Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: non-proliferation treaty

On the 50th Anniversary of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: An Exercise in Bad Faith

On July 1, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) turned 50 years old. In that agreement, five nuclear weapons states— the US, Russia, UK, France, and China—promised, a half a century ago, to make “good faith efforts” to give up their nuclear weapons, while non-nuclear weapons states promised not to acquire them. Every country in the world agreed to join the treaty except for India, Pakistan, and Israel which then went on to develop their own nuclear arsenals. To sweeten the pot, the NPT’s Faustian bargain promised the non-nuclear weapons states an “inalienable right” to so-called “peaceful” nuclear power. Every nuclear power reactor is a potential bomb factory since its operation produces radioactive waste which can be enriched into bomb-grade fuel for nuclear bombs. North Korea developed its promised “peaceful” nuclear technology and then walked out of the treaty and made nuclear bombs. And it was feared that Iran was on its way to enriching their “peaceful” nuclear waste to make nuclear weapons as well, which is why Obama negotiated the “Iran deal” which provided more stringent inspections of Iran’s enrichment activity, now under assault by the US with the election of Donald Trump.

Despite the passage of 50 years since the NPT states promised “good faith” efforts to disarm, and the required Review and Extension conference 25 years ago, which since then has instituted substantive review conferences every five years as a condition for having extended the NPT indefinitely rather than letting it lapse in 1995, there are still about 15,000 nuclear weapons on our planet. All but some 1,000 of them are in the US and Russia which keep nearly 2,000 weapons on hair-trigger alert, poised and ready to fire on each other’s cities in a matter of minutes. Only this month, the Trump administration upped the ante on a plan developed by Obama’s war machine to spend one trillion dollars over the next ten years on two new nuclear bomb factories, new weapons, and nuclear-firing planes, missiles and submarines. Trump’s new proposal for a massive Pentagon budget of $716 billion, an increase of $82 billion, was passed in the House and now in the Senate by 85 Republicans and Democrats alike, with only 10 Senators voting against it! When it comes to gross and violent military spending, bi-partisanship is the modus operandi! And the most radical aspect of the budget is a massive expansion of the US nuclear arsenal, ending a 15-year prohibition on developing “more usable” low-yield nuclear warheads that can be delivered by submarine as well as by air-launched cruise missiles. “More usable” in this case, are bombs that are at least as destructive as the atom bombs that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki, since the subsequently developed hydrogen bombs in the US arsenal are magnitudes more devastating and catastrophic.

Putin, in his March 2018 State of the Nation Address, also spoke of new nuclear-weapons bearing missiles being developed by Russia in response to the US having pulled out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and then planting missiles in eastern Europe. He noted that:

Back in 2000, the US announced its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Russia was categorically against this. We saw the Soviet-US ABM Treaty signed in 1972 as the cornerstone of the international security system. Under this treaty, the parties had the right to deploy ballistic missile defence systems only in one of its regions. Russia deployed these systems around Moscow, and the US around its Grand Forks land-based ICBM base.

Together with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the ABM Treaty not only created an atmosphere of trust but also prevented either party from recklessly using nuclear weapons, which would have endangered humankind, because the limited number of ballistic missile defence systems made the potential aggressor vulnerable to a response strike.

We did our best to dissuade the Americans from withdrawing from the treaty. All in vain. The US pulled out of the treaty in 2002. Even after that we tried to develop constructive dialogue with the Americans. We proposed working together in this area to ease concerns and maintain the atmosphere of trust. At one point, I thought that a compromise was possible, but this was not to be. All our proposals, absolutely all of them, were rejected. And then we said that we would have to improve our modern strike systems to protect our security.

Ironically, this week the US Department of State, under the heading “Diplomacy in Action”, issued a joint statement with US Secretary of State Pompeo and the Russian and UK Foreign Ministers, extolling the NPT as the “essential foundation for international efforts to stem the looming threat—then and now—that nuclear weapons would proliferate across the globe…and has limited the risk that the vast devastation of nuclear war would be unleashed.”

All this is occurring against the stunning new development of the negotiation and passage of a new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the culmination of a ten-year campaign by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which succeeded in lobbying for 122 nations to adopt this new treaty which prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. Just as the world has banned chemical and biological weapons, as well as landmines and cluster bombs, the new treaty to ban nuclear weapons closes the legal gap created by the NPT which only requires “good faith efforts” for nuclear disarmament, and doesn’t prohibit them.

At the last NPT review in 2015, South Africa spoke eloquently about the state of nuclear apartheid created by the NPT where the nuclear “haves” hold the rest of the world hostage to their devastating nuclear threats which provided even more impetus for the successful negotiation of the ban treaty. ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize for their winning campaign and is now engaged in lobbying for ratification by the 50 states required by the ban treaty to enter into force. To date, 58 nations have signed the treaty, with 10 national legislatures having weighed in to ratify it (see www.icanw.org). None of the nine nuclear weapons states or the US nuclear alliance nations in NATO, as well as South Korea, Australia, and surprisingly, Japan, have signed the treaty and all of them boycotted the negotiations, except for the Netherlands because a grassroots campaign resulted in their Parliament voting to mandate attendance at the ban negotiations, even though they voted against the treaty. Grassroots groups are organizing in the five NATO states that host US nuclear weapons—Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Turkey—to remove these weapons from US bases now that they are prohibited.

There is a vibrant new divestment campaign, for use in the nuclear weapons states and their allies sheltering under the US nuclear umbrella, www.dontbankonthebomb.com. There is also a parliamentary pledge for legislators to sign who live in nuclear weapons states or allied states at http://www.icanw.org/projects/pledge/ calling on their governments to join the ban treaty. In the US, there is a campaign to pass resolutions at city and state levels in favor of the new treaty at www.nuclearban.us. Many of these nuclear divestment campaigns (such as World BEYOND War) are working in cooperation with the new Code Pink Divest from the War Campaign.

It remains to be seen whether the NPT will continue to have relevance in light of the evident lack of integrity by the parties who promised “good faith” efforts for nuclear disarmament, and instead are all modernizing and inventing new forms of nuclear terror. The recent detente between the US and North Korea, with proposals to sign a peace treaty and formally end the Korean War, after a 65 year cease-fire since 1953, and the proposed meeting between the two nuclear gargantuans, the US and Russia, together with the new nuclear ban treaty, may be an opportunity to shift gears and look forward to a world without nuclear weapons if we can overcome the corrupt forces that keep the military-industrial-academic-congressional complex in business, seemingly forever!

Alice Slater serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War.

July 2, 2018
Charm Offensive Takes Center Stage at the NPT

This article was originally published in Reaching Critical Will’s News In Review, which is distributed to delegates and civil society representatives at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee in Geneva.

In February, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was widely and, I would say, unfairly criticized by the U.S. media, politicians, and even diplomats for its participation in the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games. By sending high-level, suave officials to the Olympics, the narrative went, the DPRK was engaged in a “charm offensive” to win over the world and make us forget about its serious human rights violations.

This week at the NPT PrepCom, the United States launched a charm offensive of its own, holding a well-attended side event during Wednesday’s lunchtime session. Friendly faces from the Department of State and Department of Defense told attendees that there is nothing to worry about in the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR); there is continuity with past U.S. nuclear policy, and their actions to modernize their nuclear arsenal and build new types of nuclear weapons are being done benevolently for the security of the world.

The substance of the side event did not differ much from the content of the written Nuclear Posture Review, but it was presented with a smile and an assurance that everything would be ok – definitely not the prevailing mood of the written document.

Presenters applauded themselves for modeling transparency, saying that they hope other nuclear-armed states will publish Nuclear Posture Reviews and talk about them at future NPT conferences. It’s true – other nuclear-armed states, both inside and outside of the NPT, have been less transparent than the United States.

A darker view of the Nuclear Posture Review was presented on Tuesday at a side event organized by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Speakers from a range of NGOs discussed the implications of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review for the NPT and for humanity.

Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists criticized the U.S. nuclear weapons complex as a “self-licking ice cream cone.” Many of the modernization programs and proposed new nuclear weapons systems are being undertaken in order to simply maintain nuclear weapons production capacity and know-how at extraordinary financial cost. The real costs, however, lie in the additional decades of nuclear weapons deployment and the human and environmental toll that is inevitable if the weapons are ever used.

Jackie Cabasso of Western States Legal Foundation predicted the following day’s U.S. charm offensive when she called the Nuclear Posture Review a sales pitch. Ms. Cabasso also believes the NPR was issued as a threat. The threats to use nuclear weapons are explicit throughout the document, but even the issuing of the Executive Summary in Russian, Chinese, and Korean can be viewed as a not-so-veiled threat to nations that the United States currently views as adversaries.

At the end of Wednesday’s side event, Christopher Ford, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, said, “This is how responsible nuclear weapon states should behave.” Self-congratulation and charm offensives will not hide the only purpose of nuclear weapons: to indiscriminately slaughter millions of human beings.

There is no such thing as a responsible nuclear weapon state. The only responsible action a nuclear weapon state can take is to tirelessly work to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide. Not later, not some mythical future date “when the conditions are right.” Right now.

April 27, 2018
Looking Reality in the Eye

Rick Wayman delivered this talk at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s side event at the United Nations in Geneva on April 24, 2018 entitled “The Trump Nuclear Policy: The Nuclear Posture Review’s Threats to the NPT and Humanity.”

I have a lot to say about the Nuclear Posture Review and the other statements, documents, and tweets that together comprise U.S. nuclear weapons policy under President Trump. We have a limited amount of time, though, so I’ll focus on three concepts that come through in the U.S. document.

In the introduction to the NPR, and repeated later in the body of the document – and subsequently repeated in official statements the US has made – the authors write, “We must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

The glasses they are looking through are very, very dark. Because what they propose over and over in this document is a readiness and a willingness to use nuclear weapons, including to use nuclear weapons first. They unashamedly say that they are ready to resume nuclear testing in response to “geopolitical challenges.”

I dedicated my life to achieving the abolition of nuclear weapons after hearing two survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima speak when I was 23, just before my two countries of citizenship – the U.S. and UK – invaded Iraq under the false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction.

To this day, some of the people I admire most in the world are hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who openly share the unimaginable suffering imposed upon them when nuclear weapons were used on their cities. One of my personal and professional role models was Mr. Tony de Brum, who passed away last August from cancer, a fate that has befallen so many of his fellow Marshall Islanders following 12 years of brutal atmospheric nuclear testing by the U.S. I’ve spoken with nuclear testing survivors from many countries around the world, and their stories are real.

That is reality. To see the world as it is, we must look into their eyes.

***

In the NPR, the U.S. accuses Russia and China of arms racing. The U.S. does not explicitly admit in the document that it is also a part of this nuclear arms race. But last month, President Trump said in the context of U.S.-Russian relations, “Being in an arms race is not a great thing.” He also identified the U.S.-Russia arms race as “getting out of control.”

I think he’s right. There is a new nuclear arms race, and it is out of control. Nuclear weapon designers at the United States’ Los Alamos National Laboratory have welcomed what they are calling the “second nuclear age.”

If we allow it to continue along this path, we will inevitably create new generations of victims. There is, of course, the risk of nuclear weapons being used. But lasting damage to humanity is caused at every level of nuclear weapons production. From uranium mining, to the production of plutonium, to the precarious storage of highly radioactive waste for tens of thousands of years, innocent victims are created by the arms racers.

When I was little, I used to watch the local news with my parents in the evening. Starting when I was five years old, Fernald was often the lead story. All I knew then was that people were really sick, and it was a scandal. It was only as an adult that I learned that, just a short drive from my family’s home, there was a uranium processing facility called the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center. They made materials for nuclear weapons. They contaminated the drinking water of local residents with uranium, and at one point released 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide into the environment.

That was just one site in one country that was part of the Cold War nuclear arms race. Are we really doing this all over again? Will my 8 year-old daughter hear about radioactive contamination on the radio as I’m driving her to school?

At this rate, I’m afraid the answer might be yes.

***

In the NPR, the authors write, “For decades, the United States led the world in efforts to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons.” Notice the use of past tense. They didn’t say that the United States “has led,” “is leading,” “will always lead” – they said that it “led” – meaning that that era has come to an end.

Two months ago, President Trump talked about the brand new nuclear force that the U.S. is creating. He said, “We have to do it because others are doing it. If they stop, we’ll stop. But they’re not stopping. So, if they’re not gonna stop, we’re gonna be so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before. And I hope they stop. And if they do, we’ll stop in two minutes. And frankly, I’d like to get rid of a lot of ’em. And if they want to do that, we’ll go along with them. We won’t lead the way, we’ll go along with them… But we will always be number one in that category, certainly as long as I’m president. We’re going to be far, far in excess of anybody else.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that quote. But let’s stick with the concept of leadership, and Trump’s idea that the U.S. is not going to be a leader – it is going to be a follower, no matter where it is being led.

It’s hard to argue with President Obama, who said that “as the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons, the United States has a moral obligation to continue to lead the way in eliminating them.” Yet here we are, unilaterally surrendering our leadership.

***

Speaking of morality, I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis last November at the Vatican, when he stated categorically about nuclear weapons that “the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned.” A bold moral statement, and one that I agree with.

The Nuclear Posture Review drips with the threat of use of nuclear weapons. It seeks to justify, rationalize, and shift blame for the United States’ continued possession and development of new nuclear weapons.

There is no excuse. The language in Article VI of the NPT is not perfectly objective, but even the most liberal interpretation of “at an early date” could not conclude that multiple generations is an acceptable timetable. Every state party to the NPT has a legal obligation to negotiate in good faith to stop this madness.

Many states have begun to fulfill this obligation through their participation in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. For the others, it’s still not too late to change direction.

April 24, 2018
The Doublespeak of Nuclear Disarmament

This article was originally published on the Huffington Post.

It’s easy to say you want a world without nuclear weapons. Nearly everyone does: even David Cameron. It’s like saying there should be no global poverty: the hard part is taking action to do something about it.

Imagine if David Cameron returned from his recent trade-boosting visit to China and had to concede, shamefaced, that he hadn’t mentioned trade with the UK.

Worse still: what if he returned and boasted of the fact that he hadn’t mentioned trade with the UK?

Well this is precisely what the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has just done following a UN meeting on nuclear disarmament.

‘What discussions,’ FCO Minister Hugh Robertson was asked in Parliament, ‘were held by [the FCO] on the replacement of the Trident submarines at the recent High Level Meeting on nuclear disarmament at the UN?’

‘No discussions’, he replied.

Even more disturbingly, Robertson went on to claim that this was all good and proper.

‘Maintaining the UK’s nuclear deterrent beyond the life of the current system is fully consistent with our obligations as a recognised nuclear weapon state under the treaty on the non-proliferation (NPT) of nuclear weapons,’ he stated.

Disingenuous doublespeak. He may as well have said: “building new nuclear weapons is the same as negotiating to get rid of them.”

And that is precisely what the UK, and all other nuclear armed states, are bound to do by the NPT. Article VI of the treaty states:

‘Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to… nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.’

The UK government claims to have a long-standing commitment to multilateral initiatives towards a world free of nuclear weapons, but it simply doesn’t practice what it preaches.

One recent initiative which the UK won’t even engage with is around the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons: supported by 125 states as well as NGOs around the world.

But the UK, in a joint statement with France and the US, expressed ‘regret’ that states and civil society actors have sought to highlight these dangers.

After a landmark conference on this issue in Oslo this year – which the British government failed to attend, despite Defence Secretary Philip Hammond being in Norway at the time – the UK still hasn’t RSVP’d to an invitation from the Mexican government to go to the follow-up conference in 2014.

Here, our friend Hugh Robertson at the FCO can shed a little more light on the government’s position:

‘We are concerned that some efforts under the humanitarian initiative appear increasingly aimed at negotiating a nuclear weapons convention prohibiting the possession of nuclear weapons’.

What a concern! States and global civil society want the UK to fulfil its treaty obligations and ‘negotiate’ towards disarmament!?

The government’s apparent aversion to a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) is all the more disturbing given how instrumental the framework of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) has been recently in the historic elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons. These treaty apparatuses have been shown to enable and facilitate true progress on disarmament, yet the UK still refuses to join the call for similar initiatives for nuclear weapons.

When this is the attitude of our politicians, how can we see their professed commitment to disarmament as anything other than shallow and meaningless rhetoric?

December 5, 2013
Outlawing Nuclear Weapons: Time for a New International Treaty?
Is it time for a new international treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons? The short answer to this question is, Yes, it is time. Actually, it is past time. The critical question, however, is not whether we need a new international treaty. We do. The critical question is: How do we achieve the political will among the nuclear weapon states to begin negotiations for a new international treaty to outlaw and eliminate all nuclear weapons?

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Is Failing

The NPT has reciprocal obligations. The nuclear weapon states seek to hold the line against proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries. In return, the non-nuclear weapon states rely upon Article VI of the NPT to level the playing field. Article VI contains three obligations:

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

None of these obligations have been fulfilled. Negotiations in good faith have not been pursued on any of the three obligations.

It has been 42 years since the treaty entered into force, and the nuclear arms race continues. All of the NPT nuclear weapon states are modernizing their arsenals. They have not negotiated in good faith to end the nuclear arms race at an early date.

Nor have the NPT nuclear weapon states negotiated in good faith to achieve nuclear disarmament. They have not acted with a sense of urgency to achieve the goal of nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. They have not made a commitment to zero nuclear weapons.

Finally, the NPT nuclear weapon states have not negotiated in good faith on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. Since the NPT entered into force in 1970, there have been no negotiations on general and complete disarmament.

The NPT nuclear weapon states seem perfectly comfortable with their failure to fulfill their obligations under Article VI of the NPT. Given this lack of political will to achieve any of the three Article VI obligations, the prospects for a new international treaty are dim if states continue with business as usual. That is why the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation called for bold action by the non-nuclear weapon states in its Briefing Paper for the 2012 Preparatory Committee Meeting for the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. The Briefing Paper concluded:

“It is necessary to ensure that nuclear weapons will not be used again as instruments of war, risking the destruction of civilization, nuclear famine and the extinction of most or all humans and other forms of complex life. Exposing the dangers of launch-on-warning nuclear policies and the dysfunctional and counterproductive nature of nuclear deterrence theory is essential for awaking policy makers and the public to the imperative goal of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a goal that demands boldness by all who seek a sustainable future for humanity and the planet. The non-nuclear weapon states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty have both the right and the responsibility to assert leadership in assuring that the nuclear weapon states fulfill their obligations for good faith negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament.”

The Premises of Bold Action

Bold action by the non-nuclear weapon states would be based upon the following premises:
1. There needs to be a sense of urgency to eliminate the risks posed by nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
What Would Constitute Bold Action?

The non-nuclear weapon states need to demonstrate to the nuclear weapon states that they are serious about the need for a new international treaty, which would be the means to fulfill the NPT Article VI obligations. UN General Assembly Resolutions are not getting the job done. They are not being taken seriously by the nuclear weapon states; nor are exhortations by the UN Secretary-General and other world leaders. Bold action by non-nuclear weapon states, in descending order of severity, could include these options:
1. Declaring the NPT null and void as a result of the failure of the nuclear weapon states to act in good faith in fulfilling their Article VI obligations.
Conclusion

At the outset, I posed this question: How do we achieve the political will among the nuclear weapon states to begin negotiations for a new international treaty to outlaw and eliminate all nuclear weapons? The answer is that the non-nuclear weapon states must unite and pressure the nuclear weapon states by bold action.

Fifty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis and more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, we are approaching a critical time in the Nuclear Age. Our technological genius threatens our human future. Too much time has passed and too little has been accomplished toward achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.

Bold action is needed to move the nuclear weapon states to fulfill their obligations under Article VI of the NPT. I favor the first two actions listed above: a boycott and legal action. I fear that, unless such actions are taken soon by non-nuclear weapon states to pressure the nuclear weapon states to act in good faith, the likelihood is that business as usual will continue, and states will end up choosing the more extreme remedies of the third and fourth actions listed above: withdrawal from the NPT or deeming it null and void. Should this be the case, we will lose the only existing treaty that obligates its members to nuclear disarmament and also the likelihood of achieving a new international treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.
November 26, 2012
Putting U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policies on Trial in the Court of Public Opinion

The International Court of Justice, the highest and most authoritative court in the world, has stated that the use of nuclear weapons would be illegal if such use violated international humanitarian law. Failing to distinguish between civilians and combatants would be illegal, as would any use resulting in unnecessary suffering. Additionally, the Court found that any threat of such use would also be illegal. It is virtually impossible to imagine any use or threat of use that would not violate international humanitarian law.

US nuclear weapons policy fails to meet the standards of international humanitarian law and to live up to its treaty obligations in the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Until the issue of US nuclear weapons policy can be properly litigated in in a US domestic court, US policies related to the threat or use of nuclear weapons need to be put on trial in the most important court in the world, the court of public opinion. It is US citizens who may well determine the fate of the world, by their action or inaction on this most critical of all issues confronting humanity.

The Charges

1. The US has failed to fulfill its obligation to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligates the parties not only to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries, but also obligates good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament by the five nuclear weapons states parties to the treaty: the US, Russia, UK, France and China. In interpreting this part of the treaty, the International Court of Justice stated in a 1996 Advisory Opinion, “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.” It has not been the policy of the United States to pursue such negotiations despite the passage of more than 40 years since this treaty entered into force and more than 20 years since the Cold War came to an end.

2. The US has failed to fulfill its obligation to engage in good faith negotiations to achieve a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty also obligates parties to the treaty to engage in good faith negotiations for a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date. But rather than negotiating to bring an end to the nuclear arms race, the US has continued to modernize its nuclear weapons, their delivery systems and the infrastructure that keeps the arms race alive. Doing so has been costly, provocative and illegal under international law.

3. The US threatens the mass annihilation of the human species (omnicide).

The consequence of a large-scale nuclear war could be the extinction of most or all of the human species, along with other forms of complex life. This would be a most egregious violation of international humanitarian law. In fact, it would undermine the very foundation of the law, which is the protection of innocent individuals from harm. The indiscriminate nature of nuclear weapons and policies that threaten their use, such as nuclear deterrence policy, cannot be made to conform to the law, since any use of these weapons would cause a humanitarian disaster beyond our capacity to respond to the ensuing suffering and death.

4. The US is recklessly endangering life.

Certain policies of the United States may be viewed as recklessly endangering life on the planet. These policies include reliance on its land-based missile force, maintaining nuclear weapons on high-alert status, launch-on-warning and first use of nuclear weapons. Land-based missiles are attractive targets for attack in a time of tension between nuclear powers. Maintaining the weapons on high alert and a policy of launch-on-warning could result in a launch in response to a false warning, with all attendant consequences of retaliation and nuclear war. Although not well known to US citizens, their government has always maintained a policy of possible first use of nuclear weapons, rather than a policy of no first use.

5. The US is committing crimes against the environment (ecocide).

The effects of nuclear war and its preparations cannot be contained in either time or space. Radiation knows no boundaries and will affect countless future generations by poisoning the environment that sustains life. The effects of nuclear war on the environment would be severe and long lasting and would include – in addition to blast, fire and radiation – global nuclear famine, even from a regional nuclear war.

6. The US is committing crimes against future generations.

The future itself is put at risk by nuclear weapons policies that could lead to nuclear war, and where there are nuclear weapons the possibility of nuclear war cannot be dismissed. A nuclear war would, at best, deprive new generations of the opportunity for a flourishing and sustainable life on the planet. At worst, such a war would end civilization and foreclose the possibility of human life on Earth.

7. The US has contaminated indigenous lands.

Nuclear weapons production, testing and the storage of long-lived nuclear waste have largely taken place on the lands of indigenous peoples. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, located on the reservation of the Yakama Indian Nation, is where the US produced the plutonium for some 60,000 nuclear weapons. It is one of the most environmentally contaminated sites on the planet and the Yakama Indians, who were granted hunting and fishing rights in perpetuity in an 1855 treaty, have suffered disproportionately. The US has also contaminated the lands of the Western Shoshone Nation and the Marshall Islands with nuclear and thermonuclear weapons tests.

8. The US has breached the trust of the international community.

The Marshall Islands were the Trust Territory of the United States from the end of World War II until they gained their independence in 1986. Between 1946 and 1958, the US tested 67 nuclear and thermonuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands with the equivalent explosive power of one-and-a-half Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons every day for 12 years. The people of the Marshall Islands who endured these tests and their offspring have suffered grave injuries, premature deaths, and displacement from their island homes, which can only be construed as a most serious breach of trusteeship of these islands. The US continues to test nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which is on the land of the Chumash Indians, and targets most of these missiles at the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Test Range in the Marshall Islands.

9. The US has conspicuously wasted public funds.

The public funds used to develop, manufacture, test, deploy and maintain the US nuclear arsenal and its delivery systems have been estimated to exceed $7.5 trillion. Even now, more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the government continues to spend $60 to $70 billion annually and plans to maintain this level for the next decade. These funds have been taken from the resources that could have been used to feed the hungry, house the homeless, provide education for our children and help restore our infrastructure and our economic well-being.

10. The US has conspired to commit international crimes and to cover them up by silence.

US nuclear weapons policy threatens each of the three major Nuremberg Tribunal crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US government and major US media have conspired to prevent a full and open public discussion of nuclear weapons crimes. Why are the US government and US mainstream media silent about these crimes? Why is the mainstream media so accepting of US nuclear weapons policy, which threatens the destruction of civilization? This conspiracy of silence has helped to assure the complacency of the American people.

Conclusion

Current US nuclear weapons policy is illegal, immoral and runs a high risk of resulting in nuclear catastrophe. We cannot wait until there is a nuclear war before we act to rid the world of these weapons of mass annihilation. The US should be the leader in this effort, rather than an obstacle to its realization. It is up to the court of public opinion to assure that the US asserts this leadership. The time to act is now.

August 31, 2012
The Folly of Mindless Science

In 2000, I traveled to India, invited to speak at the organizing meeting of the Indian Coalition for Nuclear and Disarmament and Peace. About 600 organizations, including some 80 from Pakistan gathered in New Delhi to strategize for nuclear disarmament. India had quietly acquired the bomb and performed one nuclear test at Pokhran in 1974 but it was in 1998 that all hell broke out, with India exploding five underground tests, swiftly followed by six in Pakistan.

The trigger for this outbreak of nuclear testing in Asia was the refusal of the US Clinton Administration, under the pressure of the US nuclear weapons scientists, to negotiate a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that precluded laboratory testing and “sub-critical” tests, where plutonium could be blown up underground with chemicals without causing a chain reaction—hence defined as a non-nuclear test by the US and the nuclear club. India warned the nuclear powers at the Commission on Disarmament (CD) where the CTBT was being negotiated, that it opposed the CTBT because it contained discriminatory “loopholes … exploited by some countries to continue their testing activity, using more sophisticated and advanced techniques”, and it would never agree to consensus on the treaty unless the ability to continue high-tech laboratory testing and computer-driven nuclear experiments was foreclosed.

In an unprecedented move of colonial hubris, Australia, led by Ambassador Richard Butler, brought the treaty to the UN for approval over India’s objections, the first time in the history of that body that the UN General Assembly was asked to endorse a treaty that had not received consensus to go forward in the negotiating body at the CD. I spoke to Ambassador Butler at a UN reception where the wine was flowing a bit liberally. I asked him what he was going to do about India’s objection. He informed me that he had been visiting with Clinton’s National Security Advisor in Washington, Sandy Berger, and Berger said, “We’re going to screw India!” And Butler repeated for emphasis, “We’re going to screw India!” Unsurprisingly, India and Pakistan soon tested overtly, not wanting to be left behind in the technology race for new improved nuclear weapons which was characterized blasphemously by the US in biblical terms, as its “stockpile stewardship” program to protect the ‘safety and reliability” of the arsenal.

As for the “safety and reliability” of the nuclear arsenal, in the late 1980s, during the heady days of perestroika and glasnost, when there was talk of a nuclear testing moratorium, initially instituted in the Soviet Union after coal miners and other activists marched and protested the enormous health threats from Russian testing in Kazakhstan, a debate in Congress resulted in an annotated Congressional record indicating that since 1950 there were 32 airplane crashes carrying nuclear weapons and not one of them ever went off! Two spewed some plutonium around Palomares, Spain and Thule, Greenland that had to be “cleaned up”, but there was no catastrophic nuclear explosion. There are still some bombs unaccounted for including an airplane still missing which crashed off the coast of Georgia. How much more “safer and reliable” would the weapons have to be? Fortunately, General Lee Butler, taking command of the nuclear arsenal stopped the insanity in 1992 and ruled that the planes carrying nuclear weapons would be grounded instead of being in the air 24/7 keeping us “safe” and “deterring” the Soviet Union. What could they have been thinking? Sadly, there has been no corresponding move to ratchet down the lunacy that endangers our planet at every moment from some 1500 deployed nuclear weapons mounted on missiles poised to fire against Russian missiles, similarly cocked, in minutes.

US scientists are enabling a new arms race with Russia and China

Even before “stockpile stewardship”, I remember attending a meeting with the mad scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of Dr. Strangelove, and sitting in a circle to discuss the aftermath of nuclear policy in the shadow of the crumbled wall in Berlin. The scientists were earnestly discussing the need for AGEX (Above Ground Experiments), to keep their nuclear mind-muscles alive and limber, which eventually morphed into the diabolically named “stockpile stewardship” program. Today, that misbegotten program is funded to the tune of $84 billion over the next ten years, with another $100 billion budgeted for new “delivery” systems—missiles, submarine, airplanes—as if the Cold War had never ended!

At the Delhi conference, Dr. Amulya Reddy, a nuclear physicist gave an electrifying talk on the responsibility of science and its moral failures, explaining how shocked he was to find documents describing how the German scientists carefully calculated, with extraordinary accuracy and scientific precision, the amount of poison gas required per person to kill the Jews who were routinely marched to the Nazi “showers” in the concentration camps. And at a workshop on the role of science, there was an extraordinary conversation with Indian and Pakistani scientists who pondered whether scientists have lost their moral compass because the system of higher education produced the growth of the scientific institute, isolating scientists from the arts and humanities. They examined whether these separated tracks of learning, denying scientists the opportunity to intermingle with colleagues engaged in those issues, while narrowly concentrating on their scientific disciplines, had stunted their intellectual and moral growth and led them to forget their humanity.

Now scientists are pushing whatever boundaries might have existed to open a whole new avenue of terror and danger for the world. In a profound disregard for the consequences of their actions, US scientists are enabling a new arms race with Russia and China as the military-industrial-academic-Congressional complex plants US missiles in Eastern Europe and beefs up military bases in the Pacific. This despite efforts by Russia and China to forestall this new arms race by calling for a treaty to ban weapons in space, supported by every nation in the world except the US which blocks any forward progress for negotiations.

The US has recently admitted to cyber warfare, targeting uranium enrichment equipment in Iran with a killer virus to set back the Iranian program to build their own bomb in the basement, while at home, we are talking of massive subsidies to the uranium enrichment factory in Paducah, Kentucky. It is hard to believe how screwy this new venture into cyber warfare is in terms of providing security to the “homeland”. After all, cyber terror is not nuclear warfare. Any country, or even scores of various groups of individuals, can master the technology undetected, and wreak catastrophic havoc on the myriads of civilian computer-dependent systems, local, national, and global. Similarly, the recent expansion of drone warfare, assassinating innocent civilians together with suspected “terrorists” in eight countries, at last count, with the President of the US acting as judge, jury and executioner, is the application of misbegotten science in a recipe for endless illegal war. Just as the US was the first to use the atomic bomb, opening the door to the disturbing and uncontrollable nuclear proliferation we witness today, it is again opening the door, taking the lead in a new global arms race in cyber warfare and drone technology. Despite Russia’s suggestion that there be a treaty against cyber war, the US is resisting negotiations, indicating their continued arrogance and disregard of what must be manifestly apparent to any rational thinking person. There can be no reasonable expectation that scientists can keep the dark fruits of their lethal discoveries from proliferating around the world. It is just so 20th century, hierarchical and left-brained to imagine that there will not be others to follow their evil example, or that they can somehow control an outbreak of the same destructive technology to others who may not wish them well.

Can there be any doubt that scientists driving US policy are out of touch with reality? Officials talk about “risk assessment” as though the dreadful disastrous events at Chernobyl and Fukushima are capable of being weighed on a scale of risks and benefits. Scientists are constantly refining their nuclear weapons and designing new threats to the fate of the Earth. After the horrendous devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, surely everyone with half a brain knows these catastrophic bombs are completely unusable and yet we’re pouring all these billions of dollars into perpetuating the weapons labs, as hunger and homelessness increase in the US and our infrastructure is crumbling. The high priests of Science are not including the Earth in their calculations and the enormous havoc they are wreaking on our air, water, soil, our biosphere. They’re thinking with the wrong half of their brains—without integrating the intuitive part of thinking that would curb their aggressive tendencies which engender such deadly, irreversible possibilities. They are engaged in creating the worst possible inventions with a Pandora’s box of lethal consequences that may plague the earth for eternity. Still, they continue on. Scientists are holding our planet hostage while they tinker in their laboratories without regard to the risks they are creating for the very future of life on Earth.”

July 24, 2012
Open Letter on Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone

2012_01_31_menwfz_open_letter.pdf

January 31, 2012
Pacta Sunt Servanda: Promises to Keep

On United Nations Day, three years ago Secretary General Ban Ki-moon set forth a compass point for international cooperation to eliminate nuclear weapons and to make the world safer on the path to this achievement. In addition to calling for work on a nuclear weapons convention or a framework of instruments to achieve disarmament , he called for entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, negotiations of a fissile material treaty, entry into force of the Protocols to regional nuclear weapons free zones, and efforts to establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, as well as the development of new norms for space weapons, missiles and conventional arms.

The Secretary General’s Five Point Proposal remains relevant today and can help inspire work in many different forums and levels of diplomacy and civil society. It upholds a clear goal and emphasizes the incremental steps needed to get there. Such bold leadership will be needed to fulfill the aspiration, expressed so eloquently by President Obama, as “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” which will constitute in the words of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, “a global public good of the highest order.”

Failure to achieve greater progress in fulfilling this moral and practical imperative will result in cynicism toward the most important tool the world presently has to ensure peace — solemnly negotiated and agreed upon commitments. Without such explicit commitments — conventions, treaties — we rely upon ad hoc arrangements which are only as strong as short term perceived interests. With treaties norms are set and common purposes achievable.

But, these explicit arrangements are only as strong as the integrity of the parties and their adherence to them. The term in international law to remember is pacta sunt servanda – agreements must be kept and honored in good faith. Or, in the words of President Obama: “words must mean something.”

The 2010 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review’s Final Statement, contains a reaffirmation of an “unequivocal undertaking to accomplish”, not just to aspire, but “to accomplish the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”

It calls upon states “to undertake concrete disarmament efforts…” in fact “special efforts to establish the necessary framework to achieve and maintain a world without nuclear weapons.” It highlights that this is a matter that requires our most committed actions by saying “there is an urgent need.”

“Urgent”, “concrete”, “unequivocal” – These are strong words requiring the strongest of actions.

Many of us were heartened by the attention paid to the progressive five point agenda of the Secretary General’s Five Point proposal and particularly reference to a convention or framework of instruments to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Without such clarity of purpose the dynamism required to achieve significant threat reducing steps will be difficult to obtain. Thus we are now seeing how difficult it is just to achieve the very modest incremental steps, such as a fissile materials treaty or strengthening IAEA safeguards, needed to enhance everyone’s security. The galvanizing effect of collectively seeking the common goal of a nuclear weapons free world will make all the steps needed to move there so much easier.

In the recent United States Nuclear Posture Review, there is a “commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world” and there is even a commitment “to initiate a comprehensive national research and development program to support continued progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” including, but not limited to, “expanded work on verification technologies.”

What have we seen since these commitments were made?

Nearly every state with nuclear weapons seems to be upgrading, expanding, or modernizing their weapons. For example in the United States, as part of the negotiations for obtaining the START treaty, a new commitment was made to allocate potentially over 200 billion dollars to modernize the arsenal – modernizing delivery systems and modernizing weapons. There may also be some commitment to initiating a comprehensive national research and development program, as called for in the Nuclear Posture Review, but if any funds have been allocated to this task, they are dwarfed by the commitment to modernize the arsenal.

The language of the final statement of the NPT Review Conference is very consistent with initiating a comprehensive research and development program at an international level. And if anything is needed now, it is a clear, unambiguous, unequivocal, irreversible, well-funded effort by like-minded states, or all states if possible, on laying out the framework necessary to obtain and maintain a nuclear weapons-free world. There is no ongoing forum in which nuclear disarmament is being discussed and advanced on a daily, regular, systematic basis. There is language, there are statements, but we don’t see the institutionalization, we don’t see the commitment being operationalized and that’s what’s really important.

Without such a clear course of action, we become subject to backsliding. The ongoing debate should be about how to get rid of nuclear weapons. Yet, continually we are forced to return to the argument whether we should get rid of nuclear weapons. That argument should have been laid to rest in 2000, when the “unequivocal undertaking” to elimination was made at that NPT Review Conference.

I assure you, we will again be faced with bureaucracies and think-tanks and politicians who will force us to revisit the argument whether we should get rid of nuclear weapons again and again unless we lay out the framework or proceed to negotiate the preparatory process for a nuclear weapons convention.

Some people say working on a framework or convention is a distraction from the NPT. I very much disagree with that analysis. The NPT contemplates subsidiary instruments to fulfill its non-proliferation and disarmament purposes. Nobody argues that a test ban treaty is a distraction from the non-proliferation purposes of the NPT or that a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty is a distraction. The NPT contemplates subsidiary instruments. We need subsidiary instruments to achieve non-proliferation goals and likewise to achieve disarmament goals. It is to fulfill the disarmament pillar of the NPT that a framework of agreements or a convention is needed.

Some people say there are many preconditions to beginning this process. There seems to be a proliferation of preconditions. For some the precondition is the elimination of bad people. For others it’s the elimination of bad states. For others it’s a utopian world in utter harmony. But there is no language in the Final Statement of the NPT Review and there is no language in the Nuclear Posture Review that there are preconditions to beginning this process of making progress to move toward negotiating the elimination of nuclear weapons. There is no legal basis for that position.

It is a political basis and it is for countries’ leaders, and all of us, to educate the public on the consequences of not commencing to more substantially work on nuclear disarmament now.

There appear to be three paths before us:

One is ad hoc incremental steps with numerous preconditions before actually commencing the real work of negotiating disarmament.

Two is beginning the creation of a comprehensive framework that incorporates both incremental steps, but insures the clarity of purpose of disarmament, thus forming a basis to critique diversions from the disarmament process and a context to integrate many programs and approaches.

Third is a fast-track toward a convention with prompt commencement of preparatory work, leading to negotiations as early as possible.

I think the latter two are much preferred and the ad hoc incremental approach is proving to be too slow.

I believe that what can drive this process is the understanding that nuclear weapons are morally, culturally, and humanly repugnant.

Imagine if the Biological Weapons Convention said that no countries can use smallpox or polio as a weapon, but nine countries can use the plague as a weapon. We would all say this is incoherent and utterly immoral. We recognize that the plague is unacceptable.

The weapon itself is unacceptable. It is not legitimate, legal, or moral for any country, good or bad, to use or threaten to use such a weapon. Such conduct would clearly violate our most basic universal civilized standards which are embodied in international humanitarian law. That is why in the final statement of the 2010 NPT Review Process one of the most important elements is the explicit, positive, and unambiguous commitment to the application of international humanitarian law in nuclear weapons policy.

This is an area for nuclear disarmament advocacy that should be utilized very forcefully. International humanitarian law is the body of law that governs the use of force in war. It prohibits the use of weapons that are unable to discriminate between civilians and combatants. It necessitates that all weapons must be proportionate to specific military objectives. They must not cause unnecessary or aggravated suffering even to combatants. They must not affect states that are not parties to the conflict, and they must not cause severe, widespread, or long-term damage to the environment. The International Court of Justice in its landmark advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons highlighted the fact that it is impossible to control nuclear weapons in space and time.

Indeed, one can with great imagination imagine certain uses that would be compliant with international humanitarian law. A depth charge in the high seas might do so. A small nuke in a desert might do so. But the vast majority of missions and deployments of nuclear weapons are not those exceptions. The vast majority of deployments and missions of nuclear weapons violate those principles of international humanitarian law. That highlights the need to operationalize creating the framework of instruments needed to eliminate nuclear weapons, begin the preparatory process for a convention and begin that process now.
The threat covers everyone on the planet and thus every state, not just nuclear weapon states, have a responsibility to start this process.

There are no good reasons to wait and there are many good reasons to seize this political moment, a moment where those states that possess nuclear weapons are not existential enemies.

The global economy has become one fabric. Today, as never before, we are communicating ideas, passions, and art without borders. We share a common climate, common oceans, and it is time that we realized we share a common future. The security our children deserve requires global security with multinational cooperation based on the rule of law. When it comes to nuclear weapons, the pursuit of national self interest must not be distorted by the provincialism of national myopia. Realism requires common efforts. It is in the interest of every nation to work to eliminate nuclear weapons. We live in one world. It is time that we started living in a civilized fashion. As the late Senator Alan Cranston used to say, “Nuclear weapons are unworthy of civilization.” We have to get rid of them. Thank you.

November 2, 2011
Report on the Morning NGO Abolition Caucus: Insomniacs for Peace

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

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

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

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

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

June 3, 2010