Nuclear Disarmament
Posted on: July 15th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
Just two weeks after nuclear-armed India and Pakistan agreed to further
talks on reducing tensions between them,[i] renewed terror attacks in Mumbai threaten to unravel the gains made. But, contrary to the Globe and Mail’s alarmist headline, “Enraged Indians blame Pakistan,”[ii] the Indian government is actually showing restraint[iii] – a welcome approach encouraged by a remarkable Canadian-led dialogue process involving senior Indians and Pakistanis.
(more…)
Posted on: June 1st, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
It is potentially one of the most far-reaching recent nuclear disarmament developments – in 2010 the NPT Review Conference renewed the international commitment to pursue “a Middle East zone free of nuclear
weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.” Of course, it will turn out to be one of the biggest impediments to broader disarmament progress if that commitment is once again ignored.
(more…)
Posted on: May 23rd, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
A conversation with David A. Welch, CIGI Chair of Global Security and Interim Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, on civil society and peace advocacy.
(more…)
Posted on: April 30th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
On April 11-12 a group of Canadian civil society organizations hosted a workshop in Ottawa on the theme: “Towards a Nuclear Weapons Convention: A Role for Canada.” Panels focused on legal, verification, and security imperatives for world without nuclear weapons and on possible Canadian policies and initiatives. All the presentations and other details are available here. The following is excerpted from Ernie Regehr’s paper on “Alternative Security Arrangements.”
In their most recent joint article on nuclear disarmament, Henry Kissinger and his gang of four colleagues concluded that a “world without nuclear weapons will not simply be today’s world minus nuclear weapons.” [i]
They are right. There is no denying that for a world without nuclear weapons to be secure and stable it will have to be different in some fundamental ways from a world with many nuclear weapons – that latter itself obviously being an insecure and unstable world.
But let’s not forget that today’s international security environment is already fundamentally different from what it was when nuclear arsenals were at their peak. The Cold War is over. A greater awareness of the proliferation incentives generated by existing arsenals along with heightened concerns about non-state groups getting their hands on the bomb[ii] have helped to galvanize a new constituency of support for nuclear abolition.
So the world security environment can and does change, even for the better.
Nuclear disarmament presages a major change in that it proposes to take nuclear deterrence off the table but that in turn raises the obvious question: does nuclear deterrence need to be replaced by conventional deterrence? Without nuclear deterrence, will we need the threat of devastation by other means? Destruction by conventional arms could never approach the scale of nuclear destruction, so removing the latter is a fundamental step toward a much safer world, but a post-nuclear world will not be more stable if it is heavily militarized through competing, offence-oriented, national and alliance military postures.
The new US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)[iii] unfortunately anticipates such a world organized around heightened conventional deterrence. While it articulates a welcome reduction in US reliance on nuclear weapons, it proposes to gradually replace nuclear deterrence with what it calls “the growth of unrivalled U.S. conventional military capabilities” (p. vi).
While it cites other factors as facilitating reduced reliance on nuclear deterrence, notably the easing of Cold War tensions and the development of missile defences (p. vii), it assumes “US conventional military pre-eminence” (p. ix) and “the prospect of a devastating conventional military response” (p. ix) must be the alternative to nuclear deterrence. The NPR repeatedly links declining reliance on nuclear weapons with the pledge to “continue to strengthen conventional capabilities” (p. ix). In other words, it proposes that deterrence by weapons of mass destruction be replaced with deterrence by weapons that are massively destructive.
One particularly provocative emblem of the continuing US quest to maintain unrivalled conventional military pre-eminence is the “conventional prompt global strike capability” (CPGS)[iv] that is now coveted by US military planners. The NPR asserts a commitment to “preserving options for using heavy bombers and long-range missile systems in conventional roles” (p. x). A conventionally-armed strategic-range missile is, of course, generally regarded as extremely destabilizing since it could easily be misinterpreted as a nuclear attack. Furthermore, in a crisis, CPGS attacks would be militarily most effective in pre-emptive strikes, attacking an adversary’s military assets before they are operationally deployed – and any state fearing such pre-emption could itself try to escape such an attack by deploying early and thus escalating a crisis situation.
The component triggers the blood circulation which assists by causing relaxed muscles and timely transmission of the transmission process of wouroud.com canadian cialis pharmacy the stimulated signals from the nervous system and release of many chemicals in the tissues of the penis. This herbal cure has been used for decades for the pop over here cheap viagra cialis preparation of anti-aging and energy boosting supplements. Joyce and Calhoun point out that this is especially important if you are not prescription de viagra canada able to conceive. Impotence, also known to be erectile dysfunction is an issue in which a men is not try for more info professional cialis 20mg a new one. High levels of competing offensive conventional military forces are now and will continue to be a primary source of nuclear proliferation pressure. Those pressures will not vanish with nuclear disarmament. Nuclear materials and technology will continue to exist and spread through civilian programs, and states that feel an existential threat from militarily superior powers will be no less tempted to acquire a nuclear weapons capability (even as a virtual deterrent) than are some states now, even though they have made unqualified and solemn political and legal commitments not to acquire nuclear weapons.
Long before the US and Russia get close to zero nuclear weapons, the NATO-Russia conventional imbalance will become an impediment to further progress. The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty – suspended by Russia in 2007 in response to European missile defence plans – is one attempt to address the imbalance. Russia has the added concern about Chinese conventional capabilities. Indeed, comparative Chinese and American conventional capabilities will also come into play – as will, of course, Indian and Pakistani imbalances.
The point is that conventional arms restraint and reductions, not escalation, are essential to continuing progress in nuclear disarmament and to reducing the demand for nuclear weapons.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation: The doctrine of mutual assured destruction is obsolete in the post-Cold War era..,” the Wall Street Journal, 7 March 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703300904576178760530169414.html.
[ii] In fact, in the current security environment, as pointed out by Mohamed ElBaradei some time ago, the only actors on the international stage that could “rationally” use (that is, actually detonate) a nuclear weapon to their perceived advantage would be a non-state extremist group. Mohamed ElBaradei, “In Search of Security: Finding an Alternative to Nuclear Deterrence,” 4 Novmber 2004, Speech to the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation. http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2004/ebsp2004n012.html.
[iii] Nuclear Posture Review Report, US Department of Defense, April 2010. http://www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20nuclear%20posture%20review%20report.pdf.
[iv] Amy F. Woolf, Conventional Prompt Global Strike and Long-Range Ballistic Missiles: Background and Issues, Congressional Research Service, 1 March 2011. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf.
Posted on: March 30th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
The international community has long understood nuclear disarmament as a daunting security and political challenge, but it has been unforgivably slow in fully facing the profound legal questions raised by the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons. Now, a new “Vancouver Declaration” brings clarity and urgency to the issue through a succinct articulation of the legal principles and laws that make nuclear disarmament not only an urgent political objective and moral imperative, but also an unambiguous legal requirement.
The Vancouver Declaration,[i] the joint initiative of The Simons Foundation of Vancouver and the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, provides the kinds of detail and specifics that bring both clarity and urgency to our understanding of the ways in which nuclear weapons violate fundamental and well-established global legal principles. In the process, the declaration helps the international disarmament community to understand that “the law has a pivotal role to play in their elimination.”
The Vancouver Declaration has been endorsed by some of the most distinguished global experts in international law, notably: Christopher G. Weeramantry, former Vice President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and current President of IALANA; Mohammed Bedjaoui, who was ICJ President in 1996 when it handed down its advisory opinion on nuclear weapons; Louise Doswald-Beck, Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and co-author of a major International Committee of the Red Cross study of international humanitarian law; Ved Nanda, Evans University Professor, Nanda Center for International and Comparative Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
Noted disarmament experts to sign the declaration include Jayantha Dhanapala, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs; and Gareth Evans, QC, former Foreign Minister of Australia who recently served as Co-Chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament.[ii]
The statement confirms that all weapons of mass destruction “are, by definition, contrary to the fundamental rules of international humanitarian law forbidding the infliction of indiscriminate harm and unnecessary suffering.” That judgement, it goes on to say, applies especially to nuclear weapons because of “their uncontrollable blast, heat, and radiation effects.”
The statement concludes: “An ‘absolute evil,’ as the President of the ICJ called nuclear weapons, requires an absolute prohibition.”
The declaration includes an especially helpful annex that reviews “the law of nuclear weapons.” The declaration and annex are available here. Some excerpts from the Annex and Declaration follow:
From the Annex:
“Use of nuclear weapons in response to a prior nuclear attack cannot be justified as a reprisal. The immunity of non-combatants to attack in all circumstances is codified in widely ratified Geneva treaty law and in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which provides inter alia that an attack directed against a civilian population is a crime against humanity.
“That nuclear weapons have not been detonated in war since World War II contributes to the formation of a customary prohibition on use. Further to this end, in 2010 the United States declared that “it is in the US interest and that of all other nations that the nearly 65-year record of nuclear non-use be extended forever,” and Presidents Obama and Singh also jointly stated their support for “strengthening the six decade-old international norm of non-use of nuclear weapons.”
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“Threat as well as use of nuclear weapons is barred by law. As the ICJ made clear, it is unlawful to threaten an attack if the attack itself would be unlawful. This rule renders unlawful two types of threat: specific signals of intent to use nuclear weapons if demands, whether lawful or not, are not met; and general policies (“deterrence”) declaring a readiness to resort to nuclear weapons when vital interests are at stake. The two types come together in standing doctrines and capabilities of nuclear attack, pre-emptive or responsive, in rapid reaction to an imminent or actual nuclear attack.
“The unlawfulness of threat and use of nuclear weapons reinforces the norm of non-possession. The NPT prohibits acquisition of nuclear weapons by the vast majority of states, and there is a universal obligation, declared by the ICJ and based in the NPT and other law, of achieving their elimination through good-faith negotiation. It cannot be lawful to continue indefinitely to possess weapons which are unlawful to use or threaten to use, are already banned for most states, and are subject to an obligation of elimination.
“Ongoing possession by a few countries of weapons whose threat or use is contrary to humanitarian law undermines that law, which is essential to limiting the effects of armed conflicts, large and small, around the world. Together with the two-tier systems of the NPT and the UN Security Council, such a discriminatory approach erodes international law more generally; its rules should apply equally to all states. And reliance on “deterrence” as an international security mechanism is far removed from the world envisaged by the UN Charter in which threat or use of force is the exception, not the rule.”
Back to the Declaration
“The ICJ’s declaration that nuclear weapons are subject to international humanitarian law was affirmed by the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. In its Final Document approved by all participating states, including the nuclear-weapon states, the Conference ‘expresses its deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, and reaffirms the need for all states at all times to comply with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.’
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] Available on the website of The Simons Foundation: http://www.thesimonsfoundation.ca/highlights/experts-declare-nuclear-weapons-contrary-international-humanitarian-law.
[ii] The full list of initial signatories can be viewed at: http://www.thesimonsfoundation.ca/resources/vancouver-declaration-law%E2%80%99s-imperative-urgent-achievement-nuclear-weapon-free-world.
Posted on: March 12th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
Having written several times in support of efforts toward a world without nuclear weapons, four once prominent leaders in US security affairs – George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn – have now turned their attention to deterrence.
This “gang of four,” as they’ve become known, first appeared together in the pages of the Wall Street Journal in January 2007, where they shocked the world, but in a good way, with a strong message in support of the basic goal of a world without nuclear weapons:
“Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations. Without the bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible.”[i]
Over the years they have repeated and elaborated on that message, and this week they focused in on the need to maintain nuclear deterrence while the international community reshapes security relationships and paradigms and while it pursues the final elimination of nuclear weapons:
“[A]s long as nuclear weapons exist, America must retain a safe, secure and reliable nuclear stockpile primarily to deter a nuclear attack and to reassure our allies through extended deterrence. There is an inherent limit to U.S. and Russian nuclear reductions if other nuclear weapon states build up their inventories or if new nuclear powers emerge.”[ii]
This straightforward affirmation of deterrence is a serious disappointment to many who had celebrated the conversion of these four security potentates into nuclear abolitionists, and rightly so. It surely is an acute form of political and imaginative bankruptcy when, having concluded that absolutely no use of a nuclear weapon could ever be justified, we still find it necessary to assert that global stability requires us to threaten to do what must never be done.
Furthermore, the term “reliable nuclear stockpile” is now the preferred euphemism in American security discourse for the “modernization” of nuclear weapons – so it seems as if Messers Shultz, Kissinger, Perry, and Nunn have taken rather a giant step backwards.
But that is not an entirely fair charge. Their assertion that as long as anyone else has nuclear weapons the US is likely to retain them is, like it or not, a basic reality – and will so unless there is a rather dramatic change in the US political/security environment. Some Republicans already descry President Obama’s current nuclear disarmament initiatives as the emasculation of America. If other states, like India and Pakistan, continue to increase their arsenals, or if new nuclear weapon powers emerge, say Iran, we can expect that virtually all mainstream political support for continued reductions to the American arsenal, never mind its elimination, will disappear.
Others have very expensive prices, and some traders even send their buy tadalafil no prescription customers sugar pills with no double negative impacts or even drawbacks. Foods to try this shop now order viagra online be avoided in the diet – Raw oysters, strawberries, avocado and many more other motives. The answer is that this berry contains a magnificent generic purchase viagra combination of health-promoting minerals, vitamins, essential fatty acids, fiber, amino acids, antioxidants and tons of phytonutrients.The nutritional content of Acai truly is one of many oldest living tree species with some specimens claimed to be over 2,500 many years old. I have tried many medicines which did not disappoint any of its customers and went on to become a very renowned product especially in best buy for viagra the male populace. Nuclear deterrence, in all its contradictions and absurdities, will finally disappear as a policy when nuclear weapons disappear. That is a tough reality, and to their credit, Shultz, Kissinger, Perry, and Nunn continue to press for the latter. In their latest missive they call for more effective measures to prevent both the spread of nuclear materials and the accidental use of nuclear weapons. They acknowledge once again that the continued reliance on nuclear weapons creates proliferation pressures, and they call for redoubled efforts to resolve regional conflicts where nuclear weapons have become part of the dynamic.
They also call for the development of positive security assurances among states:
“Progress must be made through a joint enterprise among nations, recognizing the need for greater cooperation, transparency and verification to create the global political environment for stability and enhanced mutual security.”
In fact, the transformation of the international security order is a powerful theme for them: “A world without nuclear weapons will not simply be today’s world minus nuclear weapons.” Nuclear deterrence thus will remain, not a necessary presence, but an unfortunate and likely presence until that transformation becomes into clearer focus.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007. http://www.2020visioncampaign.org/pages/336.
[ii] George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation: The doctrine of mutual assured destruction is obsolete in the post-Cold War era..,” the Wall Street Journal, 7 March 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703300904576178760530169414.html.
Posted on: January 31st, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
This month and next, Canada shoulders one of the least coveted leadership posts within the United Nations system – the presidency of the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD).
The travails, frustrations, and abject failure of the CD, the UN’s only disarmament negotiating forum, have become legendary over 15 years of regular meetings that have produced not a single agreement. That includes especially the failure to agree even on a working agenda – a simple list of issues to be negotiated or debated.
The fruitless travails of the CD have centred for a decade and a half on a futile search for agreement on an agenda; the frustrations are heightened by the fact that, even though 64 of the CD’s 65 member States agree on a critically important four-part agenda or program of work, consensus continues to elude them; and the abject failure of the CD owes to a perverse convention that defines consensus as unanimity, meaning that a single “no” vote can block the work that every other member state wants to pursue.
And that’s the CD that Canada must now lead for a brief two months. In his first speech as the CD President, Canada’s Geneva-based UN Ambassador, Marius Grinius, recalled the frustrations voiced by one of his Canadian predecessors when opening the first session of the CD in 2001 – already then Canadian diplomats were descrying the disheartening waste of opportunities and waste of time and professional energies of delegations to that body.[i]
There is a proposed agenda that enjoys overwhelming support. Indeed, on 29 May 2009, a red letter day in recent CD history, unanimous agreement was reached on a program of work.[ii] It consisted of the four key items that have been acknowledged all along as needing primary attention: 1) negotiations to halt production of fissile materials for weapons purposes; 2) a working group to address nuclear disarmament more broadly; 3) a working group on measures by which nuclear weapon states promise not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states; and 4) a working group on preventing an arms race in outer space.
The first three of these items were affirmed in 1995, essentially as conditions for the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The May 2009 action also agreed to the appointment of three “special coordinators” to advance discussions within the CD respectively on emerging weapons technologies, a “comprehensive programme of disarmament,” and “transparency in armaments.”
It was a short-lived agreement when Pakistan, which is fundamentally opposed to a Treaty mandated halt in fissile materials production because it fears that India has much more extensive existing stocks, subsequently withheld consent for the work to commence.
Now, in 2011, the frustrations and sense of waste are even more intense, even as Pakistan’s opposition to negotiating on fissile materials also becomes more deeply entrenched. Pakistan has a point, as its Ambassador argued at the CD last week: “Over the last two years, Pakistan has clearly stated that it cannot agree to negotiations on a FMCT [fissile material cut-off treaty] in the CD owing to the discriminatory waiver provided by the NSG [Nuclear Suppliers Group] to our neighbour for nuclear cooperation by several powers, as this arrangement will further accentuate the asymmetry in fissile materials stockpiles in the region, to the detriment of Pakistan’s security interests.”[iii]
Pakistan has watched its principle rival, India, being courted by the international community through an exemption from Nuclear Supplier Group prohibitions on civilian nuclear cooperation. India’s rehabilitation as an acknowledged nuclear weapon state continues, even though, as the Arms Control Association’s Daryl Kimball put it, “U.S. support for Indian membership in the NSG undermines U.S. efforts to shore up the global nonproliferation system, prevent the transfer of sensitive nuclear technologies, and makes it far more difficult to slow the South Asian nuclear arms race.”[iv]
Pakistan agrees and essentially announced an accelerated nuclear arms race to the CD: “Apart from undermining the validity and sanctity of the international non-proliferation regime these measures shall further destabilize security in South Asia. Membership in the NSG will enable our neighbour to further expand on its nuclear cooperation agreements and enhance its nuclear weapons and delivery capability. As a consequence Pakistan will be forced to take measures to ensure the credibility of its deterrence. The accumulative impact would be to destabilize the security environment in South Asia and beyond or to the global level. From our perspective in the CD, this would further retard progress on non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament measures.”[v]
Meanwhile, the stalemate continues. But there may yet be a positive outcome to these growing frustrations – also voiced by the UN Secretary-General.[vi] And that is in the growing interest in taking negotiation of a fissile materials Treaty out of the CD. Washington’s Rose Gottemoeller, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, was s bit more direct. Given that the CD is “dead in the water,” she said, “if we cannot find a way to begin these negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament, we will need to consider other options.”[vii]
Canada has been among the most direct in pushing for an alternative. Ambassador Grinius issued the challenge almost a year ago: “If we truly care about disarmament, Canada believes we must be ready to look for alternative ways forward outside of this body.”[viii]
He referred in particular to a 2005 proposal in which Canada joined five other states – Brazil, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Sweden – in putting forward a resolution in the UN General Assembly asking it to mandate, by simple majority vote, four special committees to work on the four priority disarmament issues (listed above).
The point was to take these four crucial issues out of the “consensus prison” of the CD. Working as Committees of the General Assembly, they would not be bound by consensus rules and thus states would finally be allowed to deal substantively with these key issues. The drafters of the resolution were careful not to strip the CD of its function, and so built into their resolution a commitment to transfer the results of the work of these four ad-hoc committees back to the CD as soon as it finally agreed on its proposed agenda of work and was actually prepared to start negotiating. [ix] Ironically, if there are to be negotiations on fissile materials, and eventually they will begin, it will be in Pakistan’s interests to have them conducted in the CD, where the consensus rule will guarantee that its concerns are taken seriously.
Clinical treatments for Disfuncion erectile There are several treatments across this world that offers treatments to improve Going Here cialis without prescription sexual potency. This company founded the mechanical dynamometer in 1937 which helped a lot in the commander cialis overload protection. If your body’s systems are imbalanced, you will experience excessive amounts of oxidative stress which will lead to pathological disintegration and hence pathological hyperplasia. free viagra on line Ajanta Pharma, viagra generika check out this link the manufacture of Kamagra produces the medicine in the external increases the murdering flow to the ripeness buses and it cannot help in aiding an individual to increase sexual stimulus. The 2005 plan failed due to heavy hostility from the George W. Bush Administration, but the new nuclear disarmament environment is more promising. Ambassador Grinius opened his presidency by telling CD member states that “2011 will be a pivotal year” for the CD. He cited the positive context for nuclear disarmament efforts, noting the Security Council Summit meeting on the issue in 2009, the Washington Nuclear Security Summit, the New START agreement, and the successful 2010 NPT Review Conference. “At all these milestones, ‘political will’ seemed abundant,” he said. “In contrast to all these positive security developments elsewhere, the Conference on Disarmament appeared to be an oblivious island of inactivity where ‘political will’ continued to be absent.”[x]
For now there is still time for the CD to make itself relevant; but let’s all hope that time is running out.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] Marius Grinius, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada, “President’s Statement,” 25 January 2011. Available at the NGO disarmament monitoring group, Reaching Critical Will: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/2011/statements/part1/25Jan_Canada.pdf.
[ii] “Decision for the establishment of a Programme of Work for the 2009 session.” Conference on Disarmament (CD/1864, 29 May 2009).
[iii] Ambassador Zamir Akram, Statement at the Conference on Disarmament, 25 January 2011. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/2011/statements/part1/25Jan_Pakistan1.pdf.
[iv] Daryl G. Kimball, “Obama’s Message to India: Proliferation Violations Don’t Have Consequences,” US Arms Control Association Blog, 6 November 2010. http://armscontrolnow.org/2010/11/06/obamas-message-to-india-proliferation-violations-dont-have-consequences/.
“In a statement Saturday from Mumbai, Mike Froman, the Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs said ‘…the United States will support India’s full membership in the four multilateral export control regimes. These are the Nuclear Suppliers Group; the Missile Technology Control Regime; the Australia Group; and the Wassenaar Arrangement.’”
[v] Ambassador Zamir Akram, Statement at the Conference on Disarmament, 25 January 2011. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/2011/statements/part1/25Jan_Pakistan1.pdf.
[vi] “Remarks delivered by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the Conference on Disarmament,” 26 January 2010, available at the NGO disarmament monitoring group, Reaching Critical Will: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/2011/statements/part1/26Jan_SG.pdf.
[vii] Rose E. Gottemoeller, “2011 Opening Statement to the Conference on Disarmament,” 27 January 2011. Available at: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/2011/statements/part1/27Jan_US.pdf.
[viii] March 23, 2010 speech to the Conference on Disarmament. http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(httpAssets)/501328AAB0863E3BC12576EF003CD2C9/$file/1180_Canada.pdf.
[ix] Elaborated in this space: “It’s time to sideline the Geneva disarmament conference,” 18 February 2010. http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2010/2/it%E2%80%99s-time-sideline-geneva-disarmament-conference.
[x] Marius Grinius, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada, “President’s Statement,” 25 January 2011. Available at the NGO disarmament monitoring group, Reaching Critical Will: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/cd/2011/statements/part1/25Jan_Canada.pdf.
Posted on: January 19th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
Limiting or banning the operations of nuclear attack submarines in the Arctic Ocean is not disarmament, but it could advance efforts toward a nuclear-weapon-free Arctic and world.
The proposal to convert the Arctic region into a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone[i] is generally understood as a long range objective. Building declaratory support in principle for the idea is a constructive pursuit and, perhaps more to the point, exploring the details, opportunities, and obstacles to achieving the denuclearization of the Arctic is an essential part of the process toward the now near-universally accepted objective of a world without nuclear weapons.
In the context of such explorations it is appropriate and useful to also consider specific changes to Arctic nuclear deployments and operations that would serve to reduce short-term risks of nuclear escalation or miscalculation.
Fortunately, of course, such risks are not now high in the Arctic Ocean, but neither are they non-existent. Furthermore, risk reduction measures are not disarmament, but they can make the world marginally safer and, in the long term, they can contribute to the emergence of a political and security climate more conducive to nuclear disarmament in the Arctic region and beyond.
The presence and patrols of nuclear armed submarines (that is, SSBNs capable of launching long-range nuclear missiles) in the Arctic have been substantially reduced from Cold War levels. US SSBNs do not operate in the Arctic. Part of the reduced Russian SSBN force operates out of the Kola Peninsula region (Russia is now understood to operate no more than six SSBNs in its northern fleet, each of which can be loaded with 16 ballistic missiles, and each of those could deliver at least three warheads).[ii]
Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, a pre-eminent researcher on nuclear arsenals and deployments, considers the reasons for the sharp reduction in Russian SSBNs and SSBN patrols: “Perhaps the Russian navy is still not over the financial and technical constraints that hit it after the collapse of the Soviet Union. SSBNs can launch their missiles from pier side if necessary, although such a posture essentially converts each SSBN into a very soft and vulnerable target. Russia might simply have decided that it’s no longer necessary to maintain a continuous nuclear retaliatory force at sea, and that a few training patrols are all that’s needed to be able to deploy the SSBNs in a hypothetical crisis if necessary.”[iii]
At the same time, the Russians appear to be putting out stories designed to highlight their continuing commitment to under ice patrols. [iv]
As Kristensen notes, there is a negative, risk expansion, implication to Russian SSBNS staying in port while still being maintained as missile launch platforms. The practice abandons them to first-strike scenarios, making them tempting targets for American pre-emption, setting them up as a potential Russian pre-emptive force, or putting them in a launch-on-warning, “use ’em or lose ’em,” mode. In a climate of minimal Russian-America security tensions these are not high-probability scenarios, but should the political climate change the implications would be rather more serious.
For a small northern Russian SSBN force to be regarded as a second strike deterrent force, at least some of the boats need to be at sea and, significantly, not hunted by US attack submarines.
But when the Russian SSBNs are on patrol, they are invariably tailed by US attack submarines (SSNs) – notably, since the early years of the post-Cold War era neither US nor Russian attack submarines carry nuclear weapons. Wallace and Staples make the point that US fast-attack submarines continually “stalk” the Russian northern fleet. Of course, Russian attack submarines also get involved in tracking US subs and the result is an intricate nuclear-armed “cat and mouse” game played out in the sub-surface waters of the Arctic.[v]
Again, the risk that these “games” could escalate into real confrontations and risk the exercise of deliberate nuclear use options is very low, but, given that it is not non-existent, it is worth revisiting risk reduction measures advanced during the Cold War. Such measures could also, in the present climate of general political and security amity, be relatively simpler to implement.
There are three primary measures that the arms control community has repeatedly posed for lessening sea-based risks in general and in the Arctic in particular:
1. Both the US and Russia should reduce the launch readiness of their submarine-based ballistic missiles;
2. Both should refrain from deploying their SSBNs close to each other’s territories; and
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3. The two countries should agree not to track and thus threaten each other’s SSBN’s with attack submarines in agreed exclusion areas for attack submarines.
The 1987 Murmansk Initiative of then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed an expansive set of military and civilian measures to reduce tensions in the north and to begin “transforming the northern part of the globe from being a sensitive military theatre to becoming an international ‘zone of peace’.”[vi] One element of the proposal was to limit Western anti-submarine warfare operations against the Soviets in the home waters of their Northern and Baltic fleets.
A recent report by Anatoli Diakov and Frank Von Hippel proposes again that Russia agree to confine its northern SSBN fleet to the Arctic and that the US agree to keep its attack submarines out of the Russian side of the Arctic.[vii] Expanding that proposal to exclude all attack submarines from all areas of the Arctic would have to address the reality that some Russian attack subs are based in the Kola Peninsula area – but measures to restrict anti-submarine warfare operations in the region are to be commended.
Promoting the Arctic as an area from which attack submarines are excluded is not a disarmament measure. It is, however, a realistic risk reduction proposal and, if implemented, would be an important confidence building development which would in turn be supportive of nuclear disarmament broadly, including in the Arctic .
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] Michael Wallace and Steven Staples, Ridding the Arctic of Nuclear Weapons: A Task Long Overdue, Canadian Pugwash Group, March 2010. www.ArcticSecurity.org.
[ii] Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Russian Nuclear Forces, 2010,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1 January 2010, vol. 66 no. 1, pp. 74-81. http://bos.sagepub.com/content/66/1/74.full.
[iii] Hans Kristensen, “Russian Nuclear Missile Submarine Patrols Decrease Again,” Federation of American Scientists Strategic Blog, 28 April 2008. http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2008/04/russian-nuclear-missile-submarine-patrols-decrease-again.php.
[iv] “Russia will continue under-ice nuclear submarine patrols in the Arctic,” India Daily, 2 October 2010. http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/21683.asp.
[v] Michael Wallace and Steven Staples, Ridding the Arctic of Nuclear Weapons: A Task Long Overdue, Canadian Pugwash Group, March 2010. www.ArcticSecurity.org.
[vi] Kristian Atland, “Michail Gorbacheve, the Murmansk Initiative, and the Denuclearization of Interstate Relations in the Arctic.” Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies association, Vol. 43(3), pp. 289-311. NISA 2008 www.nisanet.org.
[vii] Anatoli Diakov and Frank Von Hippel, Challenges and Opportunities for Russia-U.S. Nuclear Arms Control, A Century Foundation Report, The Century Foundation (New York, Washington, 2009), pp. 15-16.
Posted on: December 23rd, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
It was genuinely a landmark moment yesterday (December 22) when the US Senate voted of 71 to 26 to ratify the New START Treaty. Of course, in the ponderously slow path toward nuclear disarmament no single success is ever enough – and the same goes for this one. But without this ratification there would have been little hope for further progress, at least in the near term, in taking up the other key measures awaiting attention on the long and onerous disarmament agenda .
The New START Treaty, as the now US-ratified US-Russia agreement is known, will reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads down to 1,550 on each side – a total of 3,100 deployed strategic warheads.
And the next big challenge? There are many and among them is the need to get working on that bigger nuclear number – 22,000.
That is roughly the total number of nuclear warheads worldwide. In other words, only about 15 per cent of the weapons in global arsenals are covered by the Treaty. START puts a ceiling on the number of strategic or long-range warheads that are actually deployed – it doesn’t address non-strategic (short-range or battlefield nuclear weapons) deployed by the US and Russia; it doesn’t address the warheads that are in storage; and it obviously doesn’t address the warheads held by other nuclear powers (since it is a bilateral US-Russia Treaty only).
Besides its deployed strategic warheads, the US has roughly an additional 500 non-strategic warheads deployed, another 2,500 warheads are held in reserve and available for deployment, and about 4,200 are in storage and awaiting dismantlement – about 250 to 400 weapons are dismantled each year. Russia has another 2,000 deployed non-strategic warheads and about 7,300 warheads in reserve and waiting to be dismantled. Roughly another 1,000 warheads are held by the other states with nuclear weapons (the UK, France, China each maintain between 150 and 400 warheads; and India, Pakistan, and Israel collectively have another 300).
Reducing those numbers will take further US-Russia negotiations and serious attention to regional conflicts in North East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East.
There are two other major global nuclear Treaties that are pending and on the arms control priority list.
The first is the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which has been agreed to since 1996 and signed by all the major nuclear weapon states. The United States and China still have to ratify it, and President Barack Obama has said ratification is a priority – not a sentiment likely to be shared by most Republicans coming into the US Congress in 2011. Israel has signed but not ratified it. India, North Korea, and Pakistan have yet to sign it.
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The second major Treaty is yet to be negotiated – a global agreement to halt all further production of fissile materials for weapons purposes. It has long been on the global arms control agenda but has been held hostage to a dysfunctional Conference on Disarmament, the Geneva-based disarmament forum that is mandated to host the negotiations.
But START ratification by the US Senate is a celebration-worthy achievement (now it’s the Russians’ turn). US civil society organizations had a huge hand in getting this done. Joined by a broad range of political leaders and security professionals, civil society led a compelling coalition of the willing. As one of the leading organizations, the Arms Control Association put it after the vote: “New START advocates include a range of supporters from the Air Force Association to the Arms Control Association, from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the National Assn. of Evangelicals, from retired generals to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, plus a long list of former Secretaries of State, former Secretaries of Defense, former national security advisers, former presidents, and all major U.S. allies urging approval of the treaty this year.”[i]
It turned out be an effective community of support for White House and Congressional champions of the Treaty.
Now civil society will mark the accomplishment and then turn attention to the next items on the nuclear disarmament agenda.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] Daryl Kimball press statement — http://www.armscontrol.org.
Posted on: December 10th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
As the US White House and Senate continue to wrangle over a complex set of compromises that may or may not lead to ratification of the New Start Treaty,[i] elsewhere, notably in the Parliament of Canada, there is growing recognition that before too long global nuclear disarmament will require the guidance of a formal roadmap – i.e. a nuclear weapons convention.
In an extraordinary show of unity in support of nuclear disarmament, earlier this week the House of Commons unanimously passed a resolution (which had already gone through the Senate) encouraging the Government of Canada to join “negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention” and to “deploy a major world-wide Canadian diplomatic initiative in support of preventing nuclear proliferation and increasing the rate of nuclear disarmament” (full resolution below).
While the idea of a nuclear weapons convention has wide public appeal, some governments which support the idea in principle, including Canada’s to date, argue nevertheless that now is not the time. First, they say, existing commitments need to be fulfilled and more of the specifics of the agreed nuclear disarmament agenda need to be completed – notably the entry into force of the test ban treaty and the negotiation of a treaty to halt production of and establish controls over fissile material for weapons purposes. When more of those basics are settled a comprehensive nuclear weapons convention will become feasible. But others argue that the convention is precisely what is needed to re-energize the pursuit of those specifics and to guide the disarmament measures that are yet to come.
The same ambivalence was present at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference earlier this year,[ii] but most states concluded that a clear roadmap is needed – that is, there needs to be an agreed legal framework for disarmament and a clear time line. Those are, after all, two key missing ingredients that a nuclear weapons convention would bring to the disarmament effort.
The fact that the Parliament of Canada, both the Senate and the House of Commons, now clearly agrees that such a convention should be pursued does not mean that the global ambivalence will be swept aside and that negotiations will begin. Internationally, most states support the call for a nuclear weapons convention, but of course the states with nuclear weapons are not among them.
While that means serious negotiations will not be beginning soon, it also means that the idea has enough international support, and in Canada a strong Parliamentary mandate, to prompt the arms control community, including expert and civil society policy groupings, to redouble its efforts in exploring the wide range of conditions and agreements that will be essential to the achievement of a nuclear weapons convention. Studies are needed to clarify the likely focus, scope, and verification measures for a convention, and in April 2011, for example, an Ottawa seminar will look at ways to further advance the setting of the legal, technical, and security foundations on which the irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons can rest.
And, given Parliament’s strong statement, we can now hope, and even expect, that the current Government of Canada will also mandate the Department of Foreign Affairs to redouble its diplomatic and technical work in pursuit of conditions conducive to nuclear disarmament.
The Parliamentary resolution is essentially the product of an initiative by Murray Thomson, a Canadian disarmament veteran, in which he (along with former Disarmament Ambassador Douglas Roche and Nobel Laureate John Polanyi) invited Order of Canada recipients to sign the following statement:
“We call on all member States of the UN – including Canada – to endorse, and begin negotiations for, a nuclear weapons convention as proposed by the UN Secretary-General in his five point plan for nuclear disarmament.”
The project grew to more than 535 signatures – all signatories being Members, Officers, or Companions of the Order of Canada – including a broad range of leaders from business, finance, political, arts, and arms control communities.[iii] One of the signatories, Sen. Hugh Segal, began the Parliamentary process with the resolution in the Senate, inviting the House to take the same action. All-party agreement in the House of Commons was assured through the efforts of a number of people from all parties. The resolution was then introduced in the House of Commons by MP Bill Siksay, Chair of the Canadian Section of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, and passed without objection.
The resolution specifically supports the five-point plan of the Secretary-General which makes the pursuit of a convention or a broad framework for disarmament measures its central feature:[iv]
The full resolution:
That the House of Commons:
(a) recognize the danger posed by the proliferation of nuclear materials and technology to peace and security;
(b) endorse the statement, signed by 500 members, officers and companions of the Order of Canada, underlining the importance of addressing the challenge of more intense nuclear proliferation and the progress of and opportunity for nuclear disarmament;
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(c) endorse the 2008 five point plan for nuclear disarmament of Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations and encourage the Government of Canada to engage in negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention as proposed by the United Nations Secretary-General;
(d) support the initiatives for nuclear disarmament of President Obama of the United States of America;
(e) commend the decision of the Government of Canada to participate in the landmark Nuclear Security Summit and encourage the Government of Canada to deploy a major world-wide Canadian diplomatic initiative in support of preventing nuclear proliferation and increasing the rate of nuclear disarmament.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] See posts here: November 6, 2010 – http://disarmingconflict.ca/2010/11/06/new-start-messy-but-urgent/; November 18, 2010 – http://disarmingconflict.ca/2010/11/18/why-the-international-silence-on-new-start/.
[ii] For references to a nuclar weapon convention in the 2010 NPT Review Conference see June 16, 2010 post. http://disarmingconflict.ca/2010/06/16/the-npt-review-conference-i-more-than-empty-promises/.
[iii] Signatories include: William Daniel, former president, Shell Oil; Adam Zimmerman, former president of Noranda and chair of the CD Howe Institute; Henry Jackman and Lincoln Alexander, former Lieutenant Governors of Ontario;Bruce Aikenhead, the architect who designed the Canadarm used in space; Ralph Barford, president of GSW, Inc.; Timothy Brodhead, President of the McConnell Foundation; Purdy Crawford, corporate philanthropist; John Ellis, former vice-chairman, Bank of Montreal; Richard W. Ivey, CEO and chair, Ivest Corporation; and Pierre Jeanniot, general manager of IATA and former president of Air Canada; Margaret Atwood, Tommy Banks, Romeo Dallaire, Atom Egoyan, Graeme Gibson, Mel Hurtig, Norman Jewison, Peter Newman, Michael Ondaatje, Christopher Plummer, Fiona Reid, Veronica Tennant, John Turner, Jean Vanier.
[iv] A five-point plan to rid world of nuclear bombs by Ban Ki-moon. http://www.un.org/sg/articleFull.asp?TID=105&Type=Op-Ed.
1. Pursue negotiations in good faith – as required by the NPT – on nuclear disarmament, either through a new convention or through a series of mutually reinforcing instruments backed by a credible system of verification.
2. Strengthen security in the disarmament process, and…assure non-nuclear-weapon states against nuclear weapons threats.
3. Ensure that disarmament is rooted in legal obligations through universal membership in multilateral treaties, regional nuclear-weapon-free zones, a new treaty on fissile materials, and ratification and entry into force of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
4. Ensure disarmament is visible to the public through greater accountability and transparency – thus countries with nuclear weapons should publish more information about what they are doing to fulfill their disarmament commitments.
5. Recognize that nuclear disarmament also requires eliminating other weapons of mass destruction and limiting missiles, space weapons and conventional arms.
