Nuclear dangers

Thinking globally, acting locally

From END Info 36 DOWNLOAD

Tom Unterrainer

The 22 January 2023 marked the second anniversary of the coming in to force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

To date, 68 nations have ratified the Treaty and work to increase that number continues. This work stretches from the offices of diplomats and international politicians to the streets of Yorkshire cities, towns and villages where CND members promote the idea of nuclear ban communities. The Treaty itself has significance beyond the prohibition of nuclearism in those states that have ratified.

It is remarkable - and telling of the role played by nuclear weapons - that it took more than three quarters of a century after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a United Nations treaty to codify prohibition into international law. Every time an additional nation rejects nuclearism and ratifies the TPNW, the world takes another step towards nuclear abolition.

For me, and many others, the TPNW has a significance beyond the incremental steps. The whole process of drafting, coordinating, winning support and signatures for and ratifications of the TPNW was a process of geopolitical significance: it was a full-frontal rejection of the dominant idea that the retention and development of nuclear weapons is a prerequisite for global security.

Driving this full-frontal rejection were nations that have been and continue to be exploited, diminished and oppressed in the name of nuclearism and the global order which is characterised by it: the nations where the United States, Britain and France and others tested their nuclear weapons; the nations where the basic materials of the nuclear warhead were extracted; the nations which have experienced intergenerational damage and which carry the legacies – in the earth, in their bodies – of the nuclear age. It is noteworthy that Japan, the only nation where atomic weapons were detonated on a civilian population, opposed the TPNW.

As Richard Falk put it: “The enormous fly in this healing ointment” - the TPNW – “arises from the refusal of any of the nine nuclear weapons states to join in the TPNW process". Not only did the nuclear armed states refuse to join the process, so did members of the NATO nuclear alliance. They were joined by countries like Japan, which maintain close relations with the United States.

These states did not simply refuse to join in with the TPNW and ignore it: a coordinated and determined effort has been made to stop nations from ratifying and to systematically undermine the legal status of the Treaty.

For instance, the presence of member and soon-to-be members of the nuclear-armed NATO alliance at the First Meeting of State Parties (1MSP) of the TPNW raises a number of questions. First amongst these is: what were they doing there?

Was this a sign, as some hoped, that NATO member states were finally ready to positively engage with the project of nuclear abolition? No.

NATO and NATO-aligned states took the opportunity of their observer status and the speaking rights afforded to them to either challenge the TPNW itself or to promote fallacies around nuclear weapons.

Norway’s statement to 1MSP is explicit:

Norway is attending this conference as an observer. This is not a step towards signing nor ratifying the TPNW, which would be incompatible with our NATO obligations. Norway stands fully behind NATO’s nuclear posture.

The Netherlands struck a similar note:

.…this is not the first time we have participated in the TPNW discussions. We would like to remind delegations of our participation in the 2017 negotiations leading up to this Treaty, including offering concrete suggestions to make the TPNW a more broadly acceptable and credible disarmament treaty - not only to us but also possibly to other NATO Allies – which were unfortunately rejected.

Here, The Netherland’s not only objects to the TPNW but points out that it has been objecting since 2017! They have been ‘persistently objecting’ to the TPNW from the very start. The first prize for clarity, enveloped in a cloud of dire hypocrisy, is awarded to Germany, which stated in its address to the 1MSP that:

As a member to NATO – and as long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear Alliance -, … Germany cannot accede to the TPNW, which would collide with our membership in NATO including nuclear deterrence. As non-member to the TPNW we are not bound by its provisions, nor do we accept the claim that its provisions are applicable under customary law – now or in the future.

It is almost as if, like me, the German Foreign Office did an internet search of ‘persistent objector’ and crafted their statement to the 1MSP in order to precisely comply with the definition. What is this ‘Persistent objection’ about?

According to a 2021 Chatham House report:

While it is a general principle of international law that treaties do not create obligations for third states, it is also an accepted principle that a rule set forth in a treaty could, under certain conditions, become binding on a third state as a customary rule ... However, this is not an automatic process. Two distinct concepts are relevant here: the concept of so-called ‘specially affected states’, and that of ‘persistent objectors’ ... As the ICJ has explained, a lack of consent from specially affected states may have the effect of preventing the required general state practice from emerging, preventing the rule from coming into being in the first place. There is a strong argument that states with nuclear weapons and those in a nuclear alliance would be specially affected by a proposed ban on nuclear weapons. Even if a rule is indeed created, states that have objected to a certain degree to its emergence - so-called persistent objectors - will not be bound by it.

What does all of this illustrate?

Firstly: that the nuclear armed states and their allies in the nuclear-armed alliances will not easily give up their nuclear weapons. This is why campaigns like CND have a vital role to play and why we have to approach the problem from a number of directions: international law, political and mass action.

Secondly: that those who most consistently preach the gospel of ‘international law’ and promote their own version of a ‘global rules based order’ do so hypocritically, deviously and in their own interests.

In his recent book, The Last Colony – A tale of exile, justice and Britain’s colonial legacy, Philippe Sands writes:

In 1945, Britain and the United States had committed themselves to a rules-based international order, then they flaunted the rules. They committed themselves to …[a] vision of decolonisation and human rights, then shredded their own commitments.

What is Sands referring to specifically? What does it have to do with nuclear weapons? Quite a lot, as we shall see.

Six thousand miles from here are a group of islands which the British government refers to as the British Indian Ocean Territory – or BIOT for short. These islands may be more familiar as the Chagos islands.

In 1965 the United Kingdom split the Chagos islands from Mauritius. It did this in direct contravention of United Nations rules, which made clear that the process of decolonisation should not involve splitting or removing territory. The UK acted illegally.

The Chagossians demanded the right to self-determination. This right is enshrined in the UN Charter. Britain refused their demand: again, illegal under international law. Instructively, this same right to self-determination – as enshrined in the UN Charter – was invoked by Britain to legally justify its actions during the Falklands War. The Chagossians were entitled to ask why such a right pertained for white Falklanders but not for themselves.

Over and over again, Britain ignored the plight of the Chagossians – a people who had been ripped from their land, transported across oceans and left to suffer.

Britain inflicted suffering, injustice and worse on the Chagnossians in contravention of international law whilst presenting itself as a champion of a ‘global rules based order’.

It was not until 2017 that things started to change for the Chagossians, who refused to give up the fight. In June 2017, the UN General Assembly voted 94 to 15 to ask the International Court of Justice for an Advisory Opinion on the legality of the initial separation. On 25 February 2019, the ICJ ruled 13-1 that the UK was under obligation to reverse the separation: to give Chagos back. It took until 3 November 2022 for James Cleverely, the British Foreign Secretary, to announce the UK’s willingness to begin negotiations for a return: but with one condition – the continued operation of the airbase at Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia is an enormous airstrip for the United States. It is the place from which bombing raids on Iraq and the wider Middle East were launched. As Philippe Sands explained in one of his earlier books, Diego Garcia was also used as a torture site. It is ‘British territory’.

Just how did the United States end up with an enormous airbase on territory stolen by Britain in the middle of the Indian Ocean – all in contravention of international law. How was the United States allowed to use this stolen territory to launch an illegal war on Iraq? How was the United States allowed to use this stolen territory to conduct torture?

There exist a series of agreements and treaties between the United States and the United Kingdom made in the aftermath of the Second World War allowing for the use of UK bases by the US military. The Lakenheath airbase is another such example.

We’re told that this is ‘RAF’ Lakenheath but it is no such thing. It is a US base. The F35 aircraft that are stationed there are American. The pilots of these aircraft are American. The B61 nuclear bombs that look set to be stationed there are American.

The only thing ‘Royal’ about the place are a smattering of British personnel on the gates.

The return of US nuclear bombs to Lakenheath will be done without fanfare, without discussion, deliberation or the opportunity for dissent within official politics.

There has been no official statement and when asked, the British government equivocates. If Chagos is the last British colony, what does that make Lakenheath?

Nuclear developments have always happened under a veil of secrecy, from the initiation of the British atomic programme by the 1945 Atlee government to the announcement in Boris Johnson’s Integrated Review that ‘transparency’ over these issues will end.

The existence of nuclear sharing sites across Europe – something everyone knew about – was only officially confirmed when someone working at NATO in Brussels accidentally uploaded the wrong document onto their website!

The expansion of the nuclear bootprint – which is how I characterise developments at Lakenheath – would be very dangerous at the best of times. It is potentially deadly in the current circumstances.

In January 2022, the Permanent 5 – the five nuclear armed states with a permanent seat on UN Security Council issued a statement that said: “Nuclear war can not be won and must never be fought.” They echoed a similar statement from Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev that many of you will recall from the 1980s.

How sincere was this statement? Quite apart from the demonstrable hostility of the P5 to the TPNW and their ongoing failure to uphold the basics of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which they claim to hold so dear, we have witnessed a number of deeply troubling developments:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has massively increased nuclear tensions.

The ‘taboo’ on threatening nuclear use has been drastically undermined: not just by Putin’s public announcements – although these are the most high-profile – but also by the United States.

A totally inadequate response to these events: No effort to reduce nuclear tensions, no effort to end the war by diplomacy and negotiation.

We’ve seen repeated public speculation about how nuclear weapons could be used, debates around ‘tactical’ vs ‘strategic’ weapons all of which creates a normalisation of the murderously abnormal.

Rather than rolling back on the worst excesses of Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review, Biden’s version looks eerily familiar.

So, what to do about it? Think globally about our problems and understand what it all means. Act locally to raise the alarm, spread the message but – importantly – to work decisively towards removing each and every roadblock to peace.

Text of a talk given at the Yorkshire CND AGM, January 2023.

First Steps Towards Secure Peace

From END Info 36 DOWNLOAD

Bertrand Russell

Chapter 8 of Has Man A Future?, first published in 1961 – as global tensions built between the USA and USSR in the lead-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis – and re-issued by Spokesman Books in 2001.

The first steps towards the attainment of secure peace, like the first tottering steps of an infant, will almost necessarily be small and doubtful. In this chapter, I want to consider, not all that is desirable, but all that might conceivably be achieved by negotiators in a not too distant future.

The first thing that is needed is a different atmosphere in debates between East and West. At present these debates are conducted in the spirit of an athletic contest. What each side thinks important is, not the reaching of agreement, but its own victory either in a propaganda performance for the rest of the world or in securing from the other side concessions which might tilt the balance of power in what would be considered a favourable direction. Neither side remembers that the future of Man is at stake and that almost any agreement would be better than none. Take, for example, the long-drawn-out negotiations for the abolition of tests. East and West have always agreed that the spread of nuclear weapons to new Powers would increase the likelihood of nuclear war. Both sides have agreed that the spread of nuclear weapons to new Powers is imminent. Both sides have agreed that a ban on nuclear tests would help to prevent this spread. From these premises, both sides have felt, not that tests must stop, but that whichever side is in question must seem to wish to stop them. The negotiations began hopefully with a joint declaration of the scientists of East and West that a test anywhere could be detected by the other side. Thereupon, the American Government announced that it needed to make underground tests and that these could easily pass undetected. After some years of negotiation this obstacle was overcome. The Soviet Government thereupon announced that the necessary inspection should not be directed by one man representing the United Nations, but by three men-one East, one West, and one neutral - and that they should only act when there was unan­imity. As was to be feared these manoeuvres on the part of America and Russia made the years of nego­tiation fruitless and led to the resumption of tests by Russia. One cannot but conclude that neither side has been sincere in pretending to wish that tests should cease by agreement.

If any progress is to be made with any of the problems that cause East-West tension, negotiators must meet, not in the hope of outwitting each other, or of prolonging the dangerous status quo, but with an absolute determination that agreement shall be reached. It must be accepted that an agreement is not likely to be wholly palatable to either party. The aim should be to reach agreements which do not alter the balance of power, but do diminish the risk of war.

I can see only one motive which can lead to this change in the attitude of negotiators. This motive will have to be consciousness on both sides of the futile horror of nuclear war. At present, each side thinks it necessary for success in the war of nerves to pretend that it might win. And not only for success in the war of nerves, but also to lure its own citizens to their death by promises which Governments must know to be deceitful. One side announces, ‘We might win a hot war’; the other side retorts, ‘We shall obliterate you’. Such statements tend to promote warlike fury in whichever side is threatened. If any steps towards peace are to be achieved, both sides will have to recognize that they face a common peril and that the true enemy is not the other side, but the weapons of mass destruction which both sides possess.

If this is recognized on both sides, the problem becomes a quite different one. It is no longer the problem of outwitting the other side, or of persuading one’s own side that it is capable of victory. The first problem will have to be to find acceptable steps, however small, which can prove that fruitful negotiations have become possible.

There is a considerable amount of rhetoric, both on the warlike and on the peaceful side, which, whatever its intention, is not likely to lead to the desired result. We have formerly considered the rhetorical war propaganda embodied in the slogan, ‘Liberty or Death’, but there is an opposite slogan invented by West German friends of peace: ‘Better Red than dead’. One may guess that in some sections of Russian public opinion there is an opposite slogan: ‘Better capitalists than corpses’. I do not think it is necessary to inquire into the theoretical validity of either slogan since I think it out of the question that the one should be adopted by Western Governments or the other by the Governments of the East. Neither slogan presents justly the problem which East and West alike have to face. Given that military victory by either side is impossible, it follows logically that a negotiated detente cannot be based on the complete subjection of either side to the other, but must preserve the existing balance while transforming it from a balance of terror to a balance of hope. That is to say, co-existence must be accepted genuinely and not superficially as a necessary condition of human survival.

Perhaps the first step should be a solemn declaration by the United States and the USSR, and as many other Powers as possible, that a nuclear war would be an utter disaster to both East and West and, also, to neutrals, and that it would not achieve anything that East or West or neutrals could possibly desire. I should hope that such a declaration could be made sincerely. Both sides know that what it would say is true, but both sides are caught in a net of prestige, propaganda, and power politics, from which, hitherto, they have not known how to extricate themselves. I should like to see the neutrals taking the lead in achieving such a declaration, and I do not see how either side could incur the odium of refusing to sign.

The next step should be a temporary moratorium, say for a period of two years, during which each side would pledge itself to abstain from provocative actions. Among provocative actions should be included such measures as interference with the freedom of West Berlin, or interven­tion by the United States in Cuba. It should be agreed that United Nations observers, as impartial as could be found, should decide whether an act is provocative.

During the two years moratorium, various preliminary steps should be taken with a view to making subsequent negotiations easier. There should be on both sides a discouragement of vehement hostile propaganda and an attempt by means of greatly increased cultural contact to diminish the popular view in East and West of West and East as melodramatic monsters of wickedness. Steps should be taken to lessen the danger of unprovoked or unintended war. At the present time, each side fears an unprovoked attack by the other, and each side has a vast system of detection by which it hopes to discover such an unprovoked attack a few minutes before it occurs. Each side’s methods of detection are fallible and, therefore, each side may believe itself about to be attacked when nothing of the sort is occurring. If it believes this, it will order what it supposes to be a counter-attack, but what, to the other side, will appear merely unprovoked aggression. This is a mutual nightmare, caused by tension, but immensely increasing it. It is hardly possible that tension should be very seriously diminished while both sides live under the threat of ‘instant retaliation’, which may well be, not retaliation, but response to a mistake. It is by no means easy to see what can be done about this situation when it has once been allowed to grow up. Nuclear disarmament, of course, would solve this problem. Not long ago the danger might have been much alleviated by abolition of launching sites, or, if that were thought too extreme a measure, by making the launching sites temporarily unavailable. But, since the introduction of submarines provided with nuclear weapons, launching sites have lost a good deal of their dominant importance. The diminution of the danger of unintended or accidental war has become a technical question of much complexity and, short of nuclear disarmament, it would seem that only palliatives are possible. If a detente is genuinely desired on both sides, a technical commission composed of East and West in equal numbers could be appointed to diminish this danger, but what exactly it could recommend, it is difficult to decide, and it must always be remembered that palliatives are unreliable and that nuclear disarmament affords the only genuine protection against this danger.

There should also be an attempt on both sides, on the one hand, to increase mutual knowledge of each other’s case, and, on the other hand, to disseminate information as to the disastrousness of a nuclear war should it take place.

The main work to be performed during the moratorium would be an agreement to appoint a Conciliation Com­mittee consisting of equal numbers of members from East and West and neutrals. I think such a Committee, if it were to perform its work efficiently, would have to be small. It might, for example, consist of four members from the West, four from the East, and four neutrals. It should - at least at first - have advisory powers only. whenever it did not succeed in reaching unanimity, the opinions of both majority and minority, with the reasons for them, should be made public. Its decisions should be governed by certain principles. Of these, the first and most important should be that the pro­posals as a whole offered no net gain to either side, since, otherwise, there would be no chance of their being agreed to. For example, Russia should cease to jam Western radios provided that they abstained from virulent hostile propaganda. The second principle to be adopted should be to seek ways of diminishing dangerous friction in areas where this is occurring - as, for example, between Israel and the Arab world, or between North and South Korea. A third principle - which, however, should be subordinate to the other two-would be to allow self-determination wherever possible. There are limits to what can be done in this direction since the Russians would not agree to its application in their satellites, and it is doubtful whether the United States would agree unreservedly as regards Latin America. As regards Formosa, I have never seen any account of the wishes of the inhabitants or any suggestion by either East or West that respect should be paid to their wishes. Until the world is much less tense than it is at present, the principle of self-determination, desirable as it is, will have to give way, here and there, to considerations of power politics. This is regrettable, but is, I fear, unavoidable if agreement is to be reached between the Great Powers.

There is another matter of very great importance which should be dealt with during the moratorium, and that is the reform and strengthening of the United Nations. UNO ought to be open to every State that wishes to join it, not only China, which is the most urgent, but also East and West Germany. The problem of Germany, however, is very special, and I shall have more to say about it in a later chapter.

UNO is defective, not only because it excludes certain countries, but also because of the Veto. UNO cannot lead on towards a World Government while the Veto is retained, but, on the other hand, it is difficult to abolish the Veto while national armaments retain their present strength. On this point, as in the matter of Germany, the question of disarmament has to be decided before any satisfactory solution is possible.

It is because of the imperfections of UNO that an ad hoc Conciliation Committee would, at first, be a better body than UNO for initiating schemes of conciliation. One may hope that, if such a body, while still having only an advisory capacity, did its work wisely, it might, in time, acquire such moral authority as would make its proposals difficult to resist and would give it, in embryo, an influence that might facilitate the ultimate establishment of a World Government. The great advantage of such a body would be that the neutrals would hold the balance between East and West, and, if they thought proposals by one side more reasonable than those by the other, they could give the majority to the side they thought best on the particular issue in question. One would hope that the neutrals would be sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. Moreover, if one side, but not the other, was in danger of encountering neutral opposition - as would be bound to happen to either side occasionally -this would tend to promote moderation on both sides. The desirability of appealing to neutrals would tend to soften the acerbity of both East and West in discussions, and to generate, gradually, a world-wide point of view, rather than one confined to this side or that. Moreover, where there is a deadlock between East and West, there is better hope of a wise compromise solution being suggested by the neutrals than by either of the contesting parties of East and West. These are, perhaps, the most important things that neutrals can do towards the promotion of sanity.

It is largely because I believe that it is neutrals who will have to play the most important role in the preserva­tion of peace that I should wish to see Britain leaving NATO and trying to inspire wise action by a neutral bloc. National pride causes most Britons to think that such action would seriously weaken the West, but this is not the view of authoritative American orthodox experts. Also, paradoxically, it would make it more probable, not less, that some Britons might survive. But the most important argument for British neutrality is the help towards world peace that Britain could do as a neutral, but cannot do as a member of either bloc.

I have not dealt in this chapter either with disarmament or with territorial questions, but only with such prelimin­ary steps as might lessen the hostility between East and West. Both disarmament and territorial questions will be considered in the ensuing chapters.

Anti-nuclear news

From END Info 36 DOWNLOAD

‘Spy balloons’ and Spy Domes

Over the course of two or three days, much of the anglosphere media dedicated itself to the story of a Chinese balloon - or ‘Spy Balloon’, as some reports labelled it - that was making its way across the United States landmass.

According to some reports, the balloon was as large as a ‘20 storey building’ (Sky News, 07/02/23) so regardless of whether or not it was actually a ‘Spy Balloon’ it was hardly designed for stealthy operations. After some days of coverage, the United States armed forces eventually found an opportunity to shoot the balloon out of the sky.

Debris has been recovered and is currently being analysed to determine the actual function of the equipment carried by the balloon. We should assume that detailed examination will confirm the nefarious purposes of the device.

Amidst the excitement, fear and condemnatory coverage generated by this Chinese balloon very little - perhaps nothing - was said about the extensive US spying operations and installations that pepper the globe. Many of these operations and installations have a direct connection to the infrastructure of the US nuclear weapons capability.

Menwith Hill (pictured), located 7.7miles west of Harrogate, Yorkshire, UK, is an example of one such installation. Rather than using a balloon or some other rudimentary device for its spying and monitoring activities, the US has been granted permission to station a series of enormous domes on this rural and otherwise beautiful landscape.

According to the Menwith Hill Accountability Campaign (themhac.uk):

Menwith Hill is the largest intelligence-gathering, interception and surveillance base outside the US. It has many roles which are generally for US interests only (diplomatic, military and economic) – being the hub of the ECHELON global surveillance system. However, in May 2013 an unknown and very important whistle blower called Edward Snowden disclosed thousands of top secret documents which revealed the extent of the intelligence gathering and surveillance on us all by the NSA/CIA (with the help of GCHQ). Menwith Hill is mentioned several times in the documents.

The base is unaccountable, secretive and out of control of the UK government. After Edward Snowden revealed thousands of documents there have been many articles in the press about the lack of scrutiny by Parliament of US bases in general and in particular the NSA especially at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill.

We don’t see many stories about Menwith Hill and related US bases in our media. Perhaps we’d hear more about them if a balloon - Chinese or otherwise - was ever blown off-course and found itself hovering above them.

Perhaps American forces would be swifter in shooting down such a balloon over Yorkshire than over the United States.

John LaForge imprisoned in Germany, January 10, 2023

Nukewatch’s John LaForge is currently serving 50 days in a German prison for his part in actions aimed at removing US nuclear weapons from Germany. Before entering prison he was joined by other activists that have endured jail time for their anti-nuclear protests in a zoom meeting. Ongoing coverage of John’s imprisonment can be found at nukewatchinfo.org/johns-jail-updates/.

Extract from John’s first letter from prison:

January 15, 2023

This month has three important political anniversaries, anti-war and anti-nuclear holidays if you will, events I’ll celebrate privately for a change, since I’m temporarily cooling my heels in a German prison on the west end of Hamburg. It’s not that I killed or robbed very many people, but I have acted contemptuously toward the court system here and have refused to cooperate with its deeply corrupt and thoroughly dishonest protection of the nuclear weapons establishment.

Because Susan Crane and I had the gall to occupy the top of a nuclear weapons bunker that holds U.S. hydrogen bombs here in Germany, and then refuse to apologize by paying a fine for trespassing, the court has decided that seven weeks in this modern prison ought to mend my ways, or at least discourage other abolitionists...

The nine-member thermonuclear cartel, like a gang of coldblooded mobsters, acts outside and above the law by rewarding their judicial, police and prison authorities for the cover they provide, authorities who then wink and pretend that the protection racket is necessary and that the Bomb is legal.

Maybe our marching, our rebellion and the law of nations can’t denuclearize the cabal of atomic weaponeers. Maybe the nuclear mobsters won’t re-direct their war chests to useful purposes before they run our earthly train off the rails. But then nothing changes unless we demand it.

John LaForge, Billwerder Prison, Hamburg

Munich Peace Conference: More diplomacy instead of more weapon deliveries!

The International Munich Peace Conference begins on February 17, 2023. It traditionally takes place as an alternative event with qualified content to the Munich Security Conference. Under the motto "Shaping peace and justice - NO to war!", the lectures and discussions are about initiating a paradigm shift towards more diplomacy and negotiations instead of more arms deliveries.

“It was always difficult to bring the parties to the conflict to the negotiating table. The political will seems to have been lacking so far, because both Russia and Ukraine and the NATO that supports them are still hoping to gain ground on the battlefield," emphasizes Dr. medical Lars Pohlmeier, Chairman of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), one of the organizations from the sponsoring group of the Munich Peace Conference. "Chancellor Olaf Scholz's term 'Zeitenwende' has meanwhile arrived in international politics. He suggests that something has finally changed, that there is no going back to peace and security. That's wrong. Disarmament treaties and building trust, starting with small steps, are always possible. Armistice and peace negotiations are always between political opponents, not friends. Even now, Russia and Ukraine are negotiating daily about wheat deliveries from Ukraine. A more peaceful world with justice is possible if the political will is there.”

“The hope that a complete victory over Russia is achievable due to more and more arms deliveries is also doubted by military officials like US General Mark Milley. That's why we need more diplomacy instead of more arms deliveries," Pohlmeier continued.

The sponsors of the Munich Peace Conference criticize the lack of willingness for non-violent conflict resolution and diplomatic initiatives. For example, no representative of the Russian government was invited to the Munich Security Conference, allegedly so as not to provide them with a platform for propaganda. As a result, no (informal) diplomatic talks between Russia and NATO states or Ukraine are possible at the security conference, the peace conference organizations complain.

"Unfortunately, this rigid militarism once again confirms the need for demonstrations against the 'security conference' and the alternative event, the International Munich Peace Conference," says Maria Feckl, organizer of the peace conference. "At this year's peace conference, representatives of civil society (including the last generation) will have the opportunity to contrast their political priorities with the war course and the armament mania of the 'security conference'." There will also be a workshop on the concept of social defense and lectures on war interests and war narratives using the example of Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Press release from IPPNW Deutschland

NATO to meet in Vilnius

The next scheduled NATO summit will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, in June 2023. The No To NATO - No To War network is actively considering options for a counter-summit and a series of activities around this time. Keep an eye on www.no-to-nato.org/ for the latest news and notices of planned activities.

Iraq: 20 years on

Lies, war and the ‘rules-based order’

From END Info 36 DOWNLOAD

T[ony] B[lair] gave me assurances when I asked for Iraq to be discussed at Cabinet that no decision made and not imminent.

Clare Short, Diaries, 9 Sept 2002

Mr Blair was ‘economical with the truth’ in his assurances to Clare Short, a member of his cabinet. He was likewise economical with Parliament, the press and the people of his country. Papers leaked to the Daily Telegraph (18 Sept 2004) and further papers published by the Sunday Times (1 May 2005) [collected in The Dodgiest Dossier, Spokesman 2005] make this clear. The lies were not simply about the point at which he and his closest allies had decided - along with the Bush Administration - to wage war against Iraq but about the basis for such a decision. As Ken Coates noted:

These papers showed in graphic detail how weak was the pre-war evidence for attacking Iraq ... The briefing papers made the bald claim that ‘the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’. They reveal that the British Government knew that there was no major threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and they also knew that the claim that Iraq had links with al Qaeda was ‘frankly unconvincing’.

Ken Coates, The Dodgiest Dossier

Despite the “frankly unconvincing” claims, the lack of evidence, the absence of UN consent, divisions in the ‘international community’ and an enormous global anti-war movement and its heroic efforts to avert the very worst, the very worst unfolded. The US and UK went to war against Iraq.

In short order, the toll of Iraqi deaths rocketed as the bombs and rockets rained down. Destruction was unleashed upon the land and two decades on, the legacies of war and occupation leave their mark.

Ken Coates relentlessly analysed the roots, conduct and outcomes of events in Iraq. In his pamphlet, Tony Blair: The Old New Goes to War, Coates writes: 

The enforcement of international law is commonly not advanced by the outbreak of war. When the war itself is arguably illegal, this perception applies with redoubled force.

He then details cases of torture, the undermining of the United Nations and breaches of the Geneva Conventions which, in addition to the death-toll and destruction, reveal much about those who claim to ‘uphold the rules-based order’.

Jack Straw - who served as Blair’s Foreign Secretary - told a House of Commons Select Committee (4 March 2003) that:

... you are right it is the United States which has the military power to act as the world’s policeman, and only the United States. We live in a uni-polar world ... We will reap a whirlwind is we push the Americans into a unilateralist position in which they are the centre of this uni-polar world.

This uni-polar moment is over. The US, in desperation to maintain influence, continues to act recklessly and dangerously. The UK and other NATO members show no signs of dissent. What new horrors are planned in the name of a ‘rules-based order’? Where will this end?

90 seconds to midnight

From END Info 36 DOWNLOAD

Editorial Comments Tom Unterrainer

“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, 9 July 1955

That these closing words from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto resonate across the decades would bring no comfort to the their authors. What would they make of today’s world, a world where nuclear weapons have not been detonated but where the threat of such detonation looms? What would they make of the choices made by those with the power to bend, shift or determine world events? Would they detect any progress towards a “new Paradise” or would they, like the Atomic Scientists of 2023, detect further risk of “universal death”.

The Atomic Scientists have moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock ten seconds closer to midnight. By their reckoning, we are 90 seconds away from “universal death”. This annual measure of existential threat to life on planet earth has never been as close to midnight as it is now.

In 1953, following the October 1952 test by the United States of the first Hydrogen Bomb and in anticipation of similar moves by the USSR, the Atomic Scientists moved the hands to 2 minutes. It took until 2018 for the clock to reach the same point again, in circumstances where the “failure of world leaders to address the largest threats to humanity’s future [was] lamentable”. Since 2018 the clock has edged ever closer to midnight, as world leaders plot a course to disaster.

This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.

The war in Ukraine may enter a second horrifying year, with both sides convinced they can win. Ukraine’s sovereignty and broader European security arrangements that have largely held since the end of World War II are at stake.

If Ukraine is the main, but not the only, reason for the perilous circumstances faced by humanity at large then a number of questions are posed. For instance: How did this situation evolve? What is being done to resolve it? Do we really think that escalation will do anything other than increase nuclear risks further still?

Whilst the Doomsday Clock confines itself to measuring the dangers posed to humanity as a whole, it is important that we register the fact that for all-too-many people, midnight has already arrived. Registering and examining this fact may help us to understand how to ‘move the hands back’ on the Doomsday Clock.

Midnight arrives

Earthquake: The earthquakes that struck Türkiye and Syria on February 7, 2023 were caused by a well understood but unpredictable ‘natural phenomena’. At the time of writing, the death toll in Türkiye alone stands at over 40,000. Are all of these deaths and all of the destruction accounted for by an abrupt release of stored elastic strain along a geological fault-line? Were the 40,000 or more who had midnight - death and destruction - delivered upon them victims of a purely ‘natural phenomenon’? According to numerous reports, more than 345,000 buildings were destroyed in the quake in Türkiye (estimates for Syria are not available). People were killed in their beds, in their homes, as the buildings collapsed above, around and below them. 1 million people are now living in tents. Midnight arrived.

Anger has erupted at the Ankara government as accusations grow over multiple failures to reinforce and improve the safety of buildings following recommendations in the wake of a similar sized quake in 1999. Citizens have criticised the government for “evading accountability” and for failing to impose stricter and enhanced building standards. All of which suggests the question: if such increased standards had been imposed, if work had been done to reinforce existing buildings and otherwise improve the durability of such structures how many deaths could have been avoided? How much destruction could have been avoided? How many people would now be living out their existence in tent cities?

The enormous death toll in Türkiye is not simply the product of a ‘natural phenomena’: it also results from carelessness, corruption and a disregard for humanity. The powerful choose to be careless, corrupt and to show such disregard. It did not have to be this way. Different choices, different approaches, could have been made. Such choices and such approaches could have - if implemented in time and in earnest - have saved lives and prevented such widespread destruction.

As bad as things are in Türkiye, they could have been much worse. Take, for instance, the ongoing construction work at the Akkuyu nuclear power plant (see map below). According to Maria Arvanitis Sotiropoulou, writing on the ‘Beyond Nuclear International’ website:

The station is being built like all major projects in Turkey through non-transparent procedures with direct commissioning and guarantees from the government, just like the apartment buildings we saw crumble into rubble during the recent earthquake.

Construction at Akkuyu was cancelled in 2010 following multiple concerns over the project but work began again in April 2018. By January 2021, it was reported that sea water was “seeping through the concrete floor”. As Sotiropoulou comments:

[E]ven if the nuclear plant were structurally safe, such strong earthquakes can cause damage to piping, so a Fukushima-style disaster is to be expected.

The construction at Akkuyu is not complete. The nuclear reactors are not ‘live’. The disaster was confined to tens-of-thousands of deaths rather than millions. The level of destruction was enormous but not as widespread and as enduring as a nuclear disaster would be.

Currently, the only things standing in the way of such a widespread disaster and potentially many more deaths are time and chance: both can run out and humanity should not count on either. It would be rational and humane to halt the construction of this nuclear power plant, to reinforce the homes that have not already been destroyed and to rebuild those that have been destroyed to a high standard. Such a rational and humane approach requires rational and humane choices on the part of those in power. Can such choices be made before midnight arrives for us all?

Baghdad: Midnight arrived in Baghdad on 19 March 2003, as the ‘air war’ against Iraq commenced. The assault upon, invasion and occupation of Iraq is widely considered to have been ‘justified’ on the basis of a ‘lie’. It was a war of aggression and ‘illegal’ under international law. This did not stop the ‘defenders of the rules based world order’ from launching it [see page 6]. The ground invasion of Iraq began shortly after the missile strikes and bombing raids. More than half-a-million US and British troops and personnel (and a very small number of forces from other countries) were engaged in the invasion.

Prior to the invasion, millions took to the streets across the world to voice their opposition. Following the invasion an enormous mobilisation continued to insist that it should stop. The anti-war and peace movements were not completely ignored but the war went ahead in any case. The lie was too big to back out of.

The result? Accounts of the levels of destruction and the numbers of deaths vary widely. We do know that tens of thousands were killed, large swathes of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities were reduced to rubble, the oil wells burned, children starved - as they did before the invasion, thanks to sanctions - and unknown numbers were subject to ‘extraordinary rendition’ and torture.

Could all of this have been stopped? Millions did their best to stop it: in parliaments, on the streets, in conference rooms and in whatever venue was open. What did the powerful do to stop it? Some countries refused point-blank to join in and used diplomatic channels and procedures in an attempt to avert the worst. What has been done since to bring those responsible to account? Why have President Bush and former Prime Minister Blair not appeared before an international court?

Midnight did not arrive in Baghdad through a sudden release of geophysical energy. It arrived because of calculated and conscious choices of people with missiles, bombs, warplanes, tanks and warships at their command. Midnight arrived with Mr Bush and Mr Blair singing a tune with the words ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and ‘international rules based order’ prominent in the lyrics. No such weapons were ever found in Iraq and every such rule was broken by the US and UK.

No wonder Mr Putin feels so justified in delivering midnight to Ukrainian villages, towns and cities.

Ukraine: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which commenced on 24 February 2022, certainly delivered midnight to all-too-many - civilians, soldiers, Ukrainian or otherwise. Yet the hands of the clock had been steadily approaching this point for a number of years. An OSCE mission, stationed in the country from 2014 until shortly before the invasion, recorded the tally of missile strikes, explosions and instances of armed conflict emanating from ‘both sides’.

Tensions steadily grew and voices for calm, reduced tensions and genuine, consistent efforts at diplomacy enjoyed some recognition. But this was not enough.

Ukraine has now experienced a year of open war. The most recent figures from the United Nations estimate that more than 21,000 civilians have been killed (8,000) or injured (12,000) over the past 12 months but acknowledges that this figure may well be higher. An estimated 8 million Ukrainian’s have fled the country and a further 8 million have been internally displaced.

This is already a disaster and a tragedy of enormous proportions. The decision to invade and launch this war the decision of President Putin and he stands responsible for what has happened. Yet apportioning blame will not bring this tragedy to an end. Nor is it likely to halt further such tragedies in Ukraine or elsewhere. The lesson of Iraq tells us this much.

Midnight has arrived in Ukraine but events there could spark ‘universal midnight’. This is why the Atomic Scientists emphasise the contribution of events in Ukraine to the advance of the Doomsday Clock.

Pull back the hands of the clock

In his ‘state of the nation’ speech (21/02/23) President Putin announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty. Under this treaty, both the US and Russia committed to reducing the numbers of ‘strategic missile launchers’. Although the verification commitments of this treaty had been suspended due to the pandemic and then Russia’s war in Ukraine, New START was the ‘last treaty standing’ between those two countries. It now joins the ABM Treaty, INF Treaty and Open Skies Treaty on the ‘bonfire of treaties’.

It can only be supposed that such a development, had it taken place before the 2023 Doomsday Clock announcement, would see us even closer to midnight.

This development, along with Putin’s repeated nuclear threats and reciprocal warnings from the United States, combine to make nuclear tensions and the risk of nuclear use - by accident or design - more sharply posed than they have ever been. Humanity is hurtling towards midnight.

What the examples of the earthquake, the invasion of Iraq and Ukraine suggest is that when midnight arrives it does so not as some unfathomable ‘natural’ or otherwise ungraspable phenomena: even if it starts this way. Midnight arrives by calculation, human decision making and destructive human ‘effort’. It can arrive despite warnings, despite mass opposition, despite previous experience and despite verbal commitments to ‘rules’, ‘international law’ or ‘democracy’.

If humanity is to avoid a ‘global midnight’ then alongside addressing and reversing our collective pursuit of climate catastrophe, rising sea levels, pollution, species extinction, pandemic threats, poverty, hunger, war and the rest then we must swiftly and determinedly reduce and eliminate the threat of nuclear use.

As has been argued many times before, there will be no such things as a ‘limited nuclear war’ or a ‘one off’ detonation. All the modelling shows that one nuclear detonation will rapidly result in escalation and the death of us all.

An immediate means of reducing nuclear tensions and the risk of nuclear use will be to secure peace in Ukraine as swiftly as possible. This means ceasefire, negotiations, diplomacy and the rest. It means dispensing with the idea of securing ‘military victory’ for one side or the other. It means de-escalation rather than a further escalation of the fighting. It means making efforts to pull back the hands of the Doomsday Clock.

If, as some claim, it is “impossible to negotiate with Putin” then we may as well lose all hope. If he is so irrational as to be beyond the ability to negotiate then it should be assumed that he will inevitably use nuclear weapons. We must all hope that this is not the case and there is only one way to find out.

To do otherwise would be akin to categorising events in Ukraine as part of a ‘natural process’, one that is unavoidable and one that should be left to ‘run its course.’ Any such attitude is as reckless, criminal and inhumane as the attitude of those who build flimsy buildings and nuclear power stations on tectonic fault lines. Such an attitude can only accelerate a global journey towards midnight.

Nuclear ‘Deterrence’: Why we must think again

From END Info 35

Ken Coates (1981)

On May 7th 1981, while the Labour Party was spectacularly disproving all the newspaper reports about its imminent collapse, by winning landslide victories in one local authority after another, a small number of parliamentarians were still in session. The debate was on foreign policy. Denis Healey made a major speech. Next day, the headline on The Times did not concern Labour’s victories in the country, but ran as follows: “Healey backs Tories on nuclear arms and NATO”. The report went on “In his first important speech in the House of Commons since his appointment as foreign affairs spokesman last December . . . Mr Healey will have outraged a large section of the Labour Party by virtually promising opposition support for the main thrust of Conservative foreign policy”. The Times went on to cite Mr Healey as insisting “it was vital that the security enjoyed for 35 years and the conditions that had made that possible, should be maintained”. Obviously The Times was seeking to make trouble for Denis Healey, and some may think that its treatment of his speech exaggerated his conformity with Tory policy. But on the key question of deterrence, The Times was not inaccurate. For this reason, we ought to examine this question again.

Long ago, in his contribution to New Fabian Essays, Denis Healey stated his conviction that, while the Labour Party’s foreign policy normally contained an admixture of “sentimentalism” and marxism, the true state of the world meant that the best guide to it was Thomas Hobbes, who understood power politics. For Hobbes, fear was an indispensable component of the impulse to statehood, upon which depended the only resolution of the “war of each against all” which otherwise rent the society of natural man. I do not see Hobbes as the unmitigated reactionary so often parodied in textbooks of political theory, but if fear really were the ground-root of political organization, it would have certainly reached the point (in 1945, with Hiroshima) at which an international polity had become unavoidable. That polity we have not, but the fear has escalated year by year, to the point where it has almost negated itself as a social cement. Now states attempt to persuade us that the “unthinkable” option of nuclear war is really quite thinkable, and that we can expect to live through a “limited” war if only we lay in enough whitewash for our windows and canned food for the duration. This gruesome pretence has been unmasked for what it is by Edward Thompson’s magisterial pamphlet, Protest and Survive, and I have nothing to add to what it says. But the case against “security” based on nuclear deterrence does not rest on the obvious fact that it is perilous, but that it is also doomed to collapse.

When Bertrand Russell sought to explain the confrontation of the nuclear superpowers, back in 1959, he offered a famous analogy:

“Since the nuclear stalemate became apparent, the Governments of East and West have adopted the policy which Mr Dulles calls ‘brinkmanship’. This is a policy adapted from a sport which, I am told, is practised by the sons of very rich Americans. This sport is called ‘Chicken!’. It is played by choosing a long straight road with a white line down the middle and starting two very fast cars towards each other from opposite ends. Each car is expected to keep the wheels of one side on the white line. As they approach each other, mutual destruction becomes more and more imminent. If one of them swerves from the white line before the other, the other, as he passes, shouts ‘Chicken!’, and the one who has swerved becomes an object of contempt. As played by youthful plutocrats, this game is considered decadent and immoral, though only the lives of the players are risked. But when the game is played by eminent statesmen, who risk not only their own lives but those of many hundreds of millions of human beings, it is thought on both sides that the statesmen on one side are displaying a high degree of wisdom and courage, and only the statesmen on the other side are reprehensible. This, of course, is absurd. Both are to blame for playing such an incredibly dangerous game. The game may be played without misfortune a few times, but sooner or later it will come to be felt that loss of face is more dreadful than nuclear annihilation. The moment will come when neither side can face the derisive cry of ‘Chicken!’ from the other side. When that moment is come, the statesmen of both sides will plunge the world into destruction.”

We do not cite this passage out of piety. Russell’s parable is no longer adequate. Various things have changed since 1959. Some were beginning to change, at any rate in minds like Mr Henry Kissinger’s, even before that time. Others were rather evident to ordinary people, more or less instantly. Within the game of “chicken” itself, we had the Cuba crisis of 1962. Mr Khrushchev swerved. This persuaded certain shallow advocates of the game that deterrence actually worked. But rather more significantly, it also persuaded the more faithful apostles of the doctrine, true disciples of Thomas Hobbes, among Mr Khrushchev’s colleagues that considerably greater effort should be lavished on the perfection of a swerve-proof war machine. Consequently, the nuclear armament balance shifted, if not in the drastic manner announced by Washington alarmists, at any rate in the direction of something closer to effective parity.

In addition to this, proliferation of nuclear weaponry continued. This is discussed below, but even before we examine it, it is manifestly clear that it has complicated the rules of the game rather considerably.

The French allowed, if they did not actually encourage, public speculation about the thought that their deterrent was more than unidirectional, if their putative defenders ever showed undue reluctance to perform, in time of need, the allotted role. The arrival of the Chinese among the club of nuclear weapons states produced a possible three-way “chicken”, with both main camps holding out at least a possibility that, in appropriate circumstances, they might “play the China card”. But here the metaphor is mixing itself. Staying within the rules Russell advanced, we would have to express it like this: the Chinese “deterrent” could, at least in theory, be set to intervene against either of the other participants in the joust, unpredictably, from any one of a bewildering number of side-entries to the main collision course. As if this were not problem enough, the war technology has itself evolved, so that:

a. military costs have escalated to the point where nuclear powers are increasingly impotent if they are barred from using what has now become by far their most expensive weaponry; and

b. nuclear weapons technique aspires to (although it may very well fail to meet) infinitely greater precision in attack. This brings nearer the possibility of pre-emptive war, which is a perfectly possible abrupt reversal of standard deterrent presumptions. To these facts we must add another, powerful moment:

c. the stability of the world political economy, which seemed effectively unchallengeable in 1959, has been fiercely undermined by the collapse of the Keynesian world order, deep slump in the advanced capitalist countries, and growing social stress within the nations of the Soviet sphere of influence, which have not been able to evolve those democratic and consensual forms of administration which could resolve their political tensions in an orderly and rational manner.

In the interaction of these developments, we have seen the consolidation, amongst other delinquencies, of the doctrine of “limited” nuclear war. We can only reduce this veritable mutation in strategy to Russell’s exemplary folk-tale if we imagine that each participant car in the game carries smaller subordinate vehicles, which can be launched down the white line at even greater speed than the velocity of approach of the main challengers. These lesser combatants can, it is apparently believed, be set loose on one another in order that their anticipated crashes may permit time for the principals to decide whether it might be wise themselves to swerve or not. The smaller war-chariots are conveniently prevented from changing course to save their own drivers, because they are steered by remote control: of course, the assumption is that those involved in the “lesser” combat will necessarily be destroyed. Maybe their destruction can save their mother vehicles from perishing, although careful analysts think it more likely not.

Stated in this way, the game has become even more whimsical than it was in Russell’s original model. But stiffened up with precise and actual designations, it loses all traces of whimsy. The lesser vehicles in the developed game of “limited” war are all of Europe’s nations. Whether or not their sacrifice makes free enterprise safer in New York, or allows Mr Brezhnev’s successors time to build full communism (and we may well be agnostic on both scores) what is securely certain is that after it Europe will be entirely and poisonly dead, and that the civilisation of Leonardo and Galileo, Bacon and Hobbes, Spinoza and Descartes, and, yes, also Karl Marx, will have evaporated without trace.

At this point we can unravel the conventional doctrine of deterrence somewhat further. Advocates of this schema will often repudiate Russell’s fable of the chicken game. “It is a malicious travesty”, they will tell us. The vogue question which is then very commonly, posed by such people is this: “you complain about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: but would these events have taken place, if Japan then had the benefit of a possible nuclear response?” Let us worry this problem a little. First, some obvious points. Did the Japanese in this speculative argument possess an equivalence of weaponry, or not? If they were nuclear-armed, but with a smaller number of warheads, or inadequate delivery systems, it is possible that their retaliatory capacity could be evaluated and discounted, in which case the American attack would presumably have gone ahead. If, on the other hand, the American Government perceived that it might not avoid parity of destruction or worse, it would in all liklihood have drawn back. It might even have hesitated for fear of less than equal devastation. “Aha!” say the deterrent philosophers: “you have conceded our case”. Well, hardly. We must first pursue it, for a few steps, but not before pointing out that it has already become completely hypothetical, and already travesties many other known facts about the real Japanese war prospects in August 1945, quite apart from the then existing, real disposition of nuclear weapons. (There are some strong grounds for the assumption that the Japanese would actually have been brought to a very quick surrender if the nuclear bombardment had never taken place, or indeed, even had it not been possible.) But for the sake of argument, we are temporarily conceding this special case of the deterrent argument. Let us see what happens when we apply it further, as might Hobbes have done.

In 1974, the Indian Government exploded a “peaceful” nuclear device. Subsequently Pakistan set in train the necessary work of preparation for an answering technology. Since partition, India and Pakistan have more than once been at war. There remain serious territorial claims at issue between them. The secession of Bangladesh inflicted serious humiliation on the Pakistan Government. What possible argument can be advanced against a Pakistan deterrent? We shall instantly be told that the present military rulers of that country are unsavoury to a remarkable degree, that they butchered their last constitutionally elected Prime Minister, and that they maintain a repressive and unpleasant adminstration. It is difficult, if not unfortunately impossible, to disagree with these complaints, all of which are founded in reason and justice. But as co-opted theorists of deterrence, we must dismiss them. Our adopted argument is, that if India and Pakistan are to be held apart from their next war, the deterrent is necessary to both sides. Their respective moral shortcomings, if any, or indeed, if all that have ever been alleged, have nothing to do with the case.

Late in April 1981, Mr F.W. De Klerk, the mineral and energy affairs minister of South Africa, publicly admitted that his country was producing a quantity of 45% enriched uranium, which announcement signified that South Africa had the capacity to manufacture its own nuclear armament. This news was scarcely electrifying, since a nuclear device had already apparently been detonated in the South Atlantic during the previous year, and it had therefore been assumed, almost universally, that the South African bomb already existed. What should the black African “front-line states” then do? Deterrence positively requires that Angola, Zimbabwe and Mozambique should instantly start work on procuring their opposing bombs. After all, South African troops have regularly been in action outside their own frontiers, and the very vulnerability of the Apartheid State makes it perfectly possible that serious military contests could break out over the whole contiguous zone. To prevent such war, the Angolan or Zimbabwean bomb represents a prudent and uncontentious investment.

We can say the same thing about the States of the Middle East. To them we might add those of Central America. Would Cuba have been invaded during the Bay of Pigs episode, if she had deployed nuclear weapons? To cap it all, what about Japan? Her experience, surely, would seem to be the most convincing argument for developing an extensive arsenal of thermo-nuclear warheads.

Strangely, these arguments are not heard in Japan. President Mugabe has not voiced them either. Japan’s people have not escaped the customary scissions which are part of advanced industrial society, but if one thing binds them together, it is a virtually unanimous revulsion against nuclear weapons. African states repeatedly insist that they seek protection, not by deterrence, but by the creation of a nuclear-free zone. Clearly they have not yet learnt the lessons which are so monotonously preached in the Establishment newspapers of the allegedly advanced nations.

If we admit, as Thomas Hobbes might have done, that all nation states have an intrinsic right to defend their institutions and interests by all the means available to any, then nuclear proliferation is not merely unavoidable, but unimpeachable within the deterrent model. And it is this incontrovertable fact which reduces it to absurdity: and argues that Russell was in fact right to pose the question as he did. The chicken game will not only have a cluster of three nuclear states at one end, and a single super-state at the other, with the Chinese now able to intervene from a random number of side routes: but it will shortly have twelve to twenty other possible contenders liable to dash, quite possibly unannounced, across the previously single axis of collision.

Deterrence, in short, was in the beginning, a bi-polar game, and it cannot be played in a multi-polar world. It is therefore collapsing, but the danger is that this collapse will result in universal destruction if alternative approaches are not speedily accepted. There was always, of course, a much simpler rebuttal of the doctrine. It is, was, and has always been, utterly immoral. Unfortunately, this argument, which is unanswerable, is not usually given even the slightest consideration in the world’s war-rooms, although there is a fair deal of evidence that the people who staff these often find it difficult to avoid traumatic neuroses about the effects of all their devilish labours.

Be that as it may, the conditions that maintained “security for 35 years” have already been undermined, and Denis Healey needs to think again.

Lakenheath: No US Nuclear Weapons in Britain

From END Info 35

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK) converged at the main gates of USAF Lakenheath, Suffolk, on Saturday 19 November to protest plans to station US nuclear weapons. This was the second protest this year, following revelations about US military spending on nuclear storage sites.

CND General Secretary, Kate Hudson, said:

“The return of US nuclear bombs to Britain and the spending of millions of dollars on upgrading NATO bases across Europe only undermines further the possibility of lasting global peace and security. The US is the only country to host nuclear weapons in other countries and appears willing to sacrifice these hosts in the event of a nuclear war with Russia.

Whether it’s the UK’s own nuclear weapons in Scotland or US ones in Suffolk, the presence of nukes in Britain doesn’t make us any safer – they make us a target. CND’s message is loud and clear: US nuclear weapons are not welcome back in Britain, and we will campaign with all our might to stop them.”

The following text is a transcript of the speech delivered by Tom Unterrainer, Chair of CND, at the most recent protest.

* * *

Nuclear weapons cannot ‘ensure security’

Welcome - I’m not sure that’s the right word - to USAF Lakenheath: ‘Home of the Liberty Wing’ where they are ‘Always Ready to Own the Skies’. Always ready to own the skies! What do they mean? How are they planning to ‘own the skies’? With what? By what means? Isn’t that message actually just a threat? It’s a threat here and it’s a threat across the world. What they mean by ‘own the skies’ and ‘liberty’ is the right of the United States of America and their allies in the nuclear-armed NATO alliance to station their machines of death, their weapons of megadeath, anywhere they want to, at any time, without taking notice of opposition, without any democratic process, without consultation or deliberation.

What is happening beyond the main gates of Lakenheath is terrifying. The F-35 nuclear-capable planes are already stationed here. For what purpose? For one purpose alone: to carry and at the orders of the United States President to drop the new B-61 range of nuclear bombs, which are on their way to Lakenheath and to sites across Europe.

Nobody asked us if we wanted these US weapons of mass-murder back and we are here to say that we do not want them back, we wanted USAF Lakenheath closed, we want their warplanes out of this country and we’re going to build a movement to make sure that their machines of death do not return here.

The United States, along with NATO allies, are expanding the nuclear bootprint. That’s what is happening at Lakenheath and that’s what is happening in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy and goodness knows where else in Europe.

They’re expanding their nuclear bootprint because - or so they tell us - these machines of megadeath “ensure our security”. They say that they make us safer. They say that they protect us. Well hear this: these people think that threatening to murder millions of people is security. Against that claim, we say: we need real security, common security. That means halting re-militarisation, it means stopping the expansion of the nuclear bootprint and for us, here, it means building the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, building the peace movements, building the anti-war movement, building the movements and ideas that represent real security in these extremely dangerous times.

Dangerous times they are! We are at a closer point than we have been for six decades to nuclear confrontation either by accident or by design. Nuclear tensions are incredibly sharp. But rather than try to reduce these tensions, rather than try to dial-down the risk and dial-down the danger untold billions will be spent on making the situation even worse.

Billions are to be spent on new weapons of death. Billions on new tanks. Billions on new machines of warfare.

But you cannot feed people with missiles. You cannot home people in tanks. You cannot educate people with weapons of mass destruction. You cannot make people secure with more military spending. You cannot make people more secure with nuclear threats.

Our job is to raise the alarm about what is happening at Lakenheath. Spread our messages and build the biggest campaign we can in opposition and to make sure that real security - common security - is put back on the agenda.

F-35E and B61-12: one deadly system, one huge threat

From END Info 35

The new US B61-12 nuclear bombs are the product of a multi-year ‘life extension programme’ costing billions of dollars. The ‘life extension programme’ has not simply maintained the original capabilities of the B61, a megaton-yield gravity bomb, but has enhanced an developed its capabilities to the point where the B61-12’s have a ‘dialable yield’ and ‘steerability’. What these features mean is that the new bombs can be set to a lower yield and can be dropped from aircraft some distance from any target.

The ‘lower yield’ - still in excess of the power of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki - are considered as ‘useable’ battlefield weapons by some military figures. The ‘steerability’ of the new bombs, made possible by a sophisticated tail fin design, implies that they could fulfill the function of a ‘first strike’ weapon.

The development of the B61-12 went hand-in-hand with the development of the F-35E nuclear capable jets. They were designed together as a deployable nuclear system.

As we now know, the United States is spending large sums of money to ‘upgrade’ nuclear storage facilities at sites in England, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey. The addition of Lakenheath to the list of US nuclear weapons sites in Europe indicates an expansion of the US ‘nuclear bootprint’ in Europe. But expansion operates in more than a geographical sense.

The F-35E/B61-12 system and its combined features represent an intensification of nuclear risk. The combined capabilities of the system, the ‘usability’ of the bombs and the utility of the aircraft imply a reduction in the threshold for nuclear use. This is an especially dangerous combination given the destruction of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the growing nuclear threats that developed from this point onwards, to the acute nuclear tensions we now witness.

Throwing this new nuclear system into Europe - a process already underway - can only lead to increased tensions that will surely demand a response from those targeted by such weapons. A Russian Foreign Affairs spokesperson warned as much in October 2022.

Such systems cannot ensure security in Europe. Europe will not be ‘defended’ by such weapons. The F-33E/B61-12 system is a weapon of offence. The presence of such weapons in Europe can only bring heightened risk and danger to the continent.

War: The Cause and the Cure

From END Info 35

Bertrand Russell

The following excerpts are from Russell’s 1914 article ‘War: The Cause and the Cure’, first published in The Labour Leader (24 September 1914) and re-published in Bertrand Russell: A Pacifist at War (Ed. Nicholas Griffin, Spokesman Books)

In every nation, by secrecy of diplomacy, by cooperation of the Press with the manufacturers of armaments, by the desire of the rich and the educated to distract the attention of the working classes from social injustice, suspicion of other nations is carefully cultivated, until a state of nightmare terror is produced, and men are prepared to attack the enemy at once, before he is ready to inflict the ruin which he is believed to be contemplating. In sudden vertigo, the nations rush into the dreaded horror; reason is called treachery, mercy is called weakness, and universal delerium drives the world to destruction.

All the nations suffer by the war, and knew in advance that they would suffer. In all the nations, the bulk of ordinary men and women must have dreaded war. Yet all felt the war thrust upon them by the absolute necessity of preserving themselves from invasion and national extinction

... [The] nations, fearing that they might at any time be exposed to sudden attack, perfected the machinery for rapid mobilisation, and allowed their Governments the power of putting this machinery in motion at a moment’s notice. Thus the issue of peace or war rested, not with the people, who have to suffer the evils of war, but with men who would not suffer by war, who, on the contrary, would gain in importance and prestige. These men, by their constant practice of diplomacy, had become filled with the spirit of competition between rival States, and had come to think it more shameful to their country to allow diplomatic triumph to another country than to bring about the devastation of Europe.

... If, when this war is ended, the world is to enjoy a secure peace, the nations must be relieved of the intolerable fear which has weighed them down and driven them into the present horror. Not only must armaments be immensely reduced, but the machinery of mobilisation must be everywhere rendered more cumbrous and more democratic, the diplomacy must be conducted more publicly and by [people] more in touch with the people, and arbitration treaties must bind nations to seek a peaceful settlement of their differences before appealing to brute force ... none will be secured if the negotiations are left in the hands of the men who made the war.

Anti-Nuclear News

From END Info 35

‘Accelerated deployment’

In October, Politico ran a report on plans to accelerate the deployment of the new generation of B61 bombs to Europe. The report claims:

“The United States has accelerated the fielding of a more accurate version of its mainstay nuclear bomb to NATO bases in Europe, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable and two people familiar with the issue.

The arrival of the upgraded B61-12 air-dropped gravity bomb, originally slated for next spring, is now planned for this December, U.S. officials told NATO allies during a closed-door meeting in Brussels this month, the cable reveals.”

US military sources quoted in the report declined to comment on the specifics, claiming that the modernisation and deployment is part of a “long-planned” effort. Hans Kristensen, from the Federation of American Scientists, suggested that it would be “odd” to rush the deployment, given heightened nuclear tensions.

Whether or not the deployment of the new B61-12 nuclear bombs has been accelerated, the presence of such weapons at sites across Europe, along with the F35E aircraft designed to carry them, marks a dangerous new episode in the history of US nuclear weapons on the continent.

US Mid-Range Capability battery

According to a December 3 2022 report on the ‘US Army News’ website, the United States has taken possession of the first prototype ‘Mid-Range Capability’ [MRC] battery. The new weapon “a land-based, ground-launched system with a range between the Army’s Precision Strike Missile and the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon.”

The report further notes that “the MRC provides a fires capability that has not existed in the US Army since the implementation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 1987.”

A Congressional Research Service report, updated on 6 December 2022, notes that:

“the U.S. Army is seeking to improve its ability to deliver what it refers to as long-range precision fires (LRPF) by upgrading current artillery and missile systems, developing new longer-ranged cannons and hypersonic weapons, and modifying existing air- and sea-launched missiles for ground launch. Army leadership has stated LRPF is its number one modernization priority.

The MRC Weapon System is part of the Army’s LRPF modernization portfolio. It is intended to hit targets at ranges between the Army’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) (about 300 miles maximum range) and the developmental Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) system (about 1,725 miles maximum range).”

There is, as yet, no precise information about where these missile battery’s will be based, but the CRS report explains that:

“On March 30, 2021, the Chief of Staff of the Army discussing the LRHW, reportedly noted, “The politics of where they’re based, how they’re based, will be up to the policymakers and the diplomats.” In a similar manner, overseas basing of MRC batteries will also be subject to political decisions. Given range limitations of Army long-range precision fires systems, the inability to secure overseas basing rights for these units could limit or negate their effectiveness. On December 1, 2021, the Secretary of the Army reportedly stated, “the Army is ready, when called upon, to be able to put those kinds of capabilities in the region. But it’s really [the State and Defense Departments] that will take the lead in those discussions.” Reportedly, in May 2022, the Secretary of the Army stated the Army did not yet have basing agreements for long-range systems but “discussions were ongoing” with a number of countries in the Indo-Pacific region. Given the importance of basing, Congress might examine ongoing efforts to secure Army long-range precision fires unit basing in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific region.”

Developing and deploying such a conventionally-armed system, the likes of which have not existed since the 1987 INF Treaty, is yet further indication that the US has no intention whatsoever of resurrecting the Treaty: something which should be a priority for President Biden.

New B-21 Stealth bomber

"The B-21 Raider is the first strategic bomber in more than three decades," U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin said during the unveiling of the Northrup Grumman constructed aircraft on 2 December 2022. He continued: "It is a testament to America's enduring advantages in ingenuity and innovation. And it's proof of the Department's [DoD’s] long-term commitment to building advanced capabilities that will fortify America's ability to deter aggression, today and into the future."

The US Air Force is reported to have requested 100 of these new bombers, each of which cost an estimated $692 million. Time magazine has estimated that the total cost of the project over three decades amounts to $203 billion.

The capabilities and dimensions of the new aircraft are classified but it is assumed that they are capable of carrying nuclear bombs.

Safety threat of prolonged Trident patrols

Commander Robert Forsyth RN (Ret’d), author of Why Trident? (Spokesman Books), has warned in an article for BASIC that “reliable anecdotal evidence suggests that Royal Navy submariners serving aboard the United Kingdom’s current Trident patrols are serving for 150 days or more.” Commander Forsyth continues: “during my appointment as the Second-in Command (and on occasion, in command) of a Polaris missile-equipped Resolution class submarine, HMS Repulse, at a time when our regular continuous submerged patrols never exceeded 60-70 days.”

Forsyth concludes: “The implications of these prolonged patrol lengths on nuclear safety is a subject which the Ministry of Defence will not acknowledge or discuss under the blanket of secrecy generally imposed on any information concerned with nuclear weapons or nuclear propulsion safety ... One can only hope that there is an awareness that patrol lengths may be having a negative impact on crew wellbeing. Speaking from the outside, as a concerned citizen and former-submariner, it is hard to establish the human cost and associated risks of abnormal behaviour, unless an incident draws attention to it – by which time, of course, it will be too late.”

Bad posture: Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review

From END Info 35

Tom Unterrainer, Editorial Comments

In Æsop’s The Wild Boar and the Fox, Fox asks Boar why he spends so much time sharpening his tusks. Boar responds: “when danger does come there will not be time for such work as this. My weapons will have to be ready for use then, or I shall suffer for it.” Boars are known for their considerable aggression when faced with threat. What is less-often commented upon is their relatively high level of intelligence. In common with other members of the pig family, boars are brighter than your average animal.

There must be limits to what the boar thinks, perceives and calculates. Does the average boar ever stop to wonder what impact all this sharpening of tusks has on fellow-boars, who no doubt feel compelled to likewise sharpen their tusks? Does the average boar ever think that all that sharpening might make them more prone to damage or death? Do boars in general ponder the overall utility of extra-sharp tusks as contrasted to blunt tusks and a more peaceful approach to life? Æsop’s fox does not probe these weighty questions with the boar. The Wild Boar and the Fox insists that preparing for war is the best line of defence.

All of which brings us to President Biden’s much-delayed ‘Nuclear Posture Review’(NPR), where we read that the United States will:

“work with a sense of urgency to reduce the danger of nuclear war, which would have catastrophic consequences for the United States and the world. Developments in the security environment make these goals both more challenging and more pressing to pursue. However, we can only make progress in these respects if we are confident in the ability of our nuclear posture to deter aggression and protect our Allies and partners. Thus, for the forseeable future, nuclear weapons will continue to provide unique deterrence effects that no other element of U.S. military power can replace. To deter aggression and preserve our security in the current environment, we will maintain a nuclear posture that is responsive to the threats we face.”

2022 Nuclear Posture Review

It turns out that President Biden has one advantage over the boar: he recognises the “catastrophic consequences” of using his tusks. Nevertheless, the NPR persists in the fiction at the heart of the global nuclear order: that nuclear weapons are in some way a guarantor of security.

President Trump’s 2016 Nuclear Posture Review was met with justifiable alarm. It marked a significant shift from the standard narrative of nuclear doctrine, focussed on the alleged ‘deterrence’ capabilities of nuclear weapons, to speculation over the actual battle-field utility of such machines of megadeath. Trump was roundly condemned for asserting such a reckless and potentially deadly posture. Trump’s NPR went hand-in-hand with his deliberate sabotage and undermining of the series of agreements, treaties and initiatives – what END Info labelled a “Bonfire of the Treaties” – that drastically undermined the established nuclear order and left a vacuum of uncertainty and risk.

The most notable victim of Trump’s “bonfire” was the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which served to exclude a discrete range of ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons from the European continent and which, together with a series of other policies, helped to maintain the ‘nuclear peace’. As we wrote at the time of Trump’s sabotage:

If the INF Treaty arose, at least in part, from the campaign for a nuclear weapon­-free zone in Europe, then it acted as an important instrument against the threat that Europe could become an actual ‘theatre’ of nuclear war. Such a function is an essential component of NWFZ proposals. It has been suggested that the INF Treaty, in combination with the START 1 Treaty and ‘Presidential Nuclear Initiatives’ signed in 1991 and the 1992 Lisbon Protocol, combined – to all intents and purposes – to create a NWFZ in the Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. This combination of states composed the ‘core group’ of a NWFZ proposed by Belarus in 1990. The states in the core group have no nuclear weapons deployed within their boundaries. With the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the INF Treaty, this arrangement is under severe threat.

‘Global Tinderbox’

The Spokesman 141

Since coming to office Biden has made no effort to re-initiate the INF Treaty, no effort to boost nuclear security in Europe and no effort to put in place measures to fulfill the main operative functions performed by the INF Treaty, which mirrored some of the functions of a Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone: reducing the threat of proliferation and confrontation.

Likewise, the Biden Administration could have re-initiated the JCPOA (Iran Deal) at an early stage but has not done so. Conversely, the US and Russia have agreed to extend the New Start Treaty – which aims to halve the number of strategic missile launchers – and have signalled a willingness to open negotiations on a similar treaty post-2026. If it is possible to come to an agreement on New Start, why not on the others?

Rather than seek to address these existing concerns or to work towards reducing sharply-posed nuclear risks resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden’s NPR maintains a striking similarity – in content, if not in tone – to the nuclear posture presented by Trump.

The main headlines from the NPR amount to a cancellation of Trump’s plans for a submarine-launched cruise missile and the retirement of the B83-1 nuclear gravity bomb. Controversially, Biden has chosen to retain the development of the W76-2 bomb which is considered to be a ‘useable’ nuclear device. During the Presidential election campaign, Biden described this bomb as a “bad idea”. Does he now think it’s a “good idea”? Also missing from the NPR is any change in posture to “sole use”, something which was much-discussed during the election campaign and in the early development of the NPR.

The US considers Russia, China, North Korea and Iran to be potential ‘nuclear adversaries’ and the NPR claims that in the:

“2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.”

The two “major nuclear powers” are Russia and China, the latter of which is addressed at length in the ‘National Defense Strategy’ which was published alongside the NPR.

We previously analysed Trump’s NPR and overall aggressive military posture as being linked to a developing global dynamic where United States dominance was steadily diminishing. We characterised Trump’s actions as a desperate and reckless attempt to maintain this dominance and to re-write ‘global rules’ to the longer-term advantage of the United States.

A sober view of Biden’s NPR would have to conclude that not a great deal has changed. The personality delivering the message may have changed but the overall message is the same: the United States will continue to act to maintain its global military dominance, it will involve NATO in such an effort and nuclear weapons and the threat of their use is a fundamental and indispensable element of the project.

This is important to note for obvious reasons – the greatly increased nuclear tensions we all face and the miserable, murderous events in Ukraine – but also in the context of the expanding nuclear bootprint in Europe, the nuclear policies and postures of US subordinates in NATO, the widespread remilitarisation underway and the global implications of all these things combined.

Also important is the terrible reality of the American political scene, where the return of Trump to the presidency – or a ‘Trump-like’ figure – is by no means out of the question. Such a prospect should surely concentrate minds and gives context to the deadly nuclear manoeuvres underway under the auspices of the Biden administration.

“NATO is no virtuous body”

From the archives: Bertrand Russell

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

First published in issue number three of the London Bulletin of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, October, 1967.

Free World Justice by Bertrand Russell

Opposing fascism in Greece

The prison sentences passed at the Old Bailey on October 4 [1967] were vicious. For what heinous offence were these three young men sent to jail for periods of six, twelve and fifteen months? Their crime was to have protested in London last April against the coup d’etat in Greece and the arrest and imprisonment of many thousands of innocent Greeks by the new military junta. It is a terrible commentary on Britain today that when fascism seizes power in Greece, the British “Labour” Government accords the new dictatorship instantaneous recognition, and those who dissent are savagely incarcerated.

Two of these young men are known to me as stalwarts of the days of mass civil disobedience. Michael Randle and Terry Chandler were both jailed for 18 months in 1962 for organising mass resistance to preparations for nuclear war. Chandler was later imprisoned for a further nine months for protesting against the visit to London of Queen Frederika of Greece, and has been convicted over the years a further 14 times for honourable offences against the indignities which we are required to suffer.

On the same day that these men were jailed, delegates at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Scarborough passed a composite resolution - against the wishes of the Party’s National Executive Committee - condemning the Greek military clique. Amongst other demands, this resolution called for the expulsion of Greece from NATO. Although I appreciate the spirit in which delegates voted for this resolution, its wording revealed a grievous misunderstanding of the role of NATO in Greece. NATO is no virtuous body from which a fascist newcomer must be expelled. NATO is the very instrument which has kept Greece in chains, thwarted social revolution there and made possible the replacement of a reactionary government by a fascist one. The failure of socialists to understand the role of NATO is crucial, because this organisation is at the heart of Western foreign and military policy. It is the instrument through which the United States interferes in the internal affairs of Western Europe; it also ensures the subservience of its Western European members to the United States.

I earnestly hope that the three million people whose votes were cast at Scarborough against the Greek junta will now raise their voices on behalf of those sent to prison in Britain for doing what their very own Government should itself have done: taking over the Greek Embassy in the name of human decency. Although some opponents of NATO have been jailed in Greece for as much as two decades, the British courts also have managed to demonstrate a cruelty which has no place in a civilised community.

* * * 

The London Bulletin, published in the early years of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, preceded publication of The Spokesman journal. The Bulletin covered the work in progress of the Russell Tribunal (International War Crimes Tribunal) on Vietnam and much else. An index of all issues available on request.

Tito and Non-Alignment

From the archives: Ken Coates

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

When Josip Broz Tito was born in 1892, a superficial observer would have thought that he had entered a very stable and structured world. Empires stretched around the globe, centring on cultured European capitals. Their poverty was concealed, but their opulence was flaunted. Industrialism and imperialism, meshed together, fashioned a universal web of communications. Rebellion must have seemed a distant and hazy memory. The Paris Commune was forgotten by all but a handful of dreamers. In Britain, Queen Victoria’s office even asked one of these, the revolutionary poet William Morris, whether he would like to be poet laureate. He would not. The German Social Democrats had newly adopted the Erfurt programme, which was explicitly Marxist; but already critics were accusing them of bureaucracy and dull conformity. Everywhere, as the young Tito arrived, the old order must have seemed safe.

Now the loss of Tito will be lamented by everyone who has followed his work. His contribution to the development of democratic socialism is evident to innumerable students of the Yugoslav system of participation, self-management and socialism. The same William Morris, who disappointed Queen Victoria’s Court in the year of Tito’s birth, provided the Workers’ Control Movement in modern Britain with its watchword: “no man is good enough to be another man’s master”. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, he wrote a prophetic essay on ‘A factory as it might be’. Nowhere in the world has his dream of a free fraternity of producers yet been fully realised. But if Morris were to return to the modern world, who can doubt that he would begin his search for clues to the cooperative commonwealth here in Yugoslavia? Yet it is equally important also to register the decisive importance of another seminal concept of Yugoslavia’s founder, that of non-alignment. This is crucial to the future of the world, if indeed the world is to be allowed to have a future.

In 1980, when President Tito died, the old imperial stability had vanished, and the world was in unconcealed turmoil where nothing either old or new seemed safe. Empires had collapsed, but exploitation still condemned vast populations to underdevelopment and worse. East/West rivalry had frozen into a yet colder war, in which re-armament became ever more frenzied and uncontrolled, while the deployment of nuclear weapons was widespread and becoming wider. Slump and mass unemployment had returned to the capitalist world, and stern repression was becoming more common in every zone, including both major power blocs. At a time when many peoples were balanced on the edge of famine, world military spending passed a figure of $1.3 billion a day. The authorities who monitor these matters report that it will pass the figure of $1.6 billion per day rather early in the decade we have just entered. Rightly, the nonnuclear States are uniting to express their strong resentment of the fact that vertical proliferation of nuclear weapons between the superpowers seems to know no rational limits. Indeed, new policies initiated by NATO positively insist on horizontal proliferation, with the stationing of so-called ‘theatre’ weapons in countries which have hitherto been able to eschew the presence of nuclear warheads in their territories.

A deepening slump intensifies these insane pressures, as if it were determined to prove the conventional socialist critique of capitalism to be precisely true. While some economies are experiencing a net contraction, military budgets mount consistently. This then means quite literally a policy of guns before butter, or in the modern idiom, nuclear missiles before education, health and welfare. Tito’s major statement to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia at their 11th Congress in 1978 gave a characteristically far-sighted and strong warning about the dangers of this renewed arms race.

If every nation had pursued similar policies to those which have been followed by Yugoslavia, then this fateful indictment would not be possible. In the given situation, however, it is entirely apposite.

Another statesman, Olof Palme, speaking at the Helsinki Conference of the Socialist International, has drawn attention to the special peril which Europe faces because it has in the main, so far rejected the course of non-alignment. “Europe”, he said, “is no special zone where peace can be taken for granted. In actual fact, it is at the centre of the arms race. Granted, the general assumption seems to be that any potential military conflict between the superpowers is going to start some place other than in Europe. But even if that were to be the case, we would have to count on one or the other party - in an effort to gain supremacy - trying to open a front on our continent, as well. As Alva Myrdal has recently pointed out, a war can simply be transported here, even though actual causes for war do not exist. Here there is a ready theatre of war. Here there have been great military forces for a long time. Here there are programmed weapons all ready for action ... “

Basing himself on this recognition, Palme recalled various earlier attempts to create, in North and Central Europe, nuclear-free zones, from which, by agreement, all warheads were to be excluded.

“Today more than ever there is, in my opinion, every reason to go on working for a nuclear-free zone. The ultimate objective of these efforts should be a nuclear-free Europe.” (My emphasis).

Olof Palme’s proposal would not be easy to achieve, and no-one has more reason to know this than the small, but crucially significant group of European neutral States. Foremost in experience of the struggle for independence and freedom of action is socialist Yugoslavia, as Tito reported in his address on the sixtieth anniversary of the Communist Movement in Yugoslavia. Pointing up the many difficulties which beset a policy of genuine non-alignment, he said:

“In a world divided into blocs, in which social, economic and political contradictions are still resolved by means of force and outside interference, it has been no easy matter to conduct such a policy, nor is it so today either. We have continually been subjected to various pressures and attempts to make us bow to the policies which are against the interests of our country and our movement. We have been and still are deeply convinced that the bloc politics can resolve none of the essential problems of the world, nor can it open up the prospect of democratisation of international relations for which nonaligned countries are striving. The policy of non-alignment, of which we were one of the co-sponsors, is therefore our permanent policy”.

Affirming the results of this prolonged struggle, Tito told the 6th Conference of Heads of State of the Non-Aligned Countries in Havana:

“The results of our activities so far represent a rich harvest.

During the past two decades we have asserted the original principles and objectives of non-alignment as permanent values.

We have resolutely fought for peace, security and freedom in the world.

We have made a substantial contribution to the successful pursuit and outcome of the anti-colonial revolution.

We have codified the principles of active and peaceful co-existence and staunchly advocated their implementation.

We have opposed power politics and foreign interference in all the forms in which they manifest themselves.

We have initiated long-term actions for the establishment of the new international economic order.

We have contributed to the realisation of the universality of the United Nations and to the strengthening of its role and importance.

We have taken marked steps to initiate the solution of the disarmament problem.

We have started a resolute struggle for decolonisation in the field of technology, information, and culture in general.”

It is plain, to everyone who cares to look, that this balance sheet is valid. In the field of disarmament in particular, all the most insistent pressures come from nations grouped within the non-aligned movement. The campaign of the Organisation of African Unity for an African Nuclear-free Zone, or the similar campaigns in the Pacific and South Asian areas, are cases in point. Indeed, the only existing Treaty which forbids nuclear warheads over a wide populous area is the Treaty of Tlatelolco which covers the Latin American continent. Most recently, the rebellion of the non-aligned world at the Geneva Conference which met to review the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and which was rightly unable to agree upon any ‘certificate of good health’ within this area, constitutes a powerful signal to all in the nuclear-armed States who have eyes to see.

Europe, having generated two world wars, and constituting the prime target for self-destruction in the third, is the slowest of the continents to awaken to these challenges. True, half aware of the menace so properly reported by Palme, Europe has seeded a very large number of partial plans for restricted nuclear-free zones. Central Europe, Baltic, Balkan and Mediterranean free zones have been propounded by numerous statesmen and scholars. But real progress is slow, whilst the arms race is anything but slow.

Now we face in Europe the forced development of the concept of ‘theatre’ nuclear war, and the rapid emplacement of the military hardware which is making it real.

The conventional notion of nuclear deterrence had always been wrapped in swathes of assurances by its proponents that the actual use of nuclear weapons was unthinkable. This had been apparently borne out during the Cuba crisis, when, as one American commentator put it, “we were eyeball to eyeball with the Russians, and they blinked”. But in today’s world, nuclear forces in the superpowers are at near parity, so that nowadays Time magazine offers up the pious hope that, next time, both parties might blink at once. Meantime, so vast are the investments tied into the manufacture of nuclear warheads and their delivery systems, that in any real war, it is not their use but their non-use which has become ‘unthinkable’. Since we must still presume that neither major power really wishes to destroy the world, we may begin to understand why more and more weight has therefore been placed on this notion of ‘theatre’ weapons, which it is canvassed, might be actually employed without annihilating the whole of civilisation.

Thus, an unlooked for transformation has come over the logic of deterrence. It followed the development of highly accurate, adaptable and lethal weapons delivery systems. Now this threatens the very survival of European civilisation. In his last speech, to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Earl Mountbatten, a former Chief of Staff in Britain, and one-time chairman of NATO’s military committee, seized the heart of the question:

“It was not long, however, before smaller nuclear weapons of various designs were produced and deployed for use in what was assumed to be a tactical or theatre war. The belief was that were hostilities ever to break out in Western Europe, such weapons could be used in field warfare without triggering an all-out nuclear exchange leading to the final holocaust. I have never found this idea credible (my italics). I have never been able to accept the reasons for the belief that any class of nuclear weapons can be categorised in terms of their tactical or strategic purposes.”

Another qualified specialist from Britain is Lord Zuckerman, once Chief Scientific Policy Advisor to the British Government. He points at Mountbatten’s insistence, saying that he sees no military reality in what is now referred to as tactical or theatre warfare, because in Europe there are no vast deserts or open plains: on the contrary, urban sprawl makes it certain that even accurate strikes at military targets will inevitably destroy huge civilian populations. “I do not believe”, Zuckerman told a Pugwash symposium in Canada,

“that nuclear weapons could be used in what is now fashionably called a ‘theatre war’. I do not believe that any scenario exists which suggests that nuclear weapons could be used in field warfare between two nuclear States without escalation resulting. I know of several such exercises. They all lead to the opposite conclusion. There is no Marquess of Queensbury who would be holding the ring in a nuclear conflict. I cannot see teams of physicists attached to military staffs who would run to the scene of a nuclear explosion and then back to tell their local commanders that the radiation intensity of a nuclear strike by the other side was such and such, and that therefore the riposte should be only a weapon of equivalent yield. If the zone of lethal or wounding neutron radiation of a so-called neutron bomb would have, say, a radius of half a kilometer, the reply might well be a ‘dirty’ bomb with the same zone of radiation, but with a much wider area of devastation due to blast and fire.”

It is often claimed that ‘It is not where nuclear weapons come from that matters, it is where they land’. To that we must add that it does not matter, when they land, whether some occult philosopher of war has originally styled them ‘tactical’ or ‘strategic’, ‘theatre’ or otherwise. Once we have seen the trend involved in reasoning about theatre war we cannot fail to draw some very unpleasant conclusions about it.

First, if Mountbatten and Zuckerman are right, any ‘theatre’ in which such weapons of whatever provenance are used, will be eliminated. Second, the corollary is that if there is any meaning in the restriction implied in the concept of ‘theatre’ weapons, it is not that they will be selective within a particular zone, but that they might possibly be unleashed in one comparatively narrow area rather than another wider one. That is to say, and this is the whole point, they might be exchanged in Europe prior to ‘escalation’, which in this case would mean extending their exchange to the USA and the USSR. This carnivorous prospect is not at all identical with the simple supposition with which supporters of nuclear disarmament are often (wrongly) credited, that ‘one day deterrence will not work’. It rather implies that there has been a mutation in the concept of deterrence itself, with grisly consequences for all of us in Europe.

If the great powers drift into a conflict which requires a bit of a nuclear war, they will want to have it away from home.

If Europeans do not wish to be their hosts for such a match, then, regardless of whether it is right or wrong to suppose that it may be confined to our ‘theatre’, we must discover a new initiative which can move us towards disarmament. New technologies will not do this, and nor will either superpower find it easy to respond unless there is a significant and powerful pressure upon all concerned so to do.

This involves the search for a political step which can open up new forms of public pressure, and bring into the field of force new moral resources. Partly this is a matter of ending superpower domination of the most important negotiations.

But another part of the response involves a multi-national mobilisation of public opinion. In Europe, this will not materialise until people appreciate the exceptional vulnerability of their continent. Then they will begin to organise for the removal of nuclear weapons from all European soil, East and West alike, and for a new approach to de-alignment. It seems very plain that the gradual and peaceful dismantling of the European blocs can never begin by agreement, until nuclear polarization and escalation is reversed. The goal of a nuclear-free Europe, from the Soviet border to the Portuguese coastline, is beginning to attract serious and thoughtful consideration in many countries. If it can become a campaigning issue, then a whole variety of intermediate steps to ultimate European nonalignment become first conceivable, then practical. Once this progress begins, detente and disarmament may indeed become irreversible processes.

It is for this reason that Tito’s testament is burningly relevant far beyond the Yugoslav frontiers, and particularly in a Europe over which the final holocaust may be unleashed at any time. Homage to the memory of a far-sighted man thus reinforces a resolve to carry forward his struggle. Unlike many powerful national leaders, Josip Broz Tito’s posthumous influence will increase and widen, as the meaning of the concept of nonalignment comes home, in its full force, to the peoples of our continent.

The Swedish journey into NATO

Lars Drake, Sweden

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

During the year we have seen several major changes in Swedish politics, especially those related to foreign and defence policy. Some of them are news in other cases things that have been going on for a long time have come to light. Sweden has as suddenly as dramatically sought membership of NATO - without any significant debate - this is at a formal level a major change in Swedish foreign and defence policy. Two hundred years of non-alignment have been thrown on the scrap heap.

On a real level, the change is not as dramatic. There has been a stealth accession for several decades. Sweden has a "host country agreement" that allows NATO to establish bases in the country - bases that can be used for attacks on third countries. Some newly established regiments in the Swedish interior have as one of their main purposes to secure the movement of NATO troops and material from Norway to Baltic Sea ports for further transport across the Baltic Sea.

Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist has for several years been doing all he can to bring Sweden closer to NATO - without formally joining. Now the political establishment has applied for membership - and, worryingly, has begun to accommodate Turkey's leaders on the way in. The Security police chief's proposal to ban demonstrations for the PKK is an unacceptable interference by a police authority in our democratic rights.

There are some important political issues that are closely linked to the Swedish journey into NATO. Sweden was previously a country that stood up when the UN decided on peacekeeping operations. In recent years, Sweden has cooperated more with NATO, or individual NATO countries, in its war efforts in several countries.

Sweden was the driving force behind the UN decision to ban nuclear weapons. Later, the US warned Sweden against signing the treaty, which has now been ratified by 66 countries. Sweden bowed to the US threat and chose not to sign.

Sweden makes large financial contributions to the Atlantic Council, a "think tank" that promotes a US-led world order. This is stated in a text about the organisation's purpose, which is among the first things you can see on its website. They and many in NATO like to talk about a "rule-based world order", which is precisely the order the rich countries, led by the US, want - it is contrary to the rules of the UN Charter. Swedish foreign policy is now increasingly replacing the UN's basic view of sovereign states that must not attack each other with "rule-based world order" as part of a drift away from democratically established international law. Peter Hultqvist used the term "rule-based world order" already in 2017. Sweden is funding the Atlantic Council's Northern Europe director, Anna Wieslander, who was formerly a director of the arms manufacturer SAAB, among others, through a grant from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. This suspicious use of taxpayers' money is part of the rapprochement with NATO.

The Swedish Parliament is in the process of amending the Freedom of the Press Act and the Basic Law on Freedom of Expression. According to the Constitutional Committee: "The proposal means, among other things, that foreign espionage and the forms of unauthorised handling of secret information and negligence with secret information that have their basis in foreign espionage are to be criminalised as offences against the freedom of the press and freedom of expression."

If amended, the law could provide for imprisonment for up to 8 years for persons who publish or make public information that could harm Sweden's foreign partners. The aim is to ensure that documents classified by countries we have cooperated with militarily cannot be published in Sweden. In practice, this means that it may become a punishable offence to reveal violations of international law committed by one of Sweden's partners in international military operations. The change in the law is a demand from the countries with which Sweden wages war. This type of adaptation is directly linked to the fact that Sweden is moving into ever closer cooperation with NATO. A strong driving force behind the change in the law is that it is a matter of trust - NATO's trust in Sweden.

The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) is collaborating with the Atlantic Council. In a report published by the Atlantic Council, funded by MSB and, with Anna Wieslander as editor and author argues for private-public collaboration. It gives just one example of such collaboration, a tourist resort in western Mexico to save coral reefs. NATO adopted a climate policy in 2021 in line with the report's ideas. Sweden's contribution to strengthening NATO's expansion and dominance in the world into new areas is another sign that we are moving away from the UN to an international cooperation governed by Western powers.

Part of the process of strengthening the forces that represent a US-led world is the attempt to silence the Swedish peace and environmental movements. The propaganda organisation Frivärld, financed by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, has taken the lead together with the Moderates and like-minded people. Supposedly non-partisan initiatives funded by Finland, the UK and the US succeeded in silencing Aftonbladet with false claims of spreading "Russian narratives". Aftonbladet used to be partly an independent voice. Now all the major Swedish newspapers promote the Western worldview regarding NATO, for example. The Atlantic Council has been involved here as well. One example is a publication by a Swedish author linked to Frivärld, which contains several false statements about people and political parties in Sweden. The publicist, the head of Northern Europe and the author refer to each other, but no one takes responsibility. It is not possible to prosecute in Sweden lies aimed at smearing parliamentary parties, the environmental and peace movement and individual Swedes when someone hired by a foreign organization without a Swedish publishing licence has been used for the smear campaign.

Accidents rarely come alone.

Lars Drake, is active in Folk och fred (People and Peace). Published on 30 August 2022. Circulated on the ‘No-To-NATO’ email list.

60 years on from Cuba

Opinion: Commander Robert Forsyth RN (Ret’d)

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

60 years on from Cuba we have not escaped the nuclear weapon nightmare

Sixty years ago this month and having only recently joined my first submarine HMS Auriga, I found myself loading fully armed torpedoes in a scramble to sail on war patrol for reasons history now recalls as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aged 23 and full of youthful exuberance I thought this was very exciting and exactly what I had joined for. Perhaps just as well for my peace of mind, I was also blissfully ignorant of the fact that, while we were describing underwater circles in mid Atlantic trying to detect our Soviet equivalents heading south from the Iceland-Faroes Gap, the rest of the world was facing possible nuclear Armageddon.

It was only later that the harsh facts as to how close we had come to that Armageddon emerged with the stark reality of what nuclear war might have meant. It took until 2002 and a 40th anniversary meeting between the three protagonists – Cuba, USA & USSR - that the real reasons it was peacefully resolved became known. The common factor was rational thinking by rational people. Khrushchev had sent missiles to Cuba in direct response to Kennedy having stationed missiles in Turkey. Both of them feared that this politically driven act of nuclear weapon ‘show boating’ by Khrushchev might cause an accidental exchange through some unforeseen and uncontrollable incident. Behind the scenes they secretly negotiated while tensions rapidly rose on the ground and, less visibly, in the four Soviet submarines submerged off Cuba.

In return for Kennedy agreeing to withdraw his missiles from Turkey, Khrushchev agreed to withdraw his from Cuba. The deal was that the US withdrawal would remain secret – as it largely did until 2002. Rational thinking had prevailed, albeit the world at large thought Khrushchev had been forced to back off by nuclear force. But, while all this was being put in place, underwater the very unforeseen act both leaders feared came close to starting a nuclear war. A US warship had detected one of the Soviet submarines and dropped some underwater charges to ‘persuade’ it to surface. The submarine captain interpreted this as a hostile act justifying the firing of one of his nuclear tipped torpedoes. Fortunately a cooler head and more rational thinker was onboard. In addition to the captain and political officer (both of whose authorisation was needed), Flotilla Commander, Vasilii Archipov’s approval was also needed to fire the ‘special weapon’. Recognising the horrific implications of firing a nuclear weapon, he would not give his permission. The others finally accepted that they could not fire and the captain surfaced his submarine. Archipov is generally credited with having saved the world.

Sixty years later, having avoided a strategic nuclear war and dodged some 14 nuclear near misses since, the world is facing the all too real threat of President Putin unleashing tactical nuclear war. This time though there is a big difference. Putin shows no sign of the implied rational thinking behind defensive nuclear deterrence that supports the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. Putin has demonstrated that, in his hands, nuclear weapons are not defensive but offensive weapons and his threats have been directed at deterring NATO from more direct action in conventional warfare which, incidentally, may well encourage other States to acquire them for similar reasons.

So where does NATO stand now and what should it do? To threaten and then possibly launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against Russia would result in further, escalating, nuclear exchanges which NATO cannot seriously contemplate initiating unless prepared to turn Europe into a wasteland. So all the $/£Bns spent on nuclear deterrence are shown to be ineffectual when faced with the leader of a State who does not play by the established rule book. This makes it crystal clear that the rule book is - and always has been - deeply flawed. The fact that there has been no nuclear war since 1945 is no proof that one could not occur. The only way to avoid a nuclear war is by the total elimination of nuclear weapons as required by the UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

Once it is clear, as surely it must be in the end, that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has failed, Russia will need to integrate back into the rest of the world. This will be the time for the west to take a bold and imaginative step forward on disarmament in a way that encourages Russia – probably and hopefully under new leadership – to engage in disarmament negotiations and this, in turn, will encourage China to join in.

Firstly - recognising that the presence of nuclear weapons based in Europe exacerbates rather than resolves conflict, the US should withdraw all of theirs retaining only its US based strategic strike missiles just for the period of negotiations.

Secondly, NATO should immediately and unconditionally declare a policy of No First Use and Sole Use as proposed by states and organisations at the recent UN NPT review. If nuclear weapons are supposed to be a ‘last resort’ then at least give meaning to the phrase.

Thirdly, the UK and France should disband their respective nuclear forces as part of the negotiations.

Lastly, negotiations should be conducted with respect towards Russian dignity and not as winner’s reparations. One of the main political drivers towards the war in Ukraine has been a failure by the west to support post-Soviet Russia integrating back into the world from which it has become totally isolated. We should not risk giving an extreme right wing leader the opportunity to replace Putin.

All of this will require courage by State leaders. But they should not he afraid to follow in the footsteps of former US Defence Secretary William (Bill) Perry who now actively promotes the elimination of nuclear weapons by all means and as swiftly as possible.

Unarmed Victory: Lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis

Bertrand Russell

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, more than any previous crisis, made the ordinary citizen suddenly aware of the ever-present danger of nuclear annihilation, and no sooner had the fright passed than it was renewed on the borders of India and China. Bertrand Russell shared these feelings, both the fright and the anger, but decided he must go on to turn concern into action. Russell’s book, Unarmed Victory, tells what he did in those frightening weeks, why he did it, and of the curious reception his activities had.

He asked Khrushchev not to challenge the US blockade of Cuba and Khrushchev acted as Russell had suggested that he should. This was exactly the action that the West had hoped for, but most people in the West still blamed Russell as too pro-communist because it was not by force that the result had been achieved. The same occurred in the Sino-Indian crisis. So the book contains a message of hope. Two precedents have been set for dignified and voluntary compromise in order to avoid nuclear war, and moreover the suggestions of a respected individual outside the battle were heeded. If we want a parallel we must look back to the thirteenth century, when Frederic II was quarrelling with the Pope and was ex-communicated. While ex-communicated he went on a crusade, but instead of fighting the Saracens, he negotiated with them. He secured far more than more warlike crusaders had ever been able to obtain, but he remained in bad odour with the Pope because it was wicked to negotiate with the Saracens. The analogy is very close.

As the world faces new, acute, nuclear tensions, you would hope that every effort was being made to reduce them. This seems not to be the case. Rather, the nuclear powers are exchanging nuclear threats and the situation becomes more perilous with each passing day. In the spirit of Russell, we call for an approach to resolving the nuclear threat that avoids the prospect of brinkmanship boiling over to disaster.

We republish extracts from Unarmed Victory and encourage all of those interested in learning more to read the whole text, which includes Russell’s letters to world leaders at the time.

Unarmed Victory

Bertrand Russell

155 Pages, ISBN 978 0 85124 812 7, £8.95

www.spokesmanbooks.org

Russell wrote:

During the days of October 24 and 25 1962, those who had knowledge and imagination went through an anxious time. It seemed probable that, at any minute, war between America and Russia would break out and would involve, in all likelihood, the extinction of the human race. If you had private affections, if you had children or grandchildren for whom you had hoped a happy future, if you had friends whom you loved, you could expect their death in the coming week. Within this brief period of time, there would cease to be any to enjoy the poetry of Shakespeare, the music of Bach or Mozart, the genius of Plato or Newton. All the slow building up of civilization in art and science and beauty would be at an end—forever, so far as this planet is concerned. If you spoke of these things to your friends, they said: ‘But, surely, you can understand the great issues involved. Is the world to be governed by godless Communists (or, alternatively, rapacious Capitalists)? Is it not your duty to die for the right, without regard for whatever loss may be entailed?’ And so the great march towards disaster went on. I asked myself if there were no sane men in the seats of power. At the last possible moment, the answer came: Yes, there was one sane man. It happened that he was on the side of Russia. This was an unimportant accident. His sanity saved the world; and you and I still exist.

* * * 

This crisis in October was so sudden and so swift that the usual forces making for conciliation had no time to act. There was no time for the United Nations to suggest conciliation. There was no time for the neutral nations to suggest compromises. There was no time for pacifist organizations to arrange demonstrations. In paralysed terror the world looked on as, hour by hour, the distance between American and Russian ships grew less. In the time available, only individuals could act. With little hope of success, I decided that I must telegraph to Kennedy and Khrushchev beseeching them to let the human race continue to exist. I had had reason, already, to think that Khrushchev might not be offended by my approach to him. I had sent a message to an international Congress in Moscow in which I said, inter alia:

‘The present situation is one involving imminent and daily peril, not only to the nations of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, but to all mankind. Of all the risks that are involved in this or that policy, none is even approximately as great as the risk of nuclear war. I should like every negotiator from the West to state: “I am firmly convinced that a nuclear war would be worse than the world-wide victory of Communism”. I should like every negotiator from the East to declare: “I am firmly convinced that a nuclear war would be worse than the worldwide victory of Capitalism.” Those on either side who refused to make such a declaration would brand themselves as enemies of mankind and advocates of the extinction of the human race. At present, negotiators tend to be obsessed by possible dangers in any suggested concessions to the other side and to forget that the continuation of the arms race involves far worse dangers than those that negotiators are apt to emphasize.’

Khrushchev had picked out this passage in my message for special commendation. In the West, the message was less favourably received: the pundits of the British Labour Party made an abortive attempt to have me expelled from the Party for talking to Communists.

* * * 

What was new, after the Second War, was the destructive power of nuclear weapons. When these came to be possessed by both sides, it became obvious that nothing desired by any Government could be achieved by nuclear war, but the strength and habit of tradition was such

that Governments went on exactly as before, threatening each other and pursuing power and prestige even at the risk of complete disaster to all sides.

The immense destructive power of nuclear weapons made World War untenable and the death of Stalin made co-existence possible as well as necessary.

* * * 

But whenever the question of peace or war is relevant, the merits of either side become insignificant in comparison with the importance of peace. In the nuclear age, the human race cannot survive without peace. For this reason, I shall always side with the more peaceful party in any dispute between powerful nations. It has happened that in both the disputes with which this book is concerned, the Communist side has been the less bellicose, but it cannot be said that this is always the case. And, where it is not, my sympathies are anti-Communist.

* * *

Will the leaders of nuclear-armed states learn the lessons Russell develops in Unarmed Victory or will they allow the ultimate disaster to destroy humanity whole?

Déjà vu

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

In issue 33, we reported on the immanent change of government in the United Kingdom and the peculiar arrangements embodied in the ‘letters of last resort’ which are written by each incoming British Prime Minister (‘Letters of last resort’, page 8, END Info 33, August/September 2022). We commented that:

One of the first acts of Prime Minister Sunak or Truss will be to write four identical letters. They will write these letters in their own hand and will do so having been ‘indoctrinated’ by the Chief of the Defence Staff, who is tasked with explaining the damage that will be done by the detonation of a nuclear warhead.

These letters will be transported from No 10 Downing Street to the four nuclear-armed submarines in the Royal Navy. The letters will be locked in a safe to be opened in one circumstance only: loss of all contact and communication following a devastating attack on the United Kingdom. A ‘letter of last resort’ leaves instructions to the Captain and Commander of each submarine on how to respond in such a situation. By the time the letters are opened, it can be assumed that the person who wrote them will be dead. The Captain and Commander will have to decide whether or not to follow the instructions of a corpse.

Liz Truss won the internal party contest and became Prime Minister on 6 September 2022. On Tuesday 25 October 2022, Prime Minister Truss went back to Buckingham Palace and informed the King of her intention to resign. A few minutes later, Rishi Sunak was asked by the King to form a new government. Liz Truss was the shortest-lived Prime Minister in British parliamentary history. Her ‘letters of last resort’ - her instructions to nuclear-armed submarine captains and commanders - will now be incinerated, to be replaced by those of Rishi Sunak.

What will the new Prime Minister write? Will it be any different in substance from those letters written some sixty-odd days before? How different will they be from all the previous letters over all the previous years? How much longer will this grim farce be allowed to continue?

All will lose

Tom Unterrainer, Editorial comments

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

“We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” So proclaimed the leaders of the People’s Republic of China, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States of America in a joint statement issued on 3 January, 2022. This statement, an echo of Reagan and Gorbachev from the ’80s, cannot be faulted. It is as self-evidently true in the 2020s as it was in the 1980s.

A nuclear war would kill millions in hours and could kill us all in time. The detonation of a single nuclear weapon by ‘accident’ or design could kill tens of thousands in an instant. Hundreds of thousands of corpses would surely follow. If such a war “must never be fought” in the reckoning of world leaders and of anyone with an ounce of common sense, why are so many resources dedicated to preparing nuclear annihilation? Why, in the months following the 3 January joint statement, have threats and counter-threats of nuclear war been issued with such reckless frequency?

Ken Coates notes in the introduction to his book, The Most Dangerous Decade (1984) that “Genocide is a crime”. He continues:

In order to be punished for it, hitherto, its instigators have had to lose a war. Since this happened in 1945, there have been recurrent acts which any impartial persons will regard as coming uncomfortably close to genocide. The United Nations Convention on Genocide defines the crime as an act committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Article III of the Convention proclaims as punishable not only the act itself, but also conspiracy to commit it, incitement to it, attempts to perform it, and complicity in it. Article IV specifically insists that punishment applies to rulers, public officials and private individuals ...

It is, of course, assumed by Governments that preparation for nuclear war does not constitute conspiracy to prepare genocide. In Britain, those who physically resist the installation of weapons of mass-obliteration are normally charged with the offence of “breaching the peace”, however pacific their protests may be shown to have been ...

There will, however, be no Nuremberg Tribunal to order the execution of the losers in the next war. All will lose, and among any survivors laws of any kind will be part of the same poisonous ruins as the material artifacts of civilisation. The most optimistic predictions about that war assume regression on a total scale, worse prospects are commonly anticipated. It is by no means outside the technical scope of modern armourers to render the entire planet uninhabitable by people of any kind.

Not only are these things widely understood: they have penetrated people’s minds in an insidious way, alongside the realisation that conscience, in the world which plans for holocaust, is itself an outlaw. As a result, authority all-too-easily overrides it. People in the main value order, and social harmony, however conscious they may be of injustice or institutional wrongs.

END Info has previously reported upon and roundly condemned nuclear threats issued by the Russian President. In February and March, 2022, the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation issued statements warning that the whole of “Europe is at evident risk of becoming ... a battlefield - even a nuclear one” (25/02/2022). Three days later, we warned that “[I]n breaking the nuclear taboo, Putin exposes the duplicity of nuclear ‘deterrence’, which really means threatening megadeath” and went on to ask: “Who will provide a ladder for Putin to climb down?” (28/02/2022). In early March we noted that Putin’s ‘deterrence’ “flips to ‘escalate to de-escalate’” and asked: “Where does that end?”

Russian officials have claimed that their nuclear threats were met with similar threats from the United States. Until recently, President Biden and his spokespeople have not issued such public threats. This has now changed.

In an essay for The New York Times May, 2022, President Biden warned that “any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us as well as the rest of the world and would entail severe consequences.” He did not spell out what those consequences would be.

In comments made at the end of September, 2022, Jake Sullivan - Biden’s national security adviser - revealed that the US had warned Russia of “catastrophic consequences” in the event of nuclear use. The New York Times describes Sullivan as “a longtime student of nuclear escalation risks, and he has been walking a fine line between orchestrating repeated warnings to the Russians and avoiding statements that could prompt Moscow to raise the stakes, perhaps by beginning to move weapons toward the border in a menacing show of seriousness” (25/09/22). The paper goes on to explain that Sullivan reiterated his claims on national television, where he explained that: “We have communicated to the Russians what the consequences would be ... but we’ve been careful in how we talk about this publicly, because from our perspective we want to lay down the principle that there would be catastrophic consequences, but not engage in a game of rhetorical tit for tat.”

There can, of course, be no excuse for making nuclear threats of any kind, at any time or in any circumstance. As we have established, such threats constitute a threat of mass death and genocide. However, despite Mr Sullivan’s stated reluctance to “engage in a game of rhetorical tit for tat” it appears that this is exactly what he, his bosses and their Russian counterparts have been doing.

In the first week of October, 2022, President Biden used the platform at a Democratic Party fundraising event to issue a chilling warning to the world. According to reports in The Guardian (London) on 7 October, 2022, Biden said: 

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis ...

We’ve got a guy I know fairly well ... [Putin’s] not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming ...

I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon...

First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have the threat of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going...

We are trying to figure out what is Putin’s off-ramp? Where does he find a way out?”

Putin and Russia certainly need an “off-ramp”, or as the Russell Foundation put it in February, “a ladder to climb down”, but rather than solely focus on reducing nuclear tensions in order for such a settlement to be reached, we witness the trading of nuclear threats. Rather than actually attempting to reduce the prospects of mass death, nuclear genocide or, in Biden’s own words, “Armageddon”, we see the stoking of nuclear tensions.

Rather than deal with the immediate nuclear threats and tensions what Putin, Biden and the pundits, journalists and ‘analysts’ who have speculated on how one side or the other will react in the event of nuclear use have done is to normalise the use of nuclear weapons. There is now a large-scale appreciation of existing and growing nuclear threats but this appreciation has not been met with widespread understanding of what this all means. This process of ‘normalisation’ is an effort to make the obscene, the grotesque, the catastrophic and the murderous implications of nuclear weaponry appear an acceptable part of political discourse.

What fate has diplomacy suffered? Where are the negotiations? Where is the consistent, honest and open commitment to some form of peaceful settlement to the desperate situation in Ukraine from the nuclear powers? Where is the recognition that ‘security’ cannot be guaranteed by nuclear weapons, nuclear alliances and the threat of mass destruction? As we argued in the last issue of END Info (Issue 33):

The sharpening tensions arising from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine - including the stark nuclear tensions - put us all at risk. Yet the response of NATO is unlikely to reduce the tensions, nuclear or otherwise. In fact, such responses follow a pattern we have seen in the past and will undoubtedly replicate the worst possible consequences.

Nuclear weapons, nuclear alliances

and the costs of militarism

We argued further that:

If, for NATO, every problem is a nail, then the biggest hammer at its disposal is the nuclear weapon ...

A truly secure future must mean working for peaceful outcomes to these challenges, not preparing for war.

Further justification for these warnings was provided in President Biden’s new National Security Strategy (October 2022). In his introduction to the NSS Biden writes:

Around the world, the need for American leadership is as great as it has ever been. We are in the midst of a strategic competition to shape the future of the international world order ...

We have also reinvigorated America’s unmatched network of alliances and partnerships to uphold and strengthen the principles and institutions that have enabled so much stability, prosperity, and growth for the last 75 years.

On page 38 of the NSS, in a section titled ‘Deepen Our Alliance with Europe’, we read:

With a relationship rooted in shared democratic values, common interests, and historic ties, the transatlantic relationship is a vital platform on which many other elements of our foreign policy are built. Europe has been, and will continue to be, our foundational partner in addressing the full range of global challenges. To effectively pursue a common global agenda, we are broadening and deepening the transatlantic bond - strengthening NATO, raising the level of ambition in the U.S.-EU relationship, and standing with our European allies and partners in defense of the rules-based system that underpins our security, prosperity, and values ... America remains unequivocally committed to collective defense as enshrined in NATO’s Article 5 and will work alongside our NATO Allies to deter, defend against, and build resilience to aggression and coercion in all its forms. As we step up our own sizable contributions to NATO capabilities and readiness - including by strengthening defensive forces and capabilities, and upholding our long-standing commitment to extended deterrence - we will count on our Allies to continue assuming greater responsibility by increasing their spending, capabilities, and contributions. European defense investments, through or complementary to NATO, will be critical to ensuring our shared security at this time of intensifying competition.

The world awaits the publication of the Biden administrations much-delayed Nuclear Posture Review, which deals with specifics of nuclear doctrine, but the direction of travel seems clear. What this will mean is that rather than attempt to create alternative, common security policies to ensure that war and the prospect of nuclear war is averted, the existing dynamic of tension and power politics will be reinforced: the threat of nuclear war will be increased.

To avert such prospects, it is essential that nuclear tensions are drastically reduced. This should be the number one priority of all governments, but special responsibility lies with the nuclear armed states. First and foremost, this means jettisoning any and all nuclear threats with immediate effect. Second, it means engaging in real and meaningful diplomacy to resolve the war in Ukraine. Third, it means adopting alternative approaches to security based on the idea that the security of one state cannot be achieved at the expense of another.

Achieving all of this is no easy task. Humanity faces manifold and interconnected crises. Each one of these crises, from climate emergency to falling living standards, is driven by a system that is incapable of addressing, let alone solving, the terrible effects. Worse still, the systems’ attempts to address pressing needs often exacerbate the situation. Take, for example, Prime Minister Truss’ now-aborted plans to tackle the energy price crisis. If we take her at her word, the whole point of the disastrous mini-budget was to protect the British population from excessive energy bills over a two year period. The result? Chaos. In an effort to resolve this chaos, a new Chancellor of the Exchequer looks set to impose yet more austerity on the nation. The result? More suffering. Only a very different approach will ensure an end to chaos and an end to suffering.

The dominant approaches to questions of ‘defence’ and ‘security’ suffer in the same respect. The words ‘defence’ and ‘security’ should be used with great caution for any number of reasons but the clearest example is given by the part played by nuclear weapons in Britain’s military posture. The Johnson government’s 2021 Integrated Review – Global Britain in a competitive age – makes the following claim for Britain’s nuclear weapons: they “deter the most extreme threats to our national security and way of life, helping to guarantee our security and that of our Allies”. NATO’s most recent strategic concept, released in 2022, claims: “The strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States, are the supreme guarantee of the security of the Alliance … NATO’s nuclear deterrence [sic] posture also relies on the United States’ nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe and the contributions of Allies concerned.” Britain is, of course, a member of NATO.

So, according to the British government and its NATO allies, ‘defence’ and ‘security’ are ultimately guaranteed by machines designed to unleash megadeath. Not only is this a foul and repugnant idea in and of itself, but it is outlandish in the extreme. Yet a publicly stated willingness to ‘press the button’ and kill millions is a shibboleth uttered by all those seeking high office, with one notable exception. Why is this idea ‘outlandish’? Imagine the reaction if all our politicians insisted that euthanasia be used as a cure for the troubles of old age? Killing millions of people, or threatening to do so, is not a credible solution to anything. Worse, it is criminal.

The majority of the world does not possess nuclear weapons and is not incorporated into nuclear alliances, like NATO. A growing number of states, particularly in the Global South, have mounted a full-frontal rejection of ‘nuclearism’ by either signing or ratifying the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. There is a growing recognition outside of Europe and America that the problems faced by the whole of humanity – be they nuclear threats, climate catastrophe, hunger, displacement or insecurity – cannot be addressed at the expense of others. Global problems require global solutions and these can only be reached by cooperation and a common approach.

In the face of this growing recognition, Britain and its allies are resorting to militarised responses and an expansionary approach. CND’s recent conference labelled this approach as one “based on threat and force rather than collective problem solving and peaceful even development.” Conference went on to agree that “This is particularly marked in the nuclear weapons sphere. On top of the ongoing replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system, we have seen the nuclear arsenal increase, the expansion of the nuclear use policy, the withdrawal of transparency, the adoption of the AUKUS agreement, and most recently the return of US/NATO nuclear weapons to RAF/USAF Lakenheath”.

The Truss government committed itself to increased military spending, which will only mean more of the same. Will Rishi Sunak uphold this commitment? It seems likely.

As the social and economic conditions for large parts of the population spiral downwards, as poverty and insecurity stalk the land, as the health services remain underfunded and working people face pay cuts this government and others like it across Europe pledge further billions to military spending.

People cannot eat missiles. Warships cannot cure disease. Tanks cannot home the homeless. Fighter aircraft will not care for the needy. Chemical and biological weapons will not educate our children. Nuclear weapons cannot ensure security.

Adapted and expanded from ‘Killing millions of people is not a credible solution to anything’, which appeared in the Morning Star on Thursday 20 October 2022.

Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

The much-delayed publication of President Biden’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) on 27 October was a significant moment. Significant because it appears at a time when nuclear risks and nuclear tensions are sharply posed. Significant because the dominant role of the US within the nuclear-armed alliance, NATO, means that US nuclear policy influences the nuclear policies of alliance members and those countries which are part of nuclear sharing arrangements. It is also significant because of what it fails to say: there is little trace of Biden’s warnings, criticisms and alternative policy proposals aired during his election campaign.

For instance, as Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda point out: “Although Joe Biden during his presidential election campaign spoke strongly in favour of adopting no-first-use and sole-purpose policies, the NPR explicitly rejects both for now.” [FAS Strategic Security blog, 27/10/22]

Kristensen and Korda continue: “From an arms control and risk reduction perspective, the NPR is a disappointment. Previous efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals and the role that nuclear weapons play have been subdued by renewed strategic competition abroad and opposition from defense hawks at home.”

The December 2022 issue of END Info will cover the NPR in more detail but it is worth looking at section V, ‘Strengthening Regional Nuclear Deterrence’, in the context of the Ukraine war and developments in Europe.

“As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance”, are the opening words of the section headed ‘Strong and Credible Nuclear Deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic Region’. The NPR continues: “A strong, cohesive Alliance with a clear nuclear mission remains essential to deter aggression and promote peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area, especially in light of Russia’s aggression against its neighbors and the central role nuclear weapons and other strategic capabilities play in Russian doctrine ... Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Crimea in 2014 NATO has taken steps to ensure a modern, ready, and credible NATO nuclear deterrent. This includes modernizing U.S. nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe and, with participating NATO allies, transitioning to a new generation of fighter aircraft, including the U.S. F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. The United States will work with Allies concerned to ensure that the transition to modern DCA and the B61-12 bomb is executed efficiently and with minimal disruption to readiness.”

Much of the NPR reads like a report of work already in progress - the F-35A and B61-12 deployments, for instance. Many of the measures described in the NPR appear to be doubling-down on already operational policies - the efforts made since 2014, for instance.

The troubling reality is that new nuclear-capable aircraft, new nuclear bombs and a continuation of policies in place since 2014 look unlikely to “deter aggression and promote peace and stability”. The risk is that such developments will take us closer to nuclear war than we are now.

If “[d]eterring Russian limited nuclear use in a regional conflict is a high U.S. and NATO priority”, then the world - and the people of Ukraine - needs to see serious efforts at diplomacy, negotiations and peace-making. We do not need more machines of megadeath and aggressive nuclear postures. ­­

US accelerates B61 deployment

From END Info 34 DOWNLOAD

On 26 October, 2022, the Politico news website announced that the “United States has accelerated the fielding of a more accurate version of the mainstay nuclear bomb to NATO bases in Europe, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable and two people familiar with the issue.”

As we reported in END Info 32 (June/July 2022), plans for the deployment of these upgraded bombs have been underway for some time. In the context of US plans to expand its nuclear bootprint in Europe, by upgrading nuclear storage facilities at the Lakenheath airbase (UK), the future deployment of the B61-12 is of some concern. News that the deployment is to be accelerated makes the matter even more pressing. Here’s how we described the capabilities of the B61-12 in June: 

B61-12 Nuclear Bomb

B61 nuclear bombs have been deployed in Europe under US nuclear sharing arrangements for some time. Originally designed as a Cold War weapon in the 1960s, the B61-12 (modification 12) entered production in December 2021 with the aim of extending the lifespan of these nuclear weapons. The latest modification includes ‘steerability’ and ‘dialable yields’, which means that the bombs can be launched some distance from their target (‘standoff capability’ meaning that pilots can reasonably expect not to be impacted by a nuclear blast) and that the explosive power of the bombs can be set as ‘usable’ on the battlefield. The development and deployment of these bombs to Lakenheath (and elsewhere in Europe) represents a significant and dangerous expansion of the US nuclear bootprint and an escalation in tension between nuclear-armed states.

Why accelerate the deployment? Politico quotes from the US diplomatic cable as follows: 

“Given the rising volume and scale of Russia’s nuclear rhetoric, a subset of allies requested continued consultations at NATO to ensure continued readiness and consistent messaging.”

Commenting on Twitter, Hans Kristensen notes:

“One odd part of this story is that training/certification of the European unites wasn’t supposed to begin until turn of the year ... after which the weapons would arrive. Moving up deployment would require moving up training/certification first ... Nor should people think that all the European bases will necessarily receive the B61-12s at the same time. This exchange could happen over many months.”

Given that deployment was already planned and given the need to complete training and certification on the bombs before deployment, accelerating the deployment - or announcing an acceleration, which may be a different thing - seems like a political/strategic move rather than an operational imperative.

The language in the US cable suggests pressure from NATO member states for some sort of gesture. Poland’s political leaders have been signalling eagerness to join NATOs nuclear sharing arrangement. The accelerated deployment may have been announced as a concession. Whatever the reasons the accelerated deployment of B61-12s is unlikely to reduce nuclear tensions in Europe. ­­