public arena, but concern has been expressed in parliament that the government has not been sufficiently clear about the circumstances under which British nuclear weapons would be used in post-cold-war circumstances. For example, the house of commons defence select committee noted in 1998: “We regret that there has been no restatement of nuclear policy since the speech of the then Secretary of State in 1993; the SDR [Strategic Defence Review] does not provide a new statement of the government’s nuclear deterrent posture in the present strategic situation within which the sub-strategic role of Trident could be clarified. We recommend the clarification of both the UK’s strategic and sub-strategic policy.”
    This was, in part, in response to comments made to the committee by the then secretary of state for defence, George (now Lord) Robertson. He had told the committee that the sub-strategic option was “an option available that is other than guaranteed to lead to a full scale nuclear exchange”. He envisaged that a nuclear-armed country might wish to “…use a sub-strategic weapon, making it clear that it is sub-strategic in order to show that … if the attack continues [the country] would then go to the full strategic strike,” and that this would give a chance to “stop the escalation on the lower point of the ladder”.
    This statement indicated that “a country”, such as Britain, could consider using nuclear weapons without initiating an all-out nuclear war, and that the government therefore appeared to accept the view that a limited nuclear war could be fought and won. It was evidently not the clear statement that the committee sought, and it did not indicate the circumstances in which such weapons might be used. In particular, it did not appear to relate to whether Britain or British forces had already been attacked with nuclear weapons, or whether nuclear weapons would be used first in response to other circumstances.
    The Iraq wars
    At the same time, there had been no evidence to suggest that Britain had moved away from the nuclear posture of the cold-war era that included the possibility of using nuclear weapons first. Indeed, just as the cold war was winding down, the first Iraq war in early 1991 was one occasion when British nuclear use might have been considered. As the UK forces embarked for the Gulf in September 1990, the Observer reported that Britain was prepared to retaliate to an Iraqi chemical attack with nuclear weapons: “A senior officer attached to Britain’s 7th Armoured Brigade, which began to leave for the Gulf yesterday, claims that if UK forces are attacked with chemical gas by Iraqi troops, they will retaliate with battlefield nuclear weapons. The Ministry of Defence refused to confirm this last night, but it is the first unofficial indication that British troops might be authorised to use nuclear weapons to defend themselves if attacked” (see Observer, 30 September 1990, front page).
    More than a decade later and prior to the start of the second Iraq war in 2003, the then secretary of state for defense, Geoff Hoon, was questioned by members of the select committee and appeared to indicate that Britain maintained this policy. In relation to a state such as Iraq he said: “They can be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons.”
    This exchange did not make clear whether this would be in response to a nuclear attack initiated by a state such as Iraq. Hoon was questioned on this point on 24 March 2002 on the Jonathan Dimbleby programme on ITV. He was asked whether nuclear use might be in response to non-nuclear weapons such as chemical or biological weapons. He replied: “Let me make it clear the long-standing British government policy that if our forces or our people were threatened by weapons of mass destruction we would reserve the right to use appropriate proportionate responses which might … might in extreme circumstances include the use of nuclear weapons.”
    Later in the exchange, Hoon made it clear that he could envisage circumstances in which British nuclear weapons were used in response to chemical or biological weapons. He was later asked by Dimbleby: “But you would only use Britain’s weapon of mass destruction after an attack by Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction?” Hoon replied: “Clearly if there were strong evidence of an imminent attack if we knew that an attack was about to occur and we could use our weapons to protect against it.”
    The implication of this is clear – that there are circumstances where Britain would consider using nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack involving chemical or biological weapons and would even consider using nuclear weapons to pre-empt such an attack.
    A time for air
    Britain has deployed nuclear forces for almost fifty years. For most of that time, they have been primarily committed to Nato, which has maintained a nuclear-targeting posture that includes the first use of nuclear weapons. Britain also retains the capability to use nuclear weapons independently.
    Although the publicly acknowledged “declaratory” policy remains one of “last resort” use of nuclear weapons, the “deployment” policy involves the idea of nuclear war-fighting that falls far short of responding to a nuclear attack on Britain. This is the long-standing reality. It could certainly liven up the forthcoming debate on replacing Trident if this enduring feature of British nuclear-weapons policy got a really thorough airing.

     

    Paul Rogers is a professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. Paul Rogers has continued to focus on trends in international conflict, developing an analysis of the linkages between socio-economic divisions, environmental constraints and international insecurity.

  • Globalizing Security: A Challenge For Your Generation

    Thank you, Dean Einhorn. Distinguished guests, members of the faculty, families and friends, honoured graduates,

    Today, in a remote village in Darfur, a young woman named Aisha is packing up to leave town. While the situation has started to quiet down, there are rumors that the same militia group that killed her father and mother last year might be planning another raid. Aisha is not sure of her destination, but she is desperate to get her younger brother and sister to a safe place.

    There are many such stories, each with a different twist. Lives in the balance, lives needlessly lost. In a rural area of Zambia, a young man named Mitambo has watched many of his friends grow sick or die from HIV/AIDS, and worries about the future of his village. In the Gaza Strip, a young man named Hassan mourns the loss of his younger brother, unable to understand what drove him to become a suicide bomber. In Cincinnati, a young man named Steven is grieving at the news that his older brother was killed in Fallujah.

    Here in Constitution Hall is a young woman named Susan. In the six years since she began her university training, the international landscape has changed radically. The terrorist attacks of September 2001 marked the beginning of her undergraduate sophomore year. The split at the UN Security Council over Iraq´s suspected weapons of mass destruction became a case study for her junior year. Developments in North Korea and Iran have made for lively classroom debates throughout her graduate studies. Susan is looking forward to receiving her diploma today. She plans a career in international relations, and is eager to make her world a safer place.

    Aisha, Mitambo, Hassan, Steven and Susan. All these young people are in their twenties. Their names are fictional, but their circumstances are very real. And now that you have heard their stories, I would like to talk to you about the major challenge of the 21st century: how to re-shape our approach to security in a way that takes into account the hopes – and the fears – of each of these young people, and in fact of all their fellow human beings around the world.

    Let me say at the outset that, to do this, we must think and act differently. We must globalize our concepts of security. We must develop a system of security that fits with these concepts. But most importantly, we must act accordingly.

    The story of the past few generations can be read as a series of efforts to build institutions that could resolve conflicts peacefully and, in parallel, to limit the scope of war and prohibit certain types of weapons.

    After the devastation of the First World War, the League of Nations was formed. But it could not prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler, or the atrocities that claimed millions of lives.

    After World War II, the United Nations was born. Principles for maintaining international peace and security were agreed upon. Economic and social development for all. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Centralization of the authority to use force, in the UN Security Council. And limitations on the conditions under which States could justify using force in self-defence.

    The United Nations and its institutions have had many successes, in regulating various aspects of our increasingly interconnected lives: international trade, civil aviation, postal standards, labour practices, and so forth.

    But the overall success of the United Nations as a body is measured most often in terms of its performance in keeping the peace – particularly its role as a peacemaker in terms of conflict prevention and conflict resolution, and as a peacekeeper in the aftermath of conflicts. Here the UN record is mixed. The UN can point to some success stories, such as in the case of Namibia, in which sustained and active UN engagement led to the country´s transition from occupation to independence. Or the case of East Timor, which through similar UN involvement has become a free and independent nation.

    The problem is how to make such successes the norm. In too many cases, such as the Middle East or South Asia, we find ourselves incapable of finding solutions to conflicts that have gone on for decades. And too often we fail to act when intervention is clearly needed – such as during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when nearly 1 million people were slaughtered in just over 3 months.

    What about our scorecard on limiting the scope of war or prohibiting the most destructive types of weapons? Here the record is also mixed. As far back as the Hague Conventions of 1899, efforts were made to limit the effects of armed conflict — through, for example, protecting people who are not part of hostilities, and prohibiting methods and means of warfare that cause unnecessary suffering.

    The Biological Weapons Convention of 1975 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, which outlawed the production and use of these weapons, were major steps forward.

    But the irony is that we still have not outlawed the “big guns”: nuclear weapons. Under the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – the five countries that had nuclear weapons at the time – China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States – committed themselves to &quote;negotiate in good faith” effective measures for the elimination of nuclear weapons and, in the meantime, to share peaceful nuclear technology with any other countries party to the Treaty. In return, those other countries agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons.

    On the one hand, efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons through the NPT treaty regime can be viewed as a remarkable success. With the exception of India, Israel and Pakistan, every country in the world has joined the NPT. The vast majority of NPT members have stood by their commitments. And the number of nuclear warheads has been reduced by more than 50 percent from its Cold War peak.

    On the other hand, in recent years, we seem to have come to an impasse, and many see the NPT regime as faltering. You might say that, while we started on the right track, we have lost our sense of direction. Today we have eight or nine countries that possess nuclear weapons – and more than 20 other members of alliances that continue to rely on these weapons for their security. Some countries are actually announcing programmes for modernizing their stockpiles, and some have even spoken of the possibility of using such weapons – all the while insisting that they are off-limits to others.

    This is a dilemma worth reflecting on. As an international community, we have no difficulties in cooperating when it comes to regulating shipping, coordinating the use of airwaves, or jointly fighting epidemics. But when it comes to how to resolve our differences, our approach dates back to the Stone Age, still rooted primitively in who carries the biggest club.

    In 1974, I was like you today – waiting to receive my graduate diploma from the New York University School of Law.

    It is now over thirty years later. My generation has had its successes and failures. But I also believe we have learned a number of lessons and insights that you may reflect on as you prepare to take over.

    The first lesson is that international peace and security cannot be achieved through business as usual with our existing norms and institutions. Clearly, these norms and institutions – whether the NPT or the UN Security Council – are far from perfect. They need to be strengthened in a variety of ways.

    But beyond the re-engineering of these norms and institutions, we need a complete change of mindset. Most importantly, our approach to security can no longer be centred on the idea of “Us Versus Them”. It must instead be anchored on the idea of the unity of the human family.

    Our world today is marked by asymmetry. Twenty percent of the world´s population consumes 80 percent of the resources. And 2 out of every 5 people still live on less than $2 per day.

    Given that SAIS just completed its “Year of Energy”, let me explain this asymmetry in another way. The average American has 1,800 watts at his or her disposal – powering everything from air conditioners to iPods. By contrast, your average Nigerian has to make do with only enough power for a single 8-watt light bulb.

    In the past, with little travel or communication between countries and peoples, this sort of imbalance could endure for centuries.

    This brings us to Lesson Number Two: in our era of globalization, this imbalance is no longer sustainable. Television and the Internet have made this imbalance glaringly visible. In some cases, that imbalance in living conditions is leading to a sense of injustice – a fertile breeding ground for conflicts and the emergence of extremist groups. And increasingly, the insecurities of one country or region become the insecurities of all.

    In the final year of World War II, President Roosevelt said, “We have learned that our own well being is dependent on the well being of other nations far away.” This reality is now ever more apparent. Chaos mathematicians sometimes describe what is known as “the butterfly effect” – the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings in Washington DC can affect the initial conditions of a chain of meteorological events that ultimately bring about, say, a sandstorm in the Sahara. Today, one can equally speak about the same butterfly effect of insecurity. The recent terrorist attacks in Europe, which could be traced back to the sense of humiliation in parts of the Middle East, are a case in point. Security is no longer as simple as building another wall. Globalization is forcing us to realize that, whether we like it or not, we are all in the same boat.

    When we look at nuclear weapons through this lens, Lesson Number Three becomes obvious. Nukes breed nukes. As long as some nations continue to insist that nuclear weapons are essential to their security, other nations will want them. There is no way around this simple truth. Here, too, the playing field will need to be leveled, one way or another.

    As recently as a few decades ago, the control of nuclear technology and nuclear material was a sensible strategy for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We are still working vigorously – and must continue to work – to maintain and improve those controls. The proposal to bring under multinational control those facilities capable of producing weapon-usable nuclear material – a proposal endorsed in various forms by many world leaders – is just one such improvement.

    But ultimately, as more countries gain advanced engineering capabilities, these controls, in and of themselves, are no longer enough. Advances in communication have simply made it too easy to share knowledge and technology. And regardless of how diligently we work to block the illicit trade in nuclear technology to nations – or worse, to extremist groups who seek this technology – there will be limits to how much can be controlled.

    When it comes to nuclear weapons, we are reaching a fork in the road. Either we must begin moving away from a security system based on nuclear weapons, or we should resign ourselves to President Kennedy´s 1960s prediction of a world with 20 to 30 nuclear-weapon States. Efforts to control the spread of such weapons will only be delaying the inevitable – a world in which each country or group has laid claim to its own nuclear weapon. Mutually Assured Destruction will once again be the absurd hallmark of civilization at its technological peak.

    Is that really the world we want to live in?

    To date, no one has seriously taken up the challenge of developing an alternative approach to security that eliminates the need for nuclear deterrence. But only when such an alternative system is created will nuclear-weapon States begin moving towards nuclear disarmament. And only when nuclear-weapon States move away from depending on these weapons for their security will the threat of nuclear proliferation by other countries be meaningfully reduced. And finally, only when both groups of countries shift their focus – from a security system based on the build-up of armaments to a security system that addresses the root causes of insecurity, ranging from poverty and repression to unresolved conflicts – will we be able to improve global security.

    Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to develop this alternative system of collective security. The good news is that, as tough as it may sound, this is not “Mission Impossible”. As graduates of the School of Advanced International Studies, you are equipped with the right skills and the broad outlook to take on such a challenge. The globalization of security will require creative diplomacy, innovative technology and above all leadership.

    Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the exact nature of such an alternative system. But I can tell you some of the features that will be essential to its success.

    At its root, this new system of collective security requires a basic belief that we are all part of one human family.

    This requires a re-arrangement of our global priorities. In 2004, the nations of the world spent over $1 trillion on weapons, and less than 10% of that amount – a mere $80 billion – on official development assistance. Experts tell us that, for an additional $65 billion per year, we could cut world hunger in half, put programmes in place for clean water worldwide, enable reproductive health care for women everywhere, eradicate illiteracy, and provide immunization for every child.

    With those kinds of numbers, it doesn´t take a nuclear scientist to figure out a smarter approach to improving our security situation. To quote President Eisenhower, speaking with far-sighted vision in 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies… a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

    If we can focus on giving our less fortunate neighbours the opportunity to raise their living standards – the chance to compete, to regain their sense of dignity and self-respect – the likelihood of conflict will immediately begin to drop.

    This new system of collective security should incorporate a deterrence based primarily on the interdependence of nations, through the exchange of people, ideas and goods. Armed conflict must become too costly to be anything but the very last option. We must find ways to make nuclear weapons relics of the past.

    Secondly, this alternative system of collective security must include institutions capable of maintaining international peace and security. The United Nations Security Council now holds this responsibility. The Security Council must be representative of the global community it serves. It must be structured in a way that makes it agile in its responses to crises. It must be consistent in its actions. It must have the resources to carry out its mission. And it must make it a high priority to resolve conflicts that have continued to fester for decades. We should not forget, however, that at the end of the day, international institutions are constellations of states, and states are made up of people who should be the focus and the drivers of any system of security.

    Third, we should initiate a series of dialogues to promote mutual understanding and respect. To correct misconceptions. To understand and address causes of hostility. These dialogues should be tailored especially towards young people – young people like Aisha, Mitambo, Hassan, Steven and Susan – because a mindset of mutual respect and understanding will be essential to the effort of your generation to put in place an equitable global security system.

    In the 1960s, Timothy Leary coined the famous phrase: “Turn On; Tune In; Drop Out” – calling on the younger generation to disengage from society and seek enlightenment through psychedelic drugs.

    I would call on you to do exactly the opposite, to engage and become part of the solution – in other words, “Turn Back; Tune In; Reach Out”. Turn Back from an approach to security that relies on nuclear deterrence. Tune In to the security needs of your fellow human beings around the globe. And Reach Out to make those needs your own, so that the dream of peace and security can finally become a reality. Every one of you can make a difference.

    Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2006: the future rests in your hands. May God bless you with the wisdom and courage necessary to lead us to a safer and more humane world.

    Thank you.

     

    Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei is the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He also shared the 2005 Noble Prize for Peace with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

  • Let Mordechai Vanunu Go

    On leaving Israel/Palestine today, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, who has spent the last 10 days in Israel-Palestine campaigning for an end to the detention of Mordechai Vanunu, said:

    “I believe it is sad and shameful that the Israeli Government continues to detain Mordechai Vanunu for this the 20 year of his internal exile within Israel. He has no secrets. He is no threat to Israeli security. I therefore call upon the Israel Government to uphold Mordechai Vanunu’s human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of movement and let him go.

    I also support his call for a Nuclear Free Israel, Middle East and world and call upon the Israeli Government to open Dimona for inspection, and to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty.

    During my visit I have travelled to Jenin Refugee Camp, Hebron, and Bethlehem in the Israeli Occupied Territories. I have witnessed the daily suffering of the Palestinian people living under an increasing and worsening oppressive Israeli occupation.

    I believe there is a great desire for peace amongst all the people, but in order to move into serious dialogue and negotiations urgent steps, and the political will; particularly from the Israeli Government, need to be taken. I therefore make the following Appeal:

    1. I call upon the International Community, European Community, the United States of America, to intervene to end the 40 year occupation by Israel and to end the Palestinian suffering in Palestinian camps for 60 years. The International Community must not be intimidated and silenced by threats of being anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli, but must be bold in demanding Israel upholds it obligations under International Law.
    2. The way for peace must be for Israel to end the occupation and recognize and respect all the national and international human rights of the Palestinian people.
    3. I call upon the Palestinian people to use the methods of Jesus Christ, Badshan Khan, Gandhi, Martin Luther King of nonviolent resistance to the occupation and apartheid system, which continues to cause so much suffering to their people. And for the International Community to support such a nonviolent resistance by the Palestinian people.
    4. I call upon the Israeli Government to uphold International Court of Justice and dismantle the Apartheid wall, and the Apartheid system of injustice. To recognize the democratically elected Government of the Palestinian people and enter into serious dialogue with their new ‘partner for peace’.
    5. I call upon Israeli Government, European Union, United State, to restore Foreign Aid as the withdrawing of this, is in effect. a collective punishment of the Palestinian people, many of whom already live under great poverty and hardship, due to the continuing illegal occupation and colonization of the Palestinian Territories.
    6. I call upon all Israeli and Palestinian people to continue to hope and believe and act for peace, and to do everything in their power to begin to build trust and friendship amongst each other. Nuclear Weapons, militarism, and emergency laws will not build trust, but overcome the fear of each other, and continuing the great work already being done by both Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, and many others, will bring peace. The Israeli Government can help this process by making it possible for people to actually meet each other, and build a grassroots peace movement together.

    I have great hopes for both Israeli-Palestinian and leave strengthened and upheld by the love and affection I have received from my many Israeli and Palestinian Friends.

    Shalom/Salam,
    Mrs Mairead Corrigan Maguire Nobel Peace Laureate

    Peace People 224 Lisburn Road, Belfast. BT9 Northern Ireland – UK. www.peacepeople.com Tel: (44) (0)2890 663465 Fax: (44) (0)2890 381987 Email Info@peacepeople.com

    Mairead Corrigan Maguire received the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize and the 1991 Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. She recently participated in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2006 International Law Symposium, “At the Nuclear Precipice: Nuclear Weapons and the Abandonment of International Law.”