Title: Looking up at the Apocalypse: Disarmament, Climate Change, and Justice
Track:  Economic Justice/Human Needs
Co-sponsored by:  Western States Legal Foundation and Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. Panelists: M. V. Ramana, Jennifer Nordstrom, and Andrew Lichterman

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Transcripts

by Andrew Lichterman (view bio):  ”Superficial politics, fundamental causes: some reflections on the relationship between the movements to abolish nuclear weapons and to stop global warming” — Download PDF

Title: Youth Lobbying and Messaging

Track: Abolition

Co-sponsored by:  Ban All Nukes Generation USA (BANg USA), Ban All Nukes Generation Europe (BANg Europe), and the Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project (a project of IPPNW).

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Workshop Material

• Download the presentation — PowerPoint (4.4 MB)
• Download the presentation in PDF (1.4 MB, slides only)

Confronting the Challenges of Nuclear Weapons and Capitalism

by Zia Mian

April 30, 2010

As we all know—both the people in this room and the people who run the world—we are in a moment of profound crisis in so many ways.  We face a political, economic and ecological challenge of unprecedented proportion.

There are a very small number of countries—and a small number of people who make real decisions that shape the policies of those countries—that are trying to shape and to find solutions to this crisis in particular ways.  These people have a recognition that the old order of the world—political, economic, and ecological—has come unraveled, and that it is now creating so many problems that the existing structures as they are can not sustain the status quo.  So, what do they do, and what do we do?

The old order is in crisis, and we need to do something.  This is where the divergence begins, because on all the issues that matter, the people that run the countries that run the world are trying to find ways to preserve the status quo because the status quo is the system that maintains their positions of wealth, power and privilege in the world.  The last thing they are willing to contemplate is the kind of solution and response to this crisis that will actually take away or fundamentally alter the present balance of power in the world.  They see the status quo slipping away and they are not letting go easily.

Turning to the specifics of how this expresses itself in the issues of nuclear weapons, capitalism and climate change, I think we all see that the notion that the election of President Obama marked a fundamental shift and that the change that he promised was going to be real, has now been shown to be without foundation.  As much as we may have wished otherwise, the key thing to understand about Obama is not Obama but the aspiration for change that poured itself in the direction of Obama.  People wanted change.  What we got was Obama.

In this regard, let me say something that captures this for me.  For the last year, we have heard endless mention—and for the next month at the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – the Review Conference of NPT states, which meets once every five years, was held in New York from 3-28 May 2010] we will hear continuous mention—of Prague and the speech that Obama made there a year ago in April, in which he said that the United States had a “moral responsibility” to work towards creating the conditions for eliminating nuclear weapons.  When you look to see what has actually happened since then, however, you find that it ends there.

Obama is not the first American president to promise this by any means.  If you look back at the speeches that past presidents have made, you will see that so many of them said the same thing, one way or the other.  Many of you here will remember that Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik [in October 1986] talked about, and said that they had reached agreement in principle on, the need to abolish nuclear weapons.

But many fewer people will remember that in [September] 1961, a very young, very dynamic, very charismatic American president who carried the hopes of an entire generation came to the United Nations and made a radical speech.  His name was John F. Kennedy, and he said that “every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles,” which is “hanging by the slenderest of threads” and which is “capable of being cut at any moment by accident, miscalculation or madness.”  “The weapons of war,” he said, “must be abolished before they abolish us.”

He went even further.  He said that “disarmament negotiations” should begin “promptly” and “continue without interruption until an entire program for general and complete disarmament had not only been agreed upon, but had actually been achieved.”

This program, he said, should involve a “steady reduction in force, both nuclear and conventional, until it has abolished all armies and all weapons with the exception of those needed for internal order and for a United Nations peace force.”  This was the vision in 1961, fifty years ago.

It’s in that context that you have to look at Barack Obama and Prague.  Obama said that we will work towards creating the conditions for eliminating nuclear weapons but will keep nuclear weapons until they are eliminated. [He said “Make no mistake: As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.”]

The Obama administration’s vision of what the abolition of nuclear weapons means is available in the Nuclear Posture Review that they released only a few weeks ago [in April 2010].  If you read it, I urge you to also read the Nuclear Posture Review released by the Bush administration in 2002, which has already been forgotten.  Between the two, you will find amazing continuity.

The Bush administration, much loathed, much chastised (rightfully by many and for good reasons), said that U.S. nuclear weapons were “unsuited to most of the contingencies for which the United States prepares.”  In other words, the existing nuclear arsenal of the United States is unsuited for the things we need to do in the world.

The Obama Nuclear Posture Review says “the nuclear arsenal today is poorly suited to address the challenges the U.S. now faces.”  We have gone from “unsuited” to “poorly suited.”  That is the gap between George Bush’s Nuclear Posture Review and Barack Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review.

The Bush Posture Review said that we now have a new nuclear triad, which goes beyond the old triad [of land and submarine- based nuclear armed missiles and nuclear-armed bombers] and includes both nuclear weapons and conventional weapons.  It said that we will develop a conventional weapons system that will have global reach, that we will build missile defenses, and that we will have a modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.  These will be the three pillars of the American nuclear defense going forward.

You will find exactly the same pillars in the Obama Nuclear Posture: the commitment to nuclear weapons, to building what they call “Prompt Global Strike” which is a system of conventional armed ballistic missiles that can reach anywhere in the world in 30 minutes, the commitment to missile defenses, and a massive commitment to the modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

When you look to see in detail what the Obama administration actually lays down, you find that the old order continues in fundamental ways.

What for me is the most telling about the vision they have of abolition is that they say in the Nuclear Posture Review (on page 48) that in a world where nuclear weapons have been eliminated, it will be necessary to both keep a strong nuclear infrastructure and to maintain human capability in the United States so that if someone cheats, we can remake nuclear weapons.  In other words, even in a world without nuclear weapons, they want to keep nuclear weapons laboratories and nuclear weapons scientists, so that in an emergency they can remake nuclear weapons.  That’s not quite the vision that we have when we talk about the abolition of nuclear weapons

As I mentioned, the Obama administration is increasing spending on U.S. nuclear weapons, the budget of which is over fifty billion dollars a year. [In 2008, the total nuclear weapon spending was estimated to be at least $52 billion.] The Obama administration has increased this number substantially and intends to keep increasing it. [The Obama Administration has announced it will spend, over the next decade, well over $100 billion on nuclear weapon delivery systems to sustain existing capabilities and modernize some strategic systems and to invest $80 billion to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex.]

As part of that program, they’re intending to build at Los Alamos, where the first nuclear weapon was made, a new factory for creating plutonium pits, which are the cores of nuclear weapons.  People who follow this issue very closely (such as my friend Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, who has tried to fight this new plutonium pit factory) estimates that the factory will cost several billion dollars and will be capable of making more than one hundred nuclear weapons pits per year.  This is what the Obama administration has said that it will fund.

However, this military expenditure—fifty billion plus dollars a year on nuclear weapons and rising—is less than ten percent of the total U.S. military budget.  Therefore, when we talk about “No Nuclear Weapons: Fund Human Needs,” [the banner for this conference] it should not be just about nuclear weapons.   It should be about the other four hundred ninety billion dollars that is the military budget. [The base military budget for 2010 was $533 billion dollars, and there was another $130 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.]

We all know this.  Now we have to break the perception that we created that getting rid of nuclear weapons will somehow fundamentally change the dynamic that is at play in the world.  Nuclear weapons are only the tip of the spear.  The rest of the spear is the conventional military force and the threat and use of violence in the world by nation-states as the fundamental instrument of their defense and foreign policy.  If we don’t talk about it in those terms, they can abolish nuclear weapons and nothing will change.

Regarding the larger crisis of capitalism, I offer two observations.  The first is that there is a global crisis of capitalism.  Everybody knows it, and it shows how fast things have changed.

Ten years ago, we were told that we were in a period of unprecedented prosperity and economic growth, that globalization was making everybody better off, and that people were coming out of poverty in very large numbers very quickly.  Instead, what we’ve seen is that the crisis has actually fed off the very structures of globalization and inequality that existed and worsened them in dramatic ways.

Before the crisis, there were twenty-five U.S. hedge fund managers, who each made over two-hundred forty million dollars a year.  That’s twenty-five people who earned a total of six billion dollars.  The economic stimulus and recovery packages that governments are putting in place are an attempt to restore the previous dynamic economic system that existed, the same dynamic economic system that produced hedge fund managers who make this much money.  [According to the New York Times, in 2009, the top 25 managers earned $25.3 billion including fees and capital gains, for most working people average earnings fell, and about 15 million people are out of work.]

We have to ask the question: if you’re trying to address the crisis of capitalism, are you simply trying to restore the status quo, or are you actually going to talk about fundamental issues of equity and redistribution and the global pattern of production distribution and exchange?  Nobody’s going to do this unless we do it.

Last year, the president of the [United Nations] General Assembly asked a group of experts, lead by the economist Joseph Stiglitz, to do a study and write a report about what to do about the global economy and the global economic crisis.  They wrote a really interesting report about the need to restructure the global economy and, more importantly, the structures that manage the global economy, the “who decides?” part.  [The report was submitted to the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development, held in New York from 24 to 30 June 2009.]

What they said was that as a consequence of the present economic crisis, thirty thousand to fifty thousand additional children in Africa will die from malnutrition each year—as long as this crisis continues—and that an additional sixty-four million people will be driven into absolute poverty, which they define as living on less than one dollar and twenty-five cents per day.  An additional sixty-four million people will be pushed into this poverty because of the crisis.

The Food and Agriculture Organization reported that the crisis will contribute to the number of hungry and undernourished people worldwide, which will rise to over 1 billion.  That’s what this crisis is doing.

They [the Group of Experts] suggested that to deal with this, we need to change who decides, so that instead of the present system of large global corporations making decisions that no one has any democratic control over, or a handful of key governments dominating the global economy—it used to be the G6, then it became the G7, then it became the G8, now it’s the G20—they said that what we need is a G192, which would be all the members of the general assembly.

What they proposed—and I think this is a very important proposal with great implications—is that there should be an elected representative forum in the General Assembly, at the level of the General Assembly and the Security Council, to manage global economic policy coordination.  This would provide leadership in economic, social and ecological issues.

We need a global, representative, more democratic system to manage the global economy because without it, all we will do is perpetuate the system of small global political elite in some countries and an economic elite spread across the world in these multinational corporations deciding the future of everybody, and that has to change.  So we need to get behind that kind of system—democratizing economic policy—as much as we get behind the need to abolish nuclear weapons and take action on climate change.

I think you get the message, which is very straightforward. We talk about nuclear weapons—and will be talking about almost nothing but nuclear weapons for the next month at the NPT—but we have to stop talking just about nuclear weapons.

It’s not about deterrence, or about fulfilling Article IV of the NPT (although this may be heresy to some people in this room).  It’s about the use of force, power and violence in the world, about who decides.

If you’re going to the NPT, go and remind them of what Kennedy said.  Say “you promised to abolish armies, so let’s see you do that.  Then you can tell us you’ve done something worthwhile.”

With capitalism, it’s about profit-making and profit-taking, about who makes it and who takes it.

The onus on us as activists who talk about social justice, equity and the need for peace and sustainability is to keep the discussion at the level of structure and fundamentals, not at the level of epiphenomenal things, such as how many nuclear weapons we will reduce to, how soon we will do it, and whether we will do it through Article VI or through a nuclear convention.  It’s about the nation-state, armies, war, equity, poverty, wealth, profit and nature.

Title: Missile Defense Deployments Impact Hopes for Nuclear Disarmament
Track: Abolition
Co-sponsored by: Co-sponsored by the Campaign to Nuclear Disarmament UK and Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. Panelists: David Webb, Bruce Gagnon, Niu Qiang and J. Narayana Rao.

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Transcripts

by J. Narayana Rao (view bio): ”INDIA AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION & SPACE EXPLORATION” — download PDF

Title: Why and How to Build a Carbon-Free, Nuclear-Free Energy System
Track: Environment/Health
Co-sponsored by: IEER, PSR, IPPL. Panelists include Jennifer Nordstrom, Natalia Mironova, Cathey E. Falvo, and Alice Slater.

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Transcripts

by Alice Slater — Shifting the Paradigm: Time to Replace Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty with Universal Membership in the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) (download in PDF)

While the world applauds the growing recognition that the abolition of nuclear weapons seems to be an idea whose time has finally  come—from the calls by rusty cold warriors and former statesmen and generals to eliminate nuclear weapons—to the recent modest START negotiated by President Obama and Medvedev to cut nuclear arsenals under new verifications procedures, there are appalling countervailing forces, born from the old 20^th century paradigm of war and terror, that undercut the growing positive pressures to end the nuclear scourge.   In addition to the pushback from the military and the Republican party in the US Congress to hold the START agreement hostage to billions of new dollars for the weapons labs to build new plutonium cores for the atom bombs, continue sub-critical explosions of plutonium and chemicals at the Nevada test site,  and erect new buildings in the weapons complex, as well as continued expansion of destabilizing missile “defenses” and space warfare programs, there is a growing global proliferation of so-called “peaceful” nuclear reactors, metastasizing around the planet and spreading their lethal technology as incipient bomb factories.

Ironically as new calls come from the nuclear sophisticated “haves” to control the nuclear fuel cycle, there has been an explosion of interest from nations that never sought “peaceful” nuclear power before to achieve the technical know-how that will allow them to play in the nuclear club with the big boys.   Thus we see  countries like El Salvador, Ghana, Burma and Indonesia  declaring their intention to build nuclear power plants as well as hearing expressions of interest from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman Qatar, Saudi Arabia Sudan Syria Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen![1]

Fueled by commercial interests, the western patriarchal network of industrialized nations is now vigorously promoting a “nuclear renaissance” of civilian power. There has been an explosion of interests in licensing new uranium mines around the world, in Africa, Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, India, the United States—even at the very the rim of the sacred land surrounding the awesome Grand Canyon, despite the known tragic consequences of mining on the health of indigenous peoples who bear the brunt of the toxic activity with higher birth defects, cancer, leukemia and mutations in every community where uranium is mined.

The nuclear crisis we face today is a direct result of the export of peaceful nuclear technology to countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Indeed, every nuclear reactor enables a country to develop its own nuclear weapons, as we have seen in the case of India, Pakistan, and Israel, who never joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and now North Korea, which exploited the fruits of “peaceful” technology and then quit to develop its own deterrent against US bullying. Under the guise of “peace”, other countries, such as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and Libya were also well on their way to developing nuclear bombs, which they later abandoned. Former IAEA Director, Mohammed ElBaradei stated “We just cannot continue business as usual that every country can build its own factories for separating plutonium or enriching uranium. Then we are really talking about 30, 40 countries sitting on the fence with a nuclear weapons capability that could be converted into a nuclear weapon in a matter of months.”

The signers of the CTB were well aware that by having a nuclear reactor, a nation had been given the keys to a bomb factory and would need to be included in any effort to ban nuclear tests, regardless of whether they proclaimed any intention to develop weapons. And former US CIA Director, George Tenet, said, “The difference between producing low-enriched uranium and weapons-capable high-enriched uranium is only a matter of time and intent, not technology.”

There are nearly 200 million kilograms of reactor wastes in the world—with only 5 kilograms needed to make one nuclear bomb. The US is planning to build 50 more reactors by 2020; China plans 30; with 31 more now under construction–to churn out more toxic poisons; on tap for bomb-making, with no known solution to safely containing the tons of nuclear waste that will be generated over the unimaginable 250,000 years it will continue to threaten life on earth.

Countless studies report higher incidences of birth defects, cancer, and genetic mutations in every situation where nuclear technology is employed—whether for war or for “peace.” A National Research Council 2005 study reported that exposure to X-rays and gamma rays, even at low-dose levels, can cause cancer. The committee defined “low-dose” as a range from near zero up to about… 10 times that from a CT scan. “There appears to be no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless,” said one NRC panelist.  Tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste accumulate at civilian reactors with no solution for its storage, releasing toxic doses of  radioactive waste into our air, water and soil and contaminating our planet and its inhabitants for hundreds of thousands of years.

An April, 2010 study released by the New York Academy of Sciences, authored by noted Russian scientists, concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died of cancer caused between 1986 by the Chernobyl accident through 2004. [2] The industry-dominated IAEA, has been instrumental in covering up the disastrous health effects of the Chernobyl tragedy, understating the number of deaths by attributing only 50 deaths directly to the accident.  This cover-up was no doubt due to the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization, which under its terms provides that if either of the organizations initiates any program or activity in which the other has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult with the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement. Thus our scientists and researchers at the WHO are required to have their work vetted by the industry’s champion for “peaceful” nuclear technology, the IAEA.

The industrialized nations have the hubris to think they can manage a whole new regime of nuclear apartheid, despite their recent and most welcome acknowledgement by their leadership of the breakdown of the nuclear weapons arms control regime.  They’re planning a top-down, hierarchical, central control of the nuclear fuel cycle, in a mad plan to reprocess the irradiated fuel rods in the “nuclear have” countries, such as the US, Russia, China, UK, France, Japan and India, who are to be members of a new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.  The Partnership will ship toxic bomb-ready materials to the four corners of the world and back, in a nightmare scenario of plutonium in constant transit, subject to terrorist theft and negligent accidents on land and on sea, while creating a whole new class of nuclear “have nots” who can’t be trusted not to turn their “peaceful” nuclear reactors into bomb factories.  It’s just so 20^th century! Time for a paradigm shift to safe, sustainable energy.

Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year.  Wind can satisfy the world’s electricity needs 40 times over, and meet all global energy demands five times over.  The geothermal energy stored in the top six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times the energy of the world’s known oil and gas resources. Tidal, wave and small hydropower, can also provide vast stores of energy everywhere on earth, abundant and free for every person on our planet, rich and poor alike.    We can store hydrogen fuel in cells, made from safe, clean energy sources, to be used when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.  When hydrogen fuel is burned, it produces water vapor, pure enough to drink, with no contamination added to the planet.[3]

Last year the governments of Germany, Spain and Denmark launched the International Renewal Energy Agency, IRENA, which would empower developing countries with the ability to access the free energy of the sun, wind, marine, and geothermal sources, would train, educate, and disseminate information about implementing sustainable energy programs, organize and enable the transfer of science and know-how of renewable energy technologies, and generally be responsible for helping the world make the critical transition to a sustainable energy future.  IRENE is the Greek word for peace, so this new initiative is especially well named.

While the NPT purports to guarantee to States who agree to abide by its terms an inalienable right to so-called peaceful nuclear technology, it is highly questionable whether such a right can ever be appropriately conferred on a State.  Inalienable rights are generally distinguished from legal rights established by a State because they are moral or natural rights, inherent in the very essence of an individual. The notion of inalienable rights appeared in Islamic law and jurisprudence which denied a ruler “the right to take away from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person as a human being” and “become Rights by reason of the fact that they are given to a subject by a law and from a source which no ruler can question or alter”.   John Locke, the great Enlightenment thinker was thought to be influenced in his concept of inalienable rights by his attendance at lectures on Arabic studies. [4]

During the Age of Enlightenment natural law theory challenged the divine right of kings.  The US Declaration of Independence spoke of “self-evident truth” that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights …life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Where does “peaceful nuclear technology” fit in this picture?  Just as the Comprehensive Test Ban cancelled the right to peaceful nuclear explosions in Article V of the NPT, a protocol to the NPT mandating participation in IRENA would supercede the Article IV right to “peaceful” nuclear technology.  There are now 144 nations participating in IRENA.  www.irena.org We urge you to insure that your nation joins as well.

[2] http://counterpunch.org/grossman04232010.html

[3] See generally, http://www.abolition2000.org/a2000-files/sustainable-now.pdf

[4] Judge Weeramantry, Christopher G. (1997) Justice Without Frontiers,  pp. 8, 132, 135,

By Kyle Kajihiro
Program Director, American Friends Service Committee Hawai’i Area Office, member of DMZ-Hawai’i / Aloha OAina network

Aloha kakou. Warm greetings from Hawai’i.

For more than a century, the U.S. has treated the Pacific ocean as an “American Lake” and Pacific islands as stepping-stones to extend the march of “manifest destiny” westward to the Asian prize.

The peoples of the Pacific were merely an afterthought. Henry Kissinger’s remark about nuclear tests in the Marshall islands exemplified this attitude: “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?”

The independent Kingdom of Hawai’i was one of the first overseas casualties of the American empire. In 1893 Hawai’i was invaded and occupied by U.S. troops in order to establish a forward military base in the Pacific. As Stephen Kinzer noted, the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was the prototype for the recurring tactic of “regime change”, all the way up to and including the invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. military occupation of Hawai’i enabled America to defeat the Spanish Empire in 1898, acquire its colonies, and emerge as a global power. During WWII, U.S. military bases in Hawai’i were crucial to America’s victory over the Japanese empire and its rise to global, nuclear armed superpower status.

After the war, America established the Pacific Command in Hawai’i, the oldest and largest of the unified commands. It has an area of responsibility that encompasses most of the world’s surface and a majority of its population.

Ke Awalau o Pu’uloa, the true name of what is commonly called Pearl Harbor, was once a marvel of aquacultural and agricultural engineering. It was the food basket for O’ahu. But the U.S. military wanted to turn it into a naval base. Today, what was once a life-giving treasure has become a toxic superfund site with more than 740 contaminated sites identified thus far.

Pearl Harbor also serves another function as the iconic war monument. It is a factory to valorize and reproduce the myth of America’s redemption through militarization and war. Hawai’i and America are still held hostage to this myth.

The military presence in Hawai’i can be imagined as the head of a monstrous he’e or octopus, with tentacles that grab at our brothers and sisters in the Philippines, Guam, Okinawa, Korea, Kwajalein. Hawai’i is simultaneously a victim of American empire and an accomplice in the building of that empire.

America’s bid for “full spectrum dominance” extends from the bottom of the sea to the heavens above, from space to cyberspace. Sensor grids on the sea floor off Kaua’i and radar, antenna and optical tracking stations on the peaks of our sacred mountains are the eyes and ears of the he’e. Supercomputers and fiber optics are its brains and nervous system. To stop a he’e, you must neutralize its head.

According to the 2009 Base Structure Report, the U.S. military operates a total of 139 installations and facilities in Hawaii, with a total area of 239,000 acres. In addition the Hawaii National Guard has 13 installations occupying 858,000 acres. The main islands are completely surrounded by military defensive sea areas, and the entire archipelago is surrounded by 2.1 million square miles of temporary operating area.

The process of militarization destroys Native Hawaiian culture and sacred sites and imperils native ecosystems. It has poisoned our environment and threatened our health with a toxic cocktail of depleted uranium, lead,

dioxins, radioactive cobalt 60, chemical weapons, and a host of other substances. It creates economic dependency that verges on addiction and distorts our sense of cultural identity and social priorities.

After 9/11, Hawai’i experienced the largest military expansion since WWII. Despite protests and devastating environmental and cultural impacts, the Army seized 25,000 acres of land and stationed 328 Strykers in Hawai’i. Missile defense programs and congressional earmarks fuel a military-industrial gold rush, cutting off access to some of our best beaches at the missile range on Kaua’i. Even economic stimulus funds have been hijacked to boost construction of military housing and other facilities.

Despite overwhelming odds, people continue to resist. In 1976, the first of several waves of activists landed on Kaho’olawe island to protest the Navy bombing of that sacred place. This movement eventually ended the bombing and forced the clean up and return of the island.

In Makua decades of protest, lawsuits and the assertion of traditional Kanaka Maoli cultural practices have halted Army live fire training for the last five years. There is fierce community opposition to the Army’s plans to resume training in Makua.

In 2003, the community defeated a proposed Marine jungle warfare training facility in Waikane valley. The marines have now begun a process of cleaning up unexploded ordnance.

On Hawai’i island, activists have called for the end of live fire training in Pohakuloa, the clean up of depleted uranium and the cancellation of the lease of state land to the military.

In 2002, the DMZ-Hawai’i / Aloha OAina network was organized to unite the various local struggles against the bases in Hawai’i. Our four demands are: 1. Stop military expansion, 2. Cleanup and return military occupied lands. 3. Develop sustainable economic alternatives and 4. Pay just compensation for the damages caused by the military in Hawai’i.

The arms of the he’e can grow back when they are cut off, as we are seeing with the return of U.S. troops and “lily pad” installations in the Philippines and the relocation of bases from Ecuador to Colombia. We need a different paradigm of peace and security based on meeting human needs and environmental sustainability, not the imposition of order through the threat of overwhelming violence.

We are inspired and encouraged by the emergence of a global network against foreign military bases. In Hawai’i we have organized actions to support Vieques, Okinawa, Guam, Korea and the Marshall Islands.

I’d like to make a special appeal and challenge to our comrades in peace and justice movements to please pay attention to and support the justice struggles on our small islands. The Pentagon wants to rule the planet from a network of strategic island military hubs. To end the present wars and prevent future wars, we must dismantle the architecture of this empire of bases, and the solidarity of people in the heart of the empire to push for the withdrawal of these bases is more important than ever.

In contrast to the imperial vision of the American Lake, peoples of the Pacific have a different vision of peace and security for our region. The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement popularized the concept of Ka Moana Nui, the great ocean that connects the Asia Pacific through solidarity rather than hegemony. To borrow a Hawaiian concept, let us “haku”, that is braid our struggles into an unbreakable cord much stronger than its individual strands to restrain the powerful forces that make wars and rule through nuclear and military terror.

Workshop Title:  Global Hibakusha: Testimonies of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Witnesses/Survivors

Track: Abolition

Co-sponsored by:  Gensuikyo, the International Peace Bureau, and BANg. Panelists include: Junko Kayashige, Matashichi Oishi, Claudia Peterson, Abbacca Anjain Madison, Kin Yongkil, Claudia Peterson, and Natalia Mironova.

Held on: May 1st, 2010  3:15 pm   (See the conference schedule)

Transcripts

Talk by Claudia Peterson

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this conference peace and justice.

I come to you from Southern Utah, downwind from the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. government has tested over 1000 nuclear devices.

I have spent my entire life downwind from the Nevada Test Site.  As a child we ate contaminated vegetables and fruit from the garden.  We drank raw cows milk that was contaminated.  We swam in contaminated ponds.  We ate fish out of the ponds and ate the cattle who had been grazing and drinking contaminated food.  All during the time when the campaign was to increase weapons and deny any wrong doing and insisted that the testing and weapons development was in the best interests of the nation.

I grew up believing I lived a charmed existence.  The US government took great steps to assure us that everything was safe and no harm would come to us.  When life is good, it’s hard to believe that awful things could possibly happen.  But they do, something the people living downwind from the test site found out soon after the testing began.  We watched loved ones suffer and die at an alarming rate, while the US government continued to deny any wrongdoing.

My husband’s father was a uranium miner and died at a young age of lung cancer as a result of working in improperly vented mines.  We now know from declassified documents that the US government made a conscious decision not to tell the miners of the illness that would occur from exposure to radon gas, because it needed the uranium to build bombs.

My father died at the age of 63 after having a brain tumor the size of a lemon removed from his head.  At this time, our family doctor suggested that the tumor was the result of the fallout that rained over our homes from the nuclear testing.

As hard as my father’s death was, it was nothing compared to the heartache that would follow.  At the age of three, my youngest daughter Bethany was diagnosed with a deadly form of cancer – neuroblastoma.  I watched this wonderfully lively inquisitive child fight so many struggles to live.  After three years of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery she lost her fight.  We held Bethany while she died, knowing the horror that we could do nothing but pray that her suffering would end.

Just one month before Bethany died, Cathy, my only sister passed away at the age of 36 from skin cancer.  She left behind six small children and a husband.  The pain of watching loved ones die is so profound that I too, wished for death to end the sadness from within me.  The nuclear age not only physically killed thousands, but also caused a great many of us the loss of our innocence.

You are changed by loss and suffering.  The heartache never goes away and just when one is able to come up for air, another loved one is diagnosed with an earth shattering illness.  Like a wound that never is able to heal because the scab keeps getting torn off.

My mother-in-law died from the same lung cancer as her husband did but it just look longer as her exposure had been at lower levels.

When my sister died her children ranged in age from 14 years to nine months.  This year her oldest son Kelly died at the age of 35 after fighting with the same spirit that his mother had fought.  Just as it had done with his mother, the cancer was slow, deliberate, and ugly.  Just a little over a year later, his wife died of heartache after never being able to come to terms with losing him.

Several weeks ago, my brother-in-law died of prostate cancer that had spread throughout his entire body.  His first wife and a son had also died of cancer years earlier after living their entire lives in northern Arizona.

I am a medical social worker, who on almost a daily basis deals with someone who is dealing with the continuing incidents of cancer and other illnesses from the nuclear testing.

The U.S. government has seen possession of Nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the aggression of other nations.  Many seem to think this has kept us safe.  Since the beginning of this altered thought process they have continued to promote, justify, and sell these ideas to themselves and others.  Things have changed.  We are no longer country against country.  We are a global community. We have not been kept safe.

Mine is only one story of thousands that  have happened because of the global nuclear fall out. We have the opportunity to change the  polices of our governments, the time has never been more right or close to happening. We can change the future, we are all victims of the nuclear age. Let’s choose to make things right. So, as we listen to the stories we will be reminded that each of us has a stake in our own future.  Anyone of these stories could be yours.

I pray for the earth that has bee abused, the plant life and the animals that have suffered.  I pray for us and those who gone before us and those to come later that the needless suffering can stop.

Faded “Vision”
The Obama Administration’s Retreat from Nuclear Disarmament

Christopher Paine

May 1, 2010

In a widely heralded April 2009 speech in Prague, President Obama pledged “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” While not the first U.S. president to pledge support for this aspirational goal, he was the first to link it to “a trajectory we need to be on,” comprised of “concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.” He also promised “to put an end to Cold War thinking” in the U.S. by reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” and pledged that his administration would seek to:

• Conclude “a legally binding and sufficiently bold” nuclear arms reduction agreement with Russia that would “set the stage for further cuts” involving “all nuclear weapons states;”
• Begin negotiations on “a new treaty that verifiably ends the production of fissile materials intended for use in state nuclear weapons,” and
• “Immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.”

President Obama faces significant political opposition to all or parts this agenda at home and abroad, so it comes as no surprise that he has been unable to date to deliver on any of these initiatives. The New Start Treaty with Russia is only modestly constraining rather than ”sufficiently bold,” and thus it does not set the stage for multilateral cuts involving “all nuclear weapons states.” It has a leisurely implementation period stretching to 2017 for what are exceedingly modest nuclear cuts, and in some cases, no cuts at all.

Similarly, for domestic political reasons that are quite understandable, his Administration has not been able to deliver on his pledge to “immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.” In fact, preoccupied with other pressing matters and lacking the Senate supermajority needed for ratification, his Administration has done little if anything concrete to advance the prospects for U.S. ratification and eventual entry-into-force of the CTBT.

Finally, Pakistan and most likely other states, currently shielded by Pakistan’s objections, are blocking agreement on a work program in the CD that would allow the beginning of negotiations on a multilateral Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. In truth, it was a bit disingenuous of President Obama to advance the FMCT as a critical early milepost of progress toward disarmament, given that the impasse in the CD was of long duration and very well known. While the Obama Administration tends to blame external forces for all these failures, much of the explanation can be found in the ambivalent response of the Administration itself  to the idea of moving toward implementing, rather than merely “envisioning,” a world without nuclear weapons.

Here the President is as guilty as his harshest critics, damning his own supposed disarmament aspirations with faint praise. During his Prague speech a year ago, President Obama stated the view that nuclear disarmament “will not be reached quickly –- perhaps not in my lifetime,” and then added this debilitating caveat: “Make no mistake: As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.” Since Obama’s lifetime is likely to extend another 30-40 years, implicit in his statement is the expectation that the United States will maintain a “safe, secure and effective” nuclear arsenal for at least that long.

That Presidential expectation is now a U.S. government plan.  His administration’s recently released Nuclear Posture Review Report (NPR) endorses a nuclear strategy—and tens of billions of dollars in future investments in U.S. nuclear force structure and the supporting industrial complex—that are directed precisely at ensuring that a “modernized” and militarily “effective” U.S. nuclear arsenals will endure for at least another half-century.[1] After a brief year of living hopefully, the goal of nuclear disarmament is once again being relegated to its time-honored status as a rhetorical pledge.

Like all Administrations before it, the Obama Administration has succumbed to the internal political-industrial and bureaucratic forces that are, on all sides, the true obstacles to the achievement of a world without nuclear weapons. These powerful interests shape the internal U.S. (and Russian) debate in a way that prioritizes the replication of Cold War nuclear capabilities for design and production of nuclear weapons above any rational reconsideration of the role these weapons of mass annihilation should be allowed play in maintaining both U.S. and international peace and security.

President Obama has allowed himself to become ensnared in a logical and political cul-de-sac, epitomized by his pledge that “as long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary…”  The words “safe, secure, and effective” are political code words for a policy that provides for a process of continuing improvement in the design and manufacture of nuclear weapons. The intent, even under the CTBT, is to incorporate changes in warheads that will augment their intrinsic resistance to accidental chemical explosive detonation and dispersal of warhead plutonium (warhead “safety”), theft or unauthorized use of a warhead (warhead “security”), all the while sustaining or improving warhead reliability and overall nuclear system performance against military targets (the so-called “effectiveness” of the nuclear deterrent.

However, to continue doing all these things, one needs a rather large, skilled, and active nuclear weapons complex, and the Catch-22 resides in the fact that if the United States maintains such an active complex producing “modernized” weapons, other states will too, and thus the point at which Obama envisions the U.S. giving up its “nuclear arsenal” will never arrive.

Any politically sincere approach to the challenge of nuclear disarmament logically requires a progressive restriction of the activities of nuclear weapon complexes, such that all states become internally as well as externally aligned with the goal of phasing out nuclear deterrence by progressively eliminating nuclear arsenals, rather than indefinitely replicating,  and worse yet,  evolving them on into the future.

The global nuclear weapons enterprise must be wound down in order achieve definitive progress toward a world without nuclear weapons. The Obama Administration’s newly announced nuclear policy, and one might add, those of Russia, the U.K., and France, head in the opposite direction, toward the indefinite retention and further refinement of nuclear stockpiles into succeeding generations.  This will only serve to empower politically the very military and scientific-industrial complexes that owe their continuing prosperity and influence to the perpetuation and continuing modernization of nuclear arsenals, creating a formidable political counterweight to the popular push for nuclear disarmament.

Indeed, comparing the limits in the New Start Treaty with the nuclear forces both sides have deployed to date under the Moscow Treaty, and taking account of the reinvigorated nuclear weapons programs underway in both Russia and the U.S., it appears that the process of nuclear arms reduction is decelerating, and may even grind to a halt for an extended period.

The New Start Treaty will require the U.S. to remove from deployment on the order of 100 strategic ballistic missiles and bombers from the currently deployed total of 798 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (SNDVs), but it appears the current overall number of 2100 operationally deployed U.S. strategic warheads will need to be reduced only marginally or not at all, depending on how the missile and bomber cuts are implemented. Because each strategic bomber counts as one warhead but can carry up to 20 nuclear weapons, there will be on average some 450 deliverable bomber weapons that will not count against the overall treaty ceiling of 1550 warheads.  There are  also empty spaces on U.S ballistic missiles, “downloaded” under the Moscow Treaty of 2002, that originally were designed to carry a much larger number of weapons, giving the U.S. an “up-load” capability vastly in excess of the treaty’s deployed warhead limit.

TABLE A:  Nuclear Disarmament Has Reached a Plateau[2]

The situation on the Russian side is somewhat comparable.  Russia is currently 134 delivery vehicles below the 700 SNDV limit, and could in theory build up to it by deploying new missiles or bombers, but it is currently about 190 weapons above the warhead limit.  Russia appears to have an even larger population than the U.S. of uncounted bomber weapons, but an aging and less effective bomber force.

Both sides have until 2017 to make these modest force adjustments. Despite the President’s Nobel Peace Prize and his “world without nuclear weapons rhetoric” it’s clear that his Administration regards the goal of nuclear disarmament as purely aspirational. After 15 months in office, there is still not a single program or effort within the Obama Administration that is looking at the transition to a nuclear disarmed world, or even at a transitional stage of “finite deterrence” among the nuclear weapon powers with stockpiles of a few hundred weapons.

The posture review devotes a total of four broad brush paragraphs to the subject of “Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” enumerates a lengthy list of prior conditions to the achievement of same, and then concludes “we can – and must – work actively to create those conditions.” Beyond this vague exhortation, the NPR contains nothing, zero, zip, that even touches on the international structures and political tasks involved in enabling the transition to a nuclear weapons free world.

Here is what President Obama is actually doing, as opposed to “envisioning,” in relation to the goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

• He is launching programs to invest tens of billions of dollars in the reconstruction of the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex for the next fifty years.  He is proposing to build major new facilities for manufacturing plutonium, uranium, and non-nuclear weapons components. The fissile material facilities won’t come on line until 2021 at the earliest, and they will have useful lives on the order of 50 years. Rather than winding down the nuclear weapons complexes in the U.S. and Russia, Obama and Medvedev are jointly ensuring that they obtain a new lease on life that will another half-century at least.

• Obama is proposing that the United States begin development of a new strategic ballistic missile submarine, a new submarine reactor, a new air-launched cruise missile, a new B61-12 warhead, and a nuclear version of the F-35 joint strike fighter to deliver the warhead from bases in Europe. “Extended nuclear deterrence” is being preserved and modernized, and buttressed with both missile defense and conventional prompt global strike weapons

• Obama is maintaining all three legs of the nuclear “triad” along with their current and mind-bogglingly wasteful alert rates and at-sea patrols.  He couldn’t even bring himself to decide to retire early two of the 14 Ohio class SSBNs, but will “consider” doing so “in the second half of this decade,” i.e. by the end of his second term, if he gets one.
• He is investing $1 billion over the next five years in upgrades to the dual capable B-2 bomber (which will also carry the new B61-Mod 12)and developing a highly accurate conventional ICBM-launched hypersonic glide weapon for “prompt global strike,” – exhibiting a global imperialist mentality for preemptive attack that can only encourage additional countries to reach for nuclear deterrents.

This is not the program of a President who is seriously interested in laying the foundation for nuclear disarmament “within his lifetime,” or even after it. His abundance of caution, and his desire to straddle the political spectrum in order to chalk up easy political “victories,” clearly has gotten the better of him.

The claim that the Administration is launching “a comprehensive national research and development program” to support continued progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons” is bogus. There is no such program in the FY 11 budget request. Maybe next year. The “expanded work on verification technologies” is almost certainly a vague reference to a DOE-NNSA budget line for the nuclear weapon laboratories that funds clandestine nuclear test  and fissile material detection technologies, which program has existed for 30 years at least. I used to round up funds for this program when I worked in the Senate on military matters in the late 1980’s, and these were really unilateral intelligence programs.

Moreover, emphasizing the necessity of further technology development misconstrues the essential nature of the nuclear disarmament problem. It is 90% a political, legal, and institutional reform task (both domestic and international). There is already ample existing monitoring technology to underpin a global nuclear disarmament regime. On the technology side, the primary need is for systems-level analyses of how the various technology pieces could function together, in both cooperative verification and unilateral intelligence gathering, to provide adequate confidence in compliance.  The fact that the Obama Administration claims to be focusing on further technology development — performed by the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, no less — rather than global institutional, legal, and political steps, is just further evidence that it is not serious about the nuclear disarmament objective.

– Christopher E. Paine

Director, Nuclear Program

Natural Resources Defense Council

(202) 422-4853 <cpaine@nrdc.org>

Notes

[2] Table A Sources:  R. S. Norris and H.M. Kristensen, Nuclear Notebook: U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2009, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2009; Norris and Kristensen, Russian Nuclear Forces, 2010, BAS, January/February 2010; Treaty Compliance, Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I): Executive Summary, www.dod.gov/acq/acic/treaties/start1/execsum.htm;  Hans Kristensen, “New  START Treaty Has New Counting,” www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2010/03/newstart.php;

“Taking on Nuclear Power: Pitfalls and successes at Entergy Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant and beyond”: Hattie Nestel of Shut It Down Affinity Group has been arrested 7 times at Vermont Yankee.

Nuclear Disarmament Day observed on August 6 seeks a change of heart in the U.S. and the world: As co-chair of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Disarm! Dismantle the War Economy Team, Margaret Harrington is active in Vermont where peace activists and Vermont legislators face down the monstrous nuclear weapons/nuclear power industry.

Ursula Gelis is active in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Oslo, Norway branch and participated in the Aldermaston Blockade in England and the anti-NATO demonstration in Strasbourg, Germany.

Proposition One in 2010, the Economic Conversion Act: Ellen Thomas campaigns throughout the United States at nuclear power and nuclear weapons facilities to bring her Let the People Decide voter initiative to the public, a major positive campaign to change how U.S. taxpayer money is spent, on education, healthcare and clean energy, rather than nuclear weapons/power.

Jay Marx joins Ellen Thomas on the Proposition One Campaign and comes to New York on their Walk for Nuclear Disarmament from Washington D.C. where he continues the 29 year nuclear disarmament vigil in front of the White House begun by William ‘Doubting’ Thomas.

Dominique Lalanne is a nuclear physicist, chair of Abolition 2000 Europe, co-chair of Armes nucléaires STOP-France, has contributed to many deliberations of the European Parliament against nuclear weapons and more recently to the one for supporting the Nuclear Weapon Convention, and is an expert on nuclear disarmament and links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Kevin Kamps serves as Radioactive Waste Watchdog at Beyond Nuclear in Takoma Park, Maryland, which aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future, while advocating for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.

Transcripts

Dominique Lalanne’s conference talk:

The links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons are numerous. In fact all aspects of nuclear power have links with weapons. I am going to present those that are shaping our world in its industrial, social, economical and political aspects. Of course the historical and technical aspects of research and development carried out in the 70 past years must also not be forgotten.

First let us go through the history. Frederic Joliot-Curie discovered the chain reaction in 1939, making a bomb possible. He immediately filed a patent in order to be the ‘father’ of any use of this nuclear process. The context of World War II and pressure from brilliant scientists, like Einstein, led to the Manhattan project which developed two bombs, one using uranium and the other plutonium. Historically therefore, nuclear science was first used for bombs.

Such uses having been “technically successful”, the cold war stimulated continued attention to nuclear issues, but with the only interest being the development of technologies with possible links to bombs. Those technologies included not only the enrichment of uranium, reprocessing for plutonium, nuclear power for submarine engines (that gave rise to the PWR technology in nuclear reactors), and fusion reactions (for the H bomb), but also missiles and missile detection by radar or satellite. More recently research has been done on the breeder reactor to get military grade plutonium easily and on lasers for directly triggering the fusion bombs planned in the future (NIF in the US and Megajoule in France).

The first link requiring comment is a social one. Two military characteristics are: secrecy and an absence of democracy. Those are also the two characteristics of nuclear power. Democracy is absent because of the powerful nuclear lobby working behind the scenes, and this lobby is very strong because of its weaponry development role.  In most cases, decisions involving nuclear facilities are made without any democratic process. And this is also because of the dangers of accidents (Three Mile Island or Chernobyl types). With this level of risk it is difficult to ask for a favourable answer from the people, unless lying becomes normal practice. In both areas there is no concern for the long term future, with nuclear waste issues possibly not solved (this is a nuclear physicist speaking) and with the planet being rendered non-viable after a nuclear war. That’s a common feature of both military and civil nuclear devices or plants: their existence implies no care for the future. For the military that means the apocalypse is possible, and for the civil authorities, radioactive pollution with waste risking the lives of future generations is acceptable. With both nuclear power and nuclear weapons, our societies are placed at risk. More generally, the whole world and the whole of humanity are at risk.

Let us study now the political and economical links. Nuclear technology is a very advanced science and so states with this skill are in a dominating world position. Basically it is the North in opposition to the South.  In the past military force was the usual way to dominate. That was colonialism. But at the end of the twentieth century, classical colonialism was officially working no more. A new version, neo-colonialism, can work only by economic action or political power. So this makes advanced technologies important to maintain the North-South gap and hence the asymmetrical dependence. Nuclear is the best way to achieve this. And as there is the chance of weaponry if nuclear plants are available, the technology becomes desirable for the recipient. And it is difficult for States to refuse anything called “development”. So, as many examples prove, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and other states got the bomb while officially working on nuclear energy.  Some, such as South Africa, Argentina and Brazil, prepared a bomb but then cancelled their weapons programmes, keeping the skills, and nuclear power, just in case…

Political domination is perfect in the nuclear case because it can be argued that the reason for such “Northern dominance” is technological, so avoiding the criticism of neo-colonialism. And with the IAEA it seems to involve international rules.  So nuclear is a new way for ‘advanced’ States to dominate the Third World, both by offering nuclear power and by threatening with nuclear weaponry. Let us just consider the NPT, a perfect example illustrating the links. This treaty contains three “pillars”, free access to nuclear energy, no access to proliferation, and nuclear disarmament. The first pillar, free access to nuclear energy, is designed to sell the treaty to the Third World, the second, non-proliferation, is to ensure that domination is long term, and the third, nuclear disarmament, is a lie.

For the future I would like to give you some information on projects and current facilities under construction.

My first comments are on nuclear fusion research and its ignition by laser. As you know current nuclear bombs involve a first ignition by a fission bomb using plutonium of uranium. That is because a fusion reaction with hydrogen needs 10 million degrees which is impossible to reach otherwise. The new idea is to achieve this condition with lasers and so avoid the first stage (of fission). That is very promising for the military because currently the first stage creates an explosion of at least 1000 tons of TNT (due to a need for what is called the “critical mass”), and so “small” nuclear bombs are not possible. A laser trigger makes it possible, even with small quantities of hydrogen, so the goal of this research is to produce bombs with yields in the range 10 tons to 1000 tons of TNT, eroding the difference between conventional and nuclear bombs. Two such facilities are under construction, one in the US, the National Ignition Facility, NIF, and the other in France, the Megajoule Laser. NIF has started its first tests, and Mégajoule will do so in 2012.

The second key current research topic involves the breeder reactor. These are reactors using a plutonium core in order to increase the neutron flux. Around the core is installed an uranium blanket (using natural uranium or depleted uranium). In this uranium, under the influence of the neutron flux, there is a production of plutonium 239, which is military grade plutonium. But this plutonium 239, if it remains in the neutron flux, is transformed into plutonium 240, 241, etc, which are not usable for a fission reaction. So these plutonium isotopes are pollution with respect to the military grade one. With a breeder reactor the blanket is easy to remove in order to extract the “good” plutonium, so this makes breeder reactors much more interesting than other reactor types. With this type of reactor, military grade plutonium is available for all. That makes proliferation much easier and so this is an easy reactor to sell to many States. And this technology is also much more complicated and so neo-colonialism is much stronger. Better for the seller!

To conclude I just want to add that it is clear that nuclear power, both now and in the future, and it may be even more so in the future than it is now, is just a way to prepare for a military use of nuclear technology. A lot of other technologies exist for producing electricity or heat, including wind and solar devices – to mention just those which are abundant. But the need for the dominating States to keep that technological dominance is their private number one argument for proposing the nuclear option.

Our goal – for a nuclear weapon free world – must make clear : we need a nuclear totally free world.

That is my final message.

International Conference
For a Nuclear Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World
April 30, 2010, Riverside Church, New York City

Dangers and Opportunities: Nuclear Weapons and the NPT Review

John Burroughs, Executive Director
Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

On April 6, the Obama administration released its Nuclear Posture Review. It’s required reading for anyone you know – even yourself! –  who thinks nuclear weapons went away after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. There are some positive elements in the review. It initiates a research program on how to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. And my favorite line is this: “It is in the U.S. interest and that of all other nations that the nearly 65-year record of nuclear non-use be extended forever.” Amen to that! But what I want to emphasize now is the essential continuity with past policy.

• Longstanding elements of US doctrine remain in place: to defend its vital interests, the United States may use nuclear weapons, preemptively or responsively, in relation to both nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities and attacks by other states possessing nuclear weapons, or states deemed not to be in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. First use is not ruled out.

• No substantial changes are made in the US nuclear force structure of heavy bombers, land-based missiles, and ballistic missile submarines, or in their alert states. The Nuclear Posture Review says that “nearly all” land-based missiles are “on alert,” and a “significant number” of ballistic missile submarines are “at sea at any given time.” It is estimated that the US has about 1000 warheads ready for launch within minutes at all times.

• The arsenal of operationally deployed warheads and bombs the United States will field under the New START agreement just signed could be several hundred in excess of 1550 due to a counting rule. It would enable a full-scale, Cold-War style preemptive or responsive attack upon Russian nuclear forces, airfields, command and control centers, military-industrial targets, etc.

Earlier this year, Russia released a statement on its doctrine.  The statement says: “Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a use  of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against her and (or) her allies, and in a case of an aggression against her with conventional weapons that would put in danger the very existence of the state.” Again, first use is not ruled out. Russia too maintains and is modernizing its triad of nuclear forces enabling an all-out attack on the United States within minutes of an order to do so.

Some may say: doctrines and capabilities don’t matter, the US and Russia won’t get into a war or a nuclear conflict. Perhaps we have to worry about India and Pakistan, developments in the Middle East, or non-state terrorists getting their hands on the bomb. But not the US and Russia, or the US and China, or Russia and China, or China and India. I devoutly hope this is true. But I am not convinced by this line of reasoning.

Russia seemed to regard a military confrontation with the United States as a real possibility in relation to its conflict with Georgia in August 2008. And let me quote from Sergei Karaganov of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He wrote this in an article earlier this year: “We must be unequivocal about this very unpleasant truth: the possibility of further NATO expansion to Ukraine, which Russia views as a vital threat to its security, has the potential to revive the long-forgotten specter of a large-scale war in Europe, which could escalate unpredictably.”

As my friend and colleague, Andy Lichterman of Western States Legal Foundation, has been saying for years: We disregard the possibility of conflict among the world’s most powerful, nuclear-armed states in coming years and decades at our peril. This is especially so in a period of economic disruption and intensified competition for oil, gas and other resources.

Let’s look at doctrines from another angle. The UN Secretary-General has wisely remarked that nuclear deterrence has proved to be “contagious.” And Randy Rydell of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs pointed out a corollary: when the United States sets out a doctrine, sometimes the very same words show up in the doctrines of new nuclear powers.

Contagion is the right word. Nuclear weapons are techno-pathogens, and they must be eradicated. To denuclearize the world, we’re first going to need to denuclearize discourse. Fortunately this is already happening. Instead of talk about use of nuclear weapons, there’s more talk about disarmament.

And a talkfest is coming up! – The five-year Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, starting Monday at the UN here in New York.

THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY

Before explaining what is at stake in the Review Conference, let me give some background on  the NPT.

Mostly written by the United States and Russia in the 1960s, the NPT was a treaty aimed at stopping the further spread of nuclear weapons. It contains a very specific, clearly mandatory obligation not to acquire nuclear weapons, monitored and verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency. To induce acceptance of the treaty, it also included a vague obligation to “pursue negotiations in good faith” on nuclear disarmament. That’s the famous Article VI. But there is no monitoring by an international agency, no timelines.

After the Soviet Union disintegrated, major efforts were made to rebalance the treaty. In 1995 in connection with indefinite extension of the NPT, and again in 2000, NPT conferences agreed to a road map for the achievement of a nuclear weapon free world: verified, irreversible reductions, test ban treaty, treaty banning production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, reducing the role of nuclear weapons in security policies, etc.

And in 1996, the International Court of Justice unanimously interpreted Article VI to require states to “bring to a conclusion negotiations on nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” The Court also concluded that threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally contrary to international law, in particular those rules protecting civilians, the environment, and neutral nations from indiscriminate and uncontrollable effects of warfare.

But the hopes of the 1990s have yet to be realized. The nuclear weapons states, especially the United States, for the most part ignored the commitments made in 1995 and 2000.India and Pakistan, states outside the NPT, conducted test explosions of nuclear weapons in 1998, and North Korea withdrew from the treaty and tested a device in 2006.

So we are faced with a treaty with the following problems:

There are very restricted means for ensuring compliance. The real action regarding non-proliferation takes place in the IAEA and its Board of Governors and in the Security Council. As to disarmament, there is nothing in place at all except for an important forum – the review conferences – for securing commitments and for very general discussion of implementation.

Beyond that, the non-proliferation regime has a fundamental problem of double, indeed triple standards. The NPT itself is a two-tier system, with nuclear haves and have-nots. This in itself is contrary to the essence of law, that the same rules apply to all.

Then there are the states with nuclear arsenals outside the NPT – India, Pakistan, and Israel, and recently the DPRK. This puts a lot of strain on some states inside the NPT required not to obtain nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Suppliers Group exemption for India pushed by the United States exacerbates the uneven application of standards. It permits nuclear commerce with a state that has not even formally accepted the disarmament obligation and commitments undertaken by the nuclear weapon states within the NPT. Meanwhile, a non-nuclear weapon state in the NPT, Iran, is scrutinized and penalized due to a program suspected of aiming at making it capable of producing nuclear weapons.

There is only one solution to the problem of triple standards: the creation of a global system with one verified rule applying to all states, non-possession of nuclear weapons.

A precedent is provided by the Chemical Weapons Convention. An agency verifies compliance with the rule of non-possession. An executive council and a conference of states parties are empowered in the first instance to deal with suspected non-compliance. My organization, with others, has developed a model Nuclear Weapons Convention along the same lines, which the Secretary-General has recommended as a starting point for negotiations on global elimination of nuclear weapons.

THE REVIEW CONFERENCE

With that background, what’s at issue in the Review Conference that starts on Monday and goes on for four weeks? Governments will engage in intense and difficult negotiations in three main contested areas.

The first contested area will concern an action plan for nuclear disarmament. Given the US change of course under Obama, it probably won’t be that hard to affirm updated versions of past commitments, bringing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty into force and so on.

More complicated will be negotiations concerning a commitment to bringing states with nuclear arsenals in addition to the United States and Russia into the process of reductions. The Obama administration has endorsed this approach in principle, but offered no concrete near-term mechanisms.

The Non-Aligned Movement will put forward a plan for global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2025, with a convention providing for verification, conversion of weapons facilities to peaceful uses, etc. entered into force by 2020. The nuclear weapon states are not likely to accept the plan. But it may provide a boost to an approach favored by many in civil society, that the Review Conference launch a preparatory process for negotiations on a convention or framework of instruments.

The Non-Aligned Movement deserves our support, and has it in the form of over 10 million signatures on petitions calling for commencement of negotiations on global nuclear abolition. Those of us who will be attending the Review Conference can show our support in person; we can organize at the 8 am Abolition Caucus and Coffee meetings in the UN cafeteria.

The second contested area at the Review Conference will concern strengthening of measures on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, including: enhancing the IAEA’s inspection powers through the “Additional Protocol”, multilateral controls on the production and supply of fuel for nuclear reactors, adding restrictions on withdrawal. Many non-nuclear weapon states resist such measures, contending that they have already “paid” for disarmament by joining and complying with the NPT.

The third contested area will concern advancing the achievement of a zone free of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in the Middle East, thus denuclearizing Israel. This was promised by a resolution adopted by the 1995 NPT conference. It is vital to Arab states – and it could also be helpful in resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. Here the signals are promising. It appears that agreement may be reached on convening an international conference in the next one or two years on the subject.

AFTER THE REVIEW CONFERENCE

There’s quite a good chance that the Review Conference will yield some positive commitments. But if the experience of the past 15 years has taught us anything, it’s that commitments are not enough; they have to be implemented. And beyond that, it’s become clear that the NPT itself has become outmoded. A new global regime is needed that builds on the NPT but goes beyond it to provide for the universal elimination of nuclear weapons.

Regardless of international agreements, action is needed in individual countries, especially those that have nuclear weapons or are in nuclear alliances. It is urgent to reduce spending on nuclear forces and production facilities, reduce numbers, reduce reliance. Practices can lead to agreements.

And there’s a lot to be done in the United States on these matters, as our conference this weekend will examine. Just for example, the Obama administration’s FY2011 budget request on February includes $7.282 billion for the nuclear weapons complex, about a 14% increase over FY2010.  Linton Brooks commented that as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration under George W. Bush, he “would have killed for the FY11 budget.” We have to ensure that ratification of New START and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty do not paradoxically have anti-disarmament effects by further entrenching and modernizing the US weapons complex and US nuclear forces.

If a process on global disarmament is not set in motion by the Review Conference, we don’t have to wait five years for the next Review Conference. Negotiations, or preparations for negotiations, on abolition can be launched in the General Assembly, or by states acting jointly outside the UN or NPT.

WHY ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

I want to conclude by putting the abolition of nuclear weapons in a larger context. There are many reasons to abolish nuclear weapons. But there’s a very important reason for abolition which does not get enough attention. That is that it is essential to the preservation and development of the international legal order. A just and therefore sustainable legal order requires that the same rules apply to all.

One manifestation of the instability caused by the possession of nuclear weapons by some states but not others is the doctrine of preventive war. That doctrine was put into practice in the Iraq invasion and the recent Israeli strike on Syria and is raised with respect to Iran. Preventive war is contrary to the UN Charter. Success in global nuclear abolition is therefore essential for preservation of the system of collective security and international law centered on the UN Charter.

Abolition of nuclear weapons is also needed for effectively managing the other grave problems faced by the human species. The current two-tier regime, with nuclear haves and have-nots, does not give rise to an equitable and therefore viable global political and legal order. So elimination of the two-tier system, along with elimination of weapons themselves, is needed in order to effectively tackle other serious problems facing the world: among them poverty, climate change and other threats to the environment, and disease. In short, as the title of our conference has it, a “Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World” is also a “Nuclear Free World.”