Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: International Law

  • A Declaration Of War

    The Bush administration has declared war on the world.

    The 450 changes that Washington is demanding to the action agenda that will culminate at the September 2005 United Nations summit don’t represent U.N. reform. They are a clear onslaught against any move that could strengthen the United Nations or international law.

    The upcoming summit was supposed to focus on strengthening and reforming the U.N. and address issues of aid and development, with a particular emphasis on implementing the U.N.’s five-year-old Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Most assumed this would be a forum for dialogue and debate, involving civil society activists from around the world challenging governments from the impoverished South and the wealthy North and the United Nations to create a viable global campaign against poverty and for internationalism.

    But now, there’s a different and even greater challenge. This is a declaration of U.S. unilateralism, uncompromising and ascendant. The United States has issued an open threat to the 190 other U.N. member states, the social movements and peoples of the entire world, and the United Nations itself. And it will take a quick and unofficially collaborative effort between all three of those elements to challenge the Bush administration juggernaut.

    The General Assembly’s package of proposed reforms, emerging after nine months of negotiations ahead of the summit, begins with new commitments to implement the Millennium Development Goals—established in 2000 as a set of international commitments aimed at reducing poverty by 2015. They were always insufficient, yet as weak as they are, they have yet to be implemented. The 2005 Millennium Plus Five summit intended to shore up the unmet commitments to those goals. In his reform proposals of March 2005, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called on governments north and south to see the implementation of the MDGs as a minimum requirement. Without at least that minimal level of poverty alleviation, he said, conflicts within and between states could spiral so far out of control that even a strengthened and reformed United Nations of the future would not be able to control the threats to international peace and security.

    When John Bolton, Bush’s hotly contested but newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations announced the U.S. proposed response, it was easy to assume this was just John Bolton running amok. After all, Bolton, a longtime U.N.-basher, has said: “There is no United Nations.” He has written in The Wall Street Journal that the United States has no legal obligation to abide by international treaties, even when they are signed and ratified. So it was no surprise when Bolton showed up three weeks before the summit, demanding a package of 450 changes in the document that had been painstakingly negotiated for almost a year.

    But, in fact, this isn’t about Bolton. This Bush administration’s position was vetted and approved in what the U.S. Mission to the U.N. bragged was a “thorough interagency process”—meaning the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and many more agencies all signed off. This is a clear statement of official U.S. policy—not the wish- ist of some marginalized extremist faction of neocon ideologues who will soon be reined in by the realists in charge. This time the extremist faction is in charge.

    The U.S. proposal package is designed to force the world to accept as its own the U.S. strategy of abandoning impoverished nations and peoples, rejecting international law, privileging ruthless market forces over any attempted regulation, sidelining the role of international institutions except for the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, and weakening, perhaps fatally, the United Nations itself.

    It begins by systematically deleting every one of the 35 specific references to the Millennium Development Goals. Every reference to concrete obligations for implementation of commitments is deleted. Setting a target figure of just 0.7 percent of GNP for wealthy countries to spend on aid? Deleted. Increasing aid for agriculture and trade opportunities in poor countries? Deleted. Helping the poorest countries, especially those in Africa, to deal with the impact of climate change? Deleted.

    The proposal puts at great risk treaties to which the United States is already a party, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.N. Summit draft referred to the NPT’s “three pillars: disarmament, non-proliferation and the peaceful use of nuclear energy.” That means that states without nukes would agree never to build or obtain them, but in return they would be guaranteed the right to produce nuclear energy for peaceful use. In return recognized nuclear weapons states—the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia—would commit, in Article VI of the NPT, to move toward “nuclear disarmament with the objective of eliminating all such weapons.” The proposed U.S. changes deleted all references to the three pillars and to Article VI.

    The U.S. deleted the statement that: “The use of force should be considered as an instrument of last resort.” That’s also not surprising given the Bush administration’s “invade first, choose your justifications later” mode of crisis resolution.

    Throughout the document, the United States demands changes that redefine and narrow what should be universal and binding rights and obligations. In the clearest reference to Iraq and Palestine, Washington narrowed the definition of the “right of self-determination of peoples” to eliminate those who “remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation.”

    Much of the U.S. effort aims to undermine the power of the U.N. in favor of absolute national sovereignty. On migration, for instance, the original language focused on enhancing international cooperation, linking migrant worker issues and development, and the human rights of migrants. The U.S. wants to scrap it all, replacing it with “the sovereign right of states to formulate and enforce national migration policies,” with international cooperation only to facilitate national laws. Human rights were deleted altogether.

    In the document’s section on strengthening the United Nations, the U.S. deleted all mention of enhancing the U.N.’s authority, focusing instead only on U.N. efficiency. Regarding the General Assembly the most democratic organ of the U.N. system—the United States deleted references to the Assembly’s centrality, its role in codifying international law, and, ultimately its authority, relegating it to a toothless talking shop. It even deleted reference to the Assembly’s role in Washington’s own pet project—management oversight of the U.N. secretariat—leaving the U.S.-dominated and undemocratic Security Council, along with the U.S. itself (in the person of a State Department official recently appointed head of management in Kofi Annan’s office) to play watchdog.

    The Bush administration has given the United Nations what it believes to be a stark choice: adopt the U.S. changes and acquiesce to becoming an adjunct of Washington and a tool of empire, or reject the changes and be consigned to insignificance.

    But the United Nations could choose a third option. It should not be forgotten that the U.N. itself has some practice in dealing with U.S. threats. President George W. Bush gave the U.N. these same two choices once before—in September 2002, when he threatened the global body with “irrelevance” if the U.N. did not embrace his call for war in Iraq. On that occasion, the United Nations made the third choice—the choice to grow a backbone, to reclaim its charter, and to join with people and governments around the world who were mobilized to say no to war. It was the beginning of eight months of triumph, in which governments and peoples and the U.N. stood together to defy the U.S. drive toward war and empire, and in doing so created what The New York Times called “the second super-power.”

    This time, as before, the United States has threatened and declared war on the United Nations and the world. As before, it’s time for that three-part superpower to rise again, to defend the U.N., and to say no to empire.

    Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, is the author of the forthcoming Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power (Interlink Publishing, Northampton MA, October 2005)

  • Opening Speech at the World Tribunal on Iraq

    Let me express at the outset, on behalf of the Panel of Advocates our profound gratitude to the convenors of this Istanbul session of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) for their exceptional effort, and at the same time acknowledge the extraordinary contributions of the twenty earlier sessions of the WTI that have produced invaluable testimony and results that have increased awareness the world over of the criminality of the Iraq War. This unprecedented process of truth-telling about an ongoing war has produced what can best be described as ‘a tribunal movement’ of which this Istanbul session is the culminating phase to date of this process.

    The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) is remarkable for two principal reasons: WTI bears witness to the depth and persistence of the popular mobilization of people throughout the world in opposition to the Iraq War. Such a mobilization against a particular war has never occurred before on such a scale. It started with the massive street demonstrations before the war on Feb. 15, 2003 in which some 11 million people took part in 80 countries and more than 600 urban communities. The WTI gives a continuing legal, moral, and political expression to this anti-war opposition which itself has entered a new phase: an insurgent war of liberation being waged in resistance to the illegal occupation of the country by the greatest military power in the history of the world. In this struggle, the Iraqi people are being denied their fundamental rights of self-determination, first by aggression and then by a cruel and criminal dynamic occupation.

    The second reason for claiming historical significance on behalf of WTI relates to this initiative of, by, and for citizens to hold leaders accountable for severe violations of international law, especially in relation to matters of war and peace. It is not that this is an entirely new idea. The first such effort was inspired by the eminent British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who convened such a tribunal back in 1967 to assess the legal responsibility of the United States and its leaders for the Vietnam War. It gathered testimony and documented the massive abuses of Vietnamese sovereignty by a devastating war that took millions of innocent Vietnamese lives. Above all, this citizens’ tribunal was a cry of anguish intended to break the wall of silence behind which the crimes associated with the Vietnam War were daily committed. The Russell Tribunal in turn led to the formation of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, located in Rome, operating since 1976 to reinforce the claims of international law by filling in the gaps where governments and even the United Nations are unable and unwilling to act, or even to speak. The WTI continues and extends this tradition of refusing to be silent or to be silenced. It accepts as a responsibility of democracy the obligation of citizens to insist on the relevance and applicability of international law to every use of force. This insistence includes a demand for criminal accountability, whenever a government disavows its commitment to respect international law. It is primarily to honor this commitment to uphold international law that this tribunal has been organized, and its mission is to confirm the truth of the allegation directed at the United States and the United Kingdom, while also extending to all governments that support directly or indirectly the Iraq War.

    We should be aware that such a commitment by the WTI is part of a longer journey of international law that has evolved by stages that can be identified.

    The initial stage was to create in some authoritative way the norms of law, morality, and politics associated with the prohibition of wars of aggression. The legal culmination of this process occurred in 1928 when leading states, including the United States and the UK, ratified without qualification the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an instrument of National Policy, also known as the Kellogg-Brand Pact;

    This was followed by a second stage that attached criminal consequences to the violation of this norm prohibiting aggressive war through establishing accountability. The criminal trial of German and Japanese leaders after World War II, the Nuremberg Judgment issued in 1945 was a milestone in this process. The Judgment declared: “To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” and although Nuremberg was flawed by being an example of “victors’ justice,” the American prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson, made what has been described as the Nuremberg Promise in his closing statement: “If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us” This promise has been broken, but such behavior is not acceptable, and we are gathered in part to insist even now that the promise that every state will pay the consequences if it wages a war of aggression.

    This treaty pledge to renounce aggressive war informed the United Nations Charter. The Charter imposes a core obligation on Members to refrain from the use of force in international relations except in circumstances of self-defense strictly defined and under the authority of the Security Council. It also, in a spirit relevant to the WTI, confirmed in its opening words that it is the peoples of the world and not the governments or even the UN that have been entrusted with the ultimate responsibility for upholding this renunciation of war: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…” that set forth the duties of states in the UN Charter. This tribunal is dedicated to precisely this undertaking as a matter of law, as an imperative of morality and human rights, and as an engagement with the politics of global justice.

    Of course, this tribunal does not pretend to be a normal court of law with powers of enforcement. At the same time, it is acting on behalf of the peoples of the world to uphold respect for international law. When governments and the UN are silent, and fail to protect victims of aggression, tribunals of concerned citizens possess a law-making authority. Their unique contribution is to tell the truth as powerfully and fully as possible, and by such truthfulness to activate the conscience of humanity to resist. The US Government told a pack of lies in its feeble attempt to find a legal justification for the invasion of Iraq. The WTI will expose these lies by presenting evidence and testimony. The task of exposing lies and confirming truth has become easier as a result of the release of the Downing Street memos. These official documents show that British and American officials understood fully that the Iraq War was unlawful, and not only did they go ahead, but they fabricated evidence to build a completely dishonest legal case. Neither governments, nor the UN, nor most of the media will tell this story of deception, destruction, and criminality. It is the mission of the WTI, building on the efforts of the 20 or so earlier citizens’ tribunals, to tell this story and to appeal to the peoples of the world to join with the people of Iraq in opposing aggression against Iraq. The tribunal is formed on the basis of a Panel of Advocates and a Jury of Conscience. The Panel will present the evidence and the Jury will draw legal, moral, and political conclusions and offer recommendations. The pledge of advocates and jurors is to act in an honest, non-partisan, independent, and objective spirit to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

    This tribunal differs from a normal court of law in the following main respects:

    –it is an organ of civil society, not of the state;

    –its essential purpose is to confirm the truth, not to discover it;

    –its jurors are dedicated, informed, and committed citizens of the world, not neutral and indifferent individuals of the community;

    –its advocates are knowledgeable, wise and decent, but not legally trained specialists;

    –its trust for the future is not based on violence and police, but on conscience, political struggle, and public opinion.

    Nevertheless, we claim for this tribunal the authority to declare the law and to impose its judgment and to hope — hope that a demonstration of this criminality will not fall on deaf ears, but will awaken and exercise the peoples of the world to intensify their resistance to America’s plans for world domination and stand in solidarity with the Iraqi people.

    We need to realize that the Iraq war is the eye of a larger global storm. The storm expresses the fury of this American project to dominate the world by force of arms, to exploit the peoples of the world through the medium of economic globalization, and to administer its idea of security from its Washington headquarters. This project of World Empire hides its true colors beneath the banner of anti-terrorism. It justifies every abuse by pointing to the September 11 attacks. These attacks, even if they are what is claimed, do not justify aggression against states or the torture of individuals. We should remember that the imperial brain trust said before September 11 that only “a new Pearl Harbor” would produce the political climate needed to achieve global hegemony. And they got a new Pearl Harbor, or did they? Read David Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor and you will never be able to take 9/11 at face value in the future. The convenors of the WTI are mindful of this wider context of the Iraq War.

    It should also be observed that Turkey is an appropriate site for this culminating session of the WTI, remembering that earlier sessions of the WTI in all regions of the world have gathered evidence of the illegality of the Iraq War and the criminal policies and practices that have been associated with its conduct. To begin with, Turkey stands at the crossroads between the old European geopolitical core and the Third World periphery. Earlier Russell, PPT initiatives were European. Now the moral, political, and legal platform is moving away from the Christian West. It was Turkey’s proudest moment when its parliament refused the request of the US Government to mount the invasion of Iraq from Turkish territory; this represented an expression of an increasingly robust democratic process here in Turkey. Turkey is also a natural site for the tribunal because it is an important neighbor of Iraq, and suffers a variety of bad consequences from the war and the turmoil in the region that has resulted. And further, the Turkish government has been complicit with the Iraq war, as well as with the preceding period of sanctions, by allowing its territory to be used for a strategic base that has been extensively used for the bombing of Iraq ever since 1990. It is a purpose of this tribunal to show that such complicity engages legal responsibility for Turkey, and for other governments in the region that support directly or indirectly such aggressive war making.

    A special concern of the WTI is to take sharp issue with American claims of exception whether based on an alleged freedom to wage war anywhere on the planet as a result of the 9/11 attacks or securing an exemption for itself in relation to the basic obligation to uphold international law. The pernicious American exceptionalism contradicts completely the role played by the United States in seeking to promote the Rule of Law, the Nuremberg approach, and the UN Charter after 1945. The claim of exception moves in two directions: it operates, first of all, as an explicit effort to exempt Anerican leaders from individual accountability for violating international law, specifically in relation to the recently established International Criminal Court; and secondly, in relation to the lawless barbarism of the detention of alleged terrorist and insurgency suspects being held in such notorious outposts of torture and official evil as Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq and Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo. This tribunal stands against such outrageous claims of exception, and operates beneath the jurisprudential principle that no government or leader is above the law and that every government and leader is criminally accountable for failures to uphold international law. If governments and the UN are unwilling to pass judgment, it is up to initiatives by citizens of the world to perform this scared duty. The WTI has been formed against the background of these essential beliefs.

    It should also be understood that the WTI views the Iraq War as part of this wider assault by the United States, and the UK, against wider prospects for a just world order. These prospects depend upon respecting the sovereign rights of all states, of working to achieve human rights, including economic, social, and cultural rights for all peoples, and to struggle on behalf of a humane world order, including a far more equitable world economy that is indispensable for achieving a sustainable world peace.

    There was a tart in this direction made during the 1990s, although amid an array of contradictions. But it is worth noting these progressive moves that have been stymied by the wars of aggression launched by the United States by relying upon the pretext of a war against terrorism. It is worth observing because it is important to revive these moves toward humane global governance based on the principles of global justice:

    –the spread of democracy, and especially the rise of global civil society and of global social movements in the area of environment, human rights, women, and peace;

    –the increased support for human rights by civil society actors and governments around the world;

    –the attention given to the remembrance and partial erasure of historic grievances toward indigenous peoples on all continents, toward the victims of forced labor, including so-called “comfort women” during World War II, toward the descendants of slavery;

    –and most of all, to the revival of Nuremberg ideas about criminal accountability, challenging impunity – the Chilean dictator Pinochet was indicted by Spain and detained by Britain; the UN established tribunals to prosecute those responsible for ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia and for genocide in Rwanda; and over the objections of the leading states, the ICC was brought into existence due to the active coalition of hundreds of NGOs working together with dozens of governments dedicated to establish a framework for applying international criminal law.

    Such positive steps have been derailed, at least temporarily, by the firestorm released in the world by the US Government since the September 11 attacks. This tribunal hopes that truth-telling with respect to Iraq will also revive the emergent normative revolution of the 1990s, making us move again in the Puerto Alegre direction of insisting that “another world is possible,” and adding, “if possible, it is necessary,” and with this affirmation, the WTI will not only stimulate resistance to appression and solidarity with victims, but will revive the vision of the 1990s that can be best summarized as the cause of “moral globalization.”

  • US Nuclear Hypocrisy: Bad For The World

    US Nuclear Hypocrisy: Bad For The World

    Every five years the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meet in a review conference to further the non-proliferation and disarmament goals of the treaty. This year the conference ended in a spectacular failure with no final document and no agreement on moving forward. For the first ten days of the conference, the US resisted agreement on an agenda that made any reference to past commitments.

    The failure of the treaty conference is overwhelmingly attributable to the nuclear policies of the Bush administration, which has disavowed previous US nuclear disarmament commitments under the treaty. The Bush administration does not seem to grasp the hypocrisy of pressing other nations to forego their nuclear options, while failing to fulfill its own obligations under the disarmament provisions of the treaty.

    The treaty is crumbling under the double standards of American policy, and may not be able to recover from the rigid “do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do” positions of the Bush administration. These policies are viewed by most of the world as high-level nuclear hypocrisy.

    Paul Meyer, the head of Canada’s delegation to the treaty conference, reflected on the conference, “The vast majority of states have to be acknowledged, but we did not get that kind of diplomacy from the US.” Former UK Foreign Minister Robin Cook also singled out the Bush administration in explaining the failure of the conference. “How strange,” he wrote, “that no delegation should have worked harder to frustrate agreement on what needs to be done than the representatives of George Bush.”

    What the US did at the treaty conference was to point the finger at Iran and North Korea, while refusing to discuss or even acknowledge its own failure to meet its obligations under the treaty. Five years ago, at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the parties to the treaty, including the US, agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Under the Bush administration, nearly all of these obligations have been disavowed.

    Although President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, the Bush administration does not support it and refused to allow ratification of this treaty, which is part of the 13 Practical Steps, to even be discussed at the 2005 review conference. The parties to the treaty are aware that the Bush administration is seeking funding from Congress to continue work on new earth penetrating nuclear weapons (“bunker busters”), while telling other nations not to develop nuclear arms.

    They are also aware that the Bush administration has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to pursue a destabilizing missile defense program, and has not supported a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, although the US had agreed to support these treaties in the 13 Practical Steps.

    The failure of this treaty conference makes nuclear proliferation more likely, including proliferation to terrorist organizations that cannot be deterred from using the weapons. The fault for this failure does not lie with other governments as the Bush administration would have us believe. It does not lie with Egypt for seeking consideration of previous promises to achieve a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. Nor does the fault lie with Iran for seeking to enrich uranium for its nuclear energy program, as is done by many other states, including the US, under the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It would no doubt be preferable to have the enrichment of uranium and the separation of plutonium, both of which can be used for nuclear weapons programs, done under strict international controls, but this requires a change in the treaty that must be applicable to all parties, not just to those singled out by the US.

    Nor can the fault be said to lie with those states that, having given up their option to develop nuclear weapons, sought renewed commitments from the nuclear weapons states not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. It is hard to imagine a more reasonable request. Yet the US has refused to relinquish the option of first use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear weapons states.

    The fault for the failure of the treaty conference lies clearly with the Bush administration, which must take full responsibility for undermining the security of every American by its double standards and nuclear hypocrisy.

    The American people must understand the full magnitude of the Bush administration’s failure at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. This may not happen because the administration has been so remarkably successful in spinning the news to suit its unilateralist, militarist and triumphalist worldviews.

    As Americans, we can not afford to wait until we experience an American Hiroshima before we wake up to the very real dangers posed by US nuclear policies. We must demand the reversal of these policies and the resumption of constructive engagement with the rest of the world.

    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 has written extensively on nuclear dangers.

  • A Higher Duty

    Iraq war resister Navy sailor Pablo Paredes has been sentenced to three months of hard labor for refusing deployment to the Persian Gulf. He was also demoted from petty officer third class to seaman recruit, the lowest rank in the Navy. His lawyers call it a victory for war resisters around the country.

    Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Paredes to nine months of confinement and a bad conduct discharge.

    Paredes refused to board the USS Bonhomme Richard as it was preparing to sail from San Diego with 2,000 Marines in December. He surrendered to military authorities a few days later and applied for conscientious objector status. The Navy has denied his request but that ruling is being appealed.

    Paredes was convicted in a court-martial on May 11th on a charge of missing his deployment. Prosecutor Lt. Brandon Hale said “He is trying to infect the military with his own philosophy of disobedience.”

    On Thursday, May 12th, before sentencing, Paredes spoke to the court about his decision not to go to Iraq. He said “I feel in my mind and heart that this war is illegal and immoral.”

    The following statement was made by Pablo Paredes during his military court-martial in San Diego, California on May 12, 2005.

    Your Honor, and to all present, I’d like to state first and foremost that it has never been my intent or motivation to create a mockery of the Navy or its judicial system. I do not consider military members adversaries. I consider myself in solidarity with all service members. It is this feeling of solidarity that was at the root of my actions. I don’t pretend to be in a position to lecture anyone on what I perceive as facts concerning our current political state of affairs. I accept that it is very possible that my political perspective on this war could be wrong. I don’t think that rational people can even engage in debate if neither is willing to accept the possibility that their assertions, no matter how researched, can be tainted with inaccuracy and falsehoods. I do believe that accepting this in no way takes away from one’s confidence in their own convictions.

    I am convinced that the current war in Iraq is illegal. I am also convinced that the true causality for it lacked any high ground in the topography of morality. I believe as a member of the Armed Forces, beyond having duty to my Chain of Command and my President, I have a higher duty to my conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these higher duties dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or indirect, in the current aggression that has been unleashed on Iraq. In the past few months I have been continually asked if I regret my decision to refuse to board my ship and to do so publicly. I have spent hour upon hour reflecting on my decision, and I can tell you with every fiber of certitude that I possess that I feel in my heart I did the right thing.

    This does not mean I have no regrets. I regret dearly exposing the families of marines and sailors to my protest. While I do not feel my message was wrong, I know that those families were facing a difficult moment. This moment was made in some ways more difficult by my actions, and this pains me. That day on the pier, I restrained myself from answering the calls of coward and even some harsher variations of the same term. I did so because I knew this wasn’t the time to engage these families in debate. I thought that I became in many ways a forum in which to vent their fears and sadness. And I didn’t want to turn that into a combative situation in which the families were distracted more by our debate than simply empowered by their ability to chastise my actions. All that being said I still feel my actions made some people very unhappy and made others feel that I was taking away from their child’s or their husband’s goodbye, and I regret this.

    I also regret the pain and stress I have caused those near and dear to me. I know that my lawyers feel that it is ill advised of me to say these things, and I am aware of that. My lawyers have had a very difficult time with me. They also thought that it was ill advised me for me to plead not guilty. It is this I truly want to explain, both to them and to the court. I realize I did not board the Bonhomme Richard on December 6 and that I left after the ship personnel and Pier Master-at-Arms refused to arrest me. Given these confessions one may find it hard to understand why would anyone admit to the action but not plead guilty to the crime. It is this question that has also been the topic of much reflection for me.

    I never deny my actions nor do I run from their consequences. But pleading guilty is more than admission of action. It is also acceptance that that action was wrong and illegal. These are two things I do not and cannot accept. I feel, even with all the regrets and difficulties that have come as a result of my actions, that they were in fact my duty as a human being and as a service member. I feel in my mind and heart that this war is illegal and immoral. The moral argument is one that courts have little room for and has been articulated in my C.O. application. It is an argument that encompasses all wars as intolerable in my system of morals. The legal argument is quite relevant, although motions filed and approved have discriminated against it to the point it was not allowed into this trial.

    I have long now been an ardent reader of independent media, and, in my opinion, less corrupted forms of media, such as TruthOut.org, Democracy Now!, books from folks like Steven Zunes, and Chalmers Johnson, articles from people like Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein. These folks are very educated in matters of politics and are not on the payroll of any major corporate news programming, such as CNN or FOX News network. They all do what they do for reasons other than money, as they could earn much more if they joined the corporate-controlled ranks. I have come to trust their research and value their convictions in assisting me to form my own. They have all unanimously condemned this war as illegal, as well as made resources available for me to draw my own conclusions, resources like Kofi Annan’s statements on how under the U.N. Charter the Iraq War is illegal, resources like Marjorie Cohn’s countless articles providing numerous sources and reasons why the war is illegal under international, as well as domestic law. I could speak on countless sources and their arguments as to the legality of the war on Iraq quite extensively. But again, I don’t presume to be in a position to lecture anyone here on law. I mean only to provide insight on my actions on December 6.

    I understood before that date very well what the precedent was for service members participating in illegal wars. I read extensively on the arguments and results of Nazi German soldiers, as well as imperial Japanese soldiers, in the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials, respectively. In all I read I came to an overwhelming conclusion supported by countless examples that any soldier who knowingly participates in an illegal war can find no haven in the fact that they were following orders, in the eyes of international law.

    Nazi aggression and imperialist Japan are very charged moments of history and simply mentioning them evokes many emotions and reminds of many atrocities. So I want to be very clear that I am in no way comparing our current government to any of the historical counterparts. I am not comparing the leaders or their acts, not their militaries nor their acts. I am only citing the trials because they are the best example of judicial precedent for what a soldier/sailor is expected to do when faced with the decision to participate or refuse to participate in what he perceives is an illegal war.

    I think we would all agree that a service member must not participate in random unprovoked illegitimate violence simply because he is ordered to. What I submit to you and the court is that I am convinced that the current war is exactly that. So, if there’s anything I could be guilty of, it is my beliefs. I am guilty of believing this war is illegal. I’m guilty of believing war in all forms is immoral and useless, and I am guilty of believing that as a service member I have a duty to refuse to participate in this war because it is illegal.

    I do not expect the court to rule on the legality of this war, nor do I expect the court to agree with me. I only wish to express my reasons and convictions surrounding my actions. I acted on my conscience. Whether right or wrong in my convictions I will be at peace knowing I followed my conscience.

  • The War on Iraq as Illegal and Illegitimate

    “The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons.”

    George W. Bush, October 7, 2002

    “I think unless the United Nations shows some backbone and courage, it could render the Security Council irrelevant.”

    George W. Bush, February 17, 2003

    We now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as repeatedly alleged by Mr. Bush and other members of his administration. And contrary to Mr. Bush’s allegation that the United Nations showed no backbone and courage, the Security Council did, in fact, stand up to the Bush administration’s pressure and did resist authorizing war prior to the UN weapons inspectors completing their task. It was the Bush administration’s impatience with the Security Council process and unwillingness to abide by it that led them to initiate an unauthorized attack on Iraq in violation of international law. Although the war in Iraq is widely regarded throughout the world as illegal under international law, few consequences seem to be flowing from this in holding to account the perpetrators of the war, including leading figures in the Bush administration.

    At issue is a view often articulated by detractors of the war, such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, describing the war in Iraq as a “war of choice,” rather than a war of necessity.1 This would suggest that those with sufficient power have choices in matters of war and peace in which they can initiate war without being held accountable; or, at best, be held accountable only by the democratic process of defeat in the next election. The implication is that an illegal war of aggression, while it may be neither wise nor necessary, is a prerogative of power.

    The two main justifications offered by the Bush administration for the war against Iraq prior to its inception have by now been completely discredited. First, administration spokespersons repeatedly pointed to an imminent threat that Iraq would use weapons of mass destruction against the US or its allies, or would transfer these weapons to terrorist organizations. UN weapons inspectors in Iraq prior to the war reported that they were not finding weapons of mass destruction and needed more time to complete their inspections. The Bush administration, however, continued to assert that Iraq had such weapons, despite a lack of credible corroboration, and finally warned the UN inspectors to leave Iraq before the US initiated what they called a “preemptive” war. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his presentation to the United Nations Security Council, asserted without question that the US had knowledge of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and proceeded to produce intelligence photographs of the sites where they were being manufactured and stored.2 His assertions turned out to be false.

    In the aftermath of the war, no weapons of mass destruction were located in Iraq, despite extensive efforts on the part of UN inspectors and US military personnel. This wholly discredited the numerous pronouncements by members of the Bush administration that they not only knew there were such weapons but even knew where they were located within Iraq.

    The second justification for the war made by the Bush administration prior to initiating the war was that there was a link between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. The evidence establishing this link has also proven to be false or, at best, extremely tenuous. This led the US to come up with new post hoc justifications for the war, such as the assertion that Saddam Hussein was a bad man and evil dictator, even though the US supported Hussein despite his poor human rights record when it believed that it served its interests to do so. While the latter, after-the-fact justifications may be true, they do not make an effective case for legality, or even legitimacy, of an aggressive war initiated without UN authorization.

    If allowed to stand unchallenged, the US initiation of war on Iraq and the rationale that permitted it could set an extremely dangerous precedent. Such actions could also undermine the legal and normative system to prevent wars of aggression, centered in the United Nations and enunciated in the Nuremberg Principles, which were the basis for the trials of Axis leaders in the aftermath of World War II. The Nuremberg Principles list “Crimes against peace” as first among the crimes punishable under international law and define Crimes against peace as: “(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation of a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).”

    The words of the US chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Justice Robert Jackson, are relevant. Jackson was adamant that the true test of what was done at Nuremberg would be the extent to which the Allied victors, including the US, applied these principles to themselves in future years. In his opening statement to the Court, Jackson placed the issue of “victor’s justice” in context: “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this Trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice.”3 Such “aspirations to do justice” included for Jackson applying the law equally and fairly to all. “If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes,” he stated, “they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”4

    The Illegality of the Iraq War

    The UN Charter is clear that wars of aggression are prohibited. Article 2(4) states: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”5 This prohibition on the use of force finds an exception in Article 51 of the Charter, which allows for the possibility of self-defense.6

    Article 51 states: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”7 It should be emphasized that this exception to the general prohibition against the use of force is only valid in the event of “an armed attack” and only “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

    In the case of the US war against Iraq, there was no armed attack against the US by Iraq, nor any substantiated threat of armed attack. There was no credible evidence that Iraq had any relationship to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the US. There was, therefore, no appropriate justification for the invocation of the self-defense exception to the UN Charter’s prohibition against the use of force. If the US could proceed to war against Iraq on the basis of a claim of potential future attack, it would open the door to a broad range of assertions of potential future attacks by one country against another that would justify unilateral initiation of warfare, whether or not based on factual foundations, paranoia or simple expediency. It would throw the international order into a state of chaos.

    Further, the matter of Iraq’s failure to complete the disarmament obligations imposed upon it by the Security Council following the 1991 Gulf War was actually placed before the Security Council by the US for action, and the Security Council resisted US pressure to provide the US with an authorization to use force. The Bush administration, at the urging of Secretary of State Colin Powell and over objections of other administration officials, sought a Security Council mandate to initiate what the US called a “preemptive war” (but was actually a “preventive war” since it involved no imminent threat of attack but only sought to prevent the imagined possibility of a future attack) against Iraq.

    The Security Council did agree to one resolution, UNSC Resolution 1441, that called on Iraq to disarm its weapons of mass destruction and cooperate with UN inspectors, but did not include an authorization for the use of force against Iraq.8 In Resolution 1441, the Security Council indicated that it would remain “seized” of the matter, meaning that it continued to assert its authority as the final international arbiter of the use of force in the matter. When the US went back to the Security Council for a second and follow-up resolution to 1441, this one to provide authorization to proceed to war against Iraq, the Security Council refused to comply with the US demand for such authorization on the grounds that it wanted to give the UN inspectors more time to finish their work.

    Rather than awaiting authorization from the Security Council or abiding by the Council’s unwillingness to provide such authorization, the US, under the Bush administration, which had been gradually repositioning its military forces into the Middle East in preparation for war with Iraq, abandoned its quest for UN authorization and proceeded to attack and invade Iraq. The Bush administration sought to justify its illegal actions on the basis of Security Council Resolution 678, a 1990 resolution that authorized “all necessary means” to uphold previous resolutions related to Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait and to restore peace and security in the area.9 The resolution authorized the use of force unless Iraq fully complied with previous Council resolutions by January 15, 1991. This resolution was used as legal justification for the attack against Iraq on that date by the US-led coalition and also by the Bush II administration for its attack in March 2003. While the justification is relevant, at least legally, to the 1991 Gulf War, it is basically used as sophistry in relation to the 2003 attack.

    Following the first Gulf War, Iraq accepted a cease-fire contained in Security Council Resolution 687.10 This resolution imposed certain conditions on them, including weapons of mass destruction (WMD) disarmament obligations. In justifying the 2003 war on Iraq, Bush administration officials continued to rely upon the Security Council resolutions preceding and immediately following the 199l Gulf War. State Department Legal Advisers, for example, argued, “As a legal matter, a material breach of the conditions that had been essential to the establishment of the cease-fire left the responsibility to member states to enforce those conditions, operating consistently with Resolution 678 to use all necessary means to restore international peace and security in the area.”11

    These officials further argued that the provision in Resolution 1441 indicating that Iraq was in “material breach of its obligations” to cooperate with UN inspectors on WMD inspections under previous resolutions, including resolutions 678 and 687, allowed them to legally initiate their attack on Iraq.12 In fact, however, Resolution 1441 offered Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with disarmament obligations,”13 and Iraq was doing so. Iraq was cooperating with UN inspectors on these issues, and the arguments to the contrary, by Colin Powell and others in the Bush administration, have since been exposed as misrepresentations.14 Most important, though, Security Council Resolution 1441 stated that the Security Council would remain seized of the matter, thus indicating that without further Council authorization there was not legal justification for the US and its allies to proceed to war against Iraq.15

    The US-led attack against Iraq constitutes a clear undermining of established Security Council authority in the realm of war and peace. The attack and initiation of the Iraq War would later be described by President Bush in terms of the US not needing a “permission slip,” presumably from the United Nations, when US security interests were threatened.16 As was subsequently revealed, however, US security interests were not threatened, as had been alleged by the Bush administration, and the war therefore had no legal basis. It was considered by the opposition party in the US to be at best a “war of choice.” More realistically, it was understood by large majorities of the populations of nearly all countries in the world to be an aggressive and illegal war of the type for which Axis leaders were held to account by the Allied powers after World War II. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said unequivocally that the war was illegal. Referring to the war, he stated, “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.”17

    The Security Council could have chosen to act under Article 39 of the UN Charter to authorize the use of force against Iraq if it determined that there had been a breach of the peace or act of aggression. Article 39 states,18“The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”19 Article 41 refers to actions the Security Council can take that do not involve the use of force. Article 42 refers to acts of force the Security Council can take if it finds the measures under Article 41 to be inadequate. These include “such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.”20 No such actions were authorized by the Security Council in relation to the Iraq War initiated by Mr. Bush and other US and coalition leaders in March 2003.

    The Illegitimacy of the Iraq War

    Despite the nearly universal understanding of the illegality of the war, it might be asked under what conditions it might nonetheless be considered legitimate, even if not legal. This line of inquiry takes into account the argument that the threat of a possible attack with weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, would allow for some bending of international law to fit the extreme dangers associated with such weapons. In response to this line of inquiry, it seems reasonable to suggest that evidence of the development of weapons of mass destruction, when combined with further evidence of imminent intent to use such weapons, could constitute a sufficient threat to justify preemptive war in an attempt to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction. (Query: Would the 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review,21 which calls for developing contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against seven countries, suggest imminent threat, and constitute sufficient grounds for a preemptive attack by one of these states against the US?)

    Hans Blix, the former chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq, analyzed the pre-war situation in Iraq in this way: “Any government learning that a 9/11, perhaps with weapons of mass destruction, is about to happen cannot sit and wait, but will seek to prevent it. However, such preventive action, if undertaken without the authorization of the Security Council, would have to rely critically upon solid intelligence if it were to be internationally accepted. The case of Iraq cannot be said to have strengthened faith in national intelligence as a basis for preemptive military action without Security Council authorization. Saddam Hussein did not have any weapons of mass destruction in March 2003, and the evidence invoked of the existence of such weapons had begun to fall apart even before the invasion started.”22 Based on this analysis, Blix concluded: “Saddam Hussein was not a valid object for counter-proliferation. He was not an imminent or even remote threat to the United States or to Iraq’s neighbors.”23

    It should be understood that even if there had been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, this alone would not have been a sufficient justification for preemptive war. The mere presence of weapons of mass destruction, absent evidence of imminent intent to use them, would be insufficient to justify a preemptive war, let alone a preventive war. If the mere presence of weapons of mass destruction were sufficient, it would mean that any country possessing weapons of mass destruction would be a legitimate target of preventive attack by a potential enemy of that country. Such logic would push all states in the direction of preventive warfare and would substantially increase both the likelihood and danger of such wars. It would allow for attacks against Israel on the basis of its secret but widely recognized nuclear weapons program, for attacks by either India or Pakistan against the other, and for attacks by any of the nuclear weapons states against one another. This is, in part, why the International Court of Justice, in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on the illegality of nuclear weapons, stated: “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.”24

    Following further this line of inquiry, a distinction needs to be drawn between a state possessing weapons of mass destruction and non-state extremist groups possessing the same weapons. In the former case, a country has a fixed location and is therefore far more likely to be deterred by threat of retaliation from using such weapons. On the other hand, the same weapons in the hands of extremists who are not easily locatable and who may be suicidal as well, and therefore are not subject to being deterred by threats of retaliation, present a far more dangerous threat. In the case of both states of concern – such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea – and of extremist groups, however, the best remedy is surely policies to prevent nuclear proliferation and achieve nuclear disarmament rather than a preemptive war. An aggressive war could only stand as a final barrier and one that is unacceptable and illegal unless under the mandate of the international community through authorization by the United Nations Security Council.

    Given the after-the-fact findings in Iraq that there were neither weapons of mass destruction nor links to extremist organizations, there was no reasonable justification, either in legality or in legitimacy, for the US-led war against that country. US leaders continue to make the claim that previous Security Council resolutions provide the necessary justification, but this is a poor argument that is not borne out by scrutiny of the earlier resolutions and, in any event, is overridden by the fact that the Security Council had decided in Resolution 1441 to remain seized of the matter.

    Costs of the War

    Defenders of the Iraq War claim that the removal of Saddam Hussein by the rapidly diminishing “Coalition of the Willing” will make it possible for democracy to eventually take root in the country, and that a new Iraq will serve as a model to other countries in the region, transforming a troublesome, but oil rich, part of the world into one that is stable, peaceful and democratic. This is an unlikely scenario, given the realities that have ensued as a result of the war.

    While many Iraqi citizens are pleased to see Saddam Hussein dislodged from power, the result of the Iraq War has been the deaths of some 100,000 innocent civilians, severe injury to tens of thousands more, and enormous destruction to the infrastructure of the country.25 Iraqi society has been devastated by warfare and its citizens subjected to death, injury, torture and humiliating abuses such as were revealed at Abu Ghraib prison. The price for regime change has been very high in terms of death and destruction. Iraq will now have to struggle with reestablishing itself as a sovereign state, finding its own means of governance in a post-Saddam and post-US occupation country. As part of this struggle, it will have to come to terms with its relationship to the US, which undoubtedly seeks to assure special privileges with Iraq with regard to Iraqi oil supplies and the continued presence of US troops in the region, particularly on newly established US military bases in Iraq itself.

    Of course, the US has also paid a price for the war in terms of its financial costs, currently estimated at over $200 billion, the deaths and injuries of its soldiers, the spreading thin of its armed forces to levels considered dangerous by leading US military figures, and the loss of respect for and credibility of the US in the world community.

    A second area of equally severe costs of the war against Iraq is its unfortunate implications for world order in the 21 st century. If the US precedent of aggressive war under false pretenses against Iraq is allowed to stand as a fait accompli without some form of international sanction against the US and its leaders, it bodes ill for the continuation of the world order system established after World War II to prevent “the scourge of war.”26 Clearly, the US is a key actor in the international system and, with its overwhelming military and economic power, it is not easy for the international community to stand up for principles of international law against US actions that violate the UN Charter. Yet, the continued viability of the Charter demands principled action by the members of the UN even in the face of US pressure. One extremely important principle of law is that no person or nation stands above the law. Law can only be respected and ultimately enforced when it applies to all, equally and alike. The US-led invasion of Iraq, under false pretenses and without UN Security Council approval, is a direct challenge to the principle of prohibition on the use of force in the UN Charter. Had the Security Council actually authorized the US attack on Iraq, it would have undermined the credibility of the United Nations itself, including its commitment to the basic principles of its own Charter.

    The Need for Accountability

    Throughout the world, there have been an ongoing series of inquiries into international crimes committed by US and Coalition leaders in initiating and conducting the war against Iraq in the form of international people’s tribunals.27 These tribunals, in the spirit of the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunals during the Vietnam War, are amassing evidence of international crimes and will be reporting these to the public throughout the world. This is an important initiative of civil society, and it promises to help educate people and governments about the dangers and criminal nature of wars of aggression as well as crimes committed in the conduct of the war. Something more is needed, however, than leaving this matter to be dealt with only by civil society. The UN, for the health and integrity of the organization, also needs to initiate its own inquiry into the nature of the US war against Iraq. This could be done either in the General Assembly or by a committee of selected representative members of the UN and brought back to the General Assembly and, through it, to the people of the world. If the facts bear out the circumvention of the UN Charter by the US in direct defiance of the Security Council, at a minimum, the US should be censured for its actions. Further recommendations by the General Assembly could include a call for reparations to the Iraqi people, prohibitions on the US profiting from its aggression, the disgorgement of profits already obtained, and the trial and punishment of responsible US and coalition leaders for their actions.

    An early act of the Bush administration was to “unsign” the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court (ICC).28 Under the Bush administration, the US has been hostile to the ICC, arguing that it did not want to subject US military personnel to the dictates of this international court. In light of the US circumvention of international law in its initiation of an aggressive war against Iraq, it becomes clearer that US leaders were seeking to give themselves greater degrees of freedom to commit serious violations of international criminal law without being subjected to the jurisdiction of the court.

    No country, even the most powerful, should be immune from international law. The United Nations owes it to itself and the principles for which the organization stands not to allow the law to be violated without, at a minimum, drawing public attention to the violations. While a report by the UN on illegal actions by a member state might upset the government of that state, it would also help to draw the attention of the people of that country to illegal acts being committed in their name. This would bear some resemblance at the international level to the truth aspect of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was successfully used in South Africa after apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela was released from prison to become president of that country.29 It would be useful for a UN committee examining the violations of international law in the US-led war against Iraq to also look carefully into the more than a decade of sanctions imposed upon Iraq and the results of those sanctions in terms of human life and suffering of innocent parties.

    The Iraq War and Weapons of Mass Destruction

    At the heart of world conditions that provided the ostensible reason that the US went into Iraq are the extreme threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. Many countries are now concerned about the incendiary mix that lies at the intersection of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. The need is greater today than ever before to bring weapons of mass destruction under effective international control, and many countries have voiced their concern that more must be done to keep weapons of mass destruction from proliferating to states of concern and non-state extremist organizations. Mr. Bush has spoken out on the importance of preventing nuclear terrorism. His plans involve attempting to keep what he refers to as the world’s most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the world’s most dangerous states and extremist organizations. Mr. Bush has organized a Proliferation Security Initiative that seeks to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to other states and to terrorist groups.30 To accomplish this, cooperating countries are tightening export controls, criminalizing transfers of weapons of mass destruction and the materials to create them, and making arrangements to board and inspect ships at sea suspected of transporting contraband materials.

    Bush has noted the “loophole” in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that allows states to develop peaceful nuclear programs that could be converted to nuclear weapons programs.31 He has called for closing this “loophole,” although the treaty itself calls the peaceful uses of nuclear energy an “inalienable right.”32 Additionally, he has called for tighter controls on nuclear materials by the International Atomic Energy Agency and particularly international controls on the technologies to reprocess plutonium and enrich uranium. Bush has not raised, however, the key obligation of the nuclear weapons states in the treaty, the Article VI obligation to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament, which, more than any other single act, could limit the possibilities of nuclear weapons or the materials to make them falling into the hands of terrorists.33

    A major problem in the international system related to preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is the double standard on nuclear weapons that the permanent members of the UN Security Council continue attempting to uphold individually and collectively. While these states continue to maintain nuclear arsenals, all seek also to prevent other states from developing these weapons. In the end, such double standards cannot be maintained. It is not likely, for example, that the US would have initiated its aggressive war against Iraq if it truly believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that it was prepared to use. A consequence of the Iraq War is that it demonstrated to non-nuclear weapon states that there are advantages to possessing these weapons if only to deter a stronger power, such as the US, from an unprovoked and illegal attack. This message does not seem to be lost on either North Korea, which announced that it has developed nuclear weapons, or on Iran, a country that appears to be pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

    The initiation of warfare to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by a state possessing weapons of mass destruction reflects the ultimate double standard in the current international system. It is a standard that ultimately cannot hold, and in the end will bring the current international order tumbling down. In a sense, the nuclear weapons states are holding the world hostage to this double standard by failing to fulfill their obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Projecting into the future a continuation of the effort to maintain these double standards, despite long-standing obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, suggests the possibility that aggressive “wars of choice” may increase and become a regular occurrence in relations among countries. Such a future will also increase the likelihood of the use of weapons of mass destruction, either preemptively by a nuclear weapons state, or by extremist organizations intent on inflicting maximum damage on powerful states in the only way they are capable of damaging them, that is, by attacks on innocent civilians.

    Need for Action by the United Nations

    The world continues to stand at a crossroads. In one direction is a continuation of the status quo based on double standards related to weapons of mass destruction; in the other direction is a world in which international law applies to all countries, even the most powerful. The world’s countries, acting through the United Nations, must find a way to end double standards relating to weapons of mass destruction and, at the same time, to fulfill the promise of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to achieve total nuclear disarmament through the phased elimination of all nuclear arsenals. Prohibitions already exist on chemical and biological weapons, but the international community must find a way to assure the viability of these prohibitions through robust inspection and verification mechanisms.

    In the short run, the war against Iraq has alerted the world to the dangers of a breakdown of accepted international norms and prohibitions against aggressive war. In the longer run, however, the resolution of this problem will require the strengthening of the UN itself and the ending of current double standards applied to the possession of weapons of mass destruction. The starting point for addressing this problem is for the UN to take responsibility for reviewing and evaluating what happened leading to the war against Iraq and to draw attention to violations of the UN Charter that occurred when the US and its coalition partners proceeded to invade and occupy Iraq without authorization by the Security Council. In doing so, it is likely that the conclusion will be inescapable that the US-led war was neither legal nor legitimate.

    Some Final Questions

    Finally, let us consider some remaining questions that might be raised about the Iraq War. Was it a defining moment for international law? If it was a defining moment, it was so only in calling for a clear response from the international community that no state, including the most powerful, stands above the law. Otherwise, the Iraq War represents aggressive warfare of a type that has occurred throughout history. Nonetheless, we might inquire about the right of states, individually or collectively, to remove from power a dictator that has a long record of violating international law and committing crimes against his own people. Certainly the international community has some responsibility in such a case, but it is a responsibility that must be exercised with proper authorization of the UN Security Council. Absent such authorization, there is no right under the law for a state to proceed to forcefully intervene in the internal affairs of another sovereign state.

    Was the Security Council’s refusal to authorize war a triumphant moment for it, as some would argue, or was it an abdication of responsibility as others, particularly the US, would argue? If it was a triumphant moment, it was certainly a hollow one, for although the Security Council, to its credit, did not authorize the use of force in violation of the UN Charter, it was unable to prevent its most powerful member from acting without its authorization. Thus, although the Security Council may have been right, its authority was weakened by the noncompliance of the United States in acting without UN authority, and thereby illegally, in a spirit of exceptionalism.

    Should the legal norm of non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states be abandoned? This norm deserves review by the Security Council in an attempt to better delineate under what circumstances this norm should be set aside by the Security Council. Examples of overriding circumstances could include when genocides or crimes against humanity are occurring or are believed, based on sufficient evidence, to be imminent. A strong case can be made for establishing a UN Emergency Peace Service, a well-trained force composed of international volunteers, which would be available for rapid deployment upon authorization of the Security Council to prevent genocide or crimes against humanity.34 In relation to genocide and crimes against humanity, it would be appropriate to place limits on the veto power of the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

    Does the Iraq War provide a model for future instances of controlling weapons of mass destruction? It is a very poor model for this purpose. Wars to control weapons of mass destruction are costly in terms of life and treasure, and sometimes, as in the case of Iraq, the wars may be based on faulty information, manipulated intelligence, false premises, misrepresentations and deceptions. The control of weapons of mass destruction can only be achieved in the end by doing away with double standards and placing all weapons of mass destruction and the materials to make them under verifiable international control while they are being dismantled and destroyed. This will require strengthening the chemical, biological and nuclear non-proliferation regimes; and this, in turn, will require a much higher level of political will by the states currently possessing such weapons of mass destruction.

    A Step Backward for International Law

    The Iraq War has been a step backward for international law, has harmed the authority of the UN Security Council and has undermined the credibility of the United States in the eyes of the world. The United Nations is faced with the dilemma of reasserting the post-World War II emphasis on ending the “scourge of war” in the face of a disturbing pattern of unilateralism, exceptionalism and disregard for international law displayed by the United States. The international community, acting through the United Nations, needs to establish effective limitations on unilateral action by all states and censure and apply sanctions to any country, including the most powerful, that defies the dictates of international law. At a minimum, the UN General Assembly should conduct a thorough review of the circumstances leading to the initiation of war against Iraq, and determine authoritatively whether that war was conducted legally with reference to international law.

    This matter cannot be left in the hands of the UN Security Council since the US, as a permanent member, would exercise its veto power to prevent such a review from going forward. If the General Assembly deems it appropriate, it can turn to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the matter. The UN report or advisory opinion of the Court should be made public and widely disseminated. Proposals should be made by the General Assembly on preventing aggressive wars in the future and on the circumstances under which humanitarian interventions are appropriate. Were the United Nations to thoroughly review the matter and issue a strong report, it is possible that the international community could learn from what has happened and attempt to more effectively control such unauthorized and costly interventions in the future.

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons and is the author of many studies of peace in the Nuclear Age, including Nuclear Weapons and the World Court.

    *This paper has been submitted for inclusion in the book The Iraq Crisis and World Order: Structural and Normative Challenges, Ramesh Thakur and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, editors, to be published by United Nations University Press, Tokyo (www.unu.edu/unupress).

    1. See, for example, Albright, Madeleine, “Medallion Speaker Address” (Commonwealth Club), 12 February 2004, http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/04/04-02albright-speech.html. Albright states, “Because although the war in Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity, winning the peace is a necessity, not a choice.”
    2. “ US Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses UN Security Council,” 5 February 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html.
    3. General Assembly Resolution 95(1), 11 December 1946.
    4. Quoted in Taylor, Telford, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials. New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 1992, p. 168.
    5. Quoted in Tusa, Ann and John Tusa, The Nuremberg Trial. New York: The Notable Trials Library, 1990, p. 81.
    6. United Nations Charter, entered into force 24 October 1945, http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter.
    7. . bid.
    8. Ibid.
    9. Security Council Resolution 1441, 8 November 2002, 42 ILM 250 (2003).
    10. Security Council Resolution 678, 29 November 1990, 29 ILM 1565 (1990).
    11. Security Council Resolution 687, 3 April 1991, 30 ILM 846 (1991).
    12. Taft IV, William H. and Todd F. Buchwald, “Preemption, Iraq and International Law,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 97, No. 3, July 2003, p. 559. (The authors work for the US State Department. Mr. Taft is Legal Adviser to the US State Department, and Mr. Buchwald is Assistant Legal Adviser for Political-Military Affairs.)
    13. Taft and Buchwald, op.cit., pp. 560-561.
    14. Security Council Resolution 1441, operative paragraph 2 states: “Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; and accordingly decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council.”
    15. “US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Address to the UN Security Council,” 5 February 2003, can be found on the White House website under the heading, “Iraq, Denial and Deception,” http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html. Powell was later reported to have “told The Washington Post that he doesn’t know whether he would have recommended the invasion of Iraq if he had been told at the time that there were no stockpiles of banned weapons.” See “The Man Who Knew,” 4 February 2004, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/main577975.shtml.
    16. Security Council Resolution 1441, operative paragraph 14 states: “”Decides to remain seized of the matter.”
    17. Bush, George W., “State of the Union Address,” 20 January 2004, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html.
    18. See MacAskill, Ewen and Julian Borger, “Iraq War was Illegal and Breached UN Charter, Says Annan,” Guardian, 16 September 2004, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0916-01.htm.
    19. United Nations Charter, http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter.
    20. Ibid.
    21. Excerpts from the classified Nuclear Posture Review, submitted to Congress on 31 December 2001, can be found at http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm.
    22. Blix, Hans, “The Importance of Inspections.” Proliferation Brief (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Vol. 7, No. 11, 2004, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1591.
    23. Ibid.
    24. “Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons,” General Assembly document A/51/218, 15 October 1996, p. 37.
    25. Rosenthal, Elisabeth, “Study puts civilian toll in Iraq at over 100,000,” International Herald Tribune, 30 October 2004.
    26. United Nations Charter, http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter.
    27. See, for example, “World Tribunal on Iraq, Platform Document, 29 October 2003, http://www.brusselstribunal.org/wti_platform_text.htm.
    28. The Treaty Establishing an International Criminal Court, entered into force on July 1, 2002. The treaty was signed by President Clinton on December 31, 2000. President Bush took the unprecedented step of “unsigning” the treaty in May 2002.
    29. See Tutu, Desmond, No Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday, 1999.
    30. On the Proliferation Security Initiative see: Bolton, John, “The Proliferation Security Initiative: A Vision Becomes a Reality,” 31 May 2004, http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/33046.htm. For a more critical perspective, see “The Proliferation Security Initiative: Naval Interception Bush-Style,” Center for Defense Information, 25 August 2003, http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1667.
    31. See Milbank, Dana and Peter Slevin, “Bush Details Plans to Curb Nuclear Arms,” Washington Post, 12 February 2004.
    32. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, entered into force on March 5, 1970, http://www.armscontrol.org/documents/npt.asp. Article IV(1) of the Treaty states: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop, research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty.” This clause may be viewed as an obstacle to achieving the non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament goals of the Treaty.
    33. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, http://www.armscontrol.org/documents/npt.asp. Article VI of the Treaty states: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” This critical element of the nuclear non-proliferation/disarmament bargain has been largely ignored by the nuclear weapons states.
    34. See Wang, Justine, “A Symposium on Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity: The Challenge of Prevention and Enforcement,” 8 January 2004, https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/2004/01/08_wang_symposium.htm.

  • US Won’t Rule Out Waging War in Space, General Says

    A top U.S. space commander says the United States can’t rule out attacking the satellites and other spacecraft of enemy nations in the future.

    But Lt.-Gen. Daniel Leaf, vice-commander of the American air force space command, says at this point the U.S. is focused on protecting its own space capabilities, although it has to keep an eye on the potential that weapons will be developed by other nations to target U.S. satellites and spacecraft. And even if it does decide to directly counter such moves, that doesn’t mean it will resort to putting weapons into orbit, according to the officer.

    The issue of turning space into a battleground has become a hot-button topic in the U.S. and Canada. Some defence analysts have voiced concern the Pentagon is preparing to fight a war in orbit and worry that Prime Minister Paul Martin’s government is being drawn into those plans. Analysts also cite a report issued last August by the U.S. air force, which, they note, acknowledged that satellites of enemy or neutral countries could be destroyed if necessary.

    “Our active plans right now are not along those lines,” Lt.-Gen. Leaf said in an interview with the Citizen. “They’re along the lines of denying access to space capabilities, protecting our own access, and having space situational awareness to know what’s going on.”

    “We don’t have the luxury of dismissing the fact that it may come to that point some day,” he added.

    “It is not in our interest or in our policy to make that day come sooner. But our thinking has to consider an adversary might do it.”

    Lt.-Gen. Leaf said countering efforts by other nations to strike at American space systems does not automatically mean the U.S. would respond by building space weapons. He cited an example of Iraqi forces trying to jam U.S. military navigation satellites, noting the response was to use aircraft to bomb the Iraqi jamming sites.

    But Washington-based defence analyst Theresa Hitchens said last year’s report lays out for air force commanders the procedures they would follow for launching attacks in space. It also signals the air force’s acceptance of space as a battle zone, said Ms. Hitchens, vice-president of the Center for Defense Information.

    She noted the study outlines the option of a pre-emptive attack on the satellites of other countries, including those operated by neutral nations that may be used by the Americans’ adversaries. “That doctrine does not rule out the use of destructive measures,” said Ms. Hitchens.

    She noted the Pentagon has become increasingly uneasy about the response from U.S. lawmakers concerned about a potential push to make space a battlefield. As a result, the U.S. military has increased its public relations efforts to downplay future space plans and to cast them as appearing to be defensive in nature, she added.

    “The air force talks about pre-emptive action against a satellite so isn’t that by definition an offensive technique?” asked Ms. Hitchens. “I don’t see how that is defensive.”

    Lt.-Gen. Leaf acknowledged the air force’s report discusses the potential to stop enemy nations from using satellites being operated by another nation, but said the answer to that is not in destroying those spacecraft.

    “When you ask how do we deny an enemy access to space capabilities that might come from a third country or a satellite that is used by others, the answer is clearly not through brute force,” he explained. “It is going to have to be a precise, refined, sophisticated approach to denying those capabilities. And those are the kind of tough issues we are grappling with.”

    Canada has several military space programs on the go, all designed to gather information for the Canadian Forces, but also to feed that data to the U.S. Included among those are Projects Sapphire and Polar Star as well as the ultra-secret program dubbed Polar Ice.

    Lt.-Gen. Leaf noted he can’t speak for Canada on those programs but responded: “Can they contribute to what our nations do as partners? Yes.”

    © The Ottawa Citizen 2005

  • Nuclear Proliferation: One Cheer for Kerry

    George Bush and John Kerry both agreed during their first debate in Miami on September 30th that nuclear proliferation is the single greatest threat to American national security.  They are undoubtedly correct. The late U.S. Senator Alan Cranston liked to say that if a single nuclear warhead detonates a single time in a single city in the world, all other issues will become instantly trivial by comparison.

    On the small nuclear questions Kerry is far superior to Bush. But on the big nuclear question, Kerry might as well be Bush. Because neither Bush nor Kerry have come close to challenging the single greatest stimulant to nuclear proliferation: The nuclear double standard. Our nation’s nuclear narcissism. America’s nuclear hypocrisy.

    “Nuclear proliferation,” said Kerry immediately when asked by Miami debate moderator Jim Lehrer to describe the greatest security threat facing the United States. Nuclear proliferation.” “I agree with my opponent,” said Bush moments later, “that the biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network.”

    These declarations were accompanied by many comments about the present or potential nuclear capabilities of Pakistan, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Russia, and unspecified “terrorist enemies.” But though both candidates said a great deal about the frightful dangers stemming from nuclear weapons in the hands of others, neither said a single word about the 10,455 operational nuclear warheads currently in the hands of ourselves.

    NORTH KOREA: ROGUE STATE OR THREATENED STATE?

    On the question of North Korea’s nascent nuclear arsenal, the candidates during the first two debates engaged in a dispute so arcane that it almost seemed like a Saturday Night Live parody. Their argument about the costs and benefits of bilateral vs. multilateral negotiations (Bush favors the latter, Kerry favors both) was undoubtedly above the heads of at least 99% of the viewers, and likely swayed not a single swing state voter. Neither candidate came close to addressing the underlying issue: the motivation behind Kim Jong-Il’s quest for a nuclear arsenal.

    Consider the view from Pyongyang. America maintains a breathtaking military superiority over their country (or any country) in both the nuclear and conventional realms. George Bush announces a doctrine of launching unilateral, illegal, preventive wars against any nation his Administration subjectively determines might become a threat sometime down the road. He singles out three countries as constituting an “axis of evil,” (and gratuitously reiterated that characterization at the second debate in St. Louis.) He actually starts a war against one of the three — decapitating its regime, killing the supreme leader’s sons, and driving the leader himself into a pathetic hole in the ground.

    Given this track record, is it wholly unreasonable for North Korean decisionmakers to worry that the United States intends to invade their country, decapitate their government, and drive their leaders into a spider hole of their own? And is it wholly irrational for them to seek to acquire the one tool that could conceivably deter the awesome power that America can wield over them – a couple of atomic bombs?

    THE PRECARIOUS NUCLEAR DOUBLE STANDARD

    The basic predicament, from the perspective of other countries, cannot be expressed more simply: Why can we have them when they can’t? How come the United States and a handful of countries can have thousands of nuclear warheads, but other countries can’t have even one? What’s the principle? What’s the argument? It is never said. To the rest of the world this is sanctimonious and self-righteous, and appears based on the condescending notion that some are responsible enough to be “trusted” with these weapons, while others are not.

    President Bush himself, perhaps unwittingly, has managed to expose and illuminate this conceit of cultural superiority. “We owe it to our children,” he said in August of 2002, “to free the world from weapons of mass destruction in the hands of those who hate freedom.” Well that pretty much settles it, doesn’t it? Nuclear weapons in the hands of those who “hate freedom” are impermissible; nuclear arsenals in the hands of the Lovers of Freedom are, apparently, just fine with us. And just who will determine who “hates freedom” so much they must be denied the nuclear prize? Why the Freedom Lovers, of course, in whose hands nuclear weapons already presently reside.

    The trouble with that is that it’s not going to be entirely up to us. When we insist that nuclear weapons are vital to our security, other countries are bound to conclude that nuclear weapons will enhance their security as well. “There is an irrefutable truth about nuclear weapons,” says Ambassador Richard Butler of Australia, who spent much of the 1990s searching for nuclear weapons in Iraq. “As long as any one state has them, others will seek to acquire them.” Far from preventing nuclear proliferation, our nuclear arsenal is in fact the greatest provocation for it.

    This is especially true when the original Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is understood in its original context. The NPT of 1970 was not just a framework to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. It was, instead, a grand bargain — where the great many “nuclear have-nots” agreed to forever forego nuclear weapons, while the few “nuclear haves” agreed eventually to get rid of theirs. The World Court concluded unanimously in 1996 that the NPT and other international legal precedents had created “an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.” Moreover, the United States recommitted itself to the grand bargain at the 30-year NPT Review Conference in the spring of 2000, where the NPT’s nuclear signatories pledged “an unequivocal undertaking … to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

    If anything seems certain about the political landscape in the decades to come, it is that the nuclear status quo cannot last. We can seriously commit ourselves to fewer nuclear weapons and fewer nuclear states, or we can resign ourselves to more and more nuclear weapons floating around the world and more and more nuclear states. Stay the course, and we’ll likely witness a presidential debate 20 or 30 years hence where candidate Lindsay Lohan argues with candidate Hilary Duff — about how to deal with a world of 20 or 30 nuclear states. Continue down the same road, and our reward will be a vice presidential debate between candidates Mary-Kate Olsen and Lil’ Romeo — where each of them lectures Brazil or South Korea or Egypt or Indonesia or Japan about going nuclear, but neither says a word – any more than did Bush and Kerry — about the United States remaining nuclear.

    THE FALLACY OF BEAN COUNTING

    One thing the peace and disarmament left must begin to challenge is the notion that bean counting makes any meaningful difference on the fundamentals of nuclear security. Under the Moscow Treaty of 2002, the Bush Administration has committed to reduce our active nuclear inventory to 2200 operational warheads by the year 2012. But the Moscow Treaty is probably the emptiest disarmament agreement ever signed. It’s bad enough that the warheads and missiles we have agreed to decommission will simply be put into storage – likely available for redeployment within a matter of days. (As the Italian commentator Bruno Marolo put it: “A subtle distinction is now emerging between deployed nuclear weapons and set-aside weapons, piled up in a cellar so they can age like a good wine for the next generation.”) It’s bad enough too that the treaty allows for immediate withdrawal without cause – meaning that we could move some 8000 warheads into storage between now and 2012, and then immediately redeploy them the day after the treaty expires, as if it had never existed at all.

    But suppose that we do in fact actually destroy about 80% of our present nuclear arsenal, and do indeed retain only about 2200 warheads by the year 2012. What would this do to reduce the actual dangers posed by nuclear weapons? In what way exactly would 2200 warheads instead of 10,455 diminish the possibility that some simmering international impasse will spin out of control, and result – like the Cuban missile crisis nearly did — in global thermonuclear war?  What does bean counting do to eliminate the unfathomable danger of accidental atomic apocalypse (as opposed to dealerting the thousands of missiles we still incomprehensibly maintain on hair-trigger, poised to be launched with less than five minutes notice)? How does our stated intention to reduce our nuclear inventory to 2200 by 2012 make North Korea or Iran feel safer today (or, for that matter, in 2012)?

    Perhaps most importantly, how does simply cutting numbers reduce the risk that some malevolent creature will someday smuggle a nuclear warhead into the heart of an American city, and commit the greatest act of mass murder in all of human history? What could 10,455, 2200, or a single American nuclear warhead have done to stop Mohammed Atta – a non-state actor with nothing to deter and nothing to lose?

    Our nuclear bombers and missiles and submarines were not only irrelevant to Mohammed Atta, they make a nuclear Mohammed Atta more likely to eventually emerge. Why? Because our nuclear weapons make other nuclear weapons all around the world more likely to eventually emerge, and more likely to eventually fall into the wrong hands. And because – let’s face it – it’s not impossible to suppose that someone might steal or bribe their way into getting their hands on one of ours someday. Even an extraordinarily unlikely event, over a long enough period of time, becomes virtually inevitable.

    If an American city is someday obliterated by a 15-megaton nuclear device, it will matter little to the dead whether the offending warhead came from a stockpile of 10,455 or 2200. John Kerry, however, has said nothing to indicate that he would reopen negotiations on the basic outlines of the Moscow Treaty – even though he undoubtedly envisions 2012 as the final full year of his presidency.

    THE KERRY ADVANTAGE

    There is little doubt that John Kerry would be a far better president on nuclear issues than George Bush. It’s hard to argue for any higher priority than securing nuclear materials and warheads in Russia – the remains of the USSR’s 4 ½ decades of preparations for global thermonuclear war. Kerry seems to understand this, and his pledge during the Miami debate to complete the destruction of 600 tons of fissile material in Russia before his first term is out should be unequivocally applauded. Bush, on the other hand, is spending fully 12 times as much on new nuclear weapon research than on efforts to secure and dispose of loose nuclear materials worldwide.

    Kerry was a staunch supporter of the nuclear freeze movement which blossomed after Ronald Reagan’s saber-rattling and victorious presidential campaign in 1980. The freeze, in fact, was one of the central planks of Kerry’s initial and victorious run for the U.S. Senate in 1984. George Bush opposes ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, while John Kerry has consistently supported it. Kerry has promised to toughen export controls, strengthen law enforcement, and work through the United Nations to make trade in WMD technologies an international crime.

    And while Kerry has not categorically rejected missile defenses, it is clear that he is much less enthusiastic about them than Bush. The Administration apparently intends to declare the first elements of its ballistic missile defense operational before the end of this year. It was Bush, of course, who unilaterally withdrew the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, a move that Kerry declared would “welcome an arms race that will make us more vulnerable, not less.”

    Perhaps most significantly, Kerry has directly challenged Bush’s plan to build a brand new nuclear weapon: the “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.”  This bomb, a good five times the size of the Hiroshima device, is being designed to burrow deep into the earth to seek out and destroy subterranean command complexes. Unlike traditional nuclear weapons that detonate above ground, this one would likely cast hundreds of tons of radioactive rocks and dirt and dust high into the sky, likely exposing thousands to slow and agonizing deaths from radioactive fallout.

    So much for Republicans calling themselves the party that is “prolife.”

    “Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars  to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons,” said Kerry in the Miami debate. “You talk about mixed messages. We’re telling other people, ‘You can’t have nuclear weapons,’ but we’re pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using. Not this president. I’m going to shut that program down.”

    This is certainly a good thing, and something the left should unapologetically applaud. But it is one thing for John Kerry to oppose the development of new types of nuclear weapons, another altogether to put the thousands we already possess on the table. Kerry needs to understand that the “mixed message” on nuclear weapons isn’t just about the new weapons that the Bush Administration has begun to pursue. For decades now, the United States has said to other countries, “We need them, but you don’t. They’re good for us, but no good for you. We can have them, but you can’t. ” What kind of message does that send?

    THE NUCLEAR SWORD OF DAMOCLES

    Earlier this year IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei delivered a blistering speech that squarely placed the blame for his difficulties stemming nuclear proliferation on the nuclear double standard. The time has come, he said, to “abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue nuclear weapons but morally acceptable for others to rely on them.”

    Nuclear weapons pollute the psyche with the arrogance of insuperable power. They create delusions of domination. With their calculations of mass casualties, they dehumanize our adversaries … and consequently ourselves. And in the age of American hyperpower, they provide American decisionmakers with very few additional policy options or political/military benefits.

    This is why Ambassador Paul H. Nitze, one of the great hard-line cold warriors who died this month at 97, concluded toward the end of his life that our atomic arsenal is “a threat mostly to ourselves,” that he “can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the U.S. to use nuclear weapons,” and that “the simplest and most direct answer to the problem of nuclear weapons has always been their complete elimination.”

    As we stand poised, perhaps, to elect a second JFK to the presidency on November 2nd, Kerry himself would do well to recall the words of the first, spoken in his first address before the UN General Assembly in 1961: “Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness. These weapons of war must be abolished — before they abolish us.”

    As the decades of the 21st Century march forward, it will become apparent that only two nuclear options will present themselves to humanity. One choice is a world of a dozen, two dozen, five dozen nuclear weapon states – and god knows how many nuclear non-state actors (i.e., terrorists). The other choice is to figure out how we can at least begin to move toward a world of zero nuclear states and zero nuclear weapons. But the notion that a handful of states can forever maintain a nuclear oligarchy, and forever frustrate the nuclear yearnings of others, is nothing but a forlorn fantasy.

    It would make an enormous difference if an American president would simply state, unambiguously, that abolition is our ultimate objective. That moving to 2200 warheads by 2012 is part of a longer-term plan, or even simply an aspiration, to eventually move to zero. That when we demand that Iran and North Korea forego their own nuclear aspirations, we assure them that the double standard is not something we expect them forever to endure.

    But when’s the last time you heard any American president, Democrat or Republican, say anything like that?

    ” If you expect to be part of the world of nations,” said President Bush during the Miami debate, “get rid of your nuclear programs.” He directed that sentence explicitly at the mullahs who rule Iran. But if he wants them to actually listen, it wouldn’t hurt for us to begin to direct it at ourselves.

    Tad Daley, who served as chief deputy to the late Senator Alan Cranston (D-Cal, 1969-1993) after he retired from the Senate, was Issues and Policy Director for the presidential campaign of Congressman Dennis Kucinich.  He is now Senior Policy Advisor for Progressive Democrats of America,www.pdamerica.org.

  • A New Bridge to Nuclear Disarmament

    A bridge on the long road to nuclear disarmament was built when eight NATO States supported a New Agenda Coalition resolution at the United Nations calling for more speed in implementing commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The bridge gained extra strength when Japan and South Korea joined with the NATO 8 – Belgium, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway and Turkey.

    These States, along with the New Agenda countries – Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden – now form an impressive and perhaps formidable center in the nuclear weapons debate and can play a determining role in the outcome of the 2005 NPT Review Conference.

    The bridge they have formed links the nuclear weapons States, which are entrenching nuclear weapons in their military doctrines, and the Non-Aligned Movement, which wants immediate negotiations on a time-bound program for nuclear disarmament.

    It is hard to know what to call this new collection of important States in the center. It is certainly not an entity. To be called a working partnership, it will at least have to pursue a common goal. And it is by no means certain that the tensions within the center can be contained. Nonetheless, the strategy adopted by the New Agenda Coalition to make its annual resolution at the U.N. First Committee more attractive particularly to the NATO and like-minded States – and thus shore up the moderate middle in the nuclear weapons debate – is working.

    Although the bridge needs strengthening, it is firm enough for the centrist States to exert leverage on the nuclear weapons States to take minimum steps to save the NPT in 2005.

    These steps are spelled out in the New Agenda resolution. It starts out by expressing “grave concern” at the danger to humanity posed by the possible use of nuclear weapons, and reminds nuclear weapons States of their 2000 “unequivocal undertaking” to the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals. It then calls on “all States” to fully comply with their nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation commitments and “not to act in any way that may be detrimental to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation or that may lead to a new nuclear arms race.”

    The resolution identifies priorities for action: universal adherence to the NPT and the early entry-into-force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; reduction of non-strategic nuclear weapons and non-development of new types of nuclear weapons; negotiation of an effectively verifiable fissile material cut-off treaty; establishment of a subsidiary body to deal with nuclear disarmament at the Conference on Disarmament; and compliance with principles of irreversibility and transparency and verification capability.

    The resolution was adopted by a vote of 135 States in favour, 5 against and 25 abstentions. This was a considerable gain over the 121-6-38 vote for the New Agenda’s much more extensive resolution last year.

    China voted for the resolution and Russia abstained. The three Western nuclear weapons States, the U.S., the U.K. and France, all voted no, along with Israel and Latvia. Not able to object to what was in the resolution, the Western NWS said their “no” was based on what was not in it, namely recognition that the Moscow Treaty “commits the United States and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals by several thousand warheads over the next decade.” Nonetheless, the Western NWS looked forward to “ongoing dialogue” at the NPT 2005 Conference.

    The U.S. took an aggressive stance against the resolution, both in meetings at the U.N. and in demarches in capitals. Some NATO States were obviously intimidated, but the presumed NATO solidarity was cracked when seven NATO States joined with Canada, which for two years had stood alone in NATO in supporting the New Agenda resolution. The fact that such important NATO players as Germany, Norway, The Netherlands and Belgium have also now taken a pro-active stance indicates that they wanted to send a message to the U.S. to take more significant steps to fulfilling commitments already made to the NPT.

    Japan, which annually offers its own resolution, “A Path to the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” suddenly decided to support the New Agenda resolution, in order, as the government explained, to engender a “favourable atmosphere for nuclear disarmament.” This was a statesmanlike step, especially since the New Agenda countries failed to reciprocate when they abstained on Japan’s resolution. To parse the minute differences between the New Agenda’s and Japan’s resolutions is to engage in the technical games that experts play that result in diplomatic paralysis and public apathy.

    The situation the NPT finds itself in is so serious and the threat of nuclear terrorism so real that governments need to put aside their quarrels and power plays and take meaningful steps to ensure that the NPT will not be lost to the world through erosion.

    The centrist States have shown that they can cooperate in at least a basic manner to vote together on a program of meaningful action. They will now have to find ways of effectively negotiating with the NWS at the 2005 conference. They can do this provided they retain a confidence that the bridge they have built can hold and trust one another in the forthcoming NPT deliberations.

    Here the role of civil society should be noted. Like the States within the NPT, civil society is itself composed of groups with different viewpoints about how to achieve elimination. Some groups, understandably impatient, want fast action. But the resistance of the Western NWS, particularly the U.S., is so strong that demands for immediate comprehensive negotiations run up against a brick wall.

    Intermediate gains, such as the steps outlined in the New Agenda resolution, would go a long way in moving the international community down the path to nuclear disarmament. The New Agenda strategy of building up the center for moderate, realistic achievements deserves the full-fledged support of civil society.

    Senator emeritus Douglas Roche, O.C. of Canada is Chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative and author of “The Human Right to Peace.”

  • Towards a Nuclear-Weapon Free World: Accelerating the Implementation of Nuclear Disarmament Commitments

    Draft Resolution for UNGA First Committee NAC- New Agenda Coalition (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden)

    The General Assembly,

    (pp1) Recalling its resolution 58/51 of 8 December 2003 , and mindful of the upcoming 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,

    (pp2) Expressing its grave concern at the danger to humanity posed by the possibility that nuclear weapons could be used and at the lack of implementation of binding obligations and agreed steps toward nuclear disarmament and r eaffirming that nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation are mutually reinforcing processes requiring urgent irreversible progress on both fronts,

    (pp 3) Recalling the unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament, in accordance with commitments under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and noting that the ultimate objective of the disarmament process is general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control,

    1. Calls upon all States to fully comply with commitments made to nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation and not to act in any way that may be detrimental to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation or that may lead to a new nuclear arms race;
    2. Calls upon all States to spare no efforts to achieve universal adherence to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty;
    3. Calls upon all States parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to accelerate the implementation of the practical steps for the systematic and progressive efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament agreed at the 2000 Review Conference;
    4. Also calls upon the nuclear-weapon States to take further steps to reduce their non-strategic nuclear arsenals, and not to develop new types of nuclear weapons in accordance with their commitment to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies;
    5. Agrees to urgently strengthen efforts towards both nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation through the resumption in the Conference on Disarmament of negotiations on a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, in accordance with the statement of the special coordinator in 1995 and the mandate contained therein taking into account both nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation objectives, as well as the completion and implementation of arrangements by all nuclear-weapon States to place fissile material no longer required for military purposes under international verification;
    6. Calls for the establishment of an appropriate subsidiary body in the Conference on Disarmament to deal with nuclear disarmament;
    7. Underlines the imperative of the principles of irreversibility and transparency for all nuclear disarmament measures, and the need to develop further adequate and efficient verification capabilities;
    8. Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its sixtieth session an item entitled “Towards a nuclear-weapon free world: Accelerating the implementation of nuclear disarmament commitments”, and to review the implementation of the present resolution at that session.

     

  • Who Will Make Us Safer from the Biggest Threat Facing the US?

    If you watched or heard about the first Presidential debate on September 30th, then you probably already know that one thing both presidential candidates agree upon is that nuclear proliferation poses the biggest threat to the US. What you might not know is which candidate will actually make Americans far safer and more secure. Understanding how the presidential candidates will deal with nuclear proliferation is essential in allowing US citizens to make an informed decision on who is best suited to lead this great country.

    One thing President Bush failed to mention is that, despite calls from past Presidents, nuclear weapons have assumed a far more central role in US security policy. The new, more “usable” role that the US government has assigned to nuclear weapons and its doctrine of pre-emptive warfare can encourage other nations to obtain nuclear weapons (and other weapons of mass destruction) in pursuit of their own security needs. These policies diminish US national security and attempts to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction, increasing the risk that other countries and terrorists will obtain and use nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against the US.

    So, let’s take a moment to examine exactly where President Bush and Senator Kerry stand on just four key policies that would protect Americans and their families.

    Oppose creating dangerous new nuclear weapons that will lead others to follow our example.

    President George W. Bush requested some $36.6 million in the 2005 Budget for research on dangerous new nuclear weapons, including the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator or “bunker-buster” and “mini-nukes.”

    John Kerry has stated, “As president, I will stop this administration’s program to develop a whole new generation of bunker-busting nuclear bombs. This is a weapon we don’t need. And it undermines our credibility in persuading other nations. What kind of message does it send when we’re asking other countries not to develop nuclear weapons but developing new ones ourselves?”

    Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and continue the current moratorium on nuclear testing, which are essential elements to promoting the international non-proliferation regime and protecting American security.

    President Bush opposes ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, already ratified by 115 countries, and has proposed $30 million in the 2005 Budget for reducing the time to resume nuclear testing from 24 months to 18 months.

    Senator Kerry supports ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and has emphasized its importance in promoting the international non-proliferation regime.

    Cancel funding for and plans to deploy offensive missile “defense” systems that could ignite a dangerous nuclear arms race and offer no security against terrorist weapons of mass destruction.

    In 2001, President Bush unilaterally withdrew the US from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the former Soviet Union in order to deploy a missile “defenses.” He is seeking to deploy an inadequately tested missile defense system this year, and has requested a budget of more than $10 billion for this unproven system in 2005.

    Senator Kerry has stated that he believes in further missile defense research, but he does “not believe in rapid deployment of a system that hasn’t been adequately tested.” He has stated that “to abandon [the ABM Treaty] altogether is to welcome an arms race that will make us more vulnerable, not less.”

    Work with Russia to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both countries and ensure that nuclear weapons and materials stay out of the hands of terrorists or countries seeking to acquire nuclear capabilities.

    President Bush signed a treaty with the Russians that calls for bringing down the number of deployed strategic weapons to between 2,200 and 1,700 by the year 2012. The treaty, however, does not provide for verification and does not make the reductions irreversible. The treaty also terminates in the year 2012. Since weapons taken off active deployment will be kept on the shelf in reserve, they will be a tempting target for terrorists. President Bush has also called for reductions of more than nine percent in the funding for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to secure nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union.

    Senator Kerry has stated that the treaty that President Bush entered into “runs the risk of increasing nuclear theft by stockpiling thousands of warheads.” He further stated that “if we are to make America safer, and we must, it will take more than cosmetic treaties that leave Russia’s nuclear arsenal in place.” Kerry has called for increased joint efforts with the Russians to dispose of stocks of existing nuclear materials. He has stated that he will make securing nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union a priority in relations between the US and Russia and work with our allies to establish global standards for the safekeeping of nuclear materials.

    It is up to us voters to elect a President who will make us safer from the biggest threat facing the US. If you want to see the US implement more responsible nuclear policies, then visit www.chartinganewcourse.org to learn more and take action today.

    Carah Ong is the Development and Communications Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation