Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: US Nuclear Weapons Policy

  • Erosion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

    I recently participated in a meeting on the Future of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, sponsored by the Middle Powers Initiative at The Carter Center in Atlanta. The Middle Powers Initiative is a coalition of eight international civil society organizations, two of which have received the Nobel Peace Prize. I represented the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at the meeting, one of the founding organizations. In addition to civil society representatives such as myself, the meeting hosted diplomats from many countries. Among the participants were Marian Hobbs, New Zealand’s Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control; Senator Douglas Roche of Canada, chair of the Middle Powers Initiative; Nobuyasu Abe, United Nations Under-Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs; Ambassador Sergio de Queiroz Duarte, Brazilian Ambassador and President-Designate of the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference; former US Ambassador Robert Grey Jr.; and Ambassador Rajab M. Sukayri of the Jordanian Foreign Ministry.

    The participants in the consultation were mindful of the recent United Nations Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The Report, issued in December 2004, indicated that “the nuclear non-proliferation regime is now at risk because of lack of compliance with existing commitments, withdrawal or threats of withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to escape those commitments, a changing international security environment and the diffusion of technology.” The Report found, “We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.”

    The Report further found that “if a simple nuclear device were detonated in a major city, the number of deaths would range from tens of thousands to more than one million. The shock to international commerce, employment and travel would amount to at least one trillion dollars. Such an attack could have further, far-reaching implications for international security, democratic governance and civil rights.” It was against this background of concern that the Atlanta meeting took place. Ambassador Duarte, who will preside over the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, said, “What we have to contend with at the 2005 Review Conference is a persistent and serious situation of erosion of confidence in the mechanisms of the NPT and on the ability of the instrument to survive the tests it has been put through.”

    Among the major issues that were discussed were the need for the Non-Proliferation Treaty to become universal by bringing in the three nuclear weapons states that are not parties to the treaty (Israel, India and Pakistan) and bringing back North Korea; for the nuclear weapons states parties to the treaty to fulfill their obligations for good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament; for more effective safeguarding of nuclear materials and inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency; and for some effective method of sanctions for violating the Treaty’s provisions.

    Former President Jimmy Carter, who spoke at the meeting, pointed out, “Prospects for this year’s discussions are not encouraging. I have heard that the [Preparatory Committee] for the forthcoming Non-Proliferation Treaty talks have so far failed even to achieve an agenda because of the deep divisions between the nuclear powers who seek to stop proliferation without meeting their own disarmament commitments, and the Non-Aligned Movement, whose demands include firm disarmament commitments and considerations of the Israeli arsenal.”

    President Carter also pointed to the contradictions in US nuclear policy. “The United States claims to be upholding Article VI,” he said, referring to the disarmament provision of the Treaty, “but yet asserts a security strategy of testing and developing new weapons [such as] Star Wars and the earth penetrating ‘bunker buster,’ and has threatened first use, even against non-nuclear states, in case of ‘surprising military developments’ and ‘unexpected contingencies.’”

    President Carter referred to another of the contradictions in the approach to nuclear non-proliferation in addressing the issue of Iran and the Middle East: “While the international community is justified in exerting strong pressure on Iran to comply with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, there is no public effort or comment in the United States or Europe calling for Israel to comply with the Non-Proliferation Treaty or submit to any other restraints. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge what a powerful incentive this is to Iran, Syria, Egypt, and other states to join the nuclear community.”

    There was a general sense at the meeting that the non-proliferation regime, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty that is its centerpiece, is eroding, and that some measure of success at the May 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is critical to the future of this regime. Right now the United States is choosing not to recognize the progress made at previous NPT Review Conferences on nuclear disarmament obligations. The Bush administration doesn’t want to be bound by promises made at the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conferences, promises that committed the nuclear weapons states to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to make nuclear disarmament transparent and irreversible, and to an “unequivocal undertaking” to achieve complete nuclear disarmament.

    The US position is throwing the prospects for the 2005 Review Conference into disarray. There was a general sense at the meeting that unless the nuclear weapons states, including the United States, stand by their previous commitments, the prospects for assuring future efforts to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation are dim. This is where we stand three months prior to the beginning of the 2005 Review Conference.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and a member of the International Steering Committee of the Middle Powers Initiative.

  • Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove- A Book Review

    Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove by Peter Goodchild (Harvard, 2004)

    Although most people would prefer to forget it, ever since the atomic bombing of Japanese cities in August 1945 the world has lived on the brink of nuclear annihilation. And no individual played a more important role in fostering the nuclear arms race and its terrible dangers than Edward Teller, a Hungarian emigre physicist.

    In “Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove,” Peter Goodchild–an award-winning television producer for the BBC and the author of a biography of Robert Oppenheimer–provides a detailed, informative biography of Teller. Drawing upon interviews he conducted, manuscript materials, and secondary sources, Goodchild sketches a revealing portrait of this gifted and extraordinarily influential figure.

    Although Teller was born into a relatively privileged, comfortable, Jewish professional family in Budapest, he underwent an unhappy childhood. His mother was often worried and over-protective and, thus, he grew up a very serious child, frightened of everyday situations. Indeed, Teller himself recalled that “the consistency of numbers” was “the first memory I have of feeling secure.” And there was much to feel insecure about. Within short order, the Teller family life in Budapest was disrupted by World War I, a postwar Communist revolution, and a tide of post-Communist anti-Semitism. Though he was unusually bright, Teller recalled that, at school, he had no friends among his classmates, was ridiculed by some of his teachers, and “was practically a social outcast.” Not surprisingly, he “reached adolescence still a serious child with no sense of humor.”

    As Teller moved on to Germany to attend university classes and do physics research, his social acceptance and social skills improved markedly. Thrown together with other brilliant scientists, many of them as maladjusted as he was, Teller developed genuine warmth, humor, and charm. Nevertheless, his childhood difficulties deeply marked his subsequent career. Goodchild argues, convincingly, that Teller’s “thirst for acceptance–with the hurt and anger he felt when it was denied”–became “a defining feature” of his life.

    With the Nazi rise to power, Teller left Germany for Britain and, soon, for the United States, where he settled comfortably into an academic career. In 1939, along with two other Hungarian emigre physicists, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, he met with Albert Einstein and helped convince him to warn President Franklin Roosevelt that the German government might be developing an atomic bomb. This proved to be the beginning of the Manhattan Project, the secret wartime atomic bomb program. Teller worked on the project, which drew together many of the scientists who, in later years, would clash over nuclear weapons policy. Expecting to be appointed head of the theoretical division at Los Alamos, Teller was bitterly disappointed when he did not get the post.

    He was also chagrined when his plans for work on the “Super”H-bomb were disrupted. For these setbacks, he blamed the director of the Los Alamos lab, Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist whose influence, popularity, and cliquish behavior he began to resent. When Szilard asked Teller to circulate a petition at Los Alamos urging that the bomb not be used against Japan, Teller was ready to do it, but was dissuaded by Oppenheimer. Indeed, Teller reported back to Szilard that, in light of the need to convince the public that “the next war could be fatal,” the “actual combat use” of the weapon “might even be the best thing.” It was the first sign of his hawkishness and, also, of a complex relationship with Oppenheimer, that characterized his life in the following decades.

    With the end of the war, Teller –deeply pessimistic about postwar relations with the Soviet Union– pressed scientists to continue their nuclear weapons work. Initially, to be sure, he supported nuclear arms control and disarmament measures like the ill-fated Acheson-Lilienthal Plan. But, increasingly, he championed the development of the H-bomb– a project in which he hoped to play a leading role. As Goodchild shows, by developing the H-bomb, Teller was responding both to his fear that the Soviet Union might conquer the world and to his jealousy of Oppenheimer, then widely lauded as the “father of the atomic bomb.”

    The two issues, reflecting his anxiety and his ambition, soon became intertwined, for Oppenheimer and his circle proved to be major obstacles to getting the U.S. government to move forward with the H-bomb project. Gradually, however, Teller won the struggle. Particularly after the first Soviet nuclear test in the fall of 1949, powerful political figures, including President Harry Truman, lined up on the side of constructing an H-bomb. All Teller had to do was to figure out how to build it. Ironically, despite his vigorous weapons work at the Livermore laboratory, it was a problem that confounded him for years. Furthermore, the mathematician Stan Ulam may have been responsible for the necessary conceptual breakthrough. Nevertheless, Teller received the lion’s share of the credit and, ultimately, became known as “the father of the H-bomb”— a weapon a thousand times as powerful as the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima.

    Nor was the creation of the H-bomb Teller’s only victory over his putative enemies. In 1954, he teamed up with other foes of Oppenheimer (and of nuclear arms controls) to destroy his rival’s career and influence. Oppenheimer had applied to the Atomic Energy Commission to reinstate his security clearance, and this triggered a dramatic, highly-publicized loyalty-security hearing. Although Teller’s friends urged him not to testify, he rejected their advice. Thus, during the hearing, he asserted that, based on Oppenheimer’s actions since 1945, he thought it vital for national security to deny clearance to him. This also turned out to be the decision of the board, which cut off Oppenheimer from government programs he had once directed and terminated his lingering influence upon them.

    For Teller, it proved to be a pyrrhic victory. When the AEC surprised him by publishing the transcript of the loyalty-security hearing, many of Teller’s scientific colleagues –shocked by what they considered his betrayal of human decency–cut him off as well. Teller was devastated by their response. As he recalled: “If a person leaves his country, leaves his continent, leaves his relatives, leaves his friends, the only people he knows are his professional colleagues. If more than ninety per cent of them come around to consider him an enemy, an outcast, it is bound to have an effect. The truth is it had a profound effect.”

    Teller, however, proceeded to make new friends, particularly within the ranks of the military-industrial complex, who appreciated the positions he had taken and recognized his utility as a champion of new nuclear weapons programs. And he proved to be a good investment. Urging Congress and the President to spurn the idea of a nuclear test ban treaty, Teller argued that “it would be a crime against the people” to stop nuclear testing when he and other weapons scientists stood on the brink of developing a “clean” bomb. “Peaceful nuclear explosions,” he told President Dwight Eisenhower, could be used to uncover deposits of oil, alter the course of rivers, and “perhaps even modify the weather.” Eisenhower was greatly impressed, and suggested that it might be a good idea to share the “clean”; bombs with the Russians, an idea that Teller, naturally, resisted. Under Teller’ direction, his colleagues at Livermore devised ever wilder schemes to prove that nuclear testing could be hidden and, therefore, a test ban was not possible. These included exploding weapons in deep caves, building a gargantuan shield to hide x-rays from earthbound observers, and planning nuclear tests on the far side of the moon. Although much of the public was growing concerned about the nuclear fallout from testing, Teller assured Americans that fallout was “not worth worrying about.” Nuclear test radiation “need not necessarily be harmful,” he declared, and “may conceivably be helpful.”

    One of the zanier ventures promoted by Teller involved the use of H-bombs to blast out a deep-water harbor in northern Alaska. In the late 1950s, the influential physicist encouraged activities that included using nuclear explosives to create diamonds, to mine oil, and with the assistance of 26 nuclear devices to carve out a new canal adjacent to the Panama Canal. He even opined that it would be hard to “resist the temptation to shoot at the moon. . . to observe what kind of disturbance it might cause.” Eventually, these grandiose ideas took shape in Project Plowshare.

    To implement its first component, Project Chariot, Teller flew off to Alaska to propose exciting possibilities that included using nuclear explosions to construct dams, lakes, and canals. Ultimately, Teller narrowed down the Alaskan venture to using nuclear weapons to blast out a giant harbor near Cape Thompson. Although commercial interests in Alaska liked the idea, local scientists were critical and the local Inuit people –32 miles from the site of the planned nuclear explosions — were not at all eager to have their community turned into a nuclear wasteland. Responding to the surge of protest against Project Chariot, the Kennedy administration scrapped it. Goodchild reveals, however, that these apparently irrational schemes had a hidden logic, for “Chariot was intended as a cover for military activities.” Faced with the prospect of a nuclear test ban, Teller was promoting “peaceful” nuclear explosions as a means of continuing the testing of nuclear weapons.

    Teller’s fierce faith in nuclear weapons became ever more evident in the 1960s and 1970s. He testified before Congress against the Partial Test Ban Treaty and also spoke out against it on television. In addition, he championed the development of an ABM system that would employ nuclear explosions to destroy incoming missiles, held an underground nuclear test at Amchitka Island that set off the most powerful underground explosion in American history, and lobbied hard against the SALT treaties of Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. “He . . . was becoming so wildly hawkish,” recalled Marvin Goldberger, one of Teller’s early students, “that no one wanted him around except the extremists in the Pentagon.”

    Teller’s plunge into extremism carried over into the debate over the hazards of nuclear power. When the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant occurred, releasing dangerous amounts of radioactivity, Teller reassured a congressional committee that, “zero is the number of proven cases of damage to health due to a nuclear plant in the free world.” The day after his congressional appearance, Teller was hospitalized with a heart attack, and even this became grist for his propaganda mill. In July 1979, under a two-page headline in the Wall Street Journal reading “I WAS THE ONLY VICTIM OF THREE MILE ISLAND,” there appeared a large photo of Teller, along with his explanation that the cause of his health problem “was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous.” Goodchild then goes on to say: “An editorial in the New York Times accused Teller of propaganda…It then pointed out something Teller had not mentioned: that the sponsor of the advertisement, Dresser Industries, had manufactured the valve that had stuck open and started the emergency.”

    Although Teller had substantial influence on U.S. public policy through the 1970s – fostering the H-bomb during the Truman years, purging Oppenheimer and sabotaging a test ban treaty during the Eisenhower years, excluding underground nuclear testing from the test ban treaty during the Kennedy years, securing the deployment of an ABM system during the Johnson years, and keeping the U.S. government busily engaged in the nuclear arms race during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter years – he came into his own after the 1980 election victory of Ronald Reagan. Teller arranged for the appointment of a protégé of his as the president’s Science Advisor, became a member of the White House Science Council, met with the president at the White House on nuclear issues, and did as much as any other individual to convince him that the creation of a Star Wars anti-missile system was vital to the national defense. The Russians, Teller told Reagan, were about to deploy “powerful directed energy weapons” in space, thus enabling them to “militarily dominate both space and the earth, conclusively altering the world balance of power.” Thus, “urgent action” was needed to build an anti-missile system that would be powered by nuclear weapons explosions and could be deployed within a few years.

    As is well-known, Reagan swallowed this anti-missile proposal hook, line, and sinker though, in fact, Teller’s claims for it had little relation to reality. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, was more dubious about the project, but he did approve a modified version, Brilliant Pebbles, also championed by Teller. Republicans in Congress also rallied behind the idea of missile defense, and during the Bill Clinton years–used their newfound strength in that legislative body to keep the project alive and the appropriations flowing to America’s weaponeers. Thereafter, George W. Bush, taking office, ordered the deployment of the new system and, a week before Teller’s death in 2003, awarded him the President’s Medal of Freedom, this nation’s highest civilian award. Along the way, Teller’s brainchild helped to sabotage an agreement at Reykjavik to eliminate strategic nuclear weapons, caused the scrapping of the ABM treaty, and resulted in expenditures of over $100 billion. And there is still no indication that it works.

    Overall, Goodchild’s book provides a fascinating, well-researched, and at times sympathetic study of an extraordinary individual. Unfortunately, though, the author has a much better grasp of Teller’s life than he does of his times. Thus, he makes some glaring historical mistakes. Among them are the claims that, before Japanese surrender, the U.S. government provided assurances to the Japanese government of the emperor’s safety and that “Soviet armies invaded Czechoslovakia” in February 1948. Even so, “Edward Teller” is a book well worth reading. Provocative and convincing, it highlights the importance of the personal dimension –including personal neuroses–in the history of the nuclear arms race.

    Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is “Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present” (Stanford University Press, 2003)

    Originally published by the History News Network

  • The Revolt Against the Bush Administration’s Nuclear Double Standard

    In late November, when Congress refused to appropriate money to fund so-called “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes,” this action represented not only a serious blow to the Bush administration’s plan to build new nuclear weapons, but to the administration’s overall nuclear arms control and disarmament policy.

    That policy has been to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by nations the Bush administration considers “evil.” The military invasion of Iraq, like the gathering confrontation with Iran and North Korea, reflects, at least in part, the administration’s obsession with preventing nations potentially hostile to the United States from acquiring a nuclear capability. This focus upon blocking nuclear weapons development in other countries has some legal justification for, in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, non-nuclear nations agreed not to develop nuclear weapons.

    But the NPT also calls for nuclear nations to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons they possess. Indeed, in the meetings that fashioned the treaty, the non-nuclear weapons states demanded a commitment to nuclear disarmament by the nuclear powers. And they received it — not only in the form of the treaty’s provisions, but in the formal pledges made by the nuclear powers at the periodic treaty review conferences that have been held since the NPT went into effect.

    It is in this area that the Bush administration has revealed itself as the proponent of a double standard. At the same time that it has assailed selected nations for developing nuclear weapons, it has withdrawn the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, effectively destroyed the START II treaty, and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has also raised the U.S. nuclear weapons budget to new heights and proposed the building of new U.S. nuclear weapons, including the “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes.” As Senator Kerry pointed out during the recent presidential campaign, this is not the kind of policy that will encourage other nations to abide by their commitments under the NPT.

    The surprising congressional move to block the Bush plan for new nuclear weapons is but one of numerous signs that this double standard cannot be sustained. As a special high-level U.N. panel has just warned: “We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.” Nor is the breakaway from the NPT limited to the non-nuclear nations. Just the other day the Russian government announced its development of a new nuclear missile. Appropriately enough, the U.N. panel condemned the nuclear powers for failing to honor their commitments, and called upon them to restart the nuclear disarmament process.

    Furthermore, of course, terrorists have been actively seeking nuclear weapons, and might well obtain them. Thousands of tactical nuclear weapons — many of them small, portable, and, therefore, ideal for terrorist use — are still maintained by the U.S. and Russian governments. No international agreements have ever been put into place to control or eliminate them. In fact, it remains unclear how many of these tactical nuclear weapons exist or where they are located. In Russia, at least, they are badly guarded and, in the disorderly circumstances of the post-Soviet economy, they seem ripe for sale or theft.

    The revolt against the Bush administration’s double standard could come to a head in May 2005, when an NPT review conference opens at the United Nations, in New York City. Nuclear and non-nuclear nations are sure to exchange sharp barbs about non-compliance with NPT provisions. Furthermore, more than a hundred mayors from the Mayors for Peace Campaign, which has drawn together the top executives from 640 cities around the world, are expected to come to the U.N. to lobby for nuclear disarmament. They will be joined by United for Peace and Justice, the largest peace movement coalition in the United States, and over 2,000 organizations in 96 different countries. Together, they have launched Abolition Now, a campaign calling on heads of state to begin negotiations in 2005 on a treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

    Ultimately, then, the Bush administration might be forced into accepting a single standard for dealing with the threat posed by nuclear weapons — one designed to lead to a nuclear-free world. Certainly, there are plenty of signs that people and nations around the globe believe that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.

    Mr. Witnner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition (Stanford University Press).

    This article was originally published by the History News Network.

  • Increasing the Nuclear Threat: A Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post

    In his Nov. 16 op-ed piece, “New Threats, Old Weapons,” retired Adm. Robert R. Monroe said that to have a more effective deterrent against rogue states and terrorist groups, we need a new generation of nuclear weapons.

    His notion that a leaner nuclear arsenal will deter rogue states and terrorist groups from using nuclear weapons to harm us presumes that we are dealing with reasonable adversaries. Given the tactics that terrorists use, that is a naive assumption.

    Further, the Bush administration’s January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review stresses the importance of being prepared to use nuclear weapons in an offensive manner and against a wider range of countries, even those that are not nuclear. In my view, the president’s initiatives to develop additional nuclear weapons are not about deterrence but about adding a tool to our military arsenal.

    Adm. Monroe said that we must have nuclear weapons with “greatly increased accuracy,” “specialized capabilities” and “tailored effects.” But according to Stanford University physicist Sidney Drell, the effects of even a small nuclear bunker buster would be disastrous. A one-kiloton weapon detonated 20 to 50 feet underground would dig a crater the size of Ground Zero and eject a million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the air.

    Our reopening the nuclear door to a new generation of weapons will only encourage proliferation. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent statement that Russia is developing new nuclear missile systems is testimony to that effect.

    This year Congress eliminated funding for new nuclear weapons programs in the recent appropriations bill. This was the right move because, to make our nation safer from nuclear threats, the best investment we could make is to secure nuclear materials at facilities around the world while insisting that other nations follow us down the path of nonproliferation.

    Dianne Feinstein U.S. Senator (D-Calif.) Washington

  • News Media in the 60th Year of the Nuclear Age

    Top officials in Washington are now promoting jitters about Iran’s nuclear activities, while media outlets amplify the message. A confrontation with Tehran is on the second-term Bush agenda. So, we’re encouraged to obliquely think about the unthinkable.

    But no one can get very far trying to comprehend the enormity of nuclear weapons. They’ve shadowed human consciousness for six decades. From the outset, deception has been key.

    Lies from the White House have been part of the nuclear rationalizing process ever since August 1945. President Harry Truman spoke to the American public three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Calling the civilian-filled Japanese city a “military base,” Truman said: “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.”

    Actually, U.S. planners had sought a large urban area for the nuclear cross hairs because – as Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie Groves later acknowledged – it was “desirable that the first target be of such size that the damage would be confined within it, so that we could more definitely determine the power of the bomb.” Thirty-five years later, when I looked at the U.S. Energy Department’s official roster of “Announced United States Nuclear Tests,” the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were on the list.

    We’re now six decades into the Nuclear Age. And we’re farther than ever, it seems, from a momentously difficult truth that Albert Einstein uttered during its first years, when the U.S. government still held a monopoly on the split atom. “This basic power of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms,” he wrote. “For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world.”

    Today, no phrase could better describe U.S. foreign policies – or American media coverage – than “narrow nationalisms.” The officials keep putting on a proudly jingoistic show, and journalists report it without fundamental challenge.

    So, any whiff of sanity is conspicuous. Just before Thanksgiving, when the House and Senate voted to cut funding of research for a new line of tactical nuclear weapons including “bunker buster” warheads, the decision was reported as the most significant victory for arms-control advocates since the early 1990s. That’s because the nuclear-weapons industry has been running amok for so long.

    While Uncle Sam continues to maintain a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying life on Earth, the American finger-wagging at Iran is something righteous to behold.

    Current alarms, wailing about an alleged Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons, are being set off by the same Bush administration officials who declared that an invasion of Iraq was imperative because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As we now know, he didn’t. But that hasn’t stopped the Bush team from launching the same kind of media campaign against Iran – based on unverified claims by Iranian exiles with a track record of inaccuracy and a clear motive to pull Washington into military action. Sound familiar?

    We ought to be able to recognize what’s wrong with U.S. officials who lecture Iran about the evils of nuclear-arms proliferation while winking at Israel’s arsenal, estimated to include 200 nuclear weapons.

    When Einstein called for “the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world,” he was describing a need that news media ought to help fill. But instead, mostly we get the official stories: dumbed-down, simplistic, and – yes – narrowly nationalistic. The themes are those of Washington’s powerful: our nukes good, our allies’ nukes pretty good, unauthorized nukes very bad.

    That sort of propaganda drumbeat won’t be convincing to people who doubt that a Christian Bomb is good and a Jewish Bomb is good but an Islamic Bomb is bad. You don’t have to be an Einstein to understand that people are rarely persuaded by hypocritical messages along the lines of “Do as we say, not as we do.”

    Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of ” Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You. ” His columns and other writings can be found at ” Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience With Atomic Radiation ” (Delacorte Press, 1982), a book by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, is online at: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn

  • UK’s Failure on Nuclear Obligation: Letter to the Times of London Editor

    Sir, You take Iran to task for stalling on nuclear agreements (leading article, November 24) and you conclude: “Iran wants to be taken seriously by the international community, yet does not take its international obligations seriously. One is not possible without the other.”

    How very true.

    All the five “recognised” nuclear states: USA, Russia, UK, France and China, have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and thus (under Article VI) committed themselves to the abolition of their nuclear arsenals.

    Yet they have done nothing to show that they take their international obligations seriously.

    The UK is formally committed to nuclear disarmament, but it will not implement it as long as other states keep nuclear weapons. In the institution designated to deal with this issue, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, nobody is taking the initiative. The subject has been stalled for years, and is not even put on the agenda.

    With the re-election of George W. Bush, his nuclear policy – which includes the development of new nuclear warheads and their first-use, even pre-emptively if need be – is very likely to be pursued, leading to a new nuclear arms race.

    An initiative to implement the NPT is urgently needed and, for the reason stated above, the UK should feel obliged to take it.

    Yours faithfully, JOSEPH ROTBLAT, (President Emeritus of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs), 8 Asmara Road, West Hampstead, NW2 3ST. pugwash@mac.com November 24

  • Congress Says No to New Nuclear Weapons

    Congress Says No to New Nuclear Weapons

    It is not often that we are able to report a victory in the effort to chart a new course for US nuclear policy, but we can do so today.  Since the Bush administration began pursuing research on new and more usable nuclear weapons, we have said that this sends the wrong message to the world and violates US obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The administration has been pursuing new “bunker buster” nuclear weapons and “mini-nukes,” also referred to as low yield nuclear weapons.  It turns out that Congress agrees with those of us who oppose new nuclear weapons.  In a bipartisan show of support, Congress denied funding for nuclear bunker busters and advanced concepts research on new nuclear weapons designs that could have included low yield nuclear weapons.

    Congress passed the Omnibus Appropriations Bill on November 20, 2004 with no funding for new nuclear weapons.  In this Bill, Congress also slashed the administration’s request for funds for a new facility to build plutonium pits for new nuclear weapons from $29.8 million to $7 million.  This represents a major defeat for the Bush administration and its efforts to pursue new and more usable nuclear weapons.

    Chairman David Hobson (R-Ohio) of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee played a major role in removing funding for the administration’s pursuit of new nuclear weapons.  Strong support in the Senate came from Senator Dianne Feinstein.

    This year, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation launched its Turn the Tide Campaign to chart a new course for US nuclear policy.  The Campaign Statement begins: “The US government has the paramount responsibility to assure a more secure and far safer environment for its citizens.  In continuing its long tradition of demonstrating world leadership, the US government can protect Americans and their families, as well as people throughout the world, by significantly reducing and eliminating the threats posed by nuclear weapons.”

    Stopping all efforts to create dangerous new nuclear weapons and delivery systems is the first policy that the Turn the Tide Campaign calls for the President and all members of Congress to immediately implement. The Congressional action on the Omnibus Appropriations Bill is an important step toward achieving this end.

    The Turn the Tide Campaign Statement contains 13 points, including securing fissile materials around the world and canceling plans to build new nuclear weapons production plants.  For a copy of the full Campaign Statement and information on becoming involved in the Turn the Tide Campaign, visit the Action Page at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s web site.

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

  • Perestrojka for International Policy, Too?

    In Northern Ireland, we sometimes tell the following joke. A man was traveling in his car and lost his way. He asked a farmer, the way to the town. The farmer replied, “If I was you I wouldn’t start from here.”

    I believe, we the human family, like the traveler, have lost our way. We are on the wrong road. Our government’s international policies, particularly those of the United States of America , are taking us down a dangerous road. Most of us wish that we did not have to start from here, but we have to face the facts of where we currently stand.

    Policies, such as: ongoing wars, pre-emptive strike, unilateralism, increased militarism and nuclearism, invasions, occupations, imperialism, erosion of civil and political liberties, ignoring the United Nations and humanitarian and international laws, government sanctions of murder (Pentagon’s SAP – special-access program), state sanctioned systematic torture (Abu Ghraib prison, etc.), unethical corporate globalization, and run-away capitalism

    Not only will such policies take us around a cul-de-sac of counter-violence, but they may also take us well over the cliff of total destruction.

    We need urgently to move onto a new road. We can choose to do this individually, by seeking truth and living our lives with as much integrity as possible. But in order to bring about the enormous changes necessary, we have to demand our Governments change those current national and foreign policies, which are destroying the lives of millions of our brothers and sisters on the planet, and damaging the earth itself. We have to challenge our governments to abolish these policies and take a different road to where we want to go, as a united human family.

    I suspect when Mr. Gorbachev initiated Perestrojka, it was because he recognized that the Soviet Union and the world were on the wrong road. His courage in initiating reforms, and his vision, not only brought about great changes such as the ending of the Cold War, but in that period of history, he gave hope to humanity. Millions

    of us were high on Hope. We were aflame with unlimited possibilities. We too shared his vision of stopping the nuclear and arms race. We believed that everyone could share in the Peace Dividend. We too wanted stop the madness of such huge military spending, and spend it instead on tackling the real enemies of the human family, poverty, diseases, etc.,

    Alas, it is for historians to record why so many Governments and people, never took the different road. But we don’t need historians to tell us what we now in our hearts – the World missed a ‘golden opportunity’ to demilitarize, denuclearise, and unite together as the human family to tackle the enormous problems, which no one nation can solve alone.

    Well, maybe we are slow learners. However I believe this generation is now being graced with another opportunity to make, yet again, new and better choices. But will we.?

    Yes, I am convinced we will. One great hope lies in the fact that there is a new consciousness in our World, particularly among young people. We recognize we are inter-connected as the human family, and Global Citizenship is upon us. In this increasingly multi-cultural, multi-faith, pluralist world citizenship, we are challenged to build Unity in our diversity.

    However, with this new consciousness, comes too the realization that the old structures, institutions, and ways of doing things no longer work, nor do they meet the needs of our struggling into birth a united world. The Organization, which represents us all, the United Nations, is I believe much in need of re-financing, renewal and reform, but we do not have, to date, world institutions that are truly democratic, and which would constitute genuine World Government.

    These, we are challenged to build, both across the international level, but also downwards, and on a local level. We have to do both. Politics begin where people live, in villages, communities, etc., so empowering people at a local level is most important. Economic, political and social restructing starts at a local level but is necessary also on an international level. We can all play our part, as village and world citizens, in building what Martin Luther King called, “the beloved community.”

    Change, can only be built by each one of us, and joining together as a United People of the World. By rejecting violence and war, and adopting a local and international ethic of nonviolence, we can start to reshape our own lives, our communities, our countries, and our world. It must be done person-to-person, group-to-group, building nonviolent and truly democratic societies from the ground up. There is no alternative, but slow hardwork, which each of us must do.

    There will be no quick fixes. We are on a long journey, but at least if we change onto a new road now, and insist our governments do likewise, we can travel together united as the human family, celebrating the gift of life, the gift of each other, and the joy of simply being alive. For the journey we gain inner strength by following our own spiritual paths, but also from the example of others whose courage and self-sacrifice uphold and uplift us.

    Speech by Mairead Corrigan Maguire At 5th World Summit at Nobel Peace Laureates in Rome 10-12 November, 2004

  • 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.

  • An Eleventh Hour Succession for the Kerry Campaign

    It is a little late but there is still time for John Kerry and the Democratic party to offer the electorate a genuine alternative to a continuation of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

    The Kerry proposal might go like this:

    We cannot afford the continuing, even increasing, loss of life among American troops, nor the financial drain which is piling high the national debt and denying us the funds to improve the nation’s education, public health and repair to our crumbling infrastructure of highways, bridges, dams and mines.

    The Bush administration promises nothing but more of the same. It talks of another four or five years of war. This is madness. The only way out now is to admit that the Bush policies, that the invasion of Iraq, were terrible mistakes. We must acknowledge our chagrin, our embarrassment in admitting that our policies, our military intervention was a mistake. We must extend our apologies to those we misled and who suffered our rashness and our mistakes. This is not cowardly but is the courageous and honorable thing for us to do.

    My administration’s first move will be to name a panel of military experts from those retired top officers who from the beginning have criticized the Iraqi war, the administration’s lack of planning and the use of its limited forces.

    This panel would plan the immediate withdrawal of our forces in Iraq with the goal of bringing the last soldier home within six months. A portion of those soldiers who wish to volunteer, would be sent on to bolster our forces in the real war against the terrorists in Bin Laden’s home ground of Afghanistan.

    The rest of the brave and courageous troops, who bear the great brunt but none of the responsibility for the failure of the Bush Iraqi policy, will be welcomed home as the heroes they are. The bands will play and the people will cheer as they parade down the Broadways and Main Streets of America’s cities.

    Those thousand and more who have given their lives in this lost cause will never be forgotten by a grateful nation. They should get their own memorial aside those of other wars on the Washington mall.

    And those other thousands maimed as they did their duty will be honored and not forgotten. Special programs will help them become useful citizens and will assure their financial support the rest of their lives. Those returning soldiers who do not wish to remain in the regular armed forces will be given full educational opportunities similar to the GI Bill for World War Two veterans.

    For those professional people and self-employed who were called up with their National Guard and Reserve units- and held overseas overlong- we will provide financial help for them to resume their pre­Iraq careers.

    As for the Iraq government, we will extend it limited help in supplying its armed forces. We will leave behind for it billions of dollars of military equipment – to the degree that our military panel believes it will be useful.

    However, our financial aid to Iraq will primarily be on the humanitarian side. We will supply bounteous funds to aid in the restoration of housing and vital services, most particularly hospitals and other medical facilities. These funds will be administered by the American Red Cross and other such organizations to isolate them from any U.S. political interests.

    We will declare a new policy toward Iraq. We will not pretend a dominant role there. Our representation will be the normal peacetime embassy. We will clearly proclaim our abandonment of any suggestion that we seek to profiteer in the nation’s rebuilding. We shall make that clear by not only welcoming but urging the nations that once were prominent in Iraq’s economy to return without any interference from the United States. If our industry wishes to invest there, it will be in fair competition with the interests of other nations.

    If the United States is to share in Iraq’s oil treasure it will do so with clearly recognized and enforced federal rules that ensure our fair and honest participation.

    This revolution in our Iraq policy will be accompanied, of course, by a redefinition of our general foreign policy. The Democratic administration will not totally abandon the Bush policy of preemptive war against a threatening nation. The growing profusion of nuclear and biologic weapons of mass destruction conceivably could justify such action. But this administration would rebuild, with the programs outlined above ­its alliance with our long-time friends overseas whose confidence in us was destroyed by the Bush administration’s arrogant and nearly solitary aggression. Having regained the faith and trust the world once bestowed upon us, we also will hasten to repair the damage our solo performance in Iraq caused to the prestige of the United Nations. We will lead in strengthening it as the one body that could establish and enforce world peace.

    This policy – the Kerry promise would note – is the answer to the Bush administration’s policy that promises only the continued waste of so much American and Iraqi blood and the waste of billions of dollars that will be denied to the strengthening of America and the recovery of Iraq.