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nuclear nonproliferation treaty
Honor the Victims of the Nuclear Age by Bringing It to an End
Taking nuclear disarmament seriously is not only an existential imperative at this very moment, but an obligation of all state parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Jul 23, 2024
The following speech was delivered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee on July 23, 2024 at the United Nations in Geneva.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) state parties are meeting for a third year in a row in the shadow of the devastating war in Ukraine, which has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, destroyed key infrastructure in Ukraine and elsewhere, and turned friends and family members into enemies. In the past 10 months, the attack on Israel and the war in Gaza have shattered all who have dared to confront the enormous civilian toll, the ongoing justifications of violations of international humanitarian law, and the divisiveness that the conflict has brought to environs from university campuses around the world to the halls of the United Nations.
The human suffering we witness on repeat is unfathomable, and yet, the fact that both of these conflicts involve—directly and indirectly—states that possess nuclear weapons is a stark reminder that things could be far worse. Whether deliberately, as has been threatened by Russian and Israeli politicians, or by accident, and especially if the current conflicts widen to regional wars, the use of nuclear weapons is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. This is so as long as nuclear weapons exist, and most especially as long as current policies not only allow but call for their instantaneous use to defend interests of states.
The NPT state parties can no longer pretend that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary evil and sweep the nuclear testing era under a pile of rugs.
Taking nuclear disarmament seriously is not only an existential imperative at this very moment, but an obligation of all state parties to the NPT. The Nuclear-Weapon States—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—have a special responsibility. According to Article Six of this treaty, they are mandated to negotiate in good faith toward nuclear disarmament, something that they have ostensibly not been doing. This must change.
All other NPT state parties must move away from threats of nuclear annihilation as a strategy for conducting international affairs. The stationing of U.S. and Russian weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye in the case of the U.S. and Belarus in the case of Russia must end imminently. So must the so-called nuclear umbrella promise. Nuclear weapons don’t make anyone safer—they put all of us, all of humanity, and all of life on the planet at risk of extinction. To state that this is unacceptable is to state the obvious.
What should be done?
Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. The Nuclear-Weapon States should use this and next year’s Preparatory Committee to chart a path that includes signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in conjunction with the other four nuclear-weapon possessors: India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. Doing so by 2035 would allocate 10 years to make history. Once all possessors have ratified the TPNW, all nuclear weapons should be eliminated by 2045.
As we look toward a future in which nuclear weapons are abolished, eliminated, and no longer threaten to extinguish human civilization, we also must look to the past and present in order to address the suffering of communities that were impacted by nuclear weapons use and testing. The NPT state parties can no longer pretend that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary evil and sweep the nuclear testing era under a pile of rugs. The evidence of harm is all too real, and the scars are more than visible.
In Algeria, the radioactive equipment from the French nuclear testing program remains buried in the Saharan sands. In the Marshall Islands, the food on the famous Bikini Island, after which the swimsuit was named by the French designer who wanted his design to be explosive, still brims with cesium-137 left over from the U.S. nuclear testing. On Kiritimati Island in Kiribati, the local population has yet to receive an acknowledgment and assistance for harms done by the U.K. and the U.S. during their nuclear weapon testing programs. And in Kazakhstan, too many of the victims of the Soviet nuclear testing program need far more help than they have received so far. This is despite the earnest efforts of the Kazakhstan government, which has taken serious steps toward environmental remediation and victim assistance in the affected region. The stories go on and on and circle the globe.
The states responsible for these heinous acts must begin by issuing an apology. Next, they should come together with the international community to right these historical wrongs and to promise never to commit such crimes ever again.
Here too, the TPNW paves the way forward through its humanitarian provisions, spelled out in Articles six and seven. We furthermore call on all states, including the nine that abstained or voted last December against the resolution in the U.N. General Assembly to address the legacy of nuclear testing; the resolution provides an opportunity for a wide-reaching conversation about nuclear justice, which has been elusive for far too many and for far too long. Every state must come to the nuclear justice table.
There is work to be done. Statements and gatherings must be followed by real action and by concrete and time-bound steps.
We must honor the victims of the nuclear age by bringing about its end and by helping them earnestly and wholeheartedly. But beyond these tasks, we must recommit to the promise of the U.N. Charter in which states address their differences through negotiations; engage in peaceful cooperation and competition; and reject all threats, including those of nuclear Armageddon, as not just an enormous risk to humanity, but as an insult to our humanity. We are better than that.
The work and ideas of Mozart, Gandhi, Mandela, Parks, Franklin, Allende, and so many others blaze the path forward. This path does not include nuclear weapons.
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‘The Law Is Simple’: Israel’s Unregulated Nukes Mean Biden Must Halt Military Aid
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all weapons shipments to Israel.
Apr 20, 2024
The national organization Veterans For Peace is demanding that the Biden administration abide by U.S. law regarding the illegal possession of unregulated nuclear weapons and halt all military aid to Israel.
In a
letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all military aid to Israel because it possesses nuclear weapons in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel does not admit it possesses nuclear weapons, has not signed the NPT, and does not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal.
The letter lists multiple credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the NPT, the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid.
The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors.
The president may not waive the cutoff of the aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the president to waive some or all of these sanctions.
“The law is quite simple,” said VFP National Director Mike Ferner. “Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘Will you obey the law or continue to let the Madmen Arsonists run America?’”
The well-referenced 11-page letter was researched and written by VFP member Terry Lodge, an activist lawyer who specializes in nuclear issues. It makes for a fascinating read, detailing Israel’s many illegal actions to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and Henry Kissinger’s approval of Israel’s “strategic ambiguity.” Israel has never officially admitted it possesses nuclear weapons, but “everybody knows.” In November, an Israeli cabinet member actually suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
The letter also references former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s hacked email (“The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands.’’). Colin Powell’s assertion that Iran’s capital Tehran has long been targeted by Israel’s nuclear weapons is especially chilling at this moment, when Israel has provoked an armed conflict with Iran and may be trying to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East. Would Israel attack Iran with nuclear weapons?
All U.S. Military Aid to Israel Must Be Ended Immediately
Israel’s provocative approach to foreign relations before and since commencing the genocidal invasion of Gaza suggests that nuclear weapons might be used against both real and perceived existential threats to Israel. In May 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assessed that Israel’s security problems come from Iran, and then in September, he insisted at the United Nations that “[A]bove all, Iran must face a credible nuclear threat.”
Presently, Israel has at least 90 warheads, and possibly as many as 200. Israel's bombs are deliverable via aircraft, land-based ballistic missiles, and submarine-based cruise missiles. Israel’s Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missiles are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead from 4,000 miles away, which means that Iran, Pakistan (another NPT scofflaw non-weapons state believed to have nuclear weapons), and all of Russia west of the Urals—including Moscow—are within range of Israeli nuclear targeting, should Israel resort to The Bomb.
Israel is conducting an ongoing genocidal military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Palestinian civilians and the Hamas government, even as it bombs and fires artillery and rockets into Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors. Given the overwhelming evidence that Israel has received many nuclear weapons from its military branch and has maintained that offensive nuclear capability for decades, federal law compels President Biden to immediately terminate all military assistance to Israel.
Veterans For Peace is demanding that the president issue a formal finding that (1) Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968; (2) that Israel is, as a matter of law, a “non-nuclear-weapon state” under the NPT; (3) that Israel has acquired an arsenal of nuclear weapons with the means of using them in war and has experimentally detonated nuclear weapons in the past; and (4) that Israel has violated 22 U.S.C. § 2799aa-1(b)(1)(B). Federal law requires Biden to end all defense sales and licensing of Munitions List exports to Israel, terminate all foreign military financing, cease delivery of any military weapons and munitions, and implement all other aid cutoffs and curtailments required by the Symington and Glenn Amendments.
While awaiting a response from the Biden administration, Veterans For Peace, with over 100 chapters in the U.S., is calling on all its members, friends, and allies to tell their congressional representatives to oppose any further funding or weapons shipments to Israel. The veterans organization recently sent a letter to the State Department detailing multiple U.S. laws that are being broken by sending weapons to Israel while it is blatantly violating the human rights of Palestinian men, women, and children.
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Arms Control Group Rebuffs Congressional Report Pushing US Nuclear Buildup
"Rather than take actions that might accelerate dangerous nuclear competition, the United States must exercise prudent nuclear restraint and energetically pursue effective arms control and disarmament diplomacy."
Oct 12, 2023
A U.S.-based arms control group on Thursday forcefully countered a new bipartisan congressional report that claims it is necessary "to rebuild the nuclear infrastructure and modernize the nuclear forces" in the United States due to "the militarily troubling and increasingly aggressive behaviors of Russia and China."
While nine nations have nukes, "the three states with the largest nuclear arsenals—Russia, the United States, and China—are on the precipice of a unconstrained era of dangerous nuclear competition," the Arms Control Association (ACA) declared in response to the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States report.
The commission's publication comes as the Chinese government is ramping up its nuclear arsenal, amid heightened fears of a potential U.S.-China military conflict over Taiwan, and 20 months into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has elevated global concerns about Moscow's possible use of nuclear weapons.
"The experience of the Cold War teaches us that an unconstrained arms race has no winners, only losers."
Additionally, as the ACA noted, "with the impending expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in February 2026, and the disappearance of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, Russia is now considering 'de-ratifying' the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty."
Given those conditions, the commission contended that the existing U.S. nuclear modernization plan should be "fully and urgently" executed but also "supplemented to ensure U.S. nuclear strategy remains effective in a two-nuclear-peer environment." Its recommended modifications include addressing "the larger number of targets due to the growing Chinese nuclear threat" and accounting for "advances in Russian and Chinese integrated air and missile defenses."
The ACA, meanwhile, stressed that "the experience of the Cold War teaches us that an unconstrained arms race has no winners, only losers. Leaders in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington need to seize the opportunity to engage in nuclear risk reduction talks, negotiate sensible and verifiable reductions of their arsenals, and refrain from building new destabilizing types of weapons, rather than proceed down a 'lose-lose' path of nuclear competition."
The group argued that "despite reckless behavior on the part of Russia and China in pursuing a more diverse array of nuclear weapons, the scale and diversity of the current U.S. nuclear arsenal still exceeds what is necessary to hold a sufficient number of adversary targets at risk so as to deter enemy nuclear attack."
"In the current context, any decision to increase the number of deployed U.S. strategic nuclear weapons above New START levels could trigger a dangerous action-reaction cycle," warned the ACA. "It would not enhance deterrence in the face of China's growing nuclear capabilities or Russia's existing capabilities. It would more likely encourage China to deploy more nuclear weapons on an even wider array of delivery systems over the coming decade and prompt Russia to match any increases in the U.S. strategic force."
"Increasing the number of deployed U.S. strategic nuclear weapons or adding new types of nuclear war-fighting weapons to the the arsenal would not only be counterproductive, but prohibitively expensive," the ACA continued. The group also emphasized that "once nuclear weapons are used in a war between the United States and Russia or between the United States and China, there is no guarantee a nuclear war could be 'limited,'" citing estimates that a major exchange could kill and injure over 90 million people in the first few hours alone.
According to the ACA:
Rather than take actions that might accelerate dangerous nuclear competition, the United States must exercise prudent nuclear restraint and energetically pursue effective arms control and disarmament diplomacy with Russia, China, and other nuclear-armed states inside and outside of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Considering that new bilateral nuclear arms control limits with Russia may be difficult to achieve so long as Russia's war on Ukraine rages on, the United States could seek an executive agreement or simply a reciprocal unilateral arrangement verified with national technical means of intelligence that commits Russia and the United States to respect New START's central limits until a more permanent and comprehensive nuclear arms control arrangement is concluded.
At the same time, U.S. and other world leaders should urge China, France, and the United Kingdom to cap the size of their nuclear arsenals as long as Russia and the United States meet their fundamental Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations, which involve participating in genuine negotiations to halt and reverse a potential nuclear arms race.
The group highlighted recent remarks from key members of U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to bolster its arguments for restraint and diplomacy. For example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in December: "Nuclear deterrence isn't just a numbers game. In fact, that sort of thinking can spur a dangerous arms race."
Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, said in June speech for ACA's annual forum that "the United States is ready to engage Russia now to manage nuclear risks and develop a post-2026 arms control framework," and "we're also ready to engage China without preconditions—helping ensure that competition is managed, and that competition does not veer into conflict."
"I want to be clear here—the United States does not need to increase our nuclear forces to outnumber the combined total of our competitors in order to successfully deter them," Sullivan added in June, as a trio of experts noted last week in Foreign Affairs. One of them reshared the piece on social media Thursday in response to the congressional commission's report.
James M. Acton, co-director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Nuclear Policy Program, Steve Fetter, a University of Maryland professor and King's College London visiting professor, and Charles L.Glaser, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology senior fellow and George Washington University professor emeritus, wrote that "a world in which the United States faces two nuclear peers may bring new risks. The possibility of simultaneous crises with both Beijing and Moscow could create new opportunities for misunderstanding and undesired escalation."
"The important point is that the key approach for reducing these dangers will be diplomacy, including communication in times of both peace and crisis," they added. "Expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal would not ameliorate the nuclear threats posed by Russia and China—and might even exacerbate them."
While rising fears of such arms have fueled recent demands for every country on Earth to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, so far none of the nine nations with nukes—including India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan—have joined the global pact.
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