World Disarmament Week begins tomorrow:

Towards a nuclear weapon-free world

By Pramod DE SILVA

The world has around 50,000 nuclear weapons, enough to blow it to smithereens many times over. Having lived under a nuclear shadow for nearly 60 years, this is indeed a worrying factor in a highly volatile world with a myriad of conflicts. John F. Kennedy once warned that “every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment.”

And it is not only nations who could have access to weapons – terrorist groups may get hold of and try to use chemical, biological and worse, nuclear weapons. That would be an unimaginable nightmare.

Another perspective on the weapons race is that if the superpowers and other powerful nations cut their defence spending even by a fraction, there will be enough funds to address most of the problems faced by developing nations. A weapon-free world, especially a nuclear weapon-free world, is thus an ideal ingredient for world peace and harmony. This, however, is more complex than it sounds, because apart from the five established (or declared) nuclear powers (US, Russia, France, China and UK), several other states are believed to be having or developing nuclear weapons. It is difficult to restrain nuclear proliferation in a world where more countries have the capability to build a nuclear bomb.

Many nations plan to push the United States and other powers to honour their commitments to move towards eliminating their nuclear arsenals when the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, the arm of the world body devoted to disarmament and international security, begins its 2011 sessions this week. It is an appropriate period too – it coincides with the International Disarmament Week, from October 24-30 and the UN Day itself (October 24).

The nuclear powers have taken "important steps such as New START, reductions by France and the UK." United Nations disarmament chief Sergio Duarte declared in an interview, "but this is understood by other members, particularly the Non-aligned Movement, as being too slow. This is a perception of the UN".

After all, the majority of UN members had been in the vanguard of the movement against weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, chemical or biological.

Arms race

The annual observance of Disarmament Week, which begins on the anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, was called for in the Final Document of the General Assembly 1978 special session on disarmament. States were invited to highlight the danger of the arms race, propagate the need for its cessation and increase public understanding of the urgent tasks of disarmament.

As the UN notes, the world would be a more peaceful place if there were fewer weapons. An important component of even the earliest peace movements was to advocate for disarmament.

Thus "Peace through Disarmament" is a major focus for the United Nations. This excerpt from the Department for Disarmament Affairs' vision statement sums up this avenue of the UN's work:"We acknowledge that disarmament alone will not produce world peace. Yet we also maintain that the elimination of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), illicit arms trafficking, and burgeoning weapons stockpiles would advance peace and development goals. It would accomplish this by reducing the effects of wars, eliminating some key incentives to new conflicts, and liberating resources to improve the lives of all people of the United Nations and the natural environment in which they live."

Disarmament efforts focus on two basic types of weapons - weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and small arms. The latter is very important - do you know that there are more than 600 million guns in the world? One million people are injured by guns each year and 300,000 people are killed.

But the main focus shall remain on the nuclear weapons, for they have enormous destructive power, as seen in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The last President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, in a recent opinion piece wrote: “Critics present nuclear disarmament as unrealistic at best, a risky utopian dream at worst. They point to the Cold War’s “long peace” as proof that nuclear deterrence is the only means of staving off a major war.

"As someone who has commanded these weapons, I strongly disagree. Nuclear deterrence has always been a hard and brittle guarantor of peace. By failing to propose a compelling plan for nuclear disarmament, the US, Russia and the other nuclear powers are promoting a future in which nuclear weapons will inevitably be used. That catastrophe must be forestalled.”

Collective responsibility

Forestalling that catastrophe is the collective responsibility of all Member States of the UN. The five nuclear powers - China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States - agreed to work on disarmament steps as part of a 2010 review conference. That meeting's final document contained strong language affirming "the need for the nuclear-weapon states to reduce and eliminate all types of their nuclear weapons." Toward that goal, it noted "the urgent need for the nuclear-weapon states to implement the steps leading to nuclear disarmament."

There has been some progress. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty destroyed the feared quick-strike missiles threatening Europe’s peace. The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (1991) cut the bloated US and Soviet nuclear arsenals by 80 percent over a decade.

The US-Russian New START agreement that entered into force earlier this year is another such step. The accord requires both governments to reduce their arsenal of deployed strategic systems to no more than 1,550 warheads and 700 delivery devices. But many neutral countries have called for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention and a total ban on space weapons.

The Non-aligned Movement (NAM), of which Sri Lanka is a pivotal member, has emerged as a strong voice against nuclear weapons. "The main objective is the total elimination of nuclear weapons," said Fikry Cassidy, minister-counsellor for Indonesia. "We don't see anything yet, at the moment, going to that objective." His comments have been endorsed by many other NAM nations.

Another frustrating point is that the nuclear states are not very transparent about the size of their arsenal. Only the United States has released the exact number of deployed and reserve weapons in its commissioned nuclear arsenal - 5,113. France has also said it has brought down its nuclear weapons stockpile to around 300.

However, this is still too much because Article 6 of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) requires nuclear powers to pursue complete disarmament. In view of this, the United States plans to co-sponsor a resolution submitted by Japan promoting the goal of complete disarmament.

Special session

Several nations have also called for a Special Session on Disarmament in the UN General Assembly. The last such meeting took place in 1998. A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has also gained traction at the UN, though several nuclear powers have still not warmed up to the idea.

The other major factor is WMD terrorism including nuclear terrorism.

"That's a constant concern and probably one of the biggest threats seen by delegations that nuclear weapons would be in the hands of non-state actors," a UN delegate told the media.

But the biggest item on the agenda seems to be revitalising the disarmament debate and machinery, particularly the Conference on Disarmament, the main international forum for negotiating arms control accords.

Then come biological weapons and normal chemical weapons. The First Committee meeting comes shortly before the Biological Weapons Convention's review conference in December. Several countries will not be able to meet a 2012 deadline for destruction of their chemical weapons stocks. However, the Chemical Weapons Convention has been hailed as a success story overall.

But the biggest reason for cutting down on the nuclear and other weapons is the sheer expenditure on arms. The total world expenditure on armament in 2008 was estimated at US$ 1,226 billion. From 1999 to 2008 this expenditure increased by 45 percent. Just imagine what could be done to build a better world with these enormous resources. From schooling for all the world’s children to better drinking water for one-third of the world’s population, nothing will be out of reach. That is the kind of race we can be proud of, not a race where everyone dies in the end.