The Year’s End Brings Real Disarmament That You Can Touch and Feel

By Russ Wellen

“In crisis lies opportunity” is more than just a cliché (and we’re not just talking about Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.)  For instance, what could be a better time than the recess-depression in which we’re mired to rethink the whole concept of a growth economy, which has become unsustainable in the face of climate change and dwindling resources? At the very least, it’s a chance to trim our defense budget. In fact, it might not be foremost in the minds of most Americans, or even of much consolation, but cuts to our nuclear-weapons program constitute a silver lining to our economic crisis.

If you’ll recall, earlier this year, the New START treaty was held hostage by Senate Republicans under the direction of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). By way of ransoming it, the Obama administration forked over a proposal to spend $88 billion during the next decade on nuclear-weapon modernization. (As if to show the futility of that approach, while it was ultimately passed, Kyl still didn’t vote in favor of New START.) That figure represents a 20 percent increase above funding levels proposed during the Bush administration.

Australian PM Gillard’s Call for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons No Shot in the Dark

By Russ Wellen

Australia’s prime minister Julia Gillard, reports Sydney’s Telegraph, “will call for a parliamentary vote on a motion calling for nuclear armed countries — including our closest allies in the US and Britain — to destroy their atomic weapons. It would be the first time the Australian parliament had adopted a resolution calling for global disarmament.”

Presumably it was only a matter of time since in June 2008 then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed the formation of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) to be co-chaired by former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. The ICNND closed down operations in July 2010 after concluding what it considered its mandate, which, in large part was creating a comprehensive report titled Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers.

Can Lasting Disarmament Be Achieved Without Peace First?

By Russ Wellen

When speaking about nonproliferation and disarmament, it’s usually assumed that the latter cuts the ice for nonproliferation. In fact, it’s part and parcel of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. In other words, large nuclear states are expected to demonstrate via substantive disarmament measures that it’s safe for smaller nuclear states to follow their lead in disarming. In the same vein, it becomes un-necessary for non-nuclear states to acquire or develop nuclear weapons.

But conservatives and even some realpolitik types, especially lately, seek to decouple nonproliferation from disarmament. That is, they believe that not only shouldn’t nonproliferation  depend on disarmament, but that disarmament shouldn’t transpire until nonproliferation has been assured.

That’s not the only cart they put before a horse.

Can the Genie of Nuclear Knowledge Ever Be Put Back in the Bottle?

By Russ Wellen

You know how we’re always hearing that we’re stuck with nuclear weapons forever because the knowledge it took to create them can’t be unlearned? Those who believe that disarmament is both dangerous and pointless make the case that sufficiently threatened, a state that once possessed nuclear weapons can always restart the production lines. But, however obvious that may seem, perhaps it’s not quite so straightforward.

In November 2010 the Hudson Institute published a paper by fellow Christopher Ford entitled Nuclear Weapons Reconstitution and its Discontents: Challenges of “Weaponless Deterrence”. The phrase in quotes, also known as “virtual deterrence,” means that, even if state were to reach something approximating Global Zero, they could still deter each other with the ability to ramp up production of their nuclear weapons should they decide a national-security crisis warranted it. But exactly how viable is that?

Stockholm Institute Peels Back the Veneer of Nuclear Disarmament

By Russ Wellen

Arms control organizations usually try to cut the Obama administration some slack on nuclear disarmament and accentuate the positive, such as the New START treaty, however minimal its disarmament measures. But the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) operates under no such constraints. Among the conclusions of its just-released SIPRI Yearbook 2011 (for purchase only): “continuing cuts in US and Russian nuclear forces are offset by long-term force modernization programmes.”

Disarm to Prevent Proliferation? Or Halt Proliferation to Enable Disarmament?

By Russ Wellen

Regular readers may be familiar with my concern that nonproliferation and disarmament, once two sides of the same coin, are being inexorably peeled apart. (See this, for instance: Are Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Once Joined at the Hip, Headed for Divorce?) In other words, the former is, as economists say of currency, no longer “pegged” to the latter.

Nuclear weapons advocates, as well as many who fall in the realist camp, seem to be gaining ground in the process of de-linking the two. To them, preventing a state from proliferating shouldn’t require the United States or other large nuclear states to show leadership or set an example with disarmament initiatives. To the contrary, nuclear-aspirational states must agree not to proliferate before the United States takes substantive steps to disarmament.

But to disarmament advocates, expecting states that possess nuclear weapons illegally, or that aspire to develop them, to surrender their weapons or dreams when the large nuclear powers, or at least the United States, retain them in large numbers is counterintuitive. Needless to say, the states in question would also like the United States to put its money where its mouth is before proceeding.