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Nuclear
Disarmament and Non-Proliferation:  |
| Nuclear Disarmament:
Relevant Excerpts from Speeches
By Jayantha Dhanapala
Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs
Distributed at The Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and
Spiritual Leaders, |
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"The threats posed by modern weapons of war -- particularly nuclear weapons -- are so grave that they jeopardize literally all of our collective cultural, political, and economic heritage and our natural environment. The issue is vital because disarmament is inextricably linked to human security. What makes disarmament so compelling a strategy for peace and development is that it would eliminate the gravest known threats, and eliminate them more reliably than any conceivable alternative. The moral imperative for disarmament is combined with its self-evidently practical need in terms of economic and social dividends. This is the heart of my message to you today. Many weapons present clear and present dangers, but none approaches the potential threats to humanity from nuclear weapons. In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued its famous Advisory Opinion concerning the threat or use of such weapons. Appended to this Opinion was a declaration by Presiding Judge Mohammed Bedjaoui, in which he termed nuclear weapons ‘the ultimate evil’ because of their indiscriminate effects on humanity and its natural environment. He concluded with the ‘hope’ that nuclear disarmament will, in his words, ‘always remain the ultimate goal of all action in the field of nuclear weapons, that the goal is no longer utopian and that it is the duty of all to seek to attain it more actively than ever.’ From the standpoint of the United Nations, the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons dates back to 1946, when it appeared in the General Assembly’s first resolution. It has been the subject of countless resolutions ever since, from both the General Assembly and the Security Council. It was the focal point of three Special Sessions of the General Assembly on Disarmament. In 1995, agreement on this ‘ultimate goal’ was one of the key ‘Principles and Objectives’ leading to the permanent extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). All the five nuclear-weapon states under that treaty endorse this goal. As clarified pointedly by the ICJ in its Advisory Opinion a year later, the treaty’s goal was not to perpetually negotiate, but actually to bring to a conclusion such negotiations. Thus nuclear disarmament does not just enjoy universal support as a goal of policy -- but it is an objective that has the status of law." Prospects for Disarmament in the 21st Century, Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass., April 28, 2000
"We have come to the end of a century and another millennium in human history. In what has indisputably been the most blood-stained century it was a leader from my region of the world, Mahatma Gandhi, who espoused the cause of non-violence as a political tool. In doing so he was echoing the Buddha’s philosophy of ahimsa, articulated two and a half millennia ago. It was Gandhi who once said that ‘the personality of a man changes when he acquires a weapon.’ I think it is similarly true that the character of a people changes when it learns to solve its most fundamental problems without the resort to threats or the use of apocalyptic weapons. Hard-headed realists might object to the utility of ahimsa, citing another tradition of South Asian political philosophy dating back to Kautilya, whose crafty realism predated Machiavelli by almost two thousand years. Yet Kautilya’s great treatise on statesmanship, the Arthasastra, also contains maxims about the importance of restraints in war, the need to protect noncombatants, and above all, the need for all foreign policy to rest upon a stable domestic foundation consisting of a contented people. Consider the legacies of nuclear weapons -- the awful destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the potential damage to the human and natural environment from regional or global nuclear war (whether by design or accident); the consequences of their production for the health of workers and the natural environment; and the diversion of trillions of dollars from treasuries around the world to produce and maintain them. None of these suggests that nuclear weapons offer a stable foundation for either a sound defense or wise foreign policy, whether one subscribes to the tradition of ahimsa or the realpolitik of Kautilya. The same arguments apply to conventional weapons arsenals beyond the legitimate requirements of national defense, when one considers the death and destruction of the wars fought since 1945." A Future Arms Control and Disarmament Agenda, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, September 30, 1999
"For the overwhelming majority of members of the world community, nuclear weapons do not offer the route to security, power, or prestige. Of the 187 States party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), 182 have undertaken formal and verifiable legal obligations not to acquire such weapons. As for the five nuclear-weapon states – the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China – these countries together possessed by published estimates about 39,000 nuclear weapons when that treaty was signed in 1968. Three decades later, these countries reportedly possess about 36,000 of such weapons in various stages of readiness. At this rate of reduction -- 3,000 weapons in 30 years -- these countries will finally reach zero sometime in the middle of the twenty-fourth century, just a few years short of the UN’s 500th anniversary. Though the rate of elimination of such weapons has been slow, the cumulative costs of producing, storing, transporting, maintaining, and cleaning up the sites that produce such weapons have been truly astounding. The Brookings Institution has recently estimated that the United States alone has spent well over $5 trillion on nuclear weapons since World War II. According to their calculations, if $1 were spent every second, it would take 184,579 years to tally up that amount." Prospects for Nuclear Disarmament, Commemoration of the Centenary of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, University of Melbourne, Australia, February 19, 1999
"None of the five nuclear-weapon states in the NPT is believed to be producing plutonium for weapons use. Nevertheless, this weapons-usable material continues to accumulate in civilian stocks and in some unsafeguarded nuclear programs around the world. Though estimates vary, there are reportedly between four and five times the amount of plutonium in civilian nuclear programmes than in military inventories. All together, over 1,000 metric tonnes of plutonium exist in the world today, not all of it under safeguards or securely stored -- a sobering fact, given that less than 8 kilograms of this material can make a bomb, while a billionth of a gram can produce lung cancer." A Future Arms Control and Disarmament Agenda, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, September 30, 1999
"It is beyond question that global disarmament efforts -- particularly those aimed at nuclear disarmament -- are now entering a dangerous new era. States that possess nuclear weapons do not appear to be in any hurry to give them up, despite the unpopularity of such weapons among the general public everywhere. Their leaders talk about ultimate disarmament goals, but balk at negotiating concrete measures to achieve such goals." Strategic Stability, Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and the 2000 NPT Review Conference, Opening Address to 12th Regional Disarmament Meeting in the Asia-Pacific Region, Kathmandu, Nepal, February 15, 2000
"Hence a tragic irony: nuclear weapons possessed by some countries beget nuclear weapons pursuits by other countries, which in turn provides new pretexts for the original possessor states to defer concrete nuclear disarmament initiatives pending the emergence of a more peaceful or stable world order. This is a recipe for perpetual global disorder. Because of its urgency and complexity, the challenge of global nuclear disarmament demands immediate attention. It cannot be consigned to the never-never land of "ultimate goals." Nor can it be conditioned by the prior achievement of general and complete disarmament, a linkage that fails to acknowledge any strategic -- let alone moral -- distinction between a nuclear warhead and an AK-47." Statement Before the Disarmament Commission, United Nations Disarmament Commission, United Nations, New York, NY, June 26, 2000
"We are all familiar with the U.S. Senate’s vote last year against ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the precarious future of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in light of the enactment of a U.S. policy to deploy a national missile defense as soon as it is ‘technologically possible.’ We see elsewhere not just the perpetuation or re-affirmation of military doctrines relying upon nuclear terror, but even the spread of such doctrines to a new region, South Asia. We recall well the shrill headlines announcing several nuclear tests in that region, followed by official words trumpeting the great security benefits from possessing nuclear weapons. We see new missile developments -- including flight tests -- in various regions. We read about the dangers from an emerging global black market in nuclear materials. This of course does not tell the whole story. Global nuclear disarmament surely is no empty slogan or ‘pie in the sky’... Quite to the contrary, it is a goal of literally every government on Earth. Even the three nuclear-capable states outside the NPT -- India, Pakistan, and Israel -- have endorsed this goal. Critics of disarmament point out that agreement on a goal is one thing, while reaching consensus on actions needed to achieve that goal is quite another. This is of course true." Eliminating Nuclear Arsenals: The NPT Pledge and What It Means, All Party Group on Global Security and Non-Proliferation, House of Commons, London, England, July 3, 2000
"While recognizing the enormity of these challenges, let us not forget that billions of diverse peoples throughout the United Nations comprise a reservoir of support for nuclear disarmament. What they are demanding are not palliatives merely to reduce the danger of future nuclear wars. They want to eliminate nuclear threats, not simply to manage them." Statement Before the Disarmament Commission, United Nations Disarmament Commission, United Nations, New York, NY, June 26, 2000
"We have all heard quite a bit about the "military-industrial complex" and all of its allegedly conspiratorial intrigues, but perhaps not enough about a new player in this game, namely that diverse coalition of individuals and groups who have committed themselves to converting disarmament from a dream into a reality. If we wish to take on the ‘nuclear weapons complex’ or any other institutional bastion of support for weapons that jeopardize international peace and security, we will need to mobilize what might be called a ‘disarmament complex.’ " A Future Arms Control and Disarmament Agenda, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, September 30, 1999
"The twentieth century saw the invention of the most horrendously destructive weapon in human history. The twenty-first century must see its delegitimization and elimination if the human race is to survive and flourish for centuries to come." Prospects for Nuclear Disarmament, Commemoration of the Centenary of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, University of Melbourne, Australia, February 19, 1999
"Now that we have reached the new millennium, we must work to rekindle some of the political will to pursue common disarmament goals in earnest. Let us together begin the task of converting the disarmament vision into a reality." Prospects for Disarmament in the 21st Century, Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass., April 28, 2000
For further information please visit United Nations Department of Disarmament Affairs web site at http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/index.html
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