U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Nuclear Security Summit 2014, with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (far left). Credit: Dave de Vaal/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 26 2014 (IPS)

The two-day, much-ballyhooed Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in the Netherlands, which concluded Tuesday, was politically haunted by the upheaval in Ukraine – the former Soviet republic that renounced some 1,800 of its nuclear weapons in one of the world’s most successful disarmament exercises back in 1994.

Still, it raised a question that has remained unanswered: Would Russian President Vladimir Putin have intervened militarily in Ukraine if it had continued to remain the world’s third largest nuclear power, after the United States and Russia?"The political utility of nuclear weapons boils down to a gamble that threatening to use them will cause an adversary to back down." -- John Loretz

The only way in which the conflict would be different now – had Ukraine kept possession of its nuclear weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union – “is that two nuclear-armed states would be testing each other’s willingness to do the unthinkable in the midst of a political crisis,” John Loretz, programme director of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), told IPS.

“The claim that deterrence works and that, therefore, Ukraine would be more secure with nuclear weapons, is facile and unsupportable,” he said.

In an editorial last week, the Wall Street Journal said it is impossible to know whether Putin would have been so quick to invade Crimea if Ukraine had nuclear weapons.

“But it’s likely it would have at least given him more pause,” the editorial said, arguing that Ukraine’s fate “is likely to make the world’s nuclear rogues, such as Iran and North Korea, even less likely to give up their nuclear facilities or weapons.”

And several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia and perhaps Egypt, are contemplating their nuclear options should Iran go nuclear.

“Ukraine’s fate will only reinforce those who believe these countries can’t trust American assurances,” the Journal said.

Refuting that argument, Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute, told IPS: “Let us presume that the Wall Street Journal’s logic is correct.”

It would then follow that a core premise of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, is adverse to the security interests of over 180 nations, which, pursuant to the treaty, have eschewed these horrific devices, he pointed out.

“A treaty that undermines the security interests of the vast majority of nations is not likely to survive for long,” said Granoff, a senior adviser of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Arms Control and National Security.

The better question, he argued, is whether the world is better off with more states with nuclear weapons or whether eliminating them universally, as the same treaty also demands, is the better course.

“If nuclear weapons were universally banned and the associated fear and hostility they engender diminished, would we be more able to soberly identify our shared interests in a more secure world?” he asked.

Dr. Ian Anthony, director of the European Security Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS a secure nuclear future cannot be based on a total absence of risk, because that cannot be achieved.

He said it follows that global nuclear security is not a final state, something that can be achieved once, and for all time.

“The instruments needed to reduce nuclear security risk will have to be continuously adapted in line with changing political, economic and technological conditions,” he said.

Anthony also said the long-term sustainability of the nuclear security effort will ultimately depend on successful multi-lateralisation of the process.

Some states with complex nuclear fuel cycles did not participate in the Nuclear Security Summit. At some point, these states will have to be engaged with and included, he added.

The Hague summit was aimed at preventing non-state actors and terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear weapons or nuclear materials.

The summit was the third in a series, the first being held in Washington DC in 2010, and the second in Seoul, South Korea, in 2012.

On the comparison with Ukraine, Granoff told IPS, “The myopia of the Wall Street Journal’s perspective distorts empirically definable threats which can be ignored no longer, amongst them, surely is the ongoing threat of a use of a nuclear weapon by accident, design or madness.”

He asked: “Would we not be better able to cooperate on the existential threats challenging every citizen of Russia, US, UK, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, France, North Korea and the Ukraine, such as stabilising the climate, protecting the rain forests and the health of the oceans, as well as the critically important global threats such as pandemic diseases, cyber security, terrorism, and financial markets?”

Loretz told IPS there is no proof that deterrence works, only that it has not yet failed. Anyone who believes that deterrence cannot fail – that it will work 100 percent of the time – is living in a fantasy world.

“One need only recall the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, where plain dumb luck had far more to do with averting catastrophe than any rational decision making – of which there was precious little,” he said.

As more states acquire nuclear weapons, he pointed out, “we simply come closer to the day when deterrence fails and nuclear weapons are used. Most countries came to this unavoidable conclusion decades ago, which is why we have the NPT and are so anxious to maintain its integrity until we can rid the world of nuclear weapons entirely.”

Loretz said the recent humanitarian initiative emerging from the 2013 Oslo and 2014 Nayarit conferences (on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons) is based on an understanding that nuclear weapons themselves are the problem, regardless of who possesses them, and that the only sure way to prevent their use is to delegitimise and eliminate them.

“This humanitarian perspective trumps all claims for the political utility of nuclear weapons, which always boils down to a gamble that threatening to use them will cause an adversary to back down,” he declared.

In the current crisis, he argued, that really would be a game of Russian roulette that no one should be playing.

“Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Ukraine had kept its strategic nuclear weapons that remained behind when the Soviet Union broke apart,” Loretz said.

“Would that have made the longstanding differences in the region any less intractable? Would Russia be any less inclined to flex its muscles in a region where it has major political and economic ambitions? Would Ukraine’s relationship with Europe, particularly the NATO states, have been any less complicated or provocative to Russia?”

“No, no, and no,” he declared.

Every nation in the world has been invited to participate at the highest political level in the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament scheduled for Sep. 26. This has never happened before. We have never been at such a moment of crisis and opportunity.

The crisis arises because the rational route forward which has been identified by the vast majority of the world’s countries in support of advancing a convention banning nuclear weapons or, as the secretary general has also suggested, a framework of legal agreements achieving elimination, has not been supported by the U.S. or Russia, two states with more than 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Thus, progress toward disarmament lacks the galvanising focus preliminary negotiations on a treaty would provide. It is also a moment of opportunity since except for India and Pakistan, no states with nuclear weapons are actually hostile to one another.

Rhetorical puffery has become expected in season after season while regularly a new crisis du jour sweeps attention away from nuclear disarmament obligations. Anyone can see cynicism as a dangerous and contagious problem looming on the horizon if nothing meaningful is done soon.

Many countries know this and that is why the 67th session of the General Assembly Resolution A/RES/67/39 moved to convene this high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament for the 68th session of the General Assembly next week.

China and India have both expressed support for negotiating a universal ban on the weapons and Pakistan has stated it would follow. France, the U.S. and UK, and Russia openly oppose progress now on even taking preliminary steps to negotiate a legal ban.

Claims are made that progress through the START process and obtaining incremental steps such as entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban and a treaty banning the further production of weapons grade fissile materials must be achieved and focused upon to the exclusion of other efforts. Diplomats from nuclear weapons states even assert that advocacy for a universal, non-discriminatory ban would divert attention and diminish effectiveness in pursuing incremental steps.

The problems with only taking this incremental approach are many. The U.S. Senate is unlikely in the near term to ratify the test ban. The case for the test ban as part of the march toward disarmament has not been made domestically and thus its advocacy appears as incoherent.

It is hard to make the case that the U.S. military should ever be constrained without demonstrating the benefits of obtaining a universal ban on the weapons. Incoherence in advocacy leads to policies going in multiple directions. An example of such incoherence was obvious in the policy for ratification for the START treaty – support the treaty and pledge hundreds of billions of dollars to “modernise” the arsenal and infrastructure.

The negotiations for the fissile materials cut off treaty are being done in the Conference on Disarmament, a body of 61 nations in Geneva that operates by consensus. Thus, one country can always stop progress. This body has not even had a working agenda in over a decade. Spoilers abound. Progress will not take place there.

Third, reliance on progress on the bilateral leadership of Russia and the U.S. is foolish. Russia has made clear that the next round on START reductions will not happen without resolution of differences on the dangers of global precision strike aspirations of the U.S. military where nuclear warheads are replaced by conventional warheads and new weapons fulfill old missions, missile defense as a possible sword and shield should technical breakthroughs arise, and weaponisation of space, a course Russia wants prohibited by treaty.

These issues will not be resolved soon since behind them all is a cadre within the U.S. military which wants to always have a dominant position for security purposes. Progress is unlikely while Russia feels threatened.

Yet: Consensus with Russia and the U.S. that through a universal treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, progress in Syria can be made thus making us all safer bodes well for progress on banning nuclear weapons. Surely no one would claim nuclear weapons are any less abhorrent and more legitimate to use than chemical weapons.

Yet: Imagine if the 114 leaders of governments in the five nuclear weapons-free zones of Latin America, Africa, South Asia, Central Asia and the South Pacific each said, “My country benefits from being in a nuclear weapons-free zone and remains threatened by those countries with nuclear weapons. It is time we made the entire world a nuclear weapons-free zone.”

The necessary upgrading of the issue to the prominent position it deserves would happen.

Imagine if the statement from the gathering said, “We will dedicate a high level day each year until the threat of nuclear weapons is gone.” Imagine if commencement of preliminary negotiations were committed to happen by a critical mass of leaders “in the Conference on Disarmament, or any other appropriate and effective venue at the earliest possible time, and we commit to full participation in this process.”

Such a call for progress would be an irresistible stimulant. But what would really ring a bell for progress would be a statement along these lines:

“There are global common public goods which must be obtained to make us all safer. Cooperation in addressing terrorism, cyber security, stable financial markets, and peaceful democratisation in countries in transition are of high value and critical importance. The very survival of civilisation depends on how well we work together in obtaining other global common goods – protecting the climate, the oceans, the rainforests, all living systems upon which humanity depends.

“There is an existential imperative that we cooperate in new dynamic ways to meet these new challenges. Nothing could compel us more strongly to resolve our differences in a spirit of peace and common purpose. Even thinking of seriously stating what is common and good for us all makes clear that possessing and threatening to use nuclear weapons is irrational, dysfunctional and must end, now.

“We breathe the same air and it is either cleansed with a spirit of cooperation or befouled by fear and threat. We are resolved to succeed in spirit of cooperation for this and future generations. That spirit calls us to denounce and renounce nuclear weapons for all now.”

Jonathan Granoff is President of the Global Security Institute, and Adjunct Professor of International Law at Widener University School of Law.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has repeatedly said that the Syrian crisis can be solved only politically. Credit: IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 30 2013 (IPS)

If and when the United States launches a military attack on Syria, one of the biggest political losers would be the United Nations.

The administration of President Barack Obama will not only bypass the Security Council, the only body mandated to declare war and peace, but also rebuff Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has repeatedly said the Syrian crisis can be resolved only politically, not militarily, even as he continues to underscore the importance of the U.N. charter.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters Friday, “We believe in the United Nations,” but still complained the U.N. investigative team in Syria is not mandated to confirm who used the chemical weapons, only whether or not they were used.

“The U.N. cannot tell anything…we don’t already know,” Kerry added.

U.N. spokesperson Martin Nesiry told reporters Friday the focus is on completing the analysis of the incident of Aug. 21.

“Everybody concerned, including the Syrian authorities, agreed that this should be a priority, that there should be the focus on this, but I have just made clear that the team will be returning to continue its work on those other incidents to be able to complete a final report.”"If [the ICC] decided that crimes against humanity had been committed, the entire political landscape would change."
-- Jonathan Granoff

The military attack on Syria will also prove once again the ineffectiveness and irrelevance of the 15-member Security Council, which has remained deadlocked because of threatened vetoes by Russia and China, who have refused to endorse the impending U.S. invasion.

But the council, the most powerful organ in the world body, could have still played a relatively significant role by urging the International Criminal Court (ICC) to move against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, says Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute.

“There would be a different political dynamic if the ICC were to determine that sufficient evidence for a prosecution exists,” he added.

“If it decided that crimes against humanity had been committed, the entire political landscape would change,” said Granoff, who is also an adjunct professor in international law at the Widener University School of Law.

He told IPS the use of chemical weapons is a war crime within the terms of the ICC Statute only if they are used in an international armed conflict, which the conflict in Syria is not. However, their use is illegal as a war crime if intentionally directed against a civilian population in a non-international armed conflict.

Such a crime can be prosecuted by the ICC, said Granoff.

Syria is not a member of the ICC nor is it a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), but for the ICC to formally investigate allegations of criminal conduct, such as mass indiscriminate killings or the use of chemical weapons, the Security Council could “refer” Syria, or the rebels, or both, to the Court.

References by the Security Council to the court have been made in the recent past – including Darfur, Sudan in 2005, and Libya in 2011.

Frank Jannuzi, deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA, believes the best course of action would be for the United Nations to complete its investigation into this latest outrage and for the Security Council to refer all evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity from this and other incidents to the ICC.

“Those responsible must be brought to justice. The walls of impunity must come down,” he said.

It is also not too late for the Security Council to consider other measures, including targeted economic sanctions and the deployment of international human rights monitors, to reduce the ripping apart of families and the bloodshed of this protracted conflict.

Targeted sanctions (namely a freeze on the assets of President Bashar al-Assad and others who may be involved in ordering or perpetrating crimes under international law), a referral of the situation in Syria to the ICC and the deployment of international human rights monitors would help contribute to conditions for fruitful negotiations aimed at a solution that respects the human rights of all Syrians, he declared.

Without Security Council authorisation, coercive military intervention in Syria would not be legal, Granoff told IPS.

Since the fighting in Syria is not threatening another country, the circumstance of self-defence, which would allow the immediate use of force against Syria by the threatened country without approval of the Security Council, is not applicable.

The actions of the Assad regime are horrible, but international law should not be set aside with impunity, he said, pointing out that alternative routes exist.

Mass atrocities are not new for the Assad regime. The U.N. Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay, as early as December 2011, called for the ICC to investigate mass killings. She was correct then, he noted.

It is worth noting, said Granoff, that she has recently called for ICC investigations of rebel slaughters as well. There is firm legal foundation for ICC involvement.

Although Syria is not a party to the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, prohibiting the use of chemical weapons, that does not matter, said Granoff.

Customary international law prohibits the use of such weapons of indiscriminate effect generally, and Syria would be responsible, especially if they were used against civilian populations regardless of whether they are party to the Treaty, he added.

The legal hurdles to such a reasonable course of action are not as high as the political ones.

However, advancing world security through the rule of law will provide much greater benefit than such short-term political posturing that does little to stop the brutality the people of Syria are experiencing, Granoff said.

One problem of a referral to the court is that if it commences prosecuting, it might make the horse-trading negotiations between the various rebel groups and the Assad regime difficult. If either faces prosecution in the event of losing militarily it could diminish incentives to achieve peace, he added.

“The status quo is worse than this risk. It is certainly preferable to risking very dangerous unintended consequences of an illegal military strike now,” Granoff declared.

When the 193-member U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) holds is first-ever high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament next September, there is little or no hope that any of the nuclear powers will make a firm commitment to gradually phase out or abandon their lethal arsenals.

At the beginning of 2013, eight states – UK, the United States, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel – possessed approximately 4,400 operational nuclear weapons, according to the latest Yearbook released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)."Our job is to help push the issue of the abolition of nuclear weapons up the political ladder so that they will cooperate on disarmament." -- Jonathan Granoff of the Global Security Institute

Nearly 2,000 of these are kept in a state of high operational alert, SIPRI said.

Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute and adjunct professor of International Law at the Widener University School of Law, told IPS, “What is needed to counteract the slow pace in arms control and disarmament is higher political profile.”

For example, he said, if certain leaders were to say at the General Assembly, “My country is one of 114 countries in a nuclear weapons-free zone. We want to help countries relying on nuclear weapons for security to obtain the benefits of helping to make the entire world a nuclear weapons-free zone.”

The SIPRI report highlights the need to bring commitments made solemnly at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in 2012 to advance nuclear disarmament into action.

Promises must mean something, said Granoff.

If all nuclear warheads are counted, says SIPRI, these eight states together possess a total of approximately 17,265 nuclear weapons, as compared with 19,000 at the beginning of 2012.

The decrease is due mainly to Russia and the United States further reducing their inventories of strategic nuclear weapons under the terms of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START), as well as retiring ageing and obsolescent weapons.

At the same time, says SIPRI, all five legally recognised nuclear weapons states – China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States – are either deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced programmes to do so, and appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals indefinitely.

Of the five, only China seems to be expanding its nuclear arsenal.

And of the others, India and Pakistan are both expanding their nuclear weapon stockpiles and missile delivery capabilities.

“Once again there was little to inspire hope that the nuclear weapon-possessing states are genuinely willing to give up their nuclear arsenals,” according to SIPRI.

“The long-term modernisation programmes under way in these states suggest that nuclear weapons are still a marker of international status and power,” says Shannon Kile, senior researcher at SIPRI’s Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-proliferation.

Asked if the upcoming UNGA disarmament conference will produce anything tangible towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, Kile told IPS that in light of current trends in global nuclear arsenals, the General Assembly cannot be reasonably expected to be able to adopt concrete measures that will require the nuclear weapon-possessing states to begin eliminating these weapons or to change their nuclear force postures and operational practices.

However, the positive role the UNGA can play in terms of strengthening existing norms and political commitments to pursue nuclear disarmament should not be underestimated, Kile said.

This involves, first and foremost, maintaining political pressure on the nuclear weapon-possessing states to reduce the role and salience of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies and defence postures.

This could be done, for example, by persuading these states to adopt explicit declaratory policies ruling out the first-use of nuclear weapons, and to provide legally-binding negative security assurances – that is, guarantees not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states.

In the longer term, he said, the UNGA can contribute to and strengthen efforts to devalue nuclear weapons as a currency of international geopolitics and to delegitimise their possession.

“This will admittedly be a part of a long-term process that will require considerable patience and diplomatic persistence but its normative significance should not be overlooked,” Kile added.

Granoff told IPS the deals the administration of President Barack Obama believed it had to make to get the START Treaty ratified in the U.S. Senate included modernisation of aspects of the nuclear arsenal. Some modernisation simply keeps the weapons in a stable situation while others actually improve accuracy and reliability and could be construed as a form of vertical proliferation, he said.

“Such activities should not be funded, but even if they are, they are not being brought into practice because of military geo strategic planning,” Granoff said.

However, he said, it is not the case that such actions affirm the status of nuclear weapons or a commitment to abrogate pledges under the NPT to move toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

“They only represent short term political deals necessary in an extremely difficult domestic partisan environment to achieve modest arms control measures,” Kile said.

But to say that the policy is not to move in the correct direction is incorrect, he added.

Granoff said there is a new open-ended working group in Geneva that will come up with recommendations.

Norway recently hosted a large conference with many countries highlighting the horrific humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. These activities bode well for our future, he said.

“It is odd that the P5 (UK, United States, Russia, France and China) did not participate in these activities,” Granoff added. “It shows, however, that they can cooperate and come up with the same strategy and positions when they want.

“Our job is to help push the issue of the abolition of nuclear weapons up the political ladder so that they will cooperate on disarmament,” he said.

Asked about the absence of North Korea from the list of nuclear weapon states, Kile told IPS, “The section of the Yearbook’s nuclear forces chapter dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapon capabilities notes that it is not known whether North Korea has produced operational (militarily usable) nuclear weapons.”

An operational weapon is not the same as a simple nuclear explosive device and would require more advanced design and engineering skills to build, he said.

“We have published in SIPRI Yearbook 2013 the estimate of six to eight nuclear weapons to indicate the maximum number that North Korea may possess, based on publicly-available information about its plutonium production activities.

“But again, it is unclear whether North Korea has actually produced operational nuclear weapons, so we did not include it in the table in the press release,” he added.