Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Threat

  • Civil Society Initiatives for Nuclear Disarmament

    Civil Society Initiatives for Nuclear Disarmament

    The fate of the world depends upon whether humankind will be able to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals. Nuclear weapons, designed to cause massive damage to large populations, are essentially city-destroying weapons, as was tragically demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These weapons may be created in the hope that they will never be used, but this cannot be guaranteed. Once created, nuclear weapons are an ongoing threat to humanity and other forms of life. So long as these weapons exist, no leader can provide a guarantee that they will not be used.

    I keep on my desk a small booklet, published by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, with the words of General George Lee Butler, a former Commander of the United States Strategic Command. General Butler, who advocates abolition of all nuclear weapons, believes that humanity has been given a “second chance” by our Creator. Here is the perspective of this retired four-star general who now sees himself simply as “a citizen of this planet”:

    “Sadly, the Cold War lives on in the minds of men who cannot let go the fears, the beliefs, the enmities of the Nuclear Age. They cling to deterrence, clutch its tattered promise to their breast, shake it wistfully at bygone adversaries and balefully at new or imagined ones. They are gripped still by its awful willingness not simply to tempt the apocalypse but to prepare its way.

    “To them I say we cannot at once keep sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it. It is time to reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason and the rightful interests of humanity.” 1

    These are powerful words, not the kind we are accustomed to hearing from politicians or military leaders. General Butler, an anomaly, is a retired air force officer, a graduate of the Air Force Academy, who once commanded the entire US strategic nuclear arsenal, and came away from this experience sobered by what he had learned. For a short time, General Butler spoke eloquently for a world free of nuclear weapons, his military background giving authenticity to his concerns.

    But there are few military men such as General Butler, and fewer still who have spoken publicly on this most important of all issues confronting humanity. For the most part, military leaders and politicians appear comfortable moving forward with only slight variations of the nuclear status quo. It appears that if there is to be change toward a world free of nuclear threat, the leadership must come from civil society organizations. These organizations face the challenge of awakening largely dormant populations within somnambulistic societies that seem content to sleepwalk toward Armageddon.

    Civil Society Leadership

    In the area of nuclear disarmament, the role of civil society leadership is critical. We obviously cannot depend upon political leadership, which is capable in our frenetic world of only dealing with problems as they become acute. There is a furious pace to politics that dulls the political imagination and often results in less than visionary leadership.

    There are two possible paths to awakening the political imagination on the issue of nuclear disarmament. The first and tragic possibility would be a sadly belated response to a nuclear detonation destroying a city, whether by accident or design, by a nuclear weapons state or by a non-state extremist group. The second would be by an effective campaign led by civil society that awakened and empowered the people of the planet to put sufficient pressure on their political leaders for them to take action as a political expedient without needing to engage their moral imaginations.

    Clearly the second option is far preferable to the first. The critical question is whether civil society organizations can actually provide the leadership to sufficiently awaken a dormant public to in turn move political leaders to take action.

    Why have civil society organizations and their followers not been successful in past campaigns calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons? Intrinsic psychological, political and social factors impede efforts to build a sustained and effective mass movement seeking this goal. A crude but accurate analogy can be made with the plight of a frog placed in a pot of lukewarm water and placidly treading water while the pot is gradually heated to a boil. Here are some of the reasons one could speculate that the frog (or our own species) fails to take the necessary action to save itself:

    • Ignorance. The frog may fail to recognize the dilemma. It may be unable to predict the consequences of being in water in which the temperature is steadily rising.
    • Complacency. The frog may feel comfortable in the warming water. It may believe that because nothing bad has happened yet (even though it has), nothing bad will happen in the future.
    • Deference to authority. The frog may believe that others are in control of the thermostat and that it has no power to change the conditions in which it finds itself.
    • Sense of powerlessness. The frog may fail to realize its own power to affect change, and believe that there is nothing it can do to improve its situation.
    • Fear. The frog may have concluded that, although there are dangers in the pot, the dangers outside the pot are even greater. Thus, it fails to take action, even though it could do so.
    • Economic advantage. The frog may conclude that there are greater short-term rewards for staying in the pot than jumping out.
    • Conformity. The frog may see other frogs treading water in the pot and not want to appear different by sounding an alarm or acting on its own initiative.
    • Marginalization. The frog may have witnessed other frogs attempt to raise warnings or jump out, and seen them marginalized and ignored by the other frogs.
    • Technological optimism. The frog may understand that there is a problem that could lead to its demise, but believe that it is not necessary to act because someone will find a technological solution.
    • Tyranny of experts. Even though the frog may believe it is in danger, the experts may provide a comforting assessment that makes the frog doubt its own wisdom.

    Identical challenges must be overcome if civil society initiatives are to be successful in moving the human population to action. Other challenges have to do with the mass media, which is not inclined to cede either time or authority to civil society leadership. Thus, the messages of those who often have little to say, but are in powerful positions, tend to dominate the media, while civil society organizations struggle for even modest media exposure.

    Civil Society Initiatives

    Indeed, there have been many courageous and ambitious civil society initiatives for nuclear disarmament over the period of the Nuclear Age. They have included marches, protests, appeals, policy recommendations and civil disobedience. I will discuss a few of these important initiatives that have occurred in the post Cold War period, although there are far too many for me to provide a comprehensive overview. Some of these outstanding initiatives have been Abolition 2000, The Middle Powers Initiative, the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons, and the Turn the Tide Campaign of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    Abolition 2000, a global network of over 2,000 civil society organizations and municipalities, was formed during the 1995 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference by representatives of organizations that were disappointed with the manner in which the nuclear weapons states, particularly the United States , had manipulated the outcome of the Conference. Despite the serious lack of progress by the nuclear weapons states in fulfilling their nuclear disarmament obligations to that point in time, the treaty was extended indefinitely. Abolition 2000 began with a Founding Statement, created by civil society representatives at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, which articulated its principles. 2 The strong points of Abolition 2000 were that it was broadly international, included many forms of expertise, was activist in its orientation, and was committed to complete nuclear disarmament. This network was largely responsible for bringing the terms “abolition” and “elimination” into the dialogue on nuclear disarmament. It moved the discussion from arms control to abolition.

    The initial goal of Abolition 2000 when it was formed in 1995 was to achieve an agreement for the total elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2000. When this agreement by governments proved impossible to achieve, despite Abolition 2000 having drafted a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, the network decided to continue its abolition work, maintaining contacts within the global network with the more than 2,000 civil society organizations and municipalities that comprised the network.

    The Middle Powers Initiative (MPI) is a coalition of eight international civil society organizations. It was formed in 1998 to encourage middle power governments to promote a nuclear disarmament agenda. Only months after MPI’s formation, a group of middle power countries, calling itself the New Agenda Coalition (NAC), went public with a strong nuclear disarmament agenda. These countries were: Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden. 3 They have been active in promoting their agenda in the First Committee of the United Nations (Disarmament Committee) and at the meetings of the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They were instrumental in achieving the consensus adoption of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament in the Final Document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference.

    MPI has given support to the New Agenda countries by convening high level consultations, sending delegations to many countries, including NATO countries and Japan , and publishing briefing papers in support of NAC positions and the preservation of the NPT. By its support of the NAC, the Middle Powers Initiative has tried to focus the attention and efforts of key civil society organizations to bring pressure to bear on the nuclear weapons states from friendly middle power governments. 4

    The Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons, also known as Vision 2020, is a relatively recent campaign, having begun its work in 2003. The goal of the campaign is to press governments to begin negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons in 2005, to complete negotiations on this treaty by the year 2010 and to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2020. In a sense, this Emergency Campaign picks up from Abolition 2000, setting its target date for governments to complete negotiations just a decade further in the future than Abolition 2000. This Emergency Campaign has another important element. It is led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , two cities dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons, and is composed of mayors in over 600 cities. 5

    The Mayors for Peace participated in the 2004 Preparatory Committee meeting of the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, bringing 16 mayors and deputy mayors from 12 countries to New York to attend the meetings. They are planning to bring over 100 mayors and deputy mayors to the 2005 NPT Review Conference. There is no doubt that the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign is bringing important new energy to the global effort for nuclear disarmament. Abolition 2000 has created a special arm, Abolition Now!, to support the mayors campaign and that calls upon all countries to make public their plans for nuclear disarmament in accord with their treaty obligations under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. 6

    A new and hopeful campaign focuses on the United States , the world’s most powerful state, because US leadership and support is essential for serious global progress on nuclear disarmament. The campaign, called Turn the Tide, is a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. It seeks to inform and mobilize US citizens to participate in directing messages via the internet to their elected representatives on key nuclear weapons issues. The campaign utilizes sophisticated software to send action alerts and enables easy communications with key officials. 7

    The Turn the Tide Campaign is based on a 13-point Statement:

    • Stop all efforts to create dangerous new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
    • Maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
    • Cancel plans to build new nuclear weapons production plants, and close and clean up the toxic contamination at existing plants.
    • Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No Use of nuclear weapons against any nation or group that does not have nuclear weapons.
    • Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nations possessing nuclear weapons.
    • Cancel funding for and plans to deploy offensive missile “defense” systems which could ignite a dangerous arms race and offer no security against terrorist weapons of mass destruction.
    • In order to significantly decrease the threat of accidental launch, together with Russia , take nuclear weapons off high-alert status and do away with the strategy of launch-on-warning.
    • Together with Russia , implement permanent and verifiable dismantlement of nuclear weapons taken off deployed status through the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).
    • Demonstrate to other countries US commitment to reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons by removing all US nuclear weapons from foreign soil.
    • To prevent future proliferation or theft, create and maintain a global inventory of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons materials and place these weapons and materials under strict international safeguards.
    • Initiate international negotiations to fulfill existing treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the phased and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
    • Initiate a moratorium on new nuclear power reactors and gradually phase out existing ones, as these are a primarily means for the proliferation of nuclear materials, technology and weapons; simultaneously establish an International Sustainable Energy Agency to support the development of clean, safe renewable energy.
    • Redirect funding from nuclear weapons programs to dismantling nuclear weapons, safeguarding nuclear materials, cleaning up the toxic legacy of the Nuclear Age and meeting more pressing social needs such as education, health care and social services.

    Conclusions

    For nearly 60 years, since the first nuclear test at Alamogordo , New Mexico , the world has been muddling through the nuclear dilemma. Despite the end of the Cold War, we are far from being secure from the nuclear threat. The threat today takes a different form, but is no less dangerous. In our divided world, there are terrible tensions and there is the possibility that nuclear weapons could end up in the hands of non-state extremists who would have no reservations about using them against the populations of many countries, including the nuclear weapons states. The irony of this is that none of the nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear weapons states can provide an ounce of deterrence or security against such extremists.

    The only way to assure the security of the nuclear weapons states, or any state, from a nuclear attack, is to eliminate these weapons in a phased, orderly and verified manner and place the materials to make these weapons under strict and effective international control. This is the reality of our common nuclear dilemma, and getting this message through to the leaders of nuclear weapons states, particularly the United States, is one of the most critical challenges, if not the most critical challenge, of our time. Only with the success of civil society in meeting this challenge can we have a reasonable expectation, in General Butler’s words, to “reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason and the rightful interests of humanity.”

    David Krieger is a founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the co-author of Nuclear Weapons and the World Court and may other studies of peace in the Nuclear Age.

    Butler , George Lee, “Ending the Nuclear Madness,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Waging Peace Series, Booklet 40, September 1999.

    See http://www.abolition2000.org

    Originally Slovenia was also a part of the New Agenda Coalition, but did not stay long in the coalition.

    See http://www.mpi.org

    See http://www.mayorsforpeace.org

    See http://www.abolitionnow.org

    See https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com

  • Contesting Iran’s Nuclear Future

    Iran continues to challenge international efforts to hold it accountable for its suspicious nuclear activities. Later this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors will meet to address the issue against the backdrop of growing fear that time to contain the country’s nuclear ambitions is running out. This leaves little doubt that Iran will be high on the Bush administration’s foreign-policy agenda in the months to come.

    To date, the IAEA has relied on public shame to force Iran’s compliance. In the past two years, agency inspectors laid bare much of Tehran’s nuclear program. But suspicions remain that Iran’s ruling mullahs have not revealed all. Should Iran continue to waffle, the international community must decide if it must take more aggressive steps to force the revolutionary state to accede. The following options suggest that there is no clear path.

    The most benign approach would be to continue current IAEA efforts. Arguably, agency inspections and quarterly public reports will, in time, embarrass Iran to resist the nuclear-weapons temptation. This butts against two facts, however. First, suspicions persist that Iran has not come clean about all its nuclear activities. Second, Iran’s enrichment and reprocessing endeavors make no sense apart from nuclear weapons. For example, the solitary power reactor Tehran hopes to initiate in 2005 or 2006 does not justify the economic investment in facilities to recycle nuclear fuel into weapons-grade material.

    Believing that diplomacy had not run its course, Britain, France and Germany opened a dialogue with Iran outside the IAEA framework. In October 2003, the three European powers sent their foreign ministers to Tehran. The diplomats offered economic carrots and peaceful nuclear-energy assistance as a quid pro quo for Iran to halt its developing enrichment program. The meeting prompted cautious optimism: Tehran announced that it would suspend the manufacture of nuclear centrifuges. Nine months later, the mullahs reversed themselves.

    Chagrined, the Europeans renewed the dialogue. The Iranians stonewalled. They declared that “no country has the right to deprive us of nuclear technology.” The Europeans remain undaunted. They continue to try. Today, for instance, they are sitting down with the Iranians in Paris, where they will likely continue to dangle economic incentives in exchange for Tehran’s promise of a halt to Iran’s enrichment program. Tehran’s probable, coy response: It might suspend – again – its enrichment activities, but just for a short time, to give diplomacy a chance.

    Unimpressed, the Bush administration remains convinced that Iran is using diplomacy to buy time for its nuclear ambitions. For months, the administration has pushed the IAEA to declare Tehran in violation of its nuclear nonproliferation obligations. The result would place the matter before the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.

    But this is another path to nowhere. Iran’s critical vulnerability to sanctions – reliance on the hard currency earned through oil exports – is a double-edged sword. The United States is unlikely to generate Security Council support for measures that will restrict the already tight oil market. Washington also is stuck on its own petard – the Iraq WMD intelligence debacle. In the absence of a nuclear weapons “smoking gun” – certified by the IAEA – the Security Council is unlikely to issue more than a rhetorical slap on the wrist that calls upon the mullahs to reconsider their transgressions.

    Among the dwindling options is confrontation. One option would galvanize members of the Proliferation Security Initiative – which includes a core group of a dozen or so nations that have agreed to intercept WMD contraband – to isolate Iran until it disgorges its nuclear weapons capacity. However, building the PSI into a serious new “alliance of the willing,” in the absence of a clear and present danger, is unlikely.

    Then there is military action. Only military occupation can guarantee Iran’s nuclear disarmament; limited military strikes will not destroy hidden nuclear facilities. But, in the Iraq aftermath, either option would be a hard sell to the American public. On the other hand, Israel, which considers Iran a mortal enemy, does not require a sales job. Jerusalem repeatedly has declared that it will not allow Iran a nuclear weapons capacity. But Israel is in no better position than the United States to destroy the program.

    This leaves two factors that may impact Iran’s nuclear future. One is peaceful regime change. Although there is some hope that a new generation of Iranians – who might be more nonproliferation compliant – will replace the mullahs, there appears to be little prospect in the short term. In time, impetus could come from a thriving democratic Iraq. Unfortunately, Baghdad’s political future will not be resolved anytime soon.

    On the flip side, the United States and its allies could concede that little can be done to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. By accepting this prospect, the challenge will be to keep the nuclear peace. The solution must include an explicit warning to Tehran from Washington and Jerusalem: Any Iranian nuclear threat or act – or any complicity in a terrorist nuclear act – would result in the elimination of the revolutionary regime by any and all means. The time to issue this warning is now, before the mullahs realize their nuclear ambitions. The result might have a sobering impact as Iran weighs a nuclear armed future.

    Bennett Ramberg served in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

    First published by the San Francisco Chronicle.

  • Meeting the Russell-Einstein Challenge to Humanity

    Meeting the Russell-Einstein Challenge to Humanity

    “Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.”

    Vaclav Havel

    On July 9, 1955, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto was issued in London. Its concern was with the new, powerful H-bombs, which the signers of the Manifesto believed placed the human race in jeopardy of annihilation. “Here, then, is the problem,” the Manifesto stated, “which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.”

    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation President David Krieger speaking to Soka Gakai in Hiroshima, Japan.

    Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein were two of the leading intellectual figures of the 20th century. Russell was a philosopher, mathematician and Nobel Laureate in Literature. Einstein was a theoretical physicist, considered the greatest scientist of his time, and a Nobel Laureate in Physics. Both men were tireless advocates for peace throughout their lives.

    Russell was primarily responsible for drafting the Manifesto, but it contained ideas that Einstein often discussed. Einstein signed the document just days before his death. It was his last major act for peace.

    In addition to Russell and Einstein, the Manifesto was signed by nine other scientists: Max Born, Perry W. Bridgman, Leopold Infeld, Frederic Joliot-Curie, Herman J. Muller, Linus Pauling, Cecil F. Powell, Joseph Rotblat and Hideki Yukawa. All of these men either already had received or would receive the Nobel Prize. Linus Pauling, the great American chemist, would receive two Nobel Prizes, one for Chemistry and one for Peace.

    Sir Joseph Rotblat is the only signer of the Manifesto still living, and he is now 96 years old. He is an extraordinary man, who has been a tireless advocate of the Manifesto throughout his long life. He was the only scientist in the Manhattan Project to leave his position when he realized that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic weapon. He was the founder of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and served as president of that organization until in recent years his advanced age caused him to step back. In 1995, Professor Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize. When Professor Rotblat turned 90, he announced that he had two remaining goals in life: first, the short-term goal of abolishing nuclear weapons; and, second, the long-term goal of abolishing war.

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto makes the following points:

    1. Scientists have special responsibilities to awaken the public to the technological threats, particularly nuclear threats, confronting humanity.
    2. Those scientists with the greatest knowledge of the situation appear to be the most concerned.
    3. Nuclear weapons endanger our largest cities and threaten the future of humanity.
    4. In the circumstance of prevailing nuclear threat, humankind must put aside its differences and confront this overriding problem.
    5. The prohibition of modern weapons is not a sufficient solution to the threat; war as an institution must be abolished.
    6. Nonetheless, as a first step the nuclear weapons states should renounce these weapons.
    7. The choice before humanity is to find peaceful means of settling conflicts or to face “universal death.”

    In the end, the signers of the Manifesto believed, that humanity had a choice: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation President David Krieger speaking to Soka Gakai in Hiroshima, Japan.

    It has now been nearly 50 years since this Manifesto was made public. On the 40th anniversary of issuing the Manifesto in 1995, Joseph Rotblat concluded his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech by echoing the call: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

    In 2005, when the Russell-Einstein Manifesto has its 50th anniversary, we will be 60 years into the Nuclear Age and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will commemorate the 35th anniversary of its entry into force. In April 2005, the 189 parties to the NPT will meet at the United Nations in New York for their 7th Review Conference. The meeting promises to be contentious and disappointing.

    In 1995, the parties to the NPT agreed to extend the NPT indefinitely. At the time, the nuclear weapons states had reaffirmed their obligation in Article VI of the Treaty to pursue good faith efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament. Five years later, at the year 2000 NPT Review Conference, the parties to the Treaty agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. These included early entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile materials, application of the principle of irreversibility to nuclear disarmament, and an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals..”

    The nuclear weapons states have made virtually no progress on the 13 Practical Steps and little seems likely. The United States has been the worst offender. It has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, opposed creating a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty that is verifiable, treated nuclear disarmament as completely reversible and, in general, shown no good faith toward its obligations under the Treaty.

    Rather than fulfilling its own obligations, the US has pointed the finger at some potential nuclear proliferators. It initiated an illegal war against Iraq, alleging it possessed or was developing weapons of mass destruction programs, including nuclear programs, which turned out not to exist. It has stated that Iran will not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, implicitly threatening to attack Iran as well. After North Korea withdrew from the NPT, the US entered into six party talks with North Korea , but has been only half-hearted in its attempts to meet their concerns by offering security guarantees and development assistance.

    At the same time, the US has never expressed concern that Israel ‘s nuclear weapons pose a threat to Middle Eastern or global stability. When India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998 the US initially expressed concern. But after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the US tightened its relations with both of these countries and lifted its sanctions on military materials. Even after the discovery that Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was conducting a global nuclear arms bazaar, the US has maintained its close ties to Pakistan , despite the fact that Pakistani President Musharaf moved quickly to grant Khan a pardon. The US has yet to question Khan with regard to the extent of his nuclear proliferation.

    Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently reiterated that forty countries have the potential to become nuclear weapons states. Increased nuclear proliferation could be the ultimate result of the failure of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their obligations for nuclear disarmament. One of these proliferating countries could be Japan , which remains a virtual nuclear weapons power with the technology and nuclear materials to become a nuclear weapons state in a matter of days.

    As we approach this important anniversary year of 2005, there is a failure of governmental leadership toward nuclear disarmament and little cause for hope. The United States , under the Bush administration, has turned the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 into an ongoing war, first in Afghanistan and then Iraq . Neither of these wars is going well. The Bush administration speaks of creating democracy in these two countries, but in fact both countries are now presided over by US-selected former CIA assets.

    If Mr. Bush should be elected to a second term, the American people will have ratified his policies of preventive war, deployment of missile defenses, creation of new nuclear weapons, the undermining of international law and the ravaging of the global environment for the benefit of US global hegemony and corporate profit. This would be a tragedy for the United States and for the rest of the world. This decision will be made on November 2, 2004 in the most important election in our lifetimes. Until this decision is made, we cannot predict the prospects for success at the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. We can project, though, that if Bush is elected, the prospects for the success of the Treaty conference and the future of the NPT will be exceedingly dim.

    The vision of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, and of the two great men who put their names on it, stands in stark contrast to the vision of the leaders of today’s nuclear weapons states and, particularly, the present leadership in the United States . The Russell-Einstein Manifesto calls upon us to remember our humanity, ban nuclear weapons and cease war. Mr. Bush, in contrast, seems incapable of embracing a broader humanity, has shown no leadership toward banning nuclear weapons and has demonstrated his willingness to engage in preventive war on false pretenses.

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto calls upon humanity to choose dramatically different futures. Since humanity is made up of all of us, we all must choose. And the choice of each of us matters. This great city of Hiroshima , a city that has experienced so much devastation and rebirth, led by its hibakusha , has chosen the path of a nuclear weapons-free future. I am always inspired by the spirit of Hiroshima and its courageous hibakusha , and I stand in solidarity with you on this path.

    One truly hopeful action at this time is the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons. This campaign, led by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, calls for the initiation of negotiations in 2005 and the completion of negotiations in 2010 for the elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world by the year 2020. This is a great and necessary challenge, one which deserves our collective support. Just a few days ago, on behalf of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, I presented our 2004 World Citizenship Award to the Mayors for Peace for their critical effort on behalf of humanity.

    Our cause is right and it is noble. It seeks, in the spirit of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, to preserve humanity’s future. It calls upon us to raise our voices, to stand our ground, and to never give up. The year 2005 is a critical year, but it is not the only year. Our efforts must be sustained over a long period of time, perhaps longer than our lifetimes. This means we must inspire new generations to act for humanity.

    There will be times when we may be tired and discouraged, but we are not allowed to cease our efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. No matter what obstacles we face in the form of political intransigence or public apathy, we are not allowed to give up hope. This is the price of being fully human in the Nuclear Age. The future demands of us that we keep our hearts strong, our voices firm, and our hope alive.

    David Krieger is a founder and the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global movement to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Gorbachev Wages the Good Fight Against WMDs

    The term statesman, in its positive sense, can be applied to only a few current and former heads of state. One of them is Mikhail Gorbachev.

    The former Soviet president spoke out forcefully in London last week at the kickoff of a new campaign called Come Clean. Launched by Greenpeace, Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other non-governmental organizations, the campaign is designed to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. “If they exist, sooner or later there will be disastrous consequences,” he said. “It is not enough to safeguard them. They must be abolished.”

    This forthright repudiation of such weapons is not an afterthought for the man who once ruled the world’s largest nation. Quite the contrary. He began speaking out against nuclear dangers even before he assumed the top leadership post in the Soviet Union and initiated the transformation of his country into a relatively peaceful, democratic society. Addressing the British parliament in December 1984, Gorbachev declared that “the nuclear age inevitably dictates new political thinking. Preventing nuclear war is the most burning issue for all people on earth.”

    After becoming Soviet party secretary in March 1985, Gorbachev stepped up his attack upon nuclear weapons. Speaking to the French parliament that October, he declared that, as there could be “no victors in a nuclear war,” the time had come “to stop the nuclear arms race.” Faced with the “self-destruction of the human race,” people had to “burn the black book of nuclear alchemy” and make the 21st century a time “of life without fear of universal death.” In January 1986, Gorbachev unveiled a three-stage plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons around the world by the year 2000.

    As these elements of such thinking were put into place, Eduard Shevardnadze, the new Soviet foreign minister, exulted. Henceforth, he wrote, Soviet security would be “gained not by the highest possible level of strategic parity, but the lowest possible level,” with “nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction … removed from the equation.” The world was well on its way to the INF treaty, the START I treaty, and the end of the Cold War.

    American conservatives, of course, have dished up a very different version of events. In it, Gorbachev and other courageous Soviet reformers are simply airbrushed out of the picture. Instead, the Reagan administration’s military buildup is said to have overawed Soviet bureaucrats and “won” the Cold War.

    But this triumphalist interpretation has nothing behind it but the self-interest of U.S. officials. None of the Soviet leaders of the time have given it any credit whatsoever. Gorbachev himself shrugged off the idea of Soviet capitulation to U.S. power as American political campaign rhetoric, but added: “If this idea is serious, then it is a very big delusion.”

    What did move Gorbachev to take his antinuclear stand was the critical perspective on nuclear weapons advanced by the mass nuclear disarmament campaign of the era. Meeting frequently with leaders of this campaign, he adopted their ideas, their rhetoric and their proposals.

    “The new thinking,” he said, “absorbed the conclusions and demands of … the public and … of the movements of physicians, scientists and ecologists, and of various antiwar organizations.”

    Although President Reagan also deserves credit for fostering nuclear disarmament and the end of the Cold War, it is not for his dangerous and expensive weapons systems. As Colin Powell observed, what Reagan contributed was “the vision and flexibility, lacking in many knee-jerk Cold Warriors, to recognize that Gorbachev was a new man in a new age offering new opportunities for peace.”

    Gorbachev’s sincerity in seeking nuclear disarmament is further exemplified by his activities since leaving public office in 1991. Time and again, he has spoken out against the dangers of nuclear weapons. In January 1998, he joined an array of other former national leaders who signed an appeal for nuclear abolition.

    It is sad to see how far the U.S. government has strayed from that vision. Although the Bush administration talks about the danger of WMDs, they are only the WMDs of other nations. It has no plan for comprehensive nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, it has withdrawn from the ABM treaty, rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is currently promoting legislation to build new nuclear weapons.

    What this nation badly needs is a farsighted statesman like Mikhail Gorbachev.

    Lawrence S. Wittner teaches at the University at Albany. His latest book is “Toward Nuclear Abolition.”

  • Ending the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity: New Thinking and Effective Campaigns are Needed

    Ending the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity: New Thinking and Effective Campaigns are Needed

    We need new thinking and effective campaigns if we are to succeed in quelling the growing nuclear dangers in the world. The existing nuclear weapons states are failing to fulfill their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT, and claims to have become a member of the nuclear weapons club. Iran is enriching uranium for what it claims are peaceful purposes. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently reminded the world that there are forty countries capable of converting their “peaceful” nuclear programs to weapons programs.

    There are still well over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world, perhaps closer to 30,000, mostly in the arsenals of the US and Russia. These two countries also continue to maintain over 2,000 nuclear weapons each on hair-trigger alert, creating the ongoing and increasing possibility of an accidental nuclear launch. Other nuclear weapons states include the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and likely North Korea .

    Throughout the world, terrorism is on the rise with groups such as Al Qaeda openly expressing a desire to obtain nuclear weapons. Should such a group succeed in this quest, they could not be deterred from using these weapons, since deterrence implies being able to locate the attacking party in order to retaliate. Thus, existing arsenals of thousands of nuclear weapons cannot deter a small group of terrorists from attacking the cities of the militarily most powerful states.

    The US attacked Iraq because of Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, and has made threats of preemptive action to North Korea and Iran based on their nuclear arsenals. For geopolitical reasons, the US has turned a blind eye to Israel ‘s nuclear weapons and those of other allied nations, while attacking Iraq, a country that it falsely accused of having such weapons. The US has basically adopted a “do as I say, not as I do” strategy of nuclear arms control. Such a strategy, based on clear double standards, is extremely dangerous and destined to fail.

    The world is walking a dangerous tightrope, while facing harsh prospects of potential nuclear disaster. The only way to prevent a nuclear 9/11 is to dramatically reduce the nuclear weapons, technologies and materials in the world and to bring the remaining ones under international control. This will require US leadership as the world’s most powerful country. Without US leadership, the world will continue its flirtation with nuclear disaster, increasing the likelihood that the US itself could become the victim of its own double standards.

    Unfortunately, the US, under the Bush administration, has not only failed to show leadership to prevent nuclear terrorism and nuclear double standards, but has actively sought to improve its nuclear arsenal. It has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is moving toward lowering the time needed to resume nuclear testing. It has been allocating funds to research “bunker busting” nuclear weapons and “mini-nukes.” And it has forged ahead with deployment of untested missile defense systems that have caused Russia and China to make offensive improvements in their nuclear arsenals in order to maintain their deterrent capabilities.

    If we are to avert future nuclear catastrophes it is necessary to change the course of current nuclear policy. In order to do this, we need a new way of thinking about nuclear weapons that reflects the view that they undermine rather than enhance our security. This is the conclusion reached by General George Lee Butler, the former head of the US Strategic Command. General Butler was once in charge of all US strategic weapons. He stated, “Sadly, the Cold War lives on in the minds of men who cannot let go the fears, the beliefs, the enmities of the Nuclear Age. They cling to deterrence, clutch its tattered promise to their breast, shake it wistfully at bygone adversaries and balefully at new or imagined ones. They are gripped still by its awful willingness not simply to tempt the apocalypse but to prepare the way.”

    Nearly fifty years ago, Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20th century, argued, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Shortly before Einstein’s death, he joined Bertrand Russell in issuing a short manifesto signed by themselves and nine other prominent scientists, including Joseph Rotblat , the one scientist who left the Manhattan Project when he realized that the Germans would not succeed in developing a nuclear weapon. The document, known simply as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, set forth the case that nuclear weapons make the abolition of war necessary. “Here, then, is the problem that we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.”

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was Einstein’s final warning and plea to humanity. The manifesto urged that humanity has a choice: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels?” The document went on to urge: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    To succeed in ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity, ordinary people must engage in the issue and it must become a top priority issue. At present, most people are not engaged in this issue, or may even incorrectly believe that nuclear weapons provide prestige and enhance rather than undermine their security. What is needed is a massive, well-funded campaign of public education and advocacy in order to arouse ordinary people and officials everywhere to action.

    I will mention two encouraging campaigns that are in their early stages. The first is the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons. 1 This campaign seeks to activate mayors around the world to engage their populations to pressure their national leaders to begin in 2005 negotiations on eliminating nuclear weapons, to complete these negotiations by 2010, and to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2020. This campaign, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , holds promise, but at this point in time it remains dramatically under-funded. Nonetheless, it is moving forward with the expectation that more than 100 mayors and deputy mayors will state their case for nuclear disarmament at the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations. The Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign is receiving support from Abolition 2000, which has created Abolition Now! to help further the Mayors Campaign. 2

    A second campaign now underway is called Turn the Tide. 3 It was created by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to focus on changing US nuclear policies. It is a campaign that reaches out to US citizens via the internet and urges them to communicate with their elected representatives to support actions set forth in their 13-point Campaign Statement:

    1. Stop all efforts to create dangerous new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
    2. Maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
    3. Cancel plans to build new nuclear weapons production plants, and close and clean up the toxic contamination at existing plants.
    4. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No Use of nuclear weapons against any nation or group that does not have nuclear weapons.
    5. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nations possessing nuclear weapons.
    6. Cancel funding for and plans to deploy offensive missile “defense” systems which could ignite a dangerous arms race and offer no security against terrorist weapons of mass destruction.
    7. In order to significantly decrease the threat of accidental launch, together with Russia , take nuclear weapons off high-alert status and do away with the strategy of launch-on-warning.
    8. Together with Russia , implement permanent and verifiable dismantlement of nuclear weapons taken off deployed status through the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).
    9. Demonstrate to other countries US commitment to reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons by removing all US nuclear weapons from foreign soil.
    10. To prevent future proliferation or theft, create and maintain a global inventory of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons materials and place these weapons and materials under strict international safeguards.
    11. Initiate international negotiations to fulfill existing treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the phased and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
    12. Initiate a moratorium on new nuclear power reactors and gradually phase out existing ones, as these are a primarily means for the proliferation of nuclear materials, technology and weapons; simultaneously establish an International Sustainable Energy Agency to support the development of clean, safe renewable energy.
    13. Redirect funding from nuclear weapons programs to dismantling nuclear weapons, safeguarding nuclear materials, cleaning up the toxic legacy of the Nuclear Age and meeting more pressing social needs such as education, health care and social services.

    There is no magic formula for accomplishing these goals or, for that matter, for changing the world in any direction. Change often occurs one person at a time. The problem with the nuclear weapons threat is that there may not be time for such a progression of involvement. People must immediately change their thinking and they must engage in this issue as if their very lives depended upon it because they do. Many people think that this will probably not happen until another major city has been destroyed by a nuclear weapon. It would be a terrible failure of imagination if the destruction of a city is required to move us to take significant action to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    We know that the danger is lurking in the dark recesses of our collective consciences. Why else would we give our tacit assent to nuclear weapons programs, even in our most prestigious universities where the next generation of leaders is being educated? We must bring the hidden fears and dangers of the Nuclear Age into the light and act with resolve to change the course of history, which sadly now seems to be racing toward inevitable future nuclear catastrophes, unless there is a real awakening.

    David Krieger is a founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

    1 See http://www.mayorsforpeace.org
    2 See http://www.abolitionnow.org
    3 See https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com

  • The Wrong Deterrence: The Threat of Loose Nukes Is One of Our Own Making

    Nuclear terrorism, thankfully, is still only a specter, not a reality. But the recent wave of bloodshed in Russia underscores the urgency of the need to prevent terrorists capable of indiscriminate slaughter from acquiring nuclear bombs.

    To its credit, the Bush administration has finally launched an ambitious initiative to better secure nuclear and radiological materials, particularly in violence-racked Russia. But unless the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which was introduced in May, becomes part of a far more comprehensive approach to the challenges of nuclear theft and terrorism, it is destined to fall well short of its goal of safeguarding the American people from the threat of nuclear weapons.

    The initiative builds on the bilateral nonproliferation efforts of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, a U.S. government-funded, post-Cold War effort that focused on securing Russia’s nuclear arsenal. The new, expanded cooperative effort seeks to collect weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium that could be used in nuclear bombs from dozens of additional countries, and to lock them down in secure facilities.

    But with U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces still on hair-trigger alert, we need to recognize that present policies for reducing the risk of nuclear strikes against the United States by terrorists or rogue countries are inconsistent and self-defeating. On the one hand, in the name of deterrence, U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces both comply with their presidents’ instructions to be constantly prepared to fight a large-scale nuclear war with each other at a moment’s notice. On the other hand, in the name of nonproliferation, the United States and Russia cooperate closely in securing Russia’s nuclear weapons against theft.

    By keeping thousands of nuclear weapons poised for immediate launch, even under normal peacetime circumstances, the United States projects a powerful deterrent threat at Russia. But at the same time, it causes Russia to retain thousands of weapons in its operational inventory, scattered across that country’s vast territory, and to keep them ready for rapid use in large-scale nuclear war with America. And to maintain the reliability of these far-flung weapons, Russia must constantly transport large numbers back and forth between a remanufacturing facility and the dispersed military bases. This perpetual motion creates a serious vulnerability, because transportation is the Achilles’ heel of nuclear weapons security.

    On any given day, many hundreds of Russian nuclear weapons are moving around the countryside. Nearly 1,000 of them are in some stage of transit or temporary storage awaiting relocation at any time. This constant movement between the far-flung nuclear bases and the remanufacturing facility at Ozersk in the southern Urals stems from the esoteric technical fact that Russian nuclear bombs are highly perishable. In contrast to American bombs, which have a shelf life of more than 30 years, Russian bombs last only eight to 12 years before corrosion and internal decay render them unreliable — prone to fizzling instead of exploding. At that point, they must be shipped back to the factory for remanufacturing. Every year many hundreds of bombs, perhaps as many as a thousand, roll out of Russia’s Mayak factory. The United States turns out fewer than 10 per year. In Russia, the rail and other transportation lines linking the factory to the far-flung nuclear bases across 10 time zones are buzzing with nuclear activity and provide fertile ground for terrorist interception.

    Keeping a small strategic arsenal consolidated at a limited number of locations close to the Mayak factory would be the ideal security environment for preventing Russian nuclear bombs from falling into terrorist hands. But the ongoing nuclear dynamic between the former Cold War foes creates the opposite environment, which undercuts security. Russian nuclear commanders, confronted with U.S. submarines lurking off their coasts with 10-minute missile-flight times to Moscow and thousands of launch-ready U.S. warheads on land- and sea-based missiles aimed at thousands of targets in Russia, are compelled to match the American posture in numbers, alert status and geographic dispersal. U.S. leaders must decide which goal takes precedence: sustaining the Cold War legacy of massive arsenals to deter a massive surprise nuclear attack, or shoring up the security of Russian nuclear weapons to prevent terrorists from grabbing them (or corrupt guards from stealing and selling them).

    And terrorists grabbing such a weapon as it shuttles between deployment fields and factories is not the worst-case scenario stemming from this nuclear gamesmanship. The theft of a nuclear bomb could spell eventual disaster for an American city, but the seizure of a ready-to-fire strategic long-range nuclear missile or group of missiles capable of delivering bombs to targets thousands of miles away could be apocalyptic for entire nations.

    If scores of armed Chechen rebels were able to slip into the heart of Moscow and hold a packed theater hostage for days, as they did in 2002, might it not be possible for terrorists to infiltrate missile fields in rural Russia and seize control of a nuclear-armed mobile rocket roaming the countryside? It’s an open question that warrants candid bilateral discussion of the prospects of terrorists capturing rockets and circumventing the safeguards designed to foil their illicit firing, especially since the 9/11 commission report revealed that al Queda plotters considered this very idea.

    Another specter concerns terrorists “spoofing” radar or satellite sensors or cyber-terrorists hacking into early warning networks. By either firing short-range missiles that fool warning sensors into reporting an attack by longer-range missiles, or feeding false data into warning computer networks, could sophisticated terrorists generate false indications of an enemy attack that results in a mistaken launch of nuclear rockets in “retaliation?” False alarms have been frequent enough on both sides under the best of conditions. False warning poses an acute danger as long as Russian and U.S. nuclear commanders are given, as they still are today, only several pressure-packed minutes to determine whether an enemy attack is underway and to decide whether to retaliate. Russia’s deteriorating early-warning network, coupled with terrorist plotting against it, only heightens the dangers.

    Russia is not the only crucible of risk. The early-warning and control problems plaguing Pakistan, India and other nuclear proliferators are even more acute. As these nations move toward hair-trigger stances for their nuclear missiles, the terrorist threat to them will grow in parallel.

    Even the U.S. nuclear control apparatus is far from fool-proof. For example, a Pentagon investigation of nuclear safeguards conducted several years ago made a startling discovery — terrorist hackers might be able to gain back-door electronic access to the U.S. naval communications network, seize control electronically of radio towers such as the one in Cutler, Maine, and illicitly transmit a launch order to U.S. Trident ballistic missile submarines armed with 200 nuclear warheads apiece. This exposure was deemed so serious that Trident launch crews had to be given new instructions for confirming the validity of any launch order they receive. They would now reject certain types of firing orders that previously would have been carried out immediately.

    Both countries are running terrorist risks of this sort for the sake of an obsolete deterrent strategy. The notion that either the United States or Russia would deliberately attack the other with nuclear weapons is ludicrous, while the danger that terrorists are plotting to get their hands on these arsenals is real. We need to kick our old habits and stand down our hair-trigger forces. Taking U.S. and Russian missiles off of alert would automatically reduce, if not remove, the biggest terrorist threats that stem from keeping thousands of U.S. and Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles fueled, targeted and waiting for a couple of computer signals to fire. They would fly the instant they received these signals, which can be sent with a few keystrokes on a launch console.

    To keep them from flying, we ought to reverse our priorities for nuclear security. The U.S. government should not be spending 25 times more on its deterrent posture than it spends on all of our nonproliferation assistance to Russia and other countries to help them keep their nuclear bombs and materials from falling into terrorist hands. Both the United States and Russia should be spending more on de-alerting, dismantling and securing our arsenals than on prepping them for a large-scale nuclear war with each other.

    The current deterrent practices of the two nuclear superpowers are not only anachronistic, they are thwarting our ability to protect ourselves against the real threats.

    Bruce Blair is president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information and a former Minuteman launch officer.

    This article first appeared in The Washington Post , September 19, 2004.

  • The Real Problem on the Indian Sub-continent

    In May 1998, India stunned the world when it successfully conducted nuclear tests in Pokhran, a desert site in the western state of Rajasthan. The tests were reciprocated by its traditional rival, Pakistan , dramatically raising the stakes in the stand-off over Kashmir , one of the world’s longest-running feuds.

    Subsequently, in mid-1999, India fought a brief but bitter conflict with Pakistani-backed forces that had infiltrated Indian-controlled territory in the Kargil area close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. The confrontation between the two countries, just over a year after the nuclear tests, confirmed that the nuclear status didn’t remove the danger of conflict between India and Pakistan; rather, it has increased the stakes if war is to ever occur. Both countries were in an advanced state of nuclear readiness during the entire period of the Kargil conflict. Never before can I remember the tensions within both countries being so high.

    Yet, in a statement in 2001, President Abdul Kalaam of India , continuing to promote and defend the further development of nuclear weapons, asked, “When was the last war with Pakistan? That both sides are nuclear capable has helped not engage in a big war.” 1 However, Kalaam blatantly ignored the fact that tensions escalated during the Kargil conflict due to the nuclearization of the sub-continent. With blinkers on, both President Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India are pressing on to develop more advanced nuclear arsenals. Despite limited resources, in a region where there is chronic social and economic problems with hunger and disease rampant in every corner of each country, India and Pakistan continue to reiterate their commitments to develop and deploy nuclear weapons as part of their national security programs.

    But what is needed, right now more than ever, is a realistic consideration of the problems that lie in the internal sphere of each country. Socio-economic, socio-religious, sectarian, and caste conflict in several parts of the two countries are epidemic. The chaos in Karachi including several street riots, ethno-nationalist insurgencies in Assam and Nagaland in Northeast India continue to claim over a hundred lives every year and the recent Hindu-Muslim riots that killed over a thousand innocent people in the western state of Gujarat in India all point to the increasing threats within each country’s domestic sphere. Nuclear weapons are not the answer to these social problems. Furthermore, more than four million in both India and Pakistan live in abject poverty – that is more than half of the combined population of both countries. Mass unemployment and illiteracy are on the rise. The internal debt figures in India alone have more than tripled. There is a lack of basic needs such as clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. Infrastructure and the quality of education continue to rapidly diminish. There are rising number of suicides by farmers in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Unbridled drug and arms trafficking in Pakistan are becoming more common and widespread. Spending inadequate financial resources on nuclear weapons is not the way out of these pressing socio-economic problems.

    Additionally, incidents of terrorism within both countries have also increased to include suicide attacks on not only the Indian military and para-military but also on their families. Recent bomb blasts in commercial areas in Karachi are proof that Pakistan isn’t immune from terrorism, well within its own borders, either. Nuclear weapons cannot offer a solution to these flagrant acts of terror. Moreover, there is an increasing criminalization and corruption of politics in India and Pakistan. The degradation of politics is starting to question the credibility of both countries. Nuclear weapons provide no real answer to this range of domestic issues, yet this lesson remains unlearned.

    What is needed from both countries right now is a commitment to the welfare of their populations and a firm plan for decreasing poverty, eradicating disease and death from hunger and starvation. Spending limited resources – financial or otherwise on developing a more complete range of nuclear weapons is not going to help the people of India, Pakistan or, for that matter, the people of Kashmir. Providing basic needs such as drinking water, safe infrastructure and hygienic sanitation facilities is what is urgently required. Increasing the quality of education, decreasing the level of illiteracy and paving the way for increasing youth employment are the needs of the hour. Both India and Pakistan have traditionally focused on threats on their borders. It is now time for each country to look inward and form a strong resolve to solve these deep rooted issues within each society.

    Archana Bharath an is a senior at the University of Michigan and was a Lena Chang Intern at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Summer 2004.

  • Global Genocide Is Not an Option

    Dear Editor:

    President Bush violated the sacred dreams and goals of the servicemen and women of previous wars who fought and gave their lives that their children and grandchildren would never, ever have to go to war. Preemptive war guarantees the continuation of war as the way to settle differences.

    International law must be the basis for settling the differences between nations just as national laws are used within nations.

    The Bush administration must be replaced by an administration that will honor the goals and dreams of the heroes of World War II especially by substituting international law for international anarchy.

    The existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction has outlawed war forever, because Global Genocide is not an option.

  • ‘Nuclear Terrorism’: Counting Down to the New Armageddon

    Nuclear Terrorism The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe by Graham Allison
    263 pp. Times Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $24.

    Terrorists are striving to acquire and then use nuclear weapons against the United States. Success, as defined by Osama bin Laden, would be four million dead Americans. Mounting evidence makes this much abundantly clear. Documents discovered in Afghanistan seem to reveal Al Qaeda’s detailed knowledge of nuclear weaponry, while intelligence confirms the terrorists’ attempts to acquire nuclear material on the black market.

    In reaction, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry are giving pride of place to catastrophic terrorism in their foreign policy platforms. Both proclaim it the nation’s No. 1 security challenge. Meanwhile, policy analysts have urgently recommended preventive measures in a flurry of reports, books, journal articles and Congressional testimony.

    Now the Harvard scholar Graham Allison is sounding his own warning in ”Nuclear Terrorism” — a well-written report for general readers on the threat and what it will take to reduce it. He addresses all the big questions: who could be planning an attack; how they might acquire and deliver the weapons; when they might launch the first assault. Allison touches on chemical and biological dangers, but he separates out the far more lethal nuclear threat for special attention. Nonnuclear radioactive (”dirty”) bombs and chemical or biological devices would kill in the thousands. A 10-kiloton nuclear bomb, delivered to Times Square by truck and then detonated, could kill up to one million New Yorkers.

    Some experts think a terrorist attack with nuclear weapons is already unstoppable. Allison disagrees — up to a point. He argues that prevention is still possible, and he gives the Bush administration some credit for several post-9/11 initiatives meant to tighten the security of nuclear weapons and material. However, he calls for far bolder measures, more money and forceful American leadership to improve what is at present rather lax international cooperation. His bottom line is blunt: anything less will make nuclear terrorism inevitable.

    Allison blames both the White House and the Congress for falling short of meeting the challenge. To take one example, since 9/11 the rate of funding has hardly changed for the Nunn-Lugar program, which was established to destroy or secure Russia’s enormous stockpile of fissile material and nuclear weapons. Much remains to be done. Of special concern is Russia’s large supply of suitcase-size nuclear bombs, which terrorists could smuggle into the United States in cargo containers or as airline baggage. The safeguards on these weapons are loose at best. (In 1997, Russia acknowledged that 84 of some 132 such weapons were missing.)

    At present, it will take 13 years, in Allison’s estimation, to secure Russia’s fissile material. Allison’s position, adopted by the Kerry campaign, is to spend whatever dollars are necessary to complete the job in four years, though achieving this objective would also require elimination of Congressionally imposed impediments to Nunn-Lugar and overcoming Russian resistance to intrusion into their facilities.

    We face many vulnerabilities — limited intelligence of the terrorists’ plans; poorly protected ports, borders and nuclear power plants. But the most urgent danger is that terrorists could acquire the fissile material with which to construct a nuclear weapon in a relatively short period of time. Russia presents the greatest problem; 90 percent of all existing fissile material outside the United States is stored within the former Soviet Union. Still, it’s not the only region we need to focus on. At least 32 countries possess weapons-grade fissile material.

    Allison would round up all fissile material and ban the creation of any more. This is a daunting task. Allison himself observes that there are some 200 locations around the world where nuclear weapons or fissile material could be acquired, and he pinpoints the most dangerous — Russia because of its huge supplies, shaky safeguards and extensive corruption; Pakistan because of its indiscriminate spreading of nuclear know-how and equipment; North Korea because of its history of selling missile systems and its apparent nuclear development program; and lastly, the research reactors (some 20-odd) with significant quantities of bomb-grade uranium located in developing countries.

    Allison’s other remedies — like imposing intrusive nuclear power plant inspections and sanctioning violators — may also prove difficult to implement in the real world of suspicious governments and corrupt officials. Because the United States is widely viewed with hostility these days, it may not be able to marshal the international support needed to shut down black markets or block the emergence of new nuclear weapons states. And then there is the question of money. Governments are reluctant to spend lavishly on prospective threats when tax-conscious citizens have not yet experienced any consequences.

    As a champion of the idea that nuclear terrorism is preventable, Allison emphasizes the elements of an offense — improved intelligence, tighter treaties, more transparency and intrusion. But a stronger homeland defense is also needed in case prevention by offense fails. And currently, homeland security is getting short shrift. For the 2005 budget, Congress has allotted $7.6 billion to improve the security of military bases but only $2.6 billion to protect the nation’s vital infrastructure. Within the Department of Defense, $10 billion is spent annually on missile defense, compared with only a few billion on all other counterproliferation programs.

    Homeland security becomes an even higher priority if one broadens one’s thinking about the potential damage from nonnuclear weapons to include more than simply the number who would die. Allison is less concerned with biological and chemical weapons and so-called dirty bombs because they kill in the thousands, not millions. But these unconventional arms can still cause mass disruption; a few anthrax incidents, after all, virtually shut down the Congress. The release of pathogens in a public space, or a biological attack on the food supply system, or a dirty bomb set off in a seaport could have enormous economic consequences. Large-scale government efforts are needed to minimize the danger of such attacks.

    What makes the job of prevention all the more difficult is that the threat of nuclear terrorism is growing at the same time as the need for nuclear-generated electricity. Allison points out that all signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty are permitted to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium to make fuel for peaceful power reactors, provided they declare what they are doing and submit to periodic inspections. In other words, states can come to the brink of nuclear weapons capability without explicitly violating the treaty. Then, without penalty, they can withdraw from the treaty and turn enriched uranium or plutonium into bombs.

    This is a loophole that both Iran and North Korea have sought to take advantage of. Allison and other experts argue that the United States should not discard the treaty but take the lead in fixing it. Their preferred solution is to distinguish ”fuel cycle” states from ”user states.” Those states where fuel-producing facilities already exist would provide enriched fuel to other states that wish to generate electricity from nuclear reactors. Coupling this with stiffer inspection provisions and penalties for withdrawal from the treaty would return the nonproliferation treaty to an important (if limited) role in countering proliferation.

    Nuclear dangers come in several forms, those that might be mounted by states and those from terrorists that cannot be contained by treaties alone, no matter how strict. Allison covers all the potential eventualities but might have been clearer in setting priorities, since resources are limited. Rogue states, capable of launching nuclear-tipped missiles, may ultimately be a threat. But the evidence indicates that the danger currently lies elsewhere. The urgent threat is nuclear terrorism, and funds need to be freed up to fill the considerable holes remaining in our counterterrorism programs.

    Allison’s comprehensive but accessible treatment of this vital subject is a major contribution to public understanding. In turn, an informed public could spur the government to complete the counterterrorism agenda. Only then, as Allison argues, will nuclear terror against America prove preventable.

    James Hoge is the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine.

  • Pentagon Brass Suppresses Truth About Toxic Weapons

    Poisonous Uranium Munitions Threaten World

    The use of weapons containing uranium violates existing laws and customs of war and “constitutes a war crime or crime against humanity,” according to a leading U.S. expert on humanitarian law.

    Karen Parker, a San Francisco-based expert in armed conflict law, told American Free Press that the use of radioactive uranium weapons violates the Hague and Geneva Conventions as well as the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980.

    Although no treaty specifically bans DU weapons, they are illegal “de facto and de jure,” Parker said. However, a class action lawsuit by victims of DU weapons will probably be required for a court to ban their use, she said.

    ‘ILLEGAL FOR ALL COUNTRIES’

    “A weapon made illegal only because there is a specific treaty banning it is only illegal for countries that ratify such a treaty,” Parker wrote in a paper, “The Illegality of DU Weaponry,” presented at the International Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany last October. However, “a weapon that is illegal by operation of existing law is illegal for all countries.”

    Parker, a delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights since 1982, provides legal advice to the UN on DU weapons and other matters of humanitarian law.

    “DU weaponry cannot possibly be legal in light of existing law,” Parker said.

    “In evaluating whether a particular weapon is legal or illegal when there is not a specific treaty, the whole of humanitarian law must be consulted,” Parker wrote.

    According to humanitarian law, the illegality of DU weapons is based on four criteria:

    The first is the “territorial” test. Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal field of battle.

    The second is the “temporal” test, meaning that weapons may only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A weapon that continues to act after the war violates this criterion.

    The territorial and temporal criteria are meant to prevent weapons from being “indiscriminate” in their effect.

    The third rule is that a weapon cannot be unduly inhumane. The Hague Convention of 1907 prohibits “poison or poisoned weapons.” Because DU weapons are radioactive and chemically toxic, as the military knows, they fit the definition of poisonous weapons banned under the Hague Convention.

    WHAT THE MILITARY KNOWS

    The Defense Department is well aware of the toxic effects of DU. In an official presentation by U.S. Army Reserve Col. J. Edgar Wakayama at Fort Belvoir, Va. on Aug. 20, 2002, the dangers of exposure to DU were clearly spelled out:

    “Inhalation exposure has a major effect on the lungs and thoracic lymph nodes,” Wakayama read from a slide. “The alpha particle taken inside the body in large doses is hazardous, producing cell damage and cancer. Lung cancer is well documented,” he noted.

    “Urine samples containing uranium are mutagenic [capable of producing mutation]” and “the cultured human stem bone cell line with DU also transformed the cells to become carcinogenic,” Wakayama read.

    DU deposited in the bone causes DNA damage because of the effects of the alpha particles, Wakayama stressed. One gram of DU emits 12,000 high-energy alpha particles per second.

    The fourth rule for weapons, the “environmental” test, says that weapons cannot have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment.

    Wakayama advised, “Heavily contaminated soil should be removed if the area is to be populated with civilians.”

    Wakayama described the dangers to children playing in contaminated soil and the leaching of DU into local water and food supplies.

    DU FAILS ALL LEGAL CRITERIA

    DU weaponry fails all four tests, Parker says. Because it cannot be contained to the battlefield, it fails the territorial test. Airborne DU particles are carried far from the battlefield affecting distant civilian populations and neighboring countries.

    Because the uranium dispersed on the ground and in the air cannot be “turned off” when the war is over, DU fails the temporal test.

    “The airborne particles have a half-life of billions of years and have the potential to keep killing . . . long after the war is over,” Parker wrote.

    “The status of DU as nuclear, radiological, poison or conventional does not change its illegality. When the weapons test is applied to DU weaponry, it fails,” she concluded.

    DU weapons fail the humaneness test because of how they kill, Parker says, “by cancer, kidney disease etc, long after the hostilities are over.

    “DU is inhumane because it can cause birth defects such as cranial facial anomalies, missing limbs, grossly deformed and non-viable infants and the like, thus affecting children . . . born after the war is over,” Parker said.

    “The teratogenic [interfering with normal embryonic development] nature of DU weapons and the possible burdening of the gene pool of future generations raise the possibility that the use of DU weaponry is genocide,” she wrote. “Willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health” of civilians constitutes a grave breach of the fourth Geneva Convention, and this is “exactly what DU weapons do.”

    Finally, because DU weapons cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment, they fail the fourth rule for weapons, the environmental test.

    “No available technology can significantly change the chemical and radiological toxicity of DU,” the Army Environmental Policy Institute reported to Congress in 1994. “These are intrinsic properties of uranium.”

    “Regarding environmental damages, users of these weapons are obligated to carry out an effective cleanup,” Parker wrote. “The cost of legal claims and environmental cleanup for the gulf wars alone could be staggering.”

    “Use of DU weaponry necessarily violates the ‘grave breach’ provision of the Geneva Conventions, and hence its use constitutes a war crime or crime against humanity,” Parker concluded.

    Questions regarding the legality of DU weapons were sent in writing to the Pentagon’s appointed spokesman on DU matters, James Turner.

    Turner told AFP that he was “not qualified” to answer such questions.

    By press time the Pentagon had not responded to repeated requests for information.