Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear weapons

  • Risk and Nuclear Weapons

    Those of us working to eliminate the threat that nuclear weapons pose to human survival face three major barriers that a new approach attempts to overcome:

    • The public is more worried about the risk of modifying our nuclear posture than maintaining it. Even a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is criticized as too risky by guardians of the nuclear status quo. Larger steps such as the recent efforts by Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn to pose even the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons are derided as fantasy.
    • Public interest only approaches an appropriate level when the world is on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe and fades at the first partial success. When the Cold War ended, I was horrified that public concern evaporated in the mistaken belief that the nuclear threat had been extinguished. Without an ongoing effort, it was only a matter of time before the pendulum swung back, as it is now doing, and the threat of nuclear war reared its ugly head once more.
    • A true solution to the nuclear threat involves such far-reaching changes in human thought and behavior that most people discount their ever occuring. “You can’t change human nature,” is a phrase we all have heard far too often. What naysayers miss is that these changes do not occur in one fell swoop, but rather as a process. What is impossible early on becomes feasible in the new environment produced by the first steps. Abolishing slavery and women’s suffrage, both initially derided as fools’ errands, came to be in just this fashion.

    Defusing the Nuclear Threat, as the new approach is called, is based on a simple, but surprising observation: People have a right to know the risk associated with locating a nuclear power plant near their homes and to object if they feel that risk is too high. Similarly, they should have a right to know the risk associated with nuclear deterrence and to object if they feel that risk is too high. But they cannot because that latter risk is largely unknown. The initial goal of the project is summarized in a statement endorsed by seven eminent individuals including two Nobel Laureates, a former president of Stanford University, a former Director of NSA and Deputy Director of the CIA, and which concludes:
    “We, the undersigned, therefore urgently petition the international scientific community to undertake in-depth risk analyses of nuclear deterrence and, if the results so indicate, to raise an alarm alerting society to the unacceptable risk it faces as well as initiating a second phase effort to identify potential solutions.” How do these proposed studies overcome the three barriers we face?

    • They do not change our military posture one iota and therefore cannot be criticized as “too dangerous.”
    • My preliminary analysis indicates that the current risk is literally thousands of times greater than acceptable. If the proposed in-depth studies agree even approximately, it says that society cannot go back to sleep at the first partial success.
    • Reducing risk a thousand-fold clearly cannot be done in one instantaneous act. The long-term nature of the solution as a process is almost self-evident: First find ways to halve the threat. Then halve it again, and again, and again. Thus, without ever explicitly calling for the ultimate goal of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the world can discover if that end state is required as it journeys through ever safer levels.

    My paper “Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence” has just appeared in the magazine of the national engineering honor society and provides more details. While it includes some higher mathematics, those sections can be skipped without losing the paper’s main thrust.

    Martin Hellman is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford and previously taught at MIT. His invention of public key cryptography is the basis of secure financial transactions on the Internet and has been honored with numerous awards, most notably election to the National Academy of Engineering, election as a Fellow of the IEEE, and being named a Marconi International Fellow.

  • Understanding a Trillion

    Understanding a Trillion

    This is the way to understand a trillion. Begin by counting 1,2,3…one number each second, and count each second around the clock. In 12 days, you will reach one million. Keep counting. In 32 years, you will reach one billion. Admittedly, this is an impossible task, far beyond our capacities for concentration and focus, not to mention sleep deprivation.

    The really hard part, though, is that to reach one trillion would require counting for 32,000 years. It would require organizing the next 1,280 generations to continue the 24 hour counting in 32 year shifts. This would require passing the baton to future generations for more than three times the span of civilization from its roots in Mesopotamia to the present.

    Now consider that the world is spending over $1.2 trillion annually on military expenditures, and the United States is spending more than half of this amount on its military and its wars. Or consider this: the United States alone has spent some $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems since 1942. To count to $7.5 trillion would require counting for the next 240,000 years, through 9,600 generations. And our militarism has created in the US alone $9 trillion in debt which, along with our militarism and nuclearism, is our legacy to future generations.

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

  • 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).

  • Wisconsin elected Officials Speak Out Against Building New Nuclear Weapons

    On Saturday, February 16th at a citizens’ hearing at the Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. Senator Russell Feingold, U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin, State Senator Frederick Kessler, and State Senator Mark Miller made statements opposing current U.S. nuclear weapons policy and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) proposed nuclear weapons complex transformation.

    At a citizen hearing co-sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, experts, representatives of state and federal government, members of the general public, and citizen groups addressed the Department of Energy’s (DOE) proposed $150 billion plan to revamp the industrial infrastructure responsible for building and maintaining U.S. nuclear weapons.

    Under the National Environmental Policy Act, DOE is required hold hearings around the country in the communities near nuclear weapons facilities. Madison was not one of those chosen communities, but the decision to build new nuclear weapons threatens all Americans. This hearing was a chance for Wisconsin to have a voice on the future of US nuclear weapons.

    A shorter, edited video of the hearing along with written testimony will soon be available on www.wagingpeace.org. If you would like to see the full version, go to www.wiseye.org/wisEye_programming/ARCHIVES-FEB08.html#evt_080216_cnf_nukes.

    For more information on this event, or for assistance in setting up a citizens’ hearing in your area, contact Nick Roth, Washington DC Office Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at (202) 543-4100 x.105 or nroth@napf.org.

  • Who’s Going to Give Them Up First?

    In January 2007, an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal called “World Free of Nuclear Weapons” said: “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S. 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.”

    Bianca Jagger
    Photo: CND/Elliot Taylor

    Now who would have thought that I would be quoting Henry Kissinger, George P. Schultz, William J. Perry and Sam Nunn?

    But perhaps you should not be surprised. The nuclear issue is not a partisan political issue. It is reassuring to see some of the most conservative figures in both the UK and the USA supporting complete nuclear disarmament.

    Some of you may know that Ronald Reagan was strongly opposed to nuclear weapons. Reagan called for the abolition of “all nuclear weapons,” which he considered “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilisation.”

    We are at an historic moment in history in a number of respects. Many hard choices lay before us, with many serious consequences if we make the wrong decisions.

    The strategy of defending the manufacture and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, as an effective deterrent to others, is now recognised as a flawed argument. If they were once justified, as a means of American-Soviet deterrence, they are no longer. Nuclear weapons were considered essential to maintaining international security during the cold war, but that is no longer the case.

    Former shadow Defence Secretary Michael Ancram said: “The threat of using nuclear weapons is not only illogical but incredible… the need for a genuinely independent alternative and flexible non-nuclear deterrence is if anything greater.”

    Of course, the idea that the £76billion needed to finance refurbishment of the UK’s Trident submarines will provide us with an independent nuclear deterrent is nonsense. Unlike China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United States – and perhaps North Korea – the UK does not have and will not have an independent deterrent. We rely on the US for logistical support, and we import components from them, too.

    Independence comes at a price: France is spending four times what we are on their nuclear deterrent strategy. But if the adherents to this argument intend to be taken seriously, they could at least have presented us with a truly independent solution.

    Such a solution, in any case, is totally unacceptable. Quite aside from the monumental costs involved, Trident renewal will make it far more difficult to get arms reduction around the world. As Mohammed El-Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was quoted as saying, Britain “cannot modernise its Trident submarines while at the same time telling everyone else that nuclear weapons are not needed in the future… We need to treat nuclear weapons the way we treat slavery or genocide. There needs to be a taboo over possessing them.”

    Furthermore, the replacement of the Trident nuclear missile programme in the UK is in violation of international law. Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty states: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

    Kofi Annan has said of the UK’s policy that: “They should not imagine that this will be accepted as compatible with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
    Going further, The International Court of Justice, in their “Advisory Opinion on the Illegality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons on July 8, 1996, stated: “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.”

    The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was intended to guarantee the end of nuclear weapons, but as the January Wall Street Journal op-ed points out, despite the fact that every president since Nixon has renewed the U.S.’s obligations under the treaty, and that the UK government claims to remain committed to the Treaty, non-nuclear weapon states are – justifiably – growing increasingly suspicious of the intentions of the so-called nuclear powers. In addition, four nuclear powers – India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – either never ratified or have withdrawn from the Treaty. This is astonishing and unacceptable.

    In 2005 Peacerights, an NGO dedicated to peaceful conflict resolution, commissioned a report by legal experts Rabinder Singh QC and Professor Christine Chinkin, who concluded that a renewal of Trident would infringe on intransgressible requirements of customary international law, since nuclear weapons do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

    In a second legal opinion, solicited in 2006, Philippe Sands QC and Helen Law found the renewal to be disproportionate, and therefore unlawful, under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

    But it is not only that our governments are violating international agreements that they themselves signed. They are also acting with arrogance and carelessness when it comes to handling the weapons they have already. Even the supposedly most advanced nations can by alarmingly lax when it comes to the security precautions in place for nuclear weapons.

    Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the unbelievable US Army security failure last August, in which six nuclear warheads were inadvertently removed from their bunkers and flown from North Dakota to Louisiana, “unprecedented”.  Owing to “a lack of attention to detail and lack of adherence to well-established Air Force guidelines, technical orders and procedures”, for thirty-six hours, no-one knew where the warheads were, or even that they were missing.

    Each of the warheads contained ten times the yield of that dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. No breach of nuclear procedures of this magnitude had ever occurred before. Surely it is only a matter of time before an error like this becomes a disaster. Commentators have blamed this failure on the US Army’s reduced nuclear focus in recent years. Why, I would argue, not go the whole way? Why not do away with nuclear weapons altogether?

    The tolerance for error when it comes to nuclear weapons is very low – in fact, it is zero. But zero tolerance cannot realistically be achieved, which is another reason why immediate and worldwide disarmament is such an important, and a pressing, priority. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “Mistakes are made in every other human endeavour. Why should nuclear weapons be exempt?”

    David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, notes in an article this month that “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.’”

    We have come to the point where something has to give. South Africa is to be heartily applauded for its total disarmament, which was officially declared in 1994, following an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In order to affect real change globally, we now need one of the major powers to follow suit.
    The question has now become: “Who’s going to give them up first?”

    I would like to propose that Britain, as both the oldest parliamentary democracy in the world, and as one of the only countries with no independent nuclear deterrent in place, is the perfect candidate. I believe it is up to us to lead, and let others follow. It is up to us to take advantage of this perfect opportunity to pave the way.

    And Britain is uniquely positioned at this precise moment in time to act: the decision to renew Trident can still be repealed. In March 2007, a record 167 MPs from all sides of the House expressed their doubts that the case for Trident had been proven. They were unconvinced of the need for an early decision. Since March, the situation has not changed.

    Imagine the circumstances in which we might employ nuclear weapons. Let’s imagine the case of a rogue state that has threatened our major cities with a nuclear strike.

    Are we really prepared to engage in mutual obliteration? To kill millions because of the foolhardiness of the few? I wish every defender of nuclear weapons would read a little of John Hersey’s Hiroshima, and ask themselves again whether such devastation and suffering can ever be justified. I do not believe it can.

    Last month I read an article in the Guardian reporting that a manifesto by five of the west’s most senior military officials and strategists, from the U.S., Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, insists that a “first strike” nuclear option remains an “indispensable instrument”, since there is “simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world”. This is a horrifying development, but we cannot and we must not allow this to dishearten us.

    There is every prospect of a nuclear-free world. All that this manifesto shows is that not enough has been done to research the other options. Not enough has been done to examine the causes of increasing proliferation. We have the power to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. We have a responsibility to use that power to bring about global disarmament.

    Nuclear weapons are not containable. Where they exist, innocent lives are at risk. There is no such thing as a smart bomb. There will never be a “smart” nuclear weapon. And there will never be a smart supporter of nuclear weapons, either.

    Britain’s international obligations, as set out in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, are clear: we are legally committed to scrapping nuclear weapons. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our leaders were, for once, brave enough to make good on their promises?

    When they consider their responses to our pleas, politicians would do well to keep in mind the words of two men.

    The first is Dwight D. Eisenhower, who pledged America’s determination “to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”

    The second is a man who knows as much about nuclear weapons as anyone, Mikhail Gorbachev. He said that “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.”

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has launched an appeal that I urge each of you to sign. It calls on the next President of the United States to:

    • De-alert all nuclear weapons;
    • Commit to No First Use;
    • Commit to no new nuclear weapons;
    • Ban nuclear testing forever;
    • Control nuclear material worldwide;
    • Uphold nuclear weapons conventions; and
    • Reallocate resources for peace.

    I would like to extend the reach of this appeal to Gordon Brown. I urge him to answer each of these points in the affirmative. I urge him to do it now.

    You can sign the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s appeal by visiting www.wagingpeace.org/appeal.

    Thank you very much.

    Speech at the CND Global Summit
    City Hall, London
    February 16, 2008

    Bianca Jagger is Chair of the World Future Council.

  • We Cannot Afford to Neglect Nuclear Disarmament

    Originally appeared online at History News Service

    Russia’s plans for new nuclear weapons should serve as a wake-up call for the United States. The last thing Americans want to see are nuclear weapons popping up anywhere around the globe. We must regain the initiative toward nuclear disarmament by opening talks on additional bilateral nuclear arms reductions with Russia.

    During the Cold War, nuclear disarmament was a long-term goal of U.S. foreign policy. President Reagan called for “the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.”

    But Reagan’s great aspiration seems far off today. Both Russia and the United States hold thousands of nuclear weapons despite existing arms control treaties. China, India, Pakistan, Britain and France all possess smaller but sizable arsenals. North Korea has tested its first nuclear weapon. In the Middle East, Israel has the bomb, and Iran may be joining the nuclear club. When one thinks of the horrific scenarios that could emerge from all this proliferation, including nuclear terrorism, disarmament never looked so desirable.

    Ever since the end of the Cold War, there have been calls for aggressively moving forward on nuclear disarmament. In 1996 two retired generals, Lee Butler and Andrew Goodpaster, put forth a plan for the nuclear states to begin deep reductions in their arsenals, with an eye toward eventual nuclear disarmament. The United States and Russia would take the lead in these reductions, even down to the level of 100-200 nuclear weapons each. Other nuclear states would cap their arsenals at “very low levels.” Throughout this process, confidence- building and verification measures would be strengthened among the states to guarantee each step.

    The United States would be wise to follow the principles of the Goodpaster-Butler plan. Instead, like Russia, the United States has also expressed its desire for new nuclear weaponry. The U.S. refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to eliminate nuclear test explosions is a roadblock in the way of nuclear disarmament. The United States needs to partner with Russia in the elimination of nuclear weapons, not open the door for a new arms race. More nuclear disarmament talks could even ease Russian concerns over the U.S. plan to place a missile defense shield in Europe.

    Cooperation between Russia and the United States is essential in getting North Korea to disarm its nuclear capability and prevent Iran from obtaining one. Diplomacy among the United States, Russia, Japan, China, South Korea and North Korea is setting a path toward disarmament and peace on the Korean peninsula, although much work still needs to be done.

    The case of Iran is more difficult. Russia recently warned the United States not to launch a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of harboring weapons development. Russia and the United States aren’t on the same page when it comes to dealing with Iran.

    Great danger also exists in South Asia with nuclear weapons owned by rivals India and Pakistan. We must not forget China and its ever-increasing military strength. All this nuclear proliferation makes for an extremely dangerous world.

    Back in 1996, the Goodpaster-Butler plan was centered on President Eisenhower’s notion that “nuclear weapons are the only thing that can destroy the United States.” Indeed, Goodpaster and Butler were forward-thinking when they cited nuclear terrorism as among the reasons for disarmament. Nearly five years after their proposal, the world was awakened to the threat posed by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. People can now imagine what catastrophe would result should terrorists get hold of a nuclear weapon.

    Goodpaster and Butler cited nuclear accidents as another reason for taking disarmament steps. The recent fiasco of nuclear-armed missiles being accidentally transported over the United States on a B-52 shows the dangers of having these weapons around.

    Maintaining nuclear weapons is a major expense for nations to carry. This financial burden takes away from other national priorities including conventional military forces, intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism and homeland security. We should also remember Eisenhower’s philosophy that armaments represent “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

    It is imperative for the United States to regain the initiative on nuclear disarmament. Gaining Russia’s full cooperation, beginning with further bilateral nuclear arms reductions, is an essential first step. Failure to do so leaves future generations exposed to the threat of nuclear terrorism and accidents, not to mention massive expenditures for unnecessary weapons. A nuclear-free world must not remain a distant hope but rather a goal vigorously pursued in a spirit of unprecedented international cooperation.

    William Lambers is the author of Nuclear Weapons (2002) and is a writer for the History News Service – www.hnn.us.

  • Laying the Foundations for Multilateral Disarmament

    Text of his address to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland on February 5, 2008

    I know it is rare for a defence Minister to address a conference on disarmament. That is precisely why I wanted to come here today. I want the fact that the British Secretary of State for Defence is addressing this Conference to send a strong message about the priority we give to our disarmament commitments.

    These are commitments not just theoretical obligations. They are priorities against which we have made real progress since we came to power in 1997. The UK has a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and, in partnership with everyone who shares that ambition, we intend to make further progress towards this vision in the coming years.

    Problem
    Over the past 15 years, we have seen some nations expanding their nuclear arsenals, some surreptitiously seeking nuclear weapons under the guise of a civil energy programme and others detonating nuclear test devices in the face of international condemnation.

    The proliferation of nuclear material, technology, know-how and weapons represents a grave threat to international security. There remain many thousands of nuclear warheads around the world. We must take action now to ensure such material is properly protected.

    We all want to see the world become a much safer place. International security architecture, in the form of Treaties and initiatives, exists to help us achieve that objective. The international community has been active in bolstering that architecture. It has not completely stopped proliferation. Nor is it yet strong enough to permit immediate unilateral disarmament by any recognised Nuclear Weapon State.

    We need to do more.

    But nuclear weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction are not the only concern, we must also maintain a focus on conventional weapons.

    Last month, Gordon Brown set out the key challenges facing the international community. He highlighted some of the ways international institutions need to reform to enable us all, collectively, to meet those challenges. He reminded us that one person is killed every minute by a conventional weapon. Kofi Annan famously called them “WMD in slow motion”.
    These weapons have an enormous effect in terms of lost human lives, in terms of broken communities, environmental impact and damage to economic prosperity and development. I have witnessed their devastating impact on the lives of people in Central Africa, Colombia, Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

    Consequently, I am proud support efforts such as the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons and the UK’s Arms Trade Treaty initiative. These efforts aim to contribute to a global control architecture which both meets the requirements of the 21st century and gives focus and coherence to existing measures.
    In addition, Gordon Brown and I have made clear our goal of securing an international instrument that bans those cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. Last year I withdrew from service the two types of cluster munitions for exactly this reason and only last week with my colleagues I met with NGOs and politicians concerned about the impact of cluster munitions to discuss both Oslo and CCW.

    Controlling and reducing the proliferation of conventional arms is important, but I have come here to focus on nuclear disarmament.

    As the preamble to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty makes clear, all States party to the Treaty should work towards “the easing of international tension and the strengthening of trust between States in order to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the elimination of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery…”

    This is not some “get out” clause for the five recognised Nuclear Weapon States. Rather it is recognition that all signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty already have agreed to strive for measures which provide an environment for all Nuclear Weapon States to eliminate their holdings. This is a joint commitment and it is a joint responsibility.

    As this Conference knows too well, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has not yet entered into force and there is an ongoing stalemate on a Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty. This hardly gives the impression that progress is being made.

    I commend this Conference for playing a crucial role in moving forward the debate and seeking solutions. And I encourage all experts and representatives engaged in this process to redouble their efforts.

    Solutions

    It may be a truism but global challenges require global solutions. The solutions must take us all towards an increase in the pace of multilateral disarmament as well as a reduction in proliferation.

    The international community needs a transparent, sustainable and credible plan for multilateral nuclear disarmament. A plan that also addresses proliferation, so that disarmament and counter-proliferation both move forward together, each supporting the other. Although, we all understand that there is no formal conditionality between progress on disarmament and non-proliferation, our goal should be a virtuous circle, where progress on one reinforces the other.

    Our chances of eliminating nuclear weapons will be enhanced immeasurably if the Non-Nuclear Weapon States can see forward planning, commitment and action toward multilateral nuclear disarmament by Nuclear Weapon States. Without this, we risk generating the perception that the Nuclear Weapon States are failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations and this will be used by some states as an excuse for their nuclear intransigence.

    What then should this plan comprise of?

    Let me start with the question of reductions to the major nuclear arsenals.

    There is little public acknowledgement of the vast cuts so far in US and Russian warheads, especially since the Cold War. Nor, for that matter, the cuts to the much smaller French and UK stocks.

    I welcome the recent news by the US that, by 2012, their stockpile will be at its lowest for 50 years – less than one quarter of the level at the end of the Cold War. We all need to maintain this effort but we also need to get better at publicising the fact that we are on this path.

    We must also welcome the ongoing bilateral discussions between the US and Russia for a follow-on arrangement after the current START treaty expires. Success would provide a powerful signal that the post Cold War disarmament trend towards zero will continue.

    States also need to explore whether there is scope to reduce further the number of nuclear weapons they need to maintain an effective deterrent. The UK set an example by reducing our operationally available warheads by a further 20% when we decided last year to maintain our own minimum nuclear deterrent beyond the life of the current Vanguard-class submarines ,

    The international climate must become one that gives all Nuclear Weapon States the confidence to continue to make similar changes.

    I welcome the discussions on how to deal with States who may leave the NPT. Leaving any treaty is always a sovereign decision, but the NPT Review Conference in 2010 should send a message to any States considering withdrawal that such a decision will have consequences.

    We must be resolute in tackling proliferation challenges. We must confront states who are looking to breach their obligations and undermine global security by developing WMD. And within the international community we must ensure there is no space for such proliferators.

    The UK is committed to supporting the universal right of access to safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technology. But this cannot be at the risk of further proliferation. It is in this context that we have developed the concept of an Enrichment Bond – whereby assistance is granted in return for demonstrable commitment to non-proliferation.

    We should also continue to strive for the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and progress in its verification system. I warmly welcome the ratification last week by Columbia – real evidence of progress on this key piece of our security architecture. Since 1991, the UK has not tested a nuclear weapon and I call on all states to ratify the CTBT as soon as possible, especially those so-called Annex II states whose ratification is required for the Treaty’s entry into force

    I believe a key milestone towards building this climate for disarmament is securing a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, which, in real ways, will limit the ability of signatory states to expand their nuclear arsenals and which will provide the necessary reassurance to their neighbours and the international community.

    Since 1995, the UK has had a moratorium on production of fissile material for nuclear weapons purposes and permanently placed excess defence material under international safeguards. The US, France and Russia have announced similar formal arrangements. But we want to see that political commitment transformed into a legal one through a treaty.

    In 2007, the International Community came very close to starting negotiations in 2007 and I commend all those states who were willing to take part. And I call on those three states that did not, to do so this year. As UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, said last month, we all have legitimate national security concerns, but without any preconditions, let’s at least get to negotiations of a Treaty, where these security concerns can then be addressed.

    Some commentators have raised the idea of taking the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty out of the Conference and negotiating a treaty amongst a smaller group of like-minded nations. Frankly this misses the very point of the Conference – it is the only body where all nuclear armed States and Non-Nuclear Weapon States sit together to discuss security issues of the highest sensitivity.
    Safeguarding fissile material is a crucial responsibility of those who possess nuclear weapons. So let us work together within this Conference to make real multilateral progress.

    But just as the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty is a high priority for the UK, I acknowledge other nations have other priorities, such as negotiating a new legal instrument on preventing an arms race in space.

    At the UN, the UK consistently has supported the annual resolution on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. But there is no international consensus on the need to start negotiations on a new international legal instrument governing the military use of space. So rather than allowing this stalemate to continue, efforts should instead be focused on areas such as transparency and confidence building to allow us all to move forward.

    UK / Defence Contribution

    So what is the UK, and more specifically the Ministry of Defence, doing to help move this agenda along, and to help create an environment conducive to multilateral nuclear disarmament?

    Already we have contributed in the most tangible way through reducing the number of operationally available warheads to fewer than 160. This has now been achieved. And if we are able to reduce further, we will do that.

    With a contribution from the UK government, the International Institute for Strategic Studies is examining the political and technical requirements for a world free from nuclear weapons. And I look forward to the final report, which will be published later this year.

    However, one area on which I would like to focus is our work on verification of nuclear disarmament.

    Just as Margaret Beckett said last year, I too want the UK to be seen as a ‘disarmament laboratory’. By that I mean the UK becoming a role model and testing ground for measures that we and others can take on key aspects of disarmament. In particular, measures needed to determine the requirements for the verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Any verification regime will have to be robust, effective and mutually trusted and, crucially, one that doesn’t give away national security or proliferation-sensitive information.

    The more reductions states make, the more confidence they will require that no one is cheating and secretly retaining a “marginal nuclear weapon”. It is therefore of paramount importance that verification techniques are developed which enable us all – Nuclear Weapon States and Non-Nuclear Weapon States – to have confidence that when a state says it has fully and irrevocably dismantled a nuclear warhead, we all can be assured it is telling the truth.

    The UK is ready to lead the way on this. Research into how one technically verifies the dismantlement of a warhead continues at the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston.

    Developing such techniques will take time but it is very important it is not undertaken in ‘splendid isolation’. It must be built on the requirements of Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Weapon States alike. We need to consider not only what information we are willing to divulge but also what information a Non-Nuclear Weapon State will want to receive.

    With this in mind, over the last year AWE has developed a technical cooperation initiative with several Norwegian defence laboratories. The process of engaging with Norway must avoid breaching our mutual NPT obligations, which in itself serves as useful insight into how future multilateral discussions might proceed.

    The difficulty is in developing technologies which strike the right balance between protecting security and proliferation considerations and, at the same time, providing sufficient international access and verification. But this is a challenge we can overcome.

    If we are serious about doing our bit to create the conditions for complete nuclear disarmament, we must now also begin to build deeper technical relationships on disarmament between nuclear weapon states.

    So I come to this Conference with a proposal.

    As a next step, and following on from the AWE research, the UK is willing to host a technical conference of P5 nuclear laboratories on the verification of nuclear disarmament before the next NPT Review Conference in 2010. We hope such a conference will enable the five recognised nuclear weapons states to reinforce a process of mutual confidence building: working together to solve some of these difficult technical issues.

    As part of our global efforts, we also hope to engage with other P5 states in other confidence-building measures on nuclear disarmament throughout this NPT Review Cycle. The aim here is to promote greater trust and confidence as a catalyst for further reductions in warheads – but without undermining the credibility of our existing nuclear deterrents.

    So to summarise, we face serious threats. But we face them together – that is the nature of today’s globalised interdependent world. We need a transparent, sustainable and credible plan for multilateral nuclear disarmament. A plan shared by Nuclear Weapon States and Non-Nuclear Weapon States alike.

    I have suggested some of the elements of that plan. But the UK certainly does not have a monopoly on good ideas – others have put equally good proposals on the table, and I encourage states to suggest further initiatives.

    So, Conference, let us all work together with resolve and ambition to lay the foundations that will allow us to move towards that shared vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

    Thank you.

    Des Browne MP is the Secretary of Defense of the United Kingdom.

  • Processing Our History, Maintaining Critical Space

    In December 2007, I was invited to Japan by faculty at Meiji Gakuin University to speak about student nuclear abolition activism in the United States, and more specifically at the University of California (UC), the institution from which I recently graduated. My lectures focused on the University of California’s historical and pivotal role in the development of nuclear weapons for the United States government, student resistance to the UC’s management of nuclear weapons laboratories, and issues of privatization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and greater military industrial complex. My trip began in Tokyo, where I had the opportunity to speak on two separate occasions, first during a symposium on nuclear weapons issues organized by the Institute for International Studies at the Meiji Gakuin University campus in the nearby city of Yokohama. As my first audience was made up primarily of young University students, without extensive knowledge of nuclear weapons issues or much experience in student activism, I tried to focus my first talk on the basic narrative of UC management of nuclear weapons laboratories and student resistance to the continuation of lab management. So as to elucidate the substance of my lectures and to contextualize the primary purpose of my trip, I’ll briefly recount that narrative.

    The UC has managed the two primary nuclear weapons laboratories in the U.S. since the labs’ inception in 1945 (LANL) and 1952 (LLNL), through contracts with the United States Department of Energy. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were built through The Manhattan Project by a team of UC scientists, led by UC Berkeley physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Every nuclear weapon which has ever been built by the United States was developed by UC-employed scientists at LANL in New Mexico, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. LLNL was established with the specific mission of developing the hydrogen bomb. The perpetual management of the nuclear labs by the UC Regents, the governing body of the University, has faced resistance among UC students and faculty for decades.

    The faculty and many students in Japan were interested in the state of the nuclear abolition movement among students in the United States, and while I could not offer them much in terms of a cohesively organized, widespread, student nuclear abolition movement throughout the country, there does exist a growing network of young nuclear abolition activists, known as the Think Outside the Bomb network, which convenes through a series of conferences organized through the Youth Empowerment Initiative at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Regarding the issue of student nuclear abolition activism, I was happy to speak about the technically informed and focused abolition movement at the University of California, which has historically focused on the UC’s direct structural connection to the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. This movement has additionally derived the support of several local non-profit organizations including, for the last five years, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s UC-Nuclear Free program.

    In the spring of 2007, students and their supporters at UC Santa Barbara convinced the UCSB Associated Students Legislative Council to unanimously vote to establish a committee known as the Student Department of Energy Lab Oversight Committee (DOELOC). The primary purpose of the committee is to inform the UC student body, faculty, and surrounding community about the UC-managed nuclear labs through research and investigation and to give students an institutionalized means for overseeing the activities of the nuclear labs to which their University’s name is attached. Students involved in the DOELOC intend to facilitate its official establishment on other UC campuses in the near future.

    In an attempt to pressure the UC Regents to sever the University’s ties with the nuclear weapons laboratories, the UC student movement for severance with the labs organized a non-violent direct action in May 2007. The action involved hundreds of UC students and community members, at least 40 of whom underwent varying levels of fast, ranging from liquid only to total abstention from all sustenance besides water, for nine days. While I was a UC student at the time, and despite my shared desire for nuclear abolition and UC-nuclear lab severance with those who did take part in that action, I chose not to fast. However, my proximity to and support of those who were involved proffered me much insight into that action in particular, as well as the opportunity to become further involved in the UC student nuclear abolition movement in general.

    At Meiji Gakuin’s Tokyo campus, I had the opportunity to speak to an older, more technically informed audience made up of scholars, NGO representatives and older University students. Within that context, I was able to speak to the phenomenon of privatization sweeping through the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, the U.S. military, Academia, and other traditionally public spheres. After six decades of sole UC management, the U.S. Department of Energy revoked the UC’s status as sole manger of the nuclear labs, and put the labs up for bid. The University of California subsequently partnered with Bechtel, Washington Group International, and BWX Technologies, major firms already engaged in the most extensive operations throughout the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and won the new contracts for the management of LANL and LLNL. Lab management now falls under the auspices of two limited liability corporations with even less transparency and even more immense lobbying power than the labs experienced under UC’s sole management. These new contracts are indicative of the further monopolization of the nuclear production chain, from enrichment, to design and infrastructure construction, to production, to waste disposal.

    The privatization of the laboratories is part of a greater phenomenon of military privatization occurring under the Bush Administration. This development is worrisome as privatization of conventional and nuclear military production and operations creates a greater structural imperative for war, the expansion of military and nuclear activities, and the testing and use of conventional military and nuclear products, as these firms, like any other corporations, have imperatives of profit and growth to fulfill. During the question and answer period following my talk in Tokyo, I was asked by an audience member to clarify what I meant by “privatization of national laboratories,” as he professed that such a phenomenon in Japan would be “unheard of.” Furthermore, I was told later by my translator that he had a difficult time translating the concept, since the actual linguistic structure of the concept appeared to be a contradiction in terms. I didn’t have many answers for them besides the basics of government contracting and corporate subcontracting, as I’m similarly dismayed by the contradiction inherent to the concept of “privatized, national laboratories.” But I could offer them one point: As more governments adopt the neo-liberal economic prescriptions coming out of Washington, Japan not excluded, privatization may be coming to a public institution near you. Throughout my tour of Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Yokohama in Japan, I had the opportunity to speak with many people, young and old, regarding these issues.

    I also met many Japanese peace activists throughout my travels working on a wide variety of important campaigns, all interwoven with the common threads of nuclear abolition and demilitarization. Several organizations and many individuals are working to strengthen and promote Article Nine of the Japanese Constitution — through which the Japanese government has officially renounced war as a tool of foreign policy — and extend its spirit and legal framework abroad. Additionally, there is a thriving movement against the continuing occupation by the United States military, through its maintenance of several military bases stationed on the Japanese archipelago. Demilitarization activists are working to prevent the expansion of these bases through non-violent direct action, focusing their attention especially on the controversial base on the island of Okinawa. I was truly inspired by the dedication and bravery of those who shared their stories and struggles with me, and I found rejuvenation and strength in the existence of a global network of individuals all working for a very different world.

    Nevertheless, as an American, I found it personally difficult to travel through a country almost entirely destroyed through American firebombings and atomic bombings of Japanese cities during World War II, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, not to mention the continuing occupation by the United States in the form of ever-expanding military bases. I spoke to many young Japanese citizens who shared with me their experiences of the same sense of responsibility and remorse when traveling throughout China and Korea, countries which were exploited and ravaged by Imperial Japan. I recently encountered the same phenomenon when traveling throughout South America and befriending young German citizens carrying the weight of their country’s history on their shoulders. In a world that seems closer together and smaller every day, young people are finding it necessary to acknowledge the unpleasant history of their homelands, both as a means of healing as well as disassociating themselves, as individuals, from those horrible legacies.

    Indeed I find it difficult to go anywhere in the world today without the reputation of the current and past foreign actions of my country’s government, no matter what their contextual justification may be, hanging over my head, despite my own personal disassociation with many facets of that government as my legitimate representative. While I was welcomed with open arms throughout my travels in Japan, most especially by those individuals who lived through the bombings and subsequent occupation, and are most aware of the current imperialist exploits of the U.S. government, I always felt like I ought to apologize even for that which I’m not personally responsible. I never did offer an apology on behalf of the U.S. government, as I’m not its delegate, but I hope that through my words and actions, my counterparts across the Pacific were reassured that there exists a movement in my country that parallels their own, and that the actions of the U.S. government less and less represent the will of its people. Throughout the rest of this piece, I recount some of my experiences traveling through Japan as a young abolitionist. I offer a critique based on my own conception of the problems, to which Japan is no stranger, which urgently confront my generation and the very existence of our world.

    Kyoto, Japan, the country’s center of religious worship and cultural history, allows one to witness first-hand the all-too-familiar struggle that plagues the world’s centers of cultural heritage: the maintenance of indigenous tradition and culture in the face of corporate globalization. The spires of its many temples and shrines rise majestically above the city, sharing the skyline with apartment complexes and department stores, and drawing throngs of eager worshipers and international tourists at their foundations. Especially throughout the blooming of the cherry blossoms in the spring and the kaleidoscopic withering of the maple trees in autumn, the afternoon crush threatens to exceed the capacity of the anachronistically narrow, cobble-stoned alleyways between the sites. Yet it serves as a boon to the many local sweet and craft shops fortunate enough to have staked out a location close to the various site exits so as to justify the annual rent appreciation. Unlike the relics of ancient cultures throughout the Western world, which increasingly unabashedly share their plazas with the golden arches and feature a Starbucks or two within sight, Kyoto continues to struggle to maintain its local authenticity and historical heritage even as its intensively-branded center expands outward. Kyoto was one of the largest population centers in Japan to be mostly spared the U.S. B-29 fire bombings during World War II, which killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and almost wholly destroyed the infrastructure of most Japanese Imperial cities — subsequently reconstructed under occupation by the allied powers, and primarily by the United States. As money poured into the reconstruction projects in post-war Japan, the introduction of the Capitalist market system and Western lifestyle by the United States and Western Europe allowed for the type of development of the new Japanese economy to largely parallel the corporate structure of Western business. Kyoto’s visible perseverance in maintaining ancient cultural traditions and infrastructure is therefore an increasingly unique and important phenomenon both throughout the country and around the globe in the face of destructive warfare and increasingly pervasive corporate globalization.

    Kyoto has also lent its moniker to the first, albeit relatively modest, international treaty on reducing global carbon emissions in the form of the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in Kyoto in 1997 but not coming into force until early in 2005 following ratification by Russia. However, without the support and participation of the United States, responsible for more than 25% of overall carbon emissions, the treaty will not suffice to significantly alter the course of global warming. Given the United States’ superpower geopolitical status and highly disproportionate consumption rates, any sweeping international initiative regarding any global issue, from global warming to the disarmament of nuclear weapons, requires multilateral cooperation and benevolent leadership by the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the United States’ rogue history of arrogance and unilateralism — displayed most prominently through gunship diplomacy and the usurping of various international treaties and UN resolutions on test bans, environmental preservation, nuclear disarmament, and demilitarization — has resulted in a lack of overall human progress toward a more just and peaceful society.

    The eco-systemic finitude of the Japanese archipelago has its share of environmental woes, from over-fishing in its surrounding waters to the noxious air quality over Tokyo throughout the last century. But in a way microcosmically representative of the entire globe, the obvious finitude of Japan’s ecosystem has not prevented the corporate globalization model based on limitless quantitative economic growth from being allowed to continue practically unabated, just as it is around the world. And in response to its historical air pollution crisis and ever-increasing need for domestic power generation to fuel its growth, Japan relies on nuclear energy for over 30% of its energy production, presenting the seismically active and heavily populated island nation another pressing set of problems. Japan’s nuclear plants have experienced fires, reactor failures, spillage and leaks of radioactive materials into the environment, as well as the same exorbitant investment costs in reactors and enrichment facilities and the same lack of any safe means of permanent nuclear waste disposal that plagues the entire world. Despite the sustained existence of the same disastrous issues that the global nuclear energy industry and affected communities have always faced, many industry officials around the world continue to speak of a nuclear renaissance and tout nuclear energy as a clean solution to global warming despite its catastrophic history of environmental contamination.

    The irony was not lost on me as I took advantage of the high-powered electric Shinkansen (bullet-train) on which I sped across the country, peering out the window across rice fields, farming towns, industrial cities, and a picturesque mountain landscape, on my way from Kyoto to Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first glimpse of the nuclear age. On first face, the Shinkansen appears as a beacon of mass transit technology in a chaotic sea of carbon-spewing automobiles, allowing commuters to speed across long distances safely and efficiently, decreasing street traffic congestion, with a carbon output far below that of aircraft or car travel. In its current manifestation in Japan, however, the technology is largely dependent on centralized sources of high-yield energy output; and when proponents abroad sell the idea of high-speed rail and point to Japan’s Shinkansen as a model, the idea is often coupled with the derivation of power through nuclear energy, all under the guise of fabricating a greener infrastructure with a smaller carbon footprint. Certainly, mass transit need not be tied to nuclear energy, and the Shinkansen is a modern engineering marvel for human transportation. But as high-speed, mass transit technologies require such massive flows of electricity, interested parties should be wary of the de facto partnership made conceptually between the technologies in some promotional literature as well as the actual overlapping interests of companies like Mitsubishi and Hitachi. Both of these corporations are primarily responsible throughout Japan and in some areas abroad for the design, construction, and maintenance of both nuclear reactors and high-speed rail infrastructure. High-speed mass transit technology should be part of a solution to global warming, but nuclear power never has been, and never will be.

    Upon exiting the Shinkansen terminal in Hiroshima, I was immediately received and whisked away by my hosts through the busy streets of Hiroshima. On first face, the modern, bustling façade of the city is little different from the rest of the urban centers throughout Japan. It at first appeared that without some knowledge of the historical significance attached to the city, the unique and horrific history of the area would be hidden in a familiar sea of corporate billboards, busy salary-men shuffling silently through the streets on their way to work, and stylish young mall denizens ogling designer jeans in the windows of Western branded shops. Hiroshima hosts the growth of the same corporatized veneer spreading throughout the world through the vehicle of globalization, promoting the fetishization of a young, branded, bourgeois aesthetic and a culture of consumerism as the foundations of a new global youth culture premised upon immediate gratification and a skewed conception of civilized progress—a vision completely divorced from the physical limits of our Earth’s ecosystem. The same linear conception of progress as continuous growth, completely divorced from the reality of eco-systemic finitude, coupled with an anthropocentric value system promoting a vision of endless human mastery over the environment, allowed the world to be catapulted into the Nuclear Age and has helped sustain it throughout the decades. During my stay in this incredible city, however, I would come to learn that Hiroshima will never allow its citizens or the rest of the world to forget the city’s terrible history as the site of the world’s first human experiment with atomic weaponry. For in the wake of atomic terror, a new consciousness of peace and actual societal progress based on truth, compassion, and liberty from oppression was formulated, and a highly unique and increasingly rare public space was created and enshrined in the center of a city so that its citizens could hand down the city’s history and knowledge through the generations. Even after the last of the Hibakusha has passed on, the world will never be allowed to forget what happened on August 6th, 1945 at 8:15am in the city of Hiroshima, Japan, because the city’s very infrastructure is devoted to spreading its message of peace and hope that a different world, without the threat of nuclear weapons and all that they signify, can and must be realized.

    I spent my first hours in Hiroshima guest lecturing on nuclear weapons issues and youth activism in the United States to a peace and international studies class at Shudo University. I was assisted by a young translator involved with Hiroshima’s “Never Again” campaign, which helps to empower young people to spread Hiroshima’s message of peace and disarmament. In my experience, Japanese university students are in many ways very similar to their counterparts across the Pacific Ocean. A few are interested in politics and change of the status quo, but unfortunately, most can barely wait to leave campus, grab some KFC or a mocha latte, and go to the mall. In Japan, I encountered many of the same impediments to social change I encounter in the United States. Certainly, many young citizens of advanced industrialized countries are simply not aware of certain issues or have been denied the tools of critical systemic analysis required to piece together the geopolitical history necessary for an informed understanding of current events and issues. Even if they are aware of local institutions’ ties to warfare, the existence of military bases, or the practices of various military contractors with operations in their communities, they are unsure of what to do with that knowledge or whether they even should be doing anything at all. After all, critical systemic analysis of global issues and events can be downright depressing, and there is an entire world of opportunities for distraction for middle and upper class urban youth within advanced industrialized countries who have a bit of cash in their pockets.

    Just as in cities around the world, and in the metropolises of Tokyo and Yokohama, where I had spoken at both campuses of Meiji Gakuin University, Hiroshima’s downtown district keeps plenty on offer for the distraction of Japanese youth. They are similarly bombarded with glossy ads from every direction, which beg them to sink comfortably into the contrived bourgeois lifestyles depicted in storefronts and on the sides of buildings. In a country that is 98% Japanese, the ads often glorify the images of tall, blonde, Caucasian women in glamorous drab, seductively urging young shoppers to the various brands’ closest outlet stores. The almost kilometer-long downtown district of Hiroshima consists of an intensively branded strip of multinational outlets as well as Pachinko centers serving the lucrative and ever-growing gambling phenomenon across the country.

    The existence of these sensorially and emotionally stimulating centers of consumerism throughout the cities of advanced industrialized countries fills a void present in urban youth, which I would argue, is largely rooted in disempowerment. I often encounter young people who, while they may not possess a critical systemic understanding of global issues and events, know at some intuitive level that something is very wrong in their world. And I often meet knowledgeable, studious, young people who care deeply about the state of the world and the precariousness of our future. They understand that the confluence of a plethora of ecological disasters, disease, mass migration, war, exploitation, and the production and existence of many thousands of nuclear weapons in the world shrouds our generation in insecurity about our own future and the future of our Earth. But they are hopeless about change; they feel powerless. Or the situation is just too big to worry about when compared to the slew of personal difficulties one faces each day in just trying to survive. They have to work, go to school, care for sick or elderly family, and still have some fun somewhere in between. That leaves little time for changing the world. So for many, it’s so much easier to forget about it all and follow the simple advice given by President Bush to scared Americans within days of the attacks on September 11, 2001: go about business as usual and go shopping.

    But as corporate-driven globalization attempts to convince the world that it is just carrying out the inevitable, linear path of historical progress and that it is so much more convenient, cooler, and more fun to just go with it, there exists a dedicated, growing counter-movement for peace and justice, also globalized, working for a very different world. As one of the fulcrums of the global peace movement, Hiroshima draws thousands of tourists every year to an increasingly rare, central public space preserved for the critical reflection, intellectual expansion, and emotional expression of global citizens maintaining hope for a world free from nuclear weapons and imperialist war. Mere blocks away from the bustling downtown district, the Peace Park offers an expansive memorialization of the U.S. atomic bombing on August 6th, 1945. That bombing was followed by the Soviet invasion of Manchuria on August 8th, 1945, and a second U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945.

    Various monuments dedicated to victims of the atom bomb are erected throughout the tranquil park, including a memorial for the incinerated children who were not in school that day because they were commissioned by the Japanese military to build fire breaks. There is a memorial dedicated to the Korean slaves, approximately ten percent of those killed by the atomic bomb, who were incinerated while toiling in the factories of the Japanese imperial military. And there is, of course, the memorial for Sadako, a young, female survivor of the atomic bombing who, like many other survivors, contracted radiation-induced leukemia shortly afterwards. She believed, according to an old Japanese tale, that if she could fold one thousand paper cranes, that her wish for peace would come true. She died of her radiation-induced sickness before she could finish her project. But her story lives on, and children around the world still fold paper cranes in her memory and as symbols of hope for a world without wars and bombs.

    Each day throughout my stay in Hiroshima, I stood for a while and meditated in the area of the preserved A-bomb memorial dome, one of the few buildings near the hypocenter not completely obliterated by the atomic fireball unleashed across the city. That daily ritual during my stay in Hiroshima kept me centered and the space provided in memorial of the bombing offered me something that is less and less allowed for in urban centers throughout the world: a safe space to just feel. As the A-bomb dome and the peace park are in the center of the city, Hiroshima’s citizens cannot go a day without a reminder of their city’s history. But the preservation of the dome, its surrounding, reflective space, and the museum have helped the city to heal and empower itself as a center for change and anti-war activism. Current events and issues seen through the eyes of a citizen of Hiroshima must pass through the filter of its own history, proclaimed truthfully, and bestowing upon the successive generations the responsibility for its preservation.

    Only by way of an accurate internalization of our history can we hope to understand our contemporary world and its processes. Our historical knowledge allows us to sift through the rhetoric of elites and build a systemic understanding of our world that informs our interpretations of events and determines our reactions to them. The expansive and open public space in the middle of the city provides Hiroshima’s citizens and it’s visitors something which everyday is disappearing throughout the urban centers on Earth: a safe, public space, without distraction, where occupants are actually encouraged and trusted to come together and feel and think critically, and where one’s anger, outrage, and sadness at the fact that human beings could commit such horrific acts against each other are allowed to seep out and be psychologically processed through acknowledgement and comfort from the very infrastructure of the city. Through that processing and recognition, people are allowed to heal, giving their spirits renewed determination to focus on action for systemic change.

    Nicholas Robinson is the Program Associate at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in Spring 2007.

  • 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.

  • NATO Nuclear First Use Option

    David KriegerA recent article in The Guardian, “Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told” by Ian Traynor, January 22, 2008, refers to a report by a group of former senior military officers and strategists that calls for keeping open the prospect of resorting to the first use of nuclear weapons. The report’s five authors – including John Shalikashvili, a former NATO commander and a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Clinton administration – argue that current threats and challenges require NATO to keep open this option.

    The report states, “The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.” In their worldview, similar to that of President Bush, nuclear weapons are not just tools of deterrence; they are weapons that can be used preemptively.

    While the world is clearly dangerous, the threat of first use of nuclear weapons is unlikely to make it safer. The greatest dangers to the West now come from non-state terrorist organizations, which are generally not locatable, making it impossible to strike either before or even after an attack has occurred. The policy of first use of nuclear weapons, which the report’s high-ranking authors support, will speed the erosion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, encouraging other states to develop nuclear arsenals, if only to protect themselves from such policies in the West.

    The reality is that NATO, in the aftermath of the Cold War, is an organization searching for a purpose. Threatening first use of nuclear weapons would be a provocative and dangerous direction for the organization. It would make its members less secure rather than more so. It would push the world closer to the brink of the nuclear precipice.

    Einstein warned, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” A start toward the new way of thinking that Einstein saw as essential can be found in the thinking of those that support the total elimination of nuclear weapons, a prospect the authors of the report dismiss as unrealistic (“simply no prospect of a nuclear-free world”). If we want real security and freedom from the fear of nuclear holocaust, we had best focus on making the prospect of a world free of nuclear weapons realistic.

    There are a growing number of former US leaders, including George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, who believe that a nuclear weapons-free world is possible and should be our goal. They have also argued that the United States must lead the way to attaining this goal. Their recent article, “A Nuclear-Free World,” in the Wall Street Journal (January 15, 2008), sets forth their thinking on the necessity of this vision and the steps that are needed to achieve it.

    If we are going to succeed in removing the greatest danger facing humanity – that of nuclear war – it is necessary to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the security policies of the states that still possess these weapons. Developing doctrines for the first use of these weapons moves us 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Like war itself, nuclear weapons use should never be a strategy of first resort, and policies of first use move us dangerously in that direction.

    There is only one way to assure that nuclear weapons will never be used again – by accident or design – and that is to negotiate the abolition of these weapons and the strict international control of all weapons-grade nuclear materials and the technologies to create such materials. This would be consistent with the well-established obligation for nuclear disarmament in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It would be a far better way forward than standing at the nuclear precipice and thundering out the threat of nuclear first use.

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.