Pugwash NEWSLETTER
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Pugwash NEWSLETTER issued by the Council of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs Nobel Peace Prize 1995 Nuclear Impasse? Volume 37 Ⅲ Number 1 Ⅲ June 2000 To the Pugwash Community New Directions for Pugwash Pugwash Study Group on Intervention and Sovereignty he beginning of the year 2000 witnessed a num- This newly created study group met for the first time in ber of developments that set in train a wide- Venice, Italy in December 1999 to discuss ways of build- Tranging review of where and how Pugwash ing greater international support on the issue of when and should be devoting its efforts regarding major threats to where the international community should intervene in the global peace and security. internal affairs of a nation state. Papers from the Venice In the realm of nuclear weapons, Secretary General workshop were published in a new publication series, the George Rathjens convened two high-level consultations to Pugwash Occasional Papers (also available on the web) help him and the Pugwash Executive Committee think and a report on the workshop can be found on page 24. through just where Pugwash can marshal its resources to With the recent experiences of Kosovo and East Timor help the international community reverse a number of seri- freshly in mind, and with the global community facing ous recent setbacks to the control and elimination of new challenges in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic nuclear weapons. His report on these consultations, held of the Congo, and elsewhere, the Pugwash study group in La Jolla in January and in London in March, can be will work over the next several years to devise consulta- found on the pages following, and members of the tion and implementation strategies by which the interna- Pugwash community are invited and urged to respond tional community can respond in more timely fashion to with their thoughts and suggestions (via the Pugwash avert and reverse humanitarian disasters. Future meetings Online Forum on the Pugwash website, at are planned for Como, Italy in September 2000 and in www.pugwash.org). Castellón de la Plana, Spain in the spring of 2001. Also in London in March, the Pugwash Executive Committee met and decided to create a five-member Pugwash Newsletter on the Web Pugwash Review Committee that will review the structure More and more material published in the Pugwash and operations of Pugwash and report their recommenda- Newsletter is posted on the Pugwash website, usually tions to the Pugwash Council prior to the holding of the months in advance of appearing in print. We urge all 50th Pugwash Conference in Cambridge, UK from 3-8 members of Pugwash who are content to read the August 2000. Newsletter via the web to let us know Members of the review committee include the four ([email protected]) so that we can reduce the size of officers of Pugwash - George Rathjens, Michael Atiyah, our mailings and save greatly on printing and postage Francesco Calogero, and Ana María Cetto - and Joseph costs. Rotblat, President Emeritus. Here again, members of For their support of Pugwash in general and the Pugwash have had the opportunity to inject their Pugwash Newsletter in particular, we would like to thank sentiments and suggestions into the review process via the the Italian National Research Council (Consiglio website. Having been posted on the web since December Nazionale delle Recherche – CNR), the John D. and 1999, the Pugwash Survey has elicited dozens of Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Cyrus Eaton responses, most of which can be read (and responded to) Foundation. on the Pugwash Online Forum. The Editors Nuclear Weapons and the Pugwash Agenda: A Commentary Commentary 1999. I am aware that I write this had been agreed among the NATO memo before the outcome of the allies. The first part of the statement by Jan Prawitz NPT Review Conference 2000 is was an expected result of the NPT known. negotiations while the last part is dis- aving read with great The universality of the most turbing: that the NPT would lapse in interest the Secretary basic of all nuclear arms control wartime. Sweden gave up its nuclear HGeneral´s recent report on treaties, the NPT, is now almost option for a variety of reasons, but ”Nuclear Weapons Issues and the established. Only six states of the one was that our European Pugwash Agenda”, I feel compelled world are non-parties (as of May 1, neighbours would do the same. If to respond to the invitation to com- 2000), but three of them belong to that were so only in peacetime but ment. The report addresses primarily the family as parts of nuclear- not in wartime when it would be the weapons and doctrines of weapon-free zones. The remaining most needed, the Swedish rationale nuclear-weapon powers, of Russia three are the well-known threshold would lose value. and the USA in the first place. There states of India, Israel, and Pakistan, Almost unnoticed, however, the are good reasons to do so, both the adherence of whom to the NPT third NPT Review Conference in because the fundamental problems would not be a matter of routine. 1985 agreed in its Final Declaration originate there and because those With the important exception of five ”that the strict observance of the states are the ones which can recognized nuclear-weapon states terms of Articles I and II remains cen- contribute more than others to reach with a treaty right to possess nuclear tral to achieving the shared objectives the ultimate goal: a nuclear-weapon- weapons, non-possession of nuclear of preventing UNDER ANY free world. But I think that the many weapons is becoming a customary CIRCUMSTANCES (emphasis non-nuclear-weapon states can also norm. added) the further proliferation of have both interests and a role, by There is, however, a substantial nuclear weapons ...” (Document requesting arms control important to issue remaining to be solved before NPT/CONF. III/64/I, Annex I). This them through negotiations with the total universality would be achieved. language is politically rather than nuclear-weapon powers and more When the NPT was up for ratifica- legally binding upon the NPT Parties important by undertaking themselves tion hearings in the US Senate in July and should be reinforced and codified. restrictive measures within their 1968, Secretary of State Dean Rusk Obviously Mr Rusk´s statement capacity. Because so many non- explained in his prepared statement in 1968 referred to the East-West nuclear-weapon states would be that there would be no contradiction conflict dominating at the time. But involved, Pugwash would be a most between the provisions of Article I the end of the Cold War and the appropriate forum for professional and US ”arrangements for deploy- prospects for local wars in the future discussion of such issues. ment of nuclear weapons within now makes the more restrictive 1985 I have touched upon these issues Allied territory, as these do not interpretation the only reasonable before in my chapter in the Pugwash involve any transfer of nuclear one. In 1991, the UN Security monograph Nuclear Weapons: The weapons or control over them unless Council did indeed confirm the 1985 Road to Zero, and in my paper and until a decision were made to go approach in its resolution on Iraq. Towards a NWFW: Small Nation to war, at which time the treaty The opposite interpretation would be Roles and Priorities presented to the would no longer be controlling” beyond reason — that Iraq´s involv- 28th Pugwash Workshop on Nuclear (Documents on Disarmament 1968, ment first in a war with Iran and later Forces in Como, Italy, 9-10 July ACDA, pp. 478–495). This language in the Gulf War would have entitled 2 Pugwash Newsletter, June 2000 Pugwash Meeting #253 her to aquire nuclear weapons, or referred to above. Non-nuclear- France and the UK later undertook that India and Pakistan could acceed weapon states can continue this similar measures. These most impor- to the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon development unilaterally, but should tant measures have more or less emp- states but continue their weapons urge the nuclear-weapon states to be tied Europe and its adjacent sea areas programmes claiming that there is a more forthcoming in supporting and as well as many other areas of the war going on in Kashmir. extending guarantees to new zones. world of deployed theatre nuclear With the NPT membership So far some of the nuclear-weapon weapons. They did in fact remove almost complete, the more restrictive states have been oversensitive to from operational status precisely measure of nuclear-weapon-free details, for instance when refusing to those nuclear weapons that could be zones have become the dynamic ele- sign the Bangkok Treaty Protocol targeted on the smaller states and ment of the non-proliferation regime. and forcefully discouraging the estab- thus also removed the immediate The five nuclear-weapon-free zones lishment of NWFZs in Europe. threat against them of direct nuclear (NWFZ) established so far cover Furthermore, it should be attack. These measures are, however, more than half of the world´s land- based on unilateral declarations and mass (70 % of all land outside the are thus not legally binding nor do nuclear-weapon states), including 99% they have a permanent duration in For the many small and medium of the Southern Hemisphere land force. Codification of these declara- areas. They encompass 112 states sized states in the world, the most tions, as modified to meet precise cri- (out of a total of some 195) and 18 teria of security and verification, has important nuclear reduction other territories with 1.8 billion been proposed a few times.