Nuclear Disarmament

NATO and Nuclear Disarmament – I: NATO’s nuclear posture

Posted on: November 8th, 2018 by Ernie Regehr

Last June there was all-party support for an extraordinary recommendation by the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence. It called on the Canadian Government to “take a leadership role within NATO in beginning the work necessary for achieving the NATO goal of creating the conditions for a world free of nuclear weapons.” In October, the Government responded to say it agrees with the recommendation but essentially argued that its current policies and activities already constitute such leadership. A closer look at NATO’s nuclear posture indicates there is still plenty of room for improvement. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Saving the INF Treaty

Posted on: October 25th, 2018 by admin

A letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on President Donald Trump’s declared intention to pull the United States out of the US-Russian Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

October 25, 2018

The Hon. Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Global Affairs Canada
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0G2

Dear Minister Freeland,

We write to strongly urge you and your Government to publicly and persistently object to the Trump Administration’s plan to withdraw from the US-Russian Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and to call for maintaining and revitalizing the international nuclear arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament regime.

We are well aware of US charges that Russia is in violation of the Treaty, and we also note, as has a recent US Congressional Research Report, that Russia has identified three current and planned US military programs that it charges are or will be in violation of the Treaty. The way to resolve these serious charges is not by abandoning hard won, and in the case of the INF, historically important Treaties. We thus urge the Government of Canada to join with its European allies to insist that the United States and Russia resolve their differences at the negotiating table and by honoring their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, has put it, it is our collective responsibility to leave “no stone unturned in the effort to bring Washington and Moscow back to the table…”

The threatened abrogation of the INF Treaty pushes the world toward a dangerous tipping point. All states with nuclear weapons are already embarked on expensive and destabilizing “modernization” programs. We fear that if the Trump Administration proceeds with abandoning this Treaty without major push back from allies like Canada, it will also abandon the New START Treaty (which will expire in February 2021 if the US and Russia do not extend it). That would end all formal restraints on nuclear weapons programs and would lead to an unthinkably perilous acceleration of the nuclear arms races that are already underway.

We implore you and the Government of Canada to act with urgency and persistence and to stand for a return to the careful, painstaking, and unrelenting diplomacy of nuclear arms control and disarmament.

Sincerely,

Murray Thomson, OC
David Silcox, CM
Douglas Roche, OC
Ernie Regehr, OC, Chair, CNWC Steering Committee
Cesar Jaramillo
Bev Delong
Adele Buckley

Cc: The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister
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
The Hon. Peter Harder, the Government’s representative in the Senate
Members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development

Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention
Rassemblement canadien pour une convention sur les armes nucléaires

www.nuclearweaponsconvention.ca

A project of Canadian Pugwash Group 56 Douglas Drive, Toronto, ON M4W 2B3
Email: cnwc@pugwashgroup.ca

Nuclear Disarmament and the 2018 NATO Summit

Posted on: April 21st, 2018 by Ernie Regehr

No single issue has yet emerged as a central focus for the coming NATO Summit. Priorities listed by the NATO Secretary-General, as well as by some member States, include the need to reinforce alliance deterrence and defence (in the face of Russia’s new assertiveness, is how it’s usually framed), burden sharing (code for increased military spending as well as a greater military role for the European Union), reinforcement of transatlantic solidarity (code for trying to manage President Trump), projecting stability (a nod to continuing out-of-area or counter-terrorism operations), and attention to cybersecurity. Disarmament tends not to make such lists, but at least three nuclear issues warrant scrutiny and action by the NATO leaders: ballistic missile defence, the forward-basing of US non-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe, and the ongoing nuclear posture of the alliance. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Cruise Missiles: When defence is not an option

Posted on: March 30th, 2018 by Ernie Regehr

Cruise missiles recently made the front pages when President Vladimir Putin marshaled impressive audiovisuals to hype Russian strides in developing new and sinister military technologies. Cruise missiles were included but concerns regarding them didn’t just arrive with his speech. They have figured prominently, for just one example, in the current Canadian and American intention to replace the Arctic-based North Warning System.1 Cruise missiles pose a two-fold challenge: the unavoidable reality that there is no credible defence against long-range nuclear-armed cruise missiles; and, the related and equally inescapable reality that the only way to manage them in the long term is through internationally negotiated control agreements. The latter challenge is obviously made all the more daunting by a current political climate that is less than conducive to anything quite that rational.

Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

BMD: Cooperative Protection or Strategic Instability

Posted on: January 20th, 2018 by Ernie Regehr

It’s hard to believe, but less than a decade ago, academics, policy analysts, and even officials were exploring US-NATO-Russia cooperation on ballistic missile defence – begging the question: why is that no longer considered an appropriate subject for polite company? Missile defence cooperation is still happening, of course, but it’s between Russia and China on one side and among the US and its friends and allies on the other. Unless, however, missile defence is pulled back from its current competitive dynamic to one of east-west accommodation and cooperation, nuclear tensions, and arsenals, will only grow. Canada has joined the competitive fray in Europe through NATO, but, to its credit, continues to resist direct involvement in the strategic North American version of ballistic missile defence.

Continue Reading at The Simons Foundation.

Canada and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Posted on: November 15th, 2017 by Ernie Regehr

The following letter has been sent to the Prime Minister, urging support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and urging the Government of Canada to redouble its nuclear disarmament efforts.

November 15, 2017
The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, P.C., M.P.
Prime Minister of Canada
Ottawa, ON

Dear Prime Minister,

Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (CNWC) writes respectfully to urge you to reconsider your present opposition to the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on July 7, 2017. We have taken note of various statements by Governmental representatives and particularly the arguments advanced in the October 5 letter to CNWC from the Foreign Minister, the Hon. Chrystia Freeland.

We recognize this Treaty as a milestone on the long quest for the elimination of nuclear weapons, and thus take strong exception to your characterization of the Treaty as “useless.” We deeply regret your Government’s failure to recognize the validity and importance of the Treaty, agreed to by a majority of the world’s states, which creates a legally binding instrument to prohibit the possession and use of nuclear weapons – paralleling the treaties prohibiting chemical and biological weapons.

The elimination of all nuclear weapons, and an end to the military doctrine of nuclear deterrence, is an objective that Canada has long shared with the international community, knowing that the use of even one of the 15,000 nuclear weapons still in existence would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences. The tenacity with which nuclear weapon states seek to retain and even “modernize” weapons whose use would be in direct violation of international humanitarian law, makes a mockery of the solemn commitments they made and legal obligations they assumed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Canada must take extreme care not to aid them in their abdication of responsibility.

CNWC represents more than 1,000 distinguished Canadians, honoured by appointment to the Order of Canada, who have called for Canadian leadership in nuclear disarmament efforts, specifically encouraging the launch of negotiations toward a comprehensive Nuclear Weapons Convention that will set out both the vision and the practical time-bound actions required for verifiable, irreversible nuclear disarmament – that is, the realization of a world without nuclear weapons. The Treaty is a step towards such a Convention. Indeed, the Treaty’s historic significance has been dramatically reinforced by the award of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to the civil society coalition, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, most clearly associated with promoting the Treaty.

Rather than disparaging the Treaty because states with nuclear weapons refuse to support it, Canada should be faulting the obstructionist tactics of the nuclear weapon states, for it is they who are now doubling down on their refusal to meet their disarmament obligations; they are refusing to implement their own collective “unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

We wish, in this letter, to respond to the Government of Canada’s statements on this matter.

*Your Government continues to argue that today’s precarious global security environment
precludes negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Actually, it is precisely the current security environment – notably the US-North Korea conflict and the breakdown in relations between US/NATO and Russia – that makes heightened nuclear disarmament diplomacy an urgent necessity – as it was in the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no perfect time to seek nuclear disarmament – there is only now. The 186 non-nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT have never made the fulfillment of their non-proliferation obligations contingent upon an ideal security environment. They make their bold commitment not to acquire nuclear weapons in the interests of public well-being and of making the
world more secure. It is now the responsibility of states with nuclear weapons to also serve public wellbeing and make the world more secure by taking decisive action to further reduce and then eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

*Your Government continues to argue that the Treaty is ineffective because the nuclear
weapons states are not participating. Actually, not only are they refusing to respect the Treaty, but in October 2016 the U.S. went further to instruct its NATO partners to reject the U.N. resolution mandating negotiations for the Treaty. That is not leadership, and it is an instruction that Canada, as a country that has traditionally fostered multilateralism and supported the United Nations, should have rejected. We should have taken our customary place at the negotiating table. To argue now that the Treaty is “divisive” is to suggest that the rest of the world is to abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapons-free world, so as not to disturb that minority of states whose arsenals hold the world hostage. The source of
division is not disarmament, but is the refusal of the nuclear weapon states to meet their obligations under Article VI of the NPT. The time has come for real progress in implementing the promise made by the nuclear weapons states in the context of the 2010 NPT Plan of Action – that is, “the nuclear weapon States commit to undertake further efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate all types of nuclear weapons, deployed and non-deployed, including through unilateral, bilateral, regional and multilateral measures.”

*Your Government continues to argue that, since the new Treaty counters NATO’s Strategic Concept, which still names nuclear weapons the “supreme guarantee” of security, Canada cannot participate in the Treaty in good faith. Actually, as the Canadian Pugwash Group argues, Canada should sign the Treaty and state that it will, through dialogue and changes to its own policies and practices, persist in its efforts to bring NATO into conformity with the Treaty. It is wrong for Canada to give a higher priority to the outdated political policies of NATO than its legal obligations to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, obligations upheld by the International Court of Justice.

*Your Government continues to argue that the Treaty fails to include credible transparency and verification provisions, or measures to deter non-compliance. Actually, the Treaty adopts the tried and tested verification arrangements under the NPT, requiring each state party to maintain its safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency, or to enter such an agreement if it has not yet done so (Article 3). It also includes a provision for the establishment of an additional competent international authority for the purpose of verifying the irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons of
the nuclear weapon states (Article 4). Were Canada a participant in the Treaty, it would then, at further meetings, be able to seek improvements, such as making the International Atomic Energy Agency Additional Protocol a requirement.

*Your government continues to argue that its work toward a treaty to control fissile materials is of far greater importance than the new Treaty. Actually, the twenty years’ discussion of a prospective fissile materials treaty has produced not a single negotiation. Such a treaty would have value and credibility only if it went beyond the current focus on halting new production to also address the huge stocks of fissile materials already possessed by the nuclear states – enough material to make many thousands more nuclear weapons. Your government should urge states to move this process out of the moribund Conference on Disarmament, where a single state can veto progress, into the U.N. General
Assembly, where the majority can take decisions.

In urging your Government to join the new Treaty, we also encourage Canadian action on other steps – notably to encourage, as a matter of great urgency, the nuclear weapons states to de-alert their arsenals, and to support calls for the removal of tactical nuclear weapons from the territories of NATO non-nuclear weapons states in Europe.

We wish you and your colleagues well in carrying out your responsibilities in these extraordinary times. We would welcome an opportunity for representatives of CNWC to meet with you to further explore ways in which Canada can redouble its efforts in support of a world without nuclear weapons.

This letter is signed by a representative group from the more than 1,000 honorees of the Order of Canada who are calling for stronger government action for nuclear disarmament.

Sincerely,
Carolyn Acker, OC
Bruce Aikenhead, OC
Gerry Barr, CM
Michel Bastarache, CC
Anthony Belcourt, OC
Monique Bégin, OC
Ed Broadbent, CC
Margaret Hilson, OC
Laurent Isabelle, CM
Bonnie Klein, OC
Joy Kogawa, OC
Barbara Sherwood Lollar, CC
Bruce Kidd, OC
Margaret MacMillan, CC
Marilou McPhedran, CM
T. Jock Murray, OC
Alex Neve, OC
Peter Newbery, CM
James Orbinski, OC
Landon Pearson, OC
John Polanyi, CC
Ernie Regehr, OC
Douglas Roche, OC
David Silcox, CM
Jennifer Allen Simons, CM
Gérard Snow, CM
Veronica Tennant, CC
Murray Thomson, OC
Setsuko Thurlow, CM
Lois Wilson, CC

Canada, North Korea, and BMD: When defence leads to less security

Posted on: August 22nd, 2017 by Ernie Regehr

Published in Hill Times 16 August 2017

Ballistic missile defence leads to less security

An offence-defence arms race won’t make us any safer.

With both the rhetoric and North Korea’s nuclear capabilities escalating, the Canadian response invariably turns to debating the merits of joining the American ballistic missile defence (BMD) system that is designed to intercept North Korean missiles.

Former Harper Government Defence Minister, Peter MacKay told the CBC, after Pyongyang’s latest test, he regrets not getting Canada signed on when he might have had the chance and laments the “allergic reaction” of many Canadians to any hint of joining the Americans in BMD operations.

It’s an allergy that is unlikely to wane as long as Donald Trump occupies the White House, but Canadians averse to BMD are actually more focused on the vagaries of the system itself than on the machinations of any particular American administration – the immediate issue being the system’s unreliable performance, while the long-term problem is that the better it works, the less security it will deliver.

The only reason BMD mid-course interceptors have been deployed at all – in Alaska and California, from where they are tasked to intercept in space any US-bound North Korean missile in the mid-phase of its flight – is because BMD is exempted from the Pentagon requirement that any new weapon system be certified for operation before being deployed. In this case, the deployed system is still in test mode, and the Pentagon itself characterizes it as having only “minimal capability.”

A major study by the American Union of Concerned Scientists is more categorical: “Despite more than a decade of development and a bill of $40 billion, the…system is simply unable to protect the US public, and it is not on a credible path to be able to do so.”

But both North Korea and the Pentagon are committed to trying harder. Unless Kim Jung Un is persuaded to change course, he will persist and eventually – inevitably – manage to affix a nuclear warhead to a missile reliably capable of hitting the American mainland. The threat is real. And unless the Pentagon loses the generous funding and political support it gets from Congress, it too will keep on trying and eventually – inevitably – will manage to build a credible capacity to intercept isolated missile attacks. And that’s when things get a lot more dangerous.

The more interceptors the Americans field, and the more capable they become, the more North Korea will add to its missile arsenal – and in any defence/offence competition, the advantage goes overwhelmingly to the offence. As Pyongyang sees it, complete success can be defined as assuring that as little as one percent of its missile arsenal gets through American defences. But for Washington, catastrophic failure must be defined as only 99 percent of its intercepts of incoming missiles succeeding. Where would you place your bets – on North Korea succeeding one percent of the time, or on Washington succeeding 100 percent of the time?

But that’s only part of the BMD problem. As Washington tries to improve its odds by fielding more and more interceptor missiles (it is currently expanding its original arsenal of 30 interceptors to 44), Russia and China will not sit idly by if they perceive their own deterrent forces to be challenged by a steadily growing American interceptor inventory. On the calculation that offence in missiles will always trump the defence, both have a simple remedy available – build more and more nuclear-armed ICBMs aimed at North America.

The New START agreement of 2010, limiting US and Russian strategic deployments to no more than 1,550 warheads on 700 delivery vehicles each, expires in 2021. Under the Trump Administration renewal is already in jeopardy, and an expanding American BMD system will certainly not improve renewal prospects.

Add to that the implications of the American regional missile defence system (THAAD – Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) now installed in South Korea to protect it from the North’s shorter-range missiles. Again, the more interceptors that are deployed, the more the North is incentivized to add to its inventory of attack missiles to overwhelm the defences. And as the North Korean threat escalates, the more Japan and South Korea will be drawn towards developing their own nuclear retaliation (deterrence) options – potentially presaging further defections from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

At each escalating step along that way, security diminishes. Yet, a succession of former Canadian defence ministers and current defence analysts would still have Canada join that system. To its credit, the Government continues to resist these entreaties. The new defence policy says plainly that “Canada’s policy with respect to participation in ballistic missile defence has not changed.” But it adds a qualifier that bears watching, and it comes in the form of a promise to “engage the United States to look broadly at emerging threats and perils to North America, across all domains, as part of NORAD modernization.”

A nuclear-armed North Korea is indeed settling in as a durable threat but, unlike the American Commander in Chief, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has displayed moments of clarity. At an August 1 press briefing at the State Department he insisted: “We do not seek a regime change, we do not seek a collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38^th Parallel.” To the North he said, “we are not your enemy…but you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond.” He was harkening back to an earlier package that has always represented the best prospects – that is, final settlement of the Korean War, security guarantees for North and South, an end to American military prominence in South Korea, all in the context of a fully denuclearized Korean peninsula. He was also echoing South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s commitment to a new round of dialogue.

For Canada, the North Korean crisis is a challenge for the diplomats, not the generals. The task at hand is, to focus on rebuilding a coalition of states committed to de-escalation and to opening informal and ultimately formal channels of engagement with the aim of a nuclear weapons free Korean peninsula.

Hit a bullet, every time

Posted on: June 4th, 2017 by Ernie Regehr

The Globe and Mail, 03 June 2017

It’s a genuine feat to intercept a bullet with a bullet, which is what the Pentagon says it managed to do with this week’s successful missile defence test (Pentagon Successfully Tests ICBM Defence System For First Time, May 31).

Just don’t confuse that with protection from a North Korean missile attack.

The Pentagon still is not close to reliably intercepting missiles under anything approaching realistic conditions (for example, with active counter measures engaged). The problem is, any defence against nuclear attack with less than a 100-per-cent success rate amounts to catastrophic failure.

Even a missile defence system that reliably performed at a 90-per-cent success level would cede all the advantage to the attacker.

Once North Korea manages to mount a warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the continental U.S. (something that isn’t imminent but is likely in the absence of any agreement to end its nuclear program), it faces the relatively simpler challenge of building enough such missiles to stay just ahead of a necessarily less than perfect American missile defence system.

North Korea is already doing that in response to the regional missile defence system (THAAD) the U.S. has now deployed in South Korea, as Pyongyang practises regular and multiple firings of tried and true Scud missiles – of which it can build as many as it thinks it needs to overwhelm the defence.

The real accomplishment of missile defence is to create powerful incentives to accumulate ever larger inventories of offensive missiles.

Ernie Regehr, senior fellow, Simons Foundation; research fellow, Centre for Peace Advancement, Conrad Grebel University College

What a U.S. missile defence system and a new president mean for South Korea

Posted on: May 13th, 2017 by Ernie Regehr

South Koreans within the firing range of Kim Jong-un’s brandished missiles and nuclear warheads might be expected to welcome protection wherever it can be found, but they remain far from united on the question of hosting American missile defence batteries on their soil.

Indeed, in Moon Jae-in, they’ve elected this week the presidential candidate most critical of the rushed deployment of the United States’ anti-ballistic missile system known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).

Continue reading at OpenCanada.

Ballistic Missile Defence, Diplomacy, and North Korea

Posted on: May 11th, 2017 by Ernie Regehr

To South Koreans well within the firing range of a regime and leader of dubious stability and demeanour, it might seem eminently sensible to pursue protection from Kim Jong-un’s brandished missiles and nuclear warheads, but those same South Koreans are far from united on hosting American missile defence batteries on their soil. Indeed, they’ve just elected the presidential candidate most critical of the rushed THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) deployment. Whether the new Government revives an all-out “Sunshine Policy” of re-engagement with the North, it should find missile defence a poor substitute for diplomacy.

Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.