The Democratic People's Republic of Korea's decision to test a nuclear bomb on Oct. 9 has renewed fears of an arms race in which the currency of power will be nuclear weapons.
North Korea's breach of a global moratoroium on nuclear explosive testing has also spurred a raft of new calls for disarmament, including ones from Physicians for Global Survival (Canada) and the chair of the independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (WMDC).
Physicians for Global Survival President Dr. Dale Dewar urged in a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the federal government take leadership in a renewed international effort to uphold and implement the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Dewar also urged Canada to oppose sanctions against the North Korean people. “This is already a threatened people. Sanctions must target the leadership, not the populace.”
WMDC chair Hans Blix, meanwhile, decried the test as a call to other states to refrain from developing nuclear weapons and from testing. “If all great powers made sincere efforts to move the world toward nuclear disarmament, it might be less difficult to persuade other states to do likewise,” Prof. Hans Blix told the Boston Globe.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also lamented the testing and breaking “de facto” of the global moratorium on nuclear explosive testing. Further “the addition of a new State with nuclear weapon capacity is a clear setback to international commitments to move towards nuclear disarmament.”
At an Ottawa lecture 2 weeks before the test, Blix highlighted the results of a 2-year study by the Sweden-based WMDC. Its June 2006 report, Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, concludes that global efforts to achieve arms limitation and disarmament have “stagnated” and makes 60 recommendations toward global cooperation on disarmament (www.wmdcommission.org).
The UN Secretary-General has urged the international community to consider the report's recommendations.
Blix, the former director general of the Vienna-based IAEA (1981–97) and former executive chair of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (2000–03), warned, “We are at a crossroads.” If we take the wrong turn, we are heading toward a new nuclear arms race.
Blix discussed current issues affecting the nuclear arms race, from an increase in world military expenditure to a policy shift that now accepts a first strike nuclear option. The US, he argued, believes it has the freedom to use pre-emptive nuclear action to counter a threat to its national security — and that threat no longer has to be imminent.
Blix's main message was that all governments currently possessing nuclear weapons must reduce their arsenals and stop producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. “It is high time the nuclear weapons states move on with their commitment” to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In addition, all nuclear-armed states must go forward with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, including ratification by those who haven't yet done so, such as the US and China. Third, verification of fissile material (by IAEA inspectors) must continue, and non-treaty countries such as India must agree to these safeguards.
Blix and the WMDC are unanimous in calling for a prohibition of nuclear weapons.
Given the lack of political will to change the state of nuclear affairs, Dr. Ron McCoy, immediate past co-president of IPPNW, wondered if it's time to shift focus from decision-makers to public opinion. Blix gave an emphatic yes. He questioned why US taxpayers accept military expenditure of up to 1 trillion dollars.
McCoy also pointed out that the fight against global warming could increase the threat of nuclear instability as more countries procure nuclear power stations. IPPNW recently published its 5 goals toward global abolition of nuclear weapons (www.ippnw.org).
Blix praised diplomacy as the way forward: “we need to create situations in which states do not feel the need for WMD.”