Abolition 2000 Report Card for 2004
“As Time Goes By” – Making the Case for Love In a Time of Fear An Annual Assessment of Our Nuclear World
Janet Bloomfield and Pamela S. Meidell
The Fundamental Things Apply:
Moonlight and Love Songs Never Out of Date
Everyone who hears the words “Play it again, Sam!” knows that what Ilsa is asking Sam, the piano player, to play is As Time Goes By. It’s “their” song, Ilsa’s and Rick’s, from the joyous days when they were in love in Paris. But all was not as it seemed in Paris. Their world turned inside out, and in another time, another place – Casablanca, to be precise – the characters return to play out their new roles. The story goes that during the filming of Casablanca even Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman didn’t know the ending of the film until they were handed the scripts just before they were to go in front of the cameras. Just like them, we don’t know the outcome of the nuclear scenarios currently being played out on our planet. But we do know that next spring in New York at the United Nations, we will have an opportunity to rewrite our scripts and transcend our roles, and possibly even embark on the “beginning of … beautiful friendships….” between nation states, their diplomats, and their citizens in such various capacities as local elected officials (mayors), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs).
In May 2005, the world’s governments and citizen representatives from around the planet will gather in New York for the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).[1] This meeting will take place in the midst of the 60th anniversary year of the beginning of the Nuclear Age, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the founding of the United Nations. The United Nations has also declared 2005 “International Year of Physics” to mark the centenary of Albert Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis (miracle year), in which a young patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland introduced the famous formula E=mc², as part of the special theory of relativity.[2] This theory forever changed humanity’s view of time and space, and provided one of the key intellectual building blocks for the creation of nuclear weapons. As we approach the year 2005, the time is ripe to reflect and assess where we have come from, where we are, and where we are heading.
To go back to the beginning, we have to go back to a song. The Chumash people, native to the Central Coast of California, home to the US nuclear missile-testing center (Vandenberg Air Force Base) and Diablo Nuclear Power Station, say that the world began with a song. According to Pilulaw Khus, Medicine Elder of the Bear Clan of the Chumash Nation, “A long time ago, to begin with, there was a movement in the atmosphere, and that movement was very small. Then it began to build. It built from a particle into a wave and began to circle the earth. The wave began to take on substance. That wave became a song, and it was the most beautiful song. It circled the earth and all things came into being. As time went by, people began to move away from the song.”[3]
With our report this year, we will use a song, As Time Goes By, from the movie, Casablanca, to look at the state of our nuclear world, with the hope that we can return to the beautiful song that circles our earth. We invite our readers to stretch their imaginations, in the spirit of Albert Einstein when he said, “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”[4]
You Must Remember This:
A Case of Do or Die
In our 2003 report Here There Be Dragons,[5] we ended with this appeal: “Unless a breakthrough takes place soon in disarmament, we will face an acceleration of aggressive nuclear postures and an increase in the number of states acquiring nuclear weapons. The consequences will be disastrous for all of us. What can be done to concentrate minds and generate political will? Setting a deadline helped create the momentum for a successful conclusion to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty negotiations in 1996. Time is not on our side with regard to the development and spread of nuclear weapons. By setting deadlines for the implementation of the 13 points[6] agreed at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, time could become our ally.”
What has happened since this same time last year? The events of the last twelve months have, sadly, only confirmed that the world has become increasingly unstable and insecure. The US has continued its aggressive nuclear posture, and several states have acquired or are closer to acquiring nuclear weapons. North Korea has remained out of the NPT, bilateral and multilateral talks have broken down as of this writing, and the world now assumes that North Korea has at least several nuclear weapons. The skirmish between Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the US, and the Western European powers of Britain, France, and Germany continues to play out on the world stage. Iran says it wants to use its prerogative under the NPT to develop nuclear power, while the everwatchful countries mentioned above fear that Iran is using the nuclear power option as cover to develop nuclear weapons. These events plus war in Iraq show us that we need a new approach. What has gone wrong? What can we do to turn around?
We propose a thought experiment a la Einstein: to travel back in time to 1990, to the end of the Cold War, hailed as such a marvelous opportunity to put our nuclear toys away forever. Then we will pause in the present to assess the current state of our world. Then we propose traveling forward to the year 2020, to entertain various scenarios that could result from our current situation. We will then return to the present with the wisdom of our travels, and propose next steps we can take to create a nuclear free world.
As Time Goes By:
A Return to the End of the Cold War
To go back in time to 1990 is to return to the exhilaration surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the joyous hopes for peace in the planet’s peoples. One of the architects of those hopes was Mikhail Gorbachev, the original practical nuclear abolitionist. A few years earlier, in 1987, he had proclaimed in Moscow, at a summit for a nuclear-free world:[7]
“We rejected the right of the leadership of any country, be it the USSR, the USA or any other country, to pass a death sentence on mankind. We are not judges and billions of people are not criminals to be punished. So the nuclear guillotine must be taken apart. The nuclear powers must overstep their nuclear shadow and enter into a nuclear-free world, thus ending politics’ isolation from the general ethical stands of humanity.
“In view of the growing danger of a new spiral in the arms race and of the drastic aggravation of regional and so-called global problems, we must waste no more time trying to outplay each other and to gain unilateral advantages. The stake in such a game is too high – the survival of humanity. Therefore, it is now important to take the crucial factor of time into account.”
In 1990, three years after this speech, the fourth NPT Review Conference ended in disarray in Geneva without adopting a “final declaration” reaffirming the countries’ common commitment to the NPT. Mexico, resisting US pressure, held out for a pledge on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that was not forthcoming. Politicians from the nuclear weapons states did not heed Gorbachev’s advice and still played nuclear hardball at a moment when the door was wide open to diminish the world’s nuclear arsenals.
Five years later, in 1995, the NPT was extended indefinitely and unconditionally. Some governments, NGOs and experts advocated a limited ten- to twenty-five year extension to increase the pressure for implementation, but the nuclear weapons states exerted their own enormous pressure for the other option. In 2000, the first NPT Review Conference of the 21st century gave us the renowned “13 points” and the “unequivocal undertaking” of the nuclear weapons states to get rid of their nuclear arsenals, in an outcome that was widely welcomed as positive. Since 2000, as we all know, a new administration has taken power in Washington, and terrorists have struck the cultural/financial and political capitals of the United States. The world has witnessed new US policies of preemptive first use of nuclear weapons against non nuclear weapons states,[8] a green light for development of new, more “useable” nuclear weapons, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a declaration of a global “war on terror.”
Clearly, the promises and opportunities of the end of the Cold War lie tattered at our collective feet.[9] But the thinking that produced the Cold War still permeates our halls of power and even our citizen initiatives. We all have difficulty emerging from the old bi-polar mindset.
It’s Still The Same Old Story:
From Political Will to Political Willingness in Today’s Nuclear World
Today, we find ourselves in an era of globalization, terrorism and pre-emptive war. Many of the international agreements and institutions so carefully developed in the preceding decades have been ignored or dismantled; the ones that remain are increasingly fragile. Time moves faster and faster as many watch mesmerized in fear, waiting for things to fall apart. Well they could, unless we summon the courage and vision to stop it. Albert Einstein characterized this reality when he said:
“The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our mode of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe… We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Clearly, our old way of thinking does not serve our common, collective life. Given today’s realities, how do we change our minds? How do we change our way of thinking?
As we have reviewed our annual assessments,[10] in the years since 1995, we see our endless refrain, calling for the unleashing of the political will of the world’s peoples. We, the world’s peoples, clearly want a world without nuclear weapons, as the majority of the world’s countries do NOT possess them,[11] and numerous decisionmakers in the world’s nuclear weapons states say they provide no value in their arsenals given that the weapons’ only purpose is to scare people to death (by not using them) or to incinerate them to death (by using them). Perhaps in addition to summoning political will, we need to summon political willingness.
The war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the “war on terror,” and the vast uprising of people across the globe in response to these events demonstrate that political will is alive and well on the planet. But what about political willingness? How can we keep political will alive and at the same time nurture the conditions that will generate the political willingness to enter the uncharted waters evoked by Hungarian Ambassador to the UN Laszlo Molnar at the opening of the NPT Preparatory Committee meeting in Geneva in May 2003?[12] What are we willing to do to create the conditions for a nuclear-free world?
Business as usual will not suffice. In an oral addition to her prepared remarks, Ambassador Paulette Bethel of the Bahamas, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) at the NPT Preparatory Committee in May 2004, referred to the plans of a number of states to maintain their nuclear arsenals for at least another 50 years. She looked ahead and saw that, if nothing were done, the NPT will still be a treaty waiting to be fulfilled on its 100th anniversary in 2068! In the world of business, in domestic politics, in military planning and in major public projects, such as the Olympics, such tardiness would lead to bankruptcy, regime change, disciplinary measures and unemployment for those involved. Imagine for a moment if members of the Athens Olympics organizing committee had said,“Well, we might put on the Games in 2004, but we might also do it in 2007. We might have to be careful and wait until perhaps 2014. Putting the pressure of a deadline on us will make it very difficult for us to do our job.” If the original members of the Manhattan Project had shared this sense of delay and perpetually put-off deadlines, perhaps we wouldn’t be facing the nuclear dangers we face today. The citizens of the world deserve a greater sense of urgency from their political officials, as well as fuller implementation of promises made on their behalf. Ultimately, treaties such as the NPT belong to the people, and the peoples’ representatives in government would do well to remember it.
No Matter What The Future Brings:
The Clear Lens of 2020 Vision
At the local level, elected officials are working with their citizens to take responsibility for a nuclear free future. The Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign[13]13 sets out a vision, calling for the full implementation of the NPT through a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) by 2020, fifteen years from now. The campaign, called 2020 Vision, uses the symbol of clear lenses to replace the lenses melted in a pair of spectacles damaged by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.[14] The Mayors’ powerful, yet apt symbol, and call for clarity is refreshing amidst the muddy rhetoric of the current global political climate. Mayors for Peace is a fast-growing network of mayors and other local elected officials, currently linking over 600 cities in over 100 countries around the world. They speak for their citizens: the people who live in cities, the main targets for nuclear weapons. As Mayor Gabino Aguirre[15] of Santa Paula, California says, “In any war, it is cities and the people living in them that suffer. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki attest, this suffering becomes total destruction when nuclear weapons are involved. To protect their citizens’ lives, it is incumbent on all mayors to make every effort to prevent war and eliminate nuclear weapons.”
The Mayors for Peace (and their citizens)[16] recognize that the time is now ripe for full implementation of the NPT. The negotiation of Nuclear Weapons Convention offers a path and timeline to follow to make the Mayors’ vision a reality. A model of this treaty, in draft form,[17] is already available for use by the world community. In November 17, 1997, Costa Rica introduced to the United Nations a draft treaty, called a Model NWC that includes all of these elements.[18]
As Time Goes By:
A Timeline for Nuclear Abolition
Enacting a Nuclear Weapons Convention is the best way to set deadlines for implementation of the “13 points” agreed at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, and thus to fully implement the NPT. In the visionary Model NWC circulated at the United Nations, we have all the strategy, goals, and timelines we need to eliminate nuclear weapons from our beautiful planet. The laying out of such a timeline helps to generate the political will and willingness to make it happen. When this draft treaty was first unveiled in the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at the United Nations in New York on April 17, 1997, we listened in awe as the drafters cited the litany of what would happen each year as we moved toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons. It sounded something like this:
2005: agree to open negotiations on a NWC
2008: complete negotiations on a NWC
2009: parliaments, congresses and diets ratify the NWC in country capitals around the world with appropriate ceremonies
2010: NWC enters into force, becoming the law of the planet
2011-2020: begin and complete the elimination of nuclear weapons, which includes the following steps: make public declarations of all nuclear weapons, material, facilities, and delivery vehicles; remove targeting coordinates and navigational information from all nuclear weapon delivery systems; disable and dealert all nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles; designate for decommissioning and closure or conversion all nuclear weapons testing, research, and production facilities; stop producing proscribed nuclear material; stop all nuclear activities; stop producing nuclear weapons components and equipment; stop funding for nuclear weapons research; submit plans for fully implementing all obligations of the NWC.
If we can imagine it, we can do it. Einstein teaches us this great lesson, which we need to learn over and over again. All great enterprises require planning, and this timeline gives us a detailed mental map to guide us as we set out together on the road to a nuclear-free world.
The Fundamental Things Apply:
Wise as Serpents, Gentle as Doves
How do we cultivate the political willingness to bring NPT countries together to create a safer world for all of us? Where can we find the strength, wisdom and positive energy we need to create a sustainable future? If we think a Nuclear Weapons Convention is a naïve dream, given the world we live in, we need only look to the example of Mikhail Gorbachev – the first statesman on the world stage to believe that the abolition of nuclear weapons was an achievable goal. On September 23, 2004, former President Gorbachev addressed a press conference in London to launch the Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness Program.[19]
During the press conference, the BBC correspondent asked President Gorbachev: “Isn’t it naïve to think that we can abolish nuclear weapons, given the current world situation?”
Mr. Gorbachev replied: “I’ve been accused on many occasions of being naïve. On January 15, 1986, when I first called for the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2000, there were two reactions: one, this is propaganda; two, this is an illusion. But let me remind you. We did eliminate two full classes of nuclear weapons. We need to continue to reduce nuclear weapons drastically, with the goal of complete abolition. We need to put forward the issue of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction. With respect to global terrorism, nuclear weapons should of course be safeguarded and protected from theft, but ultimately they must be eliminated. Again, you may accuse me of being naïve. But I am not stupid. I believe what I say, and I know what I am talking about.”
Later that evening, President Gorbachev offered an eloquent, precise analysis and prescription that encouraged us to fulfill the promises enshrined in the NPT, and finish the work he had begun with US President Reagan in the 1980s. We appeal to our political leaders and representatives to open their minds and hearts and hear its wise message.[20]
A Fight for Love and Glory:
As Time Goes By
Political leaders of the countries bound by Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) treaties do not need to be convinced of this approach. Virtually the entire Southern Hemisphere of our planet is covered by one NWFZ treaty or another.[21] In fact, Brazil and Aotearoa/New Zealand have called for the creation of a Southern Hemisphere NWFZ treaty, uniting the current zones around the planet. We also welcome the initiative of Mexico, in calling for an international Conference of the Parties to Nuclear Weapons Free Zones treaties. Such a conference has never been convened before, and would bring together over 100 countries from the “Majority World,”[22] none of them nuclear weapons states. If such a conference could take place before the NPT Review Conference in May 2005, it would give the countries with the most experience of living without nuclear weapons the opportunity to discuss, strategize and make decisions that may bring us all closer to a nuclear-free planet.
By holding such a conference, the members of NWFZs demonstrate their political willingness to move ahead in ways that have not been possible in other diplomatic arenas such as the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, preparatory meetings and review conferences of the NPT, and even the First Committee of the United Nations itself.[23] The world’s Nuclear Weapons Free Zones form the heart of the untold success story of the road to a nuclear-free world; they are one of our best hopes for bringing it into being. NWFZs are preventive disarmament measures that can be negotiated by regional bodies as a way of taking action independent of the will of the nuclear weapons states.[24]
At a time when people and governments of nearly every persuasion look for better ways to be safe and create the conditions for their children and societies to flourish, the citizens and governments of the world’s NWFZs have much to teach us. Collectively, they are ensuring genuine security for their communities by putting the needs that support life at the top of their priorities, and dedicating the resources of their environments and labors to meeting those needs. As our theme song says, “And no matter what the progress, Or what may yet be proved, The simple facts of life are such, They cannot be removed.”
The governments of NWFZ countries don’t need to protect their countries and regions with technologically flawed missile defense “shields.” They already have the best “shields” in the world: agreements of trust and cooperation with their regional neighbors, and the legally secured promises of the nuclear weapons countries not to attack them with nuclear weapons. By virtue of the treaties themselves, the entire southern hemisphere is under a “missile defense shield,” mandated and guaranteed by the nuclear weapons states themselves!!
The kind of political willingness exemplified in NWFZ treaties (which we can envision being extended to embrace the policy exchanges between nations) appeared recently on the front page of the New York Times.[25] The article opens with Jorge Castaneda, former Foreign Minister of Mexico, noting President Bush’s change in demeanor from charming to brusque after the September 11 attacks, with the implied message to allies that the US needed their nonnegotiable support. The article continues: “Mexico’s hesitant stance at the United Nations on the war in Iraq became a source of tension. Yet Mr. Castaneda said, ‘I was never asked, “What is it you need in order to be more cooperative with us? What can we do to help?”’
We suggest that the asking of such questions would contribute greatly to the creation of the political willingness that we advocate.[26] We suggest that this kind of approach will do more to meet the needs of the world’s governments and peoples for security and sovereignty than the current “war on terror.”
A Case of Do or Die:
As Time Goes By
We all carry an urgent responsibility in the coming months to educate and engage the public about the crisis facing the NPT, and the need to work together to save, strengthen and implement it. The people of the world, led by the Mayors for Peace and the citizen groups of Abolition Now, propose that their governments put the NPT Review Conference in May 2005 at the top of their agendas, and that the governments send Heads of State to attend the important opening days. The stakes are incredibly high. In this matter, we are not engaging in an academic exercise in diplomacy and “policy- wonking” but in matters of life and death.[27] The outcome of May’s meeting will shape the future of our world. We cannot allow the NPT regime to unravel. We cannot allow more and more countries to acquire nuclear weapons while existing nuclear weapons countries develop new systems and strategies for their use.
Hearts Full of Passion – Jealousy and Hate:
Through a Lens Clearly or Through a Glass Darkly
While the Mayors for Peace, leaders of Nuclear Weapons Free Zones, and citizens throughout the world organize and plan to avert the dissolution of the NPT and to create the conditions for a nuclear-free world, political and military planners in the nuclear weapons states up the nuclear ante in their preparations for grimmer realities. The clear vision of the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign, culminating in the total elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020, contrasts starkly with the updated National Security Strategy of the United States.[29] Despite legal pledges (enshrined in the NWFZ treaties, among others) and decades of an implicit policy not to use nuclear weapons against non nuclear weapons states, the US declares its option of preemptive war by stating: “we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively.” Unfortunately, the world has witnessed the consequences of the implementation of this strategy in the war in Iraq. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the aftermath of the terrible terrorist slayings in Beslan, invoked this “right” to act preemptively, demonstrating that the domino theory is alive and well in the nuclear capitals of our world.
We cannot be safe unless everyone is safe; and no one is safe in a world with nuclear weapons. Nightmare scenarios of spiraling accusations and attacks in the diplomatic arenas of our world, and more visceral and bloody attacks on the ground, only shrink our hearts and make us more afraid. They do not address our genuine concerns for security, the meeting of our basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, and education, and a clean, healthy environment in which to live and share with all of life.
As Time Goes By
As the Old Testament Proverbs say, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”[30] But which vision will it be? We have the opportunity to choose a future that enhances life for everyone on the planet. Nuclear weapons do not enhance that life. We can choose to be dominated by ever increasing weapons systems deployed on land, sea, in the sky and in outer space. Or we can run the film backwards, and watch the exploding mushroom clouds collapse back into nothingness.
In honor of the Hibakusha, the aging survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we offer this vision of what is possible next May. Under the blossoming cherry trees next to the East River at United Nations Headquarters in New York, the heads of state of all NPT member states, starting with the nuclear weapons states, file one by one to a table dusted with cherry blossoms. On the table rests a document laying out the promise to commence negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention, thus fulfilling the promise of Article Six[31] of the NPT. Each president or prime minister, in front of the rolling cameras of the world’s press, signs the paper and hands the pen to the next person in line. The signing ceremony takes a long time. But all the witnesses watch quietly, letting the breezes caress them and carry the cherry blossoms over them.
We have called on ourselves to meet great challenges in the past: to abolish slavery, to send a man to the moon, to eradicate smallpox. It is within our power to abolish nuclear weapons and dismantle the last atomic bomb. Since we began our report with a song, we give the last line to a singer: Christian singer, Michael W. Smith, told the following story at a recent concert:[32]
When Bono (of U2) shared his new album title, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, with Smith, Bono asked Smith, “Do you know how to dismantle an atomic bomb?” When Smith said, “No,” Bono answered his own question: “Love. With love.”
Or, as Sam, the piano player, sings it, “The world will always welcome lovers/As time goes by.”
An Atomic Mirror Production. United Nations Day, October 24, 2004.
