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Norms, International Law, Nukes and Ukraine

February 27, 2022 By Bob Kinsey

By Ralph Hutchison–Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has an eerie resonance; it was almost two decades ago that another superpower brazenly invaded the sovereign territory of a state on a pretense to devastating effect, deposing its leader and destroying its government, plunging the country into political, economic, and social chaos that persists even today.

One small difference. In the days after September 11, when the US waged war on Iraq—Is it still necessary to point out that none of the 9/11 attackers was from Iraq? Or that Iraq had zero weapons of mass destruction?—because we could and because we wanted to, we had no interest in annexing that country.

But that doesn’t erase the fact that we launched an unprovoked invasion of another country, wiping away the international norms that forbade such an action as though they were mere dust on the coffee table.

This is not to excuse Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or his earlier invasion of Crimea, or before that Georgia or before that Chechnya. None of this is acceptable. It’s wrong when he does it and it’s wrong when we do it and it’s wrong when anyone does it.

But as should be crystal clear by now, the consequences go beyond the immediate conflict regardless of the success or failure of the military campaign. The erosion of international norms that demand respect for boundaries has devastating and far-reaching consequences.

And the erosion of some international norms inevitably undermines the holding power of other international norms.

Which is why, as we all stare in shock and deep dismay at the current war in Ukraine, I am bringing up nuclear weapons. The current crisis should remind us of two terribly important truths about these weapons that have the power to destroy all human and most animal life on Earth.

The first truth is that nuclear weapons enable Vladimir Putin to act with impunity and they are useless to prevent such action. That’s what it means to be a nuclear armed state—the weapons convey great power when their offensive use is threatened, and they are utterly impotent as defensive weapons or counter-offensive threats.

Do you believe Putin would make good on his veiled threat to use nuclear weapons if someone tried to stop his plans for Ukraine? If not, what norms do you think constrain him? Do you think he has, deep down inside, some moral line he will not cross, this man who has poisoned his adversaries and had journalists murdered?

And if it is true that he might, now or later, use his nuclear weapons, who will stop him and at what cost? Would the US or some European country launch a counter-attack, triggering a full scale nuclear war, knowing it would mean the immediate death of hundreds of millions of people, and the slow starvation and radiation poisoning of billions during the decade long nuclear winter to follow, culminating in the end of life on the planet as we know it?

If that gives you pause, and I surely hope it does, the second truth should stop you dead in your tracks. The norms preventing the use of nuclear weapons are as fragile as any other global norm. They are a binding moral agreement between nations that is in effect right up until the moment when it isn’t.

That moment could be any moment. At least half of the nuclear armed states, including the United States, have been presided over by unstable leaders who have ignored global norms or have indicated they would use their nuclear forces if backed into a corner. Some are right now.

A number of nuclear armed states have provided security assurances to countries that are under their “nuclear umbrella.” Those assurances seal a deal: “We’ve got you covered. You don’t build nuclear weapons, and if you ever come under attack, we’ll handle it.” It’s a guarantee that if a nuclear weapon is used against them, we’ll respond in kind.

That means it doesn’t even take two crazy leaders to make a nuclear war; it just takes one. And it means it wouldn’t take an attack against the United States to cause us to go nuclear—the attack could be half a world away.

To start with. After the first launch, all bets are off. But if you insist on betting, go ahead and put all your money on escalation to a global catastrophe. You won’t need the money anyway—there won’t be anywhere left to spend it if you are one of the unlucky ones who survive.

Nuclear armed states have been engaged in any number of wars and conflicts in the last seventy years, and none of them have resorted to using their nuclear weapons to win. Even when they ended up losing. That sounds like a strong global norm.

Yet many studies that have asked how we have survived so long in the nuclear age conclude the same thing: We’ve been very lucky.

And the luck of the past doesn’t necessarily apply in the present, and certainly not in the future. More nations have joined the nuclear club—there were five when the Nonproliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970; five more have joined the club since. Today’s total is nine, since South Africa disarmed.

But at least a dozen other nations have the capacity to launch nuclear weapons programs—the brainpower, the money, the technology, and access to materials. What is there to give them confidence that the international norms will hold, that defending themselves in the event of an invasion will never be necessary?

  The refusal of the nuclear armed states to engage the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and their success in keeping their allies from joining the Treaty, does not provide confidence that the weapons states have any intention to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their defense posture or the numbers of warheads in their stockpiles.

To the contrary, we are currently in a new global nuclear arms race, with spending increasing dramatically as nations “modernize” their nuclear armaments, building new bomb plants and designing new and ever more perilous warheads and delivery systems.

It was the US that launched this new arms race, and we are outspending the competition four and five to one. In less than a decade, the US is planning (at a cost of tens of billions of dollars) to build new nuclear bombs plants and to expand production capacity to 80 new bombs or warheads every year, enough to replace our entire active stockpile every twenty years.

So, yes, we must take to the streets now, to decry the stupendous violence in Ukraine and the outlaw arrogance of Russia. The peace movement must once again find its voice and use it.

But please, please, please, don’t think it will make much difference—or at least not enough difference. Protests now, even if they are effective, are only stop-gap measures.

What we need, if we want to live in a different world, are concrete steps to re-set the table. Universal adoption and implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons would create an entirely different political world. The Putins of the world would no longer have the ultimate threat behind them should they decide to embark on military escapades.

And if they did still launch invasions and attacks, they could be opposed and stopped without the risk of ending all life on the planet. Accountability would be individualized; the consequences of one state’s actions could not be spread across the entire globe.

This, of course, is why the nuclear armed states are not inclined to give up their weapons. And this, just as surely, is why we must compel them to do it. Our future and the future of the Earth depend on it.

—

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nuclearbananas/17235039-4f62-a23e-57f0-ef8fd4797668%40earthlink.net

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Filed Under: Perspective, Uncategorized Tagged With: International Law, Norms, NPT, Putin, Ukraine

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Disarmament Quotes

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

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