Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear terrorism

  • British Petroleum, Imagination and Nuclear Catastrophe

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

    Before the catastrophic British Petroleum oil gush in the Gulf of Mexico, there were environmentalists who warned that offshore drilling was fraught with risk – risk of exactly the type of environmental damage that is occurring.  They were mocked by people who chanted slogans such as “Drill, baby, drill.”  Now it is clear that the “Drill, baby, drill” crowd was foolish and greedy.  The economic wellbeing of people in and around the Gulf coast has been badly damaged and, for some, destroyed altogether.  Aquatic and estuary life, in the Gulf and beyond, has fallen victim to an environmental disaster that was foreseeable with a modicum of vision and imagination.

    Albert Einstein reached the conclusion that “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” He said that “knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  Let us try applying our imaginations to nuclear weapons and nuclear war.  Here are some scenarios:

    Scenario 1: Al Qaeda does what most commentators believed to be impossible.  They obtain nuclear materials for several nuclear weapons and hire scientists to construct crude nuclear weapons.  These weapons are detonated in London, New York and Paris within hours of each other.  Millions would lie dead and injured.  Around the world stock markets would freefall.  Before the terrorist nuclear attacks, the people who warned against such a possibility were mocked.

    Scenario 2: Nuclear deterrence fails dramatically, and India and Pakistan engage in a nuclear war over Kashmir.  The hundred or so nuclear warheads that detonate on Indian and Pakistani cities leave millions dead and lower global temperatures so as to significantly shrink the size of agricultural areas in which food can be grown.  Crop failures leave hundreds of millions more people to starve to death.  Before the war, the people who warned against such a possibility were mocked.  

    Scenario 3: A nuclear war begins with an accidental launch of a nuclear-armed missile by Russia, followed by a retaliatory strike by the US, which brings further retaliation from Russia, leading to still more from the US.  Before the accidental launch, few people believed that such a cataclysmic accident and its retaliatory follow up were possible.  In its aftermath, the scenario seems far too feasible.  People now realize that the failsafe devices to prevent accidental launches could fail, but those who foresaw this danger and warned about it earlier were mocked.

    Scenario 4: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il launches a nuclear attack that destroys US military bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa.  He threatens to destroy the Japanese city of Kyoto and Seoul, South Korea unless he receives the development assistance he says was promised to him by the United States.  Those who argued throughout the Nuclear Age that continued possession of nuclear weapons by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would result in nuclear proliferation and the weapons falling into the hands of irrational leaders were mocked.  

    There are many scenarios possible for the onset of nuclear war and there remain many justifications for nuclear weapons.  Leaders of nuclear weapon states argue that these weapons are only for nuclear deterrence, that is, to prevent war by threatening nuclear retaliation.  They don’t foresee the potential failure of nuclear deterrence, even though they recognize the cataclysmic consequences of failure.  They believe that nuclear weapons bolster a country’s prestige and give it greater power in the international system.  They proudly display their nuclear weapons and test their missile delivery systems.  Those who argue that nuclear deterrence could fail catastrophically are mocked.

    Political and military leaders have failed to honor the proposition that in every complex system in which humans are involved, system failure is a possibility.  They have dismissed the idea of system failure leading to nuclear annihilation.  Scientists spoke out about this shortsightedness, but they were mocked.  Former high-level policymakers spoke out about the dangers, and they, too, were mocked.  Even some former military leaders spoke out against the dangers of reliance on nuclear weapons, and they were mocked.  The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who witnessed the horrors of the atomic bombs firsthand, have told their stories in an attempt to awaken people to the danger of nuclear weapons, but their voices are soft and few people in high places have listened to them.  

    Civil society organizations from throughout the world have called out for a commitment to an urgent plan for the elimination of nuclear weapons, and they also have been mocked.  But, like the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they continue to speak out because it is the right thing to do.  Nuclear weapons can end life on Earth as we know it.  They can destroy civilization.  In a major nuclear war, they could bring the human species and most complex forms of life to extinction.  Even in a smaller nuclear war or accident, they could destroy cities and countries.  

    As the oil from the British Petroleum failure in the Gulf of Mexico continues to destroy the ocean and surrounding environment, it is perhaps too late to ask ourselves whether offshore drilling is worth the risk.  Clearly it is not.  It is still not too late, however, to raise the question of whether continued reliance on nuclear weapons is worth the risk to humanity and to future generations.  

  • Nuclear Security

    This article was originally published by the International Herald Tribune

    The 47 heads of state who will assemble in Washington next week for the world’s first Nuclear Security Summit should focus like a laser beam on the biggest potential threat to civilization.

    Psychologically, it is almost impossible to imagine terrorists exploding a nuclear bomb that devastates the heart of Moscow or Mumbai, New York or Cairo. Analytically, however, there’s only one difference between Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack that extinguished the lives of 3,000 people in New York, or the 11/26 attack that killed nearly 200 in Mumbai, and a nuclear Mumbai or 9/11 that could kill hundreds of thousands in a single blow. That difference is terrorists getting a nuclear bomb.

    No one who has examined the evidence has any doubt that terrorist groups — including Al Qaeda, Chechen separatists and Lashkar-e-Taiba — have shown serious interest and undertaken substantial efforts to acquire material and equipment for this purpose. The highly enriched uranium required to make an elementary nuclear bomb could be hidden inside a football.

    The big insight that motivates the summit is that the leaders assembled there have in their power the ways and means to successfully prevent nuclear terrorism. The key to success is to deny terrorists the means to achieve their deadliest aspirations.

    Fortunately, physics provides a syllogism that says: no fissile material, no mushroom cloud, no nuclear terrorism.

    All that the members of the international community have to do to prevent this ultimate catastrophe is to lock up all nuclear weapons and materials as securely as gold in Fort Knox or treasures in the Kremlin Armory. This is a big “all” — but it consists of actions we know how to take and can afford. Other powerful radioactive sources should be equally protected.

    How can this be done? The leaders who convene will address an issue the international community has so far been dragging its feet on — implementing the obligation states have already committed themselves to in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, to adopt “effective, appropriate measures to secure all nuclear materials.”

    In confronting this challenge, those assembled can apply many of the lessons learned by the United States and Russia over the past 18 years in their cooperative threat-reduction program, as well as the best practices and technologies developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    The bottom line by which the summit should be scored is whether as a result of this effort, states take specific actions, including the allocation of resources to make the world safer from a nuclear explosion by an extremist group.

    A number of states will announce actions that they have already taken in preparation for the summit. Others, we hope, will make unambiguous commitments to take observable actions. We trust these actions will be supported by every state, reflecting a global recognition that a nuclear explosion anywhere is a nuclear explosion everywhere.

    This Nuclear Security Summit focuses on the most urgent dimension of nuclear danger. But this is only one part of a larger, more complex agenda. The “New START” arms control agreement between the United States and Russia takes another step on the path to eliminating all nuclear arsenals. Next month, the Nonproliferation Review Conference will provide a further opportunity for international cooperation in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

    To address the array of nuclear threats and specifically the specter of a nuclear bomb exploding in one of our cities with consequences that will fundamentally change our lives and our world, the supreme requirement is for meaningful, sustained international cooperation.

    We applaud the leaders for their initiative in focusing on this grave challenge. Still, as with many international summits that have gone before, we will withhold judgment until we see what leaders actually do measured in terms of the challenge we face.

  • 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.

  • Nuclear Terrorism: How It Can Be Prevented

    The recent furor over an unsuccessful terrorist attempt to blow up an airliner is distracting us from considering the possibility of a vastly more destructive terrorist act: exploding a nuclear weapon in a heavily-populated area.

    Such a disaster — which would kill hundreds of thousands of people — is not a remote possibility at all.  Although terrorist groups do not have the fissile material (that is, material capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction) necessary to build nuclear weapons on their own, they have been trying to obtain such weapons, either by purchase or theft, for decades.  According to the U.S.government, Osama bin Laden sought to acquire nuclear weapons at least since 1992.  Not only have there been dozens of thefts and sales of fissile material to potential terrorists (all of whom were supposedly arrested), but a significant number of nuclear weapons have been “lost” by nuclear-armed nations.  In addition, if either nuclear weapons or fissile material were available to overseas terrorists, it would not be very difficult to smuggle them into the United States.

    In 2004, when Dr. Graham Allison — founding dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former top Pentagon official — published his classic study, Nuclear Terrorism:  The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, he argued that if governments continued their past policies, a nuclear terrorist attack was inevitable.  The problem, as he saw it, reflected a combination of terrorist activity, the ease of smuggling weapons across U.S.borders, and the accessibility of nuclear weapons and fissile materials. 

    Unfortunately, not much has changed since that time.  Terrorism, of course, shows no sign of disappearing.  Even if the “war on terror” produced a significant decline in terrorism (which it shows no sign of doing) and even if proper intelligence and police work reduced the number of terrorist activities, some terrorist acts almost certainly would continue, as they have for centuries.  Furthermore, as we have seen in the case of immigration, securing U.S.borders is not an easy task, and perfect security seems unlikely to be obtained.   

    But what about the third leg of the problem:  the accessibility of nuclear weapons and fissile materials?  Not much has been done about this.  But a lot could be done.

    Allison focused particularly on securing fissile material.  As he put it:  “No fissile material, no nuclear explosion, no nuclear terrorism.  It is that simple.”  He explained:  “There is a vast — but not unlimited — amount of it in the world, and it is within our power to keep it secure.”  Actually, in recent years there has been a tightening up of governmental controls over fissile material.  Also, there has been significant interest by the U.S.government and others in negotiating a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.  During the 2008 presidential campaign, both Barack Obama and John McCain endorsed such a treaty, and since then both have spoken out in favor of it.

    Then, of course, there is the possibility of eliminating the vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons accumulated by nine nations.  At the moment, there are some 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence (mostly in Russia and the United States) — ripe pickings for any would-be mass murderer.  Any significant reduction in their number would significantly reduce the opportunities for nuclear terrorism.  And their elimination would wipe out these opportunities entirely.  To draw upon Allison’s phrasing:  no nuclear weapons, no nuclear explosion, no nuclear terrorism.

    Of course, there are other good reasons to eliminate nuclear weapons, as well, including the danger of nuclear war.  Doubtless this point will be on the minds of many government officials and citizens alike as the world prepares for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference this coming May, at the United Nations.  The U.N. conference will consider the treaty pledges of non-nuclear nations to forgo nuclear weapons and the treaty pledges of nuclear nations to divest themselves of these implements of mass destruction.

    Even so, the ongoing danger of nuclear terrorism provides yet another reason to rid the world of fissile material and its final, terrible product, nuclear weapons.  Let’s not forget that.

  • President Obama and a Nuclear Weapons-Free World

    A dialogue between David Krieger and Richard Falk

    Krieger:      The last time that we got together to discuss nuclear weapons issues we were still in the final year of the Bush administration.  Our dialogue focused on being at the nuclear precipice.  We were reflecting on whether we were headed toward catastrophe or transformation.  Now the Bush administration has left office, and been replaced by the Obama administration.  President Obama has made a number of statements that reflect a different tone and a different set of objectives than were being pursued by the Bush administration.  The question that I’d like to explore with you today is this: How seriously should we take the changes that are being proposed by the Obama administration?  Do you see these proposals as a serious turning away from catastrophe toward transformation?

    Falk:           I think that this is a much more hopeful time to consider these various issues bearing on nuclear weapons and, at the same time, it’s a rather confusing and complicated time.  Of course it’s appropriate and accurate, I think, to welcome the kind of rhetorical leadership that President Obama has so far exhibited, particularly in his Prague speech of April 5th.  One has to hope that this is more than a rhetorical posture, but represents, as he said in the speech it did, a serious commitment to take concrete steps toward the objective of a world free from nuclear weapons.  But one has to look at two other factors here that make me, at any rate, somewhat less optimistic about the real tangible results.          The first is the continuing confrontation with Iran as a potential nuclear weapon state on the unspoken assumption that we still will be living in a world where some countries are allowed to have those weapons and others are forbidden.  It would be a very different confrontation, from my perspective, if it was coupled with a call for a Middle East free from nuclear weapons altogether or a dual call to Israel and Iran that would take account of the existence of a nuclear weapon state in the region already.  But as far as I can tell there is no disposition to do that.
    A second concern, it seems to me, is the degree to which the bureaucratic roots of the nuclear weapons establishment are still very deep in the governmental structure and very dedicated, as near as I can tell, to pursuing a path that has some of President Obama’s rhetoric, but really aims at managing and stabilizing the nuclear weapons arsenals of the world and, particularly, the US arsenal.  This would, in that sense, maintain this geopolitical structure of a world where some have the weapons and supposedly the great danger comes from the countries that don’t have the weapons.  I find that an untenable and basically unacceptable conception of world order in relation to this challenge posed by the continued existence of nuclear weaponry.

    Krieger:      You raise important concerns, and I think we should explore these.  I’ve just returned from the 2009 Preparatory Committee Meeting for the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.  One of the things that I took note of there was that many of the countries in the Middle East were drawing attention to the fact that when the Non-Proliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995, at the same time there was a pledge on the part of all the parties to the NPT to work for a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone.  And these countries in the Middle East are now saying that in their view the indefinite extension of the treaty was contingent upon fulfilling the other promises that were made at the time, including a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone.  So I think that issue is going to have more and more salience because there are another dozen or so countries in the region that now want to pursue nuclear energy programs in their countries and are making reference to Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for them to get assistance in doing so.  With regard to nuclear weapons, the Middle East remains one of the more unsettled regions of the world.
    I agree with you that it’s a significant problem that the United States and other leading countries in the world don’t make reference to Israel’s nuclear weapons, while at the same time trying to shut down Iran’s program.  One way of interpreting what is going on with the new administration, with President Obama, is that he is saying the right things rhetorically to give the impression that the United States seeks a world free of nuclear weapons, but he is not yet prepared—and it’s a big yet—to make the difficult decisions that involve treating those we see as friends or potential foes with a single standard rather than a double standard.  It is clear that if nonproliferation is an objective of the administration, it will not be obtained without doing away with double standards on the one hand and showing by action that the United States and other nuclear weapons states are serious about fulfilling their Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Article VI obligations of actually moving toward a nuclear weapons-free world within a reasonable timeframe.

    Falk:           That is all very persuasive, but even in the Prague speech there’s no hint of concern about this double standards problem as I read the speech.  At a time when the new prime minister of Israel is visiting the United States and there is a discussion of the future of the relationship between our two countries, they talk about Iran and they talk about the Palestinians, but there’s no willingness to raise the question of the regional nuclear weapons-free zone.  Nor is there pressure for Israel to do something about its nuclear weapons arsenal if it expects the United States to exert pressure on Iran to forego that option.  And from the point of view of the region, it’s perfectly tenable to view Israel as a greater threat than Iran.  Israel has attacked its neighbors on a few occasions, it has kept these weapons, it has even put them at the ready apparently in the 1973 war, and yet it’s been given a kind of silent pass as far as retaining its nuclear weapons arsenal.  So it’s an important issue and I believe that it’s our role in civil society to raise those uncomfortable issues that Congress is obviously unwilling to raise, the media is not very willing to discuss, much less press the issue of double standards or Israel’s exemption from scrutiny with respect to nuclear weaponry.  Unless independent voices in civil society raise these issues effectively they won’t be raised at all in my opinion.

    Krieger:      I agree with that.  The question is: Should we be pushing for President Obama to call for a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East and for Israel to be a party to that zone?  Is that where our efforts should be focused, or should they be focused on taking some large steps, such as negotiating a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Moscow?  The United States and Russia have most of the nuclear weapons in the world, so that is where a good deal of progress could be made at this moment.  Other issues have been stalled for the eight years of the Bush administration, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, gaining control of loose nuclear materials, and dealing with the potential threat posed by nuclear weapons falling into the hands of non-state extremists.  There is space at this time for considerable progress on those issues before moving to some of the tougher issues.  I would put a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone into that tougher issue category, and a Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone as well, dealing with concerns in North Korea, South Korea, Japan and China.  There are many practical questions, such as which issues should we be focusing on now, which ones can come later, as we actually move towards zero?  There seems to be some momentum now, at least in comparison to what we’ve had for the Bush years and largely for the Clinton years as well.

    Falk:           Yes, I think certainly there is a case to be made in favor of moving forward on these avenues of arms reduction and stabilization that have been blocked over a period when the conservatives controlled security policy for the US.  But I’m convinced that unless the difficult issues are raised alongside these other issues, they will never be raised, and there is, I think, a quite serious urgency in the Middle East, to some extent in the Indo-Pakistan region, central and south Asia, as well as in the Korean peninsula that you referred to.  And maybe one perspective to bring into the debate about next steps is to talk about these kinds of regional conflict zones, because they pose immediate problems that could lead to serious deterioration.  There is the possibility that Pakistan could come under the control of very extremist leadership and that India would be very nervous by such a development, and one could have the first war between nuclear weapon states easily taking place.  So I’m not convinced myself that these general denuclearizing steps should be privileged at this early stage of the Obama presidency.  I think they should certainly be supported, but to allow them to dominate the political agenda at this stage is, in my view, a tactical as well as a strategic mistake.

    Krieger:      In the Prague speech, President Obama talked about the importance of moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons, but he didn’t really indicate that it was something that needed to be done with a sense of urgency.  He said something to this effect: “I’m not naïve; this may take a long time.  It may not happen within my lifetime.”  Surely there is cause for concern in that lack of urgency because it’s a deferral of the end state until some time in a future that can’t yet be foreseen.  And that’s a similar point of view to what former officials like Kissinger, Shultz, Perry, Nunn and others are also articulating.  They think that a world free of nuclear weapons would be a good thing, but they can’t see “the top of the mountain,” as they put it.

    Falk:           I disagree with you a little bit there.  I think there is a difference between the visionary approach embodied in Obama’s Prague speech and the very realist assessment of the status of nuclear weapons in the Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn statements.  In their case, ironically, they see getting rid of nuclear weapons as a strategic benefit to the United States at this stage.  They’re worried about the spread of nuclear weapons, which they don’t think can be contained by the present nonproliferation regime, and they further believe that any further proliferation will neutralize whatever benefits nuclear weapons have had up to this point in  serving American security interests since the end of World War II.  Kissinger initially made his career as a policy advisor on the basis of advocating the reliance on US military superiority when it comes to nuclear weapons in confronting the Soviet Union, even endorsing the Cold War idea of ‘limited nuclear war.’  I believe Kissinger hasn’t changed his worldview; he just sees, and I think probably correctly from a realist point of view, that the US military dominance would be less inhibited in a world without nuclear weapons.

    Krieger:      And the United States would be less threatened in a world without nuclear weapons because of the power imbalance that nuclear weapons make possible?

    Falk:           Yes.

    Krieger:      I agree with you that they’re looking at nuclear disarmament from a realist point of view, and I think their greatest concern is that nuclear weapons could end up in the hands of extremist groups, which could lead to the destruction of United States’ cities, inflicting serious harm on the country.

    Falk:           They’re also concerned about proliferation because they don’t want to see a lot of other countries having these nuclear weapons because then it would likely make the United States much more cautious in pursuing its overseas interests, especially when these involve military intervention.  So it’s partly vulnerability, but it’s also partly military asymmetry that favors the United States that is at risk if further proliferation takes place.

    Krieger:      But nonetheless, I don’t see that they have articulated or even suggested that this is something that can be done relatively quickly.  Mayors for Peace have an agenda that calls for a nuclear weapons-free world by the year 2020.  The Kissinger group only talks, at this point, about building a base camp to get to the top of the mountain.  It has not talked about achieving the goal by a certain time, or even delving into that to look at what might be needed.  Two things are needed if there is going to be a serious attempt to go from where we are now to zero nuclear weapons—whether driven by the former officials’ view of the world or by President Obama’s view of the world.  The two things that are needed are: first, political will to go beyond a rhetorical commitment to actual action; and second, US leadership.  Without US leadership the project is going to be stalled.  If the US doesn’t lead, Russia won’t be particularly inclined to change its reliance on nuclear weapons more than it is being forced to do by economics, and other states won’t be pressed to move in that direction.  So, I see the real starting point is the United States now moving from the rhetoric that Obama has put on the table to the actual steps that will move us closer to a nuclear weapons-free world, not only in numbers of weapons but in how we treat the weapons, how we view them in our strategic outlook, and how much we rely upon them militarily.

    Falk:           Yes, I think those are certainly good ways of assessing the motivations associated with whatever steps are advocated by the United States in its natural position of leadership.  I am a little bit less convinced that the US has this special vocation of providing the leadership.  The most successful setting for real momentum toward the goal of elimination would be for mutually reinforcing developments to occur in the other nuclear weapon states, because that would both create a kind of encouragement here as well as not make others suspicious that this was a kind of US tactical, Kissinger-like move to shift the pieces on the global chess board so as to give the US a tighter grip on world politics.  So I would put a lot of emphasis on engaging the other nuclear weapon states in a more global process of denuclearization.  I think it would be very good, for instance, to have speeches by other leaders that responded in some way to the Obama Prague speech, and to have civil society alerted and mobilized to a much greater extent than it is at present in these other countries to see this as a moment of opportunity—stark opportunity.  I think as long as the climate in civil society is as passive as I believe it still remains, even here, there will not be much significant progress toward zero.  There will be some progress toward stabilization and management and reducing the risks of unintended use of nuclear weapons or perhaps making them more secure in relation to non-state actors and other essentially managerial initiatives.
    I believe quite strongly that without a movement from below there will be no challenge to the nuclear weapons establishment that is well situated in the governmental structure that operates from above.  I think President Obama’s political style is very much one of responding to pressure and not being willing to take big political risks to get out ahead of what he regards as the relation of forces within society.  I think he’s shown that in everything he’s done so far, including his appointments to important positions, the way he has handled the economic crisis, the way he has handled the Palestine-Israel conflict.  In all these areas he’s taken a very low-risk, low-profile strategy except rhetorically.

    Krieger:      So that leaves us with an important question:  Whether it’s possible to generate such a citizen movement around this issue?  Of course, that’s the reason for being of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and we’ve struggled with generating such a movement for 27 years and continue to struggle with it.  I sense that Obama’s rhetoric has made our job somewhat easier because it has alerted people to the possibility that there may be some hope.  I think the years of Bush and to a lesser extent also Clinton before him, were on the side of the scale that tipped toward despair.  When you tip toward despair of change, it’s very difficult to engage people in action.  So now, with Obama, because of his rhetoric, we have a better chance to build a movement from below.  But, as you know, it’s a difficult challenge to get people to directly confront nuclear issues and believe that they can have an effective voice in those issues.  Even for civil society groups, like ours, that have been engaged for nearly three decades, it’s not so easy to believe that we can have a strong influence on policy, partly for the reasons you mentioned earlier having to do with the entrenched bureaucracy that surrounds this issue and seeks to maintain at least some level of superiority, if not dominance, with regard to maintaining the weapons.

    Falk:           Yes, I think it is difficult, but unless that difficulty is overcome I think we have to guard ourselves against an orgy of wishful thinking because over this kind of issue it’s very difficult to achieve meaningful change unless there is a sufficiently altered climate of opinion in the society.  Some of that has occurred, as you point out, but I think there’s a long way to go. It’s not an issue that currently is very high on the public’s agenda.  There are other concerns that seem more immediate, and pressing, and in the past when the nuclear issue has become briefly prominent, the prominence has resulted from fear rather than hope.  I don’t know how strong a political pillar hope is as the basis of change.  I’m not sure about fear either, which evinces concern but not often any transformative actions.  When one considers where and when change does occur and where and when it does not occur, it seems to me to be very dependent on some kind of significant mobilization of civil society that exerts pressure on the government and alters the way in which political officials in positions of responsibility understand and interpret these kinds of issues, and how they weigh the political consequences of their various policy options.

    Krieger:      Ordinary people need to understand that this is an issue of self-interest for them to push forward.  But the complexities of the issue are such that it’s very hard for ordinary citizens of the United States, and I’m sure of other countries, to make informed decisions about what’s in their interest regarding nuclear weapons.  There are important psychological issues at play.  One, and this is long-standing, is a mistaken sense that nuclear weapons actually protect people.  This idea has been sold by the nuclear weapons bureaucracy fairly well, so that people really have to stop and think to grasp that these weapons don’t protect them.  In fact, nuclear weapons make them and their families vulnerable to a counterattack if they happen to live in a country that has these weapons.  The other side of that coin is that when somebody like Obama comes along and says that he wants to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons, and it’s profoundly in American’s interest and the world’s interest to do so, the people who already have the glimmer of understanding that nuclear weapons aren’t in their interest are immediately mollified.  They have the sense that the problem is now taken care of because the president tells us that he sees the problem and he is going to do something about it.  They think that we can check that problem off and move on to more immediate and pressing problems having to do with the economy, health care, and other issues that are more tangible.

    Falk:           Yes, I think that’s a good way of describing the challenge and difficulty, and I think those of us that are involved in trying to make this rhetorical moment into a real political project are ourselves challenged to figure out what is the best way to do that.  How do we take this rhetorical moment given to us by President Obama and in a different way by the Kissinger group, how do we make this into something that is more than rhetoric, that becomes a political project that envisions a real process that ends with the elimination of nuclear weapons?  There’s no plausible reason that I understand why, if the project is meaningful at all, it needs to be treated as something that can only happen in the distant future.  If it can happen at all, it can happen in a meaningful chronology that is well within the dimensions of a human generation, which allows for reliable verification of a disarming process, for confidence to be built and trust to be established, and for international institutions of inspection and verification to gain respect and experience.  One way of testing the seriousness of the commitment to zero is to find, to concretize the process by which one moves from where we are to where we would like to be.  As long as zero nuclear weapons remain purely an abstract goal, I’m very suspicious about the contribution of small steps taken to this goal, even if these steps are not so small from a stabilization perspective.  Unless there is an influential roadmap to zero that has been adopted by political leaders and known to the public, I don’t believe these steps are likely to lead us toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Krieger:      I think a roadmap is a litmus test of whether a country is serious.  If you say you want a world with no nuclear weapons, the logical next step is to figure out how we get from here to there.  That’s been done by civil society groups.  They’ve worked out a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty similar to the treaties banning chemical and biological weapons.  I recently created a roadmap to satisfy my own curiosity about timeframes, and I think that a generous timeframe at the outer end would be somewhere around 17 years or perhaps 20 years.  But, at the same time, with the proper political will and leadership, the elimination of nuclear weapons could be accomplished in a 10-year timeframe with far lower risks of cheating than currently exist.  If there was a serious desire to move to zero nuclear weapons that was driven by an understanding that the people of any nation would be more secure in such a world, then I think it could happen relatively quickly.  There would be adjustments that would be necessary, and it would open up a lot of discussion about changes in the international system so that some countries wouldn’t end up being bullied by those countries with the strongest conventional power.  But you would end up, at a minimum, with an international system in which nuclear weapons would not continue to threaten the destruction of civilization, if not the species, and that seems like an intelligent starting point for moving this project forward.

    Falk:           Yes, I think it is.  It still raises the question of where an organization like the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation should put its major emphasis: Whether it should be primarily developing a framework and support for the process of total nuclear disarmament, or it should be reinforcing and encouraging the support for the initial steps in a denuclearizing process that would hopefully build some sense of momentum that would carry forward beyond that?  I feel that one needs some rather clear benchmarks that would give the Obama presidency both a kind of test of whether the goal of zero is merely rhetorical, or whether it was something that they are willing to fight for politically.  That’s why I would put stress both on the roadmap as something to be endorsed and look toward an early and largely symbolic renunciation by the United States of discretion to use these weapons as instruments of statecraft.  That’s why I feel the No First Use declaration by the U.S. would be an extremely significant affirmation of the claim that Obama is pursuing nuclear disarmament as well as reviving nuclear arms control.  I think such a pledge would also encourage other nuclear weapon states to join us—if the US has made a firm commitment to not use these weapons as instruments of statecraft, but temporarily retained only as instruments kept available for ultimate survival purposes until the end point of a roadmap is achieved.

    Krieger:      For the United States to commit publicly to limiting the use of its nuclear weapons under any circumstances to retaliation for a nuclear attack, that it was adopting a No First Use policy, would be a major step forward in demonstrating actual leadership toward diminishing the military importance of nuclear weapons.  Once there’s been sufficient diminishment of the importance of the weapons in any country’s military doctrine, then it would seem to me that the next steps toward actual abolition would be much easier to take.  China currently has a No First Use policy and it actually backs up that policy by not keeping its warheads attached to its delivery vehicles.  It would have to put them together in order to use them.  It has a declaratory policy that it will not under any circumstances use nuclear weapons first.  India has made a statement similar to that.  So, two of the nine nuclear weapon states have already taken this position.  At one point, the former Soviet Union had that position as well, but when the United States refused to adopt that position and as the Soviet Union was losing conventional military power, it withdrew its No First Use pledge.  It would be a significant area for leadership by the Obama administration to join China and India, and make a declaration of No First Use and urge others under our influence—which would include Britain, France, Israel and Pakistan—to adopt similar positions.  I think that would be a landmark step from which a roadmap would certainly follow.

    Falk:           But you have to ask the question, because it seems so persuasive, why hasn’t it been proposed?  It’s a no-brainer from a moral, legal, and political perspective to insist that if you are genuinely dedicated to a world without nuclear weapons such a step should be taken.  It also follows from the 1996 International Court of Justice advisory opinion.  It follows from any kind of moral calculus of the role of nuclear weapons, recollecting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, giving a sense of what it means humanly to use these weapons, and even to contemplate and plan for their use.  So the refusal and the failure to move toward such a declaration has to raise questions about whether this whole rhetoric that President Obama has deployed, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is really a blueprint for stabilizing the nuclear weapons arsenals of the world so as to avoid accidental and unintentional use or the diversion of these weapons to non-state actors.  These may be, no doubt are, desirable goals, but they should not be confused with a project to get rid of the weapons altogether. Until we have more indication from the Obama administration that their substantive commitments go beyond arms control, we should mount pressure to reinforce our enthusiasm for his visionary rhetoric.

    Krieger:      Another possibility is that President Obama doesn’t necessarily understand the implications of a first use policy.  That may be an area he hasn’t considered to any serious extent because the issue of No First Use hasn’t come up in any of his statements.  His administration has been more focused on bilateral engagement with Russia, strengthening the Non-Proliferation Treaty, gathering up loose nuclear materials, and preventing terrorists from getting nuclear weapons.  But it seems to me within the realm of possibility that even an intelligent individual like President Obama hasn’t given serious consideration to what it means to have a policy that allows for first use.  I think he may understand that a policy that allows for preemptive use is a bad policy, but I wonder whether he fully understands the implications of a first use policy.

    Falk:           If this is a matter of oversight or ignorance, then it provides a good reason for anti-nuclear activists to convey a deeper understanding to the society as a whole and hopefully to the leadership in Washington.  As I say, I think it’s a very good litmus test of what the real intentions are behind the advocacy of this new approach to nuclear weapons.  The embrace of a No First Use posture would be, it seems to me, a very specific departure from past American policy on nuclear weapons, and it would be a very powerful signal to other nuclear weapon states the US doesn’t intend any longer to base its military planning on a nuclear weapons dimension.  Until that is done, there is an inevitable ambiguity as to what the US is up to in trying to prevent its adversaries from getting these weapons, while sheltering its friends from criticism about possessing them and continuing to develop them.  What does it mean to enter a positive relationship with India on nuclear technology, which seemingly rewards the country for becoming a nuclear weapon state in defiance of nonproliferation goals?  Such developments confirm that, as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, geopolitics is alive and well, and as long as it is alive and well, I don’t think there’s been a real break or rupture with past American approaches to its nuclear weapons agenda, and if this is the case, then it is time for vigilance and criticism, not cheerleading.

    Krieger:      Most of what you refer to and particularly the US-India agreement, for the United States to supply nuclear materials and technology to a known proliferator of nuclear weapons, occurred primarily under the Bush administration.  So it’s too soon to tell whether that’s a policy that President Obama intends to follow.
    I think we agree that a No First Use policy would be a strong signal to the world that the United States is serious about moving toward a nuclear weapons-free world.  I think that we also agree that another signal would be for the United States to end its silence about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and to be more proactive about a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone.

    Falk:           A third point that I think is important is the serious commitment, either in collaboration with other governments or on our own, to develop a roadmap that sketched in a process that leads toward a world without nuclear weapons.

    Krieger:      I was just moving to that.  One of the actions that President Obama called for in his Prague speech was a Global Summit on Nuclear Security.  When he called for that global summit, what he was saying was in essence that we want to prevent nuclear terrorism.   If this Global Summit on Nuclear Security could be broadened, it could be a really valuable project.  The United States has the convening power to bring together the nations of the world that would be needed, including the nine nuclear weapons states, for such a global summit.  These states could actually look at the security issues related to nuclear weapons in all their dimensions, including the dimension of the existing nuclear weapons in the hands of the nine nuclear weapons states, and the potential for accidents, proliferation, and all of the other security issues that nuclear weapons pose.  It could include nuclear policy issues, such as No First Use.  It seems to me that if the Global Summit on Nuclear Security were broadened, that could actually be the place to initiate a joint effort at developing a roadmap on the way to a new treaty that would lead, with the appropriate confidence-building measures and assurances against cheating, to the phased, verifiable, irreversible, and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Falk:           I suspect that there will be a lot of pressure to keep the global summit narrowly focused on the terrorist issue, making the argument that if the focus is diluted nothing will come out of the summit.
                                  I think it’s important to bring into the discussion the role of the UN system and possibly regional groupings of states, as well as to look at what groups in civil society can do in relation to their own governments.  One of the important achievements in the latter stages of the Cold War was the transnational peace movement in Europe, which had a very strong, positive effect on opposition politics in Eastern Europe and created a kind of collaboration that was often described as détente from below.  A public climate of opposition was built through the mobilization of civil society that created a context able to take advantage of other opportunities for fundamental change. The most notable of these opportunities was presented by the new style of leadership in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev.  Important changes that were completely unanticipated began to take place.  One has to try to think through the conditions under which a movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons can take shape and reinforce this kind of rhetorical initiative that President Obama has inserted into the whole dialogue on the role of nuclear weapons.

    Krieger:      His rhetoric provides a point of focus for civil society, a point of focus that wasn’t there previously.  The question I’m wrestling with is this: How can we make use of that point of focus, how can we take it as a serious commitment on his part and enlist civil society to stand up and support it with a strong enough voice that, even if it was more rhetoric than intention on the part of the administration, they won’t be able to back away from the expectations that they’ve engendered?  But, still, we’re faced with questions of how do we more effectively encourage more people to engage in this issue: How do we awaken people to the importance of the issue and the need to engage?  I think already at some basic level most people would agree that we would be better off in a world without nuclear weapons.  Then the question is: How do we get those people to engage in doing something about that and not simply defering to leaders taking it in their own direction  at their own pace?  That would require a very proactive citizenry and a democracy that was really working. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was formed on the basis that democracy can work and, at its best, does work, and that people do awaken to issues of importance to themselves and don’t always act against their interests, but can find a way to act in their interests.  I think our job continues to be to point out to more and more people and to create more and more enthusiasm for the idea that a world free of nuclear weapons is in the common interest of all Americans and all people of the world.

    Falk:           Yes, I completely agree, but we have to acknowledge that the place where democracy seems to be least effective is in relation to the national security agenda, and that ineffectiveness has been reinforced now for by decades of an essentially militarist state having emerged out of first World War II and then the long decades of the Cold War and intensified after 9/11.  In all these situations, what one has observed is a continuity of a governmental structure that is organized around the primacy of using military power in the world.  Eisenhower, of course warned long ago, about the military-industrial complex in his farewell address, but that’s almost 50 years ago and we now spend as much as the whole world put together on our military budget.  It’s an extraordinary thing.  I mean Defense Secretary Gates was quoted recently as saying that the American navy is stronger than the navies of the next 13 powers in the world, but despite this disparity we must still make it even stronger.  One needs to understand that a leader like Obama is faced with that enormous antidemocratic, militarized, bureaucratic structure and that he would probably receive a vicious backlash from this military establishment if he makes clear that his advocacy in favor of eliminating nuclear weapons is intended to become a real political project.  At the same time, such a move would be very, very reinforcing for his leadership and for US leadership, but it would almost certainly involve a fierce struggle with the national security bureaucracy and its links to the media and to certain think tanks and so on.  I think this entrenched militarism is a formidable obstacle astride the path to a nuclear free world.  It’s not so much just that the public is ill-informed; it is a matter of a hidden, unaccountable power structure that does not want to make basic changes.  Incremental changes are acceptable, but seeking basic cha`nges invariably arouses formidable bureaucratic resistance.

    Krieger:      We’ve seen some examples of that in the aftermath of Obama’s Prague speech.  There have been a number of opinion pieces that have taken the position that Obama is engaging in a fantasy, that his thoughts on a nuclear weapons-free world are an illusion, that there’s no possibility of achieving such a world, and that we should get back to reality as they see it.  Their reality is based on the premises that we’re the dominant military power, we’ll continue to be so, and nuclear weapons are essential to that dominance.  However, Obama’s rhetoric and his Prague speech seemed to be popular with a majority of Americans, if not with that bureaucratic elite.  To succeed, what Obama probably needs to do is to enlist elements of the military in support of his position.  That seems possible to me.  Without knowing the players specifically, it seems to me that a military leader, as opposed to a civilian bureaucrat, would be less likely to think that nuclear weapons are useful as a matter of national defense to the United States.

    Falk:           Yes, I hope so.  We’ll have to wait and see whether this issue is sufficiently alive on his policy agenda to elicit this sort of more constructive response and to what degree he follows up on the Prague rhetoric with a renewal of that kind of rhetoric, and gives evidence of a serious intention to move toward implementation. We need to recall that there have been past well-intentioned attempts by American leaders to talk about getting rid of nuclear weapons in a serious way.  Jimmy Carter did it at his Notre Dame speech.  Very early in his presidency he said he would work every day of his administration to get rid of nuclear weapons, but the backlash from the national security establishment was so strong that he dropped the issue altogether, and even moved in the opposite direction by issuing Presidential Directive 59, a thinly disguised threat to use nuclear weapons if provoked by the Soviet Union in the Middle East. Of course, this was during the Cold War.  And then Reagan, even Reagan, had the backlash experience after Reykjavik where he and Gorbachev seemed to have come very close to an agreement on getting rid entirely of strategic nuclear weapons.  As soon as he returned to Washington he was savagely attacked as naïve about the role of nuclear weapons and their importance for national interests by bipartisan circles.  So we have to see first, whether zero nuclear weapons is a policy priority and second, whether the assured backlash from places like The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere will be sufficiently intimidating. Perhaps even then Obama would not explicitly abandon the disarming goal, but would likely signal an intention not to challenge any further the nuclear weapons establishment.

    Krieger:      Another signal may be what comes out of the US-Russia negotiations that have begun.  The last agreement that Bush made in 2002, which is still being implemented, is to reduce the deployed strategic arsenals on both the US and Russian sides to between 1,700 and 2,200 nuclear weapons each.  Under the Bush agreement with Putin, the strategic weapons that are taken off deployed status can either be put in storage – the core can be placed in storage – or they can be dismantled and destroyed.  There’s no limit to the number of weapons that can be kept in reserve.  The Bush-Putin treaty only dealt with deployed strategic weapons, so there’s no limit to the number that can be kept in reserve.  Right now the US does have, as does Russia, a number of weapons awaiting dismantlement, but they also have a number of other weapons that are considered strategic reserve weapons.  How to count remains an issue.  Should there be one overall number—strategic, tactical and reserve—or should there be several numbers?  Under the Bush plan, there was one upper limit specified (2,200), but only for deployed strategic weapons.  Other numbers, for the overall arsenal, for instance, were unspecified and unknown.  They were not subject to accounting.  I think there should be one number of nuclear weapons, and it should be the same formula for each country.  It should include reserves and deployed weapons.

    Falk:           That seems to me essential to the credibility of any kind of disarming process in relation to other nuclear weapon states.

    Krieger:      We don’t yet know how the new negotiations will handle the number, and we also don’t know if they’ll actually make any significant reduction below the current level that has been agreed to.  There have been a number of people who have suggested that going down to 1,000 or less would be a good next step, but the numbers that I’ve heard referred to in relation to the Obama administration are around 1,500, which would be a rather minimal incremental step downward.  I’m not sure how much emphasis to put on that kind of incrementalism, or even on the number itself, when in the bigger picture it is not the number that is critical as much as it is the demonstration of political will to achieve zero.  At the same time, if it turns out that it’s not a very significant reduction, I think that may be a warning sign that the bureaucrats working on stabilization and wanting to continue American nuclear dominance are in more control than perhaps Obama is.

    Falk:           That’s always a question as to how much leadership is possible in the national security domain of policy because of the strength of the permanent bureaucracy—its nonaccountability and its links to influential media.  That’s why I feel it is so important to have this counter pressure mounted by a mobilized civil society to the extent possible.  The question is whether it is possible to mobilize civil society around this kind of issue in the absence of existential fear of the sort that existed from time to time in the Cold War. When the American or European public became very scared about the prospect of a nuclear war, then the climate of opinion changed in favor of denuclearizing initiatives and visions.

    Krieger:      But it was mobilized for lesser objectives.  It was mobilized last for the nuclear freeze, and that was a minimalist demand.  It was only to stop the increase in the size of arsenals.  One thing that I do take heart from is that there is at least a discussion going on beyond civil society and into the level of former policymakers and, in Obama’s case, up to the presidency, talking about a world free of nuclear weapons as though it is a serious possibility.  You mentioned Carter and Reagan as also taking it seriously at some level in their presidencies.  In both cases the presidents appeared sincere in their desire and were stymied by the advisors and bureaucracies that surrounded them.  If we had to make an informed guess at this point, it would be that there will be a serious attempt by the advisors and bureaucracies that surround Obama to limit his degrees of freedom in moving toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

    Falk:           Do you think the Obama speech would have had more resonance if it had been given, let’s say, at the commencement at West Point or in the United States rather than at Prague?

    Krieger:      That is a good question.  It seems to me he chose Prague because he saw it as a global issue, and I think he saw it as an issue that would have resonance for people around the world.  I suppose, though, that had he given that speech at the Air Force Academy, for example, it would have focused far more attention in the country on the speech and on his expressed desire to eliminate nuclear weapons.  My guess is that cadets would have reacted quite favorably to it.

    Falk:           That would have been very positive.  Doesn’t that suggest that one objective of anti-nuclear activists should be to encourage some kind of follow-up speech here in the United States, preferably delivered in a national security venue.  Such an undertaking would convey a seriousness of intention that went beyond making a rhetorical appeal to world public opinion. It would give more ground to believe that we have a president who is dedicated, as I believe Obama may be, to serve the global public interest, and not just a champion of American national interests.

    Krieger:      The negotiators are acting right now on the US-Russian talks, so there is going to be a need for President Obama to speak to the public about those negotiations.  When he speaks to the pubic about the progress that’s been made and that he hopes to see achieved in those negotiations toward a new treaty, he can also take that opportunity to reiterate that this is a step toward a nuclear weapons-free world and that it is only a step.  As important as negotiations may be after these many years without them, we in this country need to view the progress as only a next step on the way to going to zero.  I’d love to see him do that, and I’d love to see him do it in front of the cadets as well.  I can’t think of a better audience for him than the Air Force Academy.

    Falk:           There are a number of places where it would be more or less equivalent, but I think doing that in the United States, especially in a security-oriented venue, would be a very clear indication that this is a genuine and principal commitment of his presidency.

    Krieger:      When you expand the conversation to look at the larger picture of US militarism, you have to also ask what is the relationship of nuclear weapons to the build-up now taking place in Afghanistan.  I think that deserves some more thought and exploration.  The other issue that I think deserves more thought and exploration is built into the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that is the promise of assistance in spreading so-called peaceful nuclear technology, particularly nuclear power plants, around the world.  The question that comes up is whether that is compatible with actually moving to zero nuclear weapons; whether there is a means of oversight that could be implemented that would sufficiently control fissionable materials so that countries could feel assured that they could go to zero nuclear weapons without the risks of weapons proliferation stemming from nuclear power plants being too great.

    Falk:           In order to do that convincingly, it would be necessary to begin treating equals equally.  In other words, it is untenable to have some of the older nuclear states retaining this capacity to convert fissionable materials into weapons while insisting that other states are not entitled to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle.

    Krieger:      I think it’s a given that, if we’re going to get anywhere with any of these major global issues related to nuclear weapons abolition, double standards need to be eliminated from the international system.

    Falk:           But double standards are deeply embedded in the structure of the Nuclear Age.

    Krieger:      Right.  I think the greater problem in relation to nuclear energy is the intense desire of many countries around the world to proceed with development of nuclear energy, in part because they believe it shows a high level of technological achievement.  They have bought-in to the promotional arguments that nuclear power will provide a country with its energy needs at a relatively low cost.  I don’t think that’s a correct understanding, but it’s widespread.  When I was at the 2009 Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee meeting, I didn’t hear one country denounce the idea of the spread of nuclear energy technology, and most of them were continuing to enthusiastically embrace it.

    Falk:           I think the oil squeeze with rising prices and the prospect of supply scarcities, as well as skepticism about the contribution of solar and wind energy, is making opposition to nuclear energy a losing battle.  I don’t think you can stop the spread of nuclear energy capabilities.  What can be done is to insist on a safeguarding and monitoring superstructure that makes diversion for military development much more difficult. Even this will be difficult to accomplish without reciprocating denuclearizing moves by the nuclear weapons states.

    Krieger:      You absolutely have to stop the production and use of highly enriched uranium; convert existing stockpiles of highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium only for power plants; have safeguards that involve international challenge inspections; and control all fissionable materials, including any reprocessing of plutonium.  It will be a major undertaking.  It will make the job of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons harder by many degrees.

    Falk:           Incredibly difficult, and it will be very difficult to get countries, like the US, to accept the same kind of regulatory standards that it would want to impose on others and without mutuality nothing very significant can be achieved.

    Krieger:      We’re very accustomed to such double standards.  But going back to Obama, he’s a `pretty good dad, and in that sense he must understand something about double standards.  If he gets it at a basic level, maybe he will be able to apply it to global politics.

    Falk:           He may get it at a level of equity and fairness, but he’s also a person that is very adept at the power game and he may conclude that unless he feels very strong counterpressure from peace groups, that the only way he can be effective as a leader is by adhering to this two-tier, double standard structure.  It is built very deeply into the way in which world politics has been practiced for centuries, and especially in the Nuclear Age where membership in the nuclear club has operated as such a prime geopolitical status symbol.

    Krieger:      I’d like to end on a positive note.  Even should it prove that Obama’s statements are only rhetoric, which I don’t believe they are, he has raised the expectations of civil society and hopefully energized civil society to believe that there is a greater opportunity now than we’ve experienced in decades, perhaps ever, to end the nuclear weapons era.  Hopefully these expectations will be transformed into a larger level of public support and a course of action on the part of the Obama administration that will prove to be irreversible.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council. Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and the Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Falk and Krieger have written widely on nuclear dangers, and are co-editors of the book, At the Nuclear Precipice: Catastrophe or Transformation? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
  • The Case for US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World

    The Case for US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World

    1. Continued reliance on nuclear weapons by powerful countries will lead to nuclear proliferation and increase the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups.
      1. Terrorists cannot be deterred from using nuclear weapons. Terrorist groups do not have a fixed territory, and it isn’t credible to threaten retaliation against a group that you cannot locate.
    3. A terrorist use of nuclear weapons against a powerful country could destroy cities and have many other detrimental effects on the social, political and economic fabric of the state.
    4. Graham Allison, an expert at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, thinks there is a 50 percent chance of terrorists using nuclear weapons over the next ten years.
    5. The only way to assure that terrorists do not obtain and use nuclear weapons is to dramatically reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world and bring all nuclear weapons and the material to make them under strict international control.
    6. To achieve this goal will require US leadership. If the US does not lead, there is no incentive for Russia to substantially reduce its arsenal, and consequently other states will not join in.
    7. US leadership for a nuclear weapons free world is very much in its own interest – to assure that terrorists do not obtain the only weapons that could inflict major damage on the US population, and to assure that major nuclear states do not use nuclear weapons by accident or design.
    8. A further reason that the US should provide leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world is that the US was the first country to develop nuclear weapons and to use them.
    9. An even more important reason for US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world is to move toward creating a safe and sustainable world of opportunities for our children, grandchildren and generations to follow.
    10. Already some US leaders have seen the need for US leadership for a nuclear weapons free world and attempted to exercise such leadership. Ronald Reagan did so at a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986. Former high-level US officials Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn are calling now for such leadership.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Are You With Us…Or Against Us

    Originally published at www.tomdispatch.com

    The journey to the martial law just imposed on Pakistan by its self-appointed president, the dictator Pervez Musharraf, began in Washington on September 11, 2001. On that day, it so happened, Pakistan’s intelligence chief, Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed, was in town. He was summoned forthwith to meet with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who gave him perhaps the earliest preview of the global Bush doctrine then in its formative stages, telling him, “You are either one hundred percent with us or one hundred percent against us.”

    The next day, the administration, dictating to the dictator, presented seven demands that a Pakistan that wished to be “with us” must meet. These concentrated on gaining its cooperation in assailing Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, which had long been nurtured by the Pakistani intelligence services in Afghanistan and had, of course, harbored Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda training camps. Conspicuously missing was any requirement to rein in the activities of Mr. A.Q. Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear arms, who, with the knowledge of Washington, had been clandestinely hawking the country’s nuclear-bomb technology around the Middle East and North Asia for some years.

    Musharraf decided to be “with us”; but, as in so many countries, being with the United States in its Global War on Terror turned out to mean not being with one’s own people. Although Musharraf, who came to power in a coup in 1999, was already a dictator, he had now taken the politically fateful additional step of very visibly subordinating his dictatorship to the will of a foreign master. In many countries, people will endure a homegrown dictator but rebel against one who seems to be imposed from without, and Musharraf was now courting this danger.

    A public opinion poll in September ranking certain leaders according to their popularity suggests what the results have been. Osama bin Laden, at 46% approval, was more popular than Musharraf, at 38%, who in turn was far better liked than President Bush, at a bottom-scraping 7%. There is every reason to believe that, with the imposition of martial law, Musharraf’s and Bush’s popularity have sunk even further. Wars, whether on terror or anything else, don’t tend to go well when the enemy is more popular than those supposedly on one’s own side.

    Are You with Us?

    Even before the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, the immediate decision to bully Musharraf into compliance defined the shape of the policies that the President would adopt toward a far larger peril that had seemed to wane after the Cold War, but now was clearly on the rise: the gathering nuclear danger. President Bush proposed what was, in fact if not in name, an imperial solution to it. In the new dispensation, nuclear weapons were not to be considered good or bad in themselves; that judgment was to be based solely on whether the nation possessing them was itself judged good or bad (with us, that is, or against us). Iraq, obviously, was judged to be “against us” and suffered the consequences. Pakistan, soon honored by the administration with the somehow ridiculous, newly coined status of “major non-NATO ally,” was clearly classified as with us, and so, notwithstanding its nuclear arsenal and abysmal record on proliferation, given the highest rating.

    That doctrine constituted a remarkable shift. Previously, the United States had joined with almost the entire world to achieve nonproliferation solely by peaceful, diplomatic means. The great triumph of this effort had been the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, under which 183 nations, dozens quite capable of producing nuclear weapons, eventually agreed to remain without them. In this dispensation, all nuclear weapons were considered bad, and so all proliferation was bad as well. Even existing arsenals, including those of the two superpowers of the Cold War, were supposed to be liquidated over time. Conceptually, at least, one united world had faced one common danger: nuclear arms.

    In the new, quickly developing, post-9/11 dispensation, however, the world was to be divided into two camps. The first, led by the United States, consisted of good, democratic countries, many possessing the bomb; the second consisted of bad, repressive countries trying to get the bomb and, of course, their terrorist allies. Nuclear peril, once understood as a problem of supreme importance in its own right, posed by those who already possessed nuclear weapons as well as by potential proliferators, was thus subordinated to the polarizing “war on terror,” of which it became a mere sub-category, albeit the most important one. This peril could be found at “the crossroads of radicalism and technology,” otherwise called the “nexus of terror and weapons of mass destruction,” in the words of the master document of the Bush Doctrine, the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

    The good camp was assigned the job not of rolling back all nuclear weapons but simply of stopping any members of the bad camp from getting their hands on the bomb. The means would no longer be diplomacy, but “preventive war” (to be waged by the United States). The global Cold War of the late twentieth century was to be replaced by global wars against proliferation — disarmament wars — in the twenty-first. These wars, breaking out wherever in the world proliferation might threaten, would not be cold, but hot indeed, as the invasion of Iraq soon revealed — and as an attack on Iran, now under consideration in Washington, may soon further show.

    …Or Against Us?

    Vetting and sorting countries into the good and the bad, the with-us and the against-us, proved, however, a far more troublesome business than those in the Bush administration ever imagined. Iraq famously was not as “bad” as alleged, for it turned out to lack the key feature that supposedly warranted attack — weapons of mass destruction. Neither was Pakistan, muscled into the with-us camp so quickly after 9/11, as “good” as alleged. Indeed, these distinctions were entirely artificial, for by any factual and rational reckoning, Pakistan was by far the more dangerous country.

    Indeed, the Pakistan of Pervez Musharraf has, by now, become a one-country inventory of all the major forms of the nuclear danger.

    *Iraq did not have nuclear weapons; Pakistan did. In 1998, it had conducted a series of five nuclear tests in response to five tests by India, with whom it had fought three conventional wars since its independence in 1947. The danger of interstate nuclear war between the two nations is perhaps higher than anywhere else in the world.

    *Both Iraq and Pakistan were dictatorships (though the Iraqi government was incomparably more brutal).

    *Iraq did not harbor terrorists; Pakistan did, and does so even more today.

    *Iraq, lacking the bomb, could not of course be a nuclear proliferator. Pakistan was, with a vengeance. The arch-proliferator A.Q. Khan, a metallurgist, first purloined nuclear technology from Europe, where he was employed at the uranium enrichment company EURENCO. He then used the fruits of his theft to successfully establish an enrichment program for Pakistan’s bomb. After that, the thief turned salesman. Drawing on a globe-spanning network of producers and middlemen — in Turkey, Dubai, and Malaysia, among other countries — he peddled his nuclear wares to Iran, Iraq (which apparently turned down his offer of help), North Korea, Libya, and perhaps others. Seen from without, he had established a clandestine multinational corporation dedicated to nuclear proliferation for a profit.

    Seen from within Pakistan, he had managed to create a sort of independent nuclear city-state — a state within a state — in effect privatizing Pakistan’s nuclear technology. The extent of the government’s connivance in this enterprise is still unknown, but few observers believe Khan’s far-flung operations would have been possible without at least the knowledge of officials at the highest levels of that government. Yet all this activity emanating from the “major non-NATO ally” of the Bush administration was overlooked until late 2003, when American and German intelligence intercepted a shipload of nuclear materials bound for Libya, and forced Musharraf to place Khan, a national hero owing to his work on the Pakistani bomb, under house arrest. (Even today, the Pakistani government refuses to make Khan available for interviews with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency.)

    *Iraqi apparatchiks could not, of course, peddle to terrorists, al-Qaedan or otherwise, technology they did not have, as Bush suggested they would do in seeking to justify his war. The Pakistani apparatchiks, on the other hand, could — and they did. Shortly before September 11, 2001, two leading scientists from Pakistan’s nuclear program, Dr. Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former Director General of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and Chaudry Abdul Majeed, paid a visit to Osama bin Laden around a campfire in Afghanistan to advise him on how to make or acquire nuclear arms. They, too, are under house arrest.

    If, however, the beleaguered Pakistani state, already a balkanized enterprise (as the A.Q. Khan story shows) is overthrown, or if the country starts to fall apart, the danger of insider defections from the nuclear establishment will certainly rise. The problem is not so much that the locks on the doors of nuclear installations — Pakistan’s approximately 50 bombs are reportedly spread at sites around the country — will be broken or picked as that those with the keys to the locks will simply switch allegiances and put the materials they guard to new uses. The “nexus” of terrorism and the bomb, the catastrophe the Bush Doctrine was specifically framed to head off, might then be achieved — and in a country that was “for us.”

    What has failed in Pakistan, as in smashed Iraq, is not just a regional American policy, but the pillars and crossbeams of the entire global Bush doctrine, as announced in late 2001. In both countries, the bullying has failed; popular passions within each have gained the upper hand; and Washington has lost much of its influence. In its application to Pakistan, the doctrine was framed to stop terrorism, but in that country’s northern provinces, terrorists have, in fact, entrenched themselves to a degree unimaginable even when the Taliban protected Al-Qaeda’s camps before September 11th.

    If the Bush Doctrine laid claim to the values of democracy, its man Musharraf now has the distinction, rare even among dictators, of mounting a second military coup to maintain the results of his first one. In a crowning irony, his present crackdown is on democracy activists, not the Taliban, armed Islamic extremists, or al-Qaeda supporters who have established positions in the Swat valley only 150 miles from Islamabad.

    Most important, the collapsed doctrine has stoked the nuclear fires it was meant to quench. The dangers of nuclear terrorism, of proliferation, and even of nuclear war (with India, which is dismayed by developments in Pakistan as well as the weak Bush administration response to them) are all on the rise. The imperial solution to these perils has failed. Something new is needed, not just for Pakistan or Iraq, but for the world. Perhaps now someone should try to invent a solution based on imperialism’s opposite, democracy, which is to say respect for other countries and the wills of the people who live in them.

     

    Jonathan Schell is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a visiting lecturer at Yale University

  • Preventing a Nuclear 9/11

    Preventing a Nuclear 9/11

    In the September/October 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Harvard University professor Graham Allison discusses a “nuclear 9/11” and concludes that “a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States is more likely than not in the decade ahead.” Allison underlines this assessment by pointing out that former US Defense Secretary William Perry thinks that he (Allison) underestimates the risk, and that former Senator Sam Nunn, currently chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, thinks that the risk of a nuclear detonation by terrorists on US soil is higher today than the risk of nuclear war at the height of the Cold War. It is the failure by the majority of US policymakers to recognize and adequately respond to this threat that Allison refers to in the title of his article, “The ongoing failure of imagination.”

    Allison then argues that all is not lost because this “ultimate catastrophe” is preventable by what he calls the “Doctrine of Three Nos.” These are: No loose Nukes; No new nascent nukes; and No new nuclear weapons states. The first requires securing all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material throughout the world. The second requires no new domestic capabilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. And the third requires holding the line at the current eight nuclear weapons states (he describes North Korea as being only “three-quarters of the way across that line”).

    To win the war against nuclear terrorism, Allison calls for the creation of a new Global Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism with five common goals. First, members of the alliance would give personal assurances that nuclear weapons and materials on their territory are adequately secured from terrorists or thieves. Second, the creation of a global consensus on the Three Nos described above. Third, the establishment of a more robust non-proliferation regime to control nuclear materials and technology transfers. Fourth, development of an infrastructure to apply “lessons learned” in the fight against nuclear terrorism. Fifth and finally, Allison calls for the alliance being “not just a signed document but a living institution committed to its mission.”

    Allison’s prescription is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. In certain respects Allison, like those he criticizes, also suffers from a failure of imagination. He fails to imagine the necessity and possibility of a world without nuclear weapons as the key to foreclosing the prospects of nuclear terrorism. In general, Allison, like many others in the US nuclear policy field, seems committed to trying to prevent nuclear terrorism while maintaining the two-tier structure of nuclear weapons “haves” and “have-nots.” He wants to hold the line at eight nuclear weapons states, and to assure that there are no new domestic capabilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. He makes no mention of the failure of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations for good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament, or of the benefits that such efforts would have on reducing the risks of nuclear terrorism.

    By continuing to rely upon nuclear weapons for their own security, the current nuclear weapons states demonstrate the usefulness of these weapons for other states. The more states that have these weapons and the more nuclear weapons there are in the world, the more likely it is that the weapons will end up in the hands of terrorists. If the current nuclear weapons states want to prevent nuclear terrorism, they must do more than try to effectively guard their own weapons and weapons-grade materials and to convince others to do the same. They must become serious about their obligations for nuclear disarmament, commence good faith negotiations toward this end, and move as rapidly as possible to reduce their nuclear arsenals and bring remaining stocks of weapons, weapons-grade materials and the technologies to create such materials under strict and effective international control.

    In my view, the greatest failure of imagination on the part of leaders in the nuclear weapons states is their belief that they can continue with nuclear business as usual, brandishing their own nuclear weapons, while expecting that these weapons will not eventually end up in the hands of terrorists. In fact, it is a failure of imagination for policymakers in the nuclear weapons states not to view their own possession of nuclear weapons as a form of nuclear terrorism. In the end, the only way to assure against the threat of nuclear terrorism is to eliminate nuclear weapons. Anything short of that is only a partial measure, leaving the door open to nuclear terrorism.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.

  • Mohamed ElBaradei – Nobel Lecture

    Your Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Honourable Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency and I are humbled, proud, delighted and above all strengthened in our resolve by this most worthy of honours.

    My sister-in-law works for a group that supports orphanages in Cairo. She and her colleagues take care of children left behind by circumstances beyond their control. They feed these children, clothe them and teach them to read.

    At the International Atomic Energy Agency, my colleagues and I work to keep nuclear materials out of the reach of extremist groups. We inspect nuclear facilities all over the world, to be sure that peaceful nuclear activities are not being used as a cloak for weapons programmes.

    My sister-in-law and I are working towards the same goal, through different paths: the security of the human family.

    But why has this security so far eluded us?

    I believe it is because our security strategies have not yet caught up with the risks we are facing. The globalization that has swept away the barriers to the movement of goods, ideas and people has also swept with it barriers that confined and localized security threats.

    A recent United Nations High-Level Panel identified five categories of threats that we face:

    1. Poverty, Infectious Disease, and Environmental Degradation;
    2. Armed Conflict – both within and among states;
    3. Organized Crime;
    4. Terrorism; and
    5. Weapons of Mass Destruction.

    These are all ‘threats without borders’ – where traditional notions of national security have become obsolete. We cannot respond to these threats by building more walls, developing bigger weapons, or dispatching more troops. Quite to the contrary. By their very nature, these security threats require primarily multinational cooperation.

    But what is more important is that these are not separate or distinct threats. When we scratch the surface, we find them closely connected and interrelated.

    We are 1,000 people here today in this august hall. Imagine for a moment that we represent the world’s population. These 200 people on my left would be the wealthy of the world, who consume 80 per cent of the available resources. And these 400 people on my right would be living on an income of less than $2 per day.

    This underprivileged group of people on my right is no less intelligent or less worthy than their fellow human beings on the other side of the aisle. They were simply born into this fate.

    In the real world, this imbalance in living conditions inevitably leads to inequality of opportunity, and in many cases loss of hope. And what is worse, all too often the plight of the poor is compounded by and results in human rights abuses, a lack of good governance, and a deep sense of injustice. This combination naturally creates a most fertile breeding ground for civil wars, organized crime, and extremism in its different forms.

    In regions where conflicts have been left to fester for decades, countries continue to look for ways to offset their insecurities or project their ‘power’. In some cases, they may be tempted to seek their own weapons of mass destruction, like others who have preceded them.

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    Fifteen years ago, when the Cold War ended, many of us hoped for a new world order to emerge. A world order rooted in human solidarity – a world order that would be equitable, inclusive and effective.

    But today we are nowhere near that goal. We may have torn down the walls between East and West, but we have yet to build the bridges between North and South – the rich and the poor.

    Consider our development aid record. Last year, the nations of the world spent over $1 trillion on armaments. But we contributed less than 10 per cent of that amount – a mere $80 billion – as official development assistance to the developing parts of the world, where 850 million people suffer from hunger.

    My friend James Morris heads the World Food Programme, whose task it is to feed the hungry. He recently told me, “If I could have just 1 per cent of the money spent on global armaments, no one in this world would go to bed hungry.”

    It should not be a surprise then that poverty continues to breed conflict. Of the 13 million deaths due to armed conflict in the last ten years, 9 million occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where the poorest of the poor live.

    Consider also our approach to the sanctity and value of human life. In the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, we all grieved deeply, and expressed outrage at this heinous crime – and rightly so. But many people today are unaware that, as the result of civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 3.8 million people have lost their lives since 1998.

    Are we to conclude that our priorities are skewed, and our approaches uneven?

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen. With this ‘big picture’ in mind, we can better understand the changing landscape in nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

    There are three main features to this changing landscape: the emergence of an extensive black market in nuclear material and equipment; the proliferation of nuclear weapons and sensitive nuclear technology; and the stagnation in nuclear disarmament.

    Today, with globalization bringing us ever closer together, if we choose to ignore the insecurities of some, they will soon become the insecurities of all.

    Equally, with the spread of advanced science and technology, as long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.

    I have no doubt that, if we hope to escape self-destruction, then nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience, and no role in our security.

    To that end, we must ensure – absolutely – that no more countries acquire these deadly weapons.

    We must see to it that nuclear-weapon states take concrete steps towards nuclear disarmament.

    And we must put in place a security system that does not rely on nuclear deterrence.

    * * * * * * *

    Are these goals realistic and within reach? I do believe they are. But then three steps are urgently required.

    First, keep nuclear and radiological material out of the hands of extremist groups. In 2001, the IAEA together with the international community launched a worldwide campaign to enhance the security of such material. Protecting nuclear facilities. Securing powerful radioactive sources. Training law enforcement officials. Monitoring border crossings. In four years, we have completed perhaps 50 per cent of the work. But this is not fast enough, because we are in a race against time.

    Second, tighten control over the operations for producing the nuclear material that could be used in weapons. Under the current system, any country has the right to master these operations for civilian uses. But in doing so, it also masters the most difficult steps in making a nuclear bomb.

    To overcome this, I am hoping that we can make these operations multinational – so that no one country can have exclusive control over any such operation. My plan is to begin by setting up a reserve fuel bank, under IAEA control, so that every country will be assured that it will get the fuel needed for its bona fide peaceful nuclear activities. This assurance of supply will remove the incentive – and the justification – for each country to develop its own fuel cycle. We should then be able to agree on a moratorium on new national facilities, and to begin work on multinational arrangements for enrichment, fuel production, waste disposal and reprocessing.

    We must also strengthen the verification system. IAEA inspections are the heart and soul of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. To be effective, it is essential that we are provided with the necessary authority, information, advanced technology, and resources. And our inspections must be backed by the UN Security Council, to be called on in cases of non-compliance.

    Third, accelerate disarmament efforts. We still have eight or nine countries who possess nuclear weapons. We still have

    27,000 warheads in existence. I believe this is 27,000 too many.

    A good start would be if the nuclear-weapon states reduced the strategic role given to these weapons. More than 15 years after the end of the Cold War, it is incomprehensible to many that the major nuclear-weapon states operate with their arsenals on hair-trigger alert – such that, in the case of a possible launch of a nuclear attack, their leaders could have only 30 minutes to decide whether to retaliate, risking the devastation of entire nations in a matter of minutes.

    These are three concrete steps that, I believe, can readily be taken. Protect the material and strengthen verification. Control the fuel cycle. Accelerate disarmament efforts.

    But that is not enough. The hard part is: how do we create an environment in which nuclear weapons – like slavery or genocide – are regarded as a taboo and a historical anomaly?

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons. We seem to agree today that we can share modern technology, but we still refuse to acknowledge that our values – at their very core – are shared values.

    I am an Egyptian Muslim, educated in Cairo and New York, and now living in Vienna. My wife and I have spent half our lives in the North, half in the South. And we have experienced first hand the unique nature of the human family and the common values we all share.

    Shakespeare speaks of every single member of that family in The Merchant of Venice, when he asks: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

    And lest we forget:

    There is no religion that was founded on intolerance – and no religion that does not value the sanctity of human life.

    Judaism asks that we value the beauty and joy of human existence.

    Christianity says we should treat our neighbours as we would be treated.

    Islam declares that killing one person unjustly is the same as killing all of humanity.

    Hinduism recognizes the entire universe as one family.

    Buddhism calls on us to cherish the oneness of all creation.

    Some would say that it is too idealistic to believe in a society based on tolerance and the sanctity of human life, where borders, nationalities and ideologies are of marginal importance. To those I say, this is not idealism, but rather realism, because history has taught us that war rarely resolves our differences. Force does not heal old wounds; it opens new ones.

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    I have talked about our efforts to combat the misuse of nuclear energy. Let me now tell you how this very same energy is used for the benefit of humankind.

    At the IAEA, we work daily on every continent to put nuclear and radiation techniques in the service of humankind. In Vietnam, farmers plant rice with greater nutritional value that was developed with IAEA assistance. Throughout Latin America, nuclear technology is being used to map underground aquifers, so that water supplies can be managed sustainably. In Ghana, a new radiotherapy machine is offering cancer treatment to thousands of patients. In the South Pacific, Japanese scientists are using nuclear techniques to study climate change. In India, eight new nuclear plants are under construction, to provide clean electricity for a growing nation – a case in point of the rising expectation for a surge in the use of nuclear energy worldwide.

    These projects, and a thousand others, exemplify the IAEA ideal: Atoms for Peace.

    But the expanding use of nuclear energy and technology also makes it crucial that nuclear safety and security are maintained at the highest level.

    Since the Chernobyl accident, we have worked all over the globe to raise nuclear safety performance. And since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, we have worked with even greater intensity on nuclear security. On both fronts, we have built an international network of legal norms and performance standards. But our most tangible impact has been on the ground. Hundreds of missions, in every part of the world, with international experts making sure nuclear activities are safe and secure.

    I am very proud of the 2,300 hard working men and women that make up the IAEA staff – the colleagues with whom I share this honour. Some of them are here with me today. We come from over 90 countries. We bring many different perspectives to our work. Our diversity is our strength.

    We are limited in our authority. We have a very modest budget. And we have no armies.

    But armed with the strength of our convictions, we will continue to speak truth to power. And we will continue to carry out our mandate with independence and objectivity.

    The Nobel Peace Prize is a powerful message for us – to endure in our efforts to work for security and development. A durable peace is not a single achievement, but an environment, a process and a commitment.

    * * * * * * *

    Ladies and Gentlemen.

    The picture I have painted today may have seemed somewhat grim. Let me conclude by telling you why I have hope.

    I have hope because the positive aspects of globalization are enabling nations and peoples to become politically, economically and socially interdependent, making war an increasingly unacceptable option.

    Among the 25 members of the European Union, the degree of economic and socio-political dependencies has made the prospect of the use of force to resolve differences almost absurd. The same is emerging with regard to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, with some 55 member countries from Europe, Central Asia and North America. Could these models be expanded to a world model, through the same creative multilateral engagement and active international cooperation, where the strong are just and the weak secure?

    I have hope because civil society is becoming better informed and more engaged. They are pressing their governments for change – to create democratic societies based on diversity, tolerance and equality. They are proposing creative solutions. They are raising awareness, donating funds, working to transform civic spirit from the local to the global. Working to bring the human family closer together.

    We now have the opportunity, more than at any time before, to give an affirmative answer to one of the oldest questions of all time: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

    What is required is a new mindset and a change of heart, to be able to see the person across the ocean as our neighbour.

    Finally, I have hope because of what I see in my children, and some of their generation.

    I took my first trip abroad at the age of 19. My children were even more fortunate than I. They had their first exposure to foreign culture as infants, and they were raised in a multicultural environment. And I can say absolutely that my son and daughter are oblivious to colour and race and nationality. They see no difference between their friends Noriko, Mafupo, Justin, Saulo and Hussam; to them, they are only fellow human beings and good friends.

    Globalization, through travel, media and communication, can also help us – as it has with my children and many of their peers – to see each other simply as human beings.

    * * * * * * *

    Your Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen.

    Imagine what would happen if the nations of the world spent as much on development as on building the machines of war. Imagine a world where every human being would live in freedom and dignity. Imagine a world in which we would shed the same tears when a child dies in Darfur or Vancouver. Imagine a world where we would settle our differences through diplomacy and dialogue and not through bombs or bullets. Imagine if the only nuclear weapons remaining were the relics in our museums. Imagine the legacy we could leave to our children.

    Imagine that such a world is within our grasp.

  • The Real Threat is Nuclear Terrorism

    The terrorist bombs in London caused immense suffering and grief. This crime rightly received nearly universal condemnation. Violence does not solve any problems, it only aggravates them.

    Yet this tragedy only foreshadows much worse future catastrophes if the world continues on its current course.

    As long as the big powers insist on maintaining nuclear weapons, claiming they need them to protect their security, they cannot expect to prevent other countries and terrorist organizations from acquiring such weapons–and using them.

    The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed over 200,000 people. Today’s nuclear bombs are vastly more powerful. If even one nuclear device had been detonated in a parked car or a sailboat on the Thames, the Center of London would be strewn with smoking, radioactive rubble and over a million people might have been killed outright, and scores more would die slowly from radiation disease.

    The double standard, “Nuclear weapons are good for us, but bad for you”, is stupid and unconvincing. Believing that nuclear weapons technology can be kept secret forever is naive.

    Those who still believe in the fairy-tale of “deterrence theory” better wake up to the age of suicide bombers. Anyone convinced to go straight to heaven if blown up cannot be “deterred” by the threat of horrendous retaliation.

    Governments that order tons of bombs to be rained on Iraq and Afghanistan should not be surprised if they plant ideas in the minds of eager imitators. Osama bin Laden once benefitted from support and training financed by the CIA.

    Richard Falk, long a Professor of International Law at Princeton University, rightly pointed out: “The greatest utopians are those who call themselves ‘realists,’ because they falsely believe that we can survive the nuclear age with politics as usual.

    The true realists are those who recognize the need for change.”

    What changes must we make if we want humanity to survive?

    [1] We must stop believing that problems can be solved by applying offensive military force. That only encourages others to pay back in kind. Policing to stop criminals and defense against a foreign attack are justified, but not military interventions abroad.

    [2] Thirty-seven years after signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is time for the nuclear powers to fulfill their commitment to nuclear disarmament.

    We also need a vastly more open world, where all nuclear weapons are verifiably destroyed, and the manufacturing of new ones cannot be hidden. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can now inspect only sites that member countries voluntarily place under its supervision. If a suspected weapons smuggler could tell a border guard, “You may check under my seat, but don’t open the trunk,” such an “inspection” would be meaningless. The IAEA must have the power to inspect any suspected nuclear facilities, anywhere in the world, without advance warning, otherwise it is impossible to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

    The governments that now possess nuclear weapons object to such intrusive inspections as a “violation of their sovereignty.” Yet many airline passengers also protested at first against having their luggage searched for guns or explosives, when such searches were introduced after a series of fatal hijackings. Today, passengers realize that such inspections protect their own security. Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Sooner or later, governments will reach the same conclusion. The question is only whether this will happen before or after the first terrorist nuclear bomb explodes.

    [3] We need to address the root causes of terrorism: long festering unresolved conflicts. Peaceful conflict transformation is a skill that can be taught and learned. Johan Galtung, widely regarded as founder of the field of peace research, was able to help end a longstanding border conflict between Ecuador and Peru over which they had fought four wars by suggesting to make the disputed territory into a “binational zone with a natural park”, jointly administered. This peaceful intervention cost nearly nothing compared with a military peacekeeping operation.

    We need a UN Organization for Mediation, with several hundred trained mediators who can help prevent conflicts from erupting into violence. This is a very inexpensive, worthwhile investment in human survival, compared with the trillion dollars the world spends each year to arm millions of troops, which only make the world collectively less secure.

    If we cling to obsolete ways of thinking–that threatening others will make us safe–we face extinction as a human species, like other species that failed to adapt to new conditions.

    Is it a realistic prospect to get rid of all nuclear weapons? Certainly more realistic than waiting until they are used. Some have argued that we cannot disinvent nuclear weapons and therefore will have to live with them as long as civilization exists. But nobody has disinvented cannibalism either, we have simply learned to abhor it. Can’t we learn to abhor equally the incineration of entire cities with nuclear weapons?

    Dietrich Fischer is Academic Director of the European University Center for Peace Studies in Stadtschlaining, Austria, and a member of TRANSCEND, a peace and development network.