From Hiroshima to Kyoto
Nuclear umbrellas, global warming and common threats
Two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Kyoto, mark an era of more than half a century in which the world has changed. Hiroshima was devastated by the first atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, and the 60th anniversary in 2005 is a challenge for getting rid of this most destructive weapon. With the Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in May 2005, the coming year may draw more attention to nuclear disarmament. The Mayors for Peace have launched an Emergency Campaign to ban nuclear weapons by 2020 by means of a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC), which can be a focal point of activities.
Kyoto, on the other hand, was long on the nuclear target list but was spared because of its cultural heritage. In December 1997, states agreed on the Kyoto Protocol as a first step towards preventing dangerous climate change, as required by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). Since Russia ratified the Kyoto treaty in October, it will enter into force in February 2005. And the 10th FCCC Conference in Buenos Aires this week can move ahead with further steps, strengthening international cooperation.
Nuclear annihilation and dangerous climate change are common threats to mankind. Both the NPT and the FCCC seek to enhance international security by restraining the instruments that cause the threats. A major difference is that the NPT favors those states that built the bomb first, while the FCCC puts obligations first on the big polluters. To be equally fair, the NPT would need to be replaced by a treaty that bans all nuclear weapons, such as the NWC.
The potential disasters from climate change have been popularized by the Hollywood movie "The Day After Tomorrow", which through its name refers back to a 1983 anti-nuclear movie. Scenarios of abrupt climate change have been discussed in scientific circles and were adopted by two Pentagon consultants as an issue for US security. With energy scarcity looming, according to the 2003 report by Schwartz and Randall, "nuclear energy will become a critical source of power, and this will accelerate nuclear proliferation as countries develop enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to ensure their national security."
Whether such scenarios are realistic or not, they point to the close link between energy and security. In the 20th century, numerous battles were fought for coal and oil, and both fossil and nuclear power are connected with nuclear proliferation, first of all in the Middle East. An example is Iran, which transfers its oil revenues into nuclear technology, as once did Iraq, seeking to protect its oil resources against foreign intervention and at the same time attracting it. However, the choice is not only between nuclear and climate disasters. Renewable energy could gradually replace the old energy path and contribute to global security.
This is not the approach of the reelected US administration. President George W. Bush has turned a blind eye on climate policy and defends the old fossil-nuclear energy path. By keeping good contacts with Saudi Arabia and occupying Iraq, he ensures access to the world's largest oil reservoirs, while neglecting the enormous costs and casualties. Well protected from a complex reality, he repeats one simple message: I make America and the world safer.
Whether it is viable to alienate America from the rest of the world is doubtful. The question is how long the American people will support this path which undermines security, including environmental, economic, human and social security. When the US Southeast coast was hit by six hurricanes this summer, leaving more than US$ 45 billion of damage in the State of Florida alone, governor Jeb Bush, who helped his brother win the previous election, was surprised about the "force of nature." He did not mention the warnings that global warming increases the likelihood of extreme weather events such as floods, storms, and droughts.
As long as narrowly conceived interests are pursued by military force, the cycle of destruction will go on, in the Middle East and elsewhere. In Northeast Asia we watch a competition between China, Japan, Russia, and the United States, with the two Koreas as a focal point. North Korea's attempt to build nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and US missile defense deployments fuel regional conflicts. The various umbrellas, whether they rely on nuclear weapons, missiles, missile defenses, or space weapons, remind one of Asian paper umbrellas: they are good for sunshine, but not for thunderstorms. More appropriate is to use the six-party talks between the major players to establish a nuclear and missile free zone.
This Bulletin focuses on Northeast Asia, Japan and Hiroshima in particular, which in October 2004 hosted the conference The Challenge of Hiroshima as part of the project Moving Beyond Missile Defense. By coincidence the conference started against the background of the most severe typhoon that has hit Japan in decades. Several participants highlighted the devastating impact of nuclear weapons and the failure of nuclear umbrellas (Shoji Sawada, Masao Tomonaga). The Mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, who accepted the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's World Citizenship Award to the Mayors for Peace, outlined the Emergency Campaign 2020 Vision. David Krieger presented the award and raised the importance of civil society initiatives for nuclear disarmament, an issue also covered by Kazuhiko Tamaki. Several authors expressed their views on regional and global security (Mitsuo Okamoto, Cheong Wooksik, Ye Ru'an, Hui Zhang, Wade Huntley, Eugene Miasnikov, and Terence O'Brien). A concrete Model Treaty on the Northeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone was presented by Hiro Umebayashi. Integrated approaches towards nuclear disarmament are discussed in this issue by Wolfgang Liebert, Alyn Ware, Angela Woodward, Regina Hagen, and David Atwood.
The links between energy and security are also covered, in general by Jürgen Scheffran and Cliff Singer, by M. V. Ramana, Zia Mian, and Abdul Nayyar for nuclear power in South Asia, by Tadahiro Katsuta for Japan's nuclear fusion program, by Jungmin Kang for energy cooperation on the Korean Peninsula, and by Alice Slater who calls for an international sustainable energy fund. An issue that also shapes the current international security debate is terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (Margaret E. Kosal, Morten Bremer Mærli). Two supplements to this Bulletin deal with a proposal for missile control, presented by Akira Kurosaki, and on the role of scientists in the Chemical Weapons Convention (Jiri Matousek).
Finally, I want to inform the readers that since August 2004 I have been working as a Research Scientist in the Program on Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security (ACDIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from where I will continue to contribute to the Bulletin.
Jürgen Scheffran, December 6, 2004
