Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: International Issues

  • A Nuclear Crisis

    This article appeared in the Washington Post, Editorials and Opinions Section.

    Every five years, the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) comes up for reassessment by the countries that have signed it. This is the treaty that provides for international restraints (and inspections) on nuclear programs. It covers not only the nuclear nations but 180 other countries as well, including Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya. An end to the NPT could terminate many of these inspections and open a Pandora’s box of nuclear proliferation in states that already present serious terrorist threats to others.

    Now it is time for the 30-year-old NPT to be reviewed (in April, by an international assembly at the United Nations), and, sad to say, the current state of affairs with regard to nuclear proliferation is not good. In fact, I think it can be said that the world is facing a nuclear crisis. Unfortunately, U.S. policy has had a good deal to do with creating it.

    At the last reassessment session, in 1995, a large group of non-nuclear nations with the financial resources and technology to develop weapons–including Egypt, Brazil and Argentina–agreed to extend the NPT, but with the proviso that the five nuclear powers take certain specific steps to defuse the nuclear issue: adoption of a comprehensive test ban treaty by 1996; conclusion of negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, and “determined pursuit” of efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals, with the ultimate goal of eliminating them.

    It is almost universally conceded that none of these commitments has been honored. India and Pakistan have used this failure to justify their joining Israel as nations with recognized nuclear capability that are refusing to comply with NPT restraints. And there has been a disturbing pattern of other provocative developments:

    • For the first time I can remember, no series of summit meetings is underway or in preparation to seek further cuts in nuclear arsenals. The START II treaty concluded seven years ago by presidents George Bush and Boris Yeltsin has not been seriously considered for ratification by the Russian parliament.
    • Instead of moving away from reliance on nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War, both the United States and NATO have sent disturbing signals to other nations by declaring that these weapons are still the cornerstone of Western security policy, and both have re-emphasized that they will not comply with a “no first use” policy. Russia has reacted to this U.S. and NATO policy by rejecting its previous “no first use” commitment; strapped for funds and unable to maintain its conventional forces of submarines, tanks, artillery, and troops, it is now much more likely to rely on its nuclear arsenal.
    • The United States, NATO and others still maintain arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons, including up to 200 nuclear weapons in Western Europe.
    • Despite the efforts of Gens. Lee Butler and Andrew Goodpaster, Adm. Stansfield Turner and other military experts, American and Russian nuclear missiles are still maintained in a “hair-trigger alert” status, susceptible to being launched in a spur-of-the-moment crisis or even by accident.
    • After years of intense negotiation, recent rejection by the U.S. Senate of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was a serious blow to global nuclear control efforts and to confidence in American leadership.
    • There is a notable lack of enforcement of the excessively weak international agreements against transfer of fissile materials.
    • The prospective adoption by the United States of a limited “Star Wars” missile defense system has already led Russia, China and other nations to declare that this would abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which has prevailed since 1972. This could destroy the fabric of existing international agreements among the major powers.
    • There is no public effort or comment in the United States or Europe calling for Israel to comply with the NPT or submit to any other restraints. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge what a powerful incentive this is to Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt to join the nuclear community.
    • The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) has been recently abolished, removing an often weak but at least identifiable entity to explore arms issues.

    I believe that the general public would be extremely concerned if these facts were widely known, but so far such issues have not been on the agenda in presidential debates.

    A number of responsible non-nuclear nations, including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden have expressed their disillusionment with the lack of progress toward disarmament. The non-proliferation system may not survive unless the major powers give convincing evidence of compliance with previous commitments.

    In April, it is imperative that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty be reconfirmed and subsequently honored by leaders who are inspired to act wisely and courageously by an informed public. This treaty has been a key deterrent to the proliferation of weapons, and its unraveling would exert powerful pressures even on peace-loving nations to develop a nuclear capability.

    All nuclear states must renew efforts to achieve worldwide reduction and ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. In the meantime, it requires no further negotiations for leaders of nuclear nations to honor existing nuclear security agreements, including the test ban and anti-ballistic missile treaties, and to remove nuclear weapons from their present hair-trigger alert status.

    Just as American policy is to blame for many of the problems, so can our influence help resolve the nuclear dilemma that faces the world.

  • Questions to Ask US Political Candidates — Presidential or Congressional — in this Election Year

    Where do you stand on these issues?

    1. Do you favor or oppose reductions in spending for defense?
    2. Do you favor or oppose deployment of a ballistic missile defense for the US?
    3. Do you favor or oppose the sale of military weapons to countries that violate the human rights of their citizens?
    4. Do you favor or oppose US leadership to achieve a treaty for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons?
    5. Do you favor or oppose US initiation of reciprocal unilateral steps to reduce the size of its nuclear arsenal?
    6. Do you favor or oppose giving increased financial support to Russia to help control its nuclear arsenal?
    7. Do you favor or oppose the US signing and ratifying the international treaty to ban landmines?
    8. Do you favor or oppose US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty?
    9. Do you favor or oppose US participation in an International Criminal Court to hold individuals accountable for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity?
    10. Do you favor or oppose full and timely payment of US dues to the United Nations?

  • Open Letter to the Leaders of all Non-Nuclear Weapons States

    Your Excellencies:

    The outcome of the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which begins April 24, 2000 at the United Nations in New York, will play a significant role in determining the security of humanity in the 21st century. Your personal commitment to a successful outcome of this Review Conference is essential to strengthening nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament efforts, and thus to humanity’s future.

    The nuclear perils to humanity are not sufficiently widely recognized nor appreciated. In the words of writer Jonathan Schell, we have been given “the gift of time,” but that gift is running out. For this reason vision and bold action are called for.

    General George Lee Butler, a former Commander in Chief of all US strategic nuclear weapons, poses these questions: “By what authority do succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear weapons states usurp the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet? Most urgently, why does such breathtaking audacity persist at the moment when we should stand trembling in the face of our folly and united in our commitment to abolish its most deadly manifestation?”

    It is time to heed the warnings of men like General Butler, who know intimately the risks and consequences of nuclear war. The time is overdue for a New Agenda on nuclear disarmament. What is needed is commitment and leadership on behalf of humanity and all life.

    The heart of the Non-Proliferation Treaty agreement is the link between non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. The non-nuclear weapons states agree in the Treaty not to develop nor acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for the nuclear weapons states agreeing to negotiate in good faith to achieve nuclear disarmament. The Treaty has become nearly universal and the non-nuclear weapons states, with a few notable exceptions, have adhered to the non-proliferation side of the bargain. The progress on nuclear disarmament, however, has been almost entirely unsatisfactory, leading many observers to conclude that the intention of the nuclear weapons states is to preserve indefinitely a two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”

    At the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference many countries and non-governmental organizations challenged the nuclear disarmament record of the nuclear weapons states. They argued that to extend the Treaty indefinitely without more specific progress from the nuclear weapons states was equivalent to writing a blank check to states that had failed to keep their promises for 25 years. These countries and NGOs urged instead that the extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty be linked to progress on Article VI promises of good faith efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament. Pressure from the nuclear weapons states led to the Treaty being extended indefinitely, but only with agreement to a set of non-binding Principles and Objectives that was put forward by the Republic of South Africa.

    These Principles and Objectives provided for:

    — completion of a universal and internationally and effectively verifiable Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by 1996;

    — early conclusion of negotiations for a non-discriminatory and universally applicable treaty banning production of fissile materials; and

    — determined pursuit by the nuclear weapons states of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally with the ultimate goal of their elimination.

    Progress toward these goals has been unimpressive. A CTBT was adopted in 1996, but has been ratified only by the UK and France among the nuclear weapons states. The US argues that the CTBT necessitates its $4.6 billion per year “Stockpile Stewardship” program, which enables it to design new nuclear weapons and modify existing nuclear weapons in computer-simulated virtual reality tests and “sub-critical” nuclear tests. Despite the existence of this provocative program, ratification of the CTBT by the US Senate was rejected in October 1999. The US and Russia continue to conduct “sub-critical” nuclear weapons tests. Negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty have yet to begin, and the “determined pursuit” promise has been systematically and progressively ignored by the nuclear weapons states.

    In its 1997 Presidential Decision Directive 60, the US reaffirmed nuclear weapons as the “cornerstone” of its security policy and opened the door to the use of nuclear weapons against a country using chemical or biological weapons. The US, UK and France have also resisted proposals by other NATO members for a review of NATO nuclear policy. Under urgent prodding by Canada and Germany, they did finally agree to a review of nuclear policy, but this will not be completed until December 2000, after the 2000 NPT Review Conference.

    The US seems intent on moving ahead with a National Missile Defense plan, even if it means abrogating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which most analysts view as a bedrock treaty for further nuclear arms reductions. The US is also moving ahead with space militarization programs. In the US Space Command’s “Vision for 2020” document, the US proclaims its intention of “dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment.”

    Russia has abandoned its policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons in favor of a policy mirroring that of the western nuclear weapons states. The START II agreement is stalled and is still not ratified by the Russian Duma. The date for completion of START II has, in fact, been set back for five years from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2007. Negotiations on START III are stalled.

    China is modernizing its nuclear arsenal. India and Pakistan, countries that have consistently criticized the discriminatory nature of the NPT, have both overtly tested nuclear weapons and joined the nuclear weapons club. Israel, another country refusing to join the NPT, will not acknowledge that it has developed nuclear weapons and has imprisoned Mordechai Vanunu for more than 13 years for speaking out on Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

    In the face of the intransigence of the nuclear weapons states, the warning bells are sounding louder and louder. These warnings have been put forward by the Canberra Commission, the International Court of Justice, retired generals and admirals, past and present political leaders, the New Agenda Coalition, the Tokyo Forum, and many other distinguished individuals and non-governmental organizations working for peace and disarmament.

    The future of humanity is being held hostage to self-serving policies of the nuclear weapons states. This is an intolerable situation, not only for the myopic vision it represents and the disrespect for the rest of the world that is implicit in these policies, but, more important, for the squandering of the precious opportunity to eliminate the nuclear weapons threat to our common future.

    The more nuclear weapons in the world, the greater the danger to humanity. At present we lack even an effective accounting of the numbers and locations of these weapons and the nuclear materials to construct them. The possibilities of these weapons or the materials to make them falling into the hands of terrorists, criminals or potential new nuclear weapons states has increased since the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

    What is to be done? Will the 2000 NPT Review Conference again be bullied by strong-armed negotiating techniques and false promises of the nuclear weapons states? Or will the non-nuclear weapons states, the vast majority of the world’s nations, unite in common purpose to demand that the nuclear weapons states fulfill their long-standing promises and obligations in Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

    Ridding the world of nuclear weapons is the greatest challenge of our time. We ask you to step forward and meet this challenge by demanding in a unified voice that the nuclear weapons states fulfill their obligations under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. As we stand on the threshold of a new century and millennium, we ask that you call upon the nuclear weapons states to take the following steps to preserve the Non-Proliferation Treaty and end the threat that nuclear weapons arsenals pose to all humanity:

    • Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.
    • Publicly acknowledge the weaknesses and fallibilities of deterrence: that deterrence is only a theory and is clearly ineffective against nations whose leaders may be irrational or suicidal; nor can deterrence assure against accidents, misperceptions, miscalculations, or terrorists.
    • Publicly acknowledge the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons under international law as stated by the International Court of Justice in its 1996 opinion, and further acknowledge the obligation under international law for good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.
    • Publicly acknowledge the immorality of threatening to annihilate millions, even hundreds of millions, of people in the name of national security.
    • De-alert all nuclear weapons and de-couple all nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles.
    • Declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and policies of No Use against non-nuclear weapons states.
    • Establish an international accounting system for all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear materials.
    • Sign and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, cease laboratory and subcritical nuclear tests designed to modernize and improve nuclear weapons systems, cease construction of Megajoule in France and the National Ignition Facility in the US and end research programs that could lead to the development of pure fusion weapons, and close the remaining nuclear test sites in Nevada and Novaya Zemlya.
    • Re-affirm the commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and cease efforts to violate that Treaty by the deployment of national or theater missile defenses, and cease the militarization of space.
    • Support existing nuclear weapons free zones, and establish new ones in the Middle East, Central Europe, North Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.
    • Set forth a plan to complete the transition under international control and monitoring to zero nuclear weapons by 2020, with agreed upon levels of nuclear disarmament to be achieved by the NPT Review Conferences in 2005, 2010 and 2015.
    • Begin to reallocate the billions of dollars currently being spent annually for maintaining nuclear arsenals ($35 billion in the U.S. alone) to improving human health, education and welfare throughout the world.
    • You have a unique historical opportunity to unite in serving humanity. We urge you to seize the moment.

    Sincerely,

    David Krieger

    President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    cc: Leaders of United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel

  • Failure of the US Senate to Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

    In voting down the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the U.S. Senate acted with irresponsible disregard for the security of the American people and the people of the world. It is an act unbecoming of a great nation. The Senate sent a message to the more than 185 countries that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that the United States is not prepared to lead the global effort for non-proliferation nor to keep its promises to the international community. I urge the American people to send a strong message of disapproval to the Senators who voted against this treaty, and demand that the United States resume a leadership role in supporting the CTBT and preventing further nuclear tests by any country at any time and at any place.

    The American people should take heart that the Treaty is not dead, and this setback should be viewed as temporary — until they have made their voices reverberate in the halls of the Senate.

    List of Senators and How They Voted on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty October 13, 1999 (Rollcall Vote No. 325 Ex.)

    YEAS–48 * Akaka (D-HI) * Baucus (D-MT) * Bayh (D-IN) * Biden (D-DE) * Bingaman (D-NM) * Boxer (D-CA) * Breaux (D-LA) * Bryan (D-NV) * Chafee (R-RI) * Cleland (D-GA) * Conrad (D-ND) * Daschle (D-SD) * Dodd (D-CT) * Dorgan (D-ND) * Durbin (D-IL) * Edwards (D-NC) * Feingold (D-WI) * Feinstein (D-CA) * Graham (D-FL) * Harkin (D-IA) * Hollings (D-SC) * Inouye (D-HI) * Jeffords (R-VT) * Johnson (D-SD) * Kennedy (D-MA) * Kerrey (D-NE) * Kerry (D-MA) * Kohl (D-WI) * Landrieu (D-LA) * Lautenberg (D-NJ) * Leahy (D-VT) * Levin (D-MI) * Lieberman (D-CT) * Lincoln (D-AR) * Mikulski (D-MD) * Moynihan (D-NY) * Murray (D-WA) * Reed (D-RI) * Reid (D-NV) * Robb (D-VA) * Rockefeller (D-WV) * Sarbanes (D-MD) * Schumer (D-NY) * Smith (R-OR) * Specter (R-PA) * Torricelli (D-NJ) * Wellstone (D-MN) * Wyden (D-OR)

    NAYS–51 * Abraham (R-MI) * Allard (R-CO) * Ashcroft (R-MO) * Bennett (R-UT) * Bond (R-MO) * Brownback (R-KS) * Bunning (R-KY) * Burns (R-MT) * Campbell (R-CO) * Cochran (R-MS) * Collins (R-ME) * Coverdell (R-GA) * Craig (R-ID) * Crapo (R-ID) * DeWine (R-OH) * Domenici (R-NM) * Enzi (R-WY) * Fitzgerald (R-IL) * Frist (R-TN) * Gorton (R-WA) * Gramm (R-TX) * Grams (R-MN) * Grassley (R-IA) * Gregg (R-NH) * Hagel (R-NE) * Hatch (R-UT) * Helms (R-NC) * Hutchinson (R-TX) * Hutchison (R-AR) * Inhofe (R-OK) * Kyl (R-AZ) * Lott (R-MS) * Lugar (R-IN) * Mack (R-FL) * McCain (R-AZ) * McConnell (R-KY) * Murkowski (R-AK) * Nickles (R-OK) * Roberts (R-KS) * Roth (R-DE) * Santorum (R-PA) * Sessions (R-AL) * Shelby (R-AL) * Smith (D-NH) * Snowe (R-ME) * Stevens (R-AK) * Thomas (R-WY) * Thompson (R-TN) * Thurmond (R-SC) * Voinovich (R-OH) * Warner (R-VA)

    ANSWERED `PRESENT’–1 * Byrd (D-WV)

     

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    PRESS RELEASE – THE WHITE HOUSE

    Office of the Press Secretary

    For Immediate Release October 13, 1999

    STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

    Outside Oval Office

    8:37 P.M. EDT

    THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. I am very disappointed that the United States Senate voted not to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This agreement is critical to protecting the American people from the dangers of nuclear war. It is, therefore, well worth fighting for. And I assure you, the fight is far from over.

    I want to say to our citizens, and to people all around the world, that the United States will stay true to our tradition of global leadership against the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

    The Senate has taken us on a detour. But America eventually always returns to the main road, and we will do so again. When all is said and done, the United States will ratify the test ban treaty.

    Opponents of the treaty have offered no alternative, no other means of keeping countries around the world from developing nuclear arsenals and threatening our security. So we have to press on and do the right thing for our children’s future. We will press on to strengthen the worldwide consensus in favor of the treaty.

    The United States will continue, under my presidency, the policy we have observed since 1992 of not conducting nuclear tests. Russia, China, Britain and France have joined us in this moratorium. Britain and France have done the sensible thing and ratified this treaty. I hope not only they, but also Russia, China, will all, along with other countries, continue to refrain from nuclear testing.

    I also encourage strongly countries that have not yet signed or ratified this treaty to do so. And I will continue to press the case that this treaty is in the interest of the American people.

    The test ban treaty will restrict the development of nuclear weapons worldwide at a time when America has an overwhelming military and technological advantage. It will give us the tools to strengthen our security, including the global network of sensors to detect nuclear tests, the opportunity to demand on-site inspections, and the means to mobilize the world against potential violators. All these things, the Republican majority in the Senate would gladly give away.

    The senators who voted against the treaty did more than disregard these benefits. They turned aside the best advice — let me say this again — they turned aside the best advice of our top military leaders, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and four of his predecessors. They ignored the conclusion of 32 Nobel Prize winners in physics, and many other leading scientists, including the heads of our nuclear laboratories, that we can maintain a strong nuclear force without testing.

    They clearly disregarded the views of the American people who have consistently and strongly supported this treaty ever since it was first pursued by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. The American people do not want to see unnecessary nuclear tests here or anywhere around the world.

    I know that some Senate Republicans favored this treaty. I know others had honest questions, but simply didn’t have enough time for thorough answers. I know that many would have supported this treaty had they been free to vote their conscience, and if they had been able to do what we always do with such treaties, which is to add certain safeguards, certain understandings that protect America’s interest and make clear the meaning of the words.

    Unfortunately, the Senate majority made sure that no such safeguards could be appended. Many who had questions about the treaty worked hard to postpone the vote because they knew a defeat would be damaging to America’s interest and to our role in leading the world away from nonproliferation. But for others, we all know that foreign policy, national security policy has become just like every domestic issue — politics, pure and simple.

    For two years, the opponents of this treaty in the Senate refused to hold a single hearing. Then they offered a take-or-leave-it deal: to decide this crucial security issue in a week, with just three days of hearings and 24 hours of debate. They rejected my request to delay the vote and permit a serious process so that all the questions could be evaluated. Even worse, many Republican senators apparently committed to oppose this treaty before there was an agreement to bring it up, before they ever heard a single witness or understood the issues.

    Never before has a serious treaty involving nuclear weapons been handled in such a reckless and ultimately partisan way.

    The Senate has a solemn responsibility under our Constitution to advise and consent in matters involving treaties. The Senate has simply not fulfilled that responsibility here. This issue should be beyond politics, because the stakes are so high. We have a fundamental responsibility to do everything we can to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and the chance of nuclear war. We must decide whether we’re going to meet it.

    Will we ratify an agreement that can keep Russia and China from testing and developing new, more sophisticated advanced weapons? An agreement that could help constrain nuclear weapons programs in India, Pakistan, and elsewhere, at a time of tremendous volatility, especially on the Indian sub-continent? For now, the Senate has said, no.

    But I am sending a different message. We want to limit the nuclear threat. We want to bring the test ban treaty into force.

    I am profoundly grateful to the Senate proponents of this treaty, including the brave Republicans who stood with us, for their determination and their leadership. I am grateful to all those advocates for arms control and national security, and all the religious leaders who have joined us in this struggle.

    The test ban treaty is strongly in America’s interest. It is still on the Senate calendar. It will not go away. It must not go away. I believe that if we have a fair and thorough hearing process, the overwhelming majority of the American people will still agree with us that this treaty is in our interest. I believe in the wisdom of the American people, and I am confident that in the end, it will prevail.

    Q Mr. President, when you say the fight is far from over, sir, do you mean that you expect this treaty to be brought up again during your term in office?

    THE PRESIDENT: I mean, I think that — we could have had a regular hearing process in which the serious issues that need to be discussed would have been discussed, and in which, as the Senate leaders both agreed yesterday when they thought there was an agreement and they shook hands on an agreement, would have resulted in next year being devoted to considering the treaty, dealing with its merits, and then, barring extraordinary circumstances, would have put off a vote until the following year.

    By their actions today the Republican majority has said they want us to continue to discuss and debate this. They weren’t interested in the safeguards; they weren’t interested in a serious debate; they weren’t interested in a serious process. So they could have put this on a track to be considered in an appropriate way, which I strongly supported. They decided otherwise.

    And we, therefore, have to make it clear — those of us who agree — that it is crazy for America to walk away from Britain and France, 11 of our NATO allies, the heads of our nuclear labs, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 32 Nobel laureates, and the whole world, having depended on us for all these decades, to lead the fight for nonproliferation. Therefore, we have to keep this issue alive and continue to argue it in the strongest and most forceful terms.

    I wish we could have had a responsible alternative. I worked until the 11th hour to achieve it. This was a political deal. And I hope it will get the treatment from the American people it richly deserves.

    Thank you.

    END 8:47 P.M. EDT

    And one last word from a contemporary Peace Hero:

    “Hope is the engine that drives human endeavor. It generates the energy needed to achieve the difficult goals that lie ahead. Never lose faith that the dreams of today for a more lawful world can become the reality of tomorrow. Never stop trying to make this a more humane universe.”- Benjamin Ferencz

  • Statement by Senator Douglas Roche on the New Agenda Coalition Vote Taken Nov. 9, 1999 in the United Nations First Committee on Disarmament and International Security

    1. On November 9th, the U.N. First Committee adopted the New Agenda Coalition resolution with 90 yes votes, 13 no’s and 37 abstentions. Last year’s First Committee vote was 97-19-32. The heart of the resolution is contained in Operative Paragraph 1: “Calls upon the Nuclear Weapon States to make an unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the speedy and total elimination of their nuclear arsenals and to engage without delay in an accelerated process of negotiations, thus achieving nuclear disarmament to which they are committed under Article VI of the NPT.”

    2. Four NWS (the U.S., Russia, the U.K., and France) again voted no and China repeated its abstention. In 1998 NATO, which then had 16 states, voted 0-4-12. This year, with 19 members, Turkey and the Czech Republic moved from no to abstention, while Hungary and Poland voted no. Thus the NATO count was 0-5-14. Though some states (e.g. Azerbeijan, Benin) dropped to abstention from last year’s yes, the effect of this was offset by 14 NATO states together sending a message to the NWS that progress must be made.

    3. The Explanations-of-vote contained revealing observations. The U.K. said the NAC resolution was incompatible with the maintenance of a credible minimum deterrence. France accused the NAC of having ulterior motives in challenging the right to self-defence. The U.S. said it had already given a “solemn undertaking” concerning Article VI of the NPT and why should it be asked to give more? Canada, which abstained, praised the resolution but added: “The nuclear-weapon states and their partners and alliances need to be engaged if the goals of the New Agenda resolution are to be achieved.” This was a tacit admission that the Western NWS (the NATO leaders) had tied Canada’s hands. Australia, which also abstained, said it did not want to challenge the sincerity of the NWS commitment to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons.

    4. It is disappointing that the leaders of the NATO countries could not bring themselves to vote that the Nuclear Weapon States make an “unequivocal undertaking” to engage without delay in negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. The present situation is truly alarming: the U.S. Senate has rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; the U.S. is preparing to deploy a missile defence system over the objections of Russia and China; India is preparing to deploy nuclear weapons in air, land, and sea; Pakistan, which has successfully tested nuclear weapons, is now ruled by the military; meaningful discussions at the Conference on Disarmament are deadlocked; the preparatory conferences for the 2000 Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have failed; the Russian Duma has not ratified START II. The gains made in the past decade on reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons are being wiped out. Immense dangers to the world lie ahead if the present negative trends are not reversed.

    5. We have offered logic, law, and morality to government leaders as reasons for them to move forward on nuclear disarmament. We are tempted, at this moment, to despair that we will ever be heard. That is the wrong reaction. We are being heard as never before, and the proponents of the status quo are being forced to invent the most preposterous reasons to justify their slavish adherence to weapons that have justly been called “the ultimate evil.” We do not have the luxury of despair at this moment. We must continue, with all our growing might, to speak truth to power.

    6. It is disturbing to be thwarted by a residual Cold War mentality driven by the military-industrial complex that infects the political decision-making process with fears of an unknown enemy. It is myopic for NATO government leadership to live in fear of U.S. government retribution for voting to advance nuclear disarmament. It is an abrogation of governments’ responsibility to humanity to stare silently into the abyss of more nuclear weapons.

    7. But rage bounces off the shields of denial constructed by the powerful. It does little to berate government leaders. Those in governments and in civil society who have worked hard for the successful passage of the NAC resolution as a way out of looming catastrophe must be humble enough to recognize that there is still not a vibrant public opinion in our society against nuclear weapons. The public generally does not know enough about the present situation even to be in denial.

    8. The time has come to inject renewed energy into the nuclear weapons debate. The sheer force of this energy must penetrate the consciences of decision-makers in the powerful states and thus transfer the nuclear abolition debate into a whole new field of action. We must rise up above the political, economic, social and cultural blockages to abolition and infuse the societal and political processes with a dynamic of action. The approach I am calling for must be based on our overpowering love for God’s planet and all humanity on it. In this call to witness, we will find new confidence in our ability to overcome the temporary denial by politicians and officials who do not understand the power of this transformation moment in history.

    9. By coincidence, the NAC vote, in which the NWS are still showing their defiance, occurred on the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Wall fell because enough people created a force for freedom that became unstoppable. The Wall of resistance to nuclear weapons abolition will also crumble when the non-nuclear allies of the U.S. demonstrate the courage that we must give them. Already there are signs, in the speculation that tactical nuclear weapons will be removed from seven NATO countries in Europe, that the NATO leadership is feeling this pressure.

    10. Our first task now is to give our complete support to the leaders of the New Agenda Coalition, telling them we will not cease our active support of their efforts. Our second is to gather more strength among the public so that even the most skeptical of leaders will feel a new heat on this issue. Our third is to be a witness in our own communities, each in our own way, to our unflagging desire to leave a world for humanity that will indeed be nuclear-weapons-free.

    * Senator Douglas Roche is Former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament and Chairman, Middle Powers Initiative.

  • Our Own Worst Enemy

    The U.S and Russia have so many nuclear weapons that if used, either alone could destroy humanity. The Center for Defense Information said, “It is folly, verging on madness, to perpetuate the Cold War nuclear confrontation at levels that threaten the survival of human kind.” (1)

    How do we explain such a crazy situation? Consider the following. When thinking about nuclear weapons matters, it is much easier and less hideous to think about them in terms of numbers rather than the consequences of their use. As a result, consequence of use is generally ignored. In the arms reduction talks, the talks are in term of having equal numbers even if we can’t use them all.

    One way around the stalled nuclear arms reduction talks is to think about the relationship between the number of nuclear weapons and consequences of use. The following provides a guide for such thinking. The more nuclear weapons the greater the self-destruction.

    One Nuclear Bomb – One average size U.S. strategic nuclear warhead has an explosive power equal to 25,000 trucks each carrying 10 tons of dynamite. One average size Russian strategic nuclear warhead has an explosive power equal to 40,000 trucks each carrying 10 tons of dynamite. In order to give an idea of how destructive these warheads can be, compare them with the destruction created by the truck bombs that were exploded by terrorists in the NY World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City. Each terrorists truck bomb had about 10 tons of dynamite.(2)

    Twenty Nuclear Bombs – If 20 nuclear bombs, less than one percent of the nuclear weapons that the US and Russia each have set for hair trigger release, were used it would be enough to destroy each other. If one nuclear bomb hit Washington, D.C. it could vaporize Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and the Pentagon. If another nuclear bomb hit New York City it could vaporize the United Nations headquarters, communication centers for NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and the New York Stock Exchange. And that is only two of the twenty. Nuclear explosions would also leave the areas highly radioactive and unusable for years. Where the radioactive fallout from the mushroom clouds would land in the world would depend upon the direction of the wind and rain conditions at the time of the explosion.

    General Lee Butler USAF commanded the US Strategic Air Command until it was folded into the U.S. Strategic Command, which he then commanded until he retired. General Butler said, “That twenty nuclear weapons would suffice to destroy the twelve largest Russian cities with a total population of twenty-five million people – one-sixth of the entire Russian population and therefore that arsenals in the hundreds, much less in the thousands, can serve no meaningful strategic objective. From this prospective the START process is completely bankrupt. The START II ceiling of 3000 to 3500 operational warheads to be achieved by the year 2007 is wholly out of touch with reality.” (3)

    General Butler said,”It is imperative to recognize that all numbers of nuclear weapons above zero are completely arbitrary; that against an urban target one weapon represents an unacceptable horror.” (4)

    Four Hundred Nuclear Bombs – If 400 nuclear bombs, less than ten percent of the nuclear weapons the U.S. and Russia have set for hair trigger release, were used they could destroy everyone on earth. The late Dr. Carl Sagan and his associates, in their extensive studies of nuclear weapons use, found that a nuclear explosive force equal to 100 million tons of dynamite (100 megatons) could produce enough smoke and fine dust to create a Nuclear Winter over the world leaving few survivors. (5)

    A nuclear bomb blast can produce heat intensities of 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Centigrade at ground zero. This could start giant flash fires leaving large cities and surrounding area burning with no one to fight them. The firing of 400 nuclear explosions can lift an enormous quantity of fine soil particles into the atmosphere – more than 100,000 tons of fine dust for every megaton exploded in a surface burst. If there were any survivors they would have to contend with radioactive fallout carbon monoxide, cyanides, dioxins, furans, and increased ozone burnout. (6)

    Actions That Can Be Taken

    General Butler USAF (Ret. 1994) said the world can immediately and inexpensively improve security by taking nuclear weapons off of hair-trigger alert. (7) This action should also provide a better atmosphere for reaching agreements in the arms reduction talks.

    There are very important positive forces at work for peace. Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for the past five years has been chairing the Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation. The Commission has grown into a bilateral government conglomerate, with officials at many levels working on problems of energy, health, agriculture, investment, space and the environment. (8)

    The way the U.S. and Russia are planning on working together during the transition to the year 2000 to guard against any false alerts that might be triggered by Y2K in the warning system, is also very encouraging. (9) Let us hope they can continue to work together after the first of the year until there are no more nuclear weapons.

    “There is no doubt that, if the people of the world were more fully aware of the inherent danger of nuclear weapons and the consequences of their use, they would reject them.” This conclusion appeared in the 1996 report of the Canberra Commisson on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a group of the world’s nuclear weapon experts. (10)

    The creation of a Consequence Study Center within the U.N., in which many countries share in the studies, could help everybody become more fully aware of the consequences of nuclear weapon use and better understand the need to rid the world of them.

    Notes and References

    1. Smith, Daniel; Stobhl, Rachel; and Carroll, Eugene E, “Jump-START: A way Ahead in Nuclear Arms Reduction,” The Defense Monitor, Vol. XXVIII, No. 5, 1999. Washiington, D.C.

    2. Babst, Dean V. “Preventing An Accidental Armagedon,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Sept. 1999.

    3. Butler, Lee. Talk at the University of Pittsburgh, May 13, 1999, p.12.

    4. Ibid.

    5. Sagan, Carl. The Nuclear Winter, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Boston, MA, 1983.

    6. Ibid.

    7. Schell, Jonathan, “The Gift Of Time,” The Nation, 2/9, 1998, p.56.

    8. Lippman, Thomas W. “Gore Carves Unique Post With U.S.-Russia Collaboration,” Washington Post, Washington, D.C., March 14, 1998.

    9. Burns, Robert. “Russia, U.S. set Y2K missile vigil,” The Contra Costa Times, Sept. 11, 1999.

    10. Green, Robert D. “Zero Nuclear Weapons,” Middle Power Initiative, Cambridge. Mass., 1998, p. 8.

    *Dean Babst is a retired government research scientist and Coordinator of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Accidental Nuclear War Studies Program. In the development of this article, appreciation is extended for the helpful suggestions of David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Bob Aldridge who heads the Pacific Life Research Center, and Andy Baltzo, the Founder of the Mt. Diablo (California) Peace Center.

  • The US-Russian Relationship: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

    Russia proposed, in August meetings with US arms control negotiators, that each country agree to cut its supply of missile-ready nuclear bombs from 5,000 down to 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons. The Russian offer would allow for a full accounting of all warheads and provide for early de-alerting of bombs poised at hair-trigger readiness, which would considerably ratchet down the nuclear danger to our planet.

    Were the US to follow through on this generous Russian proposal, we would have an extraordinary opportunity to bring all the nuclear weapons states to the negotiating table for a treaty to ban the bomb, just as the world has banned biological and chemical weapons. France, UK, China, Israel, India and Pakistan all have less than 500 warheads in their respective arsenals and are not prepared to come to the table so long as the US and Russia have stockpiles of bombs which number in the tens of thousands.

    The US response has been appalling. Seeking to squeeze the final bitter cup of humiliation from Russia, which is still smarting from the expansion of NATO up to the Russian border, the continued unilateral bombing of Iraq without UN approval, and the unauthorized NATO bombing of Yugoslavia without Security Council sanction, the Clinton administration persists in demanding that Russia yield to our scheme to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and move full speed ahead with “Son of Star Wars”.

    It is little reported that the Bush administration promised Gorbachev that if Russia did not oppose the admission of a reunified Germany into NATO when the Berlin wall crumbled ten years ago, we would not expand NATO. Nor is it widely known that the US Committee to Expand NATO, which lobbied furiously on the Hill to disregard our pledge to Russia, was chaired by the Vice-President of Lockheed-Martin, working demonically to expand its lethal market to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. NATO’s 50th Anniversary Summit last April was hosted by corporate sponsors, including Boeing, Raytheon, and the like, who paid up to $250,000 to mingle and peddle their deadly wares to the 19 Foreign Ministers in attendance.

    These merchants of death are driving the Star Wars revival as well. In an illustration of a laser beam from space zapping a target, the US Space Command’s report, Vision for 2020, unashamedly trumpets, “US Space Command dominating the space dimensions of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict”. There is no way that Russia will cooperate with us to eliminate nuclear weapons while it is unable to match the billions of US dollars being poured into the militarization of space. Ironically, the greatest threat to our national security today is the Russian nuclear arsenal. How long will Americans continue to allow the ignorant boys with the dangerous toys to play Russian roulette with the fate of the earth? Who’s minding the store?

    Write to President Clinton, your Senators, your Member of Congress, the new Presidential candidates. Urge them to take up, in good faith, the Russian offer to go to 1500 warheads and to give up the warped and imperial dream of dominating space with a new arms race to the heavens. This may be our last chance to reap the benefits of the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union.

    * Alice Slater is President of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE) and a founder of Abolition 2000, a global network working for a treaty to ban the bomb.

  • Interview with Olara A. Otunnu, UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict

    Mr. Otunnu, I started to study the issue of child soldiers almost two months ago and since then I discovered the tough reality that these children have to face every day. Today there are almost 300,000 child soldiers around the world and that number is constantly growing. Do you think there is a chance to reduce that number and how would it be possible?

    Yes, we can reduce that number assuming a three-pronged approach.

    One: It is very important for the international community to raise the age limit for recruitment and participation of young persons in conflict. The present age limit is 15 and I am campaigning with others to raise this to 18. Clearly, the higher the age limit the more children we can protect. 18 is important because in the Convention on the Rights of the Child anybody below 18 is defined as a child. Also in many countries the age of majority is 18 and in many countries as well the age of voting is 18. So it is very important to raise the age for recruitment and participation. That is why I have been putting a lot of stress calling on states to cooperate on the present project on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That project is meant to raise the age limit for participation and for recruitment and the next meeting of the Working Group on the Optional Protocol is scheduled for January in Geneva and I hope everybody will work actively to cooperate to bring this matter to a successful conclusion.

    The second measure is mobilizing an international, political, social movement of pressure that can lean on governments and insurgencies who abuse children in this way and they can feel the pressure of the international public opinion. It is very important to do this.

    Thirdly, even though a significant number of children are abducted and forced to become child soldiers, we also know that there are many who volunteer to become child soldiers or are enticed to become child soldiers because of economic, social collapse in their societies, which make the alternative of being with armed groups more attractive than staying at home when there is no schooling, no economic production, the family is braking apart and the option of getting a gun and acquiring false power , or being fed, or being in the uniform looks more attractive to them. Children who are attracted by ideology, nationalist ideology come to fight for an ethnic group; or by religion come and fight for a religion; or by political ideology come and fight for a new society to re-establish democracy to overthrow a dictatorship.

    In other words we need to address the economic, social, political factors that facilitate the abuse of children in this way. These are three measures we need to take in order to reverse this trend of abomination.

    Q: I am sure you saw many child soldiers when you traveled around the world. What did you see in their eyes?

    Often is partly despair, is partly resignation and it is partly indifference and a sense of alienation, feeling out of it. This especially becomes acute when a child is becoming an adult and begins to realize more fully what they have been doing and how terrible what they have been doing. As well as also realizing the extent to which they have been exposed. So you have got a child victim in a way at both ends of a gun: the child who is firing the gun and the child who is being fired at.

    Q: I know you were born in Northern Uganda and that you spent your childhood in that area. Uganda is currently recruiting children as volunteers at the age of 13. Since you grew up in Uganda have you ever been forced to join the army or have you ever seen one of your friends joining the army at that age?

    No, when I was growing up in Uganda children were not been recruited into the army. This is a new phenomenon in Uganda. It is something that began in the 1980s when the NRA, the National Resistance Army, which is now the government in Uganda, pioneered the recruitment of children into its guerrilla movements and that is where the term KADOGÓS comes from. Kadogós means “little ones.” That is a term by which now child soldiers are known in Eastern Africa from Burundi to Uganda, from Rwanda to Sudan, and that term originated in a practice of the NRA in Uganda in the 1980s. And then the second wave of the recruitment of children is what we are seeing today in Northern Uganda by the LRA, the Lord’s Resistence Army, an insurgency group which is in opposition to the present government. So it is a relatively new phenomenon in Uganda and it did not exist when I grew up.

    Q: What do you think about the 17 and 16 year olds who can volunteer respectively in the US marines and the UK armed forces?

    We are having a dialogue with the UK government and the US government about the issue of raising the age limit for recruitment and for participation. As you know, my own position is that the age limit should be raised to 18 and both countries up until now have difficulties with that issue. We have an ongoing dialogue going on with the US and the UK on this issue and I hope that it would be possible to have these two countries joining in a consensus in January in Geneva when we discuss the finalization of the Optional Protocol.

    Most of the children in armies come from conditions of poverty. Do you believe that if their families can live in better conditions they won’t join the army or the rebels anymore?

    As I said earlier there are children who are abducted or kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers. That obviously is something that needs to be stopped by leaning on those who are doing this.

    Yes, there are children who because of conditions of poverty, economic-social breakdown will tend to gravitate towards the armed groups who may appear to them to offer better alternatives than the poverty, the despair, the misery in which they live. And it is not by accident that most Child Soldiers tend to be children from very poor, depressed and marginalized communities.

    Yes, by tackling those conditions we would be tackling this issue.

    Q: Children respond to the stress of armed conflicts with physical and psychological trauma. What can be done for them and what do you think would be better for them after they leave the army?

    Definitely is very important to address their trauma because when children go and join up armed groups they are exposed to be killed and they kill. They see violence and atrocities. Children have committed some of the worst atrocities in situations of conflict precisely because they are not fully conscious of what they are doing. They are indoctrinated; they are molded into a particularly efficient, ruthless and unquestioning tool of warfare. In many cases they are even drugged.

    So we must address their trauma, we must somehow address how to win them off violence. Violence becomes a normal way of life for them.

    How do you wean them off this? Of course we must address how to re-insert them back in the society, how to make their families accept them back, how to make the local community accept them back, because in many cases they feel this is no longer their child who left home, it’s a new person who is used to violence and who has committed atrocities. And then of course in terms of loss of childhood and schooling to find ways to give productive work to these children in order to become adults either vocational training or some kind of training for those who are young enough to try to re-introduce them to schooling.

    The four Geneva Conventions, the UN Declaration on Human Rights, but above all the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child are the primary agreements in international law for the protection of children worldwide. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is generally applicable to every human being below the age of 18 years. But Art. 38 makes a point of allowing children under 18 to take direct part in hostilities. Do you think the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child will prevent the recruitment of children under the age of 18?

    As I said earlier, that is why the present effort to bring to a close of the project of the Optional Protocol is so important. Because an important aspect of that is raising the age limit for recruitment and participation and I personally advocate that we should adopt the age limit of 18. The present age limit is 15, which is much too low and I hope that in the upcoming month of January 2000 in the meeting in Geneva we agree on raising the age limit for recruitment and participation.

    Q: What do you think about the rehabilitation centers for ex-child soldiers in Mozambique, in Sierra Leone and in Colombia?

    They tend to be inadequate in relation to the magnitude of the problem because in all these three countries children have been massively used as child soldiers and quite often there is not enough capacity in these rehabilitation centers. There are not enough resources to put in faith that capacity. Also we need to develop more expertise and learn from other experiences.

    That is why the experience of Mozambique is very important for us to learn from what works and from what does not work, so that this can be applied in Sierra Leone, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Afghanistan, in Sri Lanka and so on. We learn from previous experiences of doing this and then of course we also need to put into place whenever there is any program for this arming, demobilization and rehabilitation. We are not only addressing the older people, the adults, but as a dimension, a framework, which addresses the situation of children who have been serving as combatants or have served in other ways within the armed groups. Because serving as combatants only is one way of recruitment. Children are used also as porters, cooks and spies.

    Q: What would you like to tell to the young people around the world about the child soldiers issue?

    I would like to tell them that is one of the most cynical features of today’s warfare the way with which adults are using children to be the channel for their own hate and passion. And in this way children are not only victims, they are not only victimized by the conflict, but children have also been victimizers of other children and other civilians. This is one of the worst crimes one could commit: depriving children of their innocence, of their childhood and then turning them into war machines. We must move to reverse this trend. Children have no place in warfare at all, their place is at school, in the family, in the playground and we must deprive them of that.

    Q: Is there anything concrete that ordinary people, like you and me, can do for these child soldiers?

    You can join in adopting the three-pronged strategy. You can join in the campaign through your Congressperson, through your Senator, through your government, through your school, through your city, the campaign to raise the age limit for recruitment and participation.

    You can secondly join in a national and eventually international campaign of political pressure that can lean on the organizations that are abusing children in this way.

    You can thirdly join by urging your own government and other institutions to which you are linked to contribute through their policies, through their resources to addressing the economic, political, social factas that facilitate the use of children in this way.

    At your level, in your school, in your community, you can begin that movement.

    Finally I think one can also build children to children linkages. Children of any community in this country can link up with children who have been exposed to wars in Sri Lanka, in Sierra Leone or in Kosovo with a school, with the hospital, with a village and learn about their experiences. So I hope children who are in the US blessed with a country that has peace, a country that is prosperous and democratic, would become advocate of children who are not so fortunate caught up in situations of conflict.

    * The UN has appointed Olara A. Otunnu as the UN Secretary-General Special’s Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. Otunnu presently serves as advocate for children in armed conflicts and is recognized widely for his catalytic work with the United Nations and NGOs concerned about the child soldiers issue.

    Stefania Capodaglio was the first Ruth Floyd Intern for Human Rights at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Santa Barbara headquarters. She is a student at the Catholic University of Milan in Italy.

  • Facing Nuclear Dangers and Flinching – Comments on the Final Report of the Tokyo Forum

    The Final Report of the Tokyo Forum is entitled, “Facing Nuclear Dangers: An Action Plan for the 21st Century.” The Report, however, is not nearly as bold as its title would suggest. A clue as to why this may be so is found in paragraph 12 of the opening section of the Report where it states, “Terrorism using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons has been possible for some time, but serious policymakers have traditionally seen other threats as more pressing.” The members of the Tokyo Forum have aimed their recommendations at influencing such “serious policymakers,” particularly those in the nuclear weapons states. The Final Report ends up being short on vision, and proposes only incremental changes, the kind that might be acceptable to those who have no real desire to change the status quo.

    The Report recognizes, “the fabric of international security is unraveling and nuclear dangers are growing at a disturbing rate.” This is a diagnosis that calls for strong medicine. The Tokyo Forum, however, offers only weak tea and toast, proposals unlikely to offend the “serious policymakers” in the nuclear weapons states. In doing so, the Report falls painfully short of the mark as to what is needed as we approach the beginning of a new century and millennium. Like Nero, the “serious policymakers” in the nuclear weapons states have been fiddling while the nuclear fuse continues to burn.

    When it comes to the issue of nuclear proliferation, the Report finds that the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “must be reaffirmed and revitalized.” With breathtaking logic, the Report reaches the conclusion that “The discriminatory basis of the NPT regime need not constitute a moral and practical flaw in the treaty provided that the nuclear-weapon states and the non-nuclear weapon states keep their parts of the bargain.” The problem here is that the nuclear weapons states have never kept their part of the bargain, and seem far more intent on maintaining a two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” than in doing so.

    One bright point in the Report is its denunciation of the use of nuclear weapons to deter a chemical, biological or large-scale conventional attack. The Report states, “Until they are abolished, the Tokyo Forum believes that the only function of nuclear weapons is to deter the use of other nuclear weapons.” This is a position with which many so-called “serious policymakers” in the nuclear weapons states apparently do not agree. U.S. Presidential Decision Directive 60, a secret document, is purported to expand the use of nuclear weapons to counter chemical or biological attacks.

    In the end, the Report fails to ask enough of the nuclear weapons states. It calls on the U.S. and Russia “to further extend reductions to 1,000 deployed strategic warheads.” This is a step in the right direction, but far from sufficient. The Report asks for a “goal of zero nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.” Recognizing millennial computer risks, the Report calls for removing nuclear weapons from alert status “for the period of concern.” Good idea, but why not use this as a starting point for keeping all nuclear weapons separated from delivery vehicles to prevent any possibility of accidental launch. Perhaps in the minds of the members of the Tokyo Forum, this would go too far for “serious policymakers.”

    Rather than opposing Ballistic Missile Defenses, which seem to offer only the false promise of security and to have the potential to reignite the development of offensive nuclear capabilities, the Report asks only that “all states contemplating the deployment of advanced missile defences to proceed with caution….”

    The Tokyo Forum offers too little, too late to meet the dangers of our nuclear-armed world. While the Report is not a complete disgrace, it does little if anything to build upon and advance the Report of the Canberra Commission to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons issued three years earlier. I find the Report a serious disappointment when measured against the calls of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a world free of nuclear weapons.

    The people of Japan, even more than the people of most countries of the world, strongly support rapid action to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. The government of Japan, on the other hand, has been content to crawl under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The Tokyo Forum has aligned itself much more closely with the policies of the U.S. and Japanese governments than with the people of Japan, and particularly those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is often what happens when aspiring “serious policymakers” speak to those in power.

    The people of Japan are far ahead of their government and far ahead of the experts in the Tokyo Forum. They should demand a far stronger and more active leadership role for their government in reducing nuclear dangers, beginning with a demand for the de-alerting of all nuclear weapons and the separation of nuclear warheads from delivery vehicles. This would be a valuable first step on the part of the nuclear weapons states toward fulfilling their obligations in Article VI of the NPT to achieve nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.

    The way to proceed is with good faith negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased elimination of nuclear arsenals under strict and effective international control. There is no reason not to commence these negotiations immediately and to conclude them with a treaty by the end of next year. In this way, we could enter the 21st century with an agreed upon plan in place to abolish nuclear arms. The Tokyo Forum was timid about asking for action within a timeframe, but their timidity should not inhibit people everywhere from asking for what is right and in the best interests of humanity, now and in the future.

    * David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and is the editor of Waging Peace Worldwide. He is a member of the international coordinating committee of Abolition 2000 and a member of the executive committee of the Middle Powers Initiative.

  • Defended to Death

    India and Pakistan are governed by madmen. The prime ministers are mad, the generals, scientists, civil servants all mad. The proof of their madness is their paranoid obsession with security and nuclear weapons. What, after all, could be more insane than two desperately poor countries, struggling to feed, educate, and house their people spending scarce resources on preparing to murder millions of innocent people, then glorying in their capability and willingness to commit such a monstrous deed. More disturbing still is that while these madmen and their obsessions may mean the death of us, we do next to nothing about them. Perhaps the people, governed by lunatics for so long, have also quietly gone mad, to protect themselves from the consequences of understanding what is happening to them.

    These thoughts have been brought on by India’s recently released nuclear doctrine, and the expectation that the madmen in Islamabad will follow those in Delhi and move a step closer to deploying their nuclear weapons, and a step closer to using them.

    The Indian nuclear doctrine contains no surprises. It is what anyone should have expected from India’s National Security Advisory Board, given that it is a nest of nuclear hawks. Asked to produce a doctrine, no one should have expected reason from them. Each was bound to try to out do the others, and none would relish being found wanting in patriotism or hard-headedness. Then there is the lure of history. The nuclear tests were about science and technology, and the scientists took the credit. As strategic thinkers, the National Security Board will take credit for having made the plan for how India’s weapons are to be used. For some of them, this report is the culmination of decades of writing and arguing for India to have nuclear weapons; it reflects their hopes, dreams, fantasies, of a nuclear India.

    Given how nationalistic these men are, how committed to a kind of independence at any cost, one is reminded, ironically, of Lord Macaulay’s famous 1835 Minute on Education. Writing about British rule in India, he said the aim should be to create “a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in taste and opinions, in morals and intellect.” The British succeeded to the extent that a hundred or so years later it was anglicized Indians like Nehru and Jinnah who took over from them. American strategic thinkers, who preside like demented gods over their own nuclear weapons, can boast they have had the same effect in even less time. Despite all their differences, and animosities, within fifty years of inventing nuclear weapons, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then claiming that nuclear weapons were for defence, the US nuclear weapons complex has successfully created enclaves of Indians, and Pakistanis, who have exactly their nuclear “morals” and “intellect.”

    The tone and content of India’s nuclear doctrine carries the stamp of the hardest of the hardest liners and their global fears and ambitions. The doctrine declares that “the very existence of offensive doctrine pertaining to the first use of nuclear weapons and the insistence of some nuclear weapons states on the legitimacy of their use even against non-nuclear weapon countries constitute a threat to peace, stability and sovereignty of states.” It is this threat, the doctrine declares, that India’s nuclear weapons are supposed to protect against. But the countries which have said they will use nuclear weapons first are the US, UK, France, Russia, and Pakistan. China has a policy of no-first-use. Israel has never said what it would do, but no doubt will use nuclear weapons whenever it feels like it. It is also the US, in particular, and its NATO allies, who have indicated policies of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states.

    The fixation on the US is part of an established pattern. Indian hawks have always had global pretensions. For years, members of the National Security Advisory Board have justified Indian nuclear weapons with reference to the inequities of the international system and US threats to India during the 1972 war with Pakistan. One member of the Board, Bharat Karnad, wrote last year that India’s nuclear weapons should be aimed at “deterring an over-reaching and punitive minded United States leading the Western combine of nations.”

    With this in mind, the doctrine is blunt, India’s nuclear forces are aimed at “convincing any potential aggressor that… India … shall inflict damage unacceptable to the aggressor.” Worst case analysis, the kind of thing that nuclear hawks love, would suggest that India has to build a nuclear force able to retaliate against the US, even after a massive US attack on India. This may seem absurd. The USSR tried it and ended up building over 30,000 nuclear weapons. How could India possibly manage it?

    One way to try would be to follow the Chinese example. Following its first nuclear test in 1964, China is estimated to now have about 400 nuclear warheads. They are on aircraft, missiles, some artillery shells, and a few at sea. The majority are spread over about 20 locations, including some hidden in caves in mountainous regions, in the hope that they would survive an attack and could be used to retaliate – and kill even more people. China has about 20 missiles able to hit the US, each has a single warhead of 4,000-5,000 Kt, (a hundred times more destructive than the hydrogen bomb India claimed to have tested, and a few hundred times more destructive than the simple atom bombs Pakistan claimed it tested).

    It seems Indian hawks are hoping for something like a Chinese style arsenal which is to be developed over a long period of time. The doctrine describes a triad, with warheads on planes, missiles and at sea. Bharat Karnad has talked of 350-400 nuclear warheads and a cost of at least 700 billion rupees over the next thirty years as meeting the aims of the doctrine. It is certain to cost more, take longer, and be more difficult.

    What does the Indian doctrine mean for Pakistan? There are enough madmen in Pakistan who will demand that, no matter what, we must do what India does. If India has a nuclear doctrine with operational nuclear forces we must have one also. We must have the planes, the missiles, the nuclear weapons at sea. They will say this for all the usual reasons – it satisfies their hate for India, feeds their ambition to father another bomb or a missile, guarantees them and their institutions even more money, and gives them more power. In previous situations they have prevailed. If they prevail again the arms race will enter an even more tortuous lap.

    All the elements are there. Last May, Indian weapons scientists claimed that they had tested a Hydrogen bomb. Last week the head of India’s nuclear program claimed not only that India could build a neutron bomb (an advanced kind of hydrogen bomb that generates a higher than usual amount of radiation), but that they could design and build bombs of “any type or size.” Soon after the May tests last year, the managers of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program talked of being able to build a Hydrogen bomb, should they be asked, and provided they were given enough money. Now, it is said, Pakistan can build a neutron bomb also – although this verges on the unbelievable since Pakistan has not yet tested a simple hydrogen bomb.

    The missiles too are being lined up. In April, Abdul Kalam, the head of India’s missile program said that the Agni-II, a 2,000-3,000 km range, was “operationally ready” for deployment with a nuclear warhead. In his independence day speech, India’s prime minister announced that “AGNI-2 has been tested… and will be integrated into our defence arsenal.” India’s space launcher successfully launched three satellites from one rocket, and could be converted into an intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple warheads, given enough time and money. There is no doubt Pakistan’s missile men will say that they too can achieve this, if they are given enough money.

    There is no end to the madness. There is talk of an Indian anti-ballistic missile system that will shoot down incoming missiles. Bhabha Atomic Research Center even claims it is building a device (called Kali-5000) that can be used as a beam weapon which “when aimed at enemy missiles and aircraft, will cripple their electronic systems and computer chips and bring them down.” No doubt Pakistan’s scientists will claim they can match that too – given enough money.

    This is certainly the response from Pakistan that India’s hawks hope for. In early July, the Hindustan Times ran a report “What Should We Do With Pakistan?” The first answer was “smash them.” But it was not with nuclear weapons. General V.R. Raghavan (former Director General of Military Operations) said “Till now, we¹ve borne heavy costs. Now we must impose costs.” A former Foreign Secretary urged “We must hurt them in every single way…” Brahma Chellaney, a member of the National Security Advisory Board, went further: “Hit them when they least expect, ideologically, strategically and economically, with military force being only a small slice of the offensive.” The Hindustan Times reported him as calling for economic warfare.

    The clearest of all was K. Subrahmanyam, the guru of India’s nuclear hawks and head of the National Security Advisory Board. He answered the question of what to do about Pakistan by saying “The perfect war is subjugation of the adversary without going to battle. If India raises its defence expenditure to 3 per cent of GDP from the present 2.3, Pakistan will try to match it and go broke. This was how the US under Reagan precipitated the Soviet collapse.” His plan is simple. Pakistan will be incited into an arms race that it is bound to lose. It will, in effect, defend itself to death. Unless there is war.

    The alternative is to put the madness of the bomb behind us. To give it up while there is time, before the bomb’s hateful machinery and its demented mechanics take complete control of life and death.

    *Zia Mian is a physicist and peace activist from Pakistan, currently on the research staff of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University. He is a founding member of Abolition 2000, and a member of its Global Council. He is also on the Coordinating Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the United Nations NGO Committee on Disarmament.

    He is the editor of Pakistan’s Atomic Bomb and The Search for Security (1995) and Making Enemies, Creating Conflict: Pakistan’s Crises of State and Society (1997). Other publications by ZIa Mian include “Diplomatic Judo: Using the NPT to Make the Nuclear-Weapons States Negotiate the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons” by Zia Mian and MV Ramana in Disarmament Diplomacy Issue #36.