Rule of Law or Nuclear Chaos?

Editorial by Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D.

The defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the US Senate, along with other US actions in recent years, has raised a question about whether the United States wants to live within a system of laws in the world that applies to everyone, or whether it will seek some special unilaterally dictated place for itself.1 Specifically, the defeat of the CTBT has grievously damaged the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) (see editorial on the CTBT). Further, member countries of NATO are intent on maintaining a nuclear NATO indefinitely and hence are violating the spirit of the NPT. The new NATO doctrine of April 1999 reaffirmed the value of nuclear weapons and undermined the NPT by stating that they "make a unique contribution in rendering the risks of aggression against the Alliance incalculable and unacceptable. Thus, they remain essential to preserve peace" (paragraph 46).2 If NATO, with the most powerful non-nuclear military at its command, needs nuclear weapons, why not everyone else? Reliance on nuclear weapons is even greater in Russia. President Yeltsin has three times brandished Russian nuclear weapons in less than a year - once in December 1998 during the US-British bombing of Iraq and again during the NATO-Yugoslavia conflict in 1999, both of which were US-led actions carried out without United Nations Security Council authorization. Most recently, bristling from President Clinton's disapproval of the Russian bombing in Chechnya, Yeltsin warned Washington to remember that Russia was still a nuclear power. In the midst of this crisis, the US and Russia continue to maintain about 5,000 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert, increasing the possibility of a nuclear war by accident or miscalculation. Two basic factors are at the core of the current crisis. First, the United States is the world's preeminent military and economic power, towering so much above all the rest that the French, believing the term "superpower" to be insufficient, have dubbed it a "hyperpower." The United States seems determined to have its way in world affairs, independent of its treaty commitments and with or without the cooperation of other countries. In effect, the United States is acting out a global and far more dangerous version of "Manifest Destiny" in the post Cold War period, creating new proliferation pressures as well as new tensions worldwide, not least with Russia, China, and Europe. Second, the perennial economic crisis in Russia has led to the decline of its conventional military capability, which has led to a greater reliance on nuclear weapons in military strategy. The sense of lost greatness, deep frustration at the failure to develop economically along the lines of Western Europe or the United States, and US actions such as NATO expansion, are combining to make Russian nuclear policy more volatile. This instability is superposed on an already-strained, deteriorating technical infrastructure and poor military morale. One other factor is emerging to complicate this dangerous mix - the potential competition between the European Union and the United States for global influence. Increasingly serious frictions exist between Western Europe and the United States on a wide range of issues, such as: the implications of NATO actions in Yugoslavia on the scope of and independent military role for the European Union US disregard for insistent pleas from the highest levels in Europe that it ratify the CTBT Genetically modified foods and other trade issues. Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States, NATO and its member states, and (mainly in desperate and dangerous reaction) Russia have led the world again to the brink of nuclear destruction without a cause. The people of the world must find a way to reverse this deadly course. The central inspiration of US history has been that, in breaking away from a monarchial system and setting up a constitutional one, the United States put forth for itself and the world the ideal of equality before the law. However imperfectly it is achieved in practice, upholding that principle and progress towards its realization has been regarded across the world as a motive force towards justice, democracy, peace, and prosperity. In ratifying the NPT and urging its indefinite extension, the nuclear weapons states committed themselves to nuclear disarmament and implicitly agreed that an indefinite continuation of nuclear apartheid, in which a few countries would possess nuclear weapons forever while denying them to others, was wrong. The five nuclear weapons parties to the NPT cannot now legitimately claim to require nuclear weapons for their own security for the indefinite future, as NATO members have done. Such a posture is all the more egregious in the face of the World Court advisory opinion that nuclear weapons use and threats are illegal under international law.3 Of these states, the United States bears the greatest responsibility because it is: by far the most powerful and wealthy country in the world; the de facto leader of the NATO alliance; the one nuclear weapons state that has defeated CTBT ratification (Britain and France have ratified it; Russia and China have signed it but not yet had a ratification vote); the one nuclear weapons state that wants to install national missile defenses even at the risk of increasing insecurity for others arising from its nuclear policy of retaining the option of first use and first strike (see main article, page 1). We need equality before the law globally and generally, most urgently in the nuclear arena, where the world faces renewed nuclear dangers. The compliance actions that are needed now are not complex. First, the United States and Russia must remove their nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert. No other countries maintain their weapons on comparable alert status, ready to fire in minutes.4 We recommend that the parties to the NPT also regard it as the minimal immediate measure of progress needed towards compliance with Article VI of the NPT. There are no technical barriers in having a time bound framework for complete de-alerting of all nuclear weapons by all nuclear weapons states. In fact, some simple measures, such as pinning open missile motor switches, can be accomplished in a day or two. In April and May 2000, parties to the NPT will meet at the United Nations in New York to review progress. They must carefully consider what political, economic, and diplomatic measures they are willing to take if the five nuclear weapons parties to the NPT refuse to assure the prevention of annihilation by accident or miscalculation by de-alerting their arsenals. Large numbers of NGOs are also expected to be present in New York at that time.5 Unlike the World Trade Organization, the NPT parties have made their forum more and more open to NGOs in the past few years. Given the gravity of the situation, it is time that governments interested in enforcing Article VI of the NPT and NGOs came together to create and implement an agenda that will take us away from nuclear chaos and towards the rule of law. Second, it is essential that states respect the provisions of the CTBT 6 by respecting for the indefinite future the complete moratorium on nuclear explosions (see editorial on the rule of law). Third, it is essential that the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty be preserved intact. There are currently only two parties to the ABM Treaty - the United States and Russia. Other governments should consider universalizing the ABM Treaty by arriving at an agreement prohibiting missile defenses unless complete and verified nuclear disarmament is first achieved. This agreement could specify enforcement mechanisms for 7 parties to this as well as non-parties, in the manner of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Such an agreement would also be a useful preventive measure against the United States, Russia, and/or European members of NATO arriving at some agreement between themselves to modify or junk the ABM Treaty, even though the security of the entire world is at stake in their actions. (See article on nuclear defense and offense.) The United States has long recognized the need for enforceable nuclear treaties. As early as 1946, the Truman administration's special representative to the United Nations, South Carolina financier Bernard Baruch, stressed enforcement in presenting the US plan for disarmament to the United Nations: "We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business ... If I read the signs aright, the peoples want a program not composed merely of pious thoughts but of enforceable sanctions -- an international law with teeth in it."8 Yet, over two decades later, when the United States made a commitment to disarmament in the NPT, it sought no enforcement provisions. Enforcement is now directed only at the non-proliferation elements of the NPT and carried out through non-NPT mechanisms, such as the UN Security Council, or unilateral, bilateral or multilateral action led by the United States, as in the US-British bombing of Iraq. The result is deep structural injustice - highly selective enforcement led by the United States, which itself refuses to subject itself to international jurisdiction for compliance with Article VI of the NPT. History shows that such unilateralism does not even make for a successful non-proliferation policy. For instance, Baruch's idea of enforcement was thinly disguised US unilateralism. He wanted the United States to retain nuclear weapons until everyone else had disarmed completely and to be able to punish others for violations without even a UN Security Council vote.9 Baruch's plan failed at least partly because the Soviet Union rejected the grant of such unilateral authority. The failure led to the worst and most dangerous arms race the world has known. Unilateral dictation is even more unrealistic now with eight nuclear weapons states in the world. Moreover, materials sufficient to build large numbers of nuclear weapons exist in over a dozen countries in separated and readily usable forms. Additionally, materials to make hundreds of thousands more exist in commercial nuclear reactor spent fuel in dozens of countries, though not in readily usable form. Will the United States government continue down a road where it sets itself above the law and is at the same time an enforcer of it worldwide? Or will it, for the sake of its own safety, security, and survival and that of everyone else, set for itself and others the ideal of equality under the law for governments as well as people? The fate of the world may rest on the answer. It is essential that the people of the United States and the world help the US government to set itself along that road to the rule of law and to bring the other nuclear weapons states along with it. Also available on this website: Scottish Court Acquits Nuclear Disarmament Activists