Nuclear Disarmament Action Priorities for Canada

Two Canadian groups with a long history of engaging the Government of Canada on nuclear disarmament policy priorities – The Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (a project of the Canadian Pugwash Group) – have written to the Prime Minister, drawing attention to the escalating nuclear threat and setting out a comprehensive program for Canadian Action.

November 9, 2018

The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada

Dear Prime Minister,

The Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention write in the face of a deepening global nuclear crisis to urge you and your Government to make crisis de-escalation and persistent and intensified disarmament diplomacy a national priority.

The following draws your attention to four elements of this escalating nuclear threat and identifies ways in which Canada can help move the international community, including our allies in NATO, to a more effective pursuit of the collective goal of a world without nuclear weapons. We fear, along with the International Pugwash movement, that without urgent action, we will witness the “disintegration of the current arms control regime.” And we join Pugwash in warning that “decades of effort to build an architecture of restraint are unravelling because key lessons from the early Cold War years seem to have been forgotten.”

Nuclear dangers

First among the troubling elements of the deepening nuclear threat is the radical deterioration of East/West relations, notably the heightened tensions between Russia and NATO. The refusal to engage in sustained diplomacy and strategic dialogue, in a serious effort to set a durable foundation on which to de-escalate tensions and build mutual security, points to a future of grave uncertainty and repeated bouts of political hostility and military sabre rattling that threaten to spiral out of control.

A second and related element of the current nuclear crisis is the dysfunctional state of bilateral and multilateral arms control/disarmament institutions and practices. One manifestation of this dysfunction is the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament’s decades-long obstruction, due in part to antiquated procedural rules, of efforts by Canada and like-minded states to achieve a treaty to control fissile materials for weapons purposes. At the same time, the fully approved Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty continues to languish under an unusually daunting entry-into-force provision. Of particular worry is the current absence of any bilateral US/Russia or multilateral strategic arms control and disarmament talks, even as Washington prepares to abrogate the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and questions the value of the 2011 New START Treaty. The growing fragility of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is indisputable, and without action by the nuclear weapon state parties to show good faith in addressing their Article VI disarmament obligations, the 2020 Review Conference is destined to fail and non-nuclear weapon states will increasingly question the value and wisdom of their unrequited compliance with the non-proliferation provisions of this essential Treaty.

Third, the current nuclear weapons “modernization” programs will have obvious and long-term deleterious implications for disarmament and, if not curbed, will result in chronic destabilization and escalating of risks of nuclear use. Re-armament programs are especially intense in the United States and Russia, but, in fact, all states with nuclear weapons are engaged in either “improving” or expanding their arsenals. Among those programs are the development of smaller and more accurate nuclear weapons which are welcomed by some as more “useable” – potentially leading political and military leaders alike to conclude that a limited nuclear strike could achieve specific military objectives without incurring nuclear retaliation. But escalation to nuclear use will not be confined to a single attack. This dangerous move toward nuclear use options is exacerbated by moves to deploy conventional and nuclear warheads on the same weapons systems, obscuring the conventional/nuclear divide and thus dramatically increasing the danger of nuclear use in a crisis.

Fourth, the current fourfold nuclear crisis is given special immediacy by the continuing stand-off on the Korean Peninsula and by Washington’s determined effort to destroy the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA). The crisis of North Korea shows some tantalizing hints of progress, nevertheless it remains in the custody of unstable political leadership in both Pyongyang and Washington, and to that uncertainty is added Washington’s sustained attempt to sabotage the JCPOA’s effective verification of Iran’s commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapon.

A call to Canadian action

It is, of course, true that Canada alone cannot single-handedly alleviate and reverse these dangerous threats, but even on its own, Canada can be squarely on the side of restraint, diplomacy, negotiations, and a reset of global security dynamics away from military competition and in favour of mutuality and interdependence.

That said, as a quintessential middle power, Canada will find its most constructive impact in common with other states. Successive Canadian Governments have argued that membership in NATO gives Canada a seat at an important table, and now is the time to use the place at that table to build coalitions of support for a more stable, less polarized, less militarized and ultimately denuclearized world. NATO is directly engaged and implicated in the current nuclear crises, and it is incumbent on Canada to find, or more importantly, to create opportunities for collective action for disarmament within the Alliance.

At a civil society conference, held in Ottawa on October 1, 2018 under the sponsorship of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (CNWC) and the Canadian Network for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (CNANW), participants identified a number of key measures for collective action designed to ease the existing nuclear crises and move the world toward an international political environment that will be more conducive to disarmament – towards actually advancing the daunting process of dismantling the nuclear sword of Damocles.

In this moment of crisis, Canadians need a national Government that is acutely aware of the nuclear dangers that confront us, and one that acts with courage and foresight to advance practical measures to rein in nuclear arsenals and revitalize the stabilizing nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime. We have been deeply disappointed that, beyond actions in support of a treaty to control fissile materials for weapons purposes, an important but hardly sufficient response to the totality of the nuclear threat, your Government has been largely quiescent on the nuclear disarmament file. It is time for Canada to rise above the present inertia and take on the mantle of a determined middle power seized of the urgency of the moment and willing to exert leadership in all the forums in which the nuclear question figures prominently (notably the United Nations First Committee and General Assembly, the NPT Review Conferences, and the North Atlantic Council).

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We further urge your Government to give substance to such a recommitment by pursuing the following proposals and initiatives and actively seeking the support and collaboration of like-minded states within and beyond NATO:

1. It is urgent that NATO and Russia undertake a serious security and strategic stability dialogue, and such an initiative needs champions within NATO. We are heartened by the OSCE’s structured dialogue, launched in 2016, which is currently focused on important East/West military security issues and the avoidance of escalation and disastrous miscalculation, but without a much broader security dialogue that also explores the re-invigoration of cooperative security mechanisms, military tensions will continue to fuel increased military spending, provocative exercises, and perpetual tensions. We urge Canada to become a consistent, persistent voice for East/West dialogue that stays the course, even in the face of egregious violations of international norms and laws.

2. We also call on you and your Government to publicly acknowledge that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is under threat, and that to save the Treaty the nuclear weapon states will have to take explicit measures to demonstrate their acknowledgement of, and commitment to, the disarmament that is required of them under the Treaty.

Disarmament action that Canada should prominently support includes:
a) a call to preserve the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, to forthrightly address suspected violations, and to establish the longer-term goal of multilateralizing the Treaty, a stance consistent with Canada’s well-established work in support of ballistic missile controls and preventing the spread of ballistic missile technologies;
b) calls for the New START Treaty to be extended beyond February 2021 and for Russia and the United States to immediately begin negotiations toward further reductions to be formalized in a successor strategic arms control treaty; and
c) urging the hold-out states to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and insisting that work towards a fissile materials control treaty be taken out of the Conference on Disarmament and pursued through multilateral negotiations authorized by the UN General Assembly – treaties to ban nuclear testing and to ban the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes were commitments made in 1995 as conditions of the indefinite extension of the NPT.

3. In response to nuclear powers “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals, Canada should work within NATO to support initiatives that would permanently reduce and ultimately eliminate the role of nuclear weapons in the Alliance’s defence policy, by:
a) adopting, in its collective declarations, realistic language about the dangers of nuclear weapons and insisting that nuclear disarmament, not nuclear deterrence, must be a key part of the “guarantee” and foundation for global security;
b) ending NATO’s nuclear sharing policy by which nuclear weapons are deployed in the territories of non-nuclear weapons states in the Alliance, and thus urging the repatriation of all US nuclear weapons (the B61 bombs) now in Europe back to the United States (and in the process finally moving NATO states into compliance with Articles I and II of the NPT); and
c) urging the Alliance to declare that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a military conflict.

4. We also call on Canada to emphasize the critical importance of preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran and to call for a similar suite of verifiable de-nuclearization commitments to be established for North Korea and the entire Korean peninsula. The successful verifiable and irreversible rejection of nuclear weapons by both states is essential for the international community to have confidence in the non-proliferation regime embodied in the NPT and the safeguard system of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Prime Minister, we are keenly aware of the daunting array of challenges that Canada faces. Climate change, environmental responsibility, and the urgent need to ween our society from its dependence on fossil fuels are themselves an overwhelming agenda, yet we know that they only head a long list of issues that require the diligent attention of you and your Government. Nevertheless, we implore you to assign nuclear disarmament a much higher priority among the issues and challenges you address. The nuclear threat is real and is made all the more urgent by the failure of responsible leadership in today’s Washington and Moscow. The international nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime needs more of Canada, working alongside other like-minded states bent on helping the world retreat from the nuclear precipice.

The above proposals set out a constructive, comprehensive agenda for reinvigorated Canadian nuclear disarmament diplomacy. We commend them to you and look forward to receiving your response to each of the points made and policies proposed, and we will be pleased to share that response with our supporters and the 19 civil society organizations represented in our networks.”
Sincerely,

Ernie Regehr
Chair, CNWC Steering Committee

Bev Delong
Chair, CNANW Executive Committee