Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Non-Proliferation

  • Opening Remarks for the Washington, DC Think Outside the Bomb Conference

    Welcome to the Second annual Washington, DC Think Outside the Bomb, conference. Before going forward, I would like to thank American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute and Americans for Informed Democracy. Without their help, this event would not be possible.

    My introduction to nuclear weapons issues came from American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. As an undergraduate student, I was fortunate enough to travel to Japan to see the effects of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even after 60 years the physical and emotional scars on the people of Japan have not dissipated. It was a life-changing experience for me and ultimately has led me here today. I hope many of you have the opportunity to travel to Japan.

    Before going ahead with the conference, I’d like to talk for a moment about what this conference is and why now more than ever there is a need for a new generation of peace leaders.

    I am an American born after 1978. According to pop culture and statistical studies, we are known as Millennials or Generation Y. We are considered socially progressive and politically active. However, my generation does not consider global nuclear disarmament a priority. I believe the reason for this is that we are the first generation to come of age in a post-Cold War society. We are the first post-Cold War Americans.

    At the end of the Cold War there was a common belief that the nuclear threat would subside. Rather than work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, the Clinton Administration missed an opportunity to make sweeping changes and instead, to a large extent, reaffirmed antiquated Cold War policy already in place. The existence of nuclear weapons continued, but the public’s attention towards them waned.

    Unlike those who came before, my “post-Cold War Generation” was not exposed to a strong public outcry for the abolition of nuclear weapons. We also did not experience the nuclear arms race first hand. We did not live with the fear of duck and cover drills, nuclear testing, the Cuban missile crisis, and an unprecedented nuclear arms build up.

    The current generation of young people is a “post-Cold War Generation” that has been incorrectly taught that nuclear weapons are acceptable if possessed by responsible people. Instead of disarmament, they have embraced nonproliferation.

    There is a small window of opportunity before this generation takes seats of power in federal government and decide nuclear policy. Now more than ever, it is critical that young people learn about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the need for US leadership toward nuclear disarmament.

    In 2005 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation responded to this growing need by bringing together 50 young leaders in the nuclear field to Santa Barbara, California for the first national Think Outside the Bomb Conference. That August, the Think Outside the Bomb Participants created a Statement of Principles that guides the work of the young people in the network.

    Those principles are as follows:

    • Inspired by the need for a new generation of leaders working toward a nuclear-free world, Think Outside the Bomb is a group of young people;
    • Aware of the historical context and the current urgency to address the devastating effects of the nuclear complex;
    • Recognizing the need to develop connections between the nuclear complex and global, environmental, racial, economic and social justice;
    • Emphasizing the importance of the right to self-determination of all indigenous peoples, who have been among the most affected by the nuclear complex;
    • Drawing attention to the need to redefine security in terms of human and environmental needs;
    • Underlining the need to move beyond military force as the principal means of solving conflict and instead resolve conflict by nonviolent means;
    • Understanding the devastation caused by nuclear weapons and memorializing the many victims of bomb production at every step – from uranium mining to design, to production, to testing, to use and threat of use; and
    • Reaffirming our humanity through mutual respect, nonviolence and consensus-building.

    Nickolas Roth is Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Washington, DC office.

  • Comments on Complex Transformation

    Comments delivered in Madison, WI on February 16, 2008

    I am grateful for this opportunity to comment on the Department of Energy’s proposed changes in the United States Nuclear Weapons complex. I speak both as a citizen and as a historian who has published extensively on America’s more than sixty-year encounter with nuclear weapons.

    The Department of Energy’s proposal focuses exclusively on narrow technical detail. I think it is important to place this proposal in a larger context. First of all, note the choice of language. The DoE’s goal is to “modernize” our nuclear-weapons complex. Certainly all would agree that “modernization” is a good thing. Right?

    Further, underlying the proposal is an unspoken assumption: that nuclear weapons production and stockpiling will continue to be a central aspect of American public policy into the foreseeable future. This represents a further embedding of nuclear weapons into the very core of our nation’s economy, culture, and strategic policy. There is no hint of a commitment to eliminating these terrible weapons, but rather this proposal simply assumes their permanence, and at a level of thousands of weapons—a total that would have appalled all Americans when the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, if they could have foreseen what lay ahead.

    Further, this proposed reconfiguration of the nation’s nuclear-weapons program must be viewed in the larger context of America’s overall nuclear-weapons policies over the years, and specifically the policies of the current administration. In fact, the assumption of this proposal that nuclear-weapons will remain a permanent part of the U.S. military arsenal is part of a larger pattern of government policies that pays lip service to nuclear disarmament, while in fact contributing to proliferation worldwide and dangerously worsening what used to be called the nuclear balance of terror—a term that remains all too appropriate today.

    • The current administration has worsened the danger of proliferation. The United States continues to supply Israel with military hardware and billions of dollars in aid each year, despite the fact that Israel secretly developed and stockpiled nuclear weapons in defiance of stated U.S. policy, and has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
    • This administration has entered into a highly controversial agreement to supply nuclear know-how and technology to India, despite India’s development of nuclear weapons in defiance of international nonproliferation agreements, its refusal to open all its nuclear facilities to inspection, and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
    • This administration has given billions in aid to Pakistan, despite Pakistan’s development and testing of nuclear weapons, and despite the role of Pakistan’s top atomic scientist, A. Q. Khan, in secretly giving vital weapons-making information to other countries.
    • This administration has continued to push for the development of earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, the socalled “bunker buster” missiles, despite congressional opposition, and in violation of the spirit of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, by which the nuclear powers pledged to work in good faith for nuclear disarmament—not for developing new weapons systems.
    • Above all, the current administration has pursued the development and deployment of anti-missile missiles, a legacy of the socalled Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called “Star Wars,” launched by President Ronald Reagan twenty five years ago. In addition to setting up anti-missile launch sites in Alaska and California, the administration now proposes further deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, stirring fierce opposition from the Russian government, which is now threatening to target these sites with its own missiles.

    Russia’s reaction is entirely predictable, since the whole history of the nuclear arms race makes clear that an escalation by one side, whether labeled “offensive” or “defensive,” inevitably triggers a counter-move by the other side, leading to further escalation. Further, in taking this step, the Bush Administration abandoned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had acknowledged the dangerously destabilizing effects of trying to develop a defense against missile attack. If such a system were ever actually deployed and proven to be workable, it would mean that the nation deploying the system could then safely launch a nuclear attack without fear of retaliation. The administrations anti-missile program is not only dangerous and unwise strategically, it is technologically unfeasible and a massive waste of money. As has often been noted, trying to shoot down a missile with another missile is the equivalent of trying to stop a bullet with another bullet. Test after test has resulted in failure, even when the timing of the target-missile’s firing and its trajectory were fully known! What are the chances of successfully destroying a missile fired at an unknown time, and on an unknown trajectory? Nevertheless, the current Bush administration has poured billions into this unwise and unworkable program. In the first Bush budget, spending on missile-defense hit nearly $8 billion. Despite a series of failed tests, the administration requested a staggering $9.3 billion for fiscal year 2007, the highest in the program’s history and more that the total 2006 budgets for the National Park Service, the Food and Drug Adminstration, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and the administration’s highly touted Millennium program to combat poverty and disease in Africa. In its final budget, released in February 2008, the Bush administration requested a staggering $10.4 billion for the Missile Defense Agency, plus nearly $2 billion more for missile-defense related projects buried in other parts of the budget. The “Star Wars” scheme that Reagan sprung on the nation out of the blue in 1983 is now an embedded Pentagon program, the Missile Defense Agency, with its own entrenched bureaucracy, powerful corporate interests that stand to profit, and lobbying muscle to secure billions in new funding year after year, whatever the record of failure. The whole depressing “Star Wars” story offers a classic example of how a dangerous, misguided, and technologically unworkable program can become lodged in the bureaucracy, and take on a life of its own. In 2006, President Bush told a California audience, “Technology will once again make this country the leader of the world, and that’s what we’re here to celebrate.” When it comes to nuclear weapons, the answer is not technology, but a renewed national commitment to eliminate them from the earth—not just from “rogue states” or designated enemy nations, but eliminating them entirely.

    Much of my research has looked at the shifting rhythms of Americans’ response to nuclear weapons and the shifting fortunes of the anti-nuclear movement. What I’ve found is a pattern of upsurges of grassroots opposition to nuclear weapons, followed by a calculated government effort to neutralize that opposition. The first antinuclear movement came right after World War II, amid a massive wave of fear and revulsion against a single bomb that could destroy an entire city and snuff out hundreds of thousands of human lives in an instant. This first surge of anti-nuclear activism was blunted, however, as government propaganda hailed the promise of “the peaceful atom,” and whipped up fears of a communist takeover as the Cold War began. The second wave of grassroots antinuclear activism came in the later 1950s and early 1960s, as deadly radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests posed a terrifying danger to public health, especially the health of the most vulnerable—babies taking in radioactive poisons with their mother’s milk. This surge of activism was blunted with the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. That treaty did not end nuclear tests, but it put them underground, out of sight, and the antinuclear movement soon faded. The third wave of grassroots antinuclear activism came in the early 1980s, in reaction to the Reagan administration’s nuclear build-up, belligerent Cold War rhetoric, and renewed focus on civil defense in a possible nuclear war. As public alarm mounted, millions of Americans rallied to the Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign, the brainchild of Randall Forsberg, who died prematurely last October. Some veterans of that campaign are here today. The government, in the person of President Reagan, blunted that campaign with the 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, with its deceptive promise of using America’s technological prowess to build a secure shield against nuclear attack. The whole idea was strategically dangerous and fatally flawed technologically, but it served its immediate political purpose. Reagan shifted the terms of the debate, and the nuclear freeze movement collapsed. We now stand at another crossroads. Attention to the global danger of nuclear proliferation and the massive nuclear arsenal still held by the United States, Russia, and other nations has been diverted since 9/11 by a very selective attention to the nuclear danger posed by two specific nations, North Korea and Iran. That danger is real, but it is part of a far larger danger to our planet itself—a danger in which the United States itself is deeply implicated. But while attention to the true nature of the nuclear threat has been blunted by propaganda, a profound movement for change is sweeping the nation. This may, indeed, be a propitious moment for a new surge of grassroots anti-nuclear activism by a new generation. Through determined effort by concerned citizens, we may be poised once gain to confront the threat the whole world faces from the horrendous new power of destruction that our government, in our name, unleashed on the world on August 6, 1945.

    Paul Boyer is the Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus as the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1985) and Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America’s Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (1998).

  • No Nukes, No Proliferation

    The rising anxieties about nuclear weapons are rooted in two major and parallel developments: a renaissance of nuclear power and a resurgence of old-fashioned national security threats that supposedly had ebbed with the end of the Cold War.

    After the well publicized accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979 and Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986, opposition to nuclear power was so strong that many reactor plants were shut down, plans for new ones were canceled and virtually no new reactor was built over the past decade. With the spiraling price of oil caused by a spike in demand and disruptions to supply, the economics of nuclear power has changed. With the accelerating threat of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, the balance of environmental risk has shifted. Adding technological developments, the politics of constructing and operating nuclear power reactors has also altered.

    The net result is plans for building several reactors to add to the 435 reactors in 30 countries that provide 15 percent of the world’s electricity today. Asia will account for 18 of the 31 planned new reactors. The spurt in Chinese and Indian demand is a function of booming economic growth and population. In Japan and South Korea interest in nuclear power arises from lack of indigenous oil and gas resources and the desire for energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

    This throws up three clusters of concern:

    • How do we ensure that the plants are operated with complete safety?
    • How do we secure the plants against theft, leakage and attacks of weapons-sensitive material, skills and knowledge?
    • How do we build firewalls between civilian and weapons-related use of nuclear power?

    These concerns extend also to the international trade in nuclear material, skills and equipment. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, observed in 2004 that “Nuclear components designed in one country could be manufactured in another, shipped through a third, and assembled in a fourth for use in a fifth.”

    The challenge on the national security front is fourfold. First, the five Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty-licit nuclear powers–Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States–have ignored their NPT obligation to disarm. Instead they are busy enlarging, modernizing and upgrading their nuclear arsenals and refining nuclear doctrines to indicate retention and expanded use of these weapons for several decades yet. The lesson to others? Nuclear weapons are indispensable in today’s world and becoming more useful for dealing with tomorrow’s threats.

    Second, three states outside the NPT–India, Israel and Pakistan–have been accepted, more or less, as de facto nuclear weapons powers.

    Third, as an intergovernmental agreement, the NPT doesn’t cover nonstate groups, including terrorists, who might be pursuing nuclear weapons. The turmoil in Pakistan, with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf playing the “loose nukes” card to retain U.S. backing, highlights the related danger of links between rogue elements of security forces and extremists.

    Fourth, some countries may be cheating on their NPT obligations and seeking nuclear weapons by stealth. The drumbeats of war being sounded in Washington on Iran bring back memories of 2002-03. This is a story we’ve heard before. We didn’t like the ending the first time and are unlikely to like it any better the next time round.

    The disquieting trend of a widening circle of NPT-illicit and extra-NPT nuclear weapons powers in turn has a self-generating effect in drawing other countries into the game of nuclear brinksmanship. The renaissance of nuclear power cannot be explained solely by the interest in nuclear energy for civilian uses.

    What might be the solution? Of the 27,000 nuclear weapons in existence today, 12,000 are deployed and ready for use, with 3,500 on hair-trigger alert. To begin with, some practical and concrete measures are long overdue: Bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force; negotiating a verifiable fissile materials treaty; retrenching from launch-on-warning postures, standing down nuclear forces. That is, reviving, implementing and building on agreements for reducing the role, readiness and numbers of nuclear weapons in defense doctrines and preparations.

    But these amount to tinkering, not a bold and comprehensive vision of the final destination. What we need are rules-based regimes on the principles of reciprocity of obligations, participatory decision-making and independent verification procedures and compliance mechanisms.

    U.S. presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., declared, “America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.” In January, three former U.S. secretaries of defense and state–George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger–and Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, called on Washington to take the lead in the abolition of nuclear weapons. The national security benefits of nuclear weapons, they argued, are outweighed by the threats posed to U.S. security by uncontrolled proliferation.

    The symbiotic link between nonproliferation and disarmament is integral to the NPT, the most brilliant half-successful arms control agreement in history. The number of countries to sign it–188–embraces virtually the entire family of nations. But the nuclear arsenals of the five NPT nuclear powers expanded enormously. With almost four decades having elapsed since 1968, the five NPT nuclear powers are in violation of their solemn obligation to disarm, reinforced by the advisory opinion of the World Court in 1996 that the NPT’s Article 6 requires them to engage in and bring to a conclusion negotiations for nuclear abolition.

    Despite this history and background, a surprising number of arms control experts focus solely on the nonproliferation side to demand denial of technology and materiel to all who refuse to sign and abide by the NPT, and punishment of any who cross the threshold. The term “nonproliferation ayatollahs” is applied pejoratively to them. The latest episode in this long-running and tired serial is the United States, Britain and France threatening Iran with war to stop it from acquiring–not using, merely acquiring–nuclear weapons. From where do the leaders of nuclear-armed Britain and France derive the moral authority to declare that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable?

    Nuclear weapons could not proliferate if they did not exist. Because they do, they will. The policy implication of this logic is that the best guarantee of nuclear nonproliferation is nuclear disarmament through a nuclear weapons convention that bans the possession, acquisition, testing and use of nuclear weapons, by everyone. This would solve the problem of nonproliferation as well as disarmament. The focus on nonproliferation to the neglect of disarmament ensures that we get neither. If we want nonproliferation, therefore, we must prepare for disarmament.

    Too many, including the government of Japan, have paid lip service to this slogan, but not pursued a serious program of action to make it a reality. The elegant theorems, cogent logic and fluent reasoning of many authoritative international commissions, including the Tokyo Forum, have made no discernible dent on the old, new and aspiring nuclear powers. A coalition between nuclear-armed and nonnuclear countries, led perhaps by India–which has crossed the threshold from a disarmament leader to a hypocritical nuclear power–and Japan, the only country to have suffered an atomic attack, might break the stalemate and dispel the looming nuclear clouds.

    Time is running out for the hypocrisy and accumulated anomalies of global nuclear apartheid. Either we will achieve nuclear abolition or we will have to live with nuclear proliferation followed by nuclear war. Better the soft glow of satisfaction from the noble goal realized of nuclear weapons banned, than the harsh glare of the morning after of these weapons used.

    Ramesh Thakur, distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and professor of political science at the University of Waterloo in Canada, is the author of The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  • The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

    The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

    There are many serious problems confronting humanity, including climate change, infectious diseases, poverty and pollution, but none poses a more pervasive and urgent threat than the continuing dangers of nuclear weapons. There are still some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Twelve thousand of these are deployed, and some 3,500 are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments. Nuclear weapons are a delicately balanced “Sword of Damocles” hanging over our human future.

    We have seemingly failed to learn the lessons made evident by the atomic destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nine nuclear weapons states remain poised to inflict such mind-numbing devastation again, but on a far greater scale. The current nuclear weapons states show no signs of giving up their reliance on nuclear weapons and, as a result, other states may seek to join the nuclear club. The spread of nuclear weapons to additional states will only increase the risks of nuclear catastrophe.

    We are now in the seventh decade since nuclear weapons were created and used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the outset of the Nuclear Age, the world has witnessed an insane nuclear arms race, which has threatened the human species with annihilation. Despite the end of the Cold War more than 15 years ago, this threat has not gone away. The future of civilization and even the human species hangs in the balance, and yet, among the world’s major problems, very little attention is being paid to ending this threat. We are challenged, individually and collectively, to address and end this ultimate danger to humanity. This is surely one of the greatest challenges of our time, and we share a common responsibility to meet this challenge and pass the world on intact to the next generation.

    Warnings

    Nuclear weapons unleash the power within the atom. The creation of these weapons demonstrated significant scientific achievement, but left humankind threatened as never before and faced with the challenge of what to do with them. Albert Einstein, whose theoretical understanding of the relationship of energy and mass paved the way for nuclear weapons, was deeply troubled by the creation of these weapons. “The unleashed power of the atom,” he stated, “has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein, who died in 1955, lived long enough to see the onset of the nuclear arms race and the development and testing of thermonuclear weapons.

    By 1955, ten years after the first use of nuclear weapons, both the US and USSR had developed thermonuclear weapons, potentially thousands of times more powerful than the weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nuclear arms race had begun. The US and USSR had begun testing nuclear weapons on the lands and in the surrounding waters of indigenous and island peoples, demonstrating little concern for the health and well being of the native peoples affected. Along with philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein issued an appeal to humanity called the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which was additionally signed also by nine other prominent scientists. The Manifesto stated: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.” It was a stark warning.

    Other warnings from highly credible sources throughout the Nuclear Age sought to put the world on notice of the peril nuclear weapons pose to humanity. Warnings came from soldiers and scientists, politicians and literary figures. A notable warning was issued by a high-level group of eminent personalities in 1996 in the Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The Report stated:

    “The Canberra Commission is persuaded that immediate and determined efforts need to be made to rid the world of nuclear weapons and the threat they pose to it. The destructiveness of nuclear weapons is immense. Any use would be catastrophic.

    “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility. The only complete defense is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    One of the members of the Canberra Commission was General George Lee Butler, who had served as the commander-in-chief of the United States Strategic Command. In this capacity General Butler had been in charge of all US strategic nuclear weapons. After retiring from the US Air Force, General Butler devoted himself to the abolition of nuclear weapons. He argued, “What is at stake here is our capacity to move ever higher the bar of civilized behavior. As long as we sanctify nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of conflict, we will have forever capped our capacity to live on this planet according to a set of ideals that value human life and eschew a solution that continues to hold acceptable the shearing away of entire societies. This simply is wrong. It is morally wrong, and it ultimately will be the death of humanity.”

    In 2006, another expert commission, the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, also known as the Blix Commission after its chairman, former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix, issued a report, echoing the Canberra Commission Report. Referring to weapons of mass destruction, the Blix Commission Report stated: “So long as any state has such weapons – especially nuclear arms – others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain in any state’s arsenal, there is a high risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. Any such use would be catastrophic.” The Blix Commission Report continued:

    “The accumulated threat posed by the estimated 27,000 nuclear weapons, in Russia, the United States and the other NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] nuclear-weapon states, merits worldwide concern. However, especially in these five states the view is common that nuclear weapons from the first wave of proliferation somehow are tolerable, while such weapons in the hands of additional states are viewed as dangerous….

    “The Commission rejects the suggestion that nuclear weapons in the hands of some pose no threat, while in the hands of others they place the world in mortal jeopardy. Governments possessing nuclear weapons can act responsibly or recklessly. Governments can also change over time. Twenty-seven thousand nuclear weapons are not an abstract theory. They exist in today’s world.”

    In May 2007, the Founding Congress of the World Future Council issued “The Hamburg Call to Action.” In this document they warned: “Nuclear weapons remain humanity’s most immediate catastrophic threat. These weapons would destroy cities, countries, civilization and possibly humanity itself. The danger posed by nuclear weapons in any hands must be confronted directly and urgently through a new initiative for the elimination of these instruments of annihilation.”

    With the serious dangers that nuclear weapons pose to the human future, it is curious that so many warnings, over so long a period of time, have gone unheeded. Some 97 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons are in the arsenals of the United States and Russia. These must be the countries that lead the way, working with the seven other countries that also have nuclear weapons: the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. They must also work with the more than 35 nuclear capable countries that could choose to develop nuclear arsenals – countries that possess the technological capability of developing nuclear weapons. Some countries, such as Japan, are virtual nuclear powers, possessing the technology and nuclear materials to develop nuclear arsenals in weeks or months.

    Awakening Humanity

    What will it take to awaken humanity, and change its course? Many people think that this will not happen until there is another catastrophic use of nuclear weapons. This would, of course, be an immense tragedy and a great failure of imagination. If we can imagine that another nuclear catastrophe is possible, shouldn’t we act now to prevent it?

    Throughout the Cold War, humanity lived with the danger of Mutually Assured Destruction, which has the appropriate acronym of MAD. Today MAD has an additional meaning, Mutually Assured Delusions. It is delusional to think that nuclear weapons protect us. Despite the official justifications that nuclear weapons provide security, it should be clear to those who think about it that nuclear weapons themselves cannot provide protection in the sense of physical security. At best, they can provide psychological security if one believes that they provide a deterrent against attack. But belief in and of itself does not make a person or a society safe, certainly not from nuclear dangers. The belief itself is a well-promoted delusion.

    The United States is currently spending tens of billions of dollars to develop a missile defense system, which its proponents argue is capable of defending against nuclear attacks by rogue states. The only reasonable interpretation of this expenditure is that US defense planners understand that deterrence is not foolproof and that it can fail. Of course, missile defenses themselves are far from foolproof, and many experts believe that they will not work as promised in real-world conditions. In fact, most scientists not being paid by the missile defense program and the industry benefiting from it believe that missile defenses will not be reliable. Like the French Maginot Line, they are a defensive barrier that is unlikely to provide security. Missile defenses may be thought of as a “Maginot Line in the sky,” a highly touted and expensive defensive system with a very low probability of actually providing defense.

    The Shortcomings of Deterrence

    The United States government bases its need for nuclear weapons in the 21st century on deterrence. The US Secretaries of Defense, Energy, and State released a joint statement in July 2007, “National Security and Nuclear Weapons: Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century.” The statement begins, “A principal national security goal of the United States is to deter aggression against ourselves, our allies, and friends. Every American administration since President Truman’s day has formulated US national security policy in much the same terms, making clear to adversaries and allies alike the essential role that nuclear weapons play in maintaining deterrence.” What the statement fails to state is who is being deterred, why nuclear weapons are critical to deterrence, and whether the US wouldn’t make its citizens and the world safer by negotiating the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Reliance on deterrence is dangerous. Deterrence is a theory about human behavior and it has many shortcomings. For it to be effective, a threat of retaliation must be accurately communicated and it must be believed. Such a threat is likely to increase an opponent’s military might rather than to reduce conflict. In addition, deterrence won’t work when an opponent is suicidal or not locatable. This is surely the case against non-state extremist actors, groups such as al Qaeda.

    Should Nuclear Weapons Confer Prestige?

    If nuclear weapons cannot provide protection for a population, and almost certainly guarantee that a state possessing them will become a target of other states’ nuclear weapons, what other advantages do they offer? One possible answer to this question is prestige. Since the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council all developed nuclear weapons, it may seem to other states that nuclear weapons would contribute to their prestige in the world. This idea was given credence by the large-scale celebrations in the streets of India and Pakistan when these two countries tested nuclear devices in 1998.

    Even the capacity to make nuclear weapons by enriching uranium or separating plutonium appears to attract attention and is perceived to bestow prestige. Although there is no clear evidence that Iran seeks to develop nuclear arms, its uranium enrichment program has brought it under intense international scrutiny. This is reflective of current nuclear double standards, in which some countries, such as Iran, are highly criticized for developing nuclear technology, while others, such as India, seem to increase their status in the international community for having developed and tested nuclear weapons.

    Reflecting the positive view of his country’s nuclear capacity, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil stated in July 2007, “Brazil could rank among those few nations in the world with a command of uranium enrichment technology, and I think we will be more highly valued as a nation – as the power we wish to be.”

    Whatever prestige nuclear weapons or the technology to produce them may confer, it comes with a heavy price. Nuclear weapons are costly and possessing them will almost certainly make a country the target of nuclear weapons.

    Weapons of the Weak

    Nuclear weapons serve the interests of the weak more than they do the powerful. In the hands of a relatively weak nation, nuclear weapons can serve as an equalizer. One has only to look at the difference in the way the US has treated the three countries that Mr. Bush incorrectly labeled as being part of an axis of evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The US invaded Iraq on the false charge of having a nuclear weapons program, is threatening Iran for enriching uranium, but has negotiated with North Korea, which has tested long-range missiles and is believed to have a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.

    From the perspective of a powerful state, even one heavily armed with nuclear weapons, the worst nightmare would be for nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of a non-state extremist organization, whose members were both suicidal and not locatable. This could create the ideal conditions for these weapons to be used against a major nuclear power or another state. The US, for example, would be relatively helpless against a nuclear-armed al Qaeda. The US would not be able to deter al Qaeda. It could only hope to be able to prevent al Qaeda from obtaining a nuclear weapon or the materials to create one, or locate and destroy the weapon before it was detonated.

    Why Abolish Nuclear Weapons?

    Nuclear weapons undermine security. Under current circumstances, with so many nuclear weapons in the world and such an abundance of fissile materials for constructing nuclear weapons, there is a reasonable likelihood that nuclear weapons will eventually end up in the hands of non-state extremist organizations. This would be a disastrous scenario for the world’s most powerful counties, opening the door to possible nuclear 9/11s.

    In addition, nuclear weapons are anti-democratic. They concentrate power in the hands of single individuals or small cabals. The president of the United States, for example, could send the world spiraling into nuclear holocaust with an order to unleash the US nuclear arsenal. The undemocratic nature of nuclear weapons should be of great concern to those who value democracy and the participation of citizens in decisions that affect their lives.

    Nuclear weapons and their delivery system are also extremely expensive. The US alone has spent over $6 trillion since the onset of the Nuclear Age. The Soviet Union bankrupted itself and broke apart after engaging in a nuclear arms race with the United States for over 40 years. The funds currently expended for nuclear arsenals could be used far more constructively.

    Nuclear weapons should also be viewed in terms of their consequences. They are long-range weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction. They destroy equally civilians and combatants; infants and the aged; the healthy and the infirm; men, women and children. Viewed from this perspective, these weapons must be seen as among the most cowardly ever created. By their possession, with the implicit threat of use that possession implies, nuclear weapons also destroy the souls of those who rely upon them.

    They are a coward’s weapon and their possession, threat and use is dishonorable. This was the conclusion of virtually all of the top military leaders of World War II, most of whom were morally distraught that the US used these weapons against Japan. Truman’s Chief of Staff, Admiral William Leahy, for example, wrote this about the use of atomic weapons on Japan: “My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

    Humanity Has a Choice

    Humanity still has a choice; in fact, it is the same choice posed in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. We can choose to eliminate nuclear weapons or risk the elimination of the human species. A continuation of the status quo, of reliance by some states on nuclear arsenals, is likely to result in the proliferation of nuclear weapons to others states and to extremist organizations. Ultimately, it will lead to their use. Richard Garwin, a leading US atomic scientist who helped develop thermonuclear weapons, believes that there is a 20 percent per year probability of nuclear weapons being used on a US or European city. This is a dangerous probability. The alternative is to pursue the path of eliminating nuclear weapons.

    What would it take to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons? On the one hand, the answer to this question is “very little.” On the other hand, because of the resistance, complacency and myopia of the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, the answer may be “a great amount.”

    To move forward with the elimination of nuclear weapons would require compliance with existing international law. The International Court of Justice concluded in 1996: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” In the decade since the Court announced its opinion, there has been scant evidence of “good faith” negotiations by the nuclear weapons states moving toward any reasonable conclusion.

    The negotiations that the Court describes as an obligation of the nuclear weapons states would need to move toward the creation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty setting forth a program for the phased and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons with appropriate means of verification. With the political will to pursue these required negotiations, a treaty would not be a difficult task to achieve. What is lacking is the requisite political will on the part of the leaders of nuclear weapons states. To achieve the requisite political will, the citizens of the nuclear weapons states, and particularly of the United States, must make their voices heard.

    A Special Responsibility, A Tragic Failure

    The United States, as the world’s most powerful country and the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, has a special responsibility to lead in fulfilling its obligations under international law. In fact, without US leadership, it is unlikely that progress will be possible toward nuclear disarmament. But rather than lead in this direction, the United States under the Bush administration has been the major obstacle to nuclear disarmament. It has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to pursue missile defenses, space weaponization and increased military dominance; opposed a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty; and in general has acted as an obstacle to progress on all matters of nuclear disarmament.

    The US has also pursued a double standard with regard to nuclear weapons. It has been silent on Israeli nuclear weapons, and now seeks to change its own non-proliferation laws to enable it to provide nuclear technology and materials to India, a country that has not joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has developed a nuclear arsenal. At the same time, in its 2001 Nuclear Posture Review the US called for contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against seven countries, five of which were at the time thought to be non-nuclear weapons states.

    It is tragic that the American people don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of their government’s failure. They are lacking in education that would lead to an understanding of the situation. Their attention has been diverted to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and they fail to see what is closest to home: the failure of their own government to lead in a constructive and lawful manner to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons. “And thus,” in Einstein’s words, “we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    To bring about real change in nuclear policy, people must begin with a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and then they must speak out as if their lives and the lives of their children depended on their actions. It is unlikely that governments will give up powerful weapons on their own accord. They must be pushed by their citizenry – citizens unwilling to continue to run the risk of nuclear holocaust or to accept the logic of Mutually Assured Delusions.

    A New Story

    We need a new story for considering nuclear dangers, a story that begins with the long struggle of humans over some three million years to arrive at our present state of civilization. That state is far from perfect, but few would suggest that it should be sacrificed on the altar of weapons of mass annihilation capable of reducing our major cities to rubble.

    The first humans lived short and brutal lives. They were both predators and preyed upon. They survived by their nimbleness, more of body than mind, doing well if they lived into their twenties. Enough early humans were able to protect and nurture their infants in their hazardous environments that some of the children of each generation could survive to an age when they could themselves reproduce and repeat the cycle.

    Without these clever and capable early ancestors, and those that followed who met the distinct challenges of their times and environments for many hundreds of thousands of generations, we would not be here. Our human ancestors needed to survive the perils of birth, infancy, childhood and at least early maturity in order for each of us to have made it into the world.

    On the basis of the pure physical capacity to survive, we owe a debt to our ancestors, but with this debt comes something more. We each have a responsibility for helping to assure the chain of human survival that passes the world on intact to the next generation. In addition to this, we share an obligation to preserve the accumulated wisdom and beauty created by those who have walked the earth before us – the ideas of the great storytellers and philosophers, the great music, literature and art, the artifacts of humankind’s collective genius in its varied forms. Our responsibility extends not only to each other and to the future, but to preserve and protect the rich legacy we have received from the past – from Socrates to Shakespeare; from Homer to Hemingway; from Beethoven to the Beatles; from Michelangelo to Monet.

    All of the manifestations of human genius and triumph are placed in jeopardy by nuclear weapons and the threat of their use. Why do we tolerate this threat? Why are we docile in the face of policies that could end not only humanity, but life itself?

    Those of us alive today are the gatekeepers to the future, but the management of power by the nuclear-armed states has left us vulnerable to the continuing threat of nuclear annihilation. The only way to be free of this threat is to be free of nuclear weapons. This is the greatest challenge of our time. It will require education so that people can learn to think about nuclear weapons and war in a new way. We will need organizational modes of collective action to bring pressure to bear on governments to achieve nuclear disarmament. Ordinary people must lead from below; citizens must lead their political leaders.

    The Role of Citizens

    Organizations working for nuclear disarmament – such as the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Abolition 2000, the Middle Powers Initiative and the Mayors for Peace – can help give shape to efforts to put pressure on governments. But the change that is needed cannot be the sole responsibility of interest groups. Without the intervention of large numbers of people, we will go on with business as usual, a course that seems likely to lead to nuclear proliferation and further catastrophic uses of nuclear weapons. This is not a distant problem, nor one that can be shunted aside and left to governments.

    We who have entered the 21st century are not exempt from responsibility for assuring a human future. Fifty years ago, Japanese Buddhist leader Josei Toda called for young people to take the lead in pursuing nuclear disarmament. His proposal has great merit given the fact that it is their future and the future of their children that is imperiled by these weapons. But we must ask: How do we educate young people to care and to believe that they can make a difference in what must seem an often indifferent and terribly dangerous world? How do we empower young people to live with integrity as citizens of the world and press for the changes that are needed to assure their future?

    Change occurs one person at a time. Each of us must take responsibility for creating a world free of nuclear threat. Noted anthropologist Margaret Mead offered this hopeful advice: “Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

    In the end, the necessary changes to eliminate nuclear dangers cannot be left to governments alone. For the most part, governments have failed to come to grips with the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity. Most governments have not even tried. They have lived with double standards, engaged in insane nuclear arms races, lived under “nuclear umbrellas,” and continued to rely upon nuclear weapons against the security interests of their own people.

    It is up to each of us to play a role. What can we do? There is no panacea, no magic wand. Change requires recognizing that this is not someone else’s problem, but a shared problem of humanity. It requires rolling up our sleeves and becoming active.

    I have five suggestions for those who would like to contribute to ending the nuclear threat to humanity. First, become better informed. You can do this by visiting the website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at www.wagingpeace.org as well as many other informative websites focused on nuclear disarmament. Second, speak out, wherever you are. You can raise these issues with your family, friends, and other people around you. Third, join an organization working to abolish nuclear weapons, and help it to become more successful. By becoming active in an organization working for nuclear disarmament you can help the outreach and effectiveness of the effort. Fourth, use your unique talents. Each of us has special talents that can help make a difference. Use them. Fifth, be persistent. This is a tough job requiring strength and persistence. Even if desired results don’t come about quickly, we must remain committed and not give up.

    By working for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons, you can be a force for saving the world. Being a nuclear weapons abolitionist will require all the courage and commitment of those who worked in the 19th century for the abolition of slavery. Abolishing slavery was the challenge of that time; abolishing nuclear weapons is the even more consequential challenge of our time.

    [Please note this related upcoming event: “The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons” Conference, San Francisco, September 8-9.]

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor on the World Future Council.
  • Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility

    Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility

    I have just returned from Berlin and the annual Council meeting of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES). This is an organization much needed in our world, one that supports the ethical uses of science and technology for disarmament and sustainable development. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has helped to foster the work of this international organization since the inception of INES more than 15 years ago.

    The meeting included an important presentation by Professor Guillermo Lemarchand from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina on the extent to which scientific efforts are driven by large military research and development budgets. Lemarchand presented information on the close relationship between research and development funding and the exponential growth of the lethality of weaponry. During the 20th century the lethality (maximum number of casualties per hour that a weapon can generate) grew from about 100 at the beginning of the century to about six billion at the end of the century. The lethality growth of weapons in the 20th century was 60 million, and now encompasses the population of the planet.

    Scientists may not be concerned with or even know the reasons why their basic research is being funded by military sources. The driving of academic research and development by military budgets is becoming pervasive at universities throughout the world, leading to the variant of the famous statement in President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address that some now find appropriate – the military-industrial-academic complex.

    The University of California is an excellent example of a university providing research and development for military purposes. It provides management and oversight to the US nuclear weapons laboratories. Its funds for doing this come through the US Department of Energy, but the work of the nuclear weapons laboratories is largely secret and military in nature. Currently the labs are working on the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a new hydrogen bomb that the Bush administration hopes will replace every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal.

    The management of the nuclear weapons laboratories by the University of California is just the tip of the iceberg of military involvement with universities around the world. According to the report by Professor Lemarchand, a physicist, the US military assigns officers to practically all areas of the world to seek out scientific researchers who may be helpful in furthering US military purposes. Too often military funding is the only source of funding available for academic researchers.

    This can create a dilemma for professors, who are often under pressure to bring in research funding. On the one hand, they can accept funding from the military, and find themselves contributing toward new means of weaponization – an outcome they may find unethical. On the other hand, they can turn down offers of funding from the military and not be able to continue their research into basic areas of science that they find important.

    There are many issues that confront scientists and engineers in today’s world. These include weapons of mass destruction, genetic engineering, biotechnology, global warming and climate change, food supplies and agricultural production, energy use and alternative energy development, and pollution and health issues. How does one approach such issues from the perspective of global responsibility?

    First, global responsibility means working for the betterment of humanity. Practically this means using one’s talents and skills for constructive rather than destructive purposes. Second, it means speaking out, individually or collectively, against dangerous and destructive uses of science and technology. Third, it means putting the welfare of humanity as a whole ahead of the considerations of any one nation.

    The Council members of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility are a dedicated group that is making its voice heard on the ethical uses of science and technology. If you would like to find out more about their work and become involved in it, visit them online at www.inesglobal.com.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Responsibility in an Era of Consequences

    Responsibility in an Era of Consequences

    The inaugural meeting of the World Future Council was recently held in Hamburg, Germany. It brought together 50 Councilors from all continents, chosen for their diversity and pioneering commitment to building a better world. At the conclusion of the four-day meeting, the Council released the Hamburg Call to Action, a document calling for action to protect the future of all life. It began, “Today we stand at the crossroads of human history. Our actions – and our failures to act – will decide the future of life on earth for thousands of years, if not forever.”

    The Call to Action is a challenge to each of us to take responsibility for assuring a positive future for humanity and for preserving life on our planet. The document states: “Today there is no alternative to an ethics of global responsibility for we are entering an era of consequences. We must share, co-operate and innovate together in building a world worthy of our highest aspirations. The decision lies with each one of us!”

    We are challenged to consider what we are individually and collectively doing not only to radically undermine our present world through war and its preparation, resource depletion, pollution and global warming, but also the effects of what we are doing upon future generations. Those of us alive now have the responsibility to pass the world on intact to the next generation, and to assure that our actions do not foreclose the future.

    The Hamburg Call to Action is a great document and I urge you to read and reflect upon it. But I draw your attention specifically to the section on nuclear weapons: “Nuclear weapons remain humanity’s most immediate catastrophic threat. These weapons would destroy cities, countries, civilization and possibly humanity itself. The danger posed by nuclear weapons in any hands must be confronted directly and urgently through a new initiative for the elimination of these instruments of annihilation.”

    With this in mind, we should unite in demanding the abolition of these weapons – eliminating the weapons before they eliminate us. There is much to be done in this regard, most important being the negotiation of a new treaty for the phased, verifiable and irreversible elimination of all nuclear arsenals, as required by the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. While these negotiations are in progress, there is much to be done to lower the level of reliance on nuclear weapons and to safeguard nuclear materials, including taking deployed nuclear weapons off high-alert status, ceasing all nuclear weapons tests and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and implementing strategies to bring all weapons-grade fissionable materials and the technologies to create them under strict international control.

    We must also withdraw our support from any programs that seek to maintain nuclear arsenals into the future. A prime example is the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program now being developed at the US nuclear weapons laboratories. This is but one example of a dangerous weapons program unworthy of our humanity. Rather than continuing the nuclear arms race, largely with itself, while ignoring its obligations under international law for nuclear disarmament, the United States must take a leadership role in ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. This is only likely to happen if US citizens demand such action from their government.

    At the University of California, students are challenging the University’s management and supposed oversight of the US nuclear weapons laboratories. They are saying, in effect, “Enough is enough. It is time for the University to stop providing a fig leaf of respectability to nuclear weapons laboratories engaged in a dangerous continuation of the nuclear threat to humanity.” The students are a voice from the future that is with us today. It is their future, and they are demanding nuclear sanity. They deserve our support as they speak out and confront the University of California Regents, political appointees who seem content to promote any nuclear weapons program proposed by the nuclear labs.

    The Hamburg Call to Action challenges each of us to change our way of thinking, and to engage in meaningful actions to assure the future. The time for global sanity has arrived – none too soon.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor of the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org). Please send comments to him at “dkrieger@napf.org”.

  • Congress Must Act to Stop a US Attack on Iran

    George Bush has already lost the illegal war of aggression that he initiated in Iraq. In the process, he has spent enormous sums of money, stretched the US military to the breaking point, undermined international law and the US Constitution, been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as well as more US citizens than died on September 11, 2001, and brought respect for the United States to new lows throughout the world. He now appears poised to initiate a new war against Iran.

    In advance of the war against Iraq, Mr. Bush moved US forces into the region. In an ominously reminiscent set of maneuvers, he has already moved two naval battle groups into the Persian Gulf, and has another battle group on the way. It is likely that Mr. Bush will opt for air attacks against Iran rather than “boots on the ground,” as too many US troops are already tied up in Iraq. There should be grave concerns about Mr. Bush’s inability to think strategically beyond threat and attack, given the dismal consequences of his actions in Iraq.

    Mr. Bush believed our forces would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. One wonders what Mr. Bush thinks will happen if he attacks Iran, a regional power in the Middle East. The US could end up bogged down in the Middle East for decades. There have also been reports by respected journalist Seymour Hersh that the US military has contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, an act of terrorism that could open a global Pandora’s Box.

    Speaking recently to a security forum in Munich, Russian President Vladimir Putin had some strong criticism for the Bush policies. While Mr. Putin’s credentials are far from impeccable, his words bear consideration. “One state, the United States,” he said, “overstepped its national borders in every way.” Putin observed, “It is a world of one master, one sovereign…it has nothing to do with democracy. This is nourishing the wish of countries to get nuclear weapons.” Mr. Putin was particularly critical of the way in which the United States is undermining international law.

    Congress opened the door for Mr. Bush’s attack against Iraq. Congress should now be responsible for closing the door to a US attack on Iran. Congress should go on record before it is too late foreclosing the president from attacking Iran without specific Congressional authorization as well as appropriate authorization by the United Nations Security Council. The hour is late, but not too late, for Congress to assert its Constitutional responsibility. Under the US Constitution, only Congress can declare war and allocate funding for war.

    Senator Robert Byrd has already put forward a resolution that requires Congressional approval of any offensive US military action taken against another country. In introducing Senate Resolution 39 on January 24, 2007, Senator Byrd stated, “I am introducing a resolution that clearly states that it is Congress…not the President – that is vested with the ultimate decision on whether to take this country to war against another country.” He called his resolution “a rejection of the bankrupt, dangerous and unconstitutional doctrine of preemption, which proposes that the President – any President – may strike another country before that country threatens us….”

    As bad as things are in Iraq – and there is no doubt that they are bad – for Mr. Bush to initiate a new war by attacking Iran would only make matters worse for the United States. The US needs to pursue an exit strategy for Iraq, not a preemptive attack against yet another country that has not attacked the United States. Through its actions, the US needs to return to respecting and supporting international law. The Congress of the United States needs to go on record now to assure that Mr. Bush understands this and the limits of his authority under the Constitution.

     

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

  • Kofi Annan’s Clarion Call for Nuclear Sanity

    Kofi Annan’s Clarion Call for Nuclear Sanity

    Nearing the end of his second term as Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan went to Princeton University on November 28, 2006 to make what may well be remembered as the most important speech of his tenure. He began by talking about the general sense of insecurity in our world today related to a broad range of issues, including poverty, environmental degradation, disease, war and terrorism. He concluded that “the greatest danger of all” may well be “the area of nuclear weapons.” He gave three reasons for this conclusion:

    “First, nuclear weapons present a unique existential threat to humanity. “Secondly, the nuclear non-proliferation regime faces a major crisis of confidence….

    “Thirdly, the rise of terrorism, with the danger that nuclear weapons might be acquired by terrorists, greatly increases the danger that they will be used.”

    He pointed to the two significant failures by governments in 2005 to achieve progress on the twin issues of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament: first, at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference; and second, at the World Summit, which brought together heads of governments from throughout the world.

    Annan attributed the current stalemate, which he termed “mutually assured paralysis,” to the deadlock between those who put nuclear disarmament first and those who put non-proliferation first. He urged both sides to come together and tackle both issues “with the urgency they demand.”

    He called upon the nuclear weapons states “to develop concrete plans – with specific timetables – for implementing their disarmament commitments.” He also urged them “to make a joint declaration of intent to achieve the progressive elimination of all nuclear weapons, under strict and effective international control.”

    He concluded his remarks by appealing to young people: “Please bring your energy and imagination to this debate. Help us to seize control of the rogue aircraft on which humanity has embarked, and bring it to a safe landing before it is too late.”

    This speech is a parting gift from the Secretary General to humanity. I urge you to read it and to demand far more serious action on these critical issues by the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, those who are attempting to control the hijacked “rogue aircraft on which humanity has embarked….”

    Read the Kofi Annan Speech

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.

  • Lecture at Princeton University

    Let me begin by saying how delighted I am to have been invited to give this address by a School named after Woodrow Wilson, the great pioneer of multilateralism and advocate of world peace, who argued, among other things, for agreed international limits on deadly weapons.

    Princeton is indissolubly linked with the memory of Albert Einstein and many other great scientists who played a role in making this country the first nuclear power. That makes it an especially appropriate setting for my address this evening, because my main theme is the danger of nuclear weapons, and the urgent need to confront that danger by preventing proliferation and promoting disarmament, both at once. I shall argue that these two objectives — disarmament and non-proliferation — are inextricably linked, and that to achieve progress on either front we must also advance on the other.

    Almost everyone in today’s world feels insecure, but not everyone feels insecure about the same thing. Different threats seem more urgent to people in different parts of the world.

    Probably the largest number would give priority to economic and social threats, including poverty, environmental degradation and infectious disease.

    Others might stress inter-State conflict; yet others internal conflict, including civil war. Many people – especially but not only in the developed world — would now put terrorism at the top of their list.

    In truth, all these threats are interconnected, and all cut across national frontiers. We need common global strategies to deal with all of them — and indeed, Governments are coming together to work out and implement such strategies, in the UN and elsewhere. The one area where there is a total lack of any common strategy is the one that may well present the greatest danger of all: the area of nuclear weapons.

    Why do I consider it the greatest danger? For three reasons:

    First, nuclear weapons present a unique existential threat to all humanity.

    Secondly, the nuclear non-proliferation regime now faces a major crisis of confidence. North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), while India, Israel, and Pakistan have never joined it. There are, at least, serious questions about the nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. And this, in turn, raises questions about the legitimacy, and credibility, of the case-by-case approach to non-proliferation that the existing nuclear powers have adopted.

    Thirdly, the rise of terrorism, with the danger that nuclear weapons might be acquired by terrorists, greatly increases the danger that they will be used.

    Yet, despite the grave, all-encompassing nature of this threat, the Governments of the world are addressing it selectively, not comprehensively.

    In one way, that’s understandable. The very idea of global self-annihilation is unbearable to think about. But, that is no excuse. We must try to imagine the human and environmental consequences of a nuclear bomb exploding in one, or even in several, major world cities — or indeed of an all-out confrontation between two nuclear-armed States.

    In focusing on nuclear weapons, I am not seeking to minimize the problem of chemical and biological ones, which are also weapons of mass destruction, and are banned under international treaties. Indeed, perhaps the most important, under-addressed threat relating to terrorism — one which acutely requires new thinking — is the threat of terrorists using a biological weapon.

    But, nuclear weapons are the most dangerous. Even a single bomb can destroy an entire city, as we know from the terrible example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and today, there are bombs many times as powerful as those. These weapons pose a unique threat to humanity as a whole.

    Forty years ago, understanding that this danger must be avoided at all costs, nearly all States in the world came together and forged a grand bargain, embodied in the NPT.

    In essence, that treaty was a contract between the recognized nuclear-weapon States at that time and the rest of the international community. The nuclear-weapon States undertook to negotiate in good faith on nuclear disarmament, to prevent proliferation, and to facilitate the peaceful use of nuclear energy, while separately declaring that they would refrain from threatening non-nuclear-weapon States with nuclear weapons. In return, the rest committed themselves not to acquire or manufacture nuclear weapons, and to place all their nuclear activities under the verification of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Thus, the treaty was designed both to prevent proliferation and to advance disarmament, while assuring the right of all States, under specified conditions, to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

    From 1970 — when it entered into force — until quite recently, the NPT was widely seen as a cornerstone of global security. It had confounded the dire predictions of its critics. Nuclear weapons did not — and still have not — spread to dozens of States, as John F. Kennedy and others predicted in the 1960s. In fact, more States have given up their ambitions for nuclear weapons than have acquired them.

    And yet, in recent years, the NPT has come under withering criticism — because the international community has been unable to agree how to apply it to specific crises in South Asia, the Korean peninsula and the Middle East; and because a few States parties to the treaty are allegedly pursuing their own nuclear-weapons capabilities.

    Twice in 2005, Governments had a chance to strengthen the Treaty’s foundations — first at the Review conference in May, then at the World Summit in September. Both times they fai— essentially because they couldn’t agree whether non-proliferation or disarmament should come first.

    The advocates of “non-proliferation first” — mainly nuclear-weapon States and their supporters — believe the main danger arises not from nuclear weapons as such, but from the character of those who possess them, and therefore, from the spread of nuclear weapons to new States and to non-state actors (so called “horizontal proliferation”). The nuclear-weapon States say they have carried out significant disarmament since the end of the cold war, but that their responsibility for international peace and security requires them to maintain a nuclear deterrent.

    “Disarmament first” advocates, on the other hand, say that the world is most imperilled by existing nuclear arsenals and their continual improvement (so called “vertical proliferation”). Many non-nuclear-weapon States accuse the nuclear-weapon States of retreating from commitments they made in 1995 (when the NPT was extended indefinitely) and reiterated as recently as the year 2000. For these countries, the NPT “grand bargain” has become a swindle. They note that the UN Security Council has often described the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as a threat to international peace and security, but has never declared that nuclear weapons in and of themselves are such a threat. They see no serious movement towards nuclear disarmament, and claim that the lack of such movement presages a permanent “apartheid” between nuclear “haves” and “have-nots”.

    Both sides in this debate feel that the existence of four additional States with nuclear weapons, outside the NPT, serves only to sharpen their argument.

    The debate echoes a much older argument: are weapons a cause or a symptom of conflict? I believe both debates are sterile, counterproductive, and based on false dichotomies.

    Arms build-ups can give rise to threats leading to conflict; and political conflicts can motivate the acquisition of arms. Efforts are needed both to reduce arms and to reduce conflict. Likewise, efforts are needed to achieve both disarmament and non-proliferation.

    Yet, each side waits for the other to move. The result is that “mutually assured destruction” has been replaced by mutually assured paralysis. This sends a terrible signal of disunity and waning respect for the Treaty’s authority. It creates a vacuum that can be exploited.

    I said earlier this year that we are “sleepwalking towards disaster”. In truth, it is worse than that — we are asleep at the controls of a fast-moving aircraft. Unless we wake up and take control, the outcome is all too predictable.

    An aircraft, of course, can remain airborne only if both wings are in working order. We cannot choose between non-proliferation and disarmament. We must tackle both tasks with the urgency they demand.

    Allow me to offer my thoughts to each side in turn.

    To those who insist on disarmament first, I say this:

    — Proliferation is not a threat only, or even mainly, to those who already have nuclear weapons. The more fingers there are on nuclear triggers, and the more those fingers belong to leaders of unstable States — or, even worse, non-State actors — the greater the threat to all humankind.

    — Lack of progress on disarmament is no excuse for not addressing the dangers of proliferation. No State should imagine that, by pushing ahead with a nuclear-weapon programme, it can pose as a defender of the NPT; still less that it will persuade others to disarm.

    — I know some influential States, which themselves have scrupulously respected the Treaty, feel strongly that the nuclear-weapon States have not lived up to their disarmament obligations. But, they must be careful not to let their resentment put them on the side of the proliferators. They should state clearly that acquiring prohibited weapons never serves the cause of their elimination. Proliferation only makes disarmament even harder to achieve.

    — I urge all States to give credit where it is due. Acknowledge disarmament whenever it does occur. Applaud the moves which nuclear-weapon States have made, whether unilaterally or through negotiation, to reduce nuclear arsenals or prevent their expansion. Recognize that the nuclear-weapon States have virtually stopped producing new fissile material for weapons, and are maintaining moratoria on nuclear tests.

    — Likewise, support even small steps to contain proliferation, such as efforts to improve export controls on goods needed to make weapons of mass destruction, as mandated by Security Council resolution 1540.

    — And please support the efforts of the Director-General of the IAEA and others to find ways of guaranteeing that all States have access to fuel and services for their civilian nuclear programmes without spreading sensitive technology. Countries must be able to meet their growing energy needs through such programmes, but we cannot afford a world where more and more countries develop the most sensitive phases of the nuclear fuel cycle themselves.

    — Finally, do not encourage, or allow, any State to make its compliance with initiatives to eliminate nuclear weapons, or halt their proliferation, conditional on concessions from other States on other issues. The preservation of human life on this planet is too important to be used as a hostage.

    To those who insist on non-proliferation first, I say this:

    —True, there has been some progress on nuclear disarmament since the end of the cold war. Some States have removed many nuclear weapons from deployment, and eliminated whole classes of nuclear delivery systems. The US and Russia have agreed to limit the number of strategic nuclear weapons they deploy, and have removed non-strategic ones from ships and submarines; the US Congress refused to fund the so called “bunker-buster” bomb; most nuclear test sites have been closed; and there are national moratoria on nuclear tests, while three nuclear-weapon States — France, Russia and the UK — have ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

    — Yet, stockpiles remain alarmingly high: 27,000 nuclear weapons reportedly remain in service, of which about 12,000 are actively deployed.

    — Some States seem to believe they need fewer weapons, but smaller and more useable ones — and even to have embraced the notion of using such weapons in conflict. All of the NPT nuclear-weapon States are modernizing their nuclear arsenals or their delivery systems. They should not imagine that this will be accepted as compatible with the NPT. Everyone will see it for what it is: a euphemism for nuclear re-armament.

    — Nor is it clear how these States propose to deal with the four nuclear-weapon-capable States outside the NPT. They warn against a nuclear domino effect, if this or that country is allowed to acquire a nuclear capability, but they do not seem to know how to prevent it, or how to respond to it once it has happened. Surely they should at least consider attempting a “reverse domino effect”, in which systematic and sustained reductions in nuclear arsenals would devalue the currency of nuclear weapons, and encourage others to follow suit.

    — Instead, by clinging to and modernizing their own arsenals, even when there is no obvious threat to their national security that nuclear weapons could deter, nuclear-weapon States encourage others — particularly those that do face real threats in their own reg— to regard nuclear weapons as essential, both to their security and to their status. It would be much easier to confront proliferators, if the very existence of nuclear weapons were universally acknowledged as dangerous and ultimately illegitimate.

    — Similarly, States that wish to discourage others from undertaking nuclear or missile tests could argue their case much more convincingly if they themselves moved quickly to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty into force, halt their own missile testing, and negotiate a robust multilateral instrument regulating missiles. Such steps would do more than anything else to advance the cause of non-proliferation.

    — Important Powers such as Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Japan have shown, by refusing to develop them, that nuclear weapons are not essential to either security or status. South Africa destroyed its arsenal and joined the NPT. Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan gave up nuclear weapons from the former Soviet nuclear arsenal. And Libya has abandoned its nuclear and chemical weapons programmes. The nuclear weapon States have applauded all these examples. They should follow them.

    — Finally, Governments and civil society in many countries are increasingly questioning the relevance of the cold war doctrine of nuclear deterrence — the rationale used by all States that possess nuclear weap— in an age of growing threats from non-State actors. Do we not need, instead, to develop agreed strategies for preventing proliferation?

    — For all these reasons, I call on all the States with nuclear weapons to develop concrete plans — with specific timetables — for implementing their disarmament commitments. And I urge them to make a joint declaration of intent to achieve the progressive elimination of all nuclear weapons, under strict and effective international control.

    In short, my friends, the only way forward is to make progress on both fronts — non-proliferation and disarmament — at once. And we will not achieve this unless at the same time we deal effectively with the threat of terrorism, as well as the threats, both real and rhetorical, which drive particular States or regimes to seek security, however misguidedly, by developing or acquiring nuclear weapons.

    It is a complex and daunting task, which calls for leadership, for the establishment of trust, for dialogue and negotiation. But first of all, we need a renewed debate, which must be inclusive, must respect the norms of international negotiations, and must reaffirm the multilateral approach — Woodrow Wilson’s approach, firmly grounded in international institutions, treaties, rules, and norms of appropriate behaviour.

    Let me conclude by appealing to young people everywhere, since there are — I am glad to see — so many of them here today.

    My dear young friends, you are already admirably engaged in the struggle for global development, for human rights and to protect the environment. Please bring your energy and imagination to this debate. Help us to seize control of the rogue aircraft on which humanity has embarked, and bring it to a safe landing before it is too late.

     

    Kofi A. Annan is Secretary General of the United Nations.

  • North Korean Nuclear Conflict Has Deep Roots

    Democrats and Republicans have been quick to use North Korea’s apparent nuclear test to benefit their own party in these final weeks of the congressional campaign, but a review of history shows that both sides have contributed to the current situation.

    There is more than 50 years of history to Pyongyang’s attempt to gain a nuclear weapon, triggered in part by threats from Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower to end the Korean War.

    In 1950, when a reporter asked Truman whether he would use atomic bombs at a time when the war was going badly, the president said, “That includes every weapon we have.”

    Three years later, Eisenhower made a veiled threat, saying he would “remove all restraints in our use of weapons” if the North Korean government did not negotiate in good faith an ending to that bloody war.

    In 1957, the United States placed nuclear-tipped Matador missiles in South Korea, to be followed in later years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, by nuclear artillery, most of which was placed within miles of the demilitarized zone.

    It was not until President Jimmy Carter’s administration, in the late 1970s, that the first steps were taken to remove some of the hundreds of nuclear weapons that the United States maintained in South Korea, a process that was not completed until 1991, under the first Bush administration.

    It is against that background that the North Korean nuclear program developed.

    North Korea has its own uranium mines and in 1965 obtained a small research reactor from the Soviet Union, which it located at Yongbyon. By the mid-1970s, North Korean technicians had increased the capability of that reactor and constructed a second one. Pyongyang agreed in 1977 to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the first reactor.

    It was in the 1980s that the North Korean weapons program began its clandestine growth with the building of a facility for reprocessing fuel into weapons-grade material and the testing of chemical high explosives. In 1985, around the time U.S. intelligence discovered a third, once-secret reactor, North Korea agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

    Five years later, U.S. intelligence discovered through satellite photos that a structure had been built that appeared to be capable of separating plutonium from nuclear fuel rods. Under pressure, North Korea signed a safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1992, and inspections of facilities began. But in January 1993, IAEA inspectors were prevented from going to two previously unreported facilities. In the resulting crisis, North Korea attempted to withdraw from the NPT.

    The Clinton administration responded in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed plutonium from fuel rods, it would be crossing a “red line” that could trigger military action. The North Koreans “suspended” their withdrawal from the NPT, and bilateral talks with the Clinton administration got underway. When negotiations deadlocked, North Korea removed fuel rods from one of its reactors, a step that brought Carter back into the picture as a negotiator.

    The resulting talks led to the 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea would freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program. In return, it would be supplied with conventional fuel and ultimately with two light-water reactors that could not produce potential weapons-grade fuel.

    However, a subsequent IAEA inspection determined that North Korea had clandestinely extracted about 24 kilograms of plutonium from its fuel rods, and U.S. intelligence reported that was enough material for two or three 20-kiloton plutonium bombs.

    During the next six years of the Clinton administration and into the first years of the current Bush administration, the spent fuel from North Korea’s reactors was kept in a storage pond under IAEA supervision. As late as July 5, 2002, in a letter to Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the administration was continuing with the 1994 agreement but holding back some elements until the IAEA certified that the North Koreans had come into full compliance with the NPT’s safeguards agreement.

    In November 2001, when the Bush administration was absorbed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, intelligence analysts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory completed a highly classified report that concluded North Korea had begun construction of a plant to enrich uranium. A National Intelligence Estimate of the North Korean program confirmed the Livermore report, providing evidence that Pyongyang was violating the agreement.

    Nonetheless, the Bush administration waited until October 2002 before confronting the North Koreans, who at one meeting confirmed they were following another path to a nuclear weapon using enriched uranium.

    Soon thereafter, the United States ended its participation in the 1994 agreement. North Korea ordered IAEA inspectors out, announced it would reprocess the stored fuel rods and withdrew from the NPT. Earlier this year, Pyongyang declared it had nuclear weapons.

    The Bush administration then embarked on a new approach, developing a six-nation strategy based on the idea that bilateral U.S.-North Korea negotiations did not work and that only bringing in China and South Korea, which had direct leverage over the Pyongyang government, would gain results.

    First Published in the Washington Post