Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear policy

  • Is the Obama Administration Abandoning Its Commitment to a Nuclear-Free World?

    This article was originally published by the History News Network.

    In a major address in Prague on April 5, 2009, the newly-elected U.S. President, Barack Obama, proclaimed “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  On January 24, 2013, however, Senator John Kerry, speaking at Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination to become U.S. secretary of state, declared that a nuclear weapons-free world was no more than “an aspiration,” adding that “we’ll be lucky if we get there in however many centuries.”  Has there been a change in Obama administration policy over the past four years?

    There are certainly indications that this might be the case.

    During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Obama made his support for nuclear weapons abolition quite clear on a number of occasions, most notably in Berlin.  Speaking on July 24 before a vast, enthusiastic crowd, the Democratic presidential candidate promised to “make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy.”  He argued that “this is the moment to secure the peace of the world without nuclear weapons.”

    Obama certainly seemed to follow through with this program during his first year in office.  His Prague speech of April 5, 2009 — the first major foreign policy address he delivered as president — was devoted entirely to building a nuclear weapons-free world.  In September of 2009 he became the first American president in history to chair a meeting of the UN Security Council — one dealing with nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.  The upshot was unanimous Security Council support for Resolution 1887, which backed the goal of nuclear abolition and an action plan to reduce nuclear dangers.  Obama’s promotion of a nuclear weapons-free world played a key role in the announcement that October that he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

    The anti-nuclear momentum, however, slowed somewhat in 2010.  In April of that year, the White House released its Nuclear Posture Review, which did reorient U.S. policy toward less reliance on nuclear weapons.  But the policy shifts were fairly minor and smaller than anticipated.   Soon thereafter, the U.S. and Soviet governments announced the signing of the New START treaty, which set lower limits on the number of deployed nuclear warheads and deployed delivery systems for the two nations.  Although the U.S. Senate ratified New START by a vote of 71 to 26, the reductions in all types of nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia were actually rather modest.  Consequently, the two nations continued to possess about 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

    Much worse, from the standpoint of nuclear disarmers, was the fact that strong Republican opposition to the treaty led to an Obama administration retreat on the issue of building a nuclear-free world.  The most obvious indication was the White House pledge to provide roughly $214 billion over the next decade for modernizing U.S. nuclear forces and infrastructure.  Apparently offered in an attempt to buy GOP support for the treaty, this pledge set the U.S. government on a course that totally contradicted its talk of disarmament.  In addition, the administration withdrew plans to submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996) for Senate ratification, did not even begin negotiations for further nuclear arms reductions with Russia, and — with the exception of mobilizing other nations against the possibility of Iran joining the nuclear club — let nuclear arms control and disarmament vanish from the policy agenda.  In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked dismissively that a nuclear weapons-free world would be attained “in some century.”  President Obama’s January 2013 inaugural address did not discuss a nuclear-free world, or even specific arms control and disarmament measures.

    The hearings on Senator Kerry are revealing.  As the Republicans were eager to have him leave the Senate and open up his seat for a Republican (then presumably former Senator Scott Brown), Kerry had a very easy time of it, and used his newfound popularity to defend the more controversial Chuck Hagel, the administration’s nominee for secretary of defense.  When the Republicans raised the issue of Hagel’s support for Global Zero, a group advocating the abolition of nuclear weapons, Kerry responded that he did not believe Hagel wanted to completely eliminate them.  Kerry added that, personally, he favored a policy of nuclear deterrence and believed that “we have to maintain” the U.S. nuclear stockpile.  “We have to be realistic about it,” Kerry explained, “and I think Senator Hagel is realistic about it.”  Kerry’s remarks about the “many centuries” it would take to eliminate nuclear weapons emerged in this context.

    Of course, actions can speak much louder than words.  Kerry’s remarks might represent no more than soothing pabulum for GOP hawks.  The real test of the Obama administration’s commitment to a nuclear-free world will be its actions in the coming years.  Will it reduce expenditures for modernizing U.S. nuclear weapons and facilities, promote Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiate a treaty with Russia for deeper weapons reductions, and take actions that do not require Senate ratification (for example, join with Russia to remove nuclear weapons from high alert status)?  Above all, will it begin to negotiate a treaty for the verifiable, worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons?  We shall see.

    In the meantime, people interested in removing the dangers posed by over 17,000 nuclear weapons around the globe might want to press the administration to honor its commitment to seek a nuclear-free world.

    Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual (University of Tennessee Press).

  • What Obama Did and Did Not Say

    This article was published on the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s blog Waging Peace Today

    President Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday was all about the economy. Even when he was talking about education, national security or energy, he was talking about the economy.
    There were two things that really struck me in his speech: one thing that he said, and one thing that he didn’t say.
    The president recognizes that we need to slash the bloated Pentagon budget, though whether he’ll adopt Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) plan to cut the Pentagon budget by 25% or more is unlikely. But, on Tuesday, Obama said, “We’ll…reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use.”
    This statement was sufficiently vague to keep all but the most rabid militarists from immediately criticizing his position. I think that some proof of what exactly Obama was referring to came today in the draft 2010 Department of Energy budget: ZERO dollars for new nuclear weapons (currently called the Reliable Replacement Warhead program).
    The other thing that really struck me in his speech was the very noticeable omission of nuclear power as a critical part of our energy future. Solar? Check. Wind? Check. Efficiency? Check. “Clean” coal? Um…check. Nuclear power? No thanks.
    Let’s ignore for a moment that “clean coal” is about as asinine as calling nuclear power “clean, safe and reliable.” Barack Obama comes from the state of Illinois, the state with the most nuclear power plants and arguably the strongest base of the nuclear power lobby. Obama accepted campaign money from nuclear power pushers. He campaigned on an energy platform that included nuclear power as part of the energy mix.
    What has he discovered in his first 40 days in office? Hopefully all of the following:

    • There is still no “permanent” solution to the nuclear waste problem, and there is no solution in sight;
    • The nuclear power industry cannot survive without massive government subsidies;
    • New nuclear power plants take so many years to approve and construct that they cannot help us to meet our immediate carbon reduction requirements;
    • Once you take into account the lifecycle carbon footprint of nuclear power (uranium mining, construction, operation, waste storage, decommissioning), it doesn’t look so carbon-free;
    • Investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency are more economically sensible and will eliminate CO2 emissions more effectively.

    With continued public pressure, it is possible for the evil twins of the 20th century, nuclear power and nuclear weapons, to be eliminated for good.

     

    Rick Wayman is Director of Programs at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • United Nations General Assembly: Resolutions on Nuclear Weapons Issues Adopted from 2001-2011

    2012_zaitsu_unga_votes.pdf

  • The Path to Nuclear Security: Implementing the President’s Prague Agenda

    This speech was delivered by Joe Biden to the National Defense University on February 18, 2010.

    Ladies and gentlemen; Secretaries Gates and Chu; General Cartwright; Undersecretary Tauscher; Administrator D’Agostino; members of our armed services; students and faculty; thank you all for coming.

    At its founding, Elihu Root gave this campus a mission that is the very essence of our national defense: “Not to promote war, but to preserve peace by intelligent and adequate preparation to repel aggression.” For more than a century, you and your predecessors have heeded that call. There are few greater contributions citizens can claim.

    Many statesmen have walked these grounds, including our Administration’s outstanding National Security Advisor, General Jim Jones. You taught him well. George Kennan, the scholar and diplomat, lectured at the National War College in the late 1940s. Just back from Moscow, in a small office not far from here, he developed the doctrine of Containment that guided a generation of Cold War foreign policy.

    Some of the issues that arose during that time seem like distant memories. But the topic I came to discuss with you today, the challenge posed by nuclear weapons, continues to demand our urgent attention.

    Last April, in Prague, President Obama laid out his vision for protecting our country from nuclear threats. 

    He made clear we will take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons, while retaining a safe, secure, and effective arsenal as long as we still need it.  We will work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  And we will do everything in our power to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists and also to states that don’t already possess them.

    It’s easy to recognize the threat posed by nuclear terrorism.  But we must not underestimate how proliferation to a state could destabilize regions critical to our security and prompt neighbors to seek nuclear weapons of their own. 

    Our agenda is based on a clear-eyed assessment of our national interest.  We have long relied on nuclear weapons to deter potential adversaries. 

    Now, as our technology improves, we are developing non-nuclear ways to accomplish that same objective. The Quadrennial Defense Review and Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which Secretary Gates released two weeks ago, present a plan to further strengthen our preeminent conventional forces to defend our nation and our allies.

    Capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield, conventional warheads with worldwide reach, and others that we are developing enable us to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, as other nuclear powers join us in drawing down. With these modern capabilities, even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong.

    As we’ve said many times, the spread of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat facing our country.

    That is why we are working both to stop their proliferation and eventually to eliminate them. Until that day comes, though, we will do everything necessary to maintain our arsenal.

    At the vanguard of this effort, alongside our military, are our nuclear weapons laboratories, national treasures that deserve our support. Their invaluable contributions range from building the world’s fastest supercomputers, to developing cleaner fuels, to surveying the heavens with robotic telescopes.

    But the labs are best known for the work they do to secure our country. Time and again, we have asked our labs to meet our most urgent strategic needs. And time and again, they have delivered.

    In 1939, as fascism began its march across Europe, Asia, and Africa, Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt that the Nazis were racing to build a weapon, the likes of which the world had never seen. In the Southwest Desert, under the leadership of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicists of Los Alamos won that race and changed the course of history.

    Sandia was born near Albuquerque soon after the Second World War and became our premier facility for developing the non-nuclear components of our nuclear weapons program.

    And a few years later the institution that became Lawrence Livermore took root in California. During the arms race that followed the Korean War, it designed and developed warheads that kept our nuclear capabilities second to none.

    These examples illustrate what everyone in this room already knows—that the past century’s defining conflicts were decided not just on the battlefield, but in the classroom and in the laboratory.

    Air Force General Hap Arnold, an aviation pioneer whose vision helped shape the National War College, once argued that the First World War was decided by brawn and the Second by logistics. “The Third World War will be different,” he predicted. “It will be won by brains.” General Arnold got it almost right.  Great minds like Kennan and Oppenheimer helped win the Cold War and prevent World War Three altogether.

    During the Cold War, we tested nuclear weapons in our atmosphere, underwater and underground, to confirm that they worked before deploying them, and to evaluate more advanced concepts. But explosive testing damaged our health, disrupted our environment and set back our non-proliferation goals.

    Eighteen years ago, President George H.W. Bush signed the nuclear testing moratorium enacted by Congress, which remains in place to this day. 

    Under the moratorium, our laboratories have maintained our arsenal through the Stockpile Stewardship Program without underground nuclear testing, using techniques that are as successful as they are cutting edge.

    Today, the directors of our nuclear laboratories tell us they have a deeper understanding of our arsenal from Stockpile Stewardship than they ever had when testing was commonplace. 

    Let me repeat that—our labs know more about our arsenal today than when we used to explode our weapons on a regular basis.  With our support, the labs can anticipate potential problems and reduce their impact on our arsenal.

    Unfortunately, during the last decade, our nuclear complex and experts were neglected and underfunded.

    Tight budgets forced more than 2,000 employees of Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore from their jobs between 2006 and 2008, including highly-skilled scientists and engineers.

    And some of the facilities we use to handle uranium and plutonium date back to the days when the world’s great powers were led by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin. The signs of age and decay are becoming more apparent every day.

    Because we recognized these dangers, in December, Secretary Chu and I met at the White House with the heads of the three nuclear weapons labs. They described the dangerous impact these budgetary pressures were having on their ability to manage our arsenal without testing.  They say this situation is a threat to our security. President Obama and I agree.

    That’s why earlier this month we announced a new budget that reverses the last decade’s dangerous decline.

    It devotes $7 billion to maintaining our nuclear stockpile and modernizing our nuclear infrastructure.  To put that in perspective, that’s $624 million more than Congress approved last year—and an increase of $5 billion over the next five years.  Even in these tight fiscal times, we will commit the resources our security requires.

    This investment is not only consistent with our nonproliferation agenda; it is essential to it.   Guaranteeing our stockpile, coupled with broader research and development efforts, allows us to pursue deep nuclear reductions without compromising our security.  As our conventional capabilities improve, we will continue to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons.

    Responsible disarmament requires versatile specialists to manage it.

    The skilled technicians who look after our arsenal today are the ones who will safely dismantle it tomorrow.

    And chemists who understand how plutonium ages also develop forensics to track missing nuclear material and catch those trafficking in it. 

    Our goal of a world without nuclear weapons has been endorsed by leading voices in both parties. These include two former Secretaries of State from Republican administrations, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense Bill Perry; and my former colleague Sam Nunn, for years the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

    Together, these four statesmen called eliminating nuclear weapons “a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage.”

    During the 2008 Presidential campaign, both the President and Senator McCain supported the same objective.

    We will continue to build support for this emerging bipartisan consensus like the one around containment of Soviet expansionism that George Kennan inspired.

    Toward that end, we have worked tirelessly to implement the President’s Prague agenda.

    In September, the President chaired an historic meeting of the UN Security Council, which unanimously embraced the key elements of the President’s vision.

    As I speak, U.S. and Russian negotiators are completing an agreement that will reduce strategic weapons to their lowest levels in decades. 

    Its verification measures will provide confidence its terms are being met.  These reductions will be conducted transparently and predictably. The new START treaty will promote strategic stability and bolster global efforts to prevent proliferation by showing that the world’s leading nuclear powers are committed to reducing their arsenals. 

    And it will build momentum for collaboration with Russia on strengthening the global consensus that nations who violate their NPT obligations should be held to account. 

    This strategy is yielding results.  We have tightened sanctions on North Korea’s proliferation activities through the most restrictive UN Security Council resolution to date—and the international community is enforcing these sanctions effectively.

    And we are now working with our international partners to ensure that Iran, too, faces real consequences for failing to meet its obligations.

    In the meantime, we are completing a government-wide review of our nuclear posture.

    Already, our budget proposal reflects some of our key priorities, including increased funding for our nuclear complex, and a commitment to sustain our heavy bombers and land and submarine-based missile capabilities, under the new START agreement.

    As Congress requested and with Secretary Gates’ full support, this review has been a full interagency partnership.

    We believe we have developed a broad and deep consensus on the importance of the President’s agenda and the steps we must take to achieve it. The results will be presented to Congress soon.

    In April, the President will also host a Nuclear Security Summit to advance his goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear material within four years.  We cannot wait for an act of nuclear terrorism before coming together to share best practices and raise security standards, and we will seek firm commitments from our partners to do just that.

    In May, we will participate in the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. 

    We are rallying support for stronger measures to strengthen inspections and punish cheaters.

    The Treaty’s basic bargain—that nuclear powers pursue disarmament and non-nuclear states do not acquire such weapons, while gaining access to civilian nuclear technology—is the cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime.

    Before the treaty was negotiated, President Kennedy predicted a world with up to 20 nuclear powers by the mid-1970s.  Because of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the consensus it embodied, that didn’t happen.

    Now, 40 years later, that consensus is fraying.  We must reinforce this consensus, and strengthen the treaty for the future.

    And, while we do that, we will also continue our efforts to negotiate a ban on the production of fissile materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.  

    We know that completing a treaty that will ban the production of fissile material will not be quick or easy—but the Conference on Disarmament must resume its work on this treaty as soon as possible.

    The last piece of the President’s agenda from Prague was the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

    A decade ago, we led this effort to negotiate this treaty in order to keep emerging nuclear states from perfecting their arsenals and to prevent our rivals from pursuing ever more advanced weapons.  

    We are confident that all reasonable concerns raised about the treaty back then – concerns about verification and the reliability of our own arsenal – have now been addressed.  The test ban treaty is as important as ever.

    As President Obama said in Prague, “we cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.”

    Some friends in both parties may question aspects of our approach. Some in my own party may have trouble reconciling investments in our nuclear complex with a commitment to arms reduction. Some in the other party may worry we’re relinquishing capabilities that keep our country safe.

    With both groups we respectfully disagree. As both the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, and as a strong proponent of non-proliferation, the United States has long embodied a stark but inevitable contradiction. The horror of nuclear conflict may make its occurrence unlikely, but the very existence of nuclear weapons leaves the human race ever at the brink of self-destruction, particularly if the weapons fall into the wrong hands.

    Many leading figures of the nuclear age grew ambivalent about aspects of this order. Kennan, whose writings gave birth to the theory of nuclear deterrence, argued passionately but futilely against the development of the hydrogen bomb. And Robert Oppenheimer famously lamented, after watching the first mushroom cloud erupt from a device he helped design, that he had become “the destroyer of worlds.”

    President Obama is determined, and I am as well, that the destroyed world Oppenheimer feared must never become our reality. That is why we are pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. The awesome force at our disposal must always be balanced by the weight of our shared responsibility. 

    Every day, many in this audience help bear that burden with professionalism, courage, and grace. A grateful nation appreciates your service. Together, we will live up to our responsibilities.  Together, we will lead the world.  Thank you.  May God bless America.  May God protect our troops.

  • Japan’s Election and Anti-Nuclear Momentum

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy In Focus

    Although the smashing victory of the opposition Democratic Party in Japan’s parliamentary elections of August 30 had numerous causes, one of the results will be a strengthening of the campaign for a nuclear weapons-free world.

    In the past few years, Japan’s long-ruling conservatives — grouped in the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — had shown increasing signs of dispensing with Japan’s nuclear-free status. Pointing to North Korea’s development of a nuclear capability, party officials had publicly floated the idea of Japan’s acquiring nuclear weapons. More recently, a former government official revealed what many Japanese already suspected: Decades ago, an LDP government had agreed to allow stopovers in Japan by U.S. military aircraft and vessels carrying nuclear weapons. Outside observers even began to voice the idea that Japan’s LDP government, by insisting on U.S. nuclear guarantees, might undermine plans by the Obama administration to reduce the importance of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense policy.

    But the stunning victory by Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), with its sharply antinuclear stand, has altered this situation dramatically. Pointing to the nation’s “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” — a 1967 government pledge not to possess, manufacture, or introduce nuclear weapons into Japan — Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama promised to work to codify these principles into law. Nor is the party’s antinuclear vision limited to Japan. The DPJ endorses a regional nuclear-free zone. And as recently as this August, Hatoyama told a public gathering that “realizing a nuclear-free world as called for by U.S. President Barack Obama is exactly the moral mission of our country.”

    The DPJ’s victory gives added momentum to a campaign for nuclear abolition that has recently transitioned from an apparently utopian vision to pragmatic politics.

    Growing Movement

    Long before these new U.S. and Japanese officials turned their attention to abolishing the world’s vast nuclear arsenals, citizens groups had organized vigorous campaigns to do just that. And these nuclear disarmament campaigns played a major role in convincing governments to pull back from the nuclear arms race and accept nuclear cutbacks. As a result, the number of nuclear weapons around the world declined substantially — from some 70,000 at the height of the Cold War to fewer than 24,000 today.

    Furthermore, in the last few years the call for nuclear disarmament has turned into a demand for a nuclear-free world. In January 2007 and again in January 2008, a group of former top U.S. national security officials wrote op-ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal contending that, as the very existence of nuclear weapons raised profound dangers for human survival, the U.S. government should commit itself to the goal of nuclear abolition. During the recent U.S. presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly spoke out for building a nuclear-free world, as he did again this April. On this last occasion, addressing an audience in Prague, he committed the U.S. government to “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Subsequently, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon announced his own plan to spur the world forward “on its journey to a world free of nuclear weapons.”

    A number of important constituencies also champion this goal. In 2008, the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously adopted a resolution supporting the global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020. It followed this up in 2009 by unanimously passing a resolution “enthusiastically” welcoming “the new leadership and multilateralism that the United States is demonstrating toward achievement of a nuclear-weapon-free world” and calling upon Obama “to announce at the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference” the beginning of negotiations for “an international agreement to abolish nuclear weapons by the year 2020.”

    The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, relatively silent on nuclear disarmament since its dramatic antinuclear pronouncements of 1983, displayed a new interest in the subject in 2009. On April 8, speaking on behalf of the Conference, Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany welcomed the Obama administration’s leadership “toward a nuclear-free world” and declared that the Conference “look[ed] forward to working with the Administration and Congress in supporting legislation” toward that goal. On July 29, in a keynote talk at a “Deterrence Symposium” hosted by the U.S. Strategic Command, Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of Baltimore — a member of the Conference’s Committee on International Justice and Peace — startled the military-oriented gathering by insisting that “our world and its leaders must stay focused on the destination of a nuclear-weapons-free world.”

    Labor and Peace

    The labor movement has also started to mobilize against nuclear weapons. On July 10, 2009, the International Trade Union Confederation — representing 170 million workers in 157 countries (including the members of the AFL-CIO) — launched an international campaign for nuclear disarmament. A focal point of the campaign is a petition calling for a nuclear disarmament treaty signed by all U.N. member states. According to the world labor confederation, the campaign was “being run in cooperation with the worldwide ‘Mayors for Peace’ group,” headed by Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, which has called for creating a nuclear-free world by 2020.

    Although the U.S. peace movement has been preoccupied with ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as with averting war with Iran, it recently has increased its efforts around the theme of a nuclear-free world, especially in connection with the run-up to the May 2010 NPT review conference at the United Nations. Beginning in the summer of 2009, peace and disarmament organizations began circulating a nuclear abolition petition directed to Obama, calling upon the administration to use the occasion of the conference to announce negotiations for a treaty abolishing nuclear weapons. There are also plans afoot for a large antinuclear demonstration at the United Nations on May 2, 2010, as well as for smaller events designed to rally support for a nuclear-free world.

    At the moment, the degree to which the Japanese elections will increase the clout of this burgeoning nuclear abolition campaign remains uncertain. The DPJ faces a number of challenges if it is to implement its nuclear-free promises. Although public sentiment in Japan is strongly antinuclear, there is also a rising fear of North Korea’s nuclear program — a fact that might lead to an erosion of the new administration’s nuclear-free doctrine. Compromise on maintaining a nuclear-free Japan is alluring, as Japan has the scientific and technological capability to produce nuclear weapons easily and quickly. Furthermore, many Japanese (and particularly LDP members), though uneasy about Japan’s development of nuclear weapons, feel comfortable under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Thus, they might resist international efforts to create a nuclear-free world.

    Even so, the DPJ’s election sweep should hearten opponents of nuclear weapons, for it provides not only a symbolic victory for antinuclear forces but a potentially significant shift in the nuclear policy of a major nation. Above all, it serves as an indication that, around the world, the antinuclear momentum is growing.

    Lawrence Wittner is professor of history at the State University of New York–Albany and a Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Associate . His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

  • Questions for the Candidates

    Article originally appeared in the International Herald Tribune

    There has been unusual interest throughout the world in the U.S. presidential race.

    Skeptics, of whom there are quite a few, say the campaign is just a marathon show that has little to do with real policymaking. Even if there’s a grain of truth in that, in an interdependent world the statements of the contenders for the White House are more than just rhetoric addressed to American voters.

    Major policy problems today cannot be solved without America – and America cannot solve them alone.

    Even the domestic problems of the United States are no longer purely internal. I am referring first of all to the economy. The problem of the huge U.S. budget deficit can be managed, for a time, by continuing to flood the world with “greenbacks,” whose rate is declining along with the value of U.S. securities. But such a system cannot work forever.

    Of course, the average American is not concerned with the complexities of global finance. But as I talk to ordinary Americans, and I visit the United States once or twice a year, I sense their anxiety about the state of the economy. The irony, they have said to me, is that the middle class felt little benefit from economic growth when the official indicators were pointing upward, but once the downturn started, it hit them immediately, and it hit them hard.

    No one can offer a simple fix for America’s economic problems, but it is hard not to see their connection to U.S. foreign policies. Over the past eight years the rapid rise in military spending has been the main factor in increasing the federal budget deficit. The United States spends more money on the military today than at the height of the Cold War.

    Yet no candidate has made that clear. “Defense spending” is a subject that seems to be surrounded by a wall of silence. But that wall will have to fall one day.

    We can expect a serious debate about foreign policy issues, including the role of the United States in the world; America’s claim to global leadership; fighting terrorism; nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and the problems caused by the invasion of Iraq.

    Of course I am not pretending to write the script for the presidential candidates’ debates. But I would add to this list of issues two more: the size of America’s defense budget and the militarization of its foreign policy. I am afraid these two questions will not be asked by the moderators. But sooner or later they will have to be answered.

    The present administration, particularly during George W. Bush’s first presidential term, was bent on trying to solve many foreign policy issues primarily by military means, through threats and pressure. The big question today is whether the presidential nominees will propose a different approach to the world’s most urgent problems.

    I am extremely alarmed by the increasing tendency to militarize policymaking and thinking. The fact is that the military option has again and again led to a dead end.

    One doesn’t have to go very far to find an alternative. Take the recent developments on nonproliferation issues, where the focus has been on two countries – North Korea and Iran.

    After several years of saber-rattling, the United States finally got around to serious talks with the North Koreans, involving South Korea and other neighboring countries. And though it took time to achieve results, the dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program has now begun.

    It’s true that nuclear issues in Iran encompass some unique features and may be more difficult to solve. But clearly threats and delusions of “regime change” are not the way to do it.

    We have to look even deeper for a solution. “Horizontal” proliferation will only get worse unless we solve the “vertical” problem, i.e. the continued existence of huge arsenals of sophisticated nuclear weapons held by major powers, particularly the United States and Russia.

    In recent months there seems to have been a conceptual breakthrough on this issue, with influential Americans calling for revitalizing efforts aimed at the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have now endorsed that goal.

    I have always been in favor of ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. On my watch, the Soviet Union and the United States concluded treaties on the elimination of a whole class of nuclear weapons – Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) missiles – and on A 50 percent reduction of strategic weapons, which led to the destruction of thousands of nuclear warheads.

    But when we proposed complete nuclear disarmament, our Western partners raised the issue of the Soviet Union’s advantage in conventional forces. So we agreed to negotiate major cuts in non-nuclear weapons, signing a treaty on this issue in Vienna.

    Today, I see a similar and even bigger problem, but the roles have been reversed. Let us imagine that 10 or 15 years down the road the world has abolished nuclear weapons. What would remain? Huge stockpiles of conventional arms, including the newest types, some so devastating as to be comparable to weapons of mass destruction.

    And the lion’s share of those stockpiles would be in the hands of one country, the United States, giving it an overwhelming advantage. Such a state of affairs would block the road to nuclear disarmament.

    Today the United States produces about half of the world’s military hardware and has over 700 military bases, from Europe to the most remote corners of the world. Those are just the officially recognized bases, with more being planned. It is as if the Cold War is still raging, as if the United States is surrounded by enemies who can only be fought with tanks, missiles and bombers. Historically, only empires had such an expansive approach to assuring their security.

    So the candidates, and the next president, will have to decide and state clearly whether America wants to be an empire or a democracy, whether it seeks global dominance or international cooperation. They will have to choose, because this is an either-or proposition: The two things don’t mix, like oil and water.

    Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, is president of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies in Moscow.

  • Ten Years After India’s Nuclear Tests: Deeper Into the Morass

    Article originally appeared in The Hindu

    Since Pokharan, we have been witness to an opportunistic shift in the stance of the government, from an outright condemnation of nuclear deterrence to an unabated enthusiasm for the development of a full-fledged arsenal.

    Hand in hand, expenditures on non-nuclear military activities and acquisition of conventional weapons have also increased dramatically…The impact of these expenditures, of course, falls primarily upon the poor and the vulnerable.

    In 1996, the International Court of Justice offered a historic Advisory Opinion where it ruled that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of international humanitarian law” and endorsed unanimously a legal obligation on all States “to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” Earlier, as the case was being considered, India submitted a Memorial where it argued that nuclear deterrence should be considered “abhorrent to human sentiment since it implies that a state, if required to defend its own existence, will act with pitiless disregard for the consequences of its own and adversary’s people”. This description is apt. Though just an unproven assumption, nuclear deterrence relies on the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction aimed at killing large numbers of people in the wishful hope that such annihilation would deter another country from attacking because of fear.

    Some years later, in January 2003, the Indian government issued a nuclear doctrine which explicitly stated that the country is pursuing nuclear deterrence, though this was qualified as a minimal one. But the doctrine also warns that “nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage”. Unacceptable damage, in plain English, means that these nuclear weapons would be dropped on cities, each killing lakhs or millions of innocent people. The few years between the clear and forthright condemnation of deterrence and the enthusiastic invocation of deterrence are among the most important in recent Indian history.

    The biggest event occurred 10 years ago, on May 11, 1998, when three nuclear devices exploded in the Pokharan desert. Two days later, two more explosions were conducted and Prime Minister Vajpayee proudly announced that India was now a nuclear weapon State. Pakistan’s leaders, showing that they too subscribed to the twisted logic that drives the acquisition of nuclear weapons, conducted six explosions of their own on May 28 and 30. With those tests, the half-century-old conflict between India and Pakistan acquired a nuclear edge.
    Nuclear threats

    The edge was to be seen soon. Contrary to the claims of nuclear weapons advocates, who promised peace and a cessation of war, India and Pakistan fought over Kargil bitterly within a year of the tests. Though limited geographically, the war is estimated to have cost about 1,700 Indian lives and nearly 800 Pakistani ones. Indian and Pakistani officials delivered indirect and direct nuclear threats to one another at least 13 times. There are also plausible, though not convincing, reports that the two countries did prepare their nuclear arsenals for potential use.

    Kargil was the first major confrontation between two nuclear powers. Indeed, the war may even be the first caused by nuclear weapons. The late Benazir Bhutto stated that in 1996 Pakistani military officers had presented her with plans for a Kargil style operation, which she vetoed. It would therefore seem that the 1998 tests convinced Pakistan’s political and military leaders that the operation might be feasible with nuclear weapons to restrict any possible Indian riposte.

    The pattern of nuclear intimidation seen in Kargil was to be repeated during the major military crises that followed the militant attack on the Parliament in December 2001. Even Prime Minister Vajpayee warned: “no weapon would be spared in self-defence. Whatever weapon was available, it would be used no matter how it wounded the enemy”. On the other side of the border, former chief of the Pakistan Army, General Mirza Aslam Beg, declared: “We can make a first strike, and a second strike or even a third”.

    Although it did not develop into war, a number of factors make the 2002 crisis more dangerous than the Kargil war. Unlike Kargil, where Pakistan is clearly seen to have lost, especially politically, both sides claim the 2002 crisis as a victory. On the one hand General Musharraf’s promise that he would rein in Pakistan-based militant organisations is seen as proof that India’s “coercive diplomacy” worked. Pakistan’s case is simpler. Despite the huge build-up of forces by India, and much talk of attacking so-called terrorist camps within Pakistan, no military attacks actually occurred. That a massive military confrontation with strong nuclear overtones is seen by both sides as a victory increases the likelihood that similar incidents will occur in the future.

    Nuclear costs

    The obvious lesson of these two military crises, that nuclear weapons cause insecurity, has been ignored by nuclear advocates. Instead, they claimed that just testing nuclear weapons is insufficient for deterrence and called for the kinds of steps that India had earlier criticised nuclear weapons States for taking. Following their advice, India has not only adopted use-doctrines and practices similar to those of nuclear weapon States, but has also embarked on developing the paraphernalia needed for the adoption of these doctrines. These include a triad of delivery vehicles, including aircraft capable of dropping nuclear bombs, missiles launched from land and sea, and a nuclear submarine; training the military to use these; a command and control structure to oversee the deployment and use of nuclear weapons; components of an early warning system and an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defence system. No one has been keeping count of the crores of rupees being spent in this process. Hand in hand, expenditures on non-nuclear military activities and acquisition of conventional weapons have also increased dramatically. This is in direct contradiction to the erstwhile claims of nuclear advocates that the acquisition of nuclear weapons would reduce expenditure on conventional weapons. The impact of these expenditures, of course, falls primarily upon the poor and the vulnerable.

    A growing arsenal

    One of the adjectives appended to deterrence in India’s nuclear doctrine is minimal. (The other adjective – credible – is superfluous. A deterrent that is not credible cannot deter.) When asked to delineate what constitutes minimal, policy makers resort to obfuscation. Minimal, they claim, is a dynamic concept and one which cannot be specified in advance. Given the massive destructive power of nuclear weapons, it should be obvious that a dozen or so suffice to obliterate several cities and millions of people in Pakistan or China. But going by current public estimates, the fissile material stockpile just from CIRUS and Dhruva, the two reactors reportedly assigned for making plutonium for weapons, should be sufficient for over a hundred nuclear weapons. Perhaps the meaning of minimal is simply that it is not maximal.

    That the future arsenal size sought by policymakers is much larger was made clear during the negotiations and public debates surrounding the nuclear deal that is being negotiated with the United States. As a report from the International Panel of Fissile Materials, which the author is a part of, shows, the number of reactors that the DAE strenuously kept outside of safeguards can produce several dozen nuclear weapons worth of plutonium every year (available at www.fissilematerials.org).

    New attitudes

    During the 1990s, one oft-heard argument from those espousing nuclear weapons was that while these were evil, they were a necessary evil. To the extent that the pressures of this lobby were resisted, India acquired weapons only reluctantly. That was then. What is on display today is unabated enthusiasm for the ongoing development of a full fledged arsenal. And all the attitudes that go with being a State possessing nuclear weapons.

    Such a shift in attitude was on display during the unexpected vote against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005. While much attention was focused on US pressure, there was something deeper too. In an earlier era, Indian leaders would have denounced the hypocrisy of the United States, with its immense nuclear arsenal, lecturing Iran about its small uranium enrichment plant. Now, one heard many policy-makers talking about why nuclear proliferation was dangerous and Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear technology. Non-proliferation, which used to be seen as immoral, has come to take the place of disarmament, the truly worthwhile goal.

    The opportunistic switch in stance is somewhat akin to what has been called the third class railway compartment syndrome. Those waiting on a crowded platform clamour in the name of justice and fairness to be let into compartment. But once inside, the opportunist shuts the door and keeps the others outside, with force if necessary.

    In July 1946, following the US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mahatma Gandhi observed, “the atom bomb has deadened the finest feelings which have sustained mankind for agesŠIt has resulted for the time being in the soul of Japan being destroyed. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.”

    Unfortunately in our case, the first decade after Pokharan has already started making the impacts quite clear. It is not too late to reverse these.

    M. V. Ramana is Senior Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    4. Ibid.

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

  • Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter

    Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter

    For most Americans, nuclear weapons are a distant concern, and deciding what to do about them is a low priority. As a culture, we are relatively comfortable possessing nuclear weapons, believing that they are, on balance, a good security hedge in a dangerous world. We leave it to our leaders to determine what should be done with these weapons. But our leaders may be moving in exactly the wrong direction.

    Seymour Hersh reported in the April 17, 2006 New Yorker magazine that the US government is developing plans for the possible preemptive use of nuclear weapons against Iranian nuclear facilities. Although George Bush dismissed such reports as “wild speculation,” he did not deny them. The reports should awaken the American people to some relevant issues. First, our political and military leaders are considering the preemptive first-use of nuclear weapons, an act that would undoubtedly constitute aggressive war and a crime against humanity. Second, these leaders hold open the possibility of using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapons state, despite official pledges not to do so. Third, the decision about whether or not to use nuclear weapons preemptively rests in the hands of a single individual, the president.

    The framers of our Constitution could not have imagined the circumstances of the Nuclear Age, in which the possibility exists of one leader triggering a nuclear holocaust, yet they wisely stipulated that the consent of Congress, the political arm of the people, would be necessary to initiate any war.

    We need an open and vigorous discussion in every village, town and city about the anti-democratic and anti-Constitutional tendencies inherent in the presidential control of nuclear weapons. Without such discussion, we relegate the fate of the country and the world to the whims of a single individual.

    In addition, an equally fundamental question must be confronted – have nuclear weapons increased or decreased our security as a nation? In today’s world, nuclear weapons are a far more powerful tool in the hands of a weak actor than in the hands of a powerful state. Thus, Pakistan can deter India and China can deter the US and Russia. A powerful state, such as the US, has everything to lose and very little to gain from the possession of nuclear weapons. This concern isn’t being effectively addressed in the US.

    The more the US relies on nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that other countries will do so as well. The most reasonable course for the US to take is to provide leadership to bring the world back from the nuclear precipice by working to achieve global nuclear disarmament.

    An argument can be made that a small number of nuclear weapons are needed for deterrence until they are all eliminated. But any threat or use of nuclear weapons for purposes other than minimum deterrence will certainly encourage other states to seek their own nuclear arsenals, if only to prevent being bullied by nuclear weapons states. This is the position that North Korea and Iran find themselves in today.

    Current US nuclear policy favors allies, such as Israel and India, and threatens perceived enemies, such as Iran and North Korea. We are already engaged in an aggressive, illegal, protracted and costly war against Iraq, initiated on the false basis that it had a nuclear weapons program. Iran, because of its uranium enrichment, is currently within US gun sights.

    There is no conceivable US use of nuclear weapons, with their powerful and unpredictable consequences, that would not turn the US into a pariah state. The US engenders animosity by pushing beyond the limits imposed by minimum deterrence and failing to take seriously its disarmament obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also creates a climate in which other states may seek to develop nuclear arsenals and in which these weapons may end up in the hands of terrorists. This should be a major concern for all Americans because it could lead to US cities being the targets of nuclear weapons used by extremist groups.

    Polls show that Americans, like most other people in the world, favor nuclear disarmament. However, as a nation, we neither press for it nor question the nuclear policies of our government. But we refrain from such actions at our peril, for a bad decision involving nuclear weapons could destroy us. Inattention and apathy leave the weapons and the decision to use them beyond our reach.

    Thus, we continue with nuclear business as usual, drifting toward the catastrophic day when our policies will lead either to nuclear weapons again being used by us or, as likely, against us by extremist organizations that cannot be deterred by threat of retaliation. We are long past time to bring our nuclear policies back onto the public agenda and open them to thoughtful public discourse.

     

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Find out more at the Foundation’s website www.wagingpeace.org and its blog, www.wagingpeace.org/blog.

  • Leader or Follower? Powell Chose the Latter

    Leader or Follower? Powell Chose the Latter

    Colin Powell is coming to Santa Barbara to give a talk on “Leadership: Taking Charge.” His presence in the community and his topic provide an opportunity to consider what it means to be a leader.

    In the military model, with which Mr. Powell is most familiar, leaders give orders and followers obey. It is a hierarchical structure in which one must be an obedient follower as well as an order giver or relayer of orders from above. In this model, leadership is based principally upon the authority of one’s role. Generals give orders to colonels; colonels to majors; and so on. In the hierarchical chain of command, the commander-in-chief is at the top of the ladder, and the young recruits at the bottom of the ladder. The private who efficiently follows orders will move up the ladder. Military leadership places a premium on obedience and loyalty: doing what one is told to do. Armies run on obedience to orders.

    In the US military, as with most militaries, soldiers are, however, also subject to the law. They are informed in military handbooks that they have a duty to refuse to obey illegal orders. Examples of such orders might be to kill prisoners of war, commit torture or to bomb civilian populations. What is a soldier to do when confronted with such illegal orders? Obey or disobey? Remain silent and carry out the order, or speak out and inform the world of the illegal orders?

    A tension is created between the hierarchical following of orders and the duty to break the chain of command when it comes to illegal orders. It is easier to build a career within the military by going along and not challenging orders from above. To speak out and challenge orders, on any grounds, runs the risk of ending one’s career within a hierarchical system. One cannot be both a “good soldier” who follows orders, regardless of their legality, and also one who does his duty to refuse illegal orders.

    Colin Powell has always been a good soldier. He impressed his superiors in the military and in the upper reaches of government sufficiently to become the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was then appointed Secretary of State by George W. Bush. He was also well regarded by the public as a man who was both reasonable and responsible. When Mr. Bush initially took his case for war against Iraq to the United Nations, the Security Council balked at giving Mr. Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq, and chose instead to “remain seized” of the matter. Despite the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq was engaged in programs developing weapons of mass destruction, the United Nations inspectors were not finding such weapons or related programs on the ground in Iraq.

    To Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State who was widely regarded by the general public as the most trustworthy member of Bush’s cabinet, fell the task of making the case for war against Iraq at the UN Security Council. On February 6, 2003, Powell went before the Security Council and presented the members with false and misleading evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Relying upon the clearly faulty intelligence about aluminum tubing for a uranium enrichment program, Powell told the Council, for example, “We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program. On the contrary, we have more than a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.”

    There are times when being a leader means doing what is right, regardless of the consequences. Powell could, perhaps, have stopped a needless and illegal war. He chose, instead, to use his goodwill as a messenger presenting the Bush administration’s case for war to the United Nations Security Council and, at the same time, to the American people. He chose obedience to authority and loyalty to his “chain of command” over respect for truth, human life and international law.

    In the end, Powell must carry a heavy weight on his shoulders, for he might well have prevented the invasion of Iraq by taking the bold and courageous step of resigning his office. He could have then told the truth to the American people, rather than making a false case for war, even if it meant simply reflecting the ambiguity and doubts of the intelligence on which he drew. Ironically, Powell’s assertions at the UN met with strong rebuttals by UN inspectors, but his prestige and the public’s confidence in him seemed to reassure the American people and the Congress.

    The American people should be highly skeptical of General Powell. He had a critical moment to be a leader and he chose instead to be a follower. Rather than leadership for peace, he joined in promoting misrepresentations that led the United States into a war that has now resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Sadly, Mr. Powell has proven that he is not a man to look to for leadership, nor one to pontificate about it. He owes the country an apology, which would require self-reflection and courage, two other traits of a good leader.

    Mr. Powell is now free from the constraints of military hierarchy and enjoys the rights and responsibilities associated with being a US citizen. Even if he had been in some way convinced of the truthfulness of his statements about Iraq at the time they were made, he must by now surely have serious doubts about their veracity. With these doubts arises a solemn responsibility (and opportunity) to express them publicly, thereby breaking his silent assent to the continuing tragedy of the Iraq war and reasserting his claim to leadership.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of many studies of peace in the Nuclear Age, and has been a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons. This article was published in the Santa Barbara News-Press on February 12, 2006.