Monday, May 25, 2020
Arms Control &
Disarmament: A Failed Marriage
As with the climate
crisis, the linkages between contagious disease and nuclear weapons are too
evident to ignore.
"With respect to nuclear hazards, especially from the
weaponry and their possible use, there is a growing disconnect between risk and
behavior," writes Falk, "a combination of nuclearism prevailing among
the political elites of the nuclear weapons states and public disregard. There
is a greater appreciation of the dangers associated with nuclear energy."
(Photo: Wikimedia / Creative Commons)
The ongoing pandemic makes us obsessively
aware of the precariousness of life, and if from the U.S., the mendacious
incompetence of our political leadership. Yet, it also makes most of us as
obsessively complacent when the threats seem remote and abstract. This
complacency with respect to contagious disease greatly worsened the level of
fatalities, as well as the profound social and economic dislocations associated
with the still unfolding COVID-19 experience. Such a pandemic was unimaginable
until it became too real and omnipresent to be imagined, but only experienced
at various degrees of separation. Being obsessed, fearful, and resentful is not
the same as being imagined.
The linkages between contagious disease and
climate change is too evident to ignore altogether: The falling price of oil,
the declining carbon emissions, the global imperative of cooperation, uneven
vulnerabilities, and the relevance of justice and empathy.
With respect to nuclear hazards, especially
from the weaponry and their possible use, there is a growing disconnect between
risk and behavior, a combination of nuclearism prevailing among the political
elites of the nuclear weapons states and public disregard. There is a greater
appreciation of the dangers associated with nuclear energy. The disaster at
Fukushima, and longer ago at Chernobyl, are grim reminders of risks and
potential catastrophe.
Yet surrounding nuclear weaponry there is an
aura of complacency reinforced by a false sense of self-interest. The
complacency arises from the startling fact that no nuclear weapon has been
exploded during a combat situation in the 75 years since the horrifying attacks
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Complacency also feeds off the suppressed
realization that governments base their ultimate security on threats to
annihilate tens of millions of innocent persons and subject our natural
habitats to extreme disaster. With regard to nuclear dangers assuming the
dreaded will never happen could turn out to be the greatest bio-ethical folly
in the entire history of the human species. We forget folk wisdom at our peril:
‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ Governments need to invest
their energies and resources in anticipatory approaches to
impending disasters and not entrust the collective fate of humanity to reactive responses
when various dark unimaginables happen as they certainly will.
In this spirit, I argue for a better
understanding of the distinction between arms control and disarmament
approaches to nuclearism, which helps explain why choosing the disarmament path
is vital for the human future. Despite this contention, nuclear disarmament is
currently so low on the policy agenda of the nuclear weapons states as to be
dismissed as either superfluous or utopian.
The Distinction
It is often argued that arms control is a
realistic approach to national security in the nuclear age that can be thought
of as satisfying preconditions for negotiating a verified nuclear disarmament
agreement when international conditions are right. Arms control measures have
the added benefit of reducing risks of an accidental or mistaken use of nuclear
weapons and of avoiding wasteful costs associated with arms competition
designed to maintain security in relation to adversaries. There are good faith
beliefs present in this support for arms control, but this advocacy hides,
often unconsciously, an important quite different more complex and confusing
parts of a broader story. In addition to reducing risks and miscalculations of
intended nuclear war or expensive and dangerous extensions of competition in
nuclear armaments, arms control seems to have as its primary goal bringing as
much stability as possible to a structure of world order that is presumed to be
nuclear armed. It also has a secondary seldom avowed goal of providing an
instrument useful in the conduct of foreign policy. It allows some nuclear
weapons states to take tactical advantage of their posture of nuclear
superiority when confronting one another or of positing nuclear threats,
especially against non-nuclear hostile countries in confrontational situations.
In contrast, the advocacy of nuclear
disarmament believes unconditionally that the only safe and decent course of
action is to do everything possible to get safely rid of nuclear weaponry as
soon as possible. Nuclear weapons pose threats to human wellbeing and
ecological stability in the form of catastrophe and even extinction.
Disarmament goals are as a practical matter at odds with the arms control
approach for at least three major reasons. First of all, a disarmament process
threatens widely accepted ideas about nuclear stability. Instead, it generates
uncertainty, especially if not coupled in its latter stages with a global
demilitarization. process. The arms control view is that the more stable the
overall political environment with respect to the weaponry the safer and more
secure the world. The attainment of such stability carries with it a lessened
incentive for political leaders to embark upon a denuclearizing disarmament
alternative. This reluctance is not primarily, as often alleged, because of
destabilizing risks of cheating and fears that any renewal of nuclear arms
competition would be more dangerous than is a world order in which the nuclear
weapons states exercise prudence and prevent further proliferation of the
weaponry, but reflects militarist habits and geopolitical calculations.
Secondly, there exists a powerful nuclear
establishment joining parts of the governmental bureaucracy with weapons labs
and war industry private sector interests. Thirdly, and least acknowledged, is
the degree to which foreign policy planners in several nuclear weapons states
find and propose roles for these weapons to deter provocations, to solidify
alliances, exert geopolitical and tactical leverage, and provide a hedge
against future uncertainties.
Although such considerations are not
unfamiliar in the strategic literature, the link to arms control rarely is
explicitly made, or if made, is done so in a rather misleading and superficial
manner that presupposes its compatibility with disarmament advocacy. Sometimes,
the argument is made that arms control is a confidence-building step toward
disarmament or that nuclear disarmament, although not presently attainable,
remains the ultimate goal, but the time must be right. The
lesson drawn is that in the meantime given existing world conditions, arms
control is the most and best that can be hoped for, while nuclear disarmament
remains the shared hope of humanity if conditions ever become suitable to move
seriously toward the elimination of the weaponry. Underlying these
justifications for relegating the prospects of getting rid of nuclear weaponry
to forever horizons—by proclaiming disarmament as the ‘ultimate’ goal—is to
signal that it is not really a goal at all except as a way of keeping genuine
disarmament advocates appeased and confused.
The true story is that the national security
establishment, at least in the U.S., and undoubtedly elsewhere, is opposed
to nuclear disarmament as a policy option, for two interrelated
reasons. First, possession of nuclear weapons gives states international
prestige and leverage even if never actively relied upon. Secondly, avoiding
disarmament keeps in being a regime of ‘nuclear apartheid’ enabling nuclear
weapons states to pose unspeakable threats in crisis situations that are likely
quite effective, given the extreme vulnerability of non-nuclear states. Merely
having a nuclear weapons arsenal sends an intimidating message to potential
adversaries, especially if nuclear weapons are being designed and developed
with future combat missions in mind.
The ambiguities of arms control are most
vividly exposed with respect to the establishment and maintenance of the
anti-proliferation regime. The United States claims that it is carrying out a
positive world order role by taking responsibility for ‘enforcing’ the
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). This form of geopolitical enforcement, that is,
without UN authorization or legal prerogative, is directed against certain
outlier countries (e.g. Iran, North Korea) that are accused of seeking such
weaponry. It is questionable whether such behavior should be treated as arms
control. It seems more appropriately viewed as an integral nuclear component of
global hegemony.
The Anti-Proliferation Regime
There are other features of the
anti-Proliferation regime that occasion suspicion.
Double standards pervade the implementation of
the NPT. The standards of nonproliferation found in this widely ratified treaty
are not applied consistently. If the government evading proliferation controls
is a strategic ally (Israel) or if the country crossing the nuclear threshold
is too large to challenge (India, Pakistan), the enlargement of the nuclear
club will be tolerated, or even encouraged. Yet if a hostile country seeks the
weapons for credible deterrence reasons, then it will experience various forms
of pressure, and even become subject to sanctions and threats of attack.
Nuclear deployments and threats to use nuclear
weapons confer geopolitical advantages and options on the nuclear weapons
states, besides giving some security about the threats of being attacked.
Qaddafi was undoubtedly correct when he said that Libya would not have been
attacked in 2011`had it possessed nuclear weapons, and Iraq in 2003 was likely
attacked because it didn’t have a nuclear deterrent. It is instructive that
North Korea was not attacked once it crossed the nuclear threshold even in a
small, largely symbolic, manner.
This rationale for retaining nuclearism was
starkly confirmed by the formal statement issued by the U.S., France, and the
UK on July 13, 2017 as to why they totally rejected any connection with the
2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, emphasizing the positive
role of nuclear weaponry in keeping the peace. In view of these considerations,
why do NGOs in civil society continue to act as if they are working for nuclear
disarmament when they do not reject the essential elements of an arms
control approach?
Above all, despite experience and evidence,
‘the arms control first’ community believes that reducing the size of the
arsenal and agreeing not to develop some weapons systems are helpful measures
on their own as well lending themselves to being promoted as stepping stones to
disarmament negotiations. Additionally, there is the belief that the retention
of nuclear weapons is so entrenched that only arms control agreements are
feasible, and disarmament a diversionary pipe dream. From this perspective,
arms control arrangements are better than nothing even if completely unrelated
to achieving nuclear disarmament. Finally, as arms control activism is
concentrated in Washington, the only way for political moderates in civil
society to get a seat at the table set by government is to shed the utopian
image of disarmament advocacy and settle for what is feasible although it means
dancing with the devil.
We can ask, then, where does this leave those
dedicated to peace, and especially to avoiding any threat or use of a nuclear
weapon in the course of a war? In my view, it is not appropriate to adopt
an either/or position of saying no disarmament because unattainable or never
arms control because it legitimates nuclear apartheid, and closes its eyes to
geopolitical reliance on the leverage gained by wielding the weaponry. It is
currently important to challenge public complacency about nuclear weaponry
because these weapons have not been used since 1945, and to become attentive to
the warnings of impending danger signaled by moving the highly credible,
risk-assessing Doomsday Clock of The Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists to within 100 seconds to midnight, or closer to doomsday
than it has ever been since established in 1947. In effect, it is delusional to
suppose that we can indefinitely co-exist with this infernal weaponry,
especially given the lethal blend of demagogues and nationalist passions that
dominate the governance structures of the world.
It would also be helpful to call attention to
the fact that the NPT in Article VI imposes an unconditional obligation of
nuclear weapons states to engage in good faith nuclear disarmament negotiations
as part of the agreement reached with other states to forego the nuclear
weapons option. The obligatory character of this legal commitment was
unanimously affirmed by the International Court of Justice in its Advisory
Opinion delivered in 1996, and yet by continuing to invest heavily in the
continuous modernization of the nuclear weapons arsenal, including the
development of new nuclear weapons designed for possible combat use means that
this central legal obligation of the NPT regime is being defiantly ignored.
There is no disposition on the part of any state to call for the geopolitical
enforcement of Article VI, and until this happens the treaty is mainly
functions as a disguise for nuclearism and nuclear apartheid.
Even if this Article VI legal commitment did
not exist, the idea of resting security on discretionary threats to retaliate
by destroying tens of millions of innocent civilians and contaminating the
atmosphere of the entire planet quite possibly causing what experts call ‘a
nuclear famine’ and widespread disease. Such omnicidal courses of action
underline the immorality of resting security on such massive indiscriminate
nuclear strikes that would fill the air with contaminating radioactivity. The
UN ICAN Treaty, now formally ratified by 37 of the 50 States needed to bring
the agreement into force is an important move in the right direction, and far
more a helpful signpost than is an uncritical endorsement of this or that arms
control proposal. Yet unless the ICAN Treaty is extended in its coverage to the
nuclear weapons states it remains in the realm of rhetorical moralism lacking
behavioral consequences.
There are arms control measures that can be
supported in good conscience, including No First Use Declarations removing
ambiguity from threats to use the weapons, and de-alerting measures that gives
leaders more time to avoid accidental or unintended uses. Such measures rarely
motivate champions of arms control because their advocacy hampers cooperation
with geopolitical pragmatists who are running the world. The refusal to embrace
No First Use thinking in doctrine and practice is revealing: it suggests that
the real interface of compatibility is between arms control and geopolitics
rather than as proclaimed, as between arms control and disarmament.
In
the end, anyone genuinely devoted to world peace needs to recognize the urgency
of taking an unconditional stand against retaining nuclear weapons as an
indispensable step toward achieving peace for all peoples on earth and part of
the challenge of being ecologically responsible guardians of planetary
viability.
Richard Falk is
the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. An
international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton
University for forty years, since 2002 Falk has lived in Santa Barbara,
California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in
Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
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"The master class has always
declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master
class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had
nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene
Victor Debs
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