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STOP SMOKING: SUGGESTIONS FOR PROGRESS IN SOUTH ASIA
JONATHAN GLENN GRANOFF, ESQ.
President, Global Security Institute
San Francisco CA
www.gsinstitute.org
INTRODUCTION
Sophisticated geopolitical analysts failed to adequately anticipate the testing of
nuclear weapons and the subsequent creation of hazardous nuclear arsenals in South Asia during the last decade of the 20th century. The methodologies used to predict the conduct of States and peoples neglected an
important intellectual tool, which when used sparingly, can yield extraordinarily accurate results. For lack of a more erudite description I will simply call this tool common sense.
Often common sense is
contained in the most humble of folk tales. Let me share one arising from the wisdom traditions of the Indus Valley.
A mother failed again and again to persuade her teenage son to quite smoking. In
desperation she went with her son to a wise man for his help. He told them to return in forty days.
The sage then said, “Son, smoking is expensive, horrible for your health and continuing to pursue the habit
an expression of disrespect to your mother. I urge you, for your well-being, and hers, to gradually reduce your reliance on cigarettes and, in as short a time as possible, give them up entirely.
The young man smiled and said, “Thank you for your good advice. I will indeed follow it.”
The mother expressed her profuse gratitude and then asked, “But why did we have to wait forty days? You could have
advised my son when we first met.”
“Mother, indeed that is so, but it would not have been effective. I had to quit smoking first.”
187 states are members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT),
which prohibits the possession of nuclear weapons by 182 States. The US, Russia, UK, France and China, under the Treaty permissibly have these devices but have pledged at the 2000 Review Conference of the Treaty “an
unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapons States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI (of the
Treaty).” Excerpted from 2000 NPT Review Conference Final Document, Part I, Article VI, Section 15. All 187 States have made commitments to 13 steps to help bring this pledge to fruition.
The recent US
Nuclear Posture Review, which calls for continued indefinite reliance on the threat to use nuclear weapons, the US termination of the ABM Treaty, the failure to obtain a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, among other
policies, make clear that the commitment to fulfill this pledge by the world’s most significant country is indeed weak.
The wise man would never have persuaded the teenager to quit with a cigarette in his
mouth. Only four states remain outside the NPT regime — India, Pakistan, Cuba and Israel. It is clear that India, and thus Pakistan, are unlikely to join the regime as non- nuclear weapons states given the current
foolish inconsistencies. Jaswant Singh, India’s Foreign Minister, wrote in Foreign Affairs, September/October 1998, Against NuclearApartheid, the following:
The first 50 years of Indian independence reveal
that the country’s moralistic nuclear policy and restraint paid no measurable dividends, except resentment that India was being discriminated against. Disarmament seemed increasingly unrealistic politics. If the
permanent five’s possession of nuclear weapons increases security, why would India’s possession of nuclear weapons be dangerous? If the permanent five continue to employ nuclear weapons as an international currency
of force and power, why should India voluntarily devalue its own state power and national security? Why admonish India after the fact for not falling in line behind a new international agenda of discriminatory
nonproliferation pursued largely due to the internal agendas or political debates of the nuclear club? If deterrence works in the West – as it so obviously appears to, since the Western nations insist on continuing
to possess nuclear weapons – by what reasoning will it not work in India? Nuclear weapons powers continue to have, but to preach to the have-nots to have even less. India counters by suggesting either universal,
nondiscriminatory (nuclear) disarmament or equal security for the entire world.
The fallacy of Jaswant Singh’s proposition is that nuclear weapons bring security. It is akin to the teenager claiming that
cigarettes are not expensive, enhance his self-image, health and strength and do no injury to others. Nevertheless, Singh’s argument that hypocrisy is unpersuasive holds true.
In Secretary General Koffi
Annan’s Millennium Address to all the nations of the world he stated, in relevant part:
249. The objective of nuclear non-proliferation is not helped by the fact that the nuclear weapon states continue to
insist that those weapons in their hands enhance security, while in the hands of others they are a threat to world peace.
250. If we were making steady progress towards disarmament, this situation would be
less alarming. Unfortunately the reverse is true. Not only are the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks stalled, but there are no negotiations at all covering the many thousands of so-called tactical nuclear weapons in
existence, or the weapons of any nuclear power other than those of the Russian Federation and the United States of America.
251. Moreover, unless plans to deploy missile defenses are devised with the
agreement of all concerned parties, the progress achieved thus far in reducing the number of nuclear weapons may be jeopardized. Confidence–building is required to reassure states that their nuclear deterrent
capabilities will not be negated.
252. Above all else, we need a reaffirmation of political commitment at the highest levels to reducing the dangers that arise both from existing nuclear weapons and from
further proliferation.
253. To help focus attention on the risks we confront and on the opportunities we have to reduce them, I propose that consideration be given to convening a major international
conference that would help to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers.
The nuclear weapons states have not so far responded positively to this call for an international conference to address this ongoing
crisis, nor have they proposed an alternative route to greater security. The need continues because the risks continue. Failure in progress toward nuclear weapons elimination persists as a stimulus for
proliferation. The recent Moscow Treaty fails in this regard since it is neither irreversible nor verifiable, nor does it eliminate any weapons. Moreover, it fails entirely to address tactical nuclear weapons, which
remain in the thousands. Again, expressed aspirations fail to live up to deeds.
The most pronounced effect of failure to lead by example can be seen in the ongoing crisis between India and Pakistan. The Cuban
Missile Crisis gave us thirteen days. How much time do we have now?
Wisdom required the wise man to lead by example. Is this not the time for the US to raise a standard to which the “wise and honest can
repair.” This event is possibly in our hands alone.
In an effort to more thoroughly articulate these important moral, legal and practical aspects of the current dilemma I submit for your consideration the
following lengthy excerpt from my paper published in the Brigham Young University Law Review, Volume 2000, No. 4, titled, “Nuclear Weapons, Ethics, Morals and Law.” The article in its entirety may be found at
http:www.gsinstitute.org/resources/index.shtml
Nuclear Weapons, Ethics, Morals, and Law
Bullets kill men, but atomic bombs kill cities. A tank is a defense
against a bullet, but there is no defense against a weapon that can destroy
civilization. . . . Our defense is law and order.1
I. INTRODUCTION
The
nuclear weapons age began at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time, July 16, 1945, when the first atom bomb was tested in a portion of the bleak barren Alamogordo bombing range in the New Mexico desert chillingly named
Jornado de Muerto (Journey of Death).2 After the thunderous roar of the shock wave, a huge pillar of smoke rose 30,000 feet, creating the first icon of the nuclear age—the fearsome mushroom cloud. A blast of energy
of unprecedented 3 destructive magnitude bathed the surrounding mountain range in a brilliant light that could be seen 150 miles away. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, the organization
responsible for the design of the first atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Engineer District of the War Department, uttered a sober description from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: “‘Now I am become Death,
destroyer of worlds.’”4
The new millennium begins with 32,000 nuclear bombs5 possessed by eight nations containing 5,000 megatons of destructive energy.6 This
is a global arsenal more than sufficient to destroy the world.7
The United Nations Charter was drafted without the full recognition of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.8
The very first resolution 9 adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations called for the elimination of atomic bombs. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (hereinafter the NPT or the
Treaty)10 supplements the Charter and is now, with 187 states par-ties, the most adhered-to treaty in the world. Designed to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it contains five commitments: “acceptance of a
political and moral norm against the possession of nuclear weapons; an obligation to eliminate existing stocks; international cooperation in the peaceful uses of energy; special assistance to developing countries;
and measures to ensure a world free of nuclear weapons.”11 The Treaty entered into force on March 5, 1970, for a twenty-five year period and was indefinitely renewed in 1995. 12 In essence, it promises a world in
which nuclear weapons are eliminated and technological cooperation is widespread.13
The five declared nuclear weapon states14 — United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France—have solemnly obligated themselves under Article VI of the NPT to nuclear disarmament.15. At the 2000 Review Conference of the NPT, April 24 through May 20, 2000, at the United Nations in New York City, all parties to the Treaty, including the five nuclear weapon states, affirmed “[a]n unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”16
This legal duty does not contain an enforceable timeline. Many of the 182 non-nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT have been induced to legally bind themselves, under
the NPT, to refrain from developing nuclear weapons by the commitment of the nuclear weapon states to negotiate nuclear disarmament.17 The Treaty’s nonproliferation requirements are recognized as serious and
weighty; the nuclear disarmament commitments will not be accomplished without greater political pressure.
There is inadequate public understanding of the political,18
scientific,19 legal,20 ethical,21 moral,22 and military 23 dimensions of nuclear weapon policy, including preparedness for use.24
Such difficulty may arise because the
weapons’ effects actually outstrip our imagination.25 The proportion of the fireball in relation to the size of the nuclear device is very difficult to imagine. Their destructive capacity makes them awesome to
contemplate,26 and the policies that generated the arsenals are not always amenable to common sense 27 or our normal uses of language.28
In 1995, the prestigious Canberra
Commission,29 convened by the government of Australia, stated, The destructiveness of nuclear weapons is immense. Any use would be catastrophic. . . . There is no doubt that, if the peoples of the world were more
fully aware of the inherent danger of nuclear weapons and the consequences of their use, they would reject them, and not permit their continued possession or acquisition on their behalf by their governments, even
for an alleged need for self-defence.30
This Article attempts to address the issue in broad categories and in manners not often utilized in an effort to stimulate new
thinking.31
Part II emphasizes the ethical norm of the Golden Rule. Part III reminds us that nuclear weapons threaten our most precious, civilized values expressed through
law. Part IV succinctly states the holding of the International Court of Justice on the issue.32 Part V criticizes the incoherence of deterrence theory based on International Court of Justice opinions. The
Conclusion is a plea to move towards moral coherence. Security policies are most effective when they are coherent with legal and moral foundations.
II. ETHICAL AND MORAL FRAMEWORK FOR ADDRESSING THE ISSUE
The convergence of the development of global legal regimes with the nascent pursuit of global ethics 33 may be where we can find the future thinking Albert Einstein said
was necessary to address our current predicament.34
In his concurrence with the historic opinion of the International Court of Justice (hereinafter the ICJ or the Court)
issued July 8, 1996, addressing the legal status of the threat or use of nuclear weapons,35 Judge Ranjeva stated, “On the great issues of mankind the requirements of positive law and of ethics make common cause, and
nuclear weapons, because of their destructive effects, are one such issue.”36
Human society has ethical and moral norms based on wisdom, conscience, and practicality. Many
norms are universal and have withstood the test of human experience over long periods of time. One such principle is that of reciprocity. It is often called the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you wish to be treated.”
It is an ethical and moral foundation for all the world’s major religions.37
Judge Weeramantry said, Equality of all those who are subject to a legal system is central to its
integrity and legitimacy. So it is with the body of principles constituting the corpus of international law. Least of all can there be one law for the powerful and another law for the rest. No domestic system would
accept such a principle, nor can any international system which is premised on a concept of equality.38
The solution: “States should treat others as they wish to be treated in return.”39
Continued reliance on the role of nuclear weapons remains central to the security
postures of at least two declared nuclear weapon states for the foreseeable future.40 This posture generates instability. The Canberra Commission stated, Nuclear weapons are held by a handful of states which insist
that these weapons provide unique security benefits, and yet reserve uniquely to themselves the right to own them. This situation is highly discriminatory and thus unstable; it cannot be sustained. The possession of
nuclear weapons by any state is a constant stimulus to other states to acquire them.41
It is inconsistent with moral wisdom and practical common sense for a few states to violate the ancient and universally
valid principle of reciprocity. Such moral myopia has a corrosive effect on the law, which gains its respect largely through moral coherence. Global security cannot be obtained while rejecting wisdom universally
recognized for thousands of years.
III. LAW AND VALUES
Law is the articulation of values. Values must be based on moral foundations to have credibility. The recognition of the intrinsic
sacredness of life and the duty of states and individuals to protect life is a fundamental characteristic of all human civilized values. Such civilized values are expressed in humanitarian law and customs that have
an ancient lineage reaching back thousands of years.
They were worked out in many civilizations—Chinese, Indian, Greek, Roman, Japanese, Islamic, modern European, among others.. . . Humanitarian law is in
continuous development. . . . [and] grows as the sufferings of war keep escalating. With the nuclear weapon, those sufferings reach a limit situation, beyond which all else is academic.42
In his 1995 testimony before the Court, then Foreign Minister of Australia Gareth Evans said, The fact remains that the existence of nuclear weapons as a class of weapons threatens the whole of
civilization. This is not the case with respect to any class or classes of conventional weapons. It cannot be consistent with humanity to permit the existence of a weapon which threatens the very survival of
humanity. The threat of global annihilation engendered by the existence of such weapons, and the fear that this has engendered amongst the entire post-war generation, is itself an evil, as much as nuclear war
itself. If not always at the forefront of our everyday thinking, the shadow of the mushroom cloud remains in all our minds. It has pervaded our thoughts about the future, about our children, about human nature. And
it has pervaded the thoughts of our children themselves, who are deeply anxious about their future in a world where nuclear weapons remain.43
We must never
forget the awesome destructive power of these devices. “Nuclear weapons have the potential to destroy the entire eco system of the planet. Those already in the world’s arsenals have the potential of destroying life
on the planet several times over.”44
Not only are they destructive in magnitude but in horror aswell.45 It is questionable whether there is a full recognition of the
consequences of the horror.46
Judge Weeramantry emphasized that, the unprecedented magnitude of its destructive power is only one of the unique features of the bomb. It is unique in its un-containability in
both space and time. It is unique as a source of peril to the human future. It is unique as a source of continuing danger to human health, even long after its use. Its infringement of humanitarian law goes beyond
its being a weapon of mass destruction, to reasons which penetrate far deeper into the core of humanitarian law.47
Like a deer stunned by oncoming headlights and unable to move, we have not adequately grasped
the moral incoherence of placing the survival of states “above all other considerations, in particular above the survival of mankind itself.”48
Our collective failure to use laws guided by ethical values relegates us to live in a
kind of suspended sentence. For half a century now these terrifying weapons of
mass destruction have formed part of the human condition. Nuclear weapons have entered into all calculations, all scenarios, all plans. Since Hiroshima, on the morning of 6 August 1945, fear has gradually become
man’s first nature. His life on earth has taken on the aspect of what the Koran calls “a long nocturnal journey,” like a nightmare whose end he cannot yet foresee.49
Attempting to obtain ultimate security
through the ultimate weapon, we have failed, for the proliferation of nuclear firepower has still not been brought under control, despite the existence of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Fear and folly may still link
hands at any moment to perform a final dance of death. Humanity is all the more vulnerable today for being capable of mass producing nuclear missiles.50
*United Nations Representative of Lawyers Alliance for
World Security, Chair, American Bar Association Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament, CEO of Global Security Institute.
A shorter version of this paper was presented to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty Prepcom of 1999 and The Hague Appeal for Peace. It was drafted with the assistance of consultations with several Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) focusing on arms control, values, and disarmament,
including NGO Committee on Disarmament, Temple of Under-standing, Pax Christi International, Franciscans International, Interfaith Center of New York, State of the World Forum, Lawyers Alliance for World Security,
Global Security Institute, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, and especially Myrna Penna of the World Conference of Religion and Peace.
Special thanks are extended to Senator Alan Cranston, Professor Lois
Sohn, Ambassador Richard Butler, John Burroughs, Professor Michael Goldsmith, Ambassador Jonathan Dean, Senator Douglas Roche, O.C., Ambassador Thomas Graham, and Jeanne Boardman for their selfless advice.
1. THE EXPANDED QUOTABLE EINSTEIN 177 (Alice Calaprice ed., 2000).
2. See LOS ALAMOS 32 (Los Alamos Historical Society ed., 1999).
3. See id. at 53. Brigadier General T.F. Farrell described the moment
as follows: The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared
description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the
nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined. Seconds after the explosion came, first, the air blast pressing hard against the people, to be followed
almost immediately by the strong, sustained awesome roar which warned of doomsday and made us feel we puny things were blasphemous to dare tamper with the forces heretofore reserved for the Almighty.
4.
DOUGLAS ROCHE, AN UNACCEPTABLE RISK 6 (1995) (quoting JOHN NEWHOUSE, WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE 41 (1989)).
5. See REPAIRING THE REGIME, app. V (Joseph Cirincione ed., 2000); CHARLES J. MOXLEY, JR.,
NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE POST COLD WAR WORLD 397–98 (2000) (Nuclear weapons include fission and fusion); see also THOMAS B. COCHRAIN ET AL., NUCLEAR WEAPONS DATABOOK, UNITED STATES NUCLEAR FORCES
AND CAPABILITIES (1984). “Conventional weapons typically have a destructive capability measurable in the release of some number of tons of TNT.” MOXLEY, supra, at 397 n.2 (citing UNITED NATIONS DEPARTMENT FOR
DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS, NUCLEAR WEAPONS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY 6 (1991)). A fission bomb, which we refer to as an “atomic” bomb, is the kind that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and has the destructiveness of
thousandsof tons of TNT (kilotons). “Little Boy,” dropped on Hiroshima, was approximately 12–15 kilotons, and “Fat Man,” the plutonium fission bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, had about 22 kilotons. Id. at 398 n.4 (citing
COCHRAN ET AL., supra, at 32). “Fusion (‘hydrogen’ or ‘thermonuclear’) bombs, have the destructiveness of up to some millions of tons of TNT (megatons, mt).” MOXLEY, supra, at 398 (citing COCHRAN ET AL., supra, at
26–27).
6. REPAIRING THE REGIME, supra note 5, at app. V. Russia and the United States have over 97% of this existing arsenal. Id.
7. See STANSFIELD TURNER, CAGING THE NUCLEAR GENIE 9 (1997). “The
power of the 32,500 warheads would roughly equal 1 million Hiroshima-type bombs, one of which destroyed almost all of the buildings within a 12-square-mile area and killed 140,000 of the city’s 350,000 people during
the first five months after detonation.” Id.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1982 concluded that a thermonuclear war using approximately 5,000 megatons [of nuclear weapons] would destroy all major
cities of 500,000 population or greater in the United States, Canada, Europe, the USSR, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Korea, Vietnam, Australia, South Africa, and Cuba. Theoretically, in 1985, the United States and
the Soviet Union had the ability to destroy the world three times over with their strategic nuclear weapons and could still do so at least once today. Carl Sagan and others warned that a war involving as few as 100
megatons could trigger a nuclear winter. This would involve, say, hitting one hundred cities with 1-megaton warheads. This would induce such a drop in global temperatures and reduction of light that the resulting
starvation and weather extremes would conceivably reduce the population of the planet to prehistoric levels. By this measure, we had then the ability to destroy the world 148 times in 1985 and 50 times over today.
REPAIRING THE REGIME, supra note 5, at 13 n.2.
8. JOHN BURROUGHS, THE (IL)LEGALITY OF THE THREAT OR USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS 29 (1997). The Charter was adopted six weeks before the bombing of Hiroshima.
9. Resolution I (1) was adopted unanimously on January 24, 1946 at the First Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. See Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, U.N. GAOR 52d Sess., Agenda Item 71, at 11,
U.N. Doc. A/C.1/52/7 (1997).
10. See Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, July 1, 1968, art. VI, 21 U.S.T 483, 729 U.N.T.S. 161. See also ROCHE, supra note 4, app. at 99–105.
11. DOUGLAS
ROCHE, THE ULTIMATE EVIL 29 (1997); see also Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, supra note 10.
12. See Decision 3 of the Final Document of the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the
Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, U.N. Doc. NPT/CONF.1995/ 32 (1995) (available at <http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/WMD/ 1995dec3.htm>). For a summary of the commitments that were
made to induce the indefinite extension of the Treaty at the Review and Extension Conference, see Decision 2 of the Final Document of the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, U.N. Doc. NPT/CONF.1995/32 (1995) (available at <http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/WMD/1995dec2.htm>).
See also REPAIRING THE REGIME, supra note 5, at app. II. See ROCHE, supra note 4, at 21–45, for an excellent analysis of the negotiations in obtaining the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 and article VI of
the Treaty, which states, “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear
disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, supra note 10, art. VI.
13. See ROCHE, supra note 11, at 29.
14. Nuclear-Weapon States: China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States. Each of these five states originally declared its nuclear-weapons program and was
recognized under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a nuclear-weapon state because it had tested a nuclear weapon prior to January 1, 1967. Estimated total nuclear warhead stockpiles: United States,
12,070; Russia, 22,500; United Kingdom, 260; France, 450; China, 400.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, nuclear weapons remained in the territory of many of the new independent states. Strategic
nuclear weapons remained in three besides Russia: Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Russia was recognized as the Soviet Union’s sole nuclear-weapon-state successor. All tactical nuclear weapons were withdrawn to
Russia by June 1992. Russia assumed control over all Soviet nuclear weapons, and all strategic nuclear weapons were withdrawn to Russia by November 1996 – completing an unprecedented denuclearization process . . .
.Non-NPT Nuclear-Weapons States: India, Israel, Pakistan.
Both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear explosives tests in May 1998 and declared themselves nuclear-weapon states. Neither is an NPT member, and
neither is recognized by the NPT or other international treaties as a nuclear-weapon state. Neither is believed to have deployed nuclear weapons as of June 1998, but India is considered to be able to assemble sixty
to seventy weapons, and Pakistan about fifteen weapons, on short notice. Israel, which also is not an NPT member, has not declared its nuclear weapon capability but is believed to have an operational arsenal of over
one hundred weapons.
REPAIRING THE REGIME, supra note 5, app. IV.
15. See ROCHE, supra note 4, at 21–45.
16. Douglas Roche, An Unequivocal Landmark (visited Nov. 16, 2000)
<http://www.ploughshares.ca/CONTENT/ABOUSH%20NUCS/RocheNPTReport-May27. html>. For the full text of the treaty, see Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, supra note 10, and ROCHE, supra note 4,
app. at 99–105.
17. See Luiz F. Machado, The View from Brazil, in REPAIRING THE REGIME, supra note 5, at 275.
Non-proliferation and disarmament are different, although mutually reinforcing, concepts.
Only total and complete nuclear disarmament can put an end to nuclear proliferation. This is the very logic behind the NPT’s basic bargain, by which the non-nuclear weapon states agreed to forgo those weapons and
the nuclear weapon states agreed to negotiate disarmament measures aimed at the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons.
18. General George Lee Butler, former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Strategic Air Command
(1991–92) and U.S. Strategic Command (1992–94), who was responsible for all nuclear forces of the American Air Force and Navy, has reported being amazed by how little high-level scrutiny (the U.S. nuclear war plan)
had received over the years, and by how readily his military colleagues threw up their hands and rolled their eyes at the grim challenge of converting mathematical estimates of the destructiveness of nuclear arms
and the resilience of Soviet structures into dry statistical formulas for nuclear war.
“It was all Alice-in-Wonderland stuff,” [General] Butler says. The targetingdata and other details of the war plan, which
are written in an almost unfa-thomable million lines of computer software code, were typically reduced by military briefers to between 60 and 100 slides that could be presented in an hour or so to the handful of
senior U.S. officials who were cleared to hear it: “Generally, no one at the briefing wanted to ask questions because they didn’t want to embarrass themselves. It was about as unsatisfactory as could be imag-ined
for that subject matter. The truth is that the President only had a superficial understanding” of what would happen in a nuclear war, Butler says. Congress knew even less because no lawmaker has ever had access to
the war plan, and most academics could only make ill-informed guesses.
MOXLEY, supra note 5, at 473 n.27 (quoting R. Jeffrey Smith, Ex-Commander of Nukes Wants to Scrap Them, A Believer No More, SACRAMENTO
BEE, Mar. 29, 1998; see also R. Jeffrey Smith, The Dissenter, WASH. POST MAG., Dec. 7, 1997, at W18.).
19. The scientific dimension of nuclear weapons is understandably difficult to comprehend. “The UN in its
1991 report found the ‘(n)uclear weapons represent a historically new form of weaponry with unparalleled destructive potential. A single large nuclear weapon could release explosive power comparable to all the
energy released from the conventional weapons used in all past wars.’” MOXLEY, supra note 5, at 398 (quoting WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, UNITED NATIONS, EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WAR ON HEALTH AND HEALTH SERVICES 7 (2d ed.
1987)); see also DEPARTMENT FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS, UNITED NATIONS, NUCLEAR WEAPONS: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY 7 (1991).
20. See also FRANCIS A. BOYLE ET AL., IN RE: MORE THAN 50,000 NUCLEAR WEAPONS (1991). See
generally BURROUGHS, supra note 8.
21. Referring to the overall dangers, General Butler stated, “Despite all the evidence, we have yet to fully grasp the monstrous effect of these weapons, that the
consequences of their use defy reason, transcending time and space, poisoning the Earth and deforming its inhabitants.” Nuclear weapons are “in-herently dangerous, hugely expensive and militarily inefficient.”
General Butler stated that “accepting nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of conflict condemns the world to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety. Worse, it codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts
as an acceptable resort when other options for resolving conflict fail.” He added, “I have spent years studying nuclear weapons effects . . . have investigated a distressing array of accidents and incidents
involving strategic weapons and forces . . . I came away from that experience deeply troubled by what I see as the burden of building and maintaining nuclear arsenals . . . the grotesquely destructive war plans, the
daily operational risks, and the constant prospect of a crisis that would hold the fate of entire societies at risk.”
MOXLEY, supra note 5, at 535 (footnotes omitted) (quoting Otto Kreisher, Retired Generals
Urge End to Nuclear Arsenal, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIB., Dec. 5, 1996, at A1).
22. George Kennan, the distinguished American diplomat who originated the Cold War containment policy toward the Soviet Union, stated,
The readiness to use nuclear weapons against other human beings – against people we do not know, whom we have never seen, and whose guilt or innocence is not for us to establish – and, in doing so, to place in
jeopardy the natural structure upon which all civilization rests, as though the safety and perceived interests of our own generation were more important than everything that has taken place or could take place in
civilization: this is nothing less than a presumption, a blasphemy, an indignity – an indignity of monstrous dimensions – offered to God!
ROCHE, supra note 11, at 13 (quoting GEORGE F. KENNAN, THE NUCLEAR
DELUSION 206–07 (1982)).
23. See MOXLEY, supra note 5, at 575–84.
24. The following helps illustrate the steps necessary to prepare a country to use nuclearweapons.
Train military personnel to
use nuclear weapons; conduct regular exercises reinforcing the training; put the weapons and controls in the hands of the military personnel; provide them with contingency plans as to the circumstances in which they
are to use the weapons; instill them with a sense of mission as to the lawful and significant purposes of such weapons in upholding the national defense and honor; make them part of an elite corps; have them stand
at the ready for decades at a time waiting for the call; instill firm military discipline; make the weapons a publicly advertised centerpiece of the nation’s military strategy; locate the weapons so as to leave them
vulnerable to preemptive attack; villainize the enemy as godless and evil or as a rogue and terrorist nation; convey to military personnel that the weapons will be a major target of enemy attack and that it may be
necessary to use them quickly before they can be destroyed; warn the enemy that, in the event of attack, the weapons may or will be used; inculcate in military personnel the notion of intra-war deterrence whereby
nuclear weapons may need to be used following an enemy attack to deter further escalating attacks, give the military insufficient alternate conventional capacity to defeat the enemy attack; cut numerous nuclear
weapons bearing units and control centers off from each other and from contact with higher authorities; create a situation of hopelessness where the whole society is about to be destroyed, at least unless these
weapons can be gotten off fast to destroy and restrain the enemy; give the President and other upper level command authorities only an imperfect understanding of the options and repercussions and accord them only 5
to 10 minutes, or even a matter of seconds, to decide, against the background of SIOP [Single Inte-grated Operating Plan] based computer and other plans, decades in the making and ostensibly reflecting a broad
historical consensus as to approach – do any number of these things, and the stage is set for the actual use of the nuclear weapons.
Id. at 535–36.
25. The horror of a nuclear weapon’s actual affects
are illustrated in the following: The fireball created by a nuclear explosion will be much hotter than the surface of the sun for fractions of a second and will radiate light and heat, as do all objects of very high
temperature. Because the fireball is so hot and close to the earth, it will deliver enormous amounts of heat and light to the terrain surrounding the detonation point, and it will be hundreds or thousands of times
brighter than the sun at noon. If the fireball is created by the detonation of a 1-MT [megaton] nuclear weapon, for example, within roughly eight- to nine-tenths of a second each section of its surface will be
radiating about three times as much heat and light as a comparable area of the sun itself. The intense flash of light and heat from the explosion of a 550-KT weapon can carbonize exposed skin and cause clothing to
ignite. At a range of three miles, for instance, surfaces would fulminate and recoil as they emanate flames, and even particles of sand would explode like pieces of popcorn from the rapid heating of the fireball. At
three and a half miles, where the blast pressure would be about 5psi, the fireball could ignite clothing on people, curtains and upholstery in homes and offices, and rubber tires on cars. At four miles, it could
blister aluminum surfaces, and at six to seven miles it could still set fire to dry leaves and grass. This flash of incredibly intense, nuclear-driven sunlight could simultaneously set an uncountable number of fires
over an area of close to 100 square miles.
TURNER, supra note 7, app. A at 127–28.
26. REPAIRING THE REGIME, supra note 5, at 13 n.2.
27. Admiral Stansfield Turner, former Director of the
United States Central Intelligence Agency, describes his astonishment at a 1971 briefing in which it was argued that the United States needed to go from 27,000 nuclear warheads to 32,000:
Common sense tells
us that 27,000 nuclear warheads, let alone the peak of 32,500, far exceeded any conceivable need the United States could possibly have had. How unrealistic were such numbers? It would take 55 billion aircraft bombs,
each bomb containing 500 pounds of TNT, to unleash as much energy as 32,500 nuclear war-heads. To put this in perspective, each state in the union could be carpeted with 1 billion bombs with 5 billion to spare –
something quite beyond imagination.
TURNER, supra note 7, at 9.
28. Noted expert Kosta Tsipis, (Retired) Director of the Program in Science and Technology for International Security of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a “Foreword” to this extraordinarily comprehensive work, says, The very term “nuclear weapons” turns out to be an oxymoron. A weapon is a device, a tool used in combat, the
commonest method for resolving conflict. More or better weapons possession by one of the combatants allows him to create an asymmetrical final state: a winner and a loser. The conflict is resolved, for a while
anyway, by the winner imposing his will on the loser. But combat with nuclear weapons cannot lead to an asymmetrical outcome: both combatants are equally destroyed. The final state is symmetrical; there is no winner
and loser. So nuclear weapons cannot resolve conflict. Therefore, they are not weapons.
Kosta Tsipsis, Foreward to MOXLEY, supra note 5, at xix.
29. See The Canberra Commission website at
<http://www.dfat.gov.au/cc/cchome.html>. Roche comments on the formation of the Canberra Commission:
In 1995, the (then) Labour government of Australia established the Canberra Commission, a group of
seventeen distinguished world figures, to develop ideas and proposals for a concrete and realistic program to achieve a world totally free of nuclear weapons. Among the Commissioners: General Butler, former
Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Strategic Air Command (1991–1992) and the U.S. Strategic Command (1992–94) who was responsible for all the nuclear forces of the American Air Force and Navy; Field Marshall Lord
Carver, former Chief of the British Defence Staff (1973–76); Robert McNamara, former American Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; and Joseph Rotblat, President of the Pugwash Conferences on
Science and World Affairs, who won the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on nuclear disarmament. The Canberra Commission’s report stated that, “Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to all humanity and its
habitat,” and urged the nuclear states to immediately and “unequivocally” commit themselves to eliminating nuclear weapons, as “Such a commitment would propel the process in the most direct and imaginative way.”
While getting to zero is the goal, the Commission pointed to a number of practical steps that should be taken immediately, such as taking nuclear forces off alert and removing warheads from delivery vehicles.
ROCHE, supra note 11, at 53–55.
30. CANBERRA COMMISSION ON THE ELIMINATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, REPORT OF THE CANBERRA COMMISSION ON THE ELIMINATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS 7 (1996).
31. As Albert Einstein
said, “‘The unleashing of power of the atom bomb has changed everything except our mode of thinking, and thus we head toward unparalleled catastrophes.’”
THE EXPANDED QUOTABLE EINSTEIN, supra note 1, at 184.
32. See Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1996 I.C.J. 226 (Advisory Opinion of July 8). The full text of the opinion is available at the website of International Association of Lawyers
Against Nuclear Arms, <http://www.ialana.org> and at <http://www.icj-cij.org> (The site contains verbatim oral testimonies as well as written sub-missions). The historic importance of the opinion cannot
be overemphasized for it is the first judicial analysis of the issue by this international tribunal even though the first General Assembly Resolution, unanimously adopted January 24, 1946, at the London session,
called for elimination of atomic weapons.
33. See ROCHE, supra note 4, at 118 n.8 (citing GLOBAL ETHIC (Hans Kung & Karl-Josef Kushel eds., 1993)).
34. “Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must.”
THE EXPANDED QUOTABLE EINSTEIN, supra note 1, at 177.
35. See generally Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1996 I.C.J. 226.
36. Id. at 296 (separate opinion of Judge Ranjeva).
37. Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”
UDANA-VARGA, 5:18; Christianity: “All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.” Matthew 7:12; Confucianism: “Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”
Analects 15:23; Hinduism: “This is the sum of duty: do not unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you.” Mahabharata 5:1517; Islam: “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that
which he desires for himself.” Hadith; Jainism: “In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self.” Lord Mahavir 24th Tirthankara; Judaism: “What is hateful to
you, do not do to your fellow man. That is the law; all the rest is commentary.” Talmud, Shabbat 31a; Zoroastrianism: “That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatsoever is not good for its own
self.” Dadistan-I-Dinik, 94:5. SOURCEBOOK OF THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS 172–73 (Joel Beversluis ed., 2000). See also JEFFREY WATTLES, THE GOLDEN RULE (1996) for an analysis of the Golden Rule from philosophic, religious,
psychological, cultural, and ethical perspectives.
38. Threat or Use by a State of Nuclear Weapons in Armed Conflict, 1996 I.C.J. 526(separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry).
39. ROCHE, supra note 4, at 90.
40. See MOXLEY, supra note 5, at 491 (citing William Cohen, 1998 Annual Report to the President and Congress, Chapter 5: Strategic Nuclear Forces (visited Nov. 20, 2000)
<http://www.dtic.mil/execsec/adr98/chap5.html#top>). “For the foreseeable future, the United States must retain a robust triad of sufficient nuclear forces.” William Cohen, 2000 Annual Report to the President
and Congress, Chapter 1: The Defense Strategy (visited Nov. 20, 2000) <http://www.dtic.mil.execsec/adr2000/chapt1.html>. See also U.S. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, JOINT PUB. 3-12: DOCTRINE
FOR JOINT OPERATIONS v (1995) [hereinafter DOCTRINE FOR JOINT NUCLEAR OPERATIONS]. “Credible and capable nuclear forces are essential for national security.” Id.; see also National Security Concept of the Russian
Federation (Information Dep’t of the Russian Federation Embassy in India ed., Dec. 17, 1997) (endorsed by the Russian Federation President’s Decree No. 1300) (on file with author). “The main task of the Armed Forces
of the Russian Federation is to insure nuclear deterrence, which is to prevent both a nuclear and conventional large scale or regional war, and also to meet its allied commitments.” Id. at 1. France, the United
Kingdom, and China with much smaller arsenals have made it clear that they will not fundamentally abandon deterrence and contemplate cutting their arsenals until Russia and the United states come down to very low
numbers. See ROCHE, supra note 4, at 9–10.
41. See CANBERRA COMMISSION, supra note 30, at 7. See also Neil Joeck, Nuclear Relations in South Asia, in REPAIRING THE REGIME, supra note 5, at 132–33, for a
description of the tragic change of status of Pakistan and India in 1998.
A group of sixty–one former generals and admirals from seventeen countries, including United States and Russia, declared in December,
1996 . . . [the following:]
We, military professionals, who have devoted our lives to the national security of our countries and our peoples, are convinced that the continuing existence of nuclear weapons in
the armories of nuclear powers, and the ever present threat of acquisition of these weapons by others, constitute a peril to global peace and security and to the safety and survival of the people we are dedicated to
protect.
ROCHE, supra note 11, at 55.
42. Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1996 I.C.J. at 443–44 (separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry).
43. Gareth Evans of Australia, Verbatim Record, 30 Oct.
1995, 42, available at <http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/icases/iunan/iunan_cr/iUNAN_iCR9522_19951030.PDF>.
44. Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1996 I.C.J. at 454 (separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry);
see also BURROUGHS, supra note 8, at 90–91; ROCHE, supra note 11, at 3–13.
45. Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1996 I.C.J. at 454 (separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry). Judge Weeramantry lists the
destructive horror caused by nuclear weapons:
Nuclear weapons
1. cause death and destruction;
2. induce cancers, leukemia, keloids and related afflictions;
3. cause gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and related afflictions;
4. continue for decades after their use to induce the health related problems mentioned
above;
5. damage the environmental rights of future generations;
6. cause congenital deformities, mental retardation and genetic damage;
7. carry the potential to cause a nuclear winter;
8. contaminate and destroy the food chain;
9. imperil the ecosystem;
10. produce lethal levels of heat and blast;
11. produce radiation and radioactive fallout;
12. produce a disruptive electromagnetic pulse;
13. produce social disintegration;
14. imperil all civilization;
15. threaten human survival;
16. wreak cultural devastation;
17. span a time range of thousands of years;
18. threaten all life on the planet;
19. irreversibly damage the rights of future generations;
20. exterminate civilian populations;
21. damage neighbouring states;
22. produce psychological stress and fear syndromes as no other weapons do.
Id. at 471–72 (separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry).
46. Takashi Hiraoka, Mayor of Hiroshima, told the Court:
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shattered all war precedent.
The mind-numbing damage these nuclear weapons wrought shook the foundations
of human existence. . . .
The dropping of the nuclear weapons is a problem that must be addressed globally. History is
written by the victors. Thus, the heinous massacre that was Hiroshima has been handed down to us as a perfectly justified act of war.
As a result, for over 50 years we have never directly confronted the full
implications of this horrifying act for the future of the human race. Hence, we are still forced to live under the enormous threat of nuclear weapons . . . .
Beneath the atomic bomb’s monstrous mushroom
cloud, human skin was burned raw. Crying for water, human beings died in desperate agony. With thoughts of these victims as the starting point, it is incumbent upon us to think about the nuclear age and the
relationship between human beings and nuclear weapons . . . .
The unique characteristic of the atomic bombing was that the enormous destruction was instantaneous and universal. Old, young, male, female,
soldier, civilian – the killing was utterly indiscriminate. The entire city was exposed to the compound and devastating effects of thermal rays, shock wave blast, and radiation . . . .
Above all, we must
focus on the fact that the human misery caused by the atomic bomb is different from that caused by conventional weapons. [H]uman bodies were burned by the thermal rays and high-temperature fires, broken and
lacerated by the blast, and insidiously attacked by radiation. These forms of damage compounded and amplified each other, and the name given to the combination was “A-bomb disease. . . .”
[T]he bomb reduced
Hiroshima to an inhuman state utterly beyond human ability to express or imagine. I feel frustrated at not being able to express this completely in my testimony about the tragedy of the atomic bombing . . . .
It is clear that the use of nuclear weapons, which cause indiscriminate mass murder that leaves survivors to suffer for decades, is a violation of international law.
BURROUGHS, supra note 8, at 90–91.
47. Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1996 I.C.J. at 453 (separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry).
48. Id. at 273 (separate opinion of Judge Bedjaoui).
49. Id. at 268 (separate opinion of Judge Bedjaoui).
50. Id. at 269 (separate opinion of Judge Bedjaoui).
BIOGRAPHY:
Jonathan Glenn Granoff, Esq, has for more than 20 years
contributed his legal expertise, developed as a successful private attorney, to the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons. Dr. Granoff was elected President of the Global Security Institute after the death of the
Institute’s founding president, Senator Alan Cranston (1914-2000).
Dr. Granoff holds numerous other titles within the peace and security movement. He is also Vice President of Lawyers Alliance for World
Security, Vice President of the NGO Committee on Disarmament at the UN, and serves on numerous governing boards, such as the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, the Temple of Understanding, and the Middle Powers
Initiative. He is Co-Chair of the American Bar Association, Committee on Arms Control and National Security.
Dr. Granoff is also an author, award-winning screenwriter (“The Constitution: The Document
the Created a Nation”), and public speaker.
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