Small Arms Monitor

Reaching Critical Will, in cooperation with Global Action to Prevent War, the International Action Network on Small Arms, and Oxfam International, will be reporting on the Fourth Biennial Meeting of States on Small Arms and Light Weapons through a blog site, Small Arms Monitor. Please be sure to check it out and share the link with colleagues.

Disarmament Commission 2010: facing the “guillotine of redundancy”?

The United Nations Disarmament Commission opened its 2010 session today. This deliberative body, mandated to make recommendations on issues related to disarmament, is in the second year of its current three year cycle. It struggled to adopt its agenda last year, but did eventually agree to work on three issues: 1) recommendations for achieving the objective of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation; 2) elements of a draft declaration of the 2010s as the fourth disarmament decade; and 3) practical confidence-building measures in the field of conventional weapons. It began work on the first of these two items last year, which it will continue this year.

Monday consisted of general debate statements. There is little to report from today’s meeting. Most delegations reiterated the importance of the Commission to get to work, noting that it has failed to produce anything for more than a decade. A few states commented on process. Pakistan’s Ambassador Haroon, responding to murmurs of abandoning the stalemated Conference on Disarmament in favour of an alternative negotiating process, argued that the current UN disarmament machinery cannot work if its members “try to bury, obfuscate or side-step genuine security concerns to push through a mirage of disarmament and non-proliferation related progress” and that it is important to prevent elements of the machinery from being put “under the guillotine of redundancy” just because not all member states “subscribe to certain world views”.

In terms of substance, most delegations mentioned current and upcoming initiatives to be supported, such as the preparatory process for the arms trade treaty negotiations, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, and the usual list of arms control and non-proliferation measures such as CTBT, FMCT, etc. One speaker, Ambassador Davide, Jr of the Philippines, voiced his delegation’s support for the establishment of “an international conference that will set the parameters for the elimination of nuclear weapons and prohibit their production, stockpiling, transfer, use or threat of use, and provide for the destruction of such weapons.” He noted that his delegation “gives much importance to having a specified time frame for the destruction of such weapons and the negotiation of Nuclear Weapons Convention.”

General debate will continue tomorrow. On Wednesday, the Commission will break into informal meetings to discuss the substance of two of the three working groups. Civil society will not be permitted to attend these meetings but will rejoin the Commission on 16 April when it reconvenes to adopt its reports.

President Obama's Nuclear "Surge"

The Obama administration released its budget for FY 2011 today.

The centerpiece of the budget's National Nuclear Security Administration section is a "surge."

You can read about president Obama's $5 billion dollar nuke spending hike by downloading the NNSA budget. According to the administration they are boosting spending on nuclear weapons by 9.8% this year, with larger increases in outyears, so as to "take steps toward achieving a world without nuclear weapons" (p. 7).

Here's an excerpt (emphases added):

"Weapons Activities: The request for this appropriation is $7.0 billion, an increase of 9.8 percent over the FY 2010 appropriated level. This level is sustained and increased in the later outyears. Increased funding is requested for programs in direct support of the nuclear weapon stockpile, for scientific, technical and engineering activities related to maintenance assessment and certification capabilities for the stockpile, and for critical infrastructure improvements" (p. 9).

By "critical infrastructure improvements" the administration means the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Faciltiy planned for Los Alamos Lab, and the Uranium Processing Facility being built at Y-12 in Tennessee. The first is essentially a plutonium pit factory costing several billion. The second will provide uranium for US nuclear weapons programs, also at a cost of several billion. Neither facility is needed to "maintain" the stockpile, especially if the US is poised to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Both of these projects are necessary to lock-in nuclear weapons spending at the labs for many decades, and fully commit the US to nuclear weapons, regardless of how well international treaty discussions might go.

The importance of these facilities is emphasized in the NNSA's budget request:

"The President’s Request includes funding to complete the design and begin construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Facility Replacement (CMRR) nuclear facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This facility conducts plutonium research and development and provides analytical capabilities in support of pit surveillance and production. Current planning would have this facility fully operational by 2022. A related project is requested to increase pit production capacity and capability at the adjoining PF-4 facility that is part of the main plutonium facility at Los Alamos to demonstrate pit reuse by 2017 and production by 2018-2020. The budget request also includes funding to complete the design and begin construction of the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex to support production and surveillance of highly-enriched uranium components. This facility is also planned to achieve full operations by 2022" (p. 11).

The Obama administration's budget also appears to be easing the way for design efforts of new weapons at the laboratories, something that was resisted under the Bush White House's tenure. The NNSA budget states that;

"The President’s Request provides funding necessary to protect and advance the scientific capabilities at the U.S. national security laboratories — including the ability to design nuclear warheads as well as development and engineering expertise and capabilities— through a stockpile stewardship program that fully exercises these capabilities" (p. 10).

More spending for more disarmament?

In a third op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the “four horsemen”—Schultz, Perry, Kissinger, and Nunn (SPKN)—advocate for increased spending on nuclear weapons. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. As others have pointed out, “their work reflects a pragmatic strategy to maintain U.S. military and economic dominance well into the 21st century, resulting in the formation of a new intellectual paradigm perhaps best described as ‘anti-nuclear imperialism.’” The institutional loyalties of SPKN and their larger political agendas reflect a political economy that is not only fundamentally at odds with nuclear abolition, but is anathema to peace and justice.

Further evidence of this can be found in their 19 January 2010 op-ed, wherein they argue that as we “work to realize the vision of a world without nuclear weapons,” significant investments “are urgently needed to undo the adverse consequences of deep reductions over the past five years in the laboratories’ budgets for the science, technology and engineering programs that support and underwrite the nation’s nuclear deterrent.”

This misleading claim ignores the fact that while the US nuclear weapons budget has been reduced by about $1 billion over the past five years, this followed an increase over a decade (1995–2005) of about $3 billion. Instead, SPKN aim to support their friends at the labs in the expected request for increased funding for nuclear weapons in the FY 2011 budget. Indeed, SPKN argue, “The United States must continue to attract, develop and retain the outstanding scientists, engineers, designers and technicians we will need to maintain our nuclear arsenal, whatever its size, for as long as the nation’s security requires it.”

This statement assumes a lot. It assumes that the United States relies on, and will indefinitely continue to rely on, nuclear weapons for its security. It does not explain whose security nuclear weapons protect in the United States. Its citizens? Or its technocratic elite—the same people who work at the labs that SPKN and others who are part of that elite structure so vigorously defend? “National security,” as it is typically invoked in this sense, does not refer to the well-being of the general population but of those managing the military-industrial-academic complex.

The above statement also assumes that those who design, build, and maintain nuclear weapons have a right to continue doing this work—and what does that say about the possibilities for ever eliminating nuclear weapons throughout the world?

Andrew Lichterman of the Western States Legal Foundation has written extensively about the US nuclear weapon labs. In a recent article, he argues:

The constellation of organizations that constitute the nuclear weapons complex sits close to the apex of global power and privilege, and the upper echelon inhabitants of those organizations are quite determined to hold on to what they have. Nuclear weapons establishments, in fact, are preeminent manifestations of how far those in power will go to preserve it—they will play dice with all humanity, even all life on earth. The nature of the institutions ultimately can not be separated from the purposes and practices that have shaped them since their inception. Born in secrecy and sequestered throughout their existence within the least accountable sector of American government, the nuclear weapons laboratories and the broader nuclear weapons complex have become powerful institutions in their own right. They have done so by using all the tools that the powerful have developed in this society for staving off democracy—control of information and technologies, propaganda, and alliances with other huge organizations in common strategies aimed at extracting a steady and expanding stream of wealth from the rest of the economy. There is no way to provide the upper level denizens of the nuclear weapons establishment—the scientists and engineers, the technocrats, bureaucrats, and propagandists—with some other pursuit that gives them a similarly “rewarding” position in society, unless we can come up with some other set of “missions” that can assure them of an equally comfortable, secure, and largely unaccountable place in the upper few percent of a national and global economy characterized by stark disparities in wealth. And why should we want to do that?

Finally, SPKN frame their call for increased weapons spending in the context of disarmament—if we want to achieve a nuclear weapon free world, we need to make sure that our nuclear weapons are “safe, secure, and reliable” (that they remain an “effective deterrent” to others) until we achieve that world. This is outrageously circular logic. Modernized or “refurbished” nuclear weapons research and production facilities capable of building the nuclear threat anew, as a trade-off for arms control treaties or arsenal reductions, is not disarmament. If the danger of nuclear war is to be eliminated, ceasing to plan and build for an eternal nuclear threat must come early, not late, in the process. The “nuclear danger” does not come from without, but from within. To seek to “hedge” against the nuclear threat only perpetuates it, sustaining the global climate of fear and distrust that makes real disarmament progress always a receding goal.

Nuclear Newspeak

"Orwellian" was a popular description of the Bush administration's tendency to name policies in ways diametrically opposite to their results. There were the "clear skies," and "healthy forests" initiatives of the Interior Dept. which resulted in increased pollution, weakened regulation, and stepped up logging of public and private lands. The administration named military missions and labor reforms in similar ways, ramming through rapacious and belligerent directives under the guise of happy, democratic, and sustainable sounding monikers.

Many voters hoped for a change under the Obama administration. It seems, however, that the Obama White House subscribes to a similar political philosophy - say one thing, do the other. The recent troop surge announced for the war and occupation of Afghanistan is a case in point; the antiwar president who was elected largely because of the antiwar movement, who has talked a good talk about ending the war in Iraq, closing Guantanamo, banning torture, and other horrors of the "war on terror," is turning into quite the war president. The mission in Iraq is moving ahead par course with the Bush team's original goals, Guantanamo is still open (as are the dozens of other secret prisons in the CIA's network, even though we've been told they're closing), and now Obama is sending 30,000 Marines and GIs to Central Asia. And yet Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize and continues to project an image of peaceful intent. "War is peace."

Nowhere is this Orwellian modus —"ignorance is strength"— more refined than in the formulation of US nuclear weapons policies. Whether with respect to Sec. Clinton's maneuverings against Iran, N. Korea and other states, or current US nuclear weapons complex schemes to boost funding and build billion dollar infrastructure for weapons research, design and production far into the future, the message is, following Obama and a litany of big-whigs, "a world free of nuclear weapons," but the substance is money and authorization for "nukes forever."

In this month's Z Magazine Will Parrish, Nick Robinson and I have written up a small part of this story.

Operationalising the vision for a nuclear weapon free world

Presented by Ray Acheson, Reaching Critical Will, at the UNGA First Committee, 23 October 2009

For more than sixty years, civil society has been calling on governments to take action to prohibit and eliminate all nuclear weapons. US President Obama’s pledge in Prague to seek “a world free of nuclear weapons” brought the hope of billions of people to the highest levels of international responsibility.

We have chosen in this statement not to comment in detail on specific resolutions that the First Committee has before it, but to talk about how nuclear disarmament interconnects with other weapons and security challenges in today’s complex security environment and to put forward a few concrete ideas toward operationalising the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

First, some interconnections.

At the DPI/NGO conference in Mexico City in September, 1300 participants representing over 340 NGOs from more than 55 countries endorsed a final declaration recognising that security, peace, disarmament, human rights, gender equality, and development are closely interconnected at the local national, regional, and global levels.

One important element underscoring all of these issues is military spending. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military expenditure in 2008 is estimated to have totaled $1464 billion. This represents an increase of 45 per cent in the past ten years. The US military expenditure has reached the highest level in real terms since World War II. It is now responsible for at least 40 per cent of total global military spending.

Nuclear weapons, and the wider global military-industrial complex, consume vast resources that could be put to better use.

Consider just one example. The head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat Yvo De Boer estimated recently that the annual cost of cutting global emissions of greenhouse gases will be $200 billion. It will cost another US$100 billion per year to cope with the effects of climate change. This means that just one-fifth of annual global military spending budget can help reduce the scale and worldwide consequences of climate change.

Nuclear weapons cannot help us address climate change, poverty, child mortality, or injustice. Instead, they act as an existential threat to humanity and life on this planet. They also maintain the structural inequalities between the nuclear-armed powers and the great majority of states, and incite some states to seek nuclear weapons. They support establishments and institutions that see their interests as being well served by a mode of military dominance ultimately underwritten by nuclear weapons. They do not provide security for the citizens of the world.

Civil society groups and many states have long recognised the need to develop more effective resources and tools for security, defence, and conflict resolution than weapons. We advocate pursuit of human security, through the advancement of the interconnected issues above. However, none of the interconnecting issues should be treated as preconditions for nuclear disarmament. In fact, there is no basis for demanding general and complete disarmament or a settlement of all regional disputes as preconditions for eliminating nuclear weapons. The pursuit of nuclear disarmament and achievement of a legally-binding regime that eliminates and prohibits nuclear weapons will greatly facilitate global security and efforts to build peace.

Which leads us to a few suggestions on how to operationalise the vision for a world free of nuclear weapons.

There are many resolutions before you on various aspects of nuclear weapons. We join in supporting many of these efforts, including bringing the CTBT into force, reinforcing the existing nuclear weapon free zones and promoting the establishment of additional zones in Europe and the Arctic as well as the Middle East and North-East Asia, reducing and eliminating strategic and non-strategic arsenals, and fulfilling the NPT disarmament commitments undertaken in 1995 and 2000.

The common factor preventing progress on all these issues is that some governments continue to place high value on nuclear weapons, whether for security, status, or power projection.

When leaders come to the UN General Assembly and Security Council and say they want a nuclear weapon free world, we have to ask how they are changing their policies and doctrines to make this possible. The most conducive path to such a world is for all of the nuclear weapon states to marginalise the role of nuclear weapons in concrete ways, such as by:

• agreeing to legally-binding security assurances not to attack non-nuclear weapon states with nuclear weapons;

• committing not to use nuclear weapons as a tool for “pre-emptive strike”;

• rejecting counterforce and countervalue doctrines; and

• excluding “extended deterrence” arrangements in their doctrines;

• declaring that as a matter of national policy they will not design, develop, or produce new design nuclear warheads or modernise existing warheads.

Trading some arms control agreements or arsenal reduction for modernised nuclear weapons research and production facilities capable of building the nuclear threat anew is not disarmament. If the danger of nuclear war is to be eliminated, ceasing to plan and build for an eternal nuclear threat must come early, not late, in the process. The “nuclear danger” does not come from without, but from within. To seek to “hedge” against the nuclear threat only perpetuates it, sustaining the global climate of fear and distrust that makes real disarmament progress always a receding goal.

To this end, it is good that the United States and Russian Federation have returned to the negotiating table to replace START. The NPT Review Conference should include commitment to further bilateral reductions. In the next round, the United States and Russian Federation should each cut their deployed and stored nuclear weapons and delivery systems to at least the low hundreds. This would facilitate multilateral negotiations on elimination. They should also cut their nuclear weapon budgets in half and commit to zero funding for any modernisation or refurbishment programmes.

Furthermore, it is important not to be mesmerised by negotiations, which can be derailed by domestic or international developments. The United States and Russia, and other states with nuclear weapons, can and should undertake unilateral reductions, as the 13 Practical Steps provide.

Many non-nuclear weapon states also have a role to play. Thirty non-nuclear weapon states shelter under the US nuclear umbrella. Citizens in NATO countries, Australia, South Korea, and Japan have long advocated for their countries to let go of the cold war nuclear umbrellas and forge more independent and balanced relationships for national, regional, and international security. Now key legislators from all these countries are joining the call. We urge governments to heed these calls and act to denuclearise their alliances and relations with other states. Many proponents of retaining nuclear weapons in the United States espouse “extended deterrence” as their justification. Public statements from governments under the US nuclear umbrella stating that they believe their security commitments will still be viable without nuclear weapons would thus remove a key obstacle to deeper reductions in the US nuclear arsenal. Removing nuclear sharing from NATO’s Strategic Concept, combined with removal of nuclear weapons from Europe, would be an important confidence-building measure and would likely facilitate bilateral dialogue that could lead to much deeper cuts in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals.

Like many of you, we welcomed that the UN Security Council held a special session this September on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. While Resolution 1887 included concrete operational commitments to help prevent nuclear proliferation and other kinds of nuclear insecurity, it failed to include similarly concrete measures to advance disarmament. Disarmament cannot take a back seat to non-proliferation, nor can measures undertaken to prevent proliferation be considered acts of disarmament.

We hope that the cooperation forged among the P5 in the drafting of this resolution will continue and grow to engage non-nuclear weapon states, and that the P5 and other nuclear weapon possessors will find similar unity of purpose in implementing specific disarmament measures.

To this end, all states interested in serious nuclear disarmament should, inter alia:

• Oppose conditioning approval of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) on deals for entrenching and expanding weapons complexes, on retaining the option of designing and manufacturing modified or new-design warheads, or on modernizing delivery systems. They should also call for the closure of all nuclear test sites.

• Negotiate for a fissile materials treaty that comprehensively prevents use of existing materials outside military programs for weapons acquisition and that facilitates disarmament.

• Immediately and forcefully convey to nuclear weapon possessors that they must reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their security doctrines and in international relations.

• Support UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call, in his five-point plan for nuclear disarmament, for the possession of any weapon of mass destruction to be considered a ‘global taboo’.

• Emphasise that it would be a crime against humanity if anyone were to use nuclear weapons, anywhere in the world, for any purpose whatsoever. In this context, we applaud the decision of the International Committee of the Red Cross to speak out on nuclear weapons during this First Committee session.

• Commit to the objective of a Nuclear Weapons Convention and begin the process that will lead towards this objective. Those that are states parties to the NPT should put this commitment into their statements and papers to the 2010 Review Conference and push for it to be included in any final documents.

Civil society experts developed a model Nuclear Weapons Convention some years ago as a resource and guide, with suggestions and options for how to prohibit, reduce, and eliminate nuclear weapons safely and securely, while providing insurance against future break-outs. This model Convention has been circulated by the Secretary-General as an official UN document.

There are some who say that it is premature to consider a Nuclear Weapons Convention at this time. Work on a Nuclear Weapons Convention will ensure full implementation of the NPT and help facilitate nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation steps.

Abolishing nuclear weapons will help move the world away from a system of competing nation-states seeking military advantage and open the way to putting real, equitable, environmentally sustainable, human security interests at the centre of national policies.

Victor Hugo wrote that: “More powerful than the march of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.” The idea whose time has come is that the abolition of nuclear weapons is not only desirable, but possible, achievable, practical, and urgently necessary.

First Committee 2009 opens

This year's UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security will run from 5 October-3 November 2009. Check out the Reaching Critical Will website for all statements, resolutions, reports, and other information. Also subscribe to RCW's First Committee Monitor for full NGO reporting coverage of all topics.

Heading into another session of the First Committee, the situation looks a little more positive than last year. Issues related to disarmament—from nuclear weapons to cluster bombs—have received increasing attention throughout 2009 from governments, the media, and the general public. Many high-profile individuals have called for a nuclear weapon free world; many governments have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Civil society has continued campaigning around these weapons and others—small arms, antipersonnel landmines, depleted uranium weapons, space weapons—to prevent their development, modernisation, production, trade, and stockpiling.

There is a new administration in Washington that appears interested in active multilateralism. The United States fully participated in EU3+3 talks with Iran for the first time. Russian and US officials have been talking about reducing their arsenals further. The UN Security Council held a presidential Summit on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament on 24 October, coinciding with the sixth Entry Into Force conference of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty—which 150 states have now ratified. Disarmament was a central theme for many high-level delegates speaking to the UN General Assembly’s general debate in September, with 80 countries speaking about disarmament—up from 19 in 2008.

The heightened awareness and activity around disarmament is encouraging. However, those concerned with concrete movement toward a more secure and equitable world order with less armaments and reduced military expenditure need to take the time to separate the rhetoric from the reality. Now is the time for action, but it is equally crucial to ensure that the actions taken in the name of disarmament actually achieve that goal.

With the change in administration in the United States, the US government and several of its allies have adopted a new rhetoric on nuclear disarmament. They have begun to espouse policies for a “nuclear weapon free world” that do not actually include specific or time-bound steps for disarmament. In fact, these measures have focused nearly exclusively on strengthening or demanding new nuclear non-proliferation measures and commitments from non-nuclear weapon states, while at the same time maintaining the status quo (i.e. no progress) on nuclear disarmament.

The process toward an Arms Trade Treaty faces similar dangers of co-option by the powerful few who have interests at stake other than peace, justice, and security. Civil society and most governments want the ATT to reduce the human costs associated with the proliferation of conventional arms. However, thus far discussions have reached a lowest common denominator consensus only on dealing with illicit trade. Whether or not states will be able to agree to a treaty that has any real benefit to human security, by applying humanitarian and human rights standards to arms transfer decisions, is far from assured.

Civil society and concerned governments need to ensure that discussions and actions around disarmament and non-proliferation are clear and balanced. We also need to shift the language of the debate away from that which focuses on so-called “national security”—which in reality is the economic security only of the elite, technologically proficient classes of the state—to that which focuses on human security. To a large extent this is already happening in the Arms Trade Treaty process. For nuclear weapons, it has hardly happened at all outside of particular segments of civil society.

John Borrie, who works for the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, has looked closely at the initiatives to ban cluster munitions and landmines for lessons that could potentially be applied to the elimination of nuclear weapons. He notes that those working to abolish cluster munitions and antipersonnel landmines reframed the discourse and acceptability of these weapons in broader terms than before. Campaigners focused on the human impacts of the weapons alongside their purported military advantages and consciously shifted the burden of proof for the continued acceptability of a weapon onto users and producers. In the case of nuclear weapons, this means forcing those who want to keep them to try to make a convincing case for their acceptability in humanitarian terms, regardless of their purported military advantage.

Reaching Critical Will asks all delegations to the First Committee to take the time this year to debate the humanitarian merits of nuclear weapons. During the thematic debate on nuclear weapons, it would be extremely useful if delegations would address the values, perceptions, and interests of nuclear weapon possession and abolition. Getting away from Cold War deterrence theories, we are interested in hearing a debate on the moral, legal, and humanitarian justifications for the retention or elimination of nuclear weapons.

The First Committee is the place for this debate. All UN member states can participate. It makes recommendations to the General Assembly through resolutions related to all issues of disarmament and international security. Its work feeds into other disarmament machinery, including the Conference on Disarmament and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The time is ripe—we are coming out of the UN Security Council Summit on nuclear issues and heading into the NPT Review Conference. Having a frank discussion about the reality of nuclear weapons, without all the rhetoric, would be instrumental to actually making concrete steps toward true disarmament and stronger non-proliferation.