A)-
Details of the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) make explicit a dangerous shift that threatens to undermine US security by encouraging others to develop new nuclear weapons and use them, and would violate US political and legal obligations. The NPR is a political roadmap to ultimate catastrophe.
The US spends more on conventional military forces than the next 15 nations combined. If we must rely on the threat to use nuclear weapons against non nuclear weapons states, and if we develop new nuclear weapons to obtain security, then what are we saying to the rest of the world?
Though the administration has insisted that the NPR represents a general plan rather than a specific policy, this linguistic slight of hand has not diminished vigorous criticism in Russia, China, and even our NATO allies.
With the NPR, the US emphasizes nuclear weapons not as devices of deterrence, but as weapons of war, and thus erodes the norms against nuclear use. The NPR even calls for the development of new low-yield “mini-nukes” that could be used against hardened underground bunkers.
Former White House national security science advisor Frank Von Hippel said that if the US were to use nuclear weapons, as contemplated in the NPR, “we would have violated a taboo that we’ve had in place since Nagasaki. With our enormous conventional superiority, that would be the ultimate in stupidity and self destructiveness. By using nuclear weapons, we would make it permissible for others to use them against us.”
The lowered threshold for using nuclear weapons undercuts the moral prohibition against any such use. This increases the likelihood of their use against the US, and undermines US ability to criticize such immoral activity by others.
Rather than working toward strengthening control of fissile material and diminishing reliance on nuclear weapons, the NPR implicitly lauds their political and military value, thus stimulating proliferation. If 9-11 has taught us anything, it is that we must now strengthen the global norm against the use of nuclear weapons. The NPR does just the opposite.
As a party to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the US is duty-bound to negotiate in good faith the elimination of nuclear weapons. At the NPT’s 2000 Review Conference, the US and 186 other countries pledged an “unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”
Additionally, 182 countries rely on a US promise that it will not use nuclear weapons against them, unless they attack the US in conjunction with a nuclear state. Also, the development of new nuclear weapons would imply a rejection of the ten-year nuclear testing moratorium, undermining the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
The announced withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) coupled with the NPR will cause the international community to question whether the US is negotiating in good faith to implement its treaty obligations. It is irresponsible to play fast and loose with the non-proliferation regime. Nothing could be more dangerous than a world without legal constraints on developing nuclear arsenals.
The Bush administration has been trumpeting its recent agreement with Russia to cut nuclear arms. Without a treaty regime, the cuts will be unverifiable and easily reversible. With an accounting flourish worthy of an Enron executive, the claim of reducing the arsenal to about 2,200 by 2012 proves deceptive. According to the Natural Resource Defense Council, the plan calls for the US to retain a total stockpile of intact nuclear warheads and weapons components seven to nine times larger than the publicly-stated goal of 1,700 to 2,200 “operationally deployed weapons.”
Multilateral, cooperative enforcement of the existing treaty regime is indeed needed. This can only be achieved by diminishing reliance on nuclear weapons, and increasing enforcement of the rule of law, even by the use of multilateral force where needed.
A nuclear plan that would insure our safety should include the following steps: (1) a full de-alert of the US and Russian nuclear arsenals; (2) a pledge never to use nuclear weapons first; (3) a permanent, global end to all nuclear testing; (4) intrusive verifications to prevent the development of nuclear weapons programs in countries that would use them against the United States; (5) a strengthening, not weakening, of the existing rule of law governing nuclear weapons policies, and (6) the commencement of negotiations leading to a gradual global elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Jonathan Granoff is President of the Global Security Institute and Co-Chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Arms Control and National Security.
Posted by zack_allen
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B)-
Nuclear weapons are back on the front pages, with news of a Bush administration policy document, the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, which projects the role of nuclear weapons into the future — not as deterrents, but for the purpose of waging wars. The document even names potential targets. This document and the thinking behind it are reckless. They not only jeopardize international law but the support of America’s closest allies. Canada must state its opposition immediately.
The document also breaks a commitment. In 2000, the United States joined the other nuclear-weapons states in making an “unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination” of their nuclear arsenals. The United States made this commitment at a review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which, with 187 nations involved, is the world’s largest arms-control and disarmament treaty.
There are still 31,000 nuclear weapons in the world, most of them American or Russian, with lesser amounts held by the United Kingdom, France and China, India, Pakistan and Israel. At least 5,000 of the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are maintained on hair-trigger alert, meaning they could be fired on 15 minutes notice.
The Bush administration has offered cuts in the nuclear weapons the United States deploys, but is reinforcing its maintenance of core stocks and planning the development of new ones. By rejecting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, it is holding open the door to resumed nuclear testing. This has greatly worried many non-nuclear weapons countries and has already led to charges that the United States is acting in bad faith. The Non-Proliferation Treaty insists that negotiations for elimination should be held in “good faith.”
Periodically, the United States reviews its policies on nuclear weapons; it did so last year, the results of which are seen in this week’s alarming headlines. “Behind the administration’s rhetorical mask of post-Cold War restraint,” comments the U.S. National Resources Defence Council, a prestigious non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists, “lie expansive plans to revitalize U.S. nuclear forces, and all the elements that support them, within a so-called ‘New Triad’ of capabilities that combine nuclear and conventional offensive strikes with missile defences and nuclear-weapons infrastructure.”
According to the council’s analysis, the Bush team assumes that nuclear weapons will be part of U.S. military forces at least for the next 50 years; it plans an extensive and expensive series of programs to modernize the existing force, including a new ICBM to be operational in 2020 and a new heavy bomber in 2040.
The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review says that there are four reasons to possess nuclear weapons: to “assure allies and friends”; “dissuade competitors”; “deter aggressors”; and “defeat enemies.” Over the next 10 years, the White House’s plans call for the United States to retain a total stockpile of intact nuclear weapons and weapons components roughly seven to nine times larger than the publicly-stated goal of 1,700 to 2,200 “operationally deployed weapons.”
Moreover, the U.S. administration has ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, naming not only the “axis of evil” (Iraq, Iran and North Korea) but also Russia, China, Libya and Syria.
This position has prompted the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the minute hand of their “Doomsday Clock” forward two minutes — to seven minutes to midnight, the same position as when the clock made its debut in 1947. “Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no significant steps to alter nuclear targeting policies or reduce the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces,” said George A. Lopez, chairman of the Bulletin’s board of directors.
The shift in U.S. policy has immense implications for Canada and the other members of NATO. NATO has traditionally presented its nuclear doctrine as one of deterrence, not war. Canada is now caught in the middle, between its international legal obligations to support negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons, or to support the United States in its determination to keep them. All this will come to a head at an important Non-Proliferation Treaty meeting at the United Nations, starting April 8.
Canada has higher obligations to international law, as it is being developed in the United Nations system, than it does to its friendship with the United States, which is violating the very law that Canada stands for. Good friends don’t let their friends drive drunk. It’s time for Canada to blow the whistle on its U.S. friends in Washington, who are veering out of control in their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Because of its military strength and commanding position as the world’s lone superpower, the United States occupies the central position when it comes to making progress on nuclear disarmament. NATO’s stance — that nuclear weapons remain “essential” — would fold in an instant if the United States took action in entering comprehensive negotiations for elimination. Russia and China, struggling to move their economies into strong positions, do not want to engage in a new nuclear arms race, which is precisely what they fear will happen if and when the United States actually deploys a National Missile Defence system.
Most people do not realize that the United States spends $100-million (U.S.) a day maintaining its nuclear weapons. Because Washington is pouring huge new sums into its defence budget — it will soon be spending, at $400-billion annually, more than the next 15 countries combined — the international community has become rightfully alarmed about U.S. intentions.
Nor is the rest of the world reassured when we see the Pentagon’s Web site proclaiming the U.S. intention to weaponize space and thus ensure “full-spectrum dominance” on land, sea, air and space.
Douglas Roche is an independent senator from Alberta and Canada’s former ambassador for disarmament. He is a former chairman of the UN Disarmament Committee.
Posted by zack_allen