Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Abolition

  • New Zealand as a Disarmament Leader

    Thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening on the subject of New Zealand foreign policy in the 21st century.

    New Zealand is a small western democracy, located in the far south of the South Pacific. In strategic terms it is, as former Prime Minister David Lange once quipped, a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica.

    Our nearest neighbors are close to 1200 miles away, or as far away as Moscow from London. Our borders abut the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea. Our isolation from others gives us the world’s fifth biggest exclusive economic zone.

    It stands to reason therefore that our nation will seldom occupy world headlines. We are simply too small and too remote.

    But we do have values and interests which we seek to project internationally within a range of settings, not least of them our strong belief in nuclear disarmament. It was that issue which last brought a New Zealand Prime Minister to the Oxford Union in a celebrated debate with the Reverend Jerry Falwell. David Lange’s riposte to Falwell’s pro-nuclear position, that he could “smell the uranium on your breath,” still rates as a great line 22 years later.

    The New Zealand Parliament in the mid 1980s legislated to declare our country nuclear free. That move enjoyed strong public support then, and does to this day – to the extent that it has become an accepted part of New Zealand’s identity. Politicians tamper with it at their peril. It is a cornerstone of our independent foreign policy. But independence of mind was not something which came quickly to New Zealand.

    The journey of our modern nation began in 1840, when in the course of that year, Governor William Hobson signed the Treaty of Waitangi with representatives of many Maori tribes.

    British colonial rule was thus extended to New Zealand. For the rest of the century and beyond, settlers poured in from the British Isles, for the gold rushes of the 1860s, to buy land, or generally to seek a better life.

    The settlers retained a very strong bond with Britain as the mother country. New Zealand troops were at Britain’s side through the South African War, two World Wars, and in Malaya. In at least one World War, the vagaries of the International Date Line saw us declare war on Germany before Britain did. We also served together in the United Nations force in the Korean War.

    Just last week, we marked the centenary of long forgotten Dominion Day – the day on which New Zealand formally ceased being a colony of Britain and became a dominion within the British Empire.

    In 1931 Britain adopted the Statute of Westminster enabling the dominions to have full competence over their own affairs, including their foreign and defense policies. Through today’s eyes it seems extraordinary that New Zealand did not move to ratify that Statute till 1947.

    Yet perhaps it can be explained by New Zealand’s sense of insecurity. It was located 12,000 miles from the place which many still saw as home and on which it was trade dependent. By the 1930s also, there was growing concern about Japanese militarism and its projection in the region.

    The course of the War in the Pacific, however, brought proof that Britain could not be a guarantor of far away New Zealand’s security. The fall of Singapore shattered any remaining illusion. The tide could only be turned against Japan, when, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war. While difficult years still lay ahead, the American commitment in the Pacific, as in Europe, was decisive.

    At the founding of the United Nations at the end of the War, New Zealand found its voice as a spokesperson for small nations. We opposed the power of veto being given to permanent members of the Security Council – a position to which we adhere to this day. Indeed the existence of the veto has proved to be one of the barriers to Security Council reform and the creation of more permanent memberships.

    The post war period saw New Zealand still very much focused on its relationships with Britain, the United States, and Australia in security terms. That outlook took us to Korea, Malaya, and most controversially to Viet Nam. The commitment of troops to Viet Nam produced significant division at home, for the first time, over a military deployment, and a questioning of what New Zealand’s interests in the region really were.

    New Zealand’s role and interests in the Asia Pacific today are light years distant from what they were at the time of the Second World War. At best the Pacific had been a transit route to the Panama Canal, en route to Britain. Asia wasn’t on the route at all.

    But post war, new relationships were formed and diplomatic posts established in North and South East Asia. The Association of South East Asian Nations was formed, and New Zealand became a dialogue partner of it more than thirty years ago. This year marks our 35th year of diplomatic relations with China – our fourth biggest trade partner now, with Japan our third.

    In the Pacific too, relationships changed as its small nations became independent, beginning with Samoa in 1962. The founding of the South Pacific Forum (now the Pacific Islands Forum) in the early 1970s saw New Zealand become immersed in the affairs of its near region.

    And along the way New Zealand has changed too, from a population comprised until relatively recently of upwards of 85 per cent of people of predominantly British origin, around ten per cent Maori, and few others, to last year’s census count of 14.6 per cent Maori, 6.9 per cent Pacific peoples, and 9.2 per cent peoples of Asian descent. People of European descent now number under seventy per cent.

    We are thus a complex, multi-cultural society, but also one which by world standards lives relatively harmoniously. This too has a bearing on our foreign policy and how we project to the world. We are used to living with difference at home. We are located in a region where we and Australia are the only Western democracies, and where only New Zealand, Australia, and Japan are classified as developed countries. So we are used to dealing with difference and complexity in our region too.

    Let me now turn to the major themes of New Zealand foreign policy, before discussing regions of the world where we prioritize our engagement.

    As a small country, we place a great deal of store on multilateralism and on a rules based international order. In a world were might is right, small countries lose out. So the authority of the UN Security Council, the World Trade Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the myriad of other rules setting bodies matter to us.

    Our major preoccupations in the international arena are:

    Peace and security. This takes several forms. We continue to be very active on nuclear disarmament issues, working with colleagues in the New Agenda grouping of nations. In 2000 that grouping persuaded the membership of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to agree to thirteen practical steps on nuclear disarmament and non proliferation.

    Since then nuclear disarmament has tended to take a back seat, as counter proliferation efforts have come to the fore. Yet while undoubtedly important, those efforts should not blind us to the risk nuclear weapons per se pose to global security.

    New Zealand has been increasingly concerned at the lack of action by nuclear weapons states to lower the alert status of their arsenals. It is not widely known, but it should be, that despite the end of the Cold War, thousands of nuclear weapons remain on “hair trigger” alert. This not only increases the probability of the use of nuclear weapons overall, but also heightens the possibility of them being used accidentally or unintentionally. That would be catastrophic.

    At this year’s UN General Assembly New Zealand will launch an initiative to de-alert nuclear weapons. Along with our partners, Sweden and other interested countries, we will be asking all other countries to join us in sending a clear message that this situation cannot persist. This is the first time that this objective will be put forward as a resolution of the General Assembly, and demonstrates again New Zealand’s willingness to stand up and be counted on key disarmament issues.

    Another key priority for us on disarmament is tackling the great harm being caused around the world by cluster munitions. New Zealand has learned through the work of our defense forces of the terrible effects unexploded cluster munitions can have on the lives of communities trying to rebuild after war. At this very moment our second team of ordnance experts is working in Southern Lebanon to help remove up to a million remnants of these weapons.

    Now we have joined a small group of countries, led by Norway, to push for the negotiation of a new international treaty on cluster munitions. Once concluded, we hope that such a treaty would provide clear rules on cluster munitions. We want to prevent communities suffering in future from the indiscriminate, unreliable, or inaccurate use of these weapons.

    Next February we will host an international negotiation conference in Wellington where we anticipate substantial progress being made towards the conclusion of a new treaty.

    New Zealand is committed to continuing its work on nuclear non-proliferation and arms control, as a contribution to a safer world.

    We are also active in peacekeeping deployments internationally – across United Nations and UN-sanctioned missions from the Middle East and Africa to Asia and the Pacific. Our multicultural armed forces relate well to diverse communities, and our country takes a lot of pride in their work.

    In Afghanistan, our primary role has been in Bamian province where we run a Provincial Reconstruction Team. We also deploy police and military trainers, and in earlier years have sent special forces.

    Iraq did not meet our criteria for intervention in 2003 and we did not participate in the war there. We did, for one year, send New Zealand Defense Force engineers to do civilian reconstruction work, believing that was consistent with the United Nations mandate established in the course of 2003.

    Trade policy. This looms very large on New Zealand’s agenda, as our major export goods are agricultural – and therefore the most discriminated against under current world trade rules.

    A successful WTO round is our top trade priority. For it to succeed it must deliver on opening up agricultural trade. That is also in the interests of the developing world. But New Zealand has strong interests in negotiations on industrials and services too, and is looking for an outcome which delivers more openness across the board. Meantime in our own region we are forging new trade links with APEC partner economies. Our first free trade agreement was with Australia over 24 years ago. Now we have FTAs with Singapore and Thailand, and a sub regional FTA with Chile, Singapore, and Brunei. We have completed fourteen rounds of FTA negotiations with China. Negotiations for an FTA are also going on between ASEAN and Australia and New Zealand.

    Environmental issues. The image of being clean and green is as strongly associated with New Zealand as is being nuclear free. Our country is passionate about the environment, and we take that passion into international organizations on everything from whaling and the Antarctic, to fishing quotas, sea bird protection, and the Kyoto Protocol.

    New Zealand has ratified the Kyoto Protocol; even though our unique greenhouse gas profile makes emissions reduction more challenging than for many nations. Fifty per cent of our emissions come from pastoral agriculture, which is also the source of tremendous wealth for our economy.

    In recent weeks we have announced the design of a cap and trade scheme which puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions in the economy. I believe it is a world first in covering all sectors and all greenhouse gases. It will be phased in over the next five years.

    We were also instrumental in getting climate change onto the agenda at APEC. This year’s Leaders Summit in Sydney agreed to a communiqué on climate change which takes the level of commitment from developing countries further than has been possible in other for a. That’s important – because while per capita the developed world is responsible for more emissions, it cannot solve the climate change problem on its own.

    Our aspiration is to see New Zealand move towards carbon neutrality over time. We can reach it across our electricity sector by 2025 and in our transport sector by 2040.

    Human rights. As one of the world’s oldest continuous democracies, with our first Parliament elected in 1854, we do stand up for the rule of law and the human rights upheld by the United Nations. Many of us in our current government cut our teeth in politics on the issue of South African apartheid. Sadly too few people around the world enjoy the personal freedoms we in western democracies take for granted.

    Intercivilisation and interfaith dialogue. There are a number of initiatives worldwide now which seek to bridge the divide which has become so apparent between the western world with its Judaeo-Christian ethos and the Islamic world.

    New Zealand believes it has something to contribute to this debate, given its own multicultural, multifaith population, and its reputation for peacekeeping in and relationship building with diverse nations.

    This year we have hosted the third Regional Asia Pacific Interfaith Dialogue, and also the first regional forum to be held anywhere in the world on the United Nations’ Alliance of Civilizations initiative. The latter is a direct challenge to Huntingdon’s bleak prophecy of the inevitability of a clash between civilizations – a notion we reject. Development assistance. In terms of the proportion of Gross National Income devoted to Official Development Assistance, New Zealand is at the lower end of Western nation contributions, although we are on track to boost what we give to 0.35 per cent by 2010/11.

    In terms of broader definitions of contributing, however, we rate highly, taking into account our very open markets for goods from developing countries; the labor mobility we provide for people from the South Pacific, and our contribution to peacekeeping. Without basic stability, all the ODA in the world can’t make a difference to development.

    This leads me to comment on regions of the world where New Zealand has particularly close engagement, beginning with our near neighbor Australia and the South Pacific.

    The New Zealand and Australian economies are closely integrated and our labor markets are open to each other. Our governments liaise on many issues, and our defense forces co-operate closely. While we do not agree on all international issues, nonetheless the ties which bind us make us like family members to each other. We are both very immersed in the affairs of the South Pacific, bilaterally and through the Pacific Islands Forum. The bulk of New Zealand’s development assistance goes there, focusing on poverty alleviation, sustainable rural livelihoods, health, education, and good governance.

    We have also been drawn into peacekeeping and stabilization work, in Bougainville in Papua New Guinea and in the Solomon Islands. Some support was required in Tonga after last November’s disastrous riots too.

    Fiji is a major issue of regional concern with the coup d’etat last December being the fourth in nineteen years. Fiji’s development has been severely impeded by its manifest coup culture. New Zealand and others have a wide range of sanctions on Fiji at present, while also endeavoring to work through the Pacific Islands Forum and with other partners on supporting Fiji to move back to constitutional government.

    The broader Asia Pacific is also a huge priority for us, working through the trans-Pacific APEC organization and the many bilateral and regional relationships we have in East Asia. The APEC nations account for seventy per cent of our total trade. Forty percent of our trade is with Asia alone.

    The summitry associated with the Asia-Pacific regional institutions has led to leaders, ministers, and officials all getting to know each other well. The regional parallel here in Europe would be with the European Union. Clearly integration is much more advanced here than in the Asia-Pacific but the relationship building which paves the way for more integration is well under way.

    On the agenda for discussion in the region now are proposals at APEC for a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, and at the East Asia Summit for a Closer Economic Partnership of East Asia.

    The East Asia Summit first convened in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005. It is associated with the annual ASEAN summit, and with ASEAN’s summits with the Plus Three grouping of China, Japan, and Korea.

    The East Asia Summit brings together all of ASEAN, the Plus Three nations, India, New Zealand, and Australia. From its first meeting focusing largely on form and structure, it has moved quickly to discuss issues of substance around energy security and trade. New Zealand also sees it as the logical regional forum for discussion of intercivilisational issues. Long term the vision is for an East Asian community to emerge. All this for New Zealand is a far cry from the days when Asia was circumvented en route to Europe.

    But I must emphasize that relationships with Europe remain exceedingly important to New Zealand. We see ourselves as members of a community of shared values and as natural partners in a globalizing world. Britain and Germany are significant trade partners for us in their own right and the European Union taken as one unit is our second biggest market.

    Rather than time and distance attenuating links, the reverse is happening as we formalize and deepen our relationship with Europe across education, science, and policy and security dialogue and co-operation.

    The same is true of our relationship with the United States. For more than twenty years, it came to be characterized by the issues which divided us, which given the overall commonality of views and values, was inappropriate. A lot of work has been done by both of us now to strengthen the relationship without either resiling from strongly held views, and we have made a lot of progress.

    As a small nation, New Zealand does not have the resources to conduct intense relationships with all the world’s regions. But where our interests have been more modest, we work strategically; as with Latin America, where we have focused on five key relationships and built governmental dialogue, trade and investment links, and education, cultural, and youth exchanges.

    In the Middle East, we have had a defense force presence on and off since the First World War deployment in Palestine, and then the North African campaign of World War Two. To this day, we are not only involved in Afghanistan but also in the UN Truce Supervision Organization, in the UN Mine Action Service in Lebanon, and in the Multinational Force (MFO) in the Sinai. We have also opened our first ever diplomatic post in Egypt to give us a wider window on the Arab world. The Commonwealth remains our main window on Africa and the Caribbean, and I look forward to this year’s Heads of Government in Uganda.

    From my comments today it will be apparent that New Zealand’s window on the world is rather different from that of European nations like Britain. While we share the same values and take up many of the same issues, each of us also tends to focus most directly on bilateral and regional relations in the areas closest to us.

    For New Zealand, that means the Asia Pacific. That is a huge reorientation from where we were at the outbreak of the Second World War, when we tended largely to ignore our own neighborhood.

    My foreign policy objective as Prime Minister has been to see New Zealand positioned as a principled, constructive, and engaged international citizen.

    Nothing therefore could have given me greater pleasure than seeing New Zealand ranked second, after Norway, in the Global Peace Index, compiled with support fro the Economist Intelligence Unit, and released a few months ago.

    The Index rated levels of peace for over 120 nations across 24 indicators, ranging from a nation’s level of military expenditure to its relations with neighboring countries, and its level of respect for human rights.

    It goes without saying that I take great pride in being Prime Minister of a country ranked so highly on indicators like these, and in being able to address you on the story behind those ratings this evening.

     

    Helen Clark is the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

  • The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

    The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

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

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

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

    Warnings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Awakening Humanity

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

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

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

    The Shortcomings of Deterrence

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

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

    Should Nuclear Weapons Confer Prestige?

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

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

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

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

    Weapons of the Weak

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

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

    Why Abolish Nuclear Weapons?

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

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

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

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

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

    Humanity Has a Choice

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

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

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

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

    A Special Responsibility, A Tragic Failure

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

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

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

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

    A New Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Role of Citizens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor on the World Future Council.

  • Is Peace that Difficult?

    Reprinted from The Age, August 28, 2007 edition.

    At the end of the Cold War there was an opportunity for the world to create a new collective security order. In 1991, after decades of blockages in the Security Council, it authorized armed intervention to stop the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. In the same period, Russia and the United States took steps to reduce the number of deployed non-strategic nuclear weapons: the Chemical Weapons Convention was adopted in 1993, the Non-Proliferation Treaty was prolonged indefinitely after renewed commitments by nuclear weapon states to take get serious about disarmament; a Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty was negotiated and adopted in 1996; and at the review conference of the NPT in 2000, countries agreed on 13 practical steps to disarmament.

    But the window of opportunity soon closed. The US embarked on unilateralism. In 2003, the UN Security Council was said to be irrelevant if it did not agree with the US and its coalition of the willing.

    By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, US confidence and trust in international negotiations, particularly in dealing with disarmament issues, was at a record low. And tensions continue to grow. Instead of negotiations towards disarmament, nuclear weapon states are renewing and modernizing their nuclear arsenals.

    In 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear device. After a US decision to place components of its missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia declared its withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. China has demonstrated its space war capabilities by shooting down one of its own weather satellites.

    These developments are worrying and somewhat paradoxical. At a time when there are no longer any ideological differences between the main powers, when the economic and political interdependence between states and regions reaches new heights, and when the revolution in information technology brings the world into the living rooms of billions of people, we ought to be able to agree on steps to restrain our capacity for war and destruction.

    So, where do we go from here?

    There is some movement indicating that key actors may be moving back to multilateral approaches and diplomacy. The failure and vast human cost of the military adventures in Iraq and Lebanon may have demonstrated the limitations of military strategies to achieve foreign policy objectives. The shift in strategy towards North Korea in negotiations over its nuclear program and the resumption of the six-party talks is encouraging. Waving a big stick may be counterproductive. An alternative path, containing suitable carrots, needs to be offered. It remains to be seen if this approach will be taken also in the case of Iran.

    For the past few years, I have chaired the independent international Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, with 14 experts from different parts of the world. In June 2006, I presented our report, Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear Biological and Chemical Arms. We made 60 recommendations on how to revive disarmament and restore the confidence in the international disarmament and non-proliferation regime.

    The commission urged all states to return to the fundamental undertakings made under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The treaty is based on a double bargain: the non-nuclear weapons states committed themselves not to develop nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapon states committed themselves to negotiate towards disarmament.

    So long as the nuclear weapon states maintain that they need nuclear weapons for their national security, why shouldn’t others? The commission concluded that one of the most important ways to curb weapons’ proliferation is working to avoid states feeling a need to obtain nuclear weapons.

    The co-operative approach needs to be complemented by the enforcement of the test-ban treaty, a cut-off treaty on the production of fissile material for weapons, and effective safeguards and international verification to prevent states as well as non-state actors from acquiring nuclear weapons.

    I hope the window of opportunity is not yet shut. There may still be time to wake up and turn back to co-operative solutions to contemporary security challenges.

    The new generation of political leaders has an unprecedented opportunity to achieve peace through co-operation. We do not have the threat of war between the military powers hanging over our heads. Admittedly, there are flashpoints that need to be dealt with constructively — such as Kashmir, the Middle East, Taiwan and so on. But the numbers of armed conflicts and victims of armed conflicts have decreased. Never before have nations been so interdependent and never before have peoples of the world cared so much for the wellbeing of each other. Prospects are great for a functioning world organization devoted to establishing peace, promoting respect for universal human rights and securing our environment for future generations.

    If all can agree that we need international co-operation and multilateral solutions to protect the earth against climate change and the destruction of our environment, to keep the world economy in balance and moving, and to prevent terrorism and organized crime, then should it be so difficult to conclude that we also need to co-operate to stop shooting at each other?

     

    Dr Hans Blix is president of the World Federation of United Nations Association and was director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997.

  • Why I Oppose Nuclear Weapons

    Why I Oppose Nuclear Weapons

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they are long-distance killing machines incapable of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, the aged and the newly born, or between men, women and children.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they threaten the destruction of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they threaten to foreclose the future.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they are cowardly weapons, and in their use there can be no honor.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they are a false god, dividing nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they are a distortion of science and technology, twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they waste our resources on the development of instruments of annihilation.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they concentrate power and undermine democracy.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they corrupt our humanity.

    Shortly after graduating from college, I visited the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums. At these museums, I was awakened to the human suffering caused by the use of these weapons. This suffering is not part of the American lore about the use of the bombs. These museums gave me insight into the differences in perspective between those who had been above the bomb and those beneath the bombs.

    Those above the bombs, the victors, celebrated the technology of triumph, and went on to engage in a mad nuclear arms race. Those beneath the bombs, the victims, learned the simple lesson: “Never again! We shall not repeat the evil.”

    The vision of the future held by those above the bombs and those beneath the bombs may be the decisive struggle of our time. On the side of nuclear weapons is the arrogance of power that is willing to put at risk the future of civilization, if not of life itself. On the side of the survivors, the hibakusha, is the moral clarity of calling evil by its name.

    Resolving this struggle is the challenge presented to humanity by nuclear weapons. Each of us must choose. Ignorance, apathy and denial are de facto votes for continuing the nuclear threat. Only by unalterably opposing nuclear weapons and working actively for their elimination can an individual align himself or herself with those who experienced first-hand the absolute devastation of these weapons. This is my choice. I seek without reservation the elimination of all nuclear weapons from our unique planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life.

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

  • Responsibility in an Era of Consequences

    Responsibility in an Era of Consequences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The ABCs of Nuclear Disarmament

    The chilling announcement that our government is preparing to replace our entire nuclear arsenal with new hydrogen bombs comes on the heels of a call for nuclear abolition by no less a peace activist than Henry Kissinger, joined by old cold warriors Sam Nunn, George Schultz, and William Perry in a recent Wall Street Journal Editorial.
    We’ve been pushing our luck for more than 60 years since the first and only two atomic bombs to be used in war were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 214,000 people in the initial days, and causing numerous cases of cancers, mutations and birth defects in their radioactive aftermath, new incidences of which are still being documented today. During these sixty years of the nuclear age, every site worldwide, involved in the mining, milling, production and fabrication of uranium, for either war or for “peace”, has left a lethal legacy of radioactive waste, illness, and damage to our very genetic heritage. Bomb and reactor-created plutonium stays toxic for more than 250,000 years and we still haven’t figured out how to safely contain it.
    For the world to have a real chance to deal with nuclear proliferation and avoid a tragic repetition of Hiroshima, it’s clear that we must eliminate the bombs as well as the nuclear power reactors that too often serve as bomb factories for metastasizing nuclear weapons states. On the 20th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Gorbachev called for the phasing out of nuclear power and the establishment of a $50 billion solar fund.
    There are nine nuclear weapons states in the world today. The original five, the US, UK, Russia, China, and France, in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) promised to give up their nuclear weapons in return for a promise from all the other countries of the world not to acquire them. To sweeten the deal, the NPT promised all the other countries an “inalienable right” to “peaceful” nuclear technology, which Iran is now relying on as a member of the treaty. Only India, Pakistan and Israel, refused to go along, India arguing that the treaty was discriminatory. Since the NPT was signed, India, Pakistan, Israel, and now North Korea, have joined the nuclear club. It has been noted by several distinguished Commissions that so long as any one country has nuclear weapons, others will want them.
    There are 27,000 nuclear bombs on the planet today, 26,000 of which are in the US and Russia, with the remaining 1,000 located in the seven other nuclear weapons states. To make progress on nuclear abolition, the US and Russia will have to cut their enormous stockpiles and then call all the other nations to the table to negotiate a treaty for nuclear disarmament. They are all on record as willing to enter disarmament negotiations if the US and Russia get serious. There is an offer on the table from Russia to the US to discuss further cuts in the US-Russian arsenals. Putin called, several years ago, for cuts to 1,500 or even less nuclear weapons each, which would be a signal to the seven other nuclear weapons states to join the talks. Gorbachev tried to convince Reagan to abolish all nuclear weapons but rescinded his offer because Reagan wouldn’t agree to give up his Star Wars program and keep weapons out of space. China, repeatedly calls in the UN for negotiations to begin on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. In June, 2006, Putin called again for negotiations on new reductions.
    The silence from the US has been deafening. Rather, it is has rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, while pressing to plant our missiles right under Russia’s nose in Poland and the Czech Republic, despite promises given to Gorbachev when the wall came down, that if he didn’t object to a reunified Germany entering NATO, we would not expand NATO. This fall, the US was the only country in the world to have voted against negotiations for a treaty banning weapons in space, as we adhere to our brazen space mission to “dominate and control the military use of space to protect US interests and investments”. The newly announced hydrogen bomb to replace the entire nuclear arsenal is the product of an $8 billion annual program for the development of new nuclear weapons, and we have revised our nuclear weapons policy to include the right to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear attacks.
    A Plan for Avoiding Nuclear Proliferation
    Civil Society has produced a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, drafted by lawyers, scientists and policy makers in the Abolition 2000 Global Network for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which is now an official UN document. It lays out all the steps for disarmament, including how to proceed with dismantlement, verification, guarding and monitoring the disassembled arsenals and missiles to insure that we will all be secure from nuclear break-out. It’s not as if we don’t know how to do it! Congresswoman Lynne Woolsey has proposed a resolution calling on the president to negotiate a treaty to ban the bomb.
    So here’s the plan.

    1. The US must honor its own NPT agreement for nuclear disarmament by putting a halt to all new weapons development and taking up Putin’s offer to negotiate for deeper US-Russian cuts..
    2. Once the US and Russia agree to go below 1,000 bombs, take up China’s offer to negotiate a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons and call all the nuclear weapons states to the table..
    3. As part of the negotiation, agree to Russia and China’s annual proposal in the UN to ban all weapons in space. Other countries will not be willing to give up their nuclear “deterrent” so long as the US continues its massive military buildup to achieve “full spectrum dominance” of the planet through space..
    4. Call for a global moratorium on any further uranium mining and nuclear materials production..
    5. Close the Nevada test site just as France and China have closed their sites in the South Pacific and Gobi Desert.
    6. Restrict the role of the nuclear-industry dominated International Atomic Energy Agency to only monitoring and verifying compliance with nuclear disarmament measures, and prohibit any further commercial activity to promote “peaceful” nuclear technology.
    7. Establish an International Sustainable Energy, which would supercede the NPT’s promise of an “inalienable right” to “peaceful” nuclear technology as we phase out nuclear power. Since every one of the earth’s 442 nuclear power reactors is a potential bomb factory, we wouldn’t be dealing with a full deck if we thought we could eliminate nuclear weapons, without dealing with their evil twins, nuclear reactors.
    8. Fund the International Sustainable Energy with the $250 billion in tax breaks and subsidies now going to the fossil, nuclear, and industrial biomass industries, and jump-start a 21st Century sustainable energy future.
    9. Reject plans for international “control” of the civilian nuclear fuel cycle. It’s just so 20th Century– a top-down, centralized model, to be run by preferred members of the nuclear club which will set up another hierarchical and discriminatory regime of nuclear “haves and have nots”, contribute to more radioactive pollution and health and terrorism hazards, and is doomed to fail. Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates recently indicated they are trying to get in under the wire and develop their “peaceful” nuclear technology before the US and its colonial old boys network establishes another discriminatory regime of nuclear apartheid. To prevent proliferation and the possibility of nuclear war as well as fossil-fuel driven climate catastrophes equal to nuclear war in destructive power, sensible folks know we must deal holistically by eliminating nuclear weapons as we phase out nuclear power and mobilize for safe, clean, sustainable energy–negotiating an end to the nuclear age.
    10. Establish the Bronx Project to clean up the mess created by the Manhattan Project, by isolating nuclear materials from the environment and providing a rational containment system during the eons their radioactivity will co-exist with us on earth.

     

    Alice Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a founder of the Abolition 2000 Global Network for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

  • The Nuclear Threat

    The essay “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” published in this newspaper on Jan. 4, was signed by a bipartisan group of four influential Americans — George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn — not known for utopian thinking, and having unique experience in shaping the policies of previous administrations. It raises an issue of crucial importance for world affairs: the need for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    As someone who signed the first treaties on real reductions in nuclear weapons, I feel it is my duty to support their call for urgent action.

    The road to this goal began in November 1985 when Ronald Reagan and I met in Geneva. We declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” This was said at a time when many people in the military and among the political establishment regarded a war involving weapons of mass destruction as conceivable and even acceptable, and were developing various scenarios of nuclear escalation.

    It took political will to transcend the old thinking and attain a new vision. For if a nuclear war is inconceivable, then military doctrines, armed forces development plans and negotiating positions at arms-control talks must change accordingly. This began to happen, particularly after Reagan and I agreed in Reykjavik in October 1986 on the need ultimately to eliminate nuclear weapons. Concurrently, major positive changes were occurring in world affairs: A number of international conflicts were defused and democratic processes in many parts of the world gained momentum, leading to the end of the Cold War.

    As U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations got off the ground, a breakthrough was achieved — the treaty on the elimination of medium- and shorter-range missiles, followed by agreement on 50% reduction in strategic offensive weapons. If the negotiations had continued in the same vein and at the same pace, the world would have been rid of the greater part of the arsenals of deadly weapons. But this did not happen, and hopes for a new, more democratic world order were not fulfilled. In fact, we have seen a failure of political leadership, which proved incapable of seizing the opportunities opened by the end of the Cold War. This glaring failure has allowed nuclear weapons and their proliferation to pose a continuing, growing threat to mankind.

    The ABM Treaty has been abrogated; the requirements for effective verification and irreversibility of nuclear-arms reductions have been weakened; the treaty on comprehensive cessation of nuclear-weapons tests has not been ratified by all nuclear powers. The goal of the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons has been essentially forgotten. What is more, the military doctrines of major powers, first the U.S. and then, to some extent, Russia, have re-emphasized nuclear weapons as an acceptable means of war fighting, to be used in a first or even in a “pre-emptive” strike.

    All this is a blatant violation of the nuclear powers’ commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its Article V is clear and unambiguous: Nations that are capable of making nuclear weapons shall forgo that possibility in exchange for the promise by the members of the nuclear club to reduce and eventually abolish their nuclear arsenals. If this reciprocity is not observed, then the entire structure of the treaty will collapse.

    The Non-Proliferation Treaty is already under considerable stress. The emergence of India and Pakistan as nuclear-weapon states, the North Korean nuclear program and the issue of Iran are just the harbingers of even more dangerous problems that we will have to face unless we overcome the present situation. A new threat, nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, is a challenge to our ability to work together internationally and to our technological ingenuity. But we should not delude ourselves: In the final analysis, this problem can only be solved through the abolition of nuclear weapons. So long as they continue to exist, the danger will be with us, like the famous “rifle on the wall” that will fire sooner or later.

    Last November the Forum of Nobel Peace Laureates, meeting in Rome, issued a special statement on this issue. The late Nobel laureate and world-renowned scientist, Joseph Rotblat, initiated a global awareness campaign on the nuclear danger, in which I participated. Ted Turner’s Nuclear Threat Initiative provides important support for specific measures to reduce weapons of mass destruction. With all of them we are united by a common understanding of the need to save the Non-Proliferation Treaty and of the primary responsibility of the members of the nuclear club.

    We must put the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons back on the agenda, not in a distant future but as soon as possible. It links the moral imperative — the rejection of such weapons from an ethical standpoint — with the imperative of assuring security. It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious.

    The irony — and a reproach to the current generation of world leaders — is that two decades after the end of the Cold War the world is still burdened with vast arsenals of nuclear weapons of which even a fraction would be enough to destroy civilization. As in the 1980s, we face the problem of political will — the responsibility of the leaders of major powers for bridging the gap between the rhetoric of peace and security and the real threat looming over the world. While agreeing with the Jan. 4 article that the U.S. should take the initiative and play an active role on this issue, I believe there is also a need for major efforts on the part of Russian and European leaders and for a responsible position and full involvement of all states that have nuclear weapons.

    I am calling for a dialogue to be launched within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, involving both nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states, to cover the full range of issues related to the elimination of those weapons. The goal is to develop a common concept for moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

    The key to success is reciprocity of obligations and actions. The members of the nuclear club should formally reiterate their commitment to reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons. As a token of their serious intent, they should without delay take two crucial steps: ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty and make changes in their military doctrines, removing nuclear weapons from the Cold War-era high alert status. At the same time, the states that have nuclear-power programs would pledge to terminate all elements of those programs that could have military use.

    The participants in the dialogue should report its progress and the results achieved to the United Nations Security Council, which must be given a key coordinating role in this process.

    Over the past 15 years, the goal of the elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor. It will be a challenge to the current generation of leaders, a test of their maturity and ability to act that they must not fail. It is our duty to help them to meet this challenge.

    Originally published in the Wall Street Journal.

     

    Mr. Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991.

  • It’s Time For a Plan to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

    It’s Time For a Plan to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

    In early January 2007, a surprising commentary appeared in the Wall Street Journal pleading for US leadership to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons. The surprise emanated from the identity of the writers: four prominent former high-level US foreign and defense policy officials, a bipartisan group with impeccable hawkish credentials – George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn.

    In their welcome if belated statement of concern about nuclear dangers, they harkened back to the 1986 summit at Reykjavik, where Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev came close to an agreement to rid the world of nuclear weapons. “Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons,” they wrote, “and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations.”

    The four men who signed this commentary might have harkened back even further. In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy likened nuclear weapons to a nuclear sword of Damocles, “hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness.” Kennedy concluded, as have the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who experienced the devastatingly destructive nuclear attacks at the end of World War II, that nuclear weapons “must be abolished before they abolish us.”

    It should be of deep concern to all Americans that more than a decade and a half after the end of the Cold War, the danger of the spread and use of nuclear weapons has not substantially diminished and has quite possibly increased. Moreover, it has become increasingly apparent that nuclear weapons may give far more leverage to relatively weak actors, such as terrorist groups, than they do to even the most powerful nations.

    In one of his last speeches at the conclusion of his ten-year tenure as Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan pointedly directed his remarks to the extreme dangers humanity faces due to the failure to eliminate nuclear weapons. He argued, “The one area where there is a total lack of any common strategy is the one that may well present the greatest danger of all: the area of nuclear weapons,” and he cited many reasons necessitating a concerted effort to both prevent proliferation and achieve nuclear disarmament.

    The lynchpin of Annan’s proposal, however, was the specific need for the nuclear weapons states to take action on their nuclear disarmament commitments. “I call on all the States with nuclear weapons,” he said, “to develop concrete plans -– with specific timetables -– for implementing their disarmament commitments. And I urge them to make a joint declaration of intent to achieve the progressive elimination of all nuclear weapons, under strict and effective international control.”

    There can be no doubt that a plan to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons is critically needed and should animate a national, indeed a global, dialogue. Nuclear weapons endanger our nation and the world. These weapons are capable of destroying cities and countries, including our own, and could put an end to civilization. They are tools of our own making that place a dark cloud over the human future. The continued reliance upon these weapons by the United States and other nuclear weapons states is a provocation to other countries to do the same and could lead to a breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.

    Terrorists cannot be deterred by nuclear weapons because they cannot be located, and if terrorists gain possession of nuclear weapons they cannot be prevented from using them by threat of retaliation. The security of even a military superpower such as the United States could be dramatically undercut by a single terrorist group with just one nuclear weapon. Such is the leverage of nuclear weapons: they favor the weak over the strong.

    A consensus is finally building behind the conviction that the abolition of nuclear weapons is necessary and that US leadership is urgently needed to achieve this goal. Now we need increased momentum to achieve an action plan so that over the next decade nuclear weapons can be eliminated globally in a process that is transparent, verifiable and irreversible. To succeed in reaching this goal will require a new way of thinking that involves increased reliance on international cooperation and diplomacy to achieve security, and adherence by all nations, even the most powerful, to a strengthened body of international law.

    We are facing a challenge that will determine our common future. As Kofi Annan pleaded to the young people at Princeton who he was addressing in his speech, “Help us to seize control of the rogue aircraft on which humanity has embarked, and bring it to a safe landing before it is too late.”

    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.
  • Kofi Annan’s Clarion Call for Nuclear Sanity

    Kofi Annan’s Clarion Call for Nuclear Sanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Read the Kofi Annan Speech

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

  • Lecture at Princeton University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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