Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Threat

  • Nuclear Weapons Abolition: Signs of Hope

    Nuclear Weapons Abolition: Signs of Hope

    Introduction Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan came close to achieving agreement on abolishing nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik summit in 1986. The stumbling block was Reagan’s dream of “Star Wars,” which Gorbachev could not accept. Who could have predicted that within a decade of the founding of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the Berlin Wall would fall and the Soviet Union would cease to exist? Who could have predicted that, despite the end of the Cold War, nuclear dangers would continue to grow? The end of the Cold War helped to disarm public concern about nuclear dangers, but these dangers have not ended.

    Throughout this past quarter century, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been a steady and persistent voice of reason in its calls for abolishing nuclear weapons. We believe, along with the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is an evil that must not be repeated. I am proud that we stand with the hibakusha, who have shown such compassion and strength of character in their forgiveness and their persistence. I have supported their nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, and I continue to do so.

    I want to speak about where we stand on the road to nuclear weapons abolition. I consider this goal – a world free of nuclear weapons – to be the greatest challenge of our time. Humans created nuclear weapons – weapons that could end civilization and the human species. Humans have used nuclear weapons in warfare. We know the results of that use. We know the danger that continues to exist with 26,000 nuclear weapons still in the world. Our cities are threatened, as is our common future. I will try to answer the following questions.

    1. What are nuclear weapons?
    1. Why oppose these weapons?
    1. Why do some countries possess these weapons?
    1. Why do other countries support these weapons?
    1. Do nuclear weapons make a country more secure?
    1. What is the current nuclear policy of the United States?
    1. Whose interests do nuclear weapons serve?
    1. What is the road to nuclear weapons abolition?
    1. Are there signs of hope?

    I will end with signs of hope. I believe that there is a way out of the nuclear dilemma for humanity, and that we must not allow complacency and despair to conquer hope.

    What Are Nuclear Weapons?

    Nuclear weapons derive their power from the energy contained within the atom. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima used enriched uranium (Uranium 235) to create an explosive force equivalent to 12.5 thousand tons of TNT. The bomb that destroyed Nagasaki used Plutonium 239 to create an explosive force equivalent to 20 thousand tons of TNT. Thermonuclear weapons, which use the power of fusion, are capable of yields thousands of times greater than those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The great majority of nuclear weapons today are thermonuclear weapons.

    Nuclear weapons are not instruments of war in any traditional sense. They destroy everything within miles of their detonation. Their radioactive effects linger long after the damage of blast and fire has run its course. The effects of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in time or space. They go on killing and destroying even into new generations of survivors. They cannot be conceived of as simply “weapons.” They are instruments of annihilation, putting the future of humanity itself at risk. Beneath their veneer of scientific achievement, nuclear weapons are the tools of bullies, thugs and madmen. Why Oppose These Weapons?

    Some people support policies that rely upon nuclear weapons and justify the weapons as “instruments of peace.” This a strange way to conceptualize weapons that could destroy most life on the planet in a matter of hours.

    Here are ten reasons to oppose nuclear weapons. They are ten reasons that I oppose nuclear weapons, and I commend them as ten reasons that you, too, should oppose these weapons.

    1. They are long-distance killing machines incapable of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, the aged and the newly born, or between men, women and children.
    2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.
    3. They threaten to foreclose the future.
    4. They are cowardly weapons, and in their use there can be no honor.
    5. They are a false god, dividing nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.
    6. They are a distortion of science and technology, twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.
    7. They mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.
    8. They waste our resources on the development of unusable instruments of annihilation.
    9. They concentrate power in the hands of the few and undermine democracy.
    10. They corrupt our humanity.

    Why Do Some Countries Possess These Weapons?

    There are currently nine countries that possess nuclear weapons: US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. More than 95 percent of the 26,000 nuclear weapons in the world are in the arsenals of the US and Russia.

    The principal justification for nuclear weapons has always been deterrence – the threat of nuclear retaliation to prevent a nuclear attack. The reason that the United States first developed nuclear weapons was the fear that the Germans might also develop them, and the United States would need to have the weapons to deter the Germans from using their weapons. The Soviet Union developed its nuclear arsenal for deterrence – to keep the United States from threatening or using its nuclear arsenal against them. Every country that has developed nuclear weapons has had the intention of deterring another country. Even the most recent addition to the nuclear weapons club, North Korea, wanted to have a nuclear deterrent capability to assure survival of its regime from potential attack by the United States.

    In addition to deterrence, a second reason that some states have pursued nuclear weapons is prestige. Since the five permanent members of the Security Council were the original five members of the nuclear weapons club, other nations recognized that the possession of these weapons offered a high level of prestige in the international system. When India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, there was buoyant celebrating in the streets of the major cities of these countries. The people in these countries, despite their poverty, took pride in the achievement of their nation’s nuclear weapons capability – ironically, a capability that could lead to their demise.

    Why Do Other Countries Support These Weapons?

    The principal reason that some countries support nuclear weapons, without possessing them, is that they are tied by military compact with a nuclear weapons state. This is sometimes referred to as being under a “nuclear umbrella.” Many countries are under the US nuclear umbrella. These include Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in the Far East; Australia in the Pacific; and the countries belonging to NATO in Europe. These countries tend to give support to US nuclear policy in the belief that they are being protected by the deterrent value of the US nuclear arsenal.

    Some poorer and dependent countries give support to US nuclear weapons policy because their governments are pressured by US economic incentives and disincentives. But there are not too many of these countries, and most countries in the world express support for United Nations General Assembly resolutions aimed at achieving a nuclear weapons free world. To give one example, the Disarmament Committee in the United Nations General Assembly recently voted on a resolution for “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” a resolution spearheaded by Japan. The resolution was passed by a vote of 165 states in favor, 3 states opposed, and 10 states abstaining. The three states voting against the resolution were India, North Korea and the United States.

    Do Nuclear Weapons Make a Country More Secure?

    Security is a concept with both psychological and physical dimensions. Psychologically, one may feel secure, but not be secure in reality. The opposite is also true. One may not feel secure, but actually be quite safe. Nuclear weapons operate at the psychological level. The security they offer is of the psychological variety. These weapons cannot provide actual physical security. Deterrence, for example, is a psychological theory. It cannot provide actual physical protection against a nuclear attack.

    It is worth examining deterrence theory to see how much security it actually provides. For deterrence to work, there must be clear communications, the threat of retaliation must be believed, the decision makers must act rationally, and the targets of deterrence must be locatable. In other words, one cannot deter someone who does not understand you, someone who does not believe you, someone who acts irrationally, or someone who cannot be located. Given all these ways in which deterrence can fail, it seems highly irrational to base the future of one’s country or the planet on the belief that deterrence will work under all circumstances.

    The best evidence that deterrence is not to be relied upon is missile defenses. If leaders thought that deterrence was foolproof, they wouldn’t need to have missile defenses for protection. Instead, many countries are developing missile defenses to provide actual physical protection against a nuclear attack. The problem with missile defenses is that they, too, are unlikely to work under real world conditions. Most of the successful tests with missile defense systems have employed a homing device that guides the “defensive” missile to the “offensive” one, a condition not likely to be present in the real world. Further, many experts have given clear testimony that missile defenses can be defeated by the use of offensive missile decoys. Russia has responded to US missile defenses by developing offensive missiles with greater maneuverability. Missile defenses are also making the prospects for nuclear disarmament increasingly distant.

    In the end, nuclear weapons make a country less secure, since a country that possesses nuclear weapons is almost certainly targeted by nuclear weapons. While nuclear weapons may add little to the security of an already powerful country, they may act for weaker countries as a perceived deterrent to offensive actions by more powerful countries. Thus, North Korea was able to sustain negotiations with the United States to achieve development and security goals by having a small nuclear arsenal, whereas Iraq, which did not have nuclear weapons, was attacked by the United States and its regime overthrown. This is a dangerous strategy for North Korea, but it points out that aggressive policies by powerful states can act as a stimulant to nuclear proliferation.

    Ronald Reagan, when he was President of the United States, recognized that the only viable purpose of nuclear weapons for the US and Soviet Union was to deter the other side from attacking. That being the case, Reagan noted, “…would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” Reagan was right. True security will be found not in possessing nuclear weapons, but in eliminating them.

    What Is the Current Nuclear Policy of the United States?

    In recent years, the United States has not played a constructive role on issues of nuclear disarmament. Rather, it has demonstrated by its policies its intention to rely upon nuclear weapons for the indefinite future. I would characterize US nuclear policy unstable, unreliable and, ultimately, as reckless, provocative and dangerous for itself and humanity. I will discuss below some of the principal elements of US nuclear policy.

    Double Standards. The US has upheld one standard for its friends and allies, and another standard for its perceived enemies. Thus, the US seeks to promote nuclear trade with India, despite the fact that India never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed and tested nuclear weapons. The US has been willing to bend its own laws and pressure the international Nuclear Suppliers Group to support its agreement with India. In the same vein, the US has not complained about Israeli nuclear weapons and has continued to annually give billions of dollars of military support to Israel. At the same time, the US attacked Iraq for supposedly having a nuclear weapons program and is threatening Iran with attack for the same unsubstantiated reasons (Iran claims to be enriching uranium only for its legal nuclear energy program). The Bush administration is currently seeking to replace every weapon in its nuclear arsenal with a new thermonuclear warhead, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead. Such double standards are not sustainable, and are widely recognized as such in the international community.

    Extended Deterrence. The United States seeks not only to deter a nuclear attack against its own territory, but also an attack against its allies. Thus, the US provides nuclear assurances to its NATO allies as well as to its allies in East Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These countries are considered to reside under the US nuclear umbrella. One of the goals of US nuclear policy is to provide assurance to its allies. In the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, it states, “US nuclear forces will continue to provide assurance to security partners, particularly in the presence of known or suspected threats of nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks or in the event of surprising military developments.”

    Ambiguous Messages. The US has not given clear messages about when it may use nuclear weapons. As indicated above, even “surprising military developments” can be viewed as a provocation for the threat or use of US nuclear forces. The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, for example, also states, “Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack….”

    Threat of Preventive Use. In a 2005 draft document, Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, the US expressed a willingness to use nuclear weapons against an enemy “intending to use WMD” against the US or allied military forces, or in the case of an “imminent attack from adversary biological weapons….”

    High Alert Status. The US and Russia continue to keep some 3,500 nuclear weapons on high alert status, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so. This creates a dangerous situation in which these weapons could be launched by accident.

    Preventing Proliferation by force. The US demonstrated its willingness to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons by force when it attacked Iraq in 2003. It has threatened to use force to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons to Iran.

    Launch on Warning. The US continues to employ a policy of launching its nuclear weapons on warning of attack. This increases the chances of launching to a false warning, and thus initiating a nuclear attack.

    Alliance Sharing. US nuclear weapons are currently shared with six US allies in Europe – Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey and the UK. Some 350 US nuclear weapons are currently thought to be deployed in Europe in cooperative agreements with these countries that would leave the weapons in the hands of the European countries in the event of hostilities. The US is the only country in the world to deploy nuclear weapons on foreign soil.

    Negative Leadership. There are two main directions in which leadership can be applied on nuclear weapons issues. One direction is toward ending reliance on nuclear weapons and eliminating them; the other direction is toward sustaining these weapons for the indefinite future. The United States has chosen the latter course. It has blocked progress toward nuclear disarmament in the United Nations General Assembly, the Commission on Disarmament, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conferences, despite its obligation under the NPT to engage in “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament. In the area of nuclear policy, the US has shown negative leadership. It has been an obstacle rather than a beacon in moving toward achieving a nuclear weapons free world.

    When looked at in overview, and when taking the first letters of each of the elements of US nuclear policy described above, they spell Death Plan. While I don’t think that US nuclear policy is consciously meant to be a Death Plan, I do think that it is currently charting a course that will result in nuclear proliferation, potential nuclear terrorism, increased nuclear threats and the eventual use of these weapons.

    Above all countries, the United States should be leading the way toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Not only does it have special responsibilities as the country that first created nuclear weapons and first used them, but it is also the country that would benefit most in terms of security from abolishing these weapons.

    Whose Interests Do Nuclear Weapons Serve?

    Nuclear weapons seemingly serve the interests of countries that are threatened by another nation’s nuclear weapons. The US was originally threatened by the potential of German nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union was threatened by US Nuclear Weapons, the UK and France were threatened by the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, and so on. It is clear, however, that deterrence can fail, defeating reliance upon nuclear weapons for security.

    Beyond the questionable interests of countries in nuclear weapons for deterrence, the most obvious interests are those of the scientists and engineers employed to create and improve these weapons. The engineers and scientists employed by the nuclear weapons laboratories – such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US – have a continuing interest in their job security and prestige. In the US, the University of California has a financial interest in the resources it receives from the government for providing management and oversight to the Nuclear Weapons Laboratories, as does its partner in management, Bechtel Corporation ,and other defense contractors.

    One class of people whose interests are not served by nuclear weapons is the citizens of a country that possesses these weapons. They are the targets and potential victims of nuclear attack by other nuclear-armed states. It is ordinary citizens, the inhabitants of Earth, including the nuclear weapons states, who have the most to lose in a nuclear exchange.

    What Is the Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition?

    The road to nuclear weapons abolition is a road not much traveled, but one that calls out to humanity. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recognized that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. We must choose: humanity or nuclear devastation. The choice should not be difficult. We must end the nuclear weapons era before these weapons end the human era.

    The road to nuclear weapons abolition can be conceived of as a series of steps to lessen nuclear dangers, while engaging in good faith negotiations on an international treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. It is a road to a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). A Draft NWC has been created by some international civil society organizations, including the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP). The Draft Convention was first introduced to the United Nations General Assembly by the Republic of Costa Rica in 1997, and was revised and reintroduced to the UN by Costa Rica in 2007.

    The Draft Nuclear Weapons Convention sets forth a plan for the phased, verifiable, irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. It is only one such guide, but it demonstrates that a feasible plan can be created. It should be an incentive to nuclear weapons states to begin the process of good faith negotiations that they are obligated to fulfill by their membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Among the steps that can be taken in conjunction with negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention are the following:

    1. De-alerting nuclear arsenals;
    2. Legally binding commitments to No First Use of nuclear weapons;
    3. Placing all weapons-grade nuclear materials, as well as uranium enrichment, plutonium separation and other key elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, under strict and effective international control;
    4. Ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
    5. Reestablishing an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
    6. Banning weapons of mass destruction in outer space.

    Are There Signs of Hope?

    There are some signs of hope that our human spirits can prevail over the cold technology of nuclear annihilation.

    1. The vast majority of states in the world support a world free of nuclear weapons. There are currently 188 countries that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The nuclear weapons states party to this treaty agree that they will pursue “good faith” negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. Unfortunately, these states (US, Russia, UK, France and China) have not acted to fulfill their disarmament obligations. Only three countries have not signed the treaty (Israel, India and Pakistan), and one country has withdrawn (North Korea). At the United Nations Disarmament Committee in October 2007, states voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons.” The vote was 165 in favor, three opposed and ten abstentions. The three opposed were India, North Korea and the US.
    1. The vast majority of US and Russian citizens support a world free of nuclear weapons. A 2007 poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org found that the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons was supported by 73 percent of Americans and 63 percent of Russians. In both countries, even larger majorities want their governments to do more to pursue this objective. Sixty-four percent of Americans and 59 percent of Russians favor taking all nuclear weapons off high-alert status. Most Americans (88%) and Russians (65%) endorse the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), but would like to speed up the timetable of the treaty and have reductions far greater than the 2,200 by 2012 that are called for in the treaty. A majority in both countries would support cutbacks to 400 nuclear weapons each, making their arsenals roughly comparable to those of other nuclear weapons states. A large majority of Americans (92%) and Russians (65%) believe that an international organization, such as the United Nations, would need to monitor and verify compliance with such deep reductions.
    1. Cities are standing up for nuclear disarmament. The Mayors for Peace “2020 Vision” Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons has grown to nearly 2000 Mayors in 124 countries. The United Cities and Local Governments organization, the world’s largest and most widely recognized mayoral association, voted in October 2007 to support the Mayors campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. The Declaration of the United Cities and Local Government organization stated, “We call on all nation states and armed groups to cease considering cities as military objectives – ‘cities are not targets’.”
    2. More than half the world is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones. Virtually the entire southern hemisphere is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones, including Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Africa, and Southeast Asia. In addition, central Asia has set up a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.
    1. Former Cold War officials are now coming out in favor of a world free of nuclear weapons and US leadership to achieve such a world. In a January 4, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn argued, “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S. leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage — to a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.” At a follow up conference in late 2007 on the 21st anniversary of the Reykjavic Summit of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Nancy Reagan told the conference, “Ronnie had many hopes for the future and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons. As Ronnie said, these are ‘totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing and possibly destructive of all life on earth.’ I agree and applaud your effort to create a safer world.”
    2. Norway’s Government Pension Fund has divested from companies providing components for nuclear weapons. The Norwegian Government Pension Fund – Global, based upon a recommendation from the Ethics Council for the fund, has divested from companies that develop and/or produce central components for nuclear weapons. According to their ethical guidelines, the fund may not invest in companies that produce weapons that through normal use may violate fundamental international humanitarian principles, a category that includes nuclear weapons. The following companies were excluded from the fund on this basis: BAE Systems Plc, Boeing Co., Finmeccanica Sp.A., Honeywell International Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., Safran SA and United Technologies Corp. The Ethics Council pointed out that this is not an exhaustive list.
    1. Legal measures are being taken to challenge the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament obligations. There is a plan by the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) to encourage the United Nations General Assembly to ask the International Court of Justice whether or not the nuclear weapons states are acting in “good faith” on their obligations for nuclear disarmament in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In Italy, there is a legal case for the removal of US nuclear weapons from Italian soil.
    1. University students are showing increased concern for university involvement in nuclear weapons research and development. At the University of California at Santa Barbara, the students have established a Student Oversight Committee to oversee the US Nuclear Weapons Laboratories for which the University provides management and oversight. They intend to conduct inspections of the laboratories and report to their fellow students on whether the laboratories are fulfilling their obligations under international law.

    Conclusions

    Nuclear weapons are instruments of annihilation. Rather than provide security, the undermine it. US leadership toward nuclear disarmament is needed, but unfortunately the US has been setting up obstacles to nuclear disarmament. This must change.

    There are some signs of hope. The vast majority of countries and people support the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. Large majorities of American and Russian citizens want to move faster in this direction. Some 2000 of the world’s cities are supporting the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020, and are speaking out against the targeting of cities. More than half of the world is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones. Even former American officials during the Cold War are now pressing for US leadership for the elimination of nuclear weapons. These are all good and hopeful signs of intention. But more is needed – in addition to intention, there must also be momentum and raising the issue to a higher priority on national and global agendas.

    Norway has found a way of applying economic pressure to the corporations involved in developing or producing components for nuclear weapons. This is a powerful action that should be adopted by other major funds throughout the world. There should be a global call for divestment from these companies. Legal channels present another powerful avenue for bringing pressure to bear upon the nuclear status quo. One can imagine a global campaign to remove nuclear weapons from the oceans, the common heritage of humankind, and to prevent their introduction into the common province of humankind in outer space.

    Finally, young people are beginning to awaken to this issue, as exemplified by the student activities in opposition to the University of California’s management and oversight of the US Nuclear Weapons Laboratories. Young people must be educated to understand that it is their future that is most endangered by nuclear weapons. They cannot wait to become the leaders of tomorrow; in their own interest, they must step up and become the leaders of today on this critical issue.

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

  • Empire and Nuclear Weapons

    Over the past six decades, the United States has used its nuclear arsenal in five often inter-related ways. The first was, obviously, battlefield use, with the “battlefield” writ large to include the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The long -held consensus among scholars has been that these first atomic bombings were not necessary to end the war against Japan, and that they were designed to serve a second function of the U.S. nuclear arsenal: dictating the parameters of the global (dis)order by implicitly terrorizing U.S. enemies and allies (”vassal states” in the words of former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.) The third function, first practiced by Harry Truman during the 1946 crisis over Azerbaijan in northern Iran and relied on repeatedly in U.S. wars in Asia and the Middle East, as well as during crises over Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis, has been to threaten opponents with first strike nuclear attacks in order to terrorize them into negotiating on terms acceptable to the United States or, as in the Bush wars against Iraq, to ensure that desperate governments do not defend themselves with chemical or biological weapons. Once the Soviet Union joined the nuclear club, the U.S. arsenal began to play a fourth role, making U.S. conventional forces, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, “meaningful instruments of military and political power.” As Noam Chomsky explains, Brown was saying that implicit and explicit U.S. nuclear threats were repeatedly used to intimidate those who might consider intervening militarily to assist those we are determined to attack.

    The final role of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is deterrence, which came into play only when the Soviet Union began to achieve parity with the United States in the last years of the Vietnam War. This is popularly understood to mean preventing a surprise first strike attack against the United States by guaranteeing “mutual assured destruction.” In other words, any nation foolish enough to attack the United States with nuclear weapons will be annihilated. However, Pentagon leaders have testified that deterrence has never been U.S. policy, and they have defined deterrence as preventing other nations from taking “courses of action” that are inimical to U.S. interests. This could include decisions related to allocation of scarce resources like oil and water, defending access to markets, or preventing non-nuclear attacks against U.S. allies and clients, i.e. role #2, using genocidal nuclear weapons to define and enforce the parameters and rules of the U.S. dominated global (dis)order.

    My argument is not that U.S. use and threatened use of nuclear weapons have always succeeded. Instead, successive U.S. presidents, their most senior advisers, and many in the Pentagon have believed that U.S. use of nuclear weapons has achieved U.S. goals in the past. Furthermore, these presidents have repeatedly replicated this ostensibly successful model. In fact, even the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki achieved only one of their two purposes. These first bombs of the Cold War did communicate a terrorizing message to Stalin and the Soviet elite about the capabilities of these new weapons and about the U.S. will to use them. But, within weeks of the A-bombings, Washington was sharing influence in Korea with Moscow. Four years later northern China and Manchuria, which U.S. leaders thought they had won with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, fell into what was seen as the Soviet sphere. In 1954 France declined the offer of two U.S. A-bombs to break the Vietnamese siege at Dienbienphu, and in 1969 North Vietnam refused to be intimidated by Nixon’s “November ultimatum.”

    The U.S. commitment to nuclear dominance and its practice of threatening nuclear attacks have, in fact, been counterproductive, increasing the dangers of nuclear war in yet another way: spurring nuclear weapons proliferation. No nation will long tolerate what it experiences as an unjust imbalance of power. It was primarily for this reason that the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China, North Korea, and quite probably Iran opted for nuclear weapons.

    The Romance of Ruthlessness The Bush administration has again put nuclear weapons – and their various uses – at the center of U.S. military and foreign policy. The message of the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in December 2001 was unmistakable. As The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists editorialized, “Not since the resurgence of the Cold War in Ronald Reagan’s first term has U.S. defense strategy placed such an emphasis on nuclear weapons.” The NPR reiterated the U.S. commitment to first-strike nuclear war fighting. For the first time, seven nations were specifically named as primary nuclear targets: Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and North Korea. Consistent with calls by senior administration figures who spoke of their “bias in favor of things that might be usable,” the NPR urged funding for development of new and more usable nuclear weapons. This included a new “bunker buster.” Seventy times more powerful than the Hiroshima A-bomb, the bunker buster was designed to destroy enemy command bunkers and WMD (weapons of mass destruction) installations buried hundreds of feet beneath the surface.

    To ensure that the “bunker buster” and other new nuclear weapons could inflict their holocausts, the NPR called for accelerating preparations for the resumption of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site. It also pressed for the nuclear weapons laboratories to continue modernizing the nuclear arsenal and to train a new generation of nuclear weapons scientists. Among their first projects would be the design of a “Reliable Replacement Warhead” to serve as the military’s primary strategic weapon for the first half of the 21st century. With a massive infusion of new funds to consolidate and revitalize nuclear research, development and production facilities, National Nuclear Security Administration Deputy Administrator Tom D’Agostino testified it would “restore us to a level of capability comparable to what we had during the Cold War.”

    Later, the Rumsfeld Pentagon published and then ostensibly “rescinded” a non-classified version of its Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations. The Doctrine was revealing and profoundly disturbing. In the tradition of the Clinton administration’s Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence, the Doctrine communicated that the United States could all too easily “become irrational and vindictive.”

    Most striking was the Doctrine’s extended discussion of deterrence. Rather than define deterrence as the prevention of nuclear attacks by other nuclear powers, the Doctrine stated that “The focus of US deterrence efforts is… to influence potential adversaries to withhold actions intended to harm US’ national interests…based on the adversary’s perception of the…likelihood and magnitude of the costs or consequences corresponding to these courses of actions.” Diplomatically, the Doctrine continued, “the central focus of deterrence is for one nation to exert such influence over a potential adversary’s decision process that the potential adversary makes a deliberate choice to refrain from a COA [course of action.]” In addition to putting Chinese diplomatic efforts to marginalize U.S. power in Asia on notice or deterring unlikely Russian or French nuclear attacks, the central role of the U.S. nuclear arsenal was global dominance. China, Russia, France and Germany were reminded of their proper places, and Iran and Venezuela received ample warning not to adopt oil and energy policies that might constitute- courses of action that would “harm U.S. national interests.”

    Placing the world on further notice, the Doctrine threatened that “The US does not make positive statements defining the circumstances under which it would use nuclear weapons.” Maintaining ambiguity about when the United States would use nuclear weapons helped to “create doubt in the minds of potential adversaries.” The Doctrine also refused to rule out nuclear attacks against non-nuclear weapons states.

    The Doctrine also baldly instructed the U.S. military that “no customary or conventional international law prohibits nations from employing nuclear weapons in armed conflict,” thus subordinating international law to U.S. military strategy. It also argued that nuclear wars could be won. The Doctrine gave increased authority to field commanders to propose targets for nuclear attacks and described the circumstances when field commanders could request approval to launch first-strike nuclear attacks. “Training,” it further stated, “can help prepare friendly forces to survive the effects of nuclear weapons and improve the effectiveness of surviving forces.” The Doctrine went on to reconfirm the bankruptcy of the nuclear reduction negotiations between the United States and Russia. The Doctrine was clear that U.S. nuclear forces would not actually be reduced because “US strategic nuclear weapons remain in storage and serve as an augmentation capability should US strategic nuclear force requirements rise above the levels of the Moscow Treaty.”

    Toward Abolition Since the end of the Cold War, the media and national political discourse in the United States have focused on the dangers of “horizontal proliferation.” These dangers include “rogue” states with nuclear weapons, the possibility of nations with nuclear power plants becoming nuclear weapons states, and leakage from nuclear stockpiles finding its way to “rogue” states or to non-state terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. One nightmare scenario has envisioned the overthrow of the Musharraf regime in Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of radical Islamists.

    It doesn’t take a genius to understand the importance of under-funded initiatives like the congressional Nunn-Lugar Nuclear Threat Initiative, which was designed to secure the world’s nuclear weapons, fissile materials, and nuclear wastes. However, these efforts can be no more than stop-gap measures as long as the United States threatens other nations with nuclear attacks and insists on maintaining the terrorizing imbalance of power.

    Since the 1995 Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference, popular, elite, and governmental demands have been growing for the United States and other nuclear powers to fulfill their Article VI treaty commitment to negotiate the complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals. In 1996, in the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on the use and threatened use of nuclear weapons ruled that both are violations of international law, and the Court directed the nuclear powers to implement their Article VI commitments. While NGOs and popular movements from across the world came together to form Abolition 2000, at the elite level former head of the U.S. Strategic Command Gen. Lee Butler – supported by many of the world’s generals and admirals – called for abolition. And, in January 2007, former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz joined former secretary of defense William Perry and former senator Sam Nunn in saying that U.S. double standards were driving nuclear weapons proliferation, and that the time had come for the United States to meet its NPT obligations.

    Since then, pressed by voters and community based activists, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson have each stated that if elected, they will be the president who negotiates the complete elimination of the world’s nuclear weapons. They need to be held to these commitments, and other presidential and congressional candidates need to be pressed to join their commitment. (Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel have made similar commitments.)

    The political and technical steps needed to eliminate nuclear weapons have long been known. First, the United States must renounce its “first strike” nuclear wear fighting doctrines. Next it must refuse to fund the development and deployment of new nuclear weapons. The other essential steps include verified and irreversible dismantling of nuclear weapons and their installations; halting production of weapons-grade fissile material and securely containing existing stockpiles; verification, including societal verification, and intrusive inspection systems; and investing power in a supranational authority, probably the UN Security Council, to isolate, contain, or remove threats to the nuclear-free order.

    Like cannibalism and slavery, nuclear weapons can be abolished. The question is whether we humans have the will and courage to choose life.

    Like cannibalism and slavery, nuclear weapons can be abolished. The question is whether we humans have the will and courage to choose life.

    Table 1: Partial Listing of Incidents of Nuclear Blackmail

    (From Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World by Joseph Gerson)

     
    1946 Truman threatens Soviets regarding Northern Iran.
    1946 Truman sends SAC bombers to intimidate Yugoslavia following the downing of U.S. aircraft over Yugoslavia.
    1948 Truman threatens Soviets in response to Berlin blockade.
    1950 Truman threatens Chinese when U.S. Marines were surrounded at Chosin Reservoir in Korea.
    1951 Truman approves military request to attack Manchuria with nuclear weapons if significant numbers of new Chinese forces join the war.
    1953 Eisenhower threatens China to force an end to Korean War on terms acceptable to the United States.
    1954 Eisenhower’s Secretary of State Dulles offers French three tactical nuclear weapons to break the siege at Dienbienphu, Vietnam. Supported by Nixon’s public trial balloons.
    1954 Eisenhower used nuclear armed SAC bombers to reinforce CIA-backed coup in Guatemala.
    1956 Bulganin threatens London and Paris with nuclear attacks, demanding withdrawal following their invasion of Egypt.
    1956 Eisenhower counters by threatening the U.S.S.R. while also demanding British and French retreat from Egypt.
    1958 Eisenhower orders Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, if necessary to prevent extension of revolution into Kuwait.
    1958 Eisenhower orders Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare to use nuclear weapons against China if they invade the island of Quemoy.
    1961 Kennedy threatens Soviets during Berlin Crisis.
    1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
    1967 Johnson threatens Soviets during Middle East War.
    1967 Johnson’s public threats against Vietnam are linked to possible use of nuclear weapons to break siege at Khe Shan.
    1969 Brezhnev threatens China during border war.
    1969 Nixon’s “November Ultimatum” against Vietnam.
    1970 Nixon signals U.S. preparations to fight nuclear war during Black September War in Jordan.
    1973 Israeli Government threatens use of nuclear weapons during the “October War.”
    1973 Kissinger threatens Soviet Union during the last hours of the “October War” in the Middle East.
    1973 Nixon pledges to South Vietnamese President Thieu that he will respond with nuclear attacks or the bombing of North Vietnam’s dikes if it violated the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords.
    1975 Sec. of Defense Schlesinger threatens North Korea with nuclear retaliation should it attack South Korea in the wake of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam.
    1980 Carter Doctrine announced.
    1981 Reagan reaffirms the Carter Doctrine.
    1982 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher threatens to eliminate Buenos Aires during the Falklands War.
    1990 Pakistan threatens India during confrontation over Kashmir.
    1990-91 Bush threatens Iraq during the “Gulf War.”
    1993 Clinton threatens North Korea.
    1994 Clinton’s confrontation with North Korea.
    1996 China threatens “Los Angeles” during confrontation over Taiwan. Clinton responds by sending two nuclear-capable aircraft carrier fleets through the Taiwan Straight.
    1996 Clinton threatens Libya with nuclear attack to prevent completion of underground chemical weapons production complex.
    1998 Clinton threatens Iraq with nuclear attack.
    1999 India and Pakistan threaten and prepare nuclear threats during the Kargil War.
    2001 U.S. forces placed on a DEFCON alert in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
    2001 Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refuses to rule out using tactical nuclear weapons against Afghan caves possibly sheltering Osama Bin Laden.
    2002 Bush communicates an implied threat to counter any Iraqi use of chemical weapons to defend Iraqi troops with chemical or biological weapons with a U.S. nuclear attack.
    2006 French Prime Minister Chirac threatens first strike nuclear attacks against nations that practice terrorism against France.
    2006 & 07 “All options are on the table”: U.S. threats to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure made by President Bush and presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton.

    This article is adapted from Joseph Gerson, Empire and the Bomb (University of Michigan Press, 2007).

    Joseph Gerson is the director of programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. His previous books include The Sun Never Sets and With Hiroshima Eyes.

  • No Nukes, No Proliferation

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

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

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

    This throws up three clusters of concern:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • A Response to Brown and Deutch

    A Response to Brown and Deutch

    On November 19, 2007, Harold Brown, a former Secretary of Defense in the Carter administration, and John Deutch, a former CIA Director in the Clinton administration, published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. The title of their piece was “The Nuclear Disarmament Fantasy.” Their article began by pointing out that the end of the Cold War has led “several former senior foreign policy officials who wrote on this page [that is, the Wall Street Journal opinion page]…to make the complete elimination of nuclear weapons a principal U.S. foreign policy goal….”

    Brown and Deutch were referring to an article published in the Wall Street Journal on January 4, 2007, co-authored by Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn. The article was entitled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” and the authors made the case for US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world. They argued, “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. US leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage – to a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.”

    Disturbingly, Brown and Deutch were dismissive of even the aspirational goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. They quoted Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which obligates parties to good faith negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons, but dismissed it, stating “hope is not a policy.”

    According to Brown and Deutch, “Nuclear weapons are not empty symbols; they play an important deterrent role, and cannot be eliminated.” But if these weapons are not “empty symbols,” what is it that they symbolize? A power beyond our ability to control? Human folly? A pinnacle of destructive achievement? They based their arguments on “the important deterrent role” of nuclear weapons, but never bother to mention who exactly is being deterred by the current US arsenal of 10,000 nuclear weapons.

    Rather than looking for a new direction for US nuclear policy more than 15 years after the Cold War, Brown and Deutch seem convinced that nuclear weapons are here to stay, and with their approach they will make this outcome inevitable. Without US leadership, there will be no possibility of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. With US leadership, it is a possibility.

    No country would benefit more from a world free of nuclear weapons than the United States. These are the only weapons that could destroy this country, and perhaps will if we continue to rely upon them for phantom deterrence. Nuclear weapons are really weapons of the weak, giving great asymmetrical advantage to smaller, less powerful nations or to extremists. If the US continues to rely upon these weapons, they will eventually proliferate to extremists who cannot be deterred, and they will be used against us.

    Brown and Deutch’s vision looks directly into a rearview mirror toward the 20th century. Their vision will sustain a future of nuclear threat and make nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war more likely. We desperately need a new vision in our country – a vision that we can lead the world in a more positive direction based upon human security and encompasses ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    To view the Brown/Deutch article and see other responses to it, click here.

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

  • Are You With Us…Or Against Us

    Originally published at www.tomdispatch.com

    The journey to the martial law just imposed on Pakistan by its self-appointed president, the dictator Pervez Musharraf, began in Washington on September 11, 2001. On that day, it so happened, Pakistan’s intelligence chief, Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed, was in town. He was summoned forthwith to meet with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who gave him perhaps the earliest preview of the global Bush doctrine then in its formative stages, telling him, “You are either one hundred percent with us or one hundred percent against us.”

    The next day, the administration, dictating to the dictator, presented seven demands that a Pakistan that wished to be “with us” must meet. These concentrated on gaining its cooperation in assailing Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, which had long been nurtured by the Pakistani intelligence services in Afghanistan and had, of course, harbored Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda training camps. Conspicuously missing was any requirement to rein in the activities of Mr. A.Q. Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear arms, who, with the knowledge of Washington, had been clandestinely hawking the country’s nuclear-bomb technology around the Middle East and North Asia for some years.

    Musharraf decided to be “with us”; but, as in so many countries, being with the United States in its Global War on Terror turned out to mean not being with one’s own people. Although Musharraf, who came to power in a coup in 1999, was already a dictator, he had now taken the politically fateful additional step of very visibly subordinating his dictatorship to the will of a foreign master. In many countries, people will endure a homegrown dictator but rebel against one who seems to be imposed from without, and Musharraf was now courting this danger.

    A public opinion poll in September ranking certain leaders according to their popularity suggests what the results have been. Osama bin Laden, at 46% approval, was more popular than Musharraf, at 38%, who in turn was far better liked than President Bush, at a bottom-scraping 7%. There is every reason to believe that, with the imposition of martial law, Musharraf’s and Bush’s popularity have sunk even further. Wars, whether on terror or anything else, don’t tend to go well when the enemy is more popular than those supposedly on one’s own side.

    Are You with Us?

    Even before the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, the immediate decision to bully Musharraf into compliance defined the shape of the policies that the President would adopt toward a far larger peril that had seemed to wane after the Cold War, but now was clearly on the rise: the gathering nuclear danger. President Bush proposed what was, in fact if not in name, an imperial solution to it. In the new dispensation, nuclear weapons were not to be considered good or bad in themselves; that judgment was to be based solely on whether the nation possessing them was itself judged good or bad (with us, that is, or against us). Iraq, obviously, was judged to be “against us” and suffered the consequences. Pakistan, soon honored by the administration with the somehow ridiculous, newly coined status of “major non-NATO ally,” was clearly classified as with us, and so, notwithstanding its nuclear arsenal and abysmal record on proliferation, given the highest rating.

    That doctrine constituted a remarkable shift. Previously, the United States had joined with almost the entire world to achieve nonproliferation solely by peaceful, diplomatic means. The great triumph of this effort had been the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, under which 183 nations, dozens quite capable of producing nuclear weapons, eventually agreed to remain without them. In this dispensation, all nuclear weapons were considered bad, and so all proliferation was bad as well. Even existing arsenals, including those of the two superpowers of the Cold War, were supposed to be liquidated over time. Conceptually, at least, one united world had faced one common danger: nuclear arms.

    In the new, quickly developing, post-9/11 dispensation, however, the world was to be divided into two camps. The first, led by the United States, consisted of good, democratic countries, many possessing the bomb; the second consisted of bad, repressive countries trying to get the bomb and, of course, their terrorist allies. Nuclear peril, once understood as a problem of supreme importance in its own right, posed by those who already possessed nuclear weapons as well as by potential proliferators, was thus subordinated to the polarizing “war on terror,” of which it became a mere sub-category, albeit the most important one. This peril could be found at “the crossroads of radicalism and technology,” otherwise called the “nexus of terror and weapons of mass destruction,” in the words of the master document of the Bush Doctrine, the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

    The good camp was assigned the job not of rolling back all nuclear weapons but simply of stopping any members of the bad camp from getting their hands on the bomb. The means would no longer be diplomacy, but “preventive war” (to be waged by the United States). The global Cold War of the late twentieth century was to be replaced by global wars against proliferation — disarmament wars — in the twenty-first. These wars, breaking out wherever in the world proliferation might threaten, would not be cold, but hot indeed, as the invasion of Iraq soon revealed — and as an attack on Iran, now under consideration in Washington, may soon further show.

    …Or Against Us?

    Vetting and sorting countries into the good and the bad, the with-us and the against-us, proved, however, a far more troublesome business than those in the Bush administration ever imagined. Iraq famously was not as “bad” as alleged, for it turned out to lack the key feature that supposedly warranted attack — weapons of mass destruction. Neither was Pakistan, muscled into the with-us camp so quickly after 9/11, as “good” as alleged. Indeed, these distinctions were entirely artificial, for by any factual and rational reckoning, Pakistan was by far the more dangerous country.

    Indeed, the Pakistan of Pervez Musharraf has, by now, become a one-country inventory of all the major forms of the nuclear danger.

    *Iraq did not have nuclear weapons; Pakistan did. In 1998, it had conducted a series of five nuclear tests in response to five tests by India, with whom it had fought three conventional wars since its independence in 1947. The danger of interstate nuclear war between the two nations is perhaps higher than anywhere else in the world.

    *Both Iraq and Pakistan were dictatorships (though the Iraqi government was incomparably more brutal).

    *Iraq did not harbor terrorists; Pakistan did, and does so even more today.

    *Iraq, lacking the bomb, could not of course be a nuclear proliferator. Pakistan was, with a vengeance. The arch-proliferator A.Q. Khan, a metallurgist, first purloined nuclear technology from Europe, where he was employed at the uranium enrichment company EURENCO. He then used the fruits of his theft to successfully establish an enrichment program for Pakistan’s bomb. After that, the thief turned salesman. Drawing on a globe-spanning network of producers and middlemen — in Turkey, Dubai, and Malaysia, among other countries — he peddled his nuclear wares to Iran, Iraq (which apparently turned down his offer of help), North Korea, Libya, and perhaps others. Seen from without, he had established a clandestine multinational corporation dedicated to nuclear proliferation for a profit.

    Seen from within Pakistan, he had managed to create a sort of independent nuclear city-state — a state within a state — in effect privatizing Pakistan’s nuclear technology. The extent of the government’s connivance in this enterprise is still unknown, but few observers believe Khan’s far-flung operations would have been possible without at least the knowledge of officials at the highest levels of that government. Yet all this activity emanating from the “major non-NATO ally” of the Bush administration was overlooked until late 2003, when American and German intelligence intercepted a shipload of nuclear materials bound for Libya, and forced Musharraf to place Khan, a national hero owing to his work on the Pakistani bomb, under house arrest. (Even today, the Pakistani government refuses to make Khan available for interviews with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency.)

    *Iraqi apparatchiks could not, of course, peddle to terrorists, al-Qaedan or otherwise, technology they did not have, as Bush suggested they would do in seeking to justify his war. The Pakistani apparatchiks, on the other hand, could — and they did. Shortly before September 11, 2001, two leading scientists from Pakistan’s nuclear program, Dr. Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former Director General of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and Chaudry Abdul Majeed, paid a visit to Osama bin Laden around a campfire in Afghanistan to advise him on how to make or acquire nuclear arms. They, too, are under house arrest.

    If, however, the beleaguered Pakistani state, already a balkanized enterprise (as the A.Q. Khan story shows) is overthrown, or if the country starts to fall apart, the danger of insider defections from the nuclear establishment will certainly rise. The problem is not so much that the locks on the doors of nuclear installations — Pakistan’s approximately 50 bombs are reportedly spread at sites around the country — will be broken or picked as that those with the keys to the locks will simply switch allegiances and put the materials they guard to new uses. The “nexus” of terrorism and the bomb, the catastrophe the Bush Doctrine was specifically framed to head off, might then be achieved — and in a country that was “for us.”

    What has failed in Pakistan, as in smashed Iraq, is not just a regional American policy, but the pillars and crossbeams of the entire global Bush doctrine, as announced in late 2001. In both countries, the bullying has failed; popular passions within each have gained the upper hand; and Washington has lost much of its influence. In its application to Pakistan, the doctrine was framed to stop terrorism, but in that country’s northern provinces, terrorists have, in fact, entrenched themselves to a degree unimaginable even when the Taliban protected Al-Qaeda’s camps before September 11th.

    If the Bush Doctrine laid claim to the values of democracy, its man Musharraf now has the distinction, rare even among dictators, of mounting a second military coup to maintain the results of his first one. In a crowning irony, his present crackdown is on democracy activists, not the Taliban, armed Islamic extremists, or al-Qaeda supporters who have established positions in the Swat valley only 150 miles from Islamabad.

    Most important, the collapsed doctrine has stoked the nuclear fires it was meant to quench. The dangers of nuclear terrorism, of proliferation, and even of nuclear war (with India, which is dismayed by developments in Pakistan as well as the weak Bush administration response to them) are all on the rise. The imperial solution to these perils has failed. Something new is needed, not just for Pakistan or Iraq, but for the world. Perhaps now someone should try to invent a solution based on imperialism’s opposite, democracy, which is to say respect for other countries and the wills of the people who live in them.

     

    Jonathan Schell is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a visiting lecturer at Yale University

  • Nuclear Disarmament Remarks

    Note: Governor Schwarzenegger was scheduled to deliver this speech at the Hoover Institution on Oct. 24, 2007 but was forced to cancel due to the wildfires in Southern California. Former Secretary of State George Shultz read the remarks in his place.

    Thank you, I’m delighted to be in such distinguished company. On behalf of the people of California, I welcome you to our Golden State.

    George Shultz is one of the people I admire most in the world, someone for whom I feel great affection. So when George asked me to speak tonight, I was eager to say yes. But since my expertise is in weights, not throwweights . . . I didn’t know what I could possibly say to an audience of such experts. Knowing that I like big issues, George slyly suggested that I just give some thought to the big issue of nuclear weapons. This has caused me to realize some things. So let me start at the beginning.

    As some of you may know, I grew up in Austria. As a boy, the Red Army loomed over us from its bases in central Europe. Even as children, we all knew about the threat of nuclear war. We knew the blinding power of its flash. We knew the shape of its cloud. Like here, we had nuclear drills in our schools. When I was 18, I went into the Austrian Army for my required service. I really, really wanted to be a tank driver. This was before I had a Hummer. Although you were supposed to be 21, I talked them into letting me drive a tank. I have to say I wasn’t much of a deterrent to a Soviet attack. During lunch one day on maneuvers, I forgot to put on the brakes and my tank rolled into the river. I can’t tell you what a sinking feeling I had as I watched that tank heading backward down the bank and then splashing into the water.

    A true, amusing story . . . but the reality of the times, of course, was quite serious. In 1956, the Soviets crushed the Hungarians. Then later, the Czechoslovakians.

    We Austrians had three basic fears. One, that Soviet tanks might roll into Vienna the way they did into Budapest. Two, a Soviet invasion of Austria or nearby countries might bring a U.S./Soviet confrontation—with Austria getting caught in the nuclear crossfire. And three, we feared mistakes. Mistakes are made in every other human endeavor. Why should nuclear weapons be exempt? I still remember the tensions of those times. I think Austrians, wedged between the West and the Soviet empire, may have felt the Cold War more intensely than Americans. I think I actually felt less tension here in America.
    After I became an American citizen, the thing that stands out so clearly in my mind is the Reagan/Gorbachev summit at Rejkjavik. The leaders of the two most powerful nations on earth were actually discussing the elimination of nuclear weapons. Such a breathtaking possibility. I still remember the thrill of it. I’ll never forget the photos of a grim President Reagan as he left the summit after the negotiations broke down. Even though the negotiations failed, I think the very talks themselves reassured the world. The world saw that both nations desired to be free of the nuclear curse. Then history began moving rapidly. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. Russia began attending G-8 meetings. We even heard talk of it joining NATO. In spite of the nuclear differences between President Putin and President Bush, few today would believe that either nation seeks to attack the other. So, over the years, the intense, glaring threat of nuclear war faded. What also faded was the public’s awareness and concern. I include myself in that public. Today . . . the nuclear threat has returned with a vengeance, the vengeance of a terrorist. The Soviets had nuclear weapons and did not use them. Today, is there any doubt whether terrorists would use them?

    Even when Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the table at the UN, I don’t believe people felt the Soviet Union—no matter how ruthless—was devoid of reason. Today, the enemy is both ruthless and seemingly without reason. I don’t know whether it is ironic or frightening . . . but have we reached the point where we look back to Nikita Khrushchev and the Cold War as the good old days? Have the current dangers made us romantics, longing for the concepts of deterrence and mutually assured destruction? During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union also had the time and inclination to develop a living arrangement with their nuclear arsenals.

    As George and others have pointed out, the new nuclear states don’t have these safeguards of the Cold War, which increases the possibility of accidents and misjudgments. Furthermore, today those who would seek them can find the makings of nuclear weapons in hundreds of building spread over 40 countries. As we meet, terrorists are jiggling the door knobs of these buildings trying to get in, trying to get their hands on these materials. In your discussions, I would be interested whether you would rather live under the massive nuclear threat of the Cold War . . . or under the varied, erratic nuclear threat we face in the post 9-11 age? Senator Nunn has very insightfully raised the question—after a nuclear device explodes on our soil, what will we wish we had done to prevent it? And Secretary Perry has raised the question, what will we do when it does happen? Few people are addressing those questions with the immediacy of this distinguished gathering. After all, the consequences of a nuclear detonation are so horrific that it’s more comforting to put them out of mind. But I have realized some things as a result of thinking about what I should say tonight.
    For example, I have advocated—and continue to advocate—action against global warming. I genuinely believe we must take steps to stop the destruction of the planet’s environment. Looking at this logically, however—although we must address global warming now—its most dangerous consequences come decades down the road. The most dangerous consequences of nuclear weapons, however, are here and now. They are of this hour and time. A nuclear disaster will not hit at the speed of a glacier melting. It will hit with a blast. It will not hit with the speed of the atmosphere warming but of a city burning. Clearly, the attention focused on nuclear weapons should be as prominent as that of global climate change. After he left office, former Vice President Gore made a movie about the dangers of global warming. I have a movie idea for Vice President Cheney after he leaves—a movie about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. If you Google “global warming,” you will find 6,690,000 entries. If you Google “Britney Spears,” you will find 2,490,000. If you Google “nuclear disarmament,” you will get 116,000 entries. And if you Google “nuclear annihilation,” you will get 17,400. Something is wrong with that picture.

    The words that this audience knows so well, the words that President Kennedy spoke during the Cold War, have regained their urgency: “The world was not meant to be a prison in which man awaits his execution.” Here in California we still have levees that were built a hundred years ago. These levees are an imminent threat to the well-being of this state and its people. It would be only a matter of time before disaster strikes. But we’re not waiting until such a disaster.

    We in California have taken action to protect our people and our economy from the devastation. Neither can this nation nor the world wait to act until there is a nuclear disaster. I am so thankful for the work of George, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Max Kampelman, Sid Drell and so many of you at this conference. You have a big vision, a vision as big as humanity–to free the world of nuclear weapons.

    Ladies and gentlemen, I have come this evening to say that I want to help. Let me know how I can use my power and influence as governor to further your vision. Because my heart is with you. My support is firm. My door is open.

    On behalf of the people of California, thank you again for the work you are doing to lift the nuclear nightmare from our nation’s future.

     

    Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Governor of California.

  • Protest Against the Reliable Replacement Warhead

    Although Congress has been dealing with the Bush administration’s proposal to develop the reliable replacement warhead (RRW) for much of 2007, it’s remarkable that the new weapon, a hydrogen bomb, has attracted little public protest or even public attention.

    After all, for years opinion polls have reported that an overwhelming majority of Americans favor nuclear disarmament. A July 2007 poll by the Simons Foundation of Canada found that 82.3 percent of Americans backed either the total elimination or a reduction of nuclear weapons in the world. Only 3 percent favored developing new nuclear weapons.

    And yet, RRW is a new nuclear warhead, the first in two decades, and – if the Bush administration is successful in obtaining the necessary authorization from Congress – it will be used widely to upgrade the current U.S. nuclear arsenal. In this fashion, RRW won’t only contradict the U.S. government’s pledge under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to move toward nuclear disarmament, it will actually encourage other nations to jump right back into the nuclear arms race.

    Of course, peace and disarmament groups – including Peace Action, the Council for a Livable World, and Physicians for Social Responsibility – have sharply criticized RRW in mailings to their supporters and on their websites. Public protests have taken place, including hunger strikes and other demonstrations at the University of California in May 2007 and a demonstration at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in August 2007.

    But these protests have been small. And the general public hasn’t noticed RRW. Why?

    A key reason is that peace groups and the public are preoccupied by the Iraq War and by the looming war with Iran. The actual use of weapons is always more riveting (and certainly more destructive) than their potential use. And weapons are being employed every day in Iraq, while nuclear weapons represent merely a potential danger – albeit a far deadlier one. Thus, in certain ways, the nuclear disarmament campaign faces a situation much like that during the Vietnam War, when the vast carnage in that conflict distracted activists and the public from the ongoing nuclear menace.

    Another reason is that it’s hard to involve the public in a one-weapon campaign. To rouse people from their lethargy, they need to sense a crucial turning point. When atmospheric nuclear testing and the development of the hydrogen bomb riveted public attention on the danger of wholesale nuclear annihilation in the late 1950s, or when the Reagan administration escalated the nuclear arms race and threatened nuclear war in the early 1980s, people felt they had come to a crossroads. By contrast, RRW appears rather arcane and perhaps best left to the policy wonks.

    Finally, the mass communications media have done a good deal to distort and/or bury nuclear issues since the end of the Cold War. Yes, at the behest of the Bush administration they trumpeted the supreme dangers of Iraqi nuclear weapons, even when those weapons didn’t exist. But they did a terrible job of educating the U.S. public about nuclear realities. A 1999 Gallup poll taken a week after the U.S. Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty found that, although most Americans favored the treaty, only 26 percent were aware that it had been defeated! Similarly, a 2004 poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that the average American thought that the U.S. nuclear stockpile, which then numbered more than 10,000 weapons, consisted of only 200. Given the very limited knowledge that Americans have of the elementary facts about nuclear issues, it’s hardly surprising that relatively few are busy protesting against the development of RRW.

     

    Lawrence S. Wittner is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council and is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany.

  • Nuclear Dangers and Challenges to a New Nuclear Policy

    Nuclear Dangers and Challenges to a New Nuclear Policy

    It is worthwhile asking the question: What are nuclear weapons? In some respects the answer to this question may seem obvious, but this is not necessarily the case. To some, nuclear weapons are a scientific achievement that bestows prestige. This is the view that has been taken by each of the nuclear weapons states, with the exception of Israel. Most recently, this perspective was on display when India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

    To others, nuclear weapons are a deterrent that protects a weaker state from a more powerful one. This is likely the view of North Korea and perhaps Iran, after having been designated by the US president as part of the “Axis of Evil” and observing the United States attack Iraq, the third designated country in this axis. To still others, such as Israel, nuclear weapons represent a final response to an existential threat. To North Korea, nuclear weapons may represent a response to an existential threat and also a “bargaining chip” for security guarantees and development aid.

    To others, nuclear weapons demonstrate a state’s power in the international system. This likely reflects the view of the five original nuclear weapons states, the ones that also hold permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council – the US, UK, Russia, China and France – and quite possibly the rest of the nuclear weapons states as well.

    Thus far, I have only given the probable views of states that possess nuclear weapons or may wish to do so. Let me now offer another view of nuclear weapons. They are weapons that kill massively and indiscriminately. As such, they are long-distance instruments of annihilation. Weapons that kill indiscriminately are illegal under international law. In this respect, any threat or use of nuclear weapons that failed to discriminate between civilians and combatants would be illegal. It is hard to imagine any threat or use of these weapons that would or even could discriminate.

    The International Court of Justice has found that any threat or use of nuclear weapons would be generally illegal, allowing for the possible but uncertain exception under current international law of a circumstance in which the very existence of a state is at stake. But even then, for such use to be legal it would have to meet the standards of international humanitarian law. In other words, it would have to discriminate between soldiers and civilians, be proportionate, and not cause unnecessary suffering.

    Nuclear weapons are also cowardly and anti-democratic. More accurately, the weapons themselves may not be cowardly, but those who would threaten or use these long-distance killing machines are cowardly. Nearly all of the leading military figures of World War II recognized this and commented upon it. Admiral William Leahy, referring to the use of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said, “[I]n being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

    Nuclear weapons are anti-democratic because they concentrate power in the hands of single individuals or a small cabal. They take away the most basic right of people everywhere – the right to survive. There will never be a democratic vote to use nuclear weapons. These weapons place in the hands of leaders the capacity to destroy cities, countries and civilization, with the high likelihood that any use of nuclear weapons would lead to the destruction of the country that initiated a nuclear attack.

    No Defense against Nuclear Attack

    It is not possible to defend against a nuclear attack. Deterrence, which has been the main line of prevention, cannot provide physical defense against a nuclear attack. It is simply the threat of retaliation. This threat must be effectively communicated and believed by a potential attacker. It is, of course, not a meaningful threat against a non-state extremist organization, which cannot be located. Deterrence theory is rooted in rationality. It posits leaders acting rationally to assure their survival, even in times of severe crisis. Basing protection against nuclear attack on rationality, unfortunately, is irrational.

    This is what the former commander-in-chief of the United States Strategic Command, General George Lee Butler, had to say about deterrence: “Deterrence serves the ends of evil as well as those of noble intent. It holds guilty the innocent as well as the culpable. It is a gamble no mortal should pretend to make. It invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the Creator.”

    Early in 2007, four former high-level US officials – George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn – published an article, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” in the Wall Street Journal. They addressed the issue of deterrence, arguing: “The end of the Cold War made the doctrine of mutual Soviet-American deterrence obsolete. Deterrence continues to be a relevant consideration for many states with regard to threats from other states. But reliance on nuclear weapons for this purpose is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”

    If deterrence is becoming more dangerous and less effective, what remains? US leaders have put significant emphasis on missile defenses, but few knowledgeable scientists, other than those working on government contracts, believe that missile defenses would actually work under real-world conditions. There is a widespread understanding that missile defenses, in addition to being unreliable, can be easily overcome by offensive forces and the use of decoys. The US push to deploy missile defenses has frayed relations between the US and Russia and China, and led these countries to improve their offensive nuclear capabilities.

    If neither deterrence nor missile defenses provide security against nuclear attack, what is left? Nothing is viable but diplomacy to eliminate nuclear arsenals. There is no reliable defense against nuclear attack. Major countries might consider returning to the “duck and cover” drills of the 1950s, although they might update the drills so that they took place in legislatures rather than in schools. These drills, of course, offer no protection to those who do them, but they might help awaken them to the dilemma and the need to take action to eliminate the threat by eliminating the weapons.

    Nuclear Dangers

    Since nuclear weapons continue to exist, nuclear dangers have not gone away, despite the ending of the Cold War and the break up of the Soviet Union. What has largely ended is public concern for the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The end of the Cold War has created a false sense of security, largely attributable to inertia and poor leadership. It is worthwhile reviewing current nuclear dangers.

    1. The proliferation of nuclear weapons to other state actors. The more states in possession of nuclear weapons, the more likely they are to proliferate further and to be used. The spread of nuclear weapons dramatically increases problems of control, as was demonstrated by the case of Pakistan’s A. Q. Khan.
    2. The proliferation of nuclear weapons to extremist organizations. This is a danger that cannot be ruled out. Nuclear weapons in the hands of an extremist organization, such as al Qaeda, pose substantial danger to all countries, including the major nuclear weapons states.
    3. The use of a nuclear weapon by an extremist organization against a state. The actual use of a nuclear weapon by an extremist organization against a state could result in destruction comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with added widespread security and economic implications. Questions would arise about the viability of the world economy, human rights and democratic processes in the face of such attack.
    4. The use of a nuclear weapon by a nuclear weapons state against another state. Such use would be devastating and could trigger a nuclear war. It would end the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons that has existed since 1945.
    5. An all-out nuclear war, initiated either intentionally or accidentally. The danger of an all-out nuclear war is always with us. It would be insane, but it could happen. Just as states stumbled into World War I, they could stumble again, by accident or miscalculation, into an all-out nuclear war.

    These dangers are obviously not trivial, nor are they dangers with which anyone should feel comfortable. They are dangers that place civilization and even the human species at risk of annihilation.

    Current nuclear dangers are fueled by the continued reliance of the nuclear weapons states on their nuclear arsenals for their security. Whereas these states once lived in a world of Mutually Assured Destruction, they now live in a world of Mutually Assured Delusions. Their greatest delusion is that they can continue to rely upon nuclear weapons for their own security and that of their friends, while preventing these weapons from spreading to others or being used again.

    There have been repeated warnings over a long period of time that nuclear double standards cannot hold. In 1955, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto warned: “We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?”

    In 1996, the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons warned, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defines credibility. The only complete defense is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    This warning was repeated in 2006 by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, chaired by Hans Blix. Their report, entitled Weapons of Terror, Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, stated: “So long as any state has such weapons – especially nuclear arms – others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain in any state’s arsenal, there is a high risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. Any such use would be catastrophic.”

    A New Nuclear Policy

    There have been many proposals for a new nuclear policy. The essence of such a policy is rooted in the following:

    1. The obligation for good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament in Article VI of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty;
    2. The 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, which stated, “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”
    3. The pledge in the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to unanimously at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference: “An unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.

    US leadership will be necessary in order to move forward in implementing such a policy. Without US leadership there will be little incentive for the other nuclear weapons states to act, and we are likely to remain frozen in the nuclear double standards of the status quo.

    While US leadership for a new nuclear policy has not been forthcoming, some hope exists in that the group of former US officials – Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn – called for it in their January 2007 Wall Street Journal article. They endorsed “the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal….” The four former officials argued, “Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations.”

    Once the political will for the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons exists, it will be possible to take the necessary actions to move from where we are to the goal. There have been many proposals for how to achieve the goal. A group of leading civil society organizations has drafted a plan for a Nuclear Weapons Convention that would lead to the elimination of nuclear weapons in a series of stages. This draft Convention has been introduced to the United Nations by the Republic of Costa Rica. The 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference sets forth another series of steps. The four former Cold Warriors set forth their own series of steps. What is most important in achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons, once there is sufficient political will, is that the disarmament be phased, transparent, verifiable, irreversible, and subject to strict and effective international control.

    Challenges to a New Nuclear Policy

    There are many challenges to a new nuclear policy, but the greatest challenges lie in the orientation of the current leadership of the US. In July 2007, the US Secretaries of State, Defense and Energy issued a joint statement, “National Security and Nuclear Weapons: Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century.” This statement, contrary to the position taken by the four former US officials, began by extolling “the essential role that nuclear weapons play in maintaining deterrence.” It ended up by calling for replacing every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal with a new type of thermonuclear weapon, the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). They argued that “RRW is key to sustaining our security commitment to allies, and is fully consistent with U.S. obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty – including Article VI.” They also threatened that delays on RRW “raise the prospect of having to return to underground nuclear testing to certify existing weapons.”

    The Bush administration is clearly not seeking to achieve a new nuclear policy, but a retrenchment of the status quo, one in which the United States remains the dominant nuclear weapons state. They seem unaware of the risks they are running, particularly the dangers that their nuclear policies create for the US itself.

    Further challenges to a new nuclear policy come from those states that want to defy the nuclear status quo of privileged nuclear “haves” maintaining their superiority over nuclear “have-nots.” Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea were not content living in that two-tiered nuclear world, and pursued nuclear programs that led to the development of nuclear arsenals. South Africa had followed this path in earlier years, developed a small nuclear arsenal, and then reconsidered and dismantled its weapons. Without more concerted action to achieve nuclear disarmament, we can anticipate that more states will move toward a nuclear option in the future. Even today, some countries, like Japan, hold open the nuclear option as virtual nuclear weapons states, having both the technology and nuclear materials to develop nuclear arsenals in a very short time.

    A general challenge to a new nuclear policy is the belief that a firewall can be drawn between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. No such firewall is possible, and nuclear reactors, for power or research, have fueled the nuclear programs of Israel, India and Pakistan. The designation of peaceful nuclear power as an “inalienable right” in the Non-Proliferation Treaty is a contradiction that must be addressed if nuclear proliferation is to be controlled.

    A Way Forward

    In the end, the most important consideration may be that suggested by the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in their statement, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.” This is patently true. The two are now placed in an uneasy juxtaposition. One represents the technology of annihilation. The other represents the sum total of human achievement – past, present and potential future. It should not be a difficult choice, but many of us on the planet seem to be voting against ourselves by our ignorance, apathy and denial. An awakened populace may prove to be a potent force to achieve a nuclear weapons free world.

    Our challenge, as leaders in civil society, is to educate and advocate for a new nuclear policy that will move the world away from the nuclear precipice. In doing so, we may find many important partners, including the mayors of cities throughout the world who have joined Mayors for Peace led by Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima; the network of parliamentarians in the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament; and the governments of non-nuclear weapons states, such as those in the New Agenda Coalition, which have worked closely with the Middle Powers Initiative.

    What has been accomplished thus far is not nearly enough. The world remains in peril. In Einstein’s words, “we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Our challenge is to reverse that drift, to move back from the nuclear precipice, to prevent the catastrophe Einstein foresaw. To achieve a new and human-centric nuclear policy will require major national efforts within nuclear weapons states, and a major global campaign to bring pressure to bear upon these states from without. Already the southern hemisphere of the planet has organized itself into a series of Nuclear Weapon Free Zones.

    Europe could play an important role in the effort to achieve a nuclear weapons free world by demanding that US nuclear weapons be removed from Europe, by refusing to participate in missile defense programs, by stepping out from under the US nuclear umbrella, and by convening a forum for the good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament called for in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Now is the time to begin planning for a saner, more reasonable and law abiding US administration that will replace the current one in early 2009.

    Nuclear weapons currently divide humanity, but the recognition of their danger could be a force for uniting humanity for their elimination. This would be a great achievement not only for its expression of common human purpose, but also for the resources it would free for meeting basic human needs for food, health care, housing, education, the alleviation of poverty and the protection of the environment. A new nuclear policy aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons should be the top priority on the global agenda.

     

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

  • Nuclear Weapons and the Responsibility of Scientists

    Nuclear Weapons and the Responsibility of Scientists

    Nuclear weapons are unique among weapons systems – they are capable of destroying civilization and possibly the human species. Nuclear weapons kill massively and indiscriminately. They are powerful. They are also illegal, immoral and cowardly. They are long-distance killing machines, instruments of annihilation. They place the human future in jeopardy. In spite of all of this, or perhaps because of it, these weapons seem to bestow prestige upon their creators and possessors.

    Nuclear weapons were first created by scientists and engineers working in the US nuclear weapons program, the Manhattan Project, during World War II. The project began simply and, ironically, with a letter to President Roosevelt from a great man of peace and humanitarian, Albert Einstein, who also happened to be the greatest and most celebrated scientist of his time. Later, after the use of the US nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein would lament having written the letter to Roosevelt.

    By examining the subsequent responses of three leading scientists whose earlier work had involved them in significant ways with the creation of nuclear weapons, I will show how they set an example for scientists today. I will seek to answer these questions: Do the scientists who created nuclear weapons have special responsibility for these weapons? Do scientists today continue to have responsibility for nuclear weapons?

    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein is one of great men of the 20th century, and one of the men I most admire. His penetrating intellect changed our view of the world. His understanding of the relationship between mass and energy, as contained in his famous formula E=mc2, gave the original theoretical insight into the power of mass converted to energy. Einstein, however, for all his theoretical brilliance, did not foresee the potential power that might be released by the atom and give rise to nuclear weapons.

    By 1939 Einstein was living in the United States, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, and had a position at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. A fellow physicist and friend, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian refugee from Nazi Germany, became concerned that the Germans would develop an atomic weapon and use it to defeat the Allied powers fighting against Hitler. Szilard came to Einstein, explained his fear, and asked Einstein to sign a letter explaining the danger to President Franklin Roosevelt. The letter that Einstein sent said that “uranium may turn into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future,” and that, while not certain, “extremely powerful bombs of a new type may be constructed.” The letter called upon the President Roosevelt to have his administration maintain contact with “a group of physicists working on chain reactions in America.” The letter led Roosevelt to take the first steps toward what would become the Manhattan Project, a very large US government program to create atomic weapons. President Roosevelt set up an Advisory Committee on Uranium, headed by Lyman J. Briggs, to evaluate where the US stood with regard to uranium research and to recommend what role the US government should play.

    Einstein never worked on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb, and was deeply disturbed and saddened when the bombs were used on Japan. He was reported to have said later, “If only I had known, I would have become a watch maker.” Einstein would join and lend his name to many organizations working to control and eliminate nuclear weapons during the final ten years of his life after the bombs were used. He was also outspoken in his condemnation of atomic weapons. He fought against the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1946, Einstein joined a group of atomic scientists that formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. Einstein and his fellow trustees of the Emergency Committee released a statement at the end of a conference held in Princeton in November 1946 that included the following “facts…accepted by all scientists”:

    1. Atomic bombs can now be made cheaply and in large number. They will become more destructive.
    2. There is no military defense against the atomic bomb and none is to be expected.
    3. Other nations can rediscover our secret processes by themselves.
    4. Preparedness against atomic war is futile, and if attempted will ruin the structure of our social order.
    5. If war breaks out, atomic bombs will be used and they will surely destroy our civilization.
    6. There is no solution to this problem except international control of atomic energy and, ultimately, the elimination of war.

    These six points remain as valid today as they were in 1946.

    The final public document that Einstein signed, just days before his death, was the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. It is an eloquent call to scientists to act for the good of humanity. The document began, “In the tragic situation that confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in the spirit of the appended draft.”

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto is one of the most powerful anti-nuclear and anti-war statements ever written. It expresses the fear of massive destruction made possible by nuclear weapons that could bring an end to the human species. It states: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” Einstein and Russell were joined by nine other prominent scientists in calling upon people everywhere, and particularly scientists, to take a simple but critical step: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

    One of Einstein’s most prescient warnings to humanity was this: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” More than five decades after Einstein’s death, his warning remains largely unheeded.

    Leo Szilard

    Leo Szilard was one of the most remarkable men of the 20th century. He first conceived of the possibility of an atomic chain reaction that could result in atomic bombs while standing at a stoplight in London in 1933. One of the people Szilard credits with influencing his discovery was British novelist H.G. Wells, who talked about atomic bombs in his 1913 science fiction book, The World Set Free.

    Six years later, it was Szilard who encouraged Einstein to warn President Roosevelt about the possibility of a German atomic bomb. Once the Manhattan Project was underway, Szilard would work with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago on creating a controlled chain reaction. The two men succeeded in conducting the first controlled and sustained chain reaction in their laboratory under the bleachers at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942. In doing so, they left no doubt that the creation of an atomic weapon would be possible.

    By early 1945, it seemed clear to Szilard that Germany would not succeed in creating an atomic bomb, but that America would. Szilard became concerned that the US would choose to use its new weapon as an instrument of war rather than as a means of deterring the German use of an atomic weapon. Szilard made frantic attempts to stop the US from using the bomb that he had been so instrumental in creating. He went back to Einstein in an attempt to arrange a meeting with President Roosevelt. Einstein wrote another letter to Roosevelt on Szilard’s behalf. The President’s wife, Eleanor, wrote back agreeing to meet with Szilard in her Manhattan apartment. Szilard received the letter with great excitement, but his excitement was dashed when later in the day the news was announced that President Roosevelt had died. It was April 12, 1945.

    Next Szilard tried to arrange a meeting with the new President, Harry Truman. Truman arranged for Szilard to meet with Jimmy Byrnes, a Senate mentor of Truman’s who would soon be named his Secretary of State. Szilard, along with scientists Walter Bartky and Harold Urey, traveled to Spartanburg, South Carolina to meet with Byrnes. The meeting went badly. Szilard expressed concern about a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Byrnes seemed to be more concerned with the possibility of using the new weapon as a demonstration of military might to make the Soviets more manageable. Szilard made an unfavorable impression on Byrnes. Szilard later wrote, “I was rarely as depressed as when we left Byrnes’ house and walked to the station.”

    Szilard next worked energetically on the Social and Political Committee of the Met Lab scientists working on the bomb at the University of Chicago. The Committee was headed by Nobel Laureate physicist James Franck. The Committee report concluded that the bomb should be demonstrated to Japan before being used against Japanese civilians. The Scientific Committee of the Manhattan Project’s Interim Committee – composed of Arthur Holly Compton, Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer – rejected the report, recommending against a demonstration and for military use of the bomb.

    Finally, Szilard drafted a petition to the President of the United States. The petition, dated July 17, 1945, began, “Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future….” The petition argued against attacking Japanese civilians on moral and practical grounds. It argued that “a nation which sets a precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.” The petition was held by General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach Secretary of Defense Stimson or President Truman until after their return from Potsdam and after Hiroshima had been destroyed by the first attack with a nuclear weapon.

    After the war, Szilard was a leader among atomic scientists in working to alert the public to nuclear dangers. He was a founder of the Council for a Livable World. He remained active in opposing nuclear weapons until his death.

    Joseph Rotblat

    Joseph Rotblat was one of the great men of the 20th century. He was a Polish émigré, who went to London in 1939 to work with Nobel Laureate physicist James Chadwick. Rotblat became concerned about a German atomic weapon, which led him to work on the British atomic bomb project and later in the US Manhattan Project. He believed that an Allied atomic bomb was necessary to deter the Germans from using an atomic bomb. By late 1944, however, Rotblat had concluded that the Germans would not succeed in creating an atomic weapon. He had been shocked to hear from General Groves one evening that the purpose of the US bomb had always been directed against the Soviets, then US allies in the war. As an act of conscience, Rotblat left the Manhattan Project in December 1944 and returned to London. The following August his worst fears were realized when the US used their newly created weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Rotblat would dedicate the rest of his life to working for a nuclear weapons free world. He helped in the creation of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, and was its youngest signer. Two years later, he helped organize the first meeting of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, bringing together scientists from East and West. He would serve as a leader of the Pugwash movement for the rest of his long life, always as a voice of conscience and reason and a strong and uncompromising advocate of nuclear weapons abolition. He was the living embodiment of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, calling for nuclear weapons abolition and the abolition of war.

    In 1995, Joseph Rotblat received the Nobel Peace Prize. He appealed in his Nobel Lecture in part to his fellow scientists. In doing so, he referred approvingly to the statement made earlier that year by former Manhattan Project scientist Hans Bethe on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and he quoted Bethe’s statement in full:

    As the Director of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, I participated at the most senior level in the World War II Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic weapons.
    Now, at age 88, I am one of the few remaining such senior persons alive. Looking back at the half century since that time, I feel the most intense relief that these weapons have not been used since World War II, mixed with the horror that tens of thousands of such weapons have been built since that time – one hundred times more than any of us at Los Alamos could ever had imagined.
    Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.
    Accordingly, I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons – and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.

    Rotblat concluded his remarks to scientists with the following appeal: “At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society, when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role, and conduct themselves accordingly. I appeal to my fellow scientists to remember their responsibility to humanity.”

    In the final words of his Nobel Lecture, he spoke as an elder statesman of humanity: “The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity.”

    Conclusions

    I have discussed the manner in which three important scientists reacted to nuclear weapons. Of course, there have been many other scientists – including Linus Pauling, Eugene Rabinowitch and Andrei Sakharov – who have also joined in publicly seeking to free the world from the dangers of nuclear arms. But there have also been many other scientists who have supported the nuclear arms race and continue to work on designing and improving nuclear weapons.

    Einstein, Szilard and Rotblat believed that nuclear weapons threaten the future of humanity and must be brought under international control and abolished. They sought to eliminate not only nuclear weapons, but war as a human institution. They all contributed to the creation of nuclear weapons, influenced by the threat of a potential Nazi atomic weapon, but they all regretted their part and sought to change the course of history. They believed that scientists had an important role to play in educating the general population about nuclear threats and encouraging the public and political leaders to support effective nuclear disarmament.

    These men have become historical figures, but they lived real and courageous lives. They were all men of conscience, who understood that nuclear weapons cast a dark shadow across the human future. They stood not with the power establishments of their day, but with humanity. They are important role models for young scientists and engineers. Their lives and their words convey a crucial message for the scientists of today: Contribute your talents constructively to humanity, but withhold them from making and improving armaments, in particular nuclear arms.

    The atomic scientists were influential in initiating many institutions that continue to work for a nuclear weapons free world. These include Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Council for a Livable World, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the Federation of American Scientists. To these can be added newer organizations committed to science for social responsibility such as Science for Peace in the UK and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.

    As the scientists directly connected with the World War II US Manhattan Project and the British MAUD Committee have passed on, new responsibilities have fallen to a younger generation of scientists. It remains to be seen, though, whether this new generation of scientists will have the passion and persistence to carry on effectively in fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a positive sign that one of the world’s most renowned physicists, Stephen Hawking, has stated, “As scientists we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects…as citizens of the world we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action to render nuclear weapons obsolete.”

    Today the University of California manages and provides oversight to the main US nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore. These laboratories have designed every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. They have recently designed a new nuclear weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which the US government would like to develop to replace all existing weapons in the US nuclear arsenal. To this enterprise, the University of California lends its prestige and legitimacy. Leaders of the University proudly proclaim that they are performing a national service, and seem to give little thought to the dangerous nuclear nightmare they are perpetuating.

    Scientists everywhere should join together, in the spirit of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, to speak out and demand that Universities, such as the University of California, stop supporting the design, development, testing and manufacture of any weapon of mass destruction, most of all nuclear weapons. They should bring collective pressure to bear upon those scientists who choose to participate in such work. In short, they should follow in the footsteps of Einstein, Szilard and Rotblat, and accept personal and professional responsibility for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    As Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue pointed out in his 2007 Nagasaki Peace Declaration, “[A] major force for nuclear abolition would be for scientists and engineers to refuse to cooperate in nuclear weapons development.” To achieve this end, it will be necessary to apply peer pressure within the scientific community to strip away any semblance of prestige and legitimacy that remains connected to the creation of weapons capable of destroying humanity.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.com).

  • Nuclear Bombs on a Free Trip Across the U.S.A.

    It was something like a sequel to “Dr Strangelove” the black humor of Stanley Kubrick’s blockbuster from the 60’s with the genial Peter Sellers. Six armed nuclear warheads were mistakenly flown across the U.S., mounted on the wings of a B-52 bomber – the same type of plane portrayed in Kubrick’s movie.

    The news of this unthinkable event, which occurred during the last days of August, was mentioned only briefly in the media. There are more “important” matters; the latest scandal of the rich and famous or the misfortunes of disgraceful politicians.

    But this blunder from the U.S. Air Force must be extensively examined and investigated. The cruise missiles, each one with nearly 10 times the destructive force that annihilated Hiroshima, were hanging on the bomber for a 1,500 miles trip from North Dakota to Louisiana, with the flight crew totally unaware.

    The explanation given by Lt. Colonel Ed Thomas, a U.S. Air Force spokesman stated that, “All evidence we have seen so far points to an isolated mistake. The error was discovered during internal checks. The weapons remained in air force control and custody at all times.”

    In other words we don’t need to worry, everything is under control. But a different point of view was expressed by Rep. Edward J. Markey, senior member of the Homeland Security Committee: “This was absolutely inexcusable. Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible.”

    Is this the same kind of control we have in Iraq?

    We, at the NAPF believe that this kind of “mistake” could lead to a nuclear nightmare. This is another example of why the nuclear arsenals are the “sword of Damocles” hanging over the head of all of us. A most powerful reason to continue our tireless campaign to eliminate the nuclear weapons before they eliminate the human race.

    Ruben Arvizu is Director for Latin America for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org)