Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear abolition

  • World Medical Association Condemns Nuclear Weapons

    The World Medical Association, at its 50th WMA General Assembly, held in Ottawa, Canada, unanimously adopted the following Declaration on Nuclear Weapons:

    Preamble

    In October 1990, the World Medical Association (WMA) adopted a WMA Declaration on Chemical and Biological Weapons (Document 17.Y) in which it condemned and asked asked all governments to refrain from the development and use of these weapons, and urged national medical associations to join the WMA in actively supporting the Declaration. In adopting the Declaration, the WMA acknowledged the dangers and health hazards of the use of these weapons, including the indiscriminate and long lasting effects on civilian populations and on the environment, and argued that existing health care services, technology and manpower may be helpless to relieve the suffering caused by the weapons.

    The effects of nuclear weapons may be even more catastrophic, more indiscriminate, and longer lasting than chemical and biological weapons. These effects, based on studies of the affected populations and on studies of the consequences of radioactive fallout from nuclear test explosions in the atmosphere, have been widely documented over the years.

    At least 40% of the population of Hiroshima and 26% of the population of Nagasaki were killed in the nuclear attacks on these two cities. Modern nuclear weapons are much more destructive and the casualties today would be much higher.

    Apart from the immediately lethal effects of blast, heat and radiation, many of the “survivors” would perish from the latent effects of ionising radiation, (leukaemia, cancer and genetic effects) as well as infectious diseases like cholera, tuberculosis and dysentery, arising from the breakdown in local services.

    Sunlight-absorbing particulate matter, generated by fires following a massive nuclear attack involving many weapons exploding at different sites, would reduce the penetration of sunlight to the earth’s surface and change the physical properties of the earth’s atmosphere, leading to prolonged periods of darkness and devastating effects on agricultural production.

    The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed many health professionals, destroyed all hospitals and infrastructure, such as electricity and water supply, and made it impossible for medical services to function at a time when they were most needed.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its recent advisory opinion on the legal status of nuclear weapons, has declared that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is contrary to the United Nations Charter and to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.

    The ICJ, in view of the current state of international law, however, could not conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.

    The WMA Declarations of Geneva (Document 17.A), of Helsinki (Document 17.C) and of Tokyo (Document 17.F) make clear the duties, responsibilities and sacred mission of the medical profession to preserve and safeguard the health of the patient and to consecrate itself to the service of humanity.

    Recommendations

    The WMA considers that, with its unique position of influence in society, it has a duty to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons. In accord with this duty, the WMA:

    i) condemns the development, testing, production, deployment, threat and use of nuclear weapons; ii) requests all governments to refrain from the development, testing, production, deployment, threat and use of nuclear weapons, and to work in good faith towards the elimination of nuclear weapons;

    iii) requests all national medical associations to join the WMA in supporting this Declaration and to press their respective governments to work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.

  • The Challenge Posed by India and Pakistan

    In a three-week period, India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, thus becoming new members of the nuclear weapons club. Their tests have brought forth broad, even jubilant, support among the Indian and Pakistani people. Following the Pakistani tests, one Pakistani clerk effused, “Pakistan is now a superpower.”

    It is not surprising that India and Pakistan would view nuclear weapons as a path to international security and prestige. The five original members of the nuclear weapons club – the U.S., UK, France, Russia, and China – have treated their possession of nuclear weapons this way for decades.

    The major problem is not that India and Pakistan have conducted nuclear tests. It is that they, like the other members of the nuclear weapons club, have indicated by their tests that they now choose to rely upon nuclear weapons to maintain their national security.

    The Indians and Pakistanis are doing no more – in fact, much less – than the United States and the former Soviet Union did throughout the Cold War in relying upon their nuclear arsenals for deterrence. The policy of nuclear deterrence – despite the end of the Cold War and ostensibly friendly relations – continues to be the official policy of the U.S. and Russia, as it is of the other nations in the nuclear weapons club.

    The nuclear weapons states claim that there has been no nuclear war because of their nuclear weapons rather than in spite of them. If deterrence is a viable theory, however, there should be no problem with it being adopted by all states, including India and Pakistan.

    Deterrence Is Only a Theory

    The truth is that deterrence is only a theory, and not one that is believed to work universally. If deterrence were in fact considered reliable, nuclear weapons proliferation should in theory be encouraged rather than opposed.

    I doubt if anyone believes that the Indian subcontinent is safer now that India and Pakistan have demonstrated their nuclear weapons capabilities. It is generally and rightly recognized that the region has become far more dangerous with this new capacity for nuclear annihilation.

    Imagine, for example, that the Indians decided to respond to the Pakistani threat by a pre-emptive first-strike to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems. Should the Indians fail, the Pakistanis might respond with a nuclear attack. Even the fear of such pre-emptive action by the Indians might lead the Pakistanis to themselves launch a pre-emptive first-strike against India. There are many other possible scenarios that might lead to nuclear war.

    Just as the problem is not the nuclear weapons tests, but the policies that they represent, the danger is not limited to South Asia. By the Indian and Pakistani tests, we are reminded of the danger that exists from all nuclear weapons in the world – those in the hands of all nuclear weapons states. We are also reminded that nuclear weapons proliferation remains a serious threat to regional and global stability.

    There are not responsible and irresponsible nuclear weapons states. All are irresponsible because they base their national security on weapons which have the capacity to murder millions of innocent people.

    A Worst Case Scenario

    As a worst case scenario, and one that has been long understood, a large-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia could result in ending human civilization, such as it is, and destroying the human species and most life on earth. Being willing to run this risk does not demonstrate a high level of responsibility – quite the opposite.

    The choice before us is whether to deal with India and Pakistan as an isolated regional problem, or whether to view their nuclear tests as a wake-up call to commence international negotiations to achieve a treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world.

    The first option is not viable. India and Pakistan will not reverse their course unless the other nuclear weapons states clearly demonstrate their commitment to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. Following its tests, India issued a statement appealing for such a commitment in the form of a Nuclear Weapons Convention: “India calls on all nuclear weapons states and indeed the international community to join with it in opening early negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention so that these weapons can be dealt with in a global, nondiscriminatory framework as other weapons of mass destruction have been, through the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

    Nuclear “Haves” and “Have-Nots”

    I have long maintained that a world with a small number of nuclear “haves” and a much larger number of nuclear “have-nots” is unstable and unrealistic. This instability has begun to manifest itself in a detrimental way through nuclear proliferation. We will continue in this direction unless the course is reversed by serious negotiations among the nuclear weapons states to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world.

    The United States is capable of providing the leadership to attain a world free of nuclear weapons. The U.S., however, has shown no inclination to assert this leadership. In fact, U.S. policies under the current administration have all been directed toward maintaining the existing structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots”. This must change. It is our best hope for preventing a nuclear holocaust in the 21st century.

    One other possibility exists. It is for other nations of the world, without the U.S. but including other nuclear weapons states, to move forward on a treaty banning nuclear weapons in the way that the treaty to ban landmines was created without U.S. participation. Unless the U.S. steps forward as a leader on this issue, I would hope that other nations will proceed without us.

    At the edge of a new millennium, the nation state system is challenged on many fronts to solve global environmental and security problems. The greatest of these challenges is posed by weapons of man’s own creation, the most dangerous of which are nuclear weapons capable of destroying humankind. Will we meet this challenge? Are there leaders among us capable of picking up where Gorbachev left off that can lead the world to end the nuclear weapons era?

    Such leaders will have to pierce the illusions of security that have been created to manipulate the people, now including the people of India and Pakistan, into believing that nuclear weapons should be a source of national pride. Nuclear weapons are quite simply weapons of mass destruction, meaning mass murder, and should be viewed as a national disgrace. But where are the leaders to say this?

    Leadership from the People

    As in all great issues of social change, the leadership for a nuclear weapons free world will have to arise from the people. This grassroots leadership is already emerging from Abolition 2000, a global network working to eliminate nuclear weapons, which is now composed of nearly 1100 citizen action groups from around the world.

    The challenge posed to the world by the two new members of the nuclear weapons club is nothing less than creating a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a challenge of finding new means of achieving security and settling our differences without resorting to weapons of mass destruction.

  • Joint Statement Against Nuclear Tests and Weapons by Retired Pakistani and Indian Armed Forces Personnel

    Recent developments in South Asia in the field of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery are a serious threat to the wellbeing of this region.

    The fact that India and Pakistan have fought wars in the recent past and do not as yet enjoy the best of relations, makes this development all the more ominous. The signatories of this statement are not theoreticians or arm-chair idealists; we have spent many long years in the profession of arms and have served our countries both in peacetime and in war.

    By virtue of our experience and the positions we have held, we have a fair understanding of the destructive parameters of conventional and nuclear weapons. We are of the considered view that nuclear weapons should be banished from the South Asian region, and indeed from the entire globe.

    We urge India and Pakistan to take the lead by doing away with nuclear weapons in a manifest and verifiable manner, and to confine nuclear research and development strictly to peaceful and beneficient spheres.

    We are convinced that the best way of resolving disputes is through peaceful means and not through war – least of all by the threat or use of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan need to address their real problems of poverty and backwardness, not waste our scarce resources on acquiring means of greater and greater destruction.

    Signed

    Air Marshal Zafar A. Choudhry (Pakistan)
    Admiral L. Ramdas (India)
    Lt. Gen Gurbir Mansingh (India)

  • JAMA Study Calls for Medical Organizations to Unite in Campaign for Nuclear Abolition

    BOSTON, Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ — Since Hiroshima, physicians have frequently warned of the horrifying burn, blast, and radiation casualties a nuclear war would produce. Even in the post-Cold War era, the world faces the continuing risks of proliferation, terrorism, and deliberate or accidental nuclear war. An organized, global campaign led by medical organizations in support of a verifiable and enforceable Nuclear Weapons Convention would make a significant contribution to safeguarding health in 21st century, according to a study published in the August 5 Journal of the American Medical Association.

    “With a united, global voice, we in medicine must call for the zero tolerance of nuclear weapons — no different from the world’s zero tolerance of chemical and biological weapons,” says Lachlan Forrow, MD, principal author of the JAMA article, “Medicine and Nuclear War: From Hiroshima to Mutual Assured Destruction to Abolition 2000,” and internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

    The study, co-authored by Victor Sidel, MD, co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and former president of the American Public Health Association (APHA), of the Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, traces the history of nuclear weapons, from a medical perspective, since the blast at Hiroshima in 1945 and reviews the current status of nuclear arsenals and the dangers they pose worldwide. According to the JAMA authors, today’s dangers include the 35,000 warheads that remain in superpower nuclear arsenals, many of them still on hair trigger alert.

    For more than 50 years, physicians have played important roles in public policy related to nuclear weapons, first as partners in the government’s civil defense planning in the late 1940s and the 1950s. A decade later, in the 1960s, physicians organized to help end atmospheric nuclear testing and, in the 1980s, doctors would again unite, helping to end the superpowers’ plans to fight a nuclear war.

    The authors report that as early as 1946, just one year after the attack on Hiroshima, a high-level U.S. Government committee was urging a United-Nation-enforced global ban on all nuclear weapons. When their efforts failed, the superpowers, led by the United States, entered an era in which having “more” and “better” nuclear weapons was thought to be the best safeguard against nuclear disaster. Dangers of radiation from nuclear weapons was routinely minimized, according to Dr. Forrow, with U.S. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project testifying before the U.S. Congress that radiation poisoning, was “a very pleasant way to die.”

    In 1962, there was an abrupt change in the medical profession’s role in the fight against nuclear weapons. An issue of the New England Journal of Medicine was dedicated to articles on the medical consequences of nuclear war and a new force emerged. Physicians for Social Responsibility was born and began documenting in graphic detail the dire health effects of nuclear explosions. The NEJM articles and an accompanying editorial concluded that physicians, because of their special knowledge of the real medical effects of nuclear weapons also had a special responsibility to prevent their use.

    Countless medical studies have documented the toll of nuclear weapons production and testing. According to the authors, the U.S. National Cancer Institute estimated recently that the release of I-131 in fallout from U.S. nuclear test explosions was responsible for nearly 50,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer among Americans. In a separate study by the IPPNW, the physician organization estimated that the Strontium-90, Cesium-137, Carbon-14, and Plutonium-239 released worldwide in all such explosions would be responsible for 430,000 cancer deaths by the year 2000.

    In an NEJM article earlier this year, Forrow and his medical colleagues warned that the risk of an “accidental,” nuclear attack has increased recently and called for immediate de-alerting steps to be rapidly followed by a signed global agreement by the Year 2000 committing the world to the elimination of all nuclear weapons within a specified timeframe.

    Known as Abolition 2000, the initiative has been endorsed by leading U.S. medical organizations, including the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association and Physicians for Social Responsibility, as well as International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and over 1000 other nongovernmental agencies in 75 countries. Over 80 percent of Americans support the abolition of all nuclear weapons even though the U.S. government has yet to seriously question its own commitment to maintaining a nuclear arsenal, says Forrow.

    “As physicians we have an opportunity and a responsibility to make our own commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons a living example of the power of our convictions,” says Forrow. “We must do this for ourselves, our families, and the generations that will follow, for as Albert Schweitzer once said, ‘Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing.’”
    This study was supported by the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship.

  • Humanity at a Crossroads

    In response to the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan, Henry Kissinger provided new insights into his “realist” view of rationality. Referring to Indian and Pakistani tests, he said: “They live in a rough neighborhood. They don’t think the number of bombs makes war more likely. In a perfectly rational world, you’d think more nuclear weapons makes war less likely.”Self-proclaimed “realists,” including Henry Kissinger, have argued that nuclear weapons cannot be eliminated. But these same realists have been responsible for creating and maintaining some basic nuclear fictions that have been with us for decades. The first of these, a legal fiction, was written into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. This fiction said that the only states to be considered nuclear weapons states were those that had detonated a nuclear device prior to January 1, 1967; in other words, the only nuclear weapons states were the US, USSR, UK, France, and China.

    The fiction proclaimed by the “realists” was that only these five states were nuclear weapons states. Israel, India, and Pakistan, all widely understood to have nuclear weapons, were referred to as “threshold” states, meaning states with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

    Another fiction of the “realists” was that it would be possible to simultaneously promote the peaceful atom and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In fact, nuclear programs for supposedly peaceful purposes have served as the cover for efforts to develop nuclear weapons in Argentina, Brazil, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, South Africa and elsewhere. These efforts succeeded in India, Israel, South Africa, and possibly North Korea.

    With the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan, it has become far more difficult to maintain these fictions. It cannot be denied that India and Pakistan are nuclear weapons states, regardless of the date set forth in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Conducting nuclear weapons tests is a solid indicator that a state has nuclear weapons. And Israel, as has been adequately revealed, is a nuclear weapons state with or without tests.

    So where does this leave us? On one level, we are in an Alice in Wonderland world of “realists” who create fictions to serve their view of reality. On another level, most people in the world can now clearly see that the number of nuclear weapons states is growing.

    We have reached a crossroads. The choice before us is to continue to live in the world of make believe, as the “realists” would encourage us to do, or to work for an unequivocal commitment from all nuclear weapons states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals under strict and effective international controls.

    The unrealistic dream that the “realists” profess to believe in is that the nuclear weapons states can keep their arsenals forever without these weapons ever being used by accident or design. This view was implicitly criticized by the prestigious Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which stated in its 1996 report, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    The good news is that the Indians have made clear that they would prefer a world with no nuclear weapons states, and that they are willing to work for this. The Chinese have also made this commitment. Leadership is lacking primarily from the three Western nuclear weapons states and Russia. It is in these countries that the so-called “realists” have maintained their grip on the national security apparatus.

    What is real for the twenty-first century is what we will make real. If we choose to continue to maintain the fiction that nuclear weapons provide for our security, this will be our reality right up until the time a nuclear weapon explodes in one of our major cities or until a nuclear war breaks out.

    On the other hand, if we choose to accept the reality that a nuclear weapons-free world is possible, we will take the necessary steps to achieve such a world. We will begin the good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament promised in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We will negotiate a plan for the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons on Earth, and we will begin “systematic and progressive efforts” to implement this plan.

    Moving ahead to achieve this new reality are eight nations, led by Ireland, calling themselves the New Agenda Coalition. They have urged us to enter the third millennium with an unequivocal commitment in place to achieve total nuclear disarmament. The call of the New Agenda Coalition is in line with the goal of the more than 1100 citizen organizations around the world supporting the Abolition 2000 Global Network’s goal of a treaty banning nuclear weapons by the year 2000.

    There is no doubt that this path is the one that humanity must choose to assure its future. The choice should be easier now that the fictions of so-called “realists” have been exploded along with the detonations by India and Pakistan.

  • No Time to Think

    Reprinted with permission from Himal Magazine, Kathmandu, Nepal, July Anti-Nuke Issue

    For decades, military planners in the United States, former Soviet Union, and the other nuclear weapons states have convinced themselves that their nuclear weapons are a deterrent. The nuclear annihilation that would follow if these weapons were used was supposed to make any enemy stop, think, and decide that war was not worth the consequences. To make sure that an enemy had no doubt about these consequences, all the nuclear weapons states created nuclear arsenals designed to fight a nuclear war. Nuclear deterrence was built on assuming that one day the simple fear of nuclear weapons would not be enough and the weapons would have to be used.

    The reliance on nuclear weapons that could be used in a real war led each nuclear weapons state to live in perpetual fear of a surprise attack that would make their weapons useless. This fear was greatest during the Cold War, when each side thought the other could not be trusted. The US and Soviet Union addressed their fears by building enormously complex early warning systems that would let them know they were about to be attacked and give them time to launch their nuclear weapons before they were destroyed.

    The early warning systems of the superpowers had another crucial role. Since any war would have meant nuclear war, both sides wanted to make sure that war did not begin by accident. Early warning systems created time during which people could make decisions using real information about what was actually happening rather than responding simply on the basis of fears of what might be about to happen.

    The US built and still operates the biggest and most sophisticated early warning system. It is based around a missile warning system and works by collecting information from satellites that can detect the launch of missiles from another country and radars around the world that can follow the missiles to see where they are going. The information is transmitted from these satellites and radars to where it can be processed by computers and then analysed and interpreted by people. To make sure that this is done seriously and properly, this assessment is done at several places separately. If the information is determined to be reliable, it is sent to more senior people who are supposed to decide how to respond.

    When the satellites and radars say that missiles may have been launched towards the US, there is a Missile Display Conference among the commanders of the places where the analysis of the information is carried out. If they decide that the danger is serious, and not a mistake made by the satellites, or radar, or somewhere along the communication system, or a mistake by one of the people who is supposed to interpret the information, then a Threat Assessment Conference is called. This includes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and senior military commanders.

    At the same time as a Threat Assessment Conference is called, a state of alert is declared, fighter aircraft take off, nuclear-armed bombers are told to start their engines, and missiles are readied for launch. This is the last step before a Missile Attack Conference. This is where the President is told what has happened, and asked to decide what is to be done.

    Both the US and the Soviet Union, now Russia, had these multiple levels of decision making because they had the time to check, and double check, to make sure that they knew what was happening. Their satellites and early warning radar systems gave them information within one and a half minutes of the possible launch of a missile. They took about two and a half minutes to work out what was happening from this information. A meeting could be called and a threat determined a few minutes after this. In other words within about six or seven minutes, it was possible to decide if a nuclear attack may have started. Since the missiles would have taken about 25 minutes to travel from the US to the Soviet Union or in the other direction, there was still time for a final confirmation that the missiles were real. There was even time left to find out if there had been an accidental launch of the missiles, and to decide what to do.

    False Alarms

    Given the terrible consequences of nuclear war, enormous financial and technical resources were invested in setting up and running these early warning systems, and trying to make them fool-proof. However, history shows that these systems failed. Not once, or twice, but frequently. There is no real history of all the failures. It is known, however, that between 1977 and 1984 the US early warning system showed over 20,000 false alarms of a missile attack on the US. Over 1000 of these were considered serious enough for bombers and missiles to be placed on alert.

    Some of these incidents give terrifying insights into how easily even the most carefully designed and technologically advanced warning systems can go wrong. Two instances will suffice. In November 1979, the US missile warning system showed that a massive attack had suddenly been launched. Jets were launched, and a nuclear alert declared. There was no attack. There were no missiles. The warning was due to a computer that had been used to test the warning system to see how it would behave if there was an attack. Somebody had forgotten to turn off the computer after the exercise.

    A second example was even more dramatic. In June 1980, the early warning systems showed that two missiles had been launched towards the US. This was followed by signals that there were more missiles following the first two. A Threat Assessment Conference was called. The situation was considered to be sufficiently serious that the President’s special airplane was prepared for take-off. Again there was no attack, nor any missiles. The reason for the mistaken signals, and interpretations, was eventually traced to a computer chip that was not working properly. The repeated failures of the US early warning system led at one time to an official enquiry which reported that the system “had been mismanaged… by the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Department of Defence”. In other words, every institution assigned to make sure the system worked had failed in its task.

    It was not just the US system that failed. While there is little information yet on how the Soviet Union managed its nuclear weapons warning systems, there is at least one example from recent years that suggests it cannot have worked any better than the US system. On 25 January1995, a Norwegian rocket was launched to take scientific measurements. The Norwegian government told the Russian government in advance that this would happen. Nevertheless, when the rocket was picked up by Russian radar it was treated as a possible missile attack. It seems a warning was sent to the Russian defence minister’s headquarters, the Russian military leadership, and to the commanders of Russian missiles that an attack may be underway. A message was then sent to Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President, and an emergency conference called with nuclear commanders over the telephone. Boris Yeltsin has confirmed that such an emergency conference did take place.

    Fear and Paranoia

    The lessons for India and Pakistan are obvious. Experience shows that in any real crisis involving the two, fear and paranoia soon become overwhelming. One need look no further than the recent panic about a possible pre-emptive attack on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities by India. The fear was there despite a nearly ten-year-old agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities. In the absence of basic trust, generals on each side will always assume those on the other side might want to launch a surprise attack, and will want, in turn, to be prepared to respond with nuclear weapons.

    The need for early warning systems is therefore clear. But, even if Pakistan and India had the technology for early warning, and even if it worked reliably, they could not use it, geography has made sure of that. The time to take decisions will not be available to either Pakistan or India. Instead of the 25 minutes that the US and the Soviet Union had, it would take a Prithvi missile somewhere between three and five minutes to reach almost anywhere in Pakistan. It would take the Ghauri missile about five minutes to reach Delhi. In such a short time, an early warning system could give warning of what might be happening, a meeting could be called, and then time would run out. There would be no time to decide whether the warning was real, or a mistake. The decision would have to be made on either launching the missiles immediately or taking the risk of the missiles being destroyed before they could be used.

    In order to avoid such a situation, some people may suggest that India and Pakistan find a way to create time for the generals to make sure they know what is happening in any future crisis. It may be possible to create such time by an agreement whereby each side would keep its warheads stored separately from missiles and airplanes and let the other side check to make sure this was indeed the case. Any nuclear attack could then only come after the warheads were taken out of storage and then loaded onto missiles or planes, and an attempt to do so would be detected.

    But this is, at best, a desperate measure. The lack of trust is so great that making sure a agreement was being honoured would require an extraordinary system of allowing inspections of each other’s missile and airforce bases and nuclear facilities. There is no prospect of that happening. But, any agreement without such inspections would mean the generals on each side, fearing their counterparts had secretly hidden a few nuclear warheads with some missiles, would do the same. The nuclear dangers would remain despite an agreement, and might actually become greater.

    The alternative is simple. No nuclear weapons mean no nuclear crises. No nuclear crises mean no danger of nuclear war.

  • What is Next After the Latest Nuclear Tests? A Review of Nuclear Armament by the Trustees’ Committee of the Campaign “Abolish Nukes – Start with Ourselves”

    Dortmund, Germany

    (The Campaign is member of the Abolition 2000 Network and consists of 42 German organisations.)

    On the 11th and 13th May of this year India has conducted nuclear test explosions, followed suit by Pakistan detonating nuclear devices of their own on the 28th and 30th May. The design of the devices and the according statements of the respective governments confirm previous suspicions that India and Pakistan are now both to be counted among the nuclear armed states. Both states have weapons systems at their disposal well capable of delivering nuclear warheads.

    The Trustees’ Committee of the Campaign “Abolish Nukes – Start with Ourselves” states the following position on this issue:

    We categorically disapprove of the possession, storage and use, including testing, of weapons of mass destruction as well as the threat of their use, no matter what the rationale for justifying otherwise. We specifically make reference to the legal assessment by the International Court of Justice who declared in July 1996: The use of and the threat to use nuclear weapons constitute a general violation of international law.

    In contrast to the statements issued by the established nuclear powers USA, France, Russia, Great Britain, and China we do not confine our criticism to India and Pakistan as if these two were the only ones suddenly in possession of nuclear weapons in this world. Rather do the nuclear powers and some of the non-nuclear states allied with them share responsibility that India and Pakistan were able to acquire the appropriate nuclear and weapons technologies with which they now have turned into nuclear armed states on their own. Furthermore are we not satisfied with purely demanding that India and Pakistan immediately now sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty because

    • nuclear weapons would neither be dismantled nor outlawed
    • the treaty does not ban computer simulated and sub-critical testing of nuclear weapons
    • only two of the long standing-nuclear armed states, France and Great Britain, have ratified the treaty, leaving doubts about the seriousness of the intentions of the remaining three states.

    We see absolutely no chance of success in demanding that India and Pakistan sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty now, knowing that both have refused to do so for decades.

    Alarming Situation in South East Asia

    Nevertheless, we see at the same time that the decade old volatile situation on the Indian subcontinent has arrived at an extremely dangerous boiling point, now that all the parties in the immediate geographic vicinity – China, India and Pakistan – are capable to launch nuclear weapons. Admittedly, the respective governments in New Delhi and Islamabad have issued assurances to consider their atomic weapons “only” for a defensive role and not for a nuclear first strike. Yet, we are deeply concerned for several reasons:

    1. History has taught us that “defence” is a term that lends itself for some heavy stretching. The reason is that the trigger event for military defence action is subject to the subjective perception and judgement of one party. This holds particularly true if a conflict has already extremely escalated as in the case of the Kashmir region. It applies even more so with antagonists who like the current governments of India and Pakistan are locked in a deep rooted animosity towards each other’s ideological and here particularly religious beliefs. The capacity to rationally assess the intentions of the respective other is dangerously degraded by one’s own pattern of perception.

    2. A defence concept that encompasses nuclear weapons, even if it is as yet only a declared intention, means nothing less than that the opponents are entering the hazard level of nuclear warfare. We do not – even with a public denial of first-use intentions provided – share those notions of security that consider a system based on nuclear deterrence a stabilising factor.

    3. The precarious economic situations in India as well as Pakistan constitute a major factor of internal destabilisation for both. The adverse effects could still increase drastically if even more resources urgently needed for economic recovery were to be diverted to an already overdimensioned military budget. The Indian government has already gone ahead and decided to increase military spending with the Pakistani government expected to follow suit.

    4. Should the international economic sanctions imposed against both India and Pakistan start to take effect things will go from bad to worse. Both countries may feel driven towards compensatory arrangements which may have, for example, Pakistan transfer nuclear arms technology and the corresponding weapons systems to Iran. This, in turn, could trigger a chain reaction in the Near and Middle East which would on the one hand immediately bring the de facto nuclear power Israel into the nuclear gamble and on the other hand also inspire more states in the region to rise to nuclear power status.

    5. The ramifications of trying to establish a balance of nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan would be fatal and destabilising not only for the states directly afflicted but would reach beyond the confines of the region: a chain reaction of newly arising nuclear states and more nuclear arms racing in other regions would be the likely results.

    The Global Connection

    The entire problem is aggravated by the fact that so far no effort is being made to turn to appropriate mechanisms or institutions for conflict solving. A key reason for that is rooted in the attitude of the former nuclear monopolist states:

    • by enforcing an indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 those states have made an effort – proved futile now by India and Pakistan – to divide the world into two classes of states: those who have nuclear weapons and those who do not, where the former five preferred to have the privilege of exclusive membership in the first group reserved for themselves. That was one of the reasons for India and Pakistan, who liked to see complete nuclear disarmament negotiated, not to join the treaty. The position of the established nuclear powers was duly reflected at the Preparatory Committee Meeting for the next NPT Review Conference where it was particularly the USA which saw to it that the motion of a great number of member states to make far-reaching disarmament steps an imperative were blocked.
    • To safeguard their previous nuclear arms monopoly the USA have developed a “Counterproliferation Strategy” intended to keep others from obtaining nuclear weapons and including as a last resort even the threat of nuclear punishment. NATO has adopted something similar for itself. At the same time NATO will not definitely rule out that nuclear weapons may under certain circumstances (subject to definition by NATO) be stationed on the territories of its new and future member states. Notwithstanding, all NATO member states have ratified the NPT.
    • Ever since the Warsaw Pact was disbanded the previous nuclear monopolist states have not acted to seize the political opportunities that arose out of the collapse of the confrontation between the two antagonistic systems. Case in point is the START II agreement designed to cut down the nuclear long range arsenals of Russia and the US. Not even this treaty could be implemented because the Russian parliament has not ratified it yet. Even after the International Court of Justice in its already referred to assessment has clearly ruled nuclear weapons a clear violation of international law and at the same time assigned a collective responsibility for nuclear disarmament to all states, there was as little reaction from the nuclear powers as there was to the resolution of last year’s UN-General Meeting demanding to start negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention. Arriving at the same conclusion, the currently convening Conference on Disarmament in Geneva states clearly that the former nuclear monopolist powers pursue a policy of refusal on the subject of disarmament, especially evident in their refusal to approve of an ad hoc committee of this sole UN body on disarmament which would deal directly with the issue of nuclear disarmament.
    • This policy goes along with efforts to modernise one’s own nuclear weapons systems. The dismantling of obsolete systems in favour of modernisation is often sold as “disarmament” whereas the sub-critical tests performed for instance by the USA after (!) having ratified the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty clearly indicate modernisation. An important point to remember is that the existing nuclear weapons remain on alert status and that NATO and Russia both uphold a nuclear first strike option under their respective military strategies.
    • The present demands that India and Pakistan enter immediate negotiations on mutual nuclear disarmament remain untrustworthy and thus dishonest as long as those demanding are themselves not willing to put their own nuclear stockpiles up for disposal in multilateral negotiations. Likewise contradictory remains a type of attitude exhibited by India’s leadership who on the one hand keep urging repeatedly for total global disarmament as Indian governments have been doing for decades now, but on the other hand believe in backing their demands by achieving equal footing with the nuclear monopolist powers.

    It is obvious now that the NPT is not an effective means to stop nuclear proliferation and achieve a total disarmament down to zero. This treaty is not capable to provide a cornerstone for global security as it leaves the five formerly established nuclear powers unaffected and does not safeguard against the possibility of conducting nuclear developments for military purposes under the cover of civilian programmes. In a disturbing manner the current events in India and Pakistan demonstrate once more how urgent and imperative it is to take action well beyond what the traditional approach of a supposed non-proliferation policy suggests is necessary.

    A New Nuclear Disarmament Policy

    As we principally stand up for a different understanding of security policy and a comprehensive ban of all nuclear weapons we know ourselves in the company not only of hundreds of non-governmental organisations worldwide like those working together in the “Abolition 2000” network but in the company of a great many of governments as well.

    We are convinced that any kind of security concept has to measure up to the criteria of sustainability. From this follows clearly that in the nuclear age security can no longer be defined in purely military terms. Security in our terms refers to a secure prospect for human beings for a humane and unthreatened existence and not to the well-being of military structures and ‘defence’ contractors. In view of the severe escalation of the international situation it is not productive to come up with ambitious schemes with only long-term prospects of realisation without offering short-term concepts for immediately extinguishing the smouldering nuclear fire.

    1. India and Pakistan have followed the lead of the nuclear five. The five have to consider this anytime they direct demands and suggestions at India and Pakistan. This means in concrete terms: any steps demanded from Pakistan and India must likewise be achieved by the nuclear five themselves, otherwise any such suggestions are bound to fail.

    2. There were will be no meaningful way avoiding bloodshed out of this crisis unless the nuclear five immediately initiate some dramatic changes in their nuclear military policies: as first steps towards restoring their international credibility they should unconditionally lift the alert status off their nuclear armed units and they should jointly issue a statement bound by international law to drop for an unlimited time all options of a nuclear first strike.

    3. As permanent members of the UN Security Council the nuclear five share a special responsibility. Concerning the situation on the Indian subcontinent this responsibility demands that these members of the Security Council develop a system of mutual, non-nuclear political security assurances to offer India and Pakistan a way to reverse their mutual threat mechanisms step-by-step. Picking up on the concept of the Asian Regional Security Forum (ARF) of the ASEAN member states the objective should be to develop a security concept tailored to the specific situation in South Asia along the lines of the OSCE and under premium participation of all parties involved (no “imposing” of concepts). This model should be based on the principles of dialogue, confidence building measures, and mutual non-military security assurances. Economic sanctions constitute a violation of these principles: they have to be lifted immediately.

    4. The very issues of controversy focusing on the Kashmir region urge to bring in the United Nations and the International Court of Justice as mediators. Concrete objective must be to establish a regional security constellation that offers everybody involved more gain from a political settlement than from further military, – and perhaps even nuclear – action.

    5. Along with it, the political dimension of disarmament strongly suggests a fundamental break in the military nuclear policies of the established as well as the recent nuclear armed states. Otherwise, the latest developments, having led to the emergence of two new nuclear powers, may encourage other nuclear ‘threshold’ states to follow the path taken by India and Pakistan. As a short-term prospect to set the stage for truly preventive negotiations we urge to immediately approve of setting up an ad hoc committee on nuclear disarmament at the UN Conference on Disarmament. The need to start such negotiations is now more pressing than ever.

    6. Both Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and NPT have to be revised accordingly. The first treaty is scheduled for reviewing in 1999, the second one in the year 2000. On that occasion the Test Ban Treaty should have amendments added to it to outlaw computer simulated and subcritical testing. The revised treaty should be ratified by all signatory states until 1999. The disarmament obligation in article VI of the NPT has to be fulfilled in compliance with a definite time-bound frame down to zero.

    7. Following the lead of already existing treaties, the prospects for setting up zones free of weapons of mass destruction need to be put on the agenda for negotiations. Predisposed areas are in the Near and Middle East including the still undeclared nuclear state Israel, in Central Europe, and on the Indian subcontinent.

    8. All negotiating approaches must navigate along definite and binding timetables.

    Demands on German Politics

    We advise the forthcoming (*) German government bound to be elected in the fall of this year to start in advance to re-evaluate the foundations of the previous security policy. We are not content making a general reference that we expect the future German government to evaluate the above proposed alternative concepts in an affirmative and constructive manner. We ask the next German government outright to provide a timetable with specific deadlines for:

    • eliminating the nuclear capacity of the German armed forces with suitable conversion actions and abandoning the principle of “Nuclear Sharing”
    • expelling all nuclear weapons still located on German soil for return to their respective countries of origin
    • principally outlawing both the use and the utilisation of weapons-grade and highly enriched uranium granting no exemptions for research
    • making a strong case against the separation of plutonium off spent fuel rods and its use in reactors
    • pushing for a revision of the NATO treaty using its leverage as a NATO member state to definitely deny NATO any option to station nuclear weapons on the territories of new or future member states
    • making a strong argument using its weight as a leading EU- and WEU member state to have no nuclear elements included in the future European “Common Foreign and Security Policy” (CFSP)
    • promoting setting up a “Central Europe Nuclear Weapons Free Zone ” backed by binding treaties.

    We are fully aware that German federal governments have on too many occasions in the past ignored the peace promoting non-military proposals and demands of non-parliamentarian forces. We are calling attention to the fact that at the same rate as the economic and social conditions deteriorate any government grows more dependent on a consensus on security policy with the very people who have voted them into office. The levels of military expenditure disproportionate to any conceivable threat and based on an outdated understanding of security have made it clear to anybody willing and able to see: there is no consensus on security policy. As far as nuclear weapons are concerned this has been impressively confirmed by a FORSA survey commissioned by the German chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). The results published on the 2nd June 1998 indicate that 87% of those questioned like to see the nuclear armed states “getting rid of their own nuclear weapons as soon as possible”, 93% consider nuclear weapons an outright violation of international law and another 87% share the view that nuclear weapons stationed on German soil “ought to be removed right away”.

    The German Federal Government should jointly with other non-nuclear states launch an initiative in the United Nations to push for the immediate start of negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention.

    Since a sustainable concept of security cannot be reduced to the sole issue of nuclear weapons we advise the next German government to establish a national “Round Table on Alternative Security”. This forum should have forces both inside and outside the administration and independent scientists working together to design a new security policy consensus for Germany that will replace military concepts of security with a civilian understanding of security aligned along the real needs of people.

  • United States Policy and Nuclear Abolition

    An address to the Olaf Palme Institute in Stockholm, Sweden

    You are certainly aware that the United States is committed under Article VI of the Non Proliferation Treaty to work in good faith for nuclear disarmament. You are probably also aware that last year President Clinton approved a policy that nuclear weapons would remain the cornerstone of U.S. security for the indefinite future. It is very difficult to reconcile these conflicting positions. Disarm or maintain a massive nuclear war fighting capability? It is impossible to do both. My purpose here is to explain why President Clinton made his decision, what it means to prospects for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and what can be done to promote progress toward a non-nuclear world.

    First, let me tell you why I am here to advocate the abolition of nuclear weapons. I have been personally involved with these engines of destruction since the beginning of the nuclear era. 42 years ago I was a pilot prepared to destroy a European target with a bomb that would have killed 600,000 people. 20 years ago, as the Director of U.S. Military Operations in Europe, I was the officer responsible for the security, readiness and employment of 7,000 nuclear weapons against Warsaw Pact forces in Europe and Russia, weapons which could never defend anything – only destroy everything. My knowledge of nuclear weapons has convinced me that they can never be used for any rational military or political purpose. Their use would only create barbaric, indiscriminate destruction. In the words of the Canberra. Commission, “Nuclear weapons create an intolerable threat to all humanity…”

    Now, to address the reasons for President Clinton’s decision concerning the U.S. nuclear posture. When the nuclear era opened in the U.S. the atom bomb was seen as a source of immense national power and as an essential contribution to efforts to thwart any expansionist efforts by Stalin’s Soviet Union. It was also seen by the United States Army, Navy and Air Force- as the key to service supremacy. The newly autonomous Air Force under General Curtis LeMay saw atomic warfare as its primary raison d’etre and fought fiercely for the dominant role in U.S. atomic plans. The Army and Navy feared that without atomic weapons in their arsenals they would become irrelevant adjuncts to strategic air power.

    This interservice rivalry led to the rapid proliferation of nuclear missions. Without going into needless detail, each service acquired its own arsenal of nuclear weapons for every conceivable military mission: strategic bombardment, tactical warfare, anti-aircraft weapons, anti-tank rockets and landmines, anti-submarine rockets, torpedoes and depth charges, artillery shells, intermediate range missiles and ultimately intercontinental range land and sea-launched ballistic missiles armed with multiple, thermo-nuclear warheads.

    The Soviet Union, starting more than 4 years behind America, watched this rapid expansion of our war fighting weapons with shock and fear and set out to match every U.S. capability. Despite the obvious fact that the USSR lagged far behind, alarmists in the Pentagon pointed at Soviet efforts as proof of the need for ever more nuclear forces and weapons and the arms race continued unabated for 40 years. During this wasteful dangerous competition the United States built 70,000 nuclear weapons plus air, land and sea-based delivery vehicles at a total cost of $4.000 billion dollars.

    As the Soviets’ arsenal grew, Mutual Assured Destruction became a fact and the two nations finally began tenuous arms control efforts in the 1960’s to restrain their competition. This effort was accelerated in the mid-1980 as a result of world-wide fears of nuclear war when President Reagan spoke of the Soviet

    Union as the “evil empire” and doubled U.S. military spending. Unfortunately, the excesses of the nuclear arms race had created an extremely powerful pro-nuclear weapons establishment in the United States. This alliance of laboratories, weapon builders, aircraft industries and missile producers wielded immense political power in opposition to nuclear disarmament proposals. Abetted by Generals and Admirals in the Pentagon this establishment was able to turn arms control efforts into a talk-test-build process in which talks went slowly and ineffectually while testing and building went on with great dispatch. This same establishment remains extremely powerful today and explains why the United States’ continues to spend more than $28,000 million dollars each year to sustain its nuclear war fighting forces and enhance its weapons despite the formal commitment in the Non-Proliferation Treaty to take effective measures leading to nuclear disarmament. Pressure from the establishment is the primary reason why in November, 1997, President Clinton decreed in Presidential Decision Directive #60 that nuclear weapons will continue to form the cornerstone of American security indefinitely. This directive also set forth a number of other policies that are directly contrary to the goals of non-proliferation and nuclear abolition. He reaffirmed America’s right to make first use of nuclear weapons and intentionally left open the option to conduct nuclear retaliation against any nation, which employs chemical or biological agents in attacks against the United States or its allies. He went on to direct the maintenance of the triad of U.S. strategic forces (long range bombers, land-based ICBM’s and submarine-based SLBMs) at a high state of alert which would permit launch-on-warning of any impending nuclear attack on the U.S. This is the dangerous doctrine, which puts thousands of warheads on a hair trigger, thereby creating the risk of starting a nuclear war through misinformation and fear as well as through human error or system malfunction.

    Finally, his directive specifically authorized the continued targeting of numerous sites in Russia and China as well as planning for strikes against so-called rogue states in connection with regional conflicts or crises. In short, U.S. nuclear posture and planning remain essentially unchanged seven years after the end of the Cold War. The numbers of weapons are lower but the power to annihilate remains in place with 7,000 strategic and 5,000 tactical weapons.

    This doctrine would be bad enough alone but it is reinforced by continued efforts to extend and enhance the capabilities of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. A major element of this process is benignly labeled the Stockpile Stewardship Program costing more than $4, 100 million per year to maintain weapons security as well as test and replace weapon components to insure full wartime readiness of approximately 12,000 strategic and tactical bombs and warheads. In March the U.S. Air Force dropped two B61-11 bombs from a B-2 bomber on a target in Alaska to complete certification of a new design for earth penetrating weapons, clear proof of U.S. intentions to improve its nuclear war fighting capabilities.

    Furthermore, the Los Alamos National Laboratory recently resumed the manufacture of plutonium triggers for thermo-nuclear weapons while the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is preparing a new capability called the National Ignition Facility where conditions within an exploding nuclear device can be simulated Supplemented with continuing sub-critical explosive tests in Nevada and extremely sophisticated computer modeling experiments, this new facility will give the U.S. means not available to other signatories of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to develop and validate new nuclear weapons designs.

    To give even more evidence of the power of the pro-nuclear establishment, the U.S. will decide this year -on how and when to resume the production and stockpiling of tritium, the indispensable fuel for thermo-nuclear explosions. The fact is that the military has enough tritium on hand today for all of its weapons until the year 2006 and enough for 1,000 warheads and bombs at least until the year 2024. To invest thousands of millions of dollars for unneeded tritium is a waste of precious resources undertaken solely to placate and reward the nuclear establishment. It is particularly alarming and discouraging to see the United States investing heavily to perpetuate and increase its nuclear war fighting capabilities when only three years ago it was the dominant force promoting indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). To encourage support for extension the U.S. led in the formulation of the important declaration of “Principles and Objectives For Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.” More clearly than Article VI of the NPT itself, this statement reaffirmed commitment to: “The determined pursuit by the nuclear weapons states of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons…” This renewed and strengthened pledge to reduce nuclear capabilities offered as an inducement for non-nuclear states to agree to extension of the NPT makes the current U.S. nuclear program an affront to all of the signatories. It is not only a direct violation of both the letter and spirit of the NPT; it is a provocation, which jeopardizes the goal of non-proliferation. The clear message is that the foremost nuclear power regards its weapons as key elements of security and military strength, a signal, which can only stimulate other nations to consider the need to create similar capabilities.

    What must those who favor nuclear abolition do to counter this threat to non-proliferation? First, as individuals and as organizations, we must redouble our efforts at home to publicize the dangers created by as many as 35,000 weapons still ready for use in the world. A broadly based global demand by all non-nuclear states that the nuclear powers must live up to the letter and spirit of the NPT extension agreement should precede the first review conference in the year 2000. A call for worldwide public demonstrations on the order and magnitude of those, which supported the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980’s, should be made. The nuclear powers must not be permitted to dictate the results of the review conference in the same manner the United States dominated the 1995 extension conference.

    The message to be stressed is that it is illogical and unrealistic to expect that five nations can legally possess and threaten to use nuclear weapons indefinitely while all other nations are forbidden to create a nuclear capability. Pressure to break-out of the Non Proliferation Treaty is further intensified because one of the nuclear powers is actively developing new, more threatening weapons and pronouncing them essential to its future security.

    A good strategy is to follow the lead of the 62 Generals and Admirals who signed an appeal for nuclear abolition in December of 1996. We stated that we could not foresee the conditions, which would ultimately permit the final elimination of all weapons, but we did recognize many steps, which could be safely begun now to start and accelerate progress toward the ultimate goal.

    As a first step toward nuclear disarmament, all nuclear powers should positively commit themselves to unqualified no-first use guarantees for both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. Their guarantees should be incorporated in a protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty at the review conference in 2000.

    Concurrently, the process of actual reduction of weapons should begin with the United States and Russia. They should proceed immediately with START III negotiations, particularly since the implementation of START II has been delayed for four years. Even with the delay Russia cannot afford all of the changes required under that Treaty and has suggested willingness to proceed with additional reductions because far deeper reductions by both sides would be less costly.

    At the same time, both nations should agree to take thousands of nuclear warheads off of alert status. This action would reduce the possibility of a nuclear exchange initiated by accident or human error. Once fully de-alerted, warhead removal (de-mating) should commence and the warheads stored remotely from missile sites and submarine bases. Verification measures should include international participation to build confidence between the parties.

    Disassembly of warheads under international supervision should begin in the U.S. and Russia. When a level of 1,000 warheads is reached in each nation, Great Britain, France and China should join the process under a rigorous verification regime. De facto nuclear states, including Israel, should join the process as movement continued toward the complete and irreversible elimination of all nuclear weapons. Finally, an international convention should be adopted to prohibit the manufacture, possession or use of nuclear explosive devices just as current conventions proscribe chemical and biological weapons. All fissile material should be safely and securely stored under international control.

    Verification of this entire process could best be accomplished by U.N. teams formed and operating in accordance with principles developed by UNSCOM teams operating in Iraq today. This model provides a precedent already accepted by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the nuclear powers.

    None of these progressive steps will happen until the community of nations comes together to make the United States understand that non-proliferation will ultimately fail unless the U.S. abandons its delusion that nuclear superiority provides long term security. Even when the dangers of this delusion are understood, progress toward the complete, final abolition of nuclear weapons will be painfully slow. Nevertheless, the effort must be made to move toward the day that all nations live together in a world without nuclear weapons because it is clear that our children cannot hope to live safely in a world with them.

     

  • Question and Answer Session at the National Press Club Newsmakers Luncheon with General Lee Butler

    USAF, (ret.), Commander-in-Chief, United States Strategic Air Command (1991-92); Commander-in-Chief, United States Strategic Command (1992-94)

    DOUG HARBRECHT (Moderator. National Press Club president and Washington news editor of Business Week): (Brief audio break) – [Do you think the U.S. should consider using nuclear weapons in] Iraq or in response to any chemical or biological weapon threat?

    GEN. BUTLER: At the risk of reiterating something I just said, I think it’s worth reiterating perhaps in a slightly different context. I had the opportunity to go through this calculus. When I was the director of strategic plans and policy in the 1989 to ’91 time frame, it was my direct responsibility to draw up the strategic objectives of our prospective war in the Persian Gulf, to imagine outcomes and to set war termination objectives.

    At the very heart of that calculus was to imagine the prospect of using nuclear weapons. And I would point out to those of you here who might have read Colin Powell’s memoirs that he goes through this himself in the latter stages of his book, because he was asked to imagine the kinds of targets in the Persian Gulf that might be struck with nuclear weapons. I share his reservations absolutely.

    The first issue, of course, is the one that I posed in my remarks. If we rightfully abhor and condemn the resort to the use of a weapon of mass destruction, how is it we could possibly justify — we, the United States, a democratic society — ourselves steeping to such ends?

    Number two, can you imagine the impact in a part of the world where we worked so assiduously for so many years to build our presence, to build support and credibility, of being the nation that used a nuclear weapon against Arab peoples? Only the second time in history that such a device had been used, and it would be the United States, and it would be in a part of the world where even today those actions raise powerful suspicions.

    Secondly, what would — thirdly, what would have happened to the coalition? How painstakingly we worked to put together a coalition of some 30 nations from very disparate points on the ideological and cultural compass in order to provide the proper underpinnings of the international community for that war. Can you imagine the impact on that coalition if we, the United States, had used a nuclear weapon, even in response to the use of a weapon of mass destruction by the Iraqis? It would have been devastating.

    There’s the question of targets. If you were the target planner for the use of a nuclear weapon in the Persian Gulf, what would be your choice? Surely it would not be the city of Baghdad. Would you hold hundreds of thousands of people accountable for the acts of their leader? Would it be an Iraqi division in the far western reaches of that nation? You might be interested to know the calculation of how many tactical nuclear weapons it requires to bring even one division to its knees when it’s spread over such a vast expanse.

    What would have happened to the fallout from the blast? If you want to do maximum damage, you use a (surface aspirant?). How is it that the fallout patterns would have arrayed themselves beyond the borders of Iraq, perhaps even to the south if the wind had been blowing in that direction?

    The real point of the exercise is that the United States has put itself happily in a position where it has no need to resort to weapons of mass destruction to respond to such provocation. We brought Iraq to its knees conventionally. We could have decimated that country. We could have occupied it as we did Japan and Germany at the end of World War II. We chose not to do that, but it was within our capacity to do so. And if we could do that in 1991, when they had the fourth-strongest army in the world and a significant air force, can you imagine the task today when we’ve reduced all of that by at least two-thirds? It is wrong from every aspect. It is wrong politically. It makes no sense militarily. And morally, in my view, it is indefensible.

    MR. HARBRECHT: General, what happens to an officer — (applause). What happens to an officer who breaks, as you have, from the orthodoxy of our military? Is the military changing in this respect?

    GEN. BUTLER: It is, of course, very difficult and probably presumptuous in the extreme to answer on behalf of something called the military. And so I won’t pretend to do that. But I think that I can speak to it from this regard.

    It has been very gratifying over the last two years to receive countless phone calls and letters from colleagues who were on active duty with me, now retired, or who continue to serve, who support the arguments that I have tried to make, who believe, as I do, that it was near-miraculous that we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust, and that our number one foreign policy and national security priority should be the normalization of relations with the former Soviet Union and to walk back from the abyss that we created by the amassing of nuclear weapons in the tens of thousands.

    And, so, no, I would not pretend to speak for the military. And with regard to what happens, it’s also gratifying to have the comfort and to experience the fact that we live in a country where people can express their views freely. And while some, many, might take exception to them, no one in my experience has yet but to do anything but to applaud the fact that we’re trying to bring this issue back to the forefront of policy discourse in this country.

    MR. HARBRECHT: Do you also believe that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary or counterproductive?

    GEN. BUTLER: I don’t know. I don’t know. There are some historical eras into which I can put myself with some comfort; I’ve got the context right. But they’re really only those eras in which I actively participated. I was in uniform as an officer for 33 years. I understand that era very, very well.

    As an itinerant associate professor of political science, formerly with the Air Force Academy, and an historian, particularly a military historian, I have some understanding of the challenges that were faced by political leaders and military forces in early eras.

    It’s very difficult for me yet to recreate in my own mind the intensity of the period in which that decision was made by the president of the United States. And as I said in my speech, my purpose is not to accuse but to assess. It’s to try to understand the lessons that might be drawn from that. It’s to try and understand the consequences of having dropped atomic devices on Japan.

    At the time and today, we still believe that we spared the lives of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million U.S. and allied soldiers. But at the same time, we took the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. And now we have the opportunity, thank God, to step back, to pause and reflect on that in a different political, military and moral climate. And that’s what I’m trying to do. So I can’t make that judgment, but I certainly can try and draw my own observations.

    MR. HARBRECHT: General, it’s widely believed that Israel not only possesses nuclear weapons but would use them if its survival depended upon them. Is Israel’s reliance on its nuclear weapons in the dangerous Middle East ill-advised?

    GEN. BUTLER: I think that it is a perfect illustration of the short-sightedness that tends to surround this issue of whether or not nations should acquire nuclear capability. What was it that prompted Iraq to try and acquire weapons of mass destruction, a nuclear weapon arsenal of their own? Could it have in any way been tied to the fact that Israel acquired such capability? And what of Syria or Iran? What of Libya?

    These things have causes and they have effects. They’re related. The circumstances in which nuclear weapons capability is created and sustained aren’t static. As a consequence, in my view, it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that that inspires other nations to do so. And, of course, that’s not the only regional conflict where we see this perilous confrontation.

    I will tell you what I do think. I cannot imagine any regional quarrel or conflict that is or will be made easier to resolve by the presence of the further introduction of nuclear weapons.

    MR. HARBRECHT: What can be done to persuade an emerging superpower like China to give up nuclear weapons? Would such a decision have to wait for the emergence of democracy in China?

    GEN. BUTLER: There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, but it’s been in the literature for many years, as to why it was that the Chinese acquired nuclear weapons capability. The story goes that it was proposed to Mao and he said, “Why should I do this?” And he was told, “Well, other nations have them.” And his answer purportedly was, “Well, I guess we should have some.”

    If you look at the Chinese nuclear arsenal, it is far from modern. Their forces are not on alert. They’re struggling to bring up its safety and surity characteristics. China has avowed time and again that they are a no-first-use nation and that they are strongly on record in favor of nuclear abolition. I don’t know what it would take to persuade China to abandon their nuclear arsenals, but I am comforted by what they say.

    I believe that the keys to creating a climate in which the Chinas of the world — Great Britain, France, the non-declared states — are willing to join in a serious-minded, forthright and concrete series of commitments and steps to move steadfastly toward the abolition of nuclear weapons is for the United States and Russia to take the lead.

    I believe that we are missing priceless opportunities in what is perhaps a perishable window of opportunity to move forward much more swiftly and boldly in getting our forces off alert, bringing tactical nuclear weapons home from Europe, declaring no-first-use policies, and most importantly, reaching out to our friends in Russia and making the decision that it is time to get on with concrete measures for much more severe cuts in nuclear stockpiles than we’ve been willing to acknowledge to date.

    It is, in my view, a sad commentary on the current state of thinking on this issue that we are comfortable with a goal for reductions that would still have 3,500 operational nuclear weapons on alert 10 years from now. It is a dismal commentary on the current state of thinking that we still believe that distant nuclear arsenals that measure in the hundreds is a low number.

    It is time for the United States to act much more boldly and with stronger leadership with respect to getting on with getting the nuclear era to a close.

    MR. HARBRECHT: General, do you ever feel any guilt for having been so integral a part of building the nuclear machine? Shouldn’t you have spoken up earlier?

    GEN. BUTLER: Well, this isn’t about guilt. This is about understanding. This is about reflection. I talked with Bob McNamara about this subject. He took a lot of heat when he published his recent book, “Vietnam.” And Bob may, in fact, be here today. I told him forthrightly that as a veteran of Vietnam, I was anguished by some of what he said. I felt like that perhaps he hadn’t shown enough guilt.

    And he said to me, “Lee, we were who we were and we were where we were.” He said, “I can’t change any of that.” He said, “But what I can do is to try and think through and make public and help others to understand the judgments and the pressures and the outcomes and how I see them now, not in order to assess blame, but in the hope that future generations of policymakers can read those lessons and not make the same mistakes.” That’s all. I’m trying to do here. (Applause.)

  • A Break in the Clouds

    It is a great joy for my wife and I to return to Nagasaki. It has been more then 30 years since we last visited your beautiful city.

    I have often thought of the irony that Nagasaki should have entered the Nuclear Age as the second city to be bombed by an atomic weapon. When the U.S. B-29, Bock’s Car, left Tinian Island carrying its deadly cargo in the early morning hours of August 9, 1945, it was headed to another target, the city of Kokura. Were it not for the weather conditions that day — specifically, the cloud cover over Kokura — it would have been that city and not Nagasaki on which the bomb would have been dropped.

    Not being able to bomb Kokura, the pilot of the B-29 headed toward his secondary target, Nagasaki. Even here, there was cloud cover, and only a small opening in the clouds allowed the pilot to release that second atomic bomb, causing such destruction to your city and its people. Were it not for the clouds over Kokura and the small opening in the clouds over Nagasaki, your city would have been spared, at least for that day. I can’t help thinking that even gentle, ephemeral clouds could prevent an atomic bombing from occurring. We humans are not so powerful as we might think — when we compare ourselves with the power of nature. Yet, we are capable of doing great harm to each other — as we have witnessed at Nagasaki and on occasions too numerous to mention.

    The bombings of both Nagasaki and Hiroshima have taught us a simple lesson, perhaps the most basic lesson of the Nuclear Age: This must never happen again. Cloud cover must never again be the sole factor to save a city, or a break in the clouds provide an opening for nuclear devastation. Today’s missile technology, in fact, makes cloud cover irrelevant. Our task must be to make nuclear weapons — and all weapons of mass destruction — irrelevant. The only way to do this is to ban these weapons and abolish them forever.

    The evil that occurred at Nagasaki and Hiroshima must never be repeated. No city and its people must ever again be subjected to attack with a nuclear weapon. Such an attack would exceed all bounds of morality. It would undermine every precept of human decency and human dignity.

    Nuclear weapons, in the words of a former president of the International Court of Justice, are “the ultimate evil.” The description echoes Josai Toda’s reference to them more than forty years ago as “an absolute evil.”

    In the past few years there has been a growing chorus of voices to abolish nuclear weapons. When a former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, can join the call for abolition, we are making progress. General Butler, who retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1994, has stated, “I think that the vast majority of people on the face of this earth will endorse the proposition that such weapons have no place among us. There is no security to be found in nuclear weapons. It’s a fool’s game.”

    General Butler is not alone among military leaders calling for nuclear weapons abolition. Many generals and admirals from around the world have done so as well. In 1996 some 60 retired generals and admirals from 17 countries joined General Butler in stating:

    “We have been presented with a challenge of the highest possible historic importance: the creation of a nuclear-weapons-free world. The end of the Cold War makes it possible.

    “The dangers of proliferation, terrorism, and new nuclear arms races render it necessary. We must not fail to seize our opportunity. There is no alternative.”

    The Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, composed of a distinguished group of experts, including General Butler, Joseph Rotblat and the late Jacques Cousteau, issued a report in 1996 that said: “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used — accidentally or by decision — defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    The International Court of Justice has also spoken on the issue of eliminating nuclear weapons. In issuing an opinion on the illegality of these weapons in 1996, the Court made clear that there is an obligation under international law to proceed with good faith negotiations for their elimination.

    At the end of 1996 and again at the end of 1997 the United Nations General Assembly called upon all states to commence negotiations on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons.

    In February 1998 a statement calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons was released at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The statement was signed by 117 leaders from 46 countries, including 47 past or present presidents or prime ministers. Among the signers were former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and five former prime ministers of Japan. The Statement concluded: “The world is not condemned to live forever with threats of nuclear conflict, or anxious fragile peace imposed by nuclear deterrence. Such threats are intolerable and such a peace unworthy. The sheer destructiveness of nuclear weapons invokes a moral imperative for their elimination. That is our mandate. Let us begin.”

    The governments of some nuclear weapons states have been moving slowly in the direction of reducing the nuclear threat, but they have not yet demonstrated that they are committed to eliminating their nuclear arsenals. They treat their nuclear arsenals like security blankets when, in fact, they provide no security — only threat.

    There is no security in threatening the mass annihilation of civilians. In truth, it is not only cowardly, but foolish beyond words. It places the population of the country possessing nuclear weapons in danger of retaliation.

    It is important to keep in mind, that nuclear holocaust could occur not only by intention, but by accident or miscalculation as well. As recently as 1995 the Russians were poised to launch a nuclear response when they mistakenly believed that a missile launched from Norway was a nuclear attack aimed at Russia.

    Nuclear holocaust could also occur if terrorists came into possession of a nuclear weapon, and we know that some nuclear weapons are small enough to be carried by a single individual in a large backpack.

    We will be free of the threat of nuclear holocaust only when we are free of nuclear weapons. No group of people knows this better than the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It is the hibakusha, the survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, that remind us that the pain of nuclear weapons lingers. Radiation causes pain and suffering that continues to kill for decades, and genetically affects new generations.

    I am convinced that if we want a world at peace, we must create it. There is no other choice. Governments will not succeed on their own in creating such a world. The power of the people must push governments — or, more accurately, the power of the people must lead governments. We will have a peaceful and just world when enough people are willing to commit themselves to creating such a world, and will make their voices heard.

    The same is true of a world free of the threat of nuclear holocaust. We will have such a world when the people demand it. This process has begun. Here in Japan you have raised your voices, and the chorus of your voices will be heard around the world. I am overwhelmed that more than 13 million signatures for nuclear weapons abolition have been gathered in Japan in only a few months time. These signatures represent the power of an idea whose time is now. They also demonstrate the power of the people when they join together in common cause.

    These signatures represent 13 million voices of hope for a world free of the threat of nuclear annihilation. These voices of hope have unleashed a power that will not be stopped until the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is achieved.

    I congratulate you on what you have accomplished. These signatures are enough to inspire, enough to move people everywhere to greater commitment. President Ikeda must be very proud of you, and I can only imagine how proud Josai Toda would be to know that you are working to carry out his vision of a nuclear weapons free world.

    The more than 13 million signatures you have gathered are an important step on the road to abolition. But we must not rest. We must commit ourselves to continuing our activities to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons until the goal is accomplished and the last nuclear weapon in the world is destroyed. Will you join me in making this commitment?

    The Abolition 2000 International Petition calls for three outcomes. First, ending the threat. Second, signing a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. Third, reallocating resources from military purposes to assuring a sustainable future.

    Isn’t it crazy that the Cold War ended many years ago, and yet the nuclear weapons states continue to keep their nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert? There is no reason to continue this threat. These weapons must be taken off alert status immediately! There must be time to sort through all the facts, to consider the full consequences of what is being contemplated, and to avoid acting in a moment of passion.

    Warheads can be separated from delivery vehicles. A no-first-use agreement can be achieved, in which each nuclear weapons state agrees that it will never under any circumstance be the first to use nuclear weapons. These steps will make the world far safer. They can be taken immediately, and will have a profound effect on the way nuclear weapons are viewed by their possessors.

    The petition calls for signing a treaty by the year 2000 to eliminate all nuclear weapons within a fixed time period. This is the treaty called for by Abolition 2000, by the World Court, and by most nations in the world. It is absolutely reasonable that we should enter the 21st century with such a commitment in place.

    The petition calls for reallocating resources from military purposes to meeting human needs. It says a great deal about our priorities that we are spending more for military forces in our world than we do for healthcare and education of our youth. We live in a world in which many thousands of children under the age of five die daily from starvation and preventable diseases. This totals to millions of children a year. It is outrageous, unacceptable, and must be ended. We must change our priorities.

    What is at stake is no less than the future of humanity. Each of you who has signed the petition has taken a first step, but you must not stop with this step. You must continue to speak out and demand greater action from your own government, and from other governments of the world.

    You can also help by asking the council of the municipality where you live or the student government where you go to school to support an Abolition 2000 Resolution. There are currently over 185 municipalities that have gone on record in support of Abolition 2000, but we need to increase this number to thousands around the world.

    I urge you to continue to press the Japanese government to take a more responsible position on eliminating nuclear weapons. The Japanese government has not kept faith with the people of Japan on this issue. The government has placed Japan under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and reached secret nuclear agreements with the U.S. The Japanese government has also imported many tons of reprocessed plutonium 239, material suitable for making nuclear weapons. In fact, Japan could become a major nuclear weapons state in only a matter of days or weeks if it chose to do so.

    The future of humanity demands that we succeed in ridding the world of nuclear weapons. If these weapons remain in the arsenals of the nuclear weapons states, there will be a time in the future when they will be used again. The retention of these horrible weapons provides an example that other states will look to and that will eventually lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This, too, will make the world more dangerous.

    Because we must succeed, we will succeed. But it will not be easy. There are still many obstacles to overcome. We must be strong in our dedication, unwavering in our commitment. I am heartened to know of your dedication and commitment. I will let others throughout the world know of your great accomplishment, and your continuing efforts.

    I plan to inform the top leadership of the United Nations of your achievement. The United Nations Charter begins, “We, the Peoples….” We must put the people back into the United Nations. The elimination of nuclear weapons is too important to be left only to politicians and diplomats. They must hear the voices of the people — your voices.

    In April, I will share with the delegates to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference in Geneva your achievement in gathering more than 13 million signatures for nuclear weapons abolition. I will also do everything I can to bring your message to President Clinton, who has the power — but thus far has lacked the vision — to lead the way to fulfilling the goals of the petition. I will also work with other citizens groups in Abolition 2000 to see that your message is brought to the leaders of all nuclear weapons states.

    Let me conclude with a story about the sunflower. When Ukraine gave up the last of the nuclear weapons that it had inherited when the former Soviet Union split apart, there was an unusual celebration. The defense ministers of the U.S., Russia and Ukraine met at a former Ukrainian missile base that once housed 80 SS-19 nuclear armed missiles aimed at the United States. The defense ministers celebrated the occasion by planting sunflowers and scattering sunflower seeds. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry said, “Sunflowers instead of missiles in the soil will ensure peace for future generations.”

    Later I learned that protesters in the United States many years before had illegally entered missile sites in the U.S. and planted sunflowers above the missile silos. These protesters had been imprisoned for their courage.

    Sunflowers have become the symbol of a nuclear weapons free world. They are bright, beautiful, natural, and even nutritious. They stand in stark contrast to nuclear armed missiles, which are costly, manmade instruments of genocide. Let us choose what is natural and healthy. Let us restore our Earth, our decency, our humanity.

    We need to control our darker impulses. Nothing could be more representative of this than replacing missiles with sunflowers. If Ukraine can accomplish this, so can the rest of the world.

    Please make the sunflower your symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons. In doing so, you will also make it a symbol of a better humanity, of bringing forth a greater humanness in each of us. Let the sunflower also symbolize your own deeper humanity as you continue to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Thank you for caring. Thank you for what you have done. Thank you for all you will do in the future to create a safer and more decent world. I look forward to sharing the day with you when we have succeeded in creating a world without nuclear weapons. Please never lose hope that such a world is possible, and never stop working and speaking out to create such a world.