Halfway to a nuclear-weapons-free world?
On July 15 the entire Southern Hemisphere became a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ). That’s when the Pelindaba Treaty entered into force, obliging all African states to renounce nuclear weapons and to refrain from acquiring them, and prohibiting the nuclear weapon states from stationing them anywhere on the continent. All 52 African states have signed the Treaty (it opened for signature in 1996), and last month Burundi became the 28th country to ratify – the magic number for entry into force.
Pelindaba now joins the Treaty of Tlatelolco (South America), the Treaty of Rarotonga (South Pacific), the Treaty of Bangkok (Southeast Asia), and the Antarctic Treaty in banning nuclear weapons south of the equator. Even better, most of Africa is north of the equator. So are substantial geographic areas covered by nuclear-weapons-free zones in Central Asia and Mongolia. In all, 114 countries – 60% of the world – have now banned nuclear weapons from their territories as a matter of international law.
That’s not a bad start.
One of the criticisms of NWFZ treaties is that they are largely symbolic – that the nuclear-weapon states will station and transport weapons wherever they want (especially on submarines) and that no treaty will protect the parties from the effects of a nuclear war between non-parties. The latter point is certainly correct, as the nuclear winter studies and more recent findings about the global climate effects of regional nuclear wars have made painfully clear.
It’s worth pointing out, however, that some nuclear-weapons states – including the two largest – have signed and ratified additional protocols to some of the NWFZ treaties and are being pressed to commit themselves to the terms of all of them. That may be symbolism, but it’s symbolism with the weight of international law behind it.
The texts of all the NWFZ treaties, lists of members, and other useful information for anyone wanting to learn more about the role of these zones in helping to achieve a nuclear-weapons-free world can be found at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
The Strategic Value of Remembering
I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the first time some 40 years after reading John Hersey’s account of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a teenager growing up on Long Island during the early years of the Cold War. Thinking about what I might write this morning—the 64th anniversary of the world’s horrifying introduction to nuclear weapons—I opened my fragile old copy of Hersey’s book at random and came upon this description:
Mr. Tanimoto, fearful for his family and church, at first ran toward them by the shortest route, along Koi Highway. He was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns—of undershirt straps and suspenders and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin), the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos. Many, although injured themselves, supported relatives who were worse off. Almost all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression whatever.” *
On a sweltering August day in 2005, the only physical evidence of the Hiroshima bombing was the A-bomb Dome—the twisted and bizarre wreckage of the former Industrial Promotion Hall, which had sustained overpressures of 35 tons per square meter, about 100 meters from the hypocenter of the explosion. Seeing the dome for the first time is a shock for which photos and film clips cannot prepare one. It’s grotesque, but strangely beautiful, like the mushroom cloud itself.
I’d heard that a kind of identity fatigue was starting to set in among younger people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—they understood the unique place of their cities in history, but no longer wanted to be defined by events so distant from their experience and their hopes. I saw a small example of this during a visit to the Nagasaki Peace Museum a few days later. Two teenage girls, looking at a diorama of injured people fleeing from the fires ignited by the Nagasaki bomb, pointed at a model of a man whose flesh was dripping from his arm and started to giggle. They had undoubtedly seen more “realistic” images in video games. But they kept looking, and the meaning of what they were seeing began to register on their faces. By the time they moved on, mockery had been replaced by something a lot more thoughtful. These images, as far removed in time as they are from most of our personal memories, still have the power to move us. Read more…
Apollo or Extinction
by Tad Daley
On December 31st, 1999, National Public Radio interviewed the futurist and science fiction genius Arthur C. Clarke. Since the author had forecast so many of the 20th Century’s most fundamental developments, the NPR correspondent asked Clarke if anything had happened in the preceding 100 years that he never could have anticipated. “Yes, absolutely,” Clarke replied, without a moment’s hesitation. “The one thing I never would have expected is that, after centuries of wonder and imagination and aspiration, we would have gone to the moon … and then stopped.”
Were Clarke alive today, he undoubtedly would have added, “and then lost so much interest that we erased the tapes of our epochal voyage because of a shortage of blank cassettes.”
This month, the 40th anniversary of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong’s first footsteps on the moon, you will hear many rationales for sending humans into space, many noble goals that the challenge of space can help humanity to fulfill. However, in cosmological consequence, one, and only one, stands paramount above all others — human immortality. Space is the only place where we can ensure ourselves against extinction. Read more…
Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Getting It Wrong
Admiral Halsey notified me
He had to have a berth or he couldn’t get to sea.
I had another look and I had a cup of tea and a butter pie.
I always liked that song. A little bit of Beatlesque story telling, presumably floating out of Paul McCartney’s hash pipe. I always assumed if there was an Admiral Halsey, he was simply a character in a pop song, like Father McKenzie or the pretty nurse selling poppies on Penny Lane.
Then I came across his name in the first volume of Larry Wittner’s authoritative history of the nuclear disarmament movement [1], and learned that British Admiral William Halsey had publicly criticized the use of the atomic bomb against Japan a little more than a year after the event, only to be pilloried by the US State Department and Navy Secretary James Forrestal. Bernard Baruch, Wittner tells us, lashed out at Halsey for “putting America in the wrong on moral grounds in the eyes of the world.”
These were people who were determined to build as many bombs as possible, as fast as possible, and to ensure a US nuclear monopoly for as long as possible. Real paragons of morality. A little more than 60 years later, those advocating a nuclear-weapons-free world find themselves vilified by some intellectual heirs of the first bomb enthusiasts—a disgruntled collection of neocons in exile, including the likes of Frank Gaffney, Henry Cooper, and Troy Wade [2]. Unlike 60 years ago, however, one of the main objects of the nuclear priesthood’s ire happens to be the President of the United States.
Calling themselves the New Deterrent Working Group, they have published a white paper that recycles one old and bankrupt argument after another for retaining and modernizing the US nuclear arsenal [3]. I’m about as ardent a recycler as you can find, and even I understand that certain things just need to go into the trash or, like toxic waste, be permanently isolated from the environment. This paper is one of those things. Read more…
They did not find the reset button
Maybe we had expected too much. There had been so many promises. In his speech in Prague in April President Obama said: “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”.
That is, Obama had chosen the Road to Zero nuclear weapons. Did he discuss this with the Russian President Medvedev? No sign of that.
Another chance: ”… to cut off the building blocks needed for a bomb, the United States will seek a new treaty that verifiably ends the production of fissile materials intended for use in state nuclear weapons”.
Russia and the USA are here basically in agreement. Obama and Medvedev could have scored an easy point:
We will cooperate and make this reality.
President Obama further promised in Prague: Today, I am announcing a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years. We will set new standards, expand our cooperation with Russia, and pursue new partnerships to lock down these sensitive materials
Here USA and Russia are since ten years or more cooperating in securing nuclear weapons and fissile material in Russia. They now agreed to cooperate to secure the weapon grades uranium globally and to reduce their stock of plutonium. Good, and important. But will there be a treaty, or just a declaration of intent? Read more…
IPPNW Responds to the Moscow Summit
In March 2009, just before the historic first meeting between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War sent the two leaders a letter signed by more than 300 of the world’s top physicians, appealing for leadership toward a world without nuclear weapons. Our hopes and expectations were raised by the statements issued from the London meeting, and by President Obama’s speech in Prague a few days later, when he pledged “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” and added that “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.”
From the perspective of the US-Soviet Cold War, when tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert threatened humanity with extinction, the goal announced by Presidents Medvedev and Obama this week in Moscow — the reduction of US and Russian strategic arsenals to their lowest levels since the mid 1950s — is welcome news.
As a promised “down payment” toward a nuclear-weapons-free world, however, this is a disappointingly small step. Combined stockpiles of 3,000 strategic warheads are still more than enough to kill and injure hundreds of millions of people, and plunge the Earth into a nuclear winter. Even a nuclear war using only a fraction of the proposed arsenals would result in a humanitarian and climate catastrophe to which physicians could offer no meaningful medical response.
There is no plausible definition of deterrence that could not be satisfied with far fewer weapons during the transition to a nuclear-free world. Engaging the other nuclear weapon states in meaningful negotiations will require deeper reductions by the world’s largest nuclear powers, and we see no reason to postpone such reductions despite the need to resolve disputes about missile defenses, NATO expansion, and conventional force levels. Taking all US and Russian missiles off high alert would go a long way toward removing the danger of accidental nuclear war, and can be done by executive orders in Washington and Moscow. We have urged both leaders to take this security enhancing and confidence building step in the past, and we do so again.
Ridding the world of nuclear weapons will not happen overnight. But we should not have to wait for another generation of leaders to finish the task to which Presidents Obama and Medvedev say they are committed—and to which we believe they are committed. A nuclear-weapons-free world can be achieved in our lifetime, but it will require bolder action than we have seen so far.
The Russian and US negotiating teams, with the support of abolitionist Presidents, could exceed the modest goals set for them in Moscow, and we hope they will. IPPNW told Presidents Obama and Medvedev in March that “A thousand years from now no one will remember most of what you will do over the next few years; but no one will ever forget the leaders who abolished the threat of nuclear war.” We reiterate that message as the Moscow summit comes to a close, and continue to offer our support, our encouragement, and our impatience for a world that is no longer held hostage to these instruments of mass extermination.
by Tad Daley and Kevin Martin
If our thousands of nuclear weapons actually do serve to deter, then why should we be concerned about a nuclear North Korea or a nuclear Iran? If they do not serve to deter, then why retain them at all?
When South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Washington for a summit with President Barack Obama on June 16, the United States reaffirmed its “commitment of extended deterrence” to Seoul, “including the US nuclear umbrella.” In response, on June 25, the 59th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, North Korea vowed to continue to expand its nuclear arsenal, to deliver a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation” in response to US “provocations,” and insisted that the nuclear umbrella statement only “provides us with a stronger justification to have a nuclear deterrent.”
It is not entirely clear to us why the international community considers it wholly legitimate for the United States to say, “if North Korea engages in aggression against South Korea or the United States, we will retaliate with nuclear weapons,” while it universally condemns North Korea when it says, “if the United States engages in aggression against us, we will retaliate with nuclear weapons.” Perhaps, in light of all this radioactive rhetoric, it is worth pausing to consider just what “nuclear deterrence” might mean in today’s world … or whether it means anything at all.
The conventional wisdom holds that nuclear weapons have only one legitimate function in today’s world – deterrence. Most often this is framed as one country (the deterror) dissuading the use of nuclear weapons against it by another country (the deterree), by threatening nuclear retaliation in reply. This has long been the primary answer to the awkward question, just what are nuclear weapons for? Read more…
The new nuclear math
Pick a number. Any number. How about 1,500? That’s how many nuclear weapons General Nikolai Solovtsov wants to keep in the Russian arsenal at the conclusion of the next round of START negotiations with the US. “We must not go below 1,500 warheads,” the head of Russia’s strategic missile forces said in an interview this week.
Maybe you prefer 160? That’s the number of operationally deployed warheads the UK has settled on as “a minimum, safe, and effective” nuclear deterrent. The Indian Defence Ministry reportedly likes the number 400, which would suggest that Delhi still considers itself a few hundred warheads shy of a “safe minimum.”
The North Korean government has been sending a loud and clear message that one or two nukes should be enough to make its enemies think twice. The state-run newspaper has promised a “merciless” retaliatory strike “to those who touch the country’s dignity and sovereignty even a bit.”
There are six other nuclear weapon states with arsenals of varying sizes, who appear to have made their own calculations about what constitutes a “minimum” number of nuclear weapons for an “effective deterrent.” Picture rooms full of actuaries and auditors laboring over computer spreadsheets containing rows of targets and columns of warheads, plugging in different population densities and explosive yields and observing the effect on the peaks and troughs of the casualty graph until the elusive number appears with statistical precision.
“Look, Reggie, there it is! Our absolute minimum deterrent.”
In the twisted logic of nuclear deterrence, the North Korean math, while just as opaque and dysfunctional as anyone else’s, is at least brutally honest. One need only recall the devastation caused by two bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to understand why it would be a bad idea to provoke a country in possession of even a handful of such weapons.
The problem with deterrence theory is the hidden assumption that it will never fail. If the strategists could guarantee that deterrence will work perfectly and forever, then one arbitrary “minimum” force level would be as good as any other. The truth is that they can’t, and it won’t, and it’s not.
In the real world, where the lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that nuclear weapons must never be used again, where preventing their use by others is the only remotely defensible reason for having them yourself, and where even that rationale is unsustainable over the long term, only one number exists that is not arbitrary: zero.
General Solovtsov conceded that “this decision is up to the political authorities of the country.” President Medvedev will meet with President Obama next month in Moscow to set goals for the START negotiations. Across-the-board reductions to 500 nuclear weapons in each country, as unlikely as that seems this time around, would send a signal to France (with 300) and China (with about 200) and the others (with fewer than 400 among them) that the road to zero is open for traffic. Any number higher than 1,000 will amount to a squandered opportunity.
Russian Prime Minister Putin told the BBC this week that “If those who made the atomic bomb and used it are ready to abandon it, along with—I hope—other nuclear powers that officially or unofficially possess it, we will of course welcome and facilitate this process in every possible way.”
Are the “political authorities” ready to give the generals a lesson in the new math? Let’s hope so.
Nuclear Posture Review
WAND has a great action going at the moment, although it seems that only US citizens can use the form on their web page. They are asking you to write to President Obama to encourage him to make sure the Nuclear Posture Review advances nuclear abolition. Here’s what I wrote:
Dear President Obama,
You have understood that nuclear weapons are more of a liability than an asset; they create more risks than they address. I too wish to see a world free of nuclear weapons, but I would like to see it in my lifetime.
As your Administration undertakes its Nuclear Posture Review, please ensure that the reviewers keep the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons firmly in mind. The policies and plans set forth in the Review should both reflect and further this ultimate goal.
Most importantly, the first step should be preventing the use of nuclear weapons. For this reason, while nuclear weapons are still in existence, it should be clearly stated that the United States does not intend to use them in a first strike, but only in retaliation, in the very unlikely event that another country uses nuclear weapons against it. They should not be used as a deterrence against conventional attack or for attack using biological or chemical weapons. This would be disproportionate and is quite clearly illegal under international law.
Preventing the use of nuclear weapons also means taking them off high alert. This should be a priority in talks with Russia about a follow-on treaty for START 1. If we could get away from the Launch-On-Warning posture, the world would immediately be a safer place. It would also improve the security relationship with Russia and end the Cold War definitively.
The new NPR should renounce the “Axis of Evil” and signal to all those countries that were named as targets that the US seeks to improve its security relationship with those countries.
Those are some of my suggested first steps. Who am I to be saying this? I am a disarmament expert from Germany and the UK that has been working for the last 30 years for the abolition of nuclear weapons. I work for the nobel-peace prize winning organisation The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)
Sincerely,
Xanthe Hall, Berlin
If you want to take part in this action, go to WAND’s webpage.
Xanthe
Power struggle in North Korea
Despite speculation in the Western media about recent developments in the DPRK — in particular the nuclear test announced by the North Korean government on May 25 —we know little of what goes on in the leadership of the country. The information we get is unreliable and we hear little from the North Korean side.
Recent conversations with experts who have some direct access to the discussions in the DPRK leadership suggest that the power centers in the country may be more fractured than most of us realize, and that this may actually increase the dangers in an already dangerous region.
There is an ongoing fight between the military leaders and certain politicians and diplomats, especially those in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the past year, the military has, in general, made the decisions regarding foreign policy. Yet these same military leaders have little information, experience, or understanding of the world outside the DPRK. They not only believe they can win a war against South Korea, but they even talk of the need for a war against the “archenemy” Japan.
Many politicians in Pyongyang, we are told, understand and regret that recent actions by the DPRK have contributed to an increased tension in the area. Their influence in relation to an unyielding military, however, may be too slight to fend off war in response to a mistake or a provocation.
Little is known — inside or outside the DPRK — about the health and status of President Kim Jong-Il, and the recent naming of his successor has only fueled speculation.
During the Korean conflict in the 1950s, US General Douglas MacArthur threatened to use nuclear weapons against the North. Korean prisoners of war who had experienced the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came back telling of this terrifying weapon. North Koreans say these two facts spurred Kim Il Sung to start a nuclear weapons program .
The DPRK chose to build a plutonium bomb. This fitted with the concept of “self-reliance” in the Juche philosophy of Kim Il Sung. The research reactor in Yongbyon, after some initial assistance from the Soviet Union, was built and run without foreign help. Enough plutonium has reportedly been extracted for four to eight charges.
Building a plutonium bomb, however, is difficult. The first DPRK test, conducted in October 2006 after decades of work, was essentially a dud, with a yield of less than one kiloton. The second test explosion, on May 25, 2009 (Memorial Day in the US) seems to have worked perfectly. While the first test was publicized in advance, no notice was given before the second test; had it failed, we may never have known.
We do not know how many bombs are in the DPRK’s arsenal (though the number must be quite small) or whether they would detonate as intended. That the North has no reliable missiles able to carry these warheads to Japan or further does not matter. The bombs are political weapons intended to deter a possible aggressor, and they give more confidence to the military. As long as the DPRK generals believe that the US and the South Korean generals believe that the bombs may work, that is enough. The successful nuclear weapons test has, therefore, also achieved its second objective — to strengthen the influence of the generals in Pyongyang.
Negotiations regarding the nuclear program have been going on — or on and off — for at least 15 years. They have brought status to the DPRK and its leader, domestically and abroad. They have been used to extort oil and rice, and have been interrupted whenever the DPRK has felt that its negotiating partners — particularly the US — have not kept their part of the agreements. Inclusion by the Bush administration in the “axis of evil” stopped the cooperation for some time.
President Obama offered North Korea a fresh start. Soon after the beginning of his presidency, however, there was a very large military exercise in South Korea with US forces in mighty display. The DPRK protested, then tested a missile. The UN Security Council condemned the test and threatened more sanctions. North Korea, in turn, threatened that sanctions would lead to a strong reaction from Pyongyang. Pyongyang asked why the DPRK had been singled out and prohibited from launching a satellite.
The Security Council condemned the May 25 test and added new sanctions. South Korea joined the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and signaled its intention to board DPRK ships on international waters if it suspects that the ship might contain “weapons of mass destruction.” (An incident in the disputed waters along the 38th parallel, where military actions have occurred in the past, may be more likely.) The North predictably declared that such an action by the South would constitute an infraction of the Armistice Agreement and would be an act of war. Less predictably, the DPRK declared the Armistice void! They have tested more missiles and are preparing a test of a long-range missile.
Why, we asked the experts, has the DPRK taken this road rather than accept the invitation from President Obama to bilateral negotiations? The military exercise was a holdover from the previous administration; the Security Council sanctions could have been negotiated away. Instead you have chosen a road that leads to increased tension, and an increased risk of war.
According to our sources, many politicians in the DPRK, particularly in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wanted to resume negotiations, but the military leaders — arguing that negotiations had failed time and again and that only military strength counts — prevailed. They believe that the South does not want a conflict and could not handle millions of refugees; and that with nuclear weapons as a deterrent, the USA and South Korea will go out of their way to avoid a serious confrontation..
The generals say (and believe!) they can win a war. They have talked of their invincible forces for so long that they have come to believe their own words. The situation is very tense and dangerous. Generals who believe they are invincible are always dangerous. They might decide to provoke an incident to show their strength, and maybe impress the “Dear Leader.”
US and South Korean politicians and military leaders should tread cautiously.
Bimal Khadka
Bjorn Hilt
Charles K. Johnson
Gunnar Westberg
IPPNW
John Loretz
Lawrence Wittner
Maria Valenti
mollymcgint
Sue Wareham
Tilman Ruff
Tim Wright
Xanthe Hall
IPPNW peace and health blog 