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Instead of
Nuclear Weapons
New Views on Human,
Global and National Security
Report from an International IPPNW
and Peace Researchers Seminar
Moscow 25 March 2002
This publication may be ordered from
SLMK – Swedish Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Email: klas.lundius@slmk.org
The publication is also available on
www.slmk.org
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – New Views on Human,
Global and National Security
An international IPPNW and Peace Researchers seminar
taking place at the Russian Federation State Duma,
Moscow, 25
th
March 2002
Financial support from:
SLMK – Swedish Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, dept Global Security
© SLMK – Svenska Läkare Mot Kärnvapen 2002
Editor: Hans Levander MD, SLMK / IPPNW, Sweden
Photographer: Klas Lundius SLMK, Sweden
Printed in Sweden by Luleå Grafiska, Luleå 2002
Grafic Design: A Stenbergs Text & Form AB, Ljungsbro
ISBN: 91-971299-4-1
This report may be copied if the source is acknowledged.
Swedish Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Contents
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................... 5
CONCLUSION....................................................................................... 7
COSTA RICA
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – Democracy and
the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
Mr Simon Stander ........................................................................... 9
FRANCE
The Urgency for Surpassing the Nuclear Age
Mr Jacques Le Dauphin and Mr Roger Billé ....................................... 15
INDIA
Security without Nuclear Weapons
Mr Chintamani Mahapatra ............................................................. 18
IRAN
Balance of Positions on National Security:
A Combination of Disarmament and Deterrence.
An Iranian Perspective
Mr Heydar Ali Balouji .................................................................... 22
RUSSIA
Could and Would Elimination of the Nuclear Weapons
Make Russia Secure? Analysis of Russia’s Military Views
Mr Veniamin Vakhmistrov ............................................................... 25
SOUTH AFRICA
The Rise and Demise of South Africa’s Nuclear
Weapons Programme: Lessons for States with
Nuclear Weapons Programmes?
Mr Guy Lamb ............................................................................... 34
SWEDEN
Can We Learn to Live without the Bomb?
Mr Jan Øberg ............................................................................... 39
UNITED KINGDOM
Instead of Nuclear Weapons: Persuading Britain
to Do without
Mr Stephen Pullinger ...................................................................... 46
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
BALTIC UNIVERSITY PROGRAMME
Creating a Security Community in
the Baltic Sea Region
Mr Lars Rydén, presentation by Mr Sergey Dorozhko ......................... 51
DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS
Dialogue Among Civilizations As a Positive
Alternative to Nuclear Deterrence
Mr Sergey Kapitza ........................................................................ 61
IPPNW
An IPPNW Perspective on Nuclear Security,
Human Security, and Global Security
Mr Victor W. Sidel ......................................................................... 64
IFMSA
International Federation of Medical
Students’ Associations
................................................................ 68
RUSSIAN MEDICAL STUDENTS
The View of Russian Medical Students
on Global Peace and Nuclear Disarmament
Mr Alexei V. Vigdortchik ................................................................ 70
LIFE-LINK FRIENDSHIP-SCOOLS PROGRAMME
Instead of Nuclear Weapons –
What Do the Youth Think?
Ms Christina Ritzl .......................................................................... 72
APPENDIX......................................................................................... 77
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Introduction
Mr Hans Levander
INSTEAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Mr Hans Levander
Physician, Specialist Internal Medicine
University Hospital
SE 751 85 Uppsala
Sweden
Email: hans.levander@slmk.org
Instead of Nuclear Weapons project
The project Instead of Nuclear Weapons was initiated in
year 2000 by the Swedish Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War, SLMK. In January 2001 an invitation was sent
out: ”Invitation to more than 25 Peace Research Institutes
and about 10 NGO’s – Non Governmental Organisations
world-wide, as well as the Ministries for Foreign Affairs in
seven nuclear weapons states, with the aim to promote inde-
pendent studies and reports on the theme: Instead of Nu-
clear Weapons .” (Appendix). The selection of institutes
and NGO’s was made in consultation with the international
federation IPPNW – International Physicians for the Pre-
vention of Nuclear War, and all invited institutes and NGO’s
returning applications with high quality and ethical working
methods were accepted.
The response was applications and reports from eight peace
research institutes and six NGO’s. Two main dimensions of
the nuclear weapons problem were pointed out to be of spe-
cial interest for this research project:
1. Which are the main human and psychological obstacles
for a nuclear weapons disarmament process?
2. How can a comprehensive and sustainable security be
built, a security that will substitute the nuclear weapons
deterrence policy?
Seminar at the Russian Federation
State Duma
At an international IPPNW and Peace Researchers seminar,
taking place at the Russian Federation State Duma on the
25
th
of March 2002, participating researchers and NGO’s
presented their reports. Introductions to the seminar were
given by Mr Nikolai F. Gerasimenko, MP, Chairman of the
RF State Duma Committee for Health, and by Mr Sergei I.
Kolesnikov, MP, Deputy Chairman of the RF State Duma
Committee for Health, Co-president of the Russian national
affiliate of IPPNW, Academician of the Russian Academy
of Medical Sciences.
The following persons and organisations could for different
reasons not join this seminar in order to give their presen-
tations: Mr R. Billé France, Mr S. Pullinger UK and the
representative from the International Federation of Medical
Students ́ Association – IFMSA.
Seminar report
This seminar report builds on 14 reports and a final ”con-
clusions and recommendations”. The report will be
available in April 2002 at the Non-Proliferation-Treaty
Prepcom meeting, United Nations New York, and at the
forthcoming 15
th
IPPNW world congress taking place in
Washington DC early May 2002. The report will also be
used at IPPNW consultations with nuclear weapons deci-
sionmakers within the programme ”IPPNW Annual Dia-
logues and Seminars with Decisionmakers at the Capitals of
the Nuclear Weapons States”.
This official report without copywrite will also be available
at www.slmk.org. We hope that the report will inspire the
debate on how to structure new security in the post nuclear
weapons period. We are well aware that several of the
participants do not have English as their native language.
Due to limited time and resources we have not made detai-
led checking of the language, thus leaving the report with a
flavour of multi-cultural collaboration.
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Thanks
SLMK wants to express sincere thanks to all participants
and to our Russian IPPNW collegues and staff, contributing
to the realization of this project and seminar “Instead of
Nuclear Weapons”. Planning, international communication
and cooperation has a value in itself for the aim of confid-
ence building across national and cultural borders towards
common security.
Some personal reflexions
Let us make it our highest priority to safeguard the thin
layer of air, soil and water that constitutes the Biosphere
around planet Earth. I understand that the Biosphere within
wich we coexist is just about 14 000 meters thick, the dis-
tance of one hours biking or a few hours walking! Research
by Physicists (Nuclear Winter; Global Consequences of
Multiple Nuclear Explosions, 1983 Science) as well as
reports from WHO (Effects of Nuclear War on Health and
Health Services, 1984 and 1987) conclude that the stock-
piles of nuclear weapons, if used, will destroy the precondi-
tions for life on Earth for unpredictable time.
Do not the nuclear weapons and the US National Missile
Defence system belong to the same category of thinking,
emotion and strategy as: the Great Wall in China, the over-
loaded Swedish battleship Wasa 1628, the gigantic Russian
Tsar Canon today placed outside the Kremlin, the former
invincible British Navy, and the French Maginot-line in the
1930’s?
A scheme comparing some qualities of ”Old Security” and
”New Security” is added in order to promote the discussions
how to direct a paradigm shift in security thinking and po-
licy.
SOME QUALITIES OF SECURITY –
A PARADIGM SHIFT TAKING PLACE
”Old” Security”New” Security
Defence AgainstSecurity Together
Technical DevicesHuman Dialogues
Weapons – WarfareConstructive Collaboration
National DimensionRegions – Biosphere
BordersInterdependence
Experts on SecurityCitizens Diplomacy
Winner – LoosersWin – Win
DeterrenceConfidence Building
SecrecyTransparency
CompetitionCare and Share
RightsResponsibilities
Unlimited ResourcesLimited Resources
”Waste”Sustainability
Short PerspectivesLong Perspectives
One Generation?Several Generations!
FearTrust
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Conclusion
Instead of Nuclear Weapons;
New Views on Human, Global and National Security
An international IPPNW and Peace Researchers seminar
Moscow 25 March 2002
Conclusions and Recommendations
Mr Gunnar Westberg
Atomic bombs were initially produced in response to the threat from Nazi
Germany. Their number and power grew during the Cold War until the threat of
destruction of all mankind became the ultimate deterrence. Nazism is gone, the
Cold War is over, but the nuclear weapon states still cling to their nuclear
weapons. Our conclusion is that this addiction must be overcome. Alternative
security programmes introduced “Instead of Nuclear Weapons” can facilitate
such a process.
We, as concerned physicians and peace researchers of the world, are scared and deeply con-
cerned by the aggressive posture that some of the nuclear weapons states have recently adopted.
It is our considered opinion that given the current international environment, especially in the
wake of the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, nuclear weapons rhetoric
could easily be converted into a nuclear strike. Recently, nuclear weapons states have threatened
to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. This is a new development,
illegal in terms of international law and in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Regime.
Hence, we implore the nuclear weapons states to refrain from the dangerous posture of threaten-
ing with nuclear weapons and to urgently decommission and dismantle their nuclear weapons in
agreement with their pledge in Article VI of the NPT, and instead pursue human-centered
approaches to security.
In this regard we would like to recommend the following:
•The establishment of new defense doctrines that do not rely on nuclear weapons for deter-
rence or for actual warfighting.
•New cooperative and comprehensive security measures, that focus primarily on the security
of human beings rather than on the security of states.
•The creation of arrangements and policies that promote trust and confidence rather than fear,
transparency rather than secrecy, and security ”together with” rather than security ”against”.
•The consideration of unilateral disarmament. Any nuclear weapons state, given the political
impetus, can disarm its nuclear arsenal unilaterally. The argument demanding a necessary
”balanced nuclear weapons disarmament” must be challenged.
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
In order to achieve this, it is essential that the following obstacles be overcome:
•Lack of awareness of the possible consequence of a nuclear war: The extinction of mankind.
•Insufficient determination on the part of governments of Nuclear Weapons States to seriously
explore the elimination of nuclear weapons.
•Lack of trust between nuclear weapons states.
•The public, including youth, is not well informed of the dangers of nuclear weapons or of
alternative security options.
These obstacles can be overcome by means of the following:
•Establishment of a target date for the final elimination of nuclear weapons. Agreements on a
timetable for the step by step reduction of nuclear weapons aiming for the complete abolition
of all nuclear weapons within a reasonable time such as one or two decades.
•Raising public opinion through continued education on the catastrophic consequences of
nuclear weapons and on disarmament issues.
•Making nuclear disarmament an issue for political parties.
•Establishment of new nuclear weapons-free zones.
•Dialogue and collaborative programs between states and communities, including the nuclear
weapons states, in areas such as peace education, nonviolent conflict solving, language
training, cultural diversity and environmental sustainability. Such programs should include
youth and schools, universities, parliamentarians and military officials.
To develop security alternatives to nuclear weapons is one of mankind’s most
urgent needs. Very few countries in the world rely on nuclear weapons for their
security. The nuclear weapons states must try harder!
Moscow 25 March 2002
Gunnar Westberg MD,
President of SLMK,
Swedish Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Hans Levander MD,
President of the Seminar
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
COSTA RICA
A STUDY IN THE APPROACH TO
THE ELIMINATION OF NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
Mr Simon Stander
Associate Professor
University for Peace
P.O. Box 138-6100
San José
Costa Rica
Email: sstander@upeace.org
The paper examines the nature of the State in its relation to
the Economy, or, in other words, the distribution of political
and economic power in the USA. The author holds the view
that the State and the Economy are two aspects of an in-
dissoluble unity, and that the tendency in the USA is toward
ever greater concentration of both economic and political
power. This process ought to be counterbalanced by the fact
that democracy, in principle, is opposed to such concent-
ration. The key point in time when democratic expression
can have major influence is during the election of the Presi-
dent and a significant proportion of the legislature, which
takes place every four years.
The US electorate is potentially volatile since only about
half the registered voters go to the polls during presidential
years and about a third in non-presidential years. In addition
it is currently the case that candidates who have access to
substantial funds inevitably sway voters in their direction,
and this clearly demonstrates voting fragility. In 1992 a
third party led by Perot gained 19% of the vote. Yet, in 2000
Nader with limited funds gained 5% of the vote where he
had some visibility in the Pacific North West indicating that
the money buys visibility and that this is what can be used to
turn the voter.
The suggestion is that a third party adopting a single
issue, the elimination of nuclear weapons, could make
significant inroads into public opinion. Additionally, the
electoral techniques would need to be innovative. The tele-
vision age first began to influence elections from the 1950s,
but now there is scope for new tactics and techniques, by
appealing, for instance, to young first time voters using
post-modern methods and the Internet in new and creative
ways. Anything less than using an electoral run at the
presidency will make little impact since the history of oppo-
sition to nuclear weapons in the USA has not been
encouraging to abolitionists and the current political oppo-
sition is not strong since it operates mainly as bi-partisan
opposition to non-proliferation.
While nothing is said about Russia in my paper, I would
suggest that a first move to the elimination of nuclear
weapons would be achieved by an announcement that Rus-
sia was applying to join the European Union. Not only
would Russia be welcomed into the Union progressively
over the next generation but the changes in perception of
what constitutes national security would render holding
nuclear weapons in readiness as needless and antiquated.
P.S.
The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the
author.
Summary
Mr Simon Stander
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
COSTA RICA
Introduction
The need to think anew is no easy task, especially when the
objective is to remove the threat of weapons of mass de-
struction once and for all from this planet. On the other
hand, Goethe has told us: “Everything has been thought of
before; the problem is to think of it again.”
The answer to the elimination of nuclear weapons may,
therefore, be right under our noses if only we could see it.
This paper does not assume at the outset that the solution
will be found, only that it can be found. Informed by a social
science approach this analysis focuses on the relationship
between the state and the economy primarily in the USA,
recognising, however, that a more complete approach
across the several cultures in which nuclear weapons exist is
required.
This paper refers to a key area of social science, the relation-
ship between the state and the economy and, confident of
the real existence of the industrial-military complex and its
effect on policy (indicative empirical evidence included in
Appendix I) and the disorganised nature of the opposition
(discussed in Appendix II), suggests a political non-violent
solution.
The State and the Economy
In the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War when US capital-
ism appeared to be racing ahead of the rest of the world in
terms of providing the mass of the people with an unheard
of standard of living, Marcuse
2
struck a severe note of
doubt. He set out to show that hidden by this prosperity,
modern technological society is heading for a disaster in a
number of ways. Human beings were becoming the very
commodities they purchase; environmental and military
catastrophe was around the corner but false consciousness
prevented anyone from seeing this and other threats to their
existence.
“Does not the threat of an economic catastrophe which
could wipe out the whole of the human race also serve
to protect the very forces which perpetuate this dan-
ger? The efforts to prevent such a catastrophe over-
shadow the search for its potential causes in contem-
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – Democracy and
the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
1
“Our job is to increase public awareness, encourage dialogue, catalyse
action, and promote new thinking [about weapons of mass destruction]
in this country and abroad. It is this last point – the need to think anew –
that I want to emphasize today.”
Sam Nunn, former US Senator, Thurs, March 29, 2001, speech at the National
Press Club on the foundation of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
porary society. These causes remain unidentified, un-
exposed, unattacked by the public because they recede
before the all too obvious threat from without. Equally
obvious is the need for being prepared, for living on the
brink, for facing the challenge. We submit to the peace-
ful production of the means of destruction, to the per-
fection of waste, to being educated for a defence,
which deforms the defenders and that which they
defend.”
3
He warned that big business, government, the economy and
academic institutions were linked worldwide in a harmoni-
ous relationship to effect this process. Moreover, there was
nothing ’new’ about it, the process being far from new.
“The main trends are familiar: concentration of the na-
tional economy on the needs of the big corporations,
with the government as a stimulating, supporting, and
sometimes even controlling force; hitching of this eco-
nomy to a worldwide system of military alliances.
Monetary arrangements, technical assistance and
development schemes: ... fostering of a pre-establish-
ed harmony between scholarship and the national pur-
pose; invasion of the private household by the to-
getherness of public opinion.”
4
Marcuse was largely concerned with the nature of techno-
logy, the convergence of the Soviet system with the US, the
effect of the Cold War arms race, internal repression and the
lack of awareness by the mass of the people of the processes
that were taking place. Within the political process in the
USA he noted how bipartisanship in foreign policy over-
rides competitive group interests.
5
In the arena of the US
national interest, national security and the perceived need
for a strong military presence, there were no differences
within the political system. Marcuse argued that the real
threat to and within US society was the prospect of freedom
for the individual. But this held true, according to Marcuse
for any technological society, including the Soviet Union.
The most significant way in which repression is maintained
is through the threat of some imagined Enemy. Marcuse, in
the quote that follows, used the word spectre deliberately,
no doubt, conjuring up much the same imagery as Marx in
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
COSTA RICA
the opening sentence of The Communist Manifesto (’there is
a spectre haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism’).
“The Enemy is the common denominator of all doing
and undoing. And the Enemy is not identical with
actual communism or actual capitalism – he is in both
cases the real spectre of liberation.”
6
In this way Marcuse replaces the desired feature commun-
ism with liberation and he also observed that in this same
process the insane becomes the rational:
“... the insanity of the whole absolves the particular
insanities and turns the crimes against humanity into a
rational enterprise. When the people, aptly stimulated
by the public and private authorities, prepare for lives
of total mobilization, they are sensible not only be-
cause of the present Enemy, but also because of the
investment and employment possibilities in industry
and entertainment. Even the most insane calculations
are rational: the annihilation of five million people is
preferable to that of ten million ... It is hopeless to
argue that a civilization which justifies its defense by
such calculus proclaims its own ends.”
7
To Marcuse, then, we owe a perspective which gives us a
conception of rationality, technology, commodities, the
state, government and bipartisanship and the human con-
dition and what the state fears most, which is not an external
enemy but the liberation of its own people. All this may be a
little hard to accept without further adornment. The concep-
tion of the state will, therefore, have to be further explored
through the eyes of other commentators.
To neo-liberals and western political theorists, the state is
relatively unproblematic. The general conception is one of a
pluralist democracy. Everyone can have his or her say, one
way or another, hence pluralism. Of course, some elements
are disadvantaged but, then, laws are passed to adjust this
and, in a gradualistic way, the state ensures that society
moves to one of greater equality and higher living stand-
ards. Marcuse rejected this approach as have other com-
mentators who see the State approximating to being the ex-
ecutive committee of the ruling class(es), its exact nature
depending on the historical circumstances.
Not long after Marcuse’s text was published, Ralph Mili-
band
8
made a clear distinction between the state and the
government in his analysis of the State in its relation to the
prevailing perception of modern capitalism. In common
language these two words are confused. The State, however,
is a much broader and, more insidious, phenomenon than
government. In Marxism, the State is the superstructure
intrimitaly related to the base of private ownership of the
means of production. However crude this would seem, there
is a glimmer of obviousness about such an analysis. The
state will tend to function in the interests of the dominant
economic forces. Thus, we are not surprised if George W
Bush, as head of the US government, which is an integral
part of the State, appears to be acting in the interests of Big
Business. We expect it; the Republican electorate and the
greater part of the Democratic electorate endorse it.
Useful for its theoretical approach, its methodology and the
critiques it occasioned Miliband’s analysis of the modern
capitalist State and the early critique by Nicos Poulantzas
9
in particular help to identify some useful positions for our
current analysis.
Marx was concerned more with the economic base than
with the State. Activists such as Lenin and Gramsci were
more concerned with the State than the economy. Leftist
analysis of the State has been at times concerned with prac-
tical problems of the revolutionary; other commentators
have been more concerned with ’economism’ (the economic
determinism thought to be in the works of Marx). Mili-
band’s aim was to demolish bourgeois conceptions of the
state or, at least, challenge the long held adherence to
notions of a pluralist democracy as the model to be striven
for. He examined empirical data regarding the holders of
key office holders within state apparatuses, ranging widely
across most of the advanced industrial countries, and, in
doing so, challenged the widely held conceptions of the plu-
ralist model and was able to suggest strongly the merits of
an analysis that held firmly to a base-superstructure model.
What would be rewarding would be to emulate this meth-
odology concentrating on one policy matter: the elimination
of nuclear weapons and those policy issues directly relating
to disarmament. The nation states to be examined would be
determined by this single anti-nuclear issue: USA, Russia,
UK, France, China, Pakistan, India and Israel.
The analysis would have to take account of the features of
similarity across the policy-making spectrums in each of
these countries (and their satellites) and the features of dis-
similarity. The economies differ, the class relations are not
the same, the histories and cultures show marked
differences, the nature and concentration of power and capi-
tal vary, the degrees and kinds of effective democracies
differ, the motivations of the power elites and of the
ordinary people diverge in a variety of ways and the degree
to which external enemies are real or illusory are also at
variance.
10
For this particular study we have only been able to make a
prima facie examination of the United States of America,
the most powerful of the nuclear states. We have concluded
that the concentration of capital and political power lies at
the root of one of the problems in shifting the US govern-
ment toward the elimination of nuclear weapons and that
change can only come from democratic action.
Concentration of Capital
The continued and increasing concentration of capital
11
ma-
kes possible the concentration of political power. While in
the Summer of 2001 GE and Honeywell failed to combine
to compete with the increasingly successful European aero-
space and communications industry, over the previous two
years many mergers, amalgamations, take-overs and re-
alignments served to strengthen US arms industry in the
face of competition and to enable the industry to position
itself for changes in US government policy.
12
Major com-
12
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
panies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing maintain Washing-
ton offices headed by high-powered, well-paid industry
executives solely for the purpose of influencing government
decisions. Connected with the concentration of capital is the
relatively small number of positions that carry enormous
power.
Concentration of political power
in the State apparatuses
There is evidence that the occupants of the command posts
in the State apparatuses are ideologically fairly homogen-
eous and self-reinforcing. The armed forces, the govern-
ment (whatever political party is in power), think tanks
13
,
universities and big business are closely connected. The
media sources are generally accepting of the way these
apparatuses work. In other words, the State in the USA has
succeeded in establishing an ideological and political
hegemony, which imposes the power, inter alia, of the inter-
ests of the profit driven industries including those that insist
on the maintenance of nuclear weapons.
Some reasons for this ideological hegemony are as follows:
•the prevailing tendency to bi-partisanship
•the absence of any significant (working) class opposi-
tion
•right wing think tanks which soak up much govern-
mental and philanthropic sources of funding
•the contradictions in US representative democracy and
the US constitution which mitigates against a fuller
democratic outcome.
Opposition groups
The continued existence of nuclear weaponry and further
research into maintaining such weapons is not in the long
term interests of the US consumer. This position is neatly
summed up by William Weida in the quotation below.
“The allocation of resources to nuclear weapons has
often had no discernible relationship to the levels of
threat these weapons were supposed to counter and the
costs of deterrence have been considerably and
unnecessarily increased. It is important for the eco-
nomic strength of the United States that these types of
excessive spending be avoided in the future.”
14
Opposition from within the establishment to nuclear
weapons is not well-formulated, but momentum would
occur if those parts of US industry were able to find a focal
point around which it could coalesce.
Currently, the groups opposing nuclear weapons lack an
effective power base; there is no effective Green Party; the
Democratic Party is, in effect, an integral part of the State.
In terms of the class origins of the anti-nuclear activists,
they are identical to those who occupy key positions within
the State apparatuses.
Opposition groups require a markedly more effective power
base to shift the existing policies toward the abolition of
nuclear weaponry because working within the existing poli-
tical parties is ineffective as is attempting to build opposi-
tion through a small number of ’protest’ groups. There is
scope, therefore, for a successful launch of a SINGLE-
ISSUE POLITICAL PARTY in the USA whose Presidential
candidate would propose the elimination of nuclear
weapons.
A single-issue third political party in
the USA
A single-issue political party requires a huge issue. The
removal of nuclear weapons which have the capacity to
destroy the planet ought to be a big enough single issue.
15
It
appears possible to organise all opposition to the industrial-
military complex around this issue. Though it is in the inte-
rests of the armed services and huge parts of US industry to
maintain a policy to retain nuclear weapons, it is not in the
interest of the majority of the people. The prospects for op-
position are, in principle, good, given the potential volatility
of the US electorate. The volatility underlying the US
democratic system could easily be released through non-
violent and legitimate means.
The Potential Volatility of the US
Electorate
IDEA
16
ranks the USA as 114th in the world in terms of
voter participation. Only 30% of the electorate turns out to
vote for parliamentary candidates and 50% turned out in the
last presidential election in 2000. This means, for instance,
that George W Bush was elected by 24% of registered
voters. Already as a result of the Florida fiasco electoral re-
form movements have sprung up in the USA but as yet they
lack direction and look for such leadership as might come
from the Greens and/or Ralph Nader despite his poor
showing at the last election.
17
Ross Perot gained 19% of the vote when he stood. And Jesse
Ventura is current proof that shocks to the system can occur.
The single-issue party would have to appeal to a significant
section of the non-voters plus a segment of each of the
existing parties. It is fair to say that there is considerable
scope for using post modernist means to gain the votes of
first time voters, of those who would otherwise claim that
“my vote is wasted” and of the many other protest groups
who would feel a sense of unity and purpose.
One route would be to focus heavily on those first time 2004
voters who are now aged 14-18 (who for the most part are
now in High Schools) and those year 2000 first time voters
who did not vote last time (many of whom are in colleges
and universities). Creative ways of reaching them through
the Internet
18
might be the main way forward rather than
print or broadcast media.
19
Most current protest web sites
and web pages seem strangely old fashioned. Radical
thought processes in the non-violent campaigns to remove
nuclear weapons lag behind the very technology (the
Internet) that could be employed to assist in the removal of
nuclear weapons.
COSTA RICA
13
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Conclusion
Each nuclear nation needs to be studied in its own terms,
though much of the crucial work needs to be done in
examining the true relationships that exist between state and
economy. In the case of the USA, given the potential
volatility of the electorate, there is scope for launching a
single-issue political party whose presidential candidate
would challenge the existing system within the democratic
process by using post-modernist means, utilising the
Internet to the maximum and concentrating especially on
2004 first time voters and the under thirty age group gene-
rally.
Footnotes
1
The author is most grateful for the help of Julie Carlson in
the research for and preparation of this paper.
2
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, Beacon Press,
Boston, 1964, reprinted 1991.
3
Ibid Introduction p. xli. This was written at the time of the
threat from the Soviets but is still relevant, though the
external threat is more vague: Talibans, Bin Laden, Saddam
Hussein, none of whom require 20,000 nuclear warheads
and a fleet of nuclear submarines to be kept in order as we
have seen since the attacks of September 11.
4
Ibid, p.20.
5
Idem.
6
Ibid, p.52
7
Idem.
8
Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society, Weiden-
feld and Nicholson, London 1969. The debate with Nicos
Poulantzas is reprinted in Robin Blackburn, Ideology in So-
cial Science, Fontana, 1972, p.238 ff.
9
Nicos Poulantzas had already published Pouvoir Politique
et Classes Sociales in Paris in 1968 and this volume ap-
peared in English as Political Power and Social Class in
1972.
10
cf. John Gray, False Dawn, New Press, N.Y, 1998 warns
us not to confuse, say, modernisation with capitalism. E.g
“Each version of capitalism articulates the particular culture
in which it remains embedded.”
11
There are many sources which establish this process of
amalgamation and growth of capital and control. See, for
instance, Will Hutton & Anthony Giddens, Global Capital-
ism, Jonathan Cape, 2000
12
James Kitfield, “Military-Industrial Complexity”,
Government Executive Magazine, September 1, 2001.
13
See, for instance Stephen J. Del Rosso Jr., The Insecure
State (What Future the State), Daedalus, Vol 124. no.4,
(Spring 1995). Also www.mediatransparency.org
14
www.brook.edu/fp/projects/nucwcost/weida.htm
William Weida The Economic Implications of Nuclear
Weapons, June 30, 1998. William Weida is currently an eco-
nomics professor; previously he was a pilot in the USAF
and a civil servant at the Pentagon and an academic at the
USAF Academy.
15
General George Lee Butler ex C-in-C of Strategic Air
Command on the issue of how little understanding the Pre-
sident had in relation to the capacity for destruction while
legislators really knew nothing (!): “It was all Alice-in-
Wonderland stuff. The targeting data and other details of the
war plan, which are written in an almost unfathomable mil-
lion lines of computer soft ware code, were typically
reduced by military briefers to between 60 and 100 slides
that could be presented in an hour or so to the handful of
senior US officials who were cleared to hear it. Generally no
one wanted to ask questions because they did not want to
embarrass themselves. It was about as unsatisfactory as
could be imagined for that subject matter. The truth is the
President only has a superficial understanding of what could
happen in a nuclear war. Congress knew even less because
no lawmaker has ever had access to the war plan.” Quoted
by Jonathan Granoff in his excellent and terrifying article
Nuclear Weapons, Ethics, Morals and the Law, Law review,
Brigham Young University, Volume 2000, number 4.
16
IDEA: Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
The dangers inherent in a democracy where the voters are
apathetic were noted as early as 1861 before there were
many democracies. “Representative institutions are of little
value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny and
intrigue, when the generality of electors are not sufficiently
interested in their own government to vote. Popular
government thus practised, instead of securing against
misgovernment is but an additional wheel in its machinery.”
John Stuart Mill, Represenatative Government, 1861,
Chapter 1.
17
Cf. See Tim Robbins, What I Voted For, The Nation, Au-
gust 6, 2001 in explaining his and Susan Sarandon’s
reasons for supporting Nader rather than the Democrats :
“The young people who have helped launch a quest for an
alternative party ... believe that the Democratic and Repu-
blican parties are united on the major issues of our time.
This new movement is a rejection of politics as usual...”
Tim Robbins, the actor and film-maker, was recently award-
ed the Upton Sinclair Award by the Liberty Hill Foundation
for his films and grassroots activism.
18
According to Netsizer, there are (August, 2001) 171 mil-
lion Net users in the USA which makes the US electorate
particularly vulnerable as a huge collection of individuals if
it were possible to find a way through.
19
Print and broadcast media, as with US business generally,
are subject to control by a small number of mega
companies. This was elucidated as long ago as 1988 by Ed-
ward S Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing
Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,
COSTA RICA
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Pantheon Books, New York. The position has worsened
since. The Internet has great anti-propaganda potential but it
has not yet been remotely developed in this way as yet. If
linked to the one-person, one-vote democratic system in the
❑ ❑ ❑
COSTA RICA
USA, there could be enormous scope for change without
even one MacDonald’s Hamburger Restaurant being at risk
from the direct action of demonstrators.
15
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
FRANCE
THE URGENCY FOR SURPASSING THE
NUCLEAR AGE
Mr Jacques Le Dauphin
Researcher
Mr Roger Billé
Researcher
Institut de Documentation et de Recherche sur
la Paix (IDRP)
139 Boulevard Victor Hugo
93400 Saint Ouen
France
Email: jacques.le_dauphin@libertysurf.fr
rbille@libertysurf.fr
1) A decade after the end of the Cold War one might have
thought the “nuclear genie” had gone back into its lamp.
2) So, for the five nuclear powers known untill now, in spite
of various international treaties, abandoning the nuclear
weapons does not seem to appear on their present-day
schedules.
3) The persistent refusal on the part of these states to ignore
those international agreements – in particular Article VI of
the N.P.T. – is likely to lead to more countries possessing
weapons of mass destruction, a proliferation.
4) The American NMD project, far from attenuating the
dangers, is more likely to aggravate them by starting up a
new post-Cold War arms race.
5) Since the end of the Cold War, more and more significant
voices have been clamouring for the elimination of nuclear
weapons.
6) Arising out of the movement against nuclear weapons is
the idea, which is being more and more emphasized, that
today the purely military aspect of security is to be surpas-
sed as a legacy that belongs to another age. Already, 10 – 12
years ago, certain state leaders have proposed that the sup-
pression of their own “aggressive weapons” can be a new
approach of international security.
7) Going from inter-state insecurity that tends to justify
military reinforcement, to collective security in the name of
the principle of human security is no small matter. It seems
that, faced with such a tremendous challenge, humanity
cannot do without the United Nations “The only world insti-
tution that has the legitimacy and competence on account of
its universal composition”.
8) Without question, this is a challenge that calls for the
participation of all citizens in the field of international poli-
tics. NGO’s also have a vital part to play in informing civil
society, to debate, to act, to influence national and interna-
tional institutions, so that whatever may perpetuate an out-
dated analysis of security relying on nuclear weapons will
be outlawed.
Summary
16
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
FRANCE
1. A decade after the end of the Cold War one might have
thought that the “nuclear genie” had gone back into its
lamp. We have to admit that such is not the case. The
disappearance of antagonism between two powers, while
removing the major threat, did not mean that nuclear
weapons were spontaneously reproved. The strategy con-
figuration has changed but the problematics remain.
2. So, for the five nuclear powers known until now, in spite
of various international treaties the importance of which
we shall by no means underestimate, abandoning this
type of weapon does not seem to appear on their present-
day schedule. The American “Presidential Directive
Decision 60” dated November 1997, the British “Strate-
gic Defence Review” of July 1998, “NATO’s Strategic
Concept” in 1999, the “New French Defence Programme
Act” for 2003–2008, the Russian “Security Concept” and
“Military Doctrine in 2000”, the Chinese Military pro-
grammes over recent years, are striking indications that
this is indeed a present-day issue.
3. The persistent refusal on the part of these States to go
purposely forward on the road to nuclear disarmament,
the more so to exclude it from international relations has
led and is likely to lead to new arrivals of countries
possessing these weapons of mass destruction. Thus,
after Israel, India and Pakistan now possess the nuclear
weapon. There is the likelihood that the NPT, and Article
VI, to which the present nuclear states do not comply will
have no effect in abolishing the proliferation of these
weapons. The fact is, the sincerity of the nuclear powers
is hardly credible as long as they continue to declare that
in their hands the nuclear weapon is a warranty of se-
curity whereas in the hands of others it is a threat to world
peace. A number of countries that had noted with great
interest the arms reductions planned by the USA and Rus-
sia – both bound by the CTBT – are now concerned by the
vast existing stockpiles being modernised and the
development of simulation methods for testing them on a
permanent basis. As Mr. Jayantha Dhanapala, Vice-
Secretary General of UNO remarked at the NPT Review
Conference 2000 : “If the present nuclear states persist
indefinitely in carrying out no substantial progress
towards nuclear disarmament, I fear that the world con-
sensus relative to ceasing the proliferation of nuclear
weapons will gradually crumble, with the likelihood that
a growing number of countries will reconsider their
nuclear choices.”
4. It seems that the warning has not been heard, and if the
threat of proliferation is not taken seriously, its perception
will not lead to a change of doctrine but to looking for
The Urgency for Surpassing
the Nuclear Age
ways and means of protection from it. This is particularly
the case with the American NMD project, a project which
far from attenuating the dangers is more likely to aggrav-
ate them by starting up a new post-Cold War arms race.
5. The least we can say is that the “nuclear genie” is still
reluctant to go back into its lamp. In this respect, we
sometimes hear the following remark : “the nuclear can-
not be disinvented”. Obviously, but history is generous
with inventions of all kinds, which without being “dis-
invented” are nevertheless capable of playing a worthless
role for the future. If this is not so for nuclear weapons,
then the causes are of another nature with deeper
implications.
6. The nuclear weapon is still part of a multi-dimensional
concept where international security is based on the
balance of power and military capacities in inter-State re-
lations. Looking at the purely military aspect of security,
“nuclear deterrence” has for fifty years been the touch-
stone of the powers that happen to be the five permanent
members of the Security Council of the United Nations.
In spite of valorous speeches on non-proliferation, it
would be an illusion to imagine that these powers are
actually prepared to abandon their tool of power – the
nuclear weapon – spontaneously. Nevertheless, however
powerful they may be, they are not alone.
7. Since the end of the Cold War, more and more significant
voices have been clamouring for the elimination of nu-
clear weapons. There are various ways of addressing this
issue; multiple, ethical, economic, political, legal, even
military. But they have a common denominator: in the
first place, questioning the reasons why states consider
they have to possess this type of weapon for their secur-
ity. So true is it that today no security exists independ-
ently of the security of others. In his declaration before
the UN, Monsignor Renato Martino, permanent observer
to the Holy See said: “The idea that the strategy of
nuclear deterrence is essential to the security of a nation
is the most dangerous presumption passed on from the
previous period to the present one. Continuing nuclear
deterrence in the XXIst century will be an impediment to
peace rather than an advantage. It is a fundamental obs-
tacle to the advent of a new period of global security”
8. Arising out of the movement against nuclear weapons is
the idea being more and more emphasized that today the
purely military aspect of security is to be surpassed as a
legacy that belongs to another age. A surpassing founded
on the famous Hegelian concept “Aufhebung” that at the
same time underlies abolish and elevate, eliminate and
17
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
FRANCE
accomplish. Cooperative security is in fact still confined
to the state view and a conservative vision of the interna-
tional system, the Westphalian system that has lasted for
centuries. UNESCO is to be thanked for opening the
debate on a contemporary approach to the question of
security. The concept of human security can now be
defined briefly in four words: human finality, globality,
interdependence, rationality that seem quite suited to the
reality of today’s world. Obviously, in this context, there
is no room for nuclear weapons.
9. Going from inter-state insecurity that tends to justify mil-
itary reinforcement to collective security in the name of
the principle of human security is no small matter. It is a
process, as the Palme Commission stated in 1982 that
“should in the long run transform the vision that has been
stimulating and perpetuating the arms race between the
major powers”. With common security, the dilemmas of
defence and security could finally disappear. The road to
denuclearisation leads the way to a vision of global se-
curity springing from a growing allergy to the military
nuclear issue. It seems obvious to me that, faced with
such a tremendous challenge humanity cannot do without
the United Nations “The only world institution that has
the legitimacy and competence on account of its univer-
sal composition” as stated by the present General Sec-
retary Kofi Annan. Is it advisable for this reason for it to
be allowed to respond to the demands being expressed
today in different forms by the peoples of the whole
world ? Therefore, the organisation must be revitalised to
take seriously into account the diversity and interdepend-
ence of the world. It must adopt a more democratic way
of functioning so that peoples and citizens have the au-
thority to speak out and be heard. It is undoubtedly the
most appropriate institution for drawing up and imple-
menting a convention to ban all nuclear weapons.
10.Without question, this is a challenge that calls for the
participation of all citizens in the field of international
politics. NGO’s have a vital part to play in informing civil
society, to debate, to act, to influence national and inter-
national institutions, so that whatever may perpetuate an
outdated analysis of security relying on nuclear weapons
will be outlawed. In this way, a network of international
communication for organizing activities in common is a
precious asset. The international community is undoubt-
edly capable of surpassing the nuclear age, but it will not
be an easy process or a quick one. To sum up, the rhythm
of the process will depend largely on the contribution of
each one of us. It is a battle which is evidently worth the
trouble.
❑ ❑ ❑
18
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INDIA
SECURITY WITHOUT NUCLEAR
WEAPONS
Mr Chintamani Mahapatra
Dr. Associate Professor
Centre for American and West European
Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
New Delhi 110067
India
Email: chintamanim@hotmail.com
Introduction
There is No Security in a Nuclear World:
•The only weapon that threatens the extinction of entire hu-
man civilization is nuclear weapon. No country has used
this weapon since the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945.
But the fear of a nuclear war has existed since then.
•The event of 11 September 2001 has further increased the
fear of use of this deadly weapon—this time by non-state
actors. The suspected connection of a few Pakistani
nuclear scientists with Al Quaida terrorist group provides
substantial basis to this fear.
•After all, nuclear weapons do not deter terrorists and
criminals. Nuclear terrorism thus makes eliminating these
weapons an urgent need. According to the CIA, a number
of terrorist organisations are seeking chemical, biological,
radiological and even nuclear agents and there are
instances when some of them have contemplated using
such weapons.
•Nuclear weapons in the hands of less disciplined states and
well-financed terrorist groups, often motivated by
ideological rage and ethnic hatred, may not be highly
sophisticated, but are more likely to be used.
•Existence of nuclear weapons is a “dynamic motivation
for proliferation.” It is also a potential direct source of pro-
liferation through seizer, theft and illegal sale of such
weapons.
•Unfortunately, motivations of nations for keeping nuclear
weapons have not changed. The US motivation is for
superpower status, Russia for great power status, China for
Security without Nuclear Weapons
countering domination by Washington and Moscow, Bri-
tain and France as insurance against US withdrawal and
prestige; India to prevent Chinese domination and Pakis-
tan to prevent Indian domination.
•Some argue that nuclearization of India and Pakistan has
made nuclear disarmament an increasingly remote
possibility. But this event has actually highlighted the need
for nuclear disarmament more forcefully. So does the US
proposal for establishing a National Missile Defence sys-
tem, which has revived the classical debate on defence vs.
deterrence. The ABM Treaty seeks to make deterrence
work. But the NMD concept seeks to bypass it and
emphasizes defence. Development of such defences
would discourage dismantling the nuclear arsenal.
Swimming Cannot be Learnt through
Correspondence Course:
•While a lot of talks have taken place on achieving a
nuclear free world, currently no serious negotiations for a
nuclear free world are being attempted. The nuclear
weapons states have refused so far to begin a preliminary
investigation of the feasibility of nuclear weapons elimi-
nation.
•Advocacy of nuclear disarmament by some governments
has been an exercise in public relations or propaganda. No
government has yet come out with a disarmament proposal
acceptable to all, including its adversary. Indian Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s proposal for a Nuclear Free
World fell on deaf ears. It was proposed by a non-nuclear
state! A serious process of disarmament has not been
encouraged.
Mr Chintamani Mahapatra
19
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
•One of the most noteworthy advocacies of nuclear
disarmament is the Canberra Commission. But this
report “only proposed more modest measures of
reductions and reduced alert statuses.”
Problems and Bottlenecks:
Secrecy and Lack of Transparency:
•The new “Strategic Concept” of NATO announced in
April 1999 says that its nuclear forces consist of “dual-
capable aircraft and a small number of United Kingdom
Trident warheads.” The B61 bombs constitute the nuclear
parts of the aircraft, but their presence in various European
bases are Ôshrouded in secrecy.’ While the role of nuclear
weapons in American military strategy is relatively margi-
nal, the secrecy surrounding it raises suspicion.
•The recently declassified documents related to secret
deployments of US nuclear weapons around the world has
come as a surprise to many, especially deployments in
sensitive places like Japan, Taiwan, Greenland and
Iceland. The Pentagon has withheld information on other
locations.
Conventional Wisdom: Logical, but Untrue:
•Deterrence is not necessarily a pre-requisite for peace.
Deterrence doctrines have encouraged arms race, since in-
herent in this doctrine is the fear that deterrence may fail.
This leads to the development of second strike capability
and proves that deterrence is not a full proof doctrine, but
certainly an expensive one. This doctrine has proved to be
counter-productive by stimulating nuclear arms race. The
cost of such an arms race is Himalayan. If the Manhattan
Project cost $20,000,000,000, the cost the nuclear arms
race during the Cold War is beyond comprehension.
•The concept of nuclear deterrence is based on false logic.
First, it would not work in the case of a nuclear war
generated by miscalculation, accident, blackmail, terro-
rism etc. Secondly, nuclear capability has not prevented
non-nuclear states from launching attacks or fighting wars
against nuclear powers. Nuclear weapon capability of
some nations have not deterred non-weapon states from
attacking them: China against the American forces during
the Korean War, Vietnam fought against China in 1979,
Argentina against the UK in Falkland Islands, and Egypt
against Israel in 1973.
•Nuclear capability did not help the US win the war in Viet-
nam, the USSR win the war in Afghanistan, and China
achieve decisive victory against Vietnam. India’s nuclear
capability was of no use in its fight against the terrorists in
Sri Lanka or in Kashmir. Pakistan could not save the Tali-
ban with its nuclear weapons!
•Nuclear deterrence did not work between nuclear weapon
powers: Sino-Soviet border war in 1969 and the Indo-Pak
war in Kargil sector in 1999.
•The most powerful nuclear weapon powers have
experienced worst defeats: The US in Vietnam and the
USSR in Afghanistan.
•The only time nuclear weapons have been used “was in far
less compelling circumstances”. Use of nuclear weapons
against Japan was like pumping yet another bullet into a
dead man.
•Conventional wisdom suggests that nuclear weapons
provide security. These weapons could not prevent the
collapse of the Soviet Union!
•The notion that the US and the USSR did not fight war
against each other due to deterrence is only a belief. The
argument that existence of nuclear weapons kept Europe
peaceful is a half-baked idea. It can also be argued that
such weapons continue to keep the proverbial Sword of
Damocles hanging over the Old Continent. Logical
thinking may not lead one to truth!
Lessons To Be Learnt:
The Cosmos is Like a Cobweb.
Every process is linked to Every Other.
•The nuclearization of South Asia has made it evident that
nuclear deterrence and non-proliferation doctrines cannot
co-exist. A doctrine of comprehensive proliferation – both
vertical and horizontal – should replace these two
doctrines.
•About forty countries, which have nuclear capacity but not
the nuclear bomb, have set an example of restraints for
others. But the eight nuclear weapon capable countries can
set a better example for others by eliminating their
arsenals.
•The linkages between nuclear technology, nuclear prolife-
ration, nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament have to
be understood and appreciated.
•If one can verify with reasonable degree of assurance that
139 NNWS parties to the NPT are nuclear weapon free,
there is no technical reason why this should be impossible
in case of NWS.
•The world’s hierarchical power structure would not
change much if all the existing nuclear arsenals were
eliminated. The US would still be the number one power in
the world. The NATO can take care of conventional Rus-
sian capability. China, India and Pakistan would continue
to be number one, two and three powers of Southern Asia
respectively.
Preconditions and Models for
Complete Nuclear Disarmament:
Let us Not Ask for the Moon, but Let us Try a
Voyage to the Moon:
•Idealistic proposals for achieving a nuclear free world are
abound; such as surrender of national sovereignty to an
international authority (Maybe the UN), which would
have control over nuclear weapons. Secondly, there should
be an open world with free movement of people and a min-
imum level of political stability. Thirdly, establishment of
INDIA
20
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
democratic societies where people could have larger says
in governmental decision-makings. Fourthly, the existing
state system is incompatible with nuclear disarmament
and global reform should be undertaken to achieve peace,
economic well being, social and political justice and eco-
logical balance. Finally, unresolved problems, such as ter-
ritorial disputes and historical animosities in the Middle
East, South Asia and East Asia should be settled as a
precondition to a nuclear free world.
•All these idealistic proposals are important and useful. But
the goal should be to go ahead with nuclear disarmament
without waiting for the perfect realisation of all these
goals. Most of the root causes of international problems
have existed before the nuclear age and complete resolu-
tion of those problems need not be made the prerequisites
for achieving a nuclear free world.
The Road Map:
Impossibles Are in the Present. Everything Is
Possible in the Future:
•Those who believe they are protected by their or their
allies’ nuclear arsenals pose the greatest challenge to ef-
forts towards a nuclear a free world. They need to be con-
vinced that nuclear weapons are neither essential nor best
ways to ensure security.
•While public opinion on the nuclear issues is important,
public opposition to nuclear weapons is not sufficient to
achieve a nuclear free world. Deployment of Pershing and
Cruise missiles in the 1980s in the face of protests is a
bright example. Moreover, public opinion is not respected
much in non-democratic societies, some of which are nu-
clear weapon states.
Converting the Believers/Doubting Thomases:
•Nuclear weapons cannot be dis-invented, but existing ones
can be eliminated and further proliferation can be effect-
ively prevented.
•Danger of cheating will always remain, but cheating will
be more difficult in an environment of a nuclear free world
than in a world packed with deterrence doctrines.
•Ever since the nuclear export controls are in place since
the mid-1970s, “no diversion or misuse of a safeguarded
plant or material has come to light. No nation, moreover,
has alleged that another, which it dislikes or fears, has
breached a safeguards agreement.”
The Crucial First Step:
•A Convention for the Prohibition of the Use of Nuclear
and Radiological Weapons can be the first step towards
eliminating the nuclear weapons. However, it should not
be modeled on the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use
of chemical and bacteriological warfare. After all, chem-
ical and bacteriological weapons have been used several
times after 1925 and likewise use of nuclear weapons can-
not be discounted so long as the weapons exist.
•A Nuclear Weapons Convention patterned after CWC and
BWC is more appropriate. If these two weapons could be
banned before their total elimination, banning of nuclear
weapons use can also be done now.
It is necessary to throw the baby with the bath
water:
•There is sound logic in favour of continuing nuclear en-
ergy. But eliminating the use of nuclear power can be a
sure way of preventing weapons proliferation. Italy has
closed down its nuclear power plant and Sweden has plan-
ned to go without nuclear power by 2010.Verification and
transparency in this case will be easy. After all, the techno-
logy for enriching reactor fuel and processing spent fuel
are not much different from the one needed for making the
nuclear weapon. As long as there is a nuclear power indus-
try, ‘nuclear weapons are only a year away’.
•Closing the existing nuclear power plants and preventing
the construction of new ones should accompany managing
existing fissile materials of all kinds of all the countries.
Non-state actors do not have yet the know-how for making
weapons and a few quantities of stolen fissile materials
will be of no help to them. The anti-nuclear groups thus
should campaign against all kinds of nuclear power plants,
including research reactors and nuclear submarine pro-
grammes.
Who Should Do It?
Nation-states
•All the nations should adopt a doctrine of comprehensive
non-proliferation by eliminating existing weapons, nu-
clear programmes and preventing further vertical and
horizontal proliferation. Selective and piecemeal ap-
proaches may be useful for arms control, but not nuclear
disarmament.
• All the nuclear weapon powers will have to sit together
and take steps towards total nuclear disarmament, re-
placing the existing bilateral arms control efforts by the
US and Russia. Such a measure may be more useful than
extravagant conferences involving all the nations and
leading to endless talks.
•It is time perhaps to revisit the Baruch Plan – the first ever
proposal for nuclear disarmament. It was rejected by the
former Soviet Union, which felt that it would have per-
petuated the US monopoly over atomic weapons. This
proposal can be modified and an international authority
can be created to take charge of all the nuclear weapons
before they are destroyed.
•Transparency has always been considered a precondition
for total elimination of nuclear weapons. The power of the
IAEA, scope of its activities and improved technical
means of verification need to be achieved and the safe-
guards system should be applicable to all nations on a
non-discriminatory basis.
INDIA
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Non-State/Civilian Actors:
•The nuclear danger and the need for abolishing the nuclear
weapons should be made part of school and college curric-
ula all over the world.
•Grass-root political leaders, religious leaders, peace activ-
ists, philanthropic bodies and even all sections of local and
national bureaucracies should be made aware of the
problems of nuclear weapons and necessity to deal with it.
•In other words, debates, discussions and research on nu-
clear issues should not be confined to the strategic com-
munity alone. The role of media, among others, is essential
to spread awareness. More than the print media, the visual
media has a larger role. Even the illiterates watch televi-
sion.
•Artistes, painters, play-writes, novelists, cartoonists and
film producers too have a role to play.
•A dialogue among civilizations and an inter-faith initiative
to address this menace may be useful. Christians, Hindus,
Jews, Muslims and Buddhists have the nuclear weapons
capability. Ancient civilizations of Asia, Medieval
civilizations of Europe and modern civilizations of
Americas and Africa are in possession of nuclear weapons
capability. The post-industrial societies, industrial soci-
eties, newly industrializing societies and developing soci-
eties have these weapons. Since these weapons threaten
life on the planet, let there be mega efforts to address this
issue.
•The increasing interdependence of nations can serve as an
anti-dote to nuclear war. If ways and means are adopted to
enhance this process, those possessing WMD will realise
the uselessness and cost of such weapons. True inter-
dependence would bring back the concept of Mutual
Assured Destruction and enlarge it to the globe at large.
❑ ❑ ❑
INDIA
22
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IRAN
Balance of Positions on National Security:
A Combination of Disarmament and Deterrence.
An Iranian Perspective
Mr Heydar Ali Balouji
A. Introduction
Whenever a politician is asked about some vital aspects of
national interest of his or her country, most probably, natio-
nal security would stand at the top priority. History shows
that the states have resorted to any means to assure their
national security. In categorizing the state’s acts with re-
spect to national security we are facing two important ways
which, in a conceptualized framework, could be deterrence
(military) and disarmament (political).
BALANCE OF POSITIONS ON NATIONAL
SECURITY: A COMBINATION OF
DISARMAMENT AND DETERRENCE.
AN IRANIAN PERSPECTIVE
Mr Heydar Ali Balouji
Researcher
Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS)
Aghaee St
Niavaran
Tehran
Iran
Email: balouji@yahoo.com
Summary
Countries have two important ways of maintaining national security: disarmament and
deterrence. It is true that the states are responsible for defending their national security as
it is enshrined in the Charter under the “chapeau” of legitimate self-defence, and there is
no doubt that they need some arsenals for that end. But the idea is that, while the use of
weapons of mass destruction is devastating, conventional weapons are more reasonable
instruments for ensuring national security. Such a policy means a combination of disarma-
ment (focusing on the elimination of weapons of mass destruction) and deterrence (the
need to obtain warfare instruments).
It is clear that deterrence involves a strategy of threatening
punishment or denial to convice others that the costs of their
anticipated action will outweigh the gains. The means by
which states pursue policies of deterrence include increas-
ing their general military capabilities and developing super
weapons of mass destruction (1). Nuclear weapons were the
most important element of deterrence between the U.S.A.
and former Soviet Union in the Cold War era. Also these
kinds of weapons were considered the national aim for
some other countries to achieve a deterrent power.
23
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IRAN
C. Lessons Learned
1. New Dimensions of Security
In traditional approach to security, military was highlighted.
Responding to the military challenges including suppres-
sing internal riots and defending against foreign enemies,
was the main task of security for the governing states. But
now the situation has changed and new dimensions of
security have emerged. Of course, it is not to say that
military dimension of security has been perished, but at
least the new dimensions have got more importance, which
can even overshadow military security (5). And it is for this
reason that powerful developed countries pay attention to
the new dimensions of security and avoid of focusing on
merely one dimension. The new challenges of national
security in globalized era have proved and got increasing
importance. Therefore, a new strategy of national security
comprises of a multi-sided approach.
Even the very meaning of military security has changed and
technology improvement has brought new warfare instru-
ments that does not necessarily include nuclear weapons. In
response to new military challenges like terrorist attacks or
asymmetric warfare, nuclear weapons are less effective (6).
2. Changes in Deterrence
Through the process of globalization, the concept of deter-
rence has changed both in theory and practice.
In theory with remoralization of international relations and
in the light of globalization and denunciation of warfare, we
are witnessing a movement that considers nuclear weapons
as illegal. The ICJ in its advisory opinion of 1996 did
mention about inhuman effects from use of nuclear
weapons (7).
Also, by the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet
Union, defenders of nuclear deterrence changed their con-
ception of national security. The improvements of the
1990’s, in the field of nuclear disarmament, like indefinite
extension of NPT, adoption of CTBT, 1997 Protocol to NPT
and 2000 Review Conference of NPT are signals of less-
ening of the importance of nuclear deterrence among states.
In general I can say that:
1. Deterrence is not the cornerstone of national security po-
licy of states as it was attractive in the past.
2. Deterrence has extended its meaning and extended to the
new fields like economy.
3. Deterrence has moved from dominant international sys-
tem level to the subsystem level, like deterrence between
regional states.
4. Deterrence is not an explicit strategy of the states, but it is
implicit and hidden (8).
D. Iran
Iran is blamed for trying to acquire weapons of mass de-
struction and specially nuclear weapons (9). There is no
evidence of such a claim and inspections conducted by
On the other hand, disarmament, while having several
meanings, mostly and practically equals arms control,
which is measures taken unilaterally or through agreement
among states to reduce the danger of war by such means as
partial disarmament, security arrangements to avoid nuclear
war and stabilization of force and weapons levels (2).
Regardless of deterrence or disarmament as a slogan or real
end of national interest of the states in international arena,
history shows the result of these policies. Relying on merely
one of these options could lead a state to insecurity. The
question is to what extent these policies should be resorted
to as to ensure national security of states. What are the
lessons of related experiences for living in the 21
st
century?
And how can the situations in Iran be analyzed in this
regard?
To answer these questions, first I will review the result of
related national security policy of some great powers. It is
needed to say that this article will not cover all aspects of
national security policy, but the main focus will be on nu-
clear weapons. And second, an Iranian perspective will be
provided.
B. Experience
From the beginning of nuclear age, NPT regime has been a
cornerstone in the state’s approach towards nuclear
weapons. As it divides the countries to haves and have-nots
(3), most of the countries are not allowed to obtain these
weapons and only P5 permanent members of the security
council are entitled to have nuclear weapons. Therefore,
nuclear deterrence mostly can be realized between the re-
cent group of states, but as some of the others were critic of
the discriminatory provisions of NPT, and have challenged
this kind of regime.
Also in reality we have and had some nuclear weapon sta-
tes, 5 plus others, for whom nuclear weapons were the most
important instrument to assure their national security. I am
considering the question that whether these weapons were
enough for that end? And while some of the powerful
advanced countries could obtain nuclear weapons, why had
they voluntarily have ignored nuclear weapons option?
For the first question, the answer is that nuclear weapons, as
the history of the former Soviet Union indicates, were not
proper instrument to maintain security. The Soviet Union
reliance on the nuclear power not only could not ensure its
vital interests of integrity and continuity, but also with more
attention on nuclear and military strength, even forgot the
other needs in social, political and economic sectors. And
finally this imbalance led to its collapse (4).
As mentioned above, although there are some countries like
Japan or some European countries that have enough
economic base to invest on nuclear weapons, they did not
act for this end. The answer for this apparent paradox is
provided in the second section of the article.
24
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
IAEA have proved Iranian clean hands, and also Iran has
sponsored a new kind of inspections called voluntarily
inspections. Regardless of the matter, I should consider the
question that whether nuclear option is favoured for Iran or
not? It is needed to say:
1. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s positions and actions are
based on Islamic epistemology according to which any
use of weapons of mass destruction can not be justified.
As these kinds of weapons are inhuman, Iran has de-
nounced any pro-nuclear positions and invited internatio-
nal community for total and final elimination of nuclear
weapons (10).
2. Further to positions about nuclear weapons, Iran has
sought to play an active role in international forums on
disarmament for codifying international law of disarma-
ment and has offered proposals to improve and obtain a
comprehensive disarmament. Also, Iran has followed the
issue of nuclear free weapons zone in the Middle East and
hopes to solve problems in this way (11).
3. Iran is a developing country for which development in
social and economic sectors is very important. Due to
Iran’s increasing population and its several needs, any
use of national budget for non-useful items would be
devastative. If Iran wants to feel secured there should be
no excuse for any ignorance of domestic threats, for
being busy dealing with external threats. The experience
of some developing countries such as North Korea which
tried to invest on nuclear weapons makes the result clear,
experts believe that for developing countries nuclear
bomb would equal 10–15 years of more backdrop in
development (12). Economically securing enough capital
for getting nuclear weapon would be a great burden for
developing countries. Furthermore, the responses of in-
ternational community through actions like sanctions
would increase obstacles on the process of development.
India and Pakistan 1998 nuclear tests led them to more
insecurity instead of strengthening their nations security
(13).
4. Iran is nearly surrounded by atomic neighbours. Because
Russia on the north, Pakistan on the east and recently the
U.S.A. on the south are equipped with nuclear status. But
Iran does not have any strategic problem with its neigh-
bours for solving which nuclear weapons would be ne-
cessary. Hypothetically, Iran’s poor nuclear arsenal
would be non-useful against weak neighbours and inef-
ficient against strong nuclear arsenal of some powerful
rivals like the U.S.A. More than that, any try to get nu-
clear weapons can be responded by pre-emptive attack
(14).
5. With the improvement in the field of disarmament in the
last decade, there is a hope of progress even with obs-
tacles emerged provisionally. While, at the peak of the
Cold War, any idea of inspection and disarmament was
denied as the superpowers had suspicious views against
each other, détente years and confidence building meas-
ures led to agreements on disarmament and this as a pro-
cess is going ahead. So there could be strong hope for
total nuclear disarmament too.
Also, as it was mentioned, with the rapid improvement of
technology, which can change rules of game in internatio-
nal relations from hardware to software, the status of
nuclear weapons has been weakened (15).
6. Finally we should ask whether international regime of
non-proliferation could tolerate any crossing of its red
lines? The answer is no. Because, even if a country is not
a party to NPT, with the resolution of the security council
in 1992, any try to get weapons of mass destruction,
would be treated as against international peace and
security. It means that, in such a case, the Security Coun-
cil is entitled to respond coercively according to the
chapter seventh of the Charter (16).
E. Notes
1. Jack C. Plano and Roy Oltan. The International Rela-
tions Dictionary (USA: Longman, 1998) p 181.
2.Ibid. p. 216.
3.NPT. Article 9(3).
4. Saideh Lotfian. Strategy and Methods of Strategic
Planning (Teheran: IPIS, 1997) p. 41.
5.Ibid. p. 157.
6. Abdul Hossein Hojjatzadeh. ”Revolution in Military
Security”. Amniat-e Melli. Vol. 1. No. 1. Fall 1999.
P 106.
7. Heidar Ali Balouji. ”Military Security in the Light of
the Globalization”. Gofteman-e Amniat-e Melli. Vol. 1,
No. 2, 201. P. 94.
8.Ibid. p. 105.
9. Haleh Vazizri. ”Iran’s Nuclear Quest: Motivations and
Consequences” in Raju Thomas (ed.) The Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Regime, prospects for the 21
st
century (Macmillan press, 1998); Geoffrey Kemp (ed.)
Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Options www.nixoncenter.org.
January 2001.
10. Mohammed Javad Zarif – Iranian Deputy Foreign
Minister in the Parliament Session for Ratification of
the CWC June 1997.
11.Mohammed Javad Zarif. ”The Necessity of a Nuclear
Free Zone in the Middle East”. Ettela’at, 23 May 1999.
12. Amin Tarzi. ”Non-Proliferation Regime” Negah. June
2000, p. 38.
13. Reza Masoori. ”It Happened in the Neighborhood”.
Payam-e Emrouz (June. July 1998) p. 92.
14. Heidar Ali Balouji, Op. Cit. P. 105.
15. Hojjatzadeh. Op. Cit. P. 114.
16. Resolution of the Security Council, December 1992.
IRAN
25
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
RUSSIA
Summary
Mr Veniamin Vakhmistrov
Could and would elimination of the nuclear weapons make
Russia secure? According to materials being published in
Russia’s military press, military experts see the answer to
this question in the following way: ”Essentially – yes, but –
not yet”.
Why ”essentially – yes”? First, the high political leadership
and military command of the Russian Federation repeatedly
declared and continue to declare, that they act not only for
non-proliferation, for the comprehensive banning of tests,
but also they aim at complete elimination of nuclear arms as
their goal. This principle is fixed officially and unambigu-
ously in the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation,
authorized by President Vladimir Putin.
Second, the military and politicians together assert that fo-
reign-policy is clearly aimed at avoiding all war, including
nuclear conflict.
Third, radical internal political changes in Russia have
caused conceptual changes in state leadership’s notion of
national security. According to the text of the National
Security Concept of the Russian Federation (a basic docu-
ment in this sphere for the Russian authorities) Russia has
no obvious external opponents today. Thus for today, Russia
has no enemies to target their weapons on.
Fourth, modern Russia has had to face unprecedented eco-
nomic decline in the last ten years. It seems to be quite clear
that in such conditions Russia alone is unable neither to
participate persuasively in the arms race or to maintain a
quantitative balance to the USA strategic nuclear arms, nor
even to solve the problem of reliable maintenance of the
COULD AND WOULD ELIMINATION
OF THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS MAKE
RUSSIA SECURE?
Analysis of Russia’s Military View
Mr Veniamin Vakhmistrov
Military Politology Expert, Ph D
Republican Humanitarian Institute
St Petersburg
Russia
Email: ven_sv@mail.ru
nuclear arsenals. Finally it is hard to search for arguments
against the statement that because of the Russia’s economic
needs, nuclear disarmament will help to make available real
financial resources and to concentrate them in other vital
fields required for economic recovery.
Estimating the military and political situation of today the
military command recognizes that the alignment of forces is
determinated not so much by quantitative characteristics of
arms but mostly by its qualitative ones: informational, tech-
nical and spiritual. In other words, in the scenarios of sup-
posed wars of the 21st century the role of nuclear weaponry
is obsolete.
Hence, from the theoretical point of view on the character of
modern and future wars, from the point of practical eco-
nomic and military expediency view, Russia should not dis-
miss the idea of comprehensive nuclear disarmament when
further nuclear supertension becomes financially senseless.
In the same respect military experts directly specify that in
modern conditions a priority task for the maintenance of in-
ternational and national security is not nuclear weapon
deterrence, but a prevention of further proliferation of the
nuclear weapons. A major shift has taken place in the
direction of countries, such as India, Pakistan, China, Iran,
and together with them Israel. The nuclear world of the
21st century becomes more and more multipolar. The threat
of nuclear terrorism, accidents connected with nuclear
weapons; dangers of non-authorized employment really
exists and may well increase. After ”Kursk” submarine
tragedy and September 11 events in New York it is more
clear than ever.
(to be continued)
26
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Still everything seems to indicate that in the Russian strate-
gic mentality of today prevail the upholders of the views on
the international security strengthening through the expan-
sion of the range of nuclear weapons deterrence means. At
RUSSIA
Could and Would Elimination of the
Nuclear Weapons Make Russia Secure?
Analysis of Russia’s Military Views
The following survey is based mainly on materials of the
Russia’s official documents and the military press of the last
years. It has to be started with a wellknown fact that the end
of the 20
th
century was characterized by the geopolitical
changes which hardly one could predict even twenty-thirty
years before. The Soviet system, that controlled a huge part
of global space, has disintegrated unexpectedly. Russia, as
the largest post-Soviet new state formation
1
, has become a
successor of the USSR in the international affairs and has
accumulated in its arsenals all nuclear potential of the for-
mer Soviet Union.
Ten years have passed since Russia had set foot on an inde-
pendent way of state construction and the global opposition
of two military coalitions – NATO and Warsaw Treaty Or-
ganisation had stopped. As a matter of fact during this pe-
riod the world lives without nuclear arms race, without
ideological opposition of socialism and capitalism, without
iron curtain, that had divided formerly European East and
West. In the other words, one can conclude that the former
base for nuclear antagonism has disappeared and is absent
now.
Under this circumstances it is natural to put and discuss a
question about radical and complete elimination of the
nuclear weapons. Isn’t it a historical chance for a decision
of this problem in a practical way? According to the
materials being published in Russia’s military press, milit-
ary experts see the answer to this question in the next way:
”Essentially – yes, but nevertheless – not yet”.
Why ”essentially – yes”? Firstly, the high political leader-
ship and military command of the Russian Federation
repeatedly declared and continue to declare, that they act
not only for creation of the nuclear weapons non-prolife-
ration universal state, for stopping and comprehensive ban-
ning of its tests, but moreover, they declare a complete eli-
mination of nuclear arms as an ultimate goal. This principle
is fixed officially and unambiguously in the Military
Doctrine of the Russian Federation
2
, authorized by the Pre-
sident Vladimir Putin.
Secondly, the military and the politics assert in one tune,
that in the foreign-policy sphere is clearly marked the tend-
ency of decrease of war unleash threat for Russia, including
the nuclear one. According to the General of Army Anatoly
Kvashnin, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed
Forces, the large-scale threat for Russia is improbable
3
.
Such approach is set in to the basis of the Russian Federa-
tion Armed Forces Plan of Construction for 2001-2005 and
the State Program of Arms and Military Equipment Devel-
opment for 2001-2010.
In the Russia – NATO Founding Act (1997)
4
is fixed the
state on establishment of partner relations between former
opposite sides. It means, that all major decisions on local-
ization of arising threats henceforth will be accepted in
common. Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation
Sergey Ivanov emphasizes now the importance for Russia
to develop co-operation with NATO in a practical mode,
where Russia ought to have a status of enjoying full rights
partner
5
.
The same mutual understanding has been achieved with
China, that allowed Russia to reduce additionally on this di-
rection some military formations and units. ’’Here and in
Siberia, – Anatoly Kvashnin declares – there is no a single
completely deployed division’’.
In the zone of Northern European countries, because of
developed relations of complete mutual trust, Russia leaves
only two brigades of land forces. In the Moscow military
district there is left only one division of constant readiness.
All these facts evidently testify that Russia actively
supports the development of international peace and secur-
ity strengthening mechanism at the global and regional level
and practically aspires to liquidate military opposition.
Thirdly, radical internal political changes in Russia have
caused also the conceptual changes in state leadership’s
notion of the national security insurance problems. Ac-
cording to the text of the National Security Concept of the
Russian Federation
6
(a basic document in this sphere for the
Russian authorities) Russia has no obvious external op-
ponents today. In the past the USA was blamed to be a main
source of nuclear threat as the leading class antagonistic
state of ”rotting” imperialism. Now, when the USA has be-
come for many in Russia an example of civilized economy
and human rights, the former reasons for formation of the
enemy image have disappeared. The same is possible to say
the same time the role of strategic nuclear weapons is
reduced mostly to a role of psychological threat of its
deployment. Nevertheless, Russia still maintains its faith in
the principle of nuclear deterrence.
27
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
RUSSIA
about the other countries of NATO. This situation is quite
analogous to that with China.
7
Thus for today, the nuclear missile potential of Russia has
no exact checkpoints for target designation. There is nobody
to be at war with such weapon.
In – fourth, modern Russia has got into a very difficult
economic situation. Last ten years proved to be the period of
unprecedented economic decline. It was caused by the ac-
cumulated defects of the Soviet economic system, the re-
sults of the USSR disintegration, and the ill-considered
reforms after 1991. As a result the GNP of Russia in com-
parison with 1990 has been reduced more than 40%, the
production of mechanical engineering – 55%, the agri-
cultural production – 43%, the freight traffic – 3 times. The
living standard of the population has been sharply lowered,
the protracted demographic crisis has started
8
.
Russia rapidly loses prospect to join the leading economic
states. Already in 1997 the GNP of former poor China sur-
passed Russia 6 times
9
. Today overall per capita production
in the Russian Federation is approximately 30% lower than
the world average level. By the data of the World Bank
highly technological production comes only to 19% of the
Russian industrial export, while in the USA – 44%, Japan –
38%, France – 31%, Germany – 26%, China – 21%.
It is clear that a deep crisis of science and engineering has
place in Russia. As a reflection of critical situation in this
sphere Vladimir Putin adopted in 2000 the Information Se-
curity Doctrine of the Russian Federation
10
.
In the 1990s the number of personnel had been engaged in
scientific research, has decreased in Russia approximately 2
times. The enormous backlog in sphere of computer science
and communication has been outlined. Amount per capita of
mobile telephones in Russia is behind world level 13 times,
of computers – 2 times, of addresses in Internet – 8 times.
The insignificant economic growth, achieved in 1999-2001,
had place due the temporary reasons (devaluation of rouble,
growth of the energy world prices) and consequently does
not provide conditions for the accelerated revival of
Russia’s economic potential. But against the background of
the private capital flight from the country the payment of
state foreign debts has already reached more than 85 bill.
dollars over the last 10 years.
It seems to be quite clear that in such conditions Russia
alone is unable neither to participate impressively in the
arms race or to maintain a quantitative balance to the USA
strategic nuclear arms, nor even to solve the problem of re-
liable maintenance of the nuclear arsenals. Hardly anybody
was surprised with the publications that the two-parties
commission of US Congress, had been going into the ques-
tions of a nuclear materials storage safety, has stated an esti-
mate according to which the Russia’s stores of the nuclear
weapons and nuclear materials threatened gravely the na-
tional security of the USA. The appeal of this commission to
the USA administration to allocate in addition 30 bill. dol-
lars during nearest 10 years so as to help Moscow is quite
understandable
11
.
Finally it is hard to search for arguments against the state-
ment that because of the Russia’s nearest economic needs
the nuclear disarmament will help to make available real
financial resources and to concentrate them in other vital
fields for struggle with the economic crisis.
Lastly, it is necessary to take into account a proper military
aspect.
First of all, it is important to understand how the character
of modern and future wars according to which the planning
and development of military sphere (political and technical
aspects) is carried out today is realized by Russian political
leadership and military command.
As to the text of the Military Doctrine and last materials of
Russian open military press, the basic features of modern
war include:
•wide use of indirect strategic actions (diplomatic efforts,
economic sanctions, information struggle; sea, air and
land blockade of traffic communications, demonstration
of force, etc.);
•massive information preparation (information blockade,
expansion, aggression), disorientation of public opinion in
the separate states and in the world community;
•disorganization of state and military control system;
•blocking (putting out of action) of troops and weapons
control systems;
•use of not contact forms and methods of actions, distant
fire and electronic detection;
•employment of the newest highly effective systems of
weapons and military equipment (the one based on new
physical principles too);
•defeat of energetic enterprises (nuclear first of all), chem-
ical and other dangerous manufactures, infrastructure,
communications, objects of life-support;
•high probability of involving of new states, escalation of
combat operations, expansion of scales and structure of
the used means.
A hot discussion about essential understanding of the
contemporary term ”warfare” is the issue of today for Russ-
ian military press. It is caused by realization of the world
transition to a war of new generation. From one side a dis-
tinctive feature of this transition is the appearance of so
named NCW (network-centric warfare) concept. It reflects
the danger of terrorist and criminal organizations acts,
which have no united central direction and strict hierarchy
but co-ordinate their plans through Internet
12
. From another
and more important side this transition is connected with the
advanced countries adoption for service of the high-precise
and ”information” weapons
13
. It changes fundamentally the
start and process technology of the warfare, making it not
only little-contact or non-contact at all, but moreover it does
not require a little-selective destructive power of the nuclear
weapons too. Such technology was approved for the first
28
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
time by the NATO members during the operation ”Storm in
desert” (1991), then in Yugoslavia (1999) and Afghanistan
(2001). According to the estimate of the Russian military
experts, both operations have shown their high efficiency.
An important qualitative feature of the wars of new genera-
tion is also its vertical spatial scope. It is now an accom-
plished fact that the air and cosmic space are considered by
the military as a single unit in the aspect of war pursuit
14
.
The NATO members employed more than 100 military and
civil sputniks during planning and conducting of actions in
Yugoslavia
15
.
Estimating military and political situation of today the mil-
itary command recognizes that the alignment of forces is
determined not so much by quantitative characteristics of
arms but mostly by the qualitative ones – informational,
technical and spiritual possibilities
16
. In other words, in the
scripts of supposed wars of 21
st
century the role of nuclear
cudgel is not already absolute. This role can become as that
scenic ”gun”, which contrary to usual stereotype will not be
fated to shoot.
On the other hand during last years the military organization
of the Russian State has undergone so serious destructive
and collapse changes, that modern Russia is unable to pro-
vide even a former level of military potential, including its
nuclear part.
In comparison to the Soviet period the military budget of the
Russian Federation has reduced approximately 15-20
time
17
. According to Deputy Minister of Defence of RF L.
Kudelina in 2001 the national defence expenditures came to
17,99% of the federal budget. It was approximately 7 bill.
dollars
18
. This level of financing considerably concedes to
leading Western states and is comparable with military ex-
penditures of such countries as Turkey, Brazil, India, which
are not military super powers.
In 1990s up to 70% of expenditures of the Russia’s Defence
Ministry was allocated for maintenance of the Armed
Forces, basically for money allowances, regimentals and
food. The expenditures for acquisition of the material did
not exceed 20%, for the scientific researches – about 5%.
All that has resulted in the actual discontinuance of arms
modernization. In opinion of the experts, without re-
equipment of the Army and the Navy all available arms of
the Soviet period by 2005–2010 years will become finally
obsolete. If the task of re-equipment of the Armed Forces
till 2010 is to be set, it will require according to published
estimates not less than 100 bill. dollars. At a present level of
the national defence expenditures it means the allocation
for scientific researches up to 80% of all military budget,
but that is absolutely unreal. To keep partially the capacities
of the military-industrial complex allows the export of
weapons. However, according to the international estimate,
Russia has no more than 3–4% of world arms production,
thus its share in the world trade of the weapons does not
exceed 10–12% and can hardly considerably bring up
8
. At
the same time Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Account
Chamber Alexandr Piskunov emphasize that in the recent
10 years of weapons trade Russian military-industrial com-
plex hasn’t invested just a penny into fulfilment of the State
Defence Order
19
.
Under these conditions not only the quality of the Russian
Armed Forces equipment is lowering but also the level of
combat training is appreciably reducing. A most vivid
example was the wreck of newest nuclear submarine
’’Kursk’’ in August 2000 with loss of all hands. After special
investigation of this accident President V. Putin has
discharged 14 admirals and higher officers of the Navy. The
Commander-in-chief of Russia’s Northern Navy was dis-
charged too.
The Army command recognizes, that because of lack of the
material and financial means more than ten years up to 2001
no any division in the Armed Forces has carried out tactical
exercise and already a galaxy of commanders, who never
organized the measures of such scale has grown
20
.
Meanwhile the possibility to increase rapidly the volume of
military expenditures is extremely limited. It is ought to
agree with those published estimates, which assert that
unlike the Soviet period, today’s Russia is not capable to
hold deployed groupings of troops on any of strategic
directions, and in foreseeable future it can not expect for
any military superiority in case of the conflict neither in
West, nor in East
8
.
Hence, from a theoretical point of view on the character of
modern and future wars, from the point of practical
economic and military expediency view Russia should not
hush out the idea of comprehensive nuclear disarmament
especially right now on the edge of centuries and millen-
niums, when the further nuclear supertension becomes
obviously financially senseless.
In the same concern military experts directly specify, that in
modern conditions a task of real priority for the mainten-
ance of international and national security is not the nuclear
weapon deterrence, but a prevention of further proliferation
of the nuclear weapons. It has become completely clear
since the second half of 1990, when the camp of nuclear
states had been filled up by India and Pakistan, meanwhile
Northern Korea and Iran had carried out the tests of ballistic
missiles for the range about 1500 kms with the pay-load
close to the weight of nuclear ammunition. Thus a vector of
nuclear conflict threat gradually changes it direction and
displaces from traditional pairs, such as Russia and USA, to
the side of the Third World countries, such as India, Pakis-
tan, China, Iran, and Israel together with them
21
. The nu-
clear world of 21
st
century becomes more and more multi-
polar.
On the background of favourable conditions for the nuclear
weapon proliferation turned in last years, there is expressed
not unreasonable pessimism concerning the possibilities of
the international community to stop this process. One can-
not forget that according to various estimates, about 20
countries are at the ”threshold”, i.e. they are capable to
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create nuclear weapon on an available industrial basis. Thus
the threat of nuclear terrorism, accidents connected with
nuclear weapons; dangers of it non-authorized employment
really exists and has tendency to increase. After ’’Kursk’’
submarine tragedy and September 11 events in the USA it
has become more clear than ever.
More and more obvious there grows a need of cardinal
decisions in this sphere. For example, such as radical revi-
sion of haughty and flimsy attitude of the West, and USA
first of all, to Russian problems; unfolding of wide scaled
and exactly addressed financial aid to Russia in order to
stabilize its internal situation and thereby to restore a strict
order in the ensuring of the nuclear weapon arsenals
22
. An-
other example is the offer of the former Secretary of
Defence of USA Robert McNamara, published in 1997 in
the Russian press
23
, about the necessity of coming back to
the nuclear weapon free world.
A boldness of the last application is presented to the Russian
military as over maximum yet. Today it is difficult to find in
this professional circle somebody, who is ready to consider
seriously the offers on dissolution ”of nuclear club”, but not
to regard it as naive utopian and far from reality and
possibilities of the international community.
However still recently the prospects of the Soviet system
and the WTO disintegration seemed so utopian. Never-
theless it was held in front of all world. Who could really
expect such collapse degradation of the Soviet military
power or could suppose the scale of combat operations in
Yugoslavia unfolded at the centre of quiet, civilized Europe
in the end of 20
th
century, or in Afghanistan in the beginning
of the next century?
So why the idea of comprehensive elimination of the nu-
clear weapon would be excluded from our thoughts, dreams
and dealings? What yesterday still seemed utopia, tomor-
row becomes a reality, a historical validity. For example
post-Soviet Ukraine (the largest republic in former USSR)
has already realized it’s nuclear free choice after destruction
of the last nuclear warhead (October 2001), which has been
moved away before
24
.
Still everything seems to indicate that the Russian military
and the politics are not ready to believe in such prospect and
don’t want to dream about it. Their estimates of military and
political situation, being published last time, show that even
under a condition of complete elimination of world nuclear
arsenals just a number of military threats remains actual for
Russia, to which it should be able to answer adequately.
Russian leadership is deeply convinced, that it is impossible
to be done without frightening factor of the nuclear
weapon
25
.
Meanwhile not far ago (1997) Vitaly Shlikov (former Vice-
President of State Committee on Defensive Questions of
Russian Federation) wrote that neither the President, nor the
Government and the military command simply had no no-
tion what to do with the defensive complex in conditions of
market economy. But today mass media are unanimous that
after ascension to authority in 2000 the new administration
shows political will to rational comprehension of develop-
ing situation.
What does threaten to security of Russia in the beginning of
21
st
century apart from the nuclear danger?
In the text of National Security Concept of Russian Federa-
tion is affirmed, that the level and scale of military threats is
growing. First of all it is connected with NATO transition to
the force actions outside of the zone of responsibility and
without sanction of the United Nations Security Council. It
is fraught with a threat to destabilize all strategic situations
in the world. In opinion of the Russian experts behind all of
it lies the process of firmly establishing the USA global
leadership and one-polar model of the world structure
26
.
How it looks in military sphere? In the 1990s the unpre-
cedented break away of the United States in the amount of
military expenditures from all other countries has taken
place. The budget of Pentagon is equal to the military
expenditures of ten largest countries following USA
27
. Ap-
proximately a half of the world weapons export is shared by
USA. The obvious growth of offensive possibilities of con-
ventional forces of the NATO countries above defensive
potential of the Russian Federation is available. The ambi-
tions of USA are testified by Washington’s determination to
apply force in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan by demonstra-
tion of force in the Taiwan strait, by expansion of NATO, by
intervention in Somalia and Rwanda, by allocation of the
hostile states with their prosecution up to constant force
punishment (Iraq), by economic embargo (Cuba) and open
pressure (Iran, Northern Korea, Libya). It is also a new stra-
tegic concept of NATO accepted under strong influence of
Washington, which provides ”military operations in uns-
table areas” outside the former zone of responsibility.
In spite of the NATO obvious crisis and apparent dim per-
spective of it’s surviving just in the nearest 5 years there is
opinion, that the threat ”of humanitarian intervention”
28
, i.e.
introduction of international ”peacemaking of forces” in the
territory of bordering states of CIS, and first of all, in such
unstable areas as Chechnya, Georgia has place. According
to some estimates an intervention of the Western states into
the Chechen question last time was in many respects limited
by rather narrow political frameworks because of Russian
nuclear weapons possession and means of its delivery to
territory of any NATO country
29
.
A menacing one for Russia becomes a technological break-
ing away of the number of leading states and increasing of
their possibilities to create the arms and military equipment
of a new generation. It creates the preconditions for qualit-
atively new (nuclear free) stage of arms race and for radical
change of forms and ways of military operations conduc-
ting
30
. At the same time the majority of modern states, in-
cluding Russia, are not ready to conduct warfare with em-
ployment of high-technological types of weapon and even
in the foreseeable future they will not have the opportunity
to have it. Huge financial expenses and high level of
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
industry development are required for this purpose. The po-
litical leadership of such states not accidentally see the way
of the military security maintenance in possessing of the nu-
clear weapons as the cheapest mean. The presence of nu-
clear status allows them to protect themselves from prob-
able aggression unfolding by the Yugoslavian script.
At the global level a special concern of the political leader-
ship and military command of Russia is caused by
Washington’s determination to leave the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty (1972). This treaty, affirms Marshal
I. Sergeev, is a corner stone of strategic stability, the basis of
the arms control system. As a main motive of the U.S.
decision on deployment of the National Missile Defence
system I. Sergeev names the aspiration of Washington to
obtain strategic domination in the world, which in this case
first of all will has anti-Russian orientation
31
. At the same
time Sergey Ivanov (Minister of Defence) considers that
one of the reasons here is the intention of U.S. military-
economic complex to obtain astronomical profits.
32
As a reply to the U.S. actions, at the end of 2000 Russia for
the first time in last 12 years has adopted the modernized
combat complex ”Topol – M” (RS–12) with a range capa-
bility up to 10,000 kms. The launch of this rocket vehicle is
impossible to block by a nuclear explosion of the opponent.
It breaks through atmospheric ”nuclear umbrella” and has
complex of means for overcoming of the actual and per-
spective antiballistic missile systems
33
.
The atavisms of confrontation way of thinking, of a ”force
cult philosophy” manifest itself again. The chairman of
State Duma (Parliament) Defence Committee general An-
drew Nikolaev pays attention, that in Washington Russia is
frankly regarded as a source of threats. ”They do not speak,
that are going to be at war with Russia, but name her as a
source of threats. They explain it by the Russian unpredict-
ability, by inability to maintain the mark situation in the
nuclear complex, by opportunity of the nuclear technologies
outflow to the third countries”
34
. A. Nikolaev’s conclusion
is: ’’today the population of Russia has no complete under-
standing about existing threats for the state’’.
Rather certain position in his estimate has the director of the
USA and Canada Research Institute of the Russia’s Aca-
demy of Science Sergey Rogov, specifying: ”the illusions
about non-conflictness of the world development after the
end of the ”cold war” have disappeared”
35
. The discontinu-
ance of open confrontation has reduced sharply the danger
of large-scale aggression against Russia, but a new system
of international security with participation of Russian Fede-
ration has not been created. Today Russia has no enemies,
but it also has no reliable allies and partners. In long term in
case if confrontation with one of the great state or a coali-
tion occurs, Russia will find itself in isolation
8
. As a feature
of new international situation S.Rogov considers the
simultaneous presence at the system of international rela-
tions the traits of multipolarity (activity of a lot of the states
seeking a role of the centres of force, aspiration of the
countries with mass armies to regional leadership) and one-
polarity (only the USA have a cumulative set of all com-
ponents of force – economic, military and political). How-
ever S. Rogov is convinced that the return to arms race is
contraindicated for Russia.
The history teaches, that the set back of confrontational way
of thinking should not be rigidly connected only with the
military and their corporate interests. The sociological re-
searches, being carried out in the Russian Army, show
clearly the absence of former spirit of warlikeness in the
modern mentality of the officer corps. It is reasonably to
listen an authoritative opinion of the academician Valentin
Falin (in 1970s he was the USSR ambassador in West
Germany), who’s experience warns: ”The most arrant mil-
itarists, as a rule, are the civilians. The majority of officers
and generals are not so inclined to reckless judgements, as
the other civilian people who have never smelt the gun-
powder. The militant civilians not only consecrate the hare-
brained plans of headquarters, but fairly often just order the
military their way of thinking and behaviour”
36
.
Recently mass media began to show even more often the
danger of activization of the struggle for repartiation of the
spheres of influence on the post-Soviet territory and in the
immediate proximity from Russia.
As a most disturbing direction for Russia there are specified
southern borders of the country. The situation there is most-
ly determined by attempts to strengthen the influence of
Islamic fundamentalism and to cover by its ideas (including
the help of the weapon) all the region. Generally to the
South from the former USSR borders there is formed a zone
of antagonism of some states, which are capable under cer-
tain conditions to begin a new repartition of the territories.
The possibility of realization of such intentions, especially
on the background of nationalism and separatism, through
the international terrorist organizations and local militant
religious groupings activity creates a real threat of local
conflicts and wars unfolding
37
. This danger is constantly
reproduced by the tense situation in Northern Caucasus.
Traditionally there are uneasy relations on territorial issue
with Japan and China (in latent or open form).
New clash factors occurs in mutual relations with some Eu-
ropean countries in connection with the NATO expansion to
the East. A systematic preparation for acceptance of Roma-
nia, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia to the alliance takes
place. Some states, first of all the USA and Norway,
appreciablly increased the efforts of escalating their poten-
tial of military and economic presence in the Russian sector
of Arctic Region. The command of Russia’s Northern Fleet
believes, that Norway and its NATO allies aspire at any way
to assign the rights on disputable areas to themselves and to
limit ultimately the Russian presence in Barents Sea and in
Arctic Region in whole, pursuing concrete economic inter-
ests connected with the control of rich gas and oil deposits,
of fish craft etc
38
.
In this concern it is necessary to pay attention, that in
military mass media it is definitely expressed the forecasts
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
on 21
st
century, as the century of struggle of the states for
natural resources. Russia with its great mineral resources
will be involved, as the experts consider, into an orbit of
global interests of the world leading states, which will be
asserted by the military force too.
Thus, the basic character of modern system of military
threats for Russia is determined, on the one hand, by general
negative background connected with a downturn of Russian
defensive potential, a reduction of the allies number, an
increase of separatist and international extremist forces
activity, and with a growth of a number of indirect threats
from the states that are carrying out ”unfriendly” policy
towards Russia. On the other hand, a new quality to this sys-
tem under conflict conditions gives the danger of employ-
ment of space facilities, information environment and new
technologies.
The dangerous tendencies also take place in the sphere of
military-political mentality. The atmosphere of trust be-
tween the nuclear countries forms hardly and it seems, that
on the part of Russia this process has already passed the
peak of openness. If in the past mistrust to the West was
based on the fear that the Russia’s declarations about its in-
tention to disarm would not be transformed into practical
actions, now there is quite another situation. For today the
Armed Forces of Russian Federation in comparison with the
end of the 1980s has been already reduced in 4 times, while
in the world, in spite of peaceful rhetoric, this process has
not exceeded 30% of a mark
8
. At the same time there takes
place a relative increase of the USA and other advanced
countries share in the world military expenditures.
The search of further ways to provide National military
security was brightly reflected in recent public discussion
between the former Minister of Defence of the Russian
Federation Igor Sergeev and the Chief of the General Staff
Anatoly Kvashnin
39
. The campaign, had been undertaken by
A. Kvashnin in order to reduce the status of Strategic Mis-
sile Forces as an Armed Service to the level of an Arm, has
become in reality, as the analysts consider, an attack of the
nuclear deterrence principle – the basis of modern military
strategy of the state. In other words, it is only a reaction to
prevailing opinion in the highest command on priority role
of the nuclear weapons deterrence, which seems as an
absolute weapon being capable to constrain the opponent in
any conflicts, up to local wars.
The success of last point of view is most likely because of
its political comfort – only stressing the universal possibil-
ities of nuclear weapon it is possible to combine the declara-
tions about the necessity to create a ”compact army” and
aspiration to reserve the most part of status attributes of a
great power.
The scandalous image in the Russian press of discussion
between I. Sergeev and A. Kvashnin has demonstrated a
crisis of the National military security system concept with-
in the framework of old paradigm. As a condition to carry
out full-blooded military reform becomes a serious modern-
ization of the Army, because the nuclear weapons deter-
rence is already not enough for parrying the real threats to
the national security
40
.
Concerning doctrinal establishments on fulfilment of the
task to keep the readiness of the Russian Armed Forces for
the employment of available nuclear potential, there is a
marked conceptual vacuum too. On its background in the
military press, mostly in the columns of ”Voennaya Misl”
(the main theoretical magazine of the Defence Ministry)
was initiated the discussion on the concept of a ”controlled
limited nuclear war”
41
. These publications emphasize the
necessity of expansion of the nuclear weapons military
function so as to liquidate the superiority of aggressor in the
region by the tactical nuclear weapons employment from
the defending side against military objects. It is considered
that the threat of the nuclear weapons employment in re-
sponse to large-scale operations of the opponent with using
by him not nuclear, but only conventional weapons, would
put its efficiency under doubt. The target for not strategic
nuclear weapons in such case can be the nuclear power
stations of the states – aggressors. Its quantity in Western
Europe is much more, than in the European part of Russia,
and its density of placing is many times higher. Therefore
even falling behind the NATO in structure of not strategic
nuclear forces, Russia can threaten with a defeat of a greater
number of the nuclear power stations.
The availability of tactical nuclear weapons gives, in opi-
nion of the authors, a chance to prevent avalanche develop-
ment of the regional conflict into unlimited employment of
the nuclear weapons at a global level. However it is admit-
ted that the technique of specification of tactical means
sufficiency at a regional level is very complex, if it is pos-
sible at all. Thus, the military-power paradigm of the nu-
clear weapons deterrence displays a new, paradoxical in its
deliberate simplicity, way of adaptation to the new distribu-
tion of forces around post-Soviet Russia.
Eventually, the analytical materials being published in the
Russian military press, allow to make the following con-
clusions:
1. After the ”Cold War” termination the dynamics of
military and political situation in the world is determined
by three basic tendencies:
•Global economic, political and military leadership of
the USA;
•Formation of the multipolar nuclear weapons world;
•Unprecedented economic and military weakening of
Russia with preservation of its pretension to a role of
great military power.
Against this background the last actions of international
terrorist organizations find a new dangerous actuality
2. Modern official – doctrinal understanding of the system
of military threats to Russia reflects the objective causes
for reconsideration of the nuclear weapons deterrence
absolute role concept.
3. In the Russian strategic mentality of today prevail the up-
holders of the views on the national security strength-
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
ening through the expansion of the range of nuclear
weapons deterrence means.
4. The role of strategic nuclear weapons is reduced mostly
to a role of psychological threat of its deployment. Never-
theless the Russia’s political and military leadership still
considers the nuclear weapons as an unshakeable base of
the international security system.
Footnotes
1
Russia occupies 14% of world land, its frontiers stretch
for 61.000 klm.
2
See: ”Mililtary Doctrine of the Russian Federation”,
Vestnic Voennoy Informatsee (Military Information
Bulletin), 2000, No 5.
3
See: Kvashnin A. ”Main Goals of the Military Reform”,
Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), 2000, No 237. KZ is the
official daily newspaper of the Russian Minestry of
Defence.
4
Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and
Security between NATO and the Russian Federation.
Paris, 27 May 1997.
5
See: ’’Minister of Defence of the RF Sergey Ivanov
answers. ”, Argumenty e Fakty (Arguments and Facts),
2001, No 48.
6
See: ”National Security Consept of the Russian Federa-
tion”, Vestnic voennoy informatsee, 2000, No 2.
7
See: Osenev V. ”Nuclear Shield of China”, Armeysky
Sbornik (Army Review), 2000, No 12.
8
See: Rogov C. ”Vectors of Security for 2001”, NVO
(Independant Mililtary Review), 2001, No 1.
9
Quated from: Utkin A. ”Prospects of Monopolarity for
XXI Centure”, SShA – economika, politika, cultura. (The
USA: Economy. Politics. Culture), 2000, No 12.
10
See: ”Information Security Doctrine of the Russian
Federation”, Vestnic Voennoy Informatsee, 2000, No 10.
11
See: ”Payment for Fear”, NVO, 2001, No1.
12
See: Grinayev S.”NCW in American Mode”, NVO,
2002, No 5.
13
See: Zhukov V. ”The U.S. Military Command Outlook
on the Informational War”, Zarubezhnoe Voennoye
Obozreniye (Foreign Military Review), 2001. No 1, p. 2.
14
See: Rog V. ”Struggle for Air Supremacy”, NVO, 2001,
No 3.
15
See: Menshikov V. ”Military and Cosmic Policy in XXI
century”, Voennaya Misl (Military Thought), 2000, No 5,
p. 32.
16
See: Barinkin V. ”Estimate of Military and Political
Situation: Methodological Aspect”, Voennaya Misl, 1999,
No 1, p. 25.
17
See: ”Budget of the Russia’s Armed Forces”, Vestnic
Voennoy Informatsee, 2001, No 1, p. 19.
18
See: Kudelina L.’’Budget Financing of Defence
Expenditures’’, Voenno-Economitchesky Vestnik (Military
and Economic Bulletin), 2001, No O.
19
See: Solovyov S.’’Ruble Works Bad for Defence’’, NVO,
2002, No 5.
20
See: Marchenkov V. ”To Train to Economize, to
Economize while Training”, Krasnaya Zvezda, 2000,
No 244.
21
See: Kononov L. ”On the Problem of Nuclear Threat in
the Modern World”, Voennaya Misl, 2001, No 1, p. 5.
22
See: Cohen S. Failed Crusaide: America and the tragedy
of post-Communist Russia. N.Y., W.W. Norton and
Company, Inc., 2000.
23
See: McNamara R. ”Return to Nuclearless World is
Necessary”, NVO, 1997, No42.
24
See: ’’Statement of the Russia’s President Putin (of
November 13, 2001)’’, Vestnic Voennoy Informatsee, 2001,
No 11.
25
See: Karaganov S.’’Russia-NATO : it is time to build a
new union’’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 2001, No 235.
26
See: ”Mililtary Doctrine of the Russian Federation”,
Vestnic Voennoy Informatsee, 2000, No 5.
27
See: Rogov C. ”Where will the Wind Begin to Blow
from Potomac”, Krasnaya Zvezda, 2001, No 29.
28
Quoted from: Potapov V. ”Russia in the Modern World”
(Seminar ”National Security under Circumstances of
Modern Globalization”), Morscoy Sbornik (Sea Almanac),
2000, No 6, p.9.
29
Evstafiev D. ”The Tasks of Russian Military Strategy”,
Dety Feldmarshala (Children of Field-Marshal), 2000,
No 11, p. 3.
30
Khutartsev C. ”Bloodless War”, Armeysky Sbornik
(Army Almanac), 2000, No 12, p. 11.
31
See: Sergeev I. ”Russian-NATO: Dialogue after Pause”,
Krasnaya Zvezda , 2000, No 241.
32
See: Ivanov S. ’’Russia and European Security’’, Vestnic
Voennoy Informatsee, 2001, No 12, p. 12.
33
See: ”New Tradition of ”Strategists”, Krasnaya Zvezda,
2000, No 243.
34
Quoted from: Nikolaev A. ”Programme of
Stabilization”, Krasnaya Zvezda, 2000, No 236.
35
Quoted from: Rogov S. ”To Make National Interests
as a Corner-Stone”, Krasnaya Zvezda, 2000, No 246.
36
Quoted from: Falin V. ”Without Allowances for
Circumstances: Political memoirs”. Respublica:
Sovremennik Publishers, Moscow, 1999, p. 421.
RUSSIA
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
37
See: Gerasimov A. ”Threats to Russian Military
Security”, Orientir (Reference Point), 1998, No 10.
38
See: Motsak M. ”About National Interests of Russia in
Arctic”, Voennaya Misl, 2000, No 6.
39
This discussion had place in 2000 and was widely
interpreted in Russian mass-media.
40
See: Baluevsky U. ”Russia in the Modern World”,
(Seminar ”National Security under Circumstances of
Modern Globalization”), Morscoy Sbornik, 2000, No 6,
p. 14.
41
See respectively: Kreydin S. ”Global and Regional
Nuclear Deterrence: Towards system of principles and
criteria”, Voennaya Misl, 1998, No4; Ivasik V. and others.
”Nuclear Weapons and Russian Military Security”, Ibid.;
Akhmerov E. and others. ”About Direction of Regional
Nuclear Deterrence”, Ibid. 2000, No 4; Rukshin A. ”
Nuclear Deterrence: an improvement of nuclear weapons
control”, Ibid., 2000, No 6.
❑ ❑ ❑
RUSSIA
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
SOUTH AFRICA
THE RISE AND DEMISE OF SOUTH AFRICA ́S
NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAMME: LESSONS FOR
STATES WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAMMES?
Mr Guy Lamb and Ms Karen Peters
Project Coordinator and Research Assistant:
Project on Peace and Security
Centre for Conflict Resolution
University of Cape Town
Private Bag
Rondebosch 7710
Rep South Africa
Email: glamb@ccr.uct.ac.za
Summary
This paper provides an overview of the creation and termi-
nation of South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme, as
well as South African government’s policy on nuclear dis-
armament and non-proliferation since 1994. The aim of this
paper is to determine if the manner and process of South
Africa’s denuclearisation provide any lessons for other
countries with nuclear weapons programmes.
South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme was established
in 1971 by the Minister of Mines, following three decades
of peaceful nuclear energy research. In 1974 a non-nuclear
scale model of a gun-type explosive device was constructed
and tested covertly. The first nuclear device was completed
in 1977, with a cold test being planned in the Kalahari des-
ert. However, the test was cancelled following pressure
from Western governments. In 1978 the programme became
militarised, with Armscor, the state arms manufacturer,
taking control of nuclear weapons R&D. In 1982 the first
deliverable nuclear explosive device was produced, and by
1989 the South Africa had constructed a total of six
completed nuclear devices and one incomplete device. The
standard explanation for the South African government’s
decision to develop a nuclear weapons programme is that of
deterrence against an attack by the Soviet Union, and as an
instrument to gain US support should the need arise.
However, it appears as though the programme was initially
created for reasons of scientific prestige.
In 1989 the nuclear weapons programme was terminated by
President F. W. de Klerk. By 1991 the entire nuclear pro-
gramme had been dismantled, with the materials from the
nuclear devices being safely stored. A safeguard agreement
was signed with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
On 10 July 1991 South Africa signed the Non-proliferation
Treaty. The conventional explanation for the termination of
the programme is that by 1989 South Africa no longer con-
sidered a Soviet-sponsored invasion to be a credible threat,
particularly given the collapse of the Soviet Union.
However, it is possible that the apartheid regime did not
want an African National Congress (ANC) government
(and perhaps also white extremist groups) to gain access to
nuclear weapons.
Since 1994, the South African government has opposed all
nuclear tests, and subscribes to the view that security is de-
rived from nuclear disarmament and not nuclear prolife-
ration, and hence it has proactively pursued a disarmament
and non-proliferation agenda at an international level.
Despite the fact that South Africa appears to be an anomaly
in terms of nuclear disarmament (as it is the only country
that has voluntarily terminated its nuclear weapons pro-
gramme), there are two broad lessons that can be drawn for
other countries with nuclear weapons programmes. First,
given the right combination of factors and conditions,
complete nuclear disarmament at a national level can be
achieved, and second, the termination of a nuclear weapons
programme provides the disarming country with the
opportunity to gain prestige in international disarmament
circles.
Mr Guy Lamb
35
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Introduction
In terms of nuclear disarmament South Africa occupies a
unique position internationally, as it is the only country to
have developed a nuclear weapons capability and then
voluntarily relinquished it. This paper seeks to determine if
the manner and process of South Africa’s denuclearisation
provide any lessons for international nuclear disarmament
and non-proliferation efforts.
This paper consists of the following four sections: the
creation of the South African nuclear weapons programme;
the termination of the nuclear weapons programme; South
Africa’s policy on nuclear disarmament and non-prolife-
ration since 1994; and the lessons for other countries with
nuclear weapons programmes.
The creation of South Africa’s nuclear
weapons programme
South Africa was a major supplier of uranium to Western
powers from the 1940s, and as a result of this link became
involved in nuclear energy research and development
(R&D). Assistance was provided by the governments of the
United States (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK), in
particular, South African scientists received training in the
USA and Europe, and South Africa was able to source
highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the USA (Spector and
Smith, 1990: 270).
In 1948 the South African Atomic Energy Board (AEB) (it
was later renamed the Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC) in
1982) was established by an Act of Parliament to exercise
control over the production of, and trade in, uranium. This
Act was amended in 1959 to make provision for research,
development and utilisation of nuclear technology. In 1965
South Africa acquired a research reactor, and research was
initiated to develop both separated plutonium and HEU. The
former part of the programme was terminated in 1969 due to
its high cost. Throughout the 1960s the uranium enrichment
programme made steady progress, and by 1967 uranium
had been enriched on a laboratory scale through a process
based on a stationary wall vortex tube. In 1969 construction
began on a secret pilot HEU plant at Valindaba, near Preto-
ria (known as the Y-plant). In 1970, due to a number of
security breaches, Prime Minister Voster informed Parlia-
ment about the existence of the Y-plant (Beri, 1998).
In 1971, with South Africa on the threshold of developing
its own home-grown HEU, the Minister of Mines gave the
AEB permission to undertake R&D on nuclear explosive
devices for mining and construction purposes (De Villiers et
al , 1993: 99). By May 1974, a non-nuclear scale model of a
gun-type explosive device was secretly tested; and later that
year, after the results of the test were known, Prime Minister
John Voster approved plans to construct a small number of
explosive devices and to build a secret testing site in the
Kalahari desert (Beri, 1998).
The first nuclear device was completed in 1977, and a cold
test of the device at the Kalahari site was planned to test the
device’s non-nuclear components, logistics and instrumen-
tation. However, before the test could take place, the Kala-
hari site was detected by Soviet intelligence, which in-
formed the US government. Following pressure from Wes-
tern governments, South Africa cancelled the planned test,
and Kalahari site was abandoned and sealed (De Villiers et
al, 1993:100). By the beginning of 1978, South Africa was
able to produce its own HEU. It was also at this time that the
programme became militarised, with Armscor, the state
arms manufacturer, being given effective control of nuclear
weapons R&D.
In September 1979 it is widely believed that South Africa
conducted a nuclear weapons test in the South Indian
Ocean, however, to date no conclusive proof has emerged to
confirm this event.
1
In 1982 Armscor produced the first
deliverable nuclear explosive device, and by 1989, the
South African nuclear programme had constructed a total of
six completed nuclear devices and one incomplete device.
In 1989 the nuclear weapons programme was terminated by
President F.W. de Klerk. It is estimated that a total of 1,000
personnel were involved in South Africa’s nuclear weapons
programme (De Villiers et al, 1993: 102).
The dominant explanation for the South African govern-
ment’s decision to develop a nuclear weapons programme is
SOUTH AFRICA
The Rise and Demise of South Africa’s Nuclear
Weapons Programme: Lessons for States with
Nuclear Weapons Programmes?
“We must ask the question, which might sound naive to those who have
elaborated sophisticated arguments to justify their refusal to eliminate these
terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction – why do they need them
anyway!”
(Speech by South African President, Nelson Mandela at the 53
rd
Session
UN General Assembly, New York, 21 September 1998).
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SOUTH AFRICA
that it was designed to act as a deterrent against an attack by
the Soviet Union, and as an instrument to gain US support
should the need arise. If Soviet or Soviet-sponsored military
forces directly threatened South Africa, the regime report-
edly planned to announce that it had a small arsenal of nu-
clear weapons, dramatically testing one or more of the
weapons, if necessary, by dropping them from aircraft over
the ocean, hoping that such a test would oblige the US to
intervene on behalf of the Pretoria regime (Sagan, 1996: 60;
De Villiers et al, 1993:100-101). From the mid-1970s, the
South African government became increasingly concerned
about the emergence of Soviet-aligned Marxist govern-
ments in Angola and Mozambique. In addition, mainly as a
result of South African military incursions into Angola and
its support for the Unita rebel movement, Cuba sent troops
and military equipment to Angola in support of the govern-
ment.
Perceptions of Soviet-sponsored military invasion certainly
provided the impetus for the perpetuation and intensifica-
tion of the programme, however, with the benefit of hind-
sight, this explanation does not adequately account for why
a nuclear weapons programme was established in the first
place. The reason for this is that the programme was ge-
stated within the mining sector, not the military sector; and
was created prior to emergence of Soviet aligned govern-
ments in Angola and Mozambique, and even before to the
official adoption of South Africa’s policy of “Total Strat-
egy”
2
, which was first articulated in 1977 Defence White
Paper). According to Sagan (1996: 69-70), the programme
was initially established for issues of prestige and was prim-
arily championed by scientists within the mining industry in
order to enhance their international reputations. Sagan
(1996: 69-70) points out that the military was not consulted
in terms of the design and construction of the first nuclear
device. The result was the device was too unwieldy to be
deliverable by an aircraft and had to be redesigned in order
to conform to the safety and reliability standards set by
Armscor.
Termination of South Africa’s nuclear
weapons programme
Following de Klerk’s decision to terminate the nuclear
weapons programme, a Steering Committee, which includ-
ed representatives of Armscor and AEC, was tasked deter-
mining the costs and benefits of maintaining the weapons
programme. The Committee recommended the following:
the dismantling and destruction of all nuclear devices (in-
cluding the design and manufacturing information); the
decontamination of equipment; and the closing of the en-
richment plant. Furthermore, an independent auditor was
appointed to ensure that this process was completed. (How-
lett and Simpson, 1993:162; De Villiers et al, 1993:104).
In early 1990 the Y-plant was closed, and by the end of 1991
the entire nuclear programme had been dismantled, with the
materials from the nuclear devices being transferred to the
AEC for storage. Also in that year, a safeguard agreement
was signed with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA). In addition, South Africa provided the IAEA with
an inventory of nuclear materials that were in its possession.
This was followed by an inspection of relevant facilities and
sights by an IAEA team, which verified South Africa’s
inventory. Surplus nuclear material is currently being stored
in specially designed vaults that have IAEA seals and are
checked on a regular basis (Howlett and Simpson, 1993:
166-167).
In September 1990, Pretoria agreed to sign the NPT, but
only “in the context of an equal commitment by other states
in the Southern African region.” Following intensive diplo-
matic efforts, especially by the US and the Soviet Union,
Tanzania and Zambia agreed to sign the treaty. South Africa
finally signed the NPT on 10 July 1991 (FAS, 2001). In
1993, the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruc-
tion Act became law. This Act prohibits South African
citizens from being involved in programmes relating to the
construction of nuclear weapons.
Politicians, government officials and many analysts have
argued that the termination of South Africa’s nuclear
weapons programme was primarily due to the following: an
improved condition of regional security; a desire to achieve
greater international acceptance; and financial reasons. The
argument follows that in 1989 the South African govern-
ment’s perception of the likelihood of a Soviet military in-
vasion was significantly reduced following the planned
withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, Namibia’s trans-
ition to independence, and the end of the Cold War. The
termination of the programme and the signing of the NPT
were seen as a means to reduce South Africa’s international
isolation, which had been brought about by its apartheid
policies. The nuclear weapons programme was also proving
to be costly in financial terms. The initial cost of the pro-
gramme was estimated to be in excess of R700 million (in
current prices), however, the actual figure is estimated to be
significantly higher (Mackerdhuj, 1999:8; Batchelor and
Willett, 1998: 72).
There is, however, another dimension to the termination of
the nuclear programme that has not often been voiced. That
is, there is a strong possibility that the apartheid regime did
not want an African National Congress (ANC) government
(and perhaps also white extremist groups) to gain access to
nuclear weapons. According to Sagan (1996: 70-71) the de
Klerk government’s actions “spoke more loudly than its
words: the weapons components were dismantled before
IAEA inspections could be held to verify the activities, and
all the nuclear programme’s plans, history of decisions, and
approval and design documents were destroyed prior to the
public announcement of the programme’s existence”.
3
South Africa’s approach to nuclear
disarmament and non-proliferation
since 1994
Since 1994, when the ANC was elected into power, the
South African government has based its laws, as well as
both its domestic and foreign policy on the respect for hu-
37
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
SOUTH AFRICA
man rights. Hence, the government has opposed nuclear
tests, and has been publicly critical the governments of
France, China, India and Pakistan for conducting such tests.
In terms of nuclear weapons, South Africa subscribes to the
view that world security is derived from nuclear disarma-
ment and not nuclear proliferation, and consequently it has
proactively pursued a disarmament and non-proliferation
agenda. (Department of Foreign Affairs, 1998). At a natio-
nal level, the South African Parliament has passed the
Nuclear Energy Act (1999), which prohibits the nuclear
material to be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
South Africa has taken an active role in the international
arena in promoting comprehensive nuclear weapons dis-
armament and non-proliferation. In 1995, lobbying by
South Africa contributed significantly to the indefinite ex-
tension of the NPT, which, it has been argued, ensured the
viability of nuclear non-proliferation by making the non-
proliferation regime more universal (SIPRI, 1996: 589).
South Africa also played a key role in the negotiation of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) (1996), with South
Africa’s Ambassador to the United Nations having served as
the Chair of the Preparatory Commission of the CTBT Or-
ganisation.
4
South Africa has become a member of the
following non-proliferation entities: the Zangger Commit-
tee, Nuclear Supplies Group and Missile Technology Con-
trol Regime (MTCR). It played an active role in the negoti-
ation of the African Nuclear Weapons-Free-Zone (Pelin-
daba) Treaty in 1995. In terms of the Treaty, signatories
undertake not to acquire and possess nuclear explosive de-
vices. It prohibits nuclear testing, the dumping of radioact-
ive waste and armed attacks on nuclear installations.
5
In 1998 South Africa entered into the ‘New Agenda
Coalition’ (NAC) with the governments of Brazil, Egypt,
Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovenia and Sweden. The
first action of the NAC was to issue a Joint declaration,
titled, ‘A Nuclear-Weapons-Free World: The Need for a
New Agenda,’ stating they could “no longer remain
complacent” at the hazards posed by maintaining nuclear
weapons stocks. Since 1998, the NAC has introduced an
annual resolution at the United Nations General Assembly
on the need to promote a nuclear free world. At 2000 NPT
Review Conference, due the negotiating skills of the NAC,
the Nuclear Weapons States (China, France, Russian Feder-
ation, United Kingdom and United States) committed
themselves to “an unequivocal undertaking to accomplish
the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals” (Roche,
2000).
Lessons for other countries
At a superficial level the denuclearisation of South Africa
appears to be an anomaly in terms of nuclear disarmament.
After all, historically, South Africa is the only country to
have completely disbanded its nuclear weapons programme
at its own behest. This was unequivocally influenced by the
fact that prior to the creation, and during the existence of the
programme, no other African country south of the Sahara
possessed a nuclear weapons capability, and that the termi-
nation of this programme took place during an extraordin-
ary domestic political transformation, as well as at the dawn
of the post-Cold War era.
However, despite the uniqueness of the South African ex-
perience, two broad lessons can be drawn for other
countries with nuclear weapons programmes.
First, given the right combination of factors and conditions,
complete nuclear disarmament at a national level can be
achieved. In South Africa, the juncture of reduced threat
perception by the South African government, financial
constraints and concerns (though somewhat misguided) that
nuclear weapons material would be misused under a new
regime, led to the termination of the nuclear weapons pro-
gramme.
Second, the termination of a nuclear weapons programme
provides the disarming country with the opportunity to gain
prestige in international disarmament circles. The South
African government, due to skilful political positioning and
manoeuvring, has been able use its voluntarily termination
of its nuclear weapons programme as a means to gain
considerable international prestige in the area of disarma-
ment and non-proliferation.
Bibliography
Batchelor, P. and Willett, S. 1998. Disarmament and
Defence Industrial Adjustment in South Africa. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Beri, R. 1998. “South Africa’s Nuclear Policy,”
(http://www.idsa-india.org/an-oct8-2.html), 17/10/01.
De Villiers, J.W., Jardine, R. and Reiss, M. 1993 “Why
South Africa Gave Up the Bomb,”
Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 5, pp. 98-109.
Federation of American Scientists, 2001. “South Africa
Special Weapons Guide,” (http://www.fas.org/nuke/
guide/rsa/nuke/index.html), 23/10/01.
Fig, D. 1998 “Apartheid’s Nuclear Arsenal,” in Cosk, J.
and Mckenzie, P. (eds), From Defence to Development:
Redirecting Military Resources in South Africa. Cape
Town: David Philip, pp. 163-180.
Hibbs, M. 1993 “South Africa’s Secret Nuclear Weapons
Program: From PNE to a Deterrent,” Nuclear Fuel,
May 10, pp. 3-4.
Howlett, D. and Simpson, J. 1993 “Nuclearisation and
Denuclearisation in South Africa,” Survival, Vol. 35,
No. 3, pp. 154-173.
Jaster, R.S. 1994 “Pretoria’s Nuclear Diplomacy,” in
Kitchen, H. and Coleman Kitchen, J.
(eds), South
Africa: Twelve Perspectives on the Transition. West-
port, Connecticut, London: Praeger Publishers.
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Mackerdhuj, K. 1999 “Towards a World Free From
Nuclear weapons: Why South Africa Gave Up the
Nuclear Option,” Department for Disarmament Affairs
Occasional Papers, No. 1. New York: United Nation
for Department for Disarmament Affairs.
Pabian, F.V. 1995. “South Africa’s Nuclear Weapon
Program: Lessons for U.S. Nonproliferation Policy,”
The Nonproliferation Review, Fall.
Republic of South Africa. 1998. Media Statement by South
Africa on the Additional Two Nuclear Tests Conducted
by Pakistan. Department of Foreign Affairs, 30 May.
Roche, D.O.C. 2000. “An Unequivocal Landmark: The
2000 Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,”
Ploughshares working paper 00-2.
Sagan, S.S. 1996. “Why Do States Build Nuclear
Weapons: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” Inter-
national Security, Vol. 21, No.3, pp. 54-86.
Spector, L. S. and Smith, J. 1990 “South Africa,” in
Nuclear Ambitions: The Spread of Nuclear Weapons
1989-1990. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
1996. SIPRI Yearbook 1996. (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press).
Footnotes
1
At this time a double flash was detected by a US Vela
satellite over the Indian Ocean, which was characteristic of
a low-yield nuclear explosive test. South Africa and pos-
sibly Israel were suspected of being involved, however
South Africa denied that it had tested a nuclear explosive
device. Subsequently, the Carter administration in the US
assembled a panel of scientists to assess the data from the
satellite. The panel concluded that, lacking independent
collaborative data to support a nuclear origin of the signals,
the original interpretation of the satellite data could not be
justified. According to the panel, the flash could have been
caused by a combination of natural events, particularly a
micrometeorite impact on the detector sunshade, followed
by small particles ejected as a result of the impact (FAS,
2001).
2
“Total Strategy” entailed a co-ordinated, co-ordinated and
total response by the apartheid state to the perception that
there was a “total onslaught” of communist expansion in
southern Africa.
3
In 1992 there was speculation in the press that an ANC
government might transfer weapons grade uranium to
Libya, Cuba, Iran, and the Palestinian Liberation Organisa-
tion as recompense for support the ANC received during the
liberation struggle (Pabian, 1995: 10).
4
The South African Parliament ratified the CTBT in 1999.
5
The South African Parliament ratified this treaty in 1998.
❑ ❑ ❑
SOUTH AFRICA
39
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
SWEDEN
Summary
Mr Jan Øberg
CAN WE LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT
THE BOMB?
Mr Jan Øberg
Director, Researcher
The Transnational Foundation for Peace and
Future Research (TFF)
Vegagatan 25
SE-224 57 Lund
Sweden
Email: TFF@transnational.org
To summarise, if we want to rid the world of nuclear
weapons:
1) Western cosmology (or civilisation, culture) must be
addressed as deeply determining for the development of
nuclearism. We all need a deeper understanding of the
mechanisms and deep-rooted assumptions that make nu-
clear weapons look natural and legitimate (at least to those
who have them).
2) Secondly, it will be necessary to open up Western culture
to other cultural influences that are, in and of themselves,
less conducive to nuclearism, be it Gandhian, Buddhist,
Hindu, Taoist or other kinds of thinking. Particularly after
September 11, 2001, we should try to strengthen the ’soft’
peace-promoting aspects of all religions and the dialogue
among them. World unity in diversity, not uniformity, is
desirable. The very existence of nuclear weapons is a gross
negation of diversity.
3) Further, there is a need to discuss and develop a set of
truly global ethical norms that are not based on the local
neighbourhood ethics we are used to running. So far
globalisation has been military and economic, while
cultural, ethical and political globalisation is lagging ever
more behind. Western citizens and their governments have
to develop less anthropocentric worldviews and become
more humble and caring about the future for all humanity
because we have so much technological power, as some
would say more than the human race is mature enough to
handle.
4) To rid the world of nuclear and other weapons, we have to
attack the self-created, pathological enemy images and
threat assessments. There is a great need to actualise, in
pedagogical manners, the huge arsenals of non-violent
conflict-resolution and the values of mutuality, co-
existence, unity in diversity, tolerance, reconciliation and
forgiveness – to make the soft power stronger and make the
hard power weaker. The next step is to present the
alternatives to decision-makers saying something like, ”if
you pursue these different policies based on these different
norms and concepts you are likely to create fewer enemies
and win more friends in the future – in short, be more safe.”
(Some examples follow).
5) Finally, to learn to live without the bomb, we need a bet-
ter balance between male and female thinking and under-
standing of life and politics. And more women in decision-
making structures.
This leads us to the second major question raised in the
introduction: how to envision a far better, nuclear-free
world?
Mr Øbergs article will follow on page 42.
Instead of
Nuclear Weapons
New Views on Human,
Global and National Security
An international IPPNW
and Peace Researchers seminar
taking place at the Russian Federation State Duma,
Moscow25
th
March 2002
42
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Ten years after the so-called end of the Cold War, nuclear
weapons are still with us. There is the BMD, the risk of di-
version of fissile materials, the fear of nuclearisation of ter-
rorism. The weapons and their means of delivery have
become ever more sophisticated. Through base systems,
sub-marines, aircraft carriers, the global reach of militarism
has intensified. Still, in proportion to the increasing threat
all this represents to humankind’s survival as well as to
democracy and global development, public debate with
visions of a nuclear-free is desperately feeble.
Advocates of a nuclear-free world, face immensely power-
ful governments and military-industrial-scientific structur-
es. We also face the arrogance of power of the roughly 600
individuals (presidents, prime ministers, defence ministers,
chiefs of staffs and commanders) who operate the global
nuclear system, over and above the heads of 6 billion people
on Earth. There has never been a referendum on whether or
not citizens wanted to be ‘secured’ or ‘defended’ by nuclear
weapons. Indeed, one could advance the hypothesis that
nuclear weapons would be abolished if true national and
global democracy were a reality. But advocates of nuclear
freedom must also do some soul-searching and ask: have we
chosen the most effective strategies and tactics in our work
for nuclear disarmament? My answer is a definite ‘no’!
The, perhaps provocative, thesis of this analysis is that we
have:
a) underestimated the human, psychological, existential and
cultural-cosmological aspects of the nuclear age;
b) we have worked far too much against the nuclear
weapons as such (technical-material criticism) compared
to working out visions of a better nuclear-free and peace-
ful world (existential, philosophical constructivism).
Existential aspects – or: what is so
attractive about nuclear weapons?
While most people abhor nuclear weapons and war, they
also, consciously or unconsciously, embrace them as some-
thing good. Many have infused positive values into the very
existence of the Bomb. It carries a secret as to how it will
“act” the day it is used and few have ever seen a nuclear
weapon. It is mystical and belongs to a teasingly exciting
but closed society and is said to have magic powers. While
it is a threat to all, it also carries the hope of our salvation;
we can hope to obtain “security” from an evil enemy who, if
he tries to kill us, will be killed himself.
By infusing the bomb with godlike imagery and integrating
it in what is a consistent belief system bordering on deep
religiosity, people can play God themselves, become the
Destroyer and the Maker, create an eternal future or punish
– themselves and/or others. What Robert Jay Lifton calls the
“passionate embrace of nuclear weapons as a solution to
death anxiety and a way of restoring a lost sense of im-
mortality” could be, I believe, one of the least thought of
explanations of the fascination held by many vis-a-vis the
omnipotent Bomb.
Another dimension is that of individual versus collective
death. The imagery of mass-destructive weapons is filled
with allusions to death and dying. The search for the small-
est unit of life led to the atom, the splitting of which is also
the key to utter destruction. Could one argue that nuclear
mass death is more attractive or more acceptable than
individual, natural death? If it is true, as Tom Lehrer sang in
the early 1960s, that in a nuclear war “we’ll all go together
when we go, every Hottentot and every Eskimo” – then, one
may hypothesise, our individual death becomes somewhat
easier to think of and live with. The individual is relieved of
the pain and fear in meeting death alone and can imagine
that he/she will meet loved ones “on the other side.”
Closely related to this is the whole question of suicide – the
so-called balance of (nuclear) terror and nuclear war often
being compared to suicide: if we start we will get killed
ourselves. If there are any signs to the effect that our present
global civilisation and our times are suicidal, it is the first
time in human history that we are also able to carry out the
decision to exterminate ourselves and a considerable part, if
not all, of Creation
If we want to rid the world of nuclear weapons, we have to
address these deep-seated existential issues, get them on the
table, dialogue about them and overcome them as obstacles
to change. It will not help us to focus on and attack the
weapons or the nuclear managers, as is done in demonstra-
tions, petitions, disarmament and arms control negotiations
In front of us, thus, lies a huge existential, educational and
soul-searching task that can only be approached through
small-group and global dialogue and research: what are the
positive aspects of nuclear weapons that have, for fifty
years, prevented people world wide from rising against
them as the utter madness they de facto represent?
Culture, cosmology and ethics
Except for the Chinese, Indian and Pakistani nuclear
weapons, all are
Christian nukes. They are the inventions and products of a
Western or Occidental ‘social grammar’ as well as the
West’s superior technology and science. Nuclear weapons
can be seen as isomorphic with pyramidal or feudal
structures of society and are managed by an all-powerful
elite that seeks to dominate other peoples, other cultures and
Nature. Male science came across the atom when trying to
deprive Mother Nature of her secrets. Their function is
conceived within a short time perspective – Big Bangs
Can We Learn to Live without the Bomb?
SWEDEN
43
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
delivered within a few minutes over thousands of kilo-
metres, a quick ending of a war or of all of civilisation. They
are the embodiment of the power of science and technology
over ethics and spirituality.
They are isomorphic with a mono-theistic belief system.
Presumably, the user of nuclear weapons is completely con-
vinced that there is only one truth, that he possesses that
truth and that he has ‘God on our side’. In a culture based on
poly-theism and on the belief that there can be more than
one single truth, like e.g. Gandhianism and Buddhism,
nuclear weapons and their use seem more difficult to
explain and justify. Further, nuclear weapons are deeply
anthropocentric; they are extended powers of Man, the Man
that is the centre of everything, which means that there is
nothing sacred and nothing above Man. Since the test in
Alamagordo, code-named Trinity, an ever more secularised,
technocratic and God-forgetting Occident took upon it to
play God. Never before had Man been able to even think of
the decision of whether or not to let Humanity live. Hither-
to, that had belonged exclusively to the authority of God.
Since 1945 Man competes with God about being the
Almighty. And we are reminded of Robert Oppenheimer’s
“I am become Death, the shatterer of the world” as well as
Einstein’s famous dictum that everything then changed
except our ways of thinking.
In terms of ethics on might say that Kant’s categorical
imperative became outdated as a global rule. Philosopher
Hans Jonas, for instance, rightly points out that the ever
open question of what humans are or ought to be is now less
important compared to the “first commandment tacitly
underlying it, but never before in need of enunciation: That
they should be – indeed as human beings. We need, he says,
to expand Kant and observe a rule that he formulates in this
manner: “Act so that the effects of your action are
compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.”
That is, with the advent of nuclearism, we need to stress that
there should be something rather than nothing and that we
and the world will hardly survive in the long run without an
ethics of global responsibility. The fundamentally new
ethical claim is that we are responsible for preserving the
Earth precisely because we can destroy it, and that was not a
relevant issue before 1945.
There are at least other essential aspects on the Bomb as
expressive of Western cosmology. It is a deeply male-
dominated technology and civilisation. The war system and
the military-industrial system is the extreme expression of
it; the Bomb has virtually no female aspects such as
nurturing, mutuality, permanence of humanity, non-con-
tractual obligations, cultivation of Nature, respect or care
for future generations. Indeed, it is the negation of all that.
Secondly, it seems the West cannot live without enemies. If
you do not have them, you construct them. Most security
experts and politicians seem to depart from the utterly
misguided assumption that, first, there is an objective threat
assessment done and then military defence and security
policies are developed to meet them and reduce their poten-
tial impact. The whole system operates the other way aro-
und as can be seen in the reaction by the West to the dis-
solution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact: the war-
preparing system continues virtually unchanged while
images of threats and favourite enemies are produced
through a kind of assembly line
Third, the Western obsession with enemies points in the
direction of an inner weakness bordering on paranoia. The
more wealth one owns, the more power and privileges one
has in an ever more unequal world, the more there is to fear
to lose. Thus, others more easily come to look like envious,
greedy and threatening – be it refugees, asylum-seekers,
terrorists or ‘rogue’ states. All dangers have to be fought.
There is a potential terrorist or bomber lurking around every
corner – and thus we have the pathological, autistic system
of self-created threats producing ever more sophisticated
weapons and using more and more scarce resources
irrespective of what reality actually looks like. The weapons
are put to use to legitimate and justify the power system and
thereby creating more future enemies, e.g. people who hate
the West; in short, the new Bin Ladens.
Towards a vision of a nuclear-free
world
George Bernhard Shaw has said that most people look at the
world as it is and ask: why? – but what we ought to do is to
look at the world as it could be and ask: why not? I believe
this is essential; we need to develop images of a nuclear-free
world to help people overcome the sense of powerlessness
as well as overcome the obstacles mentioned above. Ad-
mittedly it is a tall order, but it has to be done by those who
see the need for change; those who benefit from the nuclear
system in particular and the military system in general can-
not be expected to develop alternatives to them. While some
people may concentrate on some alternative visions and
strategies, others may brainstorm and advocate other
changes. In the rest of this exposé, I shall focus on only a
few, fully aware that there are so many other equally
important aspects and themes.
1. Globalisation must now reach the fields of politics, NGO
activities, ethics, peace-making etc. By globalisation we
mean here a truly global dialogue and exchange. Even
future-thinking NGOs are often surprisingly ‘provincial’
thinking that if they have a national network or a European
platform that will do. It will not. The economic and military
globalisers truly see the world as one system, as one field of
operation. They are more visionary in that sense than most
alternative forces. Disarmament and de-nuclearisation must
be globalised via Internet, e-mail, travels and exchanges at
all levels. Meetings, dialogues and peace work in which
only one culture, one civilisation or one religion is repres-
ented will be increasingly irrelevant.
2. Top priority: Westerners must learn from others, receive
spiritual and other “development aid” from non-Western-
ers, humbly learning rather than merely teaching. Teaching
others (or teaching them lessons) and believing that the
West is # 1 is a serious disease found among Western
SWEDEN
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governments as well as many columnists, experts, alternat-
ivists and NGOs. So Westerners should ask others: how do
you think we can get rid of nuclear weapons and the war
system, what is your philosophy about peace and world or-
der and can you help us?
3. Non-violence must be taught and learned across the
change community. It means studying the classics and the
contemporary cases where non-violence has played a histo-
rical role. The present tendency of alternativists to accept
warfare, national military defence, humanitarian interven-
tion, bombings here and there is an implicit support to the
nuclear system.
For instance, there is far too little debate (and resistance)
among intellectuals throughout the Eastern European sys-
tem (and among Western NGOs assisting them) about
membership in the nuclear-based NATO alliance and the
nuclear-related European Union. It is an implicit endorse-
ment of violent conflict-resolution which, in its turn,
legitimate more nuclear weapons and militarism.
4. A new emphasis must be placed on non-violent conflict-
resolution, on preventive diplomacy and violence-prevent-
ive (not conflict-preventive) policies and strategies. It must
happen on the individual, the small-group level, the natio-
nal, regional and the inter-national and the global level.
That in its turn means new education. Peacemaking by
peaceful means (the UN Charter norm) requires profes-
sional education in the school system, in vocational train-
ing, in NGO communities and educational settings, in natio-
nal peace academies and throughout the international orga-
nisation system, such as in the OSCE and the UN. It takes at
least as much education to learn to mitigate and solve
conflict with as little violence as possible as it does to learn
to fight wars.
5. It is of utmost importance for democracy and pluralistic
debate that NGO continues to stand for Non-Governmental
and does not come to denote Near-Governmental. The more
state-finance NGOs (and e.g. peace research) obtain, the
greater the likelihood that they stop being alternatives to
government politics, including nuclear and other military
policies.
6. Public education about proportions and allocations of
means in this world. We should intensify the dissemination
of information concerning the general citizenry everywhere
about the allocations to the military and to repressive
systems and how much good could be done in the world if
these priorities were changed. This means also helping the
media to make a more relevant coverage of world affairs.
Over the last 25 years of lecturing and teaching in different
parts of the world, I’ve been surprised how unknown these
proportions still are even to the socially concerned – as is,
by the way, the UN Charter. It is difficult to imagine that
people find it acceptable that 75,000 to 100,000 die
unnecessarily every day from lack of food, water, shelter,
sanitation etc (not from war) while the world’s most
privileged governments pour even more billions into ‘secur-
ity.’ But how many actually know these facts? And how
many feels powerless when they hear them? Neither, I am
sure, do they find it acceptable that world military expend-
itures equal the income of the 49% poorest people on earth.
The question we must address is: why is there not a mass
protest, a mass willingness to change, an outrage and a cry
for ‘enough is enough’? Is there a deficit in awareness, in
empowerment or in democracy as we know it.
7. Central to policies for a nuclear-free world are answers
to the question: how can we learn to solve perfectly natural
conflicts world wide with as little violence as possible and
certainly without the use of mass-destructive weapons?
People everywhere must be given a chance to learn as much
about conflicts and conflict-resolution as they do about, say,
computers. We talk about ordinary illiteracy and IT illiter-
acy, but most of us are conflict illiterates.
Perhaps leaders should not become leaders before they have
something like a driving license for conflict-management?
We build safer cars and roads, we only issue driving licenses
to people who have studied theory, know the traffic signs
and have practised behind the wheel. Why? To reduce hu-
man suffering and the costs of accidents. This idea should
be emulated when it comes to conflicts in our world. No
leader would never send young boys with no military
training into war, but governments and other actors careles-
sly send military, diplomats, lawyers, former ministers, etc
out as mediators and ‘conflict-managers’ to conflict regions
without as much as a weekend course in conflict-understan-
ding psychology or mediation. Of course it must go wrong –
and when conflict-resolution goes wrong, violence takes
over and the internationals blame the local parties.
But violence comes when conflicts are deliberately provo-
ked or ignored or wrongly treated. It comes when one sees
no way out. Creative intervention with non-violent means
can help avoid the tunnel vision that violence and wars are
based on.
8. The UN Charter remains the best single document for
global peace-making. The UN is in obvious need of sub-
stantial reforms, but if more member states and decision-
makers would just honour the letter and spirit of the UN
Charter, the world would undoubtedly be a much more
humane place than it is. It is time we really take it seriously
and allocate the most competent people and much more
funds to the UN and its family. The UN is the sum total of
what its members make of it. When they speak warmly for
nuclear abolition in the General Assembly and continue to
develop nuclear systems at home, they make the world a
less safe place and undermine the normative importance of
the United Nations. Regional organisations as well as
thousands of NGOs can contribute to the UN norm of peace
by peaceful means and apply this principle to problem-sol-
ving in fields such as the environment, peace, women’s
issues, globalisation. And they could do more to honour this
principle that is the case today.
9. Ideas and norms are at least as important as organisa-
tional matters. Each human being is a potential movement
for change, including nuclear abolition. Anyone who has
SWEDEN
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learned something can help others understand. The idea that
big governmental and non-governmental organisations with
multi-million dollar budgets are the only ones who can
bring about change is utterly misleading and self-serving
for exactly those organisations. It is true that we need wider
co-operation because problems cross borders in an increas-
ingly globalising world, but it does not follow that we are
best helped by ever bigger units. Bigger organisations are
often characterised by low levels of creativity and flexibil-
ity as well as political correctness because of dependence on
government funds. And the bigger the organisation, the
more power at the top and, thus, the more energy devoted to
power struggles.
10. We need alternative defence and security. We need
defensive defence structures, only operable if a member of
the international system – be it a province, a country or a
region – is attacked. Long range forces with devastating
destructive power (offensive defence) should become a
thing of the past, since they are meant to be used only
outside of one’s own territory. The ideas that each country
or region can keep offensive forces and credibly maintain
that it has only defensive motives should again be a thing of
the past. There are many ways to envision it but a combina-
tion defence of a) defensive military, b) civil, economic and
structural preparation (against embargos, terror, economic
crisis), c) a minimum level of self-reliance in case one
should be cut off and civil protection, d) civil resistance and
e) non-violent struggle are all highly relevant elements.
In a democracy some citizens may want to carry weapons,
some want to help secure their society in purely civilian
ways; modern defence should be responsive to both
categories. But not to the wish of carrying any type of
weapons: the offensive conventional and the mass-
destructive weapons should be phased out a priori. Modern
defence and security also implies training many young
women and men in international non-violent service,
mediation, reconciliation and reconstruction.
Governments and NGOs can decide also to establish
“conflict consortiums” in each country consisting of area
experts and conflict-resolution experts, NGOs and ministe-
rial staff who would engage in conflicts around the world
before they flare up, in short practising early warning and
early listening and early action. The only thing nobody
needs is the authoritarian “you-have-no-choice-but-NATO-
membership and exclusively military defence technically
capable of offence. It goes against democracy and it goes
against the simple fact that different peoples and different
cultures face different security challenges and thus cannot
all be fed the same standard solution imposed by Western
power.
We have touched upon a series of themes and initiatives for
the future: multi-cultural dialogue and mutual learning,
basic non-violence, public education and education in
conflict-management, global norms and the importance of
the UN Charter’s provisions, global conflict-management
that promotes violence-prevention and violence-reduction
and, finally, alternative multi-layered defence compatible
with genuine democracy.
If a development took place in this direction grosso modo,
the ‘need’ for nuclear weapons and other violent means
would be reduced. The only way I can see us moving in that
direction is dialogue, dialogue and more dialogue. And it
should revolve around “the four ‘Cs’ “: coalition-building,
constructivism, creativity and concrete visions of more
humane, just and peaceful societies.
We need to throw off the fear that tells us that change is
more dangerous than continuing with the present policies.
Instead we need the hope and the vision that democracy,
justice, development and peace means freedom from
nuclearism and reduction of violence to zero. It can be done
in many ways and the above elements can be combined in
thousands of ways. There will never be one concept of
world peace but only many smaller ‘peaces’ that make up a
global unity in diversity.
Hopefully, we shall never see the thesis confirmed that there
has to be a nuclear accident or war before people get
together and act. Let’s begin now and work with a deep
conviction that there is common sense and an empowering
democracy through which nuclear abolition can be
achieved. Until we have tried much more intensely, we do
not know that it is impossible.
SWEDEN
❑ ❑ ❑
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UNITED KINGDOM
Summary
INSTEAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS:
PERSUADING BRITAIN TO DO WITHOUT
Mr Stephen Pullinger
Executive Director
International Security Information Service (ISIS)
Strand Bridge House
138-142 The Strand
London WC2 1HR
United Kingdom
Email: isis@isisuk.demon.co.uk
This paper provides a perspective on why Britain still re-
tains its nuclear weapons at a time when the country has
rarely been more secure from external military threat. It be-
gins by examining the obstacles to British nuclear disarma-
ment. These are seen as being:
•The domestic political legacy
•Public opinion and low saliency
•Personnel
•Official resistance to a nuclear weapon-free world
•International events
The basic paradigm governing general public and establish-
ment thinking can be challenged and overcome. The vari-
ables that could break the paradigm and influence Britain’s
decision on nuclear weapon retention are identified as
being:
1. Cost – when decisions are required about the replacement
of Britain’s Trident system it is likely that the cost of
maintaining Britains’ nuclear forces will become a salient
political issue.
2. Reduced nuclear threat – favourable international devel-
opments could reduce the actual and perceived threat of
nuclear weapons to Britain.
3. Disarmament lead from others – either the US or possibly
the EU might take a lead on disarmament, taking Britain
with them.
4. Public opinion changes – nuclear weapons either become
irrelevant to the public or, conceivably, perceptions of
disarmament change as a result of worrying pro-nuclear
US actions.
5. Energetic leader / pressure from party – leading political
figures may embrace nuclear disarmament as a personal
crusade and/or pressure from within their parties to dis-
arm may become more powerful.
6. Nuclear accident / or offensive use – a major accident
involving a nuclear weapon could sufficiently raise fears
in the domestic and international populations to ignite
calls for all such weapons to be scrapped. The actual use
of nuclear weapons would also certainly spur calls for
disarmament.
So, taking these six variables into account, what are the
most likely (or least unlikely) circumstances under which
Britain might renounce nuclear weapons in the foreseeable
future?
On the negative side, the present domestic political climate
in Britain does not suggest that any radical policy shift from
a British Government is likely. The Labour leadership
remains keen to portray itself as strong on defence, and
plainly wishes to keep its unilateralist past well and truly
buried. The Conservative party, as it hardens its right-wing
agenda, hardly looks ready to consider disarmament. Across
the Atlantic, with a Republican in the White House, suppor-
ters of multilateral arms control have their hands full just
defending what has already been achieved without being in
a position to advance their cause. So, in the immediate
future at least, one cannot envisage any disarmament lead
from the US for the UK to follow unless perhaps there was a
significant accident involving nuclear weaponry.
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
This paper provides a perspective on why Britain still re-
tains its nuclear weapons at a time when the country has
rarely been more secure from external military threat. It
concludes that recent history, political inertia and ingrained
public perceptions are equally if not more important factors
than ones of threat assessment and preservation of national
security. The paper then seeks to address these obstacles to
British nuclear disarmament and to suggest what needs to
happen to bring about a change in policy.
Introduction – Nuclear Disarmament
is British Government Policy
The British Government is committed to helping to achieve
a nuclear weapon-free world. True, it still cites the obstacles
to achieving this goal, but nevertheless it did make an
“unequivocal undertaking” to accomplish the global elimi-
nation of nuclear weapons and has gone some way (further
than any of the other Nuclear Weapons States (NWS)) in
making progress towards meeting that goal. So, to some
extent at least, there is movement in the right direction. How
far the British Government will go in the long run, however,
is much more open to conjecture. For significant progress to
be made will require a number of stubborn impediments to
be overcome.
Although actually setting the goal of trying to achieve a
nuclear weapon-free world (NWFW) is important it does
not necessarily follow that the ultimate achievement of such
an objective can or will be reached. The important point is
the degree to which the intention is serious and sincere, and
the consequent level of commitment devoted to reaching the
ultimate goal. The further necessary steps to complete de-
weaponisation might prove impracticable (or be claimed to
be so) to take for any number of reasons. Nevertheless, Bri-
tain and the rest of the international community could travel
a lot further down the road of nuclear confidence building,
arms control and disarmament before such an ultimate
decision stage is reached.
Conversely, if the nuclear powers chose not to pursue a
NWFW seriously and then experienced a rapid expansion of
nuclear-armed states, say 10-15 years hence, by the time
public opinion began to appreciate the attraction of a
NWFW (and the real dangers of a multi-nuclear world) the
opportunity to achieve one might have been lost - perhaps
forever. Indeed, under those circumstances, public opinion
would be just as likely to endorse a policy of retention as to
become more enthusiastic for renunciation.
A. Obstacles to UK nuclear
disarmament
1. Domestic political legacy
Until the early 1980s the major political parties in the Uni-
ted Kingdom supported the retention of nuclear weapons.
1
But following its electoral defeat in 1979, the Labour Party
adopted a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament as part
of a general shift leftwards. The Conservative Government
of Margaret Thatcher, which adopted a strongly pro-defence
stance, attacked Labour’s unilateralism as naïve and de-
featist. Electorally, unilateralism – along with many other
Labour policies – proved very unpopular. The Conser-
vatives were emphatically returned to office in 1983 and
1987 and Labour felt obliged to re-examine many of its
policies, including its attitude towards Britain’s nuclear
weapons.
The then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock decided that Britain’s
nuclear weapons had to be “neutralised” as a political issue.
There was no great enthusiasm for nuclear weapons within
Labour ranks, in fact quite the reverse – there was (and still
is) a strong and persistent anti-nuclear feeling amongst a
significant portion of the Labour party. But the Labour
leadership was frightened of showing sentiments that could
be slated by the Conservatives as ‘unpatriotic’. Labour
calculated that if it was ever to get re-elected it would have
to reassure the British public that the future of the UK
deterrent would be secure under a Labour government.
So began a gradual process of Labour retreat from unilat-
eralism. In the early stages of this policy transition, the La-
bour leadership tried to suggest that Britain’s nuclear
weapons would serve merely as a grand bargaining tool that
Britain could employ to help secure wider multilateral nu-
Instead of Nuclear Weapons:
Persuading Britain to Do without
UNITED KINGDOM
On the positive side, circumstances can be envisaged in
which a British Government decided not to proceed with a
successor system to Trident. Under benign international
conditions, with a friendly Russia and a post-Saddam Iraq,
the case in favour of investing billions of pounds in a new
nuclear weapons system may well lack persuasiveness. This
would be especially so if there were simultaneous
clamourings for more spending on public services in a pe-
riod of tight fiscal restraint. Ironically, taking its cue from
an indifferent electorate, it may be the Treasury that sounds
the final death knell for Britain’s nuclear weaponry.
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UNITED KINGDOM
clear disarmament. But the illogicality of preserving an
expensive weapon system solely for the purpose of getting
rid of it lacked credibility. After all, many asked, why con-
tinue to waste money on something to which you ascribe no
value as a weapon?
The Labour leader was also forced to begin back-tracking
on his earlier commitment that he would never use Britain’s
nuclear weapons. This embarrassing question hung over the
Labour leadership for a number of years, only finally being
laid to rest when Tony Blair assumed the leadership of the
Party, said that nuclear weapons did serve a deterrent role
and that he would be prepared to use them. Ironically,
Labour’s volte face occurred just as the Cold war was
ending and the Soviet threat was disappearing.
2. Public Opinion and low saliency
Labour’s abandonment of unilateralism brought it back into
line with its main political adversary – the Conservative
Party. Hence, as far as domestic politics is concerned,
Britain’s possession of nuclear weapons became a non-
issue; there was no political mileage for the Conservatives
in raising the issue. As nuclear weapons became of little
concern to the people, so they also fell well down the
politicians’ agenda too. The Campaign for Nuclear Dis-
armament (CND) went into abeyance – the sizeable public
marches calling for nuclear disarmament became a thing of
the past, as they also did elsewhere in the world. Labour was
re-elected to Government in 1997 and again in 2001.
So, how does the British public now think about this issue,
when it does? Everyone is aware that the Cold War is over,
with Russia – unable even to quell properly an uprising in
tiny Chechnya – resembling an emaciated bear rather than a
ferocious grizzly. On the other hand, the Russians still have
thousands of nuclear weapons and their mood and fortunes
could change. Then there are other potential enemies too,
such as Saddam Hussein – a ruthless dictator with proven
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities against
whom Britain has fought previously. Broadly speaking, the
public has a sense that if the country has a nuclear arsenal of
its own – the ultimate deterrent – no-one will dare attack
Britain.
Yet, there is no deep anxiety about the issue: there is a
widespread appreciation that the risk of involvement in
nuclear war has declined. The ‘rogue’ state argument does
not generate the same popular (or official) fears that it
appears to in the US, for example. One gets the impression
that the British public could be susceptible to persuasion
about the continuing need for Britain to have its own
nuclear weapons, should its political leadership decide to
take such a lead. Nevertheless, the task of convincing the
people that they can be protected just as well without
nuclear weapons – indeed, that they will actually be safer in
a world without any such weapons – is unlikely to prove a
simple one. This is especially so given the probability that
the mature national debate required would quickly degener-
ate into simplistic exchanges of distorted sound-bites,
whipped up by the tabloid press.
3. Personnel
Despite it being official policy, there is little evidence that
the British government currently has any intention of
actively seeking to achieve that ultimate goal.
Since coming to office, the Labour government has demon-
strated a willingness to use Britain’s armed forces – most
dramatically, in the Balkans, Sierra Leone and Iraq – in
pursuit of its foreign policy objectives. The Prime Minister
is gaining a reputation as a “strong” leader, not afraid to
tackle his foes with military might. This tough defence
stance has helped exorcise the Party’s unilateralist past. It is
hard to imagine, therefore, that it will do anything that
might resurrect those anti-nuclear memories in the public
mind by taking any new risks in this field. Moreover, there
is little to see what the Government might gain from pur-
suing such a course. There is certainly no public demand
that it should do so. For it to alter its calculation – to take up
the cudgels for nuclear disarmament – would, therefore,
probably require changes in external factors.
This view is strengthened by the British Government’s
performance in pursuit of its (far less ambitious) arms
control agenda. When the Prime Minister did speak out here
– urging the US Senate to ratify the CTBT – he was
rebuffed. Since then, despite the Bush Administration’s
rejection of other multilateral arms agreements, for ex-
ample, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Protocol to
the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention – both
contrary to British policy – Mr. Blair has been muted in his
public response.
This reluctance to ruffle US feathers, and indeed to
(publicly) go along with dubious US actions, illustrates a
persistent theme of British foreign policy, namely to pre-
serve Britain’s so-called special relationship with Washing-
ton. US views on UK nuclear weapons may be ambivalent
but London sees these as symbolising a special US-UK
partnership and, incidentally, as a counter-balance to federal
Euro-centrism.
It should not be forgotten, however, that a sizeable propor-
tion of the Labour Party would probably like the leadership
to adopt a more active and purposeful attitude towards UK
nuclear disarmament. An aggressively unilateralist Repu-
blican US President might just prove the spur that stirs
backbenchers’ passions sufficiently to see them attempting
to force a change of tack in government policy.
Despite such pressure from within its own ranks it is not
difficult to imagine that the present government, driven
largely by the political imperatives of the election cycle,
will resist tackling a problem that might take 20–30 years to
solve.
4. Official resistance to a NWFW
Within the British establishment there is a significant con-
stituency that cannot conceive of a NWFW either because it
is believed to be naive and unrealistic or because it is judged
impractical. Even those who can conceive of it, struggle to
see how to reach it safely and remain there on a secure and
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UNITED KINGDOM
permanent basis. This school, which still holds sway within
the defence and foreign ministries, calculates that because
the proliferation of WMD is probably inevitable eventually,
Britain’s retention of nuclear weapons remains crucial.
There is even a strand of opinion that opposes British
nuclear disarmament on the grounds that this would leave
France as the sole nuclear power in Europe.
On the other hand, a number of extremely senior military
figures, including at least four former Chiefs of the Defence
Staff, since retiring from active service, have spoken out
against the utility of nuclear weapons. This constituency,
which may well enjoy extensive silent support from within
the armed services, rejects the vast diversion of scarce
resources away from conventional defence forces into a
weapon it regards as having no useful purpose.
5. International events
Nuclear disarmament by Britain alone would, of course, be
insufficient to secure global nuclear elimination. Neverthe-
less, such a change of attitude on the part of one of the per-
manent members of the UN Security Council could have an
impact on the climate for disarmament. It could, for ex-
ample, encourage those within the other nuclear states that
favour nuclear elimination to show their colours more read-
ily, and to increase pressure on those who continue to resist
nuclear disarmament within their own countries. The New
Agenda Coalition of states, formed with the intention of fur-
thering the disarmament agenda in practical and construct-
ive ways, would surely welcome such an influential new
recruit.
On the downside, given the views of the new incumbent in
the White House, the immediate priority may be to secure a
hold on existing arms control agreements rather than trying
to push ahead with a more radical disarmament schedule.
Nor do any of the other nuclear weapon possessors appear
ready to contemplate seriously, for the foreseeable future at
least, complete nuclear disarmament.
B. The Present Paradigm
The present paradigm governing general public and
establishment thinking in Britain can be summarised very
crudely thus:
•If Britain retains the power to eliminate any potential
enemy no-one will ever dare attack it. There are still
dangerous dictators out there etc.
•It is a deterrent – not a weapon that Britain will ever use.
•Why should Britain give up its nuclear weapons and get
nothing in return when it has invested so much money in
them? Besides, there is no great pressure to give them up.
•Its nuclear weapons provide Britain with a certain “clout”
in world affairs – they keep Britain at the “top table”.
•No one else will give them up
•Even if a NWFW is desirable it is not feasible.
That said, there are indications that the multilateral pursuit
of the global elimination of nuclear weapons is popular with
the British people.
2
The point is that the above is essentially a ‘default’ policy,
rationalising the situation Britain happens to find itself in at
the end of the Cold War, but not positively advocated in its
own right by any serious political group. The absence of
pro-nuclear zeal, anywhere in Britain’s system, is just as
significant as the weakness of the countervailing forces.
C. Breaking the paradigm
If this is an accurate picture of where we are, how might
things change? What are the variables that could break the
paradigm and influence Britain’s decision on nuclear
weapon retention?
1. Cost (cost-benefit analysis influenced by
international environment)
Now that all the capital expenditure has been invested, the
running costs of Britain’s nuclear forces are a relatively
small proportion of the overall defence budget (officially a
couple of hundred million pounds per annum, although the
true figure of sustaining Britain’s nuclear infrastructure and
of protecting its nuclear-armed submarines and bases is far
higher). Only when decisions about Trident’s replacement
are due is it likely that the cost of maintaining Britain’s
nuclear forces will become a salient political issue. In a
harsh economic climate and a benign international security
climate one can envisage there being strong Treasury
pressure to justify a sizeable new capital investment. A de-
cision on a replacement for Trident probably will not be
necessary until 2005–2010.
2. Reduced Nuclear Threat
The decline of Russia’s military capability and enhanced
democratic credentials could render the possibility of a
Russian threat to the UK so small as to not be worth seriou-
sly contemplating. This would still leave some potentially
hostile regimes in the Middle East but they would surely
have less salience for the UK nuclear debate than did the
USSR. Favourable political developments in the region –
post-Saddam Hussein – could also reduce threats to the UK.
Geographically, proliferation worries further afield – South
Asia and beyond – are unlikely to stir UK requirements for
nuclear missiles.
3. Disarmament lead from others
For global nuclear disarmament to make any serious pro-
gress a change of heart or mind in the US would probably be
needed. A pro-NWFW government in the UK would surely
follow any US lead with enthusiastic support. A sceptical
UK government, on the other hand, still dependent on the
US for the supply of nuclear missiles, may well feel obliged
to go along with US aspirations, however reluctantly.
It is conceivable that an initiative for nuclear disarmament
could emanate from Europe, maybe fostered by mounting
European resistance to US foreign policy and a parallel
strengthening of EU defence and security identity. This
might result in Britain (and France) taking a lead in de-
veloping an arms control and disarmament policy that was
quite distinct from the US one.
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UNITED KINGDOM
4. Public opinion changes
One can envisage the political saliency of nuclear weapons
diminishing to the extent that they simply slip so far down
peoples’ agendas that they become irrelevant – no-one
continues to care very much whether or not Britain has
nuclear weapons. Of course, such public loss of interest
may well arise from perceptions of an improved internatio-
nal environment as mentioned above.
Another conceivable scenario could be one in which a uni-
lateralist US begins to act in ways that are at variance with
British and European security interests. A clumsy imposi-
tion of US Missile Defence plans, for example, could
alienate Russia and damage the fabric of multilateral arms
agreements, thereby seriously undermining strategic stabil-
ity. This, in turn, may lead to greater demands from Euro-
pean publics (including Britain’s) to pursue a different,
more pro-disarmament, path.
5. Energetic leader – pressure from party
In future, Britain may be governed by a Prime Minister or
collection of ministers who regards nuclear disarmament as
a personal crusade, an issue about which they feel suf-
ficiently passionate to take considerable risks to promote.
Pressure from within its own political party may also help to
push a government in this direction. On an issue of this
political significance, the government’s commitment may
(although not necessarily) have had to have stood the test of
the electorate before his or her policy could be embarked
upon.
6. A nuclear accident/or offensive nuclear use
A major accident involving a nuclear weapon could
sufficiently raise fears in the domestic and international
populations to ignite calls for all such weapons to be
scrapped. The actual use of nuclear weapons would also
certainly spur calls for disarmament. Depending on the con-
text however, it is also quite conceivable that use might
induce some countries to cling onto their nuclear weapons
even more fervently and others to begin or accelerate the
pursuit of their possession – in order to avoid the fate of
those who were unable to deter their nuclear-armed
adversary.
D. Conclusion
So, taking these six variables into account, what are the
most likely (or least unlikely) circumstances under which
Britain might renounce nuclear weapons in the foreseeable
future?
On the negative side, the present domestic political climate
in Britain does not suggest that any radical policy shift from
a British Government is likely. The Labour leadership re-
mains keen to portray itself as strong on defence, and
plainly wishes to keep its unilateralist past well and truly
buried. The Conservative party, as it hardens its right-wing
agenda, hardly looks ready to consider disarmament. Across
the Atlantic, with a Republican in the White House, suppor-
ters of multilateral arms control have their hands full just
defending what has already been achieved without being in
a position to advance their cause. So, in the immediate
future at least, one cannot envisage any disarmament lead
from the US for the UK to follow unless perhaps there was a
significant accident involving nuclear weaponry.
On the positive side, circumstances can be envisaged in
which a British Government decided not to proceed with a
successor system to Trident. Under benign international
conditions, with a friendly Russia and a post-Saddam Iraq,
the case in favour of investing billions of pounds in a new
nuclear weapons system may well lack persuasiveness. This
would be especially so if there were simultaneous clamour-
ings for more spending on public services in a period of
tight fiscal restraint. Ironically, taking its cue from an indif-
ferent electorate, it may be the Treasury that sounds the final
death knell for Britain’s nuclear weaponry.
Footnotes
1
In 1960, whilst in opposition and against the wishes of the
party leadership, the Labour Party Conference voted in
favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament, but the vote was
overturned the following year.
2
Cite poll commissioned by Pugwash. It found that: The
UK should dismantle nuclear weapons gradually in a co-
ordinated plan with the other nuclear states – 59 per cent;
The UK should keep nuclear weapons for the foreseeable
future – 23 per cent; The UK should eliminate nuclear
weapons unilaterally (i.e. regardless of whether other coun-
tries do so) – 14 per cent. [NOP Consumer Market Research
poll. Sample size 1004. Fieldwork 19-21/5/95.]
❑ ❑ ❑
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BALTIC UNIVERSITY PROGRAMME
CREATING A SECURITY COMMUNITY IN
THE BALTIC SEA REGION
Mr Lars Rydén
The Baltic University Programme – Uppsala University
Box 256
SE-751 05 Uppsala
Sweden
Email: Baltic.Univ@uadm.uu.se
www.baltic.univ.uadm.uu.se
Presentation by
Mr Sergey Dorozhko
Professor, Department of Ecology
Belarusan Polytechnical Academy
Minsk, Belarus
Summary
Mr Sergey Dorozhko
The end of the Cold War opened up for a world where
military might no longer be the only or even the best
guarantee for security. In the region around the Baltic Sea,
the Baltic Sea Region, (BSR), this has become particularly
obvious. From a situation where the iron curtain, right
through the Baltic Sea itself, blocked almost all possibilities
to co-operate, a multitude of new possibilities have
emerged. Since 1991 a host of new, both state and non-state,
organisations and networks have been created and develop
in the region. These deal with everything from government
co-operation, such as the Council of Baltic Sea States,
CBSS, to environmental protection, economic co-opera-
tion, social development, city and town co-operation to art
and culture.
An international region where common institutions and or-
ganisations dominate the interaction between countries con-
stitute the beginning of a Security Community. In a Security
Community common institutions, which are able to handle
inter-state conflicts in a peaceful way is a key component.
Other important aspects are democratic development in the
counties, economic co-operation and confidence building in
all spheres of society.
Here we will describe briefly the creation and development
of a network of universities in the BSR as one component in
a BSR Security Community. The Baltic University Pro-
gramme, BUP, was initiated by Uppsala University in
Sweden in the wake of the Cold War. It had its first meeting
in early 1991. The interest for joining the Programme was
large. On the eastern shore of our common sea there had not
been many opportunities for students and teachers to work
internationally. In the West many wanted to learn more
about and meet colleagues in the “new” countries in the
East. Already in the fall of 1991, 70 universities in 11
countries took part. Today, more than ten years later, 170
universities in 14 countries are established in the network,
and a total of more than 7000 students study in the BUP
every year.
Creating links between participating teaches, researchers
and students is a key issue in BUP. This is done both
through conventional meetings, summer courses, etc. and
by using Information and Communications Technologies.
Satellite TV was important in the first five years. Since then
Internet and video conferencing have taken over at a rapid
pace. The frequent interactivity contributes to confidence in
a region where suspicion about “the others” once domin-
ated. It is promising to see that students go beyond the
mistrust and even animosity between countries that as a rule
(to be continued)
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BALTIC UNIVERSITY PROGRAMME
dominated in an older generation. The phenomenon of
“collective guilt” is rapidly losing ground. Instead we see an
interest and respect for the cultures in neighbouring
countries. The polls among BUP students indicate that get-
ting to know each other and international co-operation is
most appreciated.
The main concern within BUP is regional development.
Thus environmental protection, development of the
societies and the concept of sustainable development and
democracy are main subjects studied. The agenda of the
BUP in itself thus is made to support the growth of a
Security Community. The notion of security discussed in
the publications, TV programs and conferences of the Baltic
University is by necessity comprehensive security. It goes
far beyond hard security and develop the notions of
environmental security, public health, protection of culture
and economic development.
The concept of security community and comprehensive
security is elaborated in the small report attached. It is all
excerpts from publications within the Baltic University.
Creating a Security Community in the Baltic Sea Region
(Abbreviated and edited by Lars Rydén from
Wallensteen, Nordqvists, Levinsson and others;
Uppsala University Dept of Peace and Conflict Re-
search; to be published in “The Baltic Sea region –
cultures, politics, societies” (Ed. W. Maciejewski)
in print, the Baltic University Press, Poznan 2002.)
1. The concept of a security
community
(by Wallensteen, Nordqvists, Levinsson)
1.1 Wars and armed conflicts
One of the most significant issues in international relations
is the one of armed conflict and war. During the Cold War,
the continuous danger of nuclear war and a general
insecurity for small countries plagued the world. In Decem-
ber 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved. The ‘Cold War’ as we
were used to seeing it – military, political and to an im-
portant degree technological competition and rivalry be-
tween the world’s two superpowers, the United States and
the Soviet Union and their respective military alliances –
came to an end. The end of the Cold War also reduced the
likelihood of a major war among the great powers of the
world. The reduced tension in the international system has
also created possibilities for promoting co-operation and
building new kinds of bonds between former enemies. It has
also created opportunities for domestic liberalisation and a
rebirth of states and nations all around the world.
But the end of the Cold War has also unleashed new viol-
ence and unrest in some regions and nations where the
newly born sovereignty has, for many of the states, been
challenged by age-old rivalries and animosities.
These internal conflicts, that were suppressed during the
Cold War, today constitute a major challenge to the interna-
tional community. Indeed, patterns of disruption can be
found all over the world, and the same patterns can be found
in the Baltic region. But set against the recent violent his-
tory of the Baltic region, the past decade has shown positive
signs of both political and economical consolidation
towards democracy and the market-economy and new
forms of co-operation and accord. But due to the relatively
short time span of these new developments, the question is
what the future holds for the countries of the region in terms
of peace and security. To respond to this question, the
authors have chosen to begin with the notion of “security
community”. Thus, we ask: are conditions created for a
future security community in the Baltic region? In a long-
term perspective, a second question is important: towards
which type of relations are we heading as a region?
1.2 Security community
What then does the notion of a “security community”
entail? Today there is no fear of a renewed war between
Sweden and Norway. The fear of war between Germany and
France is also receding among the general population and
among leading decision-makers. This means that disputes
between these countries are expected to be handled in
peaceful ways: through direct negotiations or within multi-
lateral organisations (such as Nordic co-operation, the
European Union). These are examples of significant and
lasting changes in relationships which, in this century, have
given rise to serious conflicts or wars. The peoples of these
countries now feel more secure vis-á-vis each other. As this
feeling is shared on both sides, it can be said that a security
community has been created in these cases, i.e. Sweden –
Norway and France – Germany.
The notion of a security community was introduced by a
leading social scientist, Karl W. Deutsch, active in the Uni-
ted States but originally from Prague. His definitions can be
seen below. The process, by which such security com-
munities are created, while the countries still consolidate
their independence, is an important one. In a discussion on
the dangers of wars and chances for peace in the Baltic area,
the concept is useful. We thus ask whether such a security
community can be developed in the Baltic region in the
foreseeable future. This would mean a significant change in
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present relations between countries and peoples in the re-
gion. Especially since the Baltic region has been an area of
conflict for many wars in recent centuries.
1.3 Characteristics of a Security Community
Deutsch specified 14 factors for the emergence of security
communities. These seem to be relevant in a discussion of
the use of this concept for the Baltic region, but can be
merged into the following five aspects:
1.Relations to outside actors are important for the emerg-
ence of a security community. This might be the existence
of a common military threat to the region or joint security
co-operation extending beyond the region. Deutsch finds
that outside military threats sometimes promote co-opera-
tion within a region, but that such effects are short-lived. It
suggests, however, that the general relationships surround-
ing the region are important, and thus, we need to discuss
the relations between the smaller states of the region and the
major centres of power in Europe.
2. There would have to be a communality of major values
among the countries concerned. This refers to a shared view
of, for instance, democracy and market economy. The
spreading and stabilisation of democracy in Europe as a
whole, as agreed in the Paris Treaty of 1990, and in the
Baltic region would be a most important factor for the
future. In particular, democracy increases the legitimacy of
governments and gives access to power for more groups.
The links between domestic democracy and the absence of
war are dealt with specifically.
3. There would have to be mutual responsiveness among
the states and peoples of the region. This refers to an ability
to predict the behaviour of other states. It requires extensive
contacts and communication, as well as psychological and
political adjustment, for instance, to the loss of a dominant
status that is a result of changing conditions. Experience in
solving conflicts peacefully, as well as active participation
in international conferences, would indicate responsive-
ness.
4. New forms of behaviour among the states and peoples,
which make the present distinctly different from the past,
are another feature of a security community. This involves,
for instance, improving economic conditions for the whole
or important parts of the region (compared to other regions,
as well as compared to the past). This we could interpret to
mean a move away from reliance on armaments for security
to disarmament, giving room for other types of contacts.
5. To this we need to add the significance of common insti-
tutions, which at the same time respect and uphold the
independence of the member states, and contribute to con-
certed actions in security matters. Such institutions may
incorporate many of the four factors but are still important
in their own respect. Such institutions, which might be the
United Nations, the Conference on Security and Co-opera-
tion in Europe (CSCE), NATO, EU (the European Union) or
others, can be evaluated with respect to their significance
for security in the Baltic region.
1.4 Security communities and alliances
One may ask if a security community is the only way to
enhance the security of a state or a region? To be sure, the
quest for security is often described in terms of defensibil-
ity, alliance-building and military capability. According to
this perspective the only way to gain security and stability is
to join an alliance. The problem with this view is the funda-
mental question of inclusion and exclusion, i.e. that an alli-
ance is always directed towards some other, and this other is
usually perceived as a threat. It may even be so that the
creation of alliances in a particular region, to all intents and
purposes, decreases the level of security for both the insi-
ders and the outsiders and that new patterns of conflict are
created upon old ones. In addition, history is full of
examples where the promises of the alliance have not been
very credible and the supposed security has in fact turned
out to be an in-security.
A security community is not the same thing as an alliance.
Whereas a security community is about trust, confidence,
transparency and a high degree of non-formal interactions
between central actors and institutions among states within
an area of geographical proximity, an alliance is a formal
coalition of states that coordinates its actions to accomplish
some ends. An alliance that is concerned with international
security is normally codified and formalised by a written
treaty that encompasses a range of issues that is supposed to
last across time. Another major distinction is that alliances
and security communities have different purposes. Alli-
ances generally have the purpose of augmenting their
members’ power relative to other states, and they join the
alliance to defend themselves against a common external
enemy. In a security community states join in so as to in-
crease common welfare by enhancing interdependence. An
alliance also differs from a security community in terms of
the promises that are behind its purpose. The security that
derives from an alliance is upheld by the promise that an
attack on one is an attack on all. It means that every member
in the alliance is willing and obligated to use force in order
to defend its allies even though its own security is not
threatened. In a security community, disputes are settled
peaceably and no one will use force against any member of
the community.
The final distinction that can be made between an alliance
and a security community is the way the institutions are
organised in order to provide or facilitate security. In an
alliance, the institutional mechanisms are based on an au-
thoritative or hierarchical decision structure. This is usually
visible in a unified command and that some parts of the po-
litical national decision-making are surrendered to a supra-
national level. A security community, on the other hand, is
based on an egalitarian decision structure. It means that
every peaceful procedure of dispute settlement is sought by
an enhanced transparency, mainly through such institutional
mechanisms as sharing information, and by promoting dif-
ferent confidence-building measures.
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2. Patterns of security
(by Kjell-Åke Nordqvists)
2.1 Security regions
There are some regions in the world that have been free
from armed conflicts after the Second World War and have
developed in a direction towards “security communities”. A
pattern of security has emerged. Such security regions are:
North America (Canada, Mexico, USA);
The Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Finland,
Norway, Sweden);
The European Community (France, Germany,
The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg and Italy);
The Australia/Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand,
Pacific states).
These regions all have a history of violence. For some of
them this goes far back in time. The Nordic countries have
not experienced an interstate war since 1809. The last
Mexican-American war ended at the beginning of the 20th
century. France and Germany, now considering forming a
security community were major belligerents on the Euro-
pean continent up to 1945.
The security regions have all established democratic sys-
tems since the early part of the century, with the sole ex-
ception of Germany with its periods of Nazism and weaker
democratic institutions in Mexico. Trade patterns have been
an important feature in the creation of patterns of security.
The European Community was created expressly with Eu-
ropean security as a major objective. More recently, formal
trade agreements between the Nordic countries in the
framework of EFTA/EU and between Canada, USA and
Mexico in NAFTA, have emerged.
Table. Main differences between an Alliance and a Security Community
AllianceSecurity Community
PurposeStates join to defendStates join to increase
against a commoncommon welfare by
external enemyenhancing interdependence
What kind ofAn attack on one is anDisputes between states
promise?attack on all: ‘I will useare settled peaceably; ‘I will
force to defend my alliesnot use force against any
even when my ownmember of the security
security is not threatened.’community.’
What kinds ofAuthoritative orEgalitarian decision structure.
institution addhierarchical decisionPeaceful dispute settlement
credibility to thestructure. Unified militaryprocedures. Other means for enhancing
promise?command. Maximumtransparency such as sharing infor-
integration of armed forcesmation, confidence-building measures.
___________________________________________________________________________
Source: Steven Weber. ‘A Modest Proposal for NATO Expansion’. In Robert W. Rauchhaus (ed). Explaining NATO Enlargement. Frank Cass. 2001.
The end of the Cold War led to two different global process-
es: new peace agreements were made in a number of con-
flict situations (such as Namibia, Angola, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Mozambique, Cambodia), while in other areas
new conflicts emerged (such as in former Yugoslavia, and
the Caucasus region). In addition, a number of nations in the
Baltic region regained independence following the dis-
solution of the Soviet Union. Thus the outcome of the end of
the Cold War was of both positive and negative in character
when it comes to peace and security aspects.
There is a possibility that southern Africa, which is a con-
flict region today, may develop into a security region. The
conflicts following the end of Portuguese colonialism in
Angola and Mozambique seem to have come to an end. The
apartheid system in the Republic of South Africa is being
abandoned. Democratic institutions are slowly developing
with new multiparty elections. Yet the war in Angola has
been recorded as being the worst in the world in terms of
casualties. Positive developments are also seen in Central
America, where important steps towards internal demilitar-
isation have been taken.
2.2 Suppressed regions
There is also a third category of regions or states, where
neither war nor peace has reigned in the post-World War II
period. We will not count these as security regions, but as
suppressed regions. States that did not allow pluralist views
about their own society are included in this category.
Examples are a majority of African states from independ-
ence up to 1990, the Soviet Union, China/Burma/Mongolia,
and military dictatorships in Latin America from the 1950s
up to 1992. However, it is important to note that even if
many of these suppressed regions has either been broken
down or is undergoing a process of liberalisation, there are
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BALTIC UNIVERSITY PROGRAMME
still a great number of dictatorships and authoritarian regi-
mes left. These regimes exists not only in remote parts of
Africa and Asia, but also in the Baltic region of today.
Thus, we can see three types of regions in the post-World
War II period: “security regions”, “conflicting regions”, and
“suppressed regions”.
The Baltic region has experiences from two of the three
types of regions. This heritage shapes the conceptions of
security in different countries of the region, as well as
opinions about how security can be achieved in the future.
3. Widening and deepening the
concept of security
(by Wallensteen, Nordqvists, Levinsson)
3.1 Traditional and liberal security concepts
The end of the bi-polar world, with the consequent lessen-
ing of the nuclear threat, did not only entail a fundamental
different world order that brought about new forms of mul-
tilateral international relations. It also obliged academics to
re-think and re-analyse the concept of security both theo-
retically and practically. Consequently, several scholars in
the academic community have re-considered what is, and
what should be, included within the concept of security and
whether a broader definition reflects a more accurate inter-
pretation of reality.
By bringing in a broader spectrum of actors and societal
structures into the security agenda, the concept of security
tends to include more and more issues of an internal or
transnational character. Thus, the role of the state has dimin-
ished at the expense of a more comprehensive understan-
ding of what is “security”. But even if this wider meaning of
security and security policy, including dimensions of
economy, societal issues, environmental protection and dis-
armament better reflects a common understanding of secur-
ity, it also makes the security debate more difficult.
The decade after the Cold War has therefore been marked by
an ongoing debate about how far the traditional political-
military concept of security should be extended to include
non-military aspects of security as well.
The debate about the concept of security has been divided
according to two theoretical perspectives, in which the first
one argues that a widening and deepening of the concept
reflects the contemporary world better than the old one, and
a second one that argues that a broadening of the concept
will result in a theoretical anarchy where everything from
“thugs”, “drugs” and “bugs” to severe international crisis
and armed aggression is included in the concept. To facilit-
ate a better understanding and provide an overview of this
debate, it is practical to categorise these perspectives
according to their “core arguments”. The first one should
therefore be labelled as the “traditional” view since it de-
fines the concept of security in terms of an original state-
centric essence. The other perspective is labelled liberal,
because of its more open view of the security agenda.
However, even if there is agreement among those who see a
need for a wider definition of security, they sometimes hold
a different view on the need of deepening the concept – i.e.,
that the concept of security should have another object of
reference than the state.
Concepts of security
Definition ReferenceThreats
TraditionalNarrowStateExternal
Liberal (I)BroadStateInternal/
external
Liberal (II)BroadIndividualGlobal/
internal
3.2 The differences
The “traditionalists” hold the view that by leaving the long-
established notion of security, made up by power politics
and military capabilities, it would mean that everything
becomes a matter of security and that the concept loses its
theoretical cogency. The definition and understanding of
security should therefore be as narrow as possible in order
to maintain analytical clarity and theoretical simplicity. The
state, according to this perspective, is the most important
object of reference since it is the primary actor in the inter-
national system and the principal organiser of political,
economical and social matters on the national level – such
as the welfare of its subjects and the safeguard from any
external threats. By expanding the concept of security
beyond the limits of the territorial state, it is not possible to
identify and study security since it becomes impossible to
assess and determine the real threats to one’s security and
complicates the ability to make necessary political priorities
between ‘security’ and ‘non-security’.
Among the advocates for a wider and deeper understanding
of the concept of security, there are those who see a need to
broaden the concept to other areas than the military one, but
that it is still necessary to refer to the state or to other large
scale of political collectives. And there are those who argue
for a more extensive interpretation and definition of secur-
ity that should have a global perspective with a focus on the
individual, and not the state, as the primary object of refer-
ence. They consider the “traditionalist” view of security as
ethno-centric and out of touch with the current process of
globalisation that has diminished the role and the signific-
ance of the territorial state. However, what unites the advoc-
ates for a wider and deeper understanding of security, is the
perception that most threats towards security are not solely
external and primarily derived from power politics and
military capabilities. They firmly believe that a definition of
security must appreciate the fact that the majority of con-
temporary conflicts, and for that reason threats to security,
are not external but internal, and comes from political do-
mestic mismanagement, social and economical discrimina-
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tion, cultural and ethnical intolerance and environmental
catastrophes.
What underlies the conceptual debate of security is the way
in which both the traditional and liberal proponents
perceive the function and organisation of international poli-
tics and relations.
4. Peace and democracy
(by Wallensteen, Nordqvists, Levinsson)
4.1 Peace and democracy
Democracies are about as prone to war as are authoritarian
states. But stable democracies are very unlikely to wage war
against other stable democracies. The explanation for peace
among stable democracies lies primarily in normative
restraints on conflict behaviour inherent in the democratic
political culture. When two democracies face each other in a
dispute, mutual trust is maintained as each side perceives
the aversion to violent solutions in the other. This is a brief
summary of the results from recent research on how
democracy influences the willingness of states to enter into
war.
In 1993, Bruce Russett published a book reflecting the state
of the art of the research on the democracy-peace nexus.
The finding that democracies shun war against each other is
very solid, and has been characterised as the closest that
empirical research in the area of international relations has
come. In fact, apart from a few special cases, one of which
will be dealt with below, two democracies have not once
fought a full-scale war against each other. Democratic peace
is thus important and needs to be fully understood. It is also
a crucial element in developing a security community.
Learning about this relationship for the first time, one might
be beset by doubts, especially if one is used to viewing the
world through the mistrustful, perhaps even cynical, lenses
of realpolitik. But the relationship between a high degree of
democracy in two states and the absence of war between
them has been thoroughly checked for many such influ-
ences through the use of advanced statistical methods. It is
true that other influences, such as wealth, economic growth
and common alliance membership, reduce the likelihood of
war between two states. But the democratic peace holds for
such controls. Recently a consensus has emerged in the re-
search community that mutual stable democracy is very
close to a sufficient condition for peace in the relationship
between two states. Democratic peace reigns even when
other favourable conditions, such as wealth, are absent.
Democratic peace is not limited to, for example, rich indus-
trialised countries or to NATO-members. Furthermore, no
other favourable influence can aspire to the status of a suf-
ficient condition for stable peace, since one can find cases
of war that clearly refute such assertions. For example, wars
between members of the same military alliance system are
in fact quite common, as is indicated by wars such as the
Hungarian uprising in 1956, when Hungary and the Soviet
Union, two members of the Warsaw Pact, fought each other.
Another example is the war in 1982 between Great Britain
and Argentina, both of which were allied to the United Sta-
tes.
4.2 Democracy as Conflict Resolution
Democracy is rule by the electorate on the basis of the
peaceful resolution of conflicts. This basis of peaceful con-
flict resolution is at the heart of the explanation for demo-
cratic peace. In democracies, violence is seen as an illegit-
imate way of furthering one’s political ambitions. Actors in
the democratic political game abstain from violent means,
and trust others to do the same. A competitive political sys-
tem cannot survive in the absence of this mutual trust in
peaceful intentions. Thus the peaceful resolution of conflict
is a powerful norm that allows a smooth process of achiev-
ing a consensus among wills within the democratic state.
Other important norms that constitute the democratic polit-
ical culture are tolerance and a willingness to compromise.
The norms of the democratic political culture carry with
them normative restraints on the use of violence in settling a
conflict.
The very same norm of peaceful resolution of conflicts can
be applied to relations between states, provided that mutual
trust is present. In the same way as actors within a demo-
cracy view each other as trustworthy, in terms of peaceful
intentions, a stable democratic political system works as an
identification tag, allowing foreign policy decision makers
to distinguish between states. Decision makers in demo-
cratic states view other democracies as peaceful, just, and
deserving of accommodation. Authoritarian states, on the
other hand, rely on the suppression of their own people. If
these states are in a state of aggression with their own cit-
izens, how can they be trusted not to have aggressive inten-
tions towards other states? Decision makers in democracies
see authoritarian states as inherently distrustful, aggressive
and unjust.
Another important aspect of democracy is the institutional
constraints on the executive’s power to decide in matters of
war. It is often a complicated procedure to persuade the
people, the legislature, and other independent institutions
that war is necessary. Especially ordinary men and women,
who, in the event of war, must bear the burden of military
service, bombings, shortages and so on, can be expected to
dislike costly foreign adventures. If the executives are dir-
ectly or indirectly accountable to the people, they must take
the preferences of the population into consideration if they
want to remain in power after the next election.
Due to the high degree of institutional constraint in most
democracies, a state in a dispute with another democratic
state can count on ample time for conflict resolution pro-
cesses, such as mediation, and virtually no risk of incurring
a surprise attack. However, not all democratic states have
highly constrained executives. The presidents of France and
Russia, for example, have extensive presidential powers,
and could be considered as relatively unconstrained in this
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regard. Furthermore, a state may have a constrained execu-
tive without being truly democratic. There have been wars
between states where both belligerents have been of the lat-
ter category.
4.3 Explaining The Democratic Peace
Systematic research indicates that normative restraints are
more important in explaining the democratic peace, al-
though institutional constraints are important as well. Evid-
ence indicates that normative restraints best explain why
democracies rarely engage even in low-level militarised
disputes. Institutional constraints, in turn, prevent escala-
tion into war in the rare cases of serious conflict between
democracies.
The discussion above, about constrained executives and po-
litical culture, indicates that democracy is a complex phe-
nomenon, making it rather difficult to identify democracies.
During the Cold War era of great ideological confrontation,
the socialist countries of the Soviet bloc used to argue that
the so-called people’s democracies, dominated by Com-
munist parties, were more democratic in the true sense of
the word. Today, however, the notion of a people’s demo-
cracy has been thrown into the dustbin of history. Instead
there are some rather non-controversial criteria of demo-
cracy within the field of political science that might be used.
In modern states, democracy is usually identified with the
right of all citizens to vote, freely contested multi-party
elections, and an executive either popularly elected, or re-
sponsible to an elected legislature. Often, requirements for
civil liberties, such as free speech, are also added. One way
of gauging the political culture of a state is to measure the
amount of internal political violence, such as terrorism and
political executions.
When it comes to democratising countries, special problems
arise. As was already outlined above, perceptions are key. It
is very important to the process how decision makers in one
country view the regime in another country, and whether or
not a democratising counterpart is judged sincere in its
democratic conviction. In order for mutual trust to develop,
the democratic regime must be seen as stable, it must have
some duration, and it must have proven its democratic con-
viction. Some additional criteria are sometimes used against
this background when it comes to differentiating reasonably
stable democracies from weak democracies that might slide
back into authoritarian practices. An observer might require
that a working democratic system must have been in exist-
ence for a certain number of years for a state to be classified
as democratic. Another criterion is that the possibility of the
leaders of the government being defeated in an election has
been proven by a transfer of power following democratic
elections. It is clear that several states on the south-eastern
shore of the Baltic Sea could be considered in a transitional
period in these respects.
5. A network of trans-national actors
in the Baltic Sea region
(by Lars Rydén)
5.1 The political scene – co-operation
increases
Formation of political co-operative structures, from loose
alliances to federal states, is a central part of regional devel-
opment. In the Baltic Sea region it is clear that a consider-
able move towards the creation of common institution has
marked the will to create political co-operation. Foremost is
the Council of Baltic Sea States, the CBSS, created in 1992,
including the 9 coastal states, all Nordic states (that is
Norway and Iceland are included) and the European Com-
mission. The inland states, e.g. Belarus, do not take part.
The CBSS manages e.g. social issues such as crime preven-
tion in the region, and works to combat drug traffic.
Presently issues such as common security and economic in-
tegration is not treated in the Council and it is thus still a
rather weak political body. As from fall of 2000 it includes,
however, the work towards sustainable development in the
BSR, the so called Baltic 21 with its own secretariat in
Stockholm, and has an enlarged mandate and will be
charged with organising all intergovernmental co-operation
in the region.
At present we see three common intergovernmental secret-
ariats in the region, the Helcom Secretariat in Helsinki, the
CBSS with the B21 Secretariat in Stockholm, and the
VASAB Secretariat in Gdansk. To this should be added a
co-operation on the parliamentarian level, as the Nordic
council since the early 1990’s regularly has invited, among
others, the three Baltic States and Poland to join their annual
meetings.
Co-operations on a lower administrative level have also
bloomed in the region after the systems shift. The Union of
Baltic Cities, UBC, was formed already in 1991 through an
initiative by Kalmar in Sweden. It has developed to support
a large number of so called town twinnings, or friendship
towns, and has its own extensive program. It counted in year
2001 99 member cities. It may be compared to associations
of cities on the national level, and the since long working
association of cities on European level as well as in other
areas of the world. On the sub-state, that is county, level
there is also a Baltic Sea region co-operation, called the
BSSSC, Baltic Sea States Sub-regional Council, with its of-
fice in Copenhagen. In addition the CPMR, Council of
Peripheral Maritime Regions, with its main office in France,
has a Baltic Sea Region group, just as there is since a long
time similar groups in e.g. the Mediterranean and else-
where.
In all these developments of new institutions since the
systems shift the region referred to is the Baltic Sea basin.
The Baltic Sea region is thus developing politically as a re-
gion of co-operation. It is true that some parts of the region,
such as the arctic area, are less tightly involved in all these
new activities, but they are never the less invited. For politi-
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cal reasons Belarus has not been invited to join most of
these institutions. For geographical reasons Ukraine, Slo-
vakia and Czech republic are also normally not involved al-
though they share small pieces of the drainage basin. How-
ever Norway is, although its share is equally small, invited
in its capacity of Nordic country.
5.2 Economic co-operation increases
The European post Second World War trade history is well
known. In the west trade barriers were systematically remo-
ved to create a common free trade zone, which eventually
led up to the European Union. Its predecessors, such as the
Coal and Steel Union from the 1950’s and its follower the
EC, and the EFTA, European Free Trade Association, from
the 1970’s were steps on the way to the union. Today, in
addition to the 15 states in the European Union, several sta-
tes have special agreements with the Union to facilitate
trade, including e.g. Norway, Switzerland and Greenland.
In the East economic co-operation within the Soviet Union
and its allies in Central Europe were even tighter. This was a
natural consequence of the planned economic system. The
two systems, west and east, were largely isolated from each
other. Exceptions included for examples the trade between
the USSR and Finland as a consequence of the peace agree-
ment after WW II.
Do we after the systems shift find tendencies to develop
trade relationships in the area around the Baltic Sea? De-
finitely. In the political documents regarding BSR from the
EU Commission and the individual countries in the region it
is clear that their policy towards the eastern part of the BSR
aims at fostering an economic development, new markets
and development of economic life. Considerable sums of
money are invested for these purposes. From the western
perspective the “new countries in transition” are potential
future markets for their productions. From the eastern
perspective the richer western countries are invited to in-
vest, and foreign investments is seen as a tool for economic
development, and the development of a new economic cul-
ture and competence.
The results are noticeable. Even if these “new markets” still
are small they are rapidly increasing. For instance the three
largest trading partners of Estonia are today Finland,
Germany and Sweden. The Russian Federation, which of
course formally before was the only trading partner, is now
further down the list. Increasing number of companies from
the western part of the region is establishing themselves in
the new countries. In Poland the by far largest trading part-
ner is Germany, with Sweden on a second position with a
value of about 35 billion Euros in 2000. Russia is on a third
place due to its major role for the gas and oil economy in
Poland. Factors that are obstacles in this process are e.g. the
still unclear legal situations especially in Russia and the
three Baltic States, and weak banking development, factors
that are rapidly changing.
The economic development is impressive under the 1990’s.
After a painful economic decline in the early years after the
systems shift the increase have been rapid and during part of
the time world record economic growth rates, up to 11 %,
were noted for Estonia and Poland. Several of the countries
in the region are candidates for the European Union and the
first countries are expected to join probably by 2004.
In addition to formal trade agreements to constitute regions,
economists also focus on special so called growth regions.
In Western Europe “the yellow banana” – referring to its
curved appearance on the map – stretching from London
over eastern France and Montpellier to Barcelona in Spain
is one such much discussed area. Another one is the Öre-
sund region which includes the cities of Malmö and Hel-
singborg in Southern Sweden, Helsingör and Copenhagen
in Denmark, and which may enlarge to Northern Germany
with Hamburg. Is there such a region in the Baltic Sea Re-
gion? Apart from the Öresund region the line from St Pe-
tersburg, over Helsinki and Tallinn to Stockholm and per-
haps down to Öresund, has been pointed out to have the
capacity for extraordinary economic co-operation and
growth. It is sometimes referred to as the “Blue banana”.
An enthusiastic promotor of economic co-operation and
growth in the Baltic Sea region is the former Danish minis-
ter of Foreign Affairs, Uffe Elleman Jensen. He has together
with a series of large companies in e.g. the telecom sector
and the energy sector arranged conferences to promote
economic growth and business development in the region.
These efforts are supported by rather large sums from the
governments in Sweden, Finland and Denmark to promote
business development, in the order of 100 million Euro
yearly. They are also systematically supported by chambers
of commerce, export councils and EU initiatives. It is clear
that the Baltic Sea region is a region of increasing economic
co-operation. After the expected expansion of the European
Union the formal economic co-operation will include the
entire region with the important exceptions of Russia, Bela-
rus and Ukraine. However work to develop agreements
between the EU and the near regions of NW Russia,
especially the Kaliningrad Oblast, is already ongoing, and
may make the border less sharp.
5.3 Regional development as spatial
planning and sustainability
The development of a region may also be seen in the context
of planning, regional and local planning. Comprehensive
planning, local plans etc are all part of the larger scheme
called spatial planning. This concept, difficult to describe,
addresses all kinds of changes in society. Obvious is
infrastructure development, building of residential areas,
industry etc but also culture, and social development are
included. The background to these efforts to develop a
holistic developmental concept were the 1980s.
In the mid 1980’s the development of the world as a whole
was seen as a series of failures. The developing third world
continued to be poor and in conflict despite all develop-
mental aid. The industrialised part of the world had entered
a route of immense resource consumption and environment-
al destruction. Obviously this was, if continued – leading to
disaster. The dystopia that was discussed included de-
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stroyed environment, emptied natural resources and col-
lapsing societies. The United Nations were at the time call-
ing a commission to deal with the dilemma, the so called
World Commission for Environment and Development. In
1987 the Commission published its report that asked for a
new kind of development, called sustainable development.
It was described as a development that “would allow us to
meet our own needs without endangering the possibilities
for future generations to meet their needs.”
The concept of sustainable development was both political,
technical or scientific and ethical. In fact it was the value
dimension of the concept that was stressed most often, not
the least by the chairman of the commission, the former
Prime Minister of Norway, Ms Gro Harlem Brundtland,
when she presented the work. Sustainability, it was stressed,
could not rely on environmental concerns alone, the so
called ecological dimension of sustainability. It was crucial
to take into account also the economic and social dimen-
sions. There were enough examples of how these three di-
mensions were interconnected to convince that a good de-
velopment needed to be comprehensive and include all
sides of society. Obviously sustainable development re-
quires that the development is peaceful, and, as is often
underlined, also co-operative.
On the European Union level co-ordination of spatial plan-
ning is a concern since the 1980’s. It is clear that develop-
ment of infrastructure require co-ordination. Roads and
railroads need to relate to each other. But much more is
discussed in the context. A first concrete step to co-ordinate
planning in Baltic Sea region was the conference organised
in the fall of 1992 on the initiative of the Swedish minister
of physical planning Ms Gördel Thurdin. Her proposal was
to co-ordinate planning for a sustainable future as a co-
operative project in the region in parallel with similar
efforts within the European Union. The ministers agreed
and created VASAB 2010, Visions and Strategies for the
Baltic Sea Area, lagging two years behind the European
project which was aiming at coordination by the year 2008.
The secretariat of VASAB has its site in Gdansk, Poland.
The area that VASAB is looking into is partly larger and
partly smaller than the one covered by the Helcom Con-
vention. It extended further north, to Murmansk, and further
South, into Germany (See maps). It was the area considered
the most relevant for spatial planning.
Also the following meeting on the level of Prime ministers
of the region in Visby in May 1996, dealt with the devel-
opmental issues. The ministers then agreed on the creation
of an Agenda 21 for the BSR, the Baltic 21 to support a
sustainable development in the region along the principles
laid out in the Agenda 21 Document from the Rio con-
ference. The Baltic 21, it was agreed should address seven
sectors: industry, energy, transport, agriculture, forestry,
fishing, and tourism. In addition spatial planning with
VASAB as the responsible actor was added. Later on the
new sector of education and so called joint actions have
been added to the Baltic 21 process, to make it a very
comprehensive programme for addressing issues of sus-
tainable development in the region.
It is clear that improvement of the environment is a very
basic component in the Baltic 21 activities, as is proper
resource management. But in the longer terms social and
economic development will have an equal weight in the
agenda. The Baltic 21 co-operation has the potential to
become one of the most forceful tools in making the Baltic
Sea Region a region of co-operation. It should be recog-
nised that in this respect the BSR is rather unique in the
world. No other international region has entered on such a
process. There are only formal agreements in some regions,
e.g. in the western Mediterranean, but nothing as concrete
as the Baltic 21.
5.4 The environment of the Baltic Sea region
Environmental protection is an important concern in
planning. It is natural that regions defined by geographers
are relevant to environmental protection. The common
water – a river, a lake or a sea – receives pollutants from the
entire drainage basin and if the inhabitants wish to protect
their common water they have to co-operate. Even if you
yourself do not pollute but your neighbours do, your water
will still be polluted, or, as most often stated, pollutants do
not recognise state borders. However they are often stopped
by borders between drainage basins.
Water is relevant for pollutants in one more way: Pollutants
sooner or later end up in water, either since they are emitted
with waste water, they are leaking to water from land, or
they are washed out from the air with precipitation, rain or
snow. The concern for water is thus well motivated. Water,
clean water, is very important to people in all kinds of life
situations. Interviews even with poor inhabitants tell us that
they are willing to pay quite much if they were given better
water. It is reflected by the fact that more than 90 % of
environmental investments of the newly independent states
in the Baltic Sea region after the systems shift was used to
improve water, either wastewater treatment or water provi-
sion.
The common water, the Baltic Sea, was also a priority when
in the first moments of the systems shift in 1990 the Swe-
dish and Polish Prime ministers invited all states around the
Baltic Sea to a meeting to support and extend the co-opera-
tion in the region. One important result was a rapid im-
provement and extension of the Baltic Sea Convention. The
new Convention, signed in Helsinki in 1992, included a
much larger portion of the drainage area of the Baltic Sea.
This is a major step forward for the protection of the envir-
onment. After all at least 95 % of the pollutants in the Sea
comes from land and to improve the situation of the water it
is necessary to comes to grips with the root causes of the
pollution, that is activities on land. A large program started
to remove 132 identified “hot spots”, the worst polluters, in
the region. The major banks in the region were engaged to
finance the implementation of this programme, which was
planned for 20 years, that is up to 2012, and to a cost of
some 20 billions of Euro. In 2001 it is fairly well on way and
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some 30 % of the money has been invested and 20 of the
hotspots removed.
The next regional meeting on governmental level was held
in the fall of 1992, as mentioned above, with the aim to co-
ordinate physical planning, of course with a large concern
for the environment. Also the following meeting now on the
level of Prime ministers in Visby in May 1996, dealt with
the environmental issue. In the creation of an Agenda 21 for
the BSR, the Baltic 21, and the aim of a sustainable devel-
opment in the region along the principles laid out in the
Agenda 21, environmental issues even more important. The
B21 process were made the responsibilities of the ministers
of environment.
Further initiatives for environmental protection in the Baltic
Sea Region include the work within the UBC, Union of
Baltic Cities, and educational activities in the Baltic Univer-
sity Programme and the school project called BSP Baltic
Sea Project and several projects run by non-governmental
organisations co-ordinated by the so called Coalition Clean
Baltic, CCB.
5.5 Conclusion
Above are described some of the many co-operative actions
now blooming in the Baltic Sea Region. These are clearly
relevant to the five main points addressed in the description
of a security community in the introduction: Democracy is
strengthened, economic co-operation increases, responsive-
ness increases, common institutions develop, and in addi-
tion the political surrounding is mainly supportive. But the
enumeration of regional organisations above is only re-
presenting a small part of the whole picture. In reality there
is a fine woven net of interactions and communications
around the Baltic Sea from personal, economic and govern-
mental to co-operation between hospitals, universities, sci-
entists, farmers, authors, artists, schools, and many others.
In the beginning the common water was an easily grasped
common concern and symbol. Today co-operation concerns
much more than protection of the Baltic Sea. In all its sim-
plicity these thousands of bonds between individuals will
make it possible to create the mutual understanding and
trust that form the basis of a security community. The Baltic
University Programme is contributing not only to the under-
standing and analysis of this process but also to its forma-
tion through reaching thousands of young students that will
create the future of the region.
6. Literature and References
Coalition Clean Baltic, 1996. An NGO Vision of an
Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region. October 1996.
The Baltic University Programme, see
www.balticuniv.uu.se
Deutsch, Karl W., et al, 1957.
Political Community and the North Atlantic Area, Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press
Evangelista, Matthew, 1995. Transnational relations,
domestic structures, and security policy in the USSR
and Russia. In: Bringing Transnational Relations Back
In. Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and Interna-
tional Institutions, edited by Thomas Risse-Kappen.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Evangelista, Matthew, 1999. Unarmed Forces. The
Transnational Movement to End the Cold War. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press
Hadenius, Axel, 1992.
Democracy and Development, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press
Hettne, Björn, 1999. Globalization and the New Regiona-
lism: The Second Great Transformation. In: Globalism
and the New Regionalism, edited by Björn Hettne,
András Inotai and Osvaldo Sunkel. London: Macmillan
Karlsson, Michael (forthcoming). Threat Politics and
Baltic Sea Business. In: Threat Politics, edited by
Johan Eriksson.
Karlsson, Michael, 1999. Transnationale Beziehungen in
der Ostsee-Region. Das Beispiel des Baltic Sea Busi-
ness Summit.
In: WeltTrends 7: 9-29
Risse-Kappen, Thomas, 1995b. Cooperation Among
Democracies. The European Influence on U.S. Foreign
Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Risse-Kappen, Thomas, ed., 1995a. Bringing Trans-
national Relations Back In. Non-State Actors,
Domestic Structures and International Institutions.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Russett, B., 1993.
Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles For a Post-
Cold War World, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton
University Press
Trans-Baltic Network, 1997. The Trans-Baltic Network
(TBN). 16 July 1997
Union of International Associations, 1998. Yearbook of
International Organizations 1998/99.
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DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS
DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS AS
A POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE TO NUCLEAR
DETERRENCE
Mr Sergey Kapitza
Professor, Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems
Russian Academy of Sciences
Moscow, Russia
Email: S.Kapitza@kapitza.ras.ru
Mr Sergey Kapitza
Summary
Professor Sergey Kapitza made a presentation on the programme Dialogue Among Civil-
izations, initially the theme for United Nations Year 2001. A book “Crossing the Divide”
presenting “Dialogue Among Civilizations as a soft tool of diplomacy” was launched at
the UN in November 2001. Mr Kapitza, representing the “Group of Eminent Persons” that
will promote this book and the philosophy of Dialogue Among Civilizations, explained
that a dialogue between scientists in United States and Russia on the topic of nuclear
weapons presently takes place. We live in a new world, and world wars must be part of
history. Physicians are important for crosscultural dialogue, and we need “soft ware
diplomacy and new visions on security” stated Mr Kapiza.
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
The meaning of a dialogue among
civilizations
The United Nations General Assembly will meet in
plenary meetings at its fifty-sixth session to commemorate
the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations
2001 and consider follow-up actions.
What does a dialogue among civilizations mean? One could
argue that in the world there are two groups of civilizations
– one which perceives diversity as a threat and the other
which sees it as an opportunity and an integral component
for growth. The Year of Dialogue among Civilizations sug-
gests us to revisit diversity and to seek a new system of rela-
tions based on inclusion. Hence, the goal of the Year is to
nurture a dialogue that is both preventive of conflicts –
when possible – and inclusive in nature.
To do this, Governments, the United Nations system and
other relevant international and non-governmental organ-
izations were invited by the United Nations General Assem-
bly in November 1998 to plan and implement cultural, edu-
cational and social programmes to promote the concept of
the dialogue among civilizations.
In a resolution adopted on 13 November 2000, the General
Assembly decided to devote two days of plenary meetings
at its fifty-sixth session to commemorate the United Nations
Year of Dialogue among Civilizations and consider any
follow-up measures. The Assembly also encouraged
Member States and observers to be represented at the high-
est possible political level at these meetings.
Dialogue Among Civilizations As a Positive
Alternative to Nuclear Deterrence
Some information from the www.un.org/Dialogue:
21/09/98 2001 should be year of dialogue among civilizations: President of Iran tells General Assembly
04/11/98 Assembly proclaimed 2001 United Nations Year of dialogue among civilizations
13/11/00 Without vote, Assembly adopts resolution on Dialogue Among Civilizations
In brief, the Year’s main features include:
Theme:Diversity is not a threat
Overall Objective:Promoting Dialogue and Tolerance
Conceptual Framework:- Diversity as an inherent part of universality
- Diversity as a source of betterment and growth
- Diversity as the human face of globalization
- Dialogue fostering trust, responsibility and tolerance
- Planting a seed for a new paradigm in international relations
Operational Framework:- Raising awareness
- Looking beyond 2001
- Reaching out to non-traditional actors
- Networking and research
Following is the list of eminent
persons engaged in this project:
Giandomenico Picco (Italy), Personal Representative of
Secretary-General Kofi Annan
Dr. A. Kamal Aboulmagd (Egypt)
Professor Lourdes Arizpe (Mexico)
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi (Palestine)
Professor Ruth Cardoso (Brazil)
The Hon. Jacques Delors (France)
Dr. Leslie Gelb (United States of America)
Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal (Jordan)
Professor Sergey Kapitza (Russia)
Dr. Hayao Kawai (Japan)
Amb. Tommy Koh (Singapore)
Professor Dr. Hans Küng (Switzerland)
Dr. Graça Machel (Mozambique)
Professor Amartya Sen (India)
Dr. Song Jian (China)
Dick Spring, TD (Ireland)
Professor Tu Wei-Ming (China)
The Hon. Richard von Weizsäker (Germany)
Dr. Javad Zarif (Iran)
DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS
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This is an executive summary of the publication of the
Group of Eminent Persons appointed by the United Na-
tions Secretary-General on the occasion of the United Na-
tions Year of Dialogue among Civilizations.
Unity and diversity
Our unity is inscribed in our genes, and our diversity is an
inevitability of nature. Undeniably, humans share a univer-
sal bond through a remote yet common ancestry. Curiously,
scientists have also recently found that the number of hu-
man genes is strikingly small. Thus, as external appearances
speak of our differences, the degrees of separation between
humans are few indeed
The context of the dialogue:
why dialogue and why now?
This may well be the time of globalization, but it is also the
time of the rediscovery of individual identity. As the discov-
ery of individuality brings the appreciation of uniqueness,
globalization also broadens our awareness of dissimil-
arities. Consequently, the two opposing trends, globaliza-
tion and diversity, are two faces of our current reality.
In the past, the perception of diversity as a threat was, and in
some cases still is, at the very core of war. Ethnic cleansing,
armed conflict or so-called religious clashes were all based
on the perception that diversity is a threat. Recalling the
atrocities of the previous decade, the answer to the question
”Why do we need a dialogue?” seems simple and even
obvious. The ancillary question then is: ”Why now?”.
A process of globalization without dialogue may increase
the probability of hegemony. Diversity without dialogue
may engender more exclusiveness. Therefore, a dialogue
between those who perceive diversity as a threat and those
who see it as a tool of betterment and growth is intrinsically
necessary.
The goal of dialogue as a tool to manage
diversity: towards a new paradigm of global
relations
Can we move from a paradigm of exclusion, one based on
the perception of diversity as a threat, to one of inclusion,
based on the perception of diversity as an element of better-
ment and growth?.
Some of the seeds of the new paradigm may already be
detectable in our world today. They can be listed as follows:
1. Equal footing (fuller participation in decision-making);
2. Reassessment of the concept of enemy (beyond
governance through exclusion);
3. Dispersion of power (no longer a monopoly of power);
4. Individual responsibility in international relations;
5. Stakeholding (in the future of the planet);
6. Issue-driven alignments.
Dialogue appears to be necessary to foster these six ele-
ments and therefore to engender the new paradigm of global
relations.
A different way of looking at the United
Nations
Dialogue may offer a way to look at the United Nations
from a different angle: its universality and its inclusiveness
of all diversities may be the fertile forum where a global
social contract is successfully consummated. Such a con-
tract would emerge between those who seek ”participation”
in the decision-making process and those who need “legit-
imacy” for their actions. Eventually, “participation” and
”legitimacy” appear to be the two core elements of that so-
cial contract.
Finally, for a successful dialogue we may perhaps need a
new “global ethics”.
”A dialogue between those who perceive diversity as a
threat and those who see it as a tool of betterment and
growth is intrinsically necessary.”
DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS
❑ ❑ ❑
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
AN IPPNW PERSPECTIVE ON NUCLEAR
SECURITY, HUMAN SECURITY, AND GLOBAL
SECURITY
Mr Victor W. Sidel, MD
Distinguished University Professor of Social Medicine
Montefiore Medical Center
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
111 East 210th Street
Bronx, NY 10467
USA
Email: vsidel@igc.org
Summary
Mr Victor W. Sidel
For the maintenance of world peace, the nations of the
world must move from “nuclear security” to other forms of
security. The United Nations Development Program has
introduced the term “human security” to characterize
constructive responses to the concerns of the world’s people
who seek security in their daily lives. As described in World
Development Report 1994, “human security includes pro-
tection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment,
crime, social conflict, political repression and environ-
mental hazards. For most people, a feeling of insecurity
arises more from worries about daily life than from the
dread of a cataclysmic world event.
Human security is not primarily concerned with weapons –
it is instead a concern with human life and dignity – but it is
an essential step in progress toward effective arms control
and assurance of peace. IPPNW has called for movement
toward human security through measures that include
ending the economic exploitation of less-economically-
developed nations by industrialized nations and by provi-
sion of higher levels of economic development aid from
industrialized nations to poorer nations.
Prevention of armed conflict and maintenance of peace –
including prevention of war and prevention of what has
become known as “terrorism” – has been termed “global
security”. Some of the measures suggested to promote such
security are known in other contexts as “national security”,
“international security”, “homeland security”, “common
security” and “comprehensive security”. Global security
will require an international order based on equity and just-
ice, on human security, and on the development of a “cul-
ture of peace”. It is the international order referred to in
Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in
which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration
can be fully realized”. As IPPNW has noted, this interna-
tional order will require comprehensive and effective arms
control treaties for a wide range of weapons (including
small arms and light weapons, landmines, chemical
weapons, biological weapons and nuclear weapons) and a
markedly strengthened United Nations that includes peace-
keeping forces and the power to establish and enforce
economic sanctions that protect the human security of
people within the affected nations. The affiliates of IPPNW
in 60 nations around the world are working through the in-
ternational relationships of medicine to help establish a
culture of peace, to ease tensions, and to reduce arms in all
nations.
Ever since its study of the “Medical Consequences of
Nuclear War”, published in the New England Journal of
Medicine in 1962, and its subsequent studies of the
economic, environmental and social consequences of the
production, testing, stockpiling and dismantlement of
nuclear weapons, Physicians for Social Responsibility
(PSR) in the United States and since its inception in 1980
the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear
War (IPPNW) have called for the abolition of nuclear
weapons by all nations.
It was for this work that IPPNW was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Peace in 1985.
IPPNW – International Physicians
for the Prevention of Nuclear War
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An IPPNW Perspective on Nuclear Security, Human
Security, and Global Security
The Meaning of “Security”
The word “security” is easier to define by its absence than
its presence. The expressions ”Freedom from Fear” and
”Freedom from Want,” two of the Four Freedoms
enunciated by Franklin Roosevelt during World War II,
expressed the desire for security even though the word
“security” was not used. These uses, and the use of the
governmental term “Social Security” in the United States,
view “security”as positive, something that people desire.
“Security”may also at times be viewed as negative, as in the
description of the false sense of security given by the three
witches to Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play. These false
feelings of security, Hecate comments,
. . . by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion.
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes ’bove wisdom, grace and fear;
And you all know security
Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.
“Security” is often used to mean prevention of or protection
against violent attacks, as in “national security,” “internatio-
nal security,” or “homeland security.” “Security” in this
sense is used by those advocating warning systems, alarms,
guard dogs, armed guards and other methods to prevent per-
sonal or property intrusion and by those advocating military
responses to threats of war and terrorism. This concept of
security, as in “nuclear security,” has been interpreted as
security of territory from external aggression, protection of
national interests in foreign policy or “deterrence” of
attacks by weapons of mass destruction. A half-century ago,
Albert Einstein warned that “the explosive force of nuclear
fission has changed everything except our modes of
thinking and thus we drift toward unparallel catastrophe.
We shall require an entirely new pattern of thinking if man-
kind is to survive.” We today need a profound transition in
thinking — from “nuclear security” to other forms of
security. The International Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War has since its formation in 1980 advocated this
transition in thinking about security.
Nuclear Security
Since the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Naga-
saki and the failure of attempts to internationalize their
control in the late 1940s, nuclear weapons have been relied
on by the United States, the Soviet Union (and then Russia),
and by a few other nations to “deter” attacks by nuclear
weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. In 1947,
two years after the initial detonation of nuclear bombs, the
danger that the few then-existing nuclear weapons posed to
the world was recognized by the appearance on the cover of
the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of a clock face set at
seven minutes to midnight.
The reliance on nuclear weapons for security has led to vast
expansion in the number and power of nuclear weapons. It
has become increasingly clear that “nuclear security” –
particularly the reliance on “deterrence” based on a nation’s
stockpiles of nuclear weapons and on the declared policy of
a nation to use them under specific conditions – is a
dangerous way to attempt to provide assurance against the
use of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and
biological) weapons against that nation. Experience over
the past 50 years has demonstrated that nuclear deterrence,
even if it may have played a partial role in preventing
nuclear attack during that period, has not prevented many
different forms of highly-destructive armed conflict. Fur-
thermore, the current size and power of nuclear arsenals in
at least eight nations, “vertical” and “horizontal prolife-
ration” of nuclear weapons, and the development of “mini-
nukes,” have increased the risk that nuclear weapons will be
purposely or accidentally used.
Ever since its study of the “Medical Consequences of
Nuclear War,” published in the New England Journal of
Medicine in 1962, and its subsequent studies of the eco-
nomic, environmental and social consequences of the pro-
duction, testing, stockpiling and dismantlement of nuclear
weapons, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in the
United States and the International Physicians for the Pre-
vention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) have called for the aboli-
tion of nuclear weapons by all nations. This work, together
with the work of other non-governmental (“civil society”)
organizations, apparently had some impact. The minute
hand on the clock face on the cover of the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists had by 1984, shortly afer IPPNW was for-
med, been moved to three minutes to midnight; after the
signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) by
the United States and the Soviet Union and other efforts at
nuclear arms reduction, the clock was set back in 1991 to
seventeen minutes to midnight.
Recent events have indicated a renewal of the danger. The
minute hand on the Bulletin clock was in February 2002
moved forward to seven minutes to midnight, the same
warning that was given in 1947! The Nuclear Posture Re-
view conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2001
and released to the press in March 2002, which maintains
the illusion that “nuclear security” is an effective policy, is
the most recent demonstration that false security is “mor-
tals’ chiefest enemy.” An editorial in the New York Times
on March 12, 2002, commenting on the U.S. Nuclear
Posture Review, states: ”If another country were planning to
develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating
preemptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers,
IPPNW
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Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous
rogue state.” David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age
Peace Foundation, on March 15 placed on the internet the
following analysis of actions by the United States:
The United States has acted in defiance of the interna-
tional community in flagrantly failing to fulfill its pro-
mises and in actions undermining nuclear arms control
treaties. The United States, under its current adminis-
tration, has taken the following actions in direct oppo-
sition to the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarma-
ment agreed to by all parties to the Non-Proliferation
Treaty at the 2000 NPT Review Conference: – given
notice of its intention to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-
Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to unilaterally pursue
missile defenses and the weaponization of outer space;
– failed to ratify and promote the entry into force of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and made plans to
shorten the time needed to resume underground nu-
clear testing; – developed contingency plans to use
nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, five
of which are non-nuclear weapons states that are par-
ties to the NPT, in direct contradiction to long-standing
security assurances given to countries without nuclear
weapons; – made nuclear war more likely by making
plans to use nuclear weapons for specific purposes,
such as bunker busting or destroying chemical or
biological weapons stockpiles, and by developing
smaller, more useable nuclear weapons; and – made
nuclear ”disarmament” easily reversible by imple-
menting policies that place deactivated nuclear war-
heads in storage rather than destroying them.
Taken together, these polices demonstrate a clear fail-
ure to pursue the ”unequivocal undertaking” to achieve
nuclear disarmament that was agreed to at the 2000
NPT Review Conference. Rather, these unilateral pol-
icies threaten the entire non-proliferation regime and
raise the specter of nuclear war. Time is running out,
and what is at stake is the future of humanity and all
life. The nations and people of the world are chal-
lenged to stop a ”rogue” superpower, uphold the Non-
Proliferation Treaty and fulfill the goal of nuclear dis-
armament before disaster strikes.
In short, a transition from “nuclear security” to other forms
of security is urgently needed.
Human Security
The United Nations Development Program has introduced
the term “human security” to characterize constructive
responses to the concerns of the world’s people who seek
security in their daily lives. As described in World Devel-
opment Report 1994, “human security includes protection
from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime,
social conflict, political repression and environmental
hazards.” The analysis continues:
For most people, a feeling of insecurity arises more
from worries about daily life than from the dread of a
cataclysmic world event. Will they and their families
have enough to eat? Will they lose their jobs? Will
their streets and neighborhoods be safe from crime?
Will they be tortured by a repressive state? Will they
become a victim of violence because of their gender?
Will their religion or ethnic origin target them for
persecution? In the final analysis, human security is a
child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, a
job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not
explode in violence, a dissident who was not silenced.
Human security is not primarily concerned with
weapons – it is instead a concern with human life and
dignity – but it is an essential step in progress toward
effective arms control and assurance of peace. . . .
A consideration of the basic concept of human security
must focus on four of its essential characteristics:
– Human security is a universal concern. It is relevant
to people everywhere, in rich nations and poor. There
are many threats that are common to all people—such
as unemployment, drugs, crime, pollution and human
rights violations. Their intensity may differ from one
part of the world to another, but all these threats to hu-
man security are real and growing.
– The components of human security are interdepend-
ent. When the security of people is endangered any-
where in the world, all nations are likely to get in-
volved. Famine, disease, pollution, drug trafficking,
terrorism, ethnic disputes and social disintegration are
no longer isolated events, confined within national
borders. Their consequences travel the globe.
– Human security is easier to ensure through early pre-
vention than later intervention. It is less costly to meet
these threats upstream than downstream. For example,
the direct and indirect cost of HIV/AIDS (human
immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency
syndrome) was roughly $240 billion during the 1980s.
Even a few billion dollars invested in primary health
care and family planning education could have helped
contain the spread of this deadly disease.
– Human security is people-centered. It is concerned
with how people live and breathe in a society, how
freely they exercise their many choices, how much ac-
cess they have to market and social opportunities – and
whether they live in conflict or in peace.
IPPNW has since 1980 called for movement toward the
elements of human security through measures that include
reducing expenditures on arms and using the resources for
human health and welfare, ending the economic exploita-
tion of less-economically-developed nations by industrial-
ized nations and providing higher levels of economic devel-
opment aid by industrialized nations to poorer nations.
IPPNW
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IPPNW has used the international language and the interna-
tional contacts of medicine to advocate a shift from false
and dangerous “nuclear security” to “human security” and
beyond that to “global security.”
Global Security
Prevention of armed conflict and maintenance of peace –
including prevention of war and prevention of what has
become known as “terrorism” – has been termed “global
security.” (Some of the measures suggested to promote such
security are known in other contexts as “national security,”
“international security,” “homeland security,” “common
security” and “comprehensive security.”) Global security
includes use of peaceful methods of resolution of conflicts
and prevention of violence and war, of preparation for war
and of militarism. Advance to global security will require
analysis and action to prevent: direct threats to life and
health, particularly to vulnerable populations, that are posed
by outbreaks of violence and war and the use of weapons of
mass destruction; the economic and social dislocations that
are caused by war and violence; the diversion of resources
from health and human services that is caused by war, pre-
paration for war, and militarism; and the environmental
consequences of war and of preparation for war. Aspects of
this analysis and calls for action are presented in War and
Public Health, published in 1997 and issued in an updated
edition by Oxford University Press and the American Public
Health Association in 2000. Furthermore, advance to global
security will require analysis and action on: the impact of
events that have been termed ”terrorism;” on the roots and
prevention of terrorism; on “preparedness for terrorism;”
and especially on the dysfunctional and dangerous ”war on
terrorism” that has been almost unilaterally been mounted
by the United States against what it terms the “axis of evil.”
Aspects of this analysis will be presented in Terrorism and
Public Health, scheduled to be published by Oxford Univer-
sity Press later this year.
Global security will require an international order based on
equity and justice, on human security, and on the develop-
ment of a “culture of peace.” It is the international order
referred to in Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Hu-
man Rights: “Everyone is entitled to a social and internatio-
nal order is which the rights and freedoms set forth in this
Declaration can be fully realized.” As IPPNW has noted,
this international order will require comprehensive and ef-
fective arms control treaties for a wide range of weapons
(including small arms and light weapons, landmines, chem-
ical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear weapons) and
a markedly strengthened United Nations that includes
peace-keeping forces and the power to establish and enforce
economic sanctions that protect the human security of
people within the affected nations.
The affiliates of IPPNW in 60 nations around the world are
working, using the international relationships of medicine,
to help establish a culture of peace, to ease tensions, and to
reduce arms in all nations. IPPNW received the Nobel Prize
for Peace in 1985 for its work in seeking to lessen miscom-
munication and to ameliorate the nuclear arms race between
the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, through re-
gional efforts in the nations of the former Soviet Union, in
the Middle East, in South Asia and in the Korean Peninsula
and through the IPPNW/PSR Office at the New York City
United Nations site headed by Merav Datan, IPPNW seeks
to expand the work that it and other civil society organiza-
tions are doing to provide accurate information, to open
communications, to aid in confidence-building, and to pro-
mote global security. We will know that nuclear weapons
have been abolished and replaced by human security and
global security when the clock face disappears from the
cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The abolition of nuclear weapons and the shift from nuclear
security to human security and global security will be major
topics for discussion at the Preparatory Committee meeting
for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty scheduled to be
held at the United Nations site in New York City on April 8
to 19, 2002. This paper, as well as other papers in this
conference, will be presented as contributions to that dis-
cussion.
IPPNW
❑ ❑ ❑
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Some basic facts about IFMSA are given in this report. IFMSA, founded in 1951 and
representing medical students in 83 countries (year 2002), has ongoing programmes for
the benefit of health, conflict prevention and medical education. IFMSA co-operates with
IPPNW since 1983. The IFMSA programme, also including a vast medical students
exchange activity, is an example of “new security” made up by common concerns on
health programmes, international networking and young health workers’ confidence buil-
ding.
IFMSA – International Federation
of Medical Students’ Associations
Summary
International Federation of
Medical Students’ Associations – IFMSA
Basic facts from the present Secretary General
and from the www.ifmsa.org
Email: gs@ifmsa.org
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International Federation of
Medical Students’ Associations – IFMSA
The official founding of IFMSA took place in 1951. The
association today counts on 91 member organisations, in-
cluding 8 associate and 24 candidate members, representing
83 countries. The number of annual medical students ex-
changes are 7000: 6000 within the SCOPE (Standing
Committee on Professional Exchange) programme and
1000 within the SCORE (Standing Committee on Research
Exchange) programme.
The SCOPE programme with professional exchanges aim
to promote understanding and cooperation amongst medical
students and all health professionals. The exchange pro-
gram offers a unique educational and cultural experience in
addition to the regular medical knowledge. It also helps to
broaden the students’ understanding of medical and social
conditions in different countries.
The SCORE programme with research exchanges is a 1-6
month program available all year round in 37 different
countries. Research Exchange offers you the opportunity to
participate in a focused and personalized research program
in order to expand your knowledge in a specific area. You’ll
be able to earn credits, to interact with other cultures and
form social and professional networks.
Recent conferences have been held around the themes of
•HIV and Cultural Issues (1997)
•Refugees and Reproductive Health (1998)
•Maternal and Child Health (1999).
IFMSA International Projcts
•Curriculum Database
•Godfrey Children – “A project of Hope”
•Calcutta Village Project
•ASPIS – Awareness Strategies for Pollution from
Industries
•Romania Orphanage Initiative
•Peace Test Project
•Taiwanese Earthquake Exhibition
•International Student Network on Ageing and Health
•Influence of Studying on Students Health
•Zimbabwe Village Concept Project
•Palestinian Refugee Project in Lebanon
•Rwanda VPC
IFMSA National Projects
•Health Education Intervention in Secondary Schools
•Nurturing Music in Prenatal and Perinatal Medicine
and Child Development
•The Sign Language Course for Medical students
IFMSA has relations with WHO, UNICEF, UNHCR,
UNESCO, IPPNW, WFME, WMA, Global Health Council,
UNAIDS.
IFMSA
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RUSSIAN MEDICAL STUDENTS
Summary
Alexei V. Vigdortchik
THE VIEW OF RUSSIAN MEDICAL STUDENTS ON
GLOBAL PEACE AND NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
Alexei V. Vigdortchik, Medical Student,
Chairman of the IPPNW – Russia Students Committee
Kirill A. Polyakov, Medical Student,
Vice-Chairman of the IPPNW – Russia Students Committee
c/o Russian Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War –
RPPNW
Solianka Street 14
109801 Moscow
Russia
Email: scippnw@online.ru
Russian Medical Students have since the late 1990’s reactivated their actions in the Russ-
ian Affiliate of the IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War).
The first results from the “Nuclear Capitals Research Project” are presented at this semi-
nar. The report describes Russian medical students attitudes towards nuclear weapons,
weapons that will soon be inherited by this young generation. The results from the first 93
questionnaires filled in by Russian medical students showed that 76 % feel the threat of
nuclear weapons proliferation in the world, although 81 % feel that nuclear weapons in
their country make them feel secure. 75 % think it is good that Russia spends money on
disarmament programmes, and 91 % state that money spent on nuclear arsenals main-
tenance is necessary. 78 % want more information on nuclear issues from their govern-
ment.
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The View of Russian Medical Students
on Global Peace and Nuclear Disarmament
It was about three years ago when three students decided to
re-establish students participation in the work of the Russ-
ian Affiliate of the ”International Physicians for the Preven-
tion of Nuclear War” Non-Governmental Organization.
Since then a lot of work has been done towards peace pro-
motion among Russian Students.
Today there is a constantly functioning Students Committee
with its chairman, vice-chairman and co-ordinators working
on different issues, like nuclear disarmament, landmines
abolition, small arms, peace education and motivation of
medical students to take part in peace movement. Student
members of the IPPNW take part in international con-
ferences and research projects, organize lectures and dis-
cussions with international representatives of peace move-
ment for other students. Their work is aimed at making
other students informed about global security issues, prob-
lems of the modern world trends and ways to influence on
politics in their own country to build a weapon-free world.
Through these activities IPPNW Students Committee estab-
lished tight connections with specialists in the field of
catastrophe medicine – The Department of Military and
Extreme Medicine at the Moscow Sechenov Medical Acad-
emy. This Department became a host for some of the meet-
ings organized by the Students Committee and Moscow
medical students took part in the Nuclear Capitals Research
Project expressing their attitude to nuclear weapons inher-
itance in Russia.
Members of our Students Committee take part in the annu-
ally organized international peace conferences and con-
gresses. We also make presentations of IPPNW work at stu-
dent scientific conferences that are hosted by Moscow
Sechenov Medical Academy – this gives us an opportunity
to bring out peace ideas to medical students from major
Russian Medical Schools and make them familiar with
global disarmament issues.
Students of IPPNW plan to expand their work in the field of
medical aspects of weapons of mass use, like landmines and
small arms. We now try to make contacts with the Depart-
ment of Traumatology, Orthopedics and Catastrophe Medi-
cine – as doctors working there are volunteers in Russian
National Catastrophe Medicine Center (mobile hospital of
the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Fede-
ration).
The Nuclear Capitals Project preliminary results of the 93
questionnaires filled in by Russian medical students from
17 to 28 years old (47 female and 46 male) showed that
76 % feel the threat of nuclear proliferation in the world,
although 81 % feel that nuclear weapons in their country
make them feel secure. 75 % think it is good that Russia
spends money on disarmament programs, but 91 % states
that money spent on nuclear arsenals maintenance is
necessary. Still 78 % of the questioned students would like
to get more information on nuclear issues from their
government. The final results will be presented at the 15th
IPPNW and PSR Congress ”Summit for Survival” in Wash-
ington, May 2002.
RUSSIAN MEDICAL STUDENTS
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LIFE-LINK FRIENDSHIP-SCHOOLS PROGRAMME
Summary
Ms Christina Ritzl
INSTEAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS –
WHAT DO THE YOUTH THINK?
Ms Christina Ritzl
M.Sc Biology
c/o Life-Link Friendship-Schools Programme
Uppsala Science Park
SE-751 83 Uppsala
Sweden
Email: friendship-schools@life-link.org
www.life-link.org
Youth (teenagers) and teachers from 22 schools in 19
countries worldwide have participated in a research
structured project “Instead of Nuclear Weapons – What do
the Youth Think?” . Four methods were used.
I. Attitudes towards the words “Nuclear Weapons” were
investigated.
II. Nine of the 22 schools wrote essays on the topic “Instead
of Nuclear Weapons”.
III. Discussions face to face took place at an international
Youth and Schools conference in July 2001.
IV. A Model United Nations General Assembly (MUNGA)
was performed discussing among other topics the US
Nuclear Missile Defence system.
Some of the important results from this project are:
I. The words “Nuclear Weapons” affect youth in a negative
way. All the students associations were negative, cruel and
gruesome. Such fears among young people must become a
serious concern among decisionmakers in our world.
II. When I made this assignment I did expect papers with
new brave ideas emerging from young creative minds. This
did not happen. Most papers echoed the facts that we
already know and few explored the focal point of “Instead
of Nuclear Weapons”. Some of the concrete suggestions on
how to achieve a safer world are discussed in this paper.
One of the expressed opinions was that youth want to
belong to the same ”WE” and move away from the ”WE”
versus ”THEM”.
III. The most creative discussions arose when students and
teachers met face to face on an equal level. Many of the
young people recognise the need to change people’s attitu-
des on a deeper level. Conflict resolution skills, col-
laboration across cultural boarders and moving away from
the competitive society were mentioned as paths that can
lead to a new way of human relations and security. Un-
fortunately this research project showed that there is a lack
of basic knowledge about Nuclear Weapons and the
destructiveness of these “weapons”. The youth of today do
not remember the Cold War and it’s deterrence politics.
Views on national defence seem to be very conservative.
Youth are stuck in the traditional ways of thinking about
security and few new ideas about alternatives to nuclear
weapons came up.
IV. MUNGA is a good method for students to deal with and
to learn about difficult topics. Through a MUNGA process
students learn more about the others, the “strangers”. The
students representing USA at the Life-Link conference
2001, had a tough time in defending themselves, but be-
come more confident during the assembly. After a long
debate the assembly voted for the resolution to condemn the
USA efforts to install the long-range missile defence sys-
tem and recommended the countries with nuclear weaponry
to work towards further reducing their nuclear arsenals.
The Life-Link Friendship-Schools Programme promotes
small peace activities and projects at schools worldwide and
facilitates contacts between schools that have similar inte-
rests; “Act Locally, and Think / Communicate Globally”. To
engage in focused projects offers to the youth an opportun-
ity to learn more about Nuclear Weapons, about the Cold
War, about Conflict Resolution skills, about Creative Col-
laboration and to take necessary Care and Responsibility.
Youth and teachers at schools worldwide must be given the
means, like Information and Communication Technique as
well as Partner-Schools programmes, in order to address
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Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
Introduction
Ten years have passed since the Cold War ended and at the
same time the threat of a third World War with Nuclear
Weapons also ended to many people, but not to all. The
Nuclear Weapons are still there and even if the relations
between the United States of America and Russia are now
warmer than before there are other threats to global peace.
Recently both India and Pakistan declared the possession of
Nuclear Weapons and it is still unclear weather Iraq has the
potential to create Nuclear Weapons or not. The degradation
of the military system in the former Soviet Union states
makes one wonder who has got the power over the Nuclear
Weapons and if the security systems really are secure. Every
now and again there are reports about terrorists trying to
purchase parts of Nuclear Weapons and in wars such as in
the Balkan states NATO uses depleted uranium war heads,
the effects of which are still disputed. The recent world
events in the form of terrorist attacks are also painful re-
minders that there are those who will use any methods to
prove a point. The world political situation may be different
now than ten years ago, but there are still enough Nuclear
Weapons to destroy the earth many times over.
During the eighties there was a general sense of fear for a
Nuclear War. School children were told and taught about the
effects of “the Bomb” both on humans and on nature. Nu-
clear winter was a well known term and everyone knew the
dates when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.
Through this project I wanted to find out more about the
general feelings among students about nuclear weapons to-
day. I also wanted them to think about alternatives to nu-
clear weapons: INSTEAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
This report is a combination of several different parts, all
dealing with Nuclear Weapons in one way or the other.
Material and method
Life-Link Friendship-schools invited some 30 schools to
join the project INSTEAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
The schools were chosen because they were also invited to
attend the Life-Link youth conference held in Sigtuna,
Sweden 8-13 July 2001. The conference would give them
an opportunity to meet and discuss the project face to face.
Nine schools took on the challenge to write an essay on the
topic of Instead of Nuclear Weapons but all the 22 schools
that finally attended the conference participated in one or
several activities that dealt with the issue (Table 1).
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – What Do the Youth Think?
Table 1. The list show all the schools who have
contributed to this project. The ones with a star after
the country name have submitted an essay on the
topic Instead of Nuclear Weapons
SchoolCountry
Escuela de Enseñza Media 432ARGENTINA
HLA Wiener NeustadtAUSTRIA*
Intellect School
AZERBAIJAN*
Electrotechnical SchoolBOSNIA AND
HERZEGOVINA
Technical School of ElectronicsBULGARIA*
Paphos Kykkos LyceumCYPRUS*
Manor House SchoolEGYPT
Rustavi Georgian GymnasiumGEORGIA*
Anansu Local Authority Basic School GHANA*
Saint Monica SchoolINDIA*
The Peace Statue CampaignJAPAN
Krimulada Secondary SchoolLATVIA*
International CollegeLEBANON
Vasile Alecsandri SchoolROMANIA*
Lyceum # 567, St PetersburgRUSSIA
School # 57, MoscowRUSSIA
Srednja Vzgojiteljska Sola in Gimnazija SLOVENIA
Njudungs gymnasieskolaSWEDEN
Sigtuna Skolan Humanistiska Läroverket SWEDEN
Newport Free Grammar SchoolUNITED
KINGDOM
Sandown High SchoolUNITED
KINGDOM
Vladislav Ribnakar SchoolYUGOSLAVIA
This project includes several different parts/activities. The
projects have all been taking place over a six-month period,
March to September 2001. I will give a brief introduction to
all parts but not all of them will be discussed in detail in this
report due to space limit.
Attitudes
The first thing the students at each participating school were
asked to do was to write down three words that come to
mind when they hear the words “nuclear weapon”. They
then had a group discussion about the words they had
written down and the feelings and emotions felt when
LIFE-LINK FRIENDSHIP-SCHOOLS PROGRAMME
global issues. On a large scale youth and schools col-
laboration across national borders will build confidence and
new security, a security that will substitute the deterrence
with nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruc-
tion. Such partner-schools programmes must and can be
promoted today, “instead of nuclear weapons”.
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discussing the issue. At the end of the project the students
were again asked to write down three words that come to
their mind. I felt it would be interesting to see if the students
attitudes had changed after having participated in this
project.
Writing of essay:
Instead of Nuclear Weapons
This was the most challenging part for the participating
schools. They were asked to write a paper, in the form of a
scientific paper, on the topic: Instead of Nuclear Weapons. I
gave them two questions to help them get started:
1. Which are the main human and psychological obstacles
for a nuclear weapons disarmament process?
2. How can a comprehensive and sustainable security be
built, to overtake the nuclear weapons deterrence con-
cept?
I wanted the paper to be creative and concrete from the
youth’s points of view. After I received the papers I sent all
the papers to all the schools for them to read through.
Discussion about Nuclear Weapons
Students and teachers attending the Life-Link conference
met for almost two hours to discuss different aspects of
Nuclear Weapons. Some of the issues we talked about
were:
1. What makes Nuclear Weapons so good that
countries are unwilling to be without them?
2. There are however, countries that don’t have
Nuclear Weapons. Why is that?
3. How can we change this great belief in Nuclear
Weapons? What is there instead of Nuclear
Weapons?
Model United Nations General Assembly
(MUNGA) – Role Play
During the Life-Link youth conference a MUNGA role play
was conducted. Each school delegation (two students)
represented a country, different from their own. They were
also given two resolutions that they were to debate. The role
play was conducted in the form of a United Nations General
Assembly. A chairperson moderated the assembly and the
different delegations were given time to debate the reso-
lutions from their countries point of view. After the debate
there was a vote for or against the resolution. One resolution
was about the long-range missile defence system proposed
by the United States of America. The role play takes several
days to prepare both for the organisers and participating
students but the general feeling after is that it is a worth-
while exercise and an effective teaching tool. Students learn
to debate not only their own point of view but others as well.
They also learn more about other countries which gives a
better understanding of different views.
Action
After the discussion about Nuclear Weapons the students
felt that there should be a specific Nuclear Weapons action
in the Life-Link Manual. I was given the task to formulate
one (www.life-link.org).
Results and diskussion
Attitudes
There is no doubt that the words Nuclear Weapons affect
youth in a negative way. All of the associations that the
students had were negative, cruel and gruesome. Words like
blood, death, war, suffering, cancer, World War and destruc-
tion were common. It is obvious that people are still afraid
of Nuclear Weapons. Even though we don’t talk about
Nuclear Weapons as much as we used to there is still a gene-
ral fear and it has been shown in several studies and pro-
claimed in several documents that humans can not grow to
their full capacity if they live under fear. The fear that these
students feel should be a serious concern to the decision
makers in our world.
I had hoped that participation in this project should have
changed the students’ attitudes from fear to a feeling of em-
powerment to change the situation but this was not the case.
There was still a negative and destructive association to the
words even after having participated in this project. Death,
danger and power were some of the words that students
associated to.
Writing of essay : Instead of Nuclear
Weapons
When I made this assignment I hoped for papers with new,
brave ideas from young creative minds. Although many of
the papers had many good points, they were in general an
echo of what we already know and I sense that teachers
were very much involved in these papers. I was presented
with facts. Facts about how many had died in Hiroshima,
how many weapons there are, what the effects are etc. In
other words I was mostly presented with why we should not
have them but very few went further. Few explored
INSTEAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. It should be said,
however, that all papers had good reasoning about why
Nuclear Weapons are so hard to rid. I have compiled some
of the concrete suggestions on how to achieve a new safe
world.
One very important point given in one of the papers which
is the prerequisite for the whole aim of disarming is that
whatever we do it is our choice. If we don’t do anything that
is a choice but we also have the choice to do something.
Things don’t just happen and we all have to make our own
choices when it comes to Nuclear Weapons. One way to
prevent nuclear disaster is the establishment of international
confidence building though cultural exchanges, educational
programmes, the expansion of social welfare services and
fair trade opportunities. To be an active citizen is also a way
to make your voice heard. It was suggested that we should
all write to world political and religious leaders to let them
know that we have not forgotten this issue and to persuade
them to break barriers created between humans because of
narrow minds and gaps between beliefs. Several papers
mentioned the creation of a world government and moral
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code. In general there was a feeling that the people of the
world need to unite so that we all become “we” and no one
ends up being “them”. This embracement of all people,
cultures and religions would not only make Nuclear
Weapons superfluous but also solve many other problems
stemming from inequalities in the world.
Some of the other very concrete proposals included support-
ing organisations such as Greenpeace financially, the ban on
Nuclear energy, and that Nuclear Weapons should be re-
cycled and energy obtained from them.
Model United Nations General Assembly
(MUNGA)-Role Play
The general feeling after having participated in the
MUNGA was that it was a good way for students to deal
with and learn more about difficult topics. The benefits of
MUNGA are many. Students have to learn more about other
countries. Their economical situation, political structure,
social values and the country’s position on the issues in the
resolutions. The original reason behind the friendship-
school theme in Life-Link was that one does not go to war
with someone one knows. Through MUNGA students learn
more about “strangers”. It also gives students practice in the
art of debating. If you can understand the opposite stand
then you will have a better chance in debating for your own
position.
The students representing USA had a tough time in defend-
ing themselves but became more confident during the
assembly. Even though they did not agree with the position
of the USA they became more confident in general to stand
up for their rights and beliefs and felt they could use that in
other situations in real life.
After a long debate the assembly voted for the resolution to
condemn the USA and their efforts to install the long-range
missile defence system and recommended to bring together
the USA and other countries with Nuclear Weaponry to
work towards further reducing their nuclear arsenals. The
main reason for this was the fear that a long-range missile
defence system would result in a new arms race where
Nuclear Weapons would play an important part.
Discussion about Nuclear Weapons
During this two-hour session we started out discussing
some of the reasons countries have Nuclear Weapons. The
most obvious reason is because of their powerful threat.
They also gives countries more power in world politics.
After all, it was concluded, Nuclear Weapons are a good
defence since very few countries would dare to attack a
Nuclear Weapons state. Some felt that countries have them
because everyone else does. It feels safer to have them if
countries near by do. This creates a sense of balance.
Someone raised the point that because people don’t know
much about the effects and the amounts of Nuclear Weapons
in the world they don’t protest. This makes Nuclear
Weapons a defence that a country can invest in without
having protesting citizens to worry about. Another
“positive” aspect that was mentioned was that they destroy
a lot compared to the cost, you get more destruction for the
money spent.
The fact is, however, that most countries in the world don’t
have Nuclear Weapons so we discussed the reason for this.
Three reasons were given. First it is too expensive to pro-
duce Nuclear Weapons for most countries. A second reason
was that the political situation in a particular country and in
it’s neighbours is such that they do not feel threatened and
thus don’t feel the need to invest in expensive defence
systems. The last reason was that countries that choose not
to have these weapons have a respect for life that other
countries don’t have. A reference was given to New Zea-
land, which, together with other Pacific states, has declared
their country a Nuclear Free Zone.
We felt we wanted to concentrate on how we can change
this great belief in the superiority of Nuclear Weapons and
how we can make people change their minds about them.
One way is to make politicians realise that other weapons
are more effective, said one student. It is too optimistic to
think that total weapons disarmament is an alternative in
today’s world so it is better to at least get rid of Nuclear
Weapons. Politicians also have to realise that by using Nu-
clear Weapons they don’t just cause harm to the enemy but
to all countries including themselves. Another suggestion
was that more emphasis needs to be placed on conflict reso-
lution skills and to understand the psychology behind con-
flicts that could lead to the use of weaponry. Decision mak-
ers need to have more faith in solutions through dialogue
and discussion. Once again the idea of Nuclear Free Zone
was mentioned as a good example where several countries
go together and give each other support against Nuclear
Weapons. If a whole region can declare themselves a Nu-
clear Free Zones there would be less space for the few
Nuclear states and it would give the protesters more weight.
At the moment Nuclear Weapons are a minority decision
and this is not democratic on a global scale. The lack of de-
bate was also mentioned as a problem. During the Cold War
everyone knew about the disastrous effects of Nuclear
Weapons and people were constantly reminded of their
existence. Since 1991 Nuclear Weapons are no longer an
issue. Many young of today are unaware of the effects of the
nuclear bombs or of how many there are in the world.
To change the attitudes of people we have to stop the well-
spread myth that it is human nature to be violent. According
to the Seville document ”Statement on Violence” this myth
is simply not true. This belief has, however, become a self-
fulfilling prophecy as well as a good excuse to invest in Nu-
clear Weapons. One of the students was of the opinion that if
we manage to disarm all Nuclear Weapons the step towards
a total disarmament of all weapons would soon follow. The
process of disarming Nuclear Weapons would change
peoples attitudes and make them realise that living without
weapons of mass destruction isn’t such a bad idea.
Finally the problem of disarming became technical. How do
you disarm safely and what do you do with the uranium and
other radioactive material? We decided that this matter must
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be solved and put our hope to scientist and their research
and innovations. We concluded that the disarmament of
Nuclear Weapons is not really an issue about cost or techno-
logy; it is an issue of political will and it is up to us all as
citizens of the world to create that political will!
Steps towards a Nuclear free world
The discussion lead to some concrete suggestions on how to
start changing the world.
The most important thing seemed to be to re-educate people
about the dangers. Many of the children today don’t know
about Nuclear Weapons since they were too young during
the cold war. It was pointed out that this is not just an issue
about teaching children about how bad Nuclear Weapons
are. It is also about teaching them to trust in the “peace spi-
rit” of humans, to understand that we are not war loving
creatures and that all humans want peace. We also need to
challenge the idea of aggression. In the society today very
many things are about competition. In sports, in schools, at
work and in relationships there is often a strong sense of
competition. This triggers aggression and is, in the large
scale, the reason for countries to invest in Nuclear Weapons.
To battle this, students need to learn conflict resolution
skills. Also schools should promote activities where stu-
dents benefit from collaboration and team effort. There are
several good conflict resolution programmes that can be
implemented in schools. Doing actions like MUNGA or
proposed in the Life-Link Manual is also a step toward
educating students about peace.
The need to know where the Nuclear Weapons are and who
controls them is also one of the first steps in their eradica-
tion. There is a need to set up an international monitoring
organisation with the responsibility to disarm and safeguard
disposed uranium. This is of course a difficult task but if
Nuclear Weapons states start discussing further disarma-
ment now maybe an international monitoring organisation
will be a reality later.
As the attitudes of the politicians need to change and the
will to disarm needs to be evoked the students suggested an
action where politicians are invited to participate in a Model
United Nations General Assembly role play (MUNGA)
together with students. One youth together with one
politician should work together to represent a country and to
debate resolutions about the subject of Nuclear Weapons. If
politicians experience this they might become more open
for dialogue with each other and the youth. To have fun
together and play is a good icebreaker and we were all
convinced that adults today don’t play enough. A role play
like the MUNGA also helps in the understanding of other
positions and when you learn more about the other side you
might suddenly see new solutions because you understand
the other position better.
All these thoughts were thought before 11 September 2001
terrorist attacks. It is possible that now, with a war in Afgha-
nistan, the essays and discussions would have been diffe-
rent. The unsafety this world sees at the moment is in many
ways a result of the big divide of humanity, them and us.
The students that took part in this project come from diffe-
rent parts of the world and as mentioned earlier many of
them mentioned unity as one of the solutions to create hu-
man security. All of them want to be part of the same “us”.
One of the most important lessons coming from this project
is the realisation that there is a lack of knowledge. The
students who were involved in writing the essays did
wonderful jobs of finding out facts but in the general
discussion that we had many pointed out the fact that they
are not taught about Nuclear Weapons at schools. I don’t
believe in scare tactics and propaganda but unless the young
of today know and understand what Nuclear Weapons can
do, how can they make educated decisions about them?
How can they make the choice to protest? I think this is
where the responsibility of the people who clearly
remember the sentiments of the cold war have to step in and
do their job.
I find it worrying that when asked to write about “Instead of
Nuclear Weapons”, students are unable to see beyond the
“same old story”. All great inventions are someone’s crazy
idea, someone that has dared think the unthinkable. We need
creative solutions to today’s problems, we need to think big
and not be so scared of what others will think. An idea may
sounds crazy today but can eventually develop into an idea
that is the perfect solution. I can not say if, in this case, it is
the students who have limited their thoughts or teachers
who have steered the students in their work but the creative
and free mind is something we all need to encourage.
All in all I would, however, like to stress the fact that there
were many good ideas generated in the process of this
project. These were particularly created in the discussion
where students and teachers met face to face, stressing the
importance of human interaction. What I found exciting
was that many of the solutions went deeper into the human
mind and many of the students could see that there are many
aspects of creating a Nuclear Weapons free world. Conflict
resolutions skills, crossing cultural barriers, and trying to
get away from the traditional competitive society were
some of the very basic things that could solve not just the
question of Nuclear Weapons but also many of the
inequalities and environmental issues.
Finally I want to express my gratitude to the organisation
Swedish Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, who
have invited Life-Link Friendship-Schools to participate in
this important discussion. Often when important topics are
discussed the youth are not invited to participate even
though they are the ones who will have to live with the
consequences of whatever decisions are made. In this report
I think it is clear that youth have thoughts worth consolida-
ting and ideas that should be considered.
Lastly I also want to thank all the students and teachers who
have devoted time and effort to this project.
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APPENDIX
Uppsala Sweden 22 January 2001
Director / Chairperson
Institute
City, Country
INVITATION TO MORE THAN 25 PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTES AND ABOUT 10 NON
GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS WORLD-WIDE, AS WELL AS THE MINISTERS FOR
FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN SEVEN NUCLEAR WEAPONS STATES, WITH THE AIM TO PROMOTE IN-
DEPENDENT STUDIES AND REPORTS ON THE THEME
INSTEAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Sir,
The Swedish Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Svenska Läkare Mot Kärnvapen – SLMK) in
cooperation with the International Physcians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), has the honour to
invite you and your Institute / Ministry / Organisation (below mentioned “institute”) to perform a study and then
to report on the topic Instead of Nuclear Weapons.
Instructions and Information
Application form
If you wish to perform a study and to submit a research report, please fill in and return the enclosed application
form if possible before end of February 2001.
Selection of accepted institutes
SLMK in consultation with our international federation IPPNW will decide which organisations will finally be
accepted. All invited institutes and organisations returning applications with high quality and ethical working
methods can be accepted.
Independent research procedure
In order to achieve as wide and unbiased research procedures and reports as possible, we will ask each participa-
ting institute to perform its research without contacting the other participants. The list of participating institutes
will not be official until late 2001. The procedure that we propose is close to a ”brainstorming” session.
”Instead of Nuclear Weapons”
The theme Instead of Nuclear Weapons will not be specified more in detail !
We submit this theme to you, and it is up to you and your institute / ministry / organisation to make associations
and visions and to structure a study.
Still there are two dimensions of the Nuclear Weapons problem that we are eager to learn more about from this
undertaking:
1. Which are the main human and psychological obstacles for a Nuclear Weapons disarmament process?
2. How could a comprehensive and sustainable security be built, to overtake the Nuclear Weapons deterrence
concept?
This invitation intends to attract openminded attitudes, newthinking and research methods that will benefit the
process of building security in a Nuclear Weapons free future.
78
Instead of Nuclear Weapons – IPPNW Moscow 2002 – www.slmk.org
The research report, format and size
We recommend a report format with Methods, Results and Discussion.
Maximum 5 pages size A4, written in 10 points.
We also want a Summary and Conclusions: maximum 1 page, size A4, 10 points.
Some pictures and photos are welcome, e.g. a photo of your institute and staff including the main author/s.
Copyright
No copyright should be linked to these reports. For each report and for future publications, reference should be
made to IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, www.ippnw.org) and SLMK (Swe-
dish Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons, www.slmk.org).
Financial support
SLMK/IPPNW will discuss individually with each institute, a financial support within the range of 500 – 3000
US $, covering some of the research expenditures. We encourage necessary fundraising to be undertaken by each
participating institute.
Future continuation
We foresee that some of the final reports (sent to us latest October 2001) will include thoughts, results and
proposals that could lead to a second phase of this initiative.
We will then discuss with the authors and their institutes how to proceed in the direction of deeper analyses and
in formulating more concrete steps towards international and global security ”instead of nuclear weapons”.
Presentation and use of the final research reports
•Summaries will be introduced at the Internet homepages for SLMK
www.slmk.org and IPPNW www.ippnw.org
•We intend to edit and publish a book (if financial support is found) that will be made available to political and
security decision makers worldwide.
•The final reports will be used at future conferences and seminars, like the ongoing programme ”IPPNW Annual
Dialogues and Seminars with Decisionmakers at the Capitals of the Nuclear Weapons States”.
•We plan to have a special workshop on the theme ”Instead of Nuclear Weapons” at the forthcoming IPPNW
world conference in May 2002, taking place in Washington, DC United States. Some of the participating
researchers and authors will be invited to present and discuss their reports at this conference.
Timetable Drafted
2001 JanuaryInvitation sent out to more than 25 institutes
2001 FebruaryApplications to be returned to SLMK
MarchDecisionmaking by SLMK/IPPNW on which institutes to be
accepted and included
April – SeptemberA six months period for research and reporting
OctoberMonth for submitting the reports to SLMK
November – DecemberEditing and publishing period by SLMK/IPPNW
2002 January – FebruaryThe final edited reports ready for outreach worldwide
MayIPPNW world conference Washington, United States
June –A possible continuation of the process.
Yours sincerely
Gunnar Westberg MDHans Levander MD
Chairperson SLMK SwedenSLMK Uppsala Sweden
APPENDIX
ISBN: 91-971299-4-1