Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: modernization

  • The New Nuclear Risk

    Article appeared in the Guardian’s Comment is Free site on March 31, 2008.

    Humans love to suppress abstract dangers. They react only after they get their fingers burned. In handling nuclear risks, however, we can hardly get away with such childlike behaviour.

    To begin with, the old system of nuclear deterrence, which has survived particularly in the US and Russia since the cold war’s end, still involves lots of risks and dangers. While the international public largely ignores this fact, the risks remain.

    To be sure, in the 1990’s the US and Russia reduced their nuclear arsenals from 65,000 to approximately 26,000 weapons. But this number is still almost unimaginable and beyond any rational level needed for deterrence. Moreover, there are another 1,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of other nuclear states.

    A second cause for worry is that the world is poised to enter a new nuclear age that threatens to be even more dangerous and expensive than the cold war era of mutually assured destruction. Indeed, the outlines of this new nuclear age are already visible: the connection between terrorism and nuclear weapons; a nuclear-armed North Korea; the risk of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran’s nuclear program; a new definition of state sovereignty as “nuclear sovereignty”, accompanied by a massive increase in the number of small and medium-sized nuclear states; possible collapse of public order in nuclear Pakistan; the illegal proliferation of military nuclear technology; the legal proliferation of civilian nuclear technology and an increase in the number of “civilian” nuclear states; the nuclearisation of space, triggering an arms race among large nuclear powers.

    Important political leaders, especially in the two biggest nuclear powers, the US and Russia, know today’s existing risks and tomorrow’s emerging ones all too well. Yet nothing is being done to control, contain, or eliminate them. On the contrary, the situation is worsening.

    Vital pillars of the old arms-control and anti-proliferation regime have either been destroyed – as was the case with the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty – or substantially weakened, as with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). Responsibility for this lies largely with the Bush administration, which, by terminating the ABM treaty, not only weakened the international control systems for nuclear weapons, but also sat on its hands when confronted with the NPT’s imminent collapse.

    At the beginning of the 21st century, proliferation of military nuclear technology is one of the major threats to humanity, particularly if this technology falls into terrorists’ hands. The use of nuclear weapons by terrorists would not only result in a major humanitarian tragedy, but also would most likely move the world beyond the threshold for actually waging a nuclear war. The consequences would be horrific.

    Nearly equally worrisome is the nuclear redefinition of state sovereignty because it will not only lead to a large number of small, politically unstable nuclear powers, but will also increase the risk of proliferation at the hands of terrorists. Pakistan would, most likely, no longer be an isolated case.

    An international initiative for the renewal and improvement of the international control regime, led by both big nuclear powers, is urgently needed to meet these and all other risks of the new nuclear age. For, if disarmament is to become effective, the signal must come from the top – the US and Russia. Here the commitment to disarmament, as agreed in the NPT, is of prime importance.

    The NPT – a bedrock of peace for more than three decades – is based on a political agreement between nuclear and non-nuclear states: the latter abstain from obtaining nuclear weapons while the former destroy their arsenals. Unfortunately, only the first part of this agreement was realised (though not completely), while the second part still awaits fulfilment.

    The NPT remains indispensable and needs urgent revision. However, this central pillar of international proliferation control is on the brink of collapse. The most recent review conference in New York, in May 2005, ended virtually without any result.

    The essential defect of the NPT is now visible in the nuclear dispute between Iran and the United Nations Security Council: the treaty permits the development of all nuclear components indispensable for military use – particularly uranium enrichment – so long as there is no outright nuclear weapons program. This means that in emerging nuclear countries only one single political decision is required to “weaponise” a nuclear program. This kind of “security” is not sufficient.

    Another controversial issue also has also come to the fore in connection with the current nuclear conflict with Iran: discrimination-free access to nuclear technology. Solving this problem will require the internationalisation of access to civilian nuclear technology, along with filling the security gap under the existing NPT and substantially more far-reaching monitoring of all states that want to be part of such a system.

    Leaders around the world know the dangers of a new nuclear age; they also know how to minimise them. But the political will to act decisively is not there, because the public does not regard nuclear disarmament and arms control as a political priority.

    This must change. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not questions of the past. They need to be addressed today if they are not to become the most dangerous threats tomorrow.

    Joschka Fischer, a leader of the Green Party for nearly 20 years, was Germany’s foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. A leader in the Green Party for nearly 20 years, he is now a visiting professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

  • Comments on Complex Transformation

    Comments delivered in Madison, WI on February 16, 2008

    I am grateful for this opportunity to comment on the Department of Energy’s proposed changes in the United States Nuclear Weapons complex. I speak both as a citizen and as a historian who has published extensively on America’s more than sixty-year encounter with nuclear weapons.

    The Department of Energy’s proposal focuses exclusively on narrow technical detail. I think it is important to place this proposal in a larger context. First of all, note the choice of language. The DoE’s goal is to “modernize” our nuclear-weapons complex. Certainly all would agree that “modernization” is a good thing. Right?

    Further, underlying the proposal is an unspoken assumption: that nuclear weapons production and stockpiling will continue to be a central aspect of American public policy into the foreseeable future. This represents a further embedding of nuclear weapons into the very core of our nation’s economy, culture, and strategic policy. There is no hint of a commitment to eliminating these terrible weapons, but rather this proposal simply assumes their permanence, and at a level of thousands of weapons—a total that would have appalled all Americans when the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, if they could have foreseen what lay ahead.

    Further, this proposed reconfiguration of the nation’s nuclear-weapons program must be viewed in the larger context of America’s overall nuclear-weapons policies over the years, and specifically the policies of the current administration. In fact, the assumption of this proposal that nuclear-weapons will remain a permanent part of the U.S. military arsenal is part of a larger pattern of government policies that pays lip service to nuclear disarmament, while in fact contributing to proliferation worldwide and dangerously worsening what used to be called the nuclear balance of terror—a term that remains all too appropriate today.

    • The current administration has worsened the danger of proliferation. The United States continues to supply Israel with military hardware and billions of dollars in aid each year, despite the fact that Israel secretly developed and stockpiled nuclear weapons in defiance of stated U.S. policy, and has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
    • This administration has entered into a highly controversial agreement to supply nuclear know-how and technology to India, despite India’s development of nuclear weapons in defiance of international nonproliferation agreements, its refusal to open all its nuclear facilities to inspection, and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
    • This administration has given billions in aid to Pakistan, despite Pakistan’s development and testing of nuclear weapons, and despite the role of Pakistan’s top atomic scientist, A. Q. Khan, in secretly giving vital weapons-making information to other countries.
    • This administration has continued to push for the development of earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, the socalled “bunker buster” missiles, despite congressional opposition, and in violation of the spirit of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, by which the nuclear powers pledged to work in good faith for nuclear disarmament—not for developing new weapons systems.
    • Above all, the current administration has pursued the development and deployment of anti-missile missiles, a legacy of the socalled Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called “Star Wars,” launched by President Ronald Reagan twenty five years ago. In addition to setting up anti-missile launch sites in Alaska and California, the administration now proposes further deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, stirring fierce opposition from the Russian government, which is now threatening to target these sites with its own missiles.

    Russia’s reaction is entirely predictable, since the whole history of the nuclear arms race makes clear that an escalation by one side, whether labeled “offensive” or “defensive,” inevitably triggers a counter-move by the other side, leading to further escalation. Further, in taking this step, the Bush Administration abandoned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had acknowledged the dangerously destabilizing effects of trying to develop a defense against missile attack. If such a system were ever actually deployed and proven to be workable, it would mean that the nation deploying the system could then safely launch a nuclear attack without fear of retaliation. The administrations anti-missile program is not only dangerous and unwise strategically, it is technologically unfeasible and a massive waste of money. As has often been noted, trying to shoot down a missile with another missile is the equivalent of trying to stop a bullet with another bullet. Test after test has resulted in failure, even when the timing of the target-missile’s firing and its trajectory were fully known! What are the chances of successfully destroying a missile fired at an unknown time, and on an unknown trajectory? Nevertheless, the current Bush administration has poured billions into this unwise and unworkable program. In the first Bush budget, spending on missile-defense hit nearly $8 billion. Despite a series of failed tests, the administration requested a staggering $9.3 billion for fiscal year 2007, the highest in the program’s history and more that the total 2006 budgets for the National Park Service, the Food and Drug Adminstration, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and the administration’s highly touted Millennium program to combat poverty and disease in Africa. In its final budget, released in February 2008, the Bush administration requested a staggering $10.4 billion for the Missile Defense Agency, plus nearly $2 billion more for missile-defense related projects buried in other parts of the budget. The “Star Wars” scheme that Reagan sprung on the nation out of the blue in 1983 is now an embedded Pentagon program, the Missile Defense Agency, with its own entrenched bureaucracy, powerful corporate interests that stand to profit, and lobbying muscle to secure billions in new funding year after year, whatever the record of failure. The whole depressing “Star Wars” story offers a classic example of how a dangerous, misguided, and technologically unworkable program can become lodged in the bureaucracy, and take on a life of its own. In 2006, President Bush told a California audience, “Technology will once again make this country the leader of the world, and that’s what we’re here to celebrate.” When it comes to nuclear weapons, the answer is not technology, but a renewed national commitment to eliminate them from the earth—not just from “rogue states” or designated enemy nations, but eliminating them entirely.

    Much of my research has looked at the shifting rhythms of Americans’ response to nuclear weapons and the shifting fortunes of the anti-nuclear movement. What I’ve found is a pattern of upsurges of grassroots opposition to nuclear weapons, followed by a calculated government effort to neutralize that opposition. The first antinuclear movement came right after World War II, amid a massive wave of fear and revulsion against a single bomb that could destroy an entire city and snuff out hundreds of thousands of human lives in an instant. This first surge of anti-nuclear activism was blunted, however, as government propaganda hailed the promise of “the peaceful atom,” and whipped up fears of a communist takeover as the Cold War began. The second wave of grassroots antinuclear activism came in the later 1950s and early 1960s, as deadly radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests posed a terrifying danger to public health, especially the health of the most vulnerable—babies taking in radioactive poisons with their mother’s milk. This surge of activism was blunted with the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. That treaty did not end nuclear tests, but it put them underground, out of sight, and the antinuclear movement soon faded. The third wave of grassroots antinuclear activism came in the early 1980s, in reaction to the Reagan administration’s nuclear build-up, belligerent Cold War rhetoric, and renewed focus on civil defense in a possible nuclear war. As public alarm mounted, millions of Americans rallied to the Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign, the brainchild of Randall Forsberg, who died prematurely last October. Some veterans of that campaign are here today. The government, in the person of President Reagan, blunted that campaign with the 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, with its deceptive promise of using America’s technological prowess to build a secure shield against nuclear attack. The whole idea was strategically dangerous and fatally flawed technologically, but it served its immediate political purpose. Reagan shifted the terms of the debate, and the nuclear freeze movement collapsed. We now stand at another crossroads. Attention to the global danger of nuclear proliferation and the massive nuclear arsenal still held by the United States, Russia, and other nations has been diverted since 9/11 by a very selective attention to the nuclear danger posed by two specific nations, North Korea and Iran. That danger is real, but it is part of a far larger danger to our planet itself—a danger in which the United States itself is deeply implicated. But while attention to the true nature of the nuclear threat has been blunted by propaganda, a profound movement for change is sweeping the nation. This may, indeed, be a propitious moment for a new surge of grassroots anti-nuclear activism by a new generation. Through determined effort by concerned citizens, we may be poised once gain to confront the threat the whole world faces from the horrendous new power of destruction that our government, in our name, unleashed on the world on August 6, 1945.

    Paul Boyer is the Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus as the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1985) and Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America’s Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (1998).

  • The Nuclear Elephant in the Room: Why No One Talks About the U.S. Nuclear Threat

    Imagine a scene where a family is anxiously gathered in their living room to discuss a growing problem with their neighbors. It seems that one of their more troublesome neighbors has been threatening them, and lately set off a large explosion to validate the threat. Yet another of their neighbors has been threatening them with malicious mischief, and making ingredients for high-explosives in blatant contempt for the law. The neighborhood is in danger of spinning out of control. Several neighbors have been actively making and demonstrating explosives in contempt of the neighborhood’s determination to disallow such dangerous and threatening activities.

    The family discussion centers on what to do about these aggravating neighbors, and several strategies are on the table. One suggests legal action to confiscate or render the neighbors’ high-explosives inoperative. Another suggests a punitive stealth attack to ruin the neighbors’ explosives making capabilities. These strategies involve serious risks, because existing laws prohibiting the creation of high-explosives may not be applied or obeyed, and any one-sided attacks will demand extreme measures that will implicate the family in illegal violence. The family has importantly decided that it cannot speak to these troublemakers directly, but must rely on other neighbors to negotiate an acceptable surrender from their foes. The situation is at an impasse.

    In our imaginary scene, one brave family member chimes in to remind everyone that this family is the original inventor and user of the high-explosives in question. Not only that, the family has, on numerous occasions, demonstrated its neighbor-threatening destructive capabilities by exploding scary weapons, first in the atmosphere and then below ground, in public displays designed to intimidate. The family has built and hoarded an enormous hidden arsenal of high-explosives that no one, even most family members themselves, is allowed to know about or discuss. The not-so-secret past of this family, our courageous protagonist reminds, includes the well-known destruction of two of their neighbor’s homes, and the incessant, often-exhibited threat of destroying the entire neighborhood at their whim. He suggests that, just perhaps, the threatening posture of his own family may have created the situation with the neighbors, and by admitting and changing its behavior the family may finally win a much desired peace in the neighborhood.

    These brave observations, instead of presenting an eye-opening epiphany to the family, are greeted with silence, then derision, and then outright criticism. The brave observer is now regarded as a traitor. His assertions are unwelcome and prohibited from discussion. Family members whisper that he must have gone crazy, or that his idealism has gotten the better of him, or that he has a secret agenda to destroy the family.

    No one will acknowledge the truth — that the threat now posed by their neighbors originates with this family and is perpetuated by their own exclusive-minded threatening. This truth is the obvious and commanding reality that cannot be discussed, the proverbial “elephant in the room”. The family behaves as if this prominent actuality doesn’t matter and, for solving their current problem with the neighbors, they regard it as irrelevant.

    Before we leave this too-obvious analogy, it should be mentioned that the family has currently concluded the sale of its explosives-making technology to another neighbor it regards as “friendly”. In the past, the family has encouraged and helped several of its “friends” to make and store high-explosives, despite the overwhelming consensus of the neighborhood — including generations of this family — that such explosives are dangerous and unwelcome. The utter hypocrisy and immorality of such activities is lost on the family members, who cannot discuss or even acknowledge the “elephant in the room”.

    Unfortunately, this analogy is not a mere abstraction. The Bush Administration has imposed its famous love of secrecy on all matters pertaining to U.S. production, storage, and deployment of nuclear weapons. The American people, whose “security” is asserted as the reason for the enormous U.S. nuclear arsenal, are now prohibited from knowing about the size, content, deployment, or status of this world-threatening arsenal built in their name, even in historic terms. (Note 1)

    The imposition of a secretive “security” regime regarding nuclear weapons is nothing new. It has been employed since the beginning of the nuclear age to both ensure the unfettered development of nuclear weapons and to silence knowledgeable critics. One only has to regard the history of Robert Oppenheimer’s purge from the nuclear establishment, or the sneering persecution of Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, to understand the current reluctance of scientists and media professionals to speak openly about the threat implied by American nuclear weapons. The nuclear “security” regime is notoriously good at keeping its secrets, oversensitive to criticism, and vindictive towards its critics.

    Nevertheless, over decades of daunting challenges, the persistent efforts of anti-nuclear advocates finally brought the United States, in 1968, to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and embrace its vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. With its endorsement of the treaty, the United States acknowledged its responsibility to cease proliferating, and to negotiate “in good faith” for the elimination nuclear weapons from the world. The achievements of the NPT have largely been ignored and abandoned by Bush II’s Administration. (Note 2)

    The recent demonstration of nuclear capabilities by North Korea, and the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons implied by Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, have laid bare the sanctimony and bad faith of the United States in its nuclear proliferation policies.

    Although the single nuclear explosion recently orchestrated by North Korea stands in stark contrast to the 1,054 nuclear tests conducted by the United States, none of our political leaders seem able to grasp the contradiction inherent in their stern admonishments that North Korea’s nuclear explosions are illegal, immoral, and must not be allowed.

    In the sensationalized U.S. media reports surrounding the North Korean nuclear explosion, scant mention is made of the numerous U.S. nuclear weapons targeting Pyongyang. Even though North Korea has demanded that such U.S. threats cease as a prerequisite for meaningful talks about abandoning their nuclear weapons program, the posture of the Bush II administration is that the threat posed by American nuclear weapons is inviolable and cannot be negotiated, even as a topic of discussion. Although President Bush allowed himself to say that U.S. policy sought “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula”, no admission or explanation of the United States’ role in amplifying nuclear tensions there has been forthcoming.

    The uranium enrichment activities undertaken by Iran, ostensibly for “peaceful” nuclear power generation, are the source of urgent diplomatic threatening. Iran, a NPT signatory, has endorsed, defended, and offered to strengthen the NPT. Nevertheless, the Bush II administration’s profitable sale of nuclear enrichment technology to India, with no credible pretense that such technology will be used for “peaceful” purposes, is lauded as a wonderful step forward in U.S./India relations. India has steadfastly refused to sign or endorse the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The U.S. Congress, which approved the deal, is, again, unable to make the link between the proliferation of nuclear technology to India and U.S. obligations under the NPT. The impending threat posed by Iran’s disdain for international opinion and obligations under the very same treaty is regarded as an international crisis, demanding sanctions or worse; while the sale of nuclear enrichment technology to India, a nuclear “rogue state” in NPT terms, is regarded as a blessing.

    There is a black-out in effect for the U.S. news media regarding the number one contention of the Iranians regarding their nuclear ambitions — that their sworn enemy, Israel, has, for decades secretly built and amassed nuclear weapons to threaten the region, especially Iran. The furtive secret of Israel’s nuclear capabilities has been hypocritically approved by, and may even have been abetted by, the United States. The U.S., following Israel’s policy, has staunchly denied the existence of well-known Israeli nuclear capabilities, and prevents any discussion of this important concealment in international forums or Arab/Israeli negotiations. Israel has never signed, and does not endorse, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    On Bush’s watch, “atomic weapons have been revalued – not quite to the point of legitimacy, perhaps, but certainly upward, as sources of influence, national pride, and anti-American defiance.” The posture of this Administration regards the NPT as irrelevant, and argues, “it is time to embrace an updated system of the deterrence and threats of massive retaliation that prevailed during the Cold War.”

    The solution to the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation is to engage the imagination and will of the world’s people who stand to win their future, or lose it catastrophically, depending on the outcome of the project of making nuclear weapons illegitimate. These “people” are not only North Korean dictators or Iranian zealots, Russians, Israelis, or Pakistanis, but United States citizens. The international project of making nuclear weapons illegitimate — active since the first days of the Nuclear Age — is currently embodied in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The unique position of the United States, as both the inventor, single user, and chief propagator of these world-threatening weapons, makes this nation especially responsible to ensure that they are never used again.

    Until Americans can recognize our own role in this dangerous situation, and come fully and honestly to grips with our responsibility to change our own awareness and behavior, “the elephant in the room” will continue to prevent any meaningful change. To turn away from this responsibility, to continue to erode the decades of positive work manifested in the NPT, to willingly fail in our critical duty, would be far more irrational and irresponsible than any calculation made by North Korea or Iran. It is time to acknowledge the brave and discerning actions of those who seek to bring the people and government of the United States, reluctant though they may be, to an honest recognition of their own accountability.

    It is time to challenge all the citizens of the world to stop denying it is we ourselves who created this life-threatening situation and perpetuate it; and it is also we who have the power and ability to change it. If we can simply awaken to our true responsibility, “the elephant in the room” will disappear –really, and not just by our denying it. Only by changing ourselves can we hope to change the world.

    1. NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE (Vol. 12, #33; 24 August 2006): According to a report released in August, 2006 by the National Security Archive (NSA), the Pentagon and the Energy Department have reclassified as national security secrets historical data relating to the size of the American nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.
    The NSA report details for the public the number of Minuteman missiles (1,000), Titan II missiles (54), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (656) in the historic U.S. Cold War arsenal – information that had previously been public through the administrations of four Secretaries of Defense in the 1960s and 70s but is now blacked out. Security classifiers have also redacted from documents deployment information relating to the number of American nuclear weapons in Great Britain and Germany — information that was first declassified in 1999. Also blacked out — details regarding the nuclear deployment arrangements with Canada, even though the Canadian government has declassified its side of the arrangement.

    2. Consider the sanctions imposed under the authority of the NPT, and the real accomplishments of its police force, the IAEA, in Iraq, where, after years of a rigorous inspection regime, and in spite of militant arguments by the Bush Administration to the contrary, Iraq was found to be free of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

    3. Coll, Steve (October 23 2006). “Nuke Rebuke”. The New Yorker, p 31.

    4. Ibid.

    James Dinwiddie is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.