Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: no first use

  • It’s Time to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat

    The US and Russia have made progress in reducing nuclear weapons from their Cold War highs, but we still have a long way to go. There remain some 35,000 weapons in the world, and 4,500 of these are on “hair-trigger” alert.

    If a single nuclear weapon were accidentally launched, it could destroy a city but that’s not all. With current launch-on-warning doctrines, an accidental launch could end up in a full-fledged nuclear war. This would mean the end of civilization and everything we value – just like that. The men and women in charge of these weapons could make a mistake, computers or sensors could make a mistake – and just like that our beautiful world could be obliterated. We can’t let that happen.

    Along with Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Marian Wright Edelman, Mohammad Ali, Harrison Ford, and many others, I have signed an Appeal to World Leaders to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity. This Appeal calls for some sensible steps, such as de-alerting nuclear weapons. Just this step alone would make the world and all of us much safer from the threat of an accidental nuclear war while we pursue a world free of nuclear weapons.

    President Clinton recently said, “As we enter this new millennium, we should all commit ourselves anew to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.” I think the American people need to encourage the President and our representatives in Congress to assert US leadership in achieving such a world. We owe it not only to ourselves, but to our children, grandchildren and all future generations.

    But what should we do?

    First, the Russians have proposed cutting the number of US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons down to 1,000 to 1,500 each. We have responded by saying that we are only prepared to go to 2,000 to 2,500 weapons. But why? Isn’t it in the security interests of the American people to decrease the Russian nuclear arsenal as much as possible? We should move immediately to the lowest number of nuclear weapons to which the Russians will agree.

    Second, we should be upholding the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty instead of seeking to amend it. By limiting the number of defensive interceptor missiles, as the ABM Treaty does, we prevent a return to an offensive nuclear arms race. An effective missile defense system may work in the movies, but experts say it has very little chance of working or of not being overcome by decoys in real life. I certainly wouldn’t bet the security of my children’s future on building an expensive missile defense system that would violate the long-standing ABM Treaty.

    Third, we should declare a policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons. There is no conceivable reason for attacking first with nuclear weapons or any other weapon of mass destruction and that should be our policy.

    Fourth, we should be engaging in good faith negotiations with Russia and the other nuclear weapons states to achieve a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. That’s what we promised in the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and recently reaffirmed at the 2000 Review Conference for this Treaty. If we want the non-nuclear weapons states to keep their part of the non-proliferation bargain and not develop nuclear weapons, we’d better keep our part of the bargain.

    When President Clinton goes to Moscow in early June to meet with President Putin, I’d like to see him come back with an agreement to dramatically reduce nuclear dangers by taking our respective nuclear arsenals off “hair-trigger” alert, by re-affirming the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, by agreeing on policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons, and by beginning negotiations in good faith on an international treaty for the phased elimination of nuclear weapons under strict and effective international control. If Presidents Clinton and Putin would take these steps, they would be real heroes of our time. And we could use some real life heroes.

     

  • A Twelve Step Program to End Nuclear Weapons Addiction

    The following steps should be taken by the nuclear weapons states to assure a full commitment to ending the nuclear weapons threat that now hangs over the heads of all humanity and clouds our future:

    1. Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.

    2. Publicly acknowledge the weaknesses and fallibilities of deterrence: that deterrence is only a theory and is clearly ineffective against nations whose leaders may be irrational or suicidal; nor can deterrence assure against accidents, misperceptions, miscalculations, or terrorists.

    3. Publicly acknowledge the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons under international law as stated by the International Court of Justice in its 1996 opinion, and further acknowledge the obligation under international law for good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.

    4. Publicly acknowledge the immorality of threatening to annihilate millions, even hundreds of millions, of people in the name of national security.

    5. De-alert all nuclear weapons and de-couple all nuclear warheads from their delivery vehicles.

    6. Declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and policies of No Use against non-nuclear weapons states.

    7. Establish an international accounting system for all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear materials.

    8. Sign and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, cease laboratory and subcritical nuclear tests designed to modernize and improve nuclear weapons systems, cease construction of Megajoule in France and the National Ignition Facility in the US and end research programs that could lead to the development of pure fusion weapons, and close the remaining nuclear test sites in Nevada and Novaya Zemlya.

    9. Re-affirm the commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and cease efforts to violate that Treaty by the deployment of national or theater missile defenses, and cease the militarization of space.

    10. Support existing nuclear weapons free zones, and establish new ones in the Middle East, Central Europe, North Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.

    11.Set forth a plan to complete the transition under international control and monitoring to zero nuclear weapons by 2020, with agreed upon levels of nuclear disarmament to be achieved by the NPT Review Conferences in 2005, 2010 and 2015.

    12. Begin to reallocate the billions of dollars currently being spent annually for maintaining nuclear arsenals ($35 billion in the U.S. alone) to improving human health, education and welfare throughout the world.

  • Scientists Demand NATO: No First Use of Nuclear Weapons as an Essential First Step Towards a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World

    The German initiators of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP) demand a No-First-Use pledge for nuclear weapons as an essential step towards a nuclear-weapon-free world. We support the initiative by the German Foreign Minister for a No-First Use in NATO and demand further steps leading to complete nuclear disarmament. The decision of Germany and 11 further NATO member states, not to vote against resolution A/C.1/53/L.48 “Towards a Nuclear Weapon Free World: The Need for a New Agenda” in the UN First Committee on 13. November 1998 is a courageous step and a signal that even within NATO there is opposition against the indefinite reliance on nuclear weapons.

    NATO’s nuclear first-use doctrine, stemming from the darkest ages of the Cold War, is completely anachronistic. It is based on the premise of a massive conventional attack of the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe. None of the underlying assumptions, which were already questionable in earlier times, have any justifiable basis, neither in Europe nor elsewhere. Striking first is not defensive, neither against supposed aggressor states nor against terrorists. The threat of striking first is also in complete contradiction to the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice which declared the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons to be generally illegal. First use would be illegal in any case. The insistence of the US government on the first-use doctrine is an indicator that the last remaining superpower wants to keep the right to use nuclear weapons any time against any point on this planet. No other country should find this acceptable. As long as this threat persists, more developing countries could follow India and Pakistan to seek reliance on nuclear weapons, undermining the whole non-proliferation regime. A No-First-Use would be the bare minimal step, signalling the willingness of the nuclear weapon states to diminish the nuclear threat.

    No-First-Use could be a first but should not be the last step. Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as the International Court of Justice demand complete nuclear disarmament. No nuclear weapons state can change this fact. What is required is an on-going international negotiation process on the step-wise transformation of the insufficient non-proliferation regime into a new regime of a nuclear-weapon-free world. How this could be done was examined in an expert study of INESAP “Beyond the NPT – A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World” that was presented in April 1995 in New York, as well as in a number of studies by other organizations and individuals that followed. This study sketches a path towards a nuclear-weapon-free world, combined with a process of negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) as a legal framework to ban and eliminate all nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the call for the NWC has been expressed by more than 1000 international non-governmental organizations and citizen groups (Abolition 2000) as well as by more than two thirds of all States in UN resolutions of the years 1996, 1997 and 1998. A model NWC that was drafted by an international Committee of lawyers, scientists and disarmament experts is now an official UN document (UN doc. A/C.1/52/7).

    Even though the path towards a nuclear-weapon-free world cannot be planned in all details in advance, the required steps can only be negotiated and realized if the goal is clear. The necessary political initiatives have to be taken now. As a non-nuclear-weapon state and NATO member, Germany has a considerable political weight and a special responsibility.

    Therefore, we urge the new German government to insist on its independent path and to take an active role to initiate negotiations on the elimination of all nuclear weapons, aiming at the Nuclear Weapons Convention as a binding framework of international law. It would be consequent and in accordance with the government coalition agreement if the German delegation at the UN would not only abstain on disarmament resolutions in the UN General Assembly but would vote “Yes”. What is most pressing is that Germany makes an end to the first-use doctrine and pushes for the removal of all nuclear weapons from its own territory, a dangerous remainder of past ages.

  • No First Use of Nuclear Weapons

    https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/wagingpeaceseries/fischer.pdf