Nuclear Disarmament

Disarmament Diplomacy in the Age of Putin and Trump

Posted on: February 11th, 2020 by Ernie Regehr

UN officials are not usually given to overstatement, which makes the recent assessment by the UN’s top disarmament diplomat that “the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons are lower than they’ve been since the darkest days of the Cold War,” all the more arresting.

The Secretary-General’s High Representative for Disarmament, Izume Nakamitsu offers a blunt assessment. Not only are arms control and disarmament “going backwards,” but that leaders of the major nuclear-weapon states are once again indulging in the “alarming” rhetoric of fighting and winning nuclear wars – a notion, she says, that “should have been consigned to history.”

Continue reading to the CIPS Blogs.

CNWC Letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Posted on: January 23rd, 2020 by Ernie Regehr

Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention have written a letter, signed by 89 prominent Canadians, to the Prime Minister, urging specific Canadian actions in support of nuclear disarmament broadly and key measures to ensure a positive outcome at the April Review Conference of the Treaty on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT.

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“As is the case in its response to the climate crisis, Canada on its own will not make the decisive difference in efforts to overcome the nuclear crisis. But in the past, Canada was helpful in working actively with like-minded states to strengthen the NPT. Another such moment, crying out for creative diplomacy, has arrived. Canada is challenged to call upon its store of political standing and diplomatic ability to work to save the NPT at its Review Conference April 27-May 22, 2020. A bridge between the nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states can best be built by adopting recommendations put forward last year by the Chairman of the Conference’s preparatory process.
“Canada should thus give leadership to a proposal to lead off the coming NPT Review Conference with a Ministerial-level declaration that would offer broad support to those recommendations by: a) recognizing the existential nuclear threat and reinforcing the urgency of the moment; b) recognizing the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear use by reiterating the Reagan-Gorbachev dictum that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought;” and c) reaffirming the disarmament steps and actions – including the “unequivocal undertaking” by the nuclear powers “to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals” – that were approved by consensus at the 2000 and 2010 Review Conferences.”

Read the full letter, in English and French, here.

Is the North Warning System obsolete?

Posted on: January 2nd, 2020 by Ernie Regehr

The American commander of Norad claims that today’s security environment is “more competitive and dangerous” than any in recent generations, and that makes the case for modernizing the North Warning System. But upgrades to this northern transcontinental line of surveillance radars—deployed in support of sovereignty, air defence and frontier controls—are necessary regardless of threat levels.

The NWS joins Pacific and Atlantic coastal radars in monitoring air approaches to Canadian territory. Norad and the Canadian Armed Forces track and identify some 200,000 civilian aircraft that approach or enter Canadian airspace annually. The mission is to sort out which of those represent challenges to Canadian security, law enforcement or public safety.

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“The point of the NWS, is and will remain, domain awareness—awareness of events within and in the approaches to Canadian territory—and modernization of the system should be driven less by the return of “great power politics” and more by an acknowledgement that domain awareness is as important in peacetime as in crisis.”

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See the debate at “Face to Face” in Legion Magazine…

How to build an architecture of peace, when destruction can rain down in mere minutes

Posted on: July 9th, 2019 by admin

Ernie Regehr and Douglas Roche

GLOBE AND MAIL

27 July 2019

The existence of 13,865 nuclear weapons held by nine countries has not been enough, seemingly, to demonstrate political power. Now science and technology are giving us faster, more precise methods of destroying “the enemy.” The name of this new danger: “hypersonic” missiles.

The United States, Russia and China are leading the way on the development of hypersonic missiles, purportedly capable of travelling at more than 15 times the speed of sound and striking any target in the world in a matter of minutes. They will be powerful enough to penetrate any building with the force of three to four tonnes of TNT.

Although hypersonics are intended to carry conventional explosives, as distinct from nuclear, that’s not the main threat right now. Hypersonic missiles, conventional or nuclear, will be capable of striking at an adversary’s nuclear arsenal. Given the very short warning times of such attacks, states with nuclear weapons will have to assess how to respond to such threats quickly, and may be tempted to bypass political consultation. Their systems will also be placed on even higher levels of alert, increasing paranoia and pressure.

And, of course, it is highly unlikely that hypersonic weapons will stay “conventional.” Indeed, Russia is already boasting that it can place nuclear warheads on its hypersonic missiles. We’re looking at a world where catastrophic destruction is possible – and with unimaginable speed.

If the world is getting to be a better place, as so many indicators of progress reveal, how can we tolerate the constant modernization of the killing process? Is our struggle ultimately against particular weapons systems, or is it against humanity’s more fundamental lust for perfecting the art of killing?

These are questions that are made relevant again with the emergence of what The New York Times Magazine recently called “unstoppable hypersonic missiles.” As Times writer R. Jeffrey Smith reminds us, there are no international agreements on how or when hypersonic missiles can be used, nor are there any plans to start such discussions. Instead, he says, the world now faces a new arms race with Russia and China – “one that could, some experts worry, upend existing norms of deterrence and renew Cold War-era tensions.”

The issue of hypersonic weapons should highlight the growing urgency of reconstructing a reliable nuclear-arms control regime. Such a system should place a legal obligation on all countries to pursue and complete comprehensive negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Stunningly, the reverse is happening: The U.S. and Russia continue to violate their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as they abandon other treaties.

Immediate steps are necessary. At a minimum, keep nuclear warheads off hypersonics; remove all nuclear systems from high-alert status to prevent false alarms from triggering nuclear catastrophe; commence negotiations to control hypersonic weapons before the emerging hypersonic arms race swings into a no-holds-barred contest among a small but widening circle of countries.

Of course, the dismal state of nuclear disarmament in this chaotic period of world history sometimes raises doubts about the effectiveness of the nuclear disarmament movement. But the arrival of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which buttresses the nearly 50-year-old Non-Proliferation Treaty, highlights the deepening humanitarian concern about the massive evil of nuclear weapons. Focusing only on nuclear disarmament is not enough to ensure sustainable world peace, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, there can be no world peace.

The new age of hypersonics reminds us that the agenda for peace is very long. It already includes curbing global warming, controlling cyberwarfare, promoting sustainable development, and continuing to learn that human rights include the right to be free of warfare.

Hypersonic marks another milestone in the development of instruments of warfare. We must respond by building a new architecture for peace. And one cornerstone of that architecture remains the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Ernie Regehr is chairman of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Douglas Roche is a former senator and the former Canadian ambassador for disarmament.

Cooperative Security and Denuclearizing the Arctic

Posted on: June 29th, 2019 by Ernie Regehr

Geography alone will continue to ensure that, as long as the United States and Russia place nuclear deterrence at the centre of their security strategies, both offensive and defensive systems will be deployed in the Arctic. As changing climate conditions also bring more immediate regional security concerns to the fore, and even as east-west relations deteriorate, the Arctic still continues to develop as an international “security community” in which there are reliable expectations that states will continue to settle disputes by peaceful means and in accordance with international law. In keeping with, and seeking to reinforce, those expectations, the denuclearization of the Arctic has been an enduring aspiration of indigenous communities and of the people of Arctic states more broadly, even though the challenges are daunting, given that two members of that community command well over 90% of global nuclear arsenals. The vision of an Arctic nuclear-weapon-free zone nevertheless persists, and with that vision comes an imperative to promote the progressive denuclearization of the Arctic, even if not initially as a formalized nuclear-weapon-free zone, within the context of a broad security cooperation agenda. Continue reading at…

“Cooperative Security and Denuclearizing the Arctic”

See: Ernie Regehr (2019) Cooperative Security and Denuclearizing the Arctic, Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, DOI: 10.1080/25751654.2019.1631696

Conjuring Chinese Nuclear Weapons Submarines in the Arctic

Posted on: May 30th, 2019 by Ernie Regehr

A single provocative sentence about China deploying nuclear-armed submarines in the Arctic led much of the commentary on the Pentagon’s May 2019 report on developments in the Chinese military. The reference was obviously meant to stoke alarm, and as long as competitive nuclear weapons “modernization” proceeds apace – especially in the United States, Russia, and China – there is little doubt that China could one day be capable of conducting submarine patrols in the Arctic, but that doesn’t answer the question of why they would want to. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

NATO and Nuclear Disarmament III – Understanding the Other, when the other is Russia

Posted on: January 10th, 2019 by Ernie Regehr

It’s clear from Cold War arms control agreements that political harmony and broad strategic cooperation are not prerequisites for progress on nuclear disarmament. It is nevertheless hard to see the US and Russia launching new rounds of nuclear arms control talks without some serious efforts at building mutual trust and understanding within the Euro/Atlantic political/security arena, even if that cannot be guaranteed to yield broad areas of agreement. Ultimately, better understanding and the rational management of conflicting interests will have to be underwritten by restrained political-military practices that seek to build confidence and, notably, point towards a renewed arms control agenda – in other words, the kinds of mutual security arrangements envisioned through the OSCE. The prospects for that level of political maturity taking firm hold in the current circumstances are not particularly bright – but that doesn’t mean they are any less necessary. Read further at The Simons Foundation.

Nuclear Submarines in the Arctic: Limiting Strategic Anti-Submarine Warfare

Posted on: December 4th, 2018 by Ernie Regehr

The Arctic is the primary home of Russia’s nuclear ballistic missile submarine force. That fleet, like its American counterpart, is being “modernized,” the subs are patrolling more often, and, inevitably, American attack submarines are paying increasing attention. Four decades ago, in a climate of intense Cold War confrontation and nuclear dangers, when American and Soviet ballistic missile submarines and the attack subs that trailed them roamed the oceans, strategists, peace researchers, and some military planners grew intensely worried about the strategic instability wrought by such dangerous cat and mouse maneuvers. That in turn led to innovative proposals for anti-submarine-warfare-free zones as one way of easing tensions and, especially, as a means of reducing the risks that mishaps, miscalculations, or miscommunications would escalate out of control. The Arctic figured prominently in those proposals – the essential elements of which continue to have merit and, unfortunately, relevance. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

NATO and Nuclear Disarmament – II: It’s Time to End NATO Nuclear Sharing

Posted on: November 12th, 2018 by Ernie Regehr

The ongoing forward deployment of non-strategic US nuclear weapons in Western Europe raises fundamental issues of strategic stability (including pre-emption, nuclear first-use, and war-fighting doctrines), public safety, and meeting Treaty obligations. American B61 nuclear gravity bombs are currently based in five European NATO member countries under NATO’s nuclear sharing policy, an arrangement that will come under increasing scrutiny as those countries are asked to accept new versions of the bombs that Washington is now “modernizing,” and as they think about including a B61 delivery capacity in their next generation fighter aircraft. And, given that nuclear sharing is explicitly prohibited in Articles I and II of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, concerns about treaty compliance generally, including the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, should bring attention to NPT compliance issues. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Nuclear Disarmament Action Priorities for Canada

Posted on: November 9th, 2018 by admin

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).

The Prime Minister of Canada should regularly speak publicly and forcefully to help Canadians understand the full extent and severity of the nuclear peril and to highlight the urgent imperative of nuclear disarmament. The obvious truth that there is much in the current international security environment that is inimical to nuclear arms control and disarmament cannot be an excuse for inaction or, worse, for deriding the efforts of others (for example, the negotiation and approval of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons). Today’s challenging international security environment must be taken as an urgent call to action and be the occasion to embrace a recommitment to multilateral disarmament diplomacy and to invest the political capital and budgetary resources required to support such a commitment.

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