Aiming at Global Disarmament by 2030

February 17, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Ramesh Jaura | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

2013-peace-proposal_small

[SGI President drafting 2013 Peace Proposal | Credit: SGI]

BERLIN (IDN) – An eminent Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda is calling for an “expanded nuclear summit” in 2015 to solidify momentum toward a world free from nuclear weapons and become the launching point for a larger effort for global disarmament aiming toward the year 2030.

With this in view, he hopes that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and forward-looking governments will establish an action group to initiate before year’s end the process of drafting a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) outlawing nuclear weapons, which are not only inhumane but also swallow some $105 billion year after year.

“A key factor . . . will be the stance taken by those countries which have relied on the extended deterrence of nuclear-weapon states, the so-called nuclear umbrella,” writes Ikeda, who heads Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a Tokyo-based lay Buddhist organization spanning the globe.

SGI President Ikeda notes with great satisfaction that signatories to the statements so far, urging putting a halt to proliferation and calling for abolition of atomic weapons of mass destruction, “include not only countries belonging to Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones (NWFZs) and neutral countries, but also Norway and Denmark, which are members of NATO and thus come under that organization’s nuclear umbrella. And yet these two countries have not only signed these statements but have played a key role in their drafting.”

On the other hand, Japan, which also relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, has refrained from signing some of the important statements, he adds and implores Tokyo to “join with other countries seeking the prohibition of nuclear weapons as inhumane and work for the earliest realization of a world free from the threat of these weapons”.

In his 2013 Peace Proposal ‘Compassion, Wisdom and Courage: Building a Global Society of Peace and Creative,’ Ikeda explores “the prospects for constructing a global society of peace and creative coexistence looking toward the year 2030″.

Originally inspired by second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda’s 1957 anti-nuclear weapons declaration, Ikeda publishes a peace proposal every year which casts a close look at the interrelation between core Buddhist concepts and the diverse challenges global society faces in the effort to realize peace and human security. He has also made proposals touching on issues such as education reform, the environment, the United Nations and nuclear abolition.

The 2013 Peace Proposal comes in run-up to two significant events this year: The Conference on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons organized by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry on March4-5 in Oslo – to be preceded by a civil society forum for a global ban on nukes, and a high level meeting in September of the UN General Assembly on nuclear disarmament.

Ikeda’s 2013 Peace Proposal states that the huge annual aggregate expenditure on nuclear weapons globally underlines “the enormity of the burden placed on societies simply by the continued possession of these weapons”. It adds: “If these financial resources were redirected domestically to health, social welfare and education programs or to development aid for other countries, the positive impact on people’s lives and dignity would be incalculable.”

Backdrop

The backdrop to the latest peace proposal is that since the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), there has been a growing, if still nascent, movement to outlaw nuclear weapons based on the premise that they are inhumane.

The Final Document of the Review Conference notes a “deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and reaffirms “the need for all States at all times to comply with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.”

This ground breaking statement was followed by a resolution by the Council of Delegates of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in November 2011, strongly appealing to all states “to pursue in good faith and conclude with urgency and determination negotiations to prohibit the use of and completely eliminate nuclear weapons through a legally binding international agreement.”

Subsequently, at the first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 NPT Review Conference held in May 2012, sixteen countries led by Norway and Switzerland issued a joint statement on the humanitarian dimension of nuclear disarmament, stating that “it is of great concern that, even after the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation remains part of the 21st century international security environment.”

They stressed: “it is of utmost importance that these weapons never be used again, under any circumstances. . . . All States must intensify their efforts to outlaw nuclear weapons and achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.” In October 2012, this statement, with minor revisions, was presented to the First Committee of the UN General Assembly by thirty-five member and observer states.

Ikeda refers to important new research on the effects of nuclear war on the environment announced in April2012 in the report ‘Nuclear Famine’. Issued by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), the study predicts that even a relatively small-scale nuclear exchange could cause major climate change and that the impact on countries far-distant from the combatant nations would result in famine affecting more than a billion people.

According to Ikeda, the SGI’s efforts to grapple with the nuclear weapons issue are based on the recognition that the very existence of these weapons represents the ultimate negation of the dignity of life.

“It is necessary to challenge the underlying inhumanity of the idea that the needs of states can justify the sacrifice of untold numbers of human lives and disruption of the global ecology. At the same time, we feel that nuclear weapons serve as a prism through which to bring into sharper focus ecological integrity, economic development and human rights – issues that our contemporary world cannot afford to ignore. This in turn helps us identify the elements that will shape the contours of a new, sustainable society, one in which all people can live in dignity.”

Three proposals

With this in view, the SGI President has tabled three concrete proposals:

First, to make disarmament a key theme of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Specifically, he proposes that halving world military expenditures relative to 2010 levels and abolishing nuclear weapons and all other weapons judged inhumane under international law be included as targets for achievement by the year 2030. In the proposal I issued on the occasion of the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012, Ikeda urged that targets related to the green economy, renewable energy and disaster prevention and mitigation be included in the SDGs, and I believe that disarmament targets should also be taken into consideration.

The International Peace Bureau (IPB), the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and other civil society organizations are currently advocating the global reduction of military spending, and the SGI supports this out of the awareness that disarmament is humanitarian action.

Second, to initiate the negotiation process for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, with the goal of agreement on an initial draft by 2015: “To this end, we must engage in active and multifaceted debate – cantered on the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons – to broadly shape international public opinion,” says Ikeda.

Third, to hold an expanded summit for a nuclear-weapon-free world: The G8 Summit in 2015, the seventieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would be an appropriate opportunity for such a summit, which should include the additional participation of representatives of the United Nations and non-G8 states in possession of nuclear weapons, as well as members of the five existing NWFZs – Antarctic Treaty, Latin American NWFZ (Tlatelolco Treaty), South Pacific NWFZ (Rarotonga Treaty), Southeast Asia NWFZ (Bangkok treaty), and African NWFZ (Pelindaba Treaty) – and those states which have taken a lead in calling for nuclear abolition, explains the SGI President.

“If possible, Germany and Japan, which are the scheduled G8 host countries for 2015 and 2016 respectively, should agree to reverse that order, enabling the convening of this meeting in Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” adds Ikeda.

In past peace proposals, he urged that the 2015 NPT Review Conference be held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a vehicle for realizing a nuclear abolition summit. He still hopes that such a meeting can be held.

“Nevertheless, the logistical issues involved in bringing together the representatives of almost 190 countries may dictate that the meeting be held at the UN Headquarters in New York as is customary. In that event, the G8 Summit scheduled to be held several months after the NPT Review Conference would provide an excellent opportunity for an expanded group of world leaders to grapple with this critical issue.” argues Ikeda.

In this regard, he feels encouraged by President Barack Obama’s speech at Hankuk University in Seoul on March 26, 2012: “My administration’s nuclear posture recognizes that the massive nuclear arsenal we inherited from the Cold War is poorly suited to today’s threats, including nuclear terrorism. . . .But I believe the United States has a unique responsibility to act– indeed, we have a moral obligation. I say this as President of the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons.”

This, of course, restates the conviction he first expressed in his April 2009 Prague speech. President Obama then went on to say: “Most of all, I say it as a father, who wants my two young daughters to grow up in a world where everything they know and love can’t be instantly wiped out.”

Ikeda says: “These words express a yearning for the world as it should be, a yearning that cannot be subsumed even after all political elements and security requirements have been taken fully into consideration. It is the statement of a single human being rising above the differences of national interest or ideological stance. Such a way of thinking can help us ‘untie’ the Gordian Knot that has too long bound together the ideas of national security and nuclear weapons possession.”

He adds: “There is no place more conducive to considering the full significance of life in the nuclear age than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was seen when the G8 Summit of Lower House Speakers was convened in Hiroshima in 2008. The kind of expanded summit I am calling for would inherit that spirit and solidify momentum toward a world free from nuclear weapons. It would become the launching point for a larger effort for global disarmament aiming toward the year 2030.” [IDN-InDepthNews – February 12, 2013]

2013 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Analysis, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons Tagged With:

Few Hopes for Iran Breakthrough

February 11, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 08 (IPS) – Despite an agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) to resume long-delayed talks about Tehran’s nuclear programme in Kazakhstan at the end of this month, few observers here believe that any breakthrough is in the offing.That belief was reinforced Thursday when Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared to reject a U.S. proposal, most recently put forward by Vice President Joseph Biden at a major security conference in Munich last week, to hold direct bilateral talks.

While Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akhbar Salehi, initially welcomed the offer, provided Washington desisted from its “threatening rhetoric that (all options are) on the table,” Khamenei said in a speech to air force officers Thursday that such talks “would solve nothing".

“You are pointing a gun at Iran saying you want to talk,” he said. “The Iranian nation will not be frightened by the threats.”

His rebuff confirmed to some observers here that serious negotiations – whether between Iran and the P5 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China) plus German or in bilateral talks between Tehran and Washington – are unlikely to take place before Iran’s presidential election in June.

“(I)t simply doesn’t lie in (Khamenei’s) nature to agree to talks from a position of weakness – and certainly not without the protection of having the talks be conducted by an Iranian President who he can …blame for any potential failure in the talks,” wrote Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), on the ‘Daily Beast’ website Thursday.

“Khamenei would rather wait till after the Iranian elections, it seems, in order to both find ways to shift the momentum back to Iran’s side and to hide behind Iran’s new President in the talks,” according to Parsi, author of two award-winning books on U.S.-Iranian relations.

He was referring to the widespread notion here that the cumulative impact of U.S.-led international economic sanctions against Iran, as well as the raging civil war in Syria, Iran’s closest regional ally, has seriously weakened Tehran and “forced” it back to the table, if not quite yet to make the concessions long demanded by the administration of President Barack Obama and its allies.

Those include ending Tehran’s enrichment of uranium to 20 percent; shipping its existing 20-percent enriched stockpile out of the country; closure of its underground Fordow enrichment facility; acceptance of a highly intrusive inspections regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); and the clearing up of all outstanding IAEA questions related to possible past military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme.

In exchange for those steps, according to U.S. officials, Washington – and presumably the other P5+1 members — would be prepared to forgo further UN. sanctions against Iran; assure the supply of nuclear fuel for Tehran’s Research Reactor (TRR), which produces medical isotopes; facilitate services to Iran’s aging civilian aircraft fleet; and provide other “targeted sanctions relief” that, however, would not include oil- and banking-related sanctions that have been particularly damaging to Iran’s economy over the past two years.

Gradual relief from those more-important sanctions would follow only after full and verifiable implementation of Iran’s side of the bargain.

Until such a deal is struck, however, Washington is committed to increasing the pressure, according to U.S. officials who say the administration remains committed to a strategy of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon by military means, if necessary.

Indeed, in what one official described as “a significant turning of the screw”, the administration announced Wednesday that it had begun implementing new Congressionally mandated sanctions that would effectively force Iran’s foreign oil purchasers into barter arrangements. To avoid sanctions, buyers would have to pay into local accounts from which Iran could then buy locally made goods.

It’s generally accepted that such so-called “crippling sanctions” are responsible, at least in substantial part, for the 50-percent decline in the value of the riyal, galloping inflation, and a major increase in unemployment in recent months.

At the same time, however, there is growing doubt here that the sanctions are achieving their purpose – forcing Iran to accept the stringent curbs on its nuclear programme demanded by the U.S. – or that they are likely to achieve that purpose within the next 18-24 months.

That is the time frame in which most experts believe Tehran could achieve “breakout capacity” – the ability to be able to build a nuclear bomb very quickly – if it decided to do so.

Indeed, in recent weeks, Iran began installing advanced centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility that, if fully activated, could significantly accelerate the rate of enrichment. The move was seen as an effort by Tehran to strengthen its position before the P5+1 meeting in Almaty Feb. 26.

Moreover, the assumption that the economic woes imposed by the sanctions would drive such a deep wedge between Tehran’s leadership and the population that the regime risked collapse is also increasingly in question.

While a majority (56 percent) of respondents said in December that sanctions have hurt Iranians’ livelihoods “a great deal", according to a poll of Iranian opinion released by the Gallup organisation here Thursday, 63 percent said they believed Iran should continue developing its nuclear programme. Only 17 percent disagreed.

When asked who should be blamed for the sanctions, only 10 percent of respondents cited Iran itself; 70 percent named either the U.S. (47 percent), Israel (nine percent); Western European countries (seven percent); or the U.N. (seven percent).

“This may indicate that sanctions alone are not having the intended effect of persuading Iranian residents and country leaders to change their stance on the level of international oversight of their nuclear program,” noted a Gallup analysis of the results.

Its credibility, however, was questioned by some Iran experts who noted that increased security measures taken by the regime may affect the willingness of respondents to speak frankly to pollsters.

In light of the most recent developments, including Khamenei’s rejection of Biden’s offer and the installation of the new centrifuges at Natanz, Iran hawks here are urging yet tougher sanctions and moves to make the eventual use of force more credible – appeals that are certain to be greatly amplified next month when the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) holds its annual convention here

At the same time, however, there appears to be a growing conviction within the foreign-policy elite that ever-increasing sanctions and threatening military action are unlikely to work, and that Washington should offer be more forthcoming about sanctions relief to get a deal.

Indeed, the administration’s commitment to resorting to military action, if necessary, to prevent Iran from obtaining a weapon is also increasingly being questioned, as a growing number of foreign-policy “greybeards” are calling for a strategy of “deterrence” if and when Iran reaches breakout capacity.

“In the end, war is too costly, unpredictable and dangerous to be a practical option,” noted Bruce Riedel, a former top CIA Middle East and South Asia analyst who was in charge of preparing Afghanistan policy on Obama’s transition team in 2009 and remains close to the White House from his perch at the Brookings Institution.

The “stark choice” between a diplomatic solution and war that Obama’s commitment to prevention has created, he wrote to the “Iran Primer” this week, “is a mistake".

“But there is a good chance that (Secretary of State John) Kerry and Obama will bail themselves out of this trap by re-opening the door to containment, although they would probably call it something else.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Diplomacy, Featured, Middle East, Nuclear Weapons, Politics Tagged With: ,

Sanctions Do Not Lead To Nuke Abolition in Asia

February 6, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Kalinga Seneviratne | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

SINGAPORE (IDN) – North Korea’s response to the United Nations Security Council’s expanded sanctions on January 22 by threatening to resume nuclear tests and failure last November of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to persuade the five recalcitrant nuclear powers to sign the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone Treaty (SEANWFZ) have focused attention on the atomic threat facing the Asian region that is fast emerging as the centre of the global economy.

Posited very much in the midst of these developments is the Obama Administration’s so-called US “pivot” or “rebalance” policy towards Asia, which is increasingly seen in the region as a security issue rather than an economic or political re-engagement.

Since this policy announcement two years ago there has been increased tension in the region with regard to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea that has prompted some analysts in Asia to question whether the US is trying to provoke Asian countries like Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam into confrontation with China.

With North Korea’s recent posturing, the threat of a nuclear confrontation – though remote – is rather worrisome to Asia that is emerging from centuries of economic subjugation by the West.

A looming confrontation with China in Asia may be one of the major reasons why the three nuclear powered states Russia, France and Britain could not agree to sign the SEANWFZ as planned at the 21st ASEAN Summit in Cambodia in November 2012. France voiced its reservations on the right of self-defence, United Kingdom on “new threat and development”, and Russia on the right of foreign ships and aircraft to pass into the nuclear free zone, a concern similar to that of the US.

The notion of a SEANWFZ dates back to November 27, 1971, when the original five members of ASEAN signed a Declaration on a (ASEAN) Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) in Kuala Lumpur. The first major component of the ZOPFAN pursued by ASEAN was the establishment of a SEANWFZ.

However, due to the unfavourable political environment in the region, the formal proposal for the establishment of such a zone was tabled only in the mid-1980s. After a decade of negotiating and drafting efforts by the ASEAN Working Group on a ZOPFAN, the SEANWFZ Treaty was signed by the heads of states of all 10 ASEAN member countries in Bangkok on December 15, 1995 and it took effect two years later. The negotiations between ASEAN and the five nuclear powers on the protocol have been under way since May 2001 with no progress achieved.

Among a number of rules and conditions laid out by the treaty, the main components are that signatory States are obliged not to develop, manufacture or otherwise acquire, possess or have control over nuclear weapons; station nuclear weapons; or test or use nuclear weapons anywhere inside or outside the treaty zone.

The protocol also stipulates that Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) must abide by articles of the Treaty and not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against States parties. China has previously expressed its willingness to ratify the protocol, but the other four NWS cite the geographical scope of the Treaty as an obstacle. The treaty zone covers the territories, continental shelves, and exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of the States Parties within the zone.

Malaysian political scientist, Dr Chandra Muzzafar, Executive Director of the International Movement for a Just World says that while ASEAN states must be commended for drafting and signing the SEANWFZ, at the same time “all the five nuclear weapons states are determined to ensure that their nuclear advantage is preserved at all costs, ‘self-defence’ is just a camouflage”.

“Britain and France are US allies and the US through various military and diplomatic moves is reinforcing its agenda of containing China. So it should not surprise anyone if its two European allies are seeking to bolster the US position in the region,” he said in an interview with IDN-InDepthNews.

Non-governmental actors

Asked if the Asian countries should make US access to their markets conditional on the nuclear powers signing the treaty, Dr Muzzafar said: “ASEAN and other countries in Asia should first demonstrate a strong collective commitment towards the control and abolition of nuclear weapons before they make demands upon outside powers. Such a commitment does not exist at the moment. This is why I do not see them asking these powers to sign the Bangkok Treaty as a condition for access to the expanding markets in Asia.”

Dr Muzzafar is of the view that governments in the region will not be able to persuade the nuclear powers to sign the treaty and it will have to be non-governmental actors that need to mount a concerted campaign for it to happen. “In the ultimate analysis, it is only a powerful citizens’ movement that can rid the continent of present and future nuclear weapons”, he argues.

In a speech at the University of Iceland in October 2012, Dr Gareth Evans, the former Australian Foreign Minister and the Convener of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), regretted that the spirit of optimism some three years ago that nuclear disarmament could be achieved in the Asia-Pacific region has evaporated.

“If the existing nuclear-armed states are serious about non-proliferation, as they all claim to be, and sincerely want to prevent others from joining their club, they cannot keep justifying the possession of nuclear weapons as a means of protection for themselves or their allies against other weapons of mass destruction, especially biological weapons, or conventional weapons,” he argued. "All the world hates a hypocrite, and in arms control as in life generally, demanding that others do as I say is not nearly as compelling as asking them to do as I do."

Dr Evans also pointed out that nuclear weapons would not deter terrorists, as many nuclear weapons states tend to argue. "Terrorists don’t usually have territory, industry, a population or a regular army which could be targeted with nuclear weapons," he said.

On September 13, 2012, APLN expressed deep disappointment at the evaporation of political will evident in global and regional efforts toward nuclear disarmament over the previous year. The statement was signed by 25 political, diplomatic, military and scientific leaders from 14 Asia Pacific countries.

Professor Ramesh Thakur, Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament at the Australian National University, writing in Japan Times noted that plans for upgrades, modernization or increased numbers and destructive power of nuclear arsenals by all the nuclear-armed states indicate that none is serious about nuclear disarmament.

“All countries that have and seek nuclear weapons, or are increasing the size and modernizing the quality of their arsenals, should be subjected to international opprobrium,” he wrote.

Tactical Nukes

Rather than subjecting nukes to international scorn, several commentators in regional publications in recent months have argued that the US may need to be persuaded to re-deploy tactical weapons in the Korean peninsula, which the Bush administration withdrew in 1991 – in order to respond to the North Korean threat.

“Tactical nukes on South Korean soil would enhance the credibility of the US nuclear umbrella against North Korea and also reassure the South Korean public of the US security commitment” argues Seongwhun Cheon, a Senior Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in a commentary published by GlobalAsia.

“As North Korea continues to develop long-range missiles, alliance dynamics in Northeast Asia will come to resemble that of Europe in the late 1950s.” he says. “When the Soviet Union first fired its Sputnik missile and opened the intercontinental missile age, Western European allies began to worry that America might decouple its own security from alliance security in fear of a Soviet attack on the US mainland. Similar concerns on decoupling will become widespread in South Korea, and cause ripple effects in Japan. To allay looming concerns about such a possible decoupling, redeploying tactical nukes in South Korea is essential,” writes Cheon.

Yet, China may play a crucial role in decreasing tension in the region. Ties are expected to become warmer between China and South Korea under the new leaderships. The newly elected South Korean President Park Geun-Hye has already sent a special envoy to Beijing and China’s new Communist party chief Xi Jinping has called for a resumption of the six-party talks on North Korea.

While Park has indicated that she would take a more conciliatory stance towards North Korea compared to her hawkish predecessor, China’s Jinping was reported by the Korean Times as saying that he opposes the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

Professor Shen Dingli, Director of the Centre for American Studies at the Fudan University in Shanghai says that if the US wants stability and peace in the Asia-Pacific region it should work with China to achieve.

“Rebalancing by ganging up on China will undermine stability in East Asia, and may ultimately backfire and cause damage to the US’ own interests,” he argues in a commentary published by China Daily. “So far the US has insisted on ignoring the facts, confusing right and wrong and taking sides in disputes that don’t directly concern it," Dingli writes.

He urges the new Obama administration to recognize that “the power shift in the Asia-Pacific region is unstoppable, and the US can only go with the flow, respect the legitimate and reasonable demands of the emerging powers, and help seek a fair and proper settlement of major disputes in the region”. [IDN-InDepthNews – January 29, 2013]

2013 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Asia, Nuclear Weapons, Opinion Tagged With: ,

Opportunity Missed for Nuclear-Free Middle East

December 3, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Jillian Kestler-DAmours

JERUSALEM, Dic 02 (IPS) – After the cancellation of an international conference to create a nuclear-free Middle East, leading experts have warned that an important opportunity to create stability in the region has been squandered.“The 2012 meeting in Helsinki was a precedent. For the first time, the important decision (was taken) of convening a special meeting to study the requirements of a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East,” Ayman Khalil, director of the Amman-based Arab Institute for Security Studies told IPS.

“That in and of itself was an important decision and a milestone. Sadly, this didn’t materialise.”

Sponsored by the United Nations and backed by Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom, the conference on building a nuclear-free Middle East was set to take place in December in Finland.

United States State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland stated that the conference was cancelled due to “a deep conceptual gap (that) persists in the region on approaches towards regional security and arms control arrangements,” and because “states in the region have not reached agreement on acceptable conditions” for the meeting.

The meeting is now expected to be held in early 2013.

According to the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs (ECFA), holding the conference was especially important at this time given “Iran’s non-response to the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency on one hand, and Israel’s threat to launch a military attack on Iran on the other hand.”

The ECFA stated that the Arab Forum for Non-Proliferation would hold a meeting Dec. 12 in Cairo to discuss how to get the process re-started. “Making the Middle East free of mass destruction weapons will create the appropriate environment for regional stability and security in the region,” it stated.

The decision to hold a special conference on the creation of a nuclear-free Middle East was made during a 2010 review meeting of states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Signed into force in 1970, the NPT aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons technology, and further the goal of nuclear disarmament around the world. Currently, 190 parties have signed the treaty, including the five official nuclear-weapons states: China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and the United States.

There are currently five nuclear-weapon-free zones in the world, according to the UN: Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, South-East Asia, Central Asia, and Africa.

Israel, which has long been believed to possess nuclear weapons yet maintains a policy of “nuclear ambiguity”, has not signed the NPT. Many have said that the decision to cancel the Helsinki conference may be linked to Israeli fears that it would be singled out for criticism.

According to Paul Hirschson, deputy spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel was never formally invited to the Helsinki conference, and therefore never agreed or disagreed to participate.

“I think that we probably agree with the Americans that the conditions aren’t right…I don’t think we’ve really got much to talk about anything,” Hirschson told IPS.

“The subject’s a nice subject, but what we’re really interested in is peace with the Palestinians, diplomatic relations with the Saudis; we’ve got a hundred things ahead of us before we start devoting time to that.”

Over the past year, Israel has publicly voiced its opposition to Iran working to acquire nuclear weapons, a charge that Iranian officials have denied. Israeli leaders have gone so far as to suggest that they might pre-emptively strike Iranian nuclear facilities, causing diplomatic tensions with its largest ally, the United States.

According to Ayman Khalil, however, Israel’s nuclear ambiguity remains the “elephant in the room”, and it, not a nuclear Iran, constitutes the biggest obstacle to building a nuclear-free Middle East.

“All countries in the region have basically signed the (nuclear) non-proliferation treaty, including Iran. One country, and one country alone, remains outside of these arrangements, and that is Israel,” Khalil said.

“Arabs wanted this meeting (in Helsinki) to take place in good faith to reach an acceptable arrangement with Israel. If this meeting would have taken place as planned, it would have been a massive confidence building measure between members of the region.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

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Filed Under: Commentary, Diplomacy, Middle East, Nuclear Weapons Tagged With: ,

IAEA Data on Sensitive Iranian Stockpile Mislead News Media

November 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Gareth Porter

Nov 20 () – News stories on the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report suggested new reasons to fear that Iran is closer to a “breakout” capability than ever before, citing a nearly 50-percent increase in its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium and the installation of hundreds of additional centrifuges at the Fordow enrichment installation. But the supposedly dramatic increase in the stockpile of uranium that could theoretically be used to enrich to weapons grade is based on misleading figures in the Nov. 16 IAEA report. The actual increase in the level of that stockpile appears to be 20 percent.

The coverage of the completion of the installation of 2,800 centrifuges at Fordow, meanwhile, continued the media practice of ignoring the linkage between large numbers of idle centrifuges and future negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme.

The latest round of media coverage of the Iran issue again highlights the failure of major news outlets to reflect the complexity and political subtleties of the Iranian enrichment programme.

The IAEA report created understandable confusion about the stockpile of uranium enriched to 20-percent – also called 20 percent LEU (low enriched uranium). It does not use the term “stockpile” at all. Instead, it says Iran produced 43 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium during the three months since the August report and cited a total of 135 kg of 20-percent uranium now “in storage”, compared with only 91.4 kg in August.

Based on those figures, Reuters suggested that Iran might already be two-thirds of the way to the level of 200-250 kg that “experts say” could be used to build a bomb. The Guardian’s Julian Borger wrote that Iran was enriching uranium at a pace that would reach the Israeli “red line” in just seven months.

But analysis of the figures in the last two reports shows that the IAEA total for 20-percent LEU “in storage” actually includes 20-percent LEU that has been sent to the Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant in Esfahan for conversion to powder for fuel plates to be used by Iran’s medical reactor but not yet converted.

The November IAEA report includes the information that, as of Sep. 26 – six weeks after the data in the August report were collected – the total amount of 20-percent LEU fed into conversion process in Esfahan stood at 82.7 kg.

That figure is 11.5 kg more than the total of 71.25 kg fed into the conversion process as of the August report.

The difference between the two indicates that 11.5 kg had been taken out of the stockpile and sent to the Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant at Esfahan during September 2012.

In another indicator of the difference between the IAEA’s “in storage” figure and the actual stockpile size, the current IAEA report gives the figure of 73.7 kg of 20-percent LEU from the Fordow facility "withdrawn and verified” by the IAEA over the entire period of such enrichment. That total is 23.7 kg higher than the total of 50 kg from Fordow “withdrawn and verified” given in the August report.

A total of 23.7 kg of 20-percent LEU was evidently taken out of the stockpile available for higher level enrichment and sent for conversion to powder for fuel plates during the last quarter.

The current IAEA report nevertheless uses the same overall total of 96.3 kg of 20-percent LEU fed into the conversion process that it used in the August report.

Subtracting the 23.7 kg additional uranium “withdrawn and verified” by the IAEA during the quarter from the total 20-percent enriched uranium production of 43 kg during the quarter reduces the amount added to the stockpile of 20-percent LEU to 19.3 kg.

Adding the 19.3 kg to the August total of 91.4 kg gives a total for the stockpile of 110.7 kg – a 20-percent increase over the August level rather than the nearly 50-percent increase suggested by news stories.

The IAEA declined to respond to the substance of an IPS e-mail query citing the apparent inconsistencies in the data presented in the last two reports. IAEA Press Officer Greg Webb said in an e-mail that safeguards department officials who had been sent the query “reply that the report is clear and accurate as it stands".

However, the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., which normally supports everything in IAEA reports, said in a Nov. 16 commentary that the current report “does not make it clear if Iran has sent additional near 20 percent LEU hexafluoride to the Esfahan conversion site after August 2012.”

The Washington think tank added, “However, it if did, the near 20 percent LEU remains in the form of hexafluoride.” The comment implied that the IAEA may have included 23.7 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium sent to the Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant during the quarter as being “in storage”.

The IAEA report also said Iran had halted its conversion of 20-percent LEU for fuel plates during the quarter, although it did not indicate how long the halt might last.

Reuters cited that halt as “another potentially worrying development”. But in light of the actual level of the stockpile, that halt could simply reflect the fact that Tehran is content to keep the figure from rising too far above 100 kg.

The spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee, Hossein Naqavi, said Oct. 6 that Iran was taking “a serious and concrete confidence-building measure” by converting some of the 20-percent LEU into powder for fuel plates.

More surprisingly, an Israel official leaked to an Israeli daily that Iran was believed to have consciously avoided allowing its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium to go much beyond 110 kg by diverting much of it for conversion to fuel for its scientific research reactor.

Citing “defense sources”, Ha’aretz military correspondent Amos Harel wrote Oct. 9 that the Israeli policymakers had new information they considered “highly reliable” that each time new production of 20-percent enriched uranium could have brought the total above 130 kg, Iran had “diverted 15 or 20 kg to scientific use".

Harel indicated that the new information was the justification for the Israeli position that the threat of Iranian threat of a breakout capability had receded for many months.

Media coverage of the addition of the last of 2,800 centrifuges added to Fordow enrichment facility over the past year played up the idea that the centrifuges could become operational at any time. “They can be started any day,” a “senior diplomat” from an unnamed country was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The fact that half of those centrifuges have not been put into operation was treated as a mystery. The Los Angeles Times said, “For unknown reasons, Iran has not begun feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into more than half of the machines….”

None of the stories mentioned the obvious connection between Iran’s continuing to add centrifuges but not putting them into operation and its maneuvering for a deal with the United States.

Iran has been suggesting both publicly and privately throughout 2012 that it is open to an agreement under which it would halt all 20-percent enrichment and agree to other constraints on its enrichment programme in return for relief from harsh economic sanctions now levied on the Iranian economy.

Iranian strategists evidently view the unused enrichment capacity at Fordow facility as an incentive for the United States and the P5+1 to seek such an agreement.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

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Filed Under: Analysis, Energy, Middle East, Nuclear Weapons Tagged With: , ,

NATO Pushing Europe into New Nuclear Arms Race

November 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Julio Godoy

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

http://www.indepthnews.net/

BERLIN (IDN) – Between late 2009 and mid-2010, the German government, represented by its foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, made a case for dismantling B61 atomic bombs on German soil. The actual number of such weapons of mass destruction is a top military secret, but some 20 of these are reported to be stationed in Germany.

The German campaign for nuclear disarmament had relevance also for Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands – as well as Turkey – where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is stated to have positioned between 150 and 200 nuclear weapons.

Like his predecessor Frank Walter Steinmeier, Westerwelle made the arguments of the anti-nuclear weapons activists his own, and recalled that such arsenal is in many ways obsolete, for it was conceived to be used in conjunction with other armament that itself is out of use, and it aimed at an enemy – the Soviet bloc – that had ceased to exist.

The German campaign, as discreet as it was, was a timely reaction to the historic speech the U.S. president Barack Obama made in the Czech capital Prague in April 2009, where he called the nuclear weapons spread across the world "the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War".

But soon, the German campaign for the denuclearisation of Europe, very much like Obama’s speech in Prague, turned out to be no more than pious words. Already in April 2010, NATO had approved the so-called modernization of its nuclear arsenal in Europe, which should be completed by 2020. The modernisation was confirmed in May 2012 at the Chicago summit, during the so called deterrence and defence posture review (DDPR).

By so doing, NATO finally admits that the criticism of the present nuclear arsenal is correct – it is constituted of so-called dumb weapons, for they are to be dropped from war planes over target zones, and be guided by a radar that, according to U.S. senate hearings, was constructed in the 1960s and originally designed for “a five-year lifetime”.

This radar also features “the now infamous vacuum tubes”, as one U.S. military industry representative stated at the senate hearing, and “must be replaced. In addition, both the neutron generator and a battery component are fast approaching obsolescence and must be replaced.”

Dropping such dumb nuclear weapons from an airplane would mean that, in case they operate as expected, vast areas would be obliterated from the face of the earth.

The old B61 nuclear bombs manifest several dangers: In 2005, a U.S. Air Force review discovered that procedures used during maintenance of the nuclear weapons in Europe held a risk that a lightning strike could trigger a nuclear detonation. In 2008, yet another U.S. Air Force review concluded that “most” nuclear weapons locations in Europe did not meet U.S. security guidelines and would “require significant additional resources” to bring these up to standard.

The modernisation of this archaic arsenal is expected to take place in two phases. In a first step, the B61 bombs currently deployed in Europe will be returned to the United States starting 2016 and converted into precision guided nuclear weapons (the so called B61?life extension programme or B61 LEP) and then brought back to Europe as B61-12, with improved military capabilities around 2019/2020. In addition, a new stealth fighter?bomber – the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – is under construction to begin deployment to Europe in the early 2020s.

However, this modernisation contradicts NATO’s assessment of the present arsenal, and undermines other declared objectives of the military alliance.

Absurd

First, in its DDPR of May 2012, NATO affirms that “the Alliance’s nuclear force posture currently meets the criteria for an effective deterrence and defence posture”. As numerous critics of NATO’s nuclear arsenal point out, if this arsenal is so efficient, why then is it necessary to improve its capabilities? This is all the more absurd, since the B61-LE “is very expensive, currently more than 10 billion U.S. dollars,” as Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, said November 7, 2012 during a hearing at the Disarmament and Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Parliament in Berlin.

This high cost, Kristensen added, “Is partly said to be necessary to upgrade safety and security features of the bomb. It is a mystery why that is necessary given that the (nuclear) weapons in Europe are always said to be safe and secure.”

But the contradictions go beyond the mere nature of the assessment and the technical obsoleteness of the nuclear armament. Its modernisation also constitutes a challenge to Russia. For, if the NATO description of the new B61 weapons is to be believed, they would be laser-controlled, thus substantially increasing its precision, and be practically able to hit targets within an error margin of less than 30 meters.

Or, as Kristensen puts it, “The addition of the guided tail kit will increase the accuracy of the B61-12 compared with the current versions and result in a greater target kill capability than the B61 versions currently deployed in Europe.” It is worth to note that the U.S. Congress in 1992 rejected a similar guided bomb proposal out of the concern that it would make nuclear weapons appear more useable.

Such precision would transform the B61 nuclear bombs into a rather flexible arsenal, deployable both as a tactical and as a strategic weapon, and no longer only under the present archaic conditions. “Such a change would revive the worst apprehensions the (post-)Soviet leadership had during the Pershing-II debate” of the late 1970s, early 1980s, warns the German nuclear weapons expert Otfried Nassauer, director of the Berlin information centre for transatlantic security (BITS), and co-author of a recent study on the B61-LEP.

That way, Europe would be heading towards a repetition of the ill-reputed “NATO double-track decision” of December 1979. With this decision, the NATO announced the deployment across Western Europe of 572 mobile middle range missiles, of the types Pershing II and BGM-109 Tomahawk Gryphon Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles, to counter the Soviet deployment of SS-20 mobile missiles in Eastern Europe. The result was a most feared nuclear arms race in the heart of Europe, to rebuild the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which threatened to annihilate life on the continent.

Officially, NATO nuclear weapons in Europe are aimed at targets in the Middle East, especially against Iran. Russia, so NATO’s official line, has no reasons to fear the modernisation of the B61 weapons. However, such a view is at best naïve, at worst cynical. For everybody in the NATO knows how the Russian leadership reacts to such modernisation plans.

Though the Soviet Union never disclosed how large its tactic nuclear arsenal was, experts believe that Russia today still has between 500 and 700 nuclear weapons mostly aimed at targets in Western Europe. This horrendous mass of nuclear weapons is as antiquated as the NATO’s; and the obsoleteness and the threat of a modern nuclear arsenal in the hands of a likely enemy, are reasons enough to foresee how the Russian government would react – by modernising its own arsenal. [Hiroshima Peace Memorial reminds of annihilation that nukes cause | Credit: UNESCO]

“Nuclear sharing policy”

On the other hand, the European opposition to the B61-LEP is almost non-existent. In Germany, despite all the words the foreign ministry used to campaign for nuclear disarmament, the official government programme of 2009, valid today, explicitly adhered to NATO’s so called “nuclear sharing policy”, which lets European member countries without nuclear weapons of their own participate in the planning for the use of the B61 stationed on their territories.

As German chancellor Angela Merkel said in March 2009, the German government “should be careful and avoid mixing up the goals with the ways leading to them. The German government has fixed the nuclear sharing policy … to secure our influence within NATO in this highly sensitive area”.

Similar positions prevail in the other European NATO countries affected by the “nuclear sharing policy”. According to Roderich Kiesewetter, military expert at the ruling CDU party, “the small European countries consider the deployment of nuclear weapons on their territory as a political appreciation of their own position. The Turkish government has even made clear that it would readily take the B61 positioned in Germany, if we were to reject them.”

Other countries, such as Belgium and Netherlands, have also announced that they would upgrade their aircraft military capabilities, to make them compatible with the new B61 nuclear weapons. To that effect, they would command the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter airplane, to replace their F-16 and B-16 military airplanes which are unable to transport nuclear bombs. Germany still refuses to replace the similarly old Tornado planes, in the pitiful hope, as the military analyst Jochen Bittner put it in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, “that the nuclear weapons disappear faster than the military airplanes corrode”.

Like Germany, Italy also uses Tornado aircrafts, and Turkey F-16 airplanes to transport the nuclear arsenal. That is, the five European countries disposing of nuclear weapons use three different types of aircraft to transport them. As Kristensen puts it, “Adding B61-12 capability to five different types of aircraft (the U.S. military uses yet another different airplane) in six Air Forces is excessive, complex and expensive for the type of security challenges that face NATO today. More importantly, it demonstrates that the nuclear posture is patched together by leftover pieces from an outdated posture rather than reduced, streamlined and adapted to the military and fiscal realities of today.”

Despite all these technical, military, and political obstacles, German government military expert Kiesewetter argues that the NATO would reconsider the B61 LEP only if Russia were ready to disclose the dimensions and locations of its huge tactical nuclear arsenal. However, he also points out that, even in case of such a dialogue, the modernisation of the European nuclear weapons must go on. “Political weapons must be technical functional,” he said, implicitly admitting the obsoleteness of the present arsenal.

Kiesewetter’s stance chimes with NATO’s official attitude towards Russia. In the DDRP of May 2012, NATO said that in a bi-polar arms control policy “any further steps must take into account the disparity with the greater Russian stockpiles of short-range nuclear weapons,” and be considered “in the context of reciprocal steps by Russia.” In other words, says Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, “Given that Russia’s non-strategic nuclear posture is not determined by NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe but by inferior conventional forces, making further NATO reductions conditioned upon Russian reciprocity and disparity would appear to effectively surrender the arms control initiative to the hardliners in the Kremlin.”

In this context, there is hardly any likelihood that Europe in the near future will achieve the “nuclear global zero”, that is, the de-alerting and elimination of all tactical nuclear weapons. Much to the despair of anti-nuclear activists and experts alike. As Otfried Nassauer puts it, “Germany has always said that it takes part of the NATO nuclear sharing policy to be able to co-decide.” It seems that this was a part of the sham existence of the B61 arsenal in Europe – extremely dangerous, obsolete, and counterproductive. [IDN-InDepthNews – November 20, 2012]

Copyright © 2012 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Commentary, Geopolitics, Nuclear Weapons Tagged With: ,

Could Malta Lead the Way to Nuke Disarmament?

August 29, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Martin E. Hellman*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

STANFORD (IDN) – At first, it might seem inconceivable that tiny Malta could lead the world in solving an issue as momentous as nuclear disarmament. To see that possibility requires recognising that nuclear disarmament is a process involving a number of steps. Malta cannot take some of the later steps in the process, but is ideal for making the first move.

The approach is similar to a business strategy known as market segmentation. If a small company develops a product that the whole world needs, initially it would fail if it marketed the product globally. Its resources would be too small for that task. The company first needs to focus on a smaller market that is commensurate with its resources. Only after achieving success there can it branch out, using the new resources created by its initial success to sell into ever-larger markets. The initial market should be chosen based on its size and its openness to the new product.

Apple Incorporated, today the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, provides a good example. When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak developed the Apple I in 1976, they marketed it through the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley. At that point in time, trying to sell personal computers to the average person would have been a dismal failure. Most people thought of computers as being of interest only to major businesses with large data processing needs. This small group of computer hobbyists had no such barriers to acceptance. They couldn’t wait to get their hands on a personal computer.

The Apple I gave the company the credibility and the resources to develop the Apple II, and to get the VisiCalc spreadsheet programme, generally recognised as the first “killer app,” written for that machine. VisiCalc opened up a new market segment of businesses that were using paper and pencil spreadsheets. Those required laborious hand calculations every time a spreadsheet entry changed. With VisiCalc, once an entry was changed, the spreadsheet was updated in the blink of an eye. Apple continued this approach, conquering market segment after market segment, until today it is ubiquitous.

In the same way that Apple conquered the world by market segmentation, proponents of nuclear disarmament need to work one step at a time and look beyond the limited success that is possible today. For the world to treat this issue as the existential threat that it is, first one nation needs to do so, and Malta is ideal for that role. Its small population is almost a hundred times easier to reach than that of the United States, and the Maltese people do not fear loss of national prestige or economic dislocations from nuclear disarmament.

Form a nucleus

Just as the nations of the world will become involved in resolving the nuclear threat one at a time, the same is true within Malta’s population. Market segmentation is needed again to identify groups of individuals within Malta who are most receptive to this issue, and who can then serve as springboards for reaching the population as a whole. Malta’s Rotary Clubs, the University of Malta’s programme in conflict analysis and resolution, and the Peace Lab at Hal Far are potential candidates and readers who have other suggestions are requested to contact Dave Pace of the ICT Gozo Malta Project ( dave.pace@ictgozomalta.eu). Within each such group, the first step is to find a few innovators who are willing to start the process. If you might consider playing that role, please contact Dave Pace, and we will provide more information to help you decide.

Once a nucleus of concerned individuals has been formed in such an organisation, it is important to stay focused on reaching a tipping point or critical mass within that group, and not diverting too much energy outside the group. Human beings are social animals and much more likely to become involved in this issue if they hear about it from several of their peers. So a small number of committed individuals within a group of 100 is more effective than a thousand dispersed within Malta’s general population. When critical mass is achieved within the group, the issue becomes of general interest, providing energy for replicating the process in other groups.

There is a critical difference between people being sympathetic to the goal of nuclear disarmament and seeing it as necessary for survival. To see the difference, imagine the outcry that would result if Italy revived the plans advanced in 2008 by Silvio Berlusconi to supply Italy with electricity from a nuclear power plant to be built on Malta. Yet the risk to Malta from a nuclear power plant located on its soil is much smaller than the risk it bears right now due to other nations’ reliance on nuclear weapons. Even though the weapons are located thousands of kilometres away and not targeted on Malta, they pose a far greater threat to Malta than the proposed nuclear power plant.

Without a fundamental change, it is only a matter of time before a mistake, an accident, or a miscalculation destroys civilization by setting off the booby trap known as nuclear deterrence. That nearly happened 50 years ago, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and there have been far too many other near misses, including in recent years. (The previous instalment in this series gave several examples, and more will be highlighted in future essays.)

If enough Maltese recognised that nuclear disarmament was necessary for their survival, Malta would become an island of reality within a sea of denial. Once that occurs, Malta can take the process to the next step by encouraging other nations to join its effort. The key first step is for some nation to assume the leadership role by acting consistently with the realities of the nuclear age. If you would like Malta to be that nation, please contact Dave Pace ( dave.pace@ictgozomalta.eu) to start a dialogue on how to do that.

*Martin E. Hellman is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and founder of Defusing the Nuclear Threat. This article was first published on August 19, 2012 in the Malta Independent Online and was written with the support of ICT Gozo Malta Project’s Ron Kelson (Synaptic Labs), Dave Pace, and Benjamin Gittins (Synaptic Labs). [IDN-InDepthNews – August 28, 2012]

2012 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Energy, Europe, Featured, Nuclear Weapons, Peace Tagged With: ,

Germany Pledges to Revitalize Nuke Disarmament

August 27, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Ramesh Jaura

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – The Geneva UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) has been turned into a talking shop because of the vested interests of a few mighty states without whose consent no genuine nuclear disarmament, not to speak of abolition of nuclear weapons, would ever be within the realm of possibility.

This formed the backdrop to an impassioned appeal by Ambassador Hellmut Hoffmann of Germany to representatives of 64 countries, including all nuclear weapon states, to avail of the potential of this United Nations body to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Germany took over from France the CD presidency on August 20.

The German Ambassador hit the nail of the head when he stressed that it was far from rewarding to engage in debates – as has become customary – about whether the CD was the only standing multilateral forum mandated to negotiate new agreements on disarmament and non-proliferation.

"But this is the point where I have to say that I would feel even more honoured presiding over our work if the Conference on Disarmament were actually in a state where it makes active use of this potential that is where it fulfils its own mandate. Unfortunately, as we are all aware, for many reasons this has not been the case for well over a decade," Ambassador Hoffmann told UN Radio.

Back home in Berlin, the Foreign Office said, Germany will use the four weeks of its Presidency (August 20 to 14 September 14) "to breathe new life into the work of the Geneva Conference on Disarmament and in particular to sound out possibilities for rapidly starting negotiations on a treaty banning the production and transfer of fissile material (FMCT)".

FMCT is a proposed international treaty to ban the further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other explosive devices. The treaty has not been negotiated and its terms remain to be defined.

The world’s two leading nuclear powers, the United States and Russia differ on defining the fissile material. The United States maintains that fissile material includes high-enriched uranium and plutonium, except plutonium that is over 80% Pu-238.

According to a proposal by Russia, fissile material would be limited to weapons-grade uranium (with more than 90% U-235) and plutonium (with more than 90% Pu-239).

But neither proposal would prohibit the production of fissile material for non-weapons purposes, including use in civil or naval nuclear reactors.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in recent years, the Geneva Conference on Disarmament has failed to launch any new treaty negotiations. One reason for this is that the Conference’s decisions are not taken by majority, but by consensus. Due to individual member states’ veto power, the Conference’s efforts have been hampered since 1996.

Subsequently, no major progress has so far been achieved on the four core issues: FMCT, prevention of an arms race in outer space, nuclear disarmament and negative security assurances for non-nuclear weapon states.

It was with this in view that, concluding the CD Presidency of France, Ambassador Jean-Hugues Simon-Michel expressed regret that the Conference had still not been able to reach consensus on a programme of work. However, during the thematic discussions many members had expressed their views "in an interactive manner", he added.

The Geneva Conference on Disarmament was established in 1979 as the United Nations’ central and permanent forum for disarmament. It succeeded other Geneva-based negotiating fora, which include the Ten-Nation Committee on Disarmament (1960), the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament (1962-68), and the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (1969-78).

CD is the world’s single permanent, multilateral negotiating forum for disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation, and meets in an annual session for 24 weeks, divided into three parts. Germany has assumed CD’s Presidency after ten years. It will conclude the meetings in 2012.

German Foreign Office sources said: "The German Government is energetically pressing for disarmament and arms control. Together with its partners it has repeatedly developed initiatives to overcome the dead end in Geneva. Most recently, Germany and the Netherlands jointly organized a series of events dealing with the technical preparations for an FMCT.

"Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has repeatedly pointed out the necessity of nuclear disarmament and advocated negotiations on a ban on the production of fissile material. In this respect, the Geneva negotiations play a key role.

"The Group of Friends of Disarmament and Non Proliferation, whose ten members include Germany, has time and again called for a revitalizing of the Geneva Conference on Disarmament and for the start of negotiations on a ban on the production of fissile material. However, to date these efforts have failed because of the obstructionist stance of some Conference members."

Negotiations stalled

The Conference participants very well know what is at stake. But vested interests have stalled the negotiations.

The on-going session of the Conference has on table a background note prepared by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) on new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons, including radiological weapons.

The issue was first presented to the UN General Assembly in 1969 by Malta, and the Conference on Disarmament was consequently tasked with considering the implications of possible military applications of laser technology.

In 1975 the then Soviet Union tabled a draft international agreement in the General Assembly on the prohibition of the development and manufacture of new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons.

However Western States, while supporting efforts to ban particular weapons of mass destruction, objected to the conclusion of a comprehensive convention banning unspecified future weapons. During the 1980s a subsidiary body on radiological weapons considered a number of working papers but no consensus emerged.

As the outgoing Conference president Ambassador Simon-Michel pointed out, since 1993 there has been no subsidiary body. In 2002 Germany tabled a discussion paper for revisiting the issue in light of new threats. But discussions since then have remained inconclusive.

Comprehensive programme

Ambassador Simon-Michel also outlined the history of a comprehensive programme on disarmament, an item which has been on the Conference’s agenda since 1980 but has not been considered as requiring a subsidiary body since 1989.

Views differ on whether nuclear disarmament could be conceived without parallel disarmament progress taking place in other areas such as radiological, biological and chemical weapons, with some States saying it should not be conditional on negotiations in other areas.

According to the Conference documents, some States have outlined in the on-going session the catastrophic danger that transfers of weapons of mass destruction to non-State actors and terrorists could entail, while one (unnamed) State highlighted new types of information and communication technologies which were capable of undermining stability and security just as much as weapons of mass destruction.

India – which is a nuclear power without being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – favours a Comprehensive Programme on Disarmament that should consider not only nuclear disarmament but also other weapons and weapon systems which are crucial for maintaining international peace and security. The principles of such a programme should be universally applicable and relevant, and in that regard the Conference would play a leading role as the world’s sole multilateral forum on disarmament, India argues.

But India and Pakistan – two South Asian nuclear rivals – are at daggers drawn when it comes to achieving a consensus. [Read Halting Pakistan-India Nuclear Arms Race.]

France argues that general and complete disarmament under effective international control is the ultimate goal of the Conference, and an agenda item frequently used by the General Assembly. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is something to which France was especially attached.

But, the French representative at the on-going CD session said, nuclear disarmament could not be conceived without parallel disarmament progress taking place in other areas such as radiological, biological and chemical weapons, nor overall independence of the strategic context.

He added: "For over 30 years France had made efforts towards humanitarian disarmament – treaties which aimed to prevent or disrupt production of weapons which caused certain harm to humans – and was very attached to those, and called for its universalization. France also called for the universalization of The Hague’s Code of Conduct against the proliferation of ballistic missiles and stressed the importance of that instrument to promote transparency of ballistic missiles."

2012 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Diplomacy, Europe, Nuclear Weapons, Peace, Report Tagged With: ,

Warhead Elimination: A Roadmap

June 11, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Frederick N. Mattis*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

ANNAPOLIS, USA (IDN) – A nuclear ban (abolition) treaty, often called a Nuclear Weapons Convention, will need to include a timetable for phased reductions of warheads until a final day when states simultaneously reach zero. The following is a plan for warhead elimination, with the aim of acceptability to today’s nuclear weapon states – and framed on the reality that the USA and Russia have far more nuclear warheads than the other possessors (Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea).

Duration of the nuclear ban warhead elimination period is proposed to be either three or four years, depending on the higher number of either Russian or U.S. nuclear warheads remaining when the worldwide, unanimously joined nuclear ban treaty enters into force. If that quantity is less than 5,000, the elimination period would be 3 years, and 4 years if over 5,000. (The USA, reportedly, is approximately at 5,000 already.)

"Warheads" in this discussion includes strategic and sub-strategic or "tactical," deployed and those in reserve, and those already slated for dismantling. Assuming for illustration that Russia has 4,500 total warheads and the USA 4,000 when a nuclear ban enters into force, meaning a three-year elimination period (because neither has more than 5,000), Russia would have to decrease to the USA level of 4,000 before the USA begins reducing – or vice versa if quantities were reversed.

From the date Russia (in this example) has decreased to the USA level and the USA then joins with Russia in parallel further reductions, the other nuclear weapon states commence a 90-day period of dismantling 25 percent of their warheads; but thereafter the latter states can "wait" until Russia and the USA, reducing in tandem and following the elimination timetable, reduce to the other states’ varying [25 percent-reduced] levels, at which successive points those states join the USA and Russia in the final phases, on a month-by-month and then week-by-week basis, of the progress to zero.

It may be noted – and objected – that in anticipation of the 25 percent required decrease, pertinent states could counteract this by increasing their arsenals, i.e., before (impending) nuclear ban entry into force. However, even if some states did so, which would be liable to world criticism with a nuclear ban on the immediate horizon, under the enacted ban such a state must promptly and transparently eliminate 25 percent of its arsenal – which in any case would be much smaller than those of Russia and the USA. It would not be fair, though, to the USA and Russia to instead exempt, until U.S./Russian warhead levels are all the way down to those of the other nuclear weapon states, the latter states from the transparency, cooperation, and good-faith demonstrations attendant upon prompt (90-day) and internationally-monitored dismantling of a significant percentage (such as 25) of a state’s nuclear arsenal.

Russia and the USA, for their part, would be dismantling from their starting points many more warheads than the other nuclear weapon states; but due to arsenal size the USA and Russia would still, as today, be possessors of a large (though diminishing) majority of the world’s nuclear weapons through most of the weapons elimination period. Nearing the end, however, such as final six or nine months, the USA and Russia together would reach the varying levels of the other nuclear weapons states, and as noted be (re)joined by them in further reductions as the elimination timetable fixes ever-lower permissible ceilings on warhead possession.

To summarize: proposed duration of the weapons elimination period is 3 or 4 years, depending on whether the USA or Russia has over 5,000 total warheads (including inactive and those already slated for dismantling). Of the two countries, the greater-possessor undertakes reductions in accordance with the 3-4 year nuclear ban timetable, and is joined by the other when initial reductions by the former bring the two countries even. From that day also, the other nuclear weapon states must within 90 days eliminate 25 percent of their warheads. Thereafter, though, those states are not required to reduce further until Russia and the USA, following the treaty’s timetable, reduce to the other states’ varying but much lower levels, whereupon the latter states join the final phases of warhead elimination – on month-by-month and then week-by-week basis – leading to day of total elimination.

The above schema would please the USA and Russia, on the one hand, because of the 25 percent, transparent warhead reduction over just 90 days by the other nuclear weapon states (whose arsenals in any case are much smaller than U.S.-Russian). On the other hand, it would please the other (currently seven) nuclear weapon states because ultimately, over the final and thus most-important six or nine months of weapons elimination, the USA and Russia would reduce to the other states’ varying lower levels before the latter states must rejoin the warhead elimination process in final reductions to zero.

"Mass-De-Alerted" Warheads During Elimination Period?

On a critical issue of warhead elimination, it is here recommended that today’s nuclear weapon states not be prohibited by the treaty from maintaining their remaining, diminishing warheads as "active" during the elimination period – with the alternative being to require their overall, mass inactivation or extreme de-alerting at some early or middle phase of the elimination period (here posited as 3-4 years). The reason is because today’s nuclear weapon states probably would prefer, and may insist upon, having a "ready arsenal" (although shrinking) as a hedge against a conceived nuclear ban "break-out" – until all weapons are eliminated and the nuclear weapons-free world is a reality, underlain by the unprecedented geopolitical and other force of a unanimously joined treaty that regards states equally and relieves all of today’s nuclear threats. (With that said, countries such as the USA and Russia or others could certainly choose to negotiate and establish de-alerting measures beyond present ones – but outside of nuclear ban auspices.)

Report on Warhead Movement?

After nuclear ban baseline accountancy and recordation of nuclear warheads, conducted by the nuclear ban Technical Secretariat (inspectorate), states also – on the viewpoint here – would not be required to maintain remaining [diminishing] warheads in the "same place(s)," nor to report movement of warheads – until each state’s necessary consolidation of its final several or so warheads in the final few days or day of weapons elimination. Why? Because a state with a relatively small nuclear arsenal, if instead required by treaty to keep its weapons in a "declared" location or locations during the period of warhead elimination, could be afraid of being an easy target for liquidation of its (small) nuclear arsenal by another state’s military resources.

Of course, all dismantling of warheads under the nuclear ban timetable would be conducted under full monitoring of the nuclear ban regime, resulting in ongoing and public accountancy of exact quantities and respective owners of the world’s shrinking number of nuclear warheads. To emphasize, though: as incentive for today’s nuclear weapon states to actually join the nuclear ban, it is here recommended as not having a requirement for states to reveal location(s) of still-extant warheads during the progress to zero of the warhead elimination period.

Deterrents to Treaty Violation

What, then, would prevent a state from attempting to hide some warheads and not initially declare and then eliminate them as required by treaty elimination timetable – or, for that matter, to attempt secret development of nuclear weapons after their worldwide elimination under a fully enacted nuclear ban treaty?

Response: the unprecedented geopolitical, legal, psychological, and moral force of unanimous accession by states to the treaty (Nuclear Weapons Convention) before it takes effect; the absence of assured or easy success in cheating due to the worldwide verification regime, plus presumable workings of "societal verification" with a worldwide treaty; the treaty’s equal applicability and thus fairness to states (removing any putative, psychological "justification" for treaty violation); the treaty’s main benefit to states (removal of current nuclear weapons-related threats, including possible terrorist acquisition from a state’s arsenal); and the certitude of worldwide opposition to a pernicious violator of the worldwide treaty.

*Frederick N. Mattis is author of “Banning Weapons of Mass Destruction,” pub. ABC-CLIO/Praeger Security International [ISBN: 978-0-313-36538-6].

2012 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Diplomacy, Geopolitics, Nuclear Weapons, Opinion, United States Tagged With:

US Asked to Abandon Cold War Nuke Strategy

May 17, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Jamshed Baruah

IDN-InDepthNews Report

http://www.indepthnews.net/

BERLIN (IDN) – In run-up to the NATO Summit in Chicago on May 20, a new report is calling for abandoning the Cold War rationale and ushering in a systemic change in U. S. nuclear force structure, strategy and posture in order to address the security threats in the 21st century.

The impassioned plea has been made by the U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission of Global Zero, an international movement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

According to General James E. Cartwright, who heads the Commission, the U.S. nuclear deterrence could be guaranteed with a total arsenal of between 500 and 900 warheads, and with only half of them deployed at any one time.

Even those in the field would be taken off hair triggers, requiring 24 to 72 hours for launching, to reduce the chance of accidental war, says General Cartwright, the retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former commander of the United States’ nuclear forces.

The Obama administration is reportedly considering at least three options for lower total numbers of deployed strategic nuclear weapons: reducing their numbers to 1,000 to 1,100; 700 to 800; or 300 to 400. The Global Zero report calls for such weapons to be reduced to about 450, while maintaining an equal number of stored weapons.

The U.S. and Russia have an estimated 5,000 nuclear weapons each, either deployed or in reserve. The two countries are already on track to reduce to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads by 2018, as required by the New START treaty.

"The strategy inherited from the Cold War which remains in place artificially sustains nuclear stockpiles that are much larger than required for deterrence today and that have scant efficacy in dealing with the main contemporary threats to U. S. and global security – nuclear proliferation, terrorism, cyber warfare and a multitude of other threats stemming from the diffusion of power in the world today," says the report.

The 26-page report Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure and Posture Current avers that U. S. nuclear policy "focuses too narrowly on threats rooted in Cold War thinking, incurring excessive costs to prepare for an implausible contingency of nuclear war with Russia when there is no conceivable circumstance in which either country’s interest would be served by deliberately initiating such a conflict."

The report warns that current U. S. nuclear policy also unnecessarily incurs risks of unintentionally initiating a nuclear conflict. By maintaining launch-ready nuclear postures just as they did during the Cold War, the United States and Russia run risks of nuclear mistakes that could have catastrophic consequences.

Continue reductions

The Global Zero report notes that the U. S. and Russian arsenals have been steadily shrinking since the end of the Cold War 20 years ago and pleads for continuing these reductions. "Steep bilateral reductions in all categories of weapons in their stockpiles are warranted and should be pursued in the next round of U. S.- Russian negotiations. An arsenal of 500-900 total weapons on each side would easily meet reasonable requirements of deterrence and would set the stage to initiate multilateral nuclear arms reductions involving all countries with nuclear weapons," says the report.

The United States should seek to achieve such reductions in ten years and plan to base its arsenal on a dyad of nuclear delivery vehicles, the report advises. The optimal mix of carriers would consist of ten Trident ballistic missile submarines and eighteen B-2 bombers.

General Cartwright and his team are of the view that under normal conditions, one-half of the warhead stockpile would be deployed on these carriers; the other half would be kept in reserve except during a national emergency. All land-based intercontinental missiles armed with nuclear payloads would be retired along with the carriers of non-strategic nuclear warheads, all of which would be eliminated from the stockpile. B-52 heavy bombers would be completely dismantled or converted to carry only conventional weapons.

Increase warning time

The report further asks the U.S. and Russia should to devise ways to increase warning and decision time in the command and control of their smaller arsenals. The current postures of launch-ready nuclear forces that provide minutes and seconds of warning and decision time should be replaced by postures that allow 24-72 hours on which to assess threats and exercise national direction over the employment of nuclear forces.

"This change would greatly reduce the risks of mistaken, ill-considered and accidental launch. It would also strengthen strategic stability by removing the threat of sudden, surprise first strikes. Any move by one side to massively generate nuclear forces to launch-ready status would provide ample warning for the other side to disperse its nuclear forces to invulnerable positions," says the report.

It adds: "By increasing warning time through de-alerting, the new postures would actually increase force survivability and diminish the adverse impact of missile defences in the equation. Missile defenses would be less threatening to the other side’s larger retaliatory force and less undermining of the other side’s confidence in its ability to carry out effective retaliation."

In the context of such reduced reliance on offensive nuclear weapons on launch-ready alert, the United States would increase its reliance on missile defences and advanced conventional forces in an integrated new strategy, explains the report.

The Global Zero expects these non-nuclear forces to replace nuclear forces. Their role in deterring and defeating a 21st century adversary, and in reassuring U. S. allies of Washington’s commitment to their defence, would be especially important during the 24-72 hour period prior to the possible generation of offensive nuclear capability. This time-limited role, however, would reduce the requirements imposed on missile defences and conventional forces. Missile defence architecture in particular could be scaled down, says the report.

The study further advises the U.S. to broaden the agenda of nuclear arms regulation to include all categories of weapons in all nuclear weapons countries. "Only a broad multilateral approach can effectively address the multitude of serious nuclear dangers found in other parts of the world. While pursuing bilateral negotiations to reduce the U. S. and Russian stockpiles to much lower levels, the two sides should initiate a multilateral process that would seek to cap, freeze, reduce and otherwise constrain the arsenals of third countries. Nuclear arms regulation must become comprehensive and universal," Global Zero experts say.

They plead for extending multilateralism beyond nuclear arms reductions into the realm of multilateral security cooperation. [IDN-InDepthNews – May 17, 2012]

2012 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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