Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: 9/11

  • This War is Illegal

    A well-kept secret about the U.S.-U.K. attack on Afghanistan is that it is clearly illegal. It violates international law and the express words of the United Nations Charter.

    Despite repeated reference to the right of self-defence under Article 51, the Charter simply does not apply here. Article 51 gives a state the right to repel an attack that is ongoing or imminent as a temporary measure until the UN Security Council can take steps necessary for international peace and security.

    The Security Council has already passed two resolutions condemning the Sept. 11 attacks and announcing a host of measures aimed at combating terrorism. These include measures for the legal suppression of terrorism and its financing, and for co-operation between states in security, intelligence, criminal investigations and proceedings relating to terrorism. The Security Council has set up a committee to monitor progress on the measures in the resolution and has given all states 90 days to report back to it.

    Neither resolution can remotely be said to authorize the use of military force. True, both, in their preambles, abstractly “affirm” the inherent right of self-defence, but they do so “in accordance with the Charter.” They do not say military action against Afghanistan would be within the right of self-defence. Nor could they. That’s because the right of unilateral self-defence does not include the right to retaliate once an attack has stopped.

    The right of self-defence in international law is like the right of self-defence in our own law: It allows you to defend yourself when the law is not around, but it does not allow you to take the law into your own hands.

    Since the United States and Britain have undertaken this attack without the explicit authorization of the Security Council, those who die from it will be victims of a crime against humanity, just like the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

    Even the Security Council is only permitted to authorize the use of force where “necessary to maintain and restore international peace and security.” Now it must be clear to everyone that the military attack on Afghanistan has nothing to do with preventing terrorism. This attack will be far more likely to provoke terrorism. Even the Bush administration concedes that the real war against terrorism is long term, a combination of improved security, intelligence and a rethinking of U.S. foreign alliances.

    Critics of the Bush approach have argued that any effective fight against terrorism would have to involve a re-evaluation of the way Washington conducts its affairs in the world. For example, the way it has promoted violence for short-term gain, as in Afghanistan when it supported the Taliban a decade ago, in Iraq when it supported Saddam Hussein against Iran, and Iran before that when it supported the Shah.

    The attack on Afghanistan is about vengeance and about showing how tough the Americans are. It is being done on the backs of people who have far less control over their government than even the poor souls who died on Sept. 11. It will inevitably result in many deaths of civilians, both from the bombing and from the disruption of aid in a country where millions are already at risk. The 37,000 rations dropped on Sunday were pure PR, and so are the claims of “surgical” strikes and the denials of civilian casualties. We’ve seen them before, in Kosovo for example, followed by lame excuses for the “accidents” that killed innocents.

    For all that has been said about how things have changed since Sept. 11, one thing that has not changed is U.S. disregard for international law. Its decade-long bombing campaign against Iraq and its 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia were both illegal. The U.S. does not even recognize the jurisdiction of the World Court. It withdrew from it in 1986 when the court condemned Washington for attacking Nicaragua, mining its harbours and funding the contras. In that case, the court rejected U.S. claims that it was acting under Article 51 in defence of Nicaragua’s neighbours.

    For its part, Canada cannot duck complicity in this lawlessness by relying on the “solidarity” clause of the NATO treaty, because that clause is made expressly subordinate to the UN Charter.

    But, you might ask, does legality matter in a case like this? You bet it does. Without the law, there is no limit to international violence but the power, ruthlessness and cunning of the perpetrators. Without the international legality of the UN system, the people of the world are sidelined in matters of our most vital interests.

    We are all at risk from what happens next. We must insist that Washington make the case for the necessity, rationality and proportionality of this attack in the light of day before the real international community.

    The bombing of Afghanistan is the legal and moral equivalent of what was done to the Americans on Sept. 11. We may come to remember that day, not for its human tragedy, but for the beginning of a headlong plunge into a violent, lawless world.

    *Michael Mandel, professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, specializes in international criminal law.

  • Who Are the Terrorists

    The horrendous events of September 11, 2001 in the U.S. have set into motion unprecedented changes in the world. Terrorism is a scourge of our times and must be eliminated. But elimination of the terrorists themselves will be insufficient if we do not eliminate the causes of their violent actions. We believe these causes lie in the gross inequities that exist in our world, accelerated by the process of globalized capital and the U.S. policy of corporate welfare supported by its adherents in the industrialized world. Still another cause is the failure to create a Palestinian state in the troubled land of Israel and a mode of living side by side in peace. And a further cause is the antiquated kingdoms of the Middle East, coupled to U.S. dependency on their oil reserves in an atmosphere where oil and politics do not mix. Finally, there is the dedicated programs and policies of the U.S. for the ideological cleansing of the world, supported by their operationalized nuclear threat.

    To all of the above, the U.S. response was predictable: “Dead or Alive” – this is the kind of juvenile rhetoric one might expect from a Texas vigilante. “You are either with us or against us” – nothing is that simple except to a simpleton. This is, yet again, a juvenile statement by the robotic president of the United States, who confuses ends and means. One can agree with the ends of stopping the terrorists, whose acts are totally unacceptable. But we disagree with the means the global bully has chosen. Once again he has attempted coalition building outside the rightful role of the United Nations while side-stepping international law. There is a relevant article of the Charter of the United Nations which applies, i.e. Article 51.

    Article 51 Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security. Reading Article 51 carefully one can only conclude that the U.S. action is in contravention of the U.N. Charter as well as international law, for example the 1971 Montreal Sabotage Convention, of which it is a signatory, together with one hundred and seventy-three other states and which requires mediation through the International Court of Justice. But as the ultimate world bully, the U.S. dictates the terms of conflict resolution in a unilateral uncompromising way that suits its consistent interventionist position. In fact it deliberately bypasses the international security regime, including the United Nations, preferring NATO, a military organization it controls. The right to self-defence in Article 51 is similar to that of individual rights. It does not permit the individual to bypass the law, once they have defended themselves.

    It has been reliably reported, including in U.S. Congressional committee reports, that the U.S. has consistently supported terrorist groups all over the world. Throughout Central and South America it has helped to overthrow democratically-elected regimes in support of military juntas and dictators. It gave aid to terrorist groups in the Honduras army who murdered hundreds, including American nuns. It used the CIA to assassinate the democratically-elected Allende in Chile and his Chief of Staff, General Schneider. In fact the General’s son has lodged a case against Henry Kissinger who, together with Richard Nixon, ordered these murders. It poisoned the people of North Viet Nam with Agent Orange. Through its sanctions, some million Iraqis, many of them children, have died in the U.S.’s terror of hunger. In fact it has directly supported Asama bin Ladin in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, as well as by the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo and Macedonia. It has supported the extreme right in Greece, the Philippines, Chile, Iran, Panama, Indonesia, Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Grenada, Cambodia, etc. In all of these actions not thousands but millions of civilians were killed. In its earlier history it carried out a genocidal war against its Native peoples, destroying their culture and seizing their lands. Then, on August 6th and 9th, 1945, it incinerated 200,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by decades of radiation damage. And this was no more than a military experiment since Japan was prepared to surrender under acceptable conditions. Together with NATO, it committed war crimes in Serbia and Kosovo. It has refused to support a UN International Criminal Court, preferring to control the War Crimes Tribunal, its own creation. And the U.S. condoned the killing of a large proportion of the people of East Timor by the Indonesian military. Adding to this were the murders in Chile by Pinochet, involving thousands. The total of all these victims adds up to millions and the U.S. is largely culpable for their deaths.

    But there is still another kind of terrorism of which the U.S. is guilty. This is internal or structural terrorism derived from poverty, disease, murder, hunger and deprivation of all kinds. The U.S. has the highest rate of permanent poor among all the highly industrialized Western countries. Examining the arithmetic of structural terrorism, some 40 million Americans have no health coverage whatsoever, one in five children are born in and live in poverty. It has the highest infant mortality rate among nineteen industrialized countries. The U.S. is twenty-ninth in the world in population per physician (Cuba is eleventh in this category). The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy among the nineteen most industrialized nations. Twenty-one per cent of all Black Americans go to sleep hungry in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. All of this adds up to lives of hopelessness, hunger and disease for many millions of Americans. The U.S. also has the highest murder rate among the highly industrialized countries, and the only one that has the legal right to bear arms and the only one with capital punishment. The inverse ratio between the latter two is hardly ever acknowledged. The hypocrisy of the U.S. about these matters knows no bounds, with a co-opted media indulging in a shameful cover-up.

    But the greatest terrorist threat in the history of humankind is embodied in the U.S.’s nuclear warfighting policies, plans and programs. We have established beyond any possible dispute that not only does the U.S. (and NATO) have a “first use” policy, but in fact the U.S. has operationalized plans to fight a nuclear war against Russia, considered to still be the major obstacle to the completion of the U.S.¹s global hegemony. In the Reagan administration, when this policy first evolved, a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was first operationalized despite the realization that it would lead to the death of twenty million Americans and one hundred million Russians. More recently, following the demise of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has operationalized plans to launch a devastating pre-emptive strike against Russia. The counterforce strike is directed against all Russian nuclear launchers – on land, on and under the sea and in the air. It is guided by an elaborate list of strategic targets embodied in a single integrated operational plan (SIOP). This includes Russia¹s command, control, communications and intelligence centres (C½I). Such a counterforce strike would kill fifteen million Russian civilians, an act of terrorism that dwarfs what happened to the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (see W.M. Arkin, “SIOP – forever immoral”; The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sept.-Oct., 2000, p.72). When we add the above fifteen million deaths to our calculations of murders, killings and assassinations, plus the internal structural terrorism described in the previous paragraphs, we can only conclude that the U.S. is the greatest terrorist nation in the world.

    But, not satisfied that some Russian missiles might escape destruction, the U.S. is committed to a national missile defense (NMD) system, despite the violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and the 1967 Outer Space treaty. Their intention is to rule the world from space, universalizing free enterprise and investment and completing the ideological cleansing of the world, converting it to universal capitalism. The U.S. would be the CEO of this global enterprise. Yet such an NMD system would be totally ineffective against the kind of attacks that took place on Sept. 11, 2001 or against chemical and biological warfare. George W. Bush and Company have asserted that their NMD system is designed against so-called “rogue states”. This is a transparent scam that has been discredited by authoritative figures.

    The coalition that Bush pressed into in his declared war against terrorism is not as solid as he had hoped. For one thing, Saudi Arabia balked at permitting the U.S. to launch its attack against the Taliban from its territory. “In this case, you are with us”, did not mean you are against us. This is how oil talks. His staunchest supporter is Tony Blair, who must have had a sex change and is really Margaret Thatcher. For Tony Blair to praise the courage and bravery of the early attacks on the Taliban is misguided, when most of the launches came from cruise missiles 1,000 miles away. The question of whether the U.S. is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the Taliban deserves a resounding affirmative. It is an essential part of their strategic posture. Russia and China have their own reasons for supporting the U.S., which will quickly collapse if Iraq is attacked, a plan now in place.

    Richard Perle, the superhawk and former adviser to Ronald Reagan, now to George Bush, was asked if the U.S. might use nuclear weapons in its “war on terrorism” (CNN, 7 Oct., 2001). His answer was both interesting and predictable. He said the U.S. should use whatever weapons are appropriate to win this war. This is a predictable response but has subtle undertones which are a clear affirmative.

    One positive fallout of the terrorist attacks on America is that the U.S. budget is in a state of chaos. Bush’s huge tax reductions, mainly for corporate welfare, are now revealed as a risk not worth taking. Also, given the budget crisis, it is unlikely that NMD will proceed as planned, i.e. by the U.S. dropping out of the ABM treaty before the end of the year. However, for the victims of September 11th there can be no benefits, only the terrible disbenefit of their grieving families.

    The predictable is occurring yet again. As reported in the London Observer of October 21, 2001, U.N. officials in Afghanistan have reported that a disaster is looming with 7.5 million Afghans threatened by starvation directly attributable to the bombing. The bombing seriously threatens delivery of the humanitarian supplies into Afghanistan. The British charity, Christian Aid, has reported that six hundred people have already died in the Dar-e-Suf region from starvation and related diseases. All of this is exacerbated by the three-year drought that has hit Afghanistan. None of this is reported in the U.S. media, which, as always, is managing consent with American terrorism. Finally, how can the U.S. lead a campaign based on common security when it is the leading obstacle to the radical reduction of nuclear weapons, let alone their elimination.

  • Preventing a Terrorist Mushroom Cloud

    The images of the hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania are nightmare images of unspeakable horror that will forever be a part of our reality.

    Imagine, however, another nightmare — that of a mushroom cloud rising over an American city. This is a threat we can no longer ignore. Terrorists have demonstrated their willingness to attack US cities and the possibility of them doing so with nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out. After September 11th, citizens and leaders alike should be better able to understand the seriousness of the nuclear threat.

    The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were powerful warnings. They signaled that determined terrorists are prepared to sacrifice their lives to harm us, that future attacks could involve weapons of mass destruction, and that nuclear dangers are increasing because of terrorist activity.

    Our leaders have failed to grasp that our present nuclear weapons policies contribute to the possibility of nuclear terrorism against our country. We are simply not doing enough to prevent nuclear weapons or weapons-grade nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.

    A US blue ribbon commission, headed by former Senate majority leader Howard Baker, has called for spending $3 billion a year over the next ten years to maintain control of the nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and nuclear scientists in the former Soviet Union. Yet, the Bush administration has proposed funding cuts for this program from $1.2 billion to $800 million next year.

    The Bush Administration’s primary response to the nuclear threat has been to push for a national missile shield costing billions of dollars, the technology of which is unproven, and which would at best be years away from implementation. A missile shield would likely do irreparable harm to our relations with other countries, countries that we need to join us in the fight against international terrorism.

    The mad nuclear arms race during the Cold War, and the paltry steps taken to reverse it since the end of the Cold War, have left tens of thousands of nuclear weapons potentially available to terrorists. Today there is no accurate inventory of the world’s nuclear arsenals or weapons-grade fissile materials suitable for making nuclear weapons. Estimates have it, however, that there are currently more than 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world. We simply don’t know whether these weapons are adequately controlled, or whether some could already have fallen into the hands of terrorists.

    Osama bin Laden claims to possess nuclear weapons. His claim is feasible. Former Russian Security Advisor Aleksandr Lebed has stated that some 80 to 100 suitcase-size nuclear weapons in the one kiloton range are missing from the Russian arsenal. This claim was reiterated by Alexey Yablokov, an advisor to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

    The Russian government has denied the claims of missing Russian nuclear weapons, but former US Deputy Energy Secretary Charles Curtis has expressed doubt about these assurances. According to Curtis, “We believe we have a full accounting of all of Russia’s strategic weapons, but when it comes to tactical weapons – the suitcase variety – we do not know, and I’m not sure they do, either.”

    More than ten years after the end of the Cold War we and the Russians still have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons each with a total of some 4,500 of them on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments. Russia has been urging the US to move faster on START 3 negotiations to reduce the size of the nuclear arsenals in both countries, but US leaders had been largely indifferent to their entreaties.

    In November 2001, President Bush announced that the US was prepared to reduce its arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons to between 2,200 and 1,700 over the next ten years. President Putin indicated that Russia would make commensurate cuts. These steps are in the right direction, but they still indicate reliance on Cold War strategies of deterrence. They also do not address tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons, which are the most likely weapons to be used and to fall into the hands of terrorists.

    Large nuclear arsenals, measured in the thousands, on hair-trigger alert are Cold War relics. They do not provide deterrence against terrorist attacks. Nor could a missile shield have prevented the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, or protect against future nuclear terrorism.

    From the outset, the Bush administration’s foreign policy course has been based on unilateral US actions and indifference bordering on hostility to international law. Since September 11th, the administration seems to have recognized that we cannot combat terrorism unilaterally. A multilateral effort to combat terrorism will require the US to change its policies and embrace multilateral approaches to many global problems, including the control and elimination of all weapons of mass destruction.

    The global elimination of nuclear weapons can no longer be a back-burner, peace activist issue. It is a top-priority security issue for all Americans, and it will require US leadership to achieve.

    *David Krieger, an attorney and political scientist, is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Pursuing Justice for the Crimes of September 11, 2001 and Reducing the Risks of Terrorism

    After more than three weeks of massive military build-up as well as restraint and diplomatic activity in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States and Britain began air strikes on Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. The U.S.-British air strikes are being accompanied by small humanitarian airdrops, but have triggered a large increase in refugees. The United States has sought and obtained a condemnation of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 from the United Nations Security Council, though the resolutions do not directly authorize the use of force.

    For a number of reasons, the military air strikes by the United States and Britain, with the support of Pakistan and Russia, are likely to aggravate the crisis.

    There is a tension between reducing the risks of further terrorism and carrying out actions to bring the perpetrators of the September 11 crimes to justice. That tension should be explicitly recognized in the organization of a response. Bombing Afghanistan in the context of the massive suffering of the Afghani people has created even angrier appeals to religious war in the region. There is already a great deal of turmoil in Pakistan. A disintegration of Pakistan is possible and creates heightened risks that nuclear materials or warheads might be captured or transferred by sections of the Pakistani establishment to the Taliban and/or the al-Qaeda network. The Pakistani government has had close ties with the Taliban and still maintains relations with that regime. The Pakistani government’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency has played a major role in training and supplying the Taliban. The nuclear implications of that historical relationship for the region, the United States, and the rest of the world are unclear. There is clearly some risk, though its magnitude is difficult to establish in the midst of this crisis.

    The U.S. choice of response to terrorism is raising the risks of wider wars. For instance, there was a terrorist attack in Kashmir on October 2, 2001, when about 40 people were killed. The Indian government has warned that it will attack the Pakistani-occupied portion of Kashmir if there are further attacks, on the same grounds that the U.S. is justifying its air attacks on Afghanistan.

    To take the approach that this is a war rather than a police action to arrest suspects who have committed crimes against humanity (in the legal definition under international law) is to accord the terrorist network the status of a state, which Osama bin Laden has implicitly claimed for years. This approach legitimizes the use of weapons of mass destruction, since states, including the United States and Britain, have long claimed the prerogatives of such use for themselves. The very doctrine of air warfare has its historical roots in the idea of terrorizing populations.(1) The United States, Britain, France, NATO, and Russia all maintain the option of using nuclear weapons first in any conflict. Osama bin Laden has more than once referred to the U.S. use of nuclear weapons over Japan, an act carried out in wartime, as justification for the attacks he is calling on terrorists to carry out against the United States. He repeated that justification after the October 7, 2001 U.S.-British strikes on Afghanistan.

    Military action threatens to de-stabilize the situation in Saudi Arabia, where feelings against the stationing of U.S. troops since 1991 have run very high and are the main source of popular support for Osama bin Laden. The flow of oil as well as the position of the U.S. dollar as a global currency are dependent on Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). OPEC’s decision of the, anchored by Saudi oil reserves, the largest in the world, to denominate the price of oil in U.S. dollars, is one of the anchors of the U.S dollar. In the present crisis, the states of the Persian Gulf may be pushed by their people to follow the 1999 example of Saddam Hussein, who asked to be paid for Iraqi oil in euros, the new European currency. If OPEC decides to denominate the price of oil in euros, the effect on the U.S. and world economies could be profoundly de-stabilizing, with unpredictable economic, political, and military consequences.(2) Other oil exporting countries also face de-stabilization, notably Indonesia, where anti-U.S. government tensions have been high since the International Monetary Fund’s intervention in its financial crisis in 1997.

    The United States, British, and Russian governments, as distinct from the people who were killed on September 11, are widely seen in the region and the world as having had major roles in the crisis in the Central Asian, South Asian, and Middle East regions that has spawned terrorist cells. The proxy war between the Soviet Union and the United States carried out via Pakistan’s government, with financing both from the Saudi government and by all accounts, from drug trade profits, has been at the center of the chaos and mass deprivation in Afghanistan. Many of the present opponents of the United States were its allies and instruments then. (For instance, in a proclamation published in the Federal Register, President Reagan said of the Islamic opposition to the Soviets on March 20, 1984 that “[w]e stand in admiration of the indomitable will and courage of the Afghan people who continue their resistance to tyranny. All freedom-loving people around the globe should be inspired by the Afghan people’s struggle to be free and the heavy sacrifices they bear for liberty.”)

    The United States and Britain are also seen as promoting and being allied with undemocratic regimes for the sake of oil supplies and profits, both historically and at the present time.

    The British military role is also likely to inflame unpleasant memories. The present Pakistani-Afghan border dates back to its British demarcation by Colonel Algermon Durand in 1893, and was part of the British-Russian imperialist rivalry in the region. It divided the Pushtu people, who found themselves on both sides of the line. After the partition of South Asia in 1947, Pakistan, allied with the United States, tried to use Islam as an ideological counterweight to Pushtu nationalism on its side of the border. The various coups between 1973 and 1979 in Afghanistan cemented the drift of Afghanistan and Pakistan into opposite camps of the Cold War. The arrival of Soviet troops at the end of 1979 sealed the division and a devastating proxy war followed. When wars and partitions result in such immense misery, memories are long and bitter, as the continuing problems in South Asia, Israel/Palestine, and Ireland/Northern Ireland demonstrate. Military attacks and wars have not contributed to solutions in any of these conflicts, only aggravated them and inflamed and hardened hatreds.

    The announced U.S.-British goal of protecting the civilian population of Afghanistan is at odds with aerial bombing. An operation more complex and vast than the Berlin airlift of 1948-1949 (“Operation Vittles”) would have to be launched in order to meet emergency demands. Operation Vittles involved airlift to an airport of thousands of tons of food, fuel, and other supplies every day, over distances of a few hundred miles. Given the magnitude of the historical refugees crisis and the one that is being created by the threat and reality of bombings, an operation of similar or larger scale will be needed over much vaster distances and more inhospitable terrain. It will need to be over areas that are controlled by the Taliban as well as forces opposed to the Taliban, meaning that inefficient airdrops are involved. The starving people in theTaliban controlled areas are hardly in a position to topple that government. They face a humanitarian crisis of stunning proportions. Both Pakistan and Iran, already hosting millions of refugees between them, are trying to keep their borders closed. In sum, the relief operation will have to be roughly a hundred times larger than the one carried out on October 8, if it is to have substantial actual effect in relieving the suffering of the people of the region. By all accounts, the best way to deliver food aid is by road. This mode of aid is made difficult or impossible by air attacks, which have, moreover, already resulted in the deaths of four civilian U.N. workers.

    For profound historical, legal, practical, and moral reasons, the use of military force, especially air strikes, to resolve the crisis, is a recipe for continued violence, terrorism, insecurity, and injustice, not to mention the immense increase in suffering for millions of Afghani people. These problems will not be resolved until the U.S., British, and Russian governments show far more understanding of their own role in the problems of the people of the region. And until that time, military action by these countries, directly or by proxy, is likely to increase problems rather than contribute to their solution.

    A different approach to resolving the crisis is urgently needed. The most important ingredient is that American people must work with the international community to put together a force for a police action to carry out the arrests in Afghanistan that does not involve U.S., British, Russian, or non-state proxy militaries. The September 11, 2001 tragedy has brought the people of the world closer to the people of the United States in their suffering. The heartfelt worldwide demand for justice and for greater security against terrorism can be the basis for a framework to address the issues of justice relating to the crimes against humanity committed on September 11, 2001 and other aspects of the crisis that have enveloped the world since that date.

    Basis of a solution

    1. It is essential to de-legitimize the use of or threat of use of weapons of mass destruction and other tactics that have the same effect, whether by states or non-state groups. The people who were killed did not create the chaos in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region or contribute to the hatreds that led to the September 11 attacks. Therefore the search for justice for those attacks should not be linked to any other injustices and problems, which should also be addressed in their own right.

    2. The use of military force by the United States and Britain, as well as the arming of proxy military forces, should stop immediately.

    3. The process of apprehending the suspects should be carried out under the mandate of the U.N. Security Council using existing international law to pursue crimes against humanity. The people of the United States should rely at this time on a police action in which neutral countries from all over the world are mainly involved. It is crucial that this be defined explicitly as a police action to make arrests.

    4. The U.N. force must have firm rules of operation. Violence against civilians, including bombing of cities, villages, and refugee camps, should be prohibited. The parties to the coalition should commit to respecting human rights. Participating states and personnel should act within the confines of humanitarian and international law, including the Nuremberg principles. They should expect to be held to the same level of accountability in an international judicial process that they seek to impose.

    5. Even though its military forces would not be involved, the United States will, as a practical matter, have a powerful voice in how the U.N. force operates for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the September 11 attacks were on U.S. soil. In order that the United States have moral authority in regard to threats and acts of mass destruction, the United States should take the leadership against the very idea of mass destruction by explicitly renouncing first use of nuclear weapons. To show its good faith, it should begin the process of de-alerting them. It should invite Russia and all other nuclear weapons states into an urgent process of verifiable de-alerting of all nuclear weapons and of putting all nuclear warheads and weapons-usable nuclear materials under international safeguards. This will strengthen the international coalition against terrorism and fulfill longstanding demands of the international community. It will also help stabilize nuclear situation in South Asia, with attendant positive security implication for that region, and the rest of the world, including the United States.

    6. There should be no proxy wars, as for instance, was the practice during the Cold War, or arming of groups that could result in proxy wars.

    7. There should be explicit recognition that the suffering of the Afghani people has its roots, in large measure, in Cold War politics and proxy wars. That recognition, both from Russia and the United States, is long overdue. When translated into practical humanitarian policies, this means that the alleviation of their suffering must be a central, co-equal goal to that of apprehending the suspects. Most of all, any process must take into account that a re-ignition of the civil war would be disastrous for the people of Afghanistan and probably Pakistan, and could have other far-reaching serious de-stabilizing consequences.

    8. It is essential that the United States protect human rights, civil rights (including freedom of speech, assembly, and religion and freedom from discrimination) at home. The rights of immigrants should be respected along with all other people living in the United States. While the evidence clearly indicates that the crimes of September 11 were likely committed by non-citizens, there are many examples where U.S. citizens have committed acts of terror, including the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City and the many crimes over a long period by the “Unabomber.” Immigrants should be accorded due process and liberties guaranteed under the Bill of Rights.

    9. The formation of a coalition against terrorism and the rules of its operation should be taken up as a matter under the many treaties against terrorism that already exist. The crisis of September 11 should be used as the time to create a direction for the world community that will be based on morality, equity, the rule of law and justice for all. It is crucial to create a direction in which the rules and norms of behavior against mass violence imposed on individuals and non-state groups be extended to states, rather than the opposite, which is the direction that the bombing of Afghanistan is taking the world.

    Notes 1: The doctrine was first elaborated by an Italian, Brigadier Douhet, who wrote: “The conception of belligerents and nonbelligerents is outmoded. Today it is not the armies but whole nations which make war; and all civilians are belligerents and all are exposed to the hazards of war. The only salvation will be in caves, but those caves cannot hold entire cities, fleets, railways, bridges, industries, etc.” That doctrine of air warfare was first employed on a large scale by Germany during the mid-1930s against Spain and again in 1940 and thereafter against Britain, and also by Britain and the United States, in conventional bombing, fire bombing, and nuclear bombing during World War II. For a history of aerial warfare see Jack Colhoun, “Strategic Bombing,” at http://www.ieer.org/comments/bombing.html 2. For an analysis of the oil-dollar problem see Arjun Makhijani, “Saddam’s Last Laugh” at http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2001/03/09/

  • Neglecting Moral Approach to US and World Security

    From Mr David Krieger,

    Sir, Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, in his speech to the Labour party conference of October 2, invoked “the moral power of a world acting as a community” to combat terrorism. But to take a truly moral approach to US and global security, the US must heed seven urgent moral imperatives that we are still neglecting:

    First, to take far stronger measures to prevent future attacks rather than simply to avenge the acts of September 11, beginning with redressing US intelligence’s massive failure to detect the threat, despite ample warnings.

    Second, to assign top priority to preventing terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction, focusing resources on plausible threats of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons attacks, before funding costly missile defences against the implausible ones.

    Third, to deploy military protection now for all nuclear power plants and rapidly phase them out. Nuclear reactors are dormant radiological weapons in proximity to highly populated areas. Until shutdown, protect plants and spent fuel with troops and anti-aircraft weapons.

    Fourth, to bring the world’s nuclear weapons and fissile materials under control and move quickly towards eliminating these weapons. In the short term, reduce nuclear arsenals now to reliably controllable numbers to keep them out of terrorist hands.

    Fifth, to commit to multilateral action to bring terrorists to justice, expressly under UN auspices and existing international treaties on terrorism and sabotage. Try perpetrators for transnational crimes against humanity before an international tribunal established for this purpose.

    Sixth, to use US pre-eminence to uphold security and justice, not just for ourselves and industrialised allies but for the world, recognising that true security is co-operative and that life in the US is ultimately only as secure and decent as life on the planet.

    Last, to have the moral courage to reconsider US policy in light of the question: Why are Islamic extremists willing to die to murder us? Is it, as President George W. Bush said, hatred of freedom and democracy, or our Middle East policy?

    Until the 1960s, the Islamic world generally admired the US as a non-colonialist beacon of freedom and democracy. Subsequent US policies changed that. While terrorists cannot dictate US actions, neither can we fail to amend policies detrimental to our security simply for fear of appearing soft on terrorism.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Search for a Political Solution in Afghanistan

    Statement by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, October, 8 2001

    Following is the text of a statement made today by Secretary-General Kofi Annan on military strikes in Afghanistan:

    Immediately after the 11 September attacks on the United States, the Security Council expressed its determination to combat, by all means, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts. The Council also reaffirmed the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. The States concerned have set their current military action in Afghanistan in that context.

    To defeat terrorism, we need a sustained effort and a broad strategy to unite all nations, and address all aspects of the scourge we face. The cause must be pursued by all the States of the world, working together and using many different means — including political, legal, diplomatic and financial means.

    The people of Afghanistan, who cannot be held responsible for the acts of the Taliban regime, are now in desperate need of aid. The United Nations has long played a vital role in providing humanitarian assistance to them, and it is my hope that we will be able to step up our humanitarian work as soon as possible.

    It is also vital that the international community now work harder than ever to encourage a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan. The United Nations is actively engaged in promoting the creation of a fully representative, multi-ethnic and broad-based Afghan Government.

  • Changing the Equation of Terror

    The toppled towers of the World Trade Center have left behind dark shadows of fear, apprehension and uncertainty in our minds. There are strong cries for war and vengeance. Our Congress has reacted by vesting additional powers in the hands of the President and by giving even more billions of dollars to the military. But traditional military force cannot prevail against this enemy. Military forces cannot wage war against an unseen and perhaps unlocatable enemy.

    Our first priority should be to protect the American people from future terrorist attacks. We must ask why our intelligence services failed so badly, even when the warnings were abundant.

    Our second priority must be to deeply examine our policies that give rise to such hatred. We must not be afraid to look at the grief and suffering in the world, particularly in the Middle East, that we have contributed to by our policies. President Bush thinks we are hated for our freedom and democracy, but many in other parts of the world believe we are hated for the arrogant manner in which we have used our economic and military might. We may have freedom and democracy at home, but our policies abroad have supported and upheld despotic regimes throughout the world and our CIA has trained and supported extremists like Osama bin Laden.

    Our third priority must be to bring the perpetrators of these terrible crimes to justice. The terrorists have committed crimes against humanity in taking the lives of citizens of some 80 countries. To apprehend the criminals behind these crimes and bring them to justice will require a global effort and should be done multilaterally with the sanction of the United Nations. The criminals should be tried in a special International Tribunal created for this purpose.

    We live in a time when there is a confluence between arrogance, hatred, vulnerability and violence. This was true before September 11th and remains true today. Our vulnerability cannot be substantially lessened. It is endemic in our technological societies. The ability to do violence is also endemic. What can be changed are our policies that lead to hatred and our own violence. It will not be easy for Americans to be introspective and to consider the manner in which our policies and our violence have caused others to suffer and die, but unless we do so we will not be able to stop future terrorism directed against us.

    As bad as the terrorist attacks were on September 11th, damage in the future could be much worse. Terrorists in possession of biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons could destroy not only buildings but cities. To prevent this, the US must provide leadership to the international community to assure that these weapons do not fall into the hands of terrorists. The only way to do this will be to put the tightest possible global controls on these weapons and the materials to construct them, while moving rapidly to eliminate them from the arsenals of all nations including our own.

    How the US responds to this crisis may well determine whether our new century will be even more violent and destructive than the 20th century, or whether we can find a way to serve justice by upholding the dignity of all persons. The future of our nation and of civilization depend upon our willingness to take a hard look at our role in the world and our willingness to change the variables in the equation of terrorism that we can control.

    *David Krieger, an attorney and political scientist, is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • The West Shares the Blame: By Rejecting All that Is Alien to Its Culture, the Industrialised World Has Helped Terrorism

    By the time this article is published, the armed assault on Afghanistan, the Taliban regime, Osama bin Laden or his followers may have already begun. For some, it seems, they are all the same. But not to speak out against this is either a serious mistake or guilty acquiescence of the bellicose plans proclaimed repeatedly by US leaders.

    The west’s quiet acceptance, particularly among European countries, pains me. It should fill all of us with despair. Yes, there are big speeches and important agreements are signed. But ultimately, the west accepts – and even takes part in – the violent response.

    That the US was going to react as it says it will should come as no surprise. But the submission of other nations was difficult to foresee. It is alarming that countries such as France and Spain have not raised their voices to say “no”: to reject the violent solution as the only available option; to uncover the big lie of a “final solution” against terrorism.

    I live in a country that has been fighting terrorism for 30 years and that daily clamours for the rule of law as the best means to confront it. What is not possible is that Spain should now put on a military helmet and pledge unlimited support for the hypothetical bombardment of nothing; for the massacre of poverty; and for a breach of the most fundamental logic, which proves that violence begets violence. The spiral of terrorism is fed by the number of dead counted among its victims.

    It has been said of terrorism, particularly the Islamic or fundamentalist kind, that it is a widespread threat. But it is a phenomenon that has been helped by the west’s rejection of all that is different from its own culture or “civilised religion”.

    The west and its political, military, social and economic hierarchies have been more preoccupied with the abusive and shameful march of production, speculation and profit than with an adequate redistribution of wealth. It has favoured a policy of social exclusion over integration and progressive immigration. And it has insisted on maintaining – and insisted on payment of – external debt instead of using those funds in the same countries it is now asking for help and understanding. For all those conscious mistakes, the west is suffering the terrible consequences of fanatical religious violence.

    Lasting peace and freedom can be achieved only with legality, justice, respect for diversity, defence of human rights and measured and fair responses. It is impossible to build peace on foundations of misery. Above all, it should not be forgotten that there will come a time when justice is demanded of those responsible for these mistakes and the loss of a historic opportunity to make the world more just.

    I am not thinking here about the justice demanded of those who masterminded and carried out the tragic events of September 11. That is the remit of national or international justice, as well as the intelligence and police services that have to compile the evidence. This is necessary if a fair trial is to take place. It is not sufficient to say: “I have the evidence but I cannot make it public for fear of endangering my sources.” That is not a serious approach – it is simply illegal.

    Of course, everyone has already established the guilt of Osama bin Laden and, as the indisputable leader of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, he probably is guilty. We should not forget that we are dealing with a horrible crime – but the response nevertheless requires due process. In its haste to eliminate Mr bin Laden, the west seems to have forgotten this fact. And that is serious.

    The justice I am talking about is that which should be brought to bear not only on the Taliban for its brutal and oppressive regime but also on the leaders of western countries, who, irresponsibly and through the media, have generated panic among the Afghan people. Faced with the prospect of imminent invasion, this panic has forced them to flee towards supposed security and freedom. In reality, however, it merely drives them towards what is certain to be a human catastrophe. Who will answer for these deaths? Who will answer for the forced migrations? In all probability, the death of a few thousand Afghans will be of no interest to these leaders because, for all the grand speeches, their fate is already sealed.

    The response that I seek is not military. It is one based on law, through the immediate approval of an international convention on terrorism. Such a convention should, among other things, include: rules governing co-operation between police and the judiciary; rules that enable investigations to take place in tax havens; the urgent ratification of the statute of the International Criminal Tribunal; and the definition of terrorism as a crime against humanity.

    The time has come to look at the principles of territorial sovereignty, human rights, security, co-operation and universal criminal justice through the same lens. That, and that alone, should be the aim of the coalition of countries against terrorism.

    *Baltasar Garzon is Spain’s leading anti-terrorist judge. A version of this article first appeared in El Pais.

  • Hope Will Shape Our Future

    Terrorist acts are the acts of people who have given up hope that they can be heard or achieve their goals by more reasonable forms of discourse and action. Terrorist acts are not acts of first recourse. They are acts of desperation, sending messages in blood and death. They are acts of individuals whose only hope lies in the worst forms of cruelty without regard for the welfare of their innocent victims.

    There is no doubt that terrorists are criminals and should be punished for their crimes, including those against humanity. International terrorism is a problem of the global community and should be punished by international tribunals established for this purpose. The international community, through the United Nations, should also be mobilized to join hands in the fight to prevent all forms of terrorism.

    In fighting terrorism, though, it is not enough to apprehend and punish the terrorists. More important is to prevent the future loss of innocent lives that can occur by means of terrorism, including chemical, biological, and nuclear attacks.

    We need to clearly grasp the fact that the consequences of acts of terrorism in a nuclear-armed world could grow much worse than what we have yet seen. Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists could mean the destruction of cities rather than buildings.

    The vulnerability of our high-tech societies to terrorism places civilization itself at risk. The stakes are very high. We must put an end to terrorism. To do this, we must be able to offer some hope to terrorists and would-be terrorists that their lives can be made better through political discourse and action.

    Thus, no one on our planet can be excluded from the hope of living a decent life, from living with dignity and justice. Each person excluded from this hope is a potential terrorist, a potential recruit as a saboteur of our vulnerable civilization.

    Military power alone cannot solve our problem and make the world safe from terrorism. In fact, military power – because it is a blunt instrument likely to cause more innocent deaths – is likely to reinforce the hopelessness of those attacked and create a greater pool from which to recruit terrorists.

    We must rather look deeper, and try to understand the factors that motivate terrorism: crushing poverty, oppression, and the sense that one’s grievances are not being heard and will not be heard. While our policies must not be dictated by terrorists, neither can we be indifferent to their grievances and to the conditions that spawn terrorism.

    Our civilization cannot survive with a small bastion of privileged societies trying to hold out against multitudes mired in poverty and oppression, those who have given up hope for a more decent future for themselves and their children.

    Hopelessness grows when some 35,000 children die daily of malnutrition and preventable diseases, when 50,000 children a year die in Iraq as a result of US-led economic sanctions on that country, when the Palestinians are increasingly marginalized and oppressed in their land.

    If we in the United States want to have hope of living without fear of terrorist attacks, we must reflect upon our policies that take away hope from others throughout the world. We are connected on this planet by not only our common humanity, but by our common vulnerability.

    Hopeless enemies will find ways to attack us where we are most vulnerable, and we are vulnerable nearly everywhere: our cities, our water, our air, our energy, our transportation, our communications, our financial institutions, and our liberties. Therefore, our policies must build hope by waging peace against poverty and oppression and by encouraging an open forum through the United Nations for listening to grievances and responding to them with justice.

    The future of our planet will be shaped by hope, and hope itself will be shaped by the policies and leadership of the United States. We must choose hope and foster it, not only for ourselves, but for every citizen of our planet. We must give hope, to even those who hate us and, in doing so, turn potential enemies into allies in the struggle for a better world.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is co-author of Choose Hope, a Dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda, recently published in Japan.

  • Building from the Ashes

    Building from the Ashes

    President Bush has described the September 11th terrorist attacks as a new kind of war, one that requires a new way of thinking. The shock of these attacks has awakened Americans and people throughout the world to the need for a new way of thinking. But what should this new way of thinking consist of? I would like to suggest some elements.

    First, we must recognize that we are all vulnerable, and our vulnerability is interconnected. No one on the planet can escape into a fortress of security. So long as people anywhere are insecure, the potential exists for making people everywhere insecure.

    Therefore, the United States, as the world’s most economically and militarily powerful nation, must dedicate itself to helping assure the security of people everywhere, including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Palestinians.

    Second, we must understand that military power can only have limited results in a “war against terrorism.” Terrorists are difficult to locate and do not occupy a fixed territory like a nation. Finding terrorists will be more dependent upon good intelligence than military operations. Such intelligence will require global cooperation. It is not something the United States can hope to do alone.

    Therefore, the United States must strengthen its ties with the rest of the world through diplomacy. We must maintain an ongoing global alliance in the fight against terrorism. This will require the United States to be a good global citizen and to join other nations in efforts to achieve global cooperation in such areas as supporting the law of the sea, preventing global warming, banning landmines, banning illegal transfers of small arms, banning nuclear tests, establishing an international criminal court, providing verification procedures for the Biological Weapons Convention, and fulfilling our obligations for the global elimination of nuclear arms.

    Third, we need to abandon Cold War thinking and policies such as nuclear deterrence and deployment of missile shields. These policies are utterly useless against small groups of extremists prepared to use any instrument at their disposal, even box cutters, to attack the United States.

    Therefore, the United States should stop spending obscene amounts of money on military might, such as on our bloated nuclear arsenal and on missile defenses. Rather, we should allocate our resources to providing better intelligence to protect the American people, to eliminating stores of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in our country and throughout the world, and to improving the lives of people in the poorest countries who suffer each day for lack of basic necessities or from brutal government policies.

    The United States needs to be a beacon of hope throughout the world based on our active support of democracy, human rights, and the alleviation of the conditions of poverty for all the world’s people.

    The new way of thinking that is now needed could lead us to a new way of Peace. Our challenge and opportunity, as we grapple with the aftermath of September 11th, is to build peace from the ashes, helping to construct a culture of peace worldwide that will make terrorism unimaginable, undesirable and unacceptable to every citizen of the planet.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.