The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 marked an end and a beginning. The close of the Second World War ushered in a Cold War, with a precarious peace based on the threat of mutually assured destruction.
Today the world is at another turning point. The assumption that nuclear weapons are indispensable to keeping the peace is crumbling. Disarmament is back on the global agenda – and not a moment too soon. A groundswell of new international initiatives will soon emerge to move this agenda forward.
The Cold War’s end, twenty years ago this autumn, was supposed to provide a peace dividend. Instead, we find ourselves still facing serious nuclear threats. Some stem from the persistence of more than 20,000 nuclear weapons and the contagious doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Others relate to nuclear tests—more than a dozen in the post-Cold War era, aggravated by the constant testing of long-range missiles. Still others arise from concerns that more countries or even terrorists might be seeking the bomb.
For decades, we believed that the terrible effects of nuclear weapons would be sufficient to prevent their use. The superpowers were likened to a pair of scorpions in a bottle, each knowing a first strike would be suicidal. Today’s expanding nest of scorpions, however, means that no one is safe. The Presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States—holders of the largest nuclear arsenals—recognize this. They have endorsed the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons, most recently at their Moscow summit, and are seeking new reductions.
Many efforts are underway worldwide to achieve this goal. Earlier this year, the 65-member Conference on Disarmament—the forum that produces multilateral disarmament treaties—broke a deadlock and agreed to negotiations on a fissile material treaty. Other issues it will discuss include nuclear disarmament and security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon states.
In addition, Australia and Japan have launched a major international commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. My own multimedia “WMD—WeMustDisarm!” campaign, which will culminate on the International Day of Peace (21 September), will reinforce growing calls for disarmament by former statesmen and grassroots campaigns, such as “Global Zero.” These calls will get a further boost in September when civil society groups gather in Mexico City for a UN-sponsored conference on disarmament and development.
Though the UN has been working on disarmament since 1946, two treaties negotiated under UN auspices are now commanding the world’s attention. Also in September, countries that have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) will meet at the UN to consider ways to promote its early entry into force. North Korea’s nuclear tests, its missile launches and its threats of further provocation lend new urgency to this cause.
Next May, the UN will also host a major five-year review conference involving the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which will examine the state of the treaty’s “grand bargain” of disarmament, non-proliferation and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. If the CTBT can enter into force, and if the NPT review conference makes progress, the world would be off to a good start on its journey to a world free of nuclear weapons.
My own five-point plan to achieve this goal begins with a call for the NPT Parties to pursue negotiations in good faith—as required by the treaty—on nuclear disarmament, either through a new convention or through a series of mutually reinforcing instruments backed by a credible system of verification. Disarmament must be reliably verified.
Second, I urged the Security Council to consider other ways to strengthen security in the disarmament process, and to assure non-nuclear-weapon states against nuclear weapons threats. I proposed to the Council that it convene a summit on nuclear disarmament, and I urged non-NPT states to freeze their own weapon capabilities and make their own disarmament commitments. Disarmament must enhance security.
My third proposal relates to the rule of law. Universal membership in multilateral treaties is key, as are regional nuclear-weapon-free zones and a new treaty on fissile materials. President Barack Obama’s support for US ratification of the CTBT is welcome — the treaty only needs a few more ratifications to enter into force. Disarmament must be rooted in legal obligations.
My fourth point addresses accountability and transparency. Countries with nuclear weapons should publish more information about what they are doing to fulfill their disarmament commitments. While most of these countries have revealed some details about their weapons programs, we still do not know how many nuclear weapons exist worldwide. The UN Secretariat could serve as a repository for such data. Disarmament must be visible to the public.
Finally, I am urging progress in eliminating other weapons of mass destruction and limiting missiles, space weapons and conventional arms — all of which are needed for a nuclear-weapon-free world. Disarmament must anticipate emerging dangers from other weapons.
This, then, is my plan to drop the bomb. Global security challenges are serious enough without the risks from nuclear weapons or their acquisition by additional states or non-state actors. Of course, strategic stability, trust among nations, and the settlement of regional conflicts would all help to advance the process of disarmament. Yet disarmament has its own contributions to make in serving these goals and should not be postponed.
It will restore hope for a more peaceful, secure and prosperous future. It deserves everybody’s support.
Category: Key Issues
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My Plan to Drop the Bomb
Ban Ki-moon is Secretary-General of the United Nations.
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Toxic Link: The WHO and the IAEA
This article was originally published in The Guardian‘s Comment Is Free
Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation’s assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations “Atoms for Peace” organisation, founded just two years before in 1957. The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.
The WHO’s objective is to promote “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health”, while the IAEA’s mission is to “accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world”. Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA’s main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.
Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in which the other may have an interest, it “shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement”. The two agencies must “keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all programs of work which may be of interest to both parties”. And in the realm of statistics – a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk – the two undertake “to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest”.
The language appears to be evenhanded, but the effect has been one-sided. For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995, and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain unpublished – despite claims to the contrary by a senior WHO spokesman reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.
Meanwhile, the 2005 report of the IAEA-dominated Chernobyl Forum, which estimates a total death toll from the accident of only several thousand, is widely regarded as a whitewash as it ignores a host of peer-reviewed epidemiological studies indicating far higher mortality and widespread genomic damage. Many of these studies were presented at the Geneva and Kiev conferences but they, and the ensuing learned discussions, have yet to see the light of day thanks to the non-publication of the proceedings.
The British radiation biologist Keith Baverstock is another casualty of the agreement, and of the mindset it has created in the WHO. He served as a radiation scientist and regional adviser at the WHO’s European Office from 1991 to 2003, when he was sacked after expressing concern to his senior managers that new epidemiological evidence from nuclear test veterans and from soldiers exposed to depleted uranium indicated that current risk models for nuclear radiation were understating the real hazards.
Now a professor at the University of Kuopio, Finland, Baverstock finally published his paper in the peer-reviewed journal Medicine, Conflict and Survival in April 2005. He concluded by calling for “reform from within the profession” and stressing “the political imperative for freely independent scientific institutions” – a clear reference to the non-independence of his former employer, the WHO, which had so long ignored his concerns.
Since the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in April 2007, a daily “Hippocratic vigil” has taken place at the WHO’s offices in Geneva, organised by Independent WHO to persuade the WHO to abandon its the WHO-IAEA Agreement. The protest has continued through the WHO’s 62nd World Health Assembly, which ended yesterday, and will endure through the executive board meeting that begins today. The group has struggled to win support from WHO’s member states. But the scientific case against the agreement is building up, most recently when the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) called for its abandonment at its conference earlier this month in Lesvos, Greece.
At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times – consistent with the ECRR’s own 2003 model of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators’ Edition). According to Chris Busby, the ECRR’s scientific secretary and visiting professor at the University of Ulster’s school of biomedical sciences:
“The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima, the agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO’s independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and publish its findings.”
Some birthdays deserve celebration – but not this one. After five decades, it is time the WHO regained the freedom to impart independent, objective advice on the health risks of radiation.
Oliver Tickell is author of the book Kyoto2.
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Maybe We Should Take the North Koreans at Their Word
Shortly after North Korea exploded its second nuclear device in three years on Monday morning, it released a statement explaining why. “The republic has conducted another underground nuclear testing successfully in order to strengthen our defensive nuclear deterrence.”(1) If the Obama Administration hopes to dissuade Pyongyang from the nuclear course it seems so hell bent on pursuing, Washington must understand just how adroitly nuclear arms do appear to serve North Korea’s national security. In other words, perhaps we should recognize that they mean what they say.
From the dawn of history until the dawn of the nuclear age, it seemed rather self-evident that for virtually any state in virtually any strategic situation, the more military power one could wield relative to one’s adversaries, the more security one gained. That all changed, however, with Alamogordo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the Cold War’s long atomic arms race, it slowly dawned on “nuclear use theorists” – whom one can hardly resist acronyming as NUTS – that in the nuclear age, security did not necessarily require superiority. Security required simply an ability to retaliate after an adversary had struck, to inflict upon that opponent “unacceptable damage” in reply. If an adversary knew, no matter how much devastation it might inflict in a first strike, that the chances were good that it would receive massive damage as a consequence (even far less damage than it had inflicted as long as that damage was “unacceptable”), then, according to the logic of nuclear deterrence, that adversary would be dissuaded from striking first. What possible political benefit could outweigh the cost of the possible obliteration of, oh, a state’s capital city, and the leaders of that state themselves, and perhaps more than a million lives therein?
Admittedly, the unassailable logic of this “unacceptable damage” model of nuclear deterrence – which we might as well call UD – failed to put the brakes on a spiraling Soviet/American nuclear arms competition that began almost immediately after the USSR acquired nuclear weapons of its own in 1949. Instead, a different model of nuclear deterrence emerged, deterrence exercised by the capability completely to wipe out the opponent’s society, “mutually assured destruction,” which soon came to be known to all as MAD. There were other scenarios of aggression – nuclear attacks on an adversary’s nuclear weapons, nuclear or conventional attacks on an adversary’s closest allies (in Western and Eastern Europe) – that nuclear weapons were supposed to deter as well. However, the Big Job of nuclear weapons was to dissuade the other side from using their nuclear weapons against one’s own cities and society, by threatening to deliver massive nuclear devastation on the opponent’s cities and society in reply. “The Department of Defense,” said an Ohio congressman in the early 1960s, with some exasperation, “has become the Department of Retaliation.”(2)
Nevertheless, those who engaged in an effort to slow the arms race often employed the logic of UD in their attempts to do so. “Our twenty thousandth bomb,” said Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the Manhattan Project that built the world’s first atomic weapons, as early as 1953, “will not in any deep strategic sense offset their two thousandth.” (3) “Deterrence does not depend on superiority,” said the great strategist Bernard Brodie in 1965.(4) “There is no foreign policy objective today that is so threatened,” said retired admiral and former CIA director Stansfield Turner in 1998, “that we would É accept the risk of receiving just one nuclear detonation in retaliation.”(5)
Consider how directly the logic of UD applies to the contemporary international environment, to the twin nuclear challenges that have dominated the headlines during most of the past decade, and to the most immediate nuclear proliferation issues now confronting the Obama Administration. Because the most persuasive explanation for the nuclear quests on which both Iran and North Korea have embarked is, indeed, the notion that “deterrence does not depend on superiority.” Deterrence depends only an ability to strike back. Iran and North Korea appear to be seeking small nuclear arsenals in order to deter potential adversaries from launching an attack upon them – by threatening them with unacceptable damage in retaliation.
Neither North Korea nor Iran could hope to defeat its most powerful potential adversary – the United States – in any kind of direct military confrontation. They cannot repel an actual attack upon them. They cannot shoot American planes and missiles out of the sky. Indeed, no state can.
However, what these countries can aspire to do is to dissuade the American leviathan from launching such an attack. How? By developing the capability to instantly vaporize an American military base or three in Iraq or Qatar or South Korea or Japan, or an entire U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Japan, or even an American city on one coast or the other. And by making it implicitly clear that they would respond to any kind of assault by employing that capability immediately, before it’s too late, following the venerable maxim: “Use them or lose them.” The obliteration of an entire American military base, or an entire American naval formation, or an entire American city, would clearly seem to qualify as “unacceptable damage” for the United States.
Moreover, to deter an American attack, Iran and North Korea do not need thousands of nuclear warheads. They just need a couple of dozen, well hidden and well protected. American military planners might be almost certain that they could take out all the nuclear weapons in these countries in some kind of a dramatic lightning “surgical strike.” However, with nuclear weapons, “almost” is not good enough. Even the barest possibility that such a strike would fail, and that just one or two nuclear weapons would make it into the air, detonate over targets, and result in massive “unacceptable damage” for the United States, would in virtually any conceivable circumstance serve to dissuade Washington from undertaking such a strike.
In addition, it is crucial to recognize that Iran and North Korea would not intend for their nascent nuclear arsenals to deter only nuclear attacks upon them. If the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States disappeared tomorrow morning, but America’s conventional military superiority remained, it still would be the case that the only possible military asset that these states could acquire, to effectively deter an American military assault, would be the nuclear asset.
The “Korean Committee for Solidarity with World Peoples,” a mouthpiece for the North Korean government, captured Pyongyang’s logic quite plainly just weeks after the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003. “The Iraqi war taught the lesson that ‘the security of the nation can be protected only when a country has a physical deterrent force’”(6) Similarly, a few weeks earlier, just before the Iraq invasion began, a North Korean general was asked to defend his country’s nuclear weapons program, and with refreshing candor replied, “We see what you are getting ready to do with Iraq. And you are not going to do it to us.”(7)
It really is quite a remarkable development. North Korea today is one of the most desperate countries in the world. Most of its citizens are either languishing in gulags or chronically starving. And yet – in contrast to all the debate that has taken place in recent years about whether the United States and/or Israel ought to launch a preemptive strike on Iran – no one seems to be proposing any kind of military strike on North Korea. Why not? Because of the mere possibility that North Korea could impose unacceptable damage upon us in reply.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about UD is that it seems every bit as effective as MAD. North Korea today possesses no more than a handful of nuclear warheads, and maintains nothing like a “mutual” nuclear balance with the United States. In addition, the retaliation that North Korea can threaten cannot promise anything like a complete “assured destruction.” To vaporize an American carrier group in the Sea of Japan, or a vast American military base in South Korea or Japan, or even an American city, would not be at all the same thing as the “destruction” of the entire American nation – as the USSR was able to threaten under MAD.
And yet, MAD and UD, it seems, exercise deterrence in precisely the same way. Astonishingly, it seems that Washington finds itself every bit as thoroughly deterred by a North Korea with probably fewer than 10 nuclear weapons as it did by a Soviet Union with 10,000. Although UD hardly contains the rich acronymphomaniacal irony wrought by MAD, it appears that both North Korea and Iran intend now to base their national security strategies solidly upon it.
There is very little reason to suppose that other states will not soon follow their lead.
President Obama, of course, to his great credit, has not only made a nuclear weapon-free Iran and North Korea one of his central foreign policy priorities, he has begun to chart a course toward a nuclear weapon-free world. In a groundbreaking speech before a huge outdoor rally in Prague on April 5th, he said, “Today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” (Unfortunately, he followed that with the statement that nuclear weapons abolition would not “be achieved quickly, perhaps not in my lifetime,” suggesting that neither he nor the nuclear policy officials in his administration fully appreciate the magnitude and immediacy of the nuclear peril. Do they really think the human race can retain nuclear weapons for another half century or so, yet manage to dodge the bullet of nuclear accident, or nuclear terror, or a nuclear crisis spinning out of control every single time?)
The one thing we can probably say for sure about the prospects for universal nuclear disarmament is that no state will agree either to abjure or to dismantle nuclear weapons unless it believes that such a course is the best course for its own national security. To persuade states like North Korea and Iran to climb aboard the train to abolition would probably require simultaneous initiatives on three parallel tracks. One track would deliver foreign and defense policies that assure weaker states that we do not intend to attack them, that just as we expect them to abide by the world rule of law they can expect the same from us, that the weak need not cower in fear before the strong. Another track would deliver diplomatic overtures that convince weaker states that on balance, overall, their national security will better be served in a world where no one possesses nuclear weapons, rather than in a world where they do-but so too do many others. And another track still would deliver nuclear weapons policies that directly address the long-simmering resentments around the world about the long-standing nuclear double standard, that directly acknowledge our legacy of nuclear hypocrisy, and that directly connect nuclear non-proliferation to nuclear disarmament.
The power decisively to adjust all those variables, of course, does not reside in Pyongyang or Tehran. It resides instead in Washington.
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(1) The Washington Post, May 25, 2009.
(2) Quoted in Daniel Lang, An Inquiry Into Enoughness: Of Bombs and Men and Staying Alive (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 167.
(3) Quoted in Ibid., p. 38.
(4) Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971 – first published in 1965), p. 274, quoted in Sarah J. Diehl and James Clay Moltz, Nuclear Weapons and Nonproliferation: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2002), p. 34.
(5) Quoted in The Nation, Special Issue Containing Jonathan Schell’s interviews with several nuclear policy professionals and intellectuals, February 2/9, 1998, p. 40.
(6) Quoted in Securing Our Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, Tilman Ruff and John Loretz, eds. (Boston: IPPNW, 2007), p. 37.
(7) Don Oberdorfer, PBS, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, October 9, 2006, quoted in Jonathan Schell, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), p. 141.
Tad Daley is the Writing Fellow with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Nobel Peace Laureate disarmament advocacy organization. His first book, Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World, is forthcoming from Rutgers University Press in January 2010. -
For Nuclear Sanity
This article was first published by the Transnational Institute
President Barack Obama’s April 5 speech in Prague calling for a world free of the scourge of nuclear weapons is a major foreign and security policy initiative that deserves applause. If he pursues its logic through to the end with the same since rity and passion with which he outlined his commitment “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”, he could be the first United States President to go beyond nuclear arms control and to put nuclear weapons elimination on the global agenda. That would mark a turning point for strategic thinking the world over and open up new avenues through which to seek security.
This remains a big “if”. Obama has not yet worked out the doctrinal, strategic and practical consequences of his fundamental premise that a secure world without nuclear weapons is both possible and desirable. His speech only outlines some necessary steps but without specifying their sequence or time frame, numbers (of weapons to be de-alerted or destroyed), the roles of different actors, the function of legally binding treaties, and so on.
But Obama has stated some premises upfront and emphasised their moral-political rationale in a way no major global leader has done in recent years. Thus, he said, “the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War”; these are “the ultimate tools of destruction”, which can erase the world “in a single flash of light”. The global non-proliferation regime is in crisis and “the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up”; soon, “we could reach the point where the centre cannot hold”.
“We are not destined,” said Obama, “to live in a world where more nations and more people possess [nuclear weapons]. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.” Logically, fighting fatalism means putting “an end to Cold War thinking” and reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy”.
This sets Obama miles apart not just from George W. Bush but also from Bill Clinton. Obama is effectively reversing a long tradition beginning with the Ronald Reagan presidency towards either a hardening of the U.S. nuclear posture, or the development of new weapons such as “Star Wars”-style ballistic missile defence (BMD), itself premised on even more dangerous doctrines than that of nuclear deterrence, which is fatally flawed.
Thus, the U.S. has failed, even two decades after the Cold War ended, to move beyond relatively paltry reductions in its nuclear arsenal through the Moscow Treaty of 2002. Under Bush, it refused to take 2,200 weapons off “launch on warning” alert. The U.S. military establishment wants to develop a Reliable Replaceable Warhead for existing ones, find new uses (for example, bunker-busting) for old weapon designs, and has yielded to pressures from the nuclear weapons laboratories to modernise and refine existing armaments and do experimental work on fusion weapons at the expensive National Ignition Facility.
Bush was not only obsessed with perpetuating America’s nuclear superiority. He gave it a particularly deadly edge through BMD deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, thus exacerbating tensions with Russia and destabilising strategic balances worldwide. Bush also blurred vital distinctions between conventional and nuclear weapons, unsigned the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
Bush’s BMD programme will militarise and nuclearise outer space, in which the U.S. seeks “full-spectrum” dominance. His paranoid response to the September 11 attacks resulted in the worst-ever fiasco in the history of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at its important review conference in 2005, liquidating all the significant gains made at the 2000 review.Obama promises to change course, radically. He has spoken more boldly and honestly in favour of a nuclear weapons-free world than any other U.S. President in decades. He has gone further than any other in acknowledging that the U.S. bears a “moral responsibility” for nuclear disarmament because it is the only power to have used the horror weapon. This speaks of exemplary moral clarity, as does his statement that the U.S. must take the lead on disarmament. However, that cannot be said about four other propositions in Obama’s speech. First, he betrays an unpardonably naive faith in nuclear deterrence: “Make no mistake. As long as [nuclear] weapons exist, the U.S. will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary.…” He also believes in extended deterrence – deploying nuclear weapons in non-North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries.
This column has dissected the fallacy of nuclear deterrence far too often to warrant further comment other than that it is a fallible, fragile and unreliable basis on which to premise security (via a balance of terror). It involves unrealistic assumptions about capabilities and doctrines, symmetrical perceptions by adversaries of “unacceptable damage” means, and the complete absence of miscalculations and accidents – 100 per cent of the time.
Second, Obama continues to repose faith in BMD – he congratulated the Czech for their “courage” in hosting it – although he qualifies his support by saying BMD must be “cost-effective and proven”. This ignores BMD’s primitive, as-yet-premature status in intercepting missiles, and worse, the danger of escalating military rivalry to uncertain and risky levels where an adversary could feel tempted to neutralise a putative BMD advantage by amassing more missiles or launching wildcat strikes.
Third, Obama, like Bush and Clinton, makes a specious distinction between responsible/acceptable/good nuclear powers (the Big Five-plus-Israel-plus-India-plus-non-Taliban-Pakistan) and irresponsible/dangerous ones (Iran, North Korea). This permits double standards and detracts from the universal urgency of abolishing all nuclear weapons. Obama’s endorsement of Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative – unilateral interception at sea of suspect nuclear-related materials – follows from this.
Finally, Obama believes that disarmament may not be achieved in “my lifetime”. Such pessimism is unwarranted. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s thoughtful plan for global nuclear disarmament, presented to the United Nations General Assembly in 1988, set a 15-year timeline for complete nuclear elimination. This is realistic – if the U.S. and the international community musters the will for an early disarmament initiative.
If Obama effects deep cuts in U.S. nuclear weapons through the promised Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia this year, and launches a drive for banning nuclear testing and ending fissile production worldwide, the momentum can be accelerated, especially if U.S. policy shifts to no-first-use. After all, even the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – George P. Schulz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn – believe that nuclear weapons abolition can be achieved in the foreseeable future.
Obama’s speech provides an opportunity to all those who believe in complete nuclear weapons elimination, a cause kept alive by the peace movement, a coalition of states, and several expert commissions. India too professes a commitment to this goal and must seize this opportunity.India’s lukewarm response
Regrettably, Indian policymakers have extended a lukewarm, if not cold, welcome to Obama’s speech. So fearful are they of pressure on India to sign the CTBT that they are clutching at straws. One such is Obama’s statement that “my administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the CTBT”. This is different from what he wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before he was sworn in: “I will work with the U.S. Senate to secure ratification of [CTBT] at the earliest practical day, and then launch a major diplomatic initiative to ensure its entry into force.” (The letter was suppressed by South Block.)
Indian policymakers are also reportedly relieved that Obama has not reiterated his letter’s reference to India’s “real responsibilities – [including] steps to restrain nuclear weapons programmes and pursuing effective disarmament when others do so”. They are also pleased that Obama has appointed Ellen Tauscher, a Democrat Congresswoman, as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security rather than Robert Einhorn, described by India’s nuclear hawks as “an ayatollah of non-proliferation”.
Such timidity is unbecoming of a nation that claims to be proud of its pro-disarmament record and has pledged to fight for a nuclear weapons-free world. India opposed the CTBT in 1995-96 not for its intrinsic flaws or demerits but because it wanted to test nuclear weapons. Having done so in 1998, India should sign and ratify the treaty. Even Arundhati Ghose, who famously declared that India will not sign it “not now, not ever”, now says that she sees no problem with its signature. This may show a deplorable level of cynicism, but it is nevertheless a ground for correcting course and returning to the disarmament agenda.
Logically, this includes several steps such as the CTBT, Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, regional nuclear risk-reduction and restraint measures (including forswearing missile test-flights and keeping delivery vehicles apart from warheads) and, of course, deep cuts in nuclear weapons by all the nuclear weapons states, beginning with the U.S. and Russia.
India must boldly seize the initiative by updating the Rajiv Gandhi plan, opposing BMD and proactively arguing for rapid strides towards the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Here lies the litmus test of India’s commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world and of its creative and principled diplomacy.Praful Bidwai is a journalist and author living in India.
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Not a Weapon of Choice
This article was originally published in the Times of India
On Sunday, North Korea launched a long-range missile which Pyongyang described as a success but US experts said had been a failure. Of greater historical significance was the speech delivered the same day in Prague by US president Barack Obama. During the Democratic primary campaign last year, Hillary Clinton famously declared that both Senator John McCain and she had actual job experience to qualify to be commander-in-chief. All that Obama had done, by contrast, was to deliver one speech in Chicago opposing the Iraq war.
As we know, Clinton fatally underestimated the power of speech. Obama at his best combines linguistic eloquence and powerful oratory with substance and gravitas. On Sunday, he addressed one of the most critically important topics of our day that literally has life and death implications for all of us, wherever we may be.
The dream of a world free of nuclear weapons is an old one. It is written into the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which balances the prohibition on non-nuclear states acquiring these weapons with the demand on the five NPT-licit nuclear powers Britain, China, France, Russia and the US (N5) to eliminate their nuclear arsenals through good-faith negotiations. Considering that the NPT was signed in 1968 and came into effect in 1970, the N5 have not lived up to their bargain.
The dream has been kept alive by many NGOs, a coalition of like-minded countries and a plethora of international blue ribbon commissions. A major difficulty is that the abundant “zero nuclear weapons” initiatives have been stillborn because of zero follow-up and a failure to address real security concerns.
If we examine the geostrategic circumstances of the existing nuclear powers, the two with the least zero security justification for holding on to any nuclear weapons are Britain and France. Nor can North Korea justify nuclear weapons on national security grounds. It seems to play a nuclear hand as a bargaining chip, the only one it has. Israel’s security environment is harsh enough with many in its neighbourhood committed to its destruction to make its reliance on nuclear weapons understandable. Pakistan will not give up its nuclear weapons while India still has them. India’s main security benchmark is not Pakistan but China. Neither China nor Russia will contemplate giving them up for fear of the US. This is why the circuit-breaker in the global nuclear weapons chain is the US.
Obama’s speech acknowledged this. The US cannot achieve the dream on its own, he said, but it is prepared to lead based on the acknowledgement of its special moral responsibility flowing from being the only power to have used atomic weapons. He thus lays down the challenge to others to follow. And he outlines concrete follow-up steps that are practical, measurable and achievable.
Obama’s strategy is to map out a vision and then outline the roadmap to achieve it. These include ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty negotiated way back in 1997; a new treaty banning fissile material; reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US national security strategy; and a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia that is bold and legally binding. Washington will also host a global summit on nuclear security within one year.
Such measures by the N5 must be matched by robust action against the proliferation threat. At the very least, Obama reclaims the moral high ground for Washington to pursue a vigorous and robust non- and counter-proliferation strategy. More resources and authority for institutions like the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Proliferation Security Initiative will be provided. Countries leaving or breaking the NPT must face real and immediate consequences. An international fuel bank could be created to assure supply to countries whose interest is limited to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. All vulnerable nuclear material around the world for example, loose nukes in Russia will be secured within four years. Black markets like A Q Khan’s will be broken up, trade in nuclear materials detected and intercepted in transit, and financial tools used to disrupt dangerous trade.
Obama is right in saying that reaching the goal will require patience and persistence. But he may be wrong in saying that it may not be achieved in his lifetime. He should set down the marker for achieving it by the end of his second term if re-elected. Without a deadline, no one will work to make it happen; rather, they will retreat into the vague formula of “yes, some day, eventually”.
Obama may also be mistaken in pinning faith on the global regime centred on the NPT which, he said, “could reach the point where the centre cannot hold”. The NPT is already a broken reed, with far too many flaws, anomalies, gaps and outright contradictions. For example, the promise that those who break the rules must be punished cannot be enforced against India. The India-US civil nuclear agreement, however justified and necessary, breaks NPT rules. A new clean nuclear weapons convention might be a better goal to pursue.
That’s a minor quibble. More important is the broad sweep of Obama’s commitment, based on national interest and personal conviction, to freeing us from the fear of nuclear weapons.
Ramesh Thakur is founding director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada. -
First Iran, Now Arabs Going Nuclear: An Interview with Richard Falk
This interview was originally published on Al-Jazeera
There is renewed effort to engage Iran on its nuclear programme. Washington has expressed willingness to hold direct talks with Tehran, which marks a dramatic shift between the policy of Barack Obama, the US president, and his predecessor George Bush.
The emphasis on dialogue comes as North Korea signals that it is restarting a nuclear plant that produces arms-grade plutonium, and Arab nations are importing nuclear technology and assistance at an unprecedented pace.
Al Jazeera spoke to Richard Falk, the chair of the board at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, about Iran’s nuclear programme, its effect on regional Arab ambitions for nuclear power, and whether the Middle East will enter a nuclear arms race.The following are excerpts from the interview:
Al Jazeera: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, recently announced the opening of a nuclear fuel plant, and stressed Iran’s ability and right to enrich uranium. However, he also welcomed constructive dialogue with the US and other powers. What motives are behind his statements? fFalk: I think it is difficult to assess the motives behind this kind of Iranian public initiative. It may be connected with domestic politics – the eflection campaign there – where Ahmadinejad is trying to present himself as a leader who has restored Iran’s stature and that this stature is associated symbolically with a robust nuclear programme.
It may also be a signal that though Iran seems receptive to resuming some kind of negotiations about their nuclear programme … this shouldn’t be made too easily.
It could be that this is part of a bargaining strategy by indicating that they already have enrichment capabilities and if they were to curtail them they would have to be given quite a bit in exchange.
Are Arab states pursuing nuclear programmes due to growing energy demands or does the perceived threat from Iran’s apparent capability to develop nuclear weapons play a role?
Often in these kinds of decisions the true motives are disguised and the public explanations are presented in the most acceptable, least provocative form.
I think that is the case here. Most of the rationale for these expanded nuclear energy programmes are almost always related to domestic factors, increasing electricity demand and the expense of importing energy.
It is hard not to believe, given the geopolitical climate in the region – not only Iran, but the Iraq war and other factors like Israel’s nuclear capabilities – that the geo-strategic factors have not entered into the motives of all these countries going in that direction.
Of course, they are also imitating one another. There is a sense that if you don’t move in this direction you are acknowledging you are subordinate or marginalised in the region.There is also a prestige element at work. It is extremely hard to read the hierarchy of motives. In the background it is probably the way in which India and Pakistan evolved their nuclear programmes.
They developed over time and as a result, India began to be taken seriously as a world power when it crossed the nuclear threshhold.
Will the Middle East witness a race for nuclear technologies?
The background of all of this is the abandonment by the Arab countries of their earlier mission of seeking a nuclear-free region that are directed at weapons and combining it with regional security.
Perhaps it is an interpretation that Israel is never going to go along with the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East.And now that Iran is at least a latent nuclear weapons state, it doesn’t make any sense to proceed in that direction anymore, rather to the extent that strategic considerations are at work.
It seems that the leading Arab countries think that they need to have their own long-term security. It should be a contingency option for them.
Arab leaders have implied that Israel does not want to see Arab countries acquire nuclear technology and has thwarted their efforts to advance their programmes.
As you suggested, the evidence over the years is that Israel becomes very nervous when any of the Arab countries move in directions that could challenge its regional military superiority.
Though that is sort of a remote prospect, the manner in which Israel views its relationship with its neighbours is such that it has consistently opposed arms sales of any kind or of enhancement of their potential capabilities.
Maybe Israel would prefer to see the Arab countries energy-dependent rather than energy-independent. I think it is consistent with the kind of regional hegemonic ambition that Israel both defensively and offensively assert.
Thirty years ago you called for a total renunciation of nuclear power in exchange for other pollution-free energy sources. Obama has also pledged to create a nuclear-free world. But is it too late?
I think it is already too late. A number of elements make it too late.
The first of which is this sense that alternative energy is indispensable for dealing with the limitations on oil supply and in the face of increasing demand for oil and gas, combined with considerations for climate change and combined with the fact that there is a sufficient commitment on the part of a sufficient number of important states that it is just implausible to think that this kind of total de-nuclearisation can occur.
The only thing that might give it a renewed possibility is another Chernobyl-type accident. Or several Chernobyls which would highlight the other aspect of developing nuclear energy – what you do with the waste and a variety of related things.
Jordan wants to maintain their right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But the UAE has unilaterally given up theirs to prove their peaceful intentions to advance their programme. Should Arab countries be allowed to enrich uranium?
The US geopolitical discipline in relation to nuclear energy and weapons has faced a two-tier view of international legitimacy. Some countries are allowed to have the weapons and other countries are not.
Of the ones that are, most say that the others are not allowed to come close to the threshhold. At the same time, from the perspective of the international law regime embodied by the NPT, it was supposed to be consistent with having the complete benefits of peaceful uses, including the option to develop the nuclear fuel cycle.
You have a much stricter regime geopolitically than you do legally. The UAE is trying to conform to the geopolitical discipline or reality by assuring the world its nuclear energy programme is accepting international inspection and forgoing the option to reprocess nuclear fuel or have the enrichment capability.
I suppose the UAE is trying to make itself look like the optimal actor of how to ensure the energy security transition beyond the petroleum age. They also have the resources to pull off the kind of programme there.
Is it fair for ‘nuclear weapons states’ to tell others they cannot produce weapons without stripping down their own nuclear arsenals?
The fascinating fact is that they have been able to successfully for 45 years convince most of the actors in the world that they are better off going along with nonproliferation charades, rather than repudiating them.
It is based on this whole pervasive double standard that is embedded in the whole idea of nuclear nonproliferation and what I call the mind game that has been successfully played by the nuclear weapons states that makes us believe that the danger comes more from those who don’t have the weapons, rather than those who have the weapons.
Nuclear weapons states have not fulfilled the Article Six pledge of nuclear disarmament. It was unanimously affirmed in the advisory opinion of the world court of the legality of nuclear weapons.
It was divided on the issues of use, but unanimous on obligation to seek in good faith and I think they have not acted in good faith and fulfilled the real bargain. Therefore non-nuclear states, from a legal point of view, would be quite entitled to say they are no longer bound either.
Is it in the interest of these states, particularly Israel and the US, to work toward military de-nuclearisation?
I would think it is in Israel’s long term interest. It is particularly pertinent to the region because there are several dimensions of unresolved conflict, one important adversary posses a rather formidable nuclear weapons capability, others, particularly Iran have clearly latent potential.
So if one is thinking from the perspective of conflict avoidance or war prevention, it could seem that one is at a point where it would make a lot of sense to exert that kind of political pressure.
Israel talks a lot about attacking Iran, but that is filled with uncertainty and probably would generate a very strong backlash in the region and possibly even in the US and Europe. They stand to gain a lot by a reliable process of regional regulation, security, system of mutual non-aggression.
In that sense it exposes the unwillingness of the US to press Israel in the way it would press other countries, which is illustrative of another aspect of these double standard in nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.Richard Falk is Chair of the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
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Obama and Medvedev on Nukes
This article was originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus
Committing the United States and Russia “to achieving a nuclear free world,” Presidents Obama and Medvedev issued a joint statement breathtaking in its positive tone. It marks an astonishing shift from the hostile policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations and offers new hope to a world weary of the endless nuclear arms race. Their statement concludes:
We, the leaders of Russia and the United States, are ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities and chart a fresh start in relations between our two countries… Now it is time to get down to business and translate our warm words into actual achievements of benefit to Russia, the United States, and all those around the world interested in peace and prosperity.
There are 25,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, all but 1,000 of them in the United States and Russia. Obama and Medvedev agreed to immediately pursue verifiable reductions in their massive nuclear arsenals, and instructed their negotiators to have a plan by this July for replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), due to expire in December. A treaty signed by Bush and Putin in 2002 called for reductions to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012, but under Bush’s insistence made no provision for verification. If START expires in December without a follow-up treaty, there would be no legally binding system for verification. Obama and Medvedev qualified their commitment to a nuclear-weapons-free world by describing it as a long-term goal, requiring “a new emphasis on arms control and conflict resolution measures, and their full implementation by all concerned nations.”
The two leaders affirmed the importance of the Six-Party Talks and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and, in a marked shift of rhetoric for the United States, recognized that under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program,” while still needing “to restore confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature.” They pledged to work together to combat terrorism and cooperate on “stabilization, reconstruction and development” in Afghanistan.
Nuclear Energy
The major portion of their statement deals with nonproliferation measures including the need “to secure nuclear weapons and materials, while promoting the safe use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” Since every nuclear reactor is a potential bomb factory, achieving the safe use of nuclear energy is probably the one part of their proposal that is least likely to succeed. Attempts to control the fuel cycle and the production of bomb-making materials, while spreading the “benefits” of nuclear power, are doomed to fail. Consider all the countries that developed nuclear weapons through their civilian nuclear programs: North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Libya (which recently gave up its nuclear weapons program).
More promising was their statement to implement the G-8’s St. Petersburg Global Energy Security Principles, “including improving energy efficiency and the development of clean energy technologies.” But with Obama repeatedly calling for “clean coal” technology, it remains to be seen whether that commitment will provide any real benefit.
Missile Defense as Spoiler
The positive Obama-Medvedev agenda for a new U.S.-Russian relationship was marked by several caveats and possible pitfalls where the parties agreed to disagree. Most significant was their acknowledgement that “differences remain over the purposes of missile defense assets in Europe.” It would be tragic if cooperation once again failed because of the hegemonic U.S. drive to dominate and control the earth from space. In a sense, we have now come full circle to the time of the Reagan-Gorbachev 1986 summit in Reykjavik, when negotiations for the total abolition of nuclear weapons collapsed because Reagan wouldn’t give up U.S. plans for a Strategic Defense Initiative to dominate space.
Clinton similarly rejected opportunities to take up Putin’s proposal to cut our nuclear arsenals to 1,000 warheads. After Russia’s ratification of START II and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 2000, Putin called for new talks to reduce long-range missiles from 3,500 to 1,500 or even 1,000, upping the ante from the planned levels of 2,500 warheads. This forward-looking proposal was accompanied by Putin’s stern caveat that all Russian offers would be off the table if the United States proceeded to build a National Missile Defense (NMD) in violation of the ABM Treaty. Astoundingly, U.S. diplomatic “talking points” leaked by Russia to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists revealed that Clinton was urging Russia it had nothing to fear from NMD as long as Russia kept 2,500 weapons at launch-on-warning, hair-trigger alert. Rejecting Putin’s offer to cut to 1,000 warheads, the United States assured Russia that with 2,500 warheads it could overcome a NMD shield and deliver an “annihilating counterattack!” If the Clinton administration had instead embraced Putin’s plan, the United States and Russia would have been able to call all nuclear weapons states to the table — even those with arsenals in the hundreds or fewer — to negotiate a treaty to ban the bomb.
Bush unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, pursuing U.S. plans “to dominate and control the military use of space, to protect U.S. interests and investments,” as set forth in the U.S. Space Command’s Vision 2020 mission statement and the Rumsfeld Commission Report of 2000. Current schemes to plant missile and radar bases in Poland and the Czech Republic could well derail real progress for nuclear abolition once again. The recent fall of the Czech government, partially in response to massive public opinion and demonstrations against the Czech radar base, should give Obama pause.
Meanwhile, Russia and the United States aren’t talking about a reduction to 1,000 warheads but have instead compromised at 1,500 warheads. Russia is unwilling to discuss lower cuts without also dealing with missile defense.
Looking at NATO
Finally, the two presidents called for the revitalization of the NATO-Russia Council, the strengthening of European security, and U.S. participation at a Conference on Afghanistan convened by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an alliance organized by Russia and China. One of the major sticking points in the U.S.-Russian relationship, NATO has expanded right up to Russia’s borders and even invited former Soviet Republics Ukraine and Georgia to join the rusty Cold War alliance. In a public statement issued only three days after the Obama-Medvedev declaration, Mikhail Gorbachev reminded the world that the United States, together with Western Germany and other western nations, had promised after Germany’s reunification in 1990 that “NATO would not move a centimeter to the east.” The West’s failure to honor this promise led to deteriorating relations with Russia.
As NATO completed its 60th anniversary meeting in Strasbourg, tens of thousands of peace protesters called for its dismantlement. It will take an enormous grassroots effort to make good on the Obama-Medvedev vision for a nuclear-weapons-free world, and to help them reach their goal to “translate our warm words into actual achievements of benefit to Russia the United States, and all those around the world interested in peace and prosperity.”
Alice Slater is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s New York representative and a founding member of Abolition 2000. -
The UN and NATO: Which Security and for Whom?
The world the UN advocates looks good on paper. (1)
In June 1945, the Charter of the United Nations was signed by 51 member states. Several years later, the two great conventions for civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights came into being, and in subsequent years, important conventions on torture, genocide, women’s and children’s rights followed. After long negotiations, the UN member states came to a consensus at the end of 2008 on a cluster bomb treaty – unfortunately containing limitations – on which several countries insisted, including Germany.
The existence of extensive international law shows that governments in all parts of the world know what is important for human security and what must be protected.
And yet, since 1945 international law has been continuously broken. Basic rights to food, health, housing, education, work, freedom of opinion have remained unattainable for many. Wars have been (and are) carried on, in utter violation of the United Nations Charter, e.g. against Yugoslavia, Iraq and in Palestine.
Torture is practiced, genocide carried out, weapons treaties ignored, the environment robbed of irreplaceable treasures. Uncontrolled financial transactions and economic activities and greed have given rise to an unprecedented crisis of worldwide dimensions.
Pragmatism flourishes while moral principles are shunted aside. “Ethics” has become a foreign word. Political lying prevails. The gap between the rich and the poor grows wider. The life and survival chances of people have become yet more unequal. Behind all this lie such significant causes as the lack of political will to speak out in defense of the community of the majority as opposed to the welfare of the few and the resulting neglect of rights and the rule of law. The United Nations strains to carrying out its mandate.
21st century born under the sign of worldwide hypocritical denial
It should thus come as no surprise that the twenty-first century was born under the sign of confrontation and of worldwide, hypocritical denial.
Western alliances such as NATO are being challenged by new alliances with weighty members such as Russia, China and India. The key word here is “rearrangement”. Dag Hammarskjoeld, the great man of the United Nations (2), in 1964 shortly before his death expressed his great concern that “ways out of the narrow, matted jungle in the struggle for honor, power and advantage” must be found. Looking back at the beginning of 2009, one can see that since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, two systems, communism and capitalism have collapsed. Maximization of profit hand-in-hand with dishonesty and ethnocentrism are among the causes.
The UN at a crossroads
The world of the 192 UN member states has come to a fork in the road. One way leads to a world focused on the well being of society, conflict resolution and peace, i.e. to a life of dignity and human security with social and economic progress for all, wherever they may be – as stated in the United Nations Charter. Down the other road is where the nineteenth century “Great Game” for power will be further played out, a course which, in the twenty-first century, will become more extensive and dangerously more aggressive than ever. This road supposedly leads to democracy, but in truth it is all about power, control and exploitation.
The peace dividend never existed
Nothing has ever been seen of the peace dividend that was expected from the end of the Cold War. The aggregate military budgets of all United Nations member states set a new record in 2007, reaching $1,200 billion. The United States military alone represents some 50% of this; the NATO countries 70%. (3) In the same year, development aid was $103 billion. (4) or 8.3% of the amount spent on the military!
Since 1969, the United Nations has requested that every year the tiny amount of 0.7% of the GDP of the industrialized countries be allocated to development aid. In fact, the figure for 2008 is around 0.3%. (5) This extreme inequality between military and development spending shows that the current emphasis is not on human security as envisioned in the United Nations Millennium Goals (6} but on countries’ military security. Those who point out how ludicrous such a comparison is willingly misunderstand that strengthening personal human security constitutes a decisive contribution to reducing the root causes of worldwide conflict. They refuse to accept that military security through alliances and the self-interest of governments encourages and deepens international conflicts.
UN and NATO: bonum commune or western interests
A comparison of the mandates of the United Nations and of NATO shows clearly how opposed the purposes of these two institutions are. In the 63 years of its existence, the United Nations mandate has remained the same.
The United Nations was created to promote and maintain worldwide peace. NATO exists to assure the self-interest of a group of 26 UN member countries. Its mandate, grounded in the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, originally dealt with the defense of its member states. At the end of the Cold War, in 1989, its mandate appeared to have been fulfilled. Nevertheless, the NATO members wanted to maintain this Western alliance. This launched the search for a new role for NATO.
21st century NATO incompatible with UN Charter
In 1999, NATO acknowledged that it was seeking to orient itself according to a new fundamental strategic concept. From a narrow military defense alliance it was to become a broad based alliance for the protection of the vital resources’ needs of its members. Besides the defense of member states’ borders, it set itself new purposes such as assured access to energy sources and the right to intervene in “movements of large numbers of persons” and in conflicts far from the boarders of NATO countries. The readiness of the new alliance to include other countries, particularly those that had previously been part of the Soviet Union, shows how the character of this military alliance has altered.
In the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, the Charter of the United Nations was declared to be NATO’s legally binding framework. However, the United Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine.
NATO’s territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its member to encompass the whole world in keeping with a strategic context that was global in its sweep. At the Budapest summit, on 3 April 2008, NATO declared that it intended to meet the emerging challenges of the twenty-first century “with all the possible means of its mission.”
It added that the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty of the founding countries had been ratified by the current parliaments and thereby had become international law. This did not hold for later NATO strategies and doctrines.
UN-NATO-accord: serious threat to peace
In spite of this NATO declaration, which, officially, would serve only the interests of a small minority of United Nations member states, on 23 September 2008, an accord was signed between the United Nations and NATO Secretaries General, Ban Ki-moon, and Jaap de Hoop-Scheffer. This took place without any reference to the United Nations Security Council.
In the generally accepted agreement of stated purposes, one reads of a “broader council” and “operative cooperation”, for example in “peace keeping” in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. Both secretaries general committed themselves to acting in common to meet threats and challenges.
In these current times of confrontation, one expects from the United Nations secretariat an especially high level of political neutrality. The UN/NATO accord is anything but neutral and will thus not remain without serious consequences. The Russian representative to NATO in Brussels, Dmitry Rogozin, has characterized the United Nations agreement with NATO, a politico-military structure, as “illegal”; Serge Lavrov, former Russian ambassador to the United Nations in New York and current Russian foreign minister has declared himself “shocked” that such a pact has been ratified in secret and without consultation.
UN-NATO-accord: incompatible with UN Charter
Several important questions thus arise:
Is the United Nations accord with NATO – a military alliance with nuclear weapons – in contradiction with Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, which requires that conflicts be resolved by peaceful means? Can UN and NATO actions be distinguished when three of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are also NATO members? How can future violations of international law by NATO be legally prosecuted? Is an institution like NATO, which in 1999, without a UN mandate, unlawfully bombed Serbia and Kosovo, a suitable partner for the United Nations?
UN mandate makes NATO obsolete
Any evaluation of the UN/NATO pact must take into account that NATO is a relic of the Cold War; that NATO, as a Western alliance, is regarded with considerable mistrust by the other 166 United Nations member states; that a primary NATO aim is to assert, by military means, its energy and power interests in opposition to other United Nations member states and that the United States, a founding member of the NATO community, in the most unscrupulous ways, has disparaged the United Nations and broken international law. (7)
Finally, it must be pointed out that the Charter of the United Nations provides for a Military Staff Committee, whose mandate is to advise and assist the United Nations Security Council “on all questions relating to the Security Council’s military requirements for the maintenance of international peace and security.” (8) If it is thus a matter of NATO countries looking after the well-being of the international community and not the interests of small group of states, then the United Nations mandate makes NATO obsolete!
It is urgent that one or several member states petition the International Court of Justice to rule on the interpretation of the UN/NATO pact of 23 September 2008, in conformity with the Courts statutes. (9)
The people of the world have a right to request such a ruling and a right to expect an answer. It will be recalled that the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations Charter states, “We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined […] to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained,” and not “We, the governments”! (10)
Thus, the question of what road the peoples of the world should take would be answered. Whoever seeks to serve the cause of peace and conflict resolution must take the rough road of United Nations multilateralism and eschew the smooth road of the NATO alliance. As the Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy said to the Security Council in 1998: “We must find our way to multilateralism, which exists for the benefit of the world community and not for the self-interest of the few.” The way to it will be a long one, for there has never yet been a multilateralism of this kind.
In 1994, the United Nations began promoting the concept of “human security”. In so doing, it wished to emphasize how important it is to see human rights as part of the daily lives of individual persons – freedom from fear and freedom from want. In 2000, for the first time in the history of the United Nations, development goals were quantified. This represents real progress for the strengthening of human security. Eight so-called Millennium Development Goals in the fight against poverty, child and mother mortality, primary education etc. are to be reached between 2000 and 2015. “Military humanism” – deception for self-interests
In this way, the United Nations seeks to make clear that besides country-related (national/military) security, there is also human-related security. Advocates of national security, for example governments, whose goal is military security through the strengthening of alliances such as NATO, know this.
They openly speak of “military humanism”. They pursue their legitimate interests. From this comes their interpretation of the new concept of “responsibility to protect”. (11)
This is a sham, for it is a matter of advancing specific, individual interests and not of simply protecting the innocent. Were this really the case, it would be obvious in Afghanistan, Darfur, Gaza, Goma, Somalia, Zimbabwe and elsewhere.
In all areas of human security, there has been progress. Yet it improbable that the Millennium Goals will become reality by 2015. A sum of $135 billion will be needed for the attainment of these goals in the remaining time of 2009–2015. This comes to $ 22.5 billion per year. Those who claim that this is a huge sum probably do not realize that the United States spends $ 180 billion per year for its military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – or that in late 2008 the countries affected by the economic and financial crisis made available at a few days’ notice some $ 3,000 billion (!) for the bailout of mismanaged institutions in need of reform within their borders.
The possibilities are available – the political will is requiredThe success of the United Nations Millennium Goals is not a question of money even in the context of the present economically critical times. Progress in the area of increased human security requires political will for such a transformation. Over the previous decades of international discussion about financing international cooperation, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that it would be easy to create innovative financing alternatives. (12) Plausible suggestions are ignored or rejected. Many governments fear that the independence of international institutions such as the United Nations might become too great.
Those who in the twenty-first century want to live in peace will encounter no difficulty in choosing the road to follow. Access to this road is open. The Charter of the United Nations, which is to be the means by which we beat swords into ploughshares and not ploughshares into swords, remains the basis for human progress and security.
Endnotes:
1. The new alliances include i) the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), founded in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its main objective is security in Central Asia. India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia enjoy observer status with the SCO. ii) Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) created a political and commercial community in 2001, and iii) Brazil, India and South Africa, a combination that has on several occasions brought about the downfall of the WTO Doha trade round on the grounds of a dispute on tariffs. 2. Dag Hammerskjoeld, born near Lund (Sweden) in 1905. He was the second UN Secretary General from 1953 to 1961, when he was killed in a mysterious air crash near the Congo border in Rhodesia. 3. See: Swedish International Institute for Peace Research (SIPRI), 2008 Almanac, 9 June 2008. 4. See: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Aid Targets Slippage out of Reach? DAC 1 Official and Private (Aid) Flows. 5. According to a 1969 UN guideline, donor countries should provide 0.7% of their GNP each year for international development cooperation. Only Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have so far achieved this target. 6. In 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted eight development objectives for the period 2000–2015. These include reducing hunger and poverty by 50%, basic schooling for all children, equality of men and women, reducing child mortality by 66% and mortality rates for women in connection with childbirth by 75%. 7. The keywords are the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and torture flights. 8. Chapter VII Article 47 of the UN Charter provides for a Military Staff Committee consisting of the chiefs of staff of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Although it has never been convened since 1945, the Article has remained in effect. 9. The statute of the International Court of Justice is given jurisdiction for the interpretation of treaties by Chapter XII, Article 36. 10. See Preamble to the UN Charter. 11. This concept is mentioned in the UN Document 2005 World Summit Outcome (A/60/L.1 – 15 September 2005), paras. 138 and 139, see also para. 79). In this document, the UN General Assembly clearly states that only the Security Council has the right to use Chapter VII of the Charter to protect populations against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, if necessary using force. 12. The innovatory proposals for financing also include the “Tobin tax” named after James Tobin, an American economist, who in 1972 proposed that a tax (0.05-1.00%) should be levied on international currency transactions that could be used inter alia to finance development aid.
Seven challenges for the present:
1) Progress towards a fundamental reform of the UN as a global objective. Multilateralism in the interests of humanity can be achieved; 2) Return to the principles of the UN Charter. The UN must no longer simply be a political toolbox; 3) Recognition and furtherance of human security as the priority for dignified survival. Military security cannot substitute for human security; 4) Compliance with international law. Political responsibility without having to render accounts for the consequences of actions must not be permitted; 5) Abandonment of the free (and anarchic) market economy. Order, supervision and control of the economy and of the finance industry are a guarantee and not a threat to democracy; 6) Urgency of a UN declaration against double standards. The elimination of special rights for alliances is a precondition for settling conflicts and serves peace; 7) Development of ethical principles for state and governmental information and media standards. Organized untruths must be punished. Finally, an appeal to the general public to continue to make demands of the body politic and to take a more active role in contemporary events. Dag Hammerskjoeld used the term “negotiations with oneself.”Hans von Sponeck is former UN Assistant Secretary General and Chairman of the Centre for the UN Millenium Development Goals in Basel, Switzerland. He is a Councilor of the World Future Council. -
President Obama and the Ballistic Missile Defense System in Eastern Europe
Overview
Will nuclear weapons remain a key instrument to reinforce American national security? The dawning of a new American leadership has aroused much curiosity within the international community: how will President Obama respond to the planned American ballistic missile defense system in Eastern Europe? This analysis seeks to answer the following questions concerning President Obama’s position on the ballistic missile defense (BMD) system and prospects on future Russo-American relations:
- How has the BMD project redefined Russo-American relations?
- Should this plan go ahead, what implications would it have on the international community?
- How can President Obama maintain global stability?
Background
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was followed by Eastern Europe’s hasty departure from Moscow’s periphery. To quickly integrate these former Soviet satellites under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) security umbrella, the Alliance initiated the Partnership-for-Peace program, which served as a stepping stone towards full NATO membership. This was seen as an aggressive encroachment into Russia’s immediate periphery and drastically tipped Eastern Europe’s delicate power balance. With clashing regional security interests and some 3,000 Russian and American nuclear weapons remaining on high (hair-trigger) alert, it has become ever so critical to revisit or replace major nonproliferation accords: the 1972 Antiballistic Treaty (from which President Bush withdrew in 2001), 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (suspended by Russia in 2007), 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (expires in December 2009), and 2002 Treaty of Moscow (scheduled to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles to 1,700 to 2,200 per country by 2012). Still, existing weaknesses of these accords paralyze the international community from eliminating nuclear weapons altogether: reduction cannot be reliably verified and the lack of a requirement to dismantle the weapons allows the U.S. and Russia to simply keep the weapons in storage.
On the American side, while President Bill Clinton was hesitant about NATO’s eastward expansion, his successor’s defense policies considerably deteriorated Russo-American relations. In particular, President George W. Bush’s strong push of the BMD system in Eastern Europe has rekindled a dangerous Cold War mentality of distrust and rivalry. Despite fervent objections from the Russian side and European public leaders, NATO members meeting at the April 2008 summit reluctantly endorsed Washington’s controversial plan to install the BMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Even as U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) experts questioned its effectiveness, the Bush administration claimed that the missile shield’s “purely defensive capabilities” would allow the U.S. to respond to any potential attack on its chief ally, Europe, from “dangerous and unpredictable regimes” like Iran. President Bush explained in 2007, “Instead of spending decades trying to develop a perfect shield, we decided to begin deploying missile defense capabilities as soon as the technology was proven ready — and then build on that foundation by adding new capabilities as they matured.”1 Poland plans to host ten interceptor missiles in exchange for significant U.S. military assistance. The Czech Republic plans to host a related tracking radar system designed to identify and shoot down missiles. Tests and developments on the project are already costing $10 billion annually, the Pentagon’s largest procurement program.2
As the BMD project progresses, Moscow has warned of retaliation. President Dmitrii Medvedev chose to postpone his State of the Union speech until the day after the U.S. presidential election to criticize America’s missile shield plan. In recent months, he has intensified the testing and mass production of advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles specifically designed to penetrate antiballistic shields such as the Bulava and Russian RS-24.3 More relevant is a proposal to install mobile Iskander missiles in Kalingrad, Russia’s southern enclave bordering Poland. Clearly, these weapons will be capable of destroying America’s proposed interceptor missiles in Poland. Furthermore, Medvedev plans to utilize radio equipment to intercept Washington’s planned defense system. Seeking to compromise, the Bush administration offered to allow Russian observers at the planned BMD sites, but President Medvedev swiftly rejected the offer.
Again disregarding Russia’s opposition to the project, on December 5, 2008, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency tested its “largest, most complex” $120-150 million long-range ballistic missiles from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. This was the first remote launching of an expansively coordinated experimental project incorporating multiple systems from various branches of the armed forces. While the agency immediately declared success, claiming that “all its components performed as designed,” there were several notable deficiencies associated with the test. This missile test actually failed to “release countermeasures designed to try to confuse the interceptor missile like decoys or chaff to throw off an incoming interceptor.”4 Since these tests began in 2001, many have failed or been scaled back because of technical problems. Adding to these are the unpredictability of missile attacks and unreliability of a missile shield. This leads us to ask: how reliable are the Bush administration and MDA’s “successful” missile tests and are they worth an annual cost of $10 billion?5 Costs of the United States’ missile defense program in the past 25 years have accrued to at least $150 billion.6Analysis
Russia remains committed to a “reactive” foreign policy. With the Kalingrad plan, President Medvedev aims to “neutralize – if necessary – the [American] anti-missile system”. Furthermore, he is confident in Russian technological superiority that would counter any incoming missile attack. He recently asserted that “the Americans will never be able to implement this scenario, because Russian strategic nuclear forces, including the Strategic Missile Forces, will be capable of delivering a strike of retribution under any course of developments.” To take this a step further, President Medvedev announced in early December a comprehensive upgrade of Russia’s missile program. New developments would include the RS-24 missiles specifically designed to counter space-based missile attacks as well as penetrate any missile shield.
What explains Russia’s intensified reaction? Eastern Europe is strategically positioned at the heart of continental Europe. Washington’s increasingly intimate relations with Poland and the Czech Republic is seen as an intrusion into Russia’s “near-abroad” and traditional sphere of influence. Iran recently announced that it produced and tested missiles capable of hitting southern Europe, but experts remain skeptical as there is not much concrete evidence to support this claim. More notably, the ballistic missile plan explicitly targets space-based military weaponry, and with Russia as the only country with technological capability to develop such advanced weaponry, one could assume that the missile shield targets Russia.
After European leaders heavily criticized Russia’s proposed missile plan in Kalingrad, both the Russian political and military leadership requested renewed Russo-U.S. relations and invited the new American leadership to engage in deeper dialogue and cooperation on European security. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has expressed renewed hope in cooperating with his new American counterpart, suggesting that new U.S. leadership would unfold a fresh chapter in Russo-American relations, “We very much hope that these changes will be positive. We are now seeing these positive signals.” Obama’s cautious stance on the ballistic missile defense plan has attracted much attention from the Russian leadership; he explains, “If we want the world to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia must lead by example… We cannot and should not accept the threat of accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch.”7 While the Russian leadership anxiously awaits concrete actions, Prime Minister Medvedev also states, “If it’s not just words, if they are transformed into practical policy, we will respond accordingly…we will not do anything until America does the first step.”8
Obama, throughout his presidential campaign, persistently reiterated two primary global concerns: nuclear terrorist attacks and nuclear weapons proliferation by rogue states. He envisioned the U.S. taking up global leadership to denuclearize to allow for “a world in which there are no nuclear weapons” and promised more commitment and funding towards nuclear nonproliferation, which he calls “the most urgent threat to the security of America and the world.” To move toward this nuclear-free world vision, the Obama administration hopes to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty aimed at reducing nuclear weapons and materials by limiting nuclear development, testing, and proliferation. In addition, the Obama administration has outlined plans to cooperate with Russia to remove thousands of nuclear weapons from operational readiness, or hair-trigger alert, to avoid the possibility of an accidental nuclear launch. To allow for an actual chance for a nuclear-free world, the President-elect staunchly believes that Russo-American cooperation is integral to leading a global effort.
According to Obama, in the immediate future, any American unilateral nuclear disarmament would prove futile and enormously dangerous to American national security. 9 His foreign policy statement says, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, we’ll retain a strong nuclear deterrent.”10 President Obama singles out “dangerous” regimes, notably Iran and Korea, whose nuclear missile developments could lead to a global nuclear catastrophe. Because of this, he acknowledges that a missile defense system would still serve as a vital security shield to strategic America’s European partners. However, the President urges against any “premature” deployment of the missile system but would support the missile plan only after “vigorous testing” has proven the system’s operational effectiveness. In the long run, he warns that such a plan would certainly produce highly undesirable implications on the entire international security regime with the American public bearing enormous financial costs for an experimental project whose capability remains far from able to guarantee Americans and its allies security from missile attacks.
The claimed “success” of the December 5, 2008, test has produced serious implications for the progression of the BMD plan. Not only has it consolidated public support of the proposed missile shield, but it has already forced the new President into an awkward position and could effectively undermine his commitment to nuclear disarmament. To immediately withdraw the BMD plan, the President-elect would be criticized for appeasing to the Russian demands as well as neglecting to provide sustained support to NATO allies; some fear that such a move would drastically undermine American global leadership. This issue is especially delicate, so the Obama administration will have to develop strategic ways to cooperate with Russia.
Future Outlook
Should President Obama move forward with the BMD project:
- The only real winners are Boeing and other major contractors from the military industrial industry, which are reaping enormous profits at the cost of American taxpayers’ money.
- The current international structure would become dangerously destabilized. This would antagonize Russia, a crucial participant in global nonproliferation and disarmament, and retard two decades of moderate cooperation on nuclear issues.
- Continued proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile defense would spur a new Cold War arms race with more sophisticated weaponry with the devastating possibility of a nuclear launch. This would prompt other countries to continue or start their own nuclear programs with nuclear weapons becoming strategic instruments of political leverage in international relations.
- American unilateral security engagement would undermine European security. Instead of deterring, Washington’s active engagement with Eastern Europe would trigger a new arms race with Russia and others. Continental Europe could become a new target for attack by the United States’ adversaries.
If President Obama stops the BMD project, the implications are as follows:
- Much-needed resources could be diverted towards more strategic security measures to safeguard American and global security.
- Reinforce American leadership and commitment to international security and nonproliferation through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and European Union.
- President Obama could gain full support from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has actively pushed for more funding for the State Department to substantially expand its diplomatic corps, cautious NATO expansion and engagement in the former Soviet satellites, and limited reliance on military defense.
Conclusion When did nuclear deterrence ever deter? Paradoxically, America’s deeply ingrained confidence in nuclear deterrence has only accelerated the arms race. The national missile defense project has consistently exacerbated the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and pushed the international community to the brink of a dangerous arms race. The Bush administration’s “new deterrence” policy put at great risk the delicate power balance of the global community.11 The new presidency presents America a unique opportunity to reassess the missile defense plan. Russia’s top political and military leadership, Medvedev, Putin, and General Nikolai Marakov, have already extended their offer of engagement. President Obama has immense power to pursue wise, pragmatic, and strategic global leadership; these are some recommended strategies that he could take:
- Initiate regular, high-level dialogue to foster mutual understanding and cooperation with Russia.
- Revisit arms control treaties to make necessary changes to address newly emerging dangers of nuclear weaponry. This includes placing a limitation on nuclear stockpiles and the development and production of particularly dangerous weapons of mass destruction. To ensure their effectiveness, the U.S. and Russia would need to engage other nuclear powers, particularly Pakistan, India, and China.
- The U.S. could pursue a more multilateral strategy and engage with Moscow through the NATO-Russia Council. This would level the playing field and provide a more transparent forum for the engagement of all 26 members of NATO, in particular Poland and the Czech Republic.
- Collaborate with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to develop more strategic, pragmatic, capable, and cost-effective defense strategies which emphasize diplomacy and are detached from the military-industrial complex.
Endnotes
1. Bush, George W. (2007, October). Discussion of Global War on Terror. Speech presented at National Defense University, Washington, DC.
2. Gordon, M. (May 2006). “U.S. Seeks antimissile shield to block Iran.” International Herald Tribune.
3. Faulconbridge, G. (Dec 2008). “Russia Starts Production of New Ballistic Missiles.” Reuters.
4. “Pentagon Says It Destroyed Missile In Test of Air Shield” (Dec 2008). Associated Press.
5. “Obama’s challenge at the Pentagon” (Nov 2008). International Herald Tribune.
6. “How to Pay for a 21st-century Military” (Dec 2008). New York Times.
7. “The Candidates and Nuclear Nonproliferation”. Council on Foreign Affairs. <www.cfr.org>.
8. Isachenkov, V. (Dec 2008). “Russia’s leaders optimistic about ties with US”. Huffington Post.
9. White House Website <www.whitehouse.gov>.
10. White House Website. <www.whitehouse.gov>.
11. Colby, E. (Apr 2008). RAND Corporation. <www.rand.org>.
Loan C. Pham is a Nuclear Age Peace Foundation intern and is pursuing a Masters degree in Global Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. -
Speedy Ratification of the Treaty Banning Cluster Weapons
In a remarkable combination of civil society pressure and leadership from a small number of progressive States, a strong ban on the use, manufacture, and stocking of cluster bombs was signed in Oslo, Norway on 3 December 2008. However, all bright sunlight casts a dark shadow, and in this case the shadow is the fact that the major makers and users of cluster munitions were deliberately not there: Brazil, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, USA.
Yet as arms negotiations go, the cluster bomb ban has been swift. They began in Oslo, Norway in February 2007 and were thus often called the “Oslo Process.” The negotiations were a justified reaction to their wide use by Israel in Lebanon during the July-August 2006 conflict. The UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) working in southern Lebanon reported that their density there is higher than in Kosovo and Iraq, especially in built up areas, posing a constant threat to hundreds of thousands of people, as well as to UN peacemakers. It is estimated that one million cluster bombs were fired on south Lebanon during the 34 days of war, many during the last two days of war when a ceasefire was a real possibility. The Hezbollah militia also shot off rockets with cluster bombs into northern Israel.
Cluster munitions are warheads that scatter scores of smaller bombs. Many of these sub-munitions fail to detonate on impact, leaving them scattered on the ground, ready to kill and maim when disturbed or handled. Reports from humanitarian organizations and mine-clearing groups have shown that civilians make up the vast majority of the victims of cluster bombs, especially children attracted by their small size and often bright colors.
The failure rate of cluster munitions is high, ranging from 30 to 80 per cent. But “failure” may be the wrong word. They may, in fact, be designed to kill later. The large number of unexploded cluster bombs means that farm lands and forests cannot be used or used with great danger. Most people killed and wounded by cluster bombs in the 21 conflicts where they have been used are civilians, often young. Such persons often suffer severe injuries such as loss of limbs and loss of sight. It is difficult to resume work or schooling.
Discussions of a ban on cluster weapons had begun in 1979 during the negotiations in Geneva leading to the Convention on Prohibition on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which may be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to have Indiscriminate Effects — the “1980 Inhumane Weapons Convention” to its friends.
The indiscriminate impact of cluster bombs was raised with the support of the Swedish government by the representative of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva and myself. My NGO text of August 1979 for the citizens of the world on “Anti-Personnel Fragmentation Weapons” called for a ban based on the 1868 St Petersburg Declaration and recommended that “permanent verification and dispute-settlement procedures be established which may investigate all charges of the use of prohibited weapons whether in inter-State or internal conflicts, and that such a permanent body include a consultative committee of experts who could begin their work without a prior resolution of the UN Security Council.”
I was thanked for my efforts but left to understand that world citizens are not in the field of real politics and that I would do better to stick to pushing for a ban on napalm — photos of its use in Vietnam being still in the memory of many delegates. Governments always have difficulty focusing on more than one weapon at a time. Likewise for public pressure to build, there needs to be some stark visual reminders to draw attention and to evoke compassion.
Although cluster munitions were widely used in the Vietnam-Indochina war, they never received the media and thus the public attention of napalm. (1) The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research recently published a study on the continued destructive impact of cluster bombs in Laos noting that “The Lao People’s Democratic Republic has the dubious distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the world” (2). Cluster-bomb land clearance is still going on while the 1963-1973 war in Laos has largely faded from broader public memory.
The wide use by NATO forces in the Kosovo conflict again drew attention to the use of cluster bombs and unexploded ordnance. The ironic gap between the humanitarian aims given for the war and the continued killing by cluster bombs after the war was too wide not to be noticed. However, the difficulties of UN administration of Kosovo and of negotiating a “final status” soon overshadowed all other concerns. Likewise the use of cluster bombs in Iraq is overshadowed by the continuing conflict, sectarian violence, the role of the USA and Iran, and what shape Iraq will take after the withdrawal of US troops.
Thus, it was the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs against Lebanon in a particularly senseless and inconclusive war that has finally led to sustained efforts for a ban. Cluster weapons were again used by both Georgia and Russia in the 5 days of the August 2008 conflict— a use which was totally unnecessary from a strategic point of view. This use in the Georgia-Russia- South Ossetia conflict proves that as long as such weapons are available to the military, they will be used with little thought of their consequence.
The ban on cluster bombs follows closely the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction which came into force in March 1999 and has been now ratified by 152 States. Many of the same NGOs active on anti-personnel mines were also the motors of the efforts on cluster bombs — a combination of disarmament, humanitarian, and human rights groups.
States signed the treaty on 3 December in Oslo where the negotiations began. If the momentum can be kept up, parliaments should ratify the treaty quickly, and it could come into force by mid-2009. It is important for supporters to contact members of parliament indicating approval of the ban and asking for swift ratification. A more difficult task will be to convince those States addicted to cluster bombs— the Outlaw Seven: Brazil, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, USA. The ban may discourage their use by these States and the USA has a recent export ban on the sale of most cluster weapons, but a signature by them would be an important sign of respect for international agreements and world law. Pressure must be kept up for speedy ratification and for signature on those States outside the law.
René Wadlow is Representative to the United Nations in Geneva for the Association of World Citizens.