International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

Abolition 2000 Report

Perspectives from the Other Side

Janet Bloomfield, Pamela Meidell

In 1995 at the Hague, in the midst of the Oral Proceedings at the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat and use of nuclear weapons, the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons formally came into being. Since then we have been monitoring the activities of this "network". The year 2000 will soon be upon us and we need to assess this threat to the status quo. Since 1995, the issue of nuclear abolition has gained increasing credence in the public mind, continuing the pressure on the nuclear states to keep their promise to the world's people to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. My department has prepared this report card based on the Mission Statement of Abolition 2000, as a means of assessing how effective the Network has been and how we might prevent its success. Note: the grades are a ranking of our assessment of A2000's progress..

1. Immediately initiate and conclude by the year 2000 negotiations on a nuclear weapons abolition convention that requires the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons within a timebound framework, with provisions for effective verification and enforcement.

Report: They are definitely making progress here. They have produced a draft treaty that has become an official UN document. Lots of the "great and the good" have made statements in favour of abolition. Even the ex-head of US Strategic Command has come out, as it were. Public opinion polls are consistently in favour in most of the key countries. Fortunately that opinion is passive and the "great and the good" bore the media to death. Also the A2000 people haven't really exploited the potential of the draft treaty as a working document. We must prevent this becoming a popular cause at all costs.

2. Immediately make an unconditional pledge not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

Report: The Chinese never shut up about this. We really saved our skins when Cook caved in to the NATO boys during the Strategic Defence Review. Our friends over the pond are keeping everyone in NATO on side, despite the Germans and Canadians stirring things up. We managed to sweep the issue under the carpet again at the NATO Summit. Lucky for us that NATO has such a huge budget and is in the middle of a war.

3. Rapidly complete a truly Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) with a zero threshold and with the stated purpose of precluding nuclear weapons development by all states.

Report: Oh joy, what a triumph for nuclear diplomacy. We have a CTBT (a good thing) and we can still make new bombs (an even better thing). Some of the abolitionists smelt the rat all the time we were massaging opinion on this one, but our friends in Washington stopped the rot. The only dark spot on the horizon is that some of the groups in the A2000 Network will just not shut up about Stockpile Stewardship and they haven't given up taking action at the test site.

4. Cease to produce and deploy new and additional nuclear weapons systems, and commence to withdraw and disable deployed nuclear weapons systems.

Report: Well, we've had to let go some of the old stuff. Even an old Cold War warrior like me can see that we didn't need all those warheads. And anyway, closing land-based sites doesn't really hurt while we've still got the submarines. The Russian scene is scary I must admit with all the uncertainty and the Millenium Bug, but when it gets to me I just go down to the club and have a stiff brandy. Some problems are just too big to think about.

5. Prohibit the military and commercial production and reprocessing of all weapons-usable radioactive materials.

Report: Hmmm, this one is getting a bit tricky. Since 1995, the plutonium economy has had a lot of problems. In fact, it's on the edge of real crisis. Events in Japan haven't helped, especially that public apology, and the German election was a bit of a disaster. The new British and French governments aren't entirely reliable on this. But at least the Green Party isn't a threat here or in the USA. The honest assessment is that things can only get worse for us on this one, unless we find a technical fix or the anti-nuclear groups make some tactical errors.

6. Subject all weapons-usable radioactive materials and nuclear facilities in all states to international accounting, monitoring, and safeguards, and establish a public international registry of all weapons-usable radioactive materials.

Report: This is really not that bad an idea you know. It all goes with this fashionable open government stuff. The only problem is that some of the A2000 types will insist on making the links between the radioactive materials and the health effects they have. But as they are cash starved, they can't get the kind of publicity they need. The $6million plus the DOE has just conceded musn't be used for this on any account.

7. Prohibit nuclear weapons research, design, development, and testing through laboratory experiments including but not limited to non-nuclear hydrodynamic explosions and computer simulations, subject all nuclear weapons laboratories to international monitoring, and close all nuclear test sites.

Report: We're getting trouble from the groups I mentioned in point 3 on this too. The DOE and the labs are doing pretty well here but we need to make sure the media ignores all these reports coming out from the abolition groups. I'm also quite concerned about the possibility of real dialogue about conversion beginning. The French and the Chinese have closed their test sites; but the U.S. and the French are moving forward with simulated testing programs. One to watch closely.

8. Create additional nuclear weapons free zones such as those established by the treaties of Tlatelolco and Rarotonga.

Report: It was getting a bit hairy there for a while with all those nuclear free zones creeping up from the South. But they seem to have stopped moving into the North. NATO is such a bulwark against all this peace and anti-nuclear nonsense. Imagine what would have happened if we had dissolved it at the same time as the Warsaw Pact and invested in the OSCE. What a disaster that would have been.

9. Recognize and declare the illegality of threat or use of nuclear weapons, publicly and before the World Court.

Report: Big failure for us here. How on earth did we allow this to happen? Once the judgement came out, our only option was to rubbish and then ignore it. But it's really got all those non-violent activists going. Containment is the watchword here. I'm a little worried about the softening of some ministers to the idea of international law being an important element of foreign policy. The ICC could prove difficult. Fortunately for us, lawyers will be lawyers and never agree about anything. The biggest success for the Abolition movement, so far. Strangely, they seem to have missed the point about setting the agenda and having one clear goal since this victory.

10. Establish an international energy agency to promote and support the development of sustainable and environmentally safe energy sources.

Report: Pray to God this never takes off or the world will be transformed. As you well know, the whole of our military-industrial-commercial-entertainment complex is based on the geo-politics of oil supply and centralised power. If renewables were invested in, society would become much less dependent on our kind of power. Decentralisation, democracy, equity would all become possible. Please encourage everyone in Whitehall to recognise this, our jobs and lifestyles are at stake here. Do the A2000 people really understand what a truly powerful concept this is? If I were them, I would take it direct to some of the bigger companies that style themselves as enlightened…if they wait for the UN to do it they will wait for years. A point that we should remember in our work to prevent social change.

11. Create mechanisms to ensure the participation of citizens and NGOs in planning and monitoring the process of nuclear weapons abolition.

Report: Persistent lot, aren't they. We try our best to block but still they keep coming. Fortunately the crumbs we drop from the table at the NPT are enough to feed their desire to be there. At least we recognise that the real decisions are taken elsewhere at NATO and in the G8. The DOE giving money for NGOs is a worrying precedent, no more lawsuits like this please. The continuing citizens' inspections actions, based on the ICJ decision, need our careful attention. These inspections base their legitimacy on adhering to international law, and have brought international teams of citizens to NATO headquarters, British and US Trident bases, and other sites to check for evidence of illegal activity. The activists are getting more imaginative, and the press is beginning to pay attention. Our analysis of political trends indicates that, at some point, we will have to create the kind of transparent mechanisms they are demanding. When that happens, we need to have enough `sensible' NGOs to outweigh the `radicals'.

Moorea Declaration: At the Abolition 2000 international nuclear abolition summit in French-occupied Polynesia in January 1997, participants adopted the Moorea Declaration and agreed to circulate it henceforth with the original Abolition 2000 statement. It states in part: "The anger and tears of colonised peoples arise from the fact that there was no consultation, no consent, no involvement in the decision when their lands, air and waters were taken for the nuclear build-up, from the very start of the nuclear era. Colonised and indigenous peoples have, in the large part, borne the brunt of this nuclear devastation.... The inalienable right to self-determination, sovereignty and independence is crucial in allowing all peoples of the world to join in the common struggle to rid the planet forever of nuclear weapons."

Report: How come they get to go to Tahiti when all I get is a lousy trip to Brussels? And then they dream up this…it's so radical and visionary it's outside of the normal parameters. Ideas like this have a strange power. Fortunately, there are enough people who are unconvinced of the relevance of the issue to counteract any possibility of a real breakthrough into an effective movement for global change.

Conclusions: (Total grade: 48 out of 110)

While A2000 has made some progress, we have not had to concede very much. The increasing currency of the idea in the wider international community is the most negative trend. We must monitor closely all the different aspects of this. There is no room for complacency on our part. The India/Pakistan Tests could have been a take off point for the Abolition Movement, but didn't quite make the breakthrough. But the next few years could see something happen (another state going overtly nuclear, an accident in Russia, an incident of nuclear terrorism, a Y2K disaster etc. that could be the spark to the flame. The organisation of the network is currently very fragile, with little leadership of any kind and continual under resourcing. If they could get focussed and mobilise the 1500 plus groups who are, on paper, committed that could be a real threat. Unless something dramatic happens, this is unlikely and they will probably indulge in a bout of recrimination and demoralisation when the year 2000 deadline passes without any sign of a treaty on the horizon. The US abolition campaign could be our Achilles Heel but it's too early to say yet. Monitoring of the e-mail and phone lines for any kind of constructive strategic discussion should continue to be my department's top priority. (Recommended key words: strategy, vision, plan, purpose, resources, focus, grassroots, transformation.)

Janet Bloomfield and Pamela Meidell have been active with Abolition 2000 since its beginning. Janet currently serves on the Network's Coordinating Committee, and Pamela on the Global Council. They have been producing Abolition 2000 Report Cards, each year on United Nations Day, October 24. This special edition was produced for the Hague Appeal for Peace, in the guise of a secret UK government report.

Address: Pamela S. Meidell: The Atomic Mirror, P.O. Box 220, Port Hueneme, California USA 93044; Tel: +1 805/985 5073, +fax: +1 805/985 7563, email: pmeidell@igc.org; Janet Bloomfield: 25 Farmadine, Saffron Walden, Essex CB11 3HR, England; tel/Fax: +44 (0)1799 516189, e-mail: jbloomfield@gn.apc.or.