A new treaty banning nuclear weapons? Would that it were so simple
(This post was revised slightly in November 2017, after
ICAN had won the Nobel Peace Prize)
A patient is told by
his doctor that he is going to die if he doesn’t do three things: quit
drinking, lower his blood pressure and get heart bypass surgery. He thinks for
a minute and says, “OK, I’ll take the blood pressure pills.”
His doctor says, “No,
that’s not enough. You’ll still die.”
The patient protests,
“Come on, doc, be realistic.” The doctor gives him a doubtful look, then he
adds, “Alright. I’ll get the surgery.”
The doctor, starting
to get exasperated asks, “Did you hear what I said? With that choice you still
die.”
The
patient thinks for a minute and says, “Look. You just don’t understand the
constraints that are in play. Let’s be mature about this. My backers will never
go for it. We have to be pragmatic. After all, we are no longer the young idealists
we used to be, right?”
This attempt at a joke is a way to
point out how our political culture reacts to the existential crises we are
faced with. We are negotiating and trying to be pragmatic in the face of
problems that allow for no half measures. This week, for example, there are
triumphant headlines in the news about a new United Nations treaty that will
make nuclear weapons illegal, except for the nations that choose not to sign
the treaty and cannot be forced to sign the treaty. In other words, the treaty
is a symbolic and well-intentioned measure that may increase the chances of
nuclear abolition happening someday, but it will have no effect in the
near-term on reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world.
I will be criticized for betraying
the anti-nuclear cause if I raise such uncomfortable issues about this push for
a new treaty, but I have followed the issue for a while and found that the
groups backing this treaty have taken a very narrow view of the world’s
problems and history. Like the man in the joke, they are eager to do one or two
things, but not everything that would be necessary to really solve this problem
comprehensively. Saving the patient’s heart is pointless if his liver is going
to fail shortly thereafter.
The treaty is being promoted mostly
by activists in Western European and English-speaking countries, and they seem
disinclined to ask uncomfortable questions about the exercise of non-nuclear
power by the United States, NATO and other nations allied with them. I suspect
the treaty is not much of a concern among Syrians at this time. There is great
irony in the fact that when I bring up this issue I am told, by the idealists
pursuing the dream of a world without nuclear weapons, that I am the one being
too idealistic. “Those are issues for another day,” I am told. “We have to stay
focused, not muddy the waters. We can’t alienate our supporters [donors].” Thus
the nuclear ban is in danger of becoming another brand of safe, unthreatening liberal
preoccupation, a respectable endeavor that no one will disagree with in
principle, as long as the focus of the movement stays narrow.[1]
The first neglected problem with
this treaty is nuclear energy. All the focus is on the abolition of nuclear
weapons but not on the proliferation of nuclear power plants. As long as
uranium is mined and fissile materials are created in nuclear reactors, nuclear
bombs will always be easy to make. Depleted uranium (is it a chemical weapon or
a radiological weapon?) will always be available to add to conventional
weaponry. Furthermore, every nuclear power plant has a spent fuel pool that is
a radiological weapon of mass destruction made available for potential enemies
to strike with conventional weapons. It is strange that so many nations have deliberately
created this vulnerability, but we should note that Israel, conscious of its
enemies’ intentions, is the only nation that built nuclear weapons but not
nuclear power plants.
The problem posed by nuclear spent
fuel pools is familiar to military strategists, and it may have been a factor
in American decisions so far not to attack North Korea, which could retaliate
by bombing nuclear power plants in Japan. In this sense, Japan already
possesses a sort of unintended “nuclear deterrent” that may be keeping the
peace in the region.
Instead of this being a major
concern in nuclear disarmament talks, nuclear energy has always been a
bargaining chip in disarmament and non-proliferation negotiations. If a country
agrees to give up nuclear weapons, they will be given assistance in developing
the “peaceful uses” of the atom. Article IV of the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) gives all parties the right to
develop nuclear energy. Critics of the nuclear powers pay much attention to the
other articles of the treaty that oblige the nuclear powers to work toward
disarmament, but the proliferation problems arising from Article IV get passed
over. Again, this is an example of how activists deceive themselves into
thinking compromised solutions are worth pursuing. The strategy is to get rid
of the bombs first and worry about nuclear energy later. Save the heart and forget
about the imminent liver failure.
A second neglected problem is that
nuclear disarmament efforts ignore the broader problems posed by international
disparities in military spending and the proliferation of conventional military
hardware and new forms of weaponry that pose new dangers. The United States
spends ten times as much as Russia, and outspends nine of the top ten nations
in military expenditures (data
available on Wikipedia).
The argument for a treaty banning
nuclear weapons says that nuclear weapons should be like all other banned
weapons that have been defined as “weapons intended to inflict catastrophic
humanitarian harm.” The trouble with such semantics is that the non-nuclear
world would still be left with a nation that can strike selected targets with
the MOAB, or any city in the world with sixty Tomahawk missiles, armed with
conventional explosives, in a single evening. In the latest exercise of such
power, the missiles merely pounded sand in the Syrian desert in a largely
symbolic display, but the consequences would be much different if the target
were an urban center. How could such an attack not be classified as weapons
“intended to inflict catastrophic humanitarian harm,” the sort of attack which
could trigger world war and cause nations to tear up their treaty obligations?
If this recent anti-nuclear drive
actually succeeded in getting the nuclear powers to ratify an international
treaty declaring nuclear weapons illegal, the world would be left with the
United States undeterred with a vastly predominant power in conventional
weaponry. Intercontinental ballistic missiles would be refitted with precision
conventional bombs capable of putting any nation on earth back in the Stone Age
within a matter of weeks. This was already achieved with the attacks on Serbia (1999), Iraq (1991, 2003~) and Libya (2011). All of these were
illegal under international law, except the 1991 war authorized by UNSC resolution 678,which raises the question of how the
international community would enforce compliance with a new international law
banning nuclear weapons. In addition to the fact that international law is
ignored continually during so-called peacetime, Russell and Einstein pointed
out in their 1955 manifesto that treaties banning nuclear weapons would be
abrogated the minute world war breaks out.[2]
An American predominance in space-based
weapons and anti-ballistic missiles would further add to the imbalance of
power. The absence of nuclear deterrence among weaker powers could set off a
new arms race based on old-fashioned dependence on tanks, heavy artillery, and
so on, then there would be an increased risk of war, with a likelihood that in
any conflict nuclear power plants would be struck with conventional weaponry.
There could be multiple such disasters in a large-scale war. It would be a
nuclear war using fallout contamination as a weapon, or perhaps the fallout
would just be a consequence of reckless bombardment. The good intentions of
nuclear disarmament could lead to such unforeseen consequences.[3]
The recent defeat of the Democratic
Party in the United States illustrated what happens when a regime spends
decades compromising its core values in order to achieve short-term gains,
telling naysayers that they are immature idealists who need to grow up and be
pragmatic. This approach may apply to some of life’s problems, but not to
matters critical for survival. Sometimes there is only one right way to proceed
and a compromise is as good as doing nothing at all. Continually choosing the
lesser evil eventually leads to a rendezvous with the evil we had first wanted
to avoid.
The disarmament movement is making
the same sort of mistake when it strategically decides to not talk about
nuclear energy and militarism in general, then scoffs at nations that hesitate
to embrace the instability that would follow a ban on nuclear weapons. It is
easy to laugh at this fear of instability and dismiss it as an outrageous
excuse of warmongers to go on endangering life on the planet, but we laugh at
our own peril. It is not so easy to convince people who remember the battle of
Stalingrad in 1942-43, as well as the humiliation, economic devastation and
NATO expansion that followed the nuclear arms reductions of the 1980s and
1990s.
The Russians and the Chinese will
pay little attention to this ban on nuclear weapons as long as the US regards
them as a threat to America’s preferred version of global order. A small nation
like North Korea has no other choice besides nuclear arms for deterrence, and
the historical record strongly suggests that America has been deterred by
nuclear arsenals, though the existence of a state of being deterred is
impossible to prove. Deterrence cannot be seen to have existed until it fails.
Nations that worry about being
targets of future American aggression are quick to remind the global community
that it wasn’t they who set off the nuclear arms race in 1945. They expect
America to lead the way not only to nuclear disarmament but also to a general
demilitarization and retrenchment of its global supremacy toward a world of
balanced interests. The first stop on nuclear disarmament’s “road to Damascus”
(pun intended) is the Pentagon.
The American general Brent Scowcroft
once pointed out, in a panel discussion after the broadcast of the film The Day After (video here,
transcript here,
1983/11), the reasons for the two superpowers needing to have an overwhelming
preponderant force. He was speaking of nuclear arsenals, but it also explains
the disproportionate 10:1 ratio that exists in both conventional and nuclear weapons.
He spoke of a policy that laid bare the reason America is not interested in
unilateral, gradual disarmament. A supreme power, like a mafia don, cannot be
satisfied with having parity with potential challengers. Near parity would just
make others think they have a chance to join the game. It is essential to have
an arsenal so overwhelming and costly that no one else will dream of trying to
match it. In 1983, the US and the Soviet Union each had about 30,000 nuclear
warheads, then in the 1990s this number was reduced to about 7,000 each, which
is still 93% of world total. This begs the question of why the decrease stopped
and has stayed at this excessive level since the mid-1990s. General Scowcroft
revealed a grim reality of the exercise of power when he said:
In some respects, the lower the numbers, the more
unstable the situation and the more the encouragement for other powers to
acquire nuclear weapons… if each side of the Soviet Union and the United States
has only a thousand weapons, or each only 500, that encourages other powers to
become major nuclear powers in a way that they can do because the numbers are
relatively small.
More is less in the doublespeak and
paradoxes involved in the possession of nuclear arms, and also in the massive
excesses in all forms of defense spending. At this time when the simple demand
to “make nuclear weapons illegal” is headlined with so little nuanced
discussion of what is at stake, it is worthwhile to keep in mind how this issue
was approached in the early days of the anti-nuclear movement. In the
Russell-Einstein manifesto of 1955, the wording was mostly about seeking
peaceful co-existence after a devastating world war. The signatories stated,
“Although an agreement to renounce nuclear weapons as part of a general
reduction of armaments would not afford an ultimate solution, it would serve
certain important purposes.” They called for nations to work toward a
“concomitant balanced reduction of all armaments,” to accept “distasteful
limitations of national sovereignty,” and to “find peaceful means for the
settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”[4]
This view which was conventional
wisdom sixty years ago has been forgotten in the contemporary discourse on
nuclear disarmament, probably because it is an uncomfortable reminder of how
much it’s been a world gone wrong since then. For the new treaty to become
more than a token gesture, it would have to be followed up with a deeply committed
non-aligned movement that would sanction, punish and ultimately break off
relations with nations that:
1) continue to possess nuclear weapons,
2) overspend on all forms of military deployment and
weaponry, and
3) flout the UN Charter by engaging
in internal interference in foreign nations and using war to resolve disputes.
Yet the truth is that all the
nations that sign this new treaty are not committed enough to pay the steep
price that nuclear abolition and a new multilateral world order would require. As a
consciousness-raising effort, the treaty may have some merit, but it will
quickly fail if it doesn't grow into something more serious.
Notes
[1] For an example of an organizations
that have been taking a comprehensive view for a long time, see https://www.veteransforpeace.org
and www.space4peace.blogspot.com.
[2] “Statement:
The Russell-Einstein Manifesto,” Pugwash
Conferences on Science and World Affairs, July 9, 1955, accessed June 19,
2017, http://pugwash.org/1995/12/10/oslo-award-of-the-nobel-peace-prize
. In spite of my use of this source in a positive light, I stress that the
Pugwash organization is still stuck in a 1950s time warp with a supportive view
of “atoms for peace.” When Joseph Rotblat received the Nobel Peace Prize in
1995 for the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, he said nuclear
energy “had great potential for the common good” but with the use of the bomb
“a splendid achievement of science and technology had turned malign.” The view
that abolition of nuclear energy is a necessary step in the abolition of
nuclear arms remains a fringe position that has no support in UN treaty
negotiations. Thus groups that aspire to achieve their goals through the UN
also ignore the issue. Completely ignored are the ecological costs of uranium
mining and the unsolved questions about keeping nuclear fission byproducts out
of contact with the ecosystem for a million years.
[4] Statement: The Russell-Einstein
Manifesto op. cit.
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