Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: International Issues

  • In the Spirit of Einstein: Scientists Advancing Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    In 1955, fifty years ago and ten years after the harsh inception of the Nuclear Age at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein issued an appeal, known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. It is the last public document signed by Einstein before his death. In addition to Russell and Einstein, the document was signed by nine other prominent scientists. The appeal warned that powerful new nuclear weapons raised the possibility of “universal death” in an all-out war, and called for the renunciation of war itself. “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” The appeal concluded: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

     

    Over the ensuing decades of the Cold War and beyond it, many scientists and citizens throughout the world have grown complacent in the face of continuing nuclear dangers. The Cold War may have ended in the early 1990s, but nuclear dangers to humanity have not abated. In some respects, the dangers have increased. Among the scientists who have banded together to educate the public and offer constructive solutions to the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity are those who are or have been associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Pugwash) and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES).

     

    Many scientists have been involved in both organizations. Pugwash, which grew directly from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, began in 1957 and has tended to work in more closed circles of scientists in the hopes of being viewed by governments as more trustworthy. Pugwash shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize with its founder, Sir Joseph Rotblat. INES, by contrast, which was established at a large scientific meeting in Berlin in 1991, has been far more open to interactions with other civil society organizations and with the general public. One of the principal aims of INES has been to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. This aim has been carried out by an extraordinarily dedicated group of scientists, engineers and experts in the INES project, the International Network of Scientists and Engineers Against Proliferation (INESAP). In the remainder of this article, I will discuss INESAP’s activities that have sought to move beyond the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other efforts to halt proliferation and to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

     

    INESAP was formed in 1993 by three young German scientists: Wolfgang Liebert, Martin Kalinowski and Juergen Scheffran. From its inception, the network focused on the central issue of the Nuclear Age: achieving total nuclear disarmament. The principal objectives of INESAP are “to promote nuclear disarmament, to tighten existing arms control and non-proliferation regimes, [and] to implement unconventional approaches to curbing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to controlling the transfer of related technology.”

     

    The founding conference of INESAP took place in Germany in August 1993, and was entitled, “Against Proliferation: Towards General Disarmament.” Some 50 scientists, engineers and other experts from 20 countries participated. In 1994, INESAP established a Study Group on non-proliferation, called “Beyond the NPT,” referring to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The work of the Study Group led to the publication of a document in early 1995, “Beyond the NPT: A Nuclear Weapon-Free World.” The document was prepared by some 50 authors from 17 countries, including soon-to-be Nobel Peace Laureate Joseph Rotblat.

     

    Among the conclusions of this study were that the Non-Proliferation Treaty was insufficient to control nuclear proliferation, and that the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of this treaty should be followed by multilateral negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention. The document proposed that the parties to the treaty, along with the few states still outside the treaty, should begin immediate negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a framework treaty for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The Executive Summary of “Beyond the NPT” stated, “In its Final Document the NPT Review and Extension Conference should, in its call for decisive steps towards a NWFW [nuclear weapons-free world], include a mandate for the Conference on Disarmament to start negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). The pattern has to be that which has already been set by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) – a total ban.”

     

    The 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference was held at United Nations headquarters in New York. It was one of the most important meetings in the then 25-year history of treaty and may turn out to be one of the significant events of the Nuclear Age, with broad implications for the future of civilization. At issue during the conference was whether the treaty should be extended indefinitely or for periods of time. The United States and other nuclear weapons states were strong supporters of indefinite extension, their goal being to prevent nuclear proliferation while maintaining the two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” Many civil society organizations, along with some non-nuclear weapons states, argued against indefinite extension on the basis that it would be like giving a blank check to parties (the nuclear weapons states) who were notorious for overdrawing their accounts and could not be trusted to keep their promises.

     

    The essential bargain of the NPT was that non-nuclear weapons states would not develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons states would cease the nuclear arms race and engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. From the perspective of the non-nuclear weapons states, the treaty was never meant to establish permanent nuclear double standards, making nuclear weapons acceptable for the small minority while prohibiting them to the vast majority.

     

    INESAP was a leader among the civil society organizations at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference pressing the point that preventing proliferation was not sufficient and that it was necessary to move expeditiously toward a nuclear weapons-free world. In cooperation with other leading international organizations, INESAP sponsored a two-day forum on the abolition of nuclear weapons, based upon its study, “Beyond the NPT: A Nuclear Weapon-Free World.” The INESAP forum provided an opportunity to present a variety of proposals on how to attain a nuclear weapons-free world and for civil society representatives from around the world to debate strategies for moving forward.

     

    The NPT Review and Extension Conference ended with a victory for the nuclear weapons states and a sound defeat for humanity. The treaty was extended indefinitely with no further requirements that the nuclear weapons states fulfill their obligations under the treaty to achieve nuclear disarmament. Having achieved the indefinite extension of the treaty, the nuclear weapons states showed no inclination to proceed with negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, as INESAP had proposed.

     

    The outcome of the NPT Review and Extension Conference created a strong reaction by civil society organizations and an increased determination among them to work for the abolition of nuclear weapons. INESAP and other civil society groups coalesced to form Abolition 2000, a global network for the abolition of nuclear weapons, which has now grown to over 2,000 organizations and municipalities throughout the world.

     

    In 1996, a year after the conclusion of the NPT Review and Extension Conference, civil society organizations played a significant role in bringing the issue of the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court. The ICJ issued an opinion in which the court unanimously declared: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

     

    By 1997, INESAP, along with two other important international organizations – the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) – put forward a comprehensive text for a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention. The text, relying heavily on the technical information provided by INESAP, provided for a system of societal and technical verification that would make it possible for the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their obligation under international law for the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals. This would not only make the world far safer, but would be the only truly effective way to assure against nuclear proliferation. The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention was introduced to the United Nations as a discussion paper by Costa Rica in 1997.

     

    Since then, INESAP has continued its efforts to promote a Nuclear Weapons Convention. In a 1999 Briefing Paper (No. 7/1999), it explored the question, “Has the Time Come for the Nuclear Weapons Convention?” During that same year, INESAP continued its collaboration with IALANA and IPPNW in producing a book: Security and Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. In the year 2000, INESAP put out an edited book on Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The book, emphasizing scientific expertise, provides analysis of the deadlock in achieving progress on the elimination of nuclear weapons and on the means of overcoming the obstacles.

     

    The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention has provided a basic tool for the global nuclear abolition movement. It has been used over the years by Abolition 2000 and its constituent organizations as an example of how countries, if they had the political will to do so, could proceed toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. Most recently, the model convention has been used by the Mayors for Peace, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in their Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons. This campaign calls for negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention to commence in 2005, to be completed by 2010, and for the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

     

    In 2000, INESAP organized a workshop entitled “Abolition of Nuclear Weapons” at the Stockholm Congress of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Intensive discussions at this meeting gave rise to a new INESAP program, initiated in cooperation with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, to explore the control and elimination of missile technologies for warlike purposes. The project, Moving Beyond Missile Defense, has held four international conferences over the past five years, in Santa Barbara, Shanghai, Berlin and Hiroshima, focusing on regional and global issues of nuclear disarmament and missile control.

     

    Einstein warned, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” The scientists, engineers and other experts associated with INESAP have worked to bring about such a change in thinking. They have exemplified a commitment to social responsibility by raising their voices to warn of continuing dangers and by using their scientific and technical expertise to propose solutions to the gravest danger confronting humanity. They carry on in the tradition of truth and courage exemplified by Albert Einstein.

     

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and the Deputy Chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • War Beyond Earth is Not Inevitable

    Canada’s major political parties are united in opposing the weaponization of space. It was principally the strength of this feeling that caused Canada to decline its closest ally’s invitation to participate in continental missile defence, seen by many as opening the way to weapons in space. The popular support for missile defence in Canada was lacking.

    This was not the first time Canada said no to missile defence. Fifteen years earlier, a Conservative government rejected Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars. The technology on that occasion was impressive, the political pressures great, and the commercial advantages apparent.

    Why does Canada make such seemingly perverse decisions?

    One answer is that we are a nation of many cultures, directing attention outward. Such a nation is less likely to seek its security behind the walls of borders, or missile defence. The other part of the story is Canada’s commitment to a different sort of bulwark: international law. This is the key to Canadian attitudes on both missile defence and the weaponization of space. One should not claim this as pure virtue; it’s to be expected that the weak will favour law. It was not King John but the nobles who insisted on the Magna Carta (the nobles were right).

    Today’s transformation of the world scene is as important as that of King John’s day. It stems from the fundamental question where current trends in weapons development are likely to extrapolate. To what secure outcome could they possibly lead? To each new weapon, there will always be a counter, and to each fear that gave rise to that weapon, a sequel. The most obvious sequel will be the spread of the weapon into the hands of our opponents. Technological dominance cannot endure. Prevention of the spread of weapons is regarded as an essential adjunct to their possession. But power alone will not prevent that spread. One also needs persuasion. And there lies the problem. How does one persuade others to behave differently from oneself?

    Only the example of restraint can foster restraint; one can only have recourse to the restraint called law, if one acknowledges the supremacy of law. It is this realization that is slowly transforming the world. But too slowly.

    In their respect for law, nations, like individuals, will always be deficient. But they cannot afford to be as deficient as today.

    It would be difficult to envisage a better arena for restraint than space. It is a medium all share, since all border on it. Its worth can be judged from the global investment that has literally rocketed in a lifetime from zero to the order of a trillion dollars.

    Hugely valuable, it is equally vulnerable. Nonetheless, it remains for the present protected only by custom and law. These are the instruments we must strengthen.

    How far have we come?

    Before Donald Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defence, he headed a bipartisan commission that warned that war in space was “a virtual certainty.” In its 2001 report, it argued, “We know from history that every medium – air, land and sea – has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different.” In a nuclear-armed world, this sort of argument from history is a counsel of despair, telling us that whatever can happen will.

    The proponents of the argument do not despair; they offer the illusory hope of single-nation dominance. They urge the United States to claim the strategic high ground of space. But a large constituency is aware that a few per cent of the world’s population cannot forever dominate.

    With that in mind, the United States joined with other major powers, as long ago as 1967, through the Outer Space Treaty, in embracing the obligation to use outer space “for the benefit ….. of all countries ….. [and as] the province of all mankind.” The impetus toward that agreement can be traced back still further to Dwight Eisenhower’s visionary 1958 proposal for banning weapons from space.

    The norm against hostile acts against satellites was established more explicitly by the U.S.-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which for decades banned interference with another nation’s eyes or ears in space. The spirit of that agreement has been re-enforced by repeated resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly in support of the “Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space” (PAROS).

    We have an opportunity today to move further in the direction of a regime of law in space, which would prohibit the testing and deployment of weapons, with all possible provisions for verification. There will be problems, but they are comparable with those we have addressed in preventing mayhem on our streets and piracy at sea. It is hard to believe that these problems will be more demanding than those we’ll face if we allow outer space to degenerate into a jungle.

    Sixty years into the atomic age, we have not yet committed ourselves to restraint. Where outer space is concerned, the opportunity will not come again. Carpe diem.

    Nobel laureate John Polanyi is a professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto. This article is adapted from a speech Polanyi gave at a NPRI conference, Full Spectrum Dominance.

    Originally published by Global and Mail.com (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050517.wcomment0518/BNStory/National/)

  • Vanunu Should Get Nobel Peace Prize

    UNITED NATIONS — U.S. whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says Mordechai Vanunu should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for revealing Israel’s nuclear arsenal and be allowed to travel the world to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Ellsberg, whose disclosure of secret Pentagon documents about the Vietnam war helped crystallize anti-war sentiment in the United States in the early 1970s, urged delegates from 188 countries attending a conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to strongly protest Israel’s restrictions on Vanunu’s speech and travel and his likely return to prison.

    Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s nuclear plant in the southern town of Dimona, served 18 years in prison for divulging information about Israel’s secretive atomic program to a British newspaper in 1986. He has been barred from leaving the country until at least April 2006 and went on trial last month for allegedly violating a condition of his 2004 release that banned contacts with foreigners.

    Ellsberg, who said he recently spent five days with Vanunu in Israel, dismissed the government’s claim that Vanunu still has secrets that could endanger national security as “absurd.”

    “It’s clearly an attempt to prolong his sentence indefinitely, sending him back to prison for years,” Ellsberg told reporters Wednesday before addressing the review conference.

    “The message this sends to potential Vanunus in other states is very clear, and the question at this conference is whether the nations of the world should encourage or strongly protest that message,” he said. “The fact is more Vanunus are urgently needed in this world.”

    Ellsberg said that if, for instance, an Indian technician had revealed the country’s plan for a nuclear test, international pressure might have prevented it — and “how much better India, Pakistan and the world would be.”

    In the early 1960s, Ellsberg said he was working in the Pentagon on command and control of nuclear weapons and nuclear war plans and should have done what Vanunu did and “tell my country and the world the insanity and moral obscenity of our war planning, which remains the same today.”

    “I regret profoundly that I did not reveal that fact publicly, with documents,” he said.

    Ellsberg, who spoke on behalf of the non-profit Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which promotes the abolition of nuclear weapons, said Israel today is probably the third or fourth-largest nuclear state — behind the United States and Russia, and possibly France.

    He said Vanunu is reported to have revealed in 1986 that Israel had about 200 nuclear weapons. Vanunu has estimated that at the same rate of production Israel had when he left Dimona in 1985, the country should have close to 400 weapons today, Ellsberg said.

    That’s more than Britain, China, India and Pakistan, and probably more than France, he said.

    Israel neither acknowledges nor denies having a nuclear weapons program, following a policy of nuclear ambiguity.

    Ellsberg said British nuclear scientist Joseph Rotblat, who won the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for his work against nuclear weapons with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, has repeatedly nominated Vanunu for the award.

    “He should get the Nobel Peace Prize as Joseph Rotblat has frequently recommended,” he said.

  • Nuclear Renaissance

    The review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), a five-yearly event, opened in New York on May 2 without benefit of an agenda. The conference had no agenda because the world has no agenda with respect to nuclear arms. Broadly speaking, two groups of nations are setting the pace of events. One — the possessors of nuclear arms under the terms of the treaty, comprising the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China — wants to hold on to its nuclear arsenals indefinitely. The other group — call them the proliferators — has only recently acquired the weapons or would like to do so. Notable among them are North Korea, which by its own account has built a small arsenal, and Iran, which appears to be using its domestic nuclear-power program to create a nuclear-weapon capacity.

    As the conference began, Iran announced that it would soon end a moratorium on the production of fissile materials and Pyongyang declared that it had become a full-fledged nuclear power — a declaration buttressed by testimony in the Senate from the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, that North Korea now has rockets capable of landing nuclear warheads on the United States. If the two countries establish themselves as nuclear powers, a long list of other countries in the Middle East and North Asia may seek to follow suit. In that case, the NPT will be a dead letter, and the gates of unlimited proliferation will swing open.

    The two groups of nations are in collision. The possessors want to stop the proliferators, and the proliferators want to defy them as well as ask them to get rid of their own mountainous nuclear arsenals. One of the liveliest debates at the conference concerns the nuclear fuel cycle, whereby fuel for both nuclear power and nuclear bomb materials is made. In the possessor countries, proposals abound to restrict this capacity to themselves, thus digging a moat around not only their arsenals but their nuclear productive capacities as well. The proliferators respond that the world’s nuclear double-standard should not be fortified but eliminated: In the long run, either everyone should have the right to the fuel cycle — and for that matter to the bombs — or no one should. (This was the view of Pakistan and India until, in May 1998, they remedied the inequity in their own cases by testing nuclear weapons and declaring themselves nuclear powers.)

    Far more contentious is the new American military doctrine of pre-emptive war, aimed at stopping proliferation by force, as the United States said it sought to do by overthrowing the government of Iraq. Inasmuch as the Bush administration has suggested that even nuclear force might be used, the new policy represents the ultimate extreme of the double standard: The United States will use nuclear weapons to stop other countries from getting those same weapons. The proliferators accordingly fear a world whose commanding heights will be guarded by the nuclear cannons of a few nations, while the rest of the world cowers in the planet’s lowlands and back alleys. Nuclear disarmament, once the domain of the peace-loving, would become a prime engine of war in an imposed, militarized global order.

    The debate between the nuclear haves and have-nots is probably unresolvable anytime soon. Certainly it will not be settled at the review conference. And yet, as is true of so many adversaries, the two groups of nations have more in common with each other than with other nations: They both want nuclear weapons. And if one looks at what is happening on the ground, a remarkable uniformity appears. All the parties in this quarrel are expanding their nuclear capacities and missions. In a sense the two groups, even as they threaten each other with annihilation, are cooperating in nuclearizing the globe.

    The end of the cold war was supposed to be the beginning of a farewell to nuclear danger, but now, fifteen years later, it’s clear that a nuclear renaissance is under way. China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Britain are all increasing their arsenals and/or their delivery systems. (In an amazingly undernoticed development, the shadow of danger from Chinese nuclear weapons is falling over larger and larger areas of the United States.) The United States, even as it reduces the number of its alert nuclear weapons — though not the total number of nuclear weapons, alert or otherwise — is rotating its nuclear guns away from their traditional Cold War targets and toward Third World sites. (The United States and Russia built up such an excess of nuclear bombs during the Cold War that they can string out their dismantlement almost indefinitely without carving into their joint capacity to finish off most of human civilization.) Britain likewise is redirecting its targeting. Its Defense Secretary has stated that even the modest step of declaring no-first-use of nuclear weapons “would be incompatible with our and NATO’s doctrine of deterrence, nor would it further nuclear disarmament objectives.” In other words, Britain may find it necessary to initiate a nuclear war to achieve nuclear disarmament. Finally, individuals and terrorist groups are reaching for the bomb and other weapons of mass destruction. Osama bin Laden, for instance, has declared that obtaining such is the “religious duty” of Muslims, and September 11 gave us an example of how he might use them.

    All but unheard in the snarling din are the true voices of peace — voices calling on the one group of nations to resist the demonic allure of nuclear arms and on the other group to rid themselves of the ones they have, leaving the world with a single standard: no nuclear weapons. Of the countries represented at the conference, fully 183 have found it entirely possible to live without atomic arsenals, and few — barring a breakdown of the treaty — show any sign of changing their minds. In the UN General Assembly the vast majority of them have voted regularly for nuclear abolition. Behind those votes stand the people of the world, who, when asked, agree. Even the people of the United States are in the consensus. Presented by AP pollsters in March with the statement, “No country should be allowed to have nuclear weapons,” 66% agreed. In other countries, the percentage of supporters is higher. On the day their voices are heard and their will made active, the end of the nuclear age will be in sight.

    Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2003 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

    Originally published by The Nation Magazine.

  • Erosion of Nonproliferation Treaty

    As the review conference of the Nonproliferation Treaty convenes in New York this month, we can only be appalled at the indifference of the United States and the other nuclear powers. This indifference is remarkable, considering the addition of Iran and North Korea as states that either possess or seek nuclear weapons programs.

    In the run-up to the conference, a group of “Middle States” had a simple goal: “To exert leverage on the nuclear powers to take some minimum steps to save the nonproliferation treaty in 2005.” Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states – including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight NATO members – voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution.

    Preparatory talks failed even to achieve an agenda because of the deep divisions between nuclear powers that refuse to meet their own disarmament commitments and the non-nuclear movement, whose demands include honoring these pledges and considering the Israeli arsenal.

    Until recently, all American presidents since Dwight Eisenhower had striven to restrict and reduce nuclear arsenals – some more than others. As far as I know, there are no present efforts by any of the nuclear powers to accomplish these crucial goals.

    The United States is the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including antiballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating “bunker buster” and perhaps some new “small” bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.

    Some corrective actions are obvious:

    The United States needs to address remaining nuclear issues with Russia, demanding the same standards of transparency and verification of past arms control agreements and dismantling and disposal of decommissioned weapons. With massive arsenals still on hair-trigger alert status, a global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the cold war. We could address perhaps the world’s greatest proliferation threat by fully securing Russia’s stockpiles.

    While all nuclear weapons states should agree to no first use, the United States, as the sole superpower, should take the lead on this issue.

    NATO needs to de-emphasize the role of its nuclear weapons and consider an end to their deployment in Western Europe. Despite its eastward expansion, NATO is keeping the same stockpiles and policies as when the Iron Curtain divided the continent.

    The comprehensive test ban treaty should be honored, but the United States is moving in the opposite direction. The administration’s 2005 budget refers for the first time to a list of test scenarios, and other nations are waiting to take the same action.

    The United States should support a fissile-materials treaty to prevent the creation and transport of highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

    The United States should curtail development of the infeasible missile defense shield, which is wasting huge resources, while breaking our commitment to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty without a working substitute.

    Act on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, an increasing source of instability. Iran has repeatedly hidden its intentions to enrich uranium while claiming that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. This explanation has been given before, by India, Pakistan and North Korea, and has led to weapons programs in all three states. Iran must be called to account and held to its promises under the Nonproliferation Treaty. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge how Israel’s nuclear status entices Iran, Syria, Egypt and other states to join the community of nuclear-weapon states.

    If the United States and other nuclear powers are serious about stopping the erosion of the Nonproliferation Treaty, they must act now on these issues. Any other course will mean a world in which the nuclear threat increases, not diminishes.

    Jimmy Carter is a former president of the United States and founder of the Carter Center in Atlanta. This comment was distributed by Tribune Media Services for Global Viewpoint.

    Originally published by the International Herald Tribune

  • Bin Laden’s Nuclear Connection

    In his interviews and writings over the past decade, Osama bin Laden has repeatedly talked about America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He believes (incorrectly) that it was the atomic bombings that shocked the Japanese imperial government into an early surrender–and, he says, he is planning an atomic attack on America that will shock us into retreating from the Middle East.

    For an Administration that believes that the only thing it has to fear is the absence of fear, Osama’s threat is a helpful reminder that we live in a dangerous world. “It may only be a matter of time,” President Bush’s recently installed CIA director, Porter Goss, told the Senate Intelligence Committee, “before Al Qaeda or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.”

    While such threats cannot be ignored, it is important to historicize and contextualize them if we are to understand how we have contributed to undermining our own security. There were alternative policies at the beginning of the nuclear age that our government could have followed–and could still promote–that would have mitigated the dangers we face today. There were people then, as now, who recognized that the knowledge of how to construct and deploy atomic bombs could not be kept secret for long. And there were people then, as now, who recognized that such bombs could be smuggled into major urban areas–meaning there is no defense against nuclear terrorism. Chief among those who clearly saw the nuclear future–as we have lived and are living it–was the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, who developed a plan for a nuclear-free world and did his best to promote this alternative path.

    The history of Oppenheimer’s failure to contain the nuclear genie makes clear that unilateralism and hubris are hardly unique to the Bush Administration; they have been a recurrent characteristic of US decision-making ever since the latter years of World War II. America’s nuclear monopoly was “the great equalizer,” Secretary of War Henry Stimson triumphantly declared in July 1945 at the Potsdam conference upon learning of the success of the atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The bomb was our “trump card,” our “ace in the hole,” President Truman and his closest advisers believed. But others, more informed and more thoughtful, like Oppenheimer, realized that the bomb was a Trojan horse that would soon threaten our own security as much as it threatened the security of others. Oppenheimer’s efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons at the beginning of the atomic age are as applicable today as they were then.

    On October 25, 1945, Oppenheimer was ushered into the Oval Office to meet Truman to discuss his plans to eliminate nuclear weapons. By one account, Truman opened the conversation by stating, “The first thing is to define the national problem, then the international.” Oppenheimer disagreed. “Perhaps it would be best first to define the international problem,” he cautiously replied. He meant, of course, that the first imperative was to stop the spread of atomic weapons by placing international controls over all atomic technology. At one point in their conversation, Truman suddenly asked him to guess when the Russians would develop their own atomic bomb. When he replied that he did not know, Truman confidently said he knew the answer: “Never.” For Oppenheimer, such foolishness was proof of Truman’s limitations. The “incomprehension it showed just knocked the heart out of him,” recalled the Los Alamos scientist Willy Higinbotham.

    A week later, on November 2, Oppenheimer returned to the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory. Some 500 people packed into the facility’s theater to hear “Oppie” talk about what he called “the fix we are in.” He spoke for an hour–much of it extemporaneously–and his audience was mesmerized; years later, people would say, “I remember Oppie’s speech.” “It is clear to me,” he said, “that wars have changed. It is clear to me that if these first bombs–the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki–that if these can destroy ten square miles, then that is really quite something. It is clear to me that they are going to be very cheap if anyone wants to make them.”

    A few days earlier, Truman had given a bellicose “Navy Day” speech in New York in which he had reveled in the atomic addition to America’s military power. The bomb, Truman said, would be held by the United States as a “sacred trust” for the rest of the world, and “we shall not give our approval to any compromises with evil.” Oppenheimer disliked Truman’s triumphalist tone: “If you approach the problem and say, ‘We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us,’ then you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed…. You will find yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster.”

    In late January 1946 Oppenheimer was nevertheless heartened to learn that negotiations begun several months earlier had resulted in an agreement between the Soviet Union, the United States and other countries to establish a United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. Pressured by veterans of the Manhattan Project and their media supporters, Truman appointed a special committee to draw up a concrete proposal for international control of nuclear weapons.

    As the only physicist on the board–indeed, as the only member of the board who knew anything about atomic energy– Oppenheimer naturally dominated their discussions, and he quickly persuaded his fellow panel members to endorse a dramatic and comprehensive plan. Turning to the internationalism of modern science as a model, Oppenheimer proposed an international agency that would monopolize all aspects of atomic energy and apportion its benefits as an incentive to individual countries. Oppenheimer believed that in the long run, “without world government there could be no permanent peace, [and] that without peace there would be atomic warfare.” Since world government was not a prospect, Oppenheimer argued that in the field of atomic energy all countries should agree to a “partial renunciation” of sovereignty.

    Under his plan, the proposed Atomic Development Authority would have sovereign ownership of all uranium mines, atomic power plants and laboratories. No nation would be permitted to build bombs–but scientists everywhere would still be allowed to exploit the atom for peaceful purposes. Complete and total transparency would make it impossible for any nation to marshal the enormous industrial, technical and material resources necessary to build an atomic weapon in secrecy. Oppenheimer understood that one couldn’t un-invent the weapon; the secret was out. But one could construct a system so transparent that it would at least provide ample warning if a rogue regime set about to make an atomic weapon.

    Soon afterward, Oppenheimer’s draft plan, which became known as the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, was optimistically submitted to the White House. But optimism was misplaced. While Secretary of State James Byrnes made a pretense of saying that he was “favorably impressed,” he was in fact shocked by the sweeping scope of the report’s recommendations. A day later he persuaded Truman to appoint his business partner, Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, “to translate” the Administration’s proposals to the United Nations. When Oppenheimer read the news, he told his Los Alamos friend Willy Higinbotham, by then president of the newly created Federation of Atomic Scientists, “We’re lost.”

    In private, Baruch was already expressing “great reservations” about the Acheson-Lilienthal Report’s recommendations. Like his advisers, Baruch was alarmed by the idea that privately owned mines might be taken over by an international Atomic Development Authority. (Both Baruch and Byrnes happened to be board members of and investors in Newmont Mining Corporation, a major company with a large stake in uranium mines.) And, as far as atomic weapons were concerned, Baruch thought of the US bomb as a “winning weapon.” In short order negotiations broke down completely over the question of “penalties.” Why, Baruch asked, was there no provision for the punishment of violators of the agreement? He thought a stockpile of nuclear weapons should be set aside and automatically used against any country found in violation.

    Disregarding the opinion of most scientists, Baruch decided that the Soviet Union would not be able to build its own atomic weapons for at least two decades, and thus that there was no need to relinquish the American monopoly anytime soon. Consequently, the plan he intended to submit to the UN would substantially amend–indeed, fundamentally alter–the Acheson-Lilienthal proposals: The Soviets would have to give up their right to a veto in the Security Council over any actions by the new atomic authority; any nation violating the agreement would immediately be subjected to an attack with atomic weapons; and, before being given access to any of the secrets surrounding the peaceful uses of atomic energy, the Soviets would have to submit to a survey of their uranium resources. What Baruch was proposing was not cooperative control over nuclear energy but an atomic pact designed to prolong the US monopoly.

    On June 14, 1946, Baruch presented his plan to the UN, dramatically stating that he offered the world “a choice between the quick and the dead.” As Oppenheimer and his colleagues had predicted, it was promptly rejected by the Soviet Union, which proposed as an alternative a simple treaty to ban the production or use of atomic weapons. The Truman Administration rejected the Soviet response out of hand. Negotiations continued in a desultory fashion for many months, but to no end.

    An early opportunity had been lost to make a good-faith effort to prevent an uncontrolled nuclear-arms race between the two major powers. It would take the terrors of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and the massive Soviet buildup that followed it, before a US administration in the 1970s would propose a serious and acceptable arms control agreement. But by then it was too late to prevent an arms race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    Oppenheimer’s anguish was real and deep. Every day the newspaper headlines gave him evidence that the world might once again be on the road to war. “Every American knows that if there is another major war,” he wrote in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on June 1, 1946, “atomic weapons will be used.” This meant, he argued, that the real task at hand was the elimination of war itself. “We know this because in the last war, the two nations which we like to think are the most enlightened and humane in the world–Great Britain and the United States–used atomic weapons against an enemy which was essentially defeated.”

    He had made this observation earlier in a speech at Los Alamos, but to publish it in 1946 was an extraordinary admission. Less than a year after the events of August 1945, the man who had instructed the bombardiers exactly how to drop their atomic bombs on the center of two Japanese cities had come to the conclusion that he had supported the use of atomic weapons against “an enemy which was essentially defeated.”

    A major war was not Oppenheimer’s only worry. Sometime that year he was asked in a closed Senate hearing room “whether three or four men couldn’t smuggle units of an [atomic] bomb into New York and blow up the whole city.” Oppenheimer responded, “Of course it could be done, and people could destroy New York.” When a startled senator then followed by asking, “What instrument would you use to detect an atomic bomb hidden somewhere in a city?” Oppenheimer quipped, “A screwdriver [to open each and every crate or suitcase].” There was no defense against nuclear terrorism–and he felt there never would be. International control of the bomb, he later told an audience of Foreign Service and military officers, was “the only way in which this country can have security comparable to that which it had in the years before the war. It is the only way in which we will be able to live with bad governments, with new discoveries, with irresponsible governments such as are likely to arise in the next hundred years, without living in fairly constant fear of the surprise use of these weapons.” Today he would add Osama bin Laden’s terrorists to his list.

  • Bolton Should Step Aside

    President Bush’s nomination of John Bolton to become United Nations ambassador began as an embarrassment and is ending as a disgrace. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was right to delay a scheduled vote and resist being railroaded by the administration into approving him.

    Bolton’s infantile crack that it would make no difference if the U.N. lost its top 10 floors already testified to his unfitness to serve as the United States’ diplomat to the world. It may have been Bush’s right to appoint someone provocative yet capable. But the revelations that have emerged over the past weeks in the Senate call into question Bolton’s basic ability to do the job.

    On issue after issue, whether North Korea or Iraq, Bolton has wielded a wrecking ball. It might be possible to wave off one allegation of the misuse of intelligence — infighting always takes place in the government bureaucracy — but Bolton appears to have willfully and systematically suppressed and misused classified information, including bullying civil service officials who dared to challenge his apocalyptic assessments of North Korean, Iraqi and Cuban weapons programs. Former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin apparently had to intervene to protect a Latin American analyst from Bolton’s wrath; Carl W. Ford Jr., the State Department’s former assistant secretary of intelligence and research — the only government bureau to get it right on Iraq — describes him as a “serial abuser.” And Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is rightly inquiring about Bolton’s unusual request to look at National Security Administration intercepts and why he asked for the identities of analysts. Why indeed?

    The best case that can be made for Bolton is that he’s no worse than other neoconservative officials in the Pentagon who manipulated intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But Bolton also appears to have a mean streak, a pattern of arrogant recklessness that bodes ill for this assignment. If there is anyone in the U.S. government who needs to be infinitely patient, it’s the ambassador at the U.N., who must constantly engage representatives of dozens of nations — diplomats Bolton would no doubt find infinitely annoying. Not only does he lack the temperament for the job, it’s hard to imagine why he’d want it.

    Bolton surely can’t want the job now, with the world on notice that even the Republican Senate has its misgivings about his nomination. Bush may find it hard to back down, so Bolton should do him and his country a favor and step aside. Maybe there is a consolation prize the White House could offer him. How about ambassador to France?

  • At the Unholy Altar of Nuclear Weapons

    This year marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the 35th anniversary of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was supposed to lead to a nuclear-weapons-free world. Both anniversaries remind us of the stark dangers nuclear weapons still pose to the world.

     

    It is a moment of intense diplomatic challenge for Canada, a country at the centre of the debate over the future of nuclear weapons. That debate will take place at the NPT Review conference May 2-27 at the United Nations.

     

    In recent years, Iran, Libya and North Korea have pursued illegal nuclear programs with the assistance of a secret Pakistani network.

     

    A high-level U.N. panel recently warned: “We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the Non-Proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.” It is truly shocking that the public seems oblivious to the 34,000 nuclear weapons still in existence, most of them with an explosive power several times greater than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

     

    The NPT was obtained through a bargain, with the nuclear-weapons states agreeing to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear weapons and share nuclear technology for peaceful purposes in return for the non-nuclear states shunning the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

     

    Adherence to that bargain enabled the indefinite extension of the treaty in 1995 and the achievement of an “unequivocal undertaking” in 2000 toward elimination through a program of 13 Practical Steps.

     

    Now the United States is rejecting the commitments of 2000 and premising its aggressive diplomacy on the assertion that the problem of the NPT lies not in the nuclear-weapons states’ own actions, but in the lack of compliance by states such as North Korea and Iran.

     

    Brazil has put the issue in a nutshell: “One cannot worship at the altar of nuclear weapons and raise heresy charges against those who want to join the sect.”

     

    The whole international community, nuclear and non-nuclear alike, is concerned about proliferation and wants strong action taken to ensure that Iran and North Korea do not become nuclear weapons states.

     

    But the new attempt by Washington to gloss over the discriminatory aspects of the NPT, which are now becoming permanent, has caused the patience of the members of the non-aligned movement to snap.

     

    They see a two-class world of nuclear haves and have-nots becoming a permanent feature of the global landscape. They see the U.S. researching the development of a new, “usable” nuclear weapon and NATO, an expanding military alliance, clinging to the doctrine that nuclear weapons are “essential.”

     

    Compounding the nuclear risk is the threat of nuclear terrorism, which is growing day by day. It is estimated that 40 countries have the knowledge to produce nuclear weapons and the existence of an extensive illicit market for nuclear items shows the inadequacy of the present export control system.

     

    The task awaiting the 2005 review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is to convince the nuclear-weapons states that the only hope of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons is to address nuclear disarmament sincerely.

     

    This is precisely the stance taken by foreign ministers of the New Agenda Coalition (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden), who recently wrote:

     

    “Nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament are two sides of the same coin and both must be energetically pursued.”

     

    The New Agenda, which showed impressive leadership at the 2000 NPT review in negotiating the 13 Practical Steps with the nuclear weapons states, is now clearly reaching out to other middle-power states to build up what might be called the “moderate middle” in the nuclear weapons debate.

     

    Eight NATO states — Belgium, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway and Turkey — voted for the New Agenda resolution at the U.N. in 2004, an action that effectively built a bridge between NATO and the New Agenda. The new “bridge” shows that a group of centrist states may be in position to produce a positive outcome for the 2005 NPT review.

     

    Here is where Canada can shine.

     

    In 2002 and 2003, Canada was the only NATO nation to vote for the New Agenda resolution. That was an act of courage, for Canada likes the “good company” of its alliance partners when it takes progressive steps. But the action was rewarded in 2004 when seven other NATO states joined Canada.

     

    I recently held meetings with the governments of some of these key countries — Germany, Norway, The Netherlands and Belgium — to discuss how to make a success of the NPT review conference. These countries look to Canada, as an important centrist state, to maintain its leadership position in upholding the integrity of the disarmament and non-proliferation goals of the NPT.

     

    When I was in Europe, news came of the Canadian government’s decision not to join in the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defence system.

     

    This move won the unanimous admiration of the officials I talked to. Clearly, they would like to work with Canada in proposing workable solutions to the NPT crisis.

     

    For Canada, working in a collegial manner with other centrist states is much easier to do than the action it boldly took in confronting the U.S. alone on missile defence.

     

    In the present political climate, no “grand solution” is possible. Rather, a set of incremental steps could be achieved if the moderate middle states use their influence to convince the U.S. that it is in American interests to protect the NPT’s ability to curb would-be nuclear proliferators.

     

    These steps include: the start of negotiations for a ban on the production of fissile materials; the striking of a new committee at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to deal with nuclear disarmament questions; the U.S. and Russia taking their strategic nuclear weapons off “alert” status, and beefing up the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that nuclear fuels for civilian purposes are not diverted to nuclear weapons.

     

    This is a modest program. Many nuclear weapons abolitionists will not be satisfied with it, for it falls far short of negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

     

    The world is a long way from obtaining such a treaty, which would need a strong verification system to ensure the safe elimination of all nuclear weapons. But the interim program would at least save the NPT.

     

    By working diligently and diplomatically with key NATO states and the progressive New Agenda states, Canada can live up to its own values of making the world safe from the spread of nuclear weapons.

     

    Douglas Roche is the former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament and Senator Emeritus in Alberta. He is chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative.

    Originally published by the Toronto Star.

  • Bush Administration Eliminating 19-year-old International Terrorism Report

    WASHINGTON – The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

    Several U.S. officials defended the abrupt decision, saying the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate statistics for the report may have been faulty, such as the inclusion of incidents that may not have been terrorism.

    Last year, the number of incidents in 2003 was undercounted, forcing a revision of the report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism.”

    But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office ordered “Patterns of Global Terrorism” eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush’s administration’s frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.

    “Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public,” charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal.

    Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., who was among the leading critics of last year’s mix-up, reacted angrily to the decision.

    “This is the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be an effort to withhold it – or any of the key data – from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing politics with this critical report.”

    A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the allegation that it was being done for political reasons was “categorically untrue.”

    According to Johnson and U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the issue, statistics that the National Counterterrorism Center provided to the State Department reported 625 “significant” terrorist attacks in 2004.

    That compared with 175 such incidents in 2003, the highest number in two decades.

    The statistics didn’t include attacks on American troops in Iraq, which President Bush as recently as Tuesday called “a central front in the war on terror.”

    The intelligence officials requested anonymity because the information is classified and because, they said, they feared White House retribution. Johnson declined to say how he obtained the figures.

    Another U.S. official, who also requested anonymity, said analysts from the counterterrorism center were especially careful in amassing and reviewing the data because of the political turmoil created by last year’s errors.

    Last June, the administration was forced to issue a revised version of the report for 2003 that showed a higher number of significant terrorist attacks and more than twice the number of fatalities than had been presented in the original report two months earlier.

    The snafu was embarrassing for the White House, which had used the original version to bolster President Bush’s election-campaign claim that the war in Iraq had advanced the fight against terrorism.

    U.S. officials blamed last year’s mix-up on bureaucratic mistakes involving the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the forerunner of the National Counterterrorism Center.

    Created last year on the recommendation of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the center is the government’s primary organization for analyzing and integrating all U.S. government intelligence on terrorism.

    The State Department published “Patterns of Global Terrorism” under a law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism assessment by April 30 each year.

    A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986 in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal requirement to produce one.

    The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public in place of “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” but that it wouldn’t contain statistical data.

    He said that decision was taken because the State Department believed that the National Counterterrorism Center “is now the authoritative government agency for the analysis of global terrorism. We believe that the NCTC should compile and publish the relevant data on that subject.”

    He didn’t answer questions about whether the data would be made available to the public, saying, “We will be consulting (with Congress) … on who should publish and in what form.”

    Another U.S. official said Rice’s office was leery of the methodology the National Counterterrorism Center used to generate the data for 2004, believing that analysts anxious to avoid a repetition of last year’s undercount included incidents that may not have been terrorist attacks.

    But the U.S. intelligence officials said Rice’s office decided to eliminate “Patterns of Global Terrorism” when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.

    The officials said they interpreted Rice’s action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration’s claims that it’s winning the war against terrorism.

    To read past “Patterns of Global Terrorism” reports online, go to www.mipt.org/Patterns-of-Global-Terrorism.asp

  • Iraq War Casualties Continue to Mount

    When President Bush stood safely on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 2, 2003 and announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” 138 American soldiers had died in the Iraq War. The number has now increased over ten-fold. In March 2005, the 1500th American soldier died in Iraq. The number now exceeds 1,525 and is growing daily. Seriously wounded American military personnel may now exceed 20,000.

    One prominent study by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore estimates Iraqi deaths from the war at greater than 100,000. At a minimum, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have died in the war.

    Prior to the Iraq War, US leaders made statement after statement expressing certainty that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and even that they knew precisely where they were located. After extensively searching the country following the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, US intelligence has concluded that there are no weapons of mass destruction or programs to create them in Iraq.

    There was, therefore, no legal or moral basis for a preventive war as presented by US leaders to the American people and to the United Nations. In fact, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has referred to the war as an illegal act. He stated, “ I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal.”

    The Bush administration has now changed its justification for the war as being to bring democracy to Iraq specifically and to the Middle East in general, but as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has pointed out, “Democracy is not imposed with tanks and missiles, but with respect of other peoples and international law.”

    The questions remaining are how can this illegal and immoral war be ended with the fewest further casualties to Iraqis and Americans, and what consequences under law should be applied those leaders who initiated this war under false pretenses and outside the boundaries of international law. Unfortunately, neither of these questions is being discussed or debated in a serious way in the halls of government.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

    Another Soldier by David Krieger, March 2005

    The fifteen hundredth American soldier has died In an ancient land.

    I don’t know his name, nor can I imagine his face, Surprised or perhaps contorted, as he fell like an anchor Through the sea.

    Like all of us, he had dreams.

    One is seized by the penetrating beauty of flowers, By their arrangement in a crystal vase, and cannot help Sinking to the sad earth, sobbing and bleeding.

    When the flowers, too, have faded and fallen, The empty container will remain solid and solitary, Still reflecting light, but lifeless and achingly alone.