Reducing the Nuclear Weapons Risks in the Ukraine Conflict

Report on November 29, 2022 Special Meeting of CNANW

In a recent statement, NATO’s Secretary General, a former social-democratic Norwegian Prime Minster, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance will continue to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes”. He added: “We will not back down.” Prominent columnists have challenged the very idea that a ceasefire in the Ukraine crisis is possible or have even suggested that it might lengthen the war on Russian President Putin’s terms. Some press for a “fight to victory” by Kyiv, given recent gains on the battlefield. Sometimes the nuclear weapons threat is seen as blackmail, a bluff, or a risk worth ignoring.

How then can Canada constructively contribute to peace?

Panelists at the CNANW discussion in late November were asked to consider opportunities for reducing the nuclear weapon threat, and prospects for peace. All acknowledged the dire situation in Ukraine following the illegal Russian invasion.

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS PROVIDES 60 YEARS OF LESSONS: We face the same risk of escalation and the same possibility of transformation

Robin Collins and Dr. Sylvie Lemieux, CNANW Co-chairpersons

https://www.hilltimes.com/2022/10/13/cuban-missile-crisis-provides-60-years-of-lessons

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis started because two superpowers, each capable of global annihilation but mis-judging the security expectations of their rivals, called the other’s bluff and moved us all close to nuclear war.

When Soviet Premier Khrushchev and US President Kennedy faced off over Cuba’s decision to host Soviet nuclear missiles, the world was only 17 years’ distance from the mass slaughter of Hiroshima and Nagasaki civilians. Atomic destruction was still palpable, and fear was widespread.  Today, we are more than 75 years removed, and it isn’t clear how many people appreciate the severity of our emergency.

The Cuba crisis ended because sober heads were allowed room to discuss the peaceful route away from Doomsday, with some of that sobriety being in the conflict-resolution efforts of UN Secretary-General U Thant.  Behind-the-scenes deals were engineered. (The US agreed to quietly remove their missiles from Turkey and the USSR theirs from Cuba). The resulting collaboration would benefit both sides, and humankind.

The crisis was so severe and tensions so high that far-reaching efforts were made afterwards to reduce risks even further. Over the next dozen years alone, an array of eight nuclear weapon-related treaties were agreed. Among them was the establishment in 1963 of a direct hot line between Washington and Moscow to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war by mistake or misinterpretation. This was followed by a Limited Test Ban Treaty (late 1963); the cornerstone Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) which is today signed by 191 countries; and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in 1972). Other treaties would follow.

Today in Europe, 60 years after the Cuba crisis, there is a hot war between Russia and Ukraine but also a proxy war that risks enlargement and escalation. In 1962, while a single American U-2 pilot died during an aerial reconnaissance mission over Cuba,  there were not thousands killed nor cities destroyed, nor occupied regions annexed.

We also know more today about the likely impact of even a small nuclear exchange. According to modelled calculations, a relatively small nuclear weapon exchange could cause dramatic global cooling and result in a “nuclear famine” that would ravage the earth.

Eventually there will have to be peace in Ukraine. Until then, we must focus also on preventing this war from “going nuclear” wherein millions might be endangered in the fallout (and worse.) 

It may seem unlikely in this moment that elimination of all nuclear weapons can be put back on the front policy burner. Threatened use of “tactical” nuclear weapons is ubiquitous in the daily news. Yet, Canada can have a role in the de-escalation of tensions and in the replacement security thinking and diplomacy that urgently need to be put into place.  60 years ago, we saw the quelling of an earth-threatening crisis then lead quickly to major arms control and disarmament opportunities. This is our urgent task now, too.  Canada, get ready to help.


published in The Hill Times, October 13, 2022
referenced in Ceasefire blog, October 14, 2022
linked here as pdf

Roche: The world doesn’t want another Cuban Missile Crisis

Douglas Roche

We are not bereft of key ideas and high-level persons to find creative ways to end the present carnage in Ukraine. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended because John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev took a risk with crisis diplomacy. Can Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin take a similar risk for peace? Canada should push diplomacy, not arms, to end the Ukraine war.

Published in The Hill Times, October 12, 2022

EDMONTON— The possibility of Russia’s use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war has led to comparisons with the Cuban Missile Crisis 60 years ago this month, in which, for 13 days, humanity stood on the brink of World War III.

The crisis passed because U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Soviet Union president Nikita Khrushchev engaged in crisis diplomacy and negotiated a solution to the problem of the Soviets installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. But negotiations today to end the Ukraine war seem farthest from the minds of the Western leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin, let alone Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For Canada’s part, the word “negotiations” does not escape the lips of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly. The G7, which includes Canada, has just signed on for more weapons to be sent to Ukraine.

I am undoubtedly speaking against a headwind when I call for Canada to support the creation of an international commission, composed of eminent figures, to reach beyond the clamour and hubris engaged in by both the West and Russia to deal with the practical realities of the Ukraine war. The essential reality is to stop the war before it escalates into World War III.

The history of the Cuban Missile Crisis should be a guide. Here is what happened in the momentous days, Oct. 16-29, 1962.

The Cuban crisis arose when the U.S. discovered—on the basis of aerial surveillance photos—that the Soviets were installing nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Kennedy imposed a naval quarantine around Cuba to stop Soviet ships carrying nuclear missiles for further installation. But for some of the president’s advisers, that was not enough: they wanted a full-scale invasion or bombing of Cuba. Kennedy feared such action would launch World War III with both Moscow and Washington using nuclear weapons against each other.

Tensions throughout the world ran sky-high in what was quickly recognized as the greatest atomic bomb threat since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the eighth day of the crisis, UN Secretary-General U Thant sent an urgent message to Khrushchev and Kennedy, appealing for a moratorium to halt further military action. Suddenly, Kennedy saw a way for the Soviets to stop their shipments without looking like they had capitulated to the U.S. He responded to U Thant and asked him to send a second message to Khrushchev, stating that if the Soviets would hold up shipments, the U.S. “would be glad to get into conversations about how the situation could be adjusted.”

U Thant picked up the signal and sent a second message to both leaders, asking Khrushchev to instruct Soviet vessels to stay away from the quarantine area, and asking Kennedy to instruct U.S. vessels to avoid direct confrontation with Soviet ships. To both leaders, he stated: “This would permit discussions of the modalities of a possible agreement which could settle the problem peacefully.”

The crisis ended a few days later when Khrushchev agreed to verifiably remove his missiles from Cuba in return for a U.S. non-invasion pledge. There was also a deal, kept secret at the time, in which Kennedy agreed to de-commission aging U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey six months later.

When it was over, the U.S. and Soviet governments sent a letter to U Thant expressing, in diplomatic understatement, “appreciation for your efforts in assisting our governments to avert the serious threat to peace, which recently arose in the Caribbean area.” Kennedy added his own note of praise: “U Thant has put the world deeply in his debt.” Publicly, the Americans took the credit for ending the crisis. U Thant, never a showman, returned to his duties.

Should the 1962 lesson of “crisis diplomacy” be applied today? The answer is yes. And the need is urgent. U.S. President Joe Biden has warned the world could face “Armageddon” if Putin uses a tactical nuclear weapon to try to win the war.

Some argue that a comparison of the Ukraine war to the Cuban Missile Crisis is invalid because it’s too late: Russia has already invaded Ukraine causing horrendous suffering; Ukraine has counter-attacked and Russia has responded with more shelling and deaths. The militarists argue that Russia must be defeated; vengeance must be obtained. This mantra has closed the minds of the West to negotiations. But if the war continues— with or without nuclear weapons—it will soon be NATO vs. Russia, and that will indeed become World War III.

Putin’s military doctrine has always been “escalate to de-escalate.” I think he is actually getting ready to negotiate because he now realizes that NATO, the growing military alliance which he saw as a threat to Russian imperialism, is more strongly determined than ever to stop him.

What is there to negotiate? My colleague Ernie Regehr, author of Disarming Conflict: Why Peace Cannot Be Won on the Battlefield, argues that intensified diplomacy “in pursuit of mutually acceptable security arrangements” is in the interests of both Russia and Ukraine.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has called for a high-level “commission for dialogue and peace,” led by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Pope Francis, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

We are not bereft of key ideas and high-level persons to find creative ways to end the present carnage. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended because Kennedy and Khrushchev took a risk with crisis diplomacy. Can Biden and Putin take a similar risk for peace? Canada should push diplomacy, not arms, to end the Ukraine war.

Former Senator Douglas Roche is the author of The Human Right to Peace.

The Hill Times

Simpson: Russian-Ukraine war brings nuclear risk to level not seen since Cuban missile crisis

Winter is coming so Russia’s chokehold on European gas, superior tank manoeuvres on snow, and increased mobilization effort foretell a conventional advantage.

The Hill Times, October 10, 2022

The Russian-Ukraine crisis may pose a greater risk of nuclear use than the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago this month. According to the Ukrainian president’s head office, Andriy Yermak the country’s intelligence agencies believe there is a “very high” risk that Russia might use tactical nuclear weapons. Experts caution that Moscow’s leader is “desperate,” and like a cornered rat, President Vladimir Putin may use nuclear weapons to force the enemy to back down, a part of Russian military doctrine known as escalate to de-escalate.

Last month, Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threat as he ordered a partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists stated that Russia would “use all the means at our disposal” to defend its territory. But the White House’s warnings have been stark, and U.S. President Joe Biden made it clear at the UN General Assembly that Russia’s threats would be opposed. More recently, he warned the world could face “Armageddon,” assessing the nuclear risk at its highest in 60 years. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in an interview on the sidelines of the assembly, confirmed that the United States sent warnings to Russia to steer clear of nuclear war. Former CIA director and retired four-star army general David Petreus explicitly warned the U.S. and its allies would destroy Russia’s troops and equipment in Ukraine—as well as sink its Black Sea fleet—if the Russian president uses nuclear weapons.

War is folly and assuredly Putin’s inner circle must be questioning the ill-fated decision to attack Kiev to topple Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government. Putin’s attempt to liberate the Donbas region by sheer force, not persuasion, and sham legislation purporting to formally annex four Ukrainian regions—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia—cannot obscure the reality that Russia’s military does not yet control the war-torn territory and Russia’s reign would be tenuous for generations to come.

Ukrainian troops are retaking more territory in regions illegally annexed by Russia and making breakthroughs in the east and south, recapturing villages and liberating settlements. However, Russian forces struck targets far from the front line last week, purportedly using self-destructing, Iran-supplied drones to hit the city of Bila Tserkva, south of Kiev. The entire Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014, is also under constant threat due to Ukraine’s sinking of the Russian warship Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea fleet. Russian submarines might not be able to safely harbor there and might have to be redeployed to the Arctic and Baltic Sea.

Winter is coming so Russia’s chokehold on European gas, superior tank manoeuvres on snow, and increased mobilization effort foretell a conventional advantage. However, Ukraine will receive even more sophisticated weapons, in part because the horror of discovering mass graves and tortured Ukrainian bodies lessens the United States’ reluctance to ratchet up the conflict by filling Ukraine’s war chest with billions of dollars of military aid.

Forebodingly, Putin’s speeches are replete with references to the neo-Nazis and the neo-Nazi coup-appointed regime in Ukraine. The leader’s preoccupation with defending the motherland from “Western pseudo-values” may signal a return in his mind to the Siege of Leningrad, where he was born and over a million died. How to defy and reassure a paranoid, violent man who holds all the levers of power and is neither subject to democracy nor beholden to others in his inner cabal?

History is replete with evidence that men fear knives borne by men within the inner circle who stab the strongest in the back. As Thomas Hobbes warns, “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest by secret machination or confederacy.” The account of the Last Supper in the King James Bible highlights Jesus’s disciple Judas’s betrayal of him. Former U.S. president Donald Trump was betrayed by close aides, from Steve Bannon to his daughter Ivanka. There are legions of legendary stories of betrayal because, in their pursuit of power, leaders cast aside sycophants who become marginalized, secret enemies.

Irrational, vengeful followers may fully support decisions by autocratic men, like Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, or Trump to use nuclear weapons. But the nuclear taboo has become much stronger since the Cuban missile crisis because so much more is known about the effects of nuclear winter, even from the use of 50 tactical nuclear weapons, merely 0.3 per cent of the world’s arsenal. Russian doctrine allows local commanders to use tactical nuclear weapons to stave off defeat, or loss of Russian territory. But if Russia crosses the line, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser to the White House disclosed the United States will respond decisively.

China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi are preaching caution to Putin directly, not mincing their words. At the same time, opposition is growing in Russian cities and remote villages in far-flung regions to mobilizing untrained men to become more cannon fodder. Putin’s recent claim that the United States created a precedent for the use of nuclear weapons with its bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 seemed to imply that if the West continues to support Kyiv and send weapons to Ukraine, he could resort to the nuclear option.

As each day passes, the nuclear threats Putin has made, veiled in self-pity and grandiosity, make the threat of an above-ground demonstration shot of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine’s east more credible. Putin’s aggressive threats lower the threshold for nuclear use and increase the risk of nuclear conflict and global catastrophe. The likelihood of nuclear use today may be more—or less—than it was back in late February, but unlikely events happen all the time. Nuclear threats are bluffs—until the catastrophic day they are not.

Nevertheless, the norm of non-use can act as a powerful restraint on leaders, just as it did in 1962 during the executive committee’s decision-making process in the United States. Once the Cuban missile crisis ended, significant steps that led to nuclear disarmament were taken, including the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. If this crisis ends safely, frightened world leaders will need to strongly promote stability, peace, and security.

Erika Simpson is a professor of international politics at Western University, the president of the Canadian Peace Research Association, and the co-author of How to De-escalate Dangerous Nuclear Weapons and Force Deployments in Europe.

On: “NWC Reset: Frameworks for a nuclear-weapon-free world”

Brief comments at the NPT side panels
(by Robin Collins, Co-chair, Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)
August 9, 2022 by Zoom

“Don’t let your reticence with one approach for the sake of alliance solidarity be the excuse of convenience that you use to justify not proceeding with another.

A colleague in Canada recently asked us to imagine that day when “You wake up to the news that the last remaining warhead has been dismantled. The era of nuclear weapons is over.”

We know he wasn’t being overly optimistic, because he then offered a list of many of the hard cases and sticky problems that obstruct us: the nuclear sharing policies of NATO; North Korea; Iran; the nuclear weapons states outside the NPT, and all those NPT obligations and expectations that to a large extent are unfulfilled or are openly violated. 

He was urging us to be realists and to consider the complementarity of options.

The point is that the specific vehicle must defer to the desire and commitment by states to accomplish the abolition. What will inspire the political will to end the existential threat hanging over us all? What are the unnecessary obstacles?

As nuclear weapon abolitionists we can make the project of abolition and the replacement security framework coherent and as palatable as possible so that when the road is cleared, or clearer, things can as easily as possible fall into place. Which package, or options picked, is far less important. What counts is that the goal is pursued in earnest.

As Jackie Cabasso, one of our Abolition 2000 working group members said earlier at the NPT as an NGO representative — considering the ignoring of NPT commitments from 1995, 2000 and 2010, it’s time to refocus our attention on the nuclear-armed states. A time-bound target for abolition is overdue. Jackie said: we “call on the nuclear-armed and nuclear sharing states to commit to a timeframe of no later than 2030 for the adoption of a framework, package of agreements or comprehensive nuclear weapons convention, and no later than 2045 for full implementation”.

The Nuclear Weapon Convention Reset paper that our Abolition 2000 working group constructed, has this approach, which is to highlight the three primary options that are under consideration: Then it is up to the official and unofficial Nuclear Weapon States, NATO members and NATO umbrella states to proceed.

Proceed swiftly. 

Canada, my country, has no nuclear weapons although was involved in the nuclear bomb project from the early days, and is a member of NATO, along with three nuclear-armed states, five others with nuclear-sharing arrangements[i] and seven others that participate in Support of Nuclear Operations With Conventional Air Tactics (known as SNOWCAT).[ii] 

We are fully aware of the pressures on NATO members towards their being compliant and in solidarity with other NATO members, to go along with the prevailing winds – and therefore also the reluctance to push back or be that nuclear nag (once again). This is still the case, particularly in the most delicate of moments, by which I mean the current context of the Russian illegal invasion of Ukraine: the sabre-rattling rhetoric, the references to actual use of nuclear weapons. Not to mention the daily killing and dying. But just as the New START talks need to continue, now more than ever, so is this a good time for states to speed up, not slow down, progress on abolition.

Countries like Canada may have been involved at the Stockholm Initiative, a diplomatic forum that proposes risk reduction measures and a “stepping stones approach” to nuclear disarmament; or attended The Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons this last June, but then avoided the TPNW like the plague, despite pressure from disarmament activists and many parliamentarians.

We are here pragmatically advocating for nuclear weapon states and NATO members to consider the options for disarmament that you can stomach. If not the TPNW with protocols, then a nuclear weapons convention or a framework of instruments. Don’t let your reticence with one approach for the sake of alliance solidarity be the excuse of convenience that you use to justify not proceeding with another. 

Some leader or leaders need to step up within NATO to break the silence and expose the illusory consensus, and begin the renewal of the abolition project, because, as the UN Secretary-General said, “Luck is no strategy!”

Our “Nuclear Weapons Convention Reset: Frameworks for a nuclear-weapon-free world” message, therefore, highlights this complementarity of three possibilities towards a time-bound abolition target, for de-escalation of the unhelpful rhetoric, for urgent risk reduction measures, and ultimately for a sustainable peace and common security wherein nuclear threats and nuclear weapons no longer exist. 

Thank you for your time.


[i] Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey

[ii] Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Poland and Romania

Peter Langille: The future requires far deeper cooperation, sustainable common security

Insecurity is spreading. Another hot war in the Ukraine, a climate emergency, another Cold War and nuclear arms race, another long war just announced, 100 million people displaced by conflict and climate change, vast inequality and precarious conditions everywhere. Our new global neighbourhood looks rough and risky.

Whatever happened to security, “the state of being free from danger or threat”?

Putin Shows Why Possesion Must be Outlawed Now

by Douglas Roche

It’s no longer postponable. Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown, in a demented and terrifying way, why the possession of nuclear weapons must be outlawed now. Far from closing down the little that remains of nuclear disarmament agreements because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this seminal moment in the history of the 21st century must be seized.

The contradictions in Canada’s nuclear disarmament policies have got to be fixed. Sand castles won’t stop a tsunami. We and our NATO partners can no longer go on professing a desire for an end to nuclear weapons while supporting the military doctrine of nuclear deterrence, which leads to even more than the present 13,000 nuclear weapons…

To read on, see pdf below.

CNWC — Canada and the Stockholm Initiative

Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention welcomes Canada’s participation in the 16-nation Stockholm Initiative (SI). The initiative’s recommendations, in the form of a series of “stepping stones,” have the important virtue of being well-established, practical, and doable – and all the measures advanced are still urgently needed actions to pull our planet back from the precipice of nuclear catastrophe. To be sure, much more is required, but the SI affords Canada an important opportunity, as part of its multilateral engagement with like-minded states, to elevate attention to nuclear arms control and disarmament internationally, and to pursue it as a clear national priority.

Read further:

Nuclear Disarmament Must be a Priority for the Next Canadian Government

Paul Meyer and Cesar Jaramillo
The Hill Times, Sept 16, 2021

Excerpt:
We see three near-term steps that Canada could take to demonstrate leadership on this challenging issue.

First, Canada should help heal the rift between TPNW supporters and opponents by attending, as an observer, the first meeting of TPNW states parties (currently 55) slated to be held in Vienna March 22-24, 2022. Such participation would be a welcome sign of engagement with fellow NPT states which have adopted a different route to fulfill the nuclear disarmament obligation.

Second, Canada should advocate for the inclusion in the Stockholm Initiative package, support for a “No First Use” declaration on the part of nuclear weapon states. Such a step would help counter a destabilizing (and proliferation-friendly) expansion of rationales for the use of nuclear weapons on the part of some nuclear states. It would also be timely given the favourable attitude towards such an adjustment of policy expressed earlier by President Joe Biden and the resumption of strategic stability talks between the U.S. and Russia.

Third, Canada should elevate its involvement in the Stockholm Initiative, including participating in the meetings at the ministerial level. Such engagement on the part of Foreign Minister Marc Garneau could be coupled with an invitation by Canada to host a meeting of the group this fall to prepare for the NPT Review Conference.

See full article in The Hill Times (pay wall):
https://www.hilltimes.com/2021/09/16/nuclear-disarmament-must-be-a-priority-for-the-next-canadian-government/317306

Why do we Still Have Nuclear Weapons?

by Robin Collins and Dr. Sylvie Lemieux, Co-chairpersons, CNANW

A recent Nanos poll found 80% across-the-board support for nuclear weapon elimination. A strong 74% majority believe Canada should join the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (“the ban treaty” or TPNW), even if there is pressure from the United States to stay clear. Those results are no surprise. Similar enthusiasm is found in older polls, and in Canadian municipalities where Councils have supported “nuclear-weapons-free zones” for many years

In an International Committee of the Red Cross 2019 global survey, millennials (those born between 1980 and 1994) in the 16 countries polled, overwhelmingly (82%) oppose the use of all weapons of mass destruction – be they nuclear, biological, or chemical – in any circumstance.

And yet, almost half “believe nuclear weapons are an effective instrument of deterrence.”

How can this be?

There lingers a belief that possessing a nuclear arsenal may protect you from enemies. There is also a lack of political leadership countering this dangerous illusion.

For example, just recently the United Kingdom announced they would increase their Trident submarine nuclear warhead limit. There are also plans to “modernize” the arsenals of most nuclear-armed states, including Russia, the USA and China. Some militaries see these weapons as war-fighting options, or as an appropriate response to an overwhelming conventional weapon attack.

And the Canadian government has snubbed the new ban treaty. Rob Oliphant, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said the ban is “inconsistent with Canada’s collective defence obligations” as a member of NATO. Within the Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, however, we point to NATO’s own policy in support of “eventual” nuclear weapons abolition. And Canada has options: Either sign the treaty while pushing back against alliance nuclear deterrence policy; or work harder for a nuclear weapons convention, as Canada did before. Get back in the game.

Canadian disarmament practice hasn’t always been so hesitant – over decades, leadership was shown on antipersonnel landmines, but also nuclear weapons policy. A resolution was supported by all members of the House of Commons and Senate as recently as 2010. It called on the government to “engage in negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention” and to “deploy a major world-wide Canadian diplomatic initiative” towards that end.  Despite the all-party mandate, the last ten years saw little initiative by Canada.

There is, however, a new effort — that includes Canada — known as the Stockholm Initiative. Sixteen states are engaged, including ban supporters New Zealand, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, but also NATO members Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain, as well as two non-NATO nuclear umbrella states (South Korea and Japan). Will this be a fresh start?

“The initiative is positive in principle, but it is too soon to tell whether it will have any meaningful impact,” says Cesar Jaramillo, Executive Director of CNANW member group Project Ploughshares. “Efforts to reframe, rename and relaunch a series of steps or stones or blocks are also not new.” Canada should participate, and at the ministerial level, if this is to be a serious contribution.

Canada can also at minimum sit in as observer to the inaugural meeting of States Parties (likely in January 2022) of the new TPNW to show solidarity with the goals of its 122+ supporting or signatory states. This is also being considered by Germany.

A new global campaign for No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons has been established and encouraged the US and Russian leaders Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin at their bilateral meeting in Geneva to engage in talks to reduce nuclear risks. US President Biden is on record as questioning “first use” of nuclear weapons for the US. At the NATO summit of leaders this month, Canada had a chance to promote NFU for the alliance as a game-changing safer policy, but also as an early step towards nuclear weapon elimination.

This opens up the urgently needed discussion of alternatives to nuclear deterrence, a shift to sustainable common security for all peoples, and protection of the global environment. Canada needs to be there.

So many words, but so little action on nuclear disarmament

Earl Turcotte
Opinion Hil Times January 20, 20201

Who in their wildest dreams would have thought that the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, would feel compelled earlier this month to plead with the chairman of the Joint  Chiefs of  Staff to deny access by an increasingly unstable president to the nuclear launch codes, for fear that he might order a nuclear strike? As if this were even possible, since, under U.S. law, no one can counter such an order by the commander in chief.

Continue reading “So many words, but so little action on nuclear disarmament”

Jaramillo: Latin America and the Quest for Nuclear Abolition: From the Treaty of Tlatelolco to the Ban Treaty

photo credit: OPANAL

On February 14, 2014, as the Second Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons came to an end, conference Chair Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo—then deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico—captured the sentiment in the room in the powerful last few words of his closing remarks: in global efforts toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, this conference marked a “point of no return.” His optimistic conclusion was met with a roar of applause.

Read further: here 

Roche: Canada can’t hide behind NATO in refusal to sign treaty on nuclear weapons prohibition

Douglas Roche: “The Canadian government has said it cannot make such a commitment because of its membership in NATO. But the letter contests this stand, arguing that nothing in the new treaty precludes a NATO state joining, as long as it never assists the use of nuclear weapons.”

EDMONTON—Lloyd Axworthy, Jean-Jacques Blais, Jean Chrétien, Bill Graham, John McCallum, John Manley, and John Turner.

These seven names hardly need an introduction to readers of The Hill Times, and certainly not to the Government of Canada. Two of them are former prime ministers, three are former foreign ministers, and two are former defence ministers, who ran and served Liberal governments.

All of them signed an open letter [en français], released on Sept. 21, that features 53 former high officials of NATO countries expressing support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It is an astonishing rebuke of NATO’s moribund policies on nuclear weapons, and the most serious challenge to NATO’s nuclear orthodoxy in the organization’s 71-year history. Even two former NATO secretaries-general, Javier Solana and Willy Claes, as well as former U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, joined in this protest.

Continue reading “Roche: Canada can’t hide behind NATO in refusal to sign treaty on nuclear weapons prohibition”

Building security without nuclear weapons

Strong arguments are being made to rid the world of the risk posed by reliance on nuclear deterrence. We should adopt a mutual security policy based on sustainable common security principles.

The Palme Commission in 1982 proposed the concept of Common Security: “All states, even the most powerful, are dependent in the end upon the good sense and restraint of other nations.  Even ideological and political opponents have a shared interest in survival.  In the long run, no nation can base its security on the insecurity of others.  True security requires a cooperative effort, a partnership in the struggle against war.”

What are some “tools” of common security?

  • local-global democracy
  • human rights
  • social justice
  • economic development
  • environmental security
  • peaceful measures
  • “non-offensive” defence (NOD)

What are “Confidence and Security Building Measures” (CSBM)?

States wanting to improve their security can develop techniques of gradually developing confidence between themselves and states they perceive as threats.  During the Cold War,  the NATO and Warsaw Pact states agreed through the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) to participate in:

  • Annual mutual exchanges of military information
  • Consultation and cooperation re: unusual military activities
  • Cooperation re: hazardous incidents
  • Voluntary hosting of visits to dispel concerns about military activities
  • Visits to bases, academies, language facilities, conferences, sporting, cultural events
  • Joint military exercises and training
  • Mutual provision of experts
  • Prior notification of certain military activities
  • Observation of certain military activities
  • Sharing annual calendars of military activities
  • Communications (CSCE Communications Network)
  • Annual Implementation Assessment Meeting

Are there other security building processes?

  • Creation of Nuclear Weapons Free Zones (NWFZs)  See the Opanal website and the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs website on NWFZs
  • Use of Preventive Diplomacy to avert violent conflicts
  • Reference of inter-state disputes to the International Court of Justice
  • Maintain peace in pre- or post-conflict regions through use of UN peacekeepers
  • The International Criminal Court enables prosecution of international criminals in cases of war crimes where their own country does not act, or where national prosecution is not believed to be fair and credible.
  • Intrusive inspection measures such as “Open Skies”: The “Open Skies” Treaty of 1992 allows states parties to conduct observation flights over each other’s territories and provides warning of surprise attack, reduces misperceptions and thereby promotes mutual confidence.
  • Conversion of industry and transfer of priorities; creation of new jobs in public infrastructure, climate sustainability sectors

Scholars, Studies and Reports proposing alternative security options: