Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear nonproliferation

  • The Commitment to a Nuclear-Free World: A Historical Perspective

    This article was originally published on the History News Network

    Addressing a U.N. Security Council Summit on September 24, 2009, President Barack Obama observed that the resolution unanimously adopted by the Security Council earlier that day “enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”

    But the enthusiasm for this measure among the representatives of major nations should not obscure the fact that securing their commitment to a nuclear-free world was for years an uphill struggle—one that began, with some political sleight-of-hand, in a nuclear superpower, the Soviet Union.

    Of course, for the first four decades of the Cold War, the Soviet government had spoken glibly about abolishing nuclear weapons. But it was never serious about this enterprise. Such talk was meant for propaganda purposes—to convince people of other nations that the Soviet Union was a peace-loving nation with their best interests at heart. In practical terms, about the most that could be hoped for from the Kremlin was a series of rather modest arms control agreements.

    But, then, in March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected Soviet party secretary. And Gorbachev was dead serious about nuclear disarmament. Faced with the “self-destruction of the human race,” he declared, it was time to “burn the black book of nuclear alchemy” and make the next century one “of life without fear of universal death.” The “nuclear era requires new thinking from everybody,” he argued and “the backbone of the new way of thinking is . . . humankind’s survival.” Gorbachev’s ideas and rhetoric clearly came from the tumultuous popular campaign against nuclear weapons that swept around the world during the early 1980s. As the Soviet leader put it: “The new thinking took into account and absorbed the conclusions and demands . . . of the public and the scientific community, of the movements of physicians, scientists and ecologists, and of various antiwar organizations.”

    Gorbachev not only changed Soviet rhetoric, but Soviet policy. Shortly after taking office, he appointed sharp critics of the nuclear arms race as his key advisors on foreign and military affairs. In April 1985, he announced the cessation of the controversial SS-20 nuclear missile deployments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. That July, he proclaimed a unilateral Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing and implored the U.S. government to join it. And by early 1986, the “new thinking” had produced a Soviet blueprint for a nuclear-free world. Announced by Gorbachev on January 15 of that year, it consisted of a three-stage plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons around the globe by the year 2000. Gorbachev recalled that it was not “another Soviet propaganda trick,” but a sincere effort to prevent nuclear war and create a peaceful world.

    But how did Gorbachev manage to secure the acquiescence of Soviet hawks in this official commitment to a nuclear-free world? It’s an intriguing story. In the spring of 1985, Soviet military officials were worried that Gorbachev and his advisors were getting ready to offer serious concessions to the U.S. government in negotiations over the removal of intermediate range nuclear missiles from Europe. To head off such concessions, they suggested what they considered would a good combination of useful propaganda and a non-negotiable proposal: a nuclear-free world! Nikolai Detinov, an official in the Soviet Ministry of Defense who drafted the nuclear abolition proposal, recalled: “They could show, on the one hand, that the Soviet Union and its General Secretary were eager to eliminate nuclear weapons and, on the other . . . that they understood that such a declaration hardly could lead to any practical results . . . or affect . . . the ongoing negotiations.” But Gorbachev outsmarted them, for he used the military’s backing of nuclear abolition to legitimize the proposal and, then, to make it official government policy. Thus, Detinov recalled, “the real authors of this idea became entrapped by their own gambit.”

    Things now moved rapidly forward. Sensitive to the strong public demand for nuclear disarmament, President Ronald Reagan responded eagerly to Gorbachev’s nuclear-free world proposal, asking: “Why wait until the end of the century for a world without nuclear weapons?” Although most national security officials in Washington and Moscow were horrified by the unexpected tilt toward nuclear abolition, Gorbachev and Reagan were considerably more enthusiastic. At the Reykjavik summit conference of October 1986, they came tantalizingly near a breakthrough on this score. And in the next two years, they did hammer out the basis for major nuclear disarmament agreements: the INF Treaty (1987); the START I Treaty (1991); and the START II Treaty (1993).

    Today, when the call for a nuclear-free world has been revived by the nuclear powers, skeptics might wonder if it is merely another propaganda ploy. Are the warriors and would-be warriors ready to forgo their nuclear toys? Probably not. But clever politicians, particularly when pushed along by popular pressure, can sometimes use public commitments in unexpected ways. And this might be such a time.

    Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

  • Remarks to the United Nations Security Council

    President Obama delivered these remarks to the United Nations Security Council meeting on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation on September 24, 2009

    The 6191st meeting of the Security Council is called to order. The provisional agenda for this meeting is before the Council in document S/Agenda/6191, which reads, “Maintenance of international peace and security, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear disarmament.” Unless I hear any objection, I shall consider the agenda adopted. Agenda is adopted.

    I wish to warmly welcome the distinguished heads of state and government, the General — the Secretary General, the Director General of the IAEA, ministers and other distinguished representatives present in the Security Council chamber. Your presence is an affirmation of the importance of the subject matter to be discussed.

    The Security Council summit will now begin its consideration of item two of the agenda. Members of the Council have before them document S/2009/473, which contains the text of a draft resolution prepared in the course of the Council’s prior consultations. I wish to draw Council members’ attention to document S/2009/463 containing a letter dated 16 September 2009 from the United States of America, transmitting a concept paper on the item under consideration. In accordance with the understanding reached earlier among members, the Security Council will take action on the draft resolution before it prior to hearing statements from the Secretary General and Council members. Accordingly, I shall put the draft resolution to the vote now. Will those in favor of the draft resolution contained in document S/2009/473 please raise their hand? The results of the voting is as follows: The draft resolution is received unanimously, 15 votes in favor. The draft resolution has been adopted unanimously as Resolution 1887 of 2009.

    I want to thank again everybody who is in attendance. I wish you all good morning. In the six-plus decades that this Security Council has been in existence, only four other meetings of this nature have been convened. I called for this one so that we may address at the highest level a fundamental threat to the security of all peoples and all nations: the spread and use of nuclear weapons.

    As I said yesterday, this very institution was founded at the dawn of the atomic age, in part because man’s capacity to kill had to be contained. And although we averted a nuclear nightmare during the Cold War, we now face proliferation of a scope and complexity that demands new strategies and new approaches. Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city — be it New York or Moscow; Tokyo or Beijing; London or Paris — could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.

    Once more, the United Nations has a pivotal role to play in preventing this crisis. The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. And it brings Security Council agreement on a broad framework for action to reduce nuclear dangers as we work toward that goal. It reflects the agenda I outlined in Prague, and builds on a consensus that all nations have the right to peaceful nuclear energy; that nations with nuclear weapons have the responsibility to move toward disarmament; and those without them have the responsibility to forsake them.

    Today, the Security Council endorsed a global effort to lock down all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. The United States will host a summit next April to advance this goal and help all nations achieve it. This resolution will also help strengthen the institutions and initiatives that combat the smuggling, financing, and theft of proliferation-related materials. It calls on all states to freeze any financial assets that are being used for proliferation. And it calls for stronger safeguards to reduce the likelihood that peaceful nuclear weapons programs can be diverted to a weapons program — that peaceful nuclear programs can be diverted to a weapons program.

    The resolution we passed today will also strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. We have made it clear that the Security Council has both the authority and the responsibility to respond to violations to this treaty. We’ve made it clear that the Security Council has both the authority and responsibility to determine and respond as necessary when violations of this treaty threaten international peace and security.

    That includes full compliance with Security Council resolutions on Iran and North Korea. Let me be clear: This is not about singling out individual nations — it is about standing up for the rights of all nations who do live up to their responsibilities. The world must stand together. And we must demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced.

    The next 12 months will be absolutely critical in determining whether this resolution and our overall efforts to stop the spread and use of nuclear weapons are successful. And all nations must do their part to make this work. In America, I have promised that we will pursue a new agreement with Russia to substantially reduce our strategic warheads and launchers. We will move forward with the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and open the door to deeper cuts in our own arsenal. In January, we will call upon countries to begin negotiations on a treaty to end the production of fissile material for weapons. And the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May will strengthen that agreement.

    Now, we harbor no illusions about the difficulty of bringing about a world without nuclear weapons. We know there are plenty of cynics, and that there will be setbacks to prove their point. But there will also be days like today that push us forward — days that tell a different story. It is the story of a world that understands that no difference or division is worth destroying all that we have built and all that we love. It is a recognition that can bring people of different nationalities and ethnicities and ideologies together. In my own country, it has brought Democrats and Republican leaders together — leaders like George Shultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, who are with us here today. And it was a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, who once articulated the goal we now seek in the starkest of terms. I quote:

    “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop until all — we must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the Earth.”

    That is our task. That can be our destiny. And we will leave this meeting with a renewed determination to achieve this shared goal. Thank you.

    In accordance with the understanding reached among Council members, I wish to remind all speakers to limit their statements to no more than five minutes in order to enable the Council to carry on its work expeditiously. Delegations with lengthy statements are kindly requested to circulate the text in writing and to deliver a condensed version when speaking in the chamber.

    I shall now invite the distinguished Secretary General, His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, to take the floor.

  • Assessing Nuclear Dangers 63 Years Later

    Sixty-three years ago this month, the United States was the first (and only—so far) nation to use nuclear weapons, detonating two warheads in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Tens of thousands of people were killed instantly. By the end of 1945, more than 200,000 more were dead from radiation-related ailments.

    This somber anniversary provides an opportunity to assess the range of nuclear threats bedeviling international relations and threatening the future. The moment is even more salient given the recent military probe of Georgia into its breakaway province of South Ossetia, the Russian military’s apparent overreaction, and the Bush administration’s subsequent rhetorical bluster threatening to reignite the Cold War, as well as ongoing U.S. attempts to establish antimissile deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, a development provoking concern and defensiveness in Russia.

    There is some good news. In a dramatic display, North Korea destroyed a cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear complex on June 28. Closer to home, the U.S. Congress refused to fund the administration’s demand for a new nuclear weapon system, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which would have upgraded most of the U.S.’s current nuclear warheads. (The existing warheads will remain frighteningly effective for many years, according to a preponderance of scientists and military theorists.)

    Now the bad news. We face a stalled disarmament process, tens of billions of dollars that the U.S. is still pumping into a vast nuclear weapons complex, and the horrifying possibility of nuclear terrorism.

    In 2002, George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, now former president Vladimir Putin, agreed to sharp reductions in nuclear stockpiles by 2012. (Even under this agreement, however, the “decommissioned” weapons could be easily and quickly re-commissioned.) More than half the allotted time has passed, yet this key post-Cold War priority has faltered.

    Furthermore, the Bush administration has decreased funding directed toward the critically important goal of securing “loose nukes” in Russia to keep them from the hands of terrorists.

    The 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) established the framework under which nuclear weapon states, included the U.S., committed to disarm. Nonnuclear signers of the treaty pledged not to develop a nuclear weapons capability in exchange for assistance in acquiring peaceful nuclear technology. The NPT’s delicate balance has now been overturned: Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and India have all built nuclear weapons stockpiles outside the treaty. They have pointed—accurately—to the implicit double standard of the original five nuclear weapons states, “led” by the U.S., which have failed to take any meaningful steps toward their own disarmament.

    At the same time, the U.S. is irresponsibly inconsistent with other countries. The Bush administration has given India a special path to nuclear legitimacy despite its development of nuclear weapons outside of international law. India is close to accepting a deal giving it access to nuclear fuel and technology for power plants, in exchange for opening only part of its nuclear fuel cycle to inspections.

    The U.S. at the same time threatens to attack Iran for thinking nuclear thoughts. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate, in fall 2007, found that Iran ceased pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003, while continuing to attempt mastery over uranium enrichment, maintaining that its current program is for peaceful energy uses, as permitted under the NPT. The Bush administration continues to use an “all options are on the table” threat—code for “nuclear weapons could be used in military strikes”—against Iran, which, all parties agree, has no nuclear weapons. The Bush White House is the first U.S. administration in history to threaten the use of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, a startling and parlous policy.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency asserts that 20-30 countries have the intent or capability to pursue new nuclear weapons programs. And large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium remain scattered at poorly secured sites throughout the world.

    Despite calls for disarmament from a cadre of converted Cold Warriors, the Department of Energy is asking for an estimated $150 billion to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons and a more “responsive” production network. This proposal builds on the Bush administration’s quiet surge in nuclear weapons spending: Adjusting for inflation, U.S. spending on nuclear weapons has increased by more than 13 percent since 2001 and is now one-third more than the Cold War average.

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been measuring the danger posed by nuclear weapons since 1947. In January 2007, it moved the clock from seven minutes to nuclear midnight to five minutes to nuclear midnight, due to “the perils of 27,000 nuclear weapons—2,000 of them ready to launch within minutes.”

    In his campaign stump speech, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama warns that nuclear terrorism is one of the gravest threats facing the United States today, highlighting his work on this overlooked issue. During the election season—and in the first months of a new presidential administration and Congress—citizens have an opportunity to insist that nuclear weapons materials from the Cold War be locked down, that nuclear stockpiles be reduced, and that we turn back the clock with real progress toward nonproliferation.

    Steve Daniels, MD, is the Santa Barbara chair of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

  • Seven Steps to Raise World Security

    Four months from now, in New York, the world will have a rare opportunity to make significant improvements in international security. The question is whether we will be smart enough to use it.

    In recent years, three phenomena have radically altered the security landscape. They are the emergence of a nuclear black market, the determined efforts by more countries to acquire technology to produce the fissile material useable in nuclear weapons and the clear desire of terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

    We have been trying to solve these new problems with existing tools. But for every step forward, we have exposed vulnerabilities in the system. The system itself – the regime that implements the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT) – needs reinforcement. Some of the necessary remedies can be taken in May, but only if governments are ready to act.

    The opportunity in New York will come in the form of a conference. If that sounds like yet more bureaucracy – addressing nightmarish nuclear security scenarios with more meetings – I sympathise. But this is no ordinary conference. Every five years, the NPT Review Conference brings world leaders together to focus on combating the threat of nuclear weapons. All but four countries will participate as treaty members. Given the global nature of the threats, these four – India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – should also be encouraged to contribute their insights and concerns.

    With seven straightforward steps, and without amending the treaty, this conference could reach a milestone in strengthening world security. The first step: put a five-year hold on additional facilities for uranium enrichment and plutonium separation. There is no compelling reason to build more of these facilities; the nuclear industry has more than enough capacity to fuel its power plants and research centres. To make this holding period acceptable for everyone, commit the countries that already have the facilities to guarantee an economic supply of nuclear fuel for bona fide uses. Then use the hiatus to develop better long-term options for managing the technologies (for example, in regional centres under multinational control). To advance these ideas, I have engaged a group of international nuclear experts, and their proposals will be put forward at the conference.

    Second, speed up existing efforts, led by the US global threat reduction initiative and others, to modify the research reactors worldwide operating with highly enriched uranium – particularly those with metal fuel that could be readily employed as bomb material. Convert these reactors to use low-enriched uranium, and accelerate research on how to make highly enriched uranium unnecessary for all peaceful nuclear applications.

    Third, raise the bar for inspection standards by establishing the “additional protocol” as the norm for verifying compliance with the NPT. Without the expanded authority of this protocol, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s rights of inspection are limited. It has proven its value recently in Iran and Libya and should be brought into force for all countries.

    Fourth, call on the United Nations Security Council to act swiftly and decisively in the case of any country that withdraws from the NPT, in terms of the threat the withdrawal poses to international peace and security.

    Fifth, urge states to act on the Security Council’s recent resolution 1540, to pursue and prosecute any illicit trading in nuclear material and technology.

    Sixth, call on the five nuclear weapon states party to the NPT to accelerate implementation of their “unequivocal commitment” to nuclear disarmament, building on efforts such as the 2002 Moscow treaty between Russia and the US. Negotiating a treaty to ban irreversibly the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons programmes would be a welcome start.

    Last, acknowledge the volatility of longstanding tensions that give rise to proliferation, in regions such as the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, and take action to resolve existing security problems and, where needed, provide security assurances. In the Middle East, urge all parties to pursue a dialogue on regional security as part of the peace process. One goal of this dialogue would be to make the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free zone.

    None of these steps will work in isolation. Each requires a concession from someone. But with leadership from all sides, this package of proposals will create gains for everyone. This opportunity will come again – in 2010. But given current trends, we cannot afford to wait another five years. As a UN panel put it recently: “We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.” The stakes are too high to risk inaction.

    The writer is the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He writes here in a personal capacity.

    Originally published by the Financial Times.