Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Non-Proliferation

  • Statement on North Korea

    The Middle Powers Initiative (MPI) deplores the nuclear test by North Korea and urges all parties to exercise restraint and place their faith in diplomacy rather than ratcheting up bellicosity. MPI is dedicated to the promotion of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation through diplomacy and the rule of law. We deplore the proliferation of nuclear weapons as well as the failure of the nuclear weapons states to demonstrate adequate leadership in fulfilling their legal duty to work for and obtain the universal elimination of nuclear weapons.

    MPI agrees with Secretary General Kofi Annan that North Korea’s action “aggravates regional tensions . and jeopardizes security both in the region and beyond.” We support Mr. Annan’s view that “serious negotiations be renewed urgently in the framework of the six-party talks.” We are encouraged that UN Secretary-General-elect Ban Ki-moon has indicated his willingness to visit the region to assist in the development of a diplomatic solution to this crisis.

    It is also useful to recall the European Union’s strategy against WMD proliferation, adopted in 2003, which states, “The more secure countries feel, the more likely they are to abandon [WMD] programs: disarmament measures can lead to a virtuous circle just as weapons programs can lead to an arms race.”

    We welcome the unanimity of the Security Council in adopting Resolution 1718 in response to the North Korean test. The challenge to and responsibility of the Security Council – and all nations – now is to ensure the diplomatic aspects of the resolution – in particular, the call for the resumption of the Six Parties talks – are favored over the punitive aspects.

    Further steps towards increased militarization and nuclearization on the Korean Peninsula cannot result in anything but a disaster. Only diplomacy anchored to the bedrock principles of international law can offer an effective solution. We applaud Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s statement last week that, “The government of Japan has no position at all to consider going nuclear. There is no need to arm ourselves with nuclear weapons, either.” In a similar vein, South Korea’s emphasis on negotiations over confrontation is extremely satisfying. China – which stands to lose much in terms of economic development and military security in the event any of its neighbors “go nuclear” – has a special role in solidifying the diplomatic track.

    We encourage the Government of North Korea to return to the Six-Party Talks, along with the governments of China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. We note that the North Korean government has reaffirmed its support for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and for the September 19, 2005, “statement of principles” on negotiations over the crisis. We call on the parties to refrain from any further provocative actions that could derail the renewal of these talks, including further nuclear tests or any threats to use force against any of the parties. The six parties should also explore the possibility for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in North East Asia.

    MPI believes the Government of the United States must take a leadership role in advancing diplomatic solutions and finally engage North Korea in one-to-one talks leading to a full integration of North Korea into the world community as a non-nuclear weapon state with appropriate security assurances that give it confidence that such weapons have no value. Such a course – long overdue – would help diffuse tensions and create the necessary political space. The United States must remain conscious of its singular capacity to strengthen or weaken the international order based on the rule of law. Whether one supports or rejects the political system of North Korea, it remains a sovereign state and thus has a right to peace and security. However, its pursuit of nuclear weapons degrades its standing among nations and must be changed. Only by offering integration into the international community will peaceful change be possible and only by ending North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons will its integration be possible.

    The actions by North Korea clearly demonstrate the folly of rejecting arms control treaties in the belief that treaties undermine national sovereignty. The record demonstrates consistent improved national and international security through arms control treaty law. Specifically these actions demonstrate the need for the full entry-into-force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and of its monitoring agency. This throws into sharp relief the lack of wisdom exhibited by powerful counties such as the United States, India and China in failing to ratify the CTBT. A CTBT, coupled with a fully-respected nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would establish a vital international norm against testing and any further dangerous developments of nuclear weapons. In fact, a vital CTBT would lower the currency of nuclear weapons, establish measures to ensure compliance with a ban on nuclear testing and lead us all to a much safer world.

    Founded in 1998, MPI (www.middlepowers.org) is dedicated to the worldwide reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons, in a series of well-defined stages, working primarily with “middle power” governments. MPI is a program of the Global Security Institute (www.gsinstitute.org).

  • Curb This Deadly Trade

    As the UN general assembly opens this week, it has its best opportunity in years to make a life-saving difference to people all over the world. An opportunity to stop human rights abuses, limit the threat of terrorism, and reduce suffering for millions. The opportunity is a draft resolution for an international arms trade treaty that would place tough controls on sales.

    The treaty would make it illegal to sell weapons to human rights abusers; make it harder for weapons to end up in the hands of criminals and terrorists; and help regulate a trade that is spiralling out of control – $900bn spent on defence versus only $60bn on aid. Every day over 1,000 people lose their lives through armed violence.

    We have seen the appalling consequences recently in the Middle East: the Israeli army flattening civilian targets with precision-guided 1,000lb “bunker-buster” bombs and forcing almost a million people to flee their homes; Hizbullah rockets fired into civilian areas in northern Israel, killing people and forcing others to leave. Both are war crimes, and largely perpetrated with weapons imported from other countries.

    Israel’s military hardware, including its deadly cluster bombs, is overwhelmingly American-made. And hi-tech British components were used in the Apache helicopters that have fired rockets at cars on crowded streets, and the F-16s that devastated southern Lebanon. For its part, Hizbullah doesn’t manufacture the Katyushas or Khaibar-1 missiles it fired indiscriminately into Israel.

    Six-year-old Abbas Yusef Shibli picked up a cluster munition while playing with friends because it looked “like a perfume bottle”. When it exploded in his hand, he suffered a ruptured colon, a ruptured gall bladder, and a perforated lung.

    Nicaragua, my birthplace, is still awash with weapons, the legacy of a bloody conflict – fuelled by the US arming the Contras – in which more than 40,000 civilians were killed. Nicaragua is now one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere.

    For decades, the US provided millions of dollars in military aid to oppressive governments in Latin America; many of those countries now have high levels of armed violence. As a human rights campaigner, I have advocated on behalf of countless victims of conflict, from Latin America to the Balkans to the Middle East. I can attest to the devastating effect on the civilian population, particularly on women and children.

    Some nations still try to block the treaty’s progress – though their arguments are flawed. The resolution from Britain, Finland, Japan, Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica and Kenya, would not undermine states’ sovereignty or ability to lawfully defend themselves with force. It would not hamper law enforcement to provide security for their citizens. Arms importers and exporters would simply have a clear set of rules to abide by, rather than the current hotch-potch of uneven and conflicting regulation.

    The treaty would promote real security. It would help to stop armed groups that pay no heed to international law equipping themselves. An Amnesty International report last year detailed shipments of more than 240 tonnes of weapons from eastern Europe to governments in Africa’s war-torn Great Lakes region, and on to militias involved in massacres, mutilation and mass rape.

    More than 50 countries have voiced support for an arms trade treaty, but to make it happen we need a majority of the 192 member states. Today Britain hosts a meeting of diplomats to discuss tougher arms controls. For once the international community can act pre-emptively to prevent carnage, not be forced to mop up afterwards. It is an opportunity that the UN must seize.

    Bianca Jagger is goodwill ambassador for the Council of Europe

  • Nuclear Weapons: The Narrowing North-South Divide

    “Nuclear bombs.violate everything that is humane; they alter the meaning of life. Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?” — Arundhati Roy

    David KriegerNorth and South are approximations, reflecting both a geographic and economic divide. There is no monolithic North, nor South. There is South within North and North within South, inasmuch as in the North there exists much poverty and in the South there is a stratum enjoying great wealth in most societies. In general, though, the North tends toward industrialization, wealth, dominance and exploitation, while the South, which has a long history of domination by the North in colonial and post-colonial times, tends toward poverty, including extreme and sometimes devastating poverty. Within both South and North powerful subcultures of militarism and extremist violence have emerged that, when linked to nuclear weapons, threaten cities, countries, civilization and the future of life.

    Nuclear weapons have been primarily developed and brandished by the North, and used to threaten other countries, North and South. The South, which for the most part has lacked the technology to develop nuclear weapons, has begun to cross this technological threshold and join the North in obtaining these weapons of mass annihilation. The original nuclear weapons states – the US, Soviet Union, UK, France and China – were largely of the dominant North, although the Soviet Union had major areas of poverty and China, although geographically in the North was the exception, reflecting the poverty of the South after having been subjected to humiliating colonial domination and exploitation.

    Israel, an outpost of the North surrounded by oil-rich but underdeveloped countries of the South, surreptitiously developed a nuclear arsenal. India and Pakistan, coming from a background of poverty and colonial domination, developed nuclear arsenals after it became clear that the other nuclear weapons states were intent upon indefinitely maintaining their nuclear arsenals rather than fulfilling their obligations for nuclear disarmament. Both countries were clearly on the Southern side of the economic and colonial divide, as was the final nuclear weapons state, North Korea, which is thought to have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.

    The world is at a critical nuclear crossroads. In one direction lies an increasing number of nuclear weapons states and nuclear-armed terrorist organizations, a world of unfathomable danger. In the other direction, lies a nuclear weapons-free world. It is the responsibility of those of us alive today on our planet to choose in which direction we shall travel. We do not have the option of standing still, with North and South, rich and poor, dominant and exploited frozen in time and inequity. Terrorism is inherent in the possession and implicit threat of use of nuclear weapons by any country. Such state terrorism creates the possibility that extremist non-state actors, who can neither be located nor deterred, will gain possession of these weapons or the materials to make them and threaten or use nuclear weapons against even the most powerful, nuclear-armed countries.

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Metaphor

    The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a metaphor for the North-South divide on nuclear weapons. The United States viewed the explosions from above. In fact, the US sent a camera crew in a separate airplane to record from the air the bombing of Hiroshima. In considering the bombings, the United States focused on technological achievement, the efficiency and power of the bomb, and bringing the war to a rapid conclusion. US politicians and opinion leaders wrapped the bomb in ribbons of mythic goodness and Americans today continue, to their own peril, to treat the bomb as a historically favorable outcome of fortune, scientific skill and determination to prevail. US President Harry Truman invoked God in his first public comment on the bomb: “We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.” In the view of Truman and many Americans, God had delivered to the Americans a war-winning tool of dominance, perhaps absolute dominance. This was and remains the view of the North, the rich, powerful, dominant and aloof.

    The Japanese, despite the closer fit of the country with the North than the South, viewed the bomb from the uncomfortable position of being beneath it and victimized by the full fury of its force. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over 210,000 men, women and children were killed instantly or given short-term death sentences due to the explosive force of the bombs, the fires that were set in motion by the bombs and the deadly radiation released by the bombs. The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked without warning and the vast majority of those who perished in those destroyed cities were civilians. For more than 60 years the survivors of the atomic bombings have fought for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The memorial cenotaph at Hiroshima carries these words: “Never Again! We shall not repeat the evil.” Those who survived the bombings, the hibakusha, reflect the view of the South, the poor, powerless, dominated and exploited.

    The Metaphor of Master and Slave

    Another metaphor that is apt is that of master and slave. If nuclear weapons are instruments of absolute dominance, they create a master-slave relationship. The master doesn’t need to use the bomb to exercise his power. He only needs to make known his willingness to do so. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki etched into the minds of people everywhere the fact that the US was willing to use the bomb, should circumstances dictate. The US had proven its commitment to power by its ruthless destruction of undefended cities. It sent a message regarding its will to dominance of extraordinary clarity, intended primarily to the Soviet Union, but to people everywhere as well.

    Other states, primarily in the North, followed the US and developed their own nuclear arsenals: first, the Soviet Union, then the UK, France and China. These five states, the victors in World War II and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, became the first five nuclear weapons states. They developed policies of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which they believed held each other’s nuclear arsenals in check. In their dangerous nuclear posturing, they placed at risk not only their own citizens but the future of life on the planet. They called this posturing deterrence, but more objectively it might have been called state-threatened nuclear terrorism.

    In every aspect of pursuing and perfecting nuclear annihilation, the nuclear weapons states have exploited the South, including the pockets of poverty within their own borders. It has been the poor and disempowered, often indigenous peoples, of the South who have paid the heaviest price in health and future habitability of their lands for the mining of uranium, the atmospheric and underground testing of nuclear weapons, and the dumping of the radioactive wastes in their backyards.

    But by the mid-1960s the nuclear weapons states, which continued to increase the size and power of their own arsenals, became worried that the world would become far more dangerous if nuclear arms spread to other countries, and particularly to countries of the South. They believed that the further proliferation of nuclear weapons would disrupt the patterns of dominance in the post-colonial relationship between the North and South that was developing with the collapse of overt colonialism.

    The Two-Tier Structure of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    Thus, it was the US, UK and USSR that proposed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the mid-1960s. By 1968, the treaty was ready for signatures and the three initiating nuclear weapons states were eager to sign. The treaty required the non-nuclear weapons states to agree not to acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons states to agree not to provide nuclear weapons or the materials to make them to the non-nuclear weapons states. But it went further. To sweeten the deal for the non-nuclear weapons states, the nuclear weapons states agreed in Article IV to assist them with the “peaceful” uses of nuclear technology; and also agreed in Article VI to “good faith” negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    When the Non-Proliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970, the non-nuclear weapons states had every reason to believe that the treaty would lead to nuclear disarmament on the part of the nuclear weapons states, thus leveling the playing field, rather than creating a permanent two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” a structure that would assure the dominance of the North. As it turned out, the nuclear weapons states did not fulfill their nuclear disarmament obligations under the treaty, and continued to build up their nuclear arsenals for two more decades before making any serious attempts to reduce them in the aftermath of the Cold War.

    Many leaders in the South recognized the spiritual bankruptcy and extreme dangers of nuclear weapons, as well as the threats to humanity posed by the Cold War nuclear arms race. States of the South, for the most part, were content to forego nuclear weapons in the interests of other forms of security. Nearly all states of the South became parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and most of the states in the Southern hemisphere entered into agreements to create regional Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones in Latin America and the Caribbean; the South Pacific; Southeast Asia; and Africa. Nearly the whole of the Southern hemisphere is now part of the series of Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones that are committed to keeping nuclear weapons out of their regions. While this was going on, the nuclear weapons states turned a blind eye or, in some cases worse, assisted Israel in developing a nuclear arsenal.

    By the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a review conference of the parties took place at five year intervals and a Review and Extension Conference was scheduled for 25 years after the treaty’s entry into force. The Review and Extension Conference took place in 1995 at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The nuclear weapons states, led by the United States, pushed for an indefinite extension of the treaty to make it permanent. A few courageous states of the South and many civil society organizations took issue with this position on the grounds that the nuclear weapons states had not fulfilled their obligations for good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. Under such circumstances, they argued, an indefinite extension would be akin to giving these states a blank check to continue with business as usual. The opponents of an indefinite extension pressed for extensions for periods of years, in which the nuclear weapons states would be required to make progress toward achieving the goal of nuclear disarmament.

    The Indefinite Extension of the Treaty

    At the end of the 1995 Review and Extension Conference, the nuclear weapons states prevailed and the treaty was extended indefinitely. The nuclear weapons states reaffirmed their Article VI commitment “to pursue good faith negotiations of effective measures relating to nuclear disarmament.” They also promised “determined pursuit.of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons.” But their pursuit of these goals has been far less than “determined.”

    What the opponents of the indefinite extension feared would happen, has indeed transpired. In the light of little tangible progress on nuclear disarmament or sincerity on the part of the nuclear weapons states, India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons in 1998, announcing that they would not live in a world of “nuclear apartheid.” India, a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, had tested what it called a “peaceful” nuclear device in 1974. In 1998, India clearly crossed the line into the status of nuclear weapons state. There was cheering in the streets of India, and this would be matched by the wild excitement demonstrated in the streets of Pakistan following their nuclear tests. A very dangerous region of repeated crises and violence over the disputed territory of Kashmir had now taken on a nuclear dimension, one with the possibility of taking tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, of innocent lives.

    In the year 2000, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty met for their sixth five-year review conference and the first since the 1995 Review and Extension Conference. After much jockeying for position, the parties to the treaty agreed unanimously to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. These steps included ratification of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, preserving and strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and negotiations for a treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons states committed to an “unequivocal undertaking.to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals, leading to nuclear disarmament.” But despite the agreement of the nuclear weapons states to these and other steps for nuclear disarmament, they have accomplished almost nothing to demonstrate that their words were anything more than additional empty promises.

    At the seventh Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in the year 2005, there was virtually no progress. The delegates spent the first ten days of the meetings trying to reach agreement on an agenda, and then could only take note of the failure to make progress on any of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Much of this failure can be attributed to a single incompetent leader in the North, George W. Bush, who has promoted new uses for nuclear weapons use while expressing implacable hostility to international law in all its forms.

    The Tragic Policies of George W. Bush

    The policies of George W. Bush have opened the door to preemptive or preventive uses of nuclear weapons, and have made clear that under his leadership US nuclear policy contemplates the use of nuclear weapons as opposed to a more limited policy of deterrence. Mr. Bush has opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and encouraged funding to reduce the time needed to make the Nevada Test Site ready for testing from three years to about 18 months. Bush also withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, despite protests from both Russia and China. In addition, Bush pushed the Russians into signing the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) in 2002, a treaty which provides for reducing the number of actively deployed strategic nuclear weapons on each side from about 6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200 by December 31, 2012. Among the many problems with this treaty are that it has no provisions for verification or irreversibility, no timetable other than the end date, and no means to continue the treaty beyond 2012, when both sides could immediately and dramatically expand their nuclear arsenals.

    In his first State of the Union speech, Mr. Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil.” Despite the fact that the three countries formed no axis, Bush lumped them together and branded them as evil. Once a country has been tarred as evil, it is far easier to commit atrocities against its people, as Mr. Bush has demonstrated in the aggressive war he has pursued against Iraq. North Korea has withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in order to pursue a nuclear weapons program. Iran, as yet still a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has been pursuing uranium enrichment, a potential step toward the development of nuclear weapons, but one that has been allowed under Article IV of the treaty and has been exercised by other non-nuclear weapons states parties to the treaty.

    In these early years of the 21st century, the North continues to find uses for nuclear weapons that threaten the countries of the South. What the countries of the North, perhaps particularly the United States, don’t seem to grasp is that nuclear weapons are likely to be their undoing in a time of non-state extremism. While it may be possible to deter another country from using nuclear weapons (this is arguably the principal reason that North Korea and Iran would pursue nuclear arsenals), it is impossible to deter a non-state terrorist organization from using nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence has its limits, and one clear limit is that a country cannot threaten or retaliate against organizations that cannot be located or whose members are suicidal. The longer the US and other nuclear weapons powers continue to rely upon nuclear weapons for their security, the greater the likelihood that these weapons will find their way into the hands of terrorist organizations intent on inflicting damage on the nuclear weapons states.

    Need for New Leadership

    Mr. Bush has embarked upon what appears to be a highly unsuccessful “Global War on Terrorism,” a war that seems to be stimulating and breeding terrorism rather than eradicating it. It is a war pitting extremists against extremists, made more dangerous by the possibility of nuclear weapons being used by the North on countries of the South, or by terrorist organizations obtaining nuclear weapons and using them in the form of a nuclear 9/11. The possibility of nuclear weapons again being used in war has perhaps not been greater since their last use at Nagasaki. The clash of fundamentalists has pushed the door to nuclear annihilation open wider than ever. Common sense and reasonable concerns for security suggest that it is time to close that door by eliminating nuclear arsenals. The leadership to do this must come from the North, particularly from the US and Russia, the most dominant of the nuclear weapons states, which together possess over 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

    Unfortunately, the leaders of the nuclear weapons states don’t appear to recognize the imperative to end the nuclear weapons era, and continue to cling to their nuclear arms as instruments of dominance. Einstein recognized early in the Nuclear Age that these new weapons required a change in thinking. He famously said, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” That is the nature of our drift, toward catastrophe, but a catastrophe in which the likelihood of the dominant powers becoming the victims is as great as their further victimization and dominance of the South. Nuclear weapons give more power to the relatively weak than they do to the powerful. With nuclear weapons, the weak can destroy the powerful. The powerful, on the other hand, would certainly destroy their own souls by attacking the weak with nuclear weapons. In the end, nuclear weapons are equalizers and equal opportunity destroyers.

    The question that the North needs to consider seriously is whether it wishes a world with many nuclear powers, including non-state actors, or a world with no nuclear weapons. What exists between these poles, including the current nuclear status quo, is not sustainable. It must tip in one direction or the other. If it tips toward many nuclear weapons powers, the price will be widespread annihilation. If it tips in the direction of eliminating nuclear weapons, humanity may save itself from destruction by its most powerful and cowardly tools of warfare.

    In the Nuclear Age, the South has attempted to pull itself up by its bootstraps, while the North has wasted huge resources on the development of its weaponry in general and on its nuclear weaponry in particular. The United States alone has spent over $6 trillion on its nuclear arsenal and its delivery systems since the beginning of the Nuclear Age. It is worth contemplating how our world might have been different if these resources had been used instead to eradicate poverty and disease and provide education and hope in the far corners of the world. Would the North still be resented, as it is now, by the politically aware poor and dispossessed?

    In analyzing the North-South divide in nuclear weaponry, one realizes that this divide has benefited neither the North nor the South, and is bound to end in disaster for all. But the same is true of the North-South divide absent nuclear weapons. A relationship of domination, enforced by any means – military, economic or political – is not sustainable. This divide is perhaps most dangerous when it could ignite a nuclear conflagration, but it is still dangerous when the divide breeds terrorism in response to structural violence. It is not only the nuclear divide that must be ended by the elimination of nuclear weapons, but the greater divide between the North and South that must be closed. The world cannot continue indefinitely half-slave and half-free, half mired in poverty and half indulged in abundance. Resources are not limitless and modern communications make each half aware of the status of the other half.

    The Narrowing Nuclear Divide

    Nuclear weapons, the ultimate weapon of cowardice, may be seen as a symbol of what separates rather than what unites the world. Nuclear weapons turn the North into cowards and bullies and the South into victims that may most effectively find their heroism and personhood in acts of resistance. Ending the nuclear threat by eliminating nuclear weapons will lead to finding more equitable and decent ways of settling differences between states of the North and South, ways that will in the end benefit both sides of this divide.

    In 1955, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and nine other distinguished scientists issued an appeal, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. This appeal concluded with these thoughts: “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.”

    More than fifty years later, the warning in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto rings true. Nuclear weapons confront humankind with the risk of universal death. We are challenged, North and South alike, to end this risk to humanity and to the human future. To effectively end this risk will require that peoples of North and South to join hands and form a bond rooted in their common humanity and their common concern with protecting and passing on the planet and all its natural and man-made treasures in tact to future generations.

    The starting point for this effort, the elimination of nuclear weapons, may seem to some like a sacrifice on the part of the nuclear weapons states, but will, in fact, assure their own security as well and liberate their people from the soul-crushing burden of being complicit in threatening the massive annihilation of innocent people. The greatest challenge of our time, for North and South alike, is to eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate humankind and to redirect the resources being spent to create, maintain and improve these weapons to programs that will uphold human dignity by assuring that basic needs are met and education provided for all of the world’s people.

    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.
  • Time to Wake Up

    Time to Wake Up

    In this season of the 61st anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, it is noteworthy that there are still 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world. These weapons are in the arsenals of nine countries, but over 95 percent of them are in the arsenals of just two countries: the US and Russia. These two countries each actively deploy some 6,000 nuclear weapons and keep about 2,000 on hair-trigger alert.

    The political elites in the US seem to think this is fine, and that they can go on with nuclear business-as-usual for the indefinite future. Not a single member of the US Senate has called for pragmatic steps leading to the abolition of nuclear weapons, including negotiations for nuclear disarmament as required by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    US leaders are living within a bubble of hubris that is manifested in many ways, flagrant examples of which are the pursuit of an illegal war in Iraq, and opposition to joining the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto accords on global warming. Underlying their policies is the attitude that US military and economic power gives them the right to violate international law at will and pursue a unilateral path of force when it suits their fancy. We citizens are being held hostage to their major errors in judgment, which in the Nuclear Age could result in the destruction of the country and much of civilization.

    Rather than working to reduce the nuclear threat, US nuclear policy is promoting nuclear proliferation. A recent example is the proposed US-India nuclear deal, in which the Congress appears prepared to change its own non-proliferation laws in order to sell nuclear materials and technology to a country that never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and secretly developed nuclear weapons. US leaders must have their heads deeply buried in the sand if they fail to grasp that this will spur an even more intense nuclear arms race on the Indian subcontinent and be viewed as hypocritical by the vast majority of the non-nuclear weapons states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    In the 2006 Hiroshima Peace Declaration, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba pointed out that the US Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution in June “demanding that all nuclear weapons states, including the Untied States, immediately cease all targeting of cities with nuclear weapons.” Of course, this would be a good beginning, but nuclear weapons have little use other than to target cities or other nuclear weapons. They are, after all, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.

    The World Court found the threat or use of nuclear weapons to be illegal. Most churches have been vocal about their immorality. These weapons detract from security rather than add to it. A recent international commission report on weapons of mass destruction, Weapons of Terror, concluded: “So long as any state has [weapons of mass destruction] – 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.”

    Why are we not appalled by the myopia and arrogance of our political leadership for disastrous policies such as those that ignore the obligation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty for good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament in all its aspects? We should be asking: How do individuals who support these insane policies rise to such high office? We should also be asking: Why do ordinary Americans not care enough about their survival to change their leadership?

    A large part of the answer to the first question is that the system is broken and far too dependent on large cash contributions to buy television ads. Insight into an answer to the second question may be found in the recent Harris Poll (July 21, 2006) that reported that 50 percent of US respondents still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the US invaded that country in March 2003. One opinion analyst, Steven Kull, described such views as “independent of reality.” That is how it is for many Americans and their political leaders in this 61st year of the Nuclear Age. Living with such purposeful ignorance is a recipe for disaster.

    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.

  • Disarming Our Nuclear Minds

    Speech at the World Peace Forum, Vancouver, British Columbia, June 28, 2006

    It’s a great honor to be part of this panel and to have the opportunity to share these words with so many people I respect and admire.

    I find it telling that I am one of the most active young people I know of in the United States currently working for nuclear disarmament; yet, until perhaps two and-a-half years ago, I knew virtually nothing about nuclear weapons. That’s not because I was apathetic. Nor is it because I wasn’t engaged. I was very engaged, in fact, from a relatively young age, in a variety of environmental and social concerns affecting the health and well-being of all living things on the planet.

    But I was – am – also a product of post-Cold War United States society, which has instilled in people the twin notions that the threat of United States involvement in a nuclear war is a thing of the past, and to the extent that nukes are still a problem, the locus of that problem certainly is not in the US. I, as virtually everyone else of my generation, unquestioningly accepted this appalling conventional wisdom, to such an insidious degree that I wasn’t even aware I was accepting it.

    I’ve taken recently to saying to my US colleagues that we shouldn’t view our task only as being to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors, or nuclear waste, but also to stop the proliferation of nuclear minds. Nuclear minds regard nuclear weapons entirely as abstract and are thereby emotionally divorced from their toxic and deadly effects, as I was. The United States is not only the world’s primary source of nuclear weapons proliferation; I would venture to say that it is also the world’s primary source of proliferation of nuclear minds.

    Disarmament of nuclear minds means making not only the potential consequences of nuclear weapons, but also their gruesome ongoing consequences, imaginable and concrete. Though the dominant discourse around nuclear weaponry tends to make them seem highly technical and exclusively the domain of experts and policy-makers, the importance of nuclear disarmament is really not at all difficult to grasp, either conceptually or – more importantly – in our bodies. This is particularly so given the powerful windows into understanding them that are tragically available to us.

    By far the greatest success I’ve had in reaching the young people I work with has been in telling the stories, to the best of my ability, of the Hibakasha, downwinders of nuclear testing, the subjects of the United States Human Radiation Experiments, the indigenous peoples who suffer under the system of “nuclear colonialism” within the claimed boundaries of the US and other countries, and the many other direct victims of the Nuclear Age. Their stories convey the true character of nuclear weapons in the most intimate way possible.

    Every time we allow nuclear weaponry to be framed primarily in terms of scientific jargon or abstract policies, I think we lose ground. Every time we frame nuclear weapons from the perspective of the victims of the Nuclear Age, we align ourselves with the best interests of life on the entire planet. As I have said before in this connection, if we in the United States – as elsewhere in the world — do not collectively begin to understand the Nuclear Age from the perspective of the victims of the Nuclear Age, we will all leave this earth as victims of the Nuclear Age.

    The notion of disarming US nuclear minds dovetails nicely with the main project I’d like to tell you about today, which I’m involved with through the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Youth Empowerment Initiative. That project is a national network of young people titled, appropriately enough, “Think Outside the Bomb.”

    The Think Outside the Bomb network formed at a week-long conference in Santa Barbara, CA, in August 2005, which was attended by roughly 50 young people from across the US, as well as representatives from Kazakhstan and the Marshall Islands. The conference attendees have coordinated a wide variety of projects since that time, including a second, one-day “Think Outside the Bomb” conference in Washington, DC, last November, which was attended by close to 200 people.

    This fall, as the next major step in the network’s progression, we will be conducting three additional conferences. These will take place in Santa Barbara, CA, from October 20-22; in New York City from November 4-5; and in Atlanta, Georgia, at some point in either October or November. The goal of these conferences is not only to feature hundreds of young people in attendance, but for each of these young people to leave these conferences as their own individual units of nuclear disarmament within the greater worldwide movement for nuclear abolition.

    So I come to you bearing good news. A coordinated national movement for nuclear disarmament is beginning to emerge among young people in the United Sates, and the Think Outside the Bomb project is one of the ways this is powerfully manifesting. There is, of course, an incredible amount of work still to be done in building this movement. I invite you to visit our table in the back of the room for more information on Think Outside the Bomb and on the other programs of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and its Youth Empowerment Initiative, or to approach me individually after this panel.

    I look forward to sharing many more experiences with all of you as we realize a nuclear-free world, sooner rather than later, in the years to come. And I thank you for listening.

    Will Parrish is Youth Empowerment Director at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter

    Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter

    For most Americans, nuclear weapons are a distant concern, and deciding what to do about them is a low priority. As a culture, we are relatively comfortable possessing nuclear weapons, believing that they are, on balance, a good security hedge in a dangerous world. We leave it to our leaders to determine what should be done with these weapons. But our leaders may be moving in exactly the wrong direction.

    Seymour Hersh reported in the April 17, 2006 New Yorker magazine that the US government is developing plans for the possible preemptive use of nuclear weapons against Iranian nuclear facilities. Although George Bush dismissed such reports as “wild speculation,” he did not deny them. The reports should awaken the American people to some relevant issues. First, our political and military leaders are considering the preemptive first-use of nuclear weapons, an act that would undoubtedly constitute aggressive war and a crime against humanity. Second, these leaders hold open the possibility of using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapons state, despite official pledges not to do so. Third, the decision about whether or not to use nuclear weapons preemptively rests in the hands of a single individual, the president.

    The framers of our Constitution could not have imagined the circumstances of the Nuclear Age, in which the possibility exists of one leader triggering a nuclear holocaust, yet they wisely stipulated that the consent of Congress, the political arm of the people, would be necessary to initiate any war.

    We need an open and vigorous discussion in every village, town and city about the anti-democratic and anti-Constitutional tendencies inherent in the presidential control of nuclear weapons. Without such discussion, we relegate the fate of the country and the world to the whims of a single individual.

    In addition, an equally fundamental question must be confronted – have nuclear weapons increased or decreased our security as a nation? In today’s world, nuclear weapons are a far more powerful tool in the hands of a weak actor than in the hands of a powerful state. Thus, Pakistan can deter India and China can deter the US and Russia. A powerful state, such as the US, has everything to lose and very little to gain from the possession of nuclear weapons. This concern isn’t being effectively addressed in the US.

    The more the US relies on nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that other countries will do so as well. The most reasonable course for the US to take is to provide leadership to bring the world back from the nuclear precipice by working to achieve global nuclear disarmament.

    An argument can be made that a small number of nuclear weapons are needed for deterrence until they are all eliminated. But any threat or use of nuclear weapons for purposes other than minimum deterrence will certainly encourage other states to seek their own nuclear arsenals, if only to prevent being bullied by nuclear weapons states. This is the position that North Korea and Iran find themselves in today.

    Current US nuclear policy favors allies, such as Israel and India, and threatens perceived enemies, such as Iran and North Korea. We are already engaged in an aggressive, illegal, protracted and costly war against Iraq, initiated on the false basis that it had a nuclear weapons program. Iran, because of its uranium enrichment, is currently within US gun sights.

    There is no conceivable US use of nuclear weapons, with their powerful and unpredictable consequences, that would not turn the US into a pariah state. The US engenders animosity by pushing beyond the limits imposed by minimum deterrence and failing to take seriously its disarmament obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also creates a climate in which other states may seek to develop nuclear arsenals and in which these weapons may end up in the hands of terrorists. This should be a major concern for all Americans because it could lead to US cities being the targets of nuclear weapons used by extremist groups.

    Polls show that Americans, like most other people in the world, favor nuclear disarmament. However, as a nation, we neither press for it nor question the nuclear policies of our government. But we refrain from such actions at our peril, for a bad decision involving nuclear weapons could destroy us. Inattention and apathy leave the weapons and the decision to use them beyond our reach.

    Thus, we continue with nuclear business as usual, drifting toward the catastrophic day when our policies will lead either to nuclear weapons again being used by us or, as likely, against us by extremist organizations that cannot be deterred by threat of retaliation. We are long past time to bring our nuclear policies back onto the public agenda and open them to thoughtful public discourse.

     

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Find out more at the Foundation’s website www.wagingpeace.org and its blog, www.wagingpeace.org/blog.

  • Gandhi, Bush, and the Bomb

    On February 24, at a press briefing, White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley announced that, when U.S. President George W. Bush travels to India, he will lay a wreath in honor of Mohandas Gandhi.

    For those familiar with the cynical gestures of government officials, it might come as no surprise that an American President would attempt to derive whatever public relations benefits he can by linking himself to one of the most revered figures in Indian and world history.

    But the level of hypocrisy is heightened when one recalls that Bush is currently one of the world’s leading warmakers and that Gandhi was one of the world’s leading advocates of nonviolence. Furthermore, the American President’s major purpose for traveling to India is to clinch a deal that will provide that nation with additional nuclear technology, thus enabling it to accelerate its development of nuclear weapons.

    Gandhi, it should be noted, was not only a keen supporter of substituting nonviolent resistance for war, but a sharp critic of the Bomb. In 1946, he remarked: “I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women, and children as the most diabolical use of science.” When he first learned of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Gandhi recalled, he said to himself: “Unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide.” In 1947, Gandhi argued that “he who invented the atom bomb has committed the gravest sin in the world of science,” concluding once more: “The only weapon that can save the world is non-violence.” The Bomb, he said, “will not be destroyed by counter-bombs.” Indeed, “hatred can be overcome only by love.”

    That is certainly an interesting backdrop against which to place President Bush’s plan to provide India with nuclear technology. India is one of only four countries that have refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—a treaty endorsed by 188 nations. Thumbing its nose at the world, India has conducted nuclear tests and has developed what experts believe to be 50 to 100 nuclear weapons. Under the terms of the NPT, the export of nuclear technology is banned to nations that don’t accept international inspections of their nuclear programs. In addition, U.S. law prohibits the transfer of nuclear technology to a country that rejects full international safeguards. U.S. law also bans such technology transfer to a non-NPT country that has conducted nuclear test explosions.

    Thus, if the President were to give any weight to Gandhi’s ideas, international treaty obligations, or U.S. law, he would not be working to provide India with the same nuclear-capable technology that he so vigorously condemns in Iran—a country, by the way, that has signed the NPT, has undergone inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and has not conducted any nuclear weapons tests.

    There are other reasons to oppose this deal, as well. Although India’s relations with Pakistan are relatively stable at the moment, they might well be very adversely affected by any perception that the Indian government was racing ahead with a buildup of its nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, Pakistan might demand the same nuclear assistance as India. Indeed, if India can simply ignore the NPT and, then, receive nuclear technology from the United States, why should other countries observe its provisions? The Iranians, certainly, will make this point.

    At home, the Bush administration’s double standard has not gone unnoticed. In Congress, Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Fred Upton (R-MI) have introduced a bipartisan resolution—H.Con.Res. 318–expressing strong concern about the proposed U.S.-India nuclear deal. Although this resolution affirms humanitarian and scientific support for India, it contends that full civil nuclear cooperation between the two nations poses serious dangers. For example, it points to the possibility that the supply of nuclear fuel to India could free up India’s existing fissile material production, thereby enabling it to be used to expand India’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The resolution also opposes transfer of nuclear technology to any country that is not a party to the NPT and has not accepted full safeguards.

    Whatever happens to this resolution, if the Bush administration were to implement its nuclear agreement with the Indian government, it would have to convince Congress to amend U.S. law. And arms control and disarmament groups are determined to prevent that from happening.

    Thus, the Bush administration might genuflect to Gandhi in its efforts to arrange a nuclear pact with India, but it is going to have to convince a lot of very skeptical observers before it implements this agreement.

    Dr. Wittner, a Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Associate, is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).

    Originally published by the History News Network.

  • A High-Stakes Nuclear Gamble

    Imagine a world with 20 or more nuclear weapons states. This was President Kennedy’s dark vision in 1963. Were it to come to pass, the risk that terrorists could buy or steal nuclear bombs would rise significantly. Yet President Bush’s recent proposal to provide nuclear energy assistance to India is a dangerous gamble that makes such an outcome more likely.

    It could unravel the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which, though imperfect, has helped limit the number of countries able to make nuclear weapons. Congress should reject the proposal and require renegotiation to limit the Indian nuclear weapons program.

    India’s nuclear history reveals why the proposed deal would weaken U.S. national security.

    In 1974, India exploded a secret nuclear device using plutonium from a Canadian-supplied reactor containing U.S. heavy water. Both the reactor and the heavy water were sold to India under agreements with a “peaceful use” requirement, which India violated.

    In 1978, Congress enacted the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act. That required countries such as India who were not among the five nations recognized as nuclear weapons states under the nonproliferation treaty, and that wanted American nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, to submit to “safeguards,” meaning inspections of all their nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. India refused, and the United States ended all nuclear assistance to the country from that day forward.

    Now, Bush has put forward a proposal that caves in utterly to India. It would not only allow India to keep its bombs, it would permit it to use all its own nuclear material for bomb making, while using nuclear fuel the United States would supply for its civilian power program. If India receives this favor, can Israel and Pakistan be far behind?

    Such a radical proposal should be viewed within the context of the current negotiations with Iran and North Korea, two countries that signed the nonproliferation treaty but have been caught violating safeguards. Failure to stop them from producing nuclear weapons would be a serious blow to global stability.

    Iran and North Korea are being offered reactors and guaranteed nuclear fuel supplies for peaceful uses in return for a permanent shutdown of facilities for enriching uranium or separating plutonium, both of which have peaceful applications but enable the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Whether either will ultimately accept is unclear.

    So let’s compare the deals offered India and Iran:

    India: Can build as many nuclear weapons as it wishes with its own nuclear supplies. Iran: Cannot build any nuclear weapons with its own or anyone else’s supplies.

    India: Can build and operate un-safeguarded facilities for producing and stockpiling unlimited amounts of fissile material for its weapons program. Iran: Cannot build enrichment or plutonium separation facilities, even if safeguarded and even though the nonproliferation treaty does not prohibit such activities.

    India: Is asked to maintain a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing. Iran: Cannot make or explode nuclear devices under any circumstances.

    India: Must divide its nuclear facilities into “civilian” and “military,” with voluntary IAEA safeguards applying only to its civilian program. Iran: Must have the most stringent safeguards on all its nuclear facilities.

    This double standard favoring India is an example of America’s willingness to wash away the nuclear sins of its “friends” to achieve other foreign policy goals. Pakistan is another example; it has received F-16s, which can deliver its nuclear weapons, despite having violated U.S. nonproliferation laws and spread nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea via the Abdul Qadeer Khan network.

    What is the message we’re sending? How will these double standards persuade the Iranians to give up their right to produce advanced nuclear materials? How could signatories of the nonproliferation treaty not conclude that it has been seriously devalued when India — which refused to sign it in the first place, broke its contracts with the United States and Canada and developed nuclear weapons — is to be given virtually unconditional nuclear assistance?

    Some nations may decide that if they withdraw from the treaty, build nuclear weapons and wait long enough while avoiding antagonizing the United States, they will eventually get all the nuclear help they want.

    Why then is the Bush administration risking undermining the treaty?

    It is no secret that it views China as a growing strategic rival and sees India as a counterweight. It is therefore interested in helping India build up its economic and military capability. If the deal goes through, Pentagon officials reportedly expect India to purchase as much as $5 billion in U.S. conventional military equipment, some of which would be helpful in monitoring Chinese military movements and submarines.

    During the 2004 presidential race, both Bush and Sen. John Kerry stated that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was the most serious threat to U.S. national security. But giving nuclear assistance to India undercuts the rationale for telling other nations not to supply suspected proliferators such as Iran.

    Moreover, both China and Pakistan will be motivated to accelerate their own weapons programs and their mutual nuclear cooperation. Pakistani officials will not be more cooperative in the stalled investigation of Khan’s activities. Adding the risk to the nonproliferation treaty to this poisonous mix makes the president’s proposal a marked retreat from half a century of American leadership in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

    LEONARD WEISS was the chief architect of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978.

    Originally published by the Los Angeles Times.

  • Mohamed ElBaradei – Nobel Lecture

    Your Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Honourable Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency and I are humbled, proud, delighted and above all strengthened in our resolve by this most worthy of honours.

    My sister-in-law works for a group that supports orphanages in Cairo. She and her colleagues take care of children left behind by circumstances beyond their control. They feed these children, clothe them and teach them to read.

    At the International Atomic Energy Agency, my colleagues and I work to keep nuclear materials out of the reach of extremist groups. We inspect nuclear facilities all over the world, to be sure that peaceful nuclear activities are not being used as a cloak for weapons programmes.

    My sister-in-law and I are working towards the same goal, through different paths: the security of the human family.

    But why has this security so far eluded us?

    I believe it is because our security strategies have not yet caught up with the risks we are facing. The globalization that has swept away the barriers to the movement of goods, ideas and people has also swept with it barriers that confined and localized security threats.

    A recent United Nations High-Level Panel identified five categories of threats that we face:

    1. Poverty, Infectious Disease, and Environmental Degradation;
    2. Armed Conflict – both within and among states;
    3. Organized Crime;
    4. Terrorism; and
    5. Weapons of Mass Destruction.

    These are all ‘threats without borders’ – where traditional notions of national security have become obsolete. We cannot respond to these threats by building more walls, developing bigger weapons, or dispatching more troops. Quite to the contrary. By their very nature, these security threats require primarily multinational cooperation.

    But what is more important is that these are not separate or distinct threats. When we scratch the surface, we find them closely connected and interrelated.

    We are 1,000 people here today in this august hall. Imagine for a moment that we represent the world’s population. These 200 people on my left would be the wealthy of the world, who consume 80 per cent of the available resources. And these 400 people on my right would be living on an income of less than $2 per day.

    This underprivileged group of people on my right is no less intelligent or less worthy than their fellow human beings on the other side of the aisle. They were simply born into this fate.

    In the real world, this imbalance in living conditions inevitably leads to inequality of opportunity, and in many cases loss of hope. And what is worse, all too often the plight of the poor is compounded by and results in human rights abuses, a lack of good governance, and a deep sense of injustice. This combination naturally creates a most fertile breeding ground for civil wars, organized crime, and extremism in its different forms.

    In regions where conflicts have been left to fester for decades, countries continue to look for ways to offset their insecurities or project their ‘power’. In some cases, they may be tempted to seek their own weapons of mass destruction, like others who have preceded them.

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    Fifteen years ago, when the Cold War ended, many of us hoped for a new world order to emerge. A world order rooted in human solidarity – a world order that would be equitable, inclusive and effective.

    But today we are nowhere near that goal. We may have torn down the walls between East and West, but we have yet to build the bridges between North and South – the rich and the poor.

    Consider our development aid record. Last year, the nations of the world spent over $1 trillion on armaments. But we contributed less than 10 per cent of that amount – a mere $80 billion – as official development assistance to the developing parts of the world, where 850 million people suffer from hunger.

    My friend James Morris heads the World Food Programme, whose task it is to feed the hungry. He recently told me, “If I could have just 1 per cent of the money spent on global armaments, no one in this world would go to bed hungry.”

    It should not be a surprise then that poverty continues to breed conflict. Of the 13 million deaths due to armed conflict in the last ten years, 9 million occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where the poorest of the poor live.

    Consider also our approach to the sanctity and value of human life. In the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, we all grieved deeply, and expressed outrage at this heinous crime – and rightly so. But many people today are unaware that, as the result of civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 3.8 million people have lost their lives since 1998.

    Are we to conclude that our priorities are skewed, and our approaches uneven?

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen. With this ‘big picture’ in mind, we can better understand the changing landscape in nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

    There are three main features to this changing landscape: the emergence of an extensive black market in nuclear material and equipment; the proliferation of nuclear weapons and sensitive nuclear technology; and the stagnation in nuclear disarmament.

    Today, with globalization bringing us ever closer together, if we choose to ignore the insecurities of some, they will soon become the insecurities of all.

    Equally, with the spread of advanced science and technology, as long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.

    I have no doubt that, if we hope to escape self-destruction, then nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience, and no role in our security.

    To that end, we must ensure – absolutely – that no more countries acquire these deadly weapons.

    We must see to it that nuclear-weapon states take concrete steps towards nuclear disarmament.

    And we must put in place a security system that does not rely on nuclear deterrence.

    * * * * * * *

    Are these goals realistic and within reach? I do believe they are. But then three steps are urgently required.

    First, keep nuclear and radiological material out of the hands of extremist groups. In 2001, the IAEA together with the international community launched a worldwide campaign to enhance the security of such material. Protecting nuclear facilities. Securing powerful radioactive sources. Training law enforcement officials. Monitoring border crossings. In four years, we have completed perhaps 50 per cent of the work. But this is not fast enough, because we are in a race against time.

    Second, tighten control over the operations for producing the nuclear material that could be used in weapons. Under the current system, any country has the right to master these operations for civilian uses. But in doing so, it also masters the most difficult steps in making a nuclear bomb.

    To overcome this, I am hoping that we can make these operations multinational – so that no one country can have exclusive control over any such operation. My plan is to begin by setting up a reserve fuel bank, under IAEA control, so that every country will be assured that it will get the fuel needed for its bona fide peaceful nuclear activities. This assurance of supply will remove the incentive – and the justification – for each country to develop its own fuel cycle. We should then be able to agree on a moratorium on new national facilities, and to begin work on multinational arrangements for enrichment, fuel production, waste disposal and reprocessing.

    We must also strengthen the verification system. IAEA inspections are the heart and soul of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. To be effective, it is essential that we are provided with the necessary authority, information, advanced technology, and resources. And our inspections must be backed by the UN Security Council, to be called on in cases of non-compliance.

    Third, accelerate disarmament efforts. We still have eight or nine countries who possess nuclear weapons. We still have

    27,000 warheads in existence. I believe this is 27,000 too many.

    A good start would be if the nuclear-weapon states reduced the strategic role given to these weapons. More than 15 years after the end of the Cold War, it is incomprehensible to many that the major nuclear-weapon states operate with their arsenals on hair-trigger alert – such that, in the case of a possible launch of a nuclear attack, their leaders could have only 30 minutes to decide whether to retaliate, risking the devastation of entire nations in a matter of minutes.

    These are three concrete steps that, I believe, can readily be taken. Protect the material and strengthen verification. Control the fuel cycle. Accelerate disarmament efforts.

    But that is not enough. The hard part is: how do we create an environment in which nuclear weapons – like slavery or genocide – are regarded as a taboo and a historical anomaly?

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons. We seem to agree today that we can share modern technology, but we still refuse to acknowledge that our values – at their very core – are shared values.

    I am an Egyptian Muslim, educated in Cairo and New York, and now living in Vienna. My wife and I have spent half our lives in the North, half in the South. And we have experienced first hand the unique nature of the human family and the common values we all share.

    Shakespeare speaks of every single member of that family in The Merchant of Venice, when he asks: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

    And lest we forget:

    There is no religion that was founded on intolerance – and no religion that does not value the sanctity of human life.

    Judaism asks that we value the beauty and joy of human existence.

    Christianity says we should treat our neighbours as we would be treated.

    Islam declares that killing one person unjustly is the same as killing all of humanity.

    Hinduism recognizes the entire universe as one family.

    Buddhism calls on us to cherish the oneness of all creation.

    Some would say that it is too idealistic to believe in a society based on tolerance and the sanctity of human life, where borders, nationalities and ideologies are of marginal importance. To those I say, this is not idealism, but rather realism, because history has taught us that war rarely resolves our differences. Force does not heal old wounds; it opens new ones.

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    I have talked about our efforts to combat the misuse of nuclear energy. Let me now tell you how this very same energy is used for the benefit of humankind.

    At the IAEA, we work daily on every continent to put nuclear and radiation techniques in the service of humankind. In Vietnam, farmers plant rice with greater nutritional value that was developed with IAEA assistance. Throughout Latin America, nuclear technology is being used to map underground aquifers, so that water supplies can be managed sustainably. In Ghana, a new radiotherapy machine is offering cancer treatment to thousands of patients. In the South Pacific, Japanese scientists are using nuclear techniques to study climate change. In India, eight new nuclear plants are under construction, to provide clean electricity for a growing nation – a case in point of the rising expectation for a surge in the use of nuclear energy worldwide.

    These projects, and a thousand others, exemplify the IAEA ideal: Atoms for Peace.

    But the expanding use of nuclear energy and technology also makes it crucial that nuclear safety and security are maintained at the highest level.

    Since the Chernobyl accident, we have worked all over the globe to raise nuclear safety performance. And since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, we have worked with even greater intensity on nuclear security. On both fronts, we have built an international network of legal norms and performance standards. But our most tangible impact has been on the ground. Hundreds of missions, in every part of the world, with international experts making sure nuclear activities are safe and secure.

    I am very proud of the 2,300 hard working men and women that make up the IAEA staff – the colleagues with whom I share this honour. Some of them are here with me today. We come from over 90 countries. We bring many different perspectives to our work. Our diversity is our strength.

    We are limited in our authority. We have a very modest budget. And we have no armies.

    But armed with the strength of our convictions, we will continue to speak truth to power. And we will continue to carry out our mandate with independence and objectivity.

    The Nobel Peace Prize is a powerful message for us – to endure in our efforts to work for security and development. A durable peace is not a single achievement, but an environment, a process and a commitment.

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    The picture I have painted today may have seemed somewhat grim. Let me conclude by telling you why I have hope.

    I have hope because the positive aspects of globalization are enabling nations and peoples to become politically, economically and socially interdependent, making war an increasingly unacceptable option.

    Among the 25 members of the European Union, the degree of economic and socio-political dependencies has made the prospect of the use of force to resolve differences almost absurd. The same is emerging with regard to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, with some 55 member countries from Europe, Central Asia and North America. Could these models be expanded to a world model, through the same creative multilateral engagement and active international cooperation, where the strong are just and the weak secure?

    I have hope because civil society is becoming better informed and more engaged. They are pressing their governments for change – to create democratic societies based on diversity, tolerance and equality. They are proposing creative solutions. They are raising awareness, donating funds, working to transform civic spirit from the local to the global. Working to bring the human family closer together.

    We now have the opportunity, more than at any time before, to give an affirmative answer to one of the oldest questions of all time: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

    What is required is a new mindset and a change of heart, to be able to see the person across the ocean as our neighbour.

    Finally, I have hope because of what I see in my children, and some of their generation.

    I took my first trip abroad at the age of 19. My children were even more fortunate than I. They had their first exposure to foreign culture as infants, and they were raised in a multicultural environment. And I can say absolutely that my son and daughter are oblivious to colour and race and nationality. They see no difference between their friends Noriko, Mafupo, Justin, Saulo and Hussam; to them, they are only fellow human beings and good friends.

    Globalization, through travel, media and communication, can also help us – as it has with my children and many of their peers – to see each other simply as human beings.

    * * * * * * *

    Your Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen.

    Imagine what would happen if the nations of the world spent as much on development as on building the machines of war. Imagine a world where every human being would live in freedom and dignity. Imagine a world in which we would shed the same tears when a child dies in Darfur or Vancouver. Imagine a world where we would settle our differences through diplomacy and dialogue and not through bombs or bullets. Imagine if the only nuclear weapons remaining were the relics in our museums. Imagine the legacy we could leave to our children.

    Imagine that such a world is within our grasp.

  • Why Nations Go Nuclear

    Understanding the reasons why a country chooses to go nuclear are complex, variable and speculative, but I would offer as a hypothesis four principal, though often overlapping factors: fear, security, enhancing the country’s bully potential or countering another country’s bully potential, and prestige. North Korea seems to be pioneering a fifth reason: to use the weapons as a bargaining chip to gain security guarantees and financial concessions. Each country that chooses to go nuclear will certainly reflect some or all of these reasons in their decision, although they may be in different combinations or proportions for different states. The reasons that the current nuclear weapons states went nuclear provide insights into these dynamics.

    Existing Nuclear Weapons States

    The first country to develop nuclear weapons was the United States, initiating the world’s first nuclear weapons program in anticipation of US involvement in World War II. President Franklin Roosevelt had been warned by Albert Einstein that a possibility existed for the Germans to develop nuclear weapons. Roosevelt and his advisors were motivated by fear that the German scientists would succeed in their quest for nuclear weapons, and that US nuclear weapons would be necessary to assure the security of the United States and the Allied powers by deterring the Germans from using theirs with impunity.

    Germany never succeeded in developing nuclear weapons and was defeated two months prior to the testing of the first US nuclear weapon. The United States quickly found another use for its nuclear arms, using the bombs against two cities in a nearly defeated Japan. Evidence suggests that this militarily questionable act was also intended to keep the Soviets from playing a larger role in the defeat and occupation of Japan and generally to send a warning message to the Soviet Union. Thus, while fear and security may have been the initial impetus for the US developing nuclear weapons, their use was subsequently overtly justified as saving US and Allied lives and bringing the war in the Pacific to a faster conclusion. At the same time, the US was flexing its muscles before the world, and demonstrating the bully potential of these weapons.

    The next country to develop nuclear weapons was the Soviet Union. Although the US and Soviet Union were allies in World War II, there were early signs that this relationship would not hold in the post-WWII period. The US use of nuclear weapons at the end of the war, when combined with the fact that the US kept the project secret from the Soviet Union, must have created the fear for Soviet leadership that the US would use its new weapons to dominate them. While many US political leaders thought that it might take decades for the Soviet Union to go nuclear, it actually took them only four years. Driven by fear of US domination, they sought security in the deterrence potential of the weapons, while at the same time adding to their prestige and bestowing upon themselves the bully potential of the weapons.

    Despite sharing in the Allied victory in World War II, both Britain and France emerged from the war with less power and prestige than they had going into the war. Britain, as a wartime ally of the US, had played a role in the development of the bomb in the US Manhattan Project, and thus its scientists were privy to the secrets of creating nuclear weapons. First Britain and then France went ahead with developing their own nuclear arms. Both countries could have chosen to remain under the US nuclear umbrella, but both chose instead to develop their own nuclear arsenals. Their reasoning was said to be based on the fear that a US leader would not be willing to sacrifice New York in an exchange with the Soviet Union in order to retaliate against a Soviet attack against London or Paris. Thus, both Britain and France, chose to go nuclear out of fear and a lack of trust in placing their security in the hands of the US. At the same time, they bolstered their waning prestige in the world, and increased their bully power against their remaining colonies and other weaker states.

    China, the final permanent member of the UN Security Council, chose also to go nuclear, fearing that without nuclear weapons its security was threatened by both the US and Soviet Union and that it would remain subject to their bully potential. China announced from the onset of its nuclear status that it did not intend to develop more than a minimum deterrent force and that it would not use nuclear weapons first. It sought only a small but sufficient nuclear retaliatory force to prevent the US or Soviet Union from using nuclear weapons against it. Fear and security appeared to be the driving force in China’s decision to go nuclear, although it enhanced its international prestige in the process and also gave itself some increase in bully power on a regional level.

    These five states – the US, Soviet Union (now Russia), UK, France and China – were the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the five states that were named as nuclear weapons states in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). While other states joined this treaty as non-nuclear weapons states and agreed not to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states promised, among other things, to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. The International Court of Justice later ruled that these states were obligated by the NPT “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.”

    Today the NPT has become nearly universal. Only four states are outside the treaty structure: Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. The first three never joined the treaty, and the latter withdrew from the treaty in 2003. Israel’s official position is the ambiguous statement that it will never be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East, but it is widely understood that Israel possesses some 100 to 200 nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery. Israel has had a troubled existence and has engaged in many wars with its neighbors, all of which it has won with its high-tech military forces. Israel’s decision to go nuclear may be best understood as a desire to enhance its security by implicitly threatening ultimate recourse against hostile neighboring countries, and by reducing or eliminating the bully power that the US or Russia might seek to use to alter Israeli policies. However, by going nuclear, Israel has raised the fear level of its neighbors and their desire to enhance their security, potentially by going nuclear themselves.

    India held the position for many years that it was willing to remain a non-nuclear weapons state, but not in a world where some states continue to possess and refuse to give up their nuclear arms. Indian leaders have used the term “nuclear apartheid” to describe the two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” India is thought to have initially secretly tested a nuclear device in 1974. It openly tested nuclear weapons in 1998. While fear and security may have played some role in India’s decision to go nuclear, particularly vis-à-vis China, there was a sense that India was motivated to a large degree by prestige. The country seemed to go wild with celebration in 1998 when India conducted its open nuclear weapons tests, as though this were validation of its emergence into “great power” status.

    India also had some potential to use its nuclear arms to bully Pakistan in their dispute over Kashmir, but this possibility was erased immediately when Pakistan followed India in publicly testing its own nuclear arms. For Pakistan, reasons for going nuclear certainly included fear of India, the desire to enhance its security, and prestige. The people of Pakistan, like those of India, exploded in celebration upon its successful nuclear weapons tests in 1998. A.Q. Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s bomb, is a national hero in Pakistan, despite being the mastermind of a major international black market nuclear proliferation scheme.

    The final country that claims to have gone nuclear is North Korea. This country again fits the pattern of developing nuclear weapons out of fear of attack, principally by the US, and thus to enhance its security. In the case of North Korea, there is the added element of creating these weapons as a bargaining chip to gain security assurances from the US and also development aid. The long-standing six-party negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear arms point to North Korea’s desire to trade its nuclear arms capability for nuclear energy plants and US security assurances. Thus, for North Korea, prestige and bully potential seem less significant than security promises and development aid.

    Why Nations Do Not Go Nuclear

    There are currently 191 member states of the United Nations. Of these, only nine have chosen to go nuclear. Thus, the overwhelming majority of states in the international system have chosen not to go nuclear. Why nations go nuclear needs to be weighed against why nations do not go nuclear. Among the reasons why nations choose not to go nuclear are the following:

    1. Technological capability. Many nations, particularly poorer nations, lack the technological capability to develop nuclear arms. While this leaves out many states, there are at least 44 states with nuclear reactors on their territory, suggesting potential technological capability and access to nuclear materials for bomb production.
    2. Security Alliances. Alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) provide a nuclear umbrella for member states, and thus act as a disincentive for an alliance member to go nuclear.
    3. Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT is the centerpiece of nuclear arms control and disarmament efforts. In joining the treaty, non-nuclear weapons states agree not to develop or acquire nuclear arms. There is, however, a reciprocal pledge by the nuclear weapons states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, and the failure of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill this obligation may be eroding viability of the treaty.
    4. Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) Agreements. Such regional agreements now cover the entire southern hemisphere of the planet. Such agreements now exist for Antarctica, Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Africa and Southeast Asia.
    5. Perception of Negative Consequences. National leaders may perceive that they would suffer negative consequences by going nuclear, such as a loss of economic support, including development aid, disruption of alliances, and becoming targets of other states’ nuclear arsenals.
    6. National Self-Image. Some states may not have as goals being nuclear weapons states, preferring to provide leadership toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

    Incentives and Disincentives to Going Nuclear

    Among the principal incentives for a state to go nuclear are threats by a current nuclear weapons state or a regional security environment that is uncertain. When the US president named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” he provided incentive for them to develop nuclear arms. These incentives were enhanced by the leaked 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review that called for developing contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against seven states (Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria), five of which were non-nuclear weapons states (although North Korea subsequently chose to go nuclear).

    Four of these states ( Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria) are in the Middle East, one of the most dangerous security environments in the world and an area in which one nuclear weapons state currently exists ( Israel). Since the US Nuclear Posture Review came out, Iraq was attacked and invaded by the US and its “Coalition of the Willing,” and Libya has chosen on its own to give up its nuclear weapons program. Iran and Syria, however, are still viewed as possible regional candidates to develop nuclear weapons, as is Egypt. Like India and Pakistan, these states may choose to go nuclear rather than continue to live with the unbalance and uncertainty of implied and overt threats to their security by the US and Israel.

    The greatest disincentives to these states going nuclear would be to establish a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East or, more broadly, a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone, combined with credible pledges by the US and other nuclear weapons states to provide security assurances to non-nuclear weapons states. It seems clear that so long as Israel remains the sole state in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, there will be strong incentives for other states to seek nuclear weapons as an equalizer, much as the Soviet Union sought to do against the US or Pakistan sought to do against India.

    Several states have come into possession of nuclear weapons and chosen to give them up. South Africa clandestinely developed a small nuclear arsenal when it felt beleaguered due to its policy of Apartheid. When South Africa chose to give up its policy and practice of Apartheid, it also made the decision to give up its nuclear arsenal. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus inherited nuclear weapons upon the break up of the Soviet Union, and all chose to turn these weapons over to Russia for dismantlement. This was accomplished with incentives and security assurances from the US and Russia. Argentina and Brazil were two countries that were moving toward developing nuclear weapons, but were dissuaded from doing so by regional security arrangements and gave up their programs. These examples all show that the development or acquisition of nuclear arsenals can be reversed.

    Unraveling the Nuclear Knot

    What is now needed are disincentives that would unravel the current knot of nuclear weapons states. The greatest disincentive to continue to possess nuclear weapons may be the possibility that other states will also continue to retain their weapons, leading to nuclear weapons or the materials to create them falling into the hands of terrorists. The possibility of a terrorist group in possession of nuclear weapons should give even the most powerful country in the world, the United States, incentive to seek the global elimination of nuclear weapons as rapidly as possible and to bring the materials to make such weapons under strict international control.

    Russia has suggested many times that it is prepared to further reduce its nuclear arsenal by agreement with the United States to under 1,500 nuclear weapons. Thus far, the US has not indicated an interest in reducing the number of its deployed strategic weapons to under 1,700 to 2,200 weapons. Further, the US has failed to accept its obligation to move forward on the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. Under the Bush administration the leadership for progress in achieving nuclear disarmament has been severely lacking.

    It would seem that only the United States, due to its military and economic power, has the capability and convening power to bring together the nuclear weapons states and lead them in creating a Nuclear Weapons Convention that would set forth obligations for phased nuclear disarmament with adequate provisions for verification and international control. We can only hope that such leadership will be forthcoming before nuclear weapons proliferate to other countries and are again used.

    Although the United States may be needed for the actual implementation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, the world cannot wait for the US to take action on this issue, particularly knowing of the Bush administration’s hostility to fulfilling its obligations under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the steps set forth in the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament in the Final Document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference. While US initiative remains dormant, other states must fill this void with innovative collective measures to move ahead with a Nuclear Weapons Convention. This idea has been most seriously embraced by civil society groups, such as the Abolition 2000 Global Network and the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons by the year 2020.

    With the failure of the 2005 NPT Review Conference to make any progress and the failure of the 2005 High-Level Summit meeting at the United Nations to reach any agreement on nuclear disarmament issues, both due to US opposition, the world stands at a deadlock on nuclear disarmament issues. The United Nations Conference on Disarmament has not addressed nuclear disarmament issues for eight years, also largely due to US opposition.

    There are only two possibilities to change this situation. The first is the awakening of the American people to put pressure on their government to cease being an obstacle to nuclear disarmament efforts and start being a leader in these efforts. The second is for the international community to unite in putting pressure on the US from outside. At this point in time, neither of these possibilities appears promising, and thus we drift toward nuclear the “unparalleled catastrophes” that Einstein warned would occur unless we can change our thinking.

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons. This paper was prepared for The Istanbul Workshop on Nuclear Dangers in the Middle East, 17-21 November 2005.