Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Disarmament

  • Indigenous Presentation to the Delegates of the Seventh Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty

    It is an honor for me to be able to speak to you today on behalf of indigenous people throughout the world whose lives have been dramatically affected by the proliferation of weapons. I bring you the greetings of the people of the Marshall Islands, and more specifically the paramount leaders of the Ralik chain, Iroijlaplap Imata Kabua, and Iroijlaplap Anjua Loeak, whose domains have borne the brunt of United States military weapons development – from the nuclear bombs of the Cold War to the missiles that carry them today.

    I lived on the island of Likiep in the northern Marshalls for the entire 12 years of the US atomic and thermonuclear testing program in my country. I witnessed most of the detonations, and was just 9-years old when I experienced the most horrific of these explosions, the infamous BRAVO shot that terrorized our community and traumatized our society to an extent that few people in the world can imagine.

    While BRAVO was by far the most dramatic test, all 67 of the shots detonated in the Marshall Islands contributed one way or another to the nuclear legacy that haunts us to this day. As one of our legal advisors has described it, if one were to take the total yield of the nuclear weapons tested in the Marshall Islands and spread them out over time, we would have the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima shots, every day for twelve years.

    But the Marshall Islands’ encounter with the bomb did not end with the detonations themselves. In recent years, documents released by the United States government have uncovered even more horrific aspects of the Marshallese burden borne in the name of international peace and security. US government documents clearly demonstrate that its scientists conducted human radiation experiments with Marshallese citizens. Some of our people were injected with or coerced to drink fluids laced with radiation. Other experimentation involved the purposeful and premature resettlement of people on islands highly contaminated by the weapons tests to study how human beings absorb radiation from their foods and environment. Much of this human experimentation occurred in populations either exposed to near lethal amounts of radiation, or to “control” populations who were told they would receive medical “care” for participating in these studies to help their fellow citizens. At the conclusion of all these studies, the United States still maintained that no positive linkage can be established between the tests and the health status of the Marshallese. Just in the past few weeks, a new US government study has predicted 50% higher than expected incidence of cancer in the Marshall Islands resulting from the atomic tests.

    Although the testing of the atomic and thermonuclear weapons ended 48 years ago, we still have entire populations living in social disarray. The people of Rongelap Atoll, the inhabited island closest to the ground zero locations, remain in exile in their own country. I might also add that although the people of Rongelap were evacuated by the US government for earlier smaller weapons tests, the US government purposefully decided not to evacuate them prior to the detonation of the BRAVO event – a thermonuclear weapon designed to be the largest device ever detonated by the United States. The people of Rongelap were known to be in harms way but were not warned about BRAVO in advance and had no ability or knowledge of how to protect themselves or reduce their exposure.

    Throughout the years, America’s nuclear history in the Marshall Islands has been colored with official denial, self-serving control of information, and abrogation of commitment to redress the shameful wrongs done to the Marshallese people. The scientists and military officials involved in the testing program picked and chose their study subjects, recognized certain communities as exposed when it served their interests, and denied monitoring and medical attention to subgroups within the Marshall Islands. I remember well their visits to my village in Likiep where they subjected every one of us to tests and invasive physical examinations which, as late as 1978, they denied every carrying out. In later years, when I was a public servant for the RMI, I raised the issue requesting that raw data gathered during these visits be made available to us. United States representatives responded by saying that our recollections were juvenile and did not consider the public health missions of the time.

    For decades, the US government has utilized slick mathematical and statistical representations to dismiss the occurrence of exotic anomalies, including malformed fetuses, and abnormal appearances of diseases in so called “unexposed areas,” as coincidental and not attributable to radiation exposure. We have been told repeatedly, for example, that our birthing anomalies are the result of incest or a gene pool that is too small – anything but the radiation. These explanations are offensive, and obviously wrong since these abnormalities certainly did not occur before we became the proving ground for US nuclear weapons. Selective referral of Marshallese patients to different military hospitals in the United States and its territories also made it easier for the US government to dismiss linkages between medical problems and radiation exposure. The several unexplained fires that led to the destruction of numerous records and medical charts for the patients with the most acute radiation illnesses further underscores this point. In spite of all these studies and findings, we were told that positive linkage was still impossible because of what they called “statistical insignificance.”

    I have been a student of the horrific impacts of the nuclear weapons testing program for most of my life. I served as interpreter for American officials who proclaimed Bikini safe for resettlement and commenced a program to repatriate the Bikini people who for decades barely survived on the secluded island of Kili. I accompanied the American High Commissioner of the Trust Territory just a few years later to once again remove the repatriated residents from Bikini because their exposure had become too high for the US government’s comfort. I was also personally involved in the translation of the Enewetak Environmental Impact Statement that declared Enewetak safe for resettlement. I voiced my doubts in a television interview at the time by describing the US public relations efforts associated with the Enewetak clean-up as a dog-and-pony show. Later, during negotiations to end the trust territory arrangement with the United States, we discovered that certain scientific information regarding Enewetak was being withheld from us because, as the official US government memorandum stated, “the Marshallese negotiators might make overreaching demands” on the United States if the facts about the extent of damage in the islands were known to us.

    The outcome of our negotiations was the end of the United Nations Trusteeship and a treaty, which, among other things, provided for the ongoing responsibilities of our former trustee for the communities impacted by the nuclear weapons tests. This assistance provided by the US government for radiation damages and injuries is based on a US government study that purports to be the best and most accurate knowledge about the effects of radiation in the Marshall Islands. Our agreement to terminate our United Nations trusteeship that the US government administered was based largely on those assurances. We have since discovered that even that covenant by the United States was false. Today, not only is the US government backpedaling on this issue but its official position as enunciated by the current administration is to flee its responsibilities to the Marshall Islands for the severe nuclear damages and injuries perpetrated upon them.

    After spending decades of my life trying to persuade the US government to take responsibility for the full range of damages and injuries caused by the testing of 67 atmospheric atomic and thermonuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, a new global arms system arrived at the door of the Marshall Islands. After years of ICBM testing, the Marshall Islands now has the dubious distinction of hosting the US government’s missile shield testing program. The US government shoots Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) at the Marshall Islands. From an area leased by the US Army on Kwajalein Atoll, the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Test Site, the US launches interceptor missiles at the incoming ICBMs to test the ability of these interceptors to track and destroy incoming missiles. These tests impact every aspect of our lives… from the local people who are relocated from their homes, to the whales, sea turtles, and birds that have lived in harmony with human beings in our region of the world for centuries.

    As history repeats itself in the Marshall Islands, the people of Kwajalein have been removed from their homelands, crowded into unbearable living squalor on a 56-acre island with 18,000 residents called Ebeye. This is the equivalent of taking everyone here in Manhattan and forcing them to live on the ground floor – can you imagine the density of Manhattan if there were no skyscrapers? The US Army base depends on Ebeye for housing its indigenous labor force, but the US Army has also erected impenetrable boundaries keeping the Marshallese at an arm’s length; Marshallese on the island adjacent to the US base are unable to use the world-class hospital in emergencies, to fill water bottles during times of drought, or to purchase basic food supplies when cargo ships are delayed. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to suspect that the lands, lagoon, and surrounding seas of Kwajalein, are being damaged from depleted uranium and other substances. Unfortunately, our efforts to seek a clear understanding of the consequences of the missile testing program – data we need to make informed decisions regarding our future or the prerequisite rehabilitation of our lands before repatriation – have been spurned by the United States government. Perchlorate additives in the missiles fired from Kwajalein have been detected in the soil and the water lenses but to date no real data has become available for meaningful, independent study. The lands leased by the United States military are compensated far below market. Efforts by the Kwajalein leadership to deal with the realities which face them when the current agreement expires in 2016 have been largely ignored as the US openly and callously discusses the uses of our lands beyond 2016 and into 2086…all without our consent. Our Constitution specifically prohibits the taking of land without consent or proper compensation.

    We call upon the international community to extend its hands to assist the people of the Marshall Islands to extricate themselves from the legacy of the nuclear age and the burden of providing testing grounds for weapons of mass destruction. In the countries that produce these weapons we have come together to protest, if a person’s land or resources become contaminated, persons so affected have the option to buy another house and move elsewhere. For indigenous people it is not that simple. Our land and waters are sacred to us. Our land and waters embody our culture, our traditions, our kinship ties, our social structures, and our ability to take care of ourselves. Our lands are irreplaceable.

    When we talk about the importance of non-proliferation of weapons we also must include in our discourse the essential non-proliferation of illness, forced relocation, and social and cultural ills in the indigenous communities that pay disproportionately for the adverse consequences resulting from the process, deployment, and storage of weapons. A relatively few number of world leaders and decision-makers do not have the right to destroy the well-being and livelihood of any society, whether large or small, in the name of global security. Security for indigenous people means healthy land, resources and body – not the presence of weapons and the dangers they engender. Global leaders do not have, nor should they be allowed to assume the right, to take my security away so that they may feel more secure themselves.

    MAY PEACE BE WITH YOU.

    Thank you.

  • Reviving Nuclear Disarmament in the Non-Proliferation Regime Opening Remarks

    This panel on “Reviving Nuclear Disarmament in the Non-Proliferation Regime” is of tremendous importance to the outcome of this Seventh Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Beyond that, it may prove vital to the present and future security of our planet. I am very pleased to be a part of it.

    Although the public is largely unaware of this, it is no secret to any of you that nuclear disarmament is a central component of the non-proliferation bargain. On the one hand, this treaty provides obligations to halt nuclear proliferation; on the other, it provides obligations to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    This makes perfect sense, of course, for the two obligations are highly interlinked. Without fulfilling disarmament obligations, it will not be possible to prevent proliferation. And should there be further nuclear proliferation, nuclear disarmament will be all the more difficult.

    There has been much emphasis in the news – a subject with which I have some familiarity – about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Unfortunately, the nuclear disarmament obligations of the nuclear weapons states receive far less attention in news reporting, (at least within the United States). This may well be simply because a degree of isolationism still exists across the breadth of our land. That manifests itself in a down-playing of international news. Too often there is only minimum attention given by our local news media, print and broadcast, to the deeper, more intricate stories about our global community, its problems and hopes.

    I’m afraid that a far too large percentage of our population does not recognize that nuclear disarmament is an essential component of the non-proliferation bargain. It is reason for us to worry. It seems that the United States and the other nuclear weapons states are trying to evade their obligations and responsibilities under this critical treaty.

    These countries have in the first instance behaved as though the “unequivocal undertaking” which they made five years ago at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, was subject to being discarded at will. They commit a similar affront to the non-proliferation treaty community by ignoring other of their promises.

    Such behavior strains the credibility of these countries and puts the outcome of this Review Conference in jeopardy of failure. That outcome, of course, would be a tragedy for the world.

    In this 60th year of the Nuclear Age, we must all be thinking about what can be done to assure a future for human beings on our planet. As the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have continually warned – “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.”

    As a species, we are neither smart enough nor careful enough to continue to live with nuclear weapons in our midst. So far we have been lucky in that since the end of World War II, nuclear weapons have not been used again in war. But there is no telling how long this luck will last. We certainly cannot count on it to last indefinitely.

    Therefore, we must get back to basics. We must return to the nuclear disarmament part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty bargain. And we must do so with clarity of purpose and determination to succeed. This is what my very distinguished fellow panelists are here to talk about today. The panelists include both representatives of civil society and of government. They all have worked on these issues with extraordinary dedication for a very long time.

    I urge the delegates to this treaty conference to listen to them carefully – and to act with certainty that the future of humanity, including yet unborn generations, is dependent upon your success – right here and right now! You have a very important responsibility and the future is in your hands.

    I trust that you will act with the foresight, courage and resolve that our current situation demands.

    Walter Cronkite is an eminent broadcast journalist and recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2004 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

  • Nuclear Renaissance

    The review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), a five-yearly event, opened in New York on May 2 without benefit of an agenda. The conference had no agenda because the world has no agenda with respect to nuclear arms. Broadly speaking, two groups of nations are setting the pace of events. One — the possessors of nuclear arms under the terms of the treaty, comprising the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China — wants to hold on to its nuclear arsenals indefinitely. The other group — call them the proliferators — has only recently acquired the weapons or would like to do so. Notable among them are North Korea, which by its own account has built a small arsenal, and Iran, which appears to be using its domestic nuclear-power program to create a nuclear-weapon capacity.

    As the conference began, Iran announced that it would soon end a moratorium on the production of fissile materials and Pyongyang declared that it had become a full-fledged nuclear power — a declaration buttressed by testimony in the Senate from the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, that North Korea now has rockets capable of landing nuclear warheads on the United States. If the two countries establish themselves as nuclear powers, a long list of other countries in the Middle East and North Asia may seek to follow suit. In that case, the NPT will be a dead letter, and the gates of unlimited proliferation will swing open.

    The two groups of nations are in collision. The possessors want to stop the proliferators, and the proliferators want to defy them as well as ask them to get rid of their own mountainous nuclear arsenals. One of the liveliest debates at the conference concerns the nuclear fuel cycle, whereby fuel for both nuclear power and nuclear bomb materials is made. In the possessor countries, proposals abound to restrict this capacity to themselves, thus digging a moat around not only their arsenals but their nuclear productive capacities as well. The proliferators respond that the world’s nuclear double-standard should not be fortified but eliminated: In the long run, either everyone should have the right to the fuel cycle — and for that matter to the bombs — or no one should. (This was the view of Pakistan and India until, in May 1998, they remedied the inequity in their own cases by testing nuclear weapons and declaring themselves nuclear powers.)

    Far more contentious is the new American military doctrine of pre-emptive war, aimed at stopping proliferation by force, as the United States said it sought to do by overthrowing the government of Iraq. Inasmuch as the Bush administration has suggested that even nuclear force might be used, the new policy represents the ultimate extreme of the double standard: The United States will use nuclear weapons to stop other countries from getting those same weapons. The proliferators accordingly fear a world whose commanding heights will be guarded by the nuclear cannons of a few nations, while the rest of the world cowers in the planet’s lowlands and back alleys. Nuclear disarmament, once the domain of the peace-loving, would become a prime engine of war in an imposed, militarized global order.

    The debate between the nuclear haves and have-nots is probably unresolvable anytime soon. Certainly it will not be settled at the review conference. And yet, as is true of so many adversaries, the two groups of nations have more in common with each other than with other nations: They both want nuclear weapons. And if one looks at what is happening on the ground, a remarkable uniformity appears. All the parties in this quarrel are expanding their nuclear capacities and missions. In a sense the two groups, even as they threaten each other with annihilation, are cooperating in nuclearizing the globe.

    The end of the cold war was supposed to be the beginning of a farewell to nuclear danger, but now, fifteen years later, it’s clear that a nuclear renaissance is under way. China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Britain are all increasing their arsenals and/or their delivery systems. (In an amazingly undernoticed development, the shadow of danger from Chinese nuclear weapons is falling over larger and larger areas of the United States.) The United States, even as it reduces the number of its alert nuclear weapons — though not the total number of nuclear weapons, alert or otherwise — is rotating its nuclear guns away from their traditional Cold War targets and toward Third World sites. (The United States and Russia built up such an excess of nuclear bombs during the Cold War that they can string out their dismantlement almost indefinitely without carving into their joint capacity to finish off most of human civilization.) Britain likewise is redirecting its targeting. Its Defense Secretary has stated that even the modest step of declaring no-first-use of nuclear weapons “would be incompatible with our and NATO’s doctrine of deterrence, nor would it further nuclear disarmament objectives.” In other words, Britain may find it necessary to initiate a nuclear war to achieve nuclear disarmament. Finally, individuals and terrorist groups are reaching for the bomb and other weapons of mass destruction. Osama bin Laden, for instance, has declared that obtaining such is the “religious duty” of Muslims, and September 11 gave us an example of how he might use them.

    All but unheard in the snarling din are the true voices of peace — voices calling on the one group of nations to resist the demonic allure of nuclear arms and on the other group to rid themselves of the ones they have, leaving the world with a single standard: no nuclear weapons. Of the countries represented at the conference, fully 183 have found it entirely possible to live without atomic arsenals, and few — barring a breakdown of the treaty — show any sign of changing their minds. In the UN General Assembly the vast majority of them have voted regularly for nuclear abolition. Behind those votes stand the people of the world, who, when asked, agree. Even the people of the United States are in the consensus. Presented by AP pollsters in March with the statement, “No country should be allowed to have nuclear weapons,” 66% agreed. In other countries, the percentage of supporters is higher. On the day their voices are heard and their will made active, the end of the nuclear age will be in sight.

    Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2003 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

    Originally published by The Nation Magazine.

  • Cronkite: Media Failing on Nuclear Stories

    United Nations – When it comes to reporting on nuclear arms, the U.S. news media let readers and viewers down, giving them only part of the story, former news anchor Walter Cronkite said Wednesday.

    The celebrated CBS retiree, joining in a panel discussion on the sidelines of a U.N. conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, said narrow reporting means the U.S. public is “largely unaware” that the 1970 treaty obliges their government to move toward full nuclear disarmament.

    “There’s been a lot in the news about nonproliferation,” Cronkite said, referring to Iran and North Korea, whose nuclear programs, under fire from the U.S. government, make daily headlines.

    “But, unfortunately, the nuclear disarmament obligations of the nuclear weapons states receive far less attention in news reporting, at least in our United States,” he said.

    Another panelist, Marian Hobbs, New Zealand’s minister for disarmament, also criticized media coverage of arms control.

    “We need the media. We want a media that informs us of other people’s opinions, not just American opinion, or your country’s opinion,” she told the international audience.

    Under the nonproliferation treaty, more than 180 countries commit to not pursuing nuclear arms, in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear powers — the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China — to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament.

    North Korea has announced its withdrawal from the pact and says it has built nuclear weapons. Washington contends Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is meant to produce electricity, is a cover for plans to build weapons.

    Nonweapons states, on the other hand, complain increasingly that U.S. actions, such as talk of building new nuclear arms, run counter to treaty obligations.

    Cronkite agreed.

    “It simply seems the United States and other nuclear weapons states are actually trying to evade their obligations and responsibilities under the treaty,” he said, adding that he visited Hiroshima after the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of that Japanese city and since then has been “a campaigner to get rid of every nuclear weapon.”

    Walter Cronkite is an eminent broadcast journalist and recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2004 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

  • It Is Up To Us

    I am very honored by this award, and I accept it on behalf of all the people I work with and have struggled with to build a better world – particularly my colleagues at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    When we founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we believed that we cannot sit back and wait for leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev. Such leaders – with his wisdom, vision and courage – are all too rare.

    We believed that we ordinary citizens must step forward, and create the change we wish to see in the world.

    My life was transformed when, shortly after graduating from college, I visited Hiroshima.

    The Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima awakened me, as I had not been before, to the true extent of the dangers of the Nuclear Age.

    Over the years since then, I have come to know many of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are called hibakusha. With one voice, they say, “Never again! We will not repeat the evil.”

    The hibakusha understand, as few others in this world do, that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist, and that we must eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.

    That is our challenge. It is the challenge that I confront daily. It is the challenge of our time and of our generation. It is a challenge we cannot fail to accept and we cannot fail to accomplish.

    I believe that each generation has a responsibility to pass the world on intact to the next generation. You might say that that is the least we can do for the future.

    But for us in the Nuclear Age, this is a more difficult task than ever before. Nuclear weapons contain the potential to foreclose a human future.

    If we succeed in eliminating these weapons of genocide, indeed omnicide, we will be viewed in the future as having done our part to save the world.

    If we fail, there may be no future generations to remember us or to judge us.

    We in the United States must press our government to stop being the greatest obstacle to nuclear disarmament. It is not in our interest, nor that of our children, for our government to cling tenaciously to these terrible weapons and even try, as it is doing now, to create new nuclear weapons for specific purposes.

    Rather, the United States, as the world’s most powerful nation, should, in our own interest and that of humanity, lead the way to a world free of nuclear weapons.

    It is up to us to change our country and the world.

    Each of us can be as powerful as anyone who ever lived. All we need to do is set our intentions and take a first step. Without doubt, a first step will lead to a second, and we will be on our way.

    We are all gifted with consciences to guide us, with voices we can raise, with arms to embrace, and with feet to take a stand. These are the gifts with which the future calls out to us to act.

    We must fight ignorance with education, apathy with direction, complacency with vision, and despair with hope. We owe this to ourselves and to our children.

    I’d like to conclude with an excerpt from a poem in my new book. The poem is about hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it is about silence. It is called Hibakusha Do Not Just Happen, and this is the way it ends:

    For every hibakusha many must contribute For every hibakusha many must obey For every hibakusha many must be silent

    It is up to us to break the silence – for each other, for humanity and for the future.

  • Saving Nonproliferation

    Renewal talks for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are scheduled for May, yet the United States and other nuclear powers seem indifferent to its fate. This is remarkable, considering the addition of Iran and North Korea as states that either possess or seek nuclear weapons programs. A recent United Nations report warned starkly: “We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.”

    A group of “Middle States” has a simple goal: “To exert leverage on the nuclear powers to take some minimum steps to save the non-proliferation treaty in 2005.” Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states — including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight NATO members — voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution.

    So far the preparatory committee for the forthcoming NPT talks has failed even to achieve an agenda because of the deep divisions between nuclear powers that refuse to meet their own disarmament commitments and the nonnuclear movement, whose demands include honoring these pledges and considering the Israeli arsenal.

    Until recently all American presidents since Dwight Eisenhower had striven to restrict and reduce nuclear arsenals — some more than others. So far as I know, there are no present efforts by any of the nuclear powers to accomplish these crucial goals.

    The United States is the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including anti-ballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating “bunker buster” and perhaps some new “small” bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states.

    Some corrective actions are obvious:

    • The United States needs to address remaining nuclear issues with Russia, demanding the same standards of transparency and verification of past arms control agreements and dismantling and disposal of decommissioned weapons. With massive arsenals still on hair-trigger alert status, a global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the Cold War. We could address perhaps the world’s greatest proliferation threat by fully securing Russia’s stockpiles.

    • While all nuclear weapons states should agree to non-first use, the United States, as the sole superpower, should take the lead on this issue.

    • NATO needs to de-emphasize the role of its nuclear weapons and consider an end to their deployment in Western Europe. Despite its eastward expansion, NATO is keeping the same stockpiles and policies as when the Iron Curtain divided the continent.

    • The comprehensive test ban treaty should be honored, but the United States is moving in the opposite direction. The administration’s 2005 budget refers for the first time to a list of test scenarios, and other nations are waiting to take the same action.

    • The United States should support a fissile materials treaty to prevent the creation and transport of highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

    • Curtail U.S. development of the infeasible missile defense shield, which is wasting huge resources, while breaking our commitment to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty without a working substitute.

    • Act on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, an increasing source of instability in that region. Iran has repeatedly hidden its intentions to enrich uranium while claiming that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. This explanation has been given before, by India, Pakistan and North Korea, and has led to weapons programs in all three states. Iran must be called to account and held to its promises under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge how Israel’s nuclear status entices Iran, Syria, Egypt and other states to join the community of nuclear weapons states.

    These are vital questions, and the world will know the answers during the NPT conference in May.

    Former president Carter is founder of the Carter Center in Atlanta.

  • Nobel Laureates Appeal for Nuclear Disarmament

    February 17, 2005

    Letter from Jack Steinberger:

    I have pleasure in enclosing a copy of a Nobel Laureates statement that has been drafted by the Abolition Now Campaign at my initiation. I am deeply concerned that in this year of the 60 th Anniversaries of the atomic bombings the world stands at the brink of a renewed nuclear crisis of incalculable proportions. All of us need to speak out before it is too late. In May the world’s governments will gather at the United Nations in New York to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This statement is a call for them to use this opportunity to begin serious negotiations to rid the world of nuclear weapons once and for all. Led by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign is mobilising support from all sectors of society worldwide for this goal. Nobel Laureates can add to this growing campaign by publicly identifying themselves with this call for sanity.

    Please consider adding your name to this statement which will be circulated widely to the press, governments and citizen groups in the run up to the NPT. It is planned to release this statement on March 5 th, the anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty entering into force in 1970. If you would like more information about the Mayors for

    Peace Emergency Campaign and Abolition Now please look at the website at www.abolitionnow.org or contact Monika Szymurska at monika@abolitionnow.org.

    We are approaching Nobel Laureates from each discipline, not just peace laureates. In this Einstein Year it is clear that all of us have a responsibility to speak out for the highest aspirations of humanity for a peaceful future. Thank you for reading this letter and for considering the statement.

    Yours sincerely,

    Jack Steinberger Nobel Physics Laureate 1988

    The continued reliance of some states on nuclear arsenals, with tens of thousands of times the destructive power of that unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaves our children and grandchildren under the constant threat of annihilation. All people, including those in the nuclear weapons states themselves, would be more secure in a world without nuclear weapons.

    Every possible effort must be made not only to prevent additional states from acquiring nuclear weapons, but also to ensure that these instruments of ultimate terror do not fall into the hands of those who might use them to perpetrate acts of unthinkable mass destruction.

    This goal can only be achieved through the global elimination of all the nuclear weapons currently in the possession of the nuclear weapon states, and by the securing of all fissile materials under a system of international controls.

    The nuclear weapon states are obligated to achieve global nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Yet, the NPT is in danger of collapse because the nuclear weapons states have spent more than 30 years evading its fundamental principal: that non-proliferation and disarmament must go hand in hand.

    As Nobel Laureates in peace, science, medicine, economics and literature, we call upon the US and the other nuclear weapons states to commence the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, starting now.

    We call upon all Heads of State to begin negotiations immediately on the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons and to set a timetable for their total elimination by the year 2020. We call upon all Heads of State to attend to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations in New York in May 2005.

    We call upon all states that may be considering the acquisition of nuclear weapons to abandon this perilous course and to insist instead upon a nuclear weapons-free world as the only basis for national and global security.

    Finally, we call upon civil society to join with the Mayors for Peace, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in their Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons and with civil society organizations around the world that have come together to demand “Abolition Now!”

    Let our legacy be securing for our posterity a future free from the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    To endorse the statement, please send your name and affiliation to Monika Szymurska at monika@abolitionnow.org or call (212) 726-9161

    For more information about the Abolition Now! Campaign, visit www.abolitionnow.org

  • Our Greatest Threat: The Coming Nuclear Crisis

    When the first atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it could hardly have been imagined that nearly sixty years later 34,145 nuclear weapons would be in existence. In a long career as a parliamentarian, diplomat, and educator, I have come to the conclusion that the abolition of nuclear weapons is the indispensable condition for peace in the twenty-first century. Yet progress toward that goal has been halted.

    In May a conference of the 188 signatory nations to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will be held in New York City to put a spotlight on this problem. A huge march is planned for May 1. Advocates of nonproliferation will once again try to draw attention to the immorality and illegality of such weapons. But will the eight nations that possess nuclear weapons-the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel-actually take steps toward eliminating their arsenals?

    The prognosis is not good. The preparatory meetings for the May conference ended in failure, with nonnuclear nations objecting to the intransigence of the nuclear-weapons states, noting how a world of nuclear haves and have-nots is becoming a permanent feature of the global landscape. The United States insists that the problem is not with those who possess nuclear weapons, but with states, such as Iran and other nations, trying to acquire them. To which Brazil responded: “One cannot worship at the altar of nuclear weapons and raise heresy charges against those who want to join the sect.” Faced with this stalemate, the NPT is eroding, and an expansion of the number of states with nuclear weapons, a fear which produced the NPT in 1970, is looming once more.

    Any discussion of the elimination of nuclear weapons inevitably raises questions of the feasibility of such action. How is an architecture of security to be built without nuclear weapons? How can states be prevented from cheating and how can such weapons be kept out of the hands of terrorists? A wide range of military, scientific, and diplomatic experts, notably the Canberra Commission established in 1996, have tried to provide answers to these urgent questions.

    First, the case for a nuclear weapons-free world is based on the commonsensical claim that the destructiveness of these weapons is so great they have no military utility against a comparably equipped opponent. Historically, nuclear weapons have been used as a deterrent. But even as a deterrent they pose too great a risk. Few doubt that the longer weapons are maintained, the greater the risk of use, or that possession by some states causes other nations to acquire them, reducing the security of all.

    Second, the elimination of such weapons will not be possible without a new architecture of security based on an adequate verification system. The components of a reliable verification system are coming into place, beginning with the inspection system maintained by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the monitoring system maintained by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which has the capacity to detect the most minute nuclear test explosions. On-site inspections of suspect materials will have to be part of the disarmament process (the United States and Russia already do this in the case of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987).

    “Trust but verify,” President Ronald Reagan famously said. Verification is essential, but the demand for a perfect verification regime is little more than an excuse for not seeking a reduction in nuclear weapons. Perfect security is not possible. Inevitably, some risk will have to be accepted if the wider benefits of a nuclear weapon-free world are to be realized. Not the elimination of risk but an evaluation of comparative risks is the rational approach to take. It is much more dangerous for the world to stay on its present path. Compared to the risks inherent in a world bristling with nuclear weapons, the risks associated with whatever threat a cheating state could assemble before it was exposed are far more acceptable.

    No one is advocating unilateral disarmament; that would be an unthinkable policy for the United States. Rather it is in the interests of the United States-and all other nations-to heed the directive of the International Court of Justice and pursue comprehensive negotiations leading to the gradual elimination of nuclear weapons. Such a program would take many years to implement. Many confidence-building measures would be needed. How long disarmament takes is not the most important thing; what is critical is that the major states show the rest of the world they are heading in that direction. Otherwise, the NPT, which entails a legal obligation to pursue negotiations in good faith, will become a mockery. This is the nub of the present dilemma.

    In 1995, on its twenty-fifth anniversary, the NPT (virtually every country in the world except India, Pakistan, and Israel has signed the treaty) was indefinitely extended. In agreeing to that extension, the nuclear powers made three promises: a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would be achieved; negotiations to ban the production of fissile material would be concluded; “systematic and progressive efforts globally” to eliminate nuclear weapons would be made. None of these promises has been kept.

    When the NPT was reviewed in 2000, all the states were again able to find common ground and, by consensus, made an “unequivocal” commitment to eliminating nuclear weapons through a program of “Thirteen Practical Steps.” Subsequently, the nuclear powers faltered again and bitterness set in.

    The United States is in the forefront of the current stalemate. Its commitment to the consensus of 2000 was made under the Clinton administration. When President George W. Bush was elected, the United States position regressed: the ABM Treaty was abandoned and the administration turned its back on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), two of the thirteen steps agreed to in 2000. Moreover, in 2001 the administration conducted a nuclear posture review, which made clear that nuclear weapons remain a cornerstone of U.S. national-security policy. The review outlines expansive plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear forces, and all the elements that support them.

    The Bush administration has also speculated about specific scenarios where the use of nuclear weapons may be justified: an Arab-Israeli conflict, a conflict with China over Taiwan, a North Korean attack on South Korea, and an attack on Israel by Iraq or another neighbor. This new policy, in contradiction of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, means that for the first time the United States will threaten the use of nuclear weapons against countries that do not themselves possess such weapons. Under President Bush, the United States is actually widening the role of nuclear weapons in defense policy far beyond deterrence. The administration is promulgating a policy that would retain a stockpile of active and reserve nuclear weapons and weapons components for at least the next fifty years.

    Among the current nuclear powers, the U.S. position is particularly aggressive, but it is by no means alone in its determination to hold onto nuclear weapons or to expand their strategic role in military policy. On November 17, 2004, President Vladimir Putin of Russia confirmed that his country is “carrying out research and missile tests of state-of-the-art nuclear missile systems” and that Russia would “continue to build up firmly and insistently our armed forces, including the nuclear component.” The United Kingdom, France, and China are all busy modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Similarly, NATO adheres to its stated policies that such weapons are “essential.”

    More and more states now treat nuclear weapons as part of a war-fighting strategy, not strictly as a deterrent. Nuclear weapons have become embedded in nations’ military doctrines. This shift in the rationale for keeping nuclear weapons is what characterizes our deepening crisis.

    Another aspect of this crisis is the specter of nuclear terrorism. “Nothing could be simpler,” was the assessment of the eminent physicist Frank von Hippel, on the capacity of terrorists to obtain highly enriched uranium and improvise an explosive device with power equal to the Hiroshima bomb. If the 9/11 terrorists had used a nuclear bomb, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers would have perished. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that at least forty countries have the capability to produce nuclear weapons, and criticizes the failure of export control systems to prevent an extensive illicit market in nuclear items. The disappearance, by theft or otherwise, of nuclear materials from Russia is well established. The threat of nuclear terrorism is on the mind of every official I know. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the IAEA, says the margin of security today is “thin and worrisome.”

    In 2004, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1540, requiring all states to take measures to prevent nonstate actors from acquiring or developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Similarly, the Proliferation Security Initiative of the United States seeks to interdict on the high seas the transfer of sensitive nuclear materials. And the G8 countries have allocated $20 billion over ten years to eliminate some stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Russia.

    These steps are by no means sufficient. The fact remains that the proliferation of nuclear weapons cannot be stopped as long as the most powerful nations in the world maintain that nuclear weapons are essential for their own security.

    Of course, Iran and any other hostile state must be stopped from acquiring such weapons, and inspection and verification processes must be stepped up with more funding and personnel. But a one-dimensional approach that attempts to stop proliferation while ignoring meaningful disarmament will never work.

    The New Agenda Coalition, a group of states (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden) pressing the nuclear-weapons states to fulfill their disarmament obligations, offers some hope. The coalition has been gathering political momentum. A recent UN resolution proposed by the group was supported by eight NATO states, including Germany and Canada. That resolution, calling on the nuclear powers to cease activities leading to “a new nuclear arms race,” identifies priorities for action: universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the early implementation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; reduction of nonstrategic nuclear weapons and ending development of new types of weapons; negotiation of an effectively verifiable fissile-material treaty; establishment of a subsidiary body to deal with nuclear disarmament at the Conference on Disarmament; and compliance with principles of transparency and verification.

    Even though this resolution was mild compared to the regular demands of groups such as the Non-Aligned Movement, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France voted against it. China voted for the resolution and Russia abstained.

    Can the NPT be saved? Will civil society groups, whose protests have been rather mild compared to the vigorous activities of the 1980s, now start clamoring for government action? Will those who maintain that nuclear weapons are deeply immoral and a blot on God’s creation now be heard?

    These are questions posed by the present crisis. Another key question is how religious leaders will react to the realization that nuclear weapons are-apparently-here to stay.

    In 1982, Pope John Paul II sent a message to the Second Special Session on Disarmament:

    In current conditions, “deterrence” based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable. Nonetheless, in order to ensure peace, it is indispensable not to be satisfied with the minimum which is always susceptible to the real danger of explosion.

    In short, deterrence as a permanent policy is not morally acceptable. The American bishops’ 1983 Pastoral Letter on War and Peace took up this theme. It argued for a strong “no” to nuclear war, declaring that a nuclear response to a conventional attack is “morally unjustifiable.” Moreover, the bishops expressed skepticism that any nuclear war could avoid the massive killing of civilians. Only a “strictly conditioned moral acceptance of nuclear deterrence” is possible. The nuclear weapons states have ignored the bishops’ admonitions as well as those of many other religious groups.

    A well-considered moral argument must be heard once again that the circle of fear perpetuated by those with a vested interest in maintaining nuclear weapons is a trap from which humanity must escape. The alternative does not bear thinking about.

    Copyright © 2004 Commonweal Foundation

  • Heavily Armed Duo in No Position to Lay down Law on Proliferation

    Thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions would be easier if the US and Israel kept their side of the bargain, writes Richard Butler.

    In recent months the US President, George Bush, and senior members of his Administration have asserted that Iran is involved in the clandestine development of nuclear weapons.

    Last week Bush turned up the temperature during his visit to Europe, when he declared, on one public occasion punching the air with his fist, Iran “must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon”.

    A month earlier The New Yorker published a disturbing report by Seymour Hersch that US forces had already entered Iran from Iraq to scope out prospective targets related to Iran’s nuclear activities.

    The Pentagon expressed anger at Hersch’s report and attacked him personally, but did not directly deny its substance. Last week Bush chose to comment publicly on this matter saying that reports the US was planning to attack Iran were wrong, but all options were on the table.

    There is good reason for concern about the directions of Iran’s nuclear program. In a manner similar to Bush’s remarks on his future intentions, Iran has also given contradictory signals, claiming that it was not making a nuclear weapon but had a right to do so if it chose to.

    As a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty Iran is obliged to accept inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that it is pursuing no activities leading to the acquisition of nuclear explosive capability. Last week, the agency’s director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, appealed to Iran to improve its work with the inspectors.

    But Bush’s strident insistence on Iran’s treaty obligation glaringly omits the other side of the bargain made in the treaty, that the nuclear weapons states must progressively eliminate their armaments. Bush repeatedly and blatantly misrepresents the treaty, which is a two-way – not one-way – street. It provides that states which do not have nuclear weapons must never acquire them and that those which do have them must progressively get rid of them.

    The treaty is reviewed every five years. At the last review conference, in 2000, the five acknowledged nuclear weapons states responded to the grave concern that they were not fulfilling their part of the bargain. They made a new promise that they would increase the tempo of their action to eliminate their nuclear weapons.

    The Bush Administration has not only refused to adhere to its obligations under the treaty and the additional promise of 2000, but has now embarked on what is anathema under the treaty – the production of a new generation of nuclear weapons. These are the new, more compact, nukes the Administration says it needs for the so-called war on terrorism.

    It beggars belief that the Administration appears to believe it can succeed in restraining Iran while it proceeds to violate its obligations. The New York Times recently editorialised to this effect, saying that in the contemporary world, nuclear weapons had become virtually useless. The main danger they now posed was of them falling into the hands of terrorist groups.

    The US is not alone in seeking to maintain a world of nuclear “haves” and “have nots”. Three weeks ago Israel’s Defence Minister said it would be unconscionable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. This was more than a modicum of chutzpah from a country which, for more than 25 years, has had a clandestine nuclear weapons program producing about 200 devices.

    The existence of the Israeli nuclear weapons capability has been a major stimulus to attempts first by Saddam Hussein (whose reactor the Israelis bombed in 1983) and then others in the region, including Iran, to acquire the same capacity.

    There is, in fact, an axiom of proliferation. It states that as long as any state holds nuclear weapons, others will seek to acquire them. Those others now include terrorist groups and nation states. In making this latter point I would not want to give any assent to the sleight of hand used so successfully to justify the invasion of Iraq, namely that it was made necessary by September 11, 2001. Nonsense: the Republicans had planned the invasion of Iraq as early as 1998 and it has now been thoroughly demonstrated that Saddam had nothing to do with September 11 and that the largest intelligence “error” was the assertion about his nuclear weapons program.

    The axiom of proliferation contains far more truth than the “axis of evil”. It rests on a gut human instinct – fairness. Simply, states are unprepared to believe that their security is less important than that of others. This was put to me repeatedly in more than 25 years of involvement in the treaty.

    It is not acceptable to others for the US, for example, to claim that its security is so important that it is justified in holding nuclear weapons but this is not the case for other states, such as India and now Iran.

    The axiom also means that the basic compact of the treaty is sound and that the only way ahead, whether in the context of Iran or any other potential proliferator, is for the treaty to be implemented. Those who hold nuclear weapons, including countries outside the treaty – India, Pakistan and Israel – should urgently devise safe means for their elimination and for collective action to prevent any future proliferation of new nuclear weapons states.

    Richard Butler was Australia’s ambassador for disarmament 1983-88, ambassador to the UN 1992-97 and head of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq 1997-99.

    Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald

  • 2005: A Year of Significant Anniversaries

    2005 is a year of important anniversaries of the Nuclear Age. It marks the 60th anniversary of the first test of an atomic weapon, an event that occurred at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Just weeks later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were each destroyed with a single atomic bomb, announcing to the world the onset of the Nuclear Age. Hibakusha — the survivors of these bombings, who have worked throughout their lives for the abolition of nuclear weapons — will gather with others from throughout the world on August 6th and 9th to renew their fervent plea of “Never again!” on the 60th anniversary of these bombings.

    This year commemorates the 50 th anniversary of the death of the great scientist Albert Einstein, whose theories changed our understanding of the universe and the relationship of energy to matter. At the urging of his friend Leo Szilard, Einstein sent a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 urging the United States to explore the possibility of an atomic weapon in order to be prepared to deter such weapons in the hands of Nazi Germany. Einstein later referred to his letter to Roosevelt as the greatest mistake of his life. Both Einstein and Szilard were active until their deaths in trying to abolish these most terrible weapons that they felt responsible for bringing into the world.

    July 9, 2005 marks the 50th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, the last public document to which Einstein gave his support. The document sounded a grave warning to humanity. “No doubt,” it stated, “in an H-bomb war great cities would be obliterated. But this is one of the minor disasters that would have to be faced.” Einstein, along with Bertrand Russell and the nine other prominent scientists who joined them in signing the Manifesto, warned that nuclear war could put an end to humanity. Their solution was to abolish war, a solution they understood to be both incredibly difficult and absolutely necessary. The Manifesto stated: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” Fifty years later, we remain confronted by this overriding problem.

    The 35th anniversary of the entry into force of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will also be observed in 2005. It is the world’s only treaty that requires the nuclear weapons states to make good faith efforts to achieve complete nuclear disarmament. Five years ago, at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the parties to the treaty, now numbering 188 countries, agreed by consensus to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. This was viewed throughout the world as a means to fulfill the treaty obligations of the nuclear weapons states to achieve nuclear disarmament. Among the most important of the 13 points is one requiring “[a]n unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….”

    Commitments made in 2000, however, have been thrown into severe doubt by the failure of the nuclear weapons states, and particularly the United States, to fulfill their obligations. US backtracking on the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament is casting a long shadow on the prospects for success at the 2005 NPT Review Conference that will be held in May at United Nations headquarters.

    Humankind cannot indefinitely postpone making a choice. One choice is to do nothing. Another choice is to heed the warnings of Einstein and Russell and seek to fulfill the aspirations of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a world without nuclear weapons. The latter course will require creative and persistent public education and advocacy, particularly in the nuclear weapons states. This is the daily work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, as you will see in this report. I encourage you to visit our www.wagingpeace.org website regularly and to become an active participant in our Turn the Tide Campaign as well as our many other activities for a more secure and nuclear weapons-free future.

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