You might remember that the government recently gave Gareth Evans a new job – to lead a commission on nuclear disarmament. In that context, I happened to pick up (for the trans-Pacific plane ride) little Quarterly Essay-style book on nuclear disarmament by Hans Blix, the man who spent 2002-3 being conspicuously and inconveniently correct on the topic of Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.
In 2005-06, Blix headed a commission, supported by the Swedish Parliament, whose final report provides the most recent comprehensive summary of the issues surrounding nuclear disarmament. Given one of the commissioners was none other than Gareth himself, it would be reasonable to expect that the content reflects the general tenor of his own thinking on the topic (and, incidentally, raises the question of what else this new commission will add). It’s quite accessible and well-written, so if you’re interested in the question I’d recommend you download the report – or at least the executive summary – and have a look.
One thing I again find rather disappointing in this report is the rather (presumably deliberately) simplistic arguments on the abolition of nuclear weapons(as distinct from reductions). Like previous such efforts, they argue that the ultimate goal should be to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely:
A key challenge is to dispel the perception that outlawing nuclear weapons is a utopian goal. A nuclear disarmament treaty is achievable and can be reached through careful, sensible and practical measures.
Nowhere in the report (or Blix’s little book) is there any indication of how the “sensible, practical” measures discussed in other sections could possibly lead to complete disarmament. There’s nothing said about how the world would avoid cheating (on easily hidden biological weapons, let alone nukes). Indeed, there’s no real case made that the complete elimination of nuclear weapons is actually a desirable goal, given the history of the early part of the 20th century. Undoubtedly Blix – and Gareth Evans, for that matter – are not so thick as to have never considered these matters. But the fact that they don’t bother to address them in public weakens the credibility of that aspect of their program and makes one suspect it’s just boilerplate to keep nations outside the nuclear club happy.
But, anyway, if you want to know where Gareth is going to be starting from, read the report.
Good old Blixy:
Robert, I believe that while complete elimination is most desirable, it is not practical (sadly) for the forseeable future, and that perhaps is why it was not ‘mentioned’ being (again sadly) too utopian for consideration. OTOH, reduction in numbers bilaterally or unilaterally is most practical and achievable in the immediate future. Pressure must be put on the US in particular for their hypocrisy in developing new nukes (eg so called bunker busting) in defiance of the original NNPT agreement to reduce. The NNPT is regarded by the US, UK as a “club” which gives them licence to do anything at all and as if the treaty only existed to prevent others from going nuclear. I don’t see France going gangbusters on hypocrisy with new nuke development, nor China or Russia.
When they threaten Iran with nukes to prevent development of Iranian nukes, the ultimate disgraceful hypocrisy is plain for all to see, when at the same time, Israel Pakistan and India who have nukes, and are outside the NNPT, are rewarded.
But they mention it, claim it’s not a utopian goal, but never bother to make a case that it is a) achievable and b) even desirable (without a complete elimination of global tensions, which is a utopian goal for the foreseeable future).
It’s intellectual dishonesty.
A Nuclear Weapons Convention has been proposed by the organisation International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. You can read more about this and a separate proposal for ‘Defensive Defence’ in the Simultaneous Policy newsletter.
The Simultaneous Policy campaign brings people together around the world to propose, develop and vote on the policies they wish to see implemented to address global problems. It also allows cross-cutting solutions. See ‘Turning weapons into windmills’ at:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/07/weapons-windmills.html
This is a serious issue, and thanks Robert for your post.
If we could see some positive signs of further disarming by the major nuclear powers, then further steps might seem more feasible than they do now.
I would like to see progress on this. I fear we are going to witness concentration only on Iran and North Korea. The NNPT needs urgent remodelling.
Nuclear disarmament is not only possible, it’s inevitable.
The Blix Commission provides 30 recommendation on getting there; read the book, as Robert Merkel says, it’s worthwhile. As Merkel also says, because Gareth Evans was part of that process, he will understand that another report is not needed.
What is needed is something that will engage decision-makers on the practical, reasonable and achievable steps, galvanising and building momentum towards consensus at the next big meeting on nuclear weapons which will be held in April of 2010 when the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will be reviewed, in a post-Bush era.
What is sometimes forgotten is that just before Bush was elected, the governments that actually have nuclear weapons provided an unequivocal undertaking to achieve nuclear disarmament and they agreed to a 13 point action plan to achieve just that. They know that it is possible. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/13point.html
There are other road maps towards disarmament. South Africa had nuclear weapons, they dismantled the physical weapons, isolated the fissile material, took apart the science and political infrastructure and then invited the international community to come and verify. That is one model, and shows that once the decision is taken, the practicalities can happen rather quickly.
The 13 point action plan agreed then resembles the steps outlined in the Canberra Commission, which provided a series of *immediate steps*: 1)Taking nuclear forces off alert, 2) Removal of warheads from delivery vehicles, 3) Ending deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons, 4) Ending nuclear testing, 5) Initiating negotiations to further reduce United States and Russian nuclear arsenals, and 6) Agreement amongst the nuclear weapon states of reciprocal no first use undertakings, and of a non-use undertaking by them in relation to the non-nuclear weapon states. The Commission also identified a series of reinforcing steps 1) Action to prevent further horizontal proliferation, 2) Developing
verification arrangements for a nuclear weapon free world, 3) Cessation
of the production of fissile material for nuclear explosive purposes.
Pepole who have been in charge of nuclear weapons policy and strategic deployment and decision-making also believe that nuclear weapons can and should be eliminated. And when you consider where these people have been, they should know…
People with this view include General Lee Butler (Commander in Chief, US Strategic Command i.e. in charge of the arsenal during a chunk of the Cold War), former UK Navy Commander Rob Green (former navigator of UK nuclear strike aircraft), and more recently a group affectionately known as the four former horsement of the nuclear apocalypse, US Cold Warriors Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, George Shultz and William Perry. Their articles in the Wall Street Journal talk about Abolition of nuclear weapons – just like Obama is doing
Their 2007 article is here http://www.ploughshares.org/content/articles/a%20world%20free%20of%20nuclear%20weapons.pdf
Their 2008 article is here http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120036422673589947.html
The US Horsement have recently (last week) been joined by their conservative former defence officials counterparts in the UK, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord Hurd of Westwell and Lord Owen are all former foreign secretaries; Lord Robertson of Port Ellen is a former Nato secretary-general. Their statement is here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4237387.ece
This train is moving, and that the Rudd government has got on it, and will take up some leadership role is positive. My organisation, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the only NGO to have attended every single meeting of the NPT agitating for disarmament to bloody well get going, has written to them both to say great, include some women why don’t you? (The Canberra Commission had 1 out of 17!)
I guess the question is whether a weapons focus is going to contribute to a truly nuclear free world? I think it is. I contend that as nuclear weapons were the genesis of this nuclear mistake, then the recognition and admission that elimination is the only way to handle the problem does take us closer to the rejection of the entire nuclear project.
Recognition and admission that the theory of deterrence has been an opium of the security people – a contention that is accumulating legitimacy – will also have an impact on the legitimacy of the entire blind nuclear faith and its priesthood. My nuclear domino theory is that rejection of nuclear weapons – intensifying and codifying the taboo around weapons – lends itself more to a rejection of all things nuclear than it does to the PR Olympic doublespeak of the industry and its government agents. Every nuclear conversation is an opportunity to reject the entire nuclear fool cycle, to defy the delusion, the scientifically and historically indefensible ‘no’ to weapons yes to ‘reactors’. My organisation believes that nuclear reactors are pre-deployed radiological weapons waiting to be detonated by an enemy, that also make bomb fuel, and waste, utter filth for many thousands of future generations to deal with, waste that effects the gene pool, an experiment that is not reversible.
Felicity, thanks for your comments.
While I strongly support efforts to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, I again come back to the question on elimination. Why is it feasible, and is it indeed even desirable, given the history of the first half of the 20th century before nuclear weapons were invented?
Let’s take off our rose-coloured glasses at the moment. To take one obvious example, given the Holocaust, and given the fact that their neighbours invaded them repeatedly (whatever the rights and wrongs of those wars), how are you going to convince Israelis that giving up their nuclear weapons are a good idea?
Furthermore, while nuclear weapons can’t be cooked up in a back shed, biological weapons can. At the moment, there’s not much point, as nuclear weapons deter such attacks. How are you proposing to guard against that threat?
On another point, have you considered that global warming represents a greater threat to humanity than the potential of making additional nuclear weapons from spent reactor fuel – given that all of the existing nuclear powers have stockpiles of fissile material far beyond the actual completed weapons they have on hand, and most other advanced industrial nations are perfectly capable of whipping up additional nuclear weapons through a covert uranium enrichment program whether they have power reactors or not?
I’m sorry, but until those who argue for abolition at least seriously attempt to engage with these questions, they either appear disingenuous or naive.
Thanks for the rose coloured glasses naivete comment, as a woman working in the security field if I don’t get it at least once a week I start to worry. I’m sure Kissinger does too so I’ll make sure to pass it on because after all, he is such a patchouli stinkin hippie…
People who seriously argue for abolition do seriously engage with the questions you raise, on the Middle East, on the potential for break out from a disarmament regime, and climate change. I’ll try to introduce you to a few of them through links. A lot of these critical questions are dealt with in a book called Securing Our Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention which you can download, and also order here http://www.icanw.org/securing-our-survival
Have I thought about Israel, yes, a bit here http://dialogue.globalmajority.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=99 but other colleagues like Merav Datan of Greenpeace Israel, Rebecca Johnson of the Acronym Institute (see especially her article here http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd86/86nwfzme.htm scroll down to the section called “Israeli consderations”) have done much better work on making the arguments as to why Israel’s nuclear arsenal actually increases the tensions and resentments in the Middle East, representing a security threat to Israel more than a security guarantee and not only in terms of perceptions and standing, but also in terms of the tangible health and safety dangers citizens are placed in due to clandestine nuclear activities that do not benefit from international safeguards standards and inspections, such as they are.
Israel’s nuclear arsenal, calculated by sources originating outside of Israel to be some 70-200 nuclear weapons, is castigated in annual United Nations (UN) General Assembly and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolutions and provides a focus for dissent and criticism by various states parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Israel has never joined. These weapons affect Israel’s standing, and the ability and willingness of many states to unequivocally provide political support or even security guarantees to Israel.
The government of Israel has for years supported a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East; it is a consensus resolution of the General Assembly and also supported by the Security Council. As stated by Merav Datan in the article here http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd86/86wmdme.htm “The current deadlock on progress towards the stated goal of a WMD free zone in the Middle East and the huge gap between rhetoric and reality reflect how key states in the region have vastly different, even incompatible starting points. These in turn reflect different perceptions of the tensions, as well as the causes and effects of conflict, in the region.” She goes on to outline some stepping stones for increasing security in the region, and the central place that nuclear disarmament must play in bringing peace to the Middle East.
The threat of nuclear weapons being cooked up in a shed… The arguments against one or two nuclear weapons are valid, but over utilized in a world in which 27,000 exist, enough to remove life in an afternoon. It will be quite a while before this becomes a real problem, but as the argument is such a cause for pause…I’ll say that concern over this, though valid, should not prevent progress on nuclear disarmament. The real risk of breakout inherent in a nuclear disarmament regime must be measured not against a perfect nuclear weapons free world–where breakout is impossible–but against the world we live in today, where pursuit of nuclear weapons programs is a potential temptation to some states and even non-state actors.
Yes, it might be possible for a country to hide or create a few nuclear warheads and thus possibly remain a single nuclear-armed State in an otherwise nuclear-weapons-free world. In order to prevent such a monopoly, the most that might be possible is to get down to low levels of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, maintaining a nuclear-weapon-free world once the infrastructure had been verifiably dismantled and the nuclear option renounced would be more straightforward than verifying a precise low number of nuclear weapons and trying to enact an absolute policy of no-use and no-threat-of-use while some States still possessed nuclear weapons ‘just in case’. If we consider the two options, it appears that, we would be better off with a comprehensive abolition regime which would include robust mechanisms for verifying, enforcing and dealing with breakout and for ensuring security without nuclear weapons, than we would be with a partial disarmament regime with less capability to detect secret stockpiles and programmes. There will be risks in implementing a nuclear weapon free world, no doubt about it, however, these risks pale in comparison to the risks posed by maintaining the status quo or in only developing partial disarmament measures leaving the nuclear option still a possibility.
A concerted effort to eliminate not only nuclear weapons but the infrastructure behind them will require sequenced measures–perhaps incrementally reversible but cumulatively irreversible–aimed at building confidence and leading to a world in which developing nuclear weapons will mean starting from scratch. Such a program will become increasingly difficult to conceal as elements of the nuclear weapons industry are destroyed, converted or allowed to erode.
About global warming, have I considered the nuclear issues linked and delinked and artifically linked, oh yeah, just a bit! Its only THE issue in our community these days so yeah, its indescriminately gobbled up most of the time of most of my colleagues for the last few years. Global warming is the huge threat, and we need vast resources to tackle it – resources that are now being eaten up by outdated approaches to security whereby 1 trillion 339 billion dollars is spend on the military.
We chuck around terms like a billion with some abandon, but it takes 32 years to count to a billion, a billion seconds ago was the start of 1961. One billion minutes ago was the beginning of the Common Era. One billion hours ago our human ancestors were living in the Stone Age. One billion days ago no animal walked upright, the earth was mostly populated with crawling, swimming beings. 40 billion dollars is what the US spends on maintaining and patting its nuclear arsenal. A 1000-megawatt light water reactor plant can cost from US $2-3 billion. And billions in subsidies, including underwriting for construction cost or caps on construction costs, operating performance, non-fuel operations and maintenance cost, nuclear fuel cost and decommissioning cost, government administered insurance programmes, liability caps and guarantees that the output will be purchased at a guaranteed price.
I can go on a lot about why nuclear isn’t a solution to the climate crisis; nuclear IS a crisis. And the fissile material you talk about laying about is a Real problem too, a crisis too, one that could be handled by something like this http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/comprehensive-fissile-material
But as you know, the climate crisis is being used as the pretext for the nuclear industry to get a second wind. The facts are however clear that nuclear is not carbon emission free! The mining, processing and extensive transportation of uranium and nuclear fuel, and the building and maintenance of nuclear power plants releases a Great Deal of Carbon Dioxide. The German Environment Ministry goes so far as to say that gas is a ‘climate friendlier’ option when considering how dirty and dangerous the mining and processing uranium really is. (March 2006) Nuclear energy is too slow to build to effect action in the next decade, the crucial time frame we have to reduce dangerous climate change. About 440 nuclear power stations provide approximately 6% of the global primary energy mix, as calculated by the IEA.[2] To even double this figure, over 1000 nuclear reactors would have to be on constructed within 25 years,[3] requiring approximately one reactor to be put into operation each one or two weeks!, assuming to be starting this year – clearly not a feasible schedule. Each reactor would require a construction time of 5 to 9 years. Nuclear reactors last about 40 years, and then they have to be decommissioned. et yadda yadda cetra
And nuclear weapons use would trigger really disasterous climate affects . A couple of scientific studies have shown that even a “minor” or “small” nuclear exchange (there is no such thing!) would trigger catastrophic and long term climate effects http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-12/uoca-rnw121106.php
Okay, that’s about all the disingenuous rose coloured glasses wearing naive muddle headed girl’s got for ya.