Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 26. April 2010 / Time Line April 26, 2010
Version 3.025. April 2010, 27. April 2010
04/26/2010
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Past & Present
By: Lawrence S.
Wittner
The opening this May of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
review conference at the United Nations seems likely to feature a
conflict that has simmered for decades between nuclear nations and
non-nuclear nations.
By the mid-1960s, five nations had developed a nuclear weapons
capability: the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France,
and, most recently, China. But numerous other nations were giving
serious consideration to joining the nuclear club. They included
Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa,
and West Germany. Millions of people and many governments feared
that the nuclear arms race -- already dangerous enough -- was on
the verge of spiraling totally out of control.
In this context, the U.S. and Soviet governments suddenly found
something upon which they could both agree. Having amassed vast
nuclear arsenals for their Cold War confrontation with one another,
both decided that it would be a good idea if other nations
refrained from developing nuclear weapons. Thus, in the fall of
1965, the two governments submitted nonproliferation treaties to
the U.N. General Assembly. "Both superpowers really got behind the
Nonproliferation Treaty," recalled U.S. Secretary of State Dean
Rusk, "because we and the Soviets basically were on the same
wavelength."
But the non-nuclear powers sharply objected to the U.S. and Soviet
proposals, which they pointed out – correctly -- would
establish a two-tier system. Alva Myrdal, Sweden's disarmament
minister and a leading proponent of nuclear disarmament, declared
that "the non-aligned nations . . . strongly believe that
disarmament measures should be a matter of mutual renunciation."
They did not want a treaty that "would leave the present five
nuclear-weapon parties free to continue to build up their
arsenals." The governments of numerous NATO nations raised the same
objection. Willy Brandt, West Germany's foreign minister,
maintained that a nonproliferation treaty was justified "only if
the nuclear states regard it as a step toward restrictions of their
own armaments and toward disarmament." In short, non-nuclear
nations were unwilling to forgo the nuclear option in the absence
of a similar commitment by the nuclear nations.
As a result, the NPT was reshaped to provide for mutual obligations
on the part of non-nuclear and nuclear nations. Under its terms,
each non-nuclear signatory pledged "not to make or acquire nuclear
weapons," as well as to accept a safeguard system, administered by
the International Atomic Energy Agency, to prevent diversion of
nuclear material from nuclear reactors to nuclear weapons
development. Furthermore, Article VI of the final version provided
that nuclear signatories would "pursue negotiations in good faith
at an early date on effective measures regarding cessation of the
nuclear arms race and disarmament."
On June 12, 1968, this revised NPT, now incorporating provisions
for both nonproliferation and disarmament, swept through the U.N.
General Assembly by a vote of 95 to 4, with 21 abstentions.
Although, ominously, a number of nations with nuclear ambitions
refused to ratify the treaty, the NPT did provide an important
milestone in global efforts to avert nuclear catastrophe.
In some ways, the NPT was a success. After it went into force in
1970, almost all nations capable of building nuclear weapons
rejected this option. Furthermore, through disarmament treaties and
individual action, the nuclear nations divested themselves of a
significant number of their nuclear weapons.
Even so, thanks to a lingering belief that national security
ultimately lies in military strength, nations have resisted
honoring their full obligations under the NPT. The nuclear powers
delayed implementing their rhetorical commitment to full-scale
nuclear disarmament. Meanwhile, some non-nuclear nations, charging
the nuclear powers with hypocrisy, began to develop nuclear weapons
themselves. Today, 42 years after the signing of the NPT, more than
23,000 nuclear weapons remain in existence and the number of
nuclear powers has grown from five to nine.
Thus, the NPT review conference this May could simply continue the
old game of duplicity and delay. Nuclear nations could avoid making
plans to eliminate their very substantial nuclear arsenals, while
demanding that other countries remain non-nuclear. Non-nuclear
nations could point to the failure of the nuclear nations to disarm
and use that as their justification for joining the nuclear
club.
But there is an alternative. The world public might decide that
enough is enough -- that it's time to move beyond the cautious,
half-way measures of the past and bring an end to the terrible
danger of nuclear annihilation. That would require a massive
outpouring of public sentiment, this May and in the following
months, demanding nothing less than the abolition of nuclear
weapons. Such an outpouring would provide a solid basis on which
reluctant government officials might finally do what they should
long ago have done: take effective action to build a nuclear
weapons-free world.
Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New
York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short
History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford
University Press).
04/26/2010
The Three Nuclear Issues
By: Johan Galtung
Washington. The three issues are disarmament-proliferation, the
military use, and the theological use of nuclear arms. All rather
untractable. But there is the universal remedy: solve underlying
conflicts, please. More easily said than done? To the contrary.
The USA-Russia possible treaty to junk aging "strategic" (genocide)
nuclear bombs of the 23,000 said to exist; the "nuclear summit" of
46 countries in Washington convened by Barack Obama to secure
fissionable material (in the USA?); the nuclear disarmament
conference in Tehran convened by Ahmadinejad of 60 countries
calling for destroying all atomic weapons starting with the US
arsenal; and the NATO meeting in Estonia on the 240 "tactical"
bombs stationed in Europe, have put the first issue on the agenda.
Not more, so far. See you next time, next summit, in Korea
2012.
The US nuclear tripod (land-, submarine- and air-based delivery)
has not been touched, nor those tactical nuclear weapons in Europe,
nor, and most importantly, the factual use of nuclear arms by the
only country ever to drop nuclear bombs as depleted uranium. Very
deadly. And what an agonizing death, made in USA.
That time has come to recycle some monstrous old weapons is clear,
that applies to all products; to call it disarmament is public
relations. True, the shield for unilateral vulnerability reduction
as originally envisaged has been canceled, but then it turned up
again on the Polish side of old East Prussia, close to Kaliningrad.
And loose uranium is problematic, given the many places it is
mined. Storing it in the USA, the fox in a hen-yard, not even under
UN-IAEA supervision, sounds like a very bad joke.
We have lived through this before: just as Afghanistan is a rerun
of Vietnam, this is a rerun, not a reset, of Cold War shows. Obama
for sure has read about them. But he has not lived them.
The second nuclear issue is catastrophic. In 1967 this author
published an essay, originally for Pugwash, where bomb delivery in
suitcases, possibly placed in luggage lockers, or dug down under a
crucial target, with trip wires, remote controls, and blackmail,
published or not, with demands, plays some role. The obvious
delivery, not that clumsy and costly missile approach. In the
meantime lockers are out, scanners might detect a bomb or two. But
there are other places. And that brings us to the crucial sender
problem, supposedly the Pentagon nightmare, according to the by far
best media in the USA, the National Public Radio, NPR.
So who is the sender, particularly if non-state actors are among
the suspects--and they are many, far beyond 200 or so state
actors--of such unsigned letters? One may leave it unanswered,
hoping it is a bluff, and there may have been some of those
already. But imagine it is not. A nuclear explosion is delivered
just on time; what then? There is something called "nuclear
forensics", searching for signatures in the fall-out. Sounds
time-consuming, and the laboratories may no longer be functional.
Moreover, after a bomb explosion there may be other concerns, also
after a warning, with the desperate public clogging all roads.
Such letters might also indicate that there is more than one bomb
scheduled for detonation if demands remain unmet.
The 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing reminds us of
"experts" sensing clear Middle East signatures, the question being
which country. But the origin was the US Midwest rather than the
Middle East. Timothy McVeigh learnt extreme violence as a US
soldier in the 1991 Gulf war massacre, and that he was very upset
about Waco massacre two years earlier. He was executed in 2001. As
a warning to suicide bombers? There are many McVeighs around.
Then what? Throwing bombs all over to join the apocalypse? Add to
this the divinity problem. God uses extreme force, causing
desertification, to punish pagans. So do nuclear bombs, and birds
of a feather go together. They can be used to punish Japanese (who
had capitulated) telling whose God is the stronger. They confirm
divinity on their owners; civilizations, not states and certainly
not non-states. Divine power to them is worse than proliferation.
It is profanization. Best USA alone, second best a Mother Country
share in divinity. From evangelical and anglican to
catholic-secular is within the family; so is a hyphenated judaic
bomb like in judeo-christianity. With bolshevism gone even an
orthodox christian bomb, if tamed by a treaty and some shield.
Confucian? Hm. A Hindu device 1971, a bomb 1998, code-named "The
Buddha has smiled". Hm. A "buddhist bomb" is an oxymoron, but a
shinto bomb? Also problematic, could they be revengeful?
But the real problem in a West unable to respect islam is the
islamic bomb. Lo ad behold, could Iran even see itself as Persian
civilization? They do, and older than most others. And islamic
non-state, even one claiming to be as close to the divine as
anybody else, the base, Al Qaeda? Also bent on protecting the
sacred in Mecca-Medina-Jerusalem and on punishing the unfaithful
intruders like by beheading some buildings on 9/ll, enacting the
Saudi flag, the shahada around the henchman's sword. Next time?
To give up nuclear status is to give up divinity. That the inner
club should multilaterally do so defies rationality.
Any way out? As twisted as the road traveled by English women out
of slavery and colonialism: that Mother Country. Some English
unilateralism might raise the Daughter to maturity, and if she has
serious doubts, then dominos might start falling. Ladies of
England, join forces with that gift, liberal Nicholas Clegg who
even doubts Trident genocide! Please, please: do it again!!
04/26/2010
Forsvaret frygter for sin eksistens
Officererne forlader forsvaret i så højt et tempo, at
forsvarets ledelse mener, at hele grundlaget for forsvaret kan
være væk om få år, ligesom Danmark kan
blive tvunget til at opgive internationale missioner, skriver
Jyllands Posten.
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