Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear war

  • The United Nations and Security in a Nuclear Weapons-Free World

    The following is the text of a speech delivered by the Secretary-General to the East-West Institute on October 24, 2008

    Mr. John Edwin Mroz, President and CEO of the East-West Institute,

    Mr. George Russell, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the East-West Institute.

    Dr. Kissinger,

    Dr. ElBaradei,

    Mr. Duarte,

    It is a great pleasure to welcome you all to the United Nations. I salute the East-West Institute and its partner non-governmental groups for organizing this event on weapons of mass destruction and disarmament.

    This is one of the gravest challenges facing international peace and security. So I thank the East-West Institute for its timely and important new global initiative to build consensus. Under the leadership of George Russell and Martti Ahtisaari, the East-West Institute is challenging each of us to rethink our international security priorities in order to get things moving again. You know, as we do, that we need specific actions, not just words. As your slogan so aptly puts it, you are a “think and do tank”.

    One of my priorities as Secretary-General is to promote global goods and remedies to challenges that do not respect borders. A world free of nuclear weapons would be a global public good of the highest order, and will be the focus of my remarks today. I will speak mainly about nuclear weapons because of their unique dangers and the lack of any treaty outlawing them. But we must also work for a world free of all weapons of mass destruction.

    Some of my interest in this subject stems from my own personal experience. As I come from [the Republic of Korea, my country has suffered the ravages of conventional war and faced threats from nuclear weapons and other WMD. But of course, such threats are not unique to my country.

    Today, there is support throughout the world for the view that nuclear weapons should never again be used because of their indiscriminate effects, their impact on the environment and their profound implications for regional and global security. Some call this the nuclear “taboo”.

    Yet nuclear disarmament has remained only an aspiration, rather than a reality. This forces us to ask whether a taboo merely on the use of such weapons is sufficient.

    States make the key decisions in this field. But the United Nations has important roles to play. We provide a central forum where states can agree on norms to serve their common interests. We analyze, educate and advocate in the pursuit of agreed goals.

    Moreover, we have pursued general and complete disarmament for so long that it has become part of the Organization’s very identity. Disarmament and the regulation of armaments are found in the Charter. The very first resolution adopted by the General Assembly, in London in 1946, called for eliminating “weapons adaptable to mass destruction”. These goals have been supported by every Secretary-General. They have been the subject of hundreds of General Assembly resolutions, and have been endorsed repeatedly by all our Member States.

    And for good reason. Nuclear weapons produce horrific, indiscriminate effects. Even when not used, they pose great risks. Accidents could happen any time. The manufacture of nuclear weapons can harm public health and the environment. And of course, terrorists could acquire nuclear weapons or nuclear material.

    Most states have chosen to forgo the nuclear option, and have complied with their commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Yet some states view possession of such weapons as a status symbol. And some states view nuclear weapons as offering the ultimate deterrent of nuclear attack, which largely accounts for the estimated 26,000 that still exist.

    Unfortunately, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence has proven to be contagious. This has made non-proliferation more difficult, which in turn raises new risks that nuclear weapons will be used.

    The world remains concerned about nuclear activities in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and in Iran. There is widespread support for efforts to address these concerns by peaceful means through dialogue.

    There are also concerns that a “nuclear renaissance” could soon take place, with nuclear energy being seen as a clean, emission-free alternative at a time of intensifying efforts to combat climate change. The main worry is that this will lead to the production and use of more nuclear materials that must be protected against proliferation and terrorist threats.

    Ladies and Gentlemen,

    The obstacles to disarmament are formidable. But the costs and risks of its alternatives never get the attention they deserve. But consider the tremendous opportunity cost of huge military budgets. Consider the vast resources that are consumed by the endless pursuit of military superiority.

    According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military expenditures last year exceeded $1.3 trillion. Ten years ago, the Brookings Institution published a study that estimated the total costs of nuclear weapons in just one country?the United States?to be over $5.8 trillion, including future cleanup costs. By any definition, this has been a huge investment of financial and technical resources that could have had many other productive uses.

    Concerns over such costs and the inherent dangers of nuclear weapons have led to a global outpouring of ideas to breathe new life into the cause of nuclear disarmament. We have seen the WMD Commission led by Hans Blix, the New Agenda Coalition and Norway’s seven-nation initiative. Australia and Japan have just launched the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. Civil society groups and nuclear-weapon states have also made proposals.

    There is also the Hoover plan. I am pleased to note the presence here today of some of that effort’s authors. Dr. Kissinger, Mr. Kampelman: allow me to thank you for your commitment and for the great wisdom you have brought to this effort.

    Such initiatives deserve greater support. As the world faces crises in the economic and environmental arenas, there is growing awareness of the fragility of our planet and the need for global solutions to global challenges. This changing consciousness can also help us revitalize the international disarmament agenda.

    In that spirit, I hereby offer a five-point proposal.

    First, I urge all NPT parties, in particular the nuclear-weapon-states, to fulfil their obligation under the treaty to undertake negotiations on effective measures leading to nuclear disarmament.

    They could pursue this goal by agreement on a framework of separate, mutually reinforcing instruments. Or they could consider negotiating a nuclear-weapons convention, backed by a strong system of verification, as has long been proposed at the United Nations. Upon the request of Costa Rica and Malaysia, I have circulated to all UN member states a draft of such a convention, which offers a good point of departure.

    The nuclear powers should actively engage with other states on this issue at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, the world’s single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum. The world would also welcome a resumption of bilateral negotiations between the United States and Russian Federation aimed at deep and verifiable reductions of their respective arsenals.

    Governments should also invest more in verification research and development. The United Kingdom’s proposal to host a conference of nuclear-weapon states on verification is a concrete step in the right direction.

    Second, the Security Council’s permanent members should commence discussions, perhaps within its Military Staff Committee, on security issues in the nuclear disarmament process. They could unambiguously assure non-nuclear-weapon states that they will not be the subject of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. The Council could also convene a summit on nuclear disarmament. Non-NPT states should freeze their own nuclear-weapon capabilities and make their own disarmament commitments.

    My third initiative relates to the “rule of law.” Unilateral moratoria on nuclear tests and the production of fissile materials can go only so far. We need new efforts to bring the CTBT into force, and for the Conference on Disarmament to begin negotiations on a fissile material treaty immediately, without preconditions. I support the entry into force of the Central Asian and African nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties. I encourage the nuclear-weapon states to ratify all the protocols to the nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties. I strongly support efforts to establish such a zone in the Middle East. And I urge all NPT parties to conclude their safeguards agreements with the IAEA, and to voluntarily adopt the strengthened safeguards under the Additional Protocol. We should never forget that the nuclear fuel cycle is more than an issue involving energy or non-proliferation; its fate will also shape prospects for disarmament.

    My fourth proposal concerns accountability and transparency. The nuclear-weapon states often circulate descriptions of what they are doing to pursue these goals, yet these accounts seldom reach the public. I invite the nuclear-weapon states to send such material to the UN Secretariat, and to encourage its wider dissemination. The nuclear powers could also expand the amount of information they publish about the size of their arsenals, stocks of fissile material and specific disarmament achievements. The lack of an authoritative estimate of the total number of nuclear weapons testifies to the need for greater transparency.

    Fifth and finally, a number of complementary measures are needed. These include the elimination of other types of WMD; new efforts against WMD terrorism; limits on the production and trade in conventional arms; and new weapons bans, including of missiles and space weapons. The General Assembly could also take up the recommendation of the Blix Commission for a “World Summit on disarmament, non-proliferation and terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction”.

    Some doubt that the problem of WMD terrorism can ever be solved. But if there is real, verified progress in disarmament, the ability to eliminate this threat will grow exponentially. It will be much easier to encourage governments to tighten relevant controls if a basic, global taboo exists on the very possession of certain types of weapons. As we progressively eliminate the world’s deadliest weapons and their components, we will make it harder to execute WMD terrorist attacks. And if our efforts also manage to address the social, economic, cultural, and political conditions that aggravate terrorist threats, so much the better.

    Ladies and Gentlemen,

    At the United Nations in 1961, President Kennedy said, “Let us call a truce to terror?. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.”

    The keys to world peace have been in our collective hands all along. They are found in the UN Charter and in our own endless capacity for political will. The proposals I have offered today seek a fresh start not just on disarmament, but to strengthen our system of international peace and security.

    We must all be grateful for the contributions that many of the participants at this meeting have already made in this great cause. When disarmament advances, the world advances. That is why it has such strong support at the United Nations. And that is why you can count on my full support in the vital work that lies ahead.

    Thank you very much for your support.

    Ban Ki-moon is Secretary-General of the United Nations.
  • Creating a World Without Nuclear Weapons

    Creating a World Without Nuclear Weapons

    We are in the seventh decade of the Nuclear Age and there remain more than 25,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine nuclear weapons states. The list of countries possessing nuclear weapons is headed by the US and Russia, which between them have more than 95 percent of the total on the planet. These two countries still maintain a few thousand nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so. The other countries with nuclear weapons are the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

    An important question that every concerned individual should ask is: Do these weapons make a country and its citizens more secure? The answer to this question is that they do not; nuclear weapons provide no physical protection against a nuclear attack. They do not and cannot provide physical protection against other nuclear weapons.

    The Limits of Deterrence

    These weapons of mass annihilation can only be used to threaten retaliation against an attacker. But the threat of retaliation, known as nuclear deterrence, is not foolproof. Deterrence relies upon beliefs and effective communications. For deterrence to work, a country’s leaders must believe in the intent as well as the capacity of an opponent to retaliate. Such a threat may be doubted since it implies a willingness to slaughter millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of innocent people.

    Another issue with deterrence is that of rationality: whether an opponent will always act rationally, even in times of severe crisis. The evidence does not support the proposition that all political leaders are rational at all times. Another problem with deterrence is that the threat of retaliation is essentially meaningless when it comes to terrorist groups, since they are often suicidal and cannot be located to retaliate against.

    Weapons of the Weak

    There are many good reasons to doubt that nuclear deterrence makes a country more secure. One perceived exception to this may be that nuclear weapons provide added security for a weaker country in relation to a stronger one. For example, George W. Bush, early in his presidency, branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil.” He then proceeded to attack Iraq on the false charge that it had a nuclear weapons program, overthrow its leadership and occupy the country. With North Korea, a country suspected of having a small arsenal of nuclear weapons, Bush was much more cautious and engaged in negotiations. This has sent a message to Iran that it would be more secure with a nuclear arsenal. This is surely not the message that the US wishes to send to the world, nor to countries such as Iran.

    For weaker countries, nuclear weapons may be thought of as “military equalizers.” They may make a stronger country think twice about attacking. But this is a dangerous game of Russian roulette. The greater the number of countries with nuclear weapons, the greater the danger that these weapons will be used by accident, miscalculation or design.

    Because of the perceived power that nuclear weapons bestow upon their possessors, they may seem to some to be desirable, but in fact possessors of nuclear weapons are also targets of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons can destroy cities, countries, civilization, the human species and most life on our planet. As Mikhail Gorbachev has pointed out, they are weapons of “infinite and uncontrollable fury,” far too dangerous to be “held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.” Nuclear weapons could cause irreversible damage, not to the planet which is capable of recovery despite the worst we can do to it, but to humanity and to the human future.

    The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    The 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires the countries that were then in possession of nuclear weapons (US, Soviet Union, UK, France and China) to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament in return for other countries agreeing not to acquire nuclear weapons. This agreement on the part of the nuclear weapons states has not been kept and unfortunately the country that has been the principal obstacle to nuclear disarmament has been the United States.

    Another aspect of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is that it refers to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy as an “inalienable right.” For many reasons, this moves the world in the wrong direction. The most important of these reasons is that nuclear energy provides a pretext for the creation of fissile materials for nuclear weapons through uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technologies. Once commerce is established in such bomb materials, the prospects of nuclear proliferation, even to terrorists, increase dramatically.

    Changing Our Thinking

    Nuclear weapons pose a unique existential challenge to humanity. If global warming is an “inconvenient truth,” nuclear weapons are an even greater and more acute problem for humanity. We need to shift our thinking if we are to confront the serious dangers to the human future posed by nuclear weapons. As Albert Einstein warned early in the Nuclear Age, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” The needed change in thinking will require a major shift in our orientation toward nuclear arms.

    These weapons must be viewed as the immoral and illegal weapons that they are, as opposed to just another, albeit more powerful, weapon of war. The International Court of Justice considered the issue of the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons and unanimously concluded: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” People everywhere must understand that the weapons themselves are the enemy and must be committed to their elimination.

    The Need for US Leadership

    The United States, as the world’s most powerful country, must lead in achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. The US, however, seems unmindful of this responsibility and continues to send exactly the wrong message by its reliance on nuclear weapons. Two distinguished former US diplomats, Thomas Graham Jr. and Max Kampelman, have called US leadership “essential”: “The road from the world of today, with thousands of nuclear weapons in national arsenals to a world free of this threat, will not be an easy one to take, but it is clear that US leadership is essential to the journey and there is growing worldwide support for that civilized call to zero.” US leaders must understand that for the country’s own security and for global security, nuclear weapons abolition is necessary, but won’t be possible without US leadership.

    The Role of Citizens

    The people of the US and other nuclear weapons states must put pressure on their governments to act on ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Pressure must come from below to change the thinking and the actions of political leaders. Among the steps that individuals can take to make a difference on this issue are the following:

    1. Learn more. Visit the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s website at www.wagingpeace.org.
    2. Keep abreast of the issues. At www.wagingpeace.org you can sign up for The Sunflower, a free monthly e-newsletter on current nuclear weapons issues.
    3. Share your knowledge. Tell your family and friends about the importance of current nuclear weapons issues and encourage their involvement.
    4. Communicate with the media. Follow the news and write letters to your local newspaper.
    5. Write your representatives in Congress. Sign up for the Turn the Tide Action Alerts at www.wagingpeace.org, and we’ll make it easy for you to communicate with your Congressional representatives.
    6. Support and build nuclear abolition organizations. It may take a village to raise a child, but it will take strong, committed and enduring organizations to assure we achieve the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons for all the children of the world.
    7. Never give up. It will take extraordinary perseverance to achieve the goal. No one should give up because the task is difficult.

    Each generation has a responsibility to pass the world on intact to the next generation. Those of us alive today are challenged as never before to accomplish this. Technological achievement does not necessarily make us stronger. It may simply make us more vulnerable, and our old ways of thinking may seal our fate. The alternative to waiting for a nuclear catastrophe to occur is to join others who are committed to preserving a future of the human species, and act to rid the world of this most terrible of all human inventions.

    David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and has served as its president since 1982. He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Saving Humanity from the Fiery Threat of Nuclear Annihilation, Through the Power of Women

    In my youth, I wrote stories about the possible destruction of the beautiful planet on which I lived, deceiving readers into thinking that I was an embittered old man.  I leaped into the future as far as I could see, and I saw creatures coming from other worlds with the weapons to destroy the world around me.  I was haunted by the screams of my father, who had to kill other men in hand-to-hand combat in the global war that raged from 1914 to 1918.

    In 1943, I was drafted into the American army to stop Hitler and his murderous followers from conquering Europe.  I was trained to shoot and stab other men, just as my father had been trained in his generation.  I was selected as a war correspondent to write about the atrocities suffered by other men in bloody battles where they had lost their arms and legs, and sometimes their brains and testicles.  I lived through glorious days after I came home unwounded, but I had to face the grim realities created by scientists who had acted on the wild possibilities I had envisioned in my science fiction stories.

    In 1932, I had published a story titled “Red April 1965” about a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union—and I was confronted early in April of 1965 by a madman who rushed into my office screaming about the imminent occurrence of such a war on the very date when I had predicted it.  The war did not happen then, but I still had a deep fear that atomic bombs would destroy our civilization.

    In 1948, I wrote speeches for President Harry Truman, who had used nuclear weapons on Japan to save the lives of thousands of civilians and end the Second World War as quickly as possible.  After his action, the world embarked on a nuclear arms race, which has continued for many years.  Life on earth is under the fiery threat of annihilation.

    In 1982, David Krieger asked me to join him in founding the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization, which has become a voice of conscience for the community, the nation, and the world.  Its message is that nuclear weapons threaten the future of all life on our planet, and that it is the responsibility of all of us, working together, to end this threat forever.  Nuclear weapons were created by humans, and they must be abolished by us.  Peace in a world free of nuclear weapons is everyone’s birthright.  It is the greatest challenge of our time to restore that birthright to our children and all future generations.

    In 1983, I was invited to go to Moscow by the Council of Citizens, a nonpartisan organization based in New York.  In Russia, I was given an opportunity to speak to 77 Soviet leaders in the Kremlin.  I urged them to take the initiative in getting rid of nuclear weapons.  I said that I hoped my own government—the U.S. government—would do that, but I was afraid that American leaders would not do it.

    The Soviets listened to me, and my speech was quoted in Pravda.  I was interviewed by Radio Moscow, but the Soviets told me that if they discarded their nuclear weapons, they would be regarded as “weak” in many parts of the world.  I felt that my mission to Moscow did not have the positive results I had hoped for.

    Now, I believe that a worldwide initiative by women has the best possibilities of ending the nuclear threat.  Courageous women are making a difference in all nations; in fact, many countries have elected women to the highest offices in their governments.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has many notable women on its board of directors, its council of advisors, its associates, and staff.  Its development and progress is largely due to the generosity and activities of these women.

    The Foundation’s financial survival was largely dependent on the gifts of Ethel Wells, a Santa Barbara resident.  In the 1980s, the Foundation coordinated an International Week for Science and Peace.  Mrs. Wells reasoned that scientists were at the heart of creating constructive or destructive technologies, so she contributed $50,000 for a prize for the best proposal for a scientific step forward.  The winning proposal came from the Hungarian Engineers for Peace and called for the formation of an International Network of Engineers for Peace.  A short time later, the engineers joined with a group of like-minded scientists and established the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.  That organization continues to thrive with a large list of supporters.

    In 1995, friends of Barbara Mandigo Kelly, my wife, established an annual series of awards through the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to encourage poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit.  These awards are offered to people in three categories—adults, young persons 13 to 18 years old, and youth 12 and under.  Thousands of poems have been received from people of all ages, from all over the world.  The prize-winning poems have been published in book form, in anthologies and on the Foundation’s website.

    For many years, the Foundation offered prizes, financed by Gladys Swackhamer, awarded for essays by high school students all over the world, who shared their thoughts on nuclear policy and peace issues.  Many of these essays have been published in magazines in many places, and the authors include many young women from a wide variety of backgrounds.

    The necessity for cooperative action was highlighted recently in an article published in the Wall Street Journal signed by four men who have served in high positions—George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Senator Sam Nunn.  They expressed the belief that “We have arrived a dangerous tipping point in the nuclear era, and we advocate a strategy for improving American security and global security….We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe.”  [Emphasis added.]

    I think the time has come for the formation of a Women’s Task Force for Nuclear Peace, composed of leaders of women’s organizations with millions of members around the world.  The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is prepared to work in cooperation with these organizations to awaken humanity to the urgent need of preserving life on earth.

  • Major Lapses in Nuclear Security Are Routine

    Article originally appeared in The Independent (UK)

    Do you know the story of the grizzly bear that nearly destroyed the world? It sounds like a demented fairytale — but it is true. On the night of 25 October 1962, when the Cold War was at its hottest and Kennedy and Krushchev’s fingers were hovering over the nuclear button, a tall, dark figure tried to climb over the fence into a US military installation near Duluth, Minnesota. A panicked sentry fired at the figure but it kept coming — so he sounded the intruder alarm. But because of faulty wiring, the wrong alarm went off: instead, the klaxon announcing an incoming Soviet nuclear warhead began its apocalyptic wah-wah. Everyone on the base had been told there would be no drills at a time like this. The ashen men manning the station went ahead: they began the chain reaction of retaliation against Moscow.

    It was only at the last second that the sentry got through to the station. It was a mistake, he cried — just a bear, growling at the fence. If he had made that call five minutes later, you wouldn’t be reading this article now.

    I have been thinking about that bear recently, because there has just been a string of startling security lapses in the British and American nuclear arsenals. In the past year alone, a truck carrying a fully-assembled nuclear weapon has skidded off the road in Wiltshire and crashed, while six nuclear warheads were lost by the US military for 36 hours.

    A new documentary called Deadly Cargo, recently premiered in Glasgow, documents a simple and extraordinary fact: every week, fully assembled Weapons of Mass Destruction are driven along the motorways and byways of Britain. Britain’s nuclear submarines are up in Scotland, while the factories that need to test and replenish them are down in Reading — so they are shuttled between them all the time in large green trucks that are followed a half-mile behind by decontamination units. It slipped on ice and crashed not long ago.

    The film shows how a group of brave protesters called NukeWatch have been able to figure out the exact route of the convoy and track it. One of them explains, “You reach out on the motorway and they’re an arm’s length from you. That’s how close the British public come to nuclear weapons.” If they could work it out, couldn’t other groups with uglier motives do the same?

    Leaked documents from the Ministry of Defence show them fretting that an attack on the convoy “has the potential to lead to damage or destruction of a nuclear warhead within the UK” and “considerable loss of life”.

    More amazingly still, Britain’s weapons do not have a secret launch code. They can be fired or detonated by the commander in charge of them simply by opening them up manually and turning some switches and buttons. Every other nuclear power has an authorisation code known only to the country’s leader, which has to be read out to the soldiers in charge of the weapon before it can be used. Not us. Whenever the British government has tried to introduce this basic safety procedure, the Navy has got huffy and refused to participate, saying it is “tantamount” to claiming their officers are not “true gentlemen”.

    The Navy dismiss the risk of a hijacking, or a Doctor Strangelove situation where a navy commander goes nuts. But the latter has almost happened. In 1963, a US B-47 bomber crew guarding a nuclear bomb discovered that one of their colleagues had broken all the seals, removed all the safety wires, and turned on the pilot’s readiness switch and the navigator’s control switch on the nuclear bomb. The man seemed to be going through a bout of insanity.

    In the US, an even-more startling nuclear lapse occurred last summer: bombs with the force of 60 Hiroshimas were simply lost by the military. On 29 August, a group of US airmen accidentally attached six nuclear warheads to their plane, mistaking them for unarmed cruise missiles intended for a weapons graveyard. They were then flown across the continental United States and left, unwatched by anyone, on an airstrip in Louisiana. Nobody even noticed they were gone for more than a day. This is not, it seems, a freak event: the Air Force’s inspector general found in 2003 that half of the “nuclear surety” inspections conducted that year were failures. Yes, that’s half.

    This is what we know is happening in relatively orderly and open societies. There have almost certainly been incidents in China and North Korea and Pakistan that we will never hear about — until the worst happens.

    The dangers of any individual nuclear accident are, of course, very small — but small risks of massive death, accumulating over the 60 years of the nuclear age, suddenly don’t look so negligible any more. Those who campaign for a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons are often referred to as utopian, or naïve. In fact, it is utopian to believe we can carry on like this without an explosion sooner or later.

    So it is disturbing that the number of nuclear weapons in the world may be about to dramatically increase. Not in Iran, where (thankfully) sanctions seem to be working, but in Russia and China. The Bush administration, backed by the British government, has been insisting for more than 20 years on building a “nuclear shield” that would, in theory, shoot down any incoming nuclear weapons before they struck the US and its allies. After more than $100bn of military-industrial bungs, the technology still doesn’t work, but they are pushing on with it anyway. Russia and China have been pleading for a treaty that would prevent it because they want to retain the existing balance of power — but the Bush administration has flatly refused.

    The result? China and Russia are now saying they will significantly increase their nuclear weapon production. It is, they insist, the only way to ensure they would be able to punch through the US missile shield and so retain some parity with US power.

    The more weapons, the more likely an accident — or worse. But when the world should be scaling down the number of nukes, the Bush administration is actually ensuring they are ramped up.

    Almost unnoticed in the Presidential race, Barack Obama has proposed the US recommit itself to moving towards a world without nukes. This isn’t out-of-the-blue: his best work as a Senator has been trying to lock up Russia’s barely guarded old weapons — while Bush tried to slash the funding for it. Some 66 per cent of the US public support the zero-nukes goal. Yet Hillary Clinton has been bragging about her ability to “obliterate” Iran instead, while McCain has cheered on the Bush shield-madness. There is no popular movement to pressure them into sanity.

    Without the careful multilateral dismantling of these weapons, thousands of them will remain scattered across the earth, waiting — waiting for an accident with a bear, or a hijacked convoy, or a flipped-out submarine commander. Precisely how many nuclear near-death experiences do you want to risk?

    Johann Hari writes for The Independent.

  • StratCom Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska

    Stories about the transformation U.S. Strategic Command has undergone since 9/11 have been dribbling out for years. But just recently have we gotten a clearer picture of what these changes portend.

    In October 2002, when the U.S. Space Command was shifted to StratCom, nobody could have imagined that in six months the “shock and awe”bombing campaign on Iraq would originate from Omaha. But with 70 per cent of the missiles and smart bombs used in that pre-emptive attack guided from space, StratCom directed what Air Force Secretary James Roche termed the “the first true space war.”

    Then, in August 2003, the “Stockpile Stewardship Committee” overseeing StratCom’s nuclear arsenal held a classified meeting at StratCom to plot the development of a new generation of crossover nuclear weapons — so-called “bunker busters” — that could be used in conventional military conflicts. The “firewall” between nuclear and conventional war-fighting was being smashed down, and StratCom was swinging the hammer.

    And who could have guessed in December 2005, when revelations about the warrantless wiretapping program became public, that this National Security Agency operation had StratCom fingerprints? But the NSA, under StratCom’s new mission of “Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance,” had been made a StratCom “component command,” and the NSA director, Gen. Michael Hayden (who now heads the CIA), was carrying out this constitutionally suspect activity.

    It’s been nearly three years since the story broke that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered StratCom to draw up plans for an air- and sea-based attack on Iran. Under its “Prompt Global Strike” and “Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction” missions, the Omaha headquarters is now charged with attacking any place on earth — within one hour — on the mere perception of a threat to America’s national security. The war on terror is being waged from StratCom, and the next war the White House gets us into (whether with Iran or a geopolitical rival like China) will start in Nebraska.

    With all the missions it’s now got in its quiver, you can hardly open a newspaper anymore without reading about a StratCom scheme.

    The current flap with Russia over the proposed missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic — that’s StratCom’s handiwork. The command picked up its “Integrated Missile Defense” mission in 2003 after the Bush/Cheney administration pulled out of the ABM Treaty. And those Eastern European installations — which the Russians warn are reigniting the Cold War — will be added to the network of international bases already under StratCom’s command.

    But from reading the news accounts, you’d never know the command was involved. StratCom’s name is never mentioned.

    Or who realized that, when a U.S. Predator drone fired a missile killing al-Qaida commander Abu Laith al-Libi in Pakistan this past January, StratCom did everything from supplying the intelligence to helping fly the unpiloted vehicle? That incident dramatized how easily StratCom — with its new war-fighting authority — can skirt the law. According to an Associated Press story, the missile attack infringed on Pakistan’s national sovereignty, meaning international law may have been breached. But with the free hand it’s been granted, 60 minutes from now, StratCom could have started a war and Congress wouldn’t even have had a clue.

    This is not our fathers’ StratCom.

    Gone are the days when Strategic Command simply controlled America’s nuclear deterrent, and its doomsday weapons were only to be used as a last resort. Since 9/11, StratCom has gone from “never supposed to be used” to “being used for everything.” Likening the changes that have occurred at the command to a tsunami, former astronaut and current StratCom Commander Kevin Chilton brags that StratCom today is “the most responsive combatant command in the U.S. arsenal.”

    It’s now also the most dangerous place on the face of the earth.

    And hardly anybody knows it.

    StratCom’s well-publicized shootdown of the spy satellite, however, may have finally shown the world just how menacing the command has become. Barely a week after the United States repudiated a treaty proposal to ban space weapons at a U.N. Conference on Disarmament, StratCom shot down the satellite — using its “missile defense” system. And the message this shootdown sent to the world struck with all the force of an anti-satellite missile. Despite the innocuous name, missile defense is now understood to be an offensive weapon by which the United States (in the language of the administration’s national space policy) means to “dominate” space …

    And whoever controls space controls the earth.

    Operating like some executive-branch vigilante, StratCom has just launched a new arms race — because you can bet Russia and China will never surrender the heavens without a fight.

    What’s equally worrisome, though, is that StratCom is now hourly making a mockery of our system of congressional checks and balances. And if Congress can’t rein in StratCom, can anyone?

    Tim Rinne is the state coordinator of Nebraskans for Peace, the nation’s oldest statewide peace and justice organization. Nebraskans for Peace will co-sponsor an international conference April 11-13, 2008 in Omaha about the threat StratCom poses.

  • Comments on Complex Transformation

    Comments delivered in Madison, WI on February 16, 2008

    I am grateful for this opportunity to comment on the Department of Energy’s proposed changes in the United States Nuclear Weapons complex. I speak both as a citizen and as a historian who has published extensively on America’s more than sixty-year encounter with nuclear weapons.

    The Department of Energy’s proposal focuses exclusively on narrow technical detail. I think it is important to place this proposal in a larger context. First of all, note the choice of language. The DoE’s goal is to “modernize” our nuclear-weapons complex. Certainly all would agree that “modernization” is a good thing. Right?

    Further, underlying the proposal is an unspoken assumption: that nuclear weapons production and stockpiling will continue to be a central aspect of American public policy into the foreseeable future. This represents a further embedding of nuclear weapons into the very core of our nation’s economy, culture, and strategic policy. There is no hint of a commitment to eliminating these terrible weapons, but rather this proposal simply assumes their permanence, and at a level of thousands of weapons—a total that would have appalled all Americans when the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, if they could have foreseen what lay ahead.

    Further, this proposed reconfiguration of the nation’s nuclear-weapons program must be viewed in the larger context of America’s overall nuclear-weapons policies over the years, and specifically the policies of the current administration. In fact, the assumption of this proposal that nuclear-weapons will remain a permanent part of the U.S. military arsenal is part of a larger pattern of government policies that pays lip service to nuclear disarmament, while in fact contributing to proliferation worldwide and dangerously worsening what used to be called the nuclear balance of terror—a term that remains all too appropriate today.

    • The current administration has worsened the danger of proliferation. The United States continues to supply Israel with military hardware and billions of dollars in aid each year, despite the fact that Israel secretly developed and stockpiled nuclear weapons in defiance of stated U.S. policy, and has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
    • This administration has entered into a highly controversial agreement to supply nuclear know-how and technology to India, despite India’s development of nuclear weapons in defiance of international nonproliferation agreements, its refusal to open all its nuclear facilities to inspection, and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
    • This administration has given billions in aid to Pakistan, despite Pakistan’s development and testing of nuclear weapons, and despite the role of Pakistan’s top atomic scientist, A. Q. Khan, in secretly giving vital weapons-making information to other countries.
    • This administration has continued to push for the development of earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, the socalled “bunker buster” missiles, despite congressional opposition, and in violation of the spirit of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, by which the nuclear powers pledged to work in good faith for nuclear disarmament—not for developing new weapons systems.
    • Above all, the current administration has pursued the development and deployment of anti-missile missiles, a legacy of the socalled Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called “Star Wars,” launched by President Ronald Reagan twenty five years ago. In addition to setting up anti-missile launch sites in Alaska and California, the administration now proposes further deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, stirring fierce opposition from the Russian government, which is now threatening to target these sites with its own missiles.

    Russia’s reaction is entirely predictable, since the whole history of the nuclear arms race makes clear that an escalation by one side, whether labeled “offensive” or “defensive,” inevitably triggers a counter-move by the other side, leading to further escalation. Further, in taking this step, the Bush Administration abandoned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had acknowledged the dangerously destabilizing effects of trying to develop a defense against missile attack. If such a system were ever actually deployed and proven to be workable, it would mean that the nation deploying the system could then safely launch a nuclear attack without fear of retaliation. The administrations anti-missile program is not only dangerous and unwise strategically, it is technologically unfeasible and a massive waste of money. As has often been noted, trying to shoot down a missile with another missile is the equivalent of trying to stop a bullet with another bullet. Test after test has resulted in failure, even when the timing of the target-missile’s firing and its trajectory were fully known! What are the chances of successfully destroying a missile fired at an unknown time, and on an unknown trajectory? Nevertheless, the current Bush administration has poured billions into this unwise and unworkable program. In the first Bush budget, spending on missile-defense hit nearly $8 billion. Despite a series of failed tests, the administration requested a staggering $9.3 billion for fiscal year 2007, the highest in the program’s history and more that the total 2006 budgets for the National Park Service, the Food and Drug Adminstration, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and the administration’s highly touted Millennium program to combat poverty and disease in Africa. In its final budget, released in February 2008, the Bush administration requested a staggering $10.4 billion for the Missile Defense Agency, plus nearly $2 billion more for missile-defense related projects buried in other parts of the budget. The “Star Wars” scheme that Reagan sprung on the nation out of the blue in 1983 is now an embedded Pentagon program, the Missile Defense Agency, with its own entrenched bureaucracy, powerful corporate interests that stand to profit, and lobbying muscle to secure billions in new funding year after year, whatever the record of failure. The whole depressing “Star Wars” story offers a classic example of how a dangerous, misguided, and technologically unworkable program can become lodged in the bureaucracy, and take on a life of its own. In 2006, President Bush told a California audience, “Technology will once again make this country the leader of the world, and that’s what we’re here to celebrate.” When it comes to nuclear weapons, the answer is not technology, but a renewed national commitment to eliminate them from the earth—not just from “rogue states” or designated enemy nations, but eliminating them entirely.

    Much of my research has looked at the shifting rhythms of Americans’ response to nuclear weapons and the shifting fortunes of the anti-nuclear movement. What I’ve found is a pattern of upsurges of grassroots opposition to nuclear weapons, followed by a calculated government effort to neutralize that opposition. The first antinuclear movement came right after World War II, amid a massive wave of fear and revulsion against a single bomb that could destroy an entire city and snuff out hundreds of thousands of human lives in an instant. This first surge of anti-nuclear activism was blunted, however, as government propaganda hailed the promise of “the peaceful atom,” and whipped up fears of a communist takeover as the Cold War began. The second wave of grassroots antinuclear activism came in the later 1950s and early 1960s, as deadly radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests posed a terrifying danger to public health, especially the health of the most vulnerable—babies taking in radioactive poisons with their mother’s milk. This surge of activism was blunted with the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. That treaty did not end nuclear tests, but it put them underground, out of sight, and the antinuclear movement soon faded. The third wave of grassroots antinuclear activism came in the early 1980s, in reaction to the Reagan administration’s nuclear build-up, belligerent Cold War rhetoric, and renewed focus on civil defense in a possible nuclear war. As public alarm mounted, millions of Americans rallied to the Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign, the brainchild of Randall Forsberg, who died prematurely last October. Some veterans of that campaign are here today. The government, in the person of President Reagan, blunted that campaign with the 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, with its deceptive promise of using America’s technological prowess to build a secure shield against nuclear attack. The whole idea was strategically dangerous and fatally flawed technologically, but it served its immediate political purpose. Reagan shifted the terms of the debate, and the nuclear freeze movement collapsed. We now stand at another crossroads. Attention to the global danger of nuclear proliferation and the massive nuclear arsenal still held by the United States, Russia, and other nations has been diverted since 9/11 by a very selective attention to the nuclear danger posed by two specific nations, North Korea and Iran. That danger is real, but it is part of a far larger danger to our planet itself—a danger in which the United States itself is deeply implicated. But while attention to the true nature of the nuclear threat has been blunted by propaganda, a profound movement for change is sweeping the nation. This may, indeed, be a propitious moment for a new surge of grassroots anti-nuclear activism by a new generation. Through determined effort by concerned citizens, we may be poised once gain to confront the threat the whole world faces from the horrendous new power of destruction that our government, in our name, unleashed on the world on August 6, 1945.

    Paul Boyer is the Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus as the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1985) and Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America’s Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (1998).

  • “Our Goal is Perfection”

    “Our Goal is Perfection”

    On August 30, 2007, six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were mistakenly loaded onto the wings of a B-52 aircraft and flown from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. It was a major error in the handling of nuclear weapons, leading to various investigations and the replacement of the commander of Minot Air Force Base. The new commander, Colonel Joel Westa, commented, “Our goal in this line of work is not to make errors. Our goal is perfection. It’s one of those missions where the tolerance is very low for error. In fact, it is zero.”

    Colonel Westa sounds like a well-meaning fellow, but perhaps someone should explain to him that humans are prone to errors, not only of judgment but of memory and inadvertence. For example, on the same day that Colonel Westa was professing that there is zero tolerance for error, February 12, 2008, the US Secretary of Defense, surely not purposefully, slipped on ice outside his home and broke his humerus, the bone connecting the shoulder to the elbow. Accidents occur.

    Even Edward Teller, father of the H-Bomb, recognized, “Sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof even in a foolproof system.” With 26,000 nuclear weapons still in the world and 3,500 of these weapons still on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments, and with policies of launch on warning in effect in the US, Russia and other nuclear-armed states, there is unfortunately fertile ground for proving Teller right about the fool proving greater than the proof.

    Mikhail Gorbachev, who had his finger on the nuclear button for many years and who called in the mid-1980s for the abolition of nuclear weapons, offered sage advice when he stated “that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.”

    Perfection is not possible, but it is possible to abolish nuclear weapons. Our choices are to play Russian Roulette with the human future, seeking an impossible standard of perfection for all possessors of nuclear weapons, or to recognize the wisdom in Gorbachev’s words and eliminate the overwhelming danger posed by these weapons by eliminating the weapons themselves.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • A Criminal Idea

    Originally appeared in The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, January 25, 2008

     

    Attacking other countries to stop them acquiring nuclear weapons repudiates a key principle of international law

    Five former Nato generals, including the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, have written a “radical manifesto” which states that “the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ‘imminent’ spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.”

    In other words, the generals argue that “the west” – meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain – should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.

    Under this doctrine, the US could have used nuclear weapons in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to destroy that country’s presumed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons – stockpiles that did not in fact exist. Under it, the US could have used nuclear weapons against North Korea in 2006. The doctrine would also have justified a nuclear attack on Pakistan at any time prior to that country’s nuclear tests in 1998. Or on India, at any time prior to 1974.

    The Nuremberg principles are the bedrock of international law on war crimes. Principle VI criminalises the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression …” and states that the following are war crimes:

    “Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”

    To state the obvious: the use of a nuclear weapon on the military production facilities of a non-nuclear state will mean dropping big bombs on populated areas. Nuclear test sites are kept remote for obvious reasons; research labs, reactors and enrichment facilities need not be. Nuclear bombs inflict total devastation on the “cities, towns or villages” that they hit. They are the ultimate in “wanton destruction”. Their use against a state with whom we are not actually at war cannot, by definition, be “justified by military necessity”.

    “The west” has lived from 1946 to the present day with a nuclear-armed Russia; no necessity of using nuclear weapons against that country ever arose. Similarly with China, since 1964. To attack some new nuclear pretender now would certainly constitute the “waging of a war of aggression …” That’s a crime. And the planning and preparation for such a war is no less a crime than the war itself.

    Next, consider what it means to determine that a country is about to acquire nuclear weapons. How does one know? The facilities that Iran possesses to enrich uranium are legal under the non-proliferation treaty. Yes, they might be used, at some point, to provide fuel for bombs. But maybe they won’t be. How could we tell? And suppose we were wrong? Ambiguity is the nature of this situation, and of the world in which we live. During the cold war, ambiguity helped keep both sides safe: it was a stabilising force. We would not use nuclear weapons, under the systems then devised, unless ambiguity disappeared. But the generals’ doctrine has no tolerance for ambiguity; it would make ambiguity itself a cause for war. Thus, causes for war could be made to arise, wherever anyone in power wanted them to.

    The generals’ doctrine would not only violate international law, it repudiates the principle of international law. For a law to be a law, it must apply equally to all. But the doctrine holds that “the west” is fundamentally a different entity from all other countries. As the former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, it holds that our use of weapons of mass destruction to prevent the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is not, itself, an illegal use of weapons of mass destruction. Thus “the west” can stand as judge, jury and executioner over all other countries. By what right? No law works that way. And no country claiming such a right can also claim to respect the law, or ask any other country to respect it.

    Conversely, suppose we stated the generals’ doctrine as a principle: that any nuclear state which suspects another state of being about to acquire nuclear weapons has the right to attack that state – and with nuclear weapons if it has them. Now suppose North Korea suspects South Korea of that intention. Does North Korea acquire a right to strike the South? Under any principle of law, the generals’ answer must be, that it does. Thus their doctrine does not protect against nuclear war. It leads, rather, directly to nuclear war.

    Is this proposed doctrine unprecedented? No, in fact it is not. For as Heather Purcell and I documented in 1994, US nuclear war-fighting plans in 1961 called for an unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union, as soon as sufficient nuclear forces were expected to be ready, in late 1963. President Kennedy quashed the plan. As JFK’s adviser Ted Sorensen put it in a letter to the New York Times on July 1, 2002:

    “A pre-emptive strike is usually sold to the president as a ‘surgical’ air strike; there is no such thing. So many bombings are required that widespread devastation, chaos and war unavoidably follow … Yes, Kennedy ‘thought about’ a pre-emptive strike; but he forcefully rejected it, as would any thoughtful American president or citizen.”

    It’s not just citizens and presidents who are obliged to think carefully about what General Shalikashvili and his British, French, German and Dutch colleagues now suggest. Military officers – as they know well – also have that obligation. Nuremberg Principle IV states:

    “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

    Any officer in the nuclear chain of command of the United States, Britain or France, faced with an order to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state would be obliged, as a matter of law, to ponder those words with care. For ultimately, as Nuremberg showed, it is not force that prevails. In the final analysis, it is law.

    James K Galbraith holds the Lloyd M Bentsen Jr chair of government/business relations at the Lyndon B Johnson school of public affairs, the University of Texas at Austin. He is a senior scholar with the Levy Economics Institute, and chair of the board of Economists for Peace and Security, an international association of professional economists.

  • US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons Free World?

    US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons Free World?

    Since the onset of the Nuclear Age, nuclear weapons have posed an existential threat to humanity. With the development of thermonuclear weapons in the early 1950s and the ensuing Cold War nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union, humanity has stood at the brink of catastrophe. Albert Einstein noted famously, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s many people breathed a sigh of relief, believing incorrectly that there was no longer a threat of nuclear annihilation. Today, more than 15 years after the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear devastation remains very much with us. In some respects, in this time of extremism, the possibilities for nuclear weapons proliferation and use may have actually increased.

    Richard Garwin, a respected nuclear scientist, estimates the risk of a terrorist nuclear attack against an American or European city to be greater than 20 percent per year, not a figure that gives reassurance that the dangers have dramatically diminished. Graham Allison, director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and an expert in international terrorism, believes that the chances of a nuclear terrorist nuclear attack in the next decade are greater than 50 percent.

    The surest and perhaps only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear annihilation is to eliminate nuclear weapons. To achieve this goal will require US leadership. Without such leadership, the other nuclear weapons states are unlikely to move toward the elimination of their arsenals. With US leadership it will be possible to forge a path forward. Unfortunately, for those of us who accept the centrality of US leadership on this issue, there have been few signs of hope that such leadership will be forthcoming. The US has been more inclined to place obstacles on the path to nuclear disarmament than to lead the way back from the nuclear precipice. If the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament set forth at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference are taken as a benchmark, the US has failed to lead virtually across the board. If anything, the US has led in the wrong direction.

    The Bush administration has committed in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) to reduce its arsenal of deployed strategic nuclear weapons from about 6,000 to 2,200 or below by the day the Treaty ends, December 31, 2012. It has, however, purposely left out of the agreement any provisions for transparency, verifiability or irreversibility. Weapons taken off deployed status can be put on a shelf in a reserve status for later redeployment. By the terms of the Treaty, the US and Russia are free to again expand their deployed strategic arsenals the day after the Treaty ends.

    In addition, the US has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to pursue missile defenses and space weaponization. Despite US assurances that the missile defenses are aimed at rogue nations and not at Russia and China, leaders of these countries have repeatedly stated that US deployment of missile defenses is provocative and is spurring them to increase their offensive nuclear capabilities. China and Russia have also called for banning weapons in outer space, and the US has persisted in blocking their efforts.

    Since the end of the Cold War, the US has failed to take its nuclear arsenal off high alert status; failed to give legally binding pledges of No First Use of nuclear weapons, failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, failed to support a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty and failed to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons for its security. To the contrary, it has developed contingency plans for nuclear weapons use against seven countries, including five that were thought to be non-nuclear weapons states at the time. And it has sought to develop new nuclear weapons, such as the “bunker buster” and the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).

    The principal elements of US nuclear policy favor continued reliance on these weapons. When taken together, the first letters of these elements actually spell out “Death Plan.” I don’t mean to imply that there is a conscious plan to destroy humanity, but that is the result of such policy. These elements are:

    — Double standards — Extended deterrence — Ambiguous messages — Threat of preventive use — High alert status

    — Preventing proliferation by force — Launch on warning — Alliance sharing — Negative leadership

    A Bipartisan Plea for US Leadership

    Against this bleak background, a bipartisan plea early in 2007 for US leadership for nuclear disarmament from four former high US officials stands out as a ray of hope. Their commentary, entitled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 4, 2007. It was remarkable not so much for what it proposed but for who was making the proposal. It was written by four former Cold Warriors: former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn. Shultz and Kissinger served in Republican administrations, while Perry served in a Democratic administration and Nunn was a Democratic Senator from Georgia. Sixteen other former US foreign and defense policy officials also endorsed the view represented in the statement.

    The statement began by recognizing a present opportunity for diminishing nuclear dangers that will require US leadership to achieve. The authors stated: “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. US leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage – to a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.”

    The authors expressed their belief in the importance of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War, but its decreasing relevance in a post Cold War world. They, in fact, found that Soviet-American mutually assured deterrence is “obsolete.”

    The four prominent former US officials reviewed current nuclear dangers and called for US leadership to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. In essence, the argument leading them to this position was based on the following premises:

    1. Reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence “is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”
    2. Terrorist groups are outside the bounds of deterrence strategy.
    3. We are entering a new nuclear era that “will be more precarious, disorienting and costly than was Cold War deterrence.”
    4. Attempting to replicate Cold War strategies of deterrence will dramatically increase the risk that nuclear weapons will be used.
    5. New nuclear weapons states lack the safeguarding and control experiences learned by the US and USSR during the Cold War.
    6. The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty envisions the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
    7. Non-nuclear weapons states have grown increasingly skeptical of the sincerity of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
    8. There exists an historic opportunity to eliminate nuclear weapons in the world.
    9. To realize this opportunity, bold vision and action are needed.
    10. The US must take the lead and must convince the leaders of the other nuclear weapons states to turn the goal of nuclear weapons abolition into a joint effort.

    In other words, the bipartisan group found that it was in the self-interest of the US to lead the way toward a world without nuclear weapons. They are not a group of men likely to encourage US leadership for altruistic reasons or humanitarian concerns. They were hardened Cold Warriors, willing to risk humanity’s future during the Cold War nuclear arms race, even if it meant blowing up the world, including the United States, for what they perceived as America’s security.

    The group outlined a number of steps that need to be taken to lay the groundwork for a world free of nuclear threat. They specifically called for the following:

    • de-alerting nuclear arsenals;
    • reducing the size of nuclear arsenals;
    • eliminating tactical nuclear weapons;
    • achieving Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and encouraging other key states to also ratify the Treaty;
    • securing nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials everywhere in the world; and
    • reducing proliferation risks by halting production of fissile materials for weapons, ceasing to use enriched uranium in civil commerce and removing weapons-usable uranium from research reactors.

    Evaluation of the Bipartisan Plea

    For individuals and organizations long committed to the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons, there is nothing new in the arguments of the former Cold Warriors. They are arguments that many civil society groups have been making for decades and with particular force since the end of the Cold War. The proposals of the former officials include many of the steps long called for by the international community such as those in the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Other former high-level US officials, such as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and former head of the US Strategic Command General George Lee Butler, have also made such arguments.

    What is new is that these former Cold Warriors have joined together in a bipartisan spirit to publicly make these arguments to the American people. This means that the perspectives of civil society organizations working for nuclear weapons abolition are finally being embraced by key former officials who once presided over Cold War nuclear strategy.

    The bipartisan advice of Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn to abolish nuclear weapons will require a full reversal of the current Bush administration nuclear policies. The Bush administration has thumbed its nose at the other parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, behaving as though the US has been in full compliance with its obligations under that Treaty.

    If the Bush administration wants to demonstrate leadership toward nuclear weapons abolition, it could immediately take the following steps:

    • submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification;
    • halt its missile defense program;
    • remove US nuclear weapons from Europe;
    • call for negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament on a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty;
    • negotiate with Russia to take nuclear weapons off high-alert status;
    • reach an agreement with Russia to begin implementing deeper cuts in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries, which Russia supports; and
    • call for a summit of leaders of all nuclear weapons states to negotiate a new treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    The Bush Administration Issues Its Own Plea (for RRW)

    The Bush administration unfortunately does not seem to have been influenced by the bipartisan statement. It released a July 2007 Joint Statement by the Secretaries of Defense, State and Energy, entitled, “National Security and Nuclear Weapons: Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century.” The Statement begins from the perspective that nuclear weapons will be necessary to maintaining deterrence in the 21st century, although it makes no effort to indicate exactly who is being deterred. Rather, it states the perceived threat in very vague terms, “[t]he future security environment is very uncertain, and some trends are not favorable.”

    Two-thirds of the way through the Joint Statement, one discovers that it is basically a sales pitch for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which Congress has been reluctant to embrace and fund. “To address these issues of sustainability, safety, security and reliability, and to achieve a smaller yet credible nuclear deterrent force,” the three Secretaries argue, “the United States needs to invest in the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. Pursuit of this program is critical to sustaining long-term confidence in our deterrent capability….”

    Ironically, the Bush administration bases its argument for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which will replace every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal with a new thermonuclear weapon, on allowing the US to assure its allies, reduce its nuclear arsenal and continue the nuclear testing moratorium. Despite the fact that scientists have concluded that the current US nuclear weapon stock will remain reliable for some 100 years, the Statement actually threatens that “[d]elays on RRW also raise the prospect of having to return to underground nuclear testing to certify existing weapons.”

    Conclusion

    If the United States becomes serious about leading the way to a world free of nuclear weapons, as called for by the former Cold War officials in their bipartisan plea, it can assume a high moral and legal ground, while improving its own security and global security. Each day that goes by without US leadership for achieving a nuclear weapons-free world diminishes the prospects for the future of humanity and the US itself. There is no issue on which US leadership is more needed, and there is no issue on which the US has more to gain for its own security by asserting such leadership.

    The former Cold War officials conclude with a call to vision and action. They state: “Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations. Without bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible.”

    These men have seen a new light, one consistent with a human future, and their statement is a fissure in the wall of Cold War security based upon deterrence and mutually assured delusions. It remains to be seen whether their combined bipartisan political clout is sufficiently hefty to move the mountain of US nuclear policy in the direction of their vision. This will depend in part upon the priority they give to this effort and to their persistence in seeking to influence policy. It is certain that one statement will not end the debate.

    In June 2007, Sam Nunn, one of the authors of the bipartisan plea, made an important speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. It was entitled, “The Mountaintop: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” He argued that “the accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material has brought us to a nuclear tipping point. The world is heading in a very dangerous direction.” He further stated that the dangers of nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation and accidental nuclear war can only be prevented through cooperation with Russia and China. He reiterated the call for US leadership “to take the world to the next stage.” He likened achieving nuclear abolition to reaching the top of a mountain, and set forth steps to be taken to ascend the mountain.

    Nunn quoted Ronald Reagan, who said, “We now have a weapon that can destroy the world – why don’t we recognize that threat more clearly and then come together with one aim in mind: How safely, sanely, and quickly can we rid the world of this threat to our civilization and our existence?”

    It is late in the day, but the question continues to hang in the air before us. Nunn’s answer was this: “If we want our children and grandchildren to ever see the mountaintop, our generation must begin to answer this question.”

    If we fail to address and adequately answer this question and continue with business as usual, choosing new nuclear weapons systems and continued reliance on these weapons, we tempt fate. If we lack the vision and impetus to change and lead, we will stay stuck, and eventually the mountain will explode and our cities, our countries and civilization at the base of the mountain will be destroyed. We will have failed ourselves and worse, our children and grandchildren.

    The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” The truth that if we are to have a human future the US must lead the way in abolishing nuclear weapons has been frequently ridiculed and violently opposed. The commentary by Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn offers the hope that this truth may now be passing the stage of violent opposition and entering the stage of being self-evident – at least to those who stand outside the halls of power.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • The Greatest Immediate Threat to Humanity

    The Greatest Immediate Threat to Humanity

    It is perhaps the least talked about and most worrying irony of our time. The United States has a massive defense budget, but spends relatively little addressing the most immediate danger to humanity.

    Global security is vital to family life, the growth of business, the wise husbanding of resources and the environment. And yet, all our hopes and plans for the future exist under the shadow of a catastrophic threat – one that could kill millions of people in a few moments and leave civilization in shambles.

    Although there are other significant threats, such as global warming and infectious diseases, it is nuclear weapons that are the greatest immediate danger confronting our species. We must stop ignoring this threat and start providing leadership to eliminate nuclear arsenals around the globe.

    Let’s look at some of the facts about nuclear weapons. They are the only weapon capable of destroying civilization and the human species. They kill indiscriminately, making them equal opportunity destroyers. In the hands of terrorists, they could destroy a country as powerful as the United States. A nuclear 9/11 could have resulted in deaths exceeding one million and the collapse of the US and world economies.

    There are currently some 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and 12,000 of these are deployed. Of these, 3,500 nuclear weapons are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments.

    Nine countries currently possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. More than 95 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world are in the arsenals of the US and Russia. The UK, France, China and Israel are estimated to have arsenals numbering a few hundred each. India and Pakistan are thought to have arsenals under 100, and North Korea to have up to 12 nuclear weapons. As many as 35 other countries have the technological capability to become nuclear weapons states, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Iran and Egypt.

    Nuclear weapons give a state sudden clout in the international system. India, Pakistan and North Korea all increased their stature in the international system after testing nuclear weapons. Recently, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva emphasized the perceived prestige that nuclear weapons potential gives a country. He said: “Brazil could rank among those few nations in the world with a command of uranium enrichment technology, and I think we will be more highly valued as a nation — as the power we wish to be.”

    Nearly all countries in the world are parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Only three countries have not signed the treaty: Israel, India and Pakistan. A fourth country, North Korea, withdrew from the NPT in 2003. All of these countries have developed nuclear arsenals.

    The NPT obligates the nuclear weapons states that are parties to the treaty to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. The International Court of Justice has interpreted this to mean that negotiations must be concluded “leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.”

    As the world’s only remaining superpower, the United States can lead the way in fulfilling this obligation. It has failed to do so. The US missile defense program has been provocative to other countries, particularly Russia and China, and has resulted in these countries improving their offensive nuclear capabilities. The US has also sought to upgrade and improve its nuclear arsenal, and has proposed replacing every thermonuclear weapon in the US arsenal with the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead. The US has, in effect, said to the world that it intends to rely upon its nuclear arsenal indefinitely.

    In addition, the US has failed to provide legally binding security assurances that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. In fact, the US indicated in its 2001 Nuclear Posture Review that it was developing contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against seven countries – two nuclear weapons states (Russia and China) and five non-nuclear weapons states (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea, which at the time was not thought to have nuclear weapons).

    US nuclear policy undermines the security of its people. The more the US relies on nuclear weapons, the more other countries will do so. Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has stated: “The more that those states that already have [nuclear weapons] increase their arsenals, or insist that such weapons are essential to their national security, the more other states feel that they too must have them for their security.” Reliance on nuclear weapons will assure their proliferation.

    The more nuclear weapons in the world, the more likely they will end up in the hands of terrorist extremists incapable of being deterred. The longer nations rely on nuclear weapons for security, the more likely it is that they will be used, by accident or design.

    The US needs to work urgently for a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons under strict international control, just as we have already done with chemical and biological weapons. To do this requires political will, which has not been demonstrated by the current US administration. Continuing with existing US nuclear policies is a recipe for disaster. The Cold War ended more than15 years ago, and new problems now confront humanity. It is time for a drastic change in US nuclear policy – change that will require strong and effective leadership.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org)