[E-rundbrief] Info 537 - UNs Unfinished Nuclear Business

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 537 - Zia Mian (USA): The 
U.N’s Unfinished Nuclear Business. A text for the 
NGO-newsletter to the NPT - Nuclear Proliferation 
Treaty - Preparatory Committee Conference in Vienna, 30.4. - 11.5.07.

Bad Ischl, 9.5.2007

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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The U.N’s Unfinished Nuclear Business

Zia Mian

Princeton University, Program on Science and 
Global Security, Woodrow Wilson School of Public 
and International Affairs (USA)

The United Nations General Assembly passed its 
first resolution in 1946. In the shadow of the 
American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki, the highest priority of the new body 
was a call for plans "for the elimination from 
national armaments of atomic weapons and of all 
other major weapons adaptable to mass 
destruction." In November 2006, U.N. 
Secretary-General Kofi Annan focused on the 
terrible fact that 60 years on, the world still 
has no plan to be rid of what he called a "unique 
existential threat to all humanity.”

Instead of elimination, the nuclear danger has 
grown and spread from one country with a few 
weapons to a situation where the United States 
and Russia have about 10,000 nuclear weapons each 
and have been joined as nucleararmed states by 
Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan 
and, most recently, North Korea.

Others are not far behind. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, 
Director-General of the International Atomic 
Energy Agency (IAEA), has warned that there are 
another 20 or 30 "virtual nuclear weapons states" 
that have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons 
in a very short time span. For these countries, 
it may take a threat from an existing 
nuclear-armed state, a change in leadership, a 
newfound desire for national power and prestige, 
a resourceful scientist or unexpected access to technology to tip the balance.

Why has it come to this? Part of the reason is 
that all states who have or seek nuclear weapons 
share a common disregard for democracy and their 
own people - every state that has developed 
nuclear weapons has done so in secret from its 
people. No nuclear-armed state has ever clearly 
explained to its people what would happen if it 
carried out its nuclear war plans. Few citizens 
in such states know that in 1961 the U.N. General 
Assembly declared that "any state using nuclear 
and thermonuclear weapons is to be considered as 
violating the Charter of the United Nations, as 
acting contrary to the laws of humanity and as 
committing a crime against mankind and civilization."

Another part of the reason is that every 
nuclear-armed state claims its weapons are for 
deterrence. In 2004, C. Paul Robinson, President 
of Sandia National Laboratory, who was 
responsible for the engineering of U.S. nuclear 
weapons, explained "deterrence." He argued 
"deterrence ... comes from the Latin root word 
'terre,' meaning 'to frighten with an 
overwhelming fear,' as in the English antecedent 
- terror." In short, to deter means to terrorize. 
Given this, should it come as any surprise that 
"terrorists" may be seeking nuclear weapons?

All of this must change if we are to plan for and 
achieve the end of the nuclear age. As a first 
step, people and leaders everywhere need to 
accept that all nuclear weapons are created 
equal. They are all weapons of terror and should 
be seen as equally immoral, illegal, illegitimate 
and dangerous. This principle may make it 
possible to find the "common global strategies" 
that Annan argued are needed to "make progress on 
both fronts - nonproliferation and disarmament at once."

Princeton's Program on Science and Global 
Security is home to one such effort. The 
International Panel on Fissile Materials brings 
together independent experts from 15 
nuclear-armed and nonnuclear countries, to find 
ways to secure and reduce all stockpiles of 
highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the key 
materials in nuclear weapons, and limit any 
further production. If successful, this would 
serve to reduce existing nuclear arsenals, limit 
the weapons capabilities of the 20-30 "virtual 
nuclear weapons states" and restrict terrorists 
from gaining access to a nuclear capability. For 
more on this, see IPFM's "Global Fissile Material 
Report 2006" (International Panel on Fissile 
Materials, www.fissilematerials.org).

But there are much larger questions that also 
need to be addressed. The Director-General of the 
IAEA has warned that "should a state with a fully 
developed [nuclear] fuelcycle capability decide, 
for whatever reason, to break away from its 
nonproliferation commitments, most experts 
believe it could produce a nuclear weapon within 
a matter of months." If so, can a world free of 
nuclear weapons risk relying on nuclear energy?

An even bigger challenge is how states and people 
can feel secure when the United States has global 
interests and can unleash almost overwhelming 
conventional military force anywhere in the 
world. Lesser powers pose the same problem on a 
regional scale. The answer may lie again in the 
United Nations. The U.N. charter requires that 
"all Members shall refrain in their international 
relations from the threat or use of force against 
the territorial integrity or political 
independence of any state." Holding all states, 
especially the most powerful, to this basic 
commitment may eventually prove to be the key to the rest.

Aus "News in Review", Nr. 6, 7.5.2007, daily 
NGO-newsletter to the NPT - Nuclear Proliferation 
Treaty - Preparatory Committee Conference in 
Vienna, 30.4. - 11.5.07,  Edited by the team of 
"Reaching Critical Will", 
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/NIR2007/Day6.pdf

Zia Mian teaches at the Princeton University, 
Program on Science and Global Security, Woodrow 
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (USA)

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