Nuclear Disarmament 2

U.N. displays million-signature petition to ban nukes

A one-million signature petition from cities around the world demanding the abolition of nuclear weapons went on exhibition at United Nations Headquarters in New York on March 24 in a ceremony attended by several hibakusha, Japanese survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The petition was organized by Mayors for Peace, which was founded in 1982 by the mayors of the two bombed cities and now includes the mayors of 4,853 cities in 151 countries. The exhibition underscores the goal of transcending national borders to work for nuclear disarmament in what Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called a “landmark occasion” that helps to build international momentum.

“These one million signatures demanding an end to the nuclear threat are the voice of the world’s people. This movement brings together mayors and mothers, like-minded citizens and peace groups. They all understand that nuclear weapons make us less safe, not more,” the Secretary-General told those present, first addressing three hibakusha, including one he met on a visit to Hiroshima last year.

“Everywhere I go, I will repeat my strong, consistent and clear call for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament,” Mr. Ban stated. “I will carry the message of the million petitioners represented here today and the many millions more around the world seeking to end the nuclear threat. Together, we can rid the world of nuclear weapons and answer the call of these hibakusha, who survived a nuclear attack and dedicated themselves to making sure no one else would ever suffer the same fate.”

Mr. Ban noted that the day’s event added to the U.N.’s permanent disarmament installation, the first exhibit of which emphasizes the importance of the U.N.’s partnership with global non-governmental organizations that advocate abolition of nuclear weapons. He then signed the petition himself.

Also present was Academy Award-winning actor Michael Douglas, a U.N. Messenger of Peace, who told U.N. Radio: “Obviously, any time I can be here to have a reminder, a memoriam of the first and only use of atomic weapons and the destruction they did, I think it’s an important reminder.”

– edited from U.N. News Service, 24 March 2011
PeaceMeal, July/August 2011

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New START treaty enters into force

The Senate ratified the strategic nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia, known as New START, by a vote of 71-26 on December 22. Top Republicans continued to oppose the treaty, but 13 Republicans crossed over to vote for it, thereby accomplishing President Obama’s major foreign policy goal for the lame-duck session. Under the treaty, Russia and the United States agree to limit the number of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 each, down from a ceiling of 2,200. The sides have seven years to accomplish the reductions. The pact also establishes a system for monitoring and verification.

Even though passage had been expected, some Republicans continued their opposition right up to the final vote. Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) argued that the treaty should be defeated because it fails to address limits on tactical weapons, an area in which Russia has a numerical advantage. Tactical weapons are smaller and designed for use on the battlefield, as opposed to strategic weapons, which are delivered by missile, bomber or from a submarine. Those delivery systems are also subject to limits in the new treaty.

Cornyn also cited other Republican objections, including that the pact’s “verification provisions are weak,” ignoring the fact that the Bush administration’s 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) had no provisions for verification at all. The Obama adminstration has argued that the new treaty is needed to step up verifica-tion, and top Pentagon officials have backed the administration.

Some Republicans argued that the treaty would limit the United States’ ability to deploy a missile defense system, but that debate ended after both sides accepted a bipartisan amendment designed to meet some GOP objections on the issue.

The New START treaty was signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last April in Prague. Following ratification by the Russian parliament, the treaty enterd into force on February 5, 2011.

– edited from an article by James Oliphant and Michael Muskal in the Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2010
PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2011

queen_noor.jpg (2323 bytes) A royal widow takes on the militarists over nukes

Queen Noor al-Hussein, the dowager queen of Jordan since the death of her husband King Hussein in 1999, is debriefing arms negotiators and parleying with generals to perfect her nuclear weapons strategy. Her strategy is to get rid of them. The former Lisa Halaby, an American beauty whose storybook romance with her late husband captivated the world a generation ago, is now telling a story of nuclear calamity and how to avoid it. She is co-leader and omnipresent voice for Global Zero, a growing movement crusading for abolition of nuclear weapons. Her organization's study commission of former missile commanders, foreign and defense secretaries, arms control specialists and others has proposed a step-by-step, 20-year plan for eliminating all nuclear arms -- in the U.S., Russia, China, wherever.

"We recognize it could take much longer, that it's going to be a torturous road ahead," she said. But the road thus far for the two-year-old organization has been smooth and successful, judging from the "who's who" of world leadership climbing aboard its campaign wagon, some 200 names, from Mikhail Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter to a platoon of retired brass from the Pentagon and the Russian, Chinese and other militaries. Global Zero scored a coup in February when George P. Shultz, President Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, a gray eminence from the conservative heyday, took part in the organization's Paris "summit."

Queen Noor said she is most encouraged by the new U.S.-Russian arms reduction treaty and other "historic steps" taken by Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, who have jointly embraced a no-nukes goal. The Kremlin leader even works the term "global zero" into his rhetoric. "It's just so heartening to see the Russian and American presidents coming together and discussing these very difficult issues," she said in an interview.

Noor is a star-quality presence that is helping raise the abolition movement's profile. From her home and office in McLean, Virginia, she is deeply engaged in the issue, tackling questions about the esoterica of the nuclear age with gusto and with knowledge. She has clearly made it her mission to immerse herself in the world of doomsday weapons, learning from such old hands as Reagan arms negotiator Richard Burt, her co-leader of Global Zero.

Noor takes the militarists head on -- "those locked into a Cold War thought process." She stated, "Many will react skeptically, in a black-and-white fashion, to what we're saying, saying, 'So, you want the United States to give up all its weapons like that?' or, 'You expect Russia to abandon its arsenals?' No, it takes time," she said. "It's a step-by-step process, and we have laid out the phases under which that needs to take place."

Global Zero's process was conceived by a study commission counting among its 23 members a former U.S. Atlantic Command chief, an ex-head of Russian strategic forces, and a retired Chinese military strategist, along with other military, political and scientific luminaries from seven nuclear powers plus Japan and Germany. Their plan calls for the U.S. and Russia to negotiate deeper bilateral cuts in their arsenals, to 1,000 warheads each by 2018. Meanwhile, begin-ning in mid-decade, all other nuclear-armed nations for the first time would enter multilateral talks to reduce their arsenals in proportion to continuing U.S. and Russian cuts. All would reach zero by 2030.

The ambitious plan would require transparency, ironclad verification and on-site inspections without notice -- an intrusiveness the nuclear powers might resist. It would also seem to require a great easing of tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, for example, and for nuclear-armed Israel. Such factors make de-nuclearization unlikely for decades to come, many believe, among them apparently President Obama, who said his no-nukes goal "will not be reached quickly -- perhaps not in my lifetime."

Queen Noor and fellow campaigners place considerable hope in "Countdown to Zero," a documentary film premiering in U.S. theaters July 9. She said the movie, produced with Global Zero assistance, should help reach younger people who "probably haven't even seen the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so they don't have any sense of the reality of what this is."

Global Zero recently delivered its declaration of commitment to work for a nuclear weapon-free world to the White House. More than 380,000 people worldwide have signed up online (See: www.globalzero.org).

Noor, a past activist in campaigns against land mines and cluster bombs, is in the high-stakes planetary challenge for the long haul. "Wherever I can be useful to the movement, I'm there," she said.

– edited from The Associated Press, April 18, 2010
PeaceMeal, May/June 2010

Nuke session approves early steps to disarm

UNITED NATIONS - The 189 member nations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on May 28 adopted a detailed plan of small steps down a long road toward nuclear disarmament, including a sharply debated proposal to move toward banning doomsday weapons from the Middle East. The 28-page final declaration was approved by consensus on the last day of the month-long conference, which is convened every five years to review and advance the objectives of the 40-year-old NPT.

Under its action plan, the "Big Five" recognized nuclear-weapon states -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- commit to speed up arms reductions, take other steps to diminish the importance of nuclear weapons, and report back on progress by 2014. The final document also calls for convening a conference in 2012 "on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction."

"All eyes the world over are watching us," the conference president, Libran Cabactulan of the Philippines, said before gaveling the final document into the record. Adoption was met with hearty applause beneath the U.N. General Assembly hall's soaring dome. U.S. Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher told the assembled delegates, "The final document this conference adopted today advances President Obama's vision" of a world without nuclear weapons.

Under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, nations without nuclear weapons committed not to acquire them; those with them committed to move toward their elimination; and all endorsed everyone's right to develop peaceful nuclear energy.

The last NPT conference in 2005 ended in failure because of open conflict between the non-Nuclear Weapons States pushing for disarmament and the Nuclear Weapons States resisting those efforts. The bickering between the Bush administration in particular and countries demanding that the United States shrink its own arsenals ran so deep that no real negotiations over how to stem nuclear proliferation ever took place. Two weeks were spent just arguing about the agenda. President Barack Obama's support for an array of arms-control measures much improved the cooperative atmosphere at this year's conference.

For the first time at an NPT RevCon, the final declaration laid out complex action plans for all three of the treaty's "pillars" -- nonproliferation, disarmament and peaceful nuclear energy. The five recognized weapons states did manage to strip earlier drafts of specific timelines for disarmament negotiations, such as a proposal that they consult among themselves on how to disarm and report back to the 2015 conference, after which a high-level meeting would convene to negotiate a "roadmap" for abolishing nuclear weapons. But in the final draft, they committed to "accelerate concrete progress" toward reducing their nuclear weaponry, and to report on progress in 2014 in preparation for the 2015 NPT RevCon.

Cuba expressed the disappointment of many non-Nuclear Weapons States that the Nuclear Weapons States did not accept a firmer timetable, saying it had done "all we could to set a timetable with 2025 as the deadline for the total elimination of nuclear weapons." The disarmament action plan also leaves a major gap, since it doesn't obligate four of the Nuclear Weapons States that are not members of the treaty -- Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The Arab idea of a Middle East WMD-free zone is designed to pressure Israel to give up its undeclared nuclear arsenal. Arab states and Israel's allies had been at odds over wording in the plan to convene a conference in 2012 to address that issue. Despite the decision to include it in the plan adopted, U.S. officials questioned whether Israel could be persuaded to attend such a conference. The Israelis objected to participating under terms in which they were the only nation singled out in this way but, in the end, the clause remained in the text adopted. Tauscher said that would "seriously jeopardize" U.S. efforts to persuade the Israelis to attend talks in 2012. Iran has long expressed support for a nuke-free Mideast, but Israel has long said a full Arab-Israeli peace must precede such weapons bans.

– edited from The Associated Press and The New York Times
PeaceMeal, May/June 2010

GOP attacks Obama's nuke policy, ignores Pentagon support

Robert G. Gard Jr.

A distressing trend has developed in the politicization of U.S. nuclear weapons policy: President Obama is criticized while the policies he is advancing enjoy the strong support of the Pentagon. The trend began in April 2009 when Obama delivered a speech in Prague calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Despite the fact that Ronald Reagan had the same objective, Obama was swiftly ridiculed on the right as "naive." The speech created an opening for all U.S. nuclear weapons policy to be similarly attacked in a larger effort to negatively brand the president's policies. By deliberately misrepresenting the facts, those criticisms play politics with our national security.

When the administration released its Nuclear Posture Review in April, it took no time for Sarah Palin to attack the policy, declaring, "No administration in America's history would, I think, ever have considered such a step that we just found out President Obama is supporting today." Her ridicule of the policy stands in stark contrast to what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said: "The review has the full support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We believe it provides us and our field commanders the opportunity to better shape our nuclear weapons posture, policies and force structure to meet an ever-changing security environment."

This trend of dishonesty has continued with the "New START" treaty between the U.S. and Russia. John Bolton, George W. Bush's interim ambassador to the U.N., wasted no time assailing the agreement. Bolton argued that the president was heading off in some utopian new direction. In contrast, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (who was also Bush's secretary of defense) declared: "The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leadership -- to include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of the service chiefs, and the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, the organization responsible for our nuclear deterrent."

Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard Jr. (U.S. Army, retired) is past president of the National Defense University.
His article is edited from McClatchy-Tribune News Service, May 20, 2010.
PeaceMeal, May/June 2010

New START treaty might be finished in weeks

Russia stated on January 27 that negotiations on a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expired on December 5 could be finished in a matter of weeks. Progress has been made at high-level meetings in Moscow that involved U.S. national security adviser Gen. James Jones and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen and their Russian equivalents, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov. “The talks were successful, and as a result we can hope that it will take just a few weeks for negotiators to come up with a document,” he said.

Last summer, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that they had agreed to reduce their countries’ respective stockpiles of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads. The two nations are required under the 2002 Moscow Treaty to cut their arsenals to no more than 2,200 warheads by 2012.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had said in December that U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe were the main obstacle to reaching a new deal on reducing Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons. Lyakin-Frolov said Washington should consider Moscow’s concerns regarding U.S. missile defense activities, though he indicated the replacement START accord might not cover the matter at great length. That issue could kill the deal, as the U.S. Senate would not be expected to sign off on a nuclear arms pact that also dealt significantly with missile defense.

One thing that is holding up treaty completion, Lyakin-Frolov suggested, is the matter of telemetry, in which a missile's launch and flight path is monitored from a distance. While the expired agreement obligated both countries to share their telemetry information, Moscow felt it received a bad bargain as it supplied the Pentagon with data on new Russian missiles while Washington only disclosed information on old missiles it was refurbishing because it was not developing any new missiles.

Verification protocols are the most contentious issue though, officials say, with Russia calling for something less stringent than what the old START agreement required.

The negotiations have been going on for 10 months, and more holdups in the negotiations could potentially hurt the chances for realization of a new treaty. Other nuclear-armed nations and states working toward that capability might also take away the wrong message from such delays. These worries have contributed to Russia and the United States shooting for a completed treaty before a Global Nuclear Security Summit is held in Washington in April. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said it is “hard to make any predictions in terms of what a time line is, but I think we’re reasonably optimistic that the finish line is within sight.”

– edited from Global Security Newswire, January 27, 2010
PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2010

U.N. Security Council adopts measure on nuclear weapons

President Barack Obama presided over the United Nations Security Council on Sept. 24 as it unanimously passed a resolution aimed at shoring up the international commitment to limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, in particular halting the diversion of nuclear material for bomb development. The special session was only the fifth time that the Security Council had met at the summit level since the United Nations was founded after World War II, and Mr. Obama was the first U.S. president to preside over such a session. He and most of the other presidents and prime ministers at the session focused their brief remarks on their dreams for a world free of nuclear weapons.

President Nikolas Sarkozy of France, however, gave a forceful speech saying that despite such ideals, the Council had to confront the reality of two crises — that Iran and North Korea continued to flout resolutions seeking to limit their nuclear programs. “What these two nations are doing undermines the very rules on which our collective security is based,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “We must stop proliferation. That is what this resolution stipulates.”

The French president said that Iran had pursued nuclear proliferation activities in violation of five United Nations resolutions. “No one can seriously believe that the aims of these activities are peaceful,” he said. On the subject of North Korea, he said that for the past 20 years, Pyongyang had been developing nuclear missiles and exporting sensitive technology. He called on all nations to monitor and intercept illegal arms and nuclear exports from North Korea.

The United States, which put forth the resolution (No. 1887), said it was not focused on any country in particular. Rather, it was meant to produce a renewed international effort with an eye toward an international review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty next spring, as well as to finally win the passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Among other things, the resolution seeks to improve security around nuclear materials to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists; says the Security Council will act against those who provide such material to terrorists; and calls for efforts to strengthen the detection, deterrence and disruption of illegal trafficking in nuclear-related materials.

It also includes provisions that would continue to hold countries responsible for any actions that violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty even if they withdraw from it. That is an attempt to deter any such withdrawals, a step that was taken by North Korea several years ago.

Despite the show of unity behind the 15-0 vote, the arguments leading up to the resolution underscored the differences on the Council. China and Russia agreed to new Council sanctions against North Korea last June, but they have been less supportive in the council on action against Iran.

Mr. Obama said the resolution was about ensuring that international agreements have real-world heft. “International law is not an empty promise, and treaties must be enforced,” he said. Officials noted that the resolution is not binding, and would become so only if the Security Council required countries to take other steps, including making their nuclear exports subject to additional restrictions.

– edited from The New York Times, September 25, 2009
Peacemeal, Sept/October 2009

U.S. and Russia announce deal on nuclear arms reduction

MOSCOW — Presidents of the United States and Russia announced July 6 that they had reached a preliminary agreement on cutting each country’s stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons. The “framework” agreement was put together by negotiators as President Obama arrived in Moscow for his first Russian-American summit meeting. Seeking to move forward on one of the most significant arms control treaties since the end of the Cold War, it was approved by Mr. Obama and Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. Both sides say they hope that the nuclear agreement would effectively set the stage for a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a Cold War-era pact that expires in December. Beyond that, they said they wanted to build momentum for a broader agreement to be negotiated starting next year to impose deeper cuts in their nuclear arsenals and put the world on a path toward eliminating nuclear weapons altogether.

The summit meeting comes almost a year after the armed conflict in the Republic of Georgia caused the worst tensions between the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War. President Obama has said he wants to rebuild the relationship. He also announced an agreement to resume military-to-military contacts.

The specter of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and North Korea raised deep concerns, Mr. Obama said, and he called for the United States to host a summit meeting on global nuclear security next year. “We have a mutual interest in protecting both of our populations from the kinds of danger that weapons proliferation is presenting today,” he said.

Mr. Medvedev said that although Russia and the United States were trying to repair their relationship, differences still remained on missile defense and other issues. Russia has repeatedly objected to a U.S. anti-missile system based in Poland and the Czech Republic, which was initiated by the Bush administration to ward off an alleged threat from Iran. Russia views the system near its border as a threat to its security.

“While the previous administration of the United States took a very hard-headed position on this issue,” Mr. Medvedev said, “the current administration is ready to discuss the topic. I think that we are fully able to find a reasonable solution here.” And while Mr. Obama is not enthusiastic about the system, he has not abandoned it and is awaiting a review by his advisers. In the meantime, he has resisted linking the missile defense system to the nuclear arms reduction negotiations.

The nuclear arms framework document sets the parameters for talks through the end of this year, according to officials. Negotiators are to be instructed to craft a treaty that would cut each side’s strategic warheads operationally deployed on ballistic missiles and bombers to between 1,500 and 1,675, down from the limit of 2,200 slated to take effect in 2012 under the Treaty of Moscow signed by President George W. Bush. The limit on delivery vehicles would be cut to between 500 and 1,100 from the 1,600 currently allowed under START. The countries would be required to meet the limits in the treaty within seven years, officials said. Perhaps more important than the specific limits would be a revised and extended verification system that otherwise would expire with START in December.

The United States currently deploys an estimated minimum of 2,200 strategic thermonuclear warheads, all of which are dangerously on high-alert to launch on warning. While the number of deployed Russian strategic warheads is not known, the Arms Control Association estimated it between 2,000 and 3,000. Both sides also have thousands more warheads that are not covered in the treaty discussions — strategic warhead reserves, many of which can be put into action within a few days, and smaller, tactical nukes that can be delivered by cruise missiles or fighter jets.

– edited from The New York Times, July 6, 2009
PeaceMeal, July/August 2009