Category: International Law

Commentary on the Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity
The Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity was initiated by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in early 2000. By April 2000 it had some 50 prominent signers. It was run as a half-page advertisement in the New York Times on the opening day of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference on April 24, 2000. Since then more prominent leaders from throughout the world have signed the Appeal. Signers include 35 Nobel Laureates including 14 Nobel Peace Laureates, former heads of state, diplomats, military leaders, scientists and entertainers, each a leader in his or her own field. What follows is the appeal set forth in italics with comments by signers of the Appeal.

We cannot hide from the threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity and all life. These are not ordinary weapons, but instruments of mass annihilation that could destroy civilization and end all life on Earth.

According to Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace Laureate and former President of Costa Rica, “The existence of nuclear weapons presents a clear and present danger to life on Earth.”

Jean-Michel Cousteau, the founder and president of the Ocean Futures Society, states, “The canary is dead…and we are going on with business as usual. How can we better move the public out of lethargy so we can protect the fragile peace?” This is our challenge with regard to the nuclear threats that confront humanity.

Former U.S. Senator Alan Cranston argues, “There is a simple reason for focusing on the nuclear issue. Many, many issues are of supreme importance in one way or another, but if we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, no other issue is really going to matter. Quite possibly there would be no other human beings left to be concerned about anything else.”

Father Theodore Hesburgh, the President Emeritus of Notre Dame University and one of the great educators of our time, writes, “The threat of nuclear war in our time has been the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced on Earth.”

Former Australian Ambassador Richard Butler states, “Disarmament requires politicians and governments who know the truth – nuclear weapons threaten all and must be eliminated.”

Nuclear weapons are morally and legally unjustifiable. They destroy indiscriminately – soldiers and civilians; men, women and children; the aged and the newly born; the healthy and the infirm.

Can there be any doubt that nuclear weapons, capable of destroying the entire human species and most other forms of life, are the most serious moral issue of our time.

The XIVth Dalai Lama has called for both internal and external disarmament. With regard to external disarmament, he states, “We must first work on the total abolishment of nuclear weapons.”

Gerry Spence, the famed trial attorney and author, writes, “All my life I’ve worked for justice. What kind of justice could possibly exist in a nuclear bomb?”

Another attorney, Jonathan Granoff, the vice president and UN representative of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, writes, “We are the first generation which must choose whether life will continue. This living sphere may be the only such place in the entire universe where this gift of life, this gift to love, exists. We surely do not have the right to place it at risk through our collective ingenuity and in the service of something we have created.”

Harrison Ford, one of the great actors of our time, argues, “The United States must assume world leadership to end once and for all the threat of nuclear war. It is our moral responsibility.”

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire writes, “The hope lies in the truth being spoken that we cannot use these weapons to kill our own brothers and sisters, and in the process destroying our homeland, Mother Earth.”

Ambassador Richard Butler states the matter simply, “There are plenty of experts who can argue and discuss the problem of proliferation, but it is beyond doubt that this in itself will not do the job. Doctrines of deterrence obfuscate the central reality that the day these weapons are used will be a catastrophe.”

The obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament “in all its aspects,” as unanimously affirmed by the International Court of Justice, is at the heart of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The highest court in the world, known as the World Court, wrote in a 1996 opinion that it was their unanimous opinion that “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.”

Ten years have now passed since the end of the Cold War, and yet nuclear weapons continue to cloud humanity’s future. The only way to assure that nuclear weapons will not be used again is to abolish them.

Retired US Admiral Eugene Carroll, the Deputy Director of the Center for Defense Information, argues, “American leaders have declared that nuclear weapons will remain the cornerstone of US national security indefinitely. In truth, as the world’s only remaining superpower, nuclear weapons are the sole military source of our national insecurity. We, and the whole world, would be much safer if nuclear weapons were abolished and Planet Earth was a nuclear free zone.”

Retired US Admiral Noel Gayler, a former Commander in Chief of the Pacific Command, asks, “Does nuclear disarmament imperil our security?” He answers his question, “No. It enhances it.”

The former Chief of the Indian Naval Staff, Admiral L. Ramdas, states, “We have to give expression to the need of the hour, which very simply put is to run down nuclear weapons to zero and recycle these huge budgets in the areas where it is most needed – human security.”

Queen Noor of Jordan argues persuasively, “The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought. Nuclear capability must be reduced to zero, globally, permanently. There is no other option.”

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, states, “We should get rid of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons will not protect us. Only a more equitable world will protect us.”

Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams, states, “We must put an end to this insanity and ‘End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity.’”

We, therefore, call upon the leaders of the nations of the world and, in particular, the leaders of the nuclear weapons states to act now for the benefit of all humanity by taking the following steps:
- Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and reaffirm commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
- De-alert all nuclear weapons and de-couple all nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles.
- Declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and policies of No Use against non-nuclear weapons states.
- Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.
- Reallocate resources from the tens of billions of dollars currently being spent for maintaining nuclear arsenals to improving human health, education and welfare throughout the world.
Former US President Jimmy Carter has argued, “All nuclear states must renew efforts to achieve worldwide reduction and ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. In the meantime, it requires no further negotiations for leaders of nuclear nations to honor existing nuclear security agreements, including the test ban and anti-ballistic missile treaties, and to remove nuclear weapons from their present hair-trigger alert status.”

Nobel Peace Laureate Oscar Arias argues that “the tens of billions of dollars that are dedicated to their [nuclear weapons] development and maintenance should be used instead to alleviate human need and suffering.”

Muhammad Ali, the great boxing champion and humanitarian, states, “We must not only control the weapons that can kill us, we must bridge the great disparities of wealth and opportunity among peoples of the world, the vast majority of whom live in poverty without hope, opportunity or choices in life. These conditions are a breeding ground for division that can cause a desperate people to resort to nuclear weapons as a last resort.” Ali concludes, “Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding and our commitment to making the world a better place for all of Allah’s children.”

Father Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame University, argues, “This is a time to reinvigorate our efforts towards reductions while we still have the opportunity of doing so. Nothing should distract us from this ultimate goal, which is all in the right direction for the peace and security of humankind.”

How Can We Move Forward?

Our best hope in moving forward lies with the power of the people. We cannot count on our leaders to act in good faith and in a timely way on this issue without pressure from the people.

Australian Ambassador Richard Butler argues, “The key requirement for ending the nuclear threat to human existence is for ordinary people to bring the issue back to the domestic political agenda. Voters must make clear to those seeking public office that they will not get their vote unless they promise to pursue the goal of nuclear disarmament.”

Arun Gandhi, the founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, concludes, “The people of the world must wake up to the negativity that has governed our lives for centuries giving rise to hate, discrimination, oppression, exploitation and leading to the creation of nuclear weapons of mass destruction.”

Harrison Ford puts the matter clearly, “We have been led to believe that we have come a long way toward world nuclear disarmament. But that is not the case. Our government is not doing all that it could. We must urge our leaders to fulfill the obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

The mayor of Nagasaki, Iccho Itoh, states, “I believe that the abolition of nuclear weapons can be accomplished by consolidating the efforts of world citizens and NGOs and mobilizing the conscience of humanity. Let us focus all our efforts on realizing a 21st century free from nuclear weapons and building a world in which our children can live in peace.”

Maj Britt Theorin, a member of the European Parliament and former Swedish Ambassador for Disarmament, proclaims, “The unequivocal undertaking of the nuclear weapon states at the Non-Proliferation Conference to eliminate their nuclear arsenals is a victory. Together with scientists and NGOs, we now have five years to present a timetable for how and when all nuclear weapons will be eliminated.”

This is our challenge. The people must awaken and act in their own self-interest and the interests of all humanity to end the nuclear weapons threat to our common future.
October 23, 2000
Signposts, Milestones to a Culture of Peace

The subject I have been asked to address is one of optimism – “Signs that we are on the road to a culture of peace.” It is one that I can’t, with integrity, address entirely in that frame. Instead I would like to speak in terms of signposts, milestones and paving stones on the road to a culture of peace because it seems to me that for every sign of peace there is a counter sign of war, of conflict, of human violations.

Actually, the state of affairs is more dismal than merely counter signs to peace.I think if I had to broadly define Western Culture, I could, without hesitation, say that we live in a war culture despite the fact that the majority of the members of civil society are not interested in being warriors. In the twentieth century alone, in the neighbourhood of “two hundred million people have been killed, directly or indirectly, in wars” – over twenty million directly in wars – in man-made violence.We live in a world where, at present, there are about fifty small wars taking place – a situation that is likely to multiply as populations expand, resources shrink, or are destroyed.Even though, western culture has a history of democracy originating with the Greeks, war has always played a defining part.However, I am not suggesting that violence or aggressionare innate in humans, but violence and aggression may be culturally determined. (Bookchin, 110, Weeramantry, 11)

I am not a war historian – but it seems to me that beginning in the nineteenth century war, the number of deaths,- and deaths on a massive scale – and threats to civilian populations has progressively grown.I would suggest that the cause of this phenomenon coincides with the birth of the industrial epoch and its expansionist goals and is perhaps the root from which the unprecedented scale of violence emerges.The situation has been further exacerbated – and perhaps even caused – not only the development of technology but by the death of God defined as the “universal communion of man” and its replacement by worship of technology.There is little faith in resolving situations between people peacefully.The faith has been transferred to technology – peace kept by terror – a nuclear armed missile named “peacemaker,” for example; the concept of safety under the “nuclear umbrella”; protection enforced by Stars Wars, National Missile Defence System, the weaponization of space; and so on.

We live in warrior culture in which we human beings, are engaged in a struggle to maintain our human dignity and to live in a peaceful and just society.

Occasionally, individuals who epitomize this struggle, emerge, and as a consequence of their principled stands focus our attention on – and raise our awareness of – the forces of domination and destruction – knowledge and understanding that often has disappeared into individual and collective amnesia, in pursuing the day-to-day functions of everyday life. Individuals like Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclav Havel, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Nelson Mandela remind us of our humanity and our responsibility to maintain human dignity and to provide us with the energy and hope to continue on our road – or roads to a Culture of Peace:

For there are two roads to be travelled concurrently.The first is a tough road – to fight against a system seemingly determined to annihilate us as it accumulates arsenals of weapons of mass destruction and maintains policies that could bring about their use; the second is peace-building – building a road to peace.The first is about survival, the second is about peace.

The first road to be travelled is in the active pursuit of the elimination of nuclear weapons, and the mobilization of political will to ban the weaponization of space. At the moment, we have the ability to destroy ourselves and the planet in an afternoon.As well, we are already facing 21st Century weapons of mass destruction which bode ill for humankind and have the potential for destruction greater than nuclear war.

Bill Joy, Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems wrote to me about the new technological weapons and asked me “to raise the issues of these technologies and support efforts to contain these new dangers”. Mr. Joy is concerned, first of all, because they “may empower nearly anyone to [commit] massively destructive acts,” and secondly, because these technologies could cause an arms race similar to that of nuclear weapons. These weapons – genetics, nanotechnology and robotics – are capable of runaway self-replication and destruction on a such a scale that, in the case of nanotechnology the biosphere could be destroyed within half and hour.”This is the first moment in the history of our planet,” writes Carl Sagan in”Pale Blue Dot” when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself- as well as to vast numbers of others.” (Joy letter; quoted in Joy)

Nuclear war, or war utilizing these technologies, is not war in the traditional sense.Nuclear weapons are not weapons in a conventional sense that can be used in a war where one side becomes the victor and the other the defeated Hans Morgenthau asserts that the concepts nuclear”weapons” and nuclear “war” are euphemisms.A nuclear weapon is “an instrument of unlimited, universal destruction.”Nuclear war is suicide and genocide. The control and abolition of nuclear weapons and these 21st Century technologies is essential if we are not to pass along, generation after generation, the intolerable threat of nuclear holocaust, or destruction from these new technologies, and if we are continue to exist in history.

The second and concurrent road on which we must travel – and one we must travel in the shadow of extinction – We “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23) – is the call to action and action itself, in its many forms, to work for global security, common security, human security in order to create a sustained world peace in which all people can live in their diverse cultures to their full potential.This entails an end to “unrestricted and undirected growth through science and technology”, an end to “perpetual economic growth.” – mindless production and consumption.(Japanese people have recently been criticized by their government for not consuming enough).

One of the primary keys to peace is the amelioration of suffering in the developing world, the elimination of poverty, hunger, famine, environmental degradation, illness with AIDS emerging as a major threat.These issues can perhaps be attributed, in part, to the legacy of colonialism, playing some part in the root causes of the tribal, ethnic and civil strife.It is no secret that the countries of the developing world are of interest to the major world powers – the G-8(and before them the colonial powers) only in relation to their own economic gain.It is only where their financial interests are at stake will the powerful nations intervene – a prime example is the Gulf War when the oil supplies were endangered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

We recently celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the 1899 Hague Appeal for Peace Conference.The 1899 Conference is perhaps an appropriate defining point to measure how far we have come on the road to peace; to look for significant milestones that suggest we may be having some success in our struggle for a culture of peace; and signposts that will provide us with direction on the path to a peaceful future.

By the time of the first Hague Conference there were over four hundred peace societies – the growth, development, sophistication of which, since then, I see as the most significant and most important progression on the road to peace.One hundred years later Cora Weiss, President of 1999 Hague Appeal for Peace managed to bring to The Hague, over 8,000 people from around the globe, representing many different organizations concerned with the need, and working in different areas, for peace.This is the future of civil society.

The 1899 Hague Peace Conference emerged at the end – and because of – a war-torn century- at that time the worst in history.There are several views on the reason for the meeting in the Hague in 1899 and I think two of them, inconsistent though they are, provide a telling argument for the complexities in which we find ourselves, with regard to the peoples-of-the-world’s longing for peace.

One view, expressed by Judge Weeramantry, a highly regarded former judge, and Vice-President, of the International Court of Justice, is that the world was sickened by the fact that during the 19th Century, the horrors of war had caused human suffering on a scale at that time unprecedented in history: new levels of efficiency had been achieved “in the regimentation of resources for the slaughter of enemy populations.”In response to the outcry and call for peace, the Czar of Russia, according to Judge Weeramantry, took the initiative, and the Great Powers met in The Hague and(I’ll quote him) “made plans to lead humanity to a golden future free of the scourge of war [and] went further along the path to establishing a machinery for global justice than any other conference in recorded history.”However, we have to acknowledge the abysmal failure of this dream with over eight-and-a-half million people killed less than twenty years later. (Weeramantry, 10)

Another view, and equally valid, voiced by Geoffrey Robertson, a well respected international lawyer and Queen’s Counsel, specializing in human rights, is that the Great Powers met in The Hague in 1899 and 1907, and prior to that in St. Petersburg, with the aim of reducing “the cost of killing soldiers in wars.”The major powers, he says, met out of concern about the cost of new weaponry, and agreed on limits “on the development of poison gases and explosive ‘dum-dum bullets.”According to him, these rules “came to be dressed up in the language of humanity… due to the influence of the International Committee of the Red Cross”.However, the intention of the founder of the Red Cross, who was “horrified by the carnage left on the European battlefields”, according to Robertson, was, not to end war, but merely “to make these wars more humane for injured soldiers and prisoners.” (Robertson, 15).

This marked the emergence of International Humanitarian Law which is one of the milestones on the road to a culture of peace.Humanitarian law, though, is war law – it imposes legal restraints on the warrior, the methods of killing.The modern rules governing the conduct of warriors which include rules on who and what can be targeted,”are now collected in the four Geneva Conventions.”However, according to Robertson “after a century of arms control efforts, commencing in 1899 with a peace conference in The Hague at which twenty-six nations debated whether to use dum-dum bullets, ends with 50 million Kalashnikov rifles in circulation and with no international rule preventing the use – let alone the development – of nuclear weapons.” (Robertson, 173, 167).

The development of International Law, even though still in its formative stages and relying “upon equity, ethics, and the moral sense of mankind to nourish its developing principles,” can be considered a series of milestones or perhaps paving stones – because they create a legal ground, a code of conduct – on the road to peace.However, the problem with International Law is that it develops after the fact, after the atrocity, after the war, and we are reaching the point where such retrospective remedies become increasingly futile. (Weeramantry, 5)

Most – if not all (perhaps all) – of the decisive actions and the creation of major global institutions concerned with freedom, justice and human dignity – peace – have arisen – like the phoenix – from the ashes of war, of death, of abominable acts of destruction.The League of Nations and the International Court of Justice emerged as a response to the horrors of the First World War. These two institutions, however, did not concern themselves with human dignity per se, for the League of Nations was created for developing and keeping peace between states. The International Court Justice has jurisdiction only over consenting states party to the Statute of the ICJ.Individuals had to wait for another war before their interests, the interests of the members of civil society were taken into account.

Their time came with the birth of the United Nations – the response to the carnage of the Second World War and it is important to state, the evils, the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. This was in the minds of the drafters – and resonates in – the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.This is tremendous victory- another milestone – for human dignity, for global security, for a culture of peace.One of the Charter’s primary purposes-“respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” – owes its prominent position to “last-minute pressure” from American non-governmental organizations on the American officials at the meetings in San Francisco in June, 1945. (Robertson, 32)

Unfortunately for peace and human security, the power in the United Nations was – and is – vested in the victors of World War Two who became the five permanent members of the Security Council – the P-5 they are called – each with the power of veto.They are also the nuclear powers, and regrettably, hold the world in some kind of hostage.

Another development from the Second World War – is The Nuremberg Charter, the response to the absolute horror at the unbelievably evil crimes of Hitler.This was another momentous step forward – another milestone – on the road to peace.Though there were earlier laws, piracy and anti-slavery which could be considered “crimes against humanity”, Nuremberg was the huge step forward for International Law.It changed, clarified and developed the concept of “crimes against humanity.”For the first time individual rights took precedence over sovereign rights and individuals who committed crimes against humanity on behalf of the states they represented were deemed responsible for the crime.Moreover, these states themselves were under a continuing obligation to institute legal proceedings and punish them for their crimes.If they failed to do so another state or the international community had the right to bring them to justice.

Following the Nuremberg Judgements – almost fifty years later, however – two Criminal Courts were established on an ad hoc basis to punish crimes against humanity: the Hague Tribunal to prosecute the crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia and the Arusha Tribunal for crimes committed in Rwanda.And recently, in Rome, a treaty was drafted and up for ratification which will establish a permanent International Criminal Court.These must be seen as victories for peace – as milestones. However, it must be emphasized that crimes against humanity have been selectively punished according to the will of the United Nations Security Council.None of the victors have been put on trial for the razing, the carpet bombing, of Dresden and Berlin; for the firebombing of Tokyo, for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to say nothing of crimes against humanity committed in Vietnam.

Moreover, the Rwanda massacre and the East Timor devastation could have been prevented but for UN Security Council’s -and above all the United States’ refusal to act.You will recall Stephen Lewis’s piercing indictment of U.S. Secretary of State, Madeline Albright).My dream is that someday justice will be elevated to a realm above state interest, because to the detriment of justice, International Law is subservient to states parties to the Treaty; and the United Nations is a convenient tool, governed by the power relations in the Security Council.

The latest victory for justice and human dignity was the Pinochet judgement which brought the crimes against humanity out of the zone of war and into the realm of “peace” – “peace” in the sense that it was not conflict between states. This would never have happened if, according to Robertson, Pinochet had decided to take tea with Henry Kissinger rather than Margaret Thatcher because the United States, which is a friend of Chile, would have issued Pinochet with a “suggestion for immunity”.In Robertston’s view credit it due to the British Government which allowed the law to take its course and to the English judges who, to quote him, “with an almost touching naiveté, took the Torture Convention to mean what it said.” [“With uncanny, uncynical decency, they proceeded to hoist the old torturer on his own petard”] (Robertson, 396,397)

These are some of the milestones and signposts on the road to peace. But it seems to me that is atrocious and unjust that human beings are forced to carve their steps for peace out of, in reaction to acts of war and violence. There has to be some way to plant the seeds of a humane, just world in healthy soil rather than in the killing fields.

Many or most of the actions to create a just world order, a culture of peace – and this is my most important point – a signpost – have come about because of the involvement and actions of civil society, of dedicated individual and groups.

One of the most hopeful signs towards a culture of peace is the rapid growth of civil movements, of people and groups who are determined – to paraphrase a section of an Amnesty International call to action – to not “be part of the killing silence.”And another, for which we give thanks, is the accelerated development and expansion of communications technology, creating global networks which link non-governmental organizations around the world.Amnesty International, for example, has over one million members world-wide and there are 900 other non-governmental organizations defending and promoting human rights and hundreds and hundreds of others focusing in others facets of peace and justice, nuclear abolition, anti-war, health, education, environment, development and so on.

A system parallel to the United Nations has grown up outside, alongside and synchronous with it – and often slightly ahead because these non-governmental organizations are not governed by power and politics. Their concern is respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.It is this moral force, which perhaps idealistically and naively, takes seriously the moral and ethical imperatives of the United Nations Charter and brings pressure to bear on the member states to act in the spirit of the Charter and to live up to their obligations under the various treaties, signed by them under the auspices of the United Nations.

These non-governmental organizations are host to a wealth of knowledge, expertize, experience, energy and a principled value-oriented, ethical commitment.Their members come from many walks of life – some are lawyers, medical doctors, academic experts, former military officials, diplomats, weapons scientists and arms control negotiators; and religious and spiritual leaders who remind us of the dignity of the human, and of our responsibility for all life.

Non-governmental organizations have created powerful global networks for information gathering and dissemination which have proven to be valuable to governments. Civil society has always played an important role in fact-finding, in the verification of information through the intelligence networks they have built.Citizen’s groups also focus attention on the issues and mobilize public opinion.

When we look to past successes in our struggle for a humane world, the actions of members of civil society have played an immense role in the development of International Law.One of the most significant was the abolition of slavery; another was the concern articulated by the founder of the International Red Cross and supported by the outcry from the four hundred peace societies referred to earlier, which gave birth humanitarian law, albeit for war; there were the American non-governmental organizations (American Jewish Congress and the NAACP) whose pressure attained the primacy of “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” in the UN Charter.And Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch can take credit for most of the achievements in human rights law.

The most significant action taken by civil society – in that it broke new ground by achieving its goal by linking with government- is the World Court Project.This project was initiated by a small group of individuals, who addressed themselves to the question of how to have the International Court of Justice, whose jurisdiction is based on consent, give an opinion on whether or not nuclear weapons, or the threat of nuclear weapons constitute a threat to humanity, a crime against humanity.This became a world-wide citizen movement which sought partnership with the World Health Organization and then because the Court refused the World Health Organization jurisdiction, with the government of Costa Rica.

Building on a global coalition of citizens, the Canadian government, in 1997, forged a civil society/government partnership, to ban landmines which resulted in the Ottawa Process, a Landmines Treaty which the US, China and Russia, all UN Security Council members have, so far, refused to sign.

The recent Treaty to establish an International Criminal Court is another important success-story for civil society and a step towards a culture of peace.Pressure from citizen groups, concerned with human rights, on their governments around the world resulted in its creation in Rome in 1998.

Citizens protests against globalization at the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle and again recently in Washington at the World Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings are perhaps harbingers of change to address the global economic disparities caused by the unregulated activity of multinational corporations and the global currency markets.

The nuclear abolition movement is undergoing a renaissance now that the Cold War is over, a Second Nuclear Age has set in, and new nuclear dangers are threatening the peace and security of the people of the world.The Canadian government, reacting to pressure from citizens’ groups, has in a small way attempted to create a civil society government partnership by establishing annual NGO/government consultations on the nuclear issue.It also included two NGO representatives on its delegation to the 2000 NPT Review Conference.At the conference Canada proposed the participation of accredited NGOs expert in this field.However, this was not acceptable to the majority of states.All that came out of the proposal was agreement that one formal meeting will be held between delegates and NGOs at which NGOs would make presentations to the delegates.This was mere formalization of a process that was already taking place.

The United Nations conferences – Habitat, The Earth Summit, Women’s Conference in Beijing – which though excluding citizens from decision-making forum, gave the people the opportunity to mass in large numbers, network, create coalitions, bring the issues to the attention of the world’s public and create the ground for change in the interest of human beings.If Kofi Annan’s proposal for a Conference on Nuclear Dangers becomes a reality, then we will have the opportunity again to carve out a path towards a global peace.

To me, the growth of civil movements, and evidence that they are going on the offensive, that their power is growing and they are demanding action and enforcement, is the most significant process, the most significant signpost directing us to the future – in the movement towards a culture for peace.

We, the people, have to accept that we are responsible for all life, to create a world worth living in. We cannot trust our destiny to government nor can we trust diplomatic solutions.They are not just – they are all about sovereign power relations, statecraft.International Law is dependent on the will of states and subservient to States interests.An example of this is one I spoke about with regard to Pinochet’s bad decision to travel to England for his health problems, rather than the United States which would not have allowed the law to take its course. It is some comfort that the courts of Chile have stripped him of his immunity.Future perpetrators of crimes against humanity will perhaps hesitate, and current ones will perhaps tremble a little.

I was outraged when I read that the US signed the 1977 Geneva Protocols on Genocide with a reservation that this did not apply to nuclear weapons; I feel angry that US will not sign the Landmines Treaty because it wants to continue to use them and their cluster bombs; and that China will not sign the Treaty to the International Criminal Court because of, it is suspected, its massacre in Tianamen Square.The U.S. will not sign it because it fears that its soldiers will be indicted.Recently, France, in an outright violation of justice for humanity, signed the International Criminal Court Convention with a reservation which will allow it to commit nuclear genocide with impunity.

The U.S. prepares itself for a Third World War with tremendous investments in high-technological super weapons and the weaponization of space, and threatens world peace and stability with its proposed National Missile Defence System and potential abrogation of the ABM Treaty, its failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the resurgence of its nuclear doctrine as strategic to its defence policy and to NATO policy which has caused Russia to give new importance to nuclear weapons.All these actions have the potential to start a new arms race.

There are some countersigns at the political and diplomatic levels – in the service of peace – for example, there is more emphasis on preventative diplomacy and conflict resolution; the UN has a peacekeeping force which, however, is merely operative to keep the peace once the mechanisms are established.Some governments, to name Canada for one, in the person of its Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lloyd Axworthy, are attempting to affect a transformation from the military security concept to one of human security and to concern themselves with issues of the effects of war on children, on women and children in armed conflict, child soldiers, landmines and so on.However, I do not think that they are attempting to ameliorate, in a real way, global economic disparities, poverty, famine, health, education, environmental degradation which perhaps would address the root causes of war.

The real signs for peace come from civil society, to the thousands of activities undertaken in the striving for peace – the paving stones – of hundreds of thousands of individuals around the world. In political circles these would be called Track II activities – you, the teachers of global education, for example, imparting tools for a sustainable future, peace education, conflict resolution and so on – grounding our young people in ethically based knowledge and practices.There is also a minor revolution taking place in alternate technologies, small scale economic and development activities, though these are in no way a counterweight to the massive technological developments.

These activities are taking place in the shadow of death, because the peace we are attempting to create today is more the outcome of fear of our demise from either ecological devastation or from death from weapons of mass destruction.Peace comes to be a mandatory goal, the only possible route for the continued existence of the human species.These thousands of civil initiatives may be the ones that will help us turn back from the wrong road we have taken – to recover an image of human good, of, borrowing from Murray Bookchin, “complementarity” in Nature, “complementarity” in relations between peoples, respect for “Other.”

There are two events which haunt me and which I believe in the long run provide a key to a more humane, a more just, a peaceful world.The first one is Charter 77.Charter 77 was not only a document, but also a human rights movement, in communist Czechoslovakia.In 1975 Czechoslovakia signed the Helsinki Articles, two Covenants on Human Rights.The signatories – initially three, Vaclav Havel, Jan Patocka and Jiri Hajek -announced that they would Live in Truth, that is to say live as though the government of Czechoslovakia honoured the treaty it had signed.In actual fact the Treaty was specifically non-binding so that the United States could then sign it without Senate consent, and also because it suited Russia’s purposes.Nevertheless, the signatories took this declaration at its face value, and acted as though the state of Czechoslovakia was honouring the treaty.Their action, though politically and physically dangerous (in Jan Patocka died after an extremely gruelling interrogation) proved to be extremely powerful in gaining international attention, in gathering international supporters, who pressured governments and ultimately pressure was applied on Czechoslovakia.

Fifteen years later, in 1992, Vaclav Havel as elected President of a democratic Czechoslovakia, in an address to the World Economic Forum, said that”Communism was not defeated by military force, but by life, by the human spirit, by conscience, by the resistance of Being and man to manipulation… This important message to the human race is coming at the 11th hour.”

The other event I referred to earlier, was the British judges who naively accepted that the Torture Convention meant what it said.

It is the people who have the moral authority, the moral courage, and the naiveté perhaps, the idealism – us – who have the greatest chance of creating a culture of peace.To quote Mahatma Gandhi: “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Thank you very much.

Jennifer Allen Simons, Ph.D.
The Simons Foundation
August 11th, 2000

August 11, 2000
A Nuclear Crisis
This article appeared in the Washington Post, Editorials and Opinions Section.

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

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

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

It is almost universally conceded that none of these commitments has been honored. India and Pakistan have used this failure to justify their joining Israel as nations with recognized nuclear capability that are refusing to comply with NPT restraints. And there has been a disturbing pattern of other provocative developments:
- For the first time I can remember, no series of summit meetings is underway or in preparation to seek further cuts in nuclear arsenals. The START II treaty concluded seven years ago by presidents George Bush and Boris Yeltsin has not been seriously considered for ratification by the Russian parliament.
- Instead of moving away from reliance on nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War, both the United States and NATO have sent disturbing signals to other nations by declaring that these weapons are still the cornerstone of Western security policy, and both have re-emphasized that they will not comply with a “no first use” policy. Russia has reacted to this U.S. and NATO policy by rejecting its previous “no first use” commitment; strapped for funds and unable to maintain its conventional forces of submarines, tanks, artillery, and troops, it is now much more likely to rely on its nuclear arsenal.
- The United States, NATO and others still maintain arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons, including up to 200 nuclear weapons in Western Europe.
- Despite the efforts of Gens. Lee Butler and Andrew Goodpaster, Adm. Stansfield Turner and other military experts, American and Russian nuclear missiles are still maintained in a “hair-trigger alert” status, susceptible to being launched in a spur-of-the-moment crisis or even by accident.
- After years of intense negotiation, recent rejection by the U.S. Senate of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was a serious blow to global nuclear control efforts and to confidence in American leadership.
- There is a notable lack of enforcement of the excessively weak international agreements against transfer of fissile materials.
- The prospective adoption by the United States of a limited “Star Wars” missile defense system has already led Russia, China and other nations to declare that this would abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which has prevailed since 1972. This could destroy the fabric of existing international agreements among the major powers.
- There is no public effort or comment in the United States or Europe calling for Israel to comply with the NPT or submit to any other restraints. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge what a powerful incentive this is to Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt to join the nuclear community.
- The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) has been recently abolished, removing an often weak but at least identifiable entity to explore arms issues.
I believe that the general public would be extremely concerned if these facts were widely known, but so far such issues have not been on the agenda in presidential debates.

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

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

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

Just as American policy is to blame for many of the problems, so can our influence help resolve the nuclear dilemma that faces the world.
February 23, 2000

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

Your Excellencies:

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

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

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

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

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

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

These Principles and Objectives provided for:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

David Krieger

President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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

January 11, 2000

The Non-Proliferation Treaty Crisis

The global nuclear weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty is in jeopardy due to the continued failure of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their obligations under the Treaty.

Background

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was signed on July 1, 1968 and remains the foundation of the post-World War II global nuclear nonproliferation. 187 nations signed the treaty; four did not — Cuba, Israel, India and Pakistan. The signers agreed to convene a special conference in 25 years to decide on whether or not to continue the treaty. And in 1997 at the UN headquarters in New York, 174 nations agreed to strengthen the treaty’s review process, i.e., to continue to hold more review conferences in the years to come.

The latest treaty review conference — the year 2000 NPT Review Conference — will be held at United Nations Headquarters in New York from April 24 to May 19, 2000. The central issue for that conference is if this treaty will continue to be the centerpiece for global efforts to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, or if the Treaty will begin to unravel.

The upcoming Review Conference has crucial implications not only for NPT member states, but also for non-member states, especially India, Pakistan and Israel. The upcoming conference presents a tremendous opportunity to make substantive progress towards nuclear disarmament. Crucial to the outcome of this Review Conference will be the extent to which the nuclear weapon states are able to demonstrate any progress made toward fulfilling obligations under Article VI of the NPT, which 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.”

In its 1996 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice concluded unanimously that:

“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.’

While the number of nuclear weapons possessed by the nuclear weapon states has decreased, the status of Article VI obligations is in a state of impasse. Parties of the NPT must take nuclear responsibility and avoid further attempts to weaken non-proliferation efforts.

Challenges to the NPT

The following developments represent the growing peril that challenges international and human security:

Though the Cold War ended more than ten years ago, more than 30,000 nuclear weapons remain worldwide.

Since the 1995 NPT review and extension conference, two additional countries, India and Pakistan, have tested nuclear weapons.

US and Russian nuclear arsenals remain in permanent, 24 hour, “launch on warning” status in spite of recommendations to de-alert nuclear weapons made by the Canberra Commission (1996), two resolutions passed by massive majorities in the UN General Assembly in 1998, another two in 1999, and a unanimous resolution of the European Parliament (1999).

The US Senate has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in spite of nearly unanimous endorsement of the treaty by the international community and massive US public support for nuclear disarmament. In addition, the US and Russia, continue to conduct “subcritical” nuclear tests, undermining the spirit and purpose of the CTBT. The clear aim of the CTBT is to restrain weapons development, yet the US, Russia, and other weapons states proceed to develop new nuclear weapons in computer-simulated “virtual reality”, with the aid of subcritical underground nuclear testing.

NATO has jeopardized the NPT by declaring in April 1999 that nuclear weapons are “essential” to its security.

US efforts to deploy a National Missile Defense (NMD) system and circumvent the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, have increased tensions with Russia and China and threaten a new arms race.

The irresponsibility of the nuclear weapons states to pursue good faith negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons is unacceptable. Failure to make progress on Article VI obligations provides incentive for non-nuclear states to acquire nuclear weapons, thereby increasing the nuclear danger.

Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan have undermined the international norm of nonproliferation established by the treaty.

medium range missile tests in India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea have undermined the NPT

Iraq’s defiance of UN Security Council Resolutions requiring it to complete its disclosure of efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction have threatened the stability of the NPT

Nuclear weapons states are not strongly supporting the treaty’s review process. For example, the US Senate failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1999 sending a message to the world that nuclear nonproliferation was not a critical issue according to the US Senate.

Sharing peaceful uses of nuclear energy has become a contentious issue

“Additional threats to the regime’s [NPT’s] stability came in 1999 from the erosion of American relations with both China and Russia resulting from NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia — with additional harm to relations with China resulting from US accusations of Chinese nuclear espionage and Taiwan’s announcement that it was a state separate from China despite its earlier acceptance of a US-Chinese ‘one China’ agreement. Major threats to the regime also came from the continued stalemate on arms control treaties in the Russian Duma and the US Senate, from a change in US policy to favor building a national missile defense against missile attack and from a Russian decision to develop a new generation of small nuclear weapons for defense against conventional attack.” Ambassador George Bunn, former US Ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference and a negotiator of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

January 11, 2000
Hope For Humanity’s Future

George Santayana, said “Progress, far from consisting of change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

These are wise words which would well enter our minds as we reflect on the coming dawn of the 21st century. What is the greatest lesson of the 20th century? It is not man’s inhumanity to man. This has been a characteristic of human nature since time began. Man has also had rationality and this has characterized men’s relationship with one another since the dawn of history. This quality distinguishes civilization from the animal kingdom.

It is this quality that has given rise to laws and negotiations for peace instead of war. It is this characteristic of rationality that leads men to establish institutions and organizations for human development. It also has led to the development of science and enormous strides in technology. Science and technology can be used for the progress and advancement of civilization or for the destruction of all on the planet. Rationality thus gives rise to the power to choose and it is this use of choice which is the fundamental issue which faces us in the 21st century catastrophe on a vast scale, as in the First and Second World Wars, or to employ it with all its enormous potential for peace, growth, development and human welfare on a scale never achieved or envisaged.

To achieve this latter alternative, however, rationality must be employed on a scale as never before, giving rise to world order, to world peace based on law and justice worldwide. Co-ordination and mobilization of the efforts of all men and institutions is a necessary pre-requisite towards this end.

Power must be humanized and subjected to laws. Human rights must be universalized and their grossest violations penalized. Impunity for such violations must no longer be the natural order of things but be relegated to the past. Efforts must b e intensified to put in place an international criminal jurisdiction so that perpetrators of atrocities against humanity, such as this century has witnessed, may be brought to account. On July 17, 1998, in Rome, one hundred and twenty nations took a significant step towards creating such a jurisdiction when they adopted a Statute for the International Criminal Court. We, the peoples of the 20th century, can make a lasting contribution to peace and security in the twenty first century and beyond by making this international system of justice a reality.

Our very humanity must reassert itself with rights, principles, laws and institutions directed towards the enlightenment and advance of humankind of every creed and race in every region of the world.

December 6, 1999
Failure of the US Senate to Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

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

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

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

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

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

ANSWERED `PRESENT’–1 * Byrd (D-WV)

——————————————————————————–

PRESS RELEASE – THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release October 13, 1999

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

Outside Oval Office

8:37 P.M. EDT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you.

END 8:47 P.M. EDT

And one last word from a contemporary Peace Hero:

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

December 2, 1999
Nuclear Weapons, Ethics, Morals and Law

This article was an NGO Presentation for the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty Prepcom of 1999 and The Hague Appeal for Peace addressing nuclear weapons, morals, ethics, spiritual values, the Culture of Peace, and law. Organizations participating in creation of this presentation include NGO Committee on Disarmament, World Conference on Religion and Peace, Temple of Understanding, Pax Christi International, Franciscans International, Interfaith Center of New York, State of the World Forum, and Lawyers Alliance for World Security.

Ethical and Moral Framework for Addressing the Issue

In his concurrence with the historic opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued July 8, 1996, addressing the legal status of the threat or use of nuclear weapons,1 Judge Ranjeva stated, “On the great issues of mankind the requirements of positive law and of ethics make common cause, and nuclear weapons, because of their destructive effects, are one such issue.”2 Human society has ethical and moral norms based on wisdom, conscience and practicality. Many norms are universal and have withstood the test of human experience over long periods of time. One such principle is that of reciprocity. It is often called the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” It is an ethical and moral foundation for all the world’s major religions.3

Several modern states sincerely believe that this principle can be abrogated and security obtained by the threat of massive destruction. The Canberra Commission highlighted the impracticality of this posture: “Nuclear weapons are held by a handful of states which insist that these weapons provide unique security benefits, and yet reserve uniquely to themselves the right to own them. This situation is highly discriminatory and thus unstable; it cannot be sustained. The possession of nuclear weapons by any state is a constant stimulus to other states to acquire them.”

The solution can be stated simply: “States should treat others as they wish to be treated in return.”4

It is inconsistent with moral wisdom and practical common sense for a few states to violate this ancient and universally valid principle of reciprocity. Such moral myopia has a corrosive effect on the law which gains its respect largely through moral coherence. Can global security be obtained while rejecting wisdom universally recognized for thousands of years?

Judge Weeramantry said,”(E)quality of all those who are subject to a legal system is central to its integrity and legitimacy. So it is with the body of principles constituting the corpus of international law. Least of all can there be one law for the powerful and another law for the rest. No domestic system would accept such a principle, nor can any international system which is premised on a concept of equality.”5

Law and Values

Law is the articulation of values. Values must be based on moral foundations to have credibility. The recognition of the intrinsic sacredness of life and the duty of states and individuals to protect life is a fundamental characteristic of all human civilized values. Such civilized values are expressed in humanitarian law and custom which has an ancient lineage reaching back thousands of years. “They were worked out in many civilizations — Chinese, Indian, Greek, Roman, Japanese, Islamic, modern European among others.” Humanitarian law ” is an ever continuous development…(and) grows as the sufferings of war keep escalating. With a nuclear weapon, those sufferings reach a limit situation, beyond which all else is academic.”6

In testimony before the Court, then Foreign Minister of Australia Gareth Evans said, “The fact remains that the existence of nuclear weapons as a class of weapons threatens the whole of civilization. This is not the case with respect to any class or classes of conventional weapons. It cannot be consistent with humanity to permit the existence of a weapon which threatens the very survival of humanity. The threat of global annihilation engendered by the existence of such weapons, and the fear that this has engendered amongst the entire post-war generation, is itself an evil, as much as nuclear war itself. If not always at the forefront of our everyday thinking, the shadow of the mushroom cloud remains on all our minds. It has pervaded our thoughts about the future, about our children, about human nature. And it has pervaded the thoughts of our children themselves, who are deeply anxious about their future in a world where nuclear weapons remain.”7

We must never forget the awesome destructive power of these devices. “Nuclear weapons have the potential to destroy the entire eco system of the planet. Those already in the world’s arsenals have the potential of destroying life on the planet several times over.”8

Not only are they destructive in magnitude but in horror as well. 9

Notwithstanding this knowledge we permit ourselves to continue to live in a “kind of suspended sentence. For half a century now these terrifying weapons of mass destruction have formed part of the human condition. Nuclear weapons have entered into all calculations, all scenarios, all plans. Since Hiroshima, on the morning of 6 August, 1945, fear has gradually become man’s first nature. His life on earth has taken on the aspect of what the Qur’an calls ‘long nocturnal journey’, a nightmare whose end he cannot yet foresee.”10

Attempting to obtain ultimate security through the ultimate weapon, we have failed for, “the proliferation of nuclear weapons has still not been brought under control, despite the existence of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Fear and folly may still link hands at any moment to perform a final dance of death. Humanity is all the more vulnerable today for being capable of mass producing nuclear missiles.”11

As the General Assembly in its “Declaration on the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe” in 1981 said, “all the horrors of past wars and calamities that have befallen people would pale in comparison with what is inherent in the use of nuclear weapons, capable of destroying civilization on earth.”

A five megaton weapon represents greater explosive power than all the bombs used in World War II and a twenty megaton bomb more than all the explosives used in all the wars in history. Several states are currently poised ready to deliver weapons that render those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki small. One megaton bomb represents the explosive force of approximately seventy Hiroshimas while a fifteen megaton bomb a thousand Hiroshimas. Judge Weeramantry emphasized that “the unprecedented magnitude of its destructive power is only one of the unique features of the bomb. It is unique in its uncontainability in both space and time. It is unique as a source of peril to the human future. It is unique as a source of continuing danger to human health, even long after its use. Its infringement of humanitarian law goes beyond its being a weapon of mass destruction, to reasons which penetrate far deeper into the core of humanitarian law.”12

We are challenged as never before: technology continues to slip away from moral guidance and law chases after common sense.

International Court of Justice

When the International Court of Justice addressed the legal status of threat or use of nuclear weapons members of the nuclear club, which has since grown, asserted a principled reliance on nuclear weapons. The Court held that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable to armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law” and that states are obligated to bring to a conclusion negotiations on nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. 13

Did the Court open the way for permissible uses of a nuclear weapon by saying that is “generally” illegal and that it could not say that there would never be an attack on a country that threatened its very existence to which nuclear weapons would be necessarily an illegal response?

Did the Court acknowledge that there were conceivably hypothetically legally compliant uses? It quoted the United Kingdom’s statement that “(I)n some cases, such as the use of a low yield nuclear weapon against warships on the high seas or troops in sparsely populated areas it is possible to envision a nuclear attack which caused comparatively few civilian casualties.”14 However, the Court further pointed out that no state demonstrated when even such a limited use would be justifiable or “feasible.”15

The Court had already ruled unanimously that nuclear weapons must in any and all instances obey humanitarian laws of war. Can our most basic moral judgments founded on “dictates of conscience”, “elementary considerations of humanity” which remain “fundamental” and “intransgressible” be squared with these devices?16 It seems scarcely reasonable with respect to these humanitarian legal requirements that they can.17

The Court stated unequivocally that the rules of armed conflict, including humanitarian law, prohibits the use of any weapon that is likely to cause unnecessary suffering to combatants;18 that is incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets;19 that violates principles protecting neutral states (such as through fall out or nuclear winter);20 that is not a proportional response to an attack;21 or that does permanent damage to the environment.22

Under no circumstance may states make civilians the object of attack nor can they use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets. Regardless of whether the survival of a state acting in self defense is at stake, these limitations continue to hold.

For this reason the President Judge stated in forceful terms that the Court’s inability to go beyond its statement “can in no manner be interpreted to mean that it is leaving the door ajar to the recognition of the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.”23 He emphasized his point by stating that nuclear weapons are “the ultimate evil, destabilize humanitarian law which is the law of the lesser evil. Thus the very existence of nuclear weapons is a great challenge to humanitarian law itself.”24

The Court held that no formal testimony was presented that nuclear weapons can meet the humanitarian law requirements for their use.25

The President Judge along with several other judges undertook to point out the illogic of the situation: “It would thus be quite foolhardy unhesitatingly to set the survival of a state above all other considerations, in particular above the survival of mankind itself.”26

The President Judge said, “Atomic warfare and humanitarian law therefore appear to me mutually exclusive: the existence of one automatically implies the non-existence of the other.”27 The Court said, “(M)ethods and means of warfare, which would preclude any distinction between civilian and military targets, or which would result in unnecessary suffering to combatants, are prohibited. In view of the unique characteristics of nuclear weapons…the use of such weapons in fact seems scarcely reconcilable with respect to such requirements.”28

Discordance between the incompatibility of these devices with the requirements of humanitarian law, the assertion that there could be possible instances in which their use could be legal and the reliance on the doctrine of deterrence compelled the Court to seek a resolution: “the long promised complete nuclear disarmament appears to be the most appropriate means of achieving that result.”29 The requirements of moral coherence and ethical conduct and the need for “international law, and with it the stability of international order which it is intended to govern,”30 drive the imperative of nuclear disarmament.

Ongoing Problem

Legal and moral questions continue to loom before us. We are not faced with nuclear policies founded on a strategy of dropping depth charges in mid-ocean or bombs in the desert. What the world faces is nuclear deterrence with its reliance on the horrific destruction of vast numbers of innocent people, destruction of the environment rendering it hostile to generations yet to be blessed with life.

Deterrence proponents claim that nuclear weapons are not so much instruments for the waging of war but political instruments “intended to prevent war by depriving it of any possible rationale.”3 The United States has boldly argued that because deterrence is believed to be essential to its international security that the threat or use of nuclear weapons must therefore be legal. The United States representative stated: “If these weapons could not lawfully be used in individual or collective self defense under any circumstances (underlying added), there would be no credible threat of such use in response to aggression and deterrent policies would be futile and meaningless. In this sense, it is impossible to separate the policy of deterrence from the legality of the use of the means of deterrence. Accordingly, any affirmation of a general prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons would be directly contrary to one of the fundamental premises of the national security policy of each of these many states.”32

It is clear that deterrence is designed to threaten massive destruction which would most certainly violate numerous principles of humanitarian law. Additionally, it strikes at generations yet unborn.

Even in the instance of retaliation the moral absurdity challenges us. As Mexico’s Ambassador Sergio Gonzalez Galvez told the Court, “Torture is not a permissible response to torture. Nor is mass rape acceptable retaliation to mass rape. Just as unacceptable is retaliatory deterrence—‘You burnt my city, I will burn yours.’ “33

Professor Eric David, on behalf of the Solomon Islands, stated, “If the dispatch of a nuclear weapon causes a million deaths, retaliation with another nuclear weapon which will also cause a million deaths will perhaps protect the sovereignty of the state suffering the first strike, and will perhaps satisfy the victim’s desire for revenge, but it will not satisfy humanitarian law, which will have been breached not once but twice; and two wrongs do not make a right.”34

Judge Weeramantry rigorously analyzed deterrence theory:

1. Intention: “Deterrence needs to carry the conviction to other parties that there is a real intention to use those weapons in the event of an attack by that other party. A game of bluff does not convey that intention, for it is difficult to persuade another of one’s intention unless one really has that intention. Deterrence thus consists in a real intention to use such weapons. If deterrence is to operate, it leaves the world of make believe and enters the field of seriously intended military threats.”35

2. Deterrence and Mere Possession: “Deterrence is more than the mere accumulation of weapons in a storehouse. It means the possession of weapons in a state of readiness for actual use. This means the linkage of weapons ready for immediate take off, with a command and control system geared for immediate action. It means that weapons are attached to delivery vehicles. It means that personnel are ready night and day to render them operational at a moment’s notice. There is clearly a vast difference between weapons stocked in a warehouse and weapons so ready for immediate action. Mere possession and deterrence are thus concepts which are clearly distinguishable from each other.”36

For deterrence to work one must have the resolve to cause the resulting damage and devastation.

Is deterrence limited to depth charges in the ocean or strikes in the desert? Are we willing to permit global security to rely on a bluff? If it is not a lie but a resolve to be willing to destroy all, are we not reducing humanitarian law to being a mere servant of raw power? Is not the very definition of lawlessness when might claims to make right?

While deterrence continues to place all life on the planet in a precarious position of high risk, one must wonder whether it provides any possible security against accidental or unauthorized launches, computer error, irrational rogue actions, terrorist attack, criminal syndicate utilization of weapons and other irrational and unpredictable, but likely, scenarios.

Did the Court undermine the continued legitimacy of deterrence? The Court stated clearly that “if the use of force itself in a given case is illegal—for whatever reason—the threat to use such force will likewise be illegal.”37

The moral position of the nuclear weapons states is essentially that the threat to commit an illegal act—massive destruction of innocent people—is legal because it is so horrible to contemplate that it ensures the peace. Thus the argument is that the threat of committing that which is patently illegal is made legal by its own intrinsic illogic. Does this engender moral coherence in the youth of the world to whom we must argue that violence and the threat of violence in daily life does not bring human fulfillment?

An unambiguous political commitment by the nuclear weapon states to the elimination of nuclear weapons evidenced by unambiguous immediate pledges never to use them first as well as placing the weapons in a de-alerted posture pending their ultimate elimination will promptly evidence the good faith efforts by the nuclear weapon states to reduce our collective risks. These steps increase our collective security, but are hardly enough to meet the clear decision of the court and the dictates of reason. Only commencement in good faith of multilateral negotiations leading to elimination of these devices will bring law, morals, ethics and reason into coherence. Only then will we be able to tell our children that ultimate violence will not bring ultimate security, a culture of peace based on law, reason and values will.

Conclusion

We are heartened by the level of cooperation articulated in the integrated human security agendas that emerged from the world summits of the 1990’s which addressed our common environmental and human security concerns. However, it must be pointed out that to fulfill the commitments made at these summits a new level of cooperation is required. It is appropriate, therefore, that the United Nations has declared the first ten years of the 21st century as dedicated to the creation of a Culture of Peace. That Culture of Peace will require a pattern in which trust, respect and transparency will breed disarmament and reverse the pattern of fear and threat which have continued to justify irrational levels of armaments. According to the Brookings Institute the U.S. alone has spent 5.8 trillion on nuclear arms since 1940.38 General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money on arms alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children.”

The moral experience of shame has been placed in us along with the moral sensibility of revulsion. What right do we have to organize ourselves such that we might give human beings the Sophie’s choice of ending all life on the planet in order to save a human creation, the state. As General Omar Bradley stated, “We live in an age of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living.”

It is time that we took bold moves to change the moral incoherence of the 20th century for it is now time in which statesmen must delve deep into themselves and become men in a state of grace. Let us grasp this moment of hazard and opportunity with our full humanity. Ultimate hazard and horror is our future if we let it slip away; opportunity to lead the world in fulfilling nothing less than an ultimate moral imperative — nuclear disarmament — is ours if we meet the challenge. This is a long journey that must take us from fear and incoherence into reason and moral coherence. Let it truly begin with us today.

Footnotes

1 Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, General List No. 95 (Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of July 8, 1996). Unless otherwise noted, references are to this opinion, which was requested by the General Assembly. The historic importance of this decision cannot be overemphasized for it is the first judicial analysis of the issue by this international tribunal even though the first General Assembly Resolution, unanimously adopted January 24, 1946 at the London session, called for elimination of atomic weapons.

2 Opinion of Judge Ranjeva, para. 105(2)E1.

3 Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” Udana-Varga, 5:18; Christianity: “All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.” Matthew 7:12; Confucianism: “Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” Analects 15:23; Hinduism: “This is the sum of duty: do not unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.” Mahabharata 5:1517; Islam: “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.” Hadith; Jainism: “In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self.” Lord Mahavir 24th Tirthankara; Judaism: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. That is the law; all the rest is commentary.” Talmud, Shabbat 31a; Zoroastrianism: “That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatsoever is not good for its own self.” Dadistan-I-Dinik, 94:5.

4 See, excellent analysis, “Ethics of Abolition” in Douglas Roche’s Unacceptable Risk, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 1995, p.90.

5 Opinion of Judge Weeramantry, V4.

6 Ibid. I 5.

7 Gareth Evans of Australia, verbatum record, 30 October, 1995, pp. 44-45, 49.

8 Opinion of Judge Weeramantry, II 3(a).

9 Nuclear weapons cause death and destruction; induced cancers, leukemia, keloids and related afflictions; cause gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and related afflictions; continued for decades after their use to induce the health related problems mentioned above; damage the environmental rights of future generations; cause congenital deformities, mental retardation and genetic damage; carry the potential to cause a nuclear winter; contaminate and destroy the food chain; imperil the eco system; produce lethal levels of heat and blast; produce radiation and radioactive fallout; produce a disruptive electromagnetic pulse; produce social disintegration; imperil all civilizations; threaten human survival; wreak cultural devastation; span a time range of thousands of years; threaten all life on the planet; irreversibly damage the rights of future generations; exterminate civilian population; damage neighboring states; produce psychological stress and fear syndromes–as no other weapons do” Opinion of J, Ibid. para. II 4.

10 Opinion of President Judge Bedjaoui, para. 2.

11 Ibid. para. 5.

12 Opinion of Judge Weeramantry II para. 3.

13 “THE COURT:(1) By thirteen votes to one, Decides to comply with the request for an advisory opinion; IN FAVOUR: President Bedjaoui; Vice-President Schwebel; Judges Guillaume, Shahabuddeen, Weeramantry, Ranjeva, Herczegh, Shi, Fleischhauer, Koroma, Vereshchetin, Ferrari Bravo, Higgins;AGAINST: Judge Oda. (2) Replies in the following manner to the question put by the General Assembly: A. Unanimously, There is in neither customary nor conventional international law any specific authorization of the threat or use of nuclear weapons; B. By eleven votes to three, There is in neither customary nor conventional international law any comprehensive and universal prohibition of the threat or use of nuclear weapons as such; IN FAVOUR: President Bedjaoui; Vice-President Schwebel; Judges Oda, Guillaume, Ranjeva, Herczegh, Shi, Fleischhauer, Vereshchetin, Ferrari Bravo, Higgins; AGAINST: Judges Shahabuddeen, Weeramantry, Koroma. C. Unanimously, A threat or use of force by means of nuclear weapons that is contrary to Article 2, paragraph 4, of the United Nations Charter and that fails to meet all the requirements of Article 51, is unlawful; D. Unanimously, A threat or use of nuclear weapons should also be compatible with the requirements of the international law applicable in armed conflict particularly those of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law, as well as with specific obligations under treaties and other undertakings which expressly deal with nuclear weapons; E. By seven votes to seven, by the President’s casting vote, It follows from the above-mentioned requirements that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law; However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake; IN FAVOUR: President Bedjaoui; Judges Ranjeva, Herczegh, Shi, Fleischhauer, Vereshchetin, Ferrari Bravo; AGAINST: Vice-President Schwebel; Judges Oda, Guillaume, Shahabuddeen, Weeramantry, Koroma, Higgins. F. Unanimously, 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.” Para.105.

For full opinion and commentary, See, Ann Fagan Ginger, ed. Nuclear Weapons Are Illegal: The Historic Opinion of the World Court and How It Will Be Enforced, Apex Press, New York, 1998; For analysis with excellent bibliography on the opinion, See, John Burroughs, The (Il)legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice, Munster, London, 1997; For opinion available at cost from UN (document A/51/218, 15 October 1996), UN Publications, 2 UN Plaza, DC2-853, NY, NY 10017, 212-963-8302; Also, available at International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) website http://www.ddh.nl/org/ialana

14 Para. 91.

15 Para. 94.

16 Paras. 78-79.

17 Para. 95.

18 Paras. 78, see paras. 92,95.

19 Paras 78, 95

20 Para. 78.

21 Ibid.

22 Paras. 32, 33, 35.

23 Opinion of President Judge Bedjaoui, para. 20.

24 Ibid. 23

25 Paras.94-95, see para. 91.

26 Opinion of President Bedjaoui, para. 22.

27 Ibid. para 20.

28 Para. 95

29 Para. 98

30 Ibid.

31 Marc Perrinde Brichambaut, France, Verbatim record (trans.) 1 November, 1995, page 33.

32 Michael Matheson, US, Verbatim record, 15 November, 1995, p. 78.

33 Verbatim record, 3 November 1995, p. 64.

34 Verbatim record, (trans.), 14 November, 1995, p. 45.

35 Opinion of Judge Weeramantry, VII 2(v).

36 Ibid.

37 Para. 47.

38 Washington Post, July 1, 1998.

* Jonathan Granoff is an attorney and a member of Lawyers Alliance for World Security, Temple of Understanding, and the State of the World Forum.

May 26, 1999
No More Kosovos!

I would like to discuss with you what the Global Action to Prevent War program could have done in helping to prevent the Kosovo crisis, what contribution it still might make to a solution there, and what it could do to prevent future Kosovos and Rwandas.

This is a practical way of reviewing the part of the Global Action to Prevent War program that deals with preventing internal conflict and of eliciting your suggestions to improve the project. And your suggestions are much needed – this is a work in progress and one that is intended to help the practitioner.

The full text of the Global Action to Prevent War program is on our website (www.globalactionpw.org). The purpose of Global Action where it concerns crises like Kosovo is to enhance the capabilities for conflict prevention of the UN, of regional security organizations, the international judicial system and human rights institutions, as well as of civil society everywhere, and to bring them all more fully into a highly active conflict prevention role.

To do this, we envision about twenty individual measures, which I would like to describe briefly. (For clarity, I have numbered them in this paper.)

Please bear in mind that it is unlikely that any of these measures alone could have decisive effect. They have to act together.

To start with, (1) Global Action foresees a specific treaty commitment to admit official human rights monitors immediately on request to the host country and to facilitate their visits.

Most countries have already undertaken numerous human rights covenants. There is no point in pressing for additional ones. What is needed is implementation of existing commitments. We know that acute Serb abuse of the Kosovars has been going on for at least ten years since Milosevic revoked the autonomy of Kosovo in 1989. Yugoslavia is a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and many other human rights covenants. These commitments are being violated by the Serb authorities.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has an agreed but complicated procedure for admitting human rights observers even when the host government is reluctant. It was invoked in Chechnya after much negotiation. What we are proposing here is a worldwide commitment that will make immediate entry of monitors to check compliance with existing human rights commitments a recognized right.

If human rights monitors had visited Kosovo at the outset of the abuses there and immediately publicized their findings, reporting them to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to the international courts, and to the Security Council, and had done this repeatedly, this would have inhibited Milosevic.

Many NGO’s and diplomatic observers were in Kosovo observing the remarkable development of non-violent self-government there, but their reports did not get action out of Western governments. This is one of the several missed opportunities for preventing Kosovo.

Remember that the explicit standard for existing human rights covenants, both for the UN and for the OSCE, is that the status of human rights within a given country is not solely a matter of national sovereignty, but a legitimate interest of the international community.

(2) Another of our measures could have had even more effect — an international treaty on minority rights. This treaty would have promoted Kosovar autonomy and protected that autonomy, once granted, against arbitrary change. And its terms would have given the Kosovars status to complain to the international community and places to lodge these complaints – the UN Human Rights Commission, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and ultimately, the Security Council. After many years of negotiation, in 1992, the General Assembly adopted a declaration on rights of minorities. We want to go a further step to give the declaration binding treaty power.

(3) We would back this treaty on minority protection by a commitment to teach non-violent conflict prevention and productive intergroup relations in every participating country at every level of education – using the concepts covered in UNESCO’s program for a culture of peace.

(4) Global Action foresees the establishment of a professional mediator corps at the UN, with counterparts in regional security organizations.

(5) To feed into these positions and to provide the trained peacekeepers I will mention later, we also propose that, in UN member states, service in mediation, humanitarian aid, and in peacekeeping, be an accepted alternative to military conscription. Where armed forces are professional and there is no conscription, we ask governments to set up a career public service in these fields and to place these practitioners in senior government positions.

We foresee that a corps of trained mediation professionals at the UN, at the disposal of the Secretary General and Security Council, would collect and analyze information about potential trouble spots and also about proven methods of conflict prevention. They would be sent out individually or in small teams to areas where conflict might develop. Their status would be protected and all UN member states would be committed to receiving them on their territory and facilitating their stay. Small teams could stay on site for months, becoming acquainted with the local population, working with local and foreign NGO’s, trying to bring hostile groups together, proposing solutions, investigating incidents and, if helpful, making their findings publicly known.

The OSCE already does valuable work of this kind. Our proposal is that the work be intensified and be carried out by trained professionals with a reputation for institutional neutrality. Today, the Secretary General sends out small missions of this kind, but he has neither permanent professional personnel nor adequate funds for this function. A small group of mediation professionals could also be assigned to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague to permit it to undertake a more proactive conflict prevention role.

These professional mediators in the field could warn UN Headquarters if there is a real possibility of armed violence. (6) They could also alert the Conflict Mediation Panel of the General Assembly that we propose. This open-ended committee of General Assembly members would be a less formal, more flexible conflict prevention group than the Security Council. It would not be subject to the veto and could set its own agenda by majority vote.

In this case, the General Assembly Conflict Mediation Panel would send a team to Kosovo composed of UN representatives from various countries. It would hold on-site hearings, publicizing them if it seems desirable. In the Panel’s sessions in New York, as many as possible of them public sessions, it would invite Kosovars and Yugoslav diplomatic representatives, and perhaps some officials from Serbia, to tell their side of the story, and to listen to the Panel’s advice on what to do. It would be the obligation of this Panel to give the UN and the world public comprehensive, balanced information on the disputed issue and to propose possible solutions.

One of the problems of conflicts like that in Rwanda and Kosovo is that, although government officials are often aware of these conflicts at an early stage, they do not publicize their reports. Media coverage in these early stages is often sporadic. As a result, the conflicts often hit an unprepared world opinion only when they are at an advanced state and organized killing has already begun. To give civil society a chance to do its job, it has to be brought in early. The same goes for governments in other areas and for national legislatures that may have to decide on aid, sanctions, or peacekeeping operations.

In this case, the work of the professional mediators and of the Conflict Mediation Panel would alert the international community, along with NGO’s and publics in major UN member states, to the Kosovo problem. The media would intensify its coverage of Kosovo, and the political opposition in Yugoslavia would have grounds early on to question the actions of their government in Kosovo.

(7) An important feature of our proposal is a reformed Security Council, expanded in membership and restricted in use of the veto through an informal understanding among the permanent members of the Security Council.

We suggest that this reformed Security Council should make a deliberate decision to undertake a highly pro-active role in conflict prevention and should make the commitments in professional backup and financing needed to carry out this role.

In the Kosovo case, backed by information from the Mediation Corps, whose personnel would serve the Council as professional staff for this program, and by information from the General Assembly’s Conflict Mediation Panel, the Security Council would invite the Yugoslav government to appear before it in a series of hearings to explain its policy in Kosovo. The Council would present the reasons for its own concern over the situation. It would give its advice to the Yugoslav government on treatment of the Kosovars and offer its assistance, both in personnel and money, to carry out this advice. In proposing this procedure, we are thinking also of other unresolved internal conflicts like those in Sudan and Sri Lanka. In the case of Kosovo, if the problem continued, the Council would invite the Yugoslav government to appear before it again and would warn it of the probable future consequences of its anti-Kosovar practices. It would point out to the Yugoslav government and the world public that the problem in Kosovo was becoming a threat to international security.

This activity by the Security Council would prepare the road to further Council action, including the possibility of full negative publicity, the use of emissaries to Yugoslavia’s leaders, carefully selected economic sanctions, of preventive deployment of a peacekeeping force if the Yugoslav government is prepared to agree, or as a last extreme measure, of peace enforcement. The international community would be alerted at each step.

(8) We believe the Security Council and the main UN member states should move step by step toward an agreed concept for humanitarian intervention based on the idea that governments are entrusted with stewardship of the welfare of their people, especially their human rights, and are accountable for their conduct of this stewardship, and that when this stewardship is misused or abused in an extreme way, the international community should be prepared to intervene in some form.

The Council would decide in the individual situation whether this is the case and what action should be taken. Actual practice of the Security Council is moving toward this concept. A clear statement of it would have advantages for member state governments and publics.

We are proposing that civil society be closely linked to this process by (9) formal liaison with the UN Secretariat and the Security Council and regional organizations and with a biennial conference of NGO’s working on all aspects of the conflict reduction field, with participation of the Secretary General and the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council, to discuss field experience, good and bad methods and improved liaison at all levels.

If the Security Council is blocked from action by vetoes, then resort should be made to the General Assembly by shifting action to the Conflict Mediation Panel or, in extreme cases, through the Uniting for Peace resolution used in the Korean War and in the big Congo peacekeeping operation of the 1960’s, when the Soviet Union paralyzed the Security Council with vetoes. These proposals for a General Assembly Conflict Mediation Panel, for a proactive role for the Security Council, and for resort to the Uniting for Peace procedure are not “future music.” They could be invoked today.

(10) This is a logical point to mention that the Global Action project foresees the establishment of universal membership regional security organizations in each major region, each with conflict prevention capability. When intervention is carried out by a regional security organization, the Security Council should give its approval.

We do not know the long term future of NATO. It may merge with OSCE or both may finally be absorbed into the European Union structure. But, according to our approach, NATO’s membership would have to become universal and NATO would have to recognize the authority of the Security Council.

(11) We propose in the Global Action program that all newly concluded treaties should provide for referral of disputes to the International Court of Justice for adjudication, giving the court a more active role in conflict prevention. These activities need not be limited to interstate disputes: Under the minority rights treaty we propose, the UN Human Rights Commissioner and the Kosovar community in Yugoslavia would both have status to bring complaints to the Court.

(12) We also assume effective operation of an International Criminal Court and authority under its procedures for the Kosovars to inform the court’s prosecutor at an early stage that abuses of their human rights are taking place. Effective operation of the Criminal Court will mean that the Court’s existence and practices would have a deterrent effect on actions and practices like those of the Yugoslav government against the Kosovars. We believe other aspects of the Global Action program will also have deterrent effects.

(13) The Global Action program foresees the existence of full-time UN volunteer peacekeeping forces, a brigade in each major geographic region, with the capacity to call on member states for backup forces. (14) These units would be financed by the proceeds of an international tax, possibly on airline tickets, levied by member state legislatures.

If the Yugoslav government was prepared to accept the force, the Security Council could propose preventive deployment of this force in Kosovo, stating an emergency was beginning to emerge. If the Yugoslav government refused, the Council could call for further steps, including carefully articulated economic sanctions and the use of military force under Chapter 7.

In contrast to the present situation, these pre-financed peacekeeping troops would be ready to move on a few hours notice. (15) They would be backed by a standing UN police force composed of volunteer personnel who could also take on the job of maintaining order in Kosovo. There are many occasions, including Kosovo, where inviting in a police force poses much less of a challenge to national sovereignty than an outside peacekeeping force and could therefore be more acceptable to the host country and to the Security Council as well. UN-directed police personnel have been deployed in Haiti and the OSCE has also done so in Bosnia.

If either of these forces had already been available, they might have provided a vital component for a negotiated solution of the Kosovo problem. In fact, I have been proposing that a United Nations peacekeeping force be substituted for NATO troops as an international peacekeeping force for Kosovo. A proposal to do this could bring about earlier agreement to end the Kosovo crisis than may be achieved otherwise.

We are talking here of a more powerful Security Council and regional security organizations. To limit the possibility of abuse of power and to enhance accountability of these organizations, we want to (16) institute on a step-by-step basis the practice of judicial review of Security Council decisions by the International Court of Justice.

What about the opposite problem from that of arbitrary action, the question of political will? Would governments and institutions really act to use this improved international security system?

We believe so. First, authority in the system we are describing would be widely dispersed. There would be many separate decisionmakers: NGO’s, human rights officials, UN officials and representatives and governments. Above all, the potential victims themselves would have a much louder voice.

What about timely decisions by regional security institutions or the UN Security Council to send peacekeepers? The issue of political will might become critical at this point.

(17) As one measure to deal with this issue, Global Action proposes that the president of the General Assembly or his representative should participate in meetings of the Security Council to report on Assembly views and keep the Council engaged — and also accountable.

As regards the Security Council’s capacity to act in a timely way without veto, we believe that the five permanent members, in their own self-interest of saving the Council from the cold war oblivion it would otherwise suffer and of preserving their own international influence as members of a functioning Council, may ultimately agree informally among themselves to restrict use of the veto. This restriction could be very limited, ad hoc, or general. Resort to the Conflict Mediation Panel of the General Assembly or to the Uniting for Peace procedure are possible alternatives.

In addition, we are suggesting that (18) the Secretary General of the UN should be given authority by Charter amendment or decision of the Security Council to deploy a peacekeeping military or police force of limited size for conflict prevention only. For the deployment to continue beyond 30 days, it would have to be confirmed by the Security Council.

Speaking more generally, when we raise the issue of political will, we are talking about education. A large part of what we call political will is learned behavior. (19) The Global Action project foresees an intense education program for political leaders at all levels, government officials, military officers and NGO’s on recognition of the signs of possible conflict and the logic of determined early action to prevent conflict.

For Kosovo, we know the lesson already: the costs of failure to intervene early in the Kosovo crisis include the costs of the current NATO military campaign, the costs of caring for the refugees, the costs of an international force, the costs of rehabilitating Kosovo, as well as possibly Serbia, a total which will probably exceed $50 billion for all NATO countries for the next two years.

Governments do not like to take early action. By and large, they believe that most incipient crises will dissipate and that there will be no need to incur the political and economic costs of action to cope with them. That is one lesson they draw from experience. That lesson is wrong in the field of internal conflict. Here, governments have to learn that when certain indicators are present, it is a necessity to pay for the insurance policy of early preventive action. Doing so will save more lives and it will be cheaper to pay these insurance costs than to risk the heavy costs of waiting.

Using round figures, the maximum cost of applying all the measures proposed by Global Action for Kosovo and described in this paper would perhaps have been $400 or $500 million — excluding the standing peacekeeping brigades, $100 million — as contrasted to the loss of life and uprooting of thousands of lives and costs of at least $50 billion in the belated action now going on.

This lesson about the need to act early can in fact be learned. A whole generation of Westerners went through World War II and came out with one lesson – the danger of allowing the human and material resources of Europe to fall under hostile hegemony. Without real hesitation, they followed that lesson into the cold war. Debate during the cold war was mainly about the methods.

To cite another example, in the century between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, the British political class learned the lesson of early warning and early intervention and acted on these lessons scores of times. Sometimes the objective was laudable, sometimes not, but the point is that this kind of alertness can be learned.

That is the kind of political understanding and political will that must ultimately arise with regard to prevention of conflict. It must be part of the training of every NGO, legislator, diplomat, and soldier on the planet to recognize and react to these symptoms early on. It is a central part of the job of supporters of Global Action to help to carry out this educational task with their political leaders and government officials.

This description covers only that part of the Global Action program aimed at reducing the outbreak of internal war. Global Action’s program of conflict prevention is backed by a systematic program of transparency on all the components of military power, confidence-building, and conventional disarmament to prevent interstate war and big power war — a necessary complement.

Let me draw a conclusion from these comments: This list of preventive measures is not and cannot be complete. We need the help of everyone who has ideas on this issue and of the many experienced workers in this field. Please give us your suggestions and help us make the Global Action approach better.

Our argument is not that any single one of the 18 or 19 measures I have described today would have prevented the Kosovo disaster.

It is that, working together, these measures, combined with the widespread conviction that armed conflict can in fact be prevented, and combined with insistent pressure from civil society – from all of us — can be a powerful force in drastically reducing the outbreak of armed conflict and in preventing future Kosovos.

This is the main subject that the United Nations and world civil society should be working on in their preparations for the agenda-setting Millennial forums next year – and this is the subject that we at the Hague Peace Appeal conference should be thinking of today.

* Jonathan Dean is an adviser on International Security Issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Suite 310, 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036, 202-332-0900 FAX: 202-332-0905, Global Action to Prevent War.

May 1, 1999
U.S. Military Action Undermines the Rule of Law

When it was first announced by President Clinton that the United States would launch a military strike against Iraq, I wondered about the legality of this attack under international law. I carefully read President Clinton’s speech announcing the attack, and found a reference to a UN Security Council resolution that condemned Iraq’s defiance of the UN inspection team by a vote of 15 to zero. Upon review of the resolution, however, I found that it contained no authorization for the use of force against Iraq. Nor did any previous Security Council resolution, except for the 1991 resolution authorizing the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, an issue clearly not relevant to the current situation.

President Clinton announced that the purpose of the military action was “to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.” Clinton and his security advisors, who he announced were unanimous in their recommendation to attack, were responding to a report filed by Richard Butler, the head of the UN inspection team in Iraq.

But this is what the Washington Post wrote about Butler’s report, “Butler’s conclusions were welcome in Washington, which helped orchestrate the terms of the Australian diplomat’s report. Sources in New York and Washington said Clinton officials played a direct role in shaping Butler’s text during multiple conversations with him Monday at secure facilities in the U.S. mission to the United Nations.”

The article in the Washington Post also pointed out that a “companion report” by the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed “broad satisfaction with Iraq’s cooperation.”

What this suggests is that there were reasonable differences of opinion about Iraq’s cooperation with the UN, and that there was improper collusion between Richard Butler, the head of the UN inspection team who is supposed to act in a neutral manner, and U.S. officials. If this is true, Butler was clearly acting in an improper manner and bears some of the responsibility for the military action against Iraq. If it is true, Kofi Annan should act immediately to fire Butler.

President Clinton justified the attack as being necessary “to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.” This justification raises many questions. What was the “national interest” that was being protected? How was it determined? Should any country have the right to attack another country in the name of national interest without proper authority under international law?

The behavior of President Clinton and his “security team” sends the wrong message to the international community. It is a similar message to the one they sent when they attacked a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which they unconvincingly claimed was a chemical weapons factory.

The message we are sending to the world is that we are the big boys on the block, and we are willing to throw our weight around regardless of the law. The Russian Duma referred to our attack in a nearly unanimous vote as “international terrorism.” This does not bode well for our future relations with the Russians.

The Pakistani Parliament unanimously characterized the military action against Iraq as “an attaack on humanity and the Islamic world.” This does not bode well for our relations with other Islamic nations.

Of the many consequences of our attack against Iraq, I believe the most serious is our undermining of the rule of law. For any use of force against Iraq, we should have had express authority from the UN Security Council, which in all of its resolutions on this matter indicated clearly that it would “remain actively seized of the matter.” By choosing not to do so, we once again demonstrated our willingness to defy international law for vague reasons of national interest.

The bottom line is that our attack against Iraq was bullyism, and undermines international law. It did not serve the interests of the United States, nor of the world. Kofi Annan had it right when he said, “This is a sad day for the United Nations and for the world.”

December 11, 1998