Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: disarmament

  • Third P5 Conference: Implementing the NPT

    Following is the text of a joint statement issued by China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States of America at the conclusion of the Third P5 Conference: Implementing the NPT June 27-29, 2012 in Washington, DC.

    Begin text:

    The five Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) nuclear-weapon states, or P5, met in Washington on June 27-29, 2012, in the wake of the 2009 London and 2011 Paris P5 conferences to review progress towards fulfilling the commitments made at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, and to continue discussions on issues related to all three pillars of the NPT nonproliferation, the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and disarmament, including confidence-building, transparency, and verification experiences.

    The P5 reaffirmed their commitment to the shared goal of nuclear disarmament and emphasized the importance of working together in implementing the 2010 NPT Review Conference Action Plan. The P5 reviewed significant developments in the context of the NPT since the 2011 Paris P5 Conference. In particular, the P5 reviewed the outcome of the 2012 Preparatory Committee for the 2015 NPT Review Conference, continued their discussion of how to report on their relevant activities, and shared views, across all three pillars of the NPT, on objectives for the 2013 Preparatory Committee and the intersessional period. The 2012 PrepCom outcome included issuance of a P5 statement comprehensively addressing issues in all three pillars (NPT/CONF.2015/PC.I/12).

    The P5 continued their previous discussions on the issues of transparency, mutual confidence, and verification, and considered proposals for a standard reporting form. The P5 recognize the importance of establishing a firm foundation for mutual confidence and further disarmament efforts, and the P5 will continue their discussions in multiple ways within the P5, with a view to reporting to the 2014 PrepCom, consistent with their commitments under Actions 5, 20, and 21 of the 2010 RevCon final document.

    Participants received a briefing from the United States on U.S. activities at the Nevada National Security Site. This was offered with a view to demonstrate ideas for additional approaches to transparency.

    Another unilateral measure was a tour of the U.S. Nuclear Risk Reduction Center located at the U.S. Department of State, where the P5 representatives have observed how the United States maintains a communications center to simultaneously implement notification regimes, including under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), Hague Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC), and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Vienna Document.

    The P5 agreed on the work plan for a P5 working group led by China, assigned to develop a glossary of definitions for key nuclear terms that will increase P5 mutual understanding and facilitate further P5 discussions on nuclear matters.

    The P5 again shared information on their respective bilateral and multilateral experiences in verification, including information on the P5 expert level meeting hosted by the UK in April, at which the UK shared the outcomes and lessons from the UK-Norway Initiative disarmament verification research project. The P5 heard presentations on lessons learned from New START Treaty implementation, were given an overview of U.S.-UK verification work, and agreed to consider attending a follow-up P5 briefing on this work to be hosted by the United States.

    As a further follow-up to the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the P5 shared their views on how to discourage abuse of the NPT withdrawal provision (Article X), and how to respond to notifications made consistent with the provisions of that article. The discussion included modalities under which NPT States Party could respond collectively and individually to a notification of withdrawal, including through arrangements regarding the disposition of equipment and materials acquired or derived under safeguards during NPT membership. The P5 agreed that states remain responsible under international law for violations of the Treaty committed prior to withdrawal.

    The P5 underlined the fundamental importance of an effective International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system in preventing nuclear proliferation and facilitating cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The P5 discussed concrete proposals for strengthening IAEA safeguards, including through promoting the universal adoption of the Additional Protocol; and the reinforcement of the IAEAs resources and capabilities for effective safeguards implementation, including verification of declarations by States.

    The P5 reiterated their commitment to promote and ensure the swift entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and its universalization. The P5 reviewed progress in developing the CTBTs verification regime in all its aspects and efforts towards entry into force. Ways to enhance the momentum for completing the verification regime, including the on-site inspection component, were explored. The P5 called upon all States to uphold their national moratoria on nuclear weapons-test explosions or any other nuclear explosion, and to refrain from acts that would defeat the object and purpose of the Treaty pending its entry into force. The moratoria, though important, are not substitutes for legally binding obligations under the CTBT.

    The P5 discussed ways to advance a mutual goal of achieving a legally binding, verifiable international ban on the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons. The P5 reiterated their support for the immediate start of negotiations on a treaty encompassing such a ban in the Conference on Disarmament (CD), building on CD/1864, and exchanged perspectives on ways to break the current impasse in the CD, including by continuing their efforts with other relevant partners to promote such negotiations within the CD.

    The P5 remain concerned about serious challenges to the non-proliferation regime and in this connection, recalled their joint statement of May 3 at the Preparatory Committee of the NPT.

    An exchange of views on how to support a successful conference in 2012 on a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction was continued.

    The P5 agreed to continue to meet at all appropriate levels on nuclear issues to further promote dialogue and mutual confidence. The P5 will follow on their discussions and hold a fourth P5 conference in the context of the next NPT Preparatory Committee.

  • Youth Speech at the NPT PrepCom

    Vienna International Centre

    Speech written by Mirko Montuori, Abolition 2000; Leonardo Scuto, Atlantic Treaty Association; Christian N. Ciobanu, Raphael Zaffran, and Charlie Sell, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; and Martin Hinrichs, Ban All Nukes Generation.

    Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,

    Two years ago in New York our predecessors asked ironically if, at the age of 65, nuclear weapons had reached the time for compulsory retirement. Today, on the verge of them turning 67, we ask you to declare them not only out of business, but also deprived of any retirement scheme.

    We are young, but we are not naive.

    We are young, but we are not unaware of the world around us.

    We are here, representing the youth movement for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, urging you to comply with your commitments towards your citizens and to start immediate negotiations for a decisive nuclear weapons convention.

    We all know the destructive power of nuclear weapons, as they have been used and tested too often in the past.

    The presence of nuclear weapons in this world leaves us with two possible futures: in the best case scenario, states continue to own weapons that will never be used. In the worst case scenario, these weapons could be used at all times. We reject both futures, for nuclear weapons should simply not exist.

    Mr. Chairman, the very first resolution of the UN General Assembly established the objective to prohibit the possession of nuclear weapons as a top priority of the international community. Then the Cold War broke out and the two superpowers developed the concept of nuclear deterrence. It is not surprising that the resulting military doctrine was called MAD. The Cold War is now over and deterrence is an outdated justification for the existence of such weapons.

    Today, we feel the danger and risk of nuclear weapons more than ever. The source of our fears and frustrations lies in the same events that have recently challenged the goals of the NPT.

    We, the youth, fear an arms race in several regions of the world and the unchecked proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    We, the youth, sit frustrated as we continue to witness the lack of political will and trust needed to confront these obstacles.

    It is crucial to build trust among states by prioritizing the elimination of rapidly deployable nuclear weapons. These weapons can destroy entire cities or countries in a few hours. Increasing trust would mean that states tempted to build new weapons would be universally accountable to the international community.

    There is a man who has used nuclear weapons and is now engaging against them. His name is Robert Green, he is a former Commander of the Royal Navy and now one of the staunchest advocates of nuclear abolition. We can all learn from his experience.
    There are also those who have survived the use of these terrible weapons. They are the victims and witnesses of the only weapons that could destroy our planet. Hibakushas bring on their dignified fight against them, well aware of their risks. They are a living warning against the worst form of death conceived by humankind, and to ignore them is to ignore the worst risk that humanity could face.

    We live in the world of the Third Industrial Revolution, with an increasing power of communication and online interaction. As a result, we are all linked to each other.

    How do you justify the existence, development and maintenance of these weapons in a world where your children and grandchildren do not see the difference between an Asian and European boy, between an American and an African girl? And how do you justify them in a world hit by the worst economic crisis since 1929, where youth unemployment is increasingly designing our instable future?
    Representatives of the world’s nations, how do you justify maintaining nuclear weapons in such a context? Is this the world that you want to hand down to younger generations?

    We, as young people, care a lot about the future of this planet. We are aware that differences of cultures, religions, and political constraints persist. But we will not give up our fight against nuclear weapons.

    Do not ignore our concern! Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

    Thank you very much for your attention.

  • Freeze the Nukes, Fund the Future

    Click here to urge your Representative to sign on to this letter to the Super Committee.


    Dear Members of the Super Committee:


    The Berlin Wall fell.  The Soviet Union crumbled.  The Cold War ended.  Yet 20 years later, we continue to spend over $50 billion a year on the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  This makes no sense.  These funds are a drain on our budget and a disservice to the next generation of Americans.  We are robbing the future to pay for the unneeded weapons of the past.  Now is the time to stop fighting last century’s war.  Now is the time to reset our priorities.  Now is the time to invest in the people and the programs to get America back on track.


    The Super Committee is best positioned to cut this outdated radioactive relic.  The Soviets are long gone, yet the stockpiles remain.  The bombs collect dust, yet the bills are with us to this day.  We call on the Super Committee to cut $20 billion a year, or $200 billion over the next ten years, from the U.S. nuclear weapons budget.  This cut will enable us to stay safe without further straining our budget.  This cut will improve our security.  This cut will allow us to continue funding the national defense programs that matter most.


    Consider how this savings compares to vital programs on which Americans rely.  We spend approximately $20 billion per year on Pell Grants to help students pay for college.  We spend $5 billion to ensure that Americans do not freeze in their homes during the winter.  We need to freeze our nuclear weapons, and fuel our stalled economy.


    The Ploughshares Fund estimates that the U.S. will spend over $700 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs over the next ten years.  Nuclear weapons and missile defense alone will consume over $500 billion.  We can no longer justify spending at these levels.  We can save hundreds of billions of dollars by restructuring the U.S. nuclear program for the 21st century.    


    Our current arsenal totals approximately 5,000 nuclear warheads.  This enormous stockpile will allow us to annihilate our enemies countless times.  At any one time there are up to 12 Trident submarines cruising the world’s seas.  Each submarine carries an estimated 96 nuclear warheads.  Each submarine is capable of destroying all of Russia’s and China’s major cities.  Why then do we need all of these weapons?  There is no good reason.  America no longer needs, and cannot afford, this massive firepower.


    The Super Committee should not reduce funding to vital programs relied upon by millions of Americans.  Cut Minuteman missiles.  Do not cut Medicare and Medicaid.  Cut nuclear-armed B-52 and B-2 bombers.  Do not cut Social Security.  Invest in the future, don’t waste money on the past.


    We do not need to maintain our current level of nuclear weapons to secure our country.  The President agrees.  The Senate agrees.  The New START treaty will reduce our level of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550.  This is a 25 percent cut from today’s levels.  Fewer nuclear weapons should equal less funding.


    We should not cut entitlement programs first.  We should not target our seniors, our children, and our sick first.  Instead we should target outdated and unnecessary nuclear weapons.  Let’s freeze the nukes so we can fund the future.


    Sincerely,

  • Kansas City Here It Comes: A New Nuclear Weapons Plant!

    This article was originally published on the History News Network.


    Lawrence WittnerShould the U.S. government be building more nuclear weapons?  Residents of Kansas City, Missouri don’t appear to think so, for they are engaged in a bitter fight against the construction of a new nuclear weapons plant in their community.


    The massive plant, 1.5 million square feet in size, is designed to replace an earlier version, also located in the city and run by the same contractor:  Honeywell.  The cost of building the new plant—which, like its predecessor, will provide 85 percent of the components of America’s nuclear weapons—is estimated to run $673 million.


    From the standpoint of the developer, Centerpoint Zimmer (CPZ), that’s a very sweet deal.  In payment for the plant site, a soybean field it owned, CPZ received $5 million.  The federal government will lease the property and plant from a city entity for twenty years, after which, for $10, CPZ will purchase it, thus establishing the world’s first privately-owned nuclear weapons plant.  In addition, as the journal Mother Jones has revealed, “the Kansas City Council, enticed by direct payments and a promise of ‘quality jobs,’ . . . agreed to exempt CPZ from property taxes on the plant and surrounding land for twenty-five years.”  The Council also agreed to issue $815 million in bond subsidies from urban blight funds to build the plant and its infrastructure.  In this lucrative context, how could a profit-driven corporation resist?


    Kansas City residents, however, had greater misgivings.  They wondered why the U.S. government, already possessing 8,500 nuclear weapons, needed more of them.  They wondered what had happened to the U.S. government’s commitment to engage in treaties for nuclear disarmament.  They wondered how the new weapons plant fit in with the Obama administration’s pledge to build a world free of nuclear weapons.  And they wondered why they should be subsidizing the U.S. military-industrial complex with their tax dollars.


    Taking the lead, the city’s peace and disarmament community began protests and demonstrations against the proposed nuclear weapons plant several years ago.  Gradually, Kansas City PeaceWorks (a branch of Peace Action) pulled together the local chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, religious groups, and others into a coalition of a dozen organizations, Kansas City Peace Planters.  The coalition’s major project was a petition campaign to place a proposition on the November 8, 2011 election ballot that would reject building a plant for weapons and utilize the facility instead for “green energy” technologies.


    The significance of the Kansas City nuclear weapons buildup was also highlighted by outside forces.  In June 2011, against the backdrop of the Obama administration’s plan to spend $185 billion for modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex over the next ten years, the U.S. Council of Mayors voted unanimously for a resolution instructing the president to join leaders of the other nuclear weapons states in implementing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s five-point plan for the elimination of all nuclear weapons by the year 2020.  It also called on Congress to terminate funding for modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and nuclear weapons systems.  Addressing the gathering, the U.N. leader declared that “the road to peace and progress runs through the world’s cities and towns,” a statement that drew a standing ovation.


    Even more pointedly, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Nations, appeared in Kansas City in July 2011.  According to the National Catholic Reporter, Chullikat “came to this Midwestern diocese because it is the site of a major new nuclear weapons manufacturing facility, the first to be built in the country in thirty-three years.”  In his address, the prelate remarked:  “Viewed from a legal, political, security and most of all—moral—perspective, there is no justification today for the continued maintenance of nuclear weapons.”  This was the moment, he declared, to address “the legal, political and technical requisites for a nuclear-weapons-free world.”  Highlighting Chullikatt’s speech, the National Catholic Reporter declared, cuttingly:  “The U.S. trudges unheedingly down the nuclear path.  Now more than ever we need to attend to the messages of the often marginalized peacemakers in our midst.”


    Actually, peace activists in Kansas City looked less and less marginalized.  Nearly 5,000 Kansas City residents signed the petition to place the proposition rejecting the nuclear weapons plant on the ballot, giving it considerably more signatures than necessary to appear before the voters.


    Naturally, this popular uprising came as a blow to the Kansas City Council, which put forward a measure that would block the disarmament initiative from appearing on the ballot.


    At an August 17 hearing on the Council measure, local residents were irate.  “You cannot divorce yourselves from the hideously immoral purpose of these weapons,” one declared, comparing the city’s subsidy for the weapons plant to financing Nazi gas chambers “for the sake of ‘jobs.’”  Referring to the Council’s charter, which provided for the appearance of propositions on the ballot when they secured the requisite number of signatures, the chair of PeaceWorks asked:  “Are we a government of laws or of . . . corporations and special interests?”


    Since then, the situation has evolved rapidly.  On August 25, the City Council voted 12 to 1 to bar the proposition from the ballot.  The next day, the petitioners went to court to block Council interference.  Honeywell, CPZ, and their friends dispatched a large legal team to Kansas City to fight against the citizens’ initiative, securing a court decision that might delay redress for years.  In response, Peace Planters seems likely to speed up the process by crafting a new petition—one that would cut off city funding for the plant.


    Whatever the outcome, the very fact that such a struggle has emerged indicates that many Americans are appalled by plans to throw their local and national resources into building more nuclear weapons.

  • The Anti-Nuclear Mountain Is Being Scaled

    Douglas RocheA three-week global speaking tour has convinced me that the world is moving into a new stage in the long quest to eliminate nuclear weapons.  Weakened government ideology in support of nuclear weapons is now colliding with chronic deficits and other economic realities that make them unaffordable. 


    I found this a consistent theme in meetings with senior government officials in China, India, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom. In the discussions surrounding my lectures to university students, think tanks and civil society groups, it became clear to me that the intellectual case for nuclear deterrence is crumbling.  Even in NATO headquarters in Brussels, where my arguments for nuclear disarmament in past visits were greeted by the derisory comment, “mission impossible,” the response this time could be characterized as “mission maybe.” 


    In addition to speaking on the themes of my book, How We Stopped Loving the Bomb, I presented a new brief, “A Global Law to Ban Nuclear Weapons,” prepared by the Middle Powers Initiative (MPI) and containing a central message: “It is urgent to seize the present opportunity, and to begin, soon, collective preparatory work leading to enactment of a universal, verifiable and enforceable legal ban on nuclear weapons.” 


    MPI has drafted a UN resolution, which would request the UN Secretary-General to convene a diplomatic conference in 2014 to negotiate a global ban on nuclear weapons.  But governments are balking at such “swift action,” and it may be that the best that can be obtained at the moment is agreement to have an Experts Group advise on steps that could lead to a Nuclear Weapons Convention. 


    The reluctance by governments to actually start working comprehensively on at least preparations for a convention, which would be a global treaty, appears on the surface to be yet another rebuff to nuclear disarmament advocates.  “It’s like a bucket of cold water thrown on us,” an activist in London complained.  But a physician of long experience likened the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons to the early days of the anti-smoking campaign when the scorn of smokers evolved into a new societal attitude against smoking. 


    My world tour showed me that the anti-nuclear weapons campaign is following the classic lines of other great social movements, such as the end of slavery, colonialism and apartheid: at first, the idea is dismissed by the powerful, then when the idea starts to take hold, it is vigorously objected to until, by persistence, the idea enters the norm of public thinking and laws start to be changed. 


    The emerging campaign to abolish nuclear weapons does not follow a straight path.  In China, I was told that the government is ready to engage in multilateral negotiations but first wants to see more progress in bilateral agreements between the US and Russia, which hold the lion’s share of the 20,000 nuclear weapons in existence.  In India, the public takes pride in their new acquisition of nuclear weapons in the mistaken belief that they would be of some use in the continuing conflict with Pakistan, but senior political officials are looking for a way to get global negotiations started.  In Russia, officials told me that US plans for a missile defence system in Europe along with other aspects of American military dominance, such as the weaponization of space, are an impediment to further agreements to lower the level of nuclear weapons.  


    All governments make excuses for resisting collaborative efforts for a global ban.  Even in Norway, Sweden and Germany, three countries thought to have progressive policies, the bureaucracies are sluggish, playing an “After you, Alphonse” game of delaying the definitive action of calling a conference to start working on a ban. The UK officials I talked to conceded the merits of the MPI brief  (and even invited me back), but are locked into temporary growth of their unaffordable Trident nuclear system by a combination of political pressures from the right wing and the felt need for coherence with the US and France. 


    Governments around the world today are relying on obfuscation to make their case for the retention of nuclear weapons.  The ideology that drove the escalation of nuclear weapons in the Cold War is long gone, younger officials are coming into status positions, and pragmatics are starting to determine how to maintain security without spending the $100 billion a year now devoured by the nuclear weapons industry for weapons whose use has been ruled out on military, political and moral grounds.  Only the building of a global law, as was effected to ban chemical and biological weapons, remains to be done to free humanity from the spectre of mass destruction. 


    The nuclear mountain is high indeed.  Scaling it is not for the faint-hearted.  But a historic shift in attitudes is under way.  And that shift is being hastened by the gradual recognition that the processes of globalization, which are elevating the standard of living for millions upon millions of people, should not be jeopardized by the squandering of money on military “junk.” 


    One unforgettable sight caught, for me, what the nuclear struggle is all about.  In Shanghai one evening, I stood on the walkway along the Bund.  On one side was the array of graceful 19th-century buildings, lit in soft amber colours.  Then, turning, I saw across the river a dazzling spectacle  of new skyscrapers garishly lit with flashing electronic signs.  The old China and the new.  The contrast is startling. 


    The new world, unfolding before our eyes, has huge problems, such as feeding the people and stopping pollution.  It’s starting to realize it doesn’t have the time, or the money, to continue stock-piling nuclear weapons.

  • A Bomb in Every Reactor

    Joschka FischerTwenty-five years after the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, the ongoing catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan has ― it must be hoped ― made clear once and for all that the purported blessings of the nuclear age are mere illusions: nuclear power is neither clean nor safe nor cheap.


    Indeed, the opposite is true. Nuclear power is saddled with three major unresolved risks: plant safety, nuclear waste, and, most menacing of all, the risk of military proliferation. Moreover, the alternatives to nuclear energy ― and to fossil fuels ― are well known and technically much more advanced and sustainable. Taking on nuclear risk is not a necessity; it is a deliberate political choice.


    Fossil-fuel and nuclear energy belong to the technological utopias of the 19th and 20th centuries, which were based on a belief in the innocence of the technologically feasible and on the fact that, at the time, only a minority of people worldwide, largely in the West, benefited from technological progress.


    By contrast, the 21st century will be informed by the realization that the global ecosystem and its resources, which are indispensable for human survival, are finite, and that this implies an enduring responsibility to preserve what we have. Meeting this imperative entails both an enormous technological challenge and an opportunity to redefine the meaning of modernity.


    The energy future of nine billion people, which is what the world population will be in the middle of the century, lies neither in fossil fuels nor in nuclear energy, but in renewable energy sources and dramatic improvements in energy efficiency. We already know this.


    Why, then, do the most advanced countries, in particular, take on the risk of a mega-catastrophe by seeking to create energy from radioactive fission?
    The answer, ultimately, doesn’t lie with any civilian use of nuclear energy, but first and foremost with its military applications.


    The energy derived from splitting uranium and plutonium atoms was originally used for the ultimate weapon, the atomic bomb. Being a nuclear power provides sovereign states with protection and prestige. Even today, the bomb divides the world into two classes: the few states have it, and the many that do not.


    The old Cold War world order was based on the nuclear arms race between the two superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union. To stop others from trying to become nuclear powers, which would have multiplied and spread the risk of nuclear confrontation, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was framed in the 1960s. To this day, it governs the relationships between the nuclear powers and the rest of the world, imposing renunciation on the have-nots and nuclear-disarmament obligations on the haves.


    Of course, the NPT has repeatedly been violated or circumvented by states that never subscribed to it. To this day, therefore, the risk remains that the number of nuclear powers will increase, particularly given small and medium powers’ hope to enhance their prestige and position in regional conflicts. Iran is the most current example of this.


    The nuclearization of these not-always-stable states threatens to make the regional conflicts of the 21st century much more dangerous, and will also substantially increase the risk that nuclear weapons eventually end up in the hands of terrorists.


    Despite the NPT, a clear separation between civilian and military use of nuclear energy hasn’t always worked, or worked completely, because the NPT’s rules permit all signatory states to develop and use ― under international supervision ― all of the components of the nuclear fuel cycle for civilian purposes. From here, then, all that is required to become a nuclear power are a few small technical steps and political leaders’ decision to take them.


    This political power, not the requirements of energy policy, is what makes giving up nuclear energy so difficult. As a rule, the path to nuclear-power status always begins with so-called “civilian” nuclear programs. The supposed “civilian” nuclear ambitions of Iran have thus, for instance, led to a large number of such “civilian” programs in neighboring states.


    And, of course, the reactions of the nuclear powers to the disaster at Fukushima will be watched and analyzed closely by the so-called “clandestine threshold countries.”


    So how will the world ― first and foremost, the main nuclear powers ― react to the Fukushima disaster? Will the tide truly turn, propelling the world toward nuclear disarmament and a future free of nuclear weapons? Or will we witness attempts to downplay the calamity and return to business as usual as soon as possible?


    Fukushima has presented the world with a far-reaching, fundamental choice.


    It was Japan, the high-tech country par excellence (not the latter-day Soviet Union) that proved unable to take adequate precautions to avert disaster in four reactor blocks. What, then, will a future risk assessment look like if significantly less organized and developed countries begin ― with the active assistance of the nuclear powers ― to acquire civilian nuclear-energy capabilities?


    Any decision to continue as before would send an unambiguous message to the clandestine threshold countries that are secretly pursuing nuclear weapons: despite lofty rhetoric and wordy documents, the nuclear powers lack the political will to change course. Were they to abandon nuclear energy, however, their epochal change of heart would constitute a seminal contribution to global nuclear security ― and thus to the fight against nuclear proliferation.

  • My Once-in-a-Generation Cut? The Armed Forces. All of them.

    This article was originally published by The Guardian.

    I say cut defence. I don’t mean nibble at it or slice it. I mean cut it, all £45bn of it. George Osborne yesterday asked the nation “for once in a generation” to think the unthinkable, to offer not just percentage cuts but “whether government needs to provide certain public services at all”.

    What do we really get from the army, the navy and the air force beyond soldiers dying in distant wars and a tingle when the band marches by? Is the tingle worth £45bn, more than the total spent on schools? Why does Osborne “ringfence” defence when everyone knows its budget is a bankruptcy waiting to happen, when Labour ministers bought the wrong kit for wars that they insisted it fight?

    Osborne cannot believe the armed forces are so vital or so efficient as to be excused the star chamber’s “fundamental re-evaluation of their role”. He knows their management and procurement have long been an insult to the taxpayer. The reason for his timidity must be that, like David Cameron, he is a young man scared of old generals.

    I was content to be expensively defended against the threat of global communism. With the end of the cold war in the 1990s that threat vanished. In its place was a fantasy proposition, that some unspecified but potent “enemy” lurked in the seas and skies around Britain. Where is it?

    Each incoming government since 1990 has held so-called defence reviews “to match capabilities to policy objectives”. I helped with one in 1997, and it was rubbish from start to finish, a cosmetic attempt to justify the colossal procurements then in train, and in such a way that any cut would present Labour as “soft” on defence.

    Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and George Robertson, the then defence secretary were terrified into submission. They agreed to a parody of generals fighting the last war but one. They bought new destroyers to defeat the U-boat menace. They bought new carriers to save the British empire. They bought Eurofighters to duel with Russian air aces. Trident submarines with nuclear warheads went on cruising the deep, deterring no one, just so Blair could walk tall at conferences.

    Each weekend, the tranquillity of the Welsh countryside is shattered by inane jets screaming through the mountain valleys playing at Lord of the Rings. With modern bombs, no plane need fly that low, and the jets are said to burn more fuel in half an hour than a school in a year. Any other service wasting so much money would be laughed out of court. Yet the Treasury grovels before the exotic virility of it all.

    Labour lacked the guts to admit that it was crazy to plan for another Falklands war. It dared not admit that the procurement executive was fit for nothing but appeasing weapons manufacturers. No armies were massing on the continent poised to attack. No navies were plotting to throttle our islands and starve us into submission. No missiles were fizzing in bunkers across Asia with Birmingham or Leeds in their sights. As for the colonies, if it costs £45bn to protect the Falklands, Gibraltar and the Caymans, it must be the most ridiculous empire in history. It would be cheaper to give each colony independence and a billion a year.

    Lobbyists reply that all defence expenditure is precautionary. You cannot predict every threat and it takes time to rearm should one emerge. That argument might have held during the cold war and, strictly up to a point, today. But at the present scale it is wholly implausible.

    All spending on insurance – be it on health or the police or environmental protection – requires some assessment of risk. Otherwise spending is open-ended. After the cold war there was much talk of a peace dividend and the defence industry went into intellectual overdrive. It conjured up a new “war” jargon, as in the war on drugs, on terror, on piracy, on genocide. The navy was needed to fight drug gangs in the Caribbean, pirates off Somalia and gun-runners in the Persian Gulf. In all such “wars” performance has been dire, because each threat was defined to justify service expenditure rather than the other way round.

    Whenever I ask a defence pundit against whom he is defending me, the answer is a wink and a smile: “You never know.” The world is a messy place. Better safe than sorry. It is like demanding crash barriers along every pavement in case cars go out of control, or examining school children for diseases every day. You never know. The truth is, we are now spending £45bn on heebie-jeebies.

    For the past 20 years, Britain’s armed forces have encouraged foreign policy into one war after another, none of them remotely to do with the nation’s security. Asked why he was standing in an Afghan desert earlier this year, Brown had to claim absurdly that he was “making London’s streets safer”. Some wars, as in Iraq, have been a sickening waste of money and young lives. Others in Kosovo and Afghanistan honour a Nato commitment that had nothing to do with collective security. Like many armies in history, Nato has become an alliance in search of a purpose. Coalition ministers are citing Canada as a shining example of how to cut. Canada is wasting no more money in Afghanistan.

    Despite Blair’s politics of fear, Britain entered the 21st century safer than at any time since the Norman conquest. I am defended already, by the police, the security services and a myriad regulators and inspectors. Defence spending does not add to this. It is like winning the Olympics – a magnificent, extravagant national boast, so embedded in the British psyche that politicians (and newspapers) dare not question it. Yet Osborne asked that every public service should “once in a generation” go back to basics and ask what it really delivers for its money. Why not defence?

    There are many evils that threaten the British people at present, but I cannot think of one that absolutely demands £45bn to deter it. Soldiers, sailors and air crews are no protection against terrorists, who anyway are not that much of a threat. No country is an aggressor against the British state. No country would attack us were the government to put its troops into reserve and mothball its ships, tanks and planes. Let us get real.

    I am all for being defended, but at the present price I am entitled to ask against whom and how. Of all the public services that should justify themselves from ground zero, defence is the first.

  • Nuclear Deterrence Scam Blocking Progress to a Safer World

    This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.

    I recently returned home to New Zealand from attending a major conference at the United Nations in New York reviewing prospects for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Because a shaky consensus was reached, the conference has been hailed a success. However, what struck me was how detached the negotiations were from the reality of what the diplomats were haggling over.

    As a former operator of British nuclear weapons, I try to articulate this reality, and to “get up close and personal” with this desperately serious issue for humanity, most recently in Security Without Nuclear Deterrence and a New York Review of Books symposium on “Debating Nuclear Deterrence.”

    The nuclear weapon states’ blocking of any serious moves towards honoring their obligation in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to get rid of their nuclear arsenals is driven by their uncritical acceptance of nuclear deterrence. Yet my carefully considered conclusion is that nuclear deterrence is a huge confidence trick – an outrageous scam cooked up fifty years ago by the US military industrial monster created by the Manhattan Project and now dominating US politics. Look at how President Barack Obama’s vision for a nuclear weapon free world, raising global expectations in his Prague speech in April last year, was quickly contradicted by his caveat that “as long as these weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies…”

    In a statement on behalf of the non-governmental organization (NGO) community to delegates, I pointed out that belief in nuclear deterrence is based on a crazy premise: that nuclear war can be made less likely by deploying weapons and doctrines that make it more likely.

    A rational leader cannot make a credible nuclear threat against a nuclear adversary capable of a retaliatory strike. And a second strike is pointless, because it would be no more than posthumous revenge, in which millions of innocent people would die horribly. This is why enthusiasm for a nuclear weapon free world is incompatible with the nuclear-armed states’ copout mantra: “We’ll keep nuclear weapons for deterrence as long as anyone else has them.”

    Nuclear deterrence, like all theories, is not foolproof. It entails a hostile stand-off where, in the case of the US and Russia, each side still has over 2,000 warheads ready for launch within half an hour, over twenty years after the Cold War officially ended. What is more, they still have nearly 18,000 more nuclear warheads between them held in reserve.

    The George W. Bush administration was the first to admit nuclear deterrence would not work against terrorists, now perceived to be the greatest threat to Americans – other than the real risk of inadvertent nuclear war with Russia because nuclear deterrence dogma requires all those warheads on hair-trigger alert. As for terrorism, a nuclear “weapon” is militarily unusable, combining uniquely indiscriminate, long-term health effects, including genetic damage, from radioactivity with almost unimaginable explosive violence. In fact, it is the ultimate terror device, far worse than chemical or biological weapons, which are banned by global treaties.

    Recent research assessing a regional nuclear war involving use of just 100 warheads, each with an explosive power of 15 kilotons like the US bomb detonated over Hiroshima, on cities in India and Pakistan found that, in addition to millions of immediate casualties, smoke from fires could block enough sunlight to cause widespread famine. For all these reasons, the overwhelming majority of states feel more secure without depending on the circular logic, myths and misleading promises of nuclear deterrence – which is effectively state-sponsored nuclear terrorism.

    As in 2005, this year’s NPT Review Conference was bedevilled by two closely related issues: the nuclear programmes of Iran, which is suspected of trying to build nuclear weapons, and Israel, which has denied having them for over forty years. Intertwined with these is one of several fundamental contradictions about the NPT: its promotion of nuclear energy, which inevitably stimulates nuclear proliferation because it provides the fissile material for nuclear weapons. This, and the double standards imposed on the non-nuclear member states by the privileged five recognized nuclear-armed states, with their associated veto power in the UN Security Council, have finally reduced the NPT process to impotence.

    Perhaps the most positive outcome was a new groundswell of opinion among a large majority of the non-nuclear signatory states that the only hope of making any meaningful progress towards nuclear weapon abolition is to start a parallel process leading to a Nuclear Weapons Convention, like the ones banning chemical and biological weapons. A model treaty exists, drafted by a group of experts from the NGO community. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been sufficiently impressed to have endorsed it as part of his five-point plan for nuclear disarmament.

    Meanwhile, in Britain a coalition government has taken power at a crucial moment for the future of British and global nuclear policy. The deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, leads the Liberal Democrats, whose election manifesto included opposition to both nuclear energy and replacing the Trident nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine force with a similar system. What is more, Clegg challenged the value to Britain of the US-UK special relationship, after the debacle of blindly following the US into Iraq and Afghanistan. Such poor decisions, driven by British nuclear dependence on the US, have left a black hole in the British defence budget, with the white elephant of a replacement Trident system increasingly vulnerable.

    Britain should take this opportunity to reassert its sovereignty, and exploit the US-UK relationship in a dramatically new way. Making a virtue from necessity, it should announce that it had decided to rescue the dysfunctional non-proliferation regime by becoming the first of the P5 to rely on more humane, lawful and effective security strategies than nuclear deterrence.

    As with the abolition of slavery, a new world role awaits the British. Such a ‘breakout’ would be sensational, transforming the nuclear disarmament debate overnight. In NATO, the UK would wield unprecedented influence in leading the drive for a non-nuclear strategy – which must happen if NATO is to survive the growing strains from overstretch in Afghanistan and confusion over a common European security policy. British leadership would create new openings for shifting the mindset in the US and France, the other two most zealous guardians of nuclear deterrence.

    The key is to see nuclear disarmament as a security-building process, moving from an outdated adversarial mindset to a co-operative one where nuclear weapons are recognized as a lethal liability.

  • Report on the Morning NGO Abolition Caucus: Insomniacs for Peace

    The NGO Abolition Morning Caucus met every day during the four week Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference starting on Tuesday, May 4th straight through to the last day of the UN meeting on May 28th. We gathered each day at 8:00 AM at the UN gates on First Avenue, waiting for the guards to unlock the chains on the UN fence and then proceeded through “security” to the temporary building on the North Lawn where a conference room had been reserved for the use of NGOs. Conference Room A was almost always in use, hosting the Abolition Caucus, the daily NGO government briefings organized by Reaching Critical Will, the plethora of NGO panels, films, testimony from Hibakusha, brainstorming and strategy sessions through the course of the Review. 

    Our Abolition Caucus began each morning by reviewing the day’s calendar, proposing a new agenda for each day, and then brainstorming to plan various actions during the course of the Conference. At the end of each meeting a new facilitator would volunteer to Chair the meeting for the following day, and volunteers sent out daily minutes of our work. In the first week, as many as 60 nuclear activists showed up at our morning meetings, hailing from every continent and united in our commitment to rid the world of the nuclear scourge. 

    We were encouraged by the many nations who called for negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention and all signed on to about 30 thank you notes that were presented to their Ambassadors at the Review conference.  The Ambassador from Switzerland was so moved by our message that he asked us to send another one to his Foreign Minister. We sent two letters from the caucus to Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon. One expressed our thanks and appreciation for his enthusiastic support of negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention and his Five Point Plan.The other was to express our dismay and urge mediation instead of the rude treatment we witnessed of Iran’s President, by the western powers who walked out on him during his speech on the first day of the Conference.

    We drafted statements in response to the Main Committee I and III reports, issued our own nuclear abolitionists preamble to the report, did a satirical take on the conference in The Scallion, a riff on The Onion, a US publication that writes spoofs of current events, and issued a final statement and critique of the weakened outcome document at the Conference. Usually our documents were inserted in the News in Review issued each day by Reaching Critical Will for distribution to the delegates.  The Abolition Caucus documents are on the web at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/2010index.html under “Other Resources”.  We also networked with the Commission on Sustainable Development which was meeting concurrently with the NPT and addressing the catastrophic results of mining.  They held a heart-wrenching presentation on the havoc of uranium mining.   Our caucus was able to enroll the French government, represented at one of the morning briefings, to permit us to show the promo for a film on the evils of uranium mining at the closing of a French presentation on the benefits of “peaceful” nuclear power.

    At the close of the meeting we presented the delegates with fortune cookies, which when opened, said “Global Zero Now”. Most important, we now have a list of over 100 international participants who can continue the warm relationships and camaraderie that developed over the four weeks, newly energized and inspired by each other as we work together for a nuclear free world. Onward to June 5th and International Nuclear Abolition Day!!  See www.icanw.org.

  • A New Start with START

    This article was originally published by YES! Magazine

    The United States and Russia reached agreement on a new START treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) to lower their count of deployed atomic warheads from 2,200 each to between 1,500 and 1,675. They would also cut their stocks of strategic bombers and land- and sea-based missiles from a current level of 1,600 each to 800. The treaty replaces the 1991 START agreement, which expired last December. Since each country still has about 10,000 weapons, mostly undeployed and in storage, the new START is a modest step forward. It is, however, a down payment on improved U.S.-Russia relations and a possible prelude to the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. Presidents Obama and Medvedev will sign the new treaty in Prague, the site of President Obama’s groundbreaking speech one year ago in which he set out a vision for a nuclear free world.

    There are 23,000 nuclear bombs on the planet, all but 1,000 of them in the U.S. and Russia. To convince the other nuclear weapons states (the U.K., China, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) to join negotiations for their total elimination, it is imperative that the U.S. and Russia cut their enormous arsenals first.

    Obama and Medvedev pledged to negotiate these weapons cuts as a step towards “a nuclear free world.” The talks almost ran aground when the U.S. announced it was putting new missile defenses in Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland, after it had canceled plans to site them in the Czech Republic. Russia views the expansion of U.S. missile defenses as a threat to the integrity of its nuclear arsenal. The parties agreed to finesse their differences by settling for language in the treaty’s preamble—which the U.S. argues is not binding—acknowledging that the size of offensive arsenals must be tied to the number of anti-missile defenses.

    Powerful forces are arrayed against Obama’s vision. Forty-one Republican senators wrote to him warning that they would not ratify the START treaty if the president made any moves to cut back on the U.S. missile defense program. They have also exacted a stiff price by requiring an increase in the nuclear weapons budget, including plans for a new facility to manufacture plutonium cores for new bombs. And the nuclear weapons labs are raising questions about the soundness of the nuclear arsenal without further money spent on testing and weapons development.

    Nevertheless, international expectations for progress in eliminating nuclear weapons are on the rise. In addition to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s proposal to begin negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention to ban the bomb, the German Bundestag has just passed a motion urging major steps towards nuclear abolition—including removing U.S. nuclear weapons stored in Germany and beginning international talks on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons.

    In May, the UN will host a conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which contains a promise from the nuclear powers to give up their nuclear weapons in return for a pledge from all the other states not to acquire them. Tens of thousands of citizen activists will march from Times Square to the UN headquarters in New York, calling for nuclear abolition. Strategy sessions to develop next steps are planned by the Abolition 2000 Network and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. On June 5th, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is organizing in communities all over the world to urge negotiations to ban the bomb.  While President Obama qualified his call for a nuclear free world by saying it might not be achieved “in my lifetime,” his very articulation of the vision has unleashed the aspirations of people all over the world, making the abolition of nuclear weapons an idea whose time has come.