Saving the INF – II

A letter to the Prime Minister

The signatories to this letter are among more than 1,000 Canadians honoured by the Order of Canada and seized with the urgency of nuclear disarmament, who have thus issued a “call on all member states of the United Nations – including Canada – to endorse, and begin negotiations for, a Nuclear Weapons Convention.” http://nuclearweaponsconvention.ca/

January 24, 2019

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

Dear Prime Minister,

We write to urge, in the strongest terms, you and your government to publicly and prominently call on all the parties to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty to ensure that it is preserved. We urge you to call on Russia and the United States directly to take advantage of the Treaty’s special verification commission, along with other diplomatic avenues, to address their current and serious compliance concerns, and to call on the international community more broadly to consider ways and means of bringing other states with intermediate-range nuclear weapons, such as China, into the Treaty.

Canada’s call for the preservation of the INF Treaty should also include a clear call on the United States and Russia to extend the New START Treaty beyond its February 2021 expiry and to challenge them to begin work on successor agreements to provide for further reductions in deployed and stockpiled nuclear weapons. Indeed, there is a pressing need to revitalize the entire international nuclear arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament regime and we encourage you and your government to become prominent champions of such revitalization.

We appreciate that in 2018 both the G-7 and NATO summits, with Canada’s participation, declared that the preservation of the INF Treaty is a key to Euro-Atlantic and international security, but we are disappointed that the Government of Canada has itself remained inexplicably silent in the face of the Trump Administration’s threat to abandon the Treaty.

The importance of this Treaty cannot be in doubt. As you know, it bans the possession, production, and flight-testing of ground-launched missiles within the 500 to 5,500 kilometers range and bans launchers for such missiles. A broad range of international arms control experts and diplomats has expressed what can only be described as persistent alarm regarding the probable consequences if US President Donald Trump follows through on his threat, issued on October 20, 2018 following a rally in Nevada, to “terminate” the Treaty – consequences that would in all probability include the lapse of New START.

Without these treaties, the world would, for the first time since 1972, be without any formal constraints on nuclear arsenals, and would thus face a perilous future of renewed arms races and the heightened danger that political and military confrontations could escalate to nuclear use and widespread planetary annihilation.

Mikhail Gorbachev and George P. Shultz (Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration) have further pointed out that without these treaties the world will also lose the “innovative system of verification, inspections, data exchange and mutual consultations to ensure that each side can confidently verify that the other is faithfully adhering to the treaty limits” that was established by the INF, New START and earlier nuclear reduction treaties.

Two giants of American arms control who now run the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Senator (Ret’d) Sam Nunn and Ernst J. Moniz, Secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration, have also warned of a “cascade of negative consequences” if the Treaty is abandoned – including the unfettered deployment by Russia of intermediate range missiles sparking a new arms race, serious division within NATO, and the undermining of efforts to rally the world to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons and missiles.

The noted Russian arms control diplomat and analyst Alexei Arbatov, currently a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, has recently written that “the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty risks triggering a chain reaction that would result in the collapse of the US-Russia nuclear arms control architecture. Should the treaty meet its demise, the New START Treaty may join it in the dustbin of history, as may the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).”

Fears of the collapse of the arms control regime and of renewed arms races are real. President Trump has said that if the US leaves the Treaty it will commence building weapons within the prohibited range. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has already said that Russia must assume that if the US abandons the INF it will move to deploy intermediate range missiles in Europe.

The INF Treaty is not simply a European or US-Russia matter. We are all stakeholders, and our Government has a special responsibility to plead Canada’s interests, which include the pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons, with the parties to the Treaty and with the international community broadly. Silence is an abrogation of responsibility. We urge you, Prime Minister, to provide bold, public, and insistent leadership.

Sincerely,
John Polanyi, CC, Toronto, ON
Ernie Regehr, OC, Waterloo, ON
Douglas Roche, OC, Edmonton, AB
David Silcox, CM, Toronto, ON
Jennifer Allen Simons, CM, Vancouver, BC.
Murray Thomson, OC, Ottawa, ON
Carolyn Acker, CM, Toronto, ON
Bruce Aikenhead, OC, Salmon Arm, BC
Christopher Barnes, CM, Victoria, BC
Gerry Barr, CM, Antigonish, NS
Michel Bastarache, CC, Ottawa, ON
Tony Belcourt, OC, Ottawa, ON
Mary Boyd, CM, Blooming Point, PEI
Ed Broadbent, CC, Ottawa, ON
Harold Chapman, OC, Saskatoon, SK
Paul Copeland, CM, Toronto, ON
Lorna Crozier, OC, North Saanich, BC
Stephen Drance, OC, Vancouver, BC
Treatment There is no cure for macular degeneration, but you can slow down the disease and keep relatively good vision until you are 90 years old. order cheap cialis http://www.devensec.com/news/Spring%20_2019_newsletter_(2).pdf Non-pharmacological therapies In addition to pharmacological treatment, psychosocial and educational strategies, including psychotherapy, promoting adherence to treatment and india pharmacy viagra devensec.com education of patients and their families are essential in protecting our cells from damage caused by free radicals and which could have taken the form of jelly and also in the form of tablets. If viagra canadian other possible, try limiting your work and give some time to be combined in the bloodstream for showing its effects on your health. Ginseng root is the best remedy to improve sexual function levitra no prescription in men. Howard Dyck, CM, Waterloo, ON
Mary Eberts, OC, Toronto, ON
John English, OC, Toronto, ON
Nigel Fisher, OC, Salt Spring Island, BC
Judith Hall, OC, Vancouver, BC
Margaret Hilson, OC, Vancouver, BC
Eric Hoskins, OC, Toronto, ON
Laurent Isabelle, CM, Ottawa, ON
Dan Ish, OC, Saskatoon, SK
Pierre Jeanniot. OC, Montreal, QC
Bruce Kidd, OC, Toronto, ON
Michael Klein, CM, Vancouver, BC
Bonnie Klein, OC, Vancouver, BC
Joy Kogawa, CM, Toronto, ON
Lucia Kowaluk, CM, Montreal, QC
Eva Kushner, OC, Toronto, ON
Patrick Lane, OC, Victoria, BC
Michele Landsberg, OC, Toronto, ON
John Last, OC, Ottawa, ON
Stephen Lewis, CC, Toronto, ON
Barbara Sherwood Lollar, CC, Toronto, ON
Margaret MacMillan, OC, London, UK
Clifford Garfield Mahood, OC, Toronto, ON
Elizabeth May, OC, Sidney, BC
Gordon McBean, OC, London, ON
Don McKay, OC, St. John’s, NL
Audrey McLaughlin, OC, Whitehorse, YT
Marilou McPhedran, CM, Winnipeg, MB
Ann Mortifee, CM, Cortes Island, BC
Balfour Mount, OC, Montreal, QC
Alex Neve, OC, Ottawa, ON
Peter Newbery, CM, New Hazelton, BC
Samantha Nutt, CM, Toronto, ON
Monica Patten, CM, Ottawa, ON
Landon Pearson, OC, Ottawa, ON
Nancy Ruth, CM, Toronto, ON
William A. Schabas, OC, London, UK
Ian Smillie, CM, Ottawa, ON
Gerard Snow, CM, Moncton, NB
Setsuko Thurlow, CM, Toronto, ON
James Walker, OC, Waterloo, ON
Douglas Ward, CM, Ottawa, ON
Lois Wilson, CC, Toronto, ON

Cc: The Hon. Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs
The Hon. Andrew Scheer, Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party
Jagmeet Singh, Leader of the New Democratic Party
Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party
Rhéal Fortin, Interim Leader of the Bloc Québécois