Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear weapons talks

  • Questions for the Candidates

    Article originally appeared in the International Herald Tribune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Break the Nuclear Deadlock

    UNITED NATIONS, New York
    Regrettably, there are times when multilateral forums tend merely to reflect, rather than mend, deep rifts over how to confront the threats we face. The review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which ended on Friday with no substantive agreement, was one of these.
    For 35 years, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, has been a cornerstone of our global security. With near universal membership, the treaty has firmly entrenched a norm against nuclear proliferation and helped confound predictions that today there would be 25 or more countries with nuclear weapons.
    But today, the treaty faces a dual crisis of compliance and confidence. Delegates at the month-long conference, which is held once every five years, could not furnish the world with any solutions to the grave nuclear threats we all face. And while arriving at an agreement can be more challenging in a climate of crisis, it is also at such times that it is all the more imperative to do so.
    Let me be clear: Failure of a review conference to come to any agreement will not break the NPT-based regime. The vast majority of countries that are parties to the treaty recognize its enduring benefits. But there are cracks in each of the treaty’s pillars – nonproliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses of nuclear technology – and each of these cracks requires urgent repair.
    Since the review conference last met, in 2000, North Korea has announced its withdrawal from the treaty and declared itself in possession of nuclear weapons. Libya has admitted that it worked for years on a clandestine nuclear weapons program. And the International Atomic Energy Agency has found undeclared uranium enrichment activity in Iran. Clearly, the NPT-based regime has not kept pace with the march of technology and globalization. Whereas proliferation among countries was once considered the sole concern of the treaty, revelations that the Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan and others were extensively trafficking in nuclear technology and know-how exposed the vulnerability of the nonproliferation regime to non-state actors.
    The treaty’s framers could hardly have imagined that we would have to work tirelessly to prevent terrorists from acquiring and using nuclear weapons and related materials. And while progress toward disarmament has taken place, there are still 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world, many of which remain on hair-trigger alert. At the same time, the intergovernmental bodies designed to address these challenges are paralyzed.
    In Geneva, the Conference on Disarmament has been unable to agree on a program of work for eight years. The UN Disarmament Commission has become increasingly marginal, producing no real agreement since 2000. And at the NPT review conference, nearlytwo-thirds of the proceedings were consumed by debate about agenda and logistics, instead of substantive discussions on how to strengthen the nonproliferation regime.
    In my opening address to the conference, I argued that success would depend on coming to terms with all the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity. I warned that the conference would stall if some delegates focused on some threats instead of addressing them all. Some countries underscored proliferation as a grave danger, while others argued that existing nuclear arsenals imperil us. Some insisted that the spread of nuclear fuel-cycle technology posed an unacceptable proliferation threat, while others countered that access to peaceful uses of nuclear technology must not be compromised.
    In the end, delegations regrettably missed the opportunity to endorse the merits of all of these arguments. As a result, they were unable to advance security against any of the dangers we face. How, then, can we overcome this paralysis? When multilateral forums falter, leaders must lead. This September, more than 170 heads of state and government will convene in New York to adopt a wide-ranging agenda to advance development, security and human rights for all countries and all peoples. I challenge them to break the deadlock on the most pressing challenges in the field of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. If they fail to do so, their peoples will ask how, in today’s world, they could not find common ground in the cause of diminishing the existential threat of nuclear weapons.
    To revitalize the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, action will be required on many fronts. To strengthen verification and increase confidence in the regime, leaders must agree to make the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol the new standard for verifying compliance with nonproliferation commitments.
    Leaders must find ways to reconcile the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy with the imperative of nonproliferation. The regime will not be sustainable if scores more countries develop the most sensitive phases of the fuel cycle, and are equipped with the technology to produce nuclear weapons on short notice.
    A first step would be to create incentives for countries to voluntarily forgo the development of fuel-cycle facilities. I commend the nuclear agency and its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, for working to advance consensus on this vital question, and I urge leaders to join him in that mission. Leaders must also move beyond rhetoric in addressing the question of disarmament.
    Prompt negotiation of a fissile material cutoff treaty for all countries is indispensable. All countries also should affirm their commitment to a moratorium on testing, and to early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. And I hope leaders will think seriously about what more can be done to reduce – irreversibly – the number and role of nuclear weapons in the world.
    Bold commitments at the September meeting would breathe new life into all forums dealing with disarmament and nonproliferation. They would reduce all the risks we face – of nuclear accidents, of trafficking, of terrorist use and of use by countries themselves. It is an ambitious agenda, and probably daunting to some. But the consequences of failure are far more daunting. Solutions are within are reach; we must grasp them.
    Kofi A. Annan is Secretary General of the United Nations. Herald Tribune All rights reserved