Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: disarmament

  • Civil Society Initiatives for Nuclear Disarmament

    Civil Society Initiatives for Nuclear Disarmament

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Civil Society Leadership

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Civil Society Initiatives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Conclusions

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

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

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

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

    See http://www.abolition2000.org

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

    See http://www.mpi.org

    See http://www.mayorsforpeace.org

    See http://www.abolitionnow.org

    See https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com

  • A New Bridge to Nuclear Disarmament

    A bridge on the long road to nuclear disarmament was built when eight NATO States supported a New Agenda Coalition resolution at the United Nations calling for more speed in implementing commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The bridge gained extra strength when Japan and South Korea joined with the NATO 8 – Belgium, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway and Turkey.

    These States, along with the New Agenda countries – Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden – now form an impressive and perhaps formidable center in the nuclear weapons debate and can play a determining role in the outcome of the 2005 NPT Review Conference.

    The bridge they have formed links the nuclear weapons States, which are entrenching nuclear weapons in their military doctrines, and the Non-Aligned Movement, which wants immediate negotiations on a time-bound program for nuclear disarmament.

    It is hard to know what to call this new collection of important States in the center. It is certainly not an entity. To be called a working partnership, it will at least have to pursue a common goal. And it is by no means certain that the tensions within the center can be contained. Nonetheless, the strategy adopted by the New Agenda Coalition to make its annual resolution at the U.N. First Committee more attractive particularly to the NATO and like-minded States – and thus shore up the moderate middle in the nuclear weapons debate – is working.

    Although the bridge needs strengthening, it is firm enough for the centrist States to exert leverage on the nuclear weapons States to take minimum steps to save the NPT in 2005.

    These steps are spelled out in the New Agenda resolution. It starts out by expressing “grave concern” at the danger to humanity posed by the possible use of nuclear weapons, and reminds nuclear weapons States of their 2000 “unequivocal undertaking” to the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals. It then calls on “all States” to fully comply with their nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation commitments and “not to act in any way that may be detrimental to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation or that may lead to a new nuclear arms race.”

    The resolution identifies priorities for action: universal adherence to the NPT and the early entry-into-force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; reduction of non-strategic nuclear weapons and non-development of new types of nuclear weapons; negotiation of an effectively verifiable fissile material cut-off treaty; establishment of a subsidiary body to deal with nuclear disarmament at the Conference on Disarmament; and compliance with principles of irreversibility and transparency and verification capability.

    The resolution was adopted by a vote of 135 States in favour, 5 against and 25 abstentions. This was a considerable gain over the 121-6-38 vote for the New Agenda’s much more extensive resolution last year.

    China voted for the resolution and Russia abstained. The three Western nuclear weapons States, the U.S., the U.K. and France, all voted no, along with Israel and Latvia. Not able to object to what was in the resolution, the Western NWS said their “no” was based on what was not in it, namely recognition that the Moscow Treaty “commits the United States and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals by several thousand warheads over the next decade.” Nonetheless, the Western NWS looked forward to “ongoing dialogue” at the NPT 2005 Conference.

    The U.S. took an aggressive stance against the resolution, both in meetings at the U.N. and in demarches in capitals. Some NATO States were obviously intimidated, but the presumed NATO solidarity was cracked when seven NATO States joined with Canada, which for two years had stood alone in NATO in supporting the New Agenda resolution. The fact that such important NATO players as Germany, Norway, The Netherlands and Belgium have also now taken a pro-active stance indicates that they wanted to send a message to the U.S. to take more significant steps to fulfilling commitments already made to the NPT.

    Japan, which annually offers its own resolution, “A Path to the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” suddenly decided to support the New Agenda resolution, in order, as the government explained, to engender a “favourable atmosphere for nuclear disarmament.” This was a statesmanlike step, especially since the New Agenda countries failed to reciprocate when they abstained on Japan’s resolution. To parse the minute differences between the New Agenda’s and Japan’s resolutions is to engage in the technical games that experts play that result in diplomatic paralysis and public apathy.

    The situation the NPT finds itself in is so serious and the threat of nuclear terrorism so real that governments need to put aside their quarrels and power plays and take meaningful steps to ensure that the NPT will not be lost to the world through erosion.

    The centrist States have shown that they can cooperate in at least a basic manner to vote together on a program of meaningful action. They will now have to find ways of effectively negotiating with the NWS at the 2005 conference. They can do this provided they retain a confidence that the bridge they have built can hold and trust one another in the forthcoming NPT deliberations.

    Here the role of civil society should be noted. Like the States within the NPT, civil society is itself composed of groups with different viewpoints about how to achieve elimination. Some groups, understandably impatient, want fast action. But the resistance of the Western NWS, particularly the U.S., is so strong that demands for immediate comprehensive negotiations run up against a brick wall.

    Intermediate gains, such as the steps outlined in the New Agenda resolution, would go a long way in moving the international community down the path to nuclear disarmament. The New Agenda strategy of building up the center for moderate, realistic achievements deserves the full-fledged support of civil society.

    Senator emeritus Douglas Roche, O.C. of Canada is Chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative and author of “The Human Right to Peace.”

  • Towards a Nuclear-Weapon Free World: Accelerating the Implementation of Nuclear Disarmament Commitments

    Draft Resolution for UNGA First Committee NAC- New Agenda Coalition (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden)

    The General Assembly,

    (pp1) Recalling its resolution 58/51 of 8 December 2003 , and mindful of the upcoming 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,

    (pp2) Expressing its grave concern at the danger to humanity posed by the possibility that nuclear weapons could be used and at the lack of implementation of binding obligations and agreed steps toward nuclear disarmament and r eaffirming that nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation are mutually reinforcing processes requiring urgent irreversible progress on both fronts,

    (pp 3) Recalling the unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament, in accordance with commitments under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and noting that the ultimate objective of the disarmament process is general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control,

    1. Calls upon all States to fully comply with commitments made to nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation and not to act in any way that may be detrimental to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation or that may lead to a new nuclear arms race;
    2. Calls upon all States to spare no efforts to achieve universal adherence to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty;
    3. Calls upon all States parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to accelerate the implementation of the practical steps for the systematic and progressive efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament agreed at the 2000 Review Conference;
    4. Also calls upon the nuclear-weapon States to take further steps to reduce their non-strategic nuclear arsenals, and not to develop new types of nuclear weapons in accordance with their commitment to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies;
    5. Agrees to urgently strengthen efforts towards both nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation through the resumption in the Conference on Disarmament of negotiations on a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, in accordance with the statement of the special coordinator in 1995 and the mandate contained therein taking into account both nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation objectives, as well as the completion and implementation of arrangements by all nuclear-weapon States to place fissile material no longer required for military purposes under international verification;
    6. Calls for the establishment of an appropriate subsidiary body in the Conference on Disarmament to deal with nuclear disarmament;
    7. Underlines the imperative of the principles of irreversibility and transparency for all nuclear disarmament measures, and the need to develop further adequate and efficient verification capabilities;
    8. Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its sixtieth session an item entitled “Towards a nuclear-weapon free world: Accelerating the implementation of nuclear disarmament commitments”, and to review the implementation of the present resolution at that session.

     

  • Gorbachev Wages the Good Fight Against WMDs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Israel’s Nukes Serve to Justify Iran’s: Deterring the Deterrents

    The more nuclear arms are lying around, the more the chances of them being used. So to persuade Iran to forgo nuclear weapons is a laudable objective. But for the United States, Britain and France to insist on it is hypocritical.

    These Western powers have argued convincingly for decades that nuclear deterrence keeps the peace – and themselves maintain nuclear armories long after the cold war has ended. So why shouldn’t Iran , which is in one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods, have a deterrent too?

    And where is the source of the threat that makes Iran, a country that has never started a war in 200 years, feel so nervous that it must now take the nuclear road? If Saddam Hussein’s Iraq , with its nuclear ambitions, used to be one reason, the other is certainly Israel, the country that hard-liners in the United States are encouraging to mount a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear industry before it produces bombs.

    The United States refuses to acknowledge formally that Israel has nuclear weapons, even though top officials will tell you privately that it has 200 of them. Until this issue is openly acknowledged, America, Britain and France are probably wasting their time trying to persuade Iran to forgo nuclear weapons.

    The supposition is that Israel lives in an even more dangerous neighborhood than Iran. It is said to be a beleaguered nation under constant threat of being eliminated by the combined muscle of its Arab opponents.

    There is no evidence, however, that Arab states have invested the financial and human resources necessary to fight the kind of war that would be catastrophic for Israel. And there is no evidence that Israel’s nuclear weapons have deterred the Arabs from more limited wars or prevented Palestinian intifadas and suicide bombers.

    Nor have Israel ‘s nuclear weapons influenced Arab attitudes toward making peace. In the 1973 Arab war against Israel and in the 1991 Gulf war, they clearly failed in their supposed deterrent effect. The Arabs knew, as the North Vietnamese knew during the Vietnam War, that their opponent would not dare to use its nuclear weapons.

    Israelis say that they need nuclear weapons in case one day an opportunistic Egypt and Syria, sensing that Israel ‘s guard is down, revert to their old stance of total hostility and attack Israel. But, as Zeev Maoz has argued in the journal International Security, these countries keep to their treaty obligations.

    Egypt did not violate its peace treaty with Israel when Israel attacked Syria and Lebanon in 1982. Syria did not violate the May 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel even when its forces were under Israeli attack. Nor did Egypt, Jordan and Syria violate their treaty commitments when the second Palestinian intifada broke out in September 2000.

    Since its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has reduced its defense spending from 22 percent of its gross national product in 1974 to a mere 2.75 percent in 2002. Syria ‘s has fallen from 26 percent to 6.7 percent. The combined defense expenditures of Egypt , Syria , Jordan and Lebanon amount to only 58 percent of Israel ‘s. It is the Arabs who should be worried by Israel ‘s might, rather than the other way round.

    Israel ‘s nuclear weapons are politically unusable and militarily irrelevant, given the real threats it faces. But they have been very effective in allowing India, Pakistan, Libya, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, North Korea and now Iran to think that they, too, had good reason to build a nuclear deterrent.

    Four of these nations have dismantled their nuclear arms factories, which shows that nuclear policies are not cast in stone. The way to deal with Iran is to prove to its leadership that nuclear weapons will add nothing to its security, just as they add nothing to Israel ‘s.

    This may require a grand bargain, which would mean the United States offering a mutual nonaggression pact, ending its embargo over access to the International Monetary Fund and allowing American investment in Iran . It would also mean America coming clean about Israel ‘s nuclear armory and pressuring Israel to forgo its nuclear deterrent.

    If Western powers want to grasp the nettle of nuclear proliferation, they need to take hold of the whole plant, not just one leaf.

    Jonathan Power is a commentator on foreign affairs.

    Originally published by the International Herald Tribune.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • International Ju-Jitsu: Using United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 to Advance Nuclear Disarmament

    Introduction: Ju-Jitsu and Resolution 1540

    In the 16th Century Shirobei Akiyama, a Japanese man studying medicine in China, noticed that in a heavy blizzard branches of most strong trees broke while the elastic branches of the willow tree bent and efficiently freed themselves from the snow. He thus developed a martial art called Ju-Jitsu , which aims not to neutralize power with power but rationally absorb an attack and convert that energy to the opponent’s own detriment.

    On April 28, 2004, the United Nations Security Council adopted  Resolution 1540 requiring all States to take measures to prevent non-State actors from acquiring or developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in general.

    Critics of the resolution fear that it provides a mandate for the powerful countries that already possess nuclear weapons, particularly the permanent members of the Security Council (P5), to impose pressure or even use force to prevent other States and non-State actors to acquire such weapons themselves (see United Nations Security Council Unanimously Passes WMD Resolution, The Sunflower, May 2004 ).

    While there are definitely problems with the resolution, peace activists would be well advised to adopt the Ju-Jitsu approach and utilize the political momentum for action required by the UN resolution to move their governments to strengthen the norms and controls not only against the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, but also against those possessed and deployed by the P5.

    Thankfully, last minute changes in the resolution, made at the insistence of non-P5 Security Council members, provide political opportunities to do just this.

    Disarmament obligations in Resolution 1540

    The resolution notes that proliferation means ‘proliferation in all its aspects of all weapons of mass destruction,’ 1 and that action to prevent proliferation includes the implementation of ‘multi-lateral treaties whose aim is to eliminate or prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons,’ 2 and the need for ‘all member States to implement fully the disarmament treaties and agreements to which they are party.’ 3

    The resolution can thus be read to refer to efforts to prevent both horizontal proliferation (spread of weapons and related materials to those who do not yet have them) and vertical proliferation (continued possession, deployment and development of weapons by those already in possession of them). Such a reading is consistent with the disarmament obligations in the key multilateral treaties which aim to prevent proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons – referred to in the UN Security Council resolution – including Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons in the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention.

    Reporting

    Under the resolution, the Security Council established a Committee of the Security Council, consisting of all members of the Council, and called on all States to present a first report to the Committee within six months on steps they have taken or intend to take to implement the resolution.

    The reporting process provides an opportunity for all States to report on steps taken and steps planned to address both the vertical and horizontal proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

    In addition to the pre-ambular language calling for ‘all member States to implement fully the disarmament treaties and agreements to which they are party,’ 4 UNSC Resolution 1540 specifically ‘calls upon all States to promote the universal adoption and full implementation, and where necessary, strengthening of multilateral treaties to which they are parties, whose aim is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.’ 5

    Thus States should report not only on steps taken domestically to implement their own disarmament and non-proliferation obligations, but also on steps taken to promote the regional and international implementation of disarmament and non-proliferation obligations, including encouragement given to the Nuclear Weapon States to achieve complete nuclear disarmament.

    Peaceful resolution of related conflicts

    UNSC Resolution also calls on ‘all Member States to resolve peacefully in accordance with the Charter any problems in that context (i.e. relating to proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction) threatening or disrupting the maintenance of regional and global stability.’ 6 This provides an opportunity for States to highlight peaceful methods for resolving such problems and to report on methods they have used or promoted. This could include:

    • Recourse to the International Court of Justice to solve the dispute of the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons (ICJ Advisory Opinion of 1996)
    • Support for United Nations Security Council action to respond to the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes of Iraq , and opposition to the use of force by countries acting outside the United Nations (US and UK use of fo rc e against Iraq )
    • Opposition to the doctrine of the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons to respond to the threat of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (US National Security Strategy)

    Criminal law

    UNSC Resolution 1540 requires all States to adopt and enfo rc e laws which prohibit any non-State actor to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery.7 States in implementing this obligation should extend such laws to include any person, regardless of whether they are a non-State actor or official of a State. This would be consistent with the objectives of the resolution, as outlined in the pre-amble which does not distinguish between State and non-State actors in determining proliferation risks.

    Many countries have already adopted criminal laws relating to both State and non-State actors with respect to chemical weapons as part of their actions to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention. Some countries, e.g. New Zealand , have adopted such laws with respect to nuclear weapons (much to the displeasure of some of the Nuclear Weapon States). States should affirm that a discriminatory approach, i.e. prohibiting acts only if undertaken by non-State actors, would fail the legal principle of universality (the law must apply to all) and would encourage proliferation under the cover of agents of the State. The recent revelations of proliferation organized through the Khan network involving both non-State and State actors, indicates the necessity for responsibility to extend to State actors as well as non-State actors.

    Adopting criminal laws which apply to both State and non-State actors would strengthen the global norm of illegality of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

    Assistance to other States

    UNSC Resolution 1540 invites States to offer assistance to other ‘States lacking the legal and regulatory infrastructure, implementation experience and/or resources’8 to fulfill the provisions of the resolution. Some observers fear that this section was inserted at the wishes of the United States in order to provide legitimacy for them to dictate to other States how they should deal with the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. If such assistance is only left to the USA and other Nuclear Weapon States , countries will no doubt be encouraged to implement only the counter-proliferation and horizontal non-proliferation aspects of the resolution and ignore the disarmament provisions. However, the provision does provide the possibility for States with strong non-discriminatory laws against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, to assist other States to develop similar laws.

    Disarmament Education

    UNSC Resolution 1540 calls upon all States to ‘develop appropriate ways to work with and inform industry and the public regarding their obligations under such laws [arising from multilateral treaties to which they are parties].’ 9

    This provides an opportunity for States to report on actions undertaken to inform and educate industry and public on non-proliferation issues including work done to implement the recommendations of the United Nations Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education.

    Transit through territorial waters

    The first paragraph of UNSC Resolution 1540 affirms ‘that proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as their means of delivery, constitutes a threat to international peace and security.’ As such, activities on the high seas, involving the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons could be considered as inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which reserves the seas for peaceful purposes consistent with ‘the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.’ 10

    Coastal States have authority in their territorial waters to prevent passage which is not innocent, 11 including passage which is ‘prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State,’ 12 or passage which is ‘in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.’ 13

    States could therefore respond to the resolution by prohibiting the passage of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery through their territorial waters.

    Regional and international collaboration

    UNSC Resolution 1540 ‘Calls upon all States to promote dialogue and cooperation on non-proliferation.’ 14 Some States have joined the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which aims to develop cooperation between States to address proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery.

    However, there is a risk that unilateral and coalition actions like PSI could undermine the work of multilateral approaches and mechanisms to address non-proliferation if such actions do not adhere to non-discriminatory norms and principles of international law.

    States participating in PSI should report on such participation to the Committee of the Security Council, and ensure that such actions are consistent with the following principles 15:

    1. Strive for universality, transparency in decision making with proper regard for legitimate comme rc ial and security interests, verifiability, and equity in application.
    2. Ensure strict compliance with existing international law relating to transit, such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
    3. Reinforce the verification regimes of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and assist in the creation of strengthened verification methods for the Biological Weapons Convention.
    4. Strengthen mechanisms within the existing regimes to more clearly determine prohibited and permitted activities relating to transport of identified materials, components, and technologies.
    5. Apply constraints and principles in a universal and equitable manner.
    6. Apply restrictions in such a manner as to reinfo rc e the existing arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament commitments and norms contained in treaty regimes.
    7. Assist in establishing objective positive standards by which countries are determined to be in good standing with the existing relevant treaty regimes.
    8. Ensure all measures reinforce the United Nations system and the rule of law.

    Nuclear Energy

    While the NPT affirms the right of States to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, nuclear reactors create a very real proliferation risk with all known cases of nuclear proliferation arising from the diversion of fissile materials from nuclear reactors or from the diversion of uranium supposedly enriched for nuclear reactors. Countries which have foresworn the development of nuclear reactors could report on their capabilities to produce sufficient energy in alternative ways in order to encourage other States to phase out or forgo nuclear energy.

    International steps

    In order to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to States and non-State actors, a vital immediate step would be to achieve an international agreement to prohibit the production of fissile materials and place all existing stocks under international control. Such a measure would curtail the ability of States and non-State actors to acquire fissile material and use it to produce nuclear weapons. Concurrent steps which would curtail the ability of States and non-State actors to acquire nuclear weapons would be to disarm and disable all existing nuclear weapons pending the completion of negotiations on their elimination. The only guarantee against the proliferation of nuclear weapons to States and non-State actors is to eliminate the existing nuclear weapons and the means to produce them. This message should be made to the Committee of the Security Council by as many States as possible, along with other plans, proposals and actions leading to complete nuclear disarmament.

    Conclusion

    UN Security Council Resolution 1540 provides opportunities for significant disarmament steps by States, including opportunities to put pressure on nuclear weapon States to implement their disarmament obligations. The degree to which States act on these opportunities will depend mostly on how much encouragement and support they receive from disarmament advocates globally. So in short, it is up to us to make this happen and turn Resolution 1540 into a positive tool for disarmament.

    * Alyn Ware is a consultant for the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
    Contact: P.O.Box 23 – 257, Cable Car Lane , Wellington , Aotearoa-New Zealand
    Phone (64) 4 385-8192. Fax 385-8193 
    alynw@attglobal.net 
    www.ialana.org

    1.  Pre-ambular paragraph 2
    2. Pre-ambular paragraph 5
    3. Pre-ambular paragraph 13
    4. Pre-ambular paragraph 13
    5. Operative paragraph 8 (a)
    6. Pre-ambular paragraph 3
    7. Operative paragraph 2
    8. Operative paragraph 7
    9. Operative paragraph 8 (d)
    10. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 301
    11. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 25
    12. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 19 (1)
    13. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 19 (2) (a)
    14. Operative paragraph 9
    15. Presented by the Global Security Institute to the Seminar on Weapons of Mass Destruction and the United Nations , New York , Mar 5, 2004 . Convened by the government of New Zealand and the International Peace Academy.
  • US Policy and the Quest for Nuclear Disarmament

    US Policy and the Quest for Nuclear Disarmament

    “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil,
    but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

    – Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein was one of the wisest and most far-seeing men who has walked the Earth. He looked further into the mysteries of the universe than any scientist of his time or any time. Tragically, it was the vision of this humane man that opened the door to atomic weapons. Even more tragically, it was Einstein, concerned about the possibility of a German atomic weapon, who encouraged President Roosevelt to establish the US atomic bomb project, leading to the creation of nuclear weapons and their use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The Decision to Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    From the outset of the Nuclear Age, the United States has been the world’s leading nuclear weapons power, a role it has strived diligently to maintain. The US created the world’s first nuclear weapons during World War II in its top-secret Manhattan Project, ostensibly for the purpose of deterring a German atomic bomb should the Germans have succeeded in developing one. In late 1944, when he understood that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic weapon, Joseph Rotblat, a Polish émigré working on the Manhattan Project, resigned out of deep concern for the implications of the project. In 1995, he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his continuing efforts for nuclear disarmament.

    At the time that the atomic bomb was first tested on July 16, 1945 , the war in Europe had already ended with the surrender of Germany in May of that year, so there was no longer a need to deter the Germans. The war in the Pacific continued, however, and the US chose to use its new weapons within a matter of weeks on the Japan ese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . It chose these two cities, which had been largely spared until that point the US carpet bombing of other Japan ese cities, to test the destructive power of first an enriched uranium bomb, Little Boy , and then a plutonium bomb, Fat Man.

    In using nuclear weapons, the US ignored the heroic efforts of Leo Szilard, a Hungarian émigré and atomic scientist who had earlier played a key role in the development of the first atomic weapons. It was Szilard who actually first conceptualized the possibility of a controlled fission reaction that could lead to the creation of a nuclear weapon. In 1939, worried about the possibility of the Germans developing an atomic weapon, Szilard went to Einstein and convinced him to send a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, urging that the US develop a nuclear weapons program to deter a possible German bomb. Szilard then worked in the Manhattan Project with Enrico Fermi on the first experimental test of a controlled fission reaction, proving the bomb was possible.

    When it became clear in spring 1945 that the US would succeed in making an atomic weapon and that the Germans would not, Szilard applied his abundant energy to trying to stop the US from using the bombs on Japan ese cities. Szilard believed that using the bombs on Japan would lead to a nuclear arms race that could result in a terrible destructive force being unleashed on civilization. Through Eleanor Roosevelt he arranged to meet with President Roosevelt, but Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 , just prior to their scheduled meeting. Szilard then sought to arrange a meeting with President Truman, but was sent to see Jimmy Byrnes, a Truman mentor in the Senate who would soon be appointed Secretary of State. Byrnes essentially dismissed Szilard as a foreigner. Finally, Szilard organized a petition among Manhattan Project scientists, urging that the bomb be demonstrated to the Japan ese rather than used on cities. The petition, signed by some 70 scientists, was stalled by General Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach Truman before the bomb was used, although it is unlikely that it would have made a difference to Truman had it reached him.

    Byrnes, who accompanied Truman to Potsdam , is believed to have encouraged the use of the bomb for partisan political reasons. He is said to have advised Truman that if Americans discovered how much had been spent on creating the first atomic bombs and was thus diverted from the war effort (approximately $2 billion), they would vote against the Democrats if the bomb were not used as soon as it was ready. Others have argued that the bomb was used on Japan to send a warning to the Soviet Union .

    The official justification for the use of the atomic bombs on Japan was to end the war quickly and save American lives that would otherwise be lost in an invasion of Japan planned for November 1945. Since Japan was already largely defeated and elements of the Japan ese cabinet were seeking favorable terms of surrender, there is now considerable debate among historians about whether the use of the bombs was actually necessary to end the war. The picture is certainly much more complex than the prevalent American mythology, which suggests that the US dropped the bombs and as a result won the war. This mythology paints nuclear weapons as war-winning weapons and therefore useful and positive.

    Perspectives on the Bombings

    It is instructive to look at how the bombing of Hiroshima , the first use of a nuclear weapon on a city, was viewed in its immediate aftermath. Here are the views of four prominent individuals on August 8 and 9, 1945:

    French writer Albert Camus: “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments — a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”

    Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt: “The only safe counter weapon to this new power is the firm decision of mankind that it shall be used for constructive purposes only. This discovery must spell the end of war. We have been paying an ever-increasing price for indulging ourselves in this uncivilized way of settling our difficulties. We can no longer indulge in the slaughter of our young men. The price will be too high and will be paid not just by young men, but by whole populations. In the past we have given lip service to the desire for peace. Now we must meet the test of really working to achieve something basically new in the world.”

    Former President Herbert Hoover: “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

    A day later, on August 9 th , President Truman invoked God with regard to the use of the bomb: “We must constitute ourselves trustees of this new force – to prevent its misuse, and to turn it into the channels of service to mankind. It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.” (Since the two bombs used on Japan ese cities caused the immediate deaths of some 135,000 people by blast, fire and incineration, and the deaths of over 200,000 people by the end of 1945, God must at the very least have been rather surprised by Mr. Truman’s prayer to use nuclear weapons “in His ways for His purposes.”)

    Reflecting a few years later on the use of the atomic weapons by the US , the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi said, “What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see. Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner.” Gandhi’s insight is unusually profound. What effect has the bomb had on the soul of America ? Perhaps we are learning about this as we watch the great dream of America becoming increasingly stuck in the tar of militarism and warfare on distant shores.

    US Nuclear Policy

    Following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , the US began an arms race with itself, testing and developing its nuclear arsenal. From 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon, until 1990, when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, the US had a partner in the nuclear arms race and a justification to continue to develop its nuclear arsenal.

    The US has always sought to maintain a devastating nuclear deterrent force, a force that would provide it with political advantage. In order to make its deterrent force credible, the US has sought to demonstrate its willingness to use its nuclear arsenal should it be attacked. Certainly its use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has contributed to a general belief that the US would not be inhibited by the costs in human lives from a retaliatory nuclear response.

    The US has also been willing to share nuclear technology with its close allies. This applies particularly to the UK, but also to other NATO allies on whose territories the US has maintained nuclear weapons, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and, until recently, Greece. The US has also extended its nuclear “umbrella” to its allies in Europe , Asia and the Pacific.

    With some notable exceptions, such as Israel , the US has always sought to prevent the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, but has felt free to engage in vertical proliferation by increasing the size and improving the quality of its nuclear arsenal and delivery systems for the arsenal. In doing so, the US has consistently demonstrated a double standard in asking other countries to abstain from doing what it was not willing to abstain from itself.

    In its policies toward arms control and disarmament, the US has always sought measures that benefited its security, while not reducing US nuclear superiority. In recent years, however, under the Bush administration, the US has shown far less regard than in the past for nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties.

    The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union partnered on occasion in an attempt to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries. This resulted in the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This Treaty divided the countries of the world into nuclear weapons states (US, UK , USSR , France and China ) and non-nuclear weapons states (all the rest). The non-nuclear weapons states agreed not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons states agreed in Article IV of the Treaty to provide technical assistance to the non-nuclear weapons states in the peaceful uses of the atom, going so far as to call the peaceful uses of atomic energy “an inalienable right.” The nuclear weapons states also promised, in Article VI of the Treaty, to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and to hold good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. When the Treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995, the nuclear weapons states agreed to “determined pursuit.of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons..” In 1996, the International Court of Justice interpreted Article VI of the NPT to mean: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    At the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the parties to the treaty agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament, including an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”

    The Greatest Danger Confronting Humanity

    Let us fast forward to today. Countering terrorism is high on the agendas of the world’s most industrialized countries, especially the US . But in the eyes of most of the world, the nuclear weapons states are employing the greatest of terrorist threats, which are embedded in the concept of nuclear deterrence. If terrorism is the threat to injure or kill innocent people for political ends, then the reliance on nuclear deterrence is itself a terrorist act.

    I would argue, in the company of Einstein, Rotblat and Szilard, that there is no greater danger confronting humanity than that of nuclear weapons. These weapons place all cities in jeopardy of annihilation. They place civilization in danger of massive destruction. And they place humanity and most of life on the endangered species list. For nearly sixty years humankind has lived with the destructive potential of nuclear weapons and has grown far too comfortable with these instruments of annihilation.

    The US remains the most powerful country in the world, militarily and economically. It is the country that holds the key to nuclear disarmament. Without the active leadership of the US , nuclear disarmament will not be possible, and the world will continue to drift toward the use of these weapons once again. No other country has the capacity to bring the other nuclear weapons states to the table to negotiate the elimination of nuclear arms.

    Nuclear dangers have not disappeared. Should terrorist groups, in the more traditional sense of the term, obtain nuclear weapons, they cannot be effectively deterred from using them. Protecting populations from nuclear attack will require a high level of international cooperation and US leadership. Current US leadership, however, is alienating the international community and its double standards are viewed as nuclear hypocrisy. Without a radical change of course in US nuclear policy, the likelihood of terrorist groups obtaining and using nuclear weapons is an increasingly likely possibility.

    The US Nuclear Posture Review

    Current US nuclear weapons policy is set forth in the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), submitted to Congress on December 31, 2001 . This document calls for a “New Triad.” During the Cold War, the US referred to a triad of strategic delivery vehicles for its nuclear forces: inter-continental ballistic missiles; submarine launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. The New Triad is composed of offensive strike systems, nuclear and non-nuclear (including the three delivery systems of the old triad); defenses, active and passive (including missile defense systems); and a revitalized defense infrastructure to meet emerging threats. One interesting aspect of the New Triad is that it will supplement nuclear strike forces with conventional strike forces delivered anywhere in the world in 30 minutes by intercontinental missiles.

    Despite calling for powerful non-nuclear forces to be added to the US arsenal, the Nuclear Posture Review boldly announces, in what may be considered a taunt to the rest of the world in terms of US obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that nuclear weapons provide the US with “credible military options”: “Nuclear weapons play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States, its allies and friends. They provide credible military options to deter a wide range of threats, including WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and large-scale conventional force. These nuclear capabilities possess unique properties that give the United States options to hold at risk classes of targets [that are] important to achieve strategic and political objectives.” In other words, the Nuclear Posture Review informs the world that nuclear weapons are useful to the United States both strategically and politically. Nearly 60 years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and some 15 years after the breakup of the former Soviet Union , the US still finds that nuclear weapons serve strategic and political goals. To further these goals, the US has been developing earth penetrating nuclear weapons (“bunker busters”) and low-yield nuclear weapons (mini-nukes”), one-third the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. While announcing to the world its intent to continue to rely upon its nuclear arsenal, the US has been unabashed in demanding that other countries – including Iraq , Iran , North Korea , Libya and Syria – refrain from following its example.

    The Nuclear Posture Review recognizes the lack of an effective earth penetrating nuclear device as a shortcoming of the current US nuclear arsenal, citing the fact that “more than 70 countries use underground Facilities (UGFs) for military purposes.” The report states, “New capabilities must be developed to defeat emerging threats such as hard and deeply buried targets..” The Bush administration is seeking $28 million in 2005 and $485 million over five years to design this new weapon.

    The Nuclear Posture Review also states, “The need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex that will: .be able, if directed, to design, manufacture, and certify new warheads in response to new national requirements; and maintain readiness to resume underground nuclear testing if required.” It further states that options exist “that might provide important advantages for enhancing the nation’s deterrence posture.” The NPR calls for creating “advanced warhead concepts teams” that “will provide unique opportunities to train our next generation of weapon designers and engineers.” Overall, the Bush administration is seeking $6.6 billion for nuclear weapons activities in 2005, fifty percent more than the average annual expenditure for these activities during the Cold War.

    Such goals and plans demonstrate little promise of US leadership for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The US cannot have it both ways, depending on nuclear weapons for security and planning to build more, on the one hand; and, on the other, providing leadership to the rest of the world for the elimination of these weapons.

    The overall sense of the Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review is that it is a long-term commitment to nuclear weapons at a time when the US is seeking to prevent these weapons from proliferating to other countries and terrorist organizations. Such a double standard cannot hold.

    Presidential Directive 17 and the National Security Strategy of the US

    In September 2002, one year after the traumatic events of September 11, 2001, President Bush signed Presidential Directive 17, a classified document, which states: “The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force – including potentially nuclear weapons-to the use of [weapons of mass destruction] against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.”

    Also in September 2002, the White House issued a document entitled “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America .” In a letter accompanying this document, President Bush wrote, “The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination.. And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.” This is a commitment to preventive war, the kind that the US would subsequently wage, under false pretenses, against Iraq in March 2003. The National Security Strategy document states, “While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country..” When combined with Presidential Directive 17, this raises the possibility of preemptive or preventive nuclear war.

    The National Security Strategy document reaffirms “the essential role of American military strength” by calling for building and maintaining “our defenses beyond challenge.” Expressing the understanding that “deterrence can fail,” the document stresses the need for US military dominance: “The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy – whether a state or non-state actor – to impose its will on the United States , or allies, or our friends.” The latter category of US friends has unfortunately become a diminishing species in response to the bellicose words and actions of the Bush administration.

    Finally, the National Security Strategy document supports a special status in the world for American leaders by freeing them from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, a court supported by nearly all US allies. The document states: “We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.” In other words, the US will not allow the same standards of international law to be applied to US leaders as were applied to the defeated Axis powers at Nuremberg and as are accepted by our allies today. 

    Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    In March 2004, the Secretaries of State, Defense and Energy issued a joint report, entitled “An Assessment of the Impact of Repeal of the Prohibition on Low Yield Warhead Development on the Ability of the United States to Achieve Its Nonproliferation Objectives.” After reviewing Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the article that calls for nuclear disarmament and an end to the nuclear arms race, the report found, “Nothing in the NPT, including Article VI, or any other Treaty, however, prohibits the United States from carrying out nuclear weapons exploratory research or, for that matter, from developing and fielding new or modified nuclear warheads. That said, we should, of course, expect that several countries, in particular, those from the non-aligned movement, perhaps citing inaccurate or misleading press reports, will call attention to certain U.S. nuclear weapons R&D efforts.in questioning the U.S. nuclear policies and will be disappointed that more progress has not been achieved toward nuclear disarmament.”

    The report then continues with a flourish of rhetoric about the US commitment to its Article VI nuclear disarmament commitments, leaving the impression that its “strong record of actions and policies.demonstrate unambiguously U.S. compliance with Article VI..” Unfortunately, most analysts not in the pay of the US government reject this rosy, some would say hypocritical, view of US commitment to its NPT Article VI obligations. They point to the failure of the US to comply with nearly all of the obligations set forth in the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. The US , for example, has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and has made no provisions for the irreversibility of reductions in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) that it pressed upon Russia .

    When Undersecretary of State for International Security John Bolton spoke to the delegates of the 2004 Preparatory Committee meeting for the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, he described the “central bargain” of the NPT as the renunciation of nuclear weapons in exchange for assistance in developing civilian nuclear power. He left out of the equation the expectation of the non-nuclear weapons states that the nuclear weapons states would fulfill their Article VI obligations for nuclear disarmament. While pointing a finger at Iran and North Korea , he dismissed the possibility of US Article VI obligations, stating, “We cannot divert attention from the violations we face by focusing on Article VI issues that do not exist.”

    Positions of Bush and Kerry

    Under the Bush administration, the US has projected its reliance on nuclear weapons far into the future, and there has been virtually no willingness on the part of the US to comply with obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or other major international arms control and disarmament treaties. Would a Kerry presidency be substantially different? In a major policy speech on nuclear terrorism on June1, 2004, Kerry pledged to make the fight against nuclear terrorism his top security priority. While Bush has also taken steps to prevent nuclear proliferation and keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, Kerry distinguished his position from Bush’s by pledging to end the double standard of calling on others not to develop nuclear weapons while the US moves forward with research on new nuclear weapons, such as “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes.” Kerry also pledged to gain control of the nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union at a far more rapid rate than that contemplated by the Bush Administration, and Kerry promised to appoint a Nuclear Terrorism Coordinator to work with him in the White House in overseeing this effort. Finally, Kerry called for taking prompt action on a verifiable ban on the creation of new fissile materials for nuclear weapons, a step long supported by the international community and nearly all US allies, but not acted upon by the US .

    Both Bush and Kerry have called for strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but only in relation to preventing nuclear materials from civilian nuclear reactors from being converted to nuclear weapons. Neither of them has set forth a plan to fulfill US obligations for nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the Treaty. Thus, both of them are prepared to commit to the Treaty to prevent others from obtaining nuclear weapons, but not to fulfilling the long-standing obligations of the US for nuclear disarmament. While Kerry’s positions on nuclear policy issues are certainly preferable to those of Bush, if only for Kerry’s support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and of international law in general, they are neither bold nor innovative; they simply are not as damaging as those of the Bush administration.

    We cannot count on US nuclear policies to change significantly on the basis of US political leadership. The only real hope to bring about needed changes in US nuclear policy is by pressure applied by US citizens and foreign governments. I will briefly discuss three efforts to influence US nuclear policy.

    Nuclear Disarmament Campaigns

    Turn the Tide. At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we are initiating a campaign to chart a new course in US nuclear policy that we call Turn the Tide. It is an Internet-based campaign that seeks to awaken US citizens to the need to change US nuclear policy and spur them to communicate with their Congressional representatives and candidates, as well as the president and presidential candidates, and to cast their ballots based on positions on nuclear disarmament issues. The campaign is based on the following call to action:

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

    Middle Powers Initiative . The Middle Powers Initiative is a coalition of eight international civil society organizations working in the area of nuclear disarmament that supports and encourages middle power governments, such as those middle power states calling for a New Agenda that have worked together in the United Nations for nuclear disarmament (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden). The New Agenda Coalition governments took a leadership role in achieving agreement of the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. With support from the Middle Powers Initiative, the New Agenda states have continued to press the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their Article VI obligations.

    Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons . This is an important new initiative that calls for beginning negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons by the year 2005, completing negotiations by the year 2010, and completing the process of eliminating nuclear weapons by the year 2020. Mayors for Peace is a global organization composed of some 600 mayors from cities throughout the world. The organization is led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , who played an active role in the 2004 Preparatory Committee meeting for the 2005 NPT Review Conference. They are planning to have more than 100 mayors from around the world at the 2005 NPT Review Conference.

    There is much that needs to be done, and many good people are engaged in these efforts. However, still more is needed, and considerably more effort must be put forward by the American people. It is not clear whether this can be achieved. Americans for the most part seem too complacent, too comfortable with the power of their government, and too deferent to their government. They have not acted to curb its abuses, either with respect to nuclear weapons or to illegal wars of aggression such as the Iraq War.

    Silence in the Face of Evil

    Gandhi mused about what would happen to the soul of the destroying power after the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima . His inquiry remains relevant. What has happened to the soul of America , a country that once held such great hope for the world? Its leaders have followed the path of illegal and aggressive warfare, killing far more civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq than died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 . Its young soldiers have become torturers, and their photographs with the prisoners at Abu Ghraib reflect no sense of shame or even self-consciousness about the degradation and torture of the prisoners whom they were to guard and interrogate. And US citizens have been remarkably silent in the face of leaders who have led by fear and instigated aggressive foreign wars.

    The American people have been docile and reticent to react to atrocities committed in their names. Their greatest sin may be silence in the face of the misuse and misdirection of US military might, and this may be a sin that has taken hold of the soul of America .

    The survivors of the atomic bombings are called hibakusha in Japan ese. They were nearly all innocent civilians. Many have lived sad and painful lives following the bombings. Their cry has been “Never again! We will not repeat the evil.” They have summoned the courage to speak out and convey their experiences in the hope that they can prevent future nuclear attacks and future hibakusha . I will conclude with a poem I wrote about hibakusha and silence. It is called Hibakusha Do Not Just Happen.

    Hibakusha Do Not Just Happen

    For every hibakusha
    there is a pilot

    for every hibakusha
    there is a planner

    for every hibakusha
    there is a bombardier

    for every hibakusha
    there is a bomb designer

    for every hibakusha
    there is a missile maker

    for every hibakusha
    there is a missileer

    for every hibakusha
    there is a targeter

    for every hibakusha
    there is a commander

    for every hibakusha
    there is a button pusher

    for every hibakusha
    many must contribute

    for every hibakusha
    many must obey

    for every hibakusha
    many must be silent

    The use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations has been described appropriately by the former president of the International Court of Justice, Mohammed Bedjaoui, as “the ultimate evil.” General George Lee Butler, a former commander of the US Strategic Command, described nuclear weapons as “the enemy of humanity.” “Indeed,” he said, “they’re not weapons at all. They’re some species of biological time bombs whose effects transcend time and space, poisoning the earth and its inhabitants for generations to come.”

    It is silence in the face of evil that allows evil to flourish. I fear this is the case in America today. There is no widespread uprising in the US for nuclear sanity and the elimination of these weapons. As a result, the nuclear threat will likely continue and the result may well be the creation of more hibakusha. This time Americans may learn the deeply painful lesson of being under, rather than above, the bomb. It is my hope that Americans will use both their imaginations and their consciences, and awaken to the serious danger that nuclear weapons pose for all humanity, including themselves, before it is too late, and will lead the world in prevailing in the greatest challenge ever faced by humanity, that of ridding the world of this ultimate evil. It is a far more difficult task than putting a man on the moon, and the first and most important step is breaking the silence that has allowed this evil to go unchallenged. This is surely necessary not only for the future of humanity, but also for the soul of America.

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

  • Nuclear Disarmament in a Time of Globalization

    Nuclear Disarmament in a Time of Globalization

    Keynote Address to the International Peace Research Association
    Sopron, Hungary

    Nuclear weapons occupy the highest rung on the ladder of military cowardice. They are long-distance devices of mass annihilation. They destroy indiscriminately – men, women and children. They draw no lines between soldiers and civilians. Those who make the weapons, who deploy them, who order their use and who press the buttons to send the missiles on their way have virtually no connection with the victims. They are simply human instruments in a chain of activities leading to massive devastation.

    The only arguably sane use of nuclear weapons is deterrence, and deterrence is largely an unproven theory. General George Lee Butler, a former commander-in-chief of the United States Strategic Command, who was in charge of all US nuclear weapons, has expressed his deep concerns about deterrence. “Nuclear deterrence,” he wrote, “was and remains a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships.” When one examines carefully the shortcomings of nuclear deterrence – its requirements of near-perfect communications, rational behavior in a time of crisis and willingness to commit mass murder – it is reasonable to conclude that reliance on nuclear deterrence for security is as insane as the threat to destroy civilization with nuclear weapons.

    In recent times, there has been a high degree of concern for nuclear terrorism, but nuclear terrorism has been practiced by the nuclear weapons states for decades. If terrorism is the threat or use of violence to achieve political goals – especially if it results in injuring or killing innocent people – then the nuclear weapons states are by definition terrorists. It is ironic that nuclear weapons are more potent tools in the hands of non-state actors than in the hands of powerful countries. Non-state actors in possession of a nuclear weapon would not be constrained by threats of retaliation. If terrorists are suicidal and cannot be located anyway, they certainly cannot be deterred from initiating a nuclear attack. In this sense, nuclear weapons are a great equalizer in the hands of extremists, and for this reason it is clear that the nuclear weapons states must do everything in their power to prevent these weapons, or the materials to make them, from falling into the hands of such extremists. The nuclear weapons states, however, appear more committed to maintaining their own nuclear arsenals than to assuring that nuclear weapons do not proliferate to non-state terrorist groups that could cause them irreparable harm.

    The only way to assure that nuclear weapons do not fall into the hands of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda is to take dramatic steps to reduce nuclear arsenals, dismantle the nuclear weapons, and place the remaining weapons and weapons-grade fissile materials under strict and effective international controls. The nuclear weapons states have not been bold in attempting to control the spread of nuclear weapons; they have acted as though time is on their side rather than on the side of those committed to waging war against them. The irony of this is that the nuclear weapons states, even with arsenals of nuclear weapons that number in the thousands, cannot deter a group such as Al Qaeda from using nuclear weapons against them. Their only hope is to prevent such groups from obtaining these most destructive of all weapons.

    Nuclearism and Globalization

    Nuclearism is one of the early manifestations of globalization. The United States went global with its nuclear threat almost from the day it first created nuclear weapons. Within three weeks of testing the first nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945 , the US used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . It did so not only to destroy those cities and punish Japan , but also to send a message to the world and particularly to the Soviet Union . The message was, “This is what we are capable of doing and willing to do with our devastating new weapons; don’t cross us or we could use them on you.” It was a powerful message, and also an incentive to nuclear proliferation. It would take the Soviet Union just four years to test its first nuclear device.

    Very early in the Nuclear Age, the US began testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, including in the Trust Territories that had been assigned to it by the United Nations. In doing so, it continued the pre-war pattern of colonial dominance. Over the decades of the Nuclear Age, all of the nuclear weapons states have performed their nuclear testing on the lands of indigenous peoples, leaving the hazardous radioactive residue of testing in their backyards.

    Another dimension to the globalization of the nuclear threat was the development of inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), allowing for the destruction of nearly any place on the globe in 30 minutes or many places simultaneously. Even today, the US and Russia each still have some 6,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons. Of these, some 2,250 each are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments.

    The US and USSR , now Russia , as well as other nuclear weapons states, also appropriated the global commons for their nuclear forces. The nuclear weapons states continue to use the oceans, humankind’s great common heritage, for their submarine-launched nuclear forces. They agreed not to place nuclear weapons on the ocean floor, but with the availability of submarines, the ocean floor is clearly not a necessary or even useful option for them.

    Another aspect of the globalization of nuclearism is the spread of the US nuclear umbrella to its allies throughout the world, particularly in Europe , Asia and the Pacific. By extending its nuclear umbrella, the US has made many more countries complicit in relying upon nuclear weapons for their security, albeit reliant upon US nuclear weapons rather than developing their own.

    Nuclear Proliferation

    Nuclear proliferation is the flip-side of nuclear disarmament. It is also the globalization of nuclear arsenals. The existing nuclear weapons states have nearly all justified their development of nuclear weapons on the basis of nuclear deterrence. The US created nuclear weapons because it was concerned about deterring a possible Nazi nuclear bomb. The Soviet Union developed its nuclear arsenal to deter the US . The UK and France developed their nuclear arsenals to have independent deterrent forces against the Soviet Union . China sought to deter both the Soviet Union and the US . India sought to deter China , and Pakistan sought to deter India . North Korea would undoubtedly justify its nuclear weapons, if indeed it has them, as being necessary to deter the US . South Africa , which faced global hostility due to its policies of Apartheid, developed a nuclear arsenal to deter the US and Russia . It subsequently gave up its nuclear weapons. Israel , which continues to face both regional and global hostility, developed a nuclear arsenal to give it greater degrees of freedom in relation to the US and Russia and well as to deter hostilities by non-nuclear weapons states in its region.

    The US-led war against Iraq was justified initially on the basis that Iraq might be developing a nuclear arsenal and could potentially transfer nuclear weapons to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. Although it turned out not to be true that Iraq was developing a nuclear arsenal or even that it had links to Al Qaeda, this fear provided the justification for the first counter-proliferation war in history.

    US Double Standards Have Stimulated Proliferation

    From the outset of the Nuclear Age, the US has had a double standard when it comes to nuclear weapons. It has always relied on these weapons for its own security, yet sought to deny these weapons to other states except when it suited its purposes. In the

    late 1960s and early 1970s, Israel developed a nuclear arsenal. At best it can be said that the US turned a blind eye to this development. In sharp contrast to the US attacking and invading Iraq because it might have nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, the US , in line with its geopolitical strategies, has never even criticized Israel for its nuclear proliferation. This double standard has created an impetus to the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in the volatile Middle East .

    India ‘s position, for decades, was that it would not develop nuclear weapons if the nuclear weapons states fulfilled their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to achieve nuclear disarmament. India made clear pronouncements that it was not willing to live without nuclear weapons in a world of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots”. Three years after the NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995 and there was still no significant breakthrough by the nuclear weapons states toward achieving nuclear disarmament, India conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests and announced that it was developing a nuclear arsenal. Pakistan followed immediately in doing the same.

    When Mr. Bush named Iraq , Iran and North Korea as part of an Axis of Evil, he put these states on notice that they were in the sights of the US . When he then went on to attack and invade Iraq to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, Bush’s actions sent a message to Iran and North Korea, among others, that they had better consider developing a nuclear deterrent force against the US. They may have already had such thoughts before the Axis of Evil speech, but there can be no doubt that such provocative language, coupled with military action, can only act as a stimulant to develop a strong deterrent force. The Bush posture toward the states designated as an Axis of Evil stands in strong contrast to the manner in which his administration virtually ignored the nuclear proliferation activities of Pakistani nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan. Khan, whose activities have been described as a nuclear Walmart, received only a slap on the wrist from the Pakistani government, allied with the US in the so-called war against terrorism.

    Nuclear Disarmament

    In the post-Cold War period, there has been some progress toward nuclear disarmament, but it has been excruciatingly slow as measured by the need, obligation and opportunity. Current global nuclear stocks are down from a Cold War high of some 70,000 nuclear weapons to approximately 30,000. The vast majority of these, some 97 percent, are in the arsenals of the US and Russia .

    The need to dramatically reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons lies in the danger of these weapons proliferating to other states or falling into the hands of non-state extremist actors. The enormous danger of these weapons in the hands of groups like Al Qaeda should be sufficient to motivate serious efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament. So far it has not done so. The need does not exist to maintain large nuclear arsenals or, for that matter, any nuclear weapons in a world where nuclear weapons states are trading with each other rather than threatening war.

    The obligation of the nuclear weapons states to achieve nuclear disarmament is set forth in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, when the treaty was extended indefinitely, the parties agreed to “systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons.” Five years later, at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the parties agreed on 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. These steps included ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, preserving and strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, making disarmament measures irreversible, and an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”

    The opportunity to achieve nuclear disarmament in the post-Cold War world has been largely squandered. Bill Clinton was presented with the greatest opportunity of any leader in the post-World War II period to put an end to the dangers of the Nuclear Age. Clinton didn’t seem to grasp the opportunity that had been laid at his feet. He was largely indifferent to the issue, and this resulted in only minimal progress during his eight years in office. He did, however, support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and did hold negotiations with Russia on ST AR T III, but these negotiations did not result in a new treaty.

    If the Clinton approach to nuclear disarmament can be described as benign indifference, the US under the Bush administration can be thought of obstructionist in its approach to nuclear disarmament. It has been an obstacle to virtually all of the 13 Practical Steps agreed to at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. The Bush administration has opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, put up barriers to negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in order to pursue missile defenses and space weaponization), and entered into an agreement with the Russians that makes nuclear reductions completely reversible. This agreement, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Agreement (SORT), specifies reductions of the US and Russian deployed strategic arsenals from levels of about 6,000 each to between 1,700 and 2,200 each by the year 2012. However, the treaty doesn’t require that the weapons taken off deployed status be irreversibly dismantled. As a result, many US weapons will go into storage and be available for redeployment in the future. It is likely that the Russians will do the same, and these weapons will also be available for possible theft by terrorist groups. The reductions do not have a timeline and only need to be completed by 2012. After that year, the treaty will no longer be in effect. So far as it impacts nuclear disarmament, the treaty is largely fraudulent. It gives the appearance of disarmament, but the substance isn’t there.

    In addition, the Bush administration has been pressing for research on new nuclear weapons that will be more usable, a new bunker busting nuclear weapon (the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator) and mini-nukes (low-yield nuclear weapons) that are about one-third the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. They have also begun deployment of missile defenses that have led Russia to pull out of the ST AR T II agreement. Despite their funding of research on new nuclear weapons and their opposition to the 13 Practical Steps, a US delegate to the 2004 Preparatory Committee meeting for the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, John Bolton, told the assembled parties to the treaty that they shouldn’t focus their attention on Article VI of the treaty with its nuclear disarmament provisions. “We cannot divert attention from the violations we face,” he said, “by focusing on Article VI violations that do not exist.”

    Need for US Leadership

    The world currently faces a tragic dilemma: preventing nuclear terrorism requires significant nuclear disarmament and international control of nuclear weapons and materials, but to achieve this will require US leadership, which is currently non-existent. Since the US continues to rely upon its own arsenal of nuclear weapons for security, it cannot effectively provide leadership toward nuclear disarmament. In the Bush administration’s secret, but leaked, 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, they stated: “Nuclear weapons play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States , its allies and friends. They provide credible options to deter a wide range of threats, including WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and large-scale conventional force. These nuclear capabilities possess unique properties that give the United States options to hold at risk classes of targets [that are] important to achieve strategic and political objectives.”

    Initiatives for Nuclear Disarmament

    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation , we are initiating a campaign to chart a new course in US nuclear policy that we call Turn the Tide. It is an Internet-based campaign that seeks to awaken US citizens to the need to change US nuclear policy and spur them to communicate with their Congressional representatives and candidates as well as the president and presidential candidates and to cast their ballots based on positions on nuclear disarmament issues. The campaign is based on the following call to action:

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

    While this campaign is essential, it is a strategy from within the country. It is also necessary to bring pressure to bear on the US and other nuclear weapons states from the international community. The countries of the New Agenda Coalition ( Brazil , Egypt , Ireland, Mexico , New Zealand , South Africa and Sweden ) have been doing admirable work on this at the United Nations and at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conferences and Preparatory Committee meetings. These countries were largely responsible for putting forward the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. I should also mention the Middle Powers Initiative, a coalition of eight international non-governmental organizations, which has provided strong support and encouragement to the New Agenda countries.

    Another important new initiative to move forward the nuclear disarmament agenda is the Emergency Campaign of the Mayors for Peace. Under the leadership of the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , this campaign has set forth a Vision 2020, calling for the initiation of negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament in 2005, the completion of these negotiations in 2010 and the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

    Breaking the Silence

    Nuclear weapons pose a threat to humanity’s future, and yet most of us are silent in the face of this danger. It would not be possible to research, develop, deploy, threaten and use nuclear weapons if so many were not silent. The threat of nuclear genocide, even omnicide, has become global. Before the spread of the weapons themselves becomes global, we must break the culture of silence and conformity that allows the continuation of the nuclear threat to all humanity.

    In some ways, we have attributed god-like characteristics to nuclear weapons. Their power far exceeds that of ordinary weapons. They are credited in the US with bringing World War II to an end. It is hard to forget the emotional celebrations that took place in the streets in India and Pakistan when they tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Here is a poem in which I have tried to capture the sense of the godliness that has been ascribed to nuclear weapons by many people in the nuclear weapons states.

    WHEN THE BOMB BECAME OUR GOD

    When the bomb became our god
    We loved it far too much,
    Worshipping no other gods before it.

    We thought ourselves great
    And powerful, creators of worlds.

    We turned toward infinity,
    Giving the bomb our very souls.

    We looked to it for comfort,
    To its smooth metallic grace.

    When the bomb became our god
    We lived in a constant state of war
    That we called peace .

    But nuclear weapons certainly are not gods, nor are their possessors. These weapons are false idols, and they threaten their possessors as well as their targets. They may be powerful, but their power is only that of destruction. They have neither the power of creativity nor of construction. They threaten the future of humanity, and they corrode the souls of their possessors.

    We are approaching the 60th anniversary of the creation and first use of nuclear weapons. Time is not on our side, and we can take little comfort in the fact that nuclear weapons have not been dropped on other cities since they were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki . In this era of globalization, the threat of nuclear annihilation is itself global. To counter this threat, we must globalize prohibitions in law and morality to the possession, threat and use of the nuclear weapons. We must end the double standards that suggest that some may have nuclear weapons while others may not. There are no safe hands in which nuclear weapons may be placed.

    The singular threat that nuclear weapons pose can only be ended by people everywhere breaking the silence and demanding that the nuclear weapons states fulfill their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty for the total elimination of these weapons, and persisting in their demands until the goal is achieved.

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org ). He is the author of many books and articles on peace in the Nuclear Age

  • Kerry Pledges To Give Nuclear Terrorism His Top Priority

    Kerry Pledges To Give Nuclear Terrorism His Top Priority

    In his speech, “New Strategies to Meet New Threats,” delivered in West Palm Beach, Florida on June 1, 2004, John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President, referred to the possibility of nuclear terrorism as “the greatest threat we face today,” and offered a program to eliminate this threat based on US leadership. Kerry promised to prevent nuclear weapons or materials to create them from falling into the hands of al Qaeda or other extremist organizations. “As President,” he pledged, “my number one security goal will be to prevent the terrorists from gaining weapons of mass murder, and ensure that hostile states disarm.”

    Kerry recognizes that the US cannot accomplish this task by itself and pledged to build and repair coalitions. “We can’t eliminate this threat on our own,” he stated. “We must fight this enemy in the same way we fought in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, by building and leading strong alliances.”

    In order to confront nuclear terrorism, Kerry offered a four-step plan. His first step called for safeguarding all bomb-making materials worldwide. He called for an approach that would “treat all nuclear materials needed for bombs as if they were bombs,” and pledged to secure all potential bomb material in the former Soviet Union within his first term as president. “For a fraction of what we have already spent in Iraq ,” he pointed out, “we can ensure that every nuclear weapon, and every pound of potential bomb material will be secured and accounted for.”

    Kerry’s second step called for US leadership to verifiably ban the creation of new materials for creating nuclear weapons, including production of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium. He pointed out that there is strong international support for such a ban, but that the Bush Administration has been “endlessly reviewing the need for such a policy.”

    Kerry’s third step called for reducing excess stocks of nuclear materials and weapons. He recognized the importance of the US adopting policies consistent with what we are asking other countries to do. He asked rhetorically, “If America is asking the world to join our country in a shared mission to reduce this nuclear threat, then why would the world listen to us if our own words do not match our deeds?” In line with this commitment, Kerry promised that as president, he would “stop this administration’s program to develop a whole new generation of bunker-busting nuclear bombs.” He called the bunker-buster “a weapon we don’t need,” one that “undermines our credibility in persuading other nations.”

    The fourth step in Kerry’s plan called for ending the nuclear weapons programs in other countries, such as North Korea and Iran . He called for strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, strengthening enforcement and verification through the International Atomic Energy Agency, and tightening export controls to assure no future black market activities in nuclear materials.

    In order to accomplish these goals, Kerry pledged to appoint a National Coordinator for Nuclear Terrorism and Counter-Proliferation to work with him “to marshal every effort and every ally, to combat an incalculable danger.” Kerry made clear that “preventing nuclear terrorism is our most urgent priority to provide for America ‘s long term security.”

    President Bush has also called for steps to prevent nuclear terrorism, but in a number of respects Kerry’s position on nuclear terrorism is stronger than that of the current administration. First, and most important, Kerry pledges to end the double standard of calling on others not to develop nuclear weapons while the US moves forward with research on new nuclear weapons, such as the bunker buster. Research on the bunker buster, as well as on lower yield, more usable nuclear weapons, has been an important aspect of the Bush Administration’s nuclear policy.

    Second, Kerry pledges to gain control of the nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union at a far more rapid rate than that of the Bush Administration. Third, Kerry promises to appoint a Nuclear Terrorism Coordinator to work with him in the White House in overseeing this effort. Finally, Kerry calls for taking prompt action on a verifiable ban on the creation of new fissile materials for nuclear weapons, a step long supported by the international community and nearly all US allies, but never before acted upon by the US .

    Both Bush and Kerry have called for strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but only in relation to preventing nuclear materials from civilian nuclear reactors from being converted to nuclear weapons. Neither Bush nor Kerry has set forth a plan to fulfill US obligations for nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the treaty. This is a major omission since the nuclear disarmament requirement of the treaty is a foundational element, and without US leadership to achieve this obligation it may be impossible to prevent nuclear terrorism.

    “We must lead this effort not just for our own safety,” Kerry stated, “but for the good of the world.” Kerry is certainly right that the world now needs US leadership on this critical issue. This leadership must include a dramatic reduction in the size of nuclear arsenals on the way to their total elimination, as agreed to by the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in order to prevent the nuclear warheads from being available to terrorist organizations.

    If any leader of the United States is truly serious about preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, he must realize that nuclear disarmament is an essential element of the equation. Kerry posited the equation: “No material. No bomb. No terrorism.” That equation must be expanded to include: “No material. No bombs – period. Not in anyone’s hands.”

    There are no good or safe hands in which to place nuclear weapons. In the end, to eliminate the threat of nuclear terrorism will require more than attempting to prevent nuclear proliferation; it will require the elimination of all nuclear weapons, a goal agreed to by the United States, United Kingdom and former Soviet Union in 1968 when they signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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