Nuclear
Age Peace
Foundation Statement
The
Challenge of Nuclear Weapons
in the Twenty-first Century
A Path Forward
By
David
Krieger
President, Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation
TFF
associate
June 23, 2003
The peoples and governments of the world face an
urgent challenge relating to weaponry of mass destruction
and particularly to nuclear weaponry.
At the crossroads of technology, terrorism,
geopolitical ambition, and policies of preemption are new
and potent dangers for humanity. Despite ending the
nuclear standoff of the Cold War era, nuclear weaponry is
again menacing the peoples of the world with catastrophic
possibilities.
We recognize the need for any government to pursue its
security interests in accordance with international law;
and further, we recognize that distinctive threats to
these interests now exist as a result of an active
international terrorist network having declared war on
the United States and its allies. Nonetheless, we reject
the assessment of the current US administration that
upgrading a reliance on nuclear weapons is in any sense
justified as a response. We find it unacceptable to
assign any security role to nuclear weapons. More
specifically, nuclear weapons are totally irrelevant and
ineffective in relation to the struggle against
terrorism.
Nuclear weapons, combined with policies that lower
barriers to their use, pose unprecedented dangers of
massive destruction, recalling to us the horrors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Any major use of such weapons
could doom humanity's future and risk the extinction of
most life on the planet.
The international regime preventing proliferation of
nuclear weapons has badly eroded in recent years, and is
in danger of unraveling altogether. This is due in large
part to the refusal of the nuclear weapons states to
fulfill their long-standing obligations set forth in
Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to
pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith. Other states,
taking note of this underlying refusal to renounce these
weapons over a period of more than five decades, have
seen growing benefits for themselves in acquiring nuclear
weapons.
Back in 1998, India and Pakistan, responding at least
in part to the failure of the declared nuclear weapons
states to achieve nuclear disarmament, decided to cross
the nuclear weapons threshold. These two countries, both
having always remained outside the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, have a long history of conflict
and war with each other. They are a flashpoint for
potential nuclear war in South Asia.
Another flashpoint is Israel's undeclared, yet
well-established, nuclear weapons arsenal, which
introduces the risk that nuclear weapons will be used in
some future crisis in the Middle East. Israel's nuclear
arsenal and the implicit threat of its use has encouraged
other Middle Eastern countries to seek or acquire weapons
of mass destruction, including the establishment of
nuclear weapons programs.
A third flashpoint exists on the Korean Peninsula in
Northeast Asia, where North Korea has withdrawn from the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other agreements
restricting its nuclear program. The North Korean
government has announced that it will expand its nuclear
weapons program unless the US agrees to negotiations to
establish a mutual security pact.
US government policies are moving dangerously in the
direction of making nuclear weapons an integral component
of its normal force structure, and terrorists are
becoming increasingly unscrupulous in challenging the
established order. Terrorist organizations have been
boldly seeking access to weaponry of mass destruction.
Beyond this, the recent Iraq War, supposedly undertaken
to remove a threat posed by Iraqi possession of these
weapons, seems to have sent the ironic message to North
Korea and others that the most effective way to deter the
United States is by proceeding covertly and with urgency
to develop a national arsenal of nuclear
weapons.
US official policies to develop smaller and more
usable nuclear weapons, to research a nuclear
earth-penetrating weapon for use as a "bunker buster,"
and to lessen the timeframe for returning to underground
nuclear testing, along with the doctrine and practice of
preemptive war, have dramatically increased the prospect
of future nuclear wars. The nuclear policies and actions
of the US government have proved to be clearly
provocative to countries that have been named by the US
president as members of ìthe axis of evilî
or that have been otherwise designated by the present US
administration to constitute potential threats to the
United States. Several of these countries now seem
strongly inclined to go all out to acquire a deterrent in
the face of American intimidation and threats.
There is no circumstance, even retaliation, in which
the use of nuclear weapons would be prudent, moral or
legal under international law. The only morally, legally
and politically acceptable policy with regard to nuclear
weapons is to move rapidly to achieve their universal and
total elimination, as called for by the world's leading
religious figures, the International Court of Justice in
its 1996 opinion, and many other governments and
respected representatives of civil society. Achieving
such goals would also dramatically reduce the
possibilities of nuclear weapons falling into the hands
of terrorist organizations.
Given the existence of treaty regimes that already ban
chemical and biological weapons, the outlawing and
disarmament of nuclear weapons would complete the
commitment of the governments and peoples of the world to
the prohibition and elimination of all weaponry of mass
destruction. Such a prohibition, and accompanying regimes
of verification and enforcement, could lead over time to
a greater confidence by world leaders in the rule of law,
as well as encourage an increased reliance on non-violent
means of resolving conflicts and satisfying
grievances.
It is the US insistence on retaining a nuclear weapons
option that sets the tone for the world as a whole,
reinforcing the unwillingness of other nuclear weapons
states to push for nuclear disarmament and inducing
threatened or ambitious states to take whatever steps are
necessary, even at the risk of confrontation and war with
the United States, to develop their own stockpile of
nuclear weaponry. In this post-September 11th climate,
the United States has suddenly become for other
governments a country to be deterred rather than, as in
the Cold War, a country practicing deterrence to
discourage aggression by others.
For these reasons, we call upon the United States
government to:
- Abandon its dangerous and provocative nuclear
policies, in particular, researching, developing and
making plans to shorten the time needed to resume
testing of new and more usable nuclear weapons;
- Take its nuclear arsenal off the high alert status
of the Cold War;
- Meet its disarmament obligations under Article VI
of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the
Treaty's Review Conferences, including making arms
reduction agreements irreversible;
- Renounce first use of or threat to use nuclear
weapons under all circumstances;
- Enter into negotiations with North Korea on a
mutual security pact; and
- Assert global leadership toward convening at the
earliest possible date a Nuclear Disarmament
Conference in order to move rapidly toward the
creation and bringing into force of a verifiable
Nuclear Weapons Convention to eliminate all nuclear
weapons and control all nuclear materials capable of
being converted to weapons.
We also call on other nuclear weapons states to accept
their responsibilities to work toward a world without
weapons of mass destruction as a matter of highest
priority.
These steps leading to the negotiation and
ratification of a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons
should then be coordinated with existing arrangements of
prohibition associated with biological and chemical
weapons to establish an overall regime dedicated to the
elimination of all weaponry of mass destruction. It would
be beneficial at that stage to also create an
international institution with responsibility for
safeguarding the world against such diabolical weaponry,
including additional concerns associated with frontier
technologies, such as space weaponization and
surveillance technology, radiological weapons, cyber
warfare, advanced robotics, genetic engineering and
nanotechnology.
Finally, we recommend that an international commission
of experts and moral authority figures be appointed by
the Secretary General of the United Nations to issue a
report on existing and emerging weaponry of mass
destruction and to propose international arrangements and
policy recommendations that would enhance the prospects
for global peace and security in the years ahead and,
above all, the avoidance of any use of weapons of mass
destruction.
Humanity stands at a critical crossroads, and the
future depends upon our actions now.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-profit,
non-partisan international organization dedicated to the
elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction, the strengthening of international law and
the education of a new generation of peace leaders.
Further information may be found at the Foundation's web
site: www.wagingpeace.org.
©
TFF & the author 2003
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