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JAMES MARTIN CENTER FOR
NONPROLIFERATION STUDIES
DELEGITIMIZING NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Examining the validity of nuclear deterrence
Ken Berry, Patricia Lewis, Benoît Pélopidas, Nikolai Sokov and Ward Wilson
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Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons:
Examining the Validity of Nuclear Deterrence
The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies
Ken Berry, Patricia Lewis, Benoît Pélopidas, Nikolai Sokov and Ward Wilson
Pag e ii
Pag e iii
Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons:
Examining the Validity of Nuclear Deterrence
Contents
Introduction and acknowledgements
I. The problem with nuclear weapons ............................................................... 1
II. Reassessing the legitimacy of nuclear weapons.............................................. 7
II.1 Traditional legitimacy.................................................................................................. 7
Genies, bottles and other myths....................................................................................................................... 7
Peace first, disarmament will follow? ............................................................................................................. 12
Instability and uncertainty at zero are overstated........................................................................................... 13
II.2. Charismatic legitimacy, coercion & deterrence ....................................................... 14
Nuclear non-coercion: Hiroshima and Nagasaki ............................................................................................ 15
Possessing nuclear weapons provides little leverage .................................................................................... 17
An exceptional technology? ........................................................................................................................... 19
Using or threatening use ................................................................................................................................ 22
The claims for nuclear deterrence .................................................................................................................. 26
Sixty-five years of safety? .............................................................................................................................. 30
Failures to deter conventional attack.............................................................................................................. 31
Extending nuclear deterrence ........................................................................................................................ 33
Preventing proliferation through nuclear extended deterrence? .................................................................... 35
II.3 Legal recognition and Nuclear Weapons.................................................................... 35
Examining the legal legitimacy of nuclear weapons. ...................................................................................... 37
III. Lessons from success .............................................................................. 39
III.1 Prohibition of use, prohibition of possession........................................................... 40
III.2 Humanitarian disarmament principles and practices ............................................... 43
The Mine Ban Convention .............................................................................................................................. 45
The Convention on Cluster Munitions ............................................................................................................ 46
The UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons ................................................................ 47
IV. Delegitimizing nuclear weapons ................................................................................ 49
A multilayered approach to nuclear disarmament .......................................................................................... 50
Ideas, efforts and leadership .......................................................................................................................... 50
Civil Society Action ......................................................................................................................................... 51
Rewriting an international history of the nuclear age ..................................................................................... 53
Involving the Military ....................................................................................................................................... 56
Involving nuclear weapons personnel ............................................................................................................ 59
Pag e iv
Counting the Costs ......................................................................................................................................... 60
Creating a representative group of states ...................................................................................................... 62
No Use, No Use at all ..................................................................................................................................... 63
Taking the leap: negotiating a nuclear disarmament convention ................................................................... 66
Monitoring Progress ....................................................................................................................................... 68
V. In Conclusion........................................................................................... 69
Appendix 1 .................................................................................................... 71
A more detailed analysis of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ............ 71
Appendix 2 .................................................................................................... 79
An annotated excerpt from the diary of Admiral Takagi Sokichi for Wednesday, August 8, 1945, recounting a
conversation he had with his boss, Navy Minister Yonai quoted in Burr, “The Atomic Bomb at the End of World
War II” ..................................................................................................................................... 79
Appendix 3: .................................................................................................... 81
No First Use, brief history and current positions................................................................................................ 81
Pag e v
Introduction
In addressing nuclear disarmament, people – be they expert, practitioners or one of the
interested public – find themselves in a bind. All bar a few countries, including the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council, have repeatedly committed themselves in
word and in law to pursuing nuclear disarmament in good faith and to the elimination of nuclear
weapons. There is enormous concern about the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries
and – in the longer term – to non-state armed factions. On the other hand, however, we are
told that nuclear weapons are important and useful. Those that possess them or feel protected
by them say that they are not deployed to be used; rather they are employed solely as a
deterrent to would-be attackers and thus prevent war. We are told that they ended the Second
World War in 1945, that they “kept the peace” during the Cold War, and that they provide an
“umbrella” or extended deterrence to military allies of the nuclear weapons possessors.
Nuclear weapons are the great protectors, the ultimate guarantee. Why then would we ever
want to eliminate such weapons if they could provide so much security, and why should we not
want every country to have them so as to eliminate war completely? At the heart of the double
bind of nuclear weapons is the issue of deterrence. It is the belief in nuclear deterrence that
enables people to accept their presence on their territories. The belief in nuclear deterrence
creates an underlying fear that if we were to give up this great protection, major conflict might
once again ensue. In large part, it is this fear that is causing the delay in fulfilling the long-
made promises of nuclear disarmament. The hypothesis of nuclear deterrence has conferred a
degree of legitimacy on the possession – by some states only – of nuclear weapons.
If the global elimination of nuclear weapons is ever going to be undertaken in earnest, nuclear
deterrence must be held up to scrutiny and found wanting. This paper sets out to examine
deterrence as the core attribute assigned to nuclear weapons and their associated legitimacy
in the international security system. We have examined the evidence for nuclear deterrence
and found it to be paltry, if it exists at all. Our aim in this study is to stimulate thought, debate
and action. We have written this paper with several audiences in mind: disarmament
practitioners including government officials, diplomats and nuclear weapons designers; experts
from policy analysts to academic dons; and the engaged, questioning public. This should not
be a comfortable read; we hope to challenge the reader and to introduce new approaches and
options for ways out of the nuclear conundrum.
Acknowledgements
This study was commissioned by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (MFA), and
we are particularly grateful to Christian Schoenberger Head, Task Force on Nuclear
Disarmament and Non-Proliferation for his insight, input and collegiality throughout. We are
also thankful to the participants of a meeting held in Nyon, Switzerland, under the auspices of
the Swiss MFA on 8 March 2010 to discuss an earlier draft of this paper. We are particularly
grateful to two readers and discussants, Dr Rebecca Johnson of the Acronym Institute for
Disarmament Diplomacy and Dr Pal Dúnay of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. Cognitive
diversity is vital to finding creative solutions to intractable problems; the wide range of
government representatives and non-governmental experts at the Nyon workshop has made
this paper so much better than it would otherwise have been. Finally, we are grateful to Ove
Hansen and his generosity in allowing us to use his beautiful photograph for the front cover, to
David Steiger for the cover design and to Sarah Diehl for her editing skills.
Pag e vi
Executive Summary
The study on “Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons: Examining the Validity of Nuclear Deterrence”
by Ken Berry, Patricia Lewis, Benoît Pélopidas, Nikolai Sokov and Ward Wilson was
commissioned by the Swiss Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs and undertaken by the James
Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Delegitimization and Deterrence
Decades of international security institution-building have been based on the Cold War
constructs of nuclear deterrence and extended nuclear deterrence. In order to eliminate
nuclear weapons, we first need to deconstruct the nuclear weapons security edifice, examine
the beliefs surrounding nuclear deterrence and nuclear weapons, and remove the value that
has been assigned to nuclear arms.
A process of delegitimization requires revoking the legal or legitimate status of the weapons,
through a process of devaluation; diminishing and destroying all claims to legitimacy, prestige
and authority. Although there has been a significant reduction in the numbers of nuclear
weapons, the nuclear weapons states will continue to fail in their disarmament obligations so
long as governments continue to confer legitimacy on nuclear weapons.
Nuclear deterrence has been such a risky strategy, fraught with the consequences of accident
and unchecked aggression, bound to promote proliferation, and not based in historical
evidence. Small mistakes are not possible with nuclear weapons.
Deterrence is the most commonly accepted quality of nuclear weapons - if only because
advocacy of using them for an unprovoked offensive war is politically and morally
unacceptable - and in debates on nuclear weapons it is an area where nuclear weapons
proponents and arms control advocates find they can compromise. However, it is striking how
widely accepted nuclear deterrence is, given the paucity of real evidence in support of it.
It is time now to place the burden of proof on those that would retain and employ nuclear
weapons and require that they demonstrate – using real evidence – what they claim for the
these weapons.
Selected Study Findings
1. Deterrence, legitimacy and value
• There is clear evidence that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not end the
Pacific War in 1945, rather it was the declaration of war by the Soviet Union on 8th
August.
• Contrary to common belief, there is no evidence that nuclear weapons “kept the peace”
during the Cold War.
Pag e vii
• There is positive evidence that nuclear threats do not prevent conventional, chemical or
biological weapons attacks, even in circumstances where nuclear deterrence ought to
work robustly.
• Possessing nuclear weapons provides little leverage. Nuclear weapons have failed to
give their possessors decisive military advantage in war.
• If nuclear weapons were to be actually used, the historical record suggests that this
would more likely strengthen resistance instead of coercing the victims of the strike.
• History shows that a nuclear security guarantee is neither a necessary nor a sufficient
condition to give up nuclear weapons ambitions.
• It is a false argument to state that nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented; neither can
chemical weapons, biological weapons, cluster munitions and anti-personnel landmines
and yet the prohibition of these weapons is governed under by international law.
• It is feared that at low numbers, each nuclear weapon becomes increasingly valuable as
a proportion of the whole. Evidence suggests that the opposite is true.
• If the nuclear weapons states have agreed to reduce numbers to a very low level and
head to zero, it is because the value of nuclear weapons has been reassessed and so
numbers are no longer as significant.
• A world with increasing numbers of nuclear weapons possessors is unlikely to be more
stable than one of reducing numbers of weapons and possessors.
• Nuclear weapons have become a currency of power but although nuclear weapons
provide status today, new and different status symbols could be designated tomorrow.
2. The legal framework
• Nuclear weapons and their use are generally prohibited under existing International
Humanitarian Law and under customary international law.
• International Humanitarian Law has developed an approach to the use of weapons in
combat. The use of weapons that cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to
the natural environment is prohibited.
• International Humanitarian Law and human rights law are equally applicable to nuclear
weapons, as they are to chemical, biological, anti personnel landmines and cluster
munitions.
• Taking an International Humanitarian Law approach would mean focusing on the results
that a negotiation will produce, not just go through the motions of a negotiation that will
keep nuclear weapons possessors comfortable and virtually unaffected.
• The humanitarian approach demands highly effective outcomes, not lowest common
denominator results.
3. Achieving nuclear disarmament
• Engagement of the public is the most single important factor in achieving success in
delegitimizing nuclear weapons.
• However, there is no genuinely effective global public campaign to eliminate nuclear
weapons today.
Pag e viii
• Mobilizing international public and political support, and sustaining it throughout the
disarmament process, is perhaps the most fundamental precondition for progress on
the path towards a world without nuclear weapons.
• The nuclear disarmament debate also should include military personnel and weapons
designers and manufactures.
• Ambition, such as a Nuclear Weapons Convention that will lead to the outlawing of
nuclear weapons and their elimination, is the framework that will attract most public
attention and passion.
• Nuclear history could be rewritten to analyze the 150 plus states that have never tried to
develop nuclear weapons to include perspectives from developing countries for which
important and urgent issues have been continually sidelined in favor of debates on
nuclear weapons, and voices from nuclear-weapon free zones, nuclear-capable states
and from states that gave up nuclear weapons ambitions.
• A like-minded representative core group of states, including key, progressive nuclear
armed states and committed non-nuclear weapons states, could begin a parallel track
process to negotiate such agreements as no-use treaty. Or they could stimulate a
negotiation for a global nuclear weapons convention that would include the prohibition
on use and possession, as a successor to the NPT.
• Pragmatism in the way things get done is far more effective than sticking to obsolete
methods and practice; the outcome matters more than the process or venue.
• Nuclear disarmament will succeed only if there is a sustainable determination in civil
society and in governments to eliminate nuclear weapons.
• The financial burden of deploying, maintaining and upgrading nuclear arsenals for the
foreseeable future far outweigh the costs of disarmament.
• There needs to be a process of review, benchmarks, oversight and wide engagement.
• A multilayered approach to the issues is required, and different types of players and
negotiation are required for different types of measures.
• It is time to open up a new debate, time to consider the possibility that nuclear
deterrence is not a valid framework for international security in the 21st Century.
• It is time to set about getting rid of nuclear weapons while we still have the opportunity.
Pag e ix
Pag e 1
Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons:
Examining the Validity of Nuclear Deterrence
The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies
Ken Berry, Patricia Lewis, Benoît Pélopidas, Nikolai Sokov and Ward Wilson
“The doctrine of nuclear deterrence is not an eternal verity but is largely based on
a belief system…. Concepts and institutions which were considered inescapable
and having no alternatives have become totally unacceptable and discarded into
the dustbin of history. Slavery was a hoary institution…. Monarchy and the divine
right of kings had their day…. The colour bar and discrimination based on it was
prevalent even a couple of decades ago, but is no longer defended as a way of
life…. All that has changed within our lifetime. It is now clear even to the
followers of the cult of nuclear deterrence that nuclear wars cannot be fought and
won…. The sensible way out is to delegitimize and outlaw nuclear weapons as
instruments of war.”1
I. The problem with nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons are capable of doing enormous damage to life, civilization and the
environment. Their destructive power is not in any doubt, but does that make them more useful
than conventional weapons? Nuclear weapons are large, clumsy weapons that are badly
matched to almost any military task. They are really ideal in only one role, which is killing
people en masse. Although high emotion is engendered by the threat of annihilation (which
clouds debates and leaves a residue of confusion in our discussions), little work has been
done on the practical realities of nuclear weapons. Is a nuclear weapon capability valuable to
have? Are nuclear weapons all they are cracked up to be or have we endowed them with a
magic power, with a desirability they would otherwise not possess? Hitherto, they have been
1 K. Subrahmanyam, Chapter V, in Study on Deterrence, Its implications for Disarmament and the Arms Race:
Negotiated Arms Reductions and International Security and Other Related Matters, Report of the Secretary-
General, United Nations A/41/432,1987 paras 42, 43 46, pp. 78-79.
Pag e 2
seen as weapons of status but if they were just about status, such as a Lulu Guinness
handbag or a red Ferrari, we would not have spent the last sixty years arguing about their
purpose, efficacy and legitimacy. Their capacity for destruction has been seen as a deterrent
to war, but new evidence suggests that this is not the case. It is this combination of their
power as status symbols and their power to destroy all that we hold dear that requires us to
think through very carefully – and continually question – their purpose, legitimacy and how to
get rid of them.
The problem with nuclear weapons is that human beings are fallible. Hand-in-hand with the
very existence of nuclear weapons go scenarios for their use and the entire hypothesis of
nuclear deterrence that dates back to the 1940s and developed primarily in the 1960s. The
core principle of the supposed deterrence effect of nuclear weapons is the credibility of the
threat of their use.2 If nuclear weapons are ready to be used at all times, no system of controls
will prevent their use forever - particularly if a war comes in which nuclear states feel their vital
interests threatened. In the whirlwind of war, when stakes are high, who can be sure that folly
can be prevented? Nuclear weapons can kill so many people so quickly that mistakes are
magnified. It is possible, without significantly affecting the military outcome, to kill hundreds of
millions of people. The difference between nuclear weapons and regular weapons is that
nuclear weapons are bigger and their radiological effects in the environment and on health
persist. This doesn't turn out to have any special military usefulness. But it does have other
implications. When you make a mistake with conventional weapons, it is possible for it to be a
relatively small mistake with physical impacts that do not have to last for generations. Small
mistakes are not possible with nuclear weapons.3
In response to the repeated attempts of civil populations and non-nuclear weapons states to
push for nuclear disarmament, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) States Parties
agreed to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the
nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general
and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” That was in 1968.
While that provision was formulated in deliberately vague terms, several subsequent
obligations are unequivocal and cannot be escaped. In 1995, in order to extend the NPT
indefinitely, the states agreed to do so within a package of decisions including a set of
principles and objectives that included a determined commitment from the nuclear weapons
states to pursue “systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with
the ultimate goal of elimination of those weapons.” Likewise at the NPT Review Conference in
2000, the nuclear weapons states made an unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total
elimination of nuclear weapons, leading to nuclear disarmament.
Although there has been a significant reduction in the numbers of nuclear weapons held by the
official nuclear weapons states (with the exception of China), there have been modernization
2 For a tour de force on deterrence, see Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004.
3 See Henry Shue, Nuclear Deterrence and Moral Restraint, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 1
Pag e 3
programs in most of the countries that possess nuclear weapons so that capabilities have
increased in some respects. Nuclear weapons still play a significant and in some regions
(South Asia, North East Asia and the Middle East) an increasing role in international security
dynamics. The nuclear weapons states will continue to fail in their disarmament obligations so
long as these weapons continue to command legitimacy and utility; domestic politics will
always prevail and make governments seek delaying action. Of course, if deterrence were truly
believed to be the ultimate guarantor of peace, then all the costs and risks associated with
nuclear weapons would be seen as worthwhile. It is the concept of nuclear deterrence that we
have to address. Examining this framework for thinking about security is at the heart of all of
the decisions that have been made on nuclear weapons and their legitimacy. The rest follows.
In considering the focus of this paper, we have grappled with the concept of legitimacy. Are
nuclear weapons “legitimate”? If so, what has given them such a status? Do they have a
legitimate use? Are they militarily useful? If not, how can we consider “delegitimizing” nuclear
weapons? What would be the purpose of removing any legitimacy from nuclear weapons?
What could we hope to achieve? Would the world be safer as a result? Would states be less
likely to proliferate? Would we be more likely to achieve nuclear disarmament?
We have tried to approach the subject with humility and creativity. So much has been written
on the subject. A whole edifice of security has been built on the basis of nuclear deterrence as
a singularity. And yet the risks involved are so enormous that to leave this subject to the
collective wisdom of the very nuclear strategists who have created the deterrence-as-security
framework would be irresponsible. Premising security on the possession of a weapon that was
never to be used but was instead maintained as a threat supposedly to deter aggression has
been such a risky strategy, fraught with the consequences of accident and unchecked
aggression, bound to promote proliferation and one that flies in the face of history.
As Robert F. Kennedy4 so aptly wrote:
Those who disparage the threat of nuclear weapons ignore all evidence of
the darker side of man, and of the history of the West – our history. Many
times the nations of the West have plunged into inexplicable cataclysm,
mutual slaughter so terrible and so widespread that it amounted nearly to
the suicide of a civilization. The religious wars of the sixteenth century, the
Thirty Years' war in the seventeenth century, the terrible excesses that
followed the French Revolution, these have been equaled and grotesquely
outmatched in the modern twentieth century. Twice within the memory of
living men, the nations of Europe, the most advanced and cultured
societies of the world, have torn themselves and each other apart for
causes so slight, in relation to the cost of struggle, that it is impossible to
regard them as other than excuses for the expression of some darker
impulse. …Who can say that [nuclear weapons] will not be used, that a
rational balance of terror will restrain emotions we do not understand? Of
4 Robert Kennedy, To Seek a Newer World, Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967, pp. 149-
151.
Pag e 4
course, we have survived [so far with nuclear weapons.] Despite many
limited wars and crises before 1914, Europe had known substantial peace
for a century – and at its end saw war as deliverance. Nuclear war may
never come, but it would be the rashest folly and ignorance to think that it
will not come because men, being reasonable beings, will realize the
destruction it would cause.
Our approach is one of fresh examination of the evidence for the previous and potential
efficacy and value of nuclear weapons, and of the risks involved with their retention and
proliferation. Much has been written on the inextricable connection between disarmament and
nonproliferation, and this understanding has been embodied in the legal framework since the
first resolution addressing the issue placed before the UN General Assembly by Ireland in
1961. The NPT in 1968 and its indefinite extension in 1995 have further cemented the well-
understood linkage between nuclear disarmament and preventing nuclear proliferation.
Consequently, we shall resist the temptation to rehearse all of those arguments that can be
found in much of the literature on nuclear weapons, particularly in discussions of the NPT.
Rather we shall confine ourselves to a discussion of how best to examine nuclear deterrence
and the value of nuclear weapons and how the concept of deterrence plays into attempts to
delegitimize and outlaw nuclear weapons. Decades of international security institution-building
have been based on cold war constructs such as nuclear deterrence and extended nuclear
deterrence – indeed the weapons themselves are often just referred to as a nuclear “deterrent
capability” as if they were one and the same. In order to eliminate the risks posed by nuclear
weapons (and therefore, in order to eliminate nuclear weapons themselves), including the risk
of further proliferation to states and to non-state armed groups, we first need to deconstruct the
nuclear weapons security edifice and examine the beliefs surrounding nuclear deterrence and
nuclear weapons.
The delegitimization of nuclear weapons will need to address the core of the deterrence
debate. The case that nuclear weapons are morally repugnant has been convincingly made for
a long time.5 However, despite the evidence for nuclear deterrence being so shaky, a case for
nuclear weapons as a deterrent has been made at political levels in the nuclear weapons
states in the name of prudence.6 It is time perhaps to place the burden of proof on those that
would retain and employ nuclear weapons and require that they demonstrate – using real
evidence – what they claim for these weapons.
5 The moral dilemma can be stated as follows: to prevent a nuclear attack, the political leadership has to show
resolve for massive killing and to behave as a hostage holder while accepting that its own population is also held
hostage by the other side. Thus, the fact that the political leadership has to be determined to use the weapon for
its deterrent value to operate is enough to condemn both the use and threat of use. For a clear statement of the
moral dilemma, see Steven Lee, Morality, Prudence and Nuclear Weapons. Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1993, chapt. 2.
6 Ibid., chapt. 4. Note also that we are addressing primarily the “prudent” proponents of nuclear deterrence more
than we are the maximalists (who see a use for nuclear weapons in fighting and winning wars). We wish to
engage those who do not consider that nuclear weapons are legitimate on moral grounds nor do they advocate
their use – they see nuclear weapons as solely for deterrence, never to be used.
Pag e 5
The word legitimate can be used either as an adjective or as verb. If nuclear weapons were to
be described as “legitimate” that would mean that the weapons are in accordance with the law
or with established legal forms and requirements and conform to recognized principles or
accepted rules and standards. As a verb, to legitimate means that nuclear weapons have been
given legal status or authorization and have been justified, lent authority or respectability.7 It is
also possible to claim another type of legitimacy – the one conferred by an unwritten norm or
convention. It is our contention that nuclear weapons have had legitimacy conferred upon them
not by virtue of being legitimate – indeed, we argue that they are not in accordance with the
norms of International Humanitarian Law, nor do they conform to recognized principles or
accepted rules and standards – rather they have been lent authority and respectability for a
few countries but not for others, as a result of several decades of concerted efforts to legitimize
them for an elite group.8
A process of delegitimization is the revoking of the legal or legitimate status of the weapons,
through a process of devaluation; diminishing and destroying all claims to legitimacy, prestige
and authority.9 This endeavor requires an assessment of the perceived legitimacy of nuclear
weapons and a review of successful disarmament attempts for other kinds of weapons of mass
destruction before turning to policy recommendations. Below, we have attempted to address
some of the key questions and objections that are posed vis a vis nuclear disarmament, in the
hope that in answering them, we may begin to shed some light on the way forward for nuclear
disarmament. We then consider the case for a convention to eliminate nuclear weapons and
propose a framework for achieving nuclear disarmament – in our lifetimes.
We approach the perceived legitimacy of nuclear weapons using Max Weber’s three types of
legitimacy: traditional, charismatic and legal/rational.10 Obviously, Weber’s typology is meant to
apply to rulers and types of domination. However, if we transpose it to nuclear weapons, this
typology is useful to frame the analysis.
Nuclear weapons have been around for sixty-five years. This leads to the idea that “you cannot
put the genie back in the bottle.” The belief is that nuclear weapons cannot be “disinvented”
and therefore cannot be eliminated. However, that has not been the case for other weapons –
such as the Paris Gun, chemical and biological weapons, and landmines and cluster munitions
for example – and there seems to be no a priori reason why nuclear weapons should be
different in this regard from other destructive technologies. There has also been a continuing
discussion concerned with the uncertainties in nuclear disarmament and the stability of a world
with zero nuclear weapons. This is the first kind of legitimacy that is associated with nuclear
7 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition 2008.
8 There are five states that the NPT recognizes as nuclear weapons states (they are China, France, Russia, the
United Kingdom and the United States), and there are three states with nuclear weapons that have never joined
the NPT and thus claim not to be governed by that legal instrument (they are India, Israel and Pakistan).
9 Adapted from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition 2008.
10 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. Talcott Parsons, New York, The Free
Press, 1964, p. 328.
Pag e 6
weapons. It comes from habit, like any kind of traditional legitimacy, which in Weber’s
understanding builds on both tradition and convention.11
Second, legitimacy can come from the specifically “exceptional power or qualities”12 that are
attributed to nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have been assigned many positive attributes
and just as many reasons abound as to why they have to remain – despite all their horrors – in
perpetuity. They have been credited with ending the Second World War by forcing Japan to
surrender and with keeping the peace in Europe for over sixty years, thus preventing a third
world war, by providing a vision so horrific that none would ever countenance initiating such a
conflict. They have bestowed a mini-superpower status on what would otherwise have been
minor powers in a post-1945 world (France13 and the United Kingdom) and have become
associated with permanent membership in the UN Security Council (and hence the
guardianship of international peace and security) by virtue of the fact that all of the P5
developed nuclear weapons between 1945 and 1964. Nuclear “umbrellas” have been
extended to provide a nuclear threat to potential enemies of the nuclear weapons states’ allies.
Consequently, a belief has grown-up over recent years that without such so-called extended
nuclear deterrence, states such as Japan, Germany and Turkey would be forced to consider
developing their own nuclear weapon capability. Indeed, there are some who believe that the
whole international order is predicated on a handful of states possessing nuclear weapons. All
these properties supposedly come from the exceptional character of nuclear weapons. They
are projected on the weapons just as exceptional qualities are projected on the charismatic
leader whether he possesses them or not. The notion of rational deterrence theory, particularly
in its ideological form, is the ultimate expression of this approach to nuclear weapons. This
charismatic legitimacy14 will also be reassessed and challenged in the paper.
Third, beyond the traditional and the charismatic claims for the legitimacy of nuclear weapons,
their legal legitimacy will be reassessed, using the framework of International Humanitarian
Law15 and a new legal framework for considering the legitimacy and purpose of nuclear
disarmament will be proposed.
11 Ibid , pp. 328, 342.
12 Ibid., p. 359.
13 The French strategist Pierre Gallois conceptualized the often quoted “equalizing power of the atom” in his 1959
book “The Balance of Terror: Strategy for the Nuclear Age,, Houghton Mifflin, translated from the French by
Richard Howard in 1961.
14 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, op. cit., p. 359 and Max Weber, “The Social
Psychology of the World Religions,” in H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology,
London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1947, p. 259.
15 On rational/legal legitimacy, see The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, op. cit., p. 328.
These distinctions only have an analytical purpose. Weber himself considered that traditional legitimacy came
from making charisma routine, which suggests both a connection and a radical difference between charismatic
legitimacy and the two other kinds. “The Social Psychology of the World Religions”, op. cit., p. 297. The Theory of
Social and Economic Organization, op. cit., p. 361.
Pag e 7
II. Reassessing the legitimacy of nuclear weapons
II.1 Traditional legitimacy
Genies, bottles and other myths
During the 2006-2007 debate on the renewal of Trident, Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted
that the United Kingdom would not choose to acquire a nuclear deterrent “if starting from
here”.16 This is one of the most telling clues that the debates on nuclear weapons are biased
by a “path dependency” or a “traditional legitimacy” leading directly to the notions that we
cannot disinvent this weapon system and that the prerequisites for abolition are
insurmountable. As we shall see, these ideas are largely based on fears of the unknown into
which the day-to-day nuclear risks are never factored.
Nuclear weapons are often regarded as an integral, almost indelible part of international
relations, especially, of course, by states that possess or would like to acquire them. A rather
complex system of arguments has been built over time to “prove” that complete elimination of
nuclear weapons is impossible17 and that they are a legitimate, even if undesirable (even many
proponents of nuclear weapons are prepared to pay lip-service to the latter) element of
international security.
While some key arguments in favor of retaining nuclear weapons will be discussed below, it is
perhaps advisable to start with the simplest reason for pro-nuclear sentiment – habit. The
majority of nuclear weapons states have possessed them for a long time and a large part of
the population and the elites of these countries simply find it difficult to imagine life without
them. A step as radical as renunciation of nuclear weapons makes many feel uncomfortable
like a leap into the dark to an unknown future.
This phenomenon could be quite clearly seen in Ukraine, especially in the early 1990s. Initially
the pro-independence groups actively promoted an anti-nuclear sentiment (which in large part
was a result of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster), but once the goal was achieved the
denuclearization momentum waned. In fact, the first president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk,
even commissioned a study in 1991 of possible scenarios for using nuclear weapons. When
elements of the Soviet Armed Forces deployed in Ukraine switched allegiance to the new
state, military leaders, who had acquired a “habit” of having nuclear assets at their disposal,
joined the opposition to the earlier denuclearization promises. As a result, the denuclearization
of Ukraine became a rather lengthy and tortuous process. Ukraine might not have given up its
16 William Walker, “The UK Threshold Status and Responsible Nuclear Sovereignty,” International Affairs vol. 86,
No. 2, 2010, p. 13.
17 For an analysis of the origins and political authority of this idea and a systematic critique, see Benoît Pélopidas,
The Seduction of the Impossible. A Study of Renunciation of Nuclear Weapons. Ph. D. dissertation, Sciences Po
(Paris) / University of Geneva, 2010 [in French].
Pag e 8
nuclear weapons without intense external pressure from the United States, Russia and others
– pressure that was amplified by the economic crisis that struck the entire post-Soviet region in
the 1990s. From that example, it is easy to see why achieving complete nuclear disarmament
is even more difficult in states that have possessed nuclear weapons for several decades and
are not subject to overwhelming external pressure.
In contrast, in South Africa, where nuclear weapons had not been fully integrated into policy
and military planning, the process of denuclearization was considerably easier and smoother.
It helped also that the nuclear weapons industrial complex was virtually non-existent and that
the African National Congress (ANC) had been planning to govern for several decades and in
so doing, had developed strong anti-nuclear weapons policies.
Nuclear weapons were developed in the first place because a) it was technologically possible
to do so, and b) because of fear that the adversary in World War II (Nazi Germany) would
acquire them first. By the beginning of World War II, many decades of nuclear research came
to a stage when knowledge and understanding could be transformed into something more
tangible and, perhaps because of the circumstance of war, perhaps because of the tendency
of human societies to seek out the weaponization of any new technology, the first practical
outgrowth of this research harnessed the enormous power of nuclear energy for the purposes
of destruction. It was also technologically easier to master the uncontrolled release of energy
for use in a weapon than the controlled release central to production of energy for civilian
purposes. A significant feature of viewing history from the prism of the inevitability of
technology is that the invention of nuclear weapons is believed to be a natural phenomenon
that could not have been avoided and cannot be reversed because human progress
(understood in terms of knowledge and its practical implications) cannot be reversed either.
Proponents of nuclear weapons never tire of saying: "You can't put the nuclear genie back in
the bottle."18 This sentiment is not wrong; it misses the point. The problem does not come
when a new technology is invented. The problem comes when a new technology is turned into
a military application and subsequently allowed to remain a military tool long enough to
become a permanent fixture in the arsenals of the major powers. There is a general belief that
every weapon invented is used in war. This may be true; it is a difficult claim to document and
prove. But except for the fact that it makes a good fodder for pessimists, it is a relatively
unimportant point. The important issue is not whether this or that weapon has ever been used.
The important question is whether such a weapon – once tried – has remained in the arsenals
of warlike nations. Horrible weapons may have been imagined, invented, and tried. But are the
horrible weapons still used?
The statement, for example, that every weapon that has ever been developed has gained a
permanent place in the arsenals of most nations is certainly, demonstrably false.
Consider the Paris Gun: the first of a new class of super-guns, built by the Germans in World
War I it was more than 90 feet long, weighed 256 tons and moved on rails. It fired a 210 pound
18 For an analysis of this view of history, see Benoît Pélopidas, “On Fatalism in Nuclear Proliferation: Insights on a
Tenacious Historical Reading,” Swiss Political Science Review, vol. 15 No. 2, 2009 [in French].
Pag e 9
projectile more than 80 miles. Often confused with its smaller cousin, the large mortar called
"Big Bertha," in its day it was the largest cannon ever built. It was a terrifying weapon. From
March until August of 1918, the Germans used it to shell Paris. The shells fell out of the sky
without warning and initially people believed they were being dropped by airplanes. Because
the weapon was relatively inaccurate, it could not be used against any target smaller than a
city. In all, the Paris Gun fired about 360 shells, killing 250 people and wounding 620. Only one
or two superguns have since been built (Schwerer Gustav, V3, etc.) Their impact on the wars
in which they participated was minimal.
Today countries do not race to build their own superguns. Governments do not try to trade
their oil and diamond wealth for superguns bought from arms dealers. There are no angry
diatribes in liberal papers about the horror of these weapons and the necessity of banning
them. There are no “realist” op-eds in conservative papers asserting that there is “no way to
shove the supergun genie back into the bottle.” They were wasteful and ineffective. History is
replete with weapons that were touted as war-winners that were eventually abandoned
because they had little effect.19 To say that every weapon that has ever been invented has
been tried in war misses the point. The key question is whether a specific weapon is adopted
into the arsenals of most militaries. To date more countries have begun and abandoned
programs to build nuclear weapons (or given up weapons in hand) than have built nuclear
arsenals. This fact ought to tell us something.20
The question is whether nuclear weapons are weapons that can be used for anything useful. Is
blowing things up and killing civilians likely to get you what you want? It is not necessary to
show that nuclear weapons can be disinvented, it is only necessary to show that they are not
very useful in war or as an instrument of coercion short of war.
Critics of nuclear disarmament point to the apparent futility of repeated attempts to put the
nuclear genie back into the bottle: first, by the failure of the Baruch Plan to put all nuclear
energy, including its military applications, under UN control; and second, by the fact that
several states, more or less independently, repeated the feat of the American (although truly
international, to the extent that the Manhattan Project employed many foreign-born scientists)
program – the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, South Africa, India,
19 An often neglected example is the Japanese warriors’ reversion to the sword after they had used guns for more
than a century, from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, at a period when the country was not
decadent. See Noel Perrin, Giving up the Gun. Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879, Boulder, Shambhala
Publications, 1979. One should note that Perrin offers five reasons why the Japanese gave up the gun; utility is
only one reason. Japan was hard to invade and Japanese fighters were so good than bows and arrows were
largely sufficient. (p. 35).
20 States that have built and retained nuclear weapons (9): United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France,
China, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea; states that have abandoned programs to build nuclear weapons (8):
Argentina, Brazil, Switzerland, Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, Iraq, Libya; states that have abandoned weapons
in hand (4): South Africa, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine. Total nuclear weapons possessors: 9; total who
abandoned: 12. This does not take into account the many countries that may have considered nuclear weapons
programs but decided they weren’t worth the cost and effort.
Pag e 10
Pakistan, and more recently North Korea; Iran (and possibly others) is perhaps on the same
path today.
This argument is faulty at several levels. There are several examples of successful bans on
weapons systems including weapons of mass destruction: the Chemical Weapons Convention
(CWC) and the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) (although the latter might not yet be
classified as a fully successful endeavor because it lacks implementation mechanisms,
including verification). More recently, the Mine Ban Convention (MBC) and the Convention on
Cluster Munitions (CCM) have demonstrated the capability of people to eliminate classes of
inhumane weapons, and there has also been the successful ban on a class of modern nuclear
weapons in the shape of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. While of
course nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented, neither can chemical weapons, biological
weapons, cluster munitions and anti-personnel landmines. This is a false argument. All of
these weapons have been subjected to international regimes that guarantee that technical
knowledge does not have to be harnessed to create weapons. The normative value of all of
these conventions is that there is no inevitability for humanity to develop and use technology to
destroy; it is possible for us to control our behavior and institute checks and balances to
ensure that we all comply with the restrictions. This is indeed the very basis of local, national
and international law – human societies elaborate sets of rules of behavior on which there is
general agreement and institutions are established to monitor compliance and punish
transgressions. There is an acknowledgement that not each and every person will behave
according to those rules. Mechanisms have to be established to anticipate noncompliance,
mitigate the damage and deal with the transgressors – this is true across a wide spectrum of
controls - from misdemeanors such as traffic violations and tax evasion through felonies such
as first degree murder and war crimes such as genocide.
In most cases of post-U.S. nuclear weapons programs, there were blatant circumstances that
encouraged the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For the Soviet Union, acquisition of nuclear
weapons was a specific response to the fear of a U.S. nuclear monopoly under the conditions
of the nascent Cold War.21 For states that acquired nuclear weapons in the 1950s-early 1960s,
as well as for a much larger number of states that had active nuclear programs at that time, the
full implications of nuclear weapons were not yet completely clear. The truth about them, as
well as an understanding of their limited – at best – utility, needed time to sink in. This is the
main reason why the global anti-nuclear movement developed only in the second half of
1950s, and the termination of many national nuclear weapons programs similarly occurred in
the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. The fact was that humanity – including many of the
scientists who first worked to develop nuclear weapons – did not quite understand the dangers
associated with these weapons early on.
In the end, it is possible that the belief in what we call the traditional legitimacy of nuclear
weapons is but a reflection of the fear of uncertainty. Nuclear weapons have been with us for
21 David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956, New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1994.
Pag e 11
over six decades, and many have come to regard a non-nuclear world as a big unknown. What
will happen when nuclear weapons disappear? Isn’t a known danger better than an unknown?
Maybe the new world will be better than the one we know, but what if it is more dangerous?
These fears could sublimate themselves in the search for reasons to keep nuclear weapons
around, if only for a bit longer. Of course the world will change without nuclear disarmament
and dangers will wax and wane. We must understand, however, that this situation cannot
continue indefinitely and that every year nuclear weapons continue to exist and enjoy a degree
of legitimacy and value makes their spread – and perhaps their use – more likely. Indeed, time
should not be considered as strengthening the taboo on the battlefield use of nuclear weapons
for two reasons. First and foremost, the taboo does not reduce the risk of accidents. The last
sixty-five years have already offered a significant series of events in which the absence of use
was mostly due to luck.22 Second, the case for the taboo has only been made convincingly for
the United States.23
Overall, this reluctance to use nuclear weapons could be portrayed more accurately as a
tradition, or an informal regime, which needs to be nurtured. The distinction between taboo and
tradition builds upon the following elements. First, social taboos like incest and cannibalism are
not assessed by a cost-benefit analysis. Whereas decisions to threaten or use nuclear
weapons, contemplated on several occasions, have included a cost-benefit approach. Second,
a taboo implies an inevitable and severe punishment if broken. There is no formal punishment
laid down for violation of the so-called nuclear taboo, although there is a wide perception that
the use of such weapons would incur international condemnation and any moral high ground
previously held by a country that used them would be lost. However, the threat of use of
nuclear weapons was not condemned by the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) 1996
advisory opinion, strongly suggesting that the taboo is at best incomplete and should be
approached as a tradition. Like others, this tradition can be – and has indeed been – contested
in recent years.24
22 See Scott Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1993.
23 Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Even in the U.S. case, the hypothesis of a taboo is facing
critiques. Scott Sagan, “Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in Sohail
Hashmi and Steven P. Lee, Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004. For an analysis of the French nuclear history suggesting that the
effect of the taboo was only truly felt after the end of the Cold War, see Bastien Irondelle, “Stratégie nucléaire et
normes internationales: La France face au tabou nucléaire” in Yves Schemeil and Wolf-Deter Eberwein, eds.,
Normer le monde, Paris, l’Harmattan, 2009.
24 For a discussion of how deeply ingrained tradition is in the second generation of nuclear states, and how it was
sometimes ill-served by the first generation, see T.V. Paul, The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons, Palo
Alto, Stanford University Press, 2009, mostly chapters 5, 6, 9 and 10. For the distinction between taboo and
tradition, see pp. 4-13.
Pag e 12
Peace first, disarmament will follow?
Increasingly, pro-nuclear weapons advocates are stressing their fears that in the absence of
nuclear weapons, in a world of conventionally armed states, force will be politically,
economically, and psychologically easier to use. They argue that nuclear forces compensate
for weak conventional armies and prevent the use of conventional weapons in war due to fear
of the “ultimate consequence.” However, once nuclear weapons are removed, they fear that
wide-scale war could again break out in Europe or elsewhere once again. Working in favor of
this argument is the deep-seated memory of the horrors of World Wars I and II, as well as
subsequent “limited” wars.
It is widely believed that during the Cold War the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s)
ability to balance Soviet conventional superiority with nuclear weapons (including tactical and
intermediate-range weapons) helped preserve peace in Europe. The same argument was
posited with regard to Japan and South Korea. The view held in the Soviet Union during the
Cold War was a mirror image – namely, that only Soviet nuclear capability prevented the
United States and NATO from aggression. This is also a rationale for Israel’s nuclear
capability. Within this logic, nuclear disarmament is possible, but only when we can be certain
that states will not go to war, i.e., as long as major conflicts that exist in today’s international
system are resolved and will not come back or new ones will not emerge. Since complete
world peace and global harmony is hardly achievable in the foreseeable future, the nuclear
weapons states can continue to uphold the NPT’s Article VI disarmament obligation, but only
as a theoretical possibility whose implementation must be postponed indefinitely.
The demand for complete peace and harmony is little more than a trick. It is impossible to
guarantee the absence of conflicts in international relations. And, in fact, it is not necessary for
nuclear disarmament. The mistake is to assume that nuclear weapons could be used in any
conflict whatsoever. Their nature and the widespread norm against their use determine a very
narrow range of situations when employment of nuclear weapons or a nuclear threat would be
feasible and credible. Such conflicts are very few. In the vast majority of situations, nuclear
weapons will never enter the picture in any event, whether they exist or not.
Furthermore, conflicts may not need to be resolved completely at first – they have to be
stabilized just enough to prevent the threat of a major war. For example, long-standing
conflicts in the Middle East do not need to be completely resolved to rule out the possibility of
nuclear use: it is sufficient to ensure that a number of major players in the region forego threats
to Israel. This is difficult certainly, but by no means impossible – the example of Egypt, which
concluded a peace treaty with Israel – testifies to that. The proliferation of international
institutions and regimes in the post-World War II decades suggests that we may now possess
a much better capability to manage conflicts instead of plunging into a fight as in the 19th or
early 20th century.
In fact, one of the greatest impediments on the path of nuclear disarmament seems to be the
continuing threat of proliferation (which, in part, is generated by the delays with disarmament,
creating a vicious circle). Certainly the threat of continued nuclear proliferation makes it harder
Pag e 13
for the nuclear weapons states to push for nuclear disarmament, both with their domestic
constituencies and those states feeling under threat from new proliferators.
In the end, if the arguments about the war-prevention qualities of nuclear weapons are
unpacked, the well-entrenched notion that a nuclear capability was useful in balancing Soviet
conventional superiority during the Cold War is highly deceptive and counterproductive.
Adherence to this view automatically justifies the current nuclear policies of Russia and
Pakistan. Claims by NATO that it does not represent a threat to Russia, and similar claims by
India with regard to Pakistan, hardly change anything. So long as the habit of basing defense
policy on the worst-case scenarios continues to dominate policy planning, these countries will
continue to think of nuclear weapons as a balance against conventionally superior neighbors.
The fact that the United States and NATO have not rescinded their Cold War justification for
reliance on nuclear weapons makes them an example to emulate and forces the United States
and NATO to accept, even if tacitly, the logic of the Russian and the Pakistani positions.
Instability and uncertainty at zero are overstated
It is argued that while nuclear disarmament is highly desirable, the path to zero is so fraught
with dangers that the world will be better off with the status quo. There are essentially three
significant numbers that matter for nuclear weapons: zero, one and a hundred.25 Zero (true
zero) is the absence nuclear weapons and hence of the ability to launch a nuclear attack. One
nuclear weapon, if used, would cause horrendous suffering for those attacked but not the end
of civilization. One nuclear weapon, if found in a world supposed to be free of nuclear
weapons, could sabotage attempts to sustain zero depending on the circumstances and thus
its significance is political and psychological rather than military. One nuclear weapon if held
back deliberately from the disarmament process could sabotage nuclear disarmament and
nonproliferation progress. A hundred nuclear weapons (or a few hundred depending on their
yields and targets) could effectively destroy a country’s ability to function for decades.
The fear expressed is that if nuclear disarmament proceeds towards zero nuclear weapons, at
low numbers, each nuclear weapon becomes increasingly valuable as a proportion of the
whole. There are people who imagine, for example, that the threat of nuclear use will increase
at low numbers. They speculate that it may be possible to “win” a nuclear war, i.e., eliminate
the opponent’s nuclear forces in the first strike. Or they imagine a situation in which two or
more states with small arsenals combine nuclear forces against another state.
There are others that see a strong incentive to fabricate secretly one or two nuclear weapons
because even such a small number will give its possessor immense leverage vis-à-vis the rest
of the world. Many of the fears that surround the transition to very low numbers are centered
on the belief that each nuclear weapon becomes more significant, more valuable as numbers
decrease. Evidence suggests that the opposite is true, however. The four years when the
United States held nuclear monopoly and the longer period when it enjoyed clear superiority
25 Thanks to Dr Jay Davis for this insight.
Pag e 14
over the Soviet Union (superiority further amplified by the scarcity of effective intercontinental
delivery means in the Soviet Union) yielded remarkably few tangible gains. Based on that
experience, we can anticipate that when nuclear arsenals make the circle and return to single
digits or low dozens imbalances or even nuclear monopoly measured in single digits will not
matter, meaning that the problem of “low levels” will not become an obstacle to
denuclearization.
Perhaps even more significantly, a small number of nuclear weapons, if used, could inflict
great destruction, but could hardly win a war – as evidenced by the only use of these weapons
in combat against Japan, (See Appendix 1 for a more in-depth analysis of the U.S. bombing in
Japan.) Small numbers of nuclear weapons are unlikely to provide a state with an
overwhelming advantage; they are perhaps more likely to saddle the state that attempts to use
them or even just to threaten use with massive problems. Such a state could become an
outcast in the international system with all other key states aligned against it. That is, a small
number of nuclear weapons in an otherwise non-nuclear world could well be a liability rather
than an advantage.
If the nuclear weapons states have agreed to reduce numbers to a very low level and head to
zero, it is because, the value of nuclear weapons has been understood as useless, akin to the
Paris Gun (or the Bat Bomb or Snark missile26), and so numbers are no longer significant.
Indeed, a world with increasing numbers of nuclear weapons possessors is hardly more stable
than one with decreasing numbers of weapons and possessors, and there are well-tested
verification measures that can be put in place now, and in the future, to address the issues of
uncertainties and risks in nuclear disarmament.
So, the tradition upholding the legitimacy of nuclear weapons relies on scant evidence. The
nuclear status quo is not supported by a comparison with other weapon systems, the risk of
nuclear instability at low numbers, or the risk of conventional war. Giving up nuclear weapons
is neither impossible nor more dangerous than the world we are living in and may indeed lead
to a safer world – at least one without risk of nuclear war.27
II.2. Charismatic legitimacy, coercion and deterrence
It is sometimes said that because nuclear weapons are “special” and their ability to coerce is
unrivaled, any comparison between conventional and nuclear attacks is pointless. Leaving
aside the point that the only evidence for their “unrivaled” ability to coerce is the destruction of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which will be shown not to have been coerced, this notion is based
on a misapprehension.
26 “Weird, Whacked and Useless Weapons,” Military Channel Web site, http://military.discovery.com/tv/backyard-
battlefield/weird-weapons/weird-weapons.html.
27 The idea that a nuclear catastrophe would be the only way to get to zero should be methodically challenged,
because it is the strongest tool to invalidate the efforts to get to zero on moral grounds.
Pag e 15
This position is perhaps best exemplified by Herman Kahn writing in his 1965 book, On
Escalation28:
Despite the fact that nuclear weapons have already been used
twice, and the nuclear sword has been rattled many times, one
can argue that for all practical purposes nuclear war is still (and
hopefully will remain) so far from our experience that it is difficult to
reason from, or illustrate arguments by, analogies from history.
Thus, many of our concepts and doctrines must be based on
abstract and analytical considerations.
The belief in the exceptional nature of nuclear weapons is widespread. As Fred Kaplan wrote
in 1983: "In the absence of any reality that was congenial to their abstract theorizing, the
strategists in power treated the theory as if it were reality. For those mired in thinking about it
aIl day, every day, in the corridors of officialdom, nuclear strategy had become the stuff of a
living dreamworld."29 We will therefore bring history back in and reassess the three main
supposed exceptional properties of these weapons: their coercive power,30 deterrent power
and incomparable technological achievement.
Nuclear non-coercion: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
There are some who claim that President Eisenhower used the threat of nuclear weapons to
coerce successfully the North Koreans into agreeing to end the Korean war, but historians
disagree and the record is far from clear.31 However, the most common case for the use of
nuclear weapons is based on the argument that bombings on Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki
ended World War II. We will examine these cases in detail and provide additional evidence to
show that nuclear threats did not provide significant leverage to those who issued them and
that their actual use would not have a coercive effect.32
The first – and the only use of nuclear weapons in war – was by the United States against
Japan in 1945. According to the traditional U.S. interpretation, the decision to use nuclear
weapons was motivated by the desire to end the war quickly and reduce the number of U.S.
casualties that would have been unavoidable had the United States been forced to land in
Japan, most likely in 1946.33
28 Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios, New York, Frederick A. Praeger, 1965, p. 134.
29 Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1983, p. 390.
30 On the origins of that idea, see Anne Harrington de Santana, “Nuclear Weapons as the Currency of Power:
Deconstructing the Fetishism of Force,” Nonproliferation Review, 16, No. 3, 2009.
31 Richard K. Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance, Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution, 1987, pp.
31-47.
32 A full version of this section is found in Appendix 2.
33 This view has always been questioned by Russia which regarded the use of nuclear weapons against Japan as
a “message” to Moscow in the emerging Cold War confrontation.
Pag e 16
Recent historical research in Japan and not-so-recent research from the Soviet archives
demonstrate that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not significantly influence the
willingness of Japan’s General Staff and government to fight (similarly neither did the Tokyo
fire bombings). Rather the declaration of war by the Soviet Union on 8 August 1945 brought
the Pacific War to an end, because only at that point did Japan find itself in a no-win situation
of fighting on two fronts simultaneously.
Even a cursory examination of the facts shows that there are serious problems with the tale we
have been telling ourselves about nuclear weapons for the last sixty-five years. And it is worth
examining the truth about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because so much of the
international nuclear security structure has been founded on these beliefs.
Hiroshima is regularly described as the worst attack against a city in history, mostly by people
who oppose nuclear weapons. The facts are quite different and the exaggeration is part of
what gives nuclear weapons their psychological power. The U.S. Air Force bombed 68 cities in
the summer of 1945, and it was one of the most devastating campaigns of city attacks in the
history of mankind. Graph the number of people killed in each of the 68 city attacks that
summer, and Hiroshima is second. Tokyo, the conventional attack that opened the campaign
in March, is first. Graph the square miles destroyed and Hiroshima is fourth. Three other cities
had more total square miles destroyed with firebombs and conventional high explosives.
Graph the proportion of each city that was destroyed, and the outcome is even more striking.
Hiroshima was seventeenth. Toyoma, attacked at the beginning of August, was 99.5%
destroyed. Clearly, Hiroshima was not outside the scale of the conventional attacks against
other Japanese cities that summer.34
The crucial event in that first week of August was the decision by Japan’s leaders to consider
unconditional surrender for the first time in a meeting on 9 August. The bombing of Hiroshima
occurred three days earlier – indeed Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori requested a meeting of
the Supreme Council to discuss the bombing of Hiroshima on 8 August,. but had his request
turned down. The Hiroshima bombing did not cause the crisis, and indeed the Supreme
Council was already meeting, already discussing surrender, when news of the bombing of
Nagasaki reached Tokyo early in the afternoon of 9 August, so the Nagasaki bombing was not
the reason for considering surrender.
What, then, could have caused Japan’s leaders to change their minds and suddenly meet to
discuss absolute surrender? At midnight on the night of 8 August the Soviet Union, which had
been neutral, declared war and launched an invasion of Japanese-held territory in Manchuria,
on Sakhalin Island and elsewhere. It was a massive, overwhelming attack by more than 1.5
million men that drove Japan’s forces reeling back.
34 Destruction figures are based on United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Vol. IX, “The Strategic Air
Operations of Very Heavy Bombardment in the War Against Japan,” in Pacific Report No. 66, New York, Garland,
1976, p. 43.
Pag e 17
On the morning of 9 August, as news of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (and other places)
began to filter into official circles in Tokyo, orders were drawn up declaring martial law – orders
that were put into effect later that same day. No such break with ordinary routine occurred
when Hiroshima was bombed three days earlier. Also on that morning, in a private meeting of
Army officers planning strategy for the Supreme Council and Cabinet meetings later that day,
Army Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe Toroshiro suggested that the military overthrow the
Emperor and declare a military dictatorship.35 No such extreme responses were considered
after the bombing of Hiroshima.
Word of the bombing of Nagasaki arrived early in the afternoon of 9 August while the full
Cabinet was discussing unconditional surrender. What is remarkable about this news is that it
does not appear to have substantially changed the debate in the Cabinet or even remained a
matter of discussion for very long. When the news arrived, the Cabinet was deadlocked over
whether to consider unconditional surrender. After a brief discussion the Cabinet remained
deadlocked and went on to talk about other issues. This second bombing does not appear to
have changed any minds or had any appreciable impact on the discussion.
In the spring of 1945, Japan was already largely defeated and Japan’s leaders knew it. They
hoped, however, through diplomacy or battle to win better terms than simple surrender.
Research in the last twenty years has made clear that these were the only two options:
Japan’s ruling elite believed that no other plan for securing an acceptable surrender merited
attention or effort. Once the Soviet Union intervened, hopes for a mediated settlement were
extinguished; Japan surrendered because the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of
Manchuria, Sakhalin Island and other territories deprived it of any viable options. They
surrendered, in other words, because they had no choice. The Soviet declaration of war and
invasion was strategically decisive; bombing two more cities in a campaign that had already
bombed 66 other cities, was not.
Hindsight is not always 20-20. We see Hiroshima in a particular way precisely because we
have been influenced by the myth of Hiroshima since 1945. We "know" that Hiroshima had a
big impact on Japan's leaders (even though the evidence contradicts that “knowledge”)
because we "know" that it forced them to surrender. The facts show one thing, but we still
retrospectively decide another. Of course, many people believe that the threat of a “rain of
ruin” coerced Japan to surrender, but now we know that this was not the case.
Possessing nuclear weapons provides little leverage
Despite expectations to the contrary, the United States' nuclear monopoly in the four years
after World War II did not yield significant diplomatic influence. Secretary of State James
Byrnes is supposed to have told friends that nuclear weapons gave him an inestimable
35 Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, New York, Random House, 1999, pp.
288-289.
Pag e 18
advantage and “assured success in negotiations.” He came back from negotiations with the
USSR chastened, saying that the Soviets are “tough, mean, and they don’t scare.”36
Nuclear weapons did not prevent the Soviet Union from occupying and holding most of
Eastern Europe in the years after World War II. These were years during which the United
States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. But the Soviets were not, apparently, intimidated.
In fact, they were so little afraid that in 1948 they cut off access to Berlin, precipitating a crisis
that could have led to war. Nuclear weapons had no impact on events in China, where
communist forces swept to victory despite U.S. possession of nuclear weapons. Nuclear
weapons appear to have had little influence on these or many other important events that
occurred between 1945 and 1949 (when the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon37).
During the Suez crisis in October 1956, British nuclear weapons did not work as an “equalizer”
as some strategists suppose. Like the not yet nuclear-armed French and Israelis, engaged in a
joint military expedition after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, the United Kingdom was
forced to withdraw following pressure from both the United States and Soviet Union.38
Nuclear weapons also failed to give their possessors a decisive military advantage in war. The
United States was fought to a draw in Korea and subsequently lost a war fought in Vietnam,
despite possessing the “ultimate weapon.” The Soviets as well suffered their own humiliating
defeat in their own guerrilla war in Afghanistan. Since the Vietnam War, the United States has
fought in Kosovo, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq. In none of these wars was the United
States’ opponent intimidated into surrender nor was a practical use for nuclear weapons
devised.
Against these failures are often offered a range of explanations. The enemy had an ally who
possessed nuclear weapons, the war was not sufficiently central to the interests of the nuclear
power to justify using weapons of last resort, and so on. The evidence provides little support
for the notion that nuclear weapons provide diplomatic leverage.
36 For U.S. expectations, see Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War 1945-
1950, New York, Vintage Books, 1982, especially chapters 2 and 3. For the thin harvest of nuclear influence, see
McGeorge Bundy “The Unimpressive Record of Atomic Diplomacy” in Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis, editors,
International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues
, New York, HarperCollins, 1996.
37 Note however that the United States and USSR could not reach each other directly with nuclear weapons until
1957, although the United States had bases in Europe which would have allowed it to bomb the Soviet Union with
nuclear weapons from 1945 onwards. One of the ways in which Truman tried to use nuclear weapons to coerce
the USSR during the Berlin crisis was to order bombers that had been modified to carry nuclear weapons to
Europe.
38 This case is also interesting in terms of the credibility problem of nuclear threats: Marechal Boulganine asked
how France would feel if she were attacked by a country with “modern and terrible” means of destruction, but this
threat was apparently not taken seriously for long. Dominique Mongin, La bombe atomique française 1945-1958,
Brussels, Bruylant, 1997, p. 441.
Pag e 19
An exceptional technology?
Hitherto, the development of nuclear weapons signified a certain technological prowess, as it
was a new technology and therefore no easy matter to develop the know-how and acquire the
material wherewithal for their manufacture. This argument seems to be important in states that
have developed the technology – at least at that time. For example, South African President
Frederik de Klerk, while presenting South Africa as a pioneer of nuclear disarmament, was
unable to hide his pride in the fact that South African engineers had developed this technology
without significant foreign assistance. It is true that basic nuclear weapons technology was
developed in the 1940s, but it is also true that the fact that countries such as Libya failed to
make significant progress in developing a nuclear weapons capability over more than thirty
years forms part of the “technical prowess” appeal of nuclear weapons. The scientific and
technical understanding is certainly within the grasp of almost all countries; it is the access to
weapons-useable nuclear materials that is the hardest technical step in the development of a
clandestine program. Prestige was a significant factor in India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear
weapons programs in the 1970-1990s, and still has an impact in the discussions in and on
North Korea and Iran. Prestige does not only work outside, it is politically useful to inspire
domestic audiences as we have seen in India, Pakistan and North Korea. The argument too
often stated that North Korea could go for the bomb with old technology and poorly trained
engineers does not hold water.39 It is now not so much the technology in itself that is
considered extraordinary but the combination of the sophistication of this technology, its
scarcity and prohibition.
A nuclear weapons program is prestigious because it is difficult to achieve on a technological
level. Getting this technology also grants prestige because it is rare and associated with great
power status. The combination is important because anything rare is not necessarily valued.
And nuclear weapons technology can be desirable because those who already have it – and
many others – have built many hurdles to prevent others from getting it. In other words, getting
it is prestigious because it is forbidden.
There is no question that there have never been any weapons like nuclear weapons. They are
remarkably powerful weapons. But that does not make them magic, or give them special
powers. One of the fundamental mistakes of much of the thinking about nuclear weapons has
been to be overly impressed with means, while ignoring ends. It is not surprising that this
happened: nuclear explosions are awe inspiring and impressive events. But nuclear weapons
have been around long enough that common sense should have returned.
In human affairs ends are almost always more important than means. Kill someone with a knife
or kill them with a soft, fluffy pillow – you will still be charged with murder. Nuclear weapons are
fundamentally means and the fact that they are new technology or remarkably impressive to
look at, does not change the outcome of their use. The reason Japan’s leaders were not overly
39 Thanks to Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress for making this point.
Pag e 20
impressed with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that they had had cities
bombed before.
Nuclear weapons may indeed be special but the outcome of their use is not: cities have been
destroyed in war going back to the beginning of time. Why does it make sense to imagine that
the means one uses to accomplish a task are more important than the end result?
The argument here is that nuclear bombings deliver a special horror that is unlike other military
actions. There is no question that nuclear weapons create horrible outcomes. But that does not
mean that those horrible outcomes give states a unique power to coerce. If the effects of
nuclear weapons are peculiarly horrible and that because of this unique horror they are far
more likely to coerce, then nuclear weapons are weapons that you have to keep because they
give you a power that no other weapon can provide. If you concede that nuclear weapons
create special horror and that that horror creates a unique power to coerce you cannot abolish
them. Nuclear weapons are new, remarkable technology: “special,” if you like; the results of
their use are not.
As far as the connection between scarcity and prestige is concerned, there are examples of
things that have very little value that we treat as the most important thing in the world. They
surround us in our day to day life. The answer to this riddle was provided by Anne Harrington
de Santana.40 Harrington solves the puzzle of how nuclear weapons could have so few real
uses and yet be treated as if they were vital.
Harrington argues that nuclear weapons are like currency. We live our lives (most of us) as if
money were the most important thing on the face of the earth (or at least one of the most
important things). But if we stop and think about it, money has very little practical value. We
can’t eat it, we can’t build a shelter out of it, we can’t wear it as clothing (not if we don’t want
the clothes ripped off our backs, that is.) Money is an object that we treat as important but
which has little practical usefulness in itself.
Consider a man washed ashore on a desert island who is magically given a wish. He can have
anything. What would he wish for? A great stack of hundred dollar bills? Or a Swiss army
knife? A pile of gold coins? Or fish hooks and some good nylon line? A credit card with a
$10,000 spending limit? Or a pair of rabbits, one male, one female? On a desert island, money
is worthless. It is only in a society that money has value.
And different societies can value different currency. In the United States, people tend to think
of money as universal because they can take their dollars and spend them almost anywhere in
the world. But Mexicans cannot bring pesos and spend them in Vermont. Although pesos can
buy you whatever you want in Mexico City, they will not get you even a bottle of maple syrup in
Burlington. You have to take those pesos to a special institution and trade them for the local
currency, for dollars.
40 Anne Harrington de Santana, “Nuclear Weapons as the Currency of Power,” op. cit., p. 333.
Pag e 21
Harrington reminds us of the Portuguese traders who, while exploring the western coast of
Africa in the 1400s, discovered African tribes whose whole economy was based on cowrie
shells. Cowrie shells are the small, rounded shells with a horizontal opening that looks like a
mouth with small black teeth. They are common on beaches throughout Europe. But they were
rare in the world of these African tribes.
The local people believed the shells had medicinal and religious power. A bracelet or a
necklace of cowrie shells could ward off sickness or prevent harm from coming to the wearer.
They brought good fortune and protected the life of the person who owned them. A man with a
large necklace of cowrie shells was a rich man.
The Portuguese collected barrels of cowrie shells from the beaches at home and brought them
for trade in Africa. They could not believe their luck. The tribes were willing to trade cowrie
shells for gold. The Portuguese were dumbstruck. It was a chance for them to make fortunes
exchanging something that was worth nothing for something that was tremendously valuable.
They must have laughed to themselves all the way back to Lisbon.
But the indigenous people were laughing, too. They knew that gold was entirely useless. You
couldn’t eat it, you couldn’t wear it. You could build a house from it, but why would you want
to? They had mines which supplied lots of this heavy, shiny metal. In their world gold was
common and shells were rare. And shells were the basis of their whole economy, the most
valuable thing in the world. And these stupid Portuguese were willing to trade the most
valuable thing in the world for a common, worthless metal. “What a deal!” they must have
thought to themselves.
Currency is a medium of exchange. The physical object that you use as currency is essentially
unimportant. It can be lumps of metal, it can be (as it was in ancient Rome) salt or it can be
pieces of paper with particular pictures and numbers on them. The actual object is largely
beside the point. It is the value that is assigned to it that matters. People could choose to use
buttons for currency. Or any object that was durable and relatively rare.
Different societies can (and do) set up their currencies in different ways. The value of money
does not depend on the practical value of the materials that make up the coin or bill. A five
dollar bill isn’t worth five dollars because the paper and ink it is printed with are worth that
much. Its value is settled by common agreement. We agree to treat this piece of paper as
money, and therefore we can trade it for goods and services. Its value is assigned by common
agreement, not by the cost of the materials it is made from or what you can actually use it for.
And this is Harrington’s central insight: nuclear weapons are tokens of exchange. They have
become a currency of power. We use them to evaluate how powerful different countries are.
We use them to trade threats back and forth. We use them to judge who should be seen as a
nation of importance. It is often pointed out that the permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council are all nuclear weapons states. All bar one of them, however, did not possess
nuclear weapons when the UN Security Council was established – nuclear weapons followed
their world-power status. Nuclear weapons are tokens of power and as we have seen their
actual usefulness is not essential for them to play this role.
Pag e 22
It is perfectly possible for a society to give value to a not very valuable object. The African
tribes gave value to cowrie shells. Harrington’s insight is to understand that it is possible to see
nuclear weapons as a currency. Because their primary function is deterrence and other forms
of threatening, and because threatening does not require practical tests to determine how
useful something actually is, it is possible for nuclear weapons to be treated as vital while still
being untested. Isn’t it possible, Harrington asks, that nuclear weapons are our cowrie shells?
We treat them as if they were magical and others treat them that way too, but it might turn out
that their practical value is relatively limited. The fact that nuclear weapons provide status
today does not mean that they are the only things that could be used as a status symbol. Since
status is a socially created attribute, new and different status symbols could be designated
tomorrow.
Using or threatening use
If nuclear weapons were to be actually used, the historical record suggests that this would
more likely strengthen resistance instead of coercing the victims of the strike. It is important to
note in this discussion that we have not distinguished greatly between “deterrence” and
“compellence” as nuclear theorists are wont to do. The reason for our contrariness in this
regard is part of our whole examination of nuclear deterrence. Compellence (threatening
someone so that you compel someone to do something) and deterrence (threatening someone
so that they do not do something) have been distinguished in nuclear strategic studies since
the 1960s. This allowed nuclear deterrence to be uncontaminated by the documented failure of
nuclear coercion – indeed, we suspect the distinction to be an after-the-fact intellectual
construction to explain the whole string of nuclear coercion threats that obviously failed. Do
compellence and deterrence with conventional force show a striking and measurable
difference in success rates?41 In addition, it is worth examining here the distinction between
the threat of use and the actual use of nuclear weapons. At the very basic level, a threat will
deter if there is belief by the threatened that it could well be executed. Therefore, the
distinction between the threat of use and the actual use vanishes at a moral level at least.
Furthermore, over time, if the threat of use does not seem to be backed up by the probability of
use, then any credible deterrent effect will disappear. Documented threats42 demonstrate two
main points. The first is that threats have been made over a period of several decades and
thus there hangs a question mark over the behavior of the nuclear weapons states. Second,
the threats have not worked in that they appear to have no impact – perhaps they were not
believed.
41 See John Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1985.
42 The most comprehensive treatment of this subject is in Richard Betts. For a further list of threats, see Daniel
Ellsberg, "Roots of the Upcoming Nuclear Crisis (or, Dr. Strangelove Lives: How Those Who Do Not Love the
Bomb Should Learn to Start Worrying)", Chapter 4 in David Krieger (ed.), The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear
Weapons, Transaction Publishers, 2009. See also Samuel Black and Shireen Havewala, “Nuclear Threats 1970-
2010,” Henry L. Stimson Center, http://www.stimson.org/nuke/pdf/Nuclear_Threats_1970-2010.pdf.
Pag e 23
There are five categories of targets possible in a nuclear war, and they form the basis for
thinking about the threat of use, as well as the actual use of nuclear weapons. They are as
follows: 1) leaders, 2) civilians, 3) military personnel, 4) economic targets and 5) the country as
a whole. Of these five targets, civilians are the group most likely to suffer from nuclear
weapons regardless of the actual set of targets, and civilians also form the group that is the
easiest to destroy with nuclear weapons. There are three reasons for this.
First, their utility for attacks against cities (and hence civilians) has been characteristic of
nuclear weapons since the very beginning. The first – and so far only -- use of nuclear
weapons was against cities. When their power is described to the uninitiated, nuclear weapons
are almost always defined by saying “one weapon is powerful enough to blow up a city.”
Discussions about nuclear war have always been filled with talk of attacks against cities.
Second, attacks against leaders, military targets and (especially) economic targets are likely to
result in large-scale civilian losses. Even when attacks are limited to relatively isolated military
targets, it is difficult to prevent considerable civilian losses. In a now famous study in 1976,
physicists Frank von Hippel and Sydney Drell demonstrated that a “limited” nuclear attack on
U.S. nuclear forces could result in as many as 110 million civilian deaths.43
Third, any war that involves nuclear weapons is likely to end up targeting civilians. Almost all
scenarios for nuclear war include the possibility that the war will “get out of control” – a
euphemism for unrestricted attacks against civilians. In fact, it has been a staple of deterrence
theories that a response strike must have “counter-value” properties, i.e., intentionally target
population centers. The great majority of nuclear deterrence threats seem likely to involve
threats to attack civilians. It makes sense, therefore, to examine the threats to attack civilians
first.
It seems intuitively obvious that a threat to destroy an entire city at a single blow would
necessarily coerce in any conceivable circumstances. But what seems intuitively obvious is not
always the case.
Review the record from the beginning of recorded history and the story is largely the same:
attacks against cities or civilians do not lead to victory. Sometimes cities are destroyed after
war has been won (Carthage) but never does city destruction or more generalized slaughter of
civilians lead to surrender. Attila the Hun’s attack on and destruction of Aquileia in 452 AD did
not convince the Western Roman Empire to surrender and had little obvious impact on the
military campaign. In the Khwarazmian war of 1219 to 1221, Genghis Khan carried out one of
the most comprehensive campaigns of city destruction in the history of warfare. At least eight
cities were destroyed, and perhaps several million civilians killed. The city attacks could not
have been more thoroughly or brutally carried out. Yet, the Khwarazmian forces fought on for
three long years. The war only came to an end when the last Khwarazmian army, under the
son of the former Shah, was defeated on the banks of the Indus in 1221. The war did not end
when cities were destroyed or civilians killed, but only when the last army was defeated.
43 Sydney Drell, and Frank von Hippel, “Limited Nuclear War,” Scientific American, November 1976.
Pag e 24
One of the most remarkable cases of city destruction occurred during the Thirty Years War.
Tilly, commanding Imperial forces, besieged the German city of Magdeburg and its Protestant
defenders. When the city fell it was burned and some 30,000 died. What is notable about the
attack, however, is that this act of slaughter did not lead the Protestant forces to capitulate. In
fact, Protestant recruitment and support surged throughout northern Europe. Far from bringing
the war to a close, the fighting continued for another seventeen years.
All of these examples are in line with the American experience during the American Civil War
of 1860-1865. The Southern states did not surrender when Atlanta was burned in the summer
of 1864, nor did they cease fighting when their capital, Richmond, Virginia, was captured and
partially burned in 1865. The war only came to an end when Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern
Virginia was surrounded at Appomatox and J. E. Johnston’s army surrendered in North
Carolina. Only when the armies were defeated – or faced certain defeat (as with Japan) – did
war come to an end.
Consider the record of World War II. The Japanese did not surrender even though sixty-eight
of their cities were bombed. Eighty percent of all the cities over 100,000 people were
destroyed. Three hundred and thirty thousand civilians died. Yet Japan’s leaders thought so
little about city bombing that they barely even mentioned it in the Supreme Council, the
effective ruling body of Japan at the time. It was discussed once in May 1945 in passing and
once on the night they discussed surrender.44 On the evidence, it is difficult to build a case that
city bombing was a major factor in Japanese officials’ decision-making at all.
Germany suffered the highest loss of civilian life due to bombing of any country in World War
II. Some 570,000 civilians were killed in a massive campaign of attacks against civilians in all
the main German cities. Hitler, at the outset of World War II, was concerned that bombing
attacks against Germany would damage German morale. In the event, the German people
took a fearsome pounding without giving up the will to continue the fight.
British civilians seem to have had their resolve stiffened by German bombing attacks against
cities. No Member of Parliament rose to urge surrender when London was attacked or
Coventry devastated. There is no evidence that Winston Churchill ever considered surrender
because of the German attacks on civilians.45 As Bernard Brodie has said, “The Allies learned
after the war that the attack on enemy morale had been on the whole a waste of bombs . . ..”46
44 Frank, Downfall, op. cit., p. 294.
45 In fact, far from being afraid that city attacks might drive the United Kingdom from the war, there is some
evidence that Prime Minister Winston Churchill used British cities as a sponge to soak up German air attacks and
to divert them away from precious military assets. In the first years of the war there had been a commitment not to
bomb cities. Historians claim that Churchill seized on an accidental bombing of London on the night of 24 August
to launch a counter raid on Berlin. The next day Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to shift away from attacks on British
airfields (which were close to breaking the Royal Air Force) and concentrate on attacking London and other cities.
George Quester notes, “Churchill admits his desire, in late August, for an immediate shifting of the massive
Luftwaffe offensive from the RAF airstrips to London, and he admits his personal responsibility for the bombings
Pag e 25
The historical record is convincingly one-sided: destroying cities does not coerce surrender.
There are no instances – at least none discussed in the literature – of cities being destroyed
and states surrendering. This clear record of failure raises serious doubts about the
effectiveness of the use of nuclear weapons – attacks against civilians paradoxically seems to
strengthen resistance, rather than breaking the will of people to resist. This is as true for terror
campaigns as it is in classic military conflict.47
What nuclear weapons do best is kill massive numbers of civilians. We imagine, because our
mental image of so many civilian deaths is so horrible, that threats to kill civilians en masse
must surely coerce. There are two startling flaws with this intuition: not only are there no
unambiguous instances of such a threat working, but even the act carried out does not seem
to have achieved the desired end. This seems counter-intuitive, but it is worth keeping in mind
when evaluating claims about the coercive ability of nuclear weapons.
Few military leaders hesitate to kill civilians if there is some justifiable military goal in prospect.
And the unimportance of civilians is so well established that Just War doctrine takes account of
the right of military forces to kill civilians who get in the way of justified military action. It is true
that as the number of civilians killed rises, so the moral objections to killing them also rise. But
the numbers can rise extraordinarily high without the moral objections overwhelming necessity.
As Hugo Slim wrote: “Most warring states do not see civilians as humanitarian agencies might
like them to. Either they do not find civilians particularly innocent or they decide that, innocent
or not, killing them is useful, necessary or inevitable.”48
Many people seem to believe that the truly appalling thought of killing hundreds of thousands
or even millions of innocent civilians necessarily would deter leaders. But this assumption has
not been closely examined. At a relatively low level of strategic importance, when relatively
unimportant interests are at stake, horror and morality surely do influence decision-makers. All
other things being equal, most leaders would like to avoid unnecessary civilian deaths – and
this may be even more compelling with instantaneous global communications. But as the
stakes rise, the importance of horror and morality decreases, the emphasis on necessity rises,
and decision-makers become more willing to allow innocents to suffer. Bruno Tertrais,49 for
example, notes “Most modern states have less tolerance for human suffering and destruction
than was the case until 1945.” He then makes the case that massive casualties caused by
bombings have a stronger effect on decision-making and thus provide a stronger coercive
force. It is certainly true that there seems to be less stomach for violence since World War II
of Berlin begun on August 25; it seems quite likely that he was aware of the probable connection between the
two.” George H. Quester, “Strategic Bombing in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, pp.
249-250.
46 Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959, p.103.
47 See, for example, Max Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2, Fall
2006.
48 Hugo Slim, Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War, London, Hurst Publishers Ltd., 2007, p. 3.
49 Bruno Tertrais, “Nuclear Myth-Busting,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol.16, No. 2, p. 133.
Pag e 26
(although the Iraqis, Iranians, Cambodians and Rwandans, for example, might see things
differently).
However, rather than be complacent, remember that at the end of the 19th century the
European Victorians congratulated themselves on their civility and good manners. There might
be wars in the colonies (fighting savages), they said, but there would never be savage war
again in Europe. We have evolved too far, they said, our commercial interests are too
intertwined, we are too cultured for the sort of brutal, rampaging war that engulfed all of Europe
during the 1600s or the Napoleonic era. Massive wars like that, they confidently and
complacently asserted, are gone forever. World War I disabused them with a savage fury.
It is hard to make a case for the importance of civilian deaths in preventing or halting war
based on historical examples. There is a strong emotional desire (particularly among civilians)
for civilian deaths to matter in war, but attempts to bolster this emotional desire with evidence
prove remarkably frustrating. A review of three thousand years of history by serious scholars
turns up no war that was won by killing civilians or destroying cities. There are no well-known
examples of leaders who are praised for surrendering in order to bring the suffering of their
people to an end. In war, it seems, civilians are expected to suffer – although there are many
instances of leaders earning immortal fame for gloriously fighting until the bitter end. As in the
cases of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a general overview of the bombing of cities and civilians,
has not proven the coercive efficacy of nuclear weapons.
The claims for nuclear deterrence
A great deal is claimed for nuclear deterrence. It keeps us safe, stabilizes crises, deters
attacks, offsets conventional force imbalances, allows us to affect political events from afar,
protects our friends, awes and influences, and acts as the ultimate insurance of national
survival. The first problem with nuclear deterrence is a generalized one. Even if one were
inclined to believe everything said about nuclear deterrence, the sheer multiplicity and diversity
of the claims made about it might be enough to inspire skepticism. How could it be possible for
one thing to accomplish so much in so many different arenas? This faith-based approach
suggests specific powers assigned to nuclear weapons that lend them “charismatic legitimacy”.
The high stakes and political determination to make a case for possession of the bomb lead to
a quest for certainty and knowledge in areas where it is not reachable. Therein lies the
deadlock of ideological thinking in the disarmament debate.50
Therefore, our examination of the deterrent power of nuclear weapons does not pretend to
deny it entirely – indeed any weapon potentially has a deterrent value on an opponent even if
the credibility of its use is low.51 Rather we are calling into question – and casting grave doubts
50 On that point, see Benoît Pélopidas, “Critical Thinking about Nuclear Weapons”, Nonproliferation Review, Vol.
17, No.1, March 2010 and The seduction of the Impossible, op. cit.
51 This is the difference between a deterrent effect and a strategy of deterrence. You can have the first one
without the intent that makes the second one.
Pag e 27
on – the theories of nuclear deterrence and asking for more than a theory. For such risks and
huge consequences, on which so much rests, we need strong evidence that nuclear
deterrence works. The costs are too high to wish otherwise. Deterrence is the most commonly
accepted quality of nuclear weapons52 – if only because advocacy of using them for an
unprovoked offensive war is politically and morally unacceptable – and in debates on nuclear
weapons it is an area where nuclear weapons proponents and arms control advocates find
they can compromise.53 However, it is striking how widely accepted nuclear deterrence is,
given the paucity of real evidence in support of it.54
The proponents of nuclear weapons claim two different levels of legitimization. The
maximalists see the weapons as a near-infallible shield that is strictly defensive: the misleading
notion of “nuclear umbrella.” Nuclear weapons are even seen as valuable in the anticipation of
surprises; they are claimed to be an “insurance against the unforeseeable.”55 This idea of the
perfect weapon makes abolition seem both impossible and undesirable – although it should be
noted that few advocate the widespread uptake of these excellent useful weapons. Almost all
believers in nuclear deterrence also support nuclear nonproliferation.56
However, prudent proponents of nuclear weapons would not hold such positions. They
understand and recognize the “limits of validity” of nuclear deterrence.57 Back in 1965, the
“stability-instability paradox”58 was posited. If a nuclear weapons state has sufficient numbers
of nuclear weapons to survive a first strike and is able to execute an all-out second strike, then
two nuclear-armed states might be said to have strategic nuclear deterrent stability. It has
been believed – up until now – that neither state would have enough incentive to strike first in
this bilateral relationship. All of this was imagined, of course, and relied on a great deal of
52 Freedman, Deterrence, op. cit.
53 Jeffrey Knopf shows that it was the case for the deterrent strategy as a whole, not only at the nuclear level,
during the Cold War. Critiques from the right favoring rollback over containment and deterrence as well as
proponents of disarmament and accommodation of the Soviet concerns as an effort to preserve the World War II
alliance ended up backing deterrence, which at first sight, had few strong allies. “Three Items in One: Deterrence
as Concept, Research Program and Political Issue” in T.V. Paul, Patrick Morgan and James Wirtz, eds., Complex
Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 32, 46.
54 See, for example, Ward Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 15, No. 3,
November 2008.
55 Pierre Gallois, Nuclear Weapons: Insurance Against the Unforeseeable , Paris, Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes
d’Histoire de la Défense, 1997 [in French].
56 With the exception of course of Kenneth Waltz and his school. See Kenneth Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear
Weapons: More May Better,” Adelphi Papers, Number 171, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies,
1981.
57 One of the major French nuclear strategists, Lucien Poirier explained in a France Culture interview on 13
November 2008 how he had always rejected the idea that nuclear weapons were able to prevent any kind of war.
(In his view, it was only the best possible way to prevent a nuclear attack in a probabilistic way. See Lucien
Poirier, Des strategies nucléaires, Paris, Hachette, 1977 p. 156). However, Charles Hernu had to use the
argument of the “weapon against war” to convince his fellow socialists to adopt the weapon.
58 Glenn Snyder, ‘‘The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,’’ in Paul Seabury, ed., The Balance of Power,
San Francisco, Chandler, 1965.
Pag e 28
common understanding between the two enemies. However, this “strategic stability” implied
that nuclear threats to deter lower levels of aggression, with say conventional weapons, would
lose credibility and a stronger incentive to low-intensity attacks would result as nuclear
weapons were deployed for a first-strike-second-strike configuration. Nuclear strategists have
considered this a serious limitation of the so-called deterrent value of nuclear weapons.59 Even
before this dilemma was explored by scientists, it had served as a foundation for NSC-68, a
U.S. government policy that abandoned exclusive reliance on nuclear weapons vis-à-vis the
Soviet Union, and posited a need to develop a robust conventional capability. The Soviet
Union went down the same path in the early 1960s.
Of course, prudent understanding of deterrence rejects certainty and instead postulates careful
probabilistic statements concerning the success of deterrence. Proponents will argue that
nuclear weapons should be kept for the sake of prudence, not absolute security.60 However,
the enormous consequences of the failure of nuclear deterrence as the mainstay of
international security with all of the attendant risks does not seem to be the overriding factor in
these esoteric debates. Prudent proponents tend to be critical of the maximalists.61 However,
the debate has not yet shifted from an assessment of the “absolute deterrent value” of the
weapon to an assessment of its “additional deterrent value.” The question to be debated is not
“did nuclear deterrence work?” but rather “was the nuclear component of an arsenal the
necessary cause of the absence of a given action?” How can we be sure that the deterred had
the original strong intent to do what they ended up not doing? If they had no such intent, there
was no deterrent effect even if the outcome was the one that was expected. Can the change in
behavior be related to the nuclear nature of the threat they faced? How can we be sure that
they considered the threat to be credible?62
59 Symmetrically, if you chose to retain weapons for use on the battlefield, that would make the threat of nuclear
retaliation more credible, even at low levels of aggression but that would deprive you of a way to prevent
escalation. Contemporary critiques of the paradox suggesting that South Asia never reached the level of nuclear
stability required for the paradox to apply would be useful for the delegitimization endeavor. S. Paul Kapur,
Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia, Stanford, Stanford University
Press, 2007, pp. 36-41.
60 Lucien Poirier has always insisted on what he called the limits of validity of nuclear deterrence. Not every crisis
is supposed to reach the nuclear threshold. On 13 November 2008, he repeated on France Culture that even a
nuclear attack on nonmetropolitan French territories should not be expected to trigger a nuclear response. Among
the theorists, even the proponents of the so-called “rational deterrence theory” recognize the existence of
deterrence failures. Their purpose is to defend the theory and to blame actors for not being rational enough, not to
pretend that deterrence never fails. See notably Christopher H. Achen and Duncan Snidal, “Rational Deterrence
Theory and Comparative Case Studies,” World Politics, Vol. 41, January 1989.
61 See Raymond Aron, blaming Pierre Gallois for “pushing to the absurd ideas which all held a portion of truth”
and succumbing to a “logical delirium.” Raymond Aron, The Great Debate: Theories of Nuclear Strategy, New
York, Doubleday, 1965. (Our translation from the original edition in French, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1963, p. 135.).
62 See Steven Lee, Morality, Prudence and Nuclear Weapons, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp.
119-132
Pag e 29
The problem in trying to judge the truth of claims about nuclear deterrence is that proof – the
essential ingredient of prudent judgment – is entirely missing. This suggests that what matters
here is not objective assessments but political perceptions. As we suggested earlier, in areas
where knowledge is not achievable, nuclear deterrence works as a construct in which simply
the belief in the power of nuclear weapons to deter is – in fact – the deterrence.63 We have
already shown the difficulty in assessing the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons, independently
from the existence of an intention to deter.64 If deterrence is considered just as a “coercive
strategy” using threats to influence a choice, not brute force to prevent some choices to be
taken,65 then “deterrence” depends on the beliefs of the one who is supposed to be deterred.
So, if those who are supposed to be deterred manage to convey that they do not consider
nuclear threats as credible, then the construct of nuclear deterrence is considerably
weakened.66 The Emperor may not actually be wearing any clothes.
Questioning the effectiveness and demonstrating the failures of nuclear deterrence provides
an empirical refutation of the claims for nuclear deterrence as the credibility of nuclear
retaliation is at the heart of the belief system. If it is believed that nuclear weapons can be used
toward some “rational” end, their value for potential proliferants increases dramatically. The
potential value of nuclear weapons and of the status supposedly conferred by nuclear
weapons played an important role in the decision of India and perhaps also Pakistan to “go
nuclear.” Thus, by suggesting that the threat of nuclear use can help manage a variety of
threats to international security and stability, the proponents of this logic effectively invite other
states to follow the example of the nuclear weapons states and thus promote proliferation
rather than reduce it.
If there were a concrete foundation of fact on which to base our assessment of the usefulness
of nuclear deterrence it might justify our reliance on these threats. As it is, almost all of the
conventional wisdom about nuclear deterrence is so speculative that any conclusions drawn
from it are doubtful at best. When talking about choosing between conflicting predictions about
63 Even Robert Jervis, who believes in nuclear deterrence, recognizes that experts stating that deterrence works
are in fact strengthening the deterrent effect of the weapons. Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear
Revolution, Statecraft and Prospect for Armageddon, Cornell, Cornell University Press, 1989, p. 177-178. The
opposite could be true.
64 This is what Patrick Morgan calls “general deterrence” as opposed to a strategy of deterrence based on an
intention to deter and existing deterrent threats. Cf. Deterrence Now, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
2003, chapt. 3.
65 Freedman, Deterrence, op. cit., pp. 26, 86.
66 One has to remember the reaction of the French nuclear experts after the 1996 advisory opinion of the
International Court of Justice. They did not worry about the moral attack on the idea of deterrence; they were
mostly concerned with the risk of weakening the credibility of deterrence because of external critique. See Bruno
Tertrais, La dissuasion nucléaire française après la guerre froide: continuité, ruptures, interrogations ,, in
Annuaire français des relations internationales, Vol. 1, 2000, p. 773.
Pag e 30
nuclear war, Bernard Brodie pointed out: “In these matters, to be sure, we are fundamentally
dealing with conflicting intuitions.”67
Sixty-five years of safety?
Perhaps the strongest case for the usefulness of nuclear deterrence is the claim that nuclear
deterrence helped maintain peace during the Cold War. Proponents of the efficacy of
deterrence often point to the fact that no nuclear war was fought during the Cold war – despite
many confrontations.
Nuclear threats are difficult and exasperating problems to try to sort out accurately. Certainty,
certainly not the sort of certainty that one would want to base national security policy on, is
almost impossible to find. In general historians judge that the success of these threats can
neither be proved nor disproved in most cases (exceptions are the Hiroshima case and the
threat during negotiations to end the war in Vietnam which both clearly failed).
Contrary to common belief, there is no evidence that nuclear weapons “kept the peace” during
the Cold War. All war plans drawn on both sides (including those that have been declassified
after the end of the Cold War) proceeded from the notion that the other side would have
launched the attack. If we do not have evidence that an attack was planned, how can we
assume that nuclear weapons prevented it? Perceptions are a different matter – attack was
feared during the entire Cold War, and the opponent was always suspected of preparing to
attack. It has been demonstrated, however, that even the widely touted “first-strike” Soviet
nuclear posture of the late 1970s to early 1980s resulted from a series of faulty decisions and
technical shortcomings and was “unintended” in the sense that the Soviet military aspired to
build a very different type of arsenal.68
It is important to recognize that various explanations are still competing to account for the
absence of actual use of nuclear weapons since 1945.69 Because the record is impossible to
definitely interpret, it makes no sense to make life or death decisions based on it. And, if
nuclear weapons had deterred war over the last 60 years, there is still little comfort to be drawn
from this history. We will not restate here the many cases of near-misses in which nuclear
conflict has been avoided by mere luck.70 This is because no nuclear weapon state has yet
67 Bernard Brodie, “The Development of Nuclear Strategy,” in Steven E. Miller, Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence,
Princeton University Press, 1984,
68 See Nikolai Sokov, Russian Strategic Modernization: Past and Future, Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, chapters
1 and 2.
69 Cf. François Heisbourg, “Has Nuclear Deterrence Preserved Peace?” Annuaire stratégique et militaire, Paris,
Odile Jacob, 2005 [in French].
70 For example, the Able Archer 1983 scare and others around the same time, see
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/a-cold-war-
conundrum/source.htm#HEADING1-13; see also False Alarms on the Nuclear Front by Geoffrey Forden,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/missileers/falsealarms.html; and see Alan F. Phillips, “20 Mishaps that Might Have
Pag e 31
faced a war in which its vital interests were at stake. Despite the “domino theory,” Korea and
Vietnam were, at best, peripheral to U.S. interests. Rebellion in Afghanistan did not put the
vital interests of the Soviet Union into jeopardy.
Failures to deter conventional attack
These explanations, however, cannot account for the striking failure of deterrence in both the
Yom Kippur War and the Falkland War/Guerra de las Malvinas. Twice, during the Cold War,
countries that had nuclear weapons – or were believed to have nuclear weapons – were
attacked by states that did not have nuclear weapons. In both cases the possible threat of
nuclear retaliation failed to deter. How can these failures be accounted for? One of the benefits
of nuclear deterrence is that it is supposed to protect against conventional invasion. Yet in both
of these cases nuclear weapons failed to provide this protection.
The case of Israel is particularly striking. Given the deep animus between Israel, on the one
hand, and Egypt and Syria, on the other, the repeated statements by various Arab spokesmen
that Israel had no right to exist, and the resulting probability that Israel would interpret any
attack as a threat on its very existence, the danger of a nuclear attack by Israel would seem to
be far greater than in any other instance of Cold War confrontation. Yet nuclear weapons
failed. They did not deter. In fact, they failed twice: neither Anwar Sadat, the leader of Egypt,
nor Hafez al-Assad, the leader of Syria, was deterred.71 Rather, these cases seem to
demonstrate the power of the non-use norm: attackers clearly understood that the chances of
the opponent resorting to nuclear weapons were slim, at best.
There is positive evidence that nuclear threats do not prevent conventional attacks, even in
circumstances where nuclear deterrence ought to work robustly.
Some proponents of nuclear weapons suggest that they can deter a wider range of attacks
including biological, chemical as well conventional attacks. Proponents of this deterrent value
often point to the fact that no nuclear weapon state has ever been attacked by such means
Started Accidental Nuclear War,” January 1998, http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/1998/01/00_phillips_20-
mishaps.php.
71 It might be argued that since Israel, which has a stated policy of not commenting on whether it has a nuclear
weapons program, did not announce the existence of its nuclear weapons, this is not a failure of deterrence, but
merely of knowledge. You can't be deterred by weapons you don't know exist. It seems likely that Egyptian and
Syrian intelligence services, however, would have been aware of Israel's nuclear program (if for no other reason
than it would be in Israel's interest to quietly pass word of the existence of the weapons to those it was trying to
intimidate). Even if Egypt's and Syria's intelligence services were not reporting the existence of the Israeli
weapons program, press reports were relatively widespread by 1973. In January 1969, NBC News reported that
Israel “had nuclear weapons or would soon have one.” On 18 July 1970, The New York Times reported that “for
at least two years the United States Government has been conducting its Middle East policy on the assumption
that Israel either possesses an atomic bomb or has the component parts available for quick assembly.” Avner
Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, New York, Columbia University Press, 1998, pp. 327-328; 337-338.
Pag e 32
and give three examples when such weapons were not used: Iraq in 1991, Egypt in 1967 and
1973.72
Accounts by James Baker and former Iraqi minister Tariq Aziz suggest that the nuclear threat
contained in the letter Baker gave to Aziz on behalf of President George H. W. Bush in
January 1991 deterred Iraq from using chemical or biological weapons against the coalition.73
The letter reads as follows:
Should war come it will be a far greater tragedy for you and your country. Let me
state, too, that the United States will not tolerate the use of chemical or biological
weapons or the destruction of Kuwait’s oil fields and installations. Further, you
will be held directly responsible for terrorist actions against any member of the
coalition. The American people would demand the strongest possible response.
You and your country will pay a terrible price if you order unconscionable acts of
this sort.74
Two elements however suggest that deterrence failed. Assuming that a nuclear threat is
hidden behind these words, it aims to deter three outcomes: the use of chemical or biological
weapons, the destruction of Kuwait’s oil fields and installations, and terrorist action against
members of the coalition. Saddam Hussein’s interrogations on 11 and 13 March 2004 suggest
that the absence of use is better explained by the fact that the coalition did not threaten the
Iraqi regime and did not march on Bagdad, rather than by any nuclear threat.75 In addition, the
threat clearly did not deter the destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields, suggesting that the threat was
not taken seriously in that regard either.
As for the 1967 war, the fact that the Egyptians targeted the Dimona reactor to prevent Israel
from getting a capability shows that they were anything but deterred by the possibility that
Israel had already developed a nuclear weapon capability (which indeed they had).76 In 1973,
the Egyptians were sure that Israel had developed a nuclear capability. It is true that they did
not use biological or chemical weapons but they attacked anyway. Even in that case, the
deterrent value of nuclear weapons should be called into question.
72 For a recent example, Bruno Tertrais, “The Trouble with No First Use,” Survival, Vol.51, No. 5, October-
November 2009, p. 25 and see Bruno Tertrais, “The Illogic of Zero,” The Washington Quarterly, April 2010, pp.
125-138.
73 Keith B. Payne, The Great American Gamble: Deterrence Theory and Practice from the Cold War to the
Twenty-First Century, Fairfax: National Institute Press, 2008, pp. 414–416 (emphasis original). See also Keith B.
Payne, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age, Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 1996, pp. 81–87.
74 George H.W. Bush, All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings, New York, Simon and
Schuster, 2000, p. 500.
75 “Saddam Hussein Talks to the FBI: Twenty Interviews and Five Conversations with ‘High Value Detainee # 1’ in
2004,” Interview Session 13, 11 March 2004, National Security Archive, George Washington University,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm. The argument was first made by Scott Sagan,
“Reply: Evidence, Logic and Nuclear Doctrine,” Survival, Vol. 51, No. 5, October-November 2009, pp. 39-41, 43.
76 Cohen, Israel and the Bomb op. cit. pp. 259–276.
Pag e 33
The 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review77 addresses this issue head-on:
During the Cold War, the United States reserved the right to use nuclear
weapons in response to a massive conventional attack by the Soviet Union and
its Warsaw Pact allies. Moreover, after the United States gave up its own
chemical and biological weapons (CBW) pursuant to international treaties (while
some states continue to possess or pursue them), it reserved the right to employ
nuclear weapons to deter CBW attack on the United States and its allies and
partner nuclear weapons to deter CBW attack on the United States and its allies
and partners. Since the end of the Cold War, the strategic situation has changed
in fundamental ways. With the advent of U.S. conventional military preeminence
and continued improvements in U.S. missile defenses and capabilities to counter
and mitigate the effects of CBW, the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in deterring
non-nuclear attacks – conventional, biological, or chemical – has declined
significantly. The United States will continue to reduce the role of nuclear
weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks. To that end, the United States is now
prepared to strengthen its long-standing “negative security assurance” by
declaring that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons
against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance
with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.
………… .In making this strengthened assurance, the United States affirms that
any state eligible for the assurance that uses chemical or biological weapons
against the United States or its allies and partners would face the prospect of a
devastating conventional military response – and that any individuals responsible
for the attack, whether national leaders or military commanders, would be held
fully accountable.78
Extending nuclear deterrence
The most common version of the extended deterrence argument applies to U.S. security
guarantees to its NATO allies, Japan, and South Korea. Supposedly, by threatening nuclear
retaliation against the Soviet Union in case of attack on Western Europe (during the Cold War)
or against China or North Korea in case of an attack on Japan or South Korea, the United
States has helped maintain relative peace and stability in these regions.
77 U.S. Department of Defense, The Nuclear Posture Review Report, April 2010.
78 The 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review notes that “Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and
the rapid pace of bio-technology development, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the
assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and U.S.
capacities to counter that threat “
Pag e 34
An integral part of this argument is the need to maintain credible nuclear options so that the
deterrence message is clearly understood by potential adversaries. For many years this need
served as a justification for the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe, Japan, and South
Korea: it was assumed that deployment of nuclear assets at the potential war theater is
essential to make the threat credible both through the maintenance of capability and the
symbolic value of these assets. Following the end of the Cold War, forward deployment was
scaled back rather radically: nuclear weapons have been withdrawn from Japan and South
Korea (but the United States assigns about 100 nuclear warheads for long-range sea-launched
cruise missiles (SLCMs) to be deployed in case of an emergency) while the number of nuclear
weapons in Europe has been cut seven or eight times. These reductions have been justified by
the radical reduction of the immediacy of the perceived threat.
While this argument may appear logical within the framework of nuclear deterrence belief, it
can be easily challenged. First and foremost, we really do not know whether deterrence
worked: to know that for certain we must know that there was an immediate threat
operationalized through actual war-fighting plans of the potential adversary. Rather, we know
that the adversary did not attack. We do not know whether this was because there was no
intention in the first place, or because the enemy was deterred from attacking. And if action
was deterred, we still do not know if the specifically nuclear component of the threat was
decisive. Evidence of such threat does not exist, however, even after the opening of archives
in the Soviet Union and former Soviet bloc countries. Scenarios of potential war in Europe that
were developed in the Soviet Union all proceeded from the assumption that NATO would
attack first. Thus, we cannot judge whether extended deterrence could actually work.
However, the 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review is illuminating in this regard as it states:
….the United States has maintained extended deterrence through bilateral
alliances and security relationships and through its forward military presence and
security guarantees. When the Cold War ended, the United States withdrew its
forward deployed nuclear weapons from the Pacific region, including removing
nuclear weapons from naval surface vessels and general purpose submarines.
…. Although nuclear weapons have proved to be a key component of U.S.
assurances to allies and partners, the United States has relied increasingly on
non-nuclear elements to strengthen regional security architectures, including a
forward U.S. conventional presence and effective theater ballistic missile
defenses. As the role of nuclear weapons is reduced in U.S. national security
strategy, these non-nuclear elements will take on a greater share of the
deterrence burden. Moreover, an indispensable ingredient of effective regional
deterrence is not only non-nuclear but also non-military – strong, trusting political
relationships between the United States and its allies and partners.79
79 U.S. Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report, op. cit., p. xiii.
Pag e 35
Thus the U.S. nuclear weapons posture is moving away from extended nuclear security
guarantees, to more credible conventional capabilities80 as part of a broader concept of
security including non-military aspects.
Preventing proliferation through nuclear extended deterrence?
The hypothesis about the ability of nuclear weapons to prevent or deter the nuclearization of
non-nuclear weapons states – allies that are well-behaved members of the NPT – is based on
the willingness of a nuclear weapon state to use such weapons for war or as a threat. The
logic of the argument is that if an ally feels protected by the nuclear weapons of its protector,
then it will not feel the need to develop its own nuclear weapons. Conversely, the fear is that
once nuclear weapons are removed from the security guarantee, the ally will then seek to
acquire its own nuclear weapons. However, this is a complicated relationship because the
supposed deterrent relationship includes a. third type of actor (there could be a range of
potential attackers) and two kinds of bilateral relationships involving nuclear weapons. The first
one is between the nuclear-armed protector and the potential attacker of an ally.81 The
potential attacker is supposed to be deterred in attacking the ally for fear of nuclear retaliation
from the protector. The second relationship links the protector and the ally who must trust that
the protector would carry out the promise and agrees that this would be in its interests.
Likewise, the protector has to provide a credible deterrent so as to be believed by both the ally
and the potential attacker. This bargain is then expected to lead the ally to give up its nuclear
weapons ambitions. Using nuclear threats in defense of allies would then prevent proliferation.
Ironically, this logic leads to the dilemma that if an extended nuclear deterrent is an effective
way to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, then nuclear weapons will always be needed.
However, this argument is flawed. History shows that a nuclear security guarantee is neither a
necessary nor a sufficient condition to give up nuclear weapons ambitions. France, the United
Kingdom – and arguably China if you take into account Khrushchev’s letters to Eisenhower in
September 1958 – decided to build their own weapons while they benefitted from a nuclear
security guarantee. Likewise, Ukraine, South Africa and Libya gave up nuclear weapons
capabilities or ambitions in the absence of an extended nuclear deterrence agreement.82
II.3 Legal recognition and nuclear weapons
It can be argued that nuclear weapons and their use are already illegal under existing
International Humanitarian Law and under customary international law (note that customary
80 See George H. Quester, Deterrence Before Hiroshima, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1966.
82 For a review of the political use of this argument in U.S. history and a systematic assessment of extended
nuclear deterrence as a nonproliferation tool, see Benoît Pélopidas, The Seduction of the Impossible, op. cit.,
chapt. 6.
Pag e 36
international law has the same force as treaty law83 – and indeed in some cases might be
stronger where it is erga omnes [a statutory right, binding on all states]; whereas treaties for
the most part only bind the parties to them – unless they come to be considered as reflecting
such a fundamental principle that they are regarded as embodying that principle in customary
law and erga omnes).
Some of the rules derived from the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, for example,
require that the use of any weapon:
• must be proportional to the initial attack,
• must be necessary for effective self-defense,
• must not be directed at civilians or civilian objects,
• must be used in a manner that makes it possible to discriminate between military
targets and civilian non-targets,
• must not cause unnecessary or aggravated suffering to combatants,
• must not affect states that are not parties to the conflict, and
• must not cause severe, widespread or long-term damage to the environment.
Nuclear weapons violate every one of these rules.
Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations provides that “All Members shall refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state.” This in effect means that all UN Member States have bound
themselves not to mount a “first strike” against other states, regardless of the type of weapon
used, be it nuclear or conventional. Similarly, in 1961, the UN General Assembly Resolution
1653 declared the use of nuclear weapons “a crime against mankind and civilization.”
This seemingly unconditional ban, has, however, lately been more honored in the breach than
in the observance. Indeed, the doctrine of preemptive war, developed during the George W.
Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, was designed precisely to circumvent it, and includes
the possibility of preemptive nuclear strikes against other weapons of mass destruction (i.e.
chemical or biological weapon) threats.84 This is also mirrored in the strategic doctrines of
France, Russia and India. Indeed, the past ten years have seen the retrograde step of
doctrines based purely on nuclear deterrence moving to the active first use of nuclear weapons
in certain circumstances. The U.S. 2010 Nuclear Posture Review however has gone a
substantial way to reversing such policies in the United States and will likely be reflected in the
strategic doctrines of other states with nuclear weapons.
83 This is the effect of the 1986 International Court of Justice case on military and paramilitary activities in
Nicaragua.
84 Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, Stockholm, 2006.
Pag e 37
Examining the legal legitimacy of nuclear weapons.
The possession, use and misuse of weaponry have been an important part of humanitarianism
and the development of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) since the foundations of the Red
Cross and Red Crescent Movement.85
Even at the height of the Cold War, when political sensitivity was at its highest, the
humanitarian community86 was tackling weapons of mass destruction. In 1954, for example,
the Board of Governors of the Red Cross pleaded with all the powers to “work unceasingly for
general disarmament and to prohibit the use –— absolutely and effectively –— of all nuclear
weapons as well as chemical and biological weapons.” Despite the 1956 rejection of the
International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC’s) draft rules for the limitation of the dangers
incurred by the civilian population in time of war, the 21st International Conference, in Istanbul
in 1969 requested the United Nations to pursue efforts towards the adoption of a special
agreement on the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction. It also requested that the ICRC
continue to devote great attention to this question and take every possible step to ban such
weapons. At the same meeting a resolution was adopted that appealed for a comprehensive,
adequately verified nuclear test ban treaty.
The convergence of International Humanitarian Law, the norms and values on which it is
based, and international disarmament law now has an impressive track record. International
Humanitarian Law has developed an approach to the use of weapons in combat. Combatants
are prohibited from using weapons that are inherently indiscriminate or of a nature to inflict
suffering greater than that required to take combatants “out of action.” Weapons that violate
the “dictates of the public conscience” may also be prohibited on that basis alone. The use of
weapons that cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment is
also prohibited.
A body of International Humanitarian Law and Disarmament Treaty Law has been built up to
control and prohibit a range of conventional weapons. This approach has led to regulations
and prohibitions on a variety of conventional weapons, including the Mine Ban Convention and
the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
85 In 1862, in his Memory of Solferino, the founder of the Red Cross Movement, Henri Dunant said: “If the new
and frightful weapons of destruction, which are now at the disposal of the nations, seem destined to abridge the
duration of future wars, it appears likely … that future battle will become more and more murderous.”
86 By “community” here we refer to a wide group of governments, non-governmental organizations, international
organizations, military officers and other individuals who have worked together to further the cause of
humanitarianism.
Pag e 38
The 1996 ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons is
relevant87 here. The justices examined current treaty law, customary law rules and state
practice with regard to nuclear weapons and concluded unanimously that the principles and
rules of International Humanitarian Law apply to the use of nuclear weapons. They added that:
“...the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international
law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian
law.”88
In response to the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion, the ICRC made a statement to the 51st session of
the United Nations General Assembly:
We were pleased to see the reaffirmation of certain rules which the Court defined
as “intransgressible”, in particular the absolute prohibition of the use of weapons
that are by their nature indiscriminate as well as the prohibition of the use of
weapons that cause unnecessary suffering. We also welcome the Court’s
emphasis that humanitarian law applies to all weapons without exception,
including new ones. In this context we would like to underline that there is no
exception to the application of these rules, whatever the circumstances.
International humanitarian law is itself the last barrier against the kind of barbarity
and horror that can all too easily occur in wartime, and it applies equally to all
parties to a conflict at all times….. Turning now to the nature of nuclear weapons,
we note that, on the basis of the scientific evidence submitted, the Court found
that ‘...The destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either
space or time...the radiation released by a nuclear explosion would affect health,
agriculture, natural resources and demography over a very wide area. Further,
the use of nuclear weapons would be a serious danger to future generations...’ In
the light of this, the ICRC finds it difficult to envisage how a use of nuclear
weapons could be compatible with the rules of international humanitarian
law……. We are convinced that because of their devastating effects no one ever
wants to see these weapons used. It is the ICRC’s earnest hope that the opinion
of the Court will give fresh impetus to the international community’s efforts to rid
humanity of this terrible threat..
In an historic statement,89 Jakob Kellenberger, President of the ICRC, to the Geneva
Diplomatic Corps in Geneva, April 2010 stated:
87 For an excellent account and analysis of the ICJ Advisory Opinion see John Burroughs, The Illegality of Threat
or Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice, International
Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, Transactions Publishers Rutgers University, 1998.
88 ICJ Advisory Opinion, http://www.lcnp.org/wcourt/opinion.htm, para. 97. The judges were evenly split on this
aspect of the opinion, and this paragraph was included only by virtue of the deciding vote of the President of the
Court.
89 Jakob Kellenberger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Official Statement to the
Geneva Diplomatic Corps “Bringing the era of nuclear weapons to an end,” Geneva, 20 April 2010,
http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/nuclear-weapons-statement-200410.
Pag e 39
The International Committee of the Red Cross firmly believes that the debate
about nuclear weapons must be conducted not only on the basis of military
doctrines and power politics. The existence of nuclear weapons poses some of
the most profound questions about the point at which the rights of States must
yield to the interests of humanity, the capacity of our species to master the
technology it creates, the reach of international humanitarian law, and the extent
of human suffering we are willing to inflict, or to permit, in warfare…..
… The currency of this debate must ultimately be about human beings, about
the fundamental rules of international humanitarian law, and about the collective
future of humanity.
That there is a case for approaching nuclear disarmament from the perspective of International
Humanitarian Law is well established. What this would mean in practice is an opportunity to
explore nuclear disarmament from new perspectives and practices. The practices of the
humanitarian community, which differ markedly from the arms control and nonproliferation
community in their focus on human protection, are of considerable interest to those keen to
make serious progress in nuclear disarmament. When progress in disarmament has been
achieved, it is in part because the devastating impact of the weapons on people has been
understood and because the lack of true military utility of the weapon has been understood.
In recent years, the 1997 Mine Ban Convention, the 2001 UN Programme of Action on the
Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions
have all brought together the technical, political arms control community with the humanitarian
and development communities to produce three of the most far-reaching and effective
international agreements/action plans ever negotiated, particularly given their normative
value.90
III. Lessons from success
Attempts to control the spread of nuclear weapons technology and curb the arms race began
in 1946. The very first resolution of the UN General Assembly called for “the elimination from
national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass
destruction” and established the UN Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the precursor of the
IAEA. The UN AEC was mandated to exchange scientific information for peaceful ends; control
atomic energy to ensure its peaceful use; eliminate from national armaments atomic and all
other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction; and establish safeguards by way of
inspection to protect complying states against the hazards of violations and evasions.
Sounds familiar does it not? So, despite countless hours of negotiation, headway made
through treaties has not got us so very far. Treaties such as the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty
were brought about through the efforts of non-governmental organizations that raised
90 See Elvira Rosert, “Cluster Bombs – a Taboo in the Making?” a paper presented to the International Studies
Association Convention, February 2010.
Pag e 40
awareness about the growing fears of the consequences of the nuclear arms race and how
testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere destroyed peoples’ health and devastated the local
environment and communities. In other words, it was humanitarian considerations that drove
the push for the constraints, and eventual prohibition on nuclear testing. This treaty—which
originally started out as a negotiation for a comprehensive test ban treaty—that prohibited
nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, underwater or in outer space. It was followed by
bilateral and unilateral restraints on nuclear weapons testing, leading eventually to the
negotiation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, which still has not entered
into force. Bilateral treaties such as SALT-I and SALT-II helped shape the arms race rather
than curtail it. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) Treaty, which the United States withdrew
from in 2002, the START-I Treaty that expired in 2009 before the signing of a new START
Treaty in 2010 to replace it – all of these have helped reduce the threat but few have not done
very much to bring about nuclear disarmament. The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty
(INF) did eliminate a whole class of newly-deployed weapons in Europe and instigated a new
approach to building trust through joint transparency and verification measures. Other treaties
also helped to increase trust and decrease the risk of accidental nuclear war; not least of which
was the 1963 Hot-Line Agreement and nuclear risk reductions centers established between
the United States and the Soviet Union Russia in 1987 – although their efficacy in preventing
accidental nuclear war was not put to the test according to the various case-studies in Cold
War near-misses.
The 1968 NPT needs no detailed analysis in this paper, except to say that it is the only treaty
that requires the nuclear weapons states to negotiate nuclear disarmament measures in good
faith. It is a treaty fraught with difficulties, particularly the installation of two tiers of countries –
the nuclear weapons states and the non-nuclear weapons states. In the minds of the original
instigators, the “haves versus have-nots” framework of the treaty was supposed to be a
temporary situation, not a vehicle for legitimizing nuclear weapons for five countries.
The emphasis in most of the bilateral treaties has been on reductions in missiles and delivery
systems for nuclear weapons. Very little emphasis has been placed on behavioral change and
doctrines, even though such matters are at the heart of nuclear weapons policies and
possession.
Certainly, if we take a cue from the outlawing of other weapons of mass destruction, success
came through a prohibition of use prior to a prohibition of possession. Could that be an
approach we should re-examine for nuclear weapons?
III.1 Prohibition of use, prohibition of possession
The use of chlorine gas by Germany at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 was
roundly condemned (although prior to that prolonged lethal attack, incapacitants such as tear
gas had been used first by France and then by Germany in 1914). The effects of the chemical
were terrifying, fatal or worse – inflicting life-long debilitating injury and mental trauma.
However, at that time, the use of chemical weapons (CW) was thought militarily effective, and
retaliation, counter-measures and counter-counter-measures quickly escalated employing
Pag e 41
chlorine, phosgene, the “white star” combination of phosgene and chlorine, and blistering
mustard gas. By the end of the war, a total of some 100,000 tons of gas had been used,
resulting in an extra million casualties that counted about 100,000 extra deaths, with the
unfortunate survivors left severely disabled and traumatized for the rest of their lives.
The public outrage at the long-lasting traumatic effects of chemical weapons pushed
governments into prohibiting Germany from the use, manufacture and importation of
asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and all analogous liquids, materials or devices.91
Attempts had been made to prevent the use of poisons in warfare before; these included the
Brussels Declaration Concerning the Laws and Customs of War in 1874, which prohibited the
"employment of poison or poisoned weapons," and the Hague Conference, in 1900, that
banned the "diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases” by projectiles. Of course, given the
retaliation in-kind by the allies and the production of various forms of chemical agents by
Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the
prohibition for Germany was hardly adequate. So following the Treaty of Versailles, the
Washington Arms Conference Treaty similarly prohibited the use of asphyxiating, poisonous or
other gases, and would have bound the United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy, but
the treaty never entered into force. Another attempt at the 1925 Conference for the
Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition, at the League of Nations, led
to the Geneva Protocol that prohibits the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases,
and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, and of bacteriological methods of warfare.92
Despite new CW having been developed by Germany, including nerve agents, World War II
did not see the deliberate employment of chemical weapons in the European battlefields.
Chemical weapons were used extensively by Japan throughout Asia, however, and Japan also
tested and used bioagents against Chinese citizens. Poison gas was of course used
throughout the war in Europe in Nazi gas chambers where Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) and
also carbon monoxide killed millions of people, in groups of up to some 2,000 people.
Chemical weaponry was used in the 1960s in Yemen and in the 1980s by Iraq, where Iranian
soldiers (about 100,000) were attacked along with countless civilians in Iran during the Iran-
Iraq war. In addition, the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in Northern Iraq, including one
brutal attack that killed 5,000 people in Halabja, consisted of a month-long series of CW
91 1919 Treaty of Versailles, Article 171. (Notably, the prohibition also applied to materials specially intended for
the manufacture, storage and use of the said products or devices.)
92 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological
Methods of Warfare, Geneva, 17 June 1925: “Whereas the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases,
and of all analogous liquids materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the
civilized world; Whereas the prohibition of such use has been declared in Treaties to which the majority of Powers
of the world are Parties; and To the end that this prohibition shall be universally accepted as a part of International
Law, binding alike the conscience and the practice of nations; Declare: That the High Contracting Parties, so far
as they are not already Parties to Treaties prohibiting such use, accept this prohibition, agree to extend this
prohibition to the use of bacteriological methods of warfare and agree to be bound as between themselves
according to the terms of this declaration.”
Pag e 42
attacks against civilian populations and employed combinations of mustard gas and sarin,
tabun and VX.
Following World War II, many states developed chemical warfare agents and spent inordinate
amounts of time and money so doing. Several attempts were made to negotiate a ban on the
possession of nuclear weapons, and after a decade of painstaking work on a “rolling text,”
Member States of the Conference on Disarmament were able to take advantage of the end of
the Cold War, and the accompanying new era of international arms control that took place from
1986 (the Stockholm Accord) to 1996 (the CTBT), and agreed to the Chemical Weapons
Convention (CWC) in 1992. The CWC prohibits all development, production, acquisition,
stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons. It requires complete disarmament in that
each State Party has to destroy chemical weapons and chemical weapons production facilities,
as well as any chemical weapons it may have abandoned on the territory of another State
Party. The verification provisions are far-reaching, and include inspections at civilian industry
as well as military facilities.
The history of the prohibition of the possession of biological weaponry is rather different.
Bioweapons remain covered by the same prohibitions on use since the 1925 Geneva Protocol,
but the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BWC) banning the development,
production and stockpiling of bacteriological (biological) and toxin weapons, and governing
their destruction was negotiated in 1972. Due to the weapons programs of a number of states
– particularly the USSR – coupled with the politics of mistrust at the time, the BWC was agreed
to without any verification provisions. Despite (perhaps because of) there being a number of
concerns regarding violations of the BWC, the States Parties have not yet been able to agree
on a set of verification provisions for the Convention, and it has suffered as a result in terms of
compliance and commitment. Recent attempts to strengthen the Convention through regular
meetings of experts, confidence-building measures and an implementation support unit have
all helped improve the situation but the BWC remains a treaty without teeth until further work
can be done.
In summary, the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions that prohibit the existence of
chemical and biological weapons stemmed from the earlier prohibition of use and had their
roots in International Humanitarian Law. It is the humanitarian approach that provided the
common ground for prohibitions on a wide range of weaponry and for what we have come to
think of as “traditional” arms control. In the case of chemical and biological weapons, the
emphasis at first was on the prohibition of use. Following acceptance of the prohibition of use
in the form of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the
1992 Chemical Weapons Convention have outlawed possession of these types of weapons by
additionally prohibiting development, production and stockpiling, and providing for the
destruction of the weapons. This makes perfect sense from the perspective of human security,
International Humanitarian Law and human rights law and could be equally applicable to
nuclear weapons. First, the international community should protect human life and prevent the
death and destruction caused by such weapons. Next, states should remove the source of the
problem – leading us to the outlawing of nuclear weapons (through for example, a Nuclear
Weapons Convention) and nuclear disarmament.
Pag e 43
III.2 Humanitarian disarmament principles and practices93
The nuclear arms control community has found itself paralyzed – and all too often co-opted –
by resistance from those who believe in the military utility of nuclear weapons. It has not been
able to fight the battle on its own turf, where challenges to the concept of nuclear deterrence
could be made; or indeed where expressions of concern over the indiscriminate and horrific
impacts of nuclear weapons (which go beyond the “dictates of public conscience”) could be
made without accusations that emotion is being allowed to dominate reality. Instead, the
debate within the arms control community has been entirely fought on the grounds of the pro-
nuclear weapons strategists – these are the same people who came up with the idea of
“flexible response” and the “ladder of escalation” during the Cold War as if they were realistic,
practical military doctrines.
It is time to reframe the debate and bring it back to its center – back to a rational discussion of
the actual military purposes, the opportunity costs, the proliferation costs and the human and
environmental94 impacts of nuclear weapons. We agree that emotion has long clouded the
debate. However, the dominant emotions have not been those of compassion and caritas, but
instead have been fear, anger and panic, which have befuddled rational thinking. It is time to
stop apologizing for being peace-loving and caring about the future of the planet.
A rational discussion would allow us to look more clearly at the effects of the weapons,
whether the threat of massive attack has ever or is ever likely to, prevent conflict. We could
look for workable alternatives to nuclear weapons and see them in a more dispassionate light.
The International Humanitarian Law community did not fall into the same trap as their arms
control brethren (although it came very close to so doing on occasion). In the effort to ban
landmines and cluster munitions, for instance, they recognized resistance to new approaches
and dealt with the intransigence on the part of many possessor states by going ahead with the
negotiations anyway, building coalitions and being clear that what was at stake is the security
of people and communities, rather than theories of deterrence.
The International Humanitarian Law community has been pragmatic, recognizing and
acknowledging that no treaty is perfect and rarely allowing the best to become the enemy of
the good. Their modus operandi is to place the protection of people at the center of decision-
making. This has led to an approach whereby the treaties are negotiated with fewer players
and a higher common factor rather than the lowest common denominator approach to arms
control. The impact of the treaty, whether or not everyone has joined, is the critical factor in
International Humanitarian Law. The approach to treaty-making is that the treaty can wait for
others to join later – better that than water it down to a point where all can join from the
beginning but it will have little real impact in a humanitarian sense. This results also in treaties
that are very specific and achieve the prohibition of a class of weapons. The arms control
93 Much of this section is based on Patricia Lewis, A New Approach to Nuclear Disarmament: Learning from
International Humanitarian Law Success, www.icnnd.org.
94 For example, see Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon,
Local Nuclear War, Global Starvation
,
Scientific
American
, January 2010, pp. 32-39.
Pag e 44
community used to think like that – indeed the NPT entered into force without all of the nuclear
weapon states being on board.
In taking the framework of International Humanitarian Law as a starting point for action, it
would make sense to take the approach of recent successes in disarmament and merge
International Humanitarian Law and disarmament treaty law. There are several good reasons
for doing this.
In the first place, the framework for negotiations on nuclear disarmament issues has unraveled
over recent years. The multilateral disarmament negotiating machinery consists of the 65-
country Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva, the UN Disarmament Commission and
the First Committee of the General Assembly.
The Conference on Disarmament has not begun negotiations since a three-week stint in 1998,
and the last treaty it negotiated was the CTBT in 1996. The CTBT could not be agreed in the
CD itself and instead was tabled at the UN General Assembly by the Australian government.
On the CD agenda there is much that would make a difference: nuclear disarmament, a fissile
material production ban and preventing weapons in space. All would be significant
contributions to human security – if the Conference could ever get beyond agreement on an
agenda and start work. The breakthrough in 2009, in which the CD agreed to a program of
work has led to nothing by April 2010, and recent, off-the-record statements from Pakistan
suggesting that it is not in a position to accept the beginning of negotiations on a fissile
material cut-off treaty in the foreseeable future does not bode well for the immediate
commencement of practical work in Geneva.95
Indeed, the multilateral agenda for disarmament was set at the first General Assembly Special
Session on Disarmament in 1978 and it has never been updated. For over thirty years the
agenda has remained the same and there still seems to be little prospect for changing it.
One of the big difficulties within these structures is that although the overwhelming majority of
the participating states could agree and begin negotiations, there are a few (sometimes just
one) who refuse to respect the will of the majority and block progress. The CD, because it is
not a UN body per se, has its own set of rules and procedures; voting is not allowed and so
any state can block consensus.
If we look at the three areas in disarmament where there has been significant progress over
the last ten years, we can see a pattern emerge in which a recipe for success could be
developed.
95 Stephanie Nebehay, “Pakistan Rules Out Fissile Talks for Now: Diplomats,” Reuters, 22 January, 2010,
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60L4S720100122.
Pag e 45
The Mine Ban Convention
Treaty-making in disarmament is not for the faint-of-heart or for people interested in short-term,
high-return gains. This is a long-term investment and a treaty can take decades from its
inception (usually in the minds of a few activists or academics) to its adoption and entry into
force – and even longer for the norm it establishes to be considered as universally binding,
even on those states which have never become party to it. The Mine Ban Convention (MBC),
for example, was a long time in the making. First employed in the mid-nineteenth century,
there were objections to the use of landmines from the start.96 Prior to the start of what
became the MBC negotiations, the humanitarian community was not in agreement over a
range of issues. Most significant was whether to include all mines or all landmines or just anti-
personnel landmines. Also contentious was whether to negotiate within the Convention on
Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) – the existing plurilateral framework – or even the CD,
or whether to begin a separate negotiating process. Other thorny issues –particularly as talks
got going – were how much money and effort should be put into institutionalizing the
convention, and whether a verification regime was needed. Not all of these choices were so
clear at the time either. A huge amount of research was carried out by NGOs, think-tanks,
universities, the military and international organizations in order to ascertain the problem and
find ways to a solution. The role of the military was a major factor in subsequent success, in
that the military usefulness of antipersonnel landmines was challenged and found wanting—
which helped persuade a number of otherwise reluctant governments.
In trying to work through the CCW, the attempts to address the humanitarian crisis caused by
antipersonnel landmines floundered in the face of military and state power interests. Although
many of the states were attempting to put the humanitarian problem at the center of the
negotiation, several significant military powers blocked progress in that regard and succeeded
in watering down language and removing the fundamental essence of a protocol that
eventually ended up as an amended version of Protocol II on the use of mines, booby traps
and other devices. Amended Protocol II contains clearer restrictions on the use of both anti-
personnel and anti-vehicle mines, booby traps and other devices. It requires parties to a
conflict to clear these weapons and take additional measures to protect civilians from the
dangers they pose. The Protocol also requires that anti-personnel mines outside of marked,
fenced and guarded minefields have self-destruct features. It is far from the ban on landmines
that was first sought.
Frustration with the power politics of the CCW process led a group of governments,
international organizations and non-governmental organizations to begin a process that was
initiated by Canada, called the Ottawa Process that began in October 1996. This started with a
96 “… (neither a) proper nor effective method of war.” General James Longstreet, U.S. Confederate Army
(Brigadier-General Rain’s commanding officer), 1862, quote from:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~pictim/mines/history/history.html.
Pag e 46
small group of energetic, committed individuals and officials (the Core Group) and later
expanded to begin the negotiation with a wider group of states. Non-governmental
organizations formed an umbrella group (the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
[ICBL)]) and worked collectively and effectively. The process was tight. Following the Ottawa
conference, meetings were held throughout 1997 in Vienna, Bonn, and Brussels, ending in
adoption of the convention’s text in Oslo in September 1997. The MBC bans antipersonnel
landmines completely, and provides for their destruction and removal from the conflict zones
where they had been deployed. In February 2010, the MBC had 156 States Parties. A small
Implementation Support Unit (ISU) has been set up to assist countries in the implementation of
the convention and a well-run international network of NGOs monitors the implementation of
the MBC and reports on it every year through the publication of the
Landmine Monitor
.
A Meeting of States Parties (MSP) is held annually, and every other year it takes place in a
mine-affected country in order to raise awareness within that country and among those in a
position to assist. Intersessional meetings take place in Geneva months ahead of the MSP,
where much of the technical discussions are held. Focus includes minefield clearance,
stockpile destruction and survivor assistance. Although thirty-nine countries have yet to join,
there is almost no trade in antipersonnel landmines among any states due to the large number
of parties to the MBC and the taboo that has grown against landmine use as a result.
The way in which the treaty processes work is exemplary. Governments, international
organizations and NGOs meet regularly; all participate fully (although any voting or formal
document adoption would be left to governments only); meetings are business-like,
representation of mine-affected countries is high thanks to a sponsorship program; and people
under threat are put first in the priorities that are decided upon.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions
The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) was similarly born from a frustration with attempts
to negotiate a ban on these inhumane weapons through the CCW. Following a long hiatus
since 1974 when Sweden along with Egypt, Mexico, Norway, Sudan, Switzerland and
Yugoslavia proposed a ban on the use of such weapons,97 concerned countries, NGOs and
international organizations did not wait for failure of the CCW process to manifest. The
government of Norway held a meeting in Oslo in February 2007 that marked the beginning of
negotiations, known as the Oslo Process. Further meetings were held in other parts of the
world, notably Lima, Vienna, Wellington and Dublin – where the text of the Convention was
agreed and adopted in May 2008. The signing ceremony was held in Oslo in December 2008 –
so in a little under two years, the treaty was negotiated and signed with ninety-five states
97 “Working Paper submitted to the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International
Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts,” February-March 1974, referenced by Eric Prokosh in John
Borrie, Unacceptable Harm, A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions was Won, UNIDIR 2009. See
also http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/RC-dipl-conference-records.html.
Pag e 47
already on board. By May 2010, the CCM had 106 signatories with thirty ratifications, and it will
enter into force on 1 August 2010.
Again a huge amount of research was carried out by NGOs, think-tanks, the military and
international organizations to ascertain the problem and devise solutions. Again the military’s
questioning of the usefulness and efficacy was vital in demonstrating to some doubting
governments that cluster munitions were not essential to their defense. Again, the successful
process involved a humanitarian approach, a core group of states, international organizations
and NGOs (that also formed an umbrella group – the Cluster Munitions Coalition that
organized and educated so as to maximize NGO cohesions and impact). Again the outcome
was the goal – a ban on the weapons. There was a clear timeframe for the negotiations, the
future humanitarian impact of the treaty was the priority, and it was made clear that the wish of
the majority would not be over-ridden by any spoiler state (and thus they tended to stay
away).98
The UN Program of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons
The 2001 UN Program of Action (PoA) on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons
(SALW) was a very different process. Born in the United Nations, through a series of
resolutions and studies, it was driven by the devastating impact of the proliferation of small
arms and light weapons through illegal trade networks to countries in conflict, primarily in sub-
Saharan Africa and Asia. A significant number of studies had been carried out and – most
importantly – humanitarian workers in conflict-prone countries were crying out for attention to
be paid to the problem. Small conflicts, which might otherwise have been manageable, were
escalating out of control due to the influx of surplus weapons via illicit dealer networks left over,
in the main, from the end of the Cold War.
A small group of NGOs, international organizations and governmental officials in Geneva
began to meet to discuss ways to address the growing problem. The generally held view was
that it was best tackled regionally, building from where the problem occurs and dealing with it
in the regional context before going to an international level. However, events in New York
overtook that approach and a conference to address the illicit trade in small arms and light
weapons was called for July 2001.
There was some hope, particularly among NGOs and officials new to the issue, that the
outcome of the conference would be a treaty or at least a treaty process. This was never a
realistic option, particularly as the United States had recently voted in President George W.
Bush and the U.S. National Rifle Association had huge influence in the U.S. decision-making
process. Instead, it became a program of action.
98 For a thorough history and analysis of the negotiations for the Convention on Cluster Munitions, see Borrie,
Unacceptable Harm, A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions was Won,
op. cit.
Pag e 48
It was a grueling process leading up to the conference and throughout it, with intransigence all
round. However, thanks to a highly competent, well prepared and supported chair, expert
NGOs and international organizations and a core group of states, whose officials were
experienced, successful negotiators, a program of action was agreed – although two important
clauses were omitted on civilian possession and transfer to non-state actors.
The UN PoA has proved to be a useful framework on which to hang many important initiatives,
including an instrument to ensure that all small arms and light weapons are marked and
traceable. In addition, there have been a significant number of national and regional initiatives
that have reduced the impact of the illicit proliferation of the ubiquitous weapons. However, the
number of surplus weapons in circulation is such a problem that even if no more guns were
manufactured ever, we would still be addressing the problem of illicit weapons for decades to
come.
Again, the success of the UN PoA and its subsequent implementation was due to large
amounts of NGO, international organization and academic quality research on the problem and
a host of solutions. Again there was a core group of states that helped shepherd the
negotiation and who have supported it with funds and initiatives. Again the NGOs had formed
an umbrella group (the International Action Network on Small Arms [IANSA]) that was able to
coordinate and educate throughout its international network. Again there was military
involvement in the solution. The single biggest difference in the case of the PoA was that a
treaty was not negotiated – in large part because all UN Member States participated and so
the text was watered down and important elements that were unpalatable to some key states
were vetoed.
Pag e 49
IV. Delegitimizing nuclear weapons
There are many elements that can be learned from a cross comparison of successful
disarmament processes such as the MBC and CCM. UNIDIR’s multi-year project,
Disarmament as Humanitarian Action, has studied the processes across the board and found:
The humanitarian perspectives of deminers, landmine survivors and medical
personnel among others were vital ingredients in international efforts leading
to the Mine Ban Convention. And they have since contributed to progress on
several other weapons issues such as small arms, explosive remnants of war
and cluster munitions—even multilateral efforts in support of the ban on
biological weapons ….. ‘disarmament as humanitarian action’ can be seen
as reflecting the generic value of diversity of perspective in multilateral
disarmament work. It should also not be underestimated that being moved by
the plight of others is a powerful spur to encouraging people with diverse
perspectives to ‘do the right thing’, even in multilateral disarmament contexts.
Seeing security in human terms makes sense. And problems of human
insecurity, augmented by the availability of weapons, are nearer our
doorsteps in an increasingly interconnected world than we often imagine.99
Learning the lessons from recent success in International Humanitarian Law will mean
focusing on the results that a negotiation will produce, not just going through the motions of a
negotiation that will keep even those that produce weapons feeling happy, comfortable and
unaffected.
The humanitarian approach demands highly effective outcomes, not lowest common
denominator results. In learning the lessons from the success of International Humanitarian
Law disarmament treaties, we have learned that one of the most important factors in success
is to keep the bar high. It is the content of the agreement, not the process and not, at first, the
inclusion of all of the nuclear-armed states, that matters. It is worth noting in this regard that
France and China did not join the NPT until 1992, but this did not stop the treaty from being
negotiated, implemented. The treaty expanded and became very successful for the 22 years
these countries remained outside. It may be that in order to prevent dilution of the meaning
and impact of a Nuclear Weapon Convention, not all of the nuclear weapon states should be
engaged in the multilateral process at the start; nor perhaps should there be any concern that
they are not involved.
Pragmatism in the way things get done is far more effective than sticking to obsolete methods
and practice. For too long in the multilateral system, the process has mattered more than the
outcome. Excellent, creative ideas – such as negotiating nuclear disarmament issues under
99 J. Borrie and A. Thornton, “The Value of Diversity in Multilateral Disarmament Work,” UNIDIR, United Nations,
December 2008.
Pag e 50
the auspices of the General Assembly – were squashed, in part, because of the fear that they
would undermine the Conference on Disarmament, although that institution was already
deadlocked.
A multilayered approach to nuclear disarmament
The solutions to the problems that we face with nuclear weapons require clear thinking,
diversity and leadership in the community as well as at the governmental level. They require
long-term sustainable commitments at all levels of society and a deep understanding that the
solutions are worth attempting. Nuclear disarmament will succeed only if there is a sustainable
determination in civil society and in governments to eliminate nuclear weapons. There needs
to be a process of review, benchmarks, oversight and wide engagement throughout the world
– in states that possess nuclear weapons, in those under extended nuclear deterrence
guarantees (often misleadingly-called nuclear umbrellas), in states that have kept their options
open and in states that have rejected nuclear deterrence as a security strategy. A multilayered
approach to the issues is required and different types of players and negotiation are required
for different types of measures. An optimal political strategy is outlined below.
Ideas, efforts and leadership
Engagement of the public is the most single important factor in achieving success in
delegitimizing nuclear weapons. Mobilizing international public and political support, and
sustaining it throughout the disarmament process, is perhaps the most fundamental
precondition for progress on the path towards a world without nuclear weapons. Global political
campaigns from governments and public movements for the abolition of nuclear weapons
testing drove the negotiations in the 1950s and 1960s for the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty and
the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty.100 Leadership in the efforts to manage and reduce nuclear
arsenals and to prevent further proliferation has resided jointly in the governments of nuclear
weapons states, non-nuclear weapons states and in non-governmental organizations,
including universities, think-tanks and advocacy groups.
The nuclear weapons possessors – in the first place the United States and Russia but
including those outside the NPT – have primary responsibility for reducing and eliminating their
nuclear weapons arsenals, either in concert or through unilateral confidence-building
measures. Leadership in nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation has been a hallmark of a
significant number of non-nuclear weapons states such as those in the New Agenda Coalition,
the Seven Countries’ Initiative, all the states that have negotiated nuclear weapon free zones
and the groups of governments that have established commissions and expert studies to move
the issue forward.
100 Lawrence S. Wittner, Confronting the Bomb. A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement,
Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 2009, chapt. 5.
Pag e 51
Governmental and non-governmental expertise also cuts across a wide range of processes
and issues. As a consequence there is a body of knowledge on the various approaches to
controlling weapons contained in bilateral and multilateral approaches. Increasingly,
nongovernmental organizations have cross-cutting experiences in such forums as bilateral and
multilateral arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament treaties along with the use of
International Humanitarian Law in weapons control – such as experience in the Geneva
Protocols, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and the Mine Ban Convention.
The in-depth knowledge of the complexity of the problems created by nuclear weapons has
resulted in an international repository of knowledge on how to solve the nuclear dilemmas in
which we find ourselves today. If we do not manage to find a set of pragmatic, workable
solutions to nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament it will not be due to a scarcity of
ideas, effort or leadership. All these are in abundance.
Since the establishment of the political anti-nuclear weapons movements at the end of the
World War II, a core group of civil society organizations have focused primarily on action to
end the nuclear arms race. The movement has been extraordinarily diverse and international:
women’s groups, scientists, engineers, physicians; indigenous people organizations; trade
unions, city councils; mayors; writers, scientists, artists, musicians, actors and so on. They
have created a wide range of activities including: mass demonstrations; non-violent direct
action; television documentaries; advocacy and educational activities; national and
international campaigns; engagement in negotiation processes; model treaty drafting; and
scientific verification experiments – to name but a few. In taking on such responsibility, civil
society institutions and governmental bodies alike have developed extensive, highly respected
expertise on nuclear weapons, their meaning, limitations and the magnitude of their legacy.
Leadership in the efforts to manage and reduce nuclear arsenals and to prevent further
proliferation has resided both in governments and in non-governmental organizations including
universities, think-tanks and advocacy groups. In many countries, government officials have
either come from such grass-roots bodies or will be working in them once they leave office.
There is a healthy international interchange between officials and non-governmental experts
around the world through a process of publication, international conferences and participation
in official negotiations and treaty reviews. From any cursory engagement with Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, or any of the current social networking tools, along with the growing number
of serious blogs and new media outlets, it is clear that nuclear disarmament is again a passion
of civil society, in particular among the young. There is a real awareness that this is a problem
we can do something about and a strong aversion among the next generation to accepting any
more legacy problems that they have to. They have quite enough on their plate with
environmental degradation, climate change, financial stress, population control, aging
populations, global deadly disease, water resources, food shortages and so on. That there will
be wars as a result of instabilities is expected; that these wars could be nuclear is
unacceptable.
Civil society action
However, despite all of this energy, knowledge and expertise, there is no genuinely effective
public campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons today. Gone are the Freeze Movement, the
Pag e 52
Greenham Common Women and the CND of the 1980s. We now have a host of think-tanks
and NGOs that are as much part of the problem as they are the key to help solve it. We need
new blood in the debate. Recently there have been signs of some green shoots that may
provide the young energy that is required for campaigning to eliminate nuclear weapons, such
as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)101, the Two Futures Project
and the films “The Strangest Dream”, “The Nuclear Tipping Point102”, “Signs for Hope - Talking
About Nuclear Disarmament103'” and “Countdown to Zero104”even a nuclear disarmament
online video game105 - but it needs nurturing. The Ploughshares Fund has been steadily
building up youthful energy and expertise for the elimination of nuclear weapons but there is a
limit to their funds and they are, naturally, focused on campaigning in the USA. Global Zero106
has raised awareness in the older generation. Having a figurehead such as Queen Noor of
Jordan has certainly attracted attention, and the weighty government sponsored commissions
such as the Hans Blix WMD Commission and the Evans-Kawaguchi International Commission
on Nonproliferation and Nuclear Disarmament have done likewise. However, the ideas
contained within most of these commissions and initiatives are tame. We often find it easier to
think of small steps or giant leaps that could take us there. Yet we know, from decades of
experience, that the path to zero has been littered with wishes, lost steps, false steps and feet
that went backwards for each one that went forward. The step-by-step approach, relying on
good will and favorable political winds, has been tried and found wanting but the giant leap
approach is always too big a jump. It is not enough to list a number of well-meant prescriptive
measures. Public engagement does not mean a few well-placed op-eds and some seminars in
New York.
The authority of experts and disappointment about the past failures of disarmament since the
end of the Cold War help explain this lack of public mobilization. Proliferation experts have for
too long agreed on the history of the nuclear age as a one-way street. Nuclear history has
been portrayed as proliferation history and you could at best stop or slow the pace of this
historical dynamic but not reverse it. The complexity of the topic and the difficulty for citizens to
check information about nuclear weapon programs, associated with the institutional recognition
of the leading experts and their seeming consensus, plus the political importance of the issue
lent a considerable authority to their orthodox views. In their version of history, limited arms-
control and non-proliferation, rather than disarmament is the only way possible, thus cautious
policymakers have had their political preferences backed by the authority of experts.
Paradoxically, the strongest advocates of disarmament have often also subscribed to this view
as a means of blaming the Nuclear Weapon States for failure in nuclear disarmament. The
political assumptions and preferences lying behind this teleological memory of the nuclear age
101 www.ican.org
102 http://www.nucleartippingpoint.org/
103 http://www.talkworks.info/Talkworks/current_films_2010.html
104 http://www.takepart.com/countdowntozero
105 http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/nuclear_weapons/game.html
106 http://www.globalzero.org/
Pag e 53
are finally being debunked.107 Cases demonstrating absence of interest in nuclear weapons (ie
most of the world) and reversal of nuclear weapons programs108 should be brought more to
light so that the public could realize that nuclear disarmament is, in fact, achievable.
Ambition, such as a Nuclear Weapons Convention that will lead to the outlawing of nuclear
weapons and their elimination, is the framework that will attract most public attention and
passion. Small steps on the way—however necessary—will only attract the experts and
minutiae-loving arms controllers that are already engaged and frankly not succeeding in
moving things along. A sustained, media campaign is required, using electronic social
networks, in addition to the more traditional formats—these are additive, not substitutional.
This will all cost money. Any well-targeted, successful campaign requires adequate financing.
Professional communicators will need to be hired; some pro bono work could be done through
cause-related marketing strategies if the companies involved see this cause to be in their
interests. Women’s groups such as the WILPF (the Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom) and their work on Reaching Critical Will, along with organizations such as the
Nobel Women’s Initiative could form the backbone of a revived NGO effort. More
establishment bodies such as religious organizations, business groups (for example Rotary,
Kiwanis and Lions) and international civic groups such as Mayors for Peace and the Inter-
Parliamentary Union, along with professional bodies of physicians, scientists, health
practitioners and so on would be important players in a new public engagement for nuclear
disarmament. International humanitarian bodies such as the ICRC, WHO, UNHCR and IOM for
example could bring the realities of the use of nuclear weapons to the attention of the general
public. For example, the work of Robin Coupland and Dominique Loye109 on victim assistance
has illustrated the need for organizations such as the ICRC to address the practicalities of
international response in event of nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical (NRBC)
weapons use.
Rewriting an international history of the nuclear age
In addition to expert communities supporting the idea that nuclear disarmament was
impossible since the 1960s, nuclear weapon states’ official histories of the nuclear age also
overstate the role of these weapons and tend to favor a form of worst-case thinking that
promotes the retention of nuclear weapons. The official accounts of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and
the first Iraq war are good examples.
107 For a study of the US case, Benoît Pélopidas, “When experts back policy makers’ historical memory and
biases. The shared “nuclear proliferation paradigm” in the US since the 1960s.” Paper presented at the 51st
International Studies Association conference, New Orleans, February 19, 2010.
108 For a recent attempt at looking at the notion of nuclear threshold from a disarmament perspective, William
Walker, “The UK threshold status and responsible nuclear sovereignty”, International Affairs vol.86 n°2, 2010.
109 Robin Coupland and Dominique Loye, “International assistance for victims of use of nuclear, radiological,
biological and chemical weapons: time for a reality check?”, International Review of the Red Cross, Volume 91
Number 874 June 2009
Pag e 54
It was in the interests of the United States to identify the Bomb as the decisive event that
brought World War II to a close. It was also, for different reasons, in the interests of the
Japanese to blame the Bomb for losing. Only the Soviet Union had an interest in de-
emphasizing the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it should surprise no one that
Russian historical accounts do not talk much about the role of nuclear weapons in ending the
war in the Pacific. The Russian version of events, however, is not as widely known. More
people today read English than Russian.
From the U.S. perspective it was highly desirable that the Bomb be the cause of Japan’s
surrender. If the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to an end, then the
reputation of U.S. military power would be enhanced and the expense of the Manhattan project
– as well as, by implication, its result – would be legitimized. The United States, after all, was
the sole possessor of this powerful new weapon. If the bombings brought the war to an end,
then U.S. political influence in Asia and around the world would also be enhanced and
extended. And U.S. prestige would be greater. On the other hand, if the Soviet invasion
caused the war to end, then the Soviets could claim that they had won the war and the
reputation of their military would be enhanced, their political influence would be enhanced, and
their prestige burnished. It is easy to see why even today it would be difficult for some
Americans to admit that the Soviet Union might have played a role in bringing the war to an
end. There is so much national pride at stake in telling the story of the end of the war in the
Pacific that it makes sense to be cautious with U.S. and Russian accounts. Third parties are
likely to be more objective. Notably, the official British history of World War II, published in
1969, ascribes the end of the war to the Soviet declaration of war and invasion - not to the
dropping of atomic bombs.110
On the Japanese side, there were even greater reasons for wanting to put the blame for defeat
on the atomic bombings. Emphasizing the bombings created sympathy for Japan, certainly.
But more importantly the bombings served as a way of obscuring certain uncomfortable truths.
Japan had fought a long and costly war. Its Navy was now confined to port, its air force
decimated, its cities lay in ashes, its economy was in a shambles, and its military forces had
been defeated again and again. It would undermine the legitimacy of the regime to have to
admit that serious errors of judgment had been made and that they had led to defeat. What
would the people of Japan have thought if it was admitted that the Army and Navy routinely
failed to cooperate closely during the course of crucial military operations? -That the rapidity of
the American build-up and the determination of U.S. leaders had been badly misjudged? -That
the government had long misled the people about the extent and severity of the military
reverses that had been suffered?
Being able to put the responsibility for defeat on an unexpected scientific breakthrough by the
enemy that no one could have predicted was a lucky stroke for Emperor Hirohito. And those at
110 The British official history states, “The Russian declaration of war was the decisive factor in bringing Japan to
accept the Potsdam declaration.” S. Woodburn Kirby, The War against Japan, Vol. 5: The Surrender of Japan
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1969), pp. 433-434. See also May, “The United States, the Soviet
Union, and the Far Eastern War, Pacific Historical Review vol.24 n°2, 1955.
Pag e 55
the top of Japan’s government admitted as much in diaries and post-war interviewers. Here is
Admiral Yonai in another conversation with Admiral Takagi after the decision to surrender had
been taken.
I think the term is inappropriate, but the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry
into the war are, in a sense, gifts from the gods [tenyu, also “Heaven-sent
blessings”]. This way we don't have to say that we have quit the war
because of domestic circumstances. Why I have long been advocating
control of the crisis of the country is neither from fear of an enemy attack
nor because of the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war. The
main reason is my anxiety over the domestic situation. So, it is rather
fortunate that now we can control matters without revealing the domestic
situation.111
Historians may argue with Yonai’s assessment of why Japan lost, but it is striking to hear him
talk about how relieved he is that it will be possible to conceal the real reasons that Japan
surrendered. Keeper of the Privy Seal Kido said much the same thing in subtler terms. “If
military leaders could convince themselves that they were defeated by the power of science
but not by lack of spiritual power or strategic errors, they could save face to some extent112.”
Secretary of the Cabinet Sakomizu Hisatsune was even more explicit. “In ending the war, the
idea was to put the responsibility for defeat on the atomic bomb alone, and not on the military.
This was a clever pretext.”113
American historians have long pointed to post-war statements by Japan’s leaders in order to
justify their belief that victory was the result of the atomic bombings. But these post-war
statements are highly suspect. It was in their interest for Japanese officials to blame the Bomb
for defeat. Yonai’s statement reveals how happy and excited they were not to have to admit
their own failings to their people, to their American captors, or to historians.
As far as Iraq is concerned, accounts by James Baker as well as former Iraqi minister Tariq
Aziz suggest that the nuclear threat contained in the letter Baker gave to Aziz on behalf of
President George H. W. Bush in January 1991 deterred the Iraqis from using use chemical or
biological weapons against the coalition.114 However, as we showed earlier, nuclear weapons
did not prove decisive in deterring Saddam Hussein from setting fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields or
in other respects. So the validity of nuclear deterrence is questionable in this instance. It could
be interpreted as a post-facto explanation – as a form of face-saving.
111 Quoted in Frank,
Downfall
, p. 310.
112 Asada, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender,” p. 507.
113 Frank,
Downfall
, p. 348.
114 Keith B. Payne, The Great American Gamble: Deterrence Theory and Practice from the Cold War to the
Twenty-First Century (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2008), pp. 414–16 (emphasis original). See also Keith
B. Payne, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), pp. 81–7.
Pag e 56
The rewriting of the nuclear history could focus on three aspects that involve “non-nuclear”
voices:115
1. The 150 plus states that have never tried to develop nuclear weapons but which would
nevertheless be embroiled in nuclear war
2. Developing countries for which important and urgent issues have been continually
sidelined in favor of debates on nuclear weapons.
3. Voices from nuclear-weapon free zones, nuclear-capable states and from states that
gave up nuclear weapons ambitions.116
Such an approach would include going beyond a worst-case scenario in terms of proliferation
forecasts through a reassessment of past surprises. The worst-case planning approach, which
has provided long-term legitimacy to nuclear weapons, has been, in part, based on the idea
that disarmament does not take into surprise into account. However, on numerous occasions,
worst-case forecasting and planning in the nuclear field has been plain wrong and has had
negative political effects over the last fifty years. Opportunities for disarmament should be
reconsidered in the light of an analysis based on these worst-case failures.117 Indeed, some
proponents of nuclear weapons agree that nuclear deterrence is not needed today but might
be necessary in a long-term future. This need is clearly stated in the 2008 National Security
Strategy of the United Kingdom and is echoed among the so-called prudent strategists
advising the nuclear weapon states.118
“We judge that no state currently has both the intent and the capability to pose a direct
nuclear threat to the United Kingdom or its vital interests. But we cannot rule out the risk
that such a threat will re-emerge over future decades.”119
Involving the military
Not surprisingly, military leaders have continually questioned the usefulness and morality of
nuclear weapons. However, due to their vows of loyalty, they have, for the most part done so
publicly only once they have retired from office.
As early as 1948, General Omar Bradley, was saying: “With the monstrous weapons man
already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents. Our
115 See the notion of “contrapuntal reading” proposed by Edward Saïd. “Reflections on Exile Granta 13 (Autumn
1984): 159–72 and Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993)
116 Fiction writers and artists could start to work on narratives of the nuclear age oriented towards abolition.
Richard Rhodes’ 2009 play Reykjavik was a recent example that worked in that direction.
117 For a critical assessment of that view of surprises, Benoît Pélopidas, “The Color of the South African Swan.
The Role of Surprises in Nuclear History and the Effects of a Partial Amnesia”, French Yearbook of International
Relations, 2010 [in French].
118 Lucien Poirier and François Géré, The Reserve and the Waiting. The Future of French Nuclear Weapons,
Paris, Economica, 2001 [in French]; Interview with Lucien Poirier, November 13, 2008 on France Culture.
119 National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom. Security in an Interdependent World, March 2008, §3.11
p.12. “Future decades” is characterized as “50 years” in §4.22 p.31.
Pag e 57
knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it”. In 1979, Lord
Mountbatten struck home when he stated: "As a military man who has given half a century of
active service I saw in all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars
cannot be fought with nuclear weapons. Their existence only adds to our perils because of the
illusions which they have generated”.120
Following the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons tests in 1998, sixty-three retired Indian
and Pakistani military personnel made a joint statement: "By virtue of our experience and the
positions we have held, we have a fair understanding of the destructive parameters of
conventional and nuclear weapons. We are of the considered view that nuclear weapons
should be banished from the South Asian region, and indeed from the entire globe."
In the same year, General Lee Butler, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief,
United States Strategic Air Command (1992-94) made waves at the National Press Club
Speech, when he announced:
"... as a nation we have no greater responsibility than to bring the nuclear era to a
close. Our present policies, plans and postures governing nuclear weapons make us
prisoner still to an age of intolerable danger. We cannot at once keep sacred the
miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it. We cannot hold
hostage to sovereign gridlock the keys to final deliverance from the nuclear nightmare.
We cannot withhold the resources essential to break its grip, to reduce its dangers. We
cannot sit in silent acquiescence to the faded homilies of the nuclear priesthood. It is
time to reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason and the
rightful interests of humanity. "
In 1996, sixty-one retired generals and admirals from seventeen countries (Canada (1),
Denmark (1), France (1), Ghana (1), Greece (3), India (2), Japan (2), Jordan (2), Netherlands
(1), Norway (1), Pakistan (1), Portugal (1), Russia (18), Sri Lanka (2), Tanzania (1), United
Kingdom (4), and the United States (19)) held a press conference in London in which they
made a detailed statement including: "We, military professionals, who have devoted our lives
to the national security of our countries and of our peoples, are convinced that the continuing
existence of nuclear weapons in the armouries of nuclear powers, and the ever present threat
of acquisition of these weapons by others, constitutes a peril to global peace and security and
to the safety and survival of the people we are dedicated to protect….. Through our variety of
responsibilities and experiences with weapons and wars in the armed forces of many nations,
we have acquired an intimate and perhaps unique knowledge of the present security and
insecurity of our countries and peoples…………We know that nuclear weapons, though never
used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, represent a clear and present danger to the very
existence of humanity. ……. We have been presented with a challenge of the highest possible
historic importance: the creation of a nuclear-weapons-free world. The end of the Cold War
makes it possible. The dangers of proliferation, terrorism, and a new nuclear arms race render
it necessary. We must not fail to seize our opportunity. There is no alternative." The previous
120 On these two cases and a few others, see Jerome D. Frank and John C. Rivard, “Antinuclear Admirals. An
Interview Study”, Political Psychology vol.7 n°1, 1986.
Pag e 58
day in Washington DC, two retired senior US military officials - Generals Lee Butler (former US
Strategic Commander) and Andrew Goodpaster (former NATO Supreme Allied Commander,
Europe) released a statement urging similar action, aimed at the same goal. Military opposition
to nuclear weapons is also found at a very high level in Argentina with physicist and vice-
admiral Castro Madero who did his best to postpone the discussions about the security
implications of the nuclear plan adopted in 1979. The same is true at a more general level in
Ukraine after independence, where the military was just not interested in the weapons, and in
Sweden during the last years of the program.121
More recently, three retired British Generals wrote a letter to The Times in which they asked in
what way, and against whom, UK nuclear weapons could be used, or even threatened, to
deter or punish. Nuclear weapons, they said “have shown themselves to be completely
useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently, or are likely to, face —
particularly international terrorism; and the more you analyse them the more unusable they
appear”. In France, General (Ret.) Bernard Norlain the President of the Comité d’Études de la
Défense Nationale and Director of the Revue Défense Nationale has joined the Global Zero
Movement122. General Norlain is the former Air Defense Commander and Air Combat
Commander of the French Air Force, and served as military adviser to French Prime Ministers
Jacques Chirac and Michel Rocard. He recently was one of the 40 senior Europeans who
penned an open letter calling for renewed urgency in tackling problems of nuclear
proliferation123 and one of the French “Gang of Four”124 in 2009 that also included former
Prime Ministers Alain Juppé and Rocard and Former Defence Minister Alain Richard, and who
wrote an article entitled “For Global Nuclear Disarmament, the Only Means to Prevent
Anarchic Proliferation”.
One of the key lessons learned from the successful disarmament negotiations banning
landmines and cluster munitions was how important it is to involve military personnel in the
intellectual development of the disarmament endeavor and in outreach to the general public,
the media and politicians. Military personnel are uniquely placed to understand the horrors of
war, the utility of – or lack thereof – a specific weapons system and have a duty to make those
views known– although not always in public. The military utility that campaigners were always
being told meant that states had to retain antipersonnel landmines or landmines was squashed
by military personnel who had encountered them in the field and had their military campaigns
thwarted by their own landmines. Peacekeepers, military humanitarian workers and deminers,
all weighed in with their experiences and strong views on the negative use of landmines and
121 On Argentina, Jacques E. C. Hymans, Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation, Identity, Emotions and Foreign
Policy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.213. On Ukraine, cf. Christopher A. Stevens, “Identity
Politics and Nuclear Disarmament: The Case of Ukraine”, Nonproliferation Review vol.15 n°1, 2008. On Sweden,
Jerome Garris, “Sweden's Debate on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons”, Cooperation and Conflict, vol.8,
1973, p.203.
122 http://www.globalzero.org/en/who/bernard-norlain
123 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/apr/14/nuclear-proliferation-washington-summit
124 “For Global Nuclear Disarmament, the Only Means to Prevent Anarchic Proliferation”, Prime Ministers Alain
Juppé and Rocard, Former Defence Minister Alain Richard, and General Bernard Norlain, Le Monde, 14 October
2009
Pag e 59
cluster munitions) in the field. Military officers, who had not had the same experiences in
conflict and post-conflict situations, learned from those that had and went back to their
countries with the knowledge that such weapons were not useful and were best eliminated.
For the most part, as the above quotes and many others illustrate, senior military planners do
not like nuclear weapons. They tend to see nuclear weapons as unusable, and therefore not a
genuine threat. They wonder what else the money that had been spent on nuclear weapons
could have been spent on: life-saving body armor perhaps; helicopters that the army cannot
afford; better housing or medical care for soldiers and their families; and so on. Because
military personnel, from officers to conscripts, have their lives on the line they tend to think in
very practical, realistic ways. For that alone, they are a vital part of any disarmament
campaign. What we need is a mechanism in which they can discuss the issues of nuclear
weapons with each other, the public and with politicians. The various defense and military
colleges around the world do enable such an international discourse, as do the services
institutes such as the Royal United Services Institute in London and equivalent bodies around
the world.
Involving nuclear weapons personnel
The issue of involving the military should be extended to nuclear weapons personnel. Past
successes in disarmament policy in that regard suggests ways to alleviate the political
pressure statesmen feel when they commit themselves to disarmament. Taking concrete steps
in favor of nuclear disarmament can be politically costly for a policymaker because of
bureaucratic hurdles, but also because of what he/she expects to be the reaction of his/her
voters. When Robert McNamara asked the US Congress for 1000 minuteman missiles instead
of 600 in spite of the fact that he knew the “missile gap” did not exist, he did so because he
was convinced that with lower numbers, he would have lost his credibility.125 Taking that into
account, the post-Soviet and South African experiences provide interesting insights. Indeed,
the Nuclear Threat Reduction Program provided housing and retraining for former members of
the Soviet Strategic Forces that had to be dismantled.126 On November 27, 1992, an
agreement was signed between the USA, Japan, the European Union and Russia establishing
an International Science and Technology Center to help with the reconversion of former Soviet
scientists.127 Similarly, in South Africa, many engineers and physicists who participated in the
weapon program have been recruited by the IAEA. These examples suggest that proposing to
fund an institution in charge of the re-employment of this personnel might alleviate a part of the
125 Robert S. Norris, Steven M. Kosiak and Stephen I. Schwartz, “Deploying the Bomb” in Stephen I. Schwartz,
(ed.), The Atomic Audit, Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 1998, pp.186, 189-190 note 203.
126 William C. Potter and John M. Schields, Dismantling the Cold War. US and NIS Perspectives on the Nunn
Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme, Cambridge, MIT Press 1997 and Anatolii Rozanov,
“Belarussian Perspectives on National Security and Belarussian Military Policy,” in Bruce Parrot, (ed.), State
Building and Military Power in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 1995, p.201.
127 R. Adam Moody, “The International Science Center initiative in William C. Potter and John M. Schields,
Dismantling the Cold War. US and NIS Perspectives on the Nunn Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction
Programme, op. cit.
Pag e 60
reluctance policymakers have vis-à-vis the idea of giving up nuclear weapons.128 The recent
report from the American Physical Society Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) on “Technical Steps
to Support Nuclear Arsenal Downsizing”129 suggests a number of practical steps for the
science and technology base of the United States to support nuclear arms reductions
including, for example, establishing international centers for verification research and validation
to serve as test-sites for assessing technologies and methodologies. In the April 2010 US
Nuclear Posture Review, a number of proposals for investing in the scientific and technical
support for nuclear disarmament were made and the Review stated:
“A modern nuclear infrastructure and highly skilled workforce is not only consistent with
our arms control and nonproliferation objectives; it is essential to them .….. Further, a corps of
highly skilled personnel will continue to expand our ability to understand the technical
challenges associated with verifying ever deeper arms control reductions.”
and
“Increased investments in the nuclear infrastructure and a highly skilled workforce are
needed to ensure the long-term safety, security, and effectiveness of our nuclear arsenal and
to support the full range of nuclear security work to include non-proliferation, nuclear forensics,
nuclear, counter-terrorism, emergency management, intelligence analysis and treaty
verification. Such investments, over time, can reduce our reliance on large inventories of non-
deployed warheads to deal with technical surprise, thereby allowing additional reductions in
the U.S. nuclear stockpile and supporting our long-term path to zero.” 130
Counting the costs
The costs of nuclear weapons have been notoriously hard to ascertain with any accuracy. In
the United States, Stephen Schwartz has carried out the path-breaking work on this. In his
book, “Atomic Audit”,131 he calculated that between 1940 and 1996, the United States spent in
excess of $5.8 trillion on its nuclear weapons program, representing some 29% of all US
military spending. This was a far larger figure than hitherto had been understood and led many
experts and policy makers to reconsider the so-called “cost-effectiveness” of nuclear weapons
128 For a detailed proposal to internationalize the Nunn-Lugar program for other scientists, see Cristina Hansell,
“Internationalizing Nunn–Lugar:Lessons for Future Multilateral Cooperative Threat Reduction Projects”, paper for
the ICNND commission. http://www.icnnd.org/research/Hansell_InternationalizingNunnLugar.pdf. (Accessed on
March 3rd 2010) Previously, see also Rose Gottemoeller, “Cooperative Threat Reduction beyond Russia”,
Washington Quarterly, Spring 2005.
129 http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/nucdown-exec.cfm
130 The Nuclear Posture Review Report, US Department of Defense, April 2010
131 Stephen I. Schwartz, Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940,
Brookings Institution Press 1998
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whereby there was “a bigger bang for a buck132”. To put this in context, this figure represented
about $21,000 for every person in the United States, or more graphically, imagining it in a
single stack of one-dollar bills it would reach to the moon and nearly back (739,117 km).
Further work by Stephen Schwartz and Deepti Choubey133 attempted to delineate the US
spending by allocating nuclear security spending to one of five categories: nuclear forces and
operational support; deferred environmental and health costs; missile defense; nuclear threat
reduction; and nuclear incident management. There were able to show that 56 percent of the
total went toward operating, sustaining, and upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal, whereas 1.3
percent ($700 million) of the nuclear security budget was devoted to preparing for the
consequences of a nuclear or radiological attack. Nuclear security funding is 14 times what
energy-related research and development funding (accounting for 67 percent of DOE's
budget), it consumes $13 billion more than international diplomacy and foreign assistance and
is approximately double the US allocations for science, space, and technology;
In another context in the UK debate over the replacement of the Trident weapon system,
figures have ranged from £20 billion to £130 billion134 – and costs are playing a major role in
the arguments in terms of opportunity costs in regards to the protection of British soldiers in
Afghanistan and more generally in the current economic crisis and the issue of public
spending. This is all the more acute when nuclear weapons are never meant to be used; it is
hard to justify such expenditure in times of financial crisis. Success in nuclear deterrence
means that the taxpayers’ money will be going to a weapon of which the efficacy may never be
known or even be tested.
In work, assessing the cost effectiveness and cost benefits of nuclear disarmament, Susan
Willett135, pointed out that in fact a large portion of the costs of disarmament – those of
dismantling and disposition in particular – are incorrectly assigned as they really are part and
parcel of the full lifecycle of nuclear weapons and would have to have been spent with or
without disarmament. All weapons have a lifecycle and all weapons have to be dismantled and
their material components disposed of or recycled in some way. In other work Willett 136
conducted a cost-effective analysis of disarmament versus rearmament and demonstrated that
nuclear disarmament policies are far more cost-effective and increase security more than the
development of new nuclear weapons—“taking into account all of the costs and risks
associated with them”.
132 A phrase coined by Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson referring to the policy of Massive Retaliation as
announced by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1954, see William Safire, Safire’s Political Dictionary,
revised edition 2008,Oxford University Press, p51
133 Stephen I. Schwartz with Deepti Choubey, Security Spending: Assessing Costs, Examining Priorities,
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2009
134 Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, Friday 18 September 2009
135 Susan Willett, Costs of Disarmament – Rethinking the Price Tag: A Methodological Inquiry into the Costs
and Benefits of Arms Control, UNIDIR 2002
136 Susan Willett, Costs of Disarmament—Disarming the Costs: Nuclear Arms Control and Nuclear
Rearmament, UNIDIR 2003
Pag e 62
In recent work by Justin Alger and Trevor Findlay137, the experts concur with Willett that the
cost of dismantling and destroying nuclear weapons is “more accurately attributed to being a
normal part of weapon life cycles rather than to nuclear disarmament” and conclude that costs
of disarmament should be only a secondary concern. Their work shows that the costs of
disarmament “pale in comparison to the financial burden of deploying, maintaining and
upgrading nuclear arsenals in perpetuity”. In their view, an international verification regime to
monitor and build confidence in disarmament would be a bargain compared with the alternative
and in relation to the confidence in a world free of nuclear weapons. Findlay and Alger strongly
recommend further study on the issue, particularly looking at a wider and more accurate data
set.
Creating a representative group of states
A like-minded representative core group of states, including key, progressive nuclear armed
states and committed non-nuclear weapons states, could begin a parallel track process to
negotiate such agreements as no-use treaty. Or they could stimulate a negotiation for a global
nuclear weapons convention that would include the prohibition on use and possession, as a
successor to the NPT.
The advantages of the likeminded group approach include a high level of commitment to the
process and the outcome. A larger number of states are involved – thus increasing the
stakeholder effect in nuclear disarmament. The content of the treaty is usually far more forceful
– less lowest-common-denominator, watered-down language – than in a treaty where many
states are reluctant negotiators. In addition, once they get going the negotiations are fast (12-
18 months). The criticism of this approach is that they are self-selecting and thus don’t include
all of the “problem” countries – by definition, those countries that join like-minded negotiations
have already decided to move forward on the limitations under negotiation. However there are
two important aspects of this approach to counter such critics. First, the countries that self-
exclude usually end up joining the treaty later when there has been a change in government or
a change of heart – let us repeat that the NPT negotiations did not include France and China
and neither country joined until 1992. Their absence for all those years, while regrettable, was
not sufficient a reason to delay negotiations or entry into force of the NPT. Second, a parallel-
track, like-minded negotiations will not be the only game in town and the more reluctant
countries will be engaged in the top-down negotiations as well as in the Conference on
Disarmament negotiations etc.
A group of like-minded countries could come together, assess what is ripe for this type of
negotiation and begin a process that would support the global nuclear disarmament effort. As
ever in such negotiations, not all states will approve of the methodology; some of the nuclear-
137 Justin Alger and Trevor Findlay, The costs of nuclear disarmament, ICNND Research Paper, www.icnnd.org,
September 2009
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armed states and their allies will try to undermine the negotiations; and the commitment of the
like-minded states will be sorely tested. However there is a core group of states that have had
extensive and positive experiences of achieving great things through this type of approach,
and we can only hope that they can muster the energy to do so again. Along with the
likeminded states a partnership with NGOs and international organizations forming a group of
“friends of nuclear disarmament” would be vital. This group could be ambitious and begin to
delineate and develop the terms and elements of a nuclear weapons convention, using as a
basis the draft model Nuclear Weapons Convention138. Or it could focus on the issue of
prohibition of the use of nuclear weapons. As a second stage in the process, the group could
begin to share the results of its work with a wider group of interested states and begin to build
momentum.
Below we outline two options for such a group to consider. The first a convention prohibiting
the use of nuclear weapons and the second is a convention to outlaw and elimination nuclear
weapons completely. Finally we propose a civil society monitoring body that can be put in
place with immediate effect to monitor and report on progress towards nuclear disarmament.
No Use, No Use at all139
“I can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use
nuclear weapons”140"
From the perspective of human security, International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights
Law it makes sense to protect and prevent the impact of the use of the weapons. The next
step is to remove the source of the problem—leading us to the outlawing of the weapons. In
the context of renewed engagement on nuclear disarmament, the role of a no use agreement
would take on a new meaning. Deciding to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and eventually
achieve a world without them requires a radical rethink of the role of nuclear weapons, which
at some point would include rethinking the doctrine of first use and a treaty on no-use as part
of the fabric of nuclear disarmament.
At the Munich Security Conference in February 2009, the National Security Adviser of India,
Mayankote Narayanan, called for a No-Use Treaty. Some of the steps in a phased approach
suggested by Narayanan and India are reproduced below:
• Reaffirm the unequivocal commitment by all nuclear weapon States to the complete
elimination of nuclear weapons;
• reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in security doctrines;
138 http://www.icanw.org/
139 Based on the work of Ken Berry, A Draft Convention and Commentary on the Non Use or Threat of Use of
Nuclear Weapons and A Draft Treaty and Commentary on No First Use of Nuclear Weapons www.inccnd.org
140 Robert F. Kennedy, To Seek a Newer World, New York, Doubleday, 1975.
Pag e 64
• reduce nuclear danger, including the risk of accidental nuclear war, by de-alerting
nuclear-weapons to prevent unintentional or accidental use of nuclear weapons;
• negotiate a global agreement among nuclear weapons States on ‘no-first-use’ of
nuclear weapons;
• negotiate a universal and legally-binding agreement on non-use of nuclear weapons
against non-nuclear weapon States;
• negotiate a convention on the complete prohibition of the use or threat of use of nuclear
weapons; and
• negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention prohibiting the development, production,
stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons and on their time-bound destruction, leading to
the global, non-discriminatory and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
As already noted, one important limitation on the ICJ’s finding was that it could not reach:
“...a definitive conclusion as to the legality or illegality of the use of nuclear
weapons by a State in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which its very
survival would be at stake”.
Given the ICJ’s inability to agree on this issue, it is clear that a fundamental element of any
treaty banning the threat or use of nuclear weapons must be to make clear one way or another
just what the situation relating to self-defense should be. In this regard it needs to be borne in
mind that the right to self-defense itself has never been considered as unlimited. Many of the
humanitarian law considerations listed above also apply here, and particularly those relating to
indiscriminate destruction, the targeting of civilians and aggravated and unnecessary suffering.
Since nuclear weapons are capable of all these effects, and indeed designed to achieve them,
it is difficult to see that an effective argument about their legal use in self-defense could ever
be maintained except perhaps in very limited cases of carefully targeted and specifically
designed sub-strategic nuclear weapons.
China has undertaken “not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-
weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones at any time or under any circumstances”. China
has also proposed a No-First Use agreement between the five nuclear weapons states.
However, many non-nuclear weapons states see such a measure as falling far short of nuclear
abolition and the prohibition of use. Some see it as a potential impediment to nuclear
disarmament in the long run, in that nuclear structures would have to be in place to survive a
first strike and execute a retaliatory response. Others however see such a step as a useful
confidence-building measure so long as it is clearly in the spirit of aiming towards the full
prohibition of use and the global elimination of nuclear weapons. For a fuller discussion on no
first use ideas see Appendix 3.
Negating the possibility of using nuclear weapons in self-defense would ipso facto include their
use in response to chemical or biological weapons. While biological weapons in particular
could in some circumstances cause the sort of widespread loss of life that might occur from
use of nuclear weapons, questions must arise as to the appropriateness of a nuclear response
to a biological or chemical attack. Apart from anything else, with bioweapons in particular, it
may be difficult to localize the source of an outbreak, and thus accurately identify a perpetrator.
Moreover, many of the effects of chemical and biological weapons can be countered by
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antidotes and vaccinations or through the use of protective clothing and decontaminants,
whereas there are no such protections against the effects of nuclear weapons.
It is highly likely that the nuclear-armed states will resist any proposal to take away their
claimed right to retaliate in kind—as a proportional and appropriate response—to a nuclear
attack on them. In other words, they might only be prepared to accept a ban on first use.141
One of the issues with respect to a No-Use Convention would be whether it should contain
provisions relating to criminal penalties for breach of it - many would see a Convention without
criminal sanctions as being a paper tiger. At best, it would be a confidence building measure
without teeth. Indeed, a good case can be made that the only way of ensuring that the ban on
threat or use of nuclear weapons is respected would be to include penalties for any breach. In
this context, it goes without saying that if States agree that not even self-defense arguments
would justify the threat or use of nuclear weapons, then any breach of that undertaking would
not only run against the very fabric of the Convention itself, but against the broad current of
International Humanitarian Law.
The Convention would probably also need to continue the trend which makes it clear that
traditional notions of immunity for State leaders would not apply in this case, and that anyone
of any rank or status involved in a breach, should be liable for punishment.
A provision to criminalize any breach of the treaty would probably need to include a provision
that respects the legal principle of aut dedere aut judicare—a state should either try a person
accused of breaching the Convention or extradite that person to a country or jurisdiction willing
to do so. In the latter case, the obvious international jurisdiction for offences under the
Convention would be the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, this in turn would
require an amendment to the ICC’s Statute providing for an expansion in the Court’s
jurisdiction to include offences under this Convention. States, including the United States,
which have refused to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, are likely to oppose inclusion of such
a provision.
In his historic address in Geneva 2010142, the President of the International Committee of the
Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, stated:
“Some have cited specific, narrowly defined scenarios to support the view that nuclear
weapons could be used legally in some circumstances. However, the Court found that "...The
destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time (...). The
radiation released by a nuclear explosion would affect health, agriculture, natural resources
and demography over a very wide area. Further, the use of nuclear weapons would be a
141 Alexei Arbatov, Non-First Use as a Way of Outlawing Nuclear Weapons, ICNND research paper,
www.icnnd.org.
142 Jakob Kellenberger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Official Statement to the
Geneva Diplomatic Corps “Bringing the era of nuclear weapons to an end”, Geneva, 20 April 2010,
http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/nuclear-weapons-statement-200410.
Pag e 66
serious danger to future generations...". In the light of this finding, the ICRC finds it difficult to
envisage how any use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with the rules of international
humanitarian law. The position of the ICRC, as a humanitarian organization, goes – and must
go – beyond a purely legal analysis. Nuclear weapons are unique in their destructive power, in
the unspeakable human suffering they cause, in the impossibility of controlling their effects in
space and time, in the risks of escalation they create, and in the threat they pose to the
environment, to future generations, and indeed to the survival of humanity. The ICRC therefore
appeals today to all States to ensure that such weapons are never used again, regardless of
their views on the legality of such use.”
Taking the leap: negotiating a nuclear disarmament convention
A nuclear-weapon convention would, however, strip nuclear weapons of
their legitimacy, their mystique and their use as a currency of international
power. Over time it would help to change attitudes towards nuclear weapons and the
doctrine of nuclear deterrence and make them as unacceptable to the world as are
biological and chemical weapons.143
The draft Nuclear Weapons Convention proposes a fully integrated, all-encompassing,
negotiated treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. In a letter dated 17 December 2007 from the
Permanent Representatives of Costa Rica and Malaysia to the United Nations addressed to
the Secretary-General, the two countries published the Model Nuclear Weapons
Convention144. The NWC had been originally drafted in response to the 1998 Indian and
Pakistani nuclear weapons tests, and has been more recently updated by an international
consortium of lawyers, scientists and disarmament experts. It was submitted as “a useful tool
in the exploration, development, negotiation and achievement of such an instrument or
instruments” and set out the legal, technical and political elements for the treaty. It is a useful
tool. It lays out clearly the package of measures and illustrates the potential for negotiation.
Thanks to that work, a nuclear weapons convention is very thinkable. Getting to that point is
the harder part. There is a great deal of support for this approach in civil society and among
several significant non-nuclear weapons states. There is less support at the moment from the
nuclear armed states but that is to be expected.
The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention would prohibit development, testing, production,
stockpiling, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. States possessing nuclear
weapons would be required to destroy their arsenals according to a series of phases. The
Convention would also prohibit the production of weapons-usable fissile material and require
143 K. Subrahmanyam Chapter V, in Study on Deterrence, Its implications for disarmament and the arms race:
Negotiated arms reductions and international security and other related matters, Report of the Secretary-General,
United Nations A/41/432,1987,p. 79
http://www.un.org/disarmament/HomePage/ODAPublications/DisarmamentStudySeries/PDF/SS-17.pdf
144 Draft Nuclear Weapons Convention appended to a letter dated 17 December 2007 from the Permanent
Representatives of Costa Rica and Malaysia to the United Nations addressed to
the Secretary-General, http://www.icanw.org/nuclear-weapons-convention.
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delivery vehicles to be destroyed or converted to make them non-nuclear capable. The
Convention outlines five phases for the elimination of nuclear weapons: taking nuclear
weapons off alert; removing weapons from deployment, removing nuclear warheads from their
delivery vehicles; warhead disabling; removing and disfiguring the “pits”; and placing the fissile
material under international control. In the initial phases the U.S. and Russia would make
deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals. An International Monitoring System would be established
under the Convention to gather information, with mechanisms for information sharing and
confidentiality. Verification would include, inter alia: declarations and reports from States;
routine inspections; challenge inspections; on-site sensors; remote sensors for a range of
particulates; satellite imagery; environmental sampling; information sharing; and citizen
reporting. The Model Convention is structured traditionally with a preamble, and includes
articles on obligations, definitions of nuclear materials, devices, prohibited activities etc. There
are phases for implementation and deadlines, exemptions from deadlines and a structure for
implementation including a secretariat and states parties decision-making procedures. Of
particular interest is a proposed “special provision” for the temporary retention of small and
diminishing quantities of nuclear weapons or proscribed materials by nuclear capable states
(defined as a state that has developed or has the capacity to develop nuclear weapons and
which is not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and includes all States outside of the NPT
that have a current capability.). “States meeting the criteria of this Special Provision shall follow
the requirements, guidelines and phases outlined in this Article. They shall not be expected to
implement the provisions of this Convention in advance of other States Parties, nor shall they
be exempted from the requirements of each phase.”
Other proposals have been made for a convention. Recently Frederick Mattis has proposed
the Nuclear Ban Treaty (NBT)145 but the idea is not at all new; in 1963 for example, Philip
Noel-Baker146 made the case for urgency in nuclear abolition and in later years wrote strongly
against a step-by-step approach147 , believing that the only way to achieve nuclear
disarmament was by a grand treaty.
Another approach to take would be to negotiate a framework convention in which there is a
legally-binding commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons, addressing the problem
through regular negotiating meetings at which benchmarks are established and the next steps
are negotiated as protocols or adjuncts to the framework treaty. The advantage to the
framework approach is that there is a framework – next steps are not left just to good will and
favorable climates. The disadvantage is that not all states in the framework convention will join
all the protocols at the same time but they are part of the negotiations and thus can slow or
water things down. The advantage would include a commitment to negotiate and a
mechanism for new elements to be incorporated over time. At the 2005 NPT RevCon, a
number of states circulated a working paper which called for the commencement of
negotiations leading either to the conclusion of a nuclear weapons convention or a framework
145 Frederick Mattis, Banning Weapons of Mass Destruction, Westport, Praeger Security International, 2009.
146 Philip John Noel-Baker, The Way to World Disarmament-Now! London, Union of Democratic Control, 1963.
147 Philip John Noel-Baker, “Gradualism is Not Realistic” in A New Design for Nuclear Disarmament, W. Epstein
and T Toyoda, eds, Nottingham, Spokesman, 1977.
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of instruments for the complete abolition and elimination of nuclear weapons. It provided a
negotiating model which combined the positive aspects of both the step-by-step approach
favored by some of the NPT nuclear weapon states and their allies, and the more
comprehensive approach favored by the Non-Aligned Movement. Malaysia called this a
“comprehensive-incremental approach”, as it included the achievement of disarmament steps
within a comprehensive disarmament framework. Pursuant to such an approach the
completion of disarmament steps in areas where agreement can be reached within a short to
medium timeframe would be facilitated. More difficult issues requiring more complex
arrangements would be resolved through continuing negotiations and achieved in subsequent
steps. Framework conventions have proved to be successful in other fields. However, as
everyone who has worked through the climate change convention and the convention on
certain conventional weapons (CCW) knows, there are severe limitations and drawbacks to
framework conventions down the road.
Monitoring Progress
The ICNND Report “Eliminating Nuclear Threats”148 proposed the establishment of an
independent non-governmental monitoring body staffed by a small cadre of researchers and
guided by a senior governing board that would produce a “report card” on progress towards
nuclear disarmament.
One idea is to establish a scientific body - an Intergovernmental Panel on Nuclear Materials –
similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Experts appointed to the panel
would be scientific and legal experts and would address the whole range of issues pertaining
to fissile materials from stocks, transparency, and the nuclear fuel cycle to complete nuclear
disarmament. Their studies would inform and drive the nuclear disarmament process from the
technical perspective. Technical and legal problems that arise would be discussed and studies
in the panel and would be reported to the United Nations Secretary-General for transmission to
member states and to negotiating bodies. The information would also be transmitted to the any
non-governmental monitoring body as proposed by the ICNND.
Another possibility is to establish the International Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons
(ICBN149) research network to produce the “Nuclear Weapons Monitor” – an annual report on
nuclear disarmament progress. This is entirely an imitation of the International Campaign to
Ban Landmines (ICBL150) and Cluster Munitions Coalition151 network of researchers that
produce the annual and so very useful “Landmine and Cluster Munitions Monitor152”. The
Landmine and Cluster Munitions Monitor is a civil society-based program providing research
and monitoring on progress made in eliminating landmines, cluster munitions, and other
148 www.icnnd.org
149 See www.ican.org
150 www.icbl.org
151 http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/
152 http://lm.icbl.org/
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explosive remnants of war. The Monitor is known and trusted as independent and impartial. It
has become the “de facto monitoring regime for the Mine Ban Treaty.” It will now take on the
same role for the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
V. In Conclusion
The delegitimization of nuclear weapons is fundamental to preventing their use and achieving
nuclear disarmament. Delegitimization is a process of devaluation; diminishing and destroying
all claims to legitimacy, prestige and authority. Delegitimization gets to the heart of the nuclear
deterrence debate and the evidence for nuclear deterrence has been found wanting. We are at
a point in history when whatever the rights and wrongs of nuclear weapons, whatever the
debates that have been rehearsed and repeated for the last 65 years, the fact is that nuclear
weapons are not particularly useful in today’s world, and may even have increased pre-existing
dangers in the form of international terrorism and old and decaying weapons still in storage.
Nuclear weapons have no inherent legitimacy as weapons of war in that they are inhumane,
indiscriminate and cause unacceptable harm. What deterrent legitimacy they possess has
been conferred on them through the mind-games of the Cold War, a period that is now over.
Delegitimization will be a self-reinforcing endeavor, affecting the credibility of deterrent threats
and allowing the restatement of the immorality of both the use and threat of use of nuclear
weapons. Delegitimization has been neglected in the name of a strategic utility. Reinstating the
more cautious approach of conventional weapons, whereby one mistake in their use, while
ghastly and to be utterly avoided, is not on the scale of one mistake with a nuclear weapon.
In a situation where modern armies are stretched to the hilt and where wealthy countries
cannot afford to equip their soldiers with bullet-proof armor, small wonder senior military
officers are asking the questions – out loud in some cases – as to why scarce money and
precious human resources should be spent on weapons that are intended never to be used
and are not useful on the battlefield. Indeed, states that possess nuclear weapons find
themselves increasingly vulnerable to proliferation. Certain smaller states seem to have
worked out that nuclear weapons serve one major purpose today and that is to prevent attack
by one of the nuclear weapon states. North Korea calculates that the U.S. would not attack
Pyongyang if a nuclear weapon were aimed at Seoul or Tokyo. Others may well calculate the
same vis-à-vis U.S. interests in the Middle East, such as the fear of a nuclear attack on Israel
or Saudi Arabia.
Nuclear weapons – along with weapons such as landmines and cluster munitions – cannot be
used to take territory in a military campaign. They cannot be used in the types of conflicts in
which we find ourselves increasingly embroiled, such as in Afghanistan, the Congo, Iraq,
Georgia and so on. Nuclear weapons are blundering, polluting weapons that cause long-
lasting environmental damage and create hostile terrains. They lack precision in a world
where advanced militaries increasingly focus on reducing collateral damage and civilian
deaths. The weapons of choice in war these days are precise, manoeuvrable and low-yield;
they are often aimed at individual heads of state or leaders of terrorist operations. Like the
move to smart sanctions, smart weapons aim not to hurt the innocent civilian and thus lose the
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campaigns for hearts and minds, rather to target solely the irascible elite who had created the
mayhem and destruction. Nuclear weapons are useless in these regards.
A group of like-minded countries, in partnership with NGOs and international organizations,
could begin a process that would begin the drive for global nuclear disarmament. The group
would begin with developing the terms and elements of a convention to outlaw the possession
and use of nuclear weapons. The process would of course be open to all who shared the
vision and over time, a wider group of interested states would help build momentum.
It is time to place the burden of proof on those that would retain nuclear weapons. International
security for many countries has been built around the concept of nuclear deterrence for over
sixty years. The evidence for its reality is weak, whereas the risks are enormous. Continuing to
premise security on the basis of a concept with weapons with which a “small accident” would
have huge consequences would be folly. It is time to open up a new debate, time to consider
the possibility that nuclear deterrence is not a valid framework for international security in the
21st Century. It is time to set about getting rid of nuclear weapons while we still have the
opportunity.
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Appendix 1
A more detailed analysis of the nuclear bombings of H ir os hima
and Nagasaki
There have been several instances when nuclear weapons are believed by many theorists to
have demonstrated their utility in war. The first – and the only use of nuclear weapons in war –
was against Japan in 1945. This was an afterthought in that the primary foe for which these
weapons were intended, Germany, had already been defeated before the first test of the A-
bomb in July 1945. According to the traditional (U.S.) interpretation, the decision to use nuclear
weapons was motivated by the desire to end the war quickly and reduce the number of U.S.
casualties that would have been unavoidable had the United States been forced to land in
Japan, most likely in 1946.
This view has always been questioned by the USSR/Russia, which regarded the use of
nuclear weapons against Japan as a “message” to Moscow in the emerging Cold War
confrontation. Recent historical research in Japan and historical evidence from the Soviet
archives demonstrate that the stated calculation underlying Truman’s decision was off the
mark, at best. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not significantly influence the
willingness of Japan’s General Staff and government to fight (similarly neither did the Tokyo
fire bombings); rather, it was the declaration of war by the Soviet Union on 8 August 1945.
Only at that point did Japan find itself in a no-win situation of fighting on two fronts
simultaneously (see below for further discussion in the section on decisiveness).
Indeed, the doctrine of “strategic bombing,” which was very influential in Europe prior to World
War II and continued to dominate U.S. military thinking throughout the war, supports the
evidence against the efficacy of nuclear weapons to end a war. Examples of this doctrine were
the horrendous conventional- and fire- bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. The purpose of
“strategic bombing” was to undermine the will of the country to resist, and as a post-war study
by U.S. government demonstrated, these attempts failed to achieve that purpose.
In retrospect, it seems clear that people believed in the power of nuclear weapons because
they wanted to, not because such a belief was supported by the facts surrounding Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. Even a cursory examination of the facts shows that there are serious problems
with the tale we have been telling ourselves about nuclear weapons for the last sixty five years.
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Timing
The first and most important problem is timing. The traditional story about the end of the war
has the U.S. bombing Hiroshima on 6 August, bombing Nagasaki on 9 August, and the
Japanese deciding to surrender on 10 August. At a superficial level this sequence of events
has some plausibility. Look more closely, however, and serious problems emerge.
The crucial event in that first week of August was not the bombing of Hiroshima. That is the
event that draws our eyes because of the drama associated with nuclear weapons since. But if
the goal is to understand why Japan surrendered, looking toward Hiroshima is nothing more
than prejudging the issue. The decisive event that week was the decision by Japan’s leaders
to consider unconditional surrender for the first time. Japan had been fighting a war since
1931. During those long years, and especially as the situation worsened in 1945, they had
sometimes talked about surrender. But never had they called an emergency meeting of the
Supreme Council (the effective ruling body of Japan at the time) in order to put immediate
surrender on the table. 9 August was the first day that Japan’s leaders seriously met to discuss
unconditional surrender. Focusing on this event raises an important question: What motivated
them to sit down and consider surrender on this day? What got them to finally abandon their
stubborn resistance and face the possibility of defeat?
It cannot have been the bombing of Nagasaki. The Supreme Council was already meeting and
already discussing surrender when news of the bombing of Nagasaki reached Tokyo early in
the afternoon of the 9th. The bombing of Hiroshima does not make a very good candidate
either. It occurred three days earlier. What sort of crisis erupts after lying dormant for three
days? It might be argued that they were not aware that it was an atomic bomb or what such a
bomb’s capabilities were. But Japan’s leaders knew the nature of the bomb due to President
Truman’s 7 August announcement. They were aware of the extent of the damage as early as
the afternoon of 6 August when the mayor of Hiroshima reported that two-thirds of the city had
been destroyed and about one-third of the civilians killed. From the 6th onward, therefore, they
had at least a rough idea of the power of such a weapon.
At least one member of the inner circle on the Supreme Council, Army Minister Anami
Korechika, had consulted with the head of Japan’s own nuclear weapons project to discuss the
capabilities of nuclear weapons. Other members of the inner circle discussed in their diaries
that it was a nuclear weapon. Yet they did not meet to discuss surrender on the 7th or the 8th.
Most tellingly, Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori requested a meeting of the Supreme Council to
discuss the bombing of Hiroshima on 8 August but had his request turned down.153 Look at the
contemporaneous documents for the days after Hiroshima and you do not find a sense of
crisis.
153 Asada, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender,” p. 505.
Pag e 73
What, then, could have caused Japan’s leaders to change their minds and suddenly meet to
discuss absolute surrender? At midnight on the night of 8 August the Soviet Union, which had
been neutral, declared war and launched an invasion of Japanese-held territory in Manchuria,
on Sakhalin Island and elsewhere. It was a massive, overwhelming attack by more than 1.5
million men that drove Japan’s forces reeling back. Looking only at timing it seems highly likely
that the cause of Japan’s decision to surrender was actually the Soviet declaration of war and
invasion of Japanese-held territory.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Proportion
The second problem is one of proportion. Hiroshima is regularly described (mostly by people
who oppose nuclear weapons) as the worst attack against a city in history. The facts are quite
different and the exaggeration is part of what gives nuclear weapons their power.
The U.S. Air Force bombed 68 cities in the summer of 1945 and it was one of the most
devastating campaigns of city attacks in the history of mankind. A B-29 bomber, loaded with
conventional bombs, could carry about 16,000 to 20,000 pounds of bombs on a high-altitude
trip to Japan and back. A typical raid consisted of 500 bombers. This means that most raids
against Japanese cities delivered something on the order of 4 to 5 kilotons of explosive force
onto their target.154 The Hiroshima bomb was 16 kilotons but consider: most of the explosive
power of a single, powerful bomb is concentrated at the center, it gets wasted re-bouncing the
rubble at the center, as it were. If destructive force is distributed more evenly, it tends to be
more effective. Simple calculation demonstrates that the Hiroshima attack was not orders of
magnitude worse than the conventional bombing that had already been going on for five
months.
Put in the perspective of this larger bombing campaign, Hiroshima appears in a very different
light. Graph the number of people killed in each of the 68 city attacks that summer, and
Hiroshima is second. Tokyo, the conventional attack that opened the campaign in March, is
first. Graph the square miles destroyed, and Hiroshima is fourth. Three other cities had more
total square miles destroyed with firebombs and conventional high explosives. Graph the
proportion of each city that was destroyed, and the outcome is even more striking. Hiroshima
was seventeenth.155 Toyoma, attacked at the beginning of August, was 99.5% destroyed.
Clearly, Hiroshima was not outside the scale of the conventional attacks against other
Japanese cities that summer. Seeing that these attacks were in many ways similar in terms of
destruction and death raises troubling questions. “Why,” one might ask, “if these other attacks
were roughly similar, didn’t Japan surrender after one of these other 66 city attacks?” The
attacks had been going on all summer - five long months. A comparison of the scale of the
154 Frank, Downfall, p. 253.
155 The casualty figures are drawn from Frank, Downfall, p. 334. The homeless, area and buildings destroyed
figures are from United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Vol. IX, “The Strategic Air Operations of Very Heavy
Bombardment in the War Against Japan,” in Pacific Report No. 66 (New York: Garland, 1976), p. 43.
Pag e 74
attacks justifiably raises the question: How can it be that all these other attacks failed, but
Hiroshima succeeded?
Advocates insist Hiroshima was different. Nuclear weapons are special. Even though these
other attacks, in some cases, outdid Hiroshima in terms of destruction, the normal rules of
human conduct do not apply because nuclear weapons are exceptional. This nuclear
exceptionalism is one of the ideas that has invested nuclear weapons with so much power in
peoples’ minds for the last 70 years. It is this article of faith - that nuclear weapons have a
power to coerce that no other weapon has - that has allowed generations to ignore the facts.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Reactions
The third problem is one of reaction: the Soviet declaration of war clearly touched off a crisis,
while the bombing of Hiroshima did not. On the morning of 9 August, as news of the Soviet
invasion of Manchuria (and other places) began to filter into official circles in Tokyo, orders
were drawn up declaring martial law - orders that were put into effect later that same day. No
such break with ordinary routine occurred when Hiroshima was bombed three days earlier.
Also on that morning, in a private meeting of Army officers planning strategy for the Supreme
Council and in Cabinet meetings later that day, Army Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe Toroshiro
suggested that the military overthrow the Emperor and declare a military dictatorship. No such
extreme responses were considered after the bombing of Hiroshima.156
These specific responses are not surprising because in general terms, the attitude of Japan’s
leaders toward the relative importance of city bombing as opposed to the actions of the Soviet
Union were already clear. Japan’s leaders identified the actions of the Soviet Union as the
pivotal factor and virtually ignored city bombing. In a June meeting the Supreme Council stated
that if the Soviet Union entered the war it would “determine the fate of the Empire.” In that
same meeting, Kawabe elaborated that: “The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations
with the Soviet Union is one of the fundamental conditions for continuing the war with the
United States.”157 On the other hand, a review of the documents reporting the work of the
Supreme Council shows that they never had a full dress meeting to discuss the city bombings
and - remarkably - it is only even mentioned twice: once in passing in May and once in
August.158
Clearly, based on this evidence alone, it is difficult to make the case that there was any
general feeling that the city bombings had a decisive impact. But in the decisive meeting on
the nights of 9 and 10 August, Army Chief of Staff Umezu is asked what the army intends to do
about the atomic bomb. His answer is remarkable on two counts. He implies that nuclear
bombing and conventional bombing are equivalent, and he seems to suggest that no city
156 Frank, Downfall, pp. 288-289.
157 Asada, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender,” p. 504.
158 Frank, Downfall, p. 294.
Pag e 75
bombing could ever be strategically decisive, in any case. Japan’s leadership seems to have
regarded city bombing in general as not strategically important.159
Their reactions to the specific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just as telling. Word of
the bombing of Nagasaki arrived early in the afternoon of 9 August while the full Cabinet was
discussing unconditional surrender. What is remarkable about this news is that it does not
appear to have substantially changed the debate in the Cabinet or even remained a matter of
discussion for very long. When the news arrived, the Cabinet was deadlocked over whether to
consider unconditional surrender. After a brief discussion the Cabinet remained deadlocked
and went on to talk about other issues. This second bombing does not appear to have
changed any minds or had any appreciable impact on the discussion.
A second example of the kinds of reactions that Hiroshima caused is a diary entry of Army
Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe. On the night of 8 August, writing in his diary, General Kawabe
writes that when he learned that the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima was an atomic bomb it
gave him a serious jolt. He uses the word shigeki, which is best translated as “serious jolt” not
its more powerful cousin shogeki which is best translated as “shock.” His word choice is
confirmed (and his general attitude toward the event made clear) by his next words. He says,
“We must be tenacious and fight on.” Clearly this particular Army general was not imagining
that the next morning he would be sitting in meetings discussing the final surrender of
Japan.160
Also telling is a rather extended diary entry by Admiral Takagi, recounting a conversation he
had with his boss, Navy Minister Yonai.161 This diary entry also comes from 8 August and is
reproduced in an appendix to this paper. There are several things that are striking about this.
First, it is clear from what Yonai says that discussing surrender is not on the agenda for the
next day’s meeting of the Supreme Council (9 August). Since this is the meeting that would
eventually result in the decision to surrender, whatever was going to happen that would force
them to consider unconditional surrender had not yet occurred by the evening of 8 August.
Second, Hiroshima is mentioned, but it is mentioned only in passing. It is a problem, but it is
only one problem among many. One gets the impression that Yonai is more concerned with
159 Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy, p. 211. This attitude is in keeping with the experience of the British government
in World War II. As far as I know, Churchill never considered surrendering because of attacks by the Luftwaffe on
British cities. In fact, some historians have speculated that Churchill deliberately goaded the Germans into
switching from attacks on radar installations to British cities at a crucial moment in the Battle of Britain to protect
the severely overstretched Royal Air Force. The apparent indifference of Japanʼs leaders is also in keeping with
the German experience. Although the Germans had more civilians killed due to aerial bombing than any other
belligerent, the German government did not consider surrendering because of city bombing. In fact, city bombing
seems to have stiffened the will of the countries that were bombed, rather than the opposite.
160 Quoted in Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy, p. 200.
161 Diary of Takagi Sokichi for Wednesday, 8 August 1945, quoted in document 55 of William Burr, ed., “The
Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources,” National Security Archive Electronic
Briefing Book No. 162, National Security Archive, 5 August 2005,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm.
Pag e 76
the rationing of rice that will start on the 11th, than with the bombing of Hiroshima two days
before. Hiroshima is not the crucial event leading to the collapse of morale, but one of “many
respects” in which the situation is getting worse. It is not the single event around which
everyone’s attention is focused. It is merely one more event that adds to the general gloom.
Finally, the general tone of this conversation is not one of crisis. This is not the tone of men
who are facing absolute defeat. These men are not struggling to come to grips with the fact
that tomorrow they will have to sit in meetings and discuss whether they will have to lose their
honor, the possibility of facing war crimes trials, or the admission of mistakes that led to defeat
and all the other things that go with surrender. This is not the despairing conversation that
takes place in extremis. This is quite clearly the talk of people who are in a crisis, facing
difficulties, but who still feel that they have cards to play. This is the conversation of people still
trying to manage.
They talk about how to talk sense into the Prime Minister and debate who can explain the
seriousness of the morale problem to him. They talk about the dangers of being too aggressive
and relying too much on military solutions. They talk about the chances that the attempt to get
Stalin to mediate might still work. They poke fun at Suzuki. These officials do not sound like
people who are struggling emotionally to come to grips with disaster. The next day, men in the
Supreme Council will weep openly in the late night meeting with the Emperor where the
decision to surrender is finally taken. But these men do not sound at all as if they are close to
tears.
If one looks closely at the contemporaneous evidence - at the meetings and conversations that
Japan’s leaders had in the days following Hiroshima - there is almost no evidence of a crisis
arising from the bombing. On the other hand, if one looks at the words and deeds of these
same men following the news that the Soviet Union had declared war and invaded, it is
obvious from their words and deeds that a full-blown crisis is underway.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Decisiveness
The final problem is one of decisiveness. The bombing of Hiroshima was not decisive militarily
in any way. It neither foreclosed crucial options nor forced a response. The declaration of war
by the Soviet Union, on the other hand, removed the last options that Japan’s leaders had.
In the spring of 1945, Japan was already largely defeated and Japan’s leaders knew it. They
hoped, however, through diplomacy or battle to win better terms than simple surrender.
Research in the last twenty years has made clear that these were the only two options:
Japan’s ruling elite believed that no other plan for securing an acceptable surrender merited
attention or effort.
Pag e 77
The “peace” faction, led by Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo (and including Navy Minister
Mitsumasa Yonai, Lord Privy Seal Koichi Kido, and many civilian ministers) hoped that
diplomacy could provide a solution to Japan’s predicament.162 They believed it might be
possible to persuade Stalin to mediate a settlement between Japan on the one hand and the
United States, Great Britain, and their allies on the other. The Soviets and the Japanese had
signed a neutrality pact in 1941, which would not expire until April 1946. The Japanese judged
that only the Soviets had sufficient status as a great power to mediate between themselves
and the United States, and they believed it was possible for such mediation to result in the
preservation of their form of government and at least some of their conquered territory.
Historians often treat this diplomatic effort by Japanese officials as inexplicable and unrealistic.
Japanese leaders knew that this option did not have a high probability of success. They were
aware that the Soviets would be predisposed to join the United States and Great Britain in
attacking Japan. But they were also aware of tensions that had developed between the Soviet
Union and its allies, and they were willing to offer considerable territorial concessions to the
Soviets in Asia. They were unaware, of course, that Stalin had already been persuaded by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill to join the war against
Japan. Their choice of the Soviets was clever: it would be in the Soviets’ interest, after all, to
make sure that the United States did not gain too much from a peace settlement, because any
increase in influence for the United States in Asia would mean a corresponding loss of
influence for the Soviets.
The “hard-liners,” led by Minister of War Korechika Anami (and including Army Chief of Staff
Yoshijiro Umezu and Navy Chief of Staff Soemu Toyoda), believed that a military solution to
Japan's current crisis could be found. Even though the Japanese military had suffered a series
of costly defeats, their economy crippled and their navy incapacitated, Japan still had many
soldiers willing to fight. One last-ditch battle, the hard-liners felt, could generate better
surrender terms.163 The hard-liners’ plan is also often characterized as wrong-headed and
fanatic. Seen through the lens of a warrior culture and Japan’s experience in the 1904-1905
Russo-Japanese war, however, their behavior may have been desperate but it was not
162 “Peace” faction is a consistently employed misnomer. It suggests a fundamental disagreement over ends –
war or peace. But Japan's leaders were largely united in their goal (bringing the war to a close); they were divided
only over the best means to achieve that end (diplomacy or battle).
163 Both the diplomatic and the military approaches were based on Japanese historical experience. Historians
generally believe that the experience of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 set the stage in many ways for
Japan’s plans and attitudes in World War II. The Russo-Japanese war consisted of a series of relatively
inconclusive land campaigns in which casualties were high, followed by a decisive naval battle at Tsushima
Straits, which the Japanese dramatically won and which persuaded the Russians to seek an end to the war. This
sequence of events is the clear model for the “decisive” battle that Japan’s military leaders sought throughout
World War II. Mediation follows the model of the Russo-Japanese war as well, which was settled through the
mediation of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. The war of 1904-05 also began with a Japanese surprise attack
against its opponent’s navy. For more on a “decisive” battle, see Drea, In the Service of the Emperor, especially
chap. 12, “Chasing a Decisive Victory: Emperor Hirohito and Japan's War with the West (1941-1945).”
Pag e 78
irrational.164 And the astuteness of the Japanese plan to use U.S. casualties as leverage is
confirmed by the fact that the U.S. high command repeatedly expressed concerns about the
possibility of high casualties during an invasion.165 The hard-liners correctly identified their
opponent’s weakness. Whether their hope that they could leverage better terms in this way
was realistic seems doubtful, but cannot be known.
Once the Soviets intervened, hopes for a mediated settlement were extinguished, and
historians generally acknowledge this. They less often discuss, however, the impact the Soviet
intervention had on the strategic military situation. The Soviet force in Manchuria consisted of
1.5 million men who had a 5 to 1 superiority in tanks and who made rapid progress.166 Japan
would have had difficulty mounting an effective defense against an invasion of the home
islands from the north as Japanese forces had been steadily shifted south toward the island of
Kyushu – the likely first target of a U.S. invasion. The Japanese Fifth Area Army, for example,
charged with defending the northern island of Hokkaido, was under strength (at two divisions
and one brigade) and was dug in on the east side of the island. Soviet plans called for the
100,000 troops of the Sixteenth Army, after quickly securing the southern half of Sakhalin
Island, to launch an immediate invasion of Hokkaido from the west. The difficulties of fighting a
decisive battle on two fronts at once would have been clear. Equally clear would have been the
likelihood that Soviet forces would be landing on the home islands within ten days to two
weeks.167
Both plans for obtaining better terms – diplomatic and military – had a low probability of
success, but each had some merit. Whether either plan was ultimately realistic is beside the
point; the Japanese leadership believed that these were the only two options that offered any
hope of securing better terms. Efforts on behalf of both options were being actively pursued at
the end of July and in the first week of August of 1945. When the Soviet Union intervened in
the early hours of 9 August, however, both of these options were invalidated. The Soviets
could not serve as mediators if they were belligerents in the conflict, and although hard-liners
164 Morgan, Compellence and the Strategic Culture of Imperial Japan. See especially chap. 6.
165 Richard Frank argues that the planned invasion would have been canceled: “With the Navy’s withdrawal of
support, the terrible casualties in Okinawa, and the appalling radio-intelligence picture of the Japanese buildup on
Kyushu, Olympic was not going forward as planned and authorized–period.” Richard B. Frank, “Why Truman
Dropped the Bomb,” Weekly Standard, Vol. 10, No. 44, 8 August 2005.
166 In some cases, units halted only when they ran out of fuel.
167 Frank, in the H-Diplo roundtable discussion on Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy, argues that Japan's leaders
would have discounted the Soviet invasion both because they had already written off Manchuria and because the
Soviet's paucity of amphibious landing craft made the possibility of an invasion of the Home Islands far less
threatening than the sheer number of Soviet troops makes it appear. Accepting his point requires disbelieving a
number of contemporaneous Japanese statements. It is possible the the Japanese high command had secretly
written off Manchuria, although the evidence is ambiguous. On the landing craft, however, the United States had
a history of supplying crucial war material to the Soviets. Even presuming that the Japanese had accurate
estimates of the numbers of Soviet landing craft, and that they had confidence in those estimates, prudence
would still have dictated that Japanese leaders assume that the United States would supply their allies with the
necessary ships.
Pag e 79
might be able to convince themselves that an all-out effort against one invasion was possible,
no one would believe that such a decisive battle could be fought against two opponents at the
same time.
Japan surrendered because the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, Sakhalin
Island and other territories deprived it of any viable options. They surrendered, in other words,
because they had no choice. The Soviet declaration of war and invasion was strategically
decisive; bombing two more cities in a campaign that had already bombed 66 other cities, was
not.
Appendix 2
An annotated excerpt from the diary of Admiral Takagi Sokichi for Wednesday, August
8, 1945, recounting a conversation he had with his boss, Navy Minister Yonai quoted in
Burr, “The Atomic Bomb at the End of World War II”
[Yonai]: “I met with Foreign Minister Togo on August 1, but he said he wanted to ask the Prime
Minister for his opinion.”
[Takagi]: “Is he still thinking about such a thing at this very moment?”
Takagi and Yonai do not seem to have high regard for Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro.
Suzuki was 77 when he was made Prime Minister in April of 1945 (when it was already
clear to many in Japan that the war was lost) and historians have noted that Suzuki does
not seem to have taken a position and stuck with it very often in the final months of World
War II. Some suggest that he came down in debates on the side of the last person who
spoke privately with him.
[Yonai]: “Prime Minister’s words are also difficult to understand. When he speaks, he still tries
to sound tough by mentioning [the Battle of]: Komaki-yama, the Winter Siege of Osaka, and
such. The other day as well, at the cabinet meeting, he started to argue that to talk about
ending the war would be almost as if we were encouraging front-line soldiers to start a riot and
that it had been common knowledge for a long time that commanders abroad would not obey
their master’s orders. It was almost like sending a wrong signal that could instigate a riot. So I
called [Seizo] Sakonji and told him to tell the Prime Minister that such a comment was not
appropriate at a Cabinet meeting.”
[Takagi]: “How does the Prime Minister assess the situation inside the country?”
[Yonai]: “It seems he hasn’t heard anything about it. And no one knows [the real situation].”
Yonai is unhappy with Suzuki’s actions and one can sense the dismissive tone in Yonai’s
response. Suzuki, he seems to be saying, does not know the first thing about the real
problem facing Japan. Yonai was deeply concerned that the people of Japan would lose
hope and that a popular (possibly communist) uprising would result. Few others at the
upper reaches of Japan’s government (and few historians) seem to have shared this
Pag e 80
assessment, but Takagi is clearly aware of his boss’s fears: he alludes to it several times
and indicates his agreement.
[Takagi]: “In my opinion, someone like the Interior Minister should have a straight talk with the
Prime Minister about domestic conditions. I used to think that by September or October the
domestic situation would rapidly deteriorate while you said it would start deteriorating in mid-
August. Actually, the situation is getting steadily worse in many respects during these couple of
days, especially after Hiroshima [6 August].”
Here Takagi is flattering his boss. He is saying, in essence, “I guessed civilian morale
would dip in October but it seems now that you were right when you guessed it would
happen in August.” He doesn’t say specifically what evidence there is that civilian morale is
falling. His final sentence mentions the situation is worsening in “many respects” and also
mentions the bombing of Hiroshima.
[Yonai]: “Bad news continues and the ration of rice in Tokyo will be reduced by 10% after [the]
11th of this month. The Army Minister still sounds aggressive all the time, but I am worried that
you may end up in a situation where you will realize, when you look back after vigorously
moving forward assuming that others are following, that no one is actually following. The
Foreign Minister has an appointment with the Army minister today. The independence of East
India will be on the agenda at the Supreme War Council tomorrow. I have doubts about such a
plan (a farce?), but I can’t say so in public.”
In a consensus-based government getting out ahead of the consensus is one of the worst
errors a leader can make. Yonai is suggesting that War Minister Anami, who is the most
influential man in government at this point, is being too aggressive. (The “independence of
East India” is a euphemism for the planned withdrawal of 30,000 troops from the Burma
theater of operations.)
[Takagi]: “There is a rumor that the Prime Minister has said that [Koichi] Kido, taking
advantage of his position as an aid to his Majesty, is trying to influence his Majesty’s opinion.
Did you hear that?”
[Yonai]: “I heard the prime minister complained what [is] the point of being a Prime Minister [in
this kind of situation].”
This is funny. Kido Koichi was one of the smartest men in government during the war years
and he used his position as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal to constantly influence Emperor
Hirohito. He was, probably, the Emperor’s closest advisor. Yonai and Takagi are chuckling
because suggesting that Kido might be using his position to influence Emperor is stating
the obvious. Yonai’s joke in response makes it clear how little influence Suzuki is perceived
to have.
[Takagi]: “I think the real problem is not whether the enemy will invade our mainland and when
it will be if they do so, but rather the diminishing spirit of the people. Therefore, it will be a big
Pag e 81
mistake if the Foreign Minister is thinking that we can spend more time on diplomacy if
invasion comes later.”
It seems from what Takagi says that the main focus of conversation in ruling circles has
been when the Americans will invade. That, however, is not the important question, he
says. The important question is how long the spirit of the people will last. Imagining that
there is lots of time to make diplomacy work is a mistake, he thinks.
[Yonai]: “I met the Foreign Ministry yesterday and he told me that no telegram [from the Soviet
Union] had come. But it was on the fifth that Stalin returned home from Potsdam and it takes a
few days for a telegram to arrive, so we will probably get some response either today or
tomorrow. I will ask him tomorrow since I have a meeting. Perhaps we may also have to be
ready for a situation where we won’t receive any response from Russia.”
Clearly, even this late in the game (8 August) these two government leaders, one of whom
is on the Supreme Council, are still hoping that a Soviet-led mediation can bring better
surrender terms.
Appendix 3:
No First Use, brief history and current positions.
The call for a No First Use of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NFU168) is not new. In 1982, the USSR
General Secretary Brezhnev at the United Nations made a pledge not to be the first to use
nuclear weapons. China’s NFU pledge “not be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or
under any circumstances” dates back to 1964, from its first nuclear weapons test and is part of
a wider set of pledges forming a part of China’s nuclear weapons doctrine. Throughout the
cold war, the USSR and China called on the western nuclear weapons states to adopt similar
nuclear doctrines. However, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France have never
responded in kind, reserving instead (since the end of the Cold War specifically) the option to
use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional, chemical or biological attack.
Following the end of the Cold War, the Russian Federation changed its declaratory NFU
pledge and aligned its views on first use with the NATO stance where first use is an option to
be considered.169 On February 5, 2010, Russia published its new Military Doctrine, replacing
the one signed in 2000.170 (Note: at the same time as he signed the 2010 Military Doctrine,
President Dmitri Medvedev also signed "The Foundations of State Policy in the Area of
Nuclear Deterrence until 2020," which has not yet been made public.) The 2010 Doctrine does
168 Also sometimes referred to as NoFUN.
169 Arbatov, op. cit.
170 Nikolai Sokov, “The New, 2010 Russian Military Doctrine: The Nuclear Angle,” CNS Feature Story, February 5,
2010, http://cns.miis.edu/stories/100205_russian_nuclear_doctrine.htm.
Pag e 82
not alter Russia’s policy on first use, reserving the right to use nuclear weapons not only in
response to a nuclear attack or an attack with other WMD but also in response to a
conventional attack. However, the new Russian doctrine has tightened the criterion for the
employment of nuclear weapons allowing for their use when "the very existence of [Russia] is
under threat."
In 1995 China issued an unconditional negative security assurance as follows:171
1. China undertakes not to be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any
circumstances.
2. China undertakes not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-
weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones at any time or under any circumstances.
This commitment naturally applies to non-nuclear-weapon States parties to the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons or non-nuclear-weapon States that have
entered into any comparable internationally binding commitments not to manufacture or
acquire nuclear explosive devices.
3. China has always held that, pending the complete prohibition and thorough
destruction of nuclear weapons, all nuclear weapon States should undertake not to be
the first to use nuclear weapons and not to use or threaten to use such weapons
against non-nuclear-weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones at any time or under
any circumstances. China strongly calls for the early conclusion of an international
convention on the non-first use of nuclear weapons as well as an international legal
instrument assuring the non-nuclear-weapon States and nuclear-weapon-free zones
against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.
4. China, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, undertakes to
take action within the Council to ensure that the Council takes appropriate measures to
provide, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, necessary assistance to
any non-nuclear-weapon State that comes under attack from nuclear weapons, and to
impose strict and effective sanctions on the attacking State. This commitment naturally
applies to any non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons or to any non-nuclear-weapon State that has entered into any
comparable internationally binding commitment not to manufacture or acquire nuclear
explosive devices, in the event of aggression involving the use of nuclear weapons or
the threat of such aggression against the State.
5. The positive security assurance provided by China, as contained in paragraph 4,
does not in any way compromise China's position as set out in paragraph 3 and shall
not in any way be construed as endorsing the use of nuclear weapons.
In 1994, China proposed to the other NPT nuclear weapons states a draft treaty on no first
use. Russia responded positively to the proposal and the two countries undertook bilateral no
171 It is doubtful that China regards this assurance as extending to Taiwan, which it considers to be part of its
sovereign territory. How far it applies to India is also not clear, since China claims one Indian state.
Pag e 83
first use commitments.172 It is worth noting here that China’s undertaking on no first use is
expressed to apply to not only non-nuclear weapons states but to Nuclear Weapon Free Zones
(NWFZs) as well. In 1999, following the nuclear tests in 1998, India announced that it would
not “resort to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against states which do not possess
nuclear weapons, or are not aligned with nuclear weapons powers.” However in 2003, India
adopted a doctrine of nuclear first use in response to chemical or biological weapons use, thus
mimicking the NPT nuclear weapons states, excluding China.
Pakistan explicitly includes the possibility of first use in its doctrine. Israel is ambiguous on the
subject – as indeed it is on nuclear weapons generally – but it has declared since 1965 that it
“will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the region”173 North Korea has issued
relatively explicit threats about its preparedness to use nuclear weapons, particularly in the
wake of its second nuclear test in May 2009. It has also been suggested that North Korea’s
nuclear capability would in any case clearly be a “use-it-or-lose-it” nuclear arsenal due to its
small size and lack of survivability.174 However, North Korea’s actual possession of functional
nuclear weapons in a form capable of delivery, let alone its political will to use them, is highly
uncertain.
The United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia made for the most part
qualified security assurances to non-nuclear weapon states at the 1995 NPT Extension and
Review Conference.175 UN Security Council Resolution 984 (1995) took appreciative note of
these statements and recognized the “legitimate interest of non-nuclear weapons states to
receive security assurances.”
The absence of such commitments made by the nuclear weapon states to each other is not
helped by the dearth of discussions between themselves and between their protected allies on
concrete military concerns, strategic concepts and the armed forces of nuclear powers.
However, the 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review goes some way to opening up the topic of
NFU again due to its self-imposed restriction on which circumstances the United States would
respond with nuclear weapons and when it would not. For example, the United States has
stated that it will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons
172 It is worth noting that China also proposed including a reference to no first use in the Preamble to the CTBT,
but this was eventually excluded. See Butler, Nicola and Young, Stephen, “New Text for a Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty,” Occasional Papers on International Security Policy, 30 May 1996, Number 18.
http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Papers/BP18.htm
173 Avner Cohen’s forthcoming book, The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb, New York,
Columbia University Press, 2010.
174 Arbatov, op. cit.
175 The United States reaffirms that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapons States parties to
the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons except in the case of an invasion or any other attack on
the United States, its territories, its armed forces or any other troops, its allies or States towards which it has a
security commitment, carried out or sustained by such a non-nuclear-weapon State, in association or alliance with
a nuclear-weapon State. To this has been added the possibility of nuclear response to a chemical or biological
weapons attack. The no first use policies of the UK and France are virtually identical to this, except that they do
not espouse a nuclear response to chemical or biological weapons attack. http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-
issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/policies/no-first-use_1995-04-05.htm
Pag e 84
states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation
obligations.176
It has been suggested that the nuclear-armed states might be willing to consider a treaty
containing only unconditional negative security assurances.177 The United Kingdom and
Russia supported the idea of such a treaty at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension
Conference, but did not have the support of France and the United States.178 The 2000 NPT
RevCon however, endorsed the concept of legally binding assurances, and the Blix WMD
Commission in 2006 made a similar recommendation not only in relation to the NPT nuclear
weapons states, but also to states which were not Party to the NPT.179 The ICNND report,
Eliminating Nuclear Threats, recommends that a No First Use agreement be in place before
2025.180
176 The Nuclear Posture Review Report, US Department of Defense, April 2010, p viii.
177 Pugwash Workshop Report, supra.
178 Arbatov, op. cit.
179 Weapons of Terror. Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, Stockholm 2006, EO
Grafiska, p. 73.
180 “Eliminating Nuclear Threats; A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers,” www.icnnd.org
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