Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear posture review

The New US Nuclear Posture

In April 2009, President Obama went to Prague and told the world that the United States seeks “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” A year later, his administration is moving forward toward this goal. The Obama administration released its Nuclear Posture Review on April 6, 2010. On April 8, 2010, the president flew back to Prague to sign a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russians.

In both tone and substance the new Nuclear Posture Review is far more positive and hopeful than that of the George W. Bush administration. The Obama nuclear posture puts its primary focus on preventing nuclear proliferation and terrorism. “The threat of global nuclear war has become remote,” it says, “but the risk of nuclear attack has increased.” It views nuclear terrorism as “today’s most immediate and extreme danger.”

To prevent terrorists, such as al Qaeda, from obtaining nuclear weapons, the Obama administration seeks to bolster the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and secure all loose nuclear materials globally. It convened a Nuclear Security Summit on April 12-13, 2010 in Washington, with leaders of 46 other countries participating in making plans to prevent nuclear terrorism. The Obama administration is also pursuing arms control efforts, including the New START agreement, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.

The administration has been straight forward in stating that it is taking these steps “as a means of strengthening our ability to mobilize broad international support for the measures needed to reinforce the non-proliferation regime and secure nuclear materials worldwide.” In other words, the Obama administration understands that the US needs to show that it is taking steps to meet its own nuclear disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (something the Bush administration never grasped) if it hopes to have the support of other parties to that treaty for keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.

Many advocates of a nuclear weapon-free world, including the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, encouraged the Obama administration to go further and adopt a policy of No First Use; that is, committing to use nuclear weapons only in response to a preceding nuclear attack. While the administration did not demonstrate this level of leadership, it did consider a policy of making the deterrence of a nuclear attack the “sole purpose” of nuclear weapons. However, it dismissed even this step, while offering some hope that it will work toward this end in the future.

The administration did take a smaller step by committing in the new Nuclear Posture Review not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are in compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It referred specifically to North Korea and Iran as countries out of compliance with the treaty. The new nuclear posture will please some advocates of nuclear weapons by leaving open “a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW [chemical or biological weapons] attack against the United States or its allies and partners.”

The new Nuclear Posture Review states that the “fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons, which will continue as long as nuclear weapons exist, is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners.” This suggests confusion in the policy. If terrorists are, in fact, the greatest threat to the country, and as non-state actors they cannot be deterred, then who exactly are the weapons deterring? The review may be contemplating Russia or China, but it also recognizes that the US is interconnected with these countries and the chances of war with them are very low. Or, it may be contemplating some unknown contingency in the future, but if this is the case then wouldn’t the country be better off moving more rapidly toward the goal of a world without nuclear weapons? The review makes clear that the US “would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” This approach, and the vagueness of “vital interests,” will likely be viewed internationally as an unfortunate double standard that other countries may also choose to rely upon.

In the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the US and Russia will reduce their deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 each and reduce deployed delivery vehicles to 700 each with 100 reserve delivery vehicles each by the year 2017. It is not a large step forward, but it is a step in the right direction, and the Obama administration is committed to seeking further reductions with Russia. Together the two countries have some 95 percent of the world’s 23,000 nuclear arms. The new US nuclear posture indicates that the US “will place importance on Russia joining us as we move to lower levels.” In the document, however, there are no constraints on the ability of the US to deploy missile defenses. Since this is a major concern to Russia, it could limit the possibilities for additional progress toward nuclear disarmament.

One of the phrases that recurs throughout the new Nuclear Posture Review is “ensuring the safety, security and effectiveness” of nuclear warheads. Safety and security both make sense. If we are to retain nuclear weapons, we want them to be both safe from accident and secure from theft. But what does “effective” mean? That the weapons will serve the purpose of deterring? If so, who? Effectiveness would be impossible to measure unless we can answer the question, “Effective for what?” In the end, “safe, secure and effective,” appear to be arguments for modernizing the US nuclear arsenal and spending an additional $5 billion on its nuclear weapons laboratories over the next five years.

The Nuclear Posture Review concludes by looking toward a world without nuclear weapons. It recognizes that certain conditions are necessary for such a world. These include halting nuclear proliferation, achieving greater transparency into nuclear weapons programs, improving verification methods, developing effective enforcement measures, and resolving regional disputes. The review states that such conditions do not exist today. However, with the requisite political will, these conditions could be developed in the process of negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention – a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. While pausing to celebrate the incremental steps in arms reductions and the limitations on nuclear weapons use that are being made now, we should also recognize that a policy of No First Use and a commitment to negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention would move us far more rapidly toward the peace and security of the nuclear weapon-free world envisioned by President Obama.

April 7, 2010
NATO Goes Anti-Nuclear?

This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.

President Obama’s call
for a nuclear-weapons-free world in Prague last April unleashed a great
outpouring of support from international allies and grassroots
activists demanding a process to actually eliminate nuclear weapons.
One recent and unexpected initiative has come from America’s NATO
allies. Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway have called
on NATO to review its nuclear policy and remove all U.S. nuclear
weapons currently on European soil under NATO’s “nuclear sharing”
policy. Despite U.S. insistence on strict adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), which prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear
weapons states, several hundred U.S. nuclear bombs are housed in
Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey.

Citing Obama’s announcement in Prague of “America’s commitment to
seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” the
NATO allies have broken ranks with the United States. All five
governments are experiencing domestic pressure to end the hypocrisy of
the NPT, where nuclear “haves” disregard their disarmament requirements
with impunity while using coercion, sanctions, threats of war, and even
actual war (as in Iraq) to prevent the nuclear “have-nots” from
acquiring nuclear bombs. Together with calls from major former political and military leaders to eliminate nuclear weapons, as well as UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon’s proposal for a five-point program
“to rid the world of nuclear bombs,” these NATO members have seized the
political moment. They have decided to do their part to maintain the
integrity of the NPT in advance of the five-year review conference this
May at the UN in New York.

The NATO five put NATO’s nuclear policy on the agenda
for an April strategy meeting in Estonia. They have neither been
dissuaded by Obama’s cautionary note that the goal of a
nuclear-weapons-free world “will not be reached quickly — perhaps not
in my lifetime,” nor discouraged by Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton’s mistaken qualification of Obama’s remarks when she said that “we might not achieve the ambition of a world without nuclear weapons in our lifetime or successive lifetimes” (emphasis added).

Progress Elsewhere

Japan has also called for more rapid progress on nuclear
disarmament. The new Democratic Party government, which ended 60 years
of one-party rule, wrote Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to
disavow the pro-nuclear advocacy of former Japanese officials. U.S.
militarists often cited such advocacy as a rationale for maintaining
the U.S. nuclear “umbrella” over Japan. Supporting Obama’s call for a
nuclear-weapons-free world, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada urged the
United States to declare that nuclear weapons would be used only for
the “sole purpose” of deterring a nuclear attack. The declaration would
end current U.S. policy, first expanded by the Clinton administration
and maintained throughout the Bush presidency, to preemptively use
nuclear weapons against the threat or use of chemical, biological, or
conventional forces. Additionally, over 200 Japanese parliamentarians wrote to reassure
Obama that, contrary to assertions by U.S. military hawks, Japan would
not seek the possession of nuclear weapons were the United States to
declare a “sole use” limitation on its nuclear arsenal.

These promising anti-nuclear positions come at an important
political moment. Obama has been expected shortly to deliver to
Congress a new nuclear posture review setting forth U.S. policy for the
use of nuclear weapons. Originally scheduled for a January release, the
review has been delayed several times. News of conflicting views among
the drafters and of Obama’s dissatisfaction with the most recent
version, which promotes the status quo on outdated Cold War nuclear policies, has been prominently reported in the mainstream press.

Pentagon Pushback

Gates has defended existing nuclear policy and expressed dissatisfaction with our NATO allies. At a meeting to discuss NATO’s 21^st Century Strategic Concept — and on the heels of the Dutch government’s collapse over the decision to extend its troop deployment in Afghanistan — Gates stated that:

The demilitarization of Europe — where
large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to
military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing
in the 20^th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21^st.

At the same meeting, U.S. National Security Advisor General James
Jones said, “NATO must be prepared to address, deny, and deter the full
spectrum of threats, whether emanating from within Europe at NATO’s
boundaries, or far beyond NATO’s borders.”

Clinton, furthermore, urged the exponential growth of “missile defense throughout the world and warned that:

[N]uclear proliferation and the
development of more sophisticated missiles in countries such as North
Korea and Iran are reviving the specter of an interstate nuclear
attack. So how do we in NATO do out part of ensure that such weapons
never are unleashed on the world?

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, commenting on the new NATO
strategic concept, raised Russia’s deep concerns that NATO’s assertion
of a right to use military force globally violated the UN Charter.
Russia views U.S. plans to ring Europe with missiles in Bulgaria,
Poland, and Romania, with a missile command center in the Czech
Republic, as a threat. The Obama-Medvedev negotiations on the first
round of nuclear arms cuts on START (the Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty) have been delayed repeatedly by disagreements on U.S. plans for missile proliferation.

Momentum Builds

Nevertheless, there is extraordinary momentum behind calls to
abolish nuclear weapons. Thousands of international visitors are
expected to join U.S. citizens to assemble, march, and rally in New York during the NPT Review Conference in May. Mayors for Peace is working to enroll 5,000 mayors in its Vision 2020 Campaign to complete negotiations on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2020. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the Abolition 2000 Network
are committed to work for a nuclear weapons convention regardless of
the NPT outcome. Norway, host of the successful Oslo process to ban
cluster bombs, noted that the Oslo and Ottawa processes banning
landmines could be replicated to move forward on a nuclear disarmament based on
“powerful alliances between civil society and governments.” There has
been an unprecedented media focus on U.S. nuclear policy and debate
about whether Obama can make good on his pledge and earn his Nobel
Peace Prize.

Nearly 25 years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev unleashed the forces of perestroika and glasnost
in the Soviet Union. These forces kindled people’s aspirations for
freedom, resulting in the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of
the Soviet empire. Despite the formidable array of powerful interests
lawlessly brandishing their missiles and refurbishing their nuclear
arsenals, Obama and Medvedev’s call for a nuclear-weapons-free world
may similarly have unleashed forces that will transform the 20^th-century paradigm of perpetual war and terror.

March 11, 2010
New Think and Old Weapons

Every four years the White House issues a “nuclear posture review.” That may sound like an anachronism. It isn’t. In a world where the United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons — and Iran, North Korea and others have seemingly unquenchable nuclear appetites — what the United States says about its arsenal matters enormously.

President Obama’s review was due to Congress in December. That has been delayed, in part because of administration infighting. The president needs to get this right. It is his chance to finally jettison cold war doctrine and bolster America’s credibility as it presses to rein in Iran, North Korea and other proliferators.

Mr. Obama has already committed rhetorically to the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. But we are concerned that some of his advisers, especially at the Pentagon, are resisting his bold ambitions. He needs to stick with the ideas he articulated in his campaign and in speeches last year in Prague and at the United Nations.

These are some of the important questions the posture review must address:

THEIR PURPOSE: Current doctrine gives nuclear weapons a “critical role” in defending the United States and its allies. And it suggests they could be used against foes wielding chemical, biological or even conventional forces — not just nuclear arms. Mr. Obama’s aides have proposed changing that to say that the “primary” purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies. This still invites questions about whether Washington values — and might use — nuclear forces against non-nuclear targets.

Given America’s vast conventional military superiority, broader uses are neither realistic nor necessary. Any ambiguity undercuts Washington’s credibility when it argues that other countries have no strategic reason to develop their own nuclear arms. The sole purpose of American nuclear forces should be to deter a nuclear attack against this country or its allies.

HOW MANY: President George W. Bush disdained arms control as old think, and Washington and Moscow have not signed an arms reduction treaty since 2002. Mr. Obama launched negotiations on a new agreement that would slash the number of warheads each side has deployed from 2,200 to between 1,500 and 1,675. The talks are dragging on, but there is hope for an agreement soon. Both sides should go deeper.

The review should make clear that the United States is ready to move, as a next step, down to 1,000 deployed warheads — military experts say half that number is enough to wipe out the assets of Russia, which is no longer an enemy. China, the only major nuclear power adding to its arsenal, is estimated to have 100 to 200 warheads. The treaty being negotiated says nothing about the nearly 15,000 warheads, in total, that the United States and Russia keep as backups — the so-called hedge. And it says nothing about America’s 500 short-range nuclear weapons, which are considered secure, or Russia’s 3,000 or more, which are chillingly vulnerable to theft.

The review should make clear that there is no need for a huge hedge, and that tactical weapons have an utter lack of strategic value — as a prelude to reducing both. Certainly no general we know of could imagine exploding a warhead on a battlefield. Today’s greatest nuclear danger is that terrorists will steal or build a weapon. That is best countered by halting proliferation and securing and reducing stockpiles and other material.

NEW WEAPONS: The United States built its last new warhead in 1989. So when aides to President George W. Bush called for building new weapons, with new designs and new capabilities, it opened this country to charges of hypocrisy and double standards when it demanded that North Korea and Iran end their nuclear programs.

Mr. Obama has said that this country does not need new weapons. But we are concerned the review will open the door to just that by directing the labs to study options — including a new weapons design — for maintaining the arsenal. The government has a strong and hugely expensive system for ensuring that the stockpile is safe and reliable. Mr. Obama has already vastly increased the labs’ budgets. The review should make clear that there is no need for a new weapon.

ALERT LEVELS: The United States and Russia each still have about 1,000 weapons ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Mr. Obama has rightly described this as a dangerous cold war relic. The review should commit to taking as many of those forces off hair-trigger alert as possible — and encourage Russia to do the same.

•

In April, Mr. Obama will host a much needed summit meeting on the need to better secure nuclear material from terrorists. In May, Washington will encourage a United Nations-led conference to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the bedrock, and battered, agreement for curbing the spread of nuclear arms.

President Obama will also have to persuade the Senate to ratify the Start follow-on treaty, and we hope he will quickly press the Senate to approve the test ban treaty. He is also working with allies to revive nuclear talks with North Korea and to impose tougher sanctions on Iran. Getting the nuclear posture review right is essential for moving all of this ahead.

February 28, 2010
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.

February 18, 2010
The Nuclear Issue After the Posture Review
We have to look reality in its ugly face. The drive for the elimination of nuclear weapons is not going well; indeed, it is going very badly. The campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons, pursued by INES, Pugwash and many other organizations, has not only come to a halt, but the use of these weapons may become a routine part of military strategy, according to the recently disclosed Nuclear Posture Review.

What is all the more worrying is the loss of support from the general public. This is evident, for example, from the results of a public opinion poll in the UK, which has been conducted systematically, every month, for the last 20 years. The graph presents the combined response to two questions: (1) What would you say is the most important issue facing Britain today? (2) What do you see as other important issues facing Britain today? At one time, over 40 per cent put nuclear disarmament and nuclear weapons as the most important issues, but the percentage of such answers decreased rapidly, and ever since the end of the Cold War has remained very low, at about 1 per cent. I do not have corresponding statistics for other countries, but from various indicators it would appear that the response in the US would be similar. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the great majority of the people came to the belief that either the nuclear threat has disappeared altogether, or that the deterrent effect of existing nuclear arsenals will take care of the threat. Neither of these beliefs is justified, as should be obvious today, when two nuclear powers are poised for a military showdown over Kashmir.

To me the situation is reminiscent of that I experienced 40 years ago, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I do hope that, like that crisis, it will be resolved without a nuclear exchange. Should such a nuclear exchange happen, however, with the inevitable immense loss of life, hundreds of thousands, millions perhaps, there would be such an upsurge of public opinion, that an agreement on the elimination of nuclear weapons would soon be reached.

My question is, why, oh why, do we have to wait for such a disaster to actually happen? Why could we not use our imagination, to take these steps now, to prevent it happening?

Clearly, we have not succeeded in putting this over to the public. I do not wish to diminish the past achievements of anti-nuclear organizations. Although it is impossible to provide concrete proof, I am convinced that these organizations deserve some credit for the fact that a nuclear war has been avoided so far. Mikhail Gorbachev told us so directly, but we cannot rest on past successes. Our job has not been done; and, although the prospects are bleak, we must pick ourselves up and resume our campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons. In this paper I am urging the renewal of a mass campaign, and I propose that it be based mainly on judicial and moral principles.

The revelations in the Nuclear Posture Review shocked us: it abandons the previous doctrine of nuclear weapons being viewed as weapons of last resort, and spells out a strategy which incorporates nuclear capability into conventional war planning. It is a major and dangerous shift in the whole rationale for nuclear weapons.

Actually, the revelations in the NPR should not have come as such a surprise. They are obviously much influenced by the events of September 11th, but in reality they are an egregious expression of the policy that has been pursued covertly by the United States ever since, or even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in contradiction to the official line of pursuing nuclear disarmament.

At the core of this duplicitous and hypocritical policy is the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Ironically, it was introduced by the scientists who initiated the atom bomb project.

The scientists in the UK who initiated the research ss myself among them — were humanitarian scientists: we pursued scientific research for its own sake but with the underlying expectation that it would be used for the benefit of humankind. The thought of working on a weapon of mass destruction would have been abhorrent to us in normal circumstances. But the circumstances were not normal: we knew that a war was imminent, a war between democracy and the worst type of totalitarianism, and we were afraid that it the bomb could be made, and was developed in Germany, it would enable Hitler to win the war and impose on the world the evil Nazi regime. At the time we thought that the only way to prevent this happening would be for us — the Western Allies — also to have the bomb and threaten its use in retaliation. I developed the concept of nuclear deterrence in the summer of 1939, even before the start of World War II.

It took me a little while to appreciate the fallacy of the deterrence concept. Our aim was to prevent the use of the atom bomb by anybody; we hoped that the threat of using it in retaliation would do the trick. This might have worked with a rational leader, but Hitler was not rational. I am convinced, though cannot prove it, that if Hitler had had the bomb, the last order from his bunker in Berlin, would have been to drop it on London, in the full knowledge that this would bring terrible retribution upon Germany. This would have been in the spirit of his philosophy of Götterdämmerung.

At it happened, this thesis was never put to the test: Hitler was defeated by conventional weapons, before the atom bomb was manufactured in the United States. But the fact remains that the concept of nuclear deterrence was used from the very beginning, and has been with us ever since. Its variant, extended deterrence, i.e. the threat to use nuclear weapons even against a non-nuclear attack, is — in my opinion — the greatest obstacle to the abolition of nuclear weapons.

By July 1945, when the first bomb was ready for testing, many scientists who initiated the Project were strongly opposed, on moral grounds, to the use of the bomb on civilian populations. They used this moral argument in their petitions to the US President and government.

The petitions were rejected. The politicians and the military leaders had their own ideas about the bomb; moral scruples hardly figured in them. The desire to bring the war to an end was undoubtedly an important factor, but perhaps even more important was to demonstrate to the world — and, particularly, to the Soviet Union — the newly acquired military might of the United States, and this required such use of the bomb that would utilize its devastating power to the maximum effect.

That the Soviet Union was thought of as the main enemy became evident soon after the end of the War, but I personally happened to find this out much earlier, directly from the mouth of General Leslie Groves, the head of the whole Manhattan Project. In a casual conversation, at a private dinner in Los Alamos which I attended, he said: “You realize, of course, that the main purpose of the Project is to subdue the Russians.” The date of this event, March 1944, is significant. This was the time when the Russians were our allies, in the common fight against Hitler. Thousands of Russians were dying every day, holding back the German forces at Stalingrad, and giving time for the Allies to prepare for the landing in France.

Two months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in October 1945, General Groves outlined his views on the US policy on nuclear weapons in a blunt statement:

“If we were truly realistic instead of idealistic, as we appear to be (sic), we would not permit any foreign power with which we are not firmly allied, and in which we do not have absolute confidence, to make or possess atomic weapons. If such a country started to make atomic weapons we would destroy its capacity to make them before it has progressed far enough to threaten us.”

Fifty-seven years later, this realism is spelled out in the NPR.

The “idealistic” sentiment lamented by General Groves was the worldwide reaction to the destruction of the two Japanese cities, a reaction of revulsion, shared by the great majority of people in the United States. From the beginning, nuclear weapons were viewed with abhorrence; a moral stand that evoked an almost universal opposition to any use of nuclear weapons; I believe this is still true today. This feeling found expression in the United Nations in the very first resolution of its General Assembly. The Charter of the United Nations was adopted in June 1945, two months before Hiroshima, and thus no provision is made for the nuclear age in the Charter. But when the General Assembly met for the first time in January 1946, the first resolution, adopted unanimously, was to set up a Commission, whose terms of reference were to:

“… proceed with the utmost despatch and enquire into all phases of the problem, and … make specific proposals … for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”

The United States government could not openly oppose this objective, but it tried its best to kybosh it. The campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons began in the United States immediately after Hiroshima and was spearheaded by the scientists from the Manhattan Project. They set up working parties which studied specific proposals for the control of atomic energy in all its aspects. The outcome was the so-called Acheson-Lilienthal Report, which recommended the creation of an International Atomic Development Authority with the power to control, inspect and licence all nuclear activities; it also made specific proposals, such as:

“Manufacture of atomic bombs shall stop;

Existing bombs shall be disposed of pursuant to the terms of the treaty.”

The Acheson-Lilienthal Report was the basis for the Baruch Plan which expounded the official stand of the US Government, and was presented to the UN Atomic Energy Commission, in June 1946.

It began in apocalyptic language:

“We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business.

Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work our salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear. Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect World Peace or World Destruction.”

Fine words, strong sentiments, but alas not followed by deeds.

The Baruch Plan incorporated certain conditions to the treaty which were obviously designed to be unacceptable to the Soviet Union, such as the removal of the right of veto by the permanent members of the Security Council. And sure enough, the Baruch Plan was rejected by the Soviets and the UN Atomic Energy Commission ended in failure.

This pattern of dissembling has characterized the nuclear policy of the United States government ever since. On the one hand, the US government feels obliged to pay lip-service to the policy of nuclear disarmament leading to the abolition of nuclear weapons, bowing to the pressure of world opinion expressed in resolutions adopted year after year by large majorities of the United Nations General Assembly. This has led to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which all but four members of the United Nations are now parties. Under the terms of the NPT, the 182 non-nuclear countries have undertaken not to acquire nuclear weapons, and the five overt nuclear states have undertaken to get rid of theirs. There was some ambiguity in the formulation of the relevant Article VI of the NPT, which provided the hawks with an excuse for the retention of nuclear weapons until general and complete disarmament had been achieved. But — again under pressure of public opinion — this ambiguity was removed two years ago in a statement issued after the 2000 NPT Review Conference. This statement, signed by all five nuclear-weapon states, contains the following:

“…an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”

Thus, the United States and the other official nuclear states — China, France, Russia and the UK — are formally and unequivocally committed to the elimination of all nuclear arsenals. The creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world is a legal commitment by all signatories of the NPT.

On the other hand, there is the de facto nuclear strategy of extended deterrence, which implies the indefinite existence of nuclear arsenals.

Since the end of the Cold War, the actual US nuclear strategy has been increasingly orientated towards the use of nuclear weapons, along the lines originally advocated by General Groves. Immediately after the end of the Cold War, the US policy, supported by many NATO countries, envisaged the use of nuclear weapons as a last resort only; this means against an attack with nuclear arms. But the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review, under the Clinton Administration, for the first time made explicit mention of the use of nuclear weapons in response to an attack with chemical or biological weapons. The current Nuclear Posture Review goes further still, it makes nuclear weapons the tool with which to keep peace in the world.

If this is the purpose of nuclear weapons, then these weapons will be needed as long as disputes are settled by recourse to military confrontations, in other words, as long as war is a recognized social institution. Such a policy is unacceptable in a civilized society on many grounds: logical, political, military, legal, and ethical. In this paper I am mainly concerned with the last two, legal and moral.

US nuclear policy is self-defeating on logical grounds. If some nations — including the most powerful militarily — say that they need nuclear weapons for their security, then such security cannot be denied to other countries which really feel insecure. Proliferation of nuclear weapons is thus the logical consequence of the US nuclear policy. The USA and its allies cannot prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by other countries while retaining them for themselves. The policy of extended deterrence undermines the non-proliferation policy.

There is yet a further aspect of the logical argument which strikes at the very basis of deterrence. This is the assumption that both sides in a dispute think and behave rationally; that they are capable of a realistic assessment of the risks entailed in a contemplated action. This would not be the case with irrational leaders. I mentioned this earlier in relation to Hitler. Even a rational leader may behave irrationally in a war situation, facing defeat; or may be pushed into irrational action by mass hysteria, or when incited by religious fanaticism or nationalistic fervour. This is exactly the situation facing us today. Deterrence would certainly not apply to terrorists, who have no respect for the sanctity of human life.

The policy of extended deterrence is unacceptable on political grounds. It is highly discriminatory in that it allows a few nations — in practice, one nation — to usurp to themselves certain rights, such as policing the world by imposing sanctions on nuclear proliferators, or directly threatening them with military action: such action should be the prerogative of the United Nations. Indeed, it goes against the very purpose of the United Nations, an organization set up specifically for the maintenance of international peace and security.

The policy of extended deterrence also means a permanent polarization of the world, with some nations being offered protection by a powerful nuclear state; while others may be protected by another nuclear state, or have no protection at all.

The policy is not credible on military grounds in relation to terrorist attacks. As the events of September 11th have shown, a major threat to security comes from terrorist groups, a threat which includes the use of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear ones. The thousands of nuclear weapons still in the arsenals are useless against terrorists for the simple reason that terrorist groups do not usually present an identifiable target, unless the killing of thousands of innocent people is seen as collateral damage and thus acceptable. At the same time, the very existence in the world of nuclear weapons, or nuclear-weapon-grade materials, increases the threat, because these materials may be acquired by the terrorists, in one way or another.

Extended deterrence is unacceptable on legal grounds. The United States, together with 186 other nations, that is 98 per cent of the UN membership, have signed and ratified the NPT. After the clarification at the 2000 Review Conference, the situation is perfectly clear: the policy of extended deterrence, which requires the indefinite retention of nuclear weapons, is in direct breach of the legally binding Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is a sine qua non of a civilized society that nations fulfil their legal commitments and adhere to international treaties.

But above all, the nuclear deterrent is not acceptable on ethical grounds. The whole concept of nuclear deterrence is based on the belief that the threat of retaliation is real, that nuclear weapons would be used against an act of aggression; otherwise, the bluff would soon be called. George W. Bush must show convincingly that he has the kind of personality that would enable him to push the button and unleash an instrument of wholesale destruction, harming not only the alleged aggressor but mainly innocent people, and potentially imperilling the whole of our civilization. I find it terrifying to think that among the necessary qualifications for leadership is the readiness to commit an act of genocide, because this is what it amounts to in the final analysis. Furthermore, by acquiescing in this policy, not only the President, but each of us, figuratively, keeps our finger on the button; each of us is taking part in a gamble in which the survival of human civilization is at stake. We rest the security of the world on a balance of terror. In the long run this is bound to erode the ethical basis of civilization.

This erosion has probably already set in. Here I have to tread with caution, because I can only speak as a layman who has been observing events over many years. It seems to me that people cannot go on for decades living under the threat of instant annihilation, without this having an effect on their psyche. I cannot help the feeling that the increase of violence in the world — from individual mugging, to organized crime, to groups such as al-Qaeda — has some connection with the culture of violence under which we have lived during the Cold War years, and still do. I am particularly concerned about the effect on the young generation.

We all crave a world of peace, a world of equity. We all want to nurture in the young generation the “culture of peace,” which we keep on proclaiming. But how can we talk about a culture of peace if that peace is predicated on the existence of weapons of mass destruction? How can we persuade the young generation to cast aside the culture of violence, when they know that it is on the threat of extreme violence that we rely for security?

I do not believe that the people of the world would accept a policy that is inherently immoral and is bound to end in catastrophe, a policy that implies the continued existence of nuclear weapons. But the resolutions for nuclear disarmament, passed every year by large majorities in the General Assembly, are completely ignored by the nuclear-weapon states, which in practice means the United States government.

In saying this, I have made a distinction between the US government and the US people, because I am convinced that the latter share with the great majority of people all over the world an abhorrence of the use of nuclear weapons.

There are groups within the US community, such as the military-industrial complex identified by President Eisenhower, with vested interests in pursuing a policy based on the continuing possession of nuclear weapons by the United States. The influence of these groups on the Administration may wax and wane, but it appears to be particularly strong in the Administration of George W. Bush, with its main characteristic of unilateralism.

The defeat of Communism in the Cold War, and the triumph of the open market economy, gave a great fillip to the capitalist system, despite its ugly faces of greed and selfishness. Profit making has become a main driving force for those groups, and protection of property a necessary upshot. The most powerful country in the world, economically, technologically, and militarily, feels the need for even greater security by seeking more protection against an attack from outside, and by the suppression — if need be, with military means — of the acquisition of greater military power by countries seen as an enemy. A ballistic missile defence system — which may include nuclear interceptors — is considered necessary to prevent any missiles reaching the territory of the USA. But even with a defence system 100 per cent effective, which is technically unlikely, the possession of a few thousand nuclear warheads is still considered necessary to deter other countries from acquiring these means of protection for themselves.

It is in the interaction with other countries that the unilateralist tendencies are so pernicious. The interests of the United States must come first and foremost. International treaties, even those already agreed to, can be ignored or unilaterally revoked, if they do not serve these interests. During the first year of the George W. Bush Administration we have seen a whole string of steps along the unilateral path: abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); refusal to sign the Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention; withdrawal from the Kyoto Agreement on the Environment; opposition to the International Criminal Court; etc. etc.

These negative measures, which weaken international treaties and agreements, are accompanied by steps designed to increase the military strength of the USA. They include a considerable increase in military expenditure, particularly in the nuclear field. They include the decision not to destroy mechanically the warheads which were due for dismantlement in accordance with the START agreements. These have now been replaced by the treaty that has been signed in Moscow today, a treaty that has been hailed as a momentous step towards world peace, but is nothing of the kind. Any reduction of weapons of mass destruction is of course, greatly welcome, but in this case the reduction is illusory. The warheads withdrawn from the arsenals under the Bush-Putin treaty — over the unnecessarily long period of ten years — will be kept in storage as a reserve force, which could be quickly activated; either side having the right to withdraw from the treaty on 90 days notice.

The steps also include the development of new and greatly improved warheads, a programme that started covertly under Clinton and now continues more overtly under Bush.

In the early 1990s — after the end of the Cold War — there was a period of goodwill when both sides agreed to take measures to reduce the enormous nuclear arsenals. As part of this, the United States Government decided to halt the production of new nuclear warheads and to end nuclear testing.

There is a general assumption that new nuclear weapons cannot be developed and made militarily usable without their being tested. Hence, the great importance of the CTBT, which was signed by President Clinton, but its ratification was rejected by the then Republican majority in the Senate. Initially, this was thought to be a rather petty vengeance against Clinton, which would soon be rectified, but since then it emerged that the main reason was the perceived need for further testing of new, or modified old warheads.

The retention of a nuclear arsenal necessitates an infrastructure to ensure the safety and reliability of the warheads in the stockpile, as well as the capability to resume testing at short notice. An adequate core of scientists and engineers would be employed to carry out these tasks. This was the origin of the Stockpile Stewardship management Program which began in 1994, with a budget recently increased by the Bush Administration to $5.3 billion.

The Stewardship Program includes the task to “maintain nuclear weapon capability; develop a stockpile surveillance engineering base; demonstrate the capability to design, fabricate and certify new warheads.” This brief is broad enough to allow the scientists to do almost anything as long as it does not openly entail nuclear testing and the actual production of new nuclear warheads. Considering the role which scientists played in the nuclear weapons establishments during the Cold War, it is a fair assumption that they will go to the limit of their brief.

The development of new warheads is not allowed, but this obstacle can be circumvented by taking an old weapon and introducing a number of modifications, each of which is permitted under the terms of the Program but which in the end produces a more usable weapon, although eventually it would have to be tested, to give the military people confidence in the improved product. With President Bush’s contempt for international agreements, there can be no doubt that he will authorize new nuclear testing, when he decides that this would be in the interest of the United States, as was confirmed in the opening statement to the Preparatory NPT Review Conference that was held a few weeks ago.

There are persistent rumours, reported in articles in reputable journals, that work in Los Alamos has resulted in the development of new warheads. Most of the military research in the national laboratories, Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia, is carried out in secrecy, making it impossible to say how reliable these rumours are, but they seem credible. Certainly, there is much more activity going on in Los Alamos, with new buildings being erected, as I have seen myself during a recent visit to Los Alamos (although I did not go into the tech area). And, of course, we know that much more money has been allocated for research there.

The persistent rumours are about the development of a new nuclear warhead, of a very low yield, almost overlapping the yields of conventional high explosives, but with a shape that will give it very high penetrating power into concrete, a “bunker-bursting mini-nuke,” as it has been called. The additional property ascribed to it is that it is a “clean” bomb, in the sense that the radioactive fission products are contained. This claim needs to be treated with caution; considerable doubt has been expressed about the prevention of the release of radioactivity.

But the main worry about this bomb, even if its attributed characteristics should prove to be correct, is the political impact. If it is “clean,” and its explosive yield can be made so low as to be within the range of that of conventional explosives, then the distinction between the two types of weapon will become blurred. The chief characteristic of a nuclear weapon is its enormous destructive power, which classifies it as a weapon of mass destruction, unique even in comparison with the other known weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological. This has resulted in a taboo about the use of nuclear weapons in combat, a taboo that has held out since Nagasaki. But if at one end of the spectrum a nuclear bomb can be manufactured which does not differ quantitatively from ordinary explosives, the qualitative difference will also disappear, the nuclear threshold will be crossed, and nuclear weapons will gradually come to be seen as a tool of war, even though their main characteristic, of potentially the existence of the human race, will still remain. The Nuclear Posture Review makes this a real possibility; the situation has become even more dangerous.

The wording of the Nuclear Posture Review was no doubt strongly influenced by the events of September 11th. These events came as a terrible shock to the people of the United States. Having never been subject to an attack on the American Continent they suddenly found themselves vulnerable; the “splendid isolation” was breached; a near panic ensued on a mere rumour of an attack with a biological weapon.

In the campaign that I am urging, to put the nuclear issue back on the public agenda, we should make use of the very arguments and tactics employed by President Bush in the actions against terrorism. In order to be able to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks, he had to build up a coalition of many countries for the military campaign in Afghanistan, even though the military burden was carried almost entirely by the United States. He also had to build up a moral case for the campaign, by presenting the terrorists as evil men, in contrast to the coalition who are the virtuous people.

By calling for help from other countries President Bush acknowledged the failure of his own unilateralist policy. An example of this is the event that took place today in Moscow; despite his contempt for international agreements, President Bush felt obliged to sign a new international treaty. Even though this treaty is a sham, we should exploit this in our efforts to put the elimination of nuclear weapons back on the agenda. No Man is an Island, particularly in a world which — thanks largely to the fantastic progress in technology — is becoming more and more interdependent, more and more transparent, more and more interactive. Inherent in these developments is a set of agreements, ranging from confidence-building measures to formal international treaties; from protection of the environment to the clearance of mine fields; from Interpol to the International Criminal Court; from ensuring intellectual property rights to the Declaration of Human Rights. Respect for, and strict adherence to, the terms of international agreements are at the basis of a civilized society.

Without this, anarchy and terrorism would reign, the very dangers the coalition was set up to prevent.

In line with this the world community has the right to call on the US government to take the following steps immediately:
- ratify the CTBT;
- retract its notice to with draw from the ABM;
- reject any notion of weaponization of space;
- take its nuclear weapons off alert;
- adopt a no-first-use policy;
- all this in preparation for the implementation of its commitment to nuclear disarmament, under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
An even stronger argument towards the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world should be based on the moral objections to nuclear weapons. President Bush insists that the campaign against terrorists, following the September 11th events, has a strong moral basis; a “moral crusade” he called it initially, and although this was quickly dropped, because of its unfortunate historical connotations, it is still presented as a struggle between good and evil, with the USA being on the side of the angels. But such a claim can be sustained only if the US policies and actions are demonstrably guided by ethical considerations. The hypocritical policy of preaching one thing and practicing just the opposite hardly comes under this category. The use of nuclear weapons, and even the threat of using them, is generally viewed as highly immoral; a moral stand is completely incompatible with the readiness by the President to push the nuclear button. If the United States is to insist in calling itself a leader of a campaign based on moral principles, then it should denounce any use of weapons of mass destruction; and it should implement the policy of their total abolition to which it is in any case committed legally.

A campaign for abolition, based on moral principles, will be seen as a fanciful dream by many, but I trust not by INES, an organization committed to ethical values. You will not submit to a policy which may result in the deaths of many thousands or millions of people, potentially threatening the very existence of the human species.

The situation is grim; the way things are moving is bound to lead to catastrophe. If there is a way out, even if seemingly unrealistic, it is our duty to pursue it. Arguments based on equity and morality may not cut ice with hardened politicians, but they may appeal to the common citizen. If we can bring to the notice of the general public the grave dangers inherent in the continuation of current policies, at the same time pointing out the long-term merits of policies based on equity and morality, we may succeed in putting the nuclear issue back on the agenda of public concern.

A colossal effort will be required, a sustained collective campaign by INES, Pugwash, and other kindred organizations. I hope that they will find the courage and the will to embark on this great task, to restore sanity in our policies, humanity in our actions, and a sense of belonging to the human race.

*This paper has been presented by Sir Joseph Rotblat on 24 May 2002 at the occasion of the INES seminar “New Security Challenges: Global and Regional Priorities” in Bradford, UK. The seminar was organized by INES together with Scientists for Global Responsibility and the Department of Peace Studies of the University of Bradford.
June 9, 2002
International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) and INES Against Proliferation (INESAP) Statement on Nuclear Dangers

India and Pakistan stand on the brink of war over Kashmir with serious dangers of nuclear war between the two countries.

We call upon the international community, through the United Nations Security Council to immediately intervene diplomatically to prevent war and with peace keeping forces, if necessary, to ensure that neither country uses nuclear weapons under any circumstance.

In this context we express our strong dissatisfaction with the United States Nuclear Posture Review and with the United States withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and the recently signed nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia. This treaty, reflecting the United States Nuclear Posture Review, does far too little too slowly and continues to set the example to the world that nuclear weapons are useful even for the strongest nations.

We urge the United States and Russia to return to the negotiation table to agree to deeper cuts, the irreversible destruction of dismantled warheads, and the immediate de-alerting of their nuclear arsenals.

We further urge that all five declared nuclear weapon states begin multilateral negotiations to fulfill their obligation for an “unequivocal undertaking” to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons in the world, including those of India, Pakistan and Israel. The leadership of the United States and Russia, as well as that of the United Kingdom, France and China, is essential to achieve these ends and to present nuclear weapons from being used again.

May 26, 2002
CNDP Denounces USA’s Nuclear Terror

The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, India voices its outrage at the unprecedented nuclear threat to the whole world held out the militarists at the helm of the United States of America. The CNDP also expresses its indignation at the servile silence of New Delhi over the subject.

The “contingency plans” revealed in the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)by the Pentagon under the Bush Administration cannot be clearer in their intent. The multi billion populaces of seven countries — with Russia, China, Syria and Libya now added to the “axis of evil” comprising Iraq, Iran and Korea — have been made the potential targets of nuclear lunacy on the part of the world’s strongest ever superpower. If countries close to these targets are taken into account, the NPR (leaked to the media) is an attempt to intimidate a large swathe of humanity.

The NPR threatens nuclear strikes against targets too tough for non-nuclear weapons, in “retaliation” against attacks by biological and chemical weapons of which the USA has the largest stockpiles, and even in case of “surprising military developments” of an undefined kind. The added threats of nuclear assaults in an Arab-Israel conflict and a Taiwan-China clash make for a truly alarming prospect. The list of targets leaves no doubt that the Bush regime is not going to be bound by treaties the US has signed including the NPT and the CTBT.

While the madness has been denounced even by many in the West, the Government of India has yet to find its tongue. New Delhi, which has acquiesced in Washington’s space weaponization schemes and its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, is failing thispeace-loving nation even more by its tacit support for the USA’s line of nuclear terror.
–Achin Vanaik, Praful Bidwai, Admiral L.Ramdas (Retd.), J. Sri Raman, Prabir Purkayastha, Jayaprakash, and Christopher Fonseca

March 1, 2002
Might Real Disarmament be on the Agenda?

As a person who has believed ever since August, 1945 that nuclear disarmament was the single most important condition for the longrun survival of civlized life on earth, I was much encouraged a few days ago by several strong reactions to the contents of the US “Nuclear Posture Review” which had been leaked to the press on March 9. The “posture” includes contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against seven states, to which plans The New York Times replied with an editorial beginning: “If another country were planning to develop new nuclear weapons and contemplating pre-emptive strilkes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended” by the Pentagon planning papers. The Washington Post, while reiterating its constant support for current American military actions, concluded its editorial by saying “The Bush administration is right to focus more of its strategic planning on deterring rogue states, but developing new nuclear weapons for that threat is neither necessary nor sensible.”

Robert S. McNamara, who was US Secretary of Defense during the first stages of the Vietnam War, immediately criticized the posture review on several grounds: that the US has scrapped the ABM treaty in order to build a new missile shield in space; that the above-mentioned contingency plans undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by targeting several non-nuclear countries with our nuclear arms; that the review “appears to set forth a forty-year plan for developing and acquiring new nuclear weapons,” and that the nuclear testing of such new weapons would “fly in the face of vital US non-proliferation commitments.” Finally, not to limit my examples to the immediate reaction against the Nuclear Posture Review, I would mention that The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in the US has been circulating since the beginning of this year an appeal to “commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.” This appeal carries the signatures of such widely admired world figures as Muhammad Ali, former President Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, and Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima.

In the balance of the present article I would like to assess the possibilities for real disarmament. But first a caution: the momentum of President Bush’s “war against terror”, and the advice of all his important counselors with the partial exception of Colin Powell, is strongly in favor of new weapons, both nuclear and non-nuclear, developed hopefully with allied approval, but unilaterally if such approval is not forthcoming. The editorial reactions I have cited above do not call for disarmament of any kind. They reflect dismay at the failure of the administration even to realize how dangerous for the US itself are these rejections of international obligations and readiness to extend nuclear competition and militarize outer space as well as the long suffering earth. They thus call for a modicum of common sense restraint.

The administration favors a certain disarmament on its own terms. In order to free up nuclear resources, plus the scientific and technical talent to create more sophisticated, precise new weapons, the US proposes a large voluntary reduction in the thousands of missiles now on alert in US and Russian bases. This is to be done without signing scraps of paper, and with the missiles kept in storage just in case some unpredictable change in the international atmosphere might require us to be able quickly to alert them again. The Russians, who have recovered their sense of humor since the demise of communism, have referred to this as a “nuclear warehouse” policy.

A more difficult obstacle lies in the fact that American public opinion, as reflected in the behavior of the US Senate, does not like to accept international obligations. The Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because it would, quite obviously, limit the country’s ability to create and test new weapons. Many legislators have nothing good to say for the United Nations as such, and will have nothing to do with a proposed international tribunal for the trial of war crimes. They feel no embarrassment whatever in saying that they will not permit any American soldier to be tried by such a tribunal. Their forbears conquered the American West without having to apply any Geneva conventions to captured Indian braves, and they declare that the captured Taliban and Al Quaida fighters are not legitimate prisoners of war (another psychological throwback to their forbears’ attitude towards the Indians).

Actually there already exists a very practical basis from which to initiate real nuclear disarmament. In 1970 the existing -and still the principal- nuclear powers (the EEUU, Russia, the UK, France, and China) sponsored a Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which they asked all the rest of the world to forego the development of nuclear weapons, in return for which the nuclear group itself undertook a solemn obligation to negotiate the reduction and eventual elimination of their own nuclear arsenals. Without any unnecessary sarcasms and finger pointings, without any reference to other treaties never ratified by the Senate, the nuclear “club” could now take the initiative to fulfill that obligation.

There are also several practical circumstances which should make it possible for the leaders of all nations to recognize the increasing importance of nuclear disarmament for the survival of civilized life. Since 1970 (as well as before) there have been accidents at nuclear plants releasing dangerous quantities of radioactivity into the atmosphere, and eventuallly into the soil and water on which millions of people depend. There has been no way to hide these facts. Regardless of governmental secrecy, seismographs all over the world have detected every single nuclear test and every single nuclear accident in the years since 1945. There have also been at least nine very little publicized sinkings of nuclear submarines with consequent poisoning of the ocean waters. In addition, the safe disposal of radioactive wastes from well controlled civilian activities is a completely unsolved problem, of which political elites are surely aware even if they avoid public discussion of the subject. Where, and in what quantity, potentially endangering whose homes and lands, are to be buried the hundreds of tons of nuclear waste which include elements that will remain radioactive for several centuries? By what right do we deliberately endanger the health of these future generations? Without hurting anybody’s religious or ideological sensibilities, the delegates to a disarmament conference could mutually assume the obligation to reduce as far as it may still be possible, these health hazards.

Another relevant circumstance is the fact that, in contrast to the situation in 1970, we no longer live in a bi-polar world. At that time, the EEUU and the USSR were so overwhelmingly powerful that, since the two of them could destroy each other 100 times over, and were aware of that fact, the rest of the world could relax in the assurance that such pragmatic leaders as Nixon and Brezhnev would be careful not to start a nuclear war. But today we live in a world of strongly revived religious differences, of militant nationalisms, of less ideological debate but more fear, hatred, and jealousy based on the increasing inequality between prosperous and poor societies, and the fact that this increasing inequaltiy is so obvious on the TV screens seen by almost everyone. This situation must lead all sane persons to realize that no small group of powers such as the nuclear club of the 1970’s can hope to restrict the spead of nuclear arms. In that sense I can agree that the ABM treaty is “outdated”, but not for the purpose of eliminating it so as to feel free to create all kinds of monstrous new weapons.

Thue only sane policy is to recognize that either we get rid of nuclear weapons or their eventual use, whether by intent or by accident, will inevitably kill millions of persons and poison the living conditions of the survivors and successors. We need a world disarmament conference for as many years as it may take to negotiate comprehensive, verifiable, permanent disarmament of all the existing stocks of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

March 1, 2002
Revealed Nuclear Policies Are a Sign of Bad Faith To Rest of the World

On 9 March, reports surfaced in major US media that the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released on 9 January contains contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against seven states: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Russia and China. It also reportedly contains plans to develop and deploy new “earth-penetrating” nuclear weapons and to accelerate the time it would take to resume full-scale nuclear testing. Using nuclear weapons against other states or developing new nuclear weapons would directly violate US obligations to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons under Article VI of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

At the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the US, along with the other state parties to the treaty, committed themselves to an “unequivocal undertaking” to eliminate nuclear weapons and to a diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies. Even if the US does not pursue the plans outlined in the NPR, as Secretary of State Colin Powell and other top military and government officials are claiming, the provocative rhetoric could unravel the non-proliferation regime.

“The fact that the US is developing contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states will certainly be viewed as a sign of bad faith by most of the world and will do serious damage to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” said David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.”

Weapons of mass destruction and missile proliferation do pose a legitimate threat not only to US security, but also to international security. However, unilateral US threats to use nuclear weapons, in conjunction with developing and deploying missile defenses, as a means of countering these threats is likely to provoke rather than prevent proliferation. A much better option would be for the US to take the lead on negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has issued an international appeal that has now been signed by over 100 prominent individuals, including 38 Nobel Laureates. The Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity and All Life calls upon the US and other nuclear weapons states to take the following practical steps as a means to preserve the non-proliferation regime and achieve the complete elimination of nuclear weapons:

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

* Reaffirm commitments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

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

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

* Reallocate resources from the tens of billions of dollars currently being spent for maintaining nuclear arsenals to improving human health, education and welfare throughout the world.

March 1, 2002
Rethink the Unthinkable

Nuclear weapons are back on the front pages, with news of a Bush administration policy document, the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, which projects the role of nuclear weapons into the future — not as deterrents, but for the purpose of waging wars. The document even names potential targets. This document and the thinking behind it are reckless. They not only jeopardize international law but the support of America’s closest allies. Canada must state its opposition immediately.

The document also breaks a commitment. In 2000, the United States joined the other nuclear-weapons states in making an “unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination” of their nuclear arsenals. The United States made this commitment at a review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which, with 187 nations involved, is the world’s largest arms-control and disarmament treaty.

There are still 31,000 nuclear weapons in the world, most of them American or Russian, with lesser amounts held by the United Kingdom, France and China, India, Pakistan and Israel. At least 5,000 of the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are maintained on hair-trigger alert, meaning they could be fired on 15 minutes notice.

The Bush administration has offered cuts in the nuclear weapons the United States deploys, but is reinforcing its maintenance of core stocks and planning the development of new ones. By rejecting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, it is holding open the door to resumed nuclear testing. This has greatly worried many non-nuclear weapons countries and has already led to charges that the United States is acting in bad faith. The Non-Proliferation Treaty insists that negotiations for elimination should be held in “good faith.”

Periodically, the United States reviews its policies on nuclear weapons; it did so last year, the results of which are seen in this week’s alarming headlines. “Behind the administration’s rhetorical mask of post-Cold War restraint,” comments the U.S. National Resources Defence Council, a prestigious non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists, “lie expansive plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear forces, and all the elements that support them, within a so-called ‘New Triad’ of capabilities that combine nuclear and conventional offensive strikes with missile defences and nuclear-weapons infrastructure.”

According to the council’s analysis, the Bush team assumes that nuclear weapons will be part of U.S. military forces at least for the next 50 years; it plans an extensive and expensive series of programs to modernize the existing force, including a new ICBM to be operational in 2020 and a new heavy bomber in 2040.

The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review says that there are four reasons to possess nuclear weapons: to “assure allies and friends”; “dissuade competitors”; “deter aggressors”; and “defeat enemies.” Over the next 10 years, the White House’s plans call for the United States to retain a total stockpile of intact nuclear weapons and weapons components roughly seven to nine times larger than the publicly-stated goal of 1,700 to 2,200 “operationally deployed weapons.”

Moreover, the U.S. administration has ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, naming not only the “axis of evil” (Iraq, Iran and North Korea) but also Russia, China, Libya and Syria.

This position has prompted the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the minute hand of their “Doomsday Clock” forward two minutes — to seven minutes to midnight, the same position as when the clock made its debut in 1947. “Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no significant steps to alter nuclear targeting policies or reduce the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces,” said George A. Lopez, chairman of the Bulletin’s board of directors.

The shift in U.S. policy has immense implications for Canada and the other members of NATO. NATO has traditionally presented its nuclear doctrine as one of deterrence, not war. Canada is now caught in the middle, between its international legal obligations to support negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons, or to support the United States in its determination to keep them. All this will come to a head at an important Non-Proliferation Treaty meeting at the United Nations, starting April 8.

Canada has higher obligations to international law, as it is being developed in the United Nations system, than it does to its friendship with the United States, which is violating the very law that Canada stands for. Good friends don’t let their friends drive drunk. It’s time for Canada to blow the whistle on its U.S. friends in Washington, who are veering out of control in their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Because of its military strength and commanding position as the world’s lone superpower, the United States occupies the central position when it comes to making progress on nuclear disarmament. NATO’s stance — that nuclear weapons remain “essential” — would fold in an instant if the United States took action in entering comprehensive negotiations for elimination. Russia and China, struggling to move their economies into strong positions, do not want to engage in a new nuclear arms race, which is precisely what they fear will happen if and when the United States actually deploys a National Missile Defence system.

Most people do not realize that the United States spends $100-million (U.S.) a day maintaining its nuclear weapons. Because Washington is pouring huge new sums into its defence budget — it will soon be spending, at $400-billion annually, more than the next 15 countries combined — the international community has become rightfully alarmed about U.S. intentions.

Nor is the rest of the world reassured when we see the Pentagon’s Web site proclaiming the U.S. intention to weaponize space and thus ensure “full-spectrum dominance” on land, sea, air and space.
*Douglas Roche is an independent senator from Alberta and Canada’s former ambassador for disarmament. He is a former chairman of the UN Disarmament Committee. Currently, Senator Roche is Chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative and a member of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

March 1, 2002