ICAN around the world
Arguments for nuclear weapons abolition
Contents
Nuclear weapons are acutely dangerous
Due to human or technical error nuclear weapons could be fired accidentally or in response to faulty intelligence or misinterpreted signals. This particularly applies to the 2000 or so US and Russian nuclear weapons that are kept on hair-trigger alert.
Nuclear weapons are an invitation for theft and attack by potential rogue, terrorist and non-state networks. Terrorist networks have already identified such possibilities. Specifically Al-Qaeda has plotted attacks against NATO nuclear weapons bases in both Belgium and Turkey.
Information is lacking about the extent of potential safety and security dangers resulting from the presence of nuclear weapons. However, it can be concluded that contingency planning, including making available information about what to do in the event of a nuclear weapons-related accident, is inadequate.
Nuclear weapons fuel proliferation
High-level reports such as the Blix Commission’s Weapons of Terror have repeatedly affirmed the inextricable links between non-proliferation and disarmament, as have former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and former senior US officials Robert McNamara, George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn.
They recognise that it is only when nuclear weapons are seen to have reduced security utility and symbolic power that others will not seek them. The Canberra Commission stated in 1996 that “the possession of nuclear weapons by any state is a constant stimulus to others to acquire them”.
Chinese nuclear weapons were a significant factor in India’s decision to build the bomb, and Pakistan similarly felt threatened by India’s weapons. The continued presence of NATO nuclear weapons in Europe reinforces the status attached to these weapons.
The presence of US nuclear weapons in Korean Peninsula waters and South Korea’s “nuclear umbrella” protection by the United States are stated as the pretext for the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and its two nuclear bomb tests in 2006 and 2009.
Nuclear weapons are hugely expensive
Nuclear weapons drain enormous human and economic resources. According to the Brookings Institution, the US alone spent $US5800 billion (in real terms) on nuclear weapons from the early 1940s to 1996. It is impossible to calculate how much it will cost to clean up leaking waste sites or store weapons-related nuclear waste for many thousands of years.
In late 2004, the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that approximately $US40 billion, or about 10 per cent of the annual US military budget, is spent on nuclear weapons. The opportunity cost of this expenditure is staggering. In all the nuclear-weapon states, weapons programs divert scarce funds away from health care, education and other essential services.
What else could $US40 billion be used for? According to the 1998 UN Human Development Report, the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food and clean water and safe sewers would amount to roughly $US40 billion a year.
Nuclear weapons are undemocratic
Every major decision taken by governments that developed nuclear weapons was done in the absence of full cabinet knowledge, let alone approval of the population. Therefore, the decision to develop nuclear weapons was in each case undemocratic, and led to the establishment of secret institutions, policies and practices which erode trust and undermine security.
Nuclear disarmament is the democratic wish of the majority of the world’s countries and citizens. The vast majority of countries (182) do not have and do not want nuclear weapons, with only a handful (nine countries) possessing them. Poll results reveal that the vast majority of citizens want nuclear disarmament.
Nuclear weapons do not keep the peace
Some 8400 nuclear weapons are deployed on land, sea and air, posing a constant threat of nuclear annihilation, radioactive contamination and nuclear winter. This cannot be called peace. Nuclear-weapon states have been involved in more wars than non-nuclear-weapon states. Between 1945 and 1997, nuclear-weapon states have fought in an average of 5.2 wars, while non-nuclear-weapon states averaged about 0.67 wars.
Nuclear weapons did not prevent wars involving nuclear-weapon states in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Falklands or Iraq. In fact, they intensify mistrust, often where it is already in short supply. The fear created by the mere suspicion of nuclear weapons in Iraq was used to unleash a catastrophic war in that country in 2003. The issue of nuclear weapons greatly heightens tension between Iran and Western nations.
A further example of nuclear weapons representing an impediment to peace can be found in the case of past US nuclear deployments in Taiwan. Following US President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972 and a secret pledge, the US withdrew its nuclear weapons from Taiwan in order to improve relations with China.
Nuclear weapons have no military utility
Nuclear weapons are futile against any of today’s real security threats. They cannot address climate change, depletion of water, environmental degradation, poverty, hunger, over-population, pandemics such as HIV/Aids or avian flu, failing states, non-state armed groups or terrorists, organized crime, or trafficking in drugs, people and arms.
Nuclear weapons have no value tactically because they have no battlefield utility. They have no value in the long term since nuclear disarmament is an affirmed universal goal, nor in the near term since they intensify mistrust precisely where building trust is most needed.
Military commanders in both Europe and the United States believe that they do not have any utility. The US Defense Science Board Task Force on Future Strategic Strike Forces recommended that the nuclear capability of forward-based, tactical, dual-capable aircraft should be eliminated because there is “no obvious military need for these systems”.
US journalist Seymour Hersh noted that, in the case of Iran, US generals concluded that the nuclear option was politically untenable. In particular, nuclear weapons are worse than useless against terrorists. Terrorists cannot be targeted with nuclear weapons or deterred by them. As noted above, however, the weapons may be a target for terrorist activity.
Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate and illegal
Nuclear weapons are unique in their destructive capacity. A single weapon can devastate a city, or even a nation, in an instant. They do not discriminate between civilians and combatants. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the judicial branch of the United Nations, concluded in 1996 that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict”.
In making their cases before the court, the nuclear-weapon states failed to demonstrate that any use of nuclear weapons, including a “clean” use involving “low-yield” weapons, could comply with legal requirements or avoid catastrophic escalation. The court held that countries must never use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets.
There would be no effective medical response to nuclear war
Nuclear weapons cause intense firestorms, hurricane-force winds and irradiation. Victims suffer burns, melting or vaporization of body parts, multiple fractures and other blast injuries, blindness and radiation sickness. Any medical services that survived an attack would be overwhelmed by the scale of human suffering. Most of the injured survivors would not even receive pain relief, let alone treatment. Many of the survivors would subsequently develop cancers.
The effects of radiation sickness include blood component changes, fatigue, diarrhoea, nausea and death. These effects will develop within hours, days or weeks, depending on the size of the dose. The larger the dose, the sooner a given effect will occur. If the damage to the DNA code occurs in a reproductive cell (egg or sperm) the coding error may be passed onto offspring, resulting potentially in birth defects and cancers in the children.
Uranium miners are exposed to radioactive radon gas, and consistently suffer increased rates of lung cancer. Uranium mining is the most ecologically damaging phase of the production of nuclear power. Mine tailings (waste) contain 85 per cent of the radioactivity of the original ore. One of the major isotopes in uranium mine tailings is thorium-230, whose half-life is 75 000 years.
Nuclear disarmament is reasonable and achievable
Reductions of nuclear weapons to date prove that elimination of the remaining weapons is physically and practically achievable. Negotiations and treaties have dealt with other weapons systems, such as chemical weapons, biological weapons, anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions.
The failure to take full advantage of the immediate post-cold war opportunity for nuclear disarmament is seriously regrettable, but the window of opportunity to rid the world of nuclear weapons remains wide open in light of the complete lack of utility of nuclear weapons, prevailing public opinion against their use and threat, the simplicity of the solution of removal, and the great potential benefits.
Removal of US tactical nuclear weapons from Europe would facilitate global nuclear disarmament. It is an element of the 13 steps towards complete nuclear disarmament identified in 2000 by the 187 countries party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. For the United States, withdrawing its B-61 bombs from Europe is something it can offer to address its own poor disarmament record.