Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Disarmament

  • Facing Nuclear Dangers and Flinching – Comments on the Final Report of the Tokyo Forum

    The Final Report of the Tokyo Forum is entitled, “Facing Nuclear Dangers: An Action Plan for the 21st Century.” The Report, however, is not nearly as bold as its title would suggest. A clue as to why this may be so is found in paragraph 12 of the opening section of the Report where it states, “Terrorism using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons has been possible for some time, but serious policymakers have traditionally seen other threats as more pressing.” The members of the Tokyo Forum have aimed their recommendations at influencing such “serious policymakers,” particularly those in the nuclear weapons states. The Final Report ends up being short on vision, and proposes only incremental changes, the kind that might be acceptable to those who have no real desire to change the status quo.

    The Report recognizes, “the fabric of international security is unraveling and nuclear dangers are growing at a disturbing rate.” This is a diagnosis that calls for strong medicine. The Tokyo Forum, however, offers only weak tea and toast, proposals unlikely to offend the “serious policymakers” in the nuclear weapons states. In doing so, the Report falls painfully short of the mark as to what is needed as we approach the beginning of a new century and millennium. Like Nero, the “serious policymakers” in the nuclear weapons states have been fiddling while the nuclear fuse continues to burn.

    When it comes to the issue of nuclear proliferation, the Report finds that the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “must be reaffirmed and revitalized.” With breathtaking logic, the Report reaches the conclusion that “The discriminatory basis of the NPT regime need not constitute a moral and practical flaw in the treaty provided that the nuclear-weapon states and the non-nuclear weapon states keep their parts of the bargain.” The problem here is that the nuclear weapons states have never kept their part of the bargain, and seem far more intent on maintaining a two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” than in doing so.

    One bright point in the Report is its denunciation of the use of nuclear weapons to deter a chemical, biological or large-scale conventional attack. The Report states, “Until they are abolished, the Tokyo Forum believes that the only function of nuclear weapons is to deter the use of other nuclear weapons.” This is a position with which many so-called “serious policymakers” in the nuclear weapons states apparently do not agree. U.S. Presidential Decision Directive 60, a secret document, is purported to expand the use of nuclear weapons to counter chemical or biological attacks.

    In the end, the Report fails to ask enough of the nuclear weapons states. It calls on the U.S. and Russia “to further extend reductions to 1,000 deployed strategic warheads.” This is a step in the right direction, but far from sufficient. The Report asks for a “goal of zero nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.” Recognizing millennial computer risks, the Report calls for removing nuclear weapons from alert status “for the period of concern.” Good idea, but why not use this as a starting point for keeping all nuclear weapons separated from delivery vehicles to prevent any possibility of accidental launch. Perhaps in the minds of the members of the Tokyo Forum, this would go too far for “serious policymakers.”

    Rather than opposing Ballistic Missile Defenses, which seem to offer only the false promise of security and to have the potential to reignite the development of offensive nuclear capabilities, the Report asks only that “all states contemplating the deployment of advanced missile defences to proceed with caution….”

    The Tokyo Forum offers too little, too late to meet the dangers of our nuclear-armed world. While the Report is not a complete disgrace, it does little if anything to build upon and advance the Report of the Canberra Commission to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons issued three years earlier. I find the Report a serious disappointment when measured against the calls of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a world free of nuclear weapons.

    The people of Japan, even more than the people of most countries of the world, strongly support rapid action to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. The government of Japan, on the other hand, has been content to crawl under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The Tokyo Forum has aligned itself much more closely with the policies of the U.S. and Japanese governments than with the people of Japan, and particularly those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is often what happens when aspiring “serious policymakers” speak to those in power.

    The people of Japan are far ahead of their government and far ahead of the experts in the Tokyo Forum. They should demand a far stronger and more active leadership role for their government in reducing nuclear dangers, beginning with a demand for the de-alerting of all nuclear weapons and the separation of nuclear warheads from delivery vehicles. This would be a valuable first step on the part of the nuclear weapons states toward fulfilling their obligations in Article VI of the NPT to achieve nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.

    The way to proceed is with good faith negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased elimination of nuclear arsenals under strict and effective international control. There is no reason not to commence these negotiations immediately and to conclude them with a treaty by the end of next year. In this way, we could enter the 21st century with an agreed upon plan in place to abolish nuclear arms. The Tokyo Forum was timid about asking for action within a timeframe, but their timidity should not inhibit people everywhere from asking for what is right and in the best interests of humanity, now and in the future.

    * David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and is the editor of Waging Peace Worldwide. He is a member of the international coordinating committee of Abolition 2000 and a member of the executive committee of the Middle Powers Initiative.

  • Defended to Death

    India and Pakistan are governed by madmen. The prime ministers are mad, the generals, scientists, civil servants all mad. The proof of their madness is their paranoid obsession with security and nuclear weapons. What, after all, could be more insane than two desperately poor countries, struggling to feed, educate, and house their people spending scarce resources on preparing to murder millions of innocent people, then glorying in their capability and willingness to commit such a monstrous deed. More disturbing still is that while these madmen and their obsessions may mean the death of us, we do next to nothing about them. Perhaps the people, governed by lunatics for so long, have also quietly gone mad, to protect themselves from the consequences of understanding what is happening to them.

    These thoughts have been brought on by India’s recently released nuclear doctrine, and the expectation that the madmen in Islamabad will follow those in Delhi and move a step closer to deploying their nuclear weapons, and a step closer to using them.

    The Indian nuclear doctrine contains no surprises. It is what anyone should have expected from India’s National Security Advisory Board, given that it is a nest of nuclear hawks. Asked to produce a doctrine, no one should have expected reason from them. Each was bound to try to out do the others, and none would relish being found wanting in patriotism or hard-headedness. Then there is the lure of history. The nuclear tests were about science and technology, and the scientists took the credit. As strategic thinkers, the National Security Board will take credit for having made the plan for how India’s weapons are to be used. For some of them, this report is the culmination of decades of writing and arguing for India to have nuclear weapons; it reflects their hopes, dreams, fantasies, of a nuclear India.

    Given how nationalistic these men are, how committed to a kind of independence at any cost, one is reminded, ironically, of Lord Macaulay’s famous 1835 Minute on Education. Writing about British rule in India, he said the aim should be to create “a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in taste and opinions, in morals and intellect.” The British succeeded to the extent that a hundred or so years later it was anglicized Indians like Nehru and Jinnah who took over from them. American strategic thinkers, who preside like demented gods over their own nuclear weapons, can boast they have had the same effect in even less time. Despite all their differences, and animosities, within fifty years of inventing nuclear weapons, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then claiming that nuclear weapons were for defence, the US nuclear weapons complex has successfully created enclaves of Indians, and Pakistanis, who have exactly their nuclear “morals” and “intellect.”

    The tone and content of India’s nuclear doctrine carries the stamp of the hardest of the hardest liners and their global fears and ambitions. The doctrine declares that “the very existence of offensive doctrine pertaining to the first use of nuclear weapons and the insistence of some nuclear weapons states on the legitimacy of their use even against non-nuclear weapon countries constitute a threat to peace, stability and sovereignty of states.” It is this threat, the doctrine declares, that India’s nuclear weapons are supposed to protect against. But the countries which have said they will use nuclear weapons first are the US, UK, France, Russia, and Pakistan. China has a policy of no-first-use. Israel has never said what it would do, but no doubt will use nuclear weapons whenever it feels like it. It is also the US, in particular, and its NATO allies, who have indicated policies of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states.

    The fixation on the US is part of an established pattern. Indian hawks have always had global pretensions. For years, members of the National Security Advisory Board have justified Indian nuclear weapons with reference to the inequities of the international system and US threats to India during the 1972 war with Pakistan. One member of the Board, Bharat Karnad, wrote last year that India’s nuclear weapons should be aimed at “deterring an over-reaching and punitive minded United States leading the Western combine of nations.”

    With this in mind, the doctrine is blunt, India’s nuclear forces are aimed at “convincing any potential aggressor that… India … shall inflict damage unacceptable to the aggressor.” Worst case analysis, the kind of thing that nuclear hawks love, would suggest that India has to build a nuclear force able to retaliate against the US, even after a massive US attack on India. This may seem absurd. The USSR tried it and ended up building over 30,000 nuclear weapons. How could India possibly manage it?

    One way to try would be to follow the Chinese example. Following its first nuclear test in 1964, China is estimated to now have about 400 nuclear warheads. They are on aircraft, missiles, some artillery shells, and a few at sea. The majority are spread over about 20 locations, including some hidden in caves in mountainous regions, in the hope that they would survive an attack and could be used to retaliate – and kill even more people. China has about 20 missiles able to hit the US, each has a single warhead of 4,000-5,000 Kt, (a hundred times more destructive than the hydrogen bomb India claimed to have tested, and a few hundred times more destructive than the simple atom bombs Pakistan claimed it tested).

    It seems Indian hawks are hoping for something like a Chinese style arsenal which is to be developed over a long period of time. The doctrine describes a triad, with warheads on planes, missiles and at sea. Bharat Karnad has talked of 350-400 nuclear warheads and a cost of at least 700 billion rupees over the next thirty years as meeting the aims of the doctrine. It is certain to cost more, take longer, and be more difficult.

    What does the Indian doctrine mean for Pakistan? There are enough madmen in Pakistan who will demand that, no matter what, we must do what India does. If India has a nuclear doctrine with operational nuclear forces we must have one also. We must have the planes, the missiles, the nuclear weapons at sea. They will say this for all the usual reasons – it satisfies their hate for India, feeds their ambition to father another bomb or a missile, guarantees them and their institutions even more money, and gives them more power. In previous situations they have prevailed. If they prevail again the arms race will enter an even more tortuous lap.

    All the elements are there. Last May, Indian weapons scientists claimed that they had tested a Hydrogen bomb. Last week the head of India’s nuclear program claimed not only that India could build a neutron bomb (an advanced kind of hydrogen bomb that generates a higher than usual amount of radiation), but that they could design and build bombs of “any type or size.” Soon after the May tests last year, the managers of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program talked of being able to build a Hydrogen bomb, should they be asked, and provided they were given enough money. Now, it is said, Pakistan can build a neutron bomb also – although this verges on the unbelievable since Pakistan has not yet tested a simple hydrogen bomb.

    The missiles too are being lined up. In April, Abdul Kalam, the head of India’s missile program said that the Agni-II, a 2,000-3,000 km range, was “operationally ready” for deployment with a nuclear warhead. In his independence day speech, India’s prime minister announced that “AGNI-2 has been tested… and will be integrated into our defence arsenal.” India’s space launcher successfully launched three satellites from one rocket, and could be converted into an intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple warheads, given enough time and money. There is no doubt Pakistan’s missile men will say that they too can achieve this, if they are given enough money.

    There is no end to the madness. There is talk of an Indian anti-ballistic missile system that will shoot down incoming missiles. Bhabha Atomic Research Center even claims it is building a device (called Kali-5000) that can be used as a beam weapon which “when aimed at enemy missiles and aircraft, will cripple their electronic systems and computer chips and bring them down.” No doubt Pakistan’s scientists will claim they can match that too – given enough money.

    This is certainly the response from Pakistan that India’s hawks hope for. In early July, the Hindustan Times ran a report “What Should We Do With Pakistan?” The first answer was “smash them.” But it was not with nuclear weapons. General V.R. Raghavan (former Director General of Military Operations) said “Till now, we¹ve borne heavy costs. Now we must impose costs.” A former Foreign Secretary urged “We must hurt them in every single way…” Brahma Chellaney, a member of the National Security Advisory Board, went further: “Hit them when they least expect, ideologically, strategically and economically, with military force being only a small slice of the offensive.” The Hindustan Times reported him as calling for economic warfare.

    The clearest of all was K. Subrahmanyam, the guru of India’s nuclear hawks and head of the National Security Advisory Board. He answered the question of what to do about Pakistan by saying “The perfect war is subjugation of the adversary without going to battle. If India raises its defence expenditure to 3 per cent of GDP from the present 2.3, Pakistan will try to match it and go broke. This was how the US under Reagan precipitated the Soviet collapse.” His plan is simple. Pakistan will be incited into an arms race that it is bound to lose. It will, in effect, defend itself to death. Unless there is war.

    The alternative is to put the madness of the bomb behind us. To give it up while there is time, before the bomb’s hateful machinery and its demented mechanics take complete control of life and death.

    *Zia Mian is a physicist and peace activist from Pakistan, currently on the research staff of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University. He is a founding member of Abolition 2000, and a member of its Global Council. He is also on the Coordinating Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the United Nations NGO Committee on Disarmament.

    He is the editor of Pakistan’s Atomic Bomb and The Search for Security (1995) and Making Enemies, Creating Conflict: Pakistan’s Crises of State and Society (1997). Other publications by ZIa Mian include “Diplomatic Judo: Using the NPT to Make the Nuclear-Weapons States Negotiate the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons” by Zia Mian and MV Ramana in Disarmament Diplomacy Issue #36.

  • The City of Hiroshima Peace Declaration

    “Today as Hiroshima marked its 54th anniversary of the atomic bombing of our city, we solemnly held the Peace memorial Ceremony in front of the Memorial Cenotaph in Peace Memorial Park, Japan, with thousands of people from Japan and overseas….This Peace Declaration expresses our desire for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of lasting world peace. The situation of the world is still changing suddenly. I would appreciate it if you would read through the Declaration to renew your understanding of the “Spirit of Hiroshma” and convey it to as many people as possible.” -Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, Hiroshma City

    A century of war, the twentieth century spawned the devil’s own weapons-nuclear weapons -and humankind has yet to free itself of their threat. Nonetheless, inspired by the memory of the hundreds of thousands who died so tragically in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all of war’s victims, we have fought for the fifty-four years since those bombings for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

    It is the many courageous hibakusha and the people who have identified with their spirit who have led this struggle. Looking at the important contributions these hibakusha have made, we cannot but express our deepest gratitude to them.

    There are three major contributions:

    The first is that they were able to transcend the infernal pain and despair that the bombings sowed and to opt for life. I want young people to remember that today’s elderly hibakusha were as young as they are when their families, their schools, and their communities were destroyed in a flash. They hovered between life and death in a corpse-strewn sea of rubble and ruin-circumstances under which none would have blamed them had they chosen death. Yet they chose life.

    We should never forget the will and courage that made it possible for the hibakusha to continue to be human.

    Their second accomplishment is that they effectively prevented a third use of nuclear weapons. Whenever conflict and war break out, there are those who advocate nuclear weapon’s use. This was true even in Kosovo. Yet the hibakusha’s will that the evil not be repeated has prevented the unleashing of this lunacy. Their determination to tell their story to the world, to argue eloquently that to use nuclear weapons is to doom the human race, and to show the use of nuclear weapons to be the ultimate evil has brought about this result. We owe our future and our children’s future to them.

    Their third achievement lies in their representing the new world-view as engraved on the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims and articulated in the Japanese Constitution. They have rejected the path of revenge and animosity that leads to extinction for all humankind. Instead, they have taken upon themselves not only the evil that Japan as a nation perpetrated but also the evil of war itself. They have also chosen to put their “trust in the justice and faith” of all humankind in order to create a future full of hope. As peace-loving people from all over the world solemnly proclaimed at the Hague Appeal for Peace Conference this May, this is the path that humankind should take in the new century. We ardently applaud all of the countries and people who have written this philosophy into their Constitutions and their laws.

    Above all else, we must possess a strong will to abolish nuclear weapons following the examples set by the hibakusha. If the entire world shares this commitment-indeed, even if only the leaders of the nuclear weapons states will it so-nuclear weapons can be eliminated tomorrow.

    Such will is born of truth-the truth that nuclear weapons are the absolute evil and cause humankind’s extinction.

    Where there is such will, there is a way. Where there is such determination, any path we take leads to our goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. However, if we lack the will to take the first step, we can never reach our goal no matter how easy the way. I especially hope our young people share this will.

    Thus, we again call upon the government of Japan to understand fully the crucial role the hibakusha have played and to enhance their support policies. We also call upon the government to place the highest priority on forging the will to abolish nuclear weapons. It is imperative that the government of Japan follows the philosophy outlined in the preamble of the Constitution to persuade other countries of this course and cement a global commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons. I declare the abolition of nuclear weapons to be our most important responsibility for the future of the earth, and pay my utmost respect to the souls of the many that perished in the atomic bombings. May they rest in peace.

    Tadatoshi Akiba Mayor, The City of Hiroshima

  • The Spirit of Hiroshima

    I am a hibakusha, a survivor of Hiroshima. In 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I was 12 years old, a 7th grader at girls’ junior high school. I was exposed to the A-bomb at a point less than a mile away from the epicenter.

    On the morning of August 6, 1945, the skies were perfectly clear without a sign of clouds. As the sun of midsummer arose, the temperature began to rise rapidly. When the air-raid alarm sounded at 7:09 a.m. and was cleared at 7:31 a.m., the citizens gave a sigh of relief and started their activities. Many people had entered the city from neighboring towns and villages to work at dismantling buildings. About 350,000 people were believed to have been in the city on that day, including more than 40,000 military personnel.

    There was no vacation for students during the war. Students of only 12 years old or so had to work day after day in factories or at building demolition sites. On that day, a total of about 8,400 junior high school boys and girls aged 12 to 14 were working on six building demolition sites.

    After the all-clear signal was issued, we went back to work. A total of 500 girl students, 7th and 8th graders of our junior high school, were serving as mobilized students, clearing away demolished buildings. Forming groups of 4 or 5, we collected broken tile, glass and pieces of wood and carried them in baskets, shouting “Yosha, Yosha,” encouraging each other.

    Suddenly my best friend, Takiko Funaoka, shouted, “I hear the sound of a B-29.” Never thinking it was possible, I looked up and there, high in the sky, the white vapor was trailing.

    Then I caught a glimpse of an airplane flying away to the northwest. I thought I saw some luminous body drop from the tail of the plane. I quickly lay flat on the ground. Just at that moment, I heard an indescribable deafening roar. My first thought was that the plane had aimed at me.

    I had no idea how long I had lain unconscious, but when I regained consciousness the bright sunny morning had turned into night. Takiko, who had stood next to me, had simply disappeared from my sight. I could see none of my friends nor any other students. Perhaps they had been blown away by the blast.

    I rose to my feet surprised. All that was left of my jacket was the upper part around my chest. And my baggy working trousers were gone, leaving only the waistband and a few patches of cloth. The only clothes left on me were dirty white underwear.

    Then I realized that my face, hands, and legs had been burned, and were swollen with the skin peeled off and hanging down in shreds. I was bleeding and some areas had turned yellow. Terror struck me, and I felt that I had to go home. And the next moment, I frantically started running away from the scene forgetting all about the heat and pain.

    On my way home, I saw a lot of people. All of them were almost naked and looked like characters out of horror movies with their skin and flesh horribly burned and blistered. The place around the Tsurumi bridge was crowded with many injured people. They held their arms aloft in front of them. Their hair stood on end. They were groaning and cursing. With pain in their eyes and furious looks on their faces, they were crying out of their mothers to help them.

    I was feeling unbearably hot, so I went down to the river. There were a lot of people in the water crying and shouting for help. Countless dead bodies were being carried away by the water – some floating, some sinking. Some bodies had been badly hurt, and their intestines were exposed. It was a horrible sight, yet I had to jump in the water to save myself from heat I felt all over.

    As I was watching the horrible scene, someone called my name, “Miyoko, aren’t you Miyoko?” But I couldn’t make out who was speaking to me. She said, “I am Michiko.” Her burns were so severe they had reduced her facial features – eyes, mouth and chin – to a pulp.

    Then I realized that bright red flames were blazing in the area from where I had escaped. Fearing that staying where Michiko and I were would mean that we would be trapped by the flames, we climbed up the river bank, helping each other.

    Just as we were about to cross the bridge, we found that A-bomb victims were moving about in utter confusion on the bridge. They reminded me of sleepwalkers.

    We crossed the bridge and on our way we witnessed countless tragedies. Those who drank from the water tank for fire prevention died as they tried to drink. They fell into the water, one on top of each other.

    A bleeding mother was trying to rush into a burning house, shouting, “oh, my boy….” But a man caught her and wouldn’t let her go. She was screaming frantically, “Let me go, let me go, my boy, I must go.” The scene was hell on earth.

    Helping each other, we came to the edge of another bridge. “I cannot run any further,” said Michiko. Yet she pleaded with me with her eyes to take her with me. I could not even give her a drop of water. We had to separate.

    Michiko walked alone to the temple property on the hillside about a half mile away. She was dead when her parents found her three days later. I always thought that if I had been able to help her a little more to reach the rescue center, she might have lived. My heart still aches.

    I managed to get to a first-aid station. I suffered from lingering high fever, diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding gums. Half of my hair fell out. I was on the verge of death. Keloid scars developed on my face, arms and legs. Someone helped me do knee bends so that my knees would not stiffen permanently.

    I was shocked and filled with sorrow when I looked at my face in the mirror for the first time after eight months. It was disfigured beyond all recognition. I couldn’t believe it was my face. My mother would weep and say, “I should have been burned instead of you, for I am much older than you and will not live long.” She would also say, “It would have been much better if you had died at the moment the bomb exploded.” Seeing mother in such deep sorrow, I made up my mind never to grieve over my fate in her presence.

    After eight months of treatment, I returned to my school only to find that the number of students had been reduced from 250 to about 50. Though I had suffered from the atomic bombing, I did not intend to stop my activities, so I studied very hard.

    The horrible keloids on my face kept me from finding work after graduation. Around that time I began visiting Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s church, located in Nagarekawa. I faithfully attended his Monday evening gatherings for atomic bomb survivors where, listening to sermons and singing hymns with the others, my heart gradually came to find peace. With the warm help of these people and many others, I became one of sixteen young women known as the “Hiroshima Maidens” who traveled to Tokyo and Osaka for hospital treatment.

    Eight years after the bombing, when I was 20, in May, 1953, I found myself inOsaka where I eventually underwent more than ten operations over a seven-month period. These operations were quite successful and, as a result, I was able to open and close my dysfunctional eyelid and to straighten out my crooked fingers. I was filled with gratitude towards those people who reached out with warm, loving hands and softly stroked my eyelid that wouldn’t shut. I returned to Hiroshima, wishing for a way to express my thanks.

    Reverend Tanimoto established a facility for poor blind children without families. I and two other “Hiroshima Maidens” began work there as live-in caretakers. From morning until night, we were mothers to these children, helping them with homework, meals, going to the bathroom, and changing and washing clothes. Exactly one year later, in May 1955, my two companions left this job to travel to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York to undergo more cosmetic surgery. For myself, I just didn’t feel right about traveling to the U.S., the country which had dropped the atomic bomb. I was left behind alone.

    My one pleasure each week was attending Sunday morning services at church. The Americans I met there did not fit the image I had formed of them in my mind. They were extremely kind, and deeply regretted their country’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of them was Mrs. Barbara Reynolds who later founded the World Citizenship Center (WCC) in Hiroshima. She was a pious Quaker who devoted her life and all she had to make Hiroshima internationally known. Because of her great efforts of goodwill, she eventually became a special honorary citizen of Hiroshima in 1975. Her hatred of the bombings were so strong and her caring for the victims so real, I often wondered how she could possibly be from the same country as the men who had bombed Hiroshima.

    I owe what I am today to the love of Mrs. Reynolds and many other people. She is the one who persuaded and encouraged me to speak of my experience to foreigners in English even though I had no confidence in my ability nor sufficient knowledge of the English language in my view. She and many kind Americans helped me overcome the fear of speaking about my experience. I am very grateful to all of them.

    Gradually coming to like and trust Americans, I realized that, had the Japanese possessed the A-bomb, we, too, would have used it. The real enemy, therefore, is not America. It is war and nuclear weapons. Those weapons must be abolished.

    Nuclear weapons are manufactured by human beings. War is started by us human beings, too. Peace begins when we share our sufferings with each other. We must all strive to overcome hatred and learn to love one another. The most important task for the peoples of this world is to cultivate friendship through exchanges involving religion, art, culture, sports, education, and economic assistance.

    In March 1962, just before the U.S. resumed nuclear testing and after I had been working at the home for the blind for eight years, I found a way to work at helping to abolish nuclear weapons. Through the help of Barbara Reynolds, I was chosen as a representative of Hiroshima to present the heartfelt message of the survivors of the A-bomb in person to U Thant, the Secretary General of the United Nations at the 18th National Disarmament Conference in Geneva. On the way to New York and Geneva, we visited 14 countries in five months, including the United States, England, France, West and East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Everywhere we appealed for a ban on nuclear testing.

    In April 1964, I joined anther group, the World Peace Study Mission, which traveled to eight countries between April and July. When I returned home, I was shocked to find that my elder brother and his wife had died from the after-effects of the bombing, leaving their three children, who were 6, 8 and 12 years old. The children had moved to our house to live with my aged parents, expecting me to bring them up. Moreover, my father’s health was very poor, due to cancer of the stomach, and the doctor said that he had only three more months to live. Although he was a survivor of the bombing himself, he had taken care of me and had worked at the first aid station treating victims and helping to dispose of dead bodies. I began to take care of my father, and my small nieces and nephew. I devoted my life to this task.

    In April 1982, when the Second Special Session on Disarmament Conference was held in the U.N., I made a third trip to the United States. My journey across America took two months. Barbara Reynolds, my guide and companion, traveled with me to Los Angeles, where we had spent an intense week introducing drawings by survivors to the people and media of Southern California. We were taken by van with those drawings, four films, 400 books, 1,500 pamphlets, 130 slide-sets, etc., from the West Coast of America to New York City. We visited 29 cities in 16 different states and one city in Canada. I made my appeal to more than 110,000 people in sixty-nine gatherings. We showed the drawings by survivors and projected our films about Hiroshima and Nagasaki so that people in North America could hear the story of Hiroshima and nuclear weapons. Three Japanese TV crews followed the exhibition, and recorded the reaction of Americans to the pictures and to my appeal for nuclear disarmament, to show on Japanese television.

    Six years after the trip to the United Nations, in September 1988, I had to take five months’ sick leave in order to have breast surgery. The Director of the National Cancer Research Center said. “At the time the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the radiation released adversely affected human cells undergoing division, especially in the mammary glands where the process of cell division is at its peak when a female is between 10 and 13 years old. In those girls passing through puberty when the bomb was dropped, a cancerous seed was implanted. The female hormonal system acted to promote the growth of this cancer. Forty-three years later, the chances for having breast cancer were four times greater for women who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.”

    I may look fine and healthy now, but my old wounds still hurt all the time. I still have the fear that I will soon have the A-bomb disease again and suffer for the rest of my life. When I get depressed and worried about the future, I try to remember my friends who were killed by the bomb when they were young. I’m sure they each had their own dreams. I feel so sorry for them when I think of how much they wanted to live. But at the same time, I can hear them saying to me that I was very fortunate to have lived and I should take care of myself in order to accomplish my mission. My mission is to continue telling my experience as a survivor, a hibakusha, appealing for the abolition of nuclear weapons, talking about the folly of war and the preciousness of life, to as many people as possible. That surely will console their souls.

    I am grateful for being able to live, and do what I can to make peace.

    As a hibakusha, I am determined to continue appealing for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the Earth. That is what I must do. We survivors of the atomic bombing are against the research, development, testing, production, and use of any nuclear arms. We are opposed to war of any kind, for whatever reason.

    I would like to say to young people in the United States and other countries: Nuclear weapons do not deter war. Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. We all must learn the value of human life. If you do not agree with me on this, please come to Hiroshima and see for yourself the destructive power of these deadly weapons at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

    We are at the threshold of the 21st century. It is time for us to change the international trend from confrontation to dialogue, from distrust to reconciliation, and to move towards the solidarity of nations in the world, so that every creature on Earth can live in peace on this beautiful planet. It is war itself that is wrong.

    The inscription on the peace memorial cenotaph in Hiroshima reads: “Let all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.” That is what the spirit of Hiroshima is all about.

    We must vow to do all in our power that never again will anyone have to face the tragedy that occurred in Hiroshima.

    “We Shall Not Repeat the Evil.” No More Hiroshimas! No More War!

    My only purpose is to appeal to everyone to work for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons, and for a more peaceful world of mutual understanding.

  • A Cold Warrior Looks to Ban the Bomb After a Career in Brinkmanship

    “Butler is highly motivated in his quest to ban nuclear weapons, but then again he knows what those weapons can do when perhaps the rest of us have forgotten.”

    Retired Gen. George L. (Lee) Butler is among the very few whose job description has included the power to destroy the planet. As he recalled during a telephone conversation last week: “I lived for three years, every day of my life, with the requirement to answer a phone within three rings and be prepared to advise the president on how to retaliate with respect to the real or perceived threat of nuclear attack. I found it extremely sobering.”

    Butler, 59, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a much-decorated Vietnam air-combat veteran, came to that awesome responsibility upon ascending to the post of commander of U.S. strategic nuclear forces. He held that job between 1991 and 1994 in the Bush administration, just after the Cold War came to an abrupt end. But the U.S reliance on nuclear deterrence did not.

    While working for the Joint Chiefs under the direction of General Colin L. Powell, Butler was charged with reevaluating the U.S. nuclear deterrent in the aftermath of the Cold War. It was Butler’s recommendation to stand down the U.S. nuclear force from hair-trigger alert for the first time in 30 years, and the Bush administration acted on his recommendation, with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, then the Soviet leader, following suit.

    “So I felt when I retired in 1994,” Butler recalled, “that nuclear-arms control was on a pretty good track. START 11 was signed and starting the ratification process, and I had a great sense of relief and gratification that all had begun to change fairly quickly.” But he ruefully concedes that his optimism was misplaced: “Here we are, years later, and things look pretty much the same.”

    The impasse on nuclear-arms control deeply worries Butler as he assays a Russia close to ruin with deteriorating control over its still deadly nuclear arsenal. “The Russians survey a strategic landscape in which our Senate has imposed a moratorium on any sort of cuts that we might make, so here we are with 6,000, 7,000 operational weapons, about half of them on alert; and they are struggling to keep about a third of that many viable.”

    While everyone is focused on the fighting in Kosovo, Butler considers Russia’s weakness and instability a prescription for disaster and so has devoted his retirement years to getting arms control back on track. The father of two and grandparent of three, Butler is highly motivated in his quest to ban nuclear weapons, but then again he knows what those weapons can do when perhaps the rest of us have forgotten.

    Question: The whole effort to abolish nuclear weapons, which you have been involved with, seems to be on a back burner as relations with the Russians deteriorate. Are you worried about their ability to control their own weapons?

    Answer: I am, to some extent. My own view is that, with regard to the operational weapons, I think they’re as concerned as we, if not more so, about keeping those accountable and safe and secure. I worry more about the components back in the labs and in the multiplicity of storage sites that they built over the years, and I just can’t believe they have the resources to keep those to the same standards that they did during the Cold War. I’ve been following some of the reports coming out of the secret cities — for example, Krasnoyarsk, where that reactor is still running, cranking out maybe 40 tons of plutonium a year and folks are on half-wages and dispirited and poor morale and God knows what kind of discipline they’re able to maintain, and that’s an enormous temptation. So I guess I worry more about that stuff getting into the wrong hands than I do about accidental launch.

    Q: Speaking of stuff getting into the wrong hands, what do you make of the charges of China stealing secrets from the Los Alamos lab?

    A: I’m not so much outraged that China is spying on us. Everybody spies on everybody else–even our friends spy on us. That’s one thing, but that just simply means we all have the greater obligation to safeguard those secrets we feel could be most damaging to our national security if revealed. So I put a lot of responsibility on our own doorstep here.

    Q: In terms of arms control, what right do we have, aside from that they shouldn’t steal, to tell China not to develop an arsenal of this sort?

    A: We don’t, we clearly don’t have that right. Part of the cross we bear by continuing to maintain this Reaganesque nuclear-weapons policy is that we’re hoist on the petard of our own nuclear-weapons rhetoric. I keep thinking about that phone call the president must have had with his counterparts in India and Pakistan, trying to persuade them not to test or to develop nuclear weapons when we still have words that say nuclear weapons are essential to our security. In fact, they are the cornerstone of our security, when we have no reasonable threat that we can point to; and yet any of those nations can say, “Look at us, our survival is threatened.” It puts us in a terrible position with regard to containing proliferation, or just to bring moral suasion to bear in terms of trying to end the nuclear era after half a century.

    Q: Why hasn’t there been more progress toward eliminating nuclear weapons?

    A: It’s a whole host of things. I thought there was a kind of a cosmic roll of the dice, in the sense that, at the very moment the Cold War was coming to a spontaneous, unanticipated conclusion, George Bush failed at reelection and, consequently, at a moment when what we needed more than anything else was continuity in our national-security and foreign- policy team, it was totally disrupted.

    Q: But why is the Clinton administration not more aggressive on nuclear-arms control?

    A: It’s really puzzling. If I had to put my finger on it, in this arena real progress comes down to one thing, and that is motivation and guidance from the top. It has to come from the Oval Office, and that’s why I hark back to the latter days of the Bush regime, because that’s the way all that got done. There was no anguishing negotiation with our own bureaucracy, much less that in Moscow. We just made a political calculation of what the new state of the Russia-U.S. relationship would tolerate safely, measures that we could take independently that would send a signal of trust. There was a willingness to exercise boldness and leadership and vision, and I don’t think that this administration came to town prepared to do that on the international front. They had a very ambitious domestic agenda and tackled things like Medicare right out of the bag. Got off on a terrible foot with the military, and I think all that soured the relationship and, to some extent, poisoned the well.

    Q: Also, with Bush, it was good having a war hero as president who couldn’t be baited as being a dove.

    A: Yes. In my view, the single most important set of arms-control accomplishments were George Bush’s unilateral measures back in ‘9 1. We took all of the tactical nukes off the ships and brought them home from Europe and took the bombers off alert and accelerated the retirement of the Minuteman H force. And [Soviet President Mikhail S.] Gorbachev kind of unilaterally followed suit shortly thereafter and accelerated retirement of some of their programs that we’re standing down under START 1. It’s kind of ironic that, today, we have a Republican Congress that thwarts arms-control progress and yet it was a Republican administration that really moved the ball down the field.

    Q: What about the threat from China and from the so-called rogue nations?

    A: I’ve been through this so many times–it was my business, and this stuff about rogue nations, it just infuriates me to hear responsible people use bumper-sticker labels like that. As if you can reduce the complexity of sovereign entities with complex histories and cultures and bureaucracies to a label in order to avoid having to think about them seriously. We call Iran a rogue nation, and 20 years ago they were our closest ally; when the shah was in power, they were our friends.

    Q: If one accepted the idea of a sort of rogue or terrorist nation or force, it is difficult to think of thwarting them with sophisticated nuclear delivery systems.

    A: Exactly. I went through this in the Persian Gulf, because I was the planner and had to think through the question of what if Saddarn [Hussein] has a so-called weapon of mass destruction, which is another term I just really dislike because it lumps together three weapons of enormously disparate consequence. But it doesn’t take long to parse that out. If he’d employed chemicals, there is no circumstance I can imagine under which the United States should or would have replied with a nuclear weapon, or biological for that matter. Those are terrible weapons, but we’ve faced chemical weapons for years. And biological weapons, when you look at them from a battlefield perspective, which I’ve done much of my years as a planner, they’re pretty difficult to even think about how you use them without threatening yourself as much as anybody else.

    And as far as a nuke is concerned, my sense was that even if he’d had a nuclear weapon, I cannot imagine he would have employed it except in extremis, which means that we were going to occupy his country and either kill him or put him on trial as a war criminal–in which case, I suspect, where he would have employed the weapon, presuming it actually worked, would not have been against us or Saudi Arabia but probably in Israel. In which case there is nothing we could have done to stop that; it would have been an extraordinary catastrophe.

    But in terms of using a nuclear weapon in retaliation, the political and military and economic consequences or obstacles were just overwhelming.

    Q: Let me ask again about China and the risk of their putting a sophisticated warhead on a ballistic missile.

    A: You’re out there worrying about the prospect of ballistic missiles, but for most nations that would be the last thing in the world you’d ever want to resort to in terms of a desire to explode a nuclear device against the United States. There are more technologically efficient ways of getting that done. Suitcase bombs or offshore launching of a cruise [missile] strapped to the hull of a freighter are far more plausible than any ballistic-missile attack.

    But all of that presupposes an urge on the part of China to make a nuclear attack on the United States, which is effectively to commit suicide, and that’s where it all breaks down for me.

    China has only been re-demonized here recently. Even in the latter stages of the Cold War, we didn’t treat China as much of a threat. All of a sudden now, they’re being elevated again. That’s still a country that is fragile and, in some respects, perishable as any nation that size could possibly. be. To me it’s part and parcel of the business of not thinking responsibly or even intelligently about the international environment in which we operate, what U.S. interests are and how we deal with the nations that intersect most importantly with those.

    Q: What do you think about this revival of the Strategic Defense Initiative?

    A: I have a lot of reservations about it. I feel a sense of personal responsibility because the Rumsfeld Report, which I helped author, is being touted by the proponents of ballistic missile defense as being justification for getting on with it. But what I told [former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld] and said to committees on the Hill in private, when we took our report over at their request, was I see no need to proceed to ballistic missile defense until the following requirements are met: One, we see threats that are commensurate with that level of effort, and nothing that we had in our report portrayed that. Secondly, that the technology is in hand; you just can’t wish and make it happen. And third, that whatever we do, we don’t unilaterally abrogate the [Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty], that we make this a cooperative negotiation with Russia that finds a way to square the circle of our security concerns and theirs.

    Q: Finally, what are the risks of accidental nuclear war?

    A: What one would worry more about is the kind of event that happened in January of 1995, when that experimental rocket was launched in the coast of Norway. That was initially assessed by the Russian command-and-control system as having been a Trident launch, and that was passed on all the way up to [President Boris NJ Yeltsin as a prospective ICBM attack from the United States. That information was only headed off in the final few moments.

    The Russian command-and-control system and early-warning system is in a state of great decline. About two-thirds of the satellites they relied on for early-warning capability are inactive or failing. That means there are very large sectors of the United States they either can not see or can not see for several hours each day–which puts them in a much more fragile posture with regard to the single most critical aspect of this deterrence equation, which is adequate forewarning of an attack. They are experiencing false alarms now on almost a routine basis. And I shudder to think about what the state of the morale and discipline of their rocket forces are, who are suffering along with everyone else with regard to not being paid and inadequate wages and an extremely dismal quality of life.

    There are worrisome aspects to all of that, but those are circumstance that we can deal with the simple step of reducing the alert status of these weapons. That’s why people like myself are so puzzled and dismayed that our government won’t even address that.

    “By continuing to maintain this Reaganesque nuclear-weapons policy … we’re hoist on the petard of our own nuclear-weapons rhetoric.”

    “This stuff about rogue nations, it just infuriates me … As if you can reduce sovereign entities with complex histories and cultures and bureaucracies to a label.”

    “You’re out there worrying about the prospect of ballistic missiles, but for most nations that would be the last thing in the world you’d ever want to resort to.”

    * Robert Scheer is a Contributing Editor to The Los Angeles Times and the author of “With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War.”

  • General George Lee Butler University of Pittsburgh Speech

    ” … it is my profound conviction that nuclear weapons did not, and will not, of themselves prevent major war. To the contrary, I am persuaded that the presence of these hideous devices unnecessarily prolonged and intensified the Cold War. In today’s security environment, threats of their employment have been fully exposed as neither credible nor of any military utility.”

    Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, and thank you Wes for your gracious introduction. My relationship with Wes Posvar is one of the threads that traces the evolution of my thinking back to the earliest years of my life as a military professional. His powerful intellect and rigorous standards of excellence imbued me with a profound determination to be worthy of my responsibilities as servant of the nation’s security. That is a responsibility that continues to move me very deeply, and indeed, it accounts for my presence this evening.

    I have brought with me another servant of the national interest whose contributions and sacrifices made a lasting imprint on my career and on the lives of thousands of colleagues with whom I served. My wife Dorene assumed the demanding obligations that derived from my duties with extraordinary grace and competence. She left a lasting mark on the quality of life of military families. In our new life, she serves as a principal officer in our foundation dedicated to reducing nuclear dangers, and is my most trusted and valued advisor.

    I want also to acknowledge the University of Pittsburgh for organizing this conference to address the future role and mission of nuclear weapons. In my judgment this is the central issue of our age. I still find it near miraculous that we now live in an age where the prospective elimination of these weapons can be seriously addressed. But, as I have made clear in my public remarks over the past three years, I am dismayed by how badly the handful of nuclear weapon states have faltered in their responsibilities to reduce the saliency of their arsenals.

    It is not my intention tonight to reiterate the explicit concerns that underlie my dismay. Those concerns are spelled out in a series of five speeches that progressively develop my thinking as I have absorbed the arguments of my critics, devised alternative strategies for elimination with like-minded colleagues and reflected on the steadily eroding progress of traditional arms control approaches.

    With respect to critics, I noted with interest that the convenors of this conference chose a negative formulation of its subject: why not nuclear abolition? That is useful if only because it serves as a reminder that proponents of abolition must be deeply mindful of the risks and obstacles that must be accounted for both along the path and at the end state of a presumptive nuclear weapons free world. By way of introduction to my principal remarks, I will suggest that these difficulties and dangers are most often posited in terms of three key arguments. First, that nuclear weapons cannot be “disinvented;” second, and relatedly, that abolition cannot be verified; and third, that the absence of nuclear weapons will make so-called “major wars” once again possible.

    I will touch on the first two of these arguments briefly and the third at length. But let me begin by noting that they all obscure an absolutely vital understanding. I came to appreciate early on in my long association with nuclear arms control that issues regarding risk reduction and prospectively abolition depend in the final analysis upon judgments about costs and benefits, both along the path and at the end state. These judgments in turn depend upon a disciplined and continuing assessment or the security environment in which reductions might be taken, or state of abolition is to be maintained.

    Too often, however, the risks of abolition are simply asserted as if they could not be adequately mitigated. Such assertions typically project upon that end state a risk calculus posed in terms of today’s sovereign relationships, technological tools and societal attitudes. This mindset ignores or discounts the stunning reality that the global security environment has already been profoundly transformed by the end of the cold war. It also misses the point that this astonishing and wholly unanticipated eventuality was itself the product of both serendipity, such as the elevation to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, and the willingness of statesmen to work relentlessly toward reducing nuclear dangers even in the face of unrelenting tension.

    As to the merits of these arguments, with respect to the first I would suggest that a world free of nuclear weapons but burdened with the knowledge of their possibility is far more tolerable than a world wherein an indeterminate number of actors maintain or seek to acquire these weapons under capricious and arbitrary circumstances. The former is effectively a condition of existential deterrence wherein all nations are marginally anxious but free of the fear of imminent nuclear threats. The latter is a continuing nightmare of proliferation; crises spun out of control and the dreaded headline announcing a city vaporized in a thermonuclear cloud.

    As regards verification, I need only to pause and reflect on the extraordinary progress we have witnessed in this arena since the superpowers committed themselves to reduce their nuclear arms, and then imagine what can be achieved when they finally commit themselves to their elimination. I can equally imagine, having already 13een party to an instance of forcible denial, the regime of both sanctions and incentives that can be designed to severely penalize cheating and rewar13 compliance. That regime will become increasingly imaginable and attainable as the distant goal of abolition draws nearer and nearer.

    Finally, with respect to the argument that nuclear weapons have and will in perpetuity preclude so-called “major war,” I take great exception with its unstated premise that the Soviet Union was driven by an urge to armed aggression with the West, and that nuclear deterrence was the predominant factor in a presumed Soviet decision to refrain from armed attack. Greater access to former Soviet archives continues to shed critical new light on the intentions and motivations of Soviet leaders. For example, in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Vojtech Mastny, a senior Research Scholar at the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center, has concluded that, and I quote, “the much-vaunted nuclear capability of NATO turns out, as a practical matter, to have been far less important to the eventual outcome than its conventional forces. But above all, it was NATO’s soft power that bested its adversary.”

    The importance of this point cannot be overstated, because it goes to the heart of the debate over the future role of nuclear weapons as justified by the asserted primacy of nuclear deterrence in averting major conflict during the Cold War era. Certainly, there is no question that the presence of nuclear weapons played a significant factor in the policies and risk calculus of the cold war antagonists. It may well be that once these weapons were introduced into their respective arsenals, nuclear deterrence was their best, and their worst, hope for avoiding mutual catastrophe.

    It is equally clear, however, that the presence of these weapons inspired the United States and the Soviet Union to take risks that brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. It is increasingly evident that senior leaders on both sides consistently misread each other’s intentions, motivations and activities, and their successors still do so today. In my own view, as I observed in my speech to the national press club in February of last year, nuclear deterrence in the cold war was a “dialogue of the blind nth the deaf. It was largely a bargain we in the west made nth ourselves.”

    As a strategist, I am offended by the muddled thinking that has come increasingly to confuse and misguide nuclear weapons policy and posture, the penalties of which are increasingly severe. Arms control negotiations are in gridlock as the United States and Russia cling to doctrines and forces that are completely irrelevant to their post-cold war security interests. Both nations are squandering precious resources at the expense of conventional military capabilities in growing demand and in the process of being steadily eroded. They have rendered moot their obligations under article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty, and thereby greatly diminished their moral capacity to champion its cause. The price of this folly is of historic import. By exaggerating the role of nuclear weapons, and misreading the history of nuclear deterrence, the united states and Russia have enshrined declarations and operational practices that are antithetical to our mutual security objectives and unique defense requirements. Worse, in this country, they have weakened our grasp of the power and the application of classic deterrence in an age when we stand preeminent in our capability to bring conventional military power to bear on our vital interests.

    We continue to do so in the face of compelling evidence that nuclear deterrence was and remains a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships. The fog of fear,

    Confusion and misinformation that enveloped the principals caught up in the Cuban missile crisis could have at any moment led to nuclear annihilation. The chilling fact is that American decision-makers did not know then, and not for many years thereafter, that even as they contemplated an invasion some one hundred soviet tactical nuclear warheads were already in place on the island. No further indictment is required to put the elegant theories of nuclear deterrence in perpetual question.

    But this lesson has been made time and again, in Korea, in Indochina and most recently in the Persian Gulf, successive presidents of both parties have contemplated and then categorically rejected the employment of nuclear weapons even in the face of grave provocation. Secretary James Baker’s infamous letter to Saddam Hussein was a bluff as concerns the potential use of nuclear weapons. Not only did Iraq violate its prohibition against “the destruction of Kuwait’s oil fields,” but analysis had already shown that a nuclear campaign against Iraq was militarily useless and politically preposterous.

    In sum, it is my profound conviction that nuclear weapons did not, and will not, of themselves prevent major war. To the contrary, I am persuaded that the presence of these hideous devices unnecessarily prolonged and intensified the cold war. In today’s security environment, threats of their employment have been fully exposed as neither credible nor of any military utility.

    And so we now find ourselves in the worst of all outcomes. Policy is being reduced to simplistic declarations that nuclear arms are merely “political weapons,” as if they can be disconnected from the risks of misperceived intent, the demands of operational practice, and the emotional cauldron of an acute confrontation. Superpower postures are being largely maintained at cold war levels, at enormous expense and increasing risk. New entrants are elaborating primitive forces and so-called deterrent policies without benefit of the intricate and costly warning and control measures essential to any hope of crisis stability. Finally, new forces are coming into play as political pressure build to deploy ballistic missile defenses, as governments rise and fall, and as regional animosities deepen.

    This is truly a dismal state of affairs. But it was not foreordained. Rather, it is the product of a failure of the worst kind in the realm of national security, that is, a failure of strategic vision. I do not make that criticism lightly, because I have held responsibilities for anticipating and acting on the perceived consequences of strategic change at the highest levels of government. I want to dwell on that experience for a moment because it leads me to a precise explication of how I view nuclear abolition as a goal and as a practical matter in light of contemporary circumstances.

    Ten years ago I was engaged in one of the greatest intellectual challenges of my military career: rewriting United States’ national military strategy in anticipation of the end of the cold war. At the time I was the director of strategic plans and policy for the nation’s armed forces, reporting directly to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. I was working under his guidance to redefine the roles, missions, organization and equipage of our military forces in light of what we both foresaw as the precipitous decline of soviet-style communism. Having concerted our views on the broad-brush strokes of this new global canvas, it was then my task to fill in the details and present them for his consideration. I felt well prepared for this effort, having spent the previous two years engaged in intensive interaction with high level soviet officials. I had also invested an enormous intellectual effort to imagine how historic forces might re-emerge after the Cold War to shape the world security environment.

    In my view, the revised strategic portrait I drew nearly a decade ago, amended by my conclusions during three subsequent years as commander of the strategic nuclear forces, is still largely relevant to the security tasks that presently confront us. First and foremost, it was founded on the premise that the United States must continue to play the leading role in sustaining and extending global peace and stability. Second, it posited that managing relations with a Soviet Union engaged in a sweeping transformation was by far our primary security interest, especially in its nuclear dimension. Third, it identified stability in the Persian Gulf and Korean peninsula as vital interests, which is to say that challenges to those interests must be met with immediate and overwhelming force. Fourth, it imagined that other smaller contingencies might arise requiring some form of American intervention with less robust forces and objectives.

    This broad global framework was tied to a highly detailed and rationalized force structure and organization that differed dramatically from the cold war era. It presaged a thirty-percent reduction in the size of the armed forces, a much more compact alignment, a premium on joint warfighting and a highly sophisticated equipage that would elevate warfare beyond the reach of any prospective opponent.

    That vision of global leadership, security priorities and robust conventional forces was short lived. It began on a high and promising note. Events in the summer of 1990 quickly proved the thesis that we would not tolerate a challenge to our vital interests in the Persian Gulf. Iraq’s aggression aims were stopped, reversed and harshly penalized by forceful American leadership and a brilliant combined arms campaign that took Iraqi forces out of play with blinding speed and with minimal coalition casualties. Shortly thereafter, president bush took a series of unilateral steps that dramatically advanced the purposes and the prospects of nuclear arms control. Then, with the sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire, the stage seemed set for an historic realignment of the forces and the rules governing security relations among sovereign states.

    Today, I am dumbfounded as I survey the global security landscape. United States leadership is unfocused and uncertain, reeling from crisis to crisis, sharply divided over ends and means, bereft of a sense of larger purpose. Our nation is materially driven and spiritually depleted. Relationships with Russia and with China hang by diplomatic threads, the consequence of policies that have proven intemperate, shortsighted and too often premised on wishful thinking. Saddam Hussein has restored his power base and dismantled the inspection regime, and we have yet to decode the bait and switch tactics emanating from Pyongyang.

    Finally, our precious conventional forces are under enormous stress, stretched thin across a host of roles and deployments, their capabilities diminished by falling readiness, only recently have congress and the administration acknowledged these debilitating circumstances and begun to provide the resources required to reconcile our strategic ends and means. In the meantime, all of the services have seen their ranks thinned by disaffection, grinding deployments and economic distress. Worse, the services are still required to fund a highly wasteful base structure and an unending array of pork barrel projects and programs.

    What then is missing from the current security debate? Why are we en aged in such an indeterminate and divisive quarrel over the most fundamental questions of national security? With respect to the conventional roles and missions of our armed forces, the answer is clear: as a nation we have yet to redefine much less to inculcate into our national psyche the broader scope of our vital interests in the post-cold war era.

    Nothing could make this point more sharply than the agonizing events in Kosovo. We are conducting a major air campaign in an undeclared war for extremely demanding objectives, yet unwilling to commit the ground forces essential to victory or to suffer the inevitable casualties. We want our strategic cake and to eat it as well. We have declared intolerable, that is, contrary to our vital interests, the humanitarian disaster in the Balkans yet want to reverse its circumstances on the cheap. As a consequence, we have contributed to the disaster and called into question our commitment to defend what we declare to hold dear.

    With respect to nuclear forces and policy, the failure of vision is compounded by a failure of imagination, of sheer intellectual paralysis. The traditional arms control process, which served us well through the tensions of the cold war, is not just stalled, but dysfunctional, it is freighted with psychology, language, assumptions and protocols that perpetuate distrust, constrain imagination, limit expectations and prolong outcomes. It is mired in partisan politics; the nation’s most vital interest reduced to a spiteful liberal — conservative standoff. It focuses on things that now matter relatively less, like numbers of warheads, at the expense of things that matter a great deal more, such as the policies that drives the numbers, and the rapid response postures. With regard to the non-proliferation treaty, ingrained pat-terns of interaction between the nuclear and now nuclear weapon states are promoting a train wreck; a collision of competing expectations that I believe is at this juncture irreconcilable.

    Clearly, it is time for reappraisal of what is possible and what is not, what is desirable and what is not, or simply what is in our best national interest. Was it mine alone to resolve I would propose the following path. With respect to the goal of abolition, I believe it is the only defensible goal and that goal matter enormously. First and foremost, all of the formally declared nuclear weapon states are legally committed to abolishing their arsenals in the letter and the spirit of the nonproliferation treaty. Every President of the United States since Dwight Eisenhower has publicly endorsed elimination. A clear and unequivocal commitment to elimination sustained by concrete policy and measurable milestones is essential to give credibility and substance to this long—standing declaratory position.

    Such a commitment goes far beyond simply seizing the moral high ground. It focuses analysis on a precise end state; all force postures above zero simply become waypoints along a path leading toward elimination. It shifts the locus of policy attention from numbers to the security climate essential to permit successive reductions. It conditions government at all levels to create and respond to every opportunity for shrinking arsenals, cutting infrastructure and curtailing modernization. It sets the stage for rigorous enforcement of nonproliferation regimes and unrelenting pressures to reduce nuclear arsenals on a global basis.

    That being said, however, in keeping with the unanimous conclusions of my colleagues on the national academy of science committee on international security and arms control, in our 1997 report, I am persuaded that the more attainable intermediate step is the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Prohibition is the more familiar coin of the realm in global efforts to constrain weapons of mass destruction. The biological and chemical weapons conventions have put down the indisputable marker that as weapons of mass destruction these means are morally repugnant and an affront to humanity. The realization cannot be far behind that as the only true weapons of mass destruction, nuclear arms are not only a candidate for prohibition, they should have been the first objective.

    Next, regarding the steps toward prohibition, clearly the most urgent concern should be those elements of nuclear capabilities that pose the most immediate danger. In my judgment, those

    elements begin with the practice of maintaining thousands of warheads on high states of alert, which is to say, launch readiness. Having successfully proposed to President Bush in 1991 to reduce bomber launch readiness from several minutes to days, I am appalled that eight years later land and sea based missiles remain in what amounts to immediate launch postures. The risk of accidental or erroneous launch would evaporate in an operational environment where warheads and missiles are de-mated and preferably widely separated in location.

    Third, it is imperative to recognize that all numbers of nuclear weapons above zero are completely arbitrary; that against an urban target one weapon represents an unacceptable horror; that twenty weapons would suffice to destroy the twelve largest Russian cities with a total population of twenty-five million people-one-sixth of the entire Russian population; and therefore that arsenals in the hundreds, much less in the thousands, can serve no meaningful strategic objective. From this perspective, the start process is completely bankrupt. The start 11 ceiling of 3000 to 3500 operational warheads to be achieved by the year 2007 is wholly out of touch with reality; the start iii objective of 2000 operational warheads is a meaningless reduction in terms of the devastation at such levels.

    In light of the current, complexly interrelated and intransigent attitudes of the nuclear weapons states-declared or otherwise-the best compromise is an arbitrary figure in the hundreds as defined by the arsenals of China, France and Great Britain. Numbers above that level are simply irresponsible, owing more to bureaucratic politics and political demagoguery than any defensible strategic rationale.

    At some future juncture, the thorny questions of warhead versus delivery system accountability, and tactical nuclear stockpiles must come into play. But what matters most in the current atmosphere is to reduce the saliency of nuclear weapons. That first requires the United States and the former Soviet Union to stop brandishing them by the thousands as if their cold war hostility were undiminished. America and Russia are not enemies. Rather, we are common survivors of a perilous enmity who could find no better solution to their entangled security fears than the monstrous resort of mutual assured destruction.

    Finally, with regard to the crucial question of deploying a national ballistic missile defense, let me recall here what I said to the Congress on this subject as a member of the Rumsfeld Commission. My position rests upon the following conditions, none yet evident. First, that we devise a system relevant to the threats described by the commission report. Second, that the technology essential to deploy such a system with high confidence be in hand. And, third, that in any case, we bend every effort to accommodate such a system within the bounds of ABM Treaty amended as necessary in concert with Russia. To do otherwise invites a series of consequences that may leave us far worse off, than the missile threats we strain to confront.

    In closing, let me underscore that this imposing agenda is a necessary but far from sufficient step toward regaining our strategic footing as the worlds most powerful nation. We cannot shrink from devoting the resources necessary to sustain conventional forces of unchallengeable strength. The capabilities and professionalism of our intelligence Community, badly eroded since the end of the cold war, must be rebuilt. And we must recognize our unique responsibility to preserve and extend the capacity of international organizations to combat global poverty and human abuse.

    Above all, we must remedy our loss of strategic vision and restore a sense of larger purpose, we have become much too prone to demonize our enemies, real or prospective, too ready to wield the meat axe of power politics than to stay the course of patient diplomacy. Nothing I have read makes this case more cogently than the sophisticated agenda set forth by Bill Perry and Ash Carter in their recent book, Preventive Defense, which should be required reading for both diplomats and warriors.

    Our best guide in the process of national renewal is simply to act in accordance with the principles and values that set us apart from tyranny and above the murderous inst114cts of racial, ethnic and religious hatred. That is what must underwrite your deliberations in this conference. It is also the test that will ultimately define our goodness as a people, our worth as a nation and our legacy to humanity.

    * General George Lee Butler retired from 33 years of military service on February 28, 1994. He served with distinction and completed numerous flying and staff assignments, including professor of nuclear subjects at the Air Force Academy. General Butler was the last Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) before that command ended in 1992. He served as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Strategic Command, successor to the SAC, at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, and formulated strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In both command positions he helped in the revision of US nuclear war plans. He was the principal nuclear advisor to the president to whom the president would have issued a command tolaunch America’s nuclear arsenal. Butler currently serves as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Committee on International Security and Arms Control for the National Academy of Sciences and the Canberra Commission. He serves on numerous boards of Omaha civic organizations. He founded the Second Chance Foundation which, which has its headquarters in Omaha, and is dedicated to the effort of globally eliminating nuclear weapons by promoting public education of awareness of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and sponsoring activities to reduce or to eliminate these dangers. Butler received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 1999 Distinguished Peace Leader Award for his courageous advocacy of abolishing nuclear weapons.

  • NATO: Abandon First Strike Doctrine, De-Alert Nuclear Weapons

    The world has changed dramatically, even NATO itself has changed, not necessarily for the better, but NATO nuclear policy, based upon nuclear deterrence and a first use option, has not changed.

    For its first 40 years NATO was a defensive alliance. Its purpose was to defend against an attack on Western Europe by the Soviet Union. NATO relied heavily on the threat to use nuclear weapons to thwart such an attack. Regardless of what one thinks of this policy, it must be recognized that the need for such a strategy has passed.

    The Cold War ended. There is no longer a Soviet Union. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved. No threat against Western Europe currently exists, and the Russians have sought friendly relations with the West.

    How has NATO responded to this situation?

    First, it has expanded. George Kennan, an American elder statesman who crafted the containment policy against the former Soviet Union, has called NATO expansion the single greatest mistake in American foreign policy in the post Cold War era. It is a mistake because it threatens the Russians.

    Second, NATO has changed from a defensive alliance to an offensive alliance in disregard of its own Charter.

    NATO, is currently engaged in hostilities that are in clear violation of international law.

    Third, NATO has resisted any change in its nuclear doctrine. It continues to have a nuclear first-strike doctrine, meaning that NATO refuses to declare that it will use nuclear weapons only against attack by nuclear weapons.

    Fourth, NATO continues to maintain U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, and continues to employ a nuclear sharing policy. U.S. nuclear weapons are located in Germany, UK, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Netherlands, and Belgium.

    It is important to note that all of this takes place under strong pressure from the United States, and is the result of U.S. leadership of NATO.

    When the new German government came to power and wanted to pursue a No First Use (of nuclear weapons) policy for NATO, the U.S. put strong pressure on them to fall into line. Similar pressure has been applied to Canada and to other NATO governments.

    What is wrong with NATO’s nuclear policy?

    It is terribly dangerous. It could have catastrophic results, by accident or design. It forces the Russians to greater reliance on their nuclear arsenal. It encourages nuclear proliferation. It violates international law, both the Non-Proliferation Treaty (Articles VI, and I and II) and the opinion of the International Court of Justice. Most tragically, it undermines the best opportunity we may have to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

    What should NATO do?

    1. Immediately declare a policy of No First Use, and a policy of Non-Use against non-nuclear weapons states.

    2. Remove all U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe, including withdrawal of Trident submarines from European waters.

    3. Express its support for the World Court decision on the illegality of nuclear weapons.

    4. Make an unequivocal commitment to the elimination of nuclear arms and take practical steps to accomplish this end, as called for by the New Agenda Coalition.

    5. De-alert its nuclear forces, and begin to separate warheads from delivery vehicles.

    6. Begin negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention, setting forth an agreed upon plan for the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons.

    7. Declare an immediate cease fire in the Balkans, and return the issue of peace in the former Yugoslavia to the United Nations Security Council or to the UN General Assembly under Article 20 of the Charter and a “Uniting for Peace” Resolution if the Security Council is deadlocked.

    In concluding, I’d like to share with you a message I received by email from a friend in Russia, Alla Yaroshinskaya, who is an advisor to President Yeltsin:

    “We are very close to theatre of war in Yugoslavia and have information from both sides. And I am very afraid we are on the eve of 3rd world’s war. NATO and USA, bombing Yugoslavia, help very much our crazy communists to take into force sooner than they dreamed about that. And I think that USA has good chance to feel destruction on their own territory if power in such country like Russia with nuclear strategical weapons fall down to the hands of bloody Bolsheviks.”

  • Needed: An Updated Strategy for Nuclear Security During the Disarmament Process

    The continuing success of the global efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament is impressive. Awareness of the true dimensions of the continuing nuclear threat has been raised, yet success in these efforts has revealed an inherent danger in the disarmament process. Security programs developed for the armament process are not, in many cases, adequate for the disarmament process.

    Nuclear weapons security is designed to provide a continuity of protection from manufacture to installation in a potential delivery system or in a ready-for-use storage site. Security comprises a series of special function jurisdictions, each with a unique set of handling or processing requirements.

    It is a compartmentalized security system, meaning that each facility maintains its own security. The least dangerous element (in terms of loss to an adversary or accidental detonation) is the initial step of mining, refining, and converting raw materials for use in the weapons making efforts. Security in this activity is routine industrial plant security as these facilities are not likely to be targets. The most danger begins when the materials are combined to become the components for nuclear weapons. Security requirements at these manufacturing facilities increases and is adjusted to meet the specific needs of the facility depending on its function within the system.

    Therefore, as each function is accomplished and material is passed to the next facility, security responsibilities change commensurately. The ultimate recipients, the military, in turn, provide their own security.

    Superimposed on this system of security arrangements is a number of specialized support groups which provide unique functions that supplement facility security. They provide unique functions not provided by facility security. The most utilized of these services is provided by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Transportation Safeguards Division (TSD). TSD trains, equips, and controls a group of security specialists known as “Couriers” who provide safe, secure transport of fabricated nuclear materials. Other security support services are provided by Explosive Ordinance Disposal teams (EOD), the Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) and a multiplicity of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. These groups work together through a series of interagency agreements and protocols that establish lines of authority and jurisdictional responsibilities. The security system now in place has evolved as the nuclear industry grew to meet the demands of the military for weapons. The system was designed and implemented for serialized, unidirectional (manufacture to use) purposes. Whether or not the same system will be adequate for the disarmament process is an open question. The mounting body of evidence suggests it will not.

    The bureaucracy that created the nuclear security system is multifaceted, and, in some cases, duplicative and unnecessary. Responsibility for its programmatic development is vested in many bureaus within DOE and DOD. These bureaus and subordinated groups are now competing for dominance and the limited funds that are available to maintain their status quo as they struggle to realign their missions to counter the known and perceived terrorist threats. New divisions and ad hoc specialized groups are being created within the existing agencies and, consequently, more competition is engendered for the limited human and monetary resources. The net effect of these developments is that nuclear security, already questionable in many areas , will continue to deteriorate due to the perception that the need for this specific security system diminishes as disarmament efforts become more successful. Already, under the guise of Civil Defense, the Pentagon is flexing its muscle in the competition as it assumes a role in the training of civilian agencies for chemical, biological, and nuclear emergencies. Fifty-two million dollars have been authorized by Congress for this program, yet the diffuse nature of the efforts across so many agencies offers little promise for improving protection against threats of misappropriation where the residual materials of nuclear disarmament are concerned. The focus on specific security regimens is being lost in favor of more generic types of security presumably more capable of countering a broader range of threats to our national safety.

    This type of political and bureaucratic reaction is not responsive to the operational requirements for well-founded security and is not conducive to developing means that will neutralize the dangers from the growing terrorist threat.

    For the conditions existing in the political environment today, there is a primary and essential need to increase awareness of the operational realities related to security in the nuclear disarmament effort so that deficiencies can be identified and corrected. This has to be done as a prerequisite to the dismantling process. The vital issues must be raised in ways that will motivate the government and people throughout our society to take appropriate and effective action.

    More concerted efforts must be made to identify and isolate each perceived or real threat in context with the unique security problems it creates. This level of attention will, in turn, assure that effective deterrents for specific threats can be developed and put into place.

    A prerequisite for the disarmament process to achieve its purpose with minimum risk is an understanding of the complexities arising from the shift in attitudes that avoids considering the significance of independently treating, in depth, the threats specific to nuclear security . The security of nuclear materials cannot be relegated to a dependency upon the generalizations of a generic security program.

    Everyone Gets into the Terrorist Game, – David E. Kaplan, U.S. News and World Report – Nov. 17, 1997, Based on DOE’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), begun in the 1970’s, copy-cat units are being established by the FBI (DEST -Domestic Emergency Support Teams), The State Department (FEST – Foreign Emergency Support Team), Public Health (MMST – Metropolitan Medical Support Teams), DOE (two spin-offs to NEST (Best – Biological Emergency Search Team and CEST – Chemical Emergency Search Team) and also the Marines with CBIRF -Chemical Biological Incident Response Force.

    Eye on America, CBS Evening News, Nov.25, 1997, Report by Rita Braver on security problems at Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility

    Taking Civil Liberties – Washington Whispers, U.S. News and World Report – Jan. 12., 1998 pg 15

  • General Lee Butler on NATO’s Nuclear Policy

    Jean-Pol Poncelet
    Minister of Defense
    Belgian Ministry of Defense
    Belgium
    Via Fax: 32-2-550-29-19

    Dear Defense Minister Poncelet,

    German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s suggestion that NATO revise its nuclear doctrine is most welcome. As you discuss these matters with your colleagues it may be that my own experience in thinking through this question as the Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the U. S. armed forces during the Gulf war might be helpful. I was equally engaged in the matter of prospective nuclear response to attack by WMD during my tenure as Commander-in-Chief of U. S. Strategic Command during the period 1991 to 1994.

    As you are keenly aware, the Gulf War presented us with the very real possibility of confronting such an attack by the forces of Iraq. We went through the exercise of imagining how it might unfold and examining a variety of response options. My personal conclusion was that under any likely attack scenario, a nuclear reply by the United States and its allies was simply out of the question.

    First, from a purely military perspective, the coalition forces had the conventional capability to impose any desired war termination objectives on Iraq, to include unconditional surrender and occupation. For a variety of reasons, we elected not to go to that extreme but it was clearly an option in the face of a WMD attack.

    Second, given our conventional superiority, and the nature of the war zone, the use of nuclear weapons simply made no tactical nor strategic sense. General Powell noted in his memoirs that several weapons would have been required to mount any sort of effective campaign against military targets, an option that Secretary Cheney immediately rejected – and understandably so. Further, whatever the immediate battlefield effects, the problems of radioactive fall-out carrying over into friendly forces or surrounding countries were unfathomable.

    Third, the larger political issues were insurmountable. What could possibly justify our resort to the very means we properly abhor and condemn? How could we hold an entire society accountable for the decision of a single demented leader who holds his own country hostage? Moreover, the consequences for the nonproliferation regime would have been severe. By joining our enemy in shattering the tradition of non-use that had held for 45 years, we would have destroyed U.S. credibility as leader of the campaign against nuclear proliferation; indeed, we would likely have emboldened a whole now array of nuclear aspirants.

    In short, in a singular act we would have martyred our principal foe, alienated our friends, destroyed the coalition so painstakingly constructed, given comfort to the non-declared nuclear states and impetus to states who seek such weapons covertly.

    In the end, we tried to have it both ways, privately ruling out a nuclear reply while maintaining an ambiguous declaratory policy. The infamous and widely misre-presented letter from Secretary Baker to Baghdad was ill-advised; in fact, Iraq violated with impunity one of its cardinal prohibitions by torching Kuwait’s oil fields.

    When I left my J-5 post in Washington and took up this issue as CINCSTRAT, I found all of the foregoing cautions to be relevant across a wide spectrum of prospective targets in a variety of so-called rogue nations. I ultimately concluded that whatever the utility of a First Use policy during the Cold War, it is entirely inappropriate to the new global security environment; worse, it is counterproductive to the goal of nonproliferation and antithetical to the values of democratic societies.

    Please forgive this rather abrupt intrusion into your deliberations. Obviously, I would not take such a liberty if I did not believe it was warranted by the import and the urgency of the issue.

    Warm regards,

    Lee Butler
    General, USAF (Retired)
    11122 Williams Plaza
    Omaha, NE 68144

    The letter was sent to the following official:.

    Jean-Pol Poncelet
    Minister of Defense
    Belgian Ministry of Defense
    Belgium
    Via Fax: 32-2-550-29-19

    Art Eggleton
    Minister of Defense
    Canadian Department of National Defense
    Canada
    Via Fax: 613-995-8189

    Hans Haekkerup
    Minister of Defense
    Royal Danish Ministry of Defense
    Denmark
    Via Fax: 45-33-32-0655

    Akis Tsohatzpoulos
    Minister of Defense
    Greek Ministry of Defense
    Greece
    Via Fax: 301-644-3832

    Eduardo Serra Rexach
    Minister of Defense
    Spanish Ministry of Defense
    Spain
    Via Fax: 34-91-55-63958

    Joris Voorhoeve
    Minister of Defense
    Dutch Ministry of Defense
    The Netherlands
    Via Fax: 31-70-345-9189

    Ismet Sezgin
    Minister of Defense
    Turkish Ministry of Defense
    Turkey
    Via Fax: 90-312-418-3384

    Jose Veiga Simao
    Minister of Defense
    Portugese Ministry of Defense
    Portugal
    Via Fax: 351-1-301-95-55

    Beniamino Andreatta
    Minister of Defense
    Italian Ministry of Defense
    Italy
    Via Fax: 39-06-488-5756

    Rudolf Scharping
    Minister of Defense
    German Ministry of Defense
    Germany
    Via Fax: 49-228-12-5255

    Dag Jostein Fjaevoll
    Minister of Defense
    Norwegian Ministry of Defense
    Norway
    Via Fax: 47-23-09-2323

    George Roberston
    Minster of Defence
    UK Ministry of Defence
    United Kingdom
    Via Fax: 44-171-218-7140

    Alain Richard
    Minister of Defense
    French Ministry of Defense
    France
    Via Fax: 33-1-47-05-40-91
    Hallder Asgrimsson
    Minister of Foreign Affairs
    Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs
    Iceland
    Via Fax: 354-562-2373

    Alex Bodry
    Foreign Minister
    Ministere de la Force Publique
    Luxembourg
    Via Fax: 352-46-26-82

  • European Parliament Resolution on the New Agenda Coalition on nuclear disarmament

    The European Parliament,

    – having regard to its previous resolutions on nuclear disarmament, testing and non-proliferation,

    A. welcoming the joint statement of 9 June 1998 by the Foreign Ministers of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa and Sweden, entitled, ‘Towards a nuclear-weapon-free world: the needs for a new agenda’, a group also known as the New Agenda Coalition (NAC),

    B. welcoming the broad diversity of this coalition of countries, crossing as it does traditional lines of co-operation, and also welcoming the eight countries’ initiating a multilateral debate at the highest level of government on such an important and urgent issue,

    C. noting that the United Nations’ First Committee passed the NAC resolution on 13 November 1998, with 97 votes in favour, 19 against and 32 abstentions,

    D. concerned by both the continued retention of nuclear weapons by a few and the nuclear aspirations of others, and reasserting its call for a nuclear-weapon-free world,

    E. noting that this timely initiative, which includes two EU Member States and one associate member, reflects the post-Cold War redefined security environment and sets a path towards constructive engagement discussions on the subject of nuclear disarmament,

    F. emphasising that the UN resolution does not propose actions that contradict any existing EU, NATO or national policies, and supports existing policies regarding inter alia the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the US-Russia START process and nuclear-weapon-free zones,

    1. Calls upon the EU Member States to support the NAC initiative and to vote in favour of it in the General Assembly in December;

    2. Calls on those countries that possess nuclear weapons to fulfil their commitment to disarm by virtue of Article VI of the NPT;

    3. Calls also on the non-nuclear weapon members of the NPT to fulfil their treaty commitments i.e. not to receive, manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;

    4. Calls on states outside of the NPT to immediately, and unconditionally, accede to the treaty and to place all fissionable materials under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards;

    5. Underlines the importance and the necessity of further improving existing verification procedures with a view to ensuring effective compliance by all states concerned, including the allocation of appropriate funding;

    6. Requests that those countries opposing the UN resolution make clear their objections by specifically naming the paragraphs in question;

    7. Calls upon all Member States of the EU to undertake discussions on the subject of taking nuclear forces off their current high-sensitivity alert procedures, also known as de-alerting, as highlighted in the Canberra Commission report of 1996;

    8. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Foreign Ministers of the NAC and the United Nations Secretary General.