What's up at NATO?

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

by Xanthe Hall

First published 16 July 2020 on the IPPNW blog

You could be excused for having missed the fact that NATO is in the process of updating its nuclear strategy, including substantial and significant steps. These include technologically more ambitious weapons that can be used more easily. This is the implementation of a decision made at the NATO Warsaw Summit in 2016 to revise nuclear strategy. In order to follow what’s going on, you have to dig deep on the internet. While this is a little easier because of Covid-19, as a lot more is happening online and NATO is just a little bit more transparent than before the pandemic, it is still difficult because NATO discussions are still shrouded in secrecy.

An article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ), a leading German newspaper, covered the topic following a press conference on the meeting of NATO defence ministers on June 17th. At that conference, the Secretary General explained that NATO has now agreed on additional steps to keep its nuclear deterrence “effective” with a “balanced package of political and military elements”. Stoltenberg says these are needed to “fix gaps” in NATO’s deterrence capabilities in all domains. However, he could not go into details because “some of the decisions are secret”.

What: More and better technology

Thomas Gutschker writes in FAZ that Alliance military planners have already worked out in detail a military plan to defend the whole operational area, including the Baltics, the far North, central Europe, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea from Russian nuclear weapons in all domains – land, sea, air, space and cyberspace – using defensive and offensive capabilities, from missile defence to launching nuclear weapons.

One of these steps is apparently the decision to strengthen advanced conventional capabilities while at the same time blurring the division between nuclear and conventional capabilities, as the Brussels summit in 2018 concluded to be necessary in order to counter Russia. This includes the option to deploy new conventional intermediate-range missiles. In a crisis, there is the possibility of loading nuclear warheads onto such missiles. So, while Jens Stoltenberg maintains that NATO has “no intention” of deploying new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe, they will be increasing capabilities that lead to that option.

The technology for this potential escalation has already been developed by the USA. Long-range missiles with low-yield nuclear weapons have been deployed on nuclear submarines and a new cruise missile is in development. Added to this, new B61-12 nuclear warheads have been tested and will soon go into production. They will be deployed in NATO nuclear sharing countries in Europe in the near future. These also have a variable yield and can be used as “mini-nukes”.

With all of these new developments, the message is clear: These new technical features enable NATO to use nuclear weapons earlier in a conflict with Russia than it could before.

Why: Mirrors and signals

NATO is making new decisions on deterrence because the security environment has changed, they say. Stoltenberg explains that this is entirely due to what he perceives as Russian bad behaviour. However, he maintains that NATO is not “mirroring” Russia and does not want an arms race but seems convinced that Russia is the sole instigator of this security crisis. “NATO is responding to what we see when we see Russia investing heavily in new, modern capabilities, updating and modernising the nuclear weapons systems, and especially when it comes to all the new, different missile systems they are deploying or are in the process of developing.” However, there is no mention of the Russian claim that they are “mirroring” what they see as massive modernisation and investment in nuclear and missile defence capabilities in the US. While Europe is caught between these two heavily-armed nuclear adversaries, European NATO members are required to remain loyal to one side and buy into the narrative originating from the US that only Russia is aggressively increasing its nuclear arsenal and capabilities and is also responsible for the demise of arms control treaties.

Ironically, Stoltenberg goes on to proudly describe NATO’s increased capabilities which, undoubtedly have an influence on Russia’s feelings of insecurity: “We have increased the readiness of our forces over the last years. We have deployed battlegroups in the eastern part of the Alliance in the Baltic countries and Poland. We have increased our presence in the Black Sea Region. And we have modernised, also, the parts of our defence, modernised and adapted the command structure. And we are also seeing that the fact that NATO Allies are now investing more in defence. NATO Allies are also acquiring more and a wider range of different capabilities, including air defence, fifth generation aircraft, investing in naval capabilities and, for instance, also upgrading their cyber defences.”

Summing up this apparent contradiction, the director of NATO nuclear policy, Jessica Cox, explained how this signalling to Russia works in an online meeting with RUSI. She says that NATO deterrence credibility is maintained through demonstrating capabilities, such as exercising and making political statements. In her introductory input, however, she says that Russia’s use of these same methods to make their deterrence credible was evidence of escalation and aggression. Stoltenberg goes even further: “We have also seen a pattern over many years of irresponsible Russian nuclear rhetoric, aimed at intimidating and threatening NATO Allies. Russia’s behaviour is destabilizing and dangerous.”

Why now: New Russian strategy

The article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper claims that NATO is responding to a new Russian nuclear strategy that contains the so-called “escalate to deescalate” concept. This would mean that Russia could use nuclear weapons pre-emptively in a regional or local context to signal commitment to retaliating with nuclear weapons on a large scale. It has been claimed that this policy was evident by its use in exercises in 2009 and 2013 where nuclear attacks were simulated on Poland and on the Swedish island of Gotland to signal their readiness to use nuclear weapons. NATO was also alarmed in 2014, during the Crimean crisis, when the same long-range nuclear-capable bombers were seen flying over the western and southern Russian flanks.

Yet, experts say that this “escalate to deescalate” policy is not to be found in the new Russian nuclear strategy, which states that “The Russian Federation views nuclear weapons exclusively as a means of deterrence, the use of which is an extreme and compelled measure, and is making all the necessary efforts to reduce the nuclear threat and not allow the aggravation of interstate relations that could provoke military conflicts, including nuclear ones.” This basic doctrine has not changed much in the last 20 years: “The Russian Federation shall reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and (or) its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.” The conditions for use are then listed, whereby two of these are not responses to nuclear or WMD attack, but conventional and are not closely defined, referring to “adversary actions affecting critically important state or military objects” that could lead to disruption of capability to retaliate with nuclear forces. This could be a reference to a cyber attack on nuclear command and control.

The Russian President can warn others of the readiness to use nuclear weapons. There was some discussion that Putin did this during the Crimean crisis when he communicated to NATO such a readiness and later confirmed this on Russian TV.

The German Debate

On top of all this, there is a rather public debate on possibly shifting B61 nuclear bombs allocated to NATO from Germany to Poland which, despite the consequences for the relationship to Russia and the NATO-Russia Founding act, NATO is not ruling out. On the contrary, they are making a show of seriously considering it, possibly to signal to Russia their willingness to escalate in a crisis. However, this may, as Michał Baranowski of the German Marshall Fund in Warsaw points out, simply be a way of the US and NATO putting pressure on Germany to put a lid on the nuclear sharing debate.

Commenting on Twitter, Oliver Meier, a German expert on arms control, says the deployment of new nuclear-capable systems and the lowering of the nuclear threshold, as well as the further integration of nuclear and conventional deterrence “is viewed with scepticism in the German debate”. That is, in my view, very under-stated. Many in Germany, including myself, view this development with increasing alarm. Rolf Mützenich, leader of the SPD parliamentary party, is also worried that the Trump administration is worsening the situation, and writes in IPG Journal:

“Over the next few years, the Trump administration also intends to replace all strategic systems, procure low-yield nuclear warheads, increase the range of air-launched cruise missiles and install nuclear weapons in sea-launched sub-strategic systems that were withdrawn under Bush and Obama as a confidence-building measure. The increasing geopolitical competition between the nuclear weapons states, the development of new types of weapons, the combination of conventional and nuclear deterrent potential and the continuing modernisation and diversification of nuclear weapons arsenals is leading to new arms races. They are a concrete threat to Germany and Europe.”

While people in Germany are aware of the nuclear threat posed by Russia, which clearly states the willingness to target all countries hosting US nuclear weapons, the current escalation and threat to strategic stability seems to be driven by the United States. NATO members are, in the name of solidarity and a united front, propagating the US narrative that only Russia is modernising its arsenal. Jens Stoltenberg and Jessica Cox even go as far as to claim that the Russian nuclear arsenal is growing, while researchers at SIPRI clearly show that it is still decreasing due to new START.

The strength of the response by political and military leaders, including US democrats, to Rolf Mützenich’s remarks on nuclear sharing show that proponents of nuclear deterrence are clearly rattled. Arguments have gone back and forth in major newspapers in Germany, and also on Twitter. While some say that B61s are only needed for alliance cohesion or to signal to Russia that NATO members are on board, risk and all, Cox says that the bombs do in fact have a real operational utility. Ask any German military expert and they will say they definitely view that with a large portion of scepticism.

Jessica Cox is proud of her success in “educating” the Allies on the relevance and need for nuclear deterrence. Just four years ago I heard a NATO official complain at a conference on arms control that this was necessary, because they seemed to have forgotten the language of nuclear deterrence. And yet Cox admits that she has been less successful in educating the public, who frequently indulge in “ban treaty type discussions”. I take that as a compliment, as it it seems that ICAN remains a thorn in her side and balances out a debate that is only just getting started.

Trump: US troops out of Germany

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

Despite attempts to block the move (see END Info 17), President Trump has announced confirmed his intention to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany. Whilst the Pentagon insists the move is part of a long-term strategy of troop redeployment, Trump characterised it as “punishment” for Germany’s low levels of defence spending.

It looks likely that the US will transfer its European command centre to Brussels. The US Africa command centre looks set to be transferred from Stuttgart to an unknown location.

The Pentagon plans to expand the numbers and increase the rotation of US troops in Poland, the Baltics and Black Sea region. Some US commentators have claimed that withdrawal of troops from Germany would ‘please the Russians’ but transferring large numbers of troops closer to the Russian border hardly seems designed to please President Putin.

Rather, in the wake of the aborted Defender 2020 NATO ‘war game’, such re-deployment looks designed to increase tensions further.

How will Germany and other NATO ‘allies’ in Europe react? Will Germany and other states – which, contrary to Trump’s claims, already meet their NATO spending commitments – now invest more in ‘national security’? Will this move accelerate EU-wide military cooperation, joint-command and spending?

New warheads: UK lobbies Congress

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

The United Kingdom likes to describe the Trident nuclear weapons system as an ‘independent nuclear deterrent.’ Nuclear disarmers have long argued that the system is neither ‘independent’ nor a ‘deterrent’ of any kind. A letter seen by the Guardian newspaper (01/08/20) adds to a substantial body of evidence confirming Britain’s dependence on the US.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace wrote to members of the US Congress in April this year, asking them to approve spending on the development of a new warhead, the W93. Wallace wrote:

“These are challenging times, but it is crucial that we demonstrate transatlantic unity and solidarity in this difficult period ... Congressional funding ... for the W93 program will ensure that we continue to deepen the unique nuclear relationship between our two countries, enabling the United Kingdom to provide safe and assured continuous-at-sea deterrence for decades to come.”

What moved Wallace to write to Congress in these terms and on whose behalf, exactly, was he writing? Wallace’s letter suggests that without Congressional funding, the UK will not be able to maintain a “safe and assured”capability. In a written Ministerial Statement issued in February this year, Wallace stated: 

“As set out in our annual updates to Parliament on the Future of the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Nuclear Organisation is working with the Atomic Weapons Establishment: to build the highly skilled teams and put in place the facilities and capabilities needed to deliver the replacement warhead; whilst also sustaining the current warhead until it is withdrawn from service. We will continue to work closely with the U.S. to ensure our warhead remains compatible with the Trident Strategic Weapon System.”

In this statement, which was only made after US officials ‘accidentally’ disclosed British involvement in new warhead plans, Wallace also uses the word “ensure” with respect to US/UK cooperation on warheads. Without such cooperation, would the UK be able to ‘do it alone’? It seems not.

The US debate on whether to grant funding is taking place within the context of the upcoming US election and the fact that billions of dollars have already been agreed to upgrade existing warheads. There is obviously some concern that should Trump be replaced, then development of the W93 would be in doubt. Where would this leave Britain’s ‘independent nuclear deterrent’? The Guardian quotes official figures stating that the current US warhead (W76) is viable until 2045 and that the UK version “is expected to last until the late 2030’s”. It seems certain that any future US administration will maintain the nuclear alliance with the UK and that the required warheads will be supplied. If so, why the rush to gain Congressional support and why the letter, which was described by one Congressional committee aid as “a little bit surprising”?

Could it be the case that the US/UK ‘special relationship’ is so close that a Conservative government in the UK can be instructed by a Republican President to lobby a Democrat majority Congress? Such a scenario does not seem out of the realm of possibility.

Whatever the facts about ‘who gave the order’ to write the letter, it is clearer than ever that Britain’s nuclear capability is wholly dependent on US funding and technology. It is clear that both the US and UK are determined to have a new generation of nuclear warheads. It is plain to see that the UK government is at the back of the queue when it comes to warning against President Trump’s reckless and destructive ‘bonfire of the treaties’. It should be clear that UK Trident is not an ‘independent’ or ‘autonomous’ system but is an integrated arm of the US nuclear system.

One year on from the INF Treaty

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

Comment by the Information and Press Department of The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation a year after the end of the INF Treaty 03/08/20

The INF Treaty ended a year ago when the US walked away from it, unilaterally. We still believe Washington made a grave mistake. Although the treaty was less than ideal in today’s security environment, it definitely promoted predictability and restraint in the missile and nuclear weapons area.

Russia firmly believes that the INF Treaty should have been preserved. It was possible and necessary to duly mitigate the crisis around it. The sides should have promptly started settling the accumulated differences in its implementation. However, this would have taken political will on both sides. Regrettably, the US did not have this and began to see the treaty as an obstacle on the road to victory in the US-proclaimed “Great Power Rivalry.”

It is regrettable how the Americans prepared to discard an agreement they no longer wanted. To justify its destructive actions, the US orchestrated a propaganda campaign based on completely groundless accusations against Moscow. Instead of a Russia-suggested practical and professional analysis of reciprocal grievances, the Americans set forth patently unacceptable ultimatums. The US instantly rejected Russia’s realistic solutions on settling existing concerns by taking measures on reciprocal transparency. Having blocked the potential paths to resolve the problems, the US deliberately engineered the end of the treaty.

Now, there are no limitations on short- and intermediate- range missiles, whereas the threats for universal security and stability have increased manifold. After abandoning the treaty Washington immediately embarked on completing the development of missiles previously banned under the treaty. The US conducted full-scale tests of these missiles, which fully confirmed that Russia’s long-standing grievances with Washington regarding the treaty were fully justified. The US publicly announced its intention to deploy advanced missiles as soon as possible, primarily in the Asia-Pacific Region. Deployment in Europe has not been ruled out, either.

Obviously, the deployment of US ground-based short- and intermediate- range missiles in various parts of the world will seriously undermine regional and global security and provoke a new and dangerous round in the arms race. Russia cannot ignore the potential risk of additional missiles adjacent to its territory, which would be of a strategic nature for us. This would require an immediate response regardless of whether these are nuclear or conventional missiles.

After the INF Treaty, a number of specific steps were made to ensure predictability in the missile area and the preservation of a “window of opportunity” for dialogue-based solutions. President of Russia Vladimir Putin announced a moratorium on the deployment of these missiles on the ground as long as US weapons of similar classes were not deployed. The US and other NATO countries were directly urged to announce a reciprocal moratorium. Moscow announced its willingness at the highest level to hold a discussion on the parameters and potential verification measures as regards mutual commitments.

We strongly believe that the only viable step now is a joint search for settling the existing situation through political and diplomatic means. Russia remains open to equitable and constructive approaches to restoring trust and enhancing international security and strategic stability. We hope the US will also display an interest in this responsible approach.

Full Spectrum Hypocrisy

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

The alleged 15 July 2020 testing of the Cosmos 2543 Russian satellite has provoked an outpouring of accusations and threats. The Financial Times (31/07/20) declared in one headline that ‘Russia satellite weapon test reignites space arms race fears’. This headline and the quotes in the article from a variety of US military sources suggest that Russia alone has provoked the ‘militarisation of space’.

In fact, the Cosmos 2543 satellite seems to be a rather rudimentary affair when compared to the ‘all-singing-all-dancing’ United States Space Force and the aspirations for the ‘control of space’ contained in the Joint Vision 2020 documents of the mid-2000s. As far as we know, the Russian satellite contains no laser weapons systems or any other particularly ‘high-tech’ devices. Rather, the Russian ‘space weapon’ functions by firing a projectile of some kind at other satellites.

Of course, the hypocrisy of US commentators and politicians surrounding the alleged Russian test and attempts to lay the blame on Russia and China for igniting an arms race in space, should not surprise us. It is important to be aware of the degree to which the US and allies have already militarised space and the dangers created by such a process. Writing in the Spring/Summer edition of Space Alert! (www.space4peace.org), Bruce Gagnon explains:

“The US has been leading the way to militarize and weaponize [space] since the start. For a while the former Soviet Union was in the game—until its collapse in 1991. Neither Russia nor China could keep up with the US in the following years and they continually begged the US to join them in negotiating a treaty to ban all weapons in space—close the door to the barn before the horse gets out. During Republican and Democrat administrations the response to Moscow and Beijing was the same from Washington—NO.”

Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 Years On

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

To mark the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we re-publish Gar Alperovitz’s 2011 article, ‘The Decision to Drop the Bomb’ (first published on the CounterPunch website, www.counterpunch.org). Alperovitz’s work on the decision conclusively demonstrates the cynical falsehood of the ‘military necessity’ argument around the use of the bomb. Sadly, public consciousness of his analysis and the truth of the matter remains low. We re-publish this article to aid wider understanding.

The Decision to use the Bomb Gar Alperovitz

[2020 is the 75th] anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

By the summer of 1945 Japan was essentially defeated, its navy at the bottom of the ocean; its air force limited by fuel, equipment, and other shortages; its army facing defeat on all fronts; and its cities subjected to bombing that was all but impossible to challenge. With Germany out of the war, the United States and Britain were about to bring their full power to bear on what was left of the Japanese military. Moreover, the Soviet Union—at this point in time still neutral—was getting ready to attack on the Asian mainland: the Red Army, fresh from victory over Hitler, was poised to strike across the Manchurian border.

Long before the bombings occurred in August 1945—indeed, as early as late April 1945, more than three months before Hiroshima—U.S. intelligence advised that the Japanese were likely to surrender when the Soviet Union entered the war if they were assured that it did not imply national annihilation. An April 29 Joint Intelligence Staff document put it this way: “If at any time the U.S.S.R. should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.” For this reason—because it would drastically shorten the war—before the atomic bomb was successfully tested (on July 16, 1945) the U.S. had strongly and repeatedly urged the Soviet Union to join the battle as soon after the defeat of Hitler as possible. A target date of three months after Germany’s surrender was agreed upon—which put the planned Red Army attack date at roughly August 8, the war in Europe having ended on May 8. (In late July the date was temporarily extended by a week.)

Nor was there any doubt that the Soviet Union would join the war for its own reasons. At the Potsdam Conference in July (before the successful atomic test) President Truman entered the following in his diary after meeting with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin on July 17: “He’ll be in the Jap War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.”

The next day, July 18, in a private letter to his wife, the President wrote: “I’ve gotten what I came for — Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it… I’ll say that we’ll end the war a year sooner now”. The President had also been urged to offer assurances that the Japanese Emperor would be allowed to remain in some form of powerless figurehead by many top advisers—including, importantly, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the man who oversaw the development of the atomic bomb. Before the bomb was used he explicitly urged the President that in his judgment the war would end if such assurances were given—without the use of the atomic bomb.

Nor were there insuperable political obstacles to this approach: Leadings newspapers like the Washington Post, along with leaders of the opposition Republican Party were publically demanding such a course. (Moreover, the U.S. Army wanted to maintain the Emperor in some role so as to use his authority both to order surrender and to help manage Japan during the occupation period after war’s end—which, of course, is what, in fact, was done: Japan still has an Emperor.)

As the President’s diary entry and letter to his wife indicate, there is little doubt that he understood the advice given by the intelligence experts as to the likely impact of the upcoming Russian attack. Further evidence is also available on this central point: The American and British Joint Chiefs of Staff—the very top military leaders of the two nations—also met at Potsdam to consolidate planning for the final stages of the war in the Pacific. General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, summarized the latest (early July) combined US-UK intelligence evidence for Prime Minister Churchill this way: “[W]hen Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”

The July joint intelligence finding, of course, for the most part simply restated what had been the essential view of American intelligence and many of the President’s top advisers throughout the spring and summer months leading up to the July meeting at Potsdam.

Among the many reasons the shock of Soviet entry was expected to be so powerful were: first, that it would directly challenge the Japanese army in what had been one of its most important strongholds, Manchuria; second, it would signal that there was literally no hope once the third of the three Great Powers was no longer neutral; and third, and perhaps even more important, with the Japanese economy in disarray Japanese leaders were extremely fearful that leftist groups might be powerfully encouraged, politically, if the Soviet Union were to play a major role in Japan’s defeat.

Furthermore, U.S. intelligence had broken Japanese codes and knew Japanese leaders were frantically hoping against hope as they attempted to arrange some form of settlement with Moscow as a mediator. Since their strategy was so heavily focused on what the Russians might or might not do, this further underscored the judgment that when the Red Army attacked, the end would not be far off: the illusory hope of a negotiation through Moscow would be thoroughly dashed as Soviet tanks rolled into Manchuria.

Instead, the United States rushed to use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8 Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.

Some modern analysts have urged that Japanese military planning to thwart an invasion was much more advanced than had previously been understood, and hence more threatening to U.S. plans. Others have argued that Japanese military leaders were much more ardently committed to one or more of four proposed ‘conditions’ to attach to a surrender than a number of experts hold, and hence, again, would likely have fought hard to continue the war.

It is, of course, impossible to know whether the advice given by top U.S. and British intelligence that a Russian attack would likely to produce surrender was correct. We do know that the President ignored such judgments and the advice of people like Secretary of War Stimson that the war could be ended in other ways when he made his decision. This, of course, is an important fact in its own right in considering whether the decision was justified, since so many civilian lives were sacrificed in the two bombings.

Moreover, many leading historians who have studied both the U.S. and Japanese records carefully (including, among others, Barton Bernstein and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa) have concluded that Japan was indeed in such dire straits that–as U.S. and British intelligence had urged long before the bombings–the war would, in fact, have likely ended before the November invasion target date once the Russians entered.

It is also important to note that there was very little to lose by using the Russian attack to end the war. The atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9. There were still three months to go before the first landing could take place in November. If the early August Russian attack did not work as expected, the bombs could obviously have been used anyway long before any lives were lost in the landing.

(Since use of the atomic bombs and Russia’s entry into the war came at almost exactly the same time, scholars have debated at great length which factor influenced the surrender decision more. This, of course, is a very different question from whether using the atomic bomb was justified as the only way to end the war. Still, it is instructive to note that speaking privately to top Army officials on August 14 the Japanese Emperor stated bluntly: “The military situation has changed suddenly. The Soviet Union entered the war against us. Suicide attacks can’t compete with the power of science. Therefore, there is no alternative…” And the Imperial Rescript the Emperor issued to officers and soldiers to make sure they would lay down their arms stated: “Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war, to continue under the present conditions at home and abroad would only result in further useless damage… Therefore…I am going to make peace.”)

The most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that (quite apart from the inaccuracy of this figure, as noted by Samuel Walker) most Americans haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S. military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified, many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.

Here is how General Dwight D. Eisenhower reports he reacted when he was told by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the atomic bomb would be used:

“During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”

In another public statement the man who later became President of the United States was blunt: “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” was also dismayed. Shortly after the bombings he stated publically: “The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, went public with this statement: “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. . . . The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.”

I noted above the report General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, made to Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.” On hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private reaction was one of “revulsion.”

Shortly before his death General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one. Even more important, well before the atomic bombs were used, contemporary documents record show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers….”

As the document concerning Marshall’s views suggests, the question of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified turns not only on whether other options were available, and whether top leaders were advised of this. It also turns on whether the bombs had to be used against a largely civilian target rather than a strictly military target—which, in fact, was the explicit choice since although there were Japanese troops in the cities, neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was deemed militarily vital by U.S. planners. (This is one of the reasons neither had been heavily bombed up to this point in the war.) Moreover, targeting was aimed explicitly on non-military facilities surrounded by workers’ homes. Here we can gain further insight from two additional, equally conservative military leaders.

Many years later President Richard Nixon recalled that “[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants. . . . MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off.” Although many others could be cited, here, finally, is the statement of another conservative, a man who was a close friend of President Truman’s, his Chief of Staff (as well as President Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff), and the five star Admiral who presided over meetings of the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff during the war—William D. Leahy: “[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

No to the NEW COLD WAR

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

An international campaign opposing a new Cold War against China was launched on Saturday, 25th July, with an online gathering of scholars and activists. People from 49 different countries registered for and watched the event, with huge numbers viewing on social media streams. The organisers of the campaign have issued the following statement:

A New Cold War against China is against the interests of humanity

We note the increasingly aggressive statements and actions being taken by the US government in regard to China. These constitute a threat to world peace and are an obstacle to humanity successfully dealing with extremely serious common issues which confront it such as climate change, control of pandemics, racist discrimination and economic development.

We therefore believe that any New Cold War would run entirely counter to the interests of humanity. Instead we stand in favour of maximum global cooperation in order to tackle the enormous challenges we face as a species.

We therefore call upon the US to step back from this threat of a Cold War and also from other dangerous threats to world peace it is engaged in including: withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement; withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Accords; and its increasing disengagement from UN bodies. The US should also stop pressuring other countries to adopt such dangerous positions.

We support China and the US basing their relations on mutual dialogue and centring on the common issues which unite humanity.

* * *

The China-based Xinhua news website posted the following report from the event:

International scholars said ... that aggressive statements and actions by the U.S. government towards China poses a threat to world peace and a potential new cold war on China is against the interests of humanity. The comments came during a virtual meeting on the international campaign against a new Cold War on China, which gathered experts from a number of countries including the United States, China, Britain, India, Russia and Canada. Jenny Clegg, author of China’s Global Strategy, said China-U.S. relationship is one of the most important bilateral relationships and its deterioration would pose significant threat to world peace. John Ross, senior fellow at Chongyang Institute, Renmin University of China, listed the threat of war by the United States, including launching major wars in Iraq and Libya, taking the dangerous step of withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and unilateral sanctions on Iran and Venezuela. "Of course, a threat of war with China itself would be an unimaginable catastrophe," he said. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Codepink, a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars, said it was concerning that the U.S. leaders claim a new Chinese aggression when the United States itself has military bases around the world. "The U.S. needs to understand China is not our enemy. We call for cooperation with China," Benjamin said. Margaret Kimberley, a columnist at Black Agenda Report, said the U.S. government made wrong accusations of China on issues relating to ... controlling the coronavirus pandemic and its forced closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston violated international law. Some experts attending the meeting issued a statement calling upon the U.S. side to step back from this threat of a Cold War and also from other dangerous threats to world peace it is engaged in. They said the United States goes in a wrong direction by withdrawing from the INF Treaty and the Paris Agreement on climate change, and increasing disengagement from UN bodies. "We support China and the U.S. basing their relations on mutual dialogue and centering on the common issues which unite humanity," the statement said, urging collective effort on addressing global challenges like climate change, the pandemic and the economic development.

* * *

The development of this campaign is of great importance.  Quite rightly, the statement accompanying the launch of the campaign does not simply seek to unite those who support China or define Chinese society in a certain way. The aim is to unite as many groups and individuals as possible around the notion that the US threat of a New Cold War against China is against the interests of all those committed to a more peaceful ordering of global society. More than that, the tensions and dangers arising from such a New Cold War are against the interests of the vast majority of humanity.

The analysis offered in END Info and The Spokesman journal has been clear that the recent behaviour of the US on the world stage, its aggressive posture and destructive actions are a result of a shift from that country enjoying ‘sole superpower status’ to a situation where there are now several poles of global power. China’s economic and political rise is clear evidence of this. Faced with a changing world order, President Trump and those who advise him are striking a recklessly aggressive posture.

We have written about a situation which amounts to a ‘global tinderbox’: a combination of risks so sharply posed that one mistake, one misstep, could engulf the world in flames. These risks include not only the aggressive political stance of the US, but also the rapid development of technology, which accelerates the rate at which dangers multiply and potentially spiral out of control.

In the face of decades of threats and provocation, China has been very restrained. It is to be hoped that this restraint endures. In this context, the creation of a global campaign is vital. In the US, UK and other NATO states the peace movements must be crystal clear about the process now underway, the roots of it and the vital issues on which we must focus. This will not necessarily be straightforward, as much of Western society – even the progressive sections of it – is woefully underexposed to the history and current politics of China. By ‘seeking truth from facts’ and uniting against a New Cold War, much can be remedied.

Europe: Time for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone! New campaign launched

From END Info 18 | August 2020. Download here

Appeal for signatories

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing, we, the signatories join our voices to those of the survivors and call upon our fellow citizens, politicians and governments to support a European nuclear weapons free zone as a matter of urgency. We call on European governments to: end the modernization of all nuclear weapons; end nuclear sharing; sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

Initiated by: International Peace Bureau, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Europe, International TUC, Quaker Council for European Affairs.

* * * * *

We are entering a new decade that appears to be even more dangerous than that of 40 years ago. In January 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the hands of the ‘Doomsday Clock’ – measuring the likelihood of man-made global catastrophe – at one hundred seconds to midnight – closer than it has ever been before due to the imminent threats of nuclear war and climate disaster.

Now, 75 years after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear weapons dropped on human targets, arms control treaties are no longer upheld, and governments have started updating and expanding nuclear arsenals. New technologies of command and control minimise human intervention and shorten the time available to consider possible responses, the probabilities of a catastrophic accident or mistake are increasing dramatically.

The world is at a crossroads and Europe has to make a strategic choice: remain part of the arms race or demonstrate global leadership by promoting a peaceful approach towards common global security.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the recession which will follow teach lessons we must embrace to overcome the existential threats of the 21st century: nuclear war and global warming. Recent studies show that increased military expenditure puts pressure on investment in social, including health, infrastructure, while extensive military exercises and operations make major carbon emissions, driving us closer to extinction in more ways than one. All three threats result from forces of nature made dangerous by triumphs of human intelligence and all three can be solved by human intelligence and good governance. Among these, nuclear war is perhaps the least visible threat. However, it is the most likely to have an immediate and devastating impact.

During the 1980s, a powerful mobilization along with the European Nuclear Disarmament initiative, which was deeply concerned about the strategy of containing a ‘limited' nuclear war in Europe, generated the necessary pressure on politicians. Mass protests and demonstrations against the stationing of short and intermediate range nuclear weapons (Cruise Missiles and Pershing 2) throughout Europe forced Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan to sign the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the US and Russia in 1987 that removed all ground-based missiles – nuclear and conventional – with ranges between 500 and 5500km from European soil.

The recent collapse of that Treaty heralds the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Europe. We are facing the modernization of all nuclear weapons in Europe and the danger of new ones. And it has opened the door to Europe becoming a nuclear battleground.

The US’s wider withdrawal from important international agreements, upgrading of the world’s nuclear arsenals, the production of new ‘low yield’ and ‘more usable’ nuclear weapons, threatened resumption of nuclear testing, aggressive positioning of nuclear weapons and missile defence/offence systems, and the severe global economic and social problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, have increased international tensions and mistrust and driven us once again to a position where, in the words of the original European Nuclear Disarmament Appeal in the 80’s, “a third world war is not merely possible, but increasingly likely”. This time however, the threat arises from military confrontation on two fronts – Europe and in the Pacific.

The discussion on global military spending has recently been highlighted by the latest report of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). This notes that, of the $1.9 trillion (€1.7 trn) global military expenditure, $72.9 billion (€65.2 billion) was spent by nine countries on nuclear weapons in 2019. The report calculates that this amounts to $138,699 (€124,065) spent on nuclear weapons every minute. European countries (UK, France, Russia) play a very important role in military spending on nuclear weapons, while in addition the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) turns out to be the main cause for the new push in spending on modernization and new military spending on nuclear weapons. This money should be better spent on public services, especially health and care as well as education, both of which need substantial extra investment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For years the people of Europe have expressed their desire to be nuclear-weapon-free by calling for the removal of the US nuclear weapons held under NATO auspices and, more recently, by pushing for their governments to ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

So far, too few governments have responded, but as the costs of nuclear participation and militarism rise and economies struggle with the pandemic’s increasing social and political strain, these calls can no longer be ignored. Generations have grown accustomed to living in the shadow of nuclear war, but concern and awareness are increasing again – especially among the young.

The recent development in European countries hosting US nuclear weapons (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy) to question the policy of the US “nuclear umbrella” is a sign of hope for a nuclear weapon free Europe. Likewise, we welcome the heightening voice of medical, environmental and humanitarian organizations and faith groups worldwide to join the movement for a nuclear ban treaty. We call for a Just Transition for workers engaged in the nuclear weapons industry to ensure their livelihoods and skills are protected.

The remedy lies in our own hands. 40 years after the original European Nuclear Disarmament Appeal (END Appeal), we must act together to free the entire territory of Europe from nuclear weapons, air and submarine bases, and from all institutions engaged in research into or manufacture of nuclear weapons, again, with a Just Transition plan for the workers involved in these activities.

More European governments can, like Austria, commit to this by ratifying the TPNW and requesting the United States to withdraw all nuclear weapons from European territory and engage in meaningful negotiations on an inclusive new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) as a necessary step towards the renewal of effective negotiations on general and complete disarmament. Every European government has ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and should therefore take steps towards the creation of a European nuclear-weapon-free zone.

We must work together in the light of an understanding that all lives on the planet are interwoven, rethink what we mean by safety and defence and developing the ideas of ‘common security’. We must understand each other better – not seed mistrust and blame. As Olof Palme’s Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues (ICDSI) set out, a nuclear war could never be won. A nuclear weapon free Europe would be the most important step to a transition to civil and a shared security, abandoning the road of continuous militarisation. Civil security, shared security means adopting appropriate lifestyles and revising global trade and economic relations to sustainable and socially just relations, as described in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

While nuclear tensions are increasing, we call on all citizens to organise against our possible extinction and to fight for a just, green and peaceful Europe, free of nuclear weapons, with security for all provided through other means. The situation is urgent. As we emerge from the pandemic, we need to build an irresistible pressure for change. As the risks of nuclear confrontation spread from Europe, through Russia, the Middle East, China and the Korean peninsula Europe should take a stand.

We appeal to everyone in Europe, of all faiths and persuasion, to consider urgently the ways in which we can work together for these common objectives. As before, we envisage a European-wide campaign, in which every kind of exchange takes place; in which representatives of different nations and opinions confer and co-ordinate their activities; and in which less formal exchanges – between universities, faith groups, women’s organisations, trade unions, youth organisations, environmental campaigners, professional groups and individuals – take place to promote a common object: to free all of Europe from nuclear weapons. Europe must become a nuclear-weapon-free zone.

Visit: www.nukefreeeurope.eu

China and the Bomb: measuring fear

From END Info 17 | July 2020 (Download)

In the first days of June 1985 there was a remarkable meeting in Beijing. Representatives of the main European peace movements, together with their Japanese and South Pacific opposite numbers gathered in a forum “for safeguarding world peace”. During this forum the Chinese hosts announced the formation of a new peace committee. For China to join in a multilateral forum, and to promise a whole series of further international contacts, was no small change in policy. The following text is an excerpt from Ken Coates’s book, China and the Bomb, which was an attempt to repair the gap in the knowledge of Western peace movements about China’s attitudes to nuclear proliferation and disarmament. We reprint this excerpt in the spirit of the popular Chinese dictum: “Seek truth from facts”. China has been the recipient of more threats of nuclear bombardment than any other country in the world. The threats have not gone away and have manifested themselves in a belligerent campaign by the US, supported by the UK, to commence a New Cold War against China. If they are to resist these new threats, the peace movements in Europe and beyond must “Seek truth from facts”. We offer this article as a contribution to that process.

* * * * *

If American statesmen are sometimes garrulous, the Chinese themselves have always been very discreet about the ... nuclear threat, although it was widely reported ... An immediate result of this threat was a feverish campaign of air raid precautions, including the development of a· massive deep shelter programme.

While I was in China attending the Beijing Peace Forum, I asked my hosts about these deep shelters which have recently been partially converted to civilian use. At the end of the Forum, they invited me to visit one. So traumatic was this experience that I wish it had been shared with all the other participants in the Forum, who at the time had set off on a tour of other areas in the country. My guide was Mr Chang, a clever young graduate who works for the Chinese Association for International Understanding. Mr Chang was deeply interested in relations with Europe, and interrogated me ceaselessly not only about the European peace movement, but also about the prospects for economic co-operation. He clearly saw the Chinese opening to Europe as an important part of the campaign to modernize the country, but he was also concerned to benefit from the cultural exchanges that became possible. Deep in discussion; we drove through the main Tiananmen Square and arrived at a crowded shopping centre a couple of hundred yards or so further on. Beijing’s main shopping centres are not like those in England. Somehow there are always more people, closer together. The streets, all pedestrian precincts now, were absolutely crowded. We turned into Qianmen Avenue.

It cut through the middle of its area, and was about 300 yards long. On the corner was a draper's store, quite large. A little further on was a massive drugstore, dispensing herbal remedies under the guidance of a panel of qualified doctors. Along the way we passed an ornate cast iron shop front, imposing a touch of Victoriana on this strictly working environment. This, apparently, was the seat of the former imperial court tailors, now given over to more democratic customers. All the puzzles of modern China range themselves along this street. Opposite the shop dispensing acupuncture tools and guides was another retailing Japanese computers.

We went into the drapery where our exploration had begun. Ms Ma Jinli, the manageress, greeted us. Hardly were we introduced before she motioned us to stand back and pushed a button under the counter by the main entrance. Instantly, as if in a James Bond film, the whole floor behind the counter wound back under the wall, revealing a deep staircase. Not even the most practised eye would have detected that such an entrance might exist. Ms Ma led us down the stone steps. We entered an underground tunnel, which ran down some yards before we came to an archway. Carved around it was the rubric “Keep in mind that China is being threatened” and the date 1975, which, I was told, was the date of completion of this part of the network. On the wall opposite the archway was a large inscription by Mao Tse-tung: “To serve the people against war and against disaster”.

Beneath the arch we went, in to a veritable warren of underground lanes and streets. The complex began in 1969, I was informed. It was dug out by manual labour, using picks and shovels. We entered an underground street which has the name Da Sha Lan. The complex around this took ten years to complete. It is constructed at two levels. At the point we entered, an intricate pattern of lanes and chambers lies eight metres below the surface, and is protected by elaborate insulation from whatever may pass above. At a deeper level (15 metres further down) lies a parallel web, just as intricate. These two complexes involve 3000 metres of tunnelling, and a number of installations. Now these have been converted to civilian purposes. They are extensive. There are 45 above ground shops over these tunnels, with 2000 staff members, and all 2000 were involved in the work of underground conversion under the guidance of professional designers.

I went straight away to one of the subterranean shops, selling a variety of fancy goods. The Da Shan Lan underground shop is obviously a tourist attraction, full of lacquer work, jade ornaments and pretty silks. A row of chairs down the middle accompanies a fairly rudimentary Coca Cola Bar, busily patronised. Several shoppers were browsing among the bangles and necklaces. Moving further into the warren from this shop there was a kind of command post. A curtain at the end of the room framed a plastic map board which was illuminated from behind to provide a map of both upper and lower tunnel levels. Ms Ma took a pointer, and described it all very precisely. Near the shop was an underground hotel, which we later visited. Above the hotel stood the pharmacy at street level, so that in time of war all the vital drugs could speedily be lowered down, to function as part of the underground hospital which the hotel would then become. Below, the lanes of apartments at the deep level were currently used as storehouses. Tue entire network is studded by entrances, in all, more than 90. Every important shop above ground has one or two access points so that, said Ma Jinli, , within six minutes everyone in the district could be safely underground.

But, if they dropped a megaton on Beijing, I asked Mr Chang, would you not all be cooked? “I hope not”, he replied. Assuming they were not, there were a number of long exit tunnels, leading towards the suburban outskirts of the city. One ran past the famous Peking Duck Restaurant. It took, said Ms Ma, three hours to walk the length of one of these tunnels. Our eyes returned to the plastic map. It blinked intelligence about the different services which were available: water pumping stations, air pumps, telecoms, generator room. “But”, said I, “what about electro-magnetic pulse? Nuclear explosions do unfamiliar things to electronic communications. They fuse circuits and render equipment inoperable.” My hosts were not sure about EMP, but they were sure that the tunnel complex had made a big contribution to solving the problem of civilian space. Overcrowding above ground meant that it was a God-send to be able to call up so much unused warehousing, not to say so many community amenities.

“How many people would use this shelter?” I asked. “It can house 10,000 people”, I was told. “But there are ten million citizens of Beijing”, I said. “They are all catered for” said Ms Ma. The shock of this statement, mercifully, hit me rather slowly. But there it was. These other underground complexes, too, had now been opened to solve peacetime problems. Roller skating rinks, restaurants, wholesale stores, a 24,000 square metre fruit depository, rifle ranges, theatres, clinics, libraries, a gymnasium, all fan out beneath the surface of Beijing's streets. What did this extraordinary labyrinth entail in social investment over the ten years it took to build? How much of China's social surplus went into delving underneath her cities?

Quite clearly, Beijing is not alone. Recently, the Chinese press reported the civilian conversion of shelters in Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and Chongqing. If all were as extensive as the Beijing complex, then the Chinese digs since 1969 represent a labour not greatly inferior to that involved in building the Great Wall. Such a labour also represents a great fear; since it is quite apparent that no one, not even a madman, would contemplate such a vast diversion of resources unless there were reason to think it necessary.

I continued my underground exploration. On the way to the hotel, Ms Ma threw another switch which dropped the floor of the tunnel into a neat self-lowering staircase and led us down to the deep level. Here, the ventilation blew a distinct chill, and we felt our skins tingle with the cold. We passed large stacks of merchandise, and peered through the windows of underground chambers into further locked storehouses. In every direction the tunnels ran, and it would have been easy to have lost one’s way. Ducking and weaving, we wound our way round a wide circle until we emerged again outside the underground hotel. This, because at the time of its excavation it had been scheduled as a wartime hospital, consisted of a number of rooms, equipped with several bunk beds each. “It is open to a variety of clients”, said Ms Ma. “But priority is given to the relatives of those who work on the staffs of the shops and enterprises above ground.” The hotel staff were busy sweeping and polishing as we left, to emerge once again above ground in the draper's shop…

Travelling in China among all those people, your mind takes a fancy that it can understand what a billion is. It also takes a fancy that it can begin to appreciate the enormous audacity, even sacrilege, of the Chinese plan to modernize by the year 2000. This involves an aim to achieve an annual per capita income of 1000 dollars, which would be a sea-change indeed. But, in this exploration of the Chinese underground, I realized for the first time the depth of the fear which had been aroused by all those nuclear threats, all that blackmail, all that intimidation. It is a fear which can be measured in cubic yards of earth removed, in feet per second of air pumped through vast tunnelled emplacements, in social productivity foregone. The removal of such fear would not only render the world the safer. It would, in China, be a major economic resource in its own right.

The TPNW and International Law

From END Info 17 | July 2020 (Download)

by Joachim Wernicke, Berlin

After the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) comes into force, it can be expected that all nine nuclear weapon states will assert that the treaty is not valid because they have not acceded to it. The 26 non-nuclear weapon states in NATO will probably follow the United States, Britain and France on this line. Formally, they are right. However, the members of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are subject to its commitments, even if they continuously disregard them.

Thirty-one states in the NPT, including the NATO states, are also likely to claim that the TPNW, even if it came into force, is not universal international law. But they will not be able to say that the NPT does not apply to them. The TPNW does not replace the NPT, but supplements it.

So it is worth taking a look at which obligations the TPNW has assumed from the NPT and what is new about it. The similarities and differences are clear from the decisive wording in the two.

From the NPT:

Article 1: Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.

Article 2: Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

Article 6: Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes 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.

In contrast, from the TPNW:

Article 1. Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to:

(a) Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;

(b) Transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly or indirectly;

(c) Receive the transfer of or control over nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices directly or indirectly;

(d) Use or threaten to use nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;

(e) Assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Treaty;

(f) Seek or receive any assistance, in any way, from anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Treaty;

(g) Allow any stationing, installation or deployment of any nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices in its territory or at any place under its jurisdiction or control.

From this can be seen immediately:

1. Almost 50 years after the NPT came into force, all five nuclear weapon states in the NPT violate its Article 6 by failing to fulfill their disarmament commitments, instead - as of 2020 - they upgrade their nuclear weapons. In doing so, they show that they have only faked “good faith” to nuclear disarmament.

2. The United States violates NPT Article 1 by directly transfering nuclear weapons to non-nuclear NATO states and control over them [nuclear sharing].

3. The five non-nuclear weapon states with nuclear sharing in NATO violate NPT Article 2 by directly undertaking to receive the transfer of nuclear weapons and of control over them, from the USA: In the event of war, their pilots have this control, even if during the mission flight only for a short period of time (or for a longer period of time: the pilot who ever wants to sleep without nightmares again after this flight has the freedom, for example, to desert to an enemy airfield with his unused dangerous cargo).

4. For non-nuclear weapon states in the NPT, TPNW points (a) and (c) correspond to the contents of the NPT.

5. The TPNW point (b) concerns nuclear weapon states and specifies their obligation according to NPT Article 6.

6. The TPNW point (d) reflects general international law, as the International Court of Justice ICJ found in 1996 at the request of the UN.

7. The ICJ's 1996 statement left open whether the use of a nuclear weapon is illegal in the event of a state's existence being jeopardized. However, this only applies to the owner of the nuclear weapon, not to supporting allies, because such support from third parties does not affect his own livelihood. Nuclear participation within the framework of NATO is therefore illegal according to the ICJ's statement in 1996.

8. The TPNW points (e) and (f) relate to the general fulfillment of the contract, not expressly to nuclear weapons.

9. The last TPNW point (g) prohibits non-nuclear weapon states from tolerating nuclear weapons on their territory. Among the non-nuclear weapon states, it is only NATO countries that tolerate nuclear weapons on their territory. According to the NATO strategy, these serve as a nuclear deterrent, i.e. as a means of threat. However, this is prohibited according to the ICJ's statement in 1996.

10. The “Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control” mentioned in NPT Article 6 has been created with the entry into force of the TPNW. This goal of the NPT is thus fulfilled and the TPNW thus indirectly applies to members of the NPT, regardless of whether they are direct members of the TPNW.

It can therefore be stated that the TPNW contains nothing that has not been international law for a long time due to the NPT and the ICJ declaration of 1996. The TPNW has therefore not changed the current legal situation, but only specified it and provided it with a time stamp. Already today, definitely from its entry into force, the essential points of the TPNW are also valid international law for the five official nuclear weapon states and for the NATO member states, regardless of whether or not they have signed the TPNW separately.

NATO-oriented voices will likely give a different assessment of the situation. In contrast to the natural sciences, there is no uniqueness in legal questions, but usually the opposite of an assertion can be proven too. Generations of lawyers live from this language design option.

The fact that the 2017 agreement received the approval of the vast majority of the 2017 United Nations General Assembly may also play a role in the value of the TPNW: 122 out of 193 states, i.e. 63 percent. The 9 nuclear-weapon and 25 nonnuclear states in NATO (excluding the Netherlands) stayed away from the vote, leaving 159 states. This increased the approval rate in the vote to 77 percent, a clear vote by the international community. The decisive difference between the TPNW and the NPT is the time schedule for nuclear disarmament: Instead of “Saint-Never-Day” in the NPT, “Immediately” in the TPNW. The nuclear-weapon states should appreciate that the non-nuclear-weapon states have waited patiently for half a century for the promised nuclear disarmament before they resorted to self-help.

Does the TPNW apply to a state that has ratified it before 50 ratifications have enacted it? This is at the discretion of the state.­

Protests at Büchel Air Base

From END Info 17 | July 2020 (Download)

From July 4 to 7, activists protested against the US nuclear weapons stationed at Büchel Air Base, Germany. The third anniversary of the nuclear weapons ban treaty was also celebrated.

“Germany has been debating the successor to the Bundeswehr tornadoes for months, with which, in an emergency, German soldiers would drop US atomic bombs over their destination. That is why our protest against nuclear weapons and nuclear participation is particularly important this year,” said Johannes Oehler (30), ICAN member of the organization team. On the occasion of the third anniversary of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the Kantar polling institute carried out a survey on behalf of Greenpeace which showed that 78 percent of those questioned opposed buying new fighter jets for atomic bombs.

Activists from the Netherlands and Germany spent four days protesting against nuclear weapons with a colorful program. In numerous workshops on Saturday, the participants dealt, among other things, with the modernization of nuclear weapons in Germany, with the criticism of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the connection between civil and military use of nuclear power.

On Sunday there was an approximately 3.5 km long peace hike around the air base. On Monday, some activists blocked various gates spontaneously. “Through our action of civil disobedience, we have expressed our rejection of nuclear weapons. With a creative music group at one gate, we disrupted operations, blocked another gate for six hours, and made our presence known at the main gate because of our permanent presence on the nearby meadow.

Speeches followed in the evening and the third anniversary of the TPNW was celebrated - this was adopted on July 7, 2017 as part of the United Nations. Since then, 38 states have ratified it. The treaty enters into force three months after the 50th ratification.

Translated from and photographs downloaded via www.ippnw.de

As Covid-19 rages US agrees $740 billion for war, nukes and troops in Europe . . .

...but still no official explanation for withdrawal from the INF Treaty!

From END Info 16 | July 2020 (Download)

The Armed Services Committee of the United States House of Representatives has approved the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), after passing a number of amendments designed to limit the ability of President Trump to reduce troop numbers deployed overseas. It is likely that a similar Senate committee will pass the Act without major modification.

Of specific interest is the amendment that blocks Trump’s plan to remove 10,000 US troops stationed in Germany. It should be noted that this Committee is dominated by Democrats, who worked closely with the outspokenly pro-war Republican Representative Liz Cheney (daughter of Bush’s Vice President), to implement these hawkish policies. According to reports by Glen Greenwald and others, this same faction failed to back other amendments designed to hold the Trump administration to account, rather than blocking ‘undesireable’ policy proposals. For instance, Cheney and her Democrat co-thinkers failed to support an amendment supported by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D), who spoke to an amendment calling for the White House to provide a ‘national security rationale’ for withdrawing from the INF Treaty - something they have so far failed to do, despite previous commitments.

The 2021 NDAA contains plans for military spending on a colossal scale. The $740.5 billion earmarked is more than three times China’s budget, ten times that of Saudi Arabia, fifteen times that of Russia and a greater amount than the next fifteen counties combined. As Greenwald notes, the Committee “authorized this kind of budget in the midst of a global pandemic as tens of millions ... struggle even to pay rent.” The US spends billions on war as millions of Americans suffer.

Nuclear Testing Alert

The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation initiated the following ‘Nuclear Testing Alert’ letter in response to mounting threats from the Trump administration that it will resume nuclear testing. We will publish any responses received and will cover the issues in more detail in the next issue of End Info (July 2020).

Recipients:

State Signatories to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Josep Borrell Fontelles, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs

António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations

 29th June 2020

Nuclear Testing Alert

  Dear Ambassador/High Commissioner,

The United States last exploded a nuclear device in 1992. For several years, there was an international halt to nuclear testing until 2006, when North Korea exploded the first of six devices. Now, the Trump Administration openly discusses the US also conducting new nuclear tests.

Of approximately 2,000 nuclear tests to date, more than 1,000 were carried out by the US. Each nuclear test not only has geopolitical significance and associated risks, but also causes substantial human and environmental consequences. The legacies of harm from such testing are widespread and well documented.

President Trump may view nuclear testing as a means by which to boost his standing – domestically and internationally. It is deeply worrying that, during election year, deterioration in President Trump’s domestic support makes it thinkable that he will resort to even more extreme measures.

 We call on the United States to abide by the international prohibition on nuclear testing. We call on those many states that have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty to uphold and defend its provisions. We call on all concerned parties to raise the alarm on the risks associated with a resumption of nuclear testing before it is too late.

 Yours sincerely,

 Tony Simpson                                                                                  Tom Unterrainer

Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation                                          Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation

Supporting Organisations:

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK)

International Peace Bureau

Signatories:

Dr Becky Alexis-Martin, Author of Disarming Doomsday, L.H.M.Ling Outstanding First Book Prize Winner, UK.

Colin Archer, Secretary-General, International Peace Bureau (Retired), UK.

Ludo De Brabander, Vrede vzw, Belgian Peace Organization, Belgium.

Reiner Braun, International Peace Bureau, Germany.

Christopher Butler, Chair, Shipley CND, UK.

Noam Chomsky, USA.

Dr Jenny Clegg, National Council, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK.

Tamara Coates, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

John Daniels, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

Marguerite Doyle, Greece.

Dennis DuVall, First U.S. citizen to be convicted of protesting against H-bombs at NATO base Büchel, Germany.

Commander Robert Forsyth RN (Ret’d), 2nd in Command Polaris submarine, commanded two other submarines and the Commanding Officer’s Qualifying Course, UK.

Benjamin Gottberg, Coordinating Group, TIME FOR PEACE - active against war, Denmark.

Commander Robert Green RN (Ret’d), author of Security without Nuclear Deterrence, New Zealand.

John Hallam, UN Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner, Co-Chair of Abolition 2000 Nuclear Risk Reduction working group, Australia.

Geir Hem, Norway.

Dr Kate Hudson, General Secretary, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK.

Kristine Karch, co-chair international network "No to war - no to NATO", Germany.

Ulla Klötzer, Coordinator of Women Against Nuclear Power, Finland.

Lizette Lassen, Coordinating Group, TIME FOR PEACE - active against war, Denmark.

Lea Launokari, Coordinator of Women for Peace, Finland.

Jeremy Lester, Clerk of the Quaker Council for European Affairs, Belgium.

Professor Catherine Rowatt, former Green MEP, UK.

Alice Slate, World Beyond War, USA.

Allan Soeborg, Coordinating Group, TIME FOR PEACE - active against war, Denmark.

Rae Street, Peace Activist, UK.

Earl Turcotte, Chair, Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Canada.

Carol Turner, Vice Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK.

Andy Vermaut, Human Rights Activist, President of {PostVersa}, Belgium.

Professor Dave Webb, Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK.

Julie Ward, former Labour MEP, UK.

Lucas Wirl, Executive Director International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, Germany.

Michael Youlton, Chairperson of the Irish Anti War Movement, Ireland.

Safardeen Yusuf, Student and Activist, Cyprus.

From the archives: Arms Production and Trends in Technology

From END Info 16 | June 2020. Download here

by Ken Coates

Introduction: In March 1987, the Transport and General Workers Union (now part of Unite) in the UK convened a European Trade Union Conference on Arms Jobs Conversion. Ron Todd, TGWU General Secretary at the time, wrote: “duty surely calls upon us to look for the next steps in our work for peace, and specifically for arms jobs conversion. We need now to start to build international trade union commitment to these aims, involving working people directly and actively in this vital work for humanity’s future.” More than thirty years on, interest in the work envisaged by Todd and others is increasing, including amongst a large layer of trade unionists. Are the successors of the TGWU willing to take up this important work again? It is to be hoped that they are. We reprint an extract from Ken Coates’ paper to the conference as part of ongoing efforts from END Info to contribute to the debate around arms conversion, socially useful production and nuclear disarmament.

The arms economy takes up somewhere between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of the whole worlds's income, at least a quarter of all manufacturing production. This is the kind of proportion that has been used by nations in the past to set aside annually for their economic development. The industrially developed nations, in fact, set aside today much larger proportions of their income for investment (around 25 per cent); but when arms expenditure is added to this, then current consumption is reduced to take up two-thirds only of all economic activity. Since the less developed nations spend similar proportions on arms, their investment in development has to be restrained to allow for current consumption adequate for bare survival. It is a fact which Seymour Melman has regularly demonstrated that the countries even at high levels of development which spend the highest proportion of their income on arms (e.g. the USA and UK) spend much lower proportions on investment than others (e.g. Japan and Denmark) whose arms bill is much less. As a result, increases in productivity are least in the USA and most in Japan .

However we look at it, such a waste of up to one tenth of human effort can only be regarded as insane, and the implications of nuclear arms escalation are positively suicidal. What is more, arms production is a less and less labour intensive industry. Even the real increases in arms spending of the last few years - of about 3 per cent a year - have resulted in average cuts in unemployment of 4 per cent a year. In the UK 47 per cent of the arms budget is now spent on equipment, 33 per cent on personnel. Ten years ago 33 per cent went on equipment and 47 per cent on personnel.

The employment effects of this kind of expenditure are quite complex. World-wide, unemployment runs at some ninety million, while a further three-hundred million people are working precariously in underemployed occupations. But the population explosion means that the workforce is going to rise very rapidly, from its present level of 2.2 billion to at least 2.8 billion at the end of the century. World-wide, then, we must create six hundred million jobs for the newly arriving workforce, and nearly four hundred million for those out of work or inadequately employed. Ninety per cent of this billion job short fall is in the underdeveloped south, which is gripped in a massive debt crisis, that eats up every possibility of productive investment for many years to come. This is the context in which military expenditure must be evaluated. Ruth Leger Sivard calculates that war budgets generate employment for one hundred million people worldwide. Why do we not see these jobs as at any rate a small step towards the solution of the problem?

Fewer jobs

The answer is that military spending undercuts other investment and displaces it. Arms expenditure creates many fewer jobs than those which could be seeded by a similar investment in labour intensive occupations, in education , health , transport or community care. More employment in these sectors creates an immediate increase in civilian demand, and therefore stimulates economic growth in all other sectors of the economy. There are only two ways in which military expenditure can stimulate growth, and both of them are exceptionally painful. It can enter a technological race in which ever more capital is burned up in the production of ever more elaborate weapons systems, employing ever fewer workers. This is the process which Mary Kaldor has called “Baroque Technology”. Such a process will enlarge arms corporations at the tax payer's expense, but it will do nothing for jobs and real growth in useable goods and services. The second option is to have an actual war, which will certainly create big destruction, and if we survive it, big demand for re-construction.

Up to now, since 1945 mankind has been “lucky” in that such wars have been confined to conventional weapons and “limited” zones: even though they have been incredibly costly in human life ... The grotesque butchery [of the] battlefield is carefully sustained by arms manufacturers, who cheerfully sell to [all] sides.

Whether we have such wars or not , is not an economic decision , but we are entitled, as trade unionists, to say that this is a political option which we reject. If we should reject it when it involves the slaughter of our own populations, we should reject it no less when it involves the export of mass-destruction to Third World peoples. Human politics is impossible if we do not oppose war, and also military build-ups and the cynical trade in arms. In this sense, of course, the political war is the prior domain, and should determine economic choices.

There are also, however, very solid economic reasons why military spending worsens the employment situation. It can outbid civilian industry for resources, because it is funded by central state provision, whilst others must usually assemble their resources in the competitive market place. It imposes strict secrecy which can only impede the spread of technological knowledge, and hinder the development and application of new techniques. And it seeds inefficiency as every student of the military is abundantly aware. This last problem is the worst, because it dooms its victims to lose out in competition, and thus raises levels of crisis, deepening economic slumps.

Because military investment is now so capital intensive, it skews every effort to redistribute income. One billion dollars create 8,250 jobs in the manufacture of Trident missiles, while for the same cost, 52,000 people could be employed in education and 102,500 in public services. The multiplier or knock-on effect of 102,500 jobs is obviously highly significant in all other sectors of the economy, whether public or private. Military spending thus reinforces social, geographical and sectoral inequalities, and locks those engaging in it into growing structural crises. To move out of mass unemployment, the advanced economies have to generate redistribution between classes, spatially between rich and poor areas nationally and internationally, and industrially towards new projects and modern technologies.

The worst feature of military spending is that, in addition to debilitating the present economy, it devastates the future. As military R&D gobbles up more and more of the social investment in future technologies, it lays waste the opportunities of new generations...

Key Factors

The possibilities of converting arms production and research to peaceful use depend on a number of factors which need to be held in mind together:

1. Arms production and research is financed by nation state governments which have a popular concensus behind this expenditure, however much such support may be artificially encouraged by the propaganda of authoritarian or military regimes.

2. It is much more difficult to develop a concensus behind state expenditure on non-arms production, since opinion tends to be divided between many alternative directions for state spending, e.g. health education, housing, transport, etc.

3. The very large companies have a vested interest in arms production because a) arms quickly become obsolete and have to be replaced; b) the cost of military goods is very difficult for governments to control by comparison with other costs; and c) arms do not compete with the other products of big companies, as, e.g. public transport does with the private car.

4. Although, in fact, state spending on arms employs fewer people for any sum spent than does state spending on peaceful purposes, nevertheless, workers in the arms industry have no confidence in their re-employment as a result of arms conversion.

5. There are some real technical problems in converting production from military to peaceful use, though these tend to be exaggerated and are far less important than the structural reasons, by which arms production is built into the military industrial complexes of company and government, which can be seen to dominate the economy of the USA and of other states.

It follows from consideration of these factors that the main requirement of any programme of arms conversion is that clear alternatives should be put forward for the use of the productive capacity now devoted to arms. Such alternatives have been put forward by a number of company wide committees of trade unions in Britain, especially by Lucas Aerospace and Vickers combine committees. The essential elements in such alternative programmes are:

a) taxpayers can be assured that “their” money is going to meet needs that they feel to be equally or more demanding than defence;

b) non-taxpayers (pensioners, unemployed, etc.) can believe that they will benefit in goods or services and in employment opportunities from the conversion policy;

c) workers can be assured that as many (or more) jobs will be generated by the alternative programmes.

None of this can be left to the market and private enterprise; but will require planning by governments with strong involvement of both unions and local government authorities, encouraging local community organisations to think through and agree on alternative claims for resource use. Conversion from the present arms economy can only be successful as part of a wider programme of popular economic activity. The alternative to arms has to grow in the hearts and minds of the people, as they explore new and exciting ways of using the vast resources at the disposal of human beings in the world today. The strongest moral appeal must be to raise the incomes of the people in the Third World. In the Socialist International's report Global Challenge it is estimated that a cut of just one tenth in the current level of spending on armaments could not only create 20 million new jobs in Europe in a decade, but could also raise output in the Third World by more than 50 per cent over the same period.

The Coronavirus Crisis and the New Cold War on China

From END Info 16 | June 2020. Download here

by Jenny Clegg

As the coronavirus rages across the world pushing the global economy into possibly the deepest recession since the 1930s, yet another crisis is brewing between the US and China.

To divert attention from his own callous incompetence, Trump has turned on China, reprising his winning formula of “China, China, China - its all China’s fault” as the date of the November election approaches. Trump, Pompeo, Pence - they all have racialised the pandemic agenda with their insistent references to the ‘China virus’ or ‘Wuhan virus’. China, unsurprisingly, if not always appropriately, has bristled. But this is far more than a ‘war of words’.

If there is one thing the Trump administration has succeeded in doing over the last four years it is in turning US China policy around from engagement to a more active containment, bringing it to the centre of the foreign policy agenda. Shifting from the so-called ‘war on terror’ to so-called ‘great power competition’ with Russia and China, US strategists have become ever more obsessed with China as the deadliest rival for global supremacy, more formidable even than the Soviet Union ever was. For at least one former Senior Director of Strategic Planning in the Trump administration, China poses ‘the most consequential existential threat since the Nazi Party in World War 2’.

The ‘China threat’ has justified massive increases in US military expenditure, with bilateral agreement last year to pump $1.3 trillion into the development of new ‘usable’ or low yield nuclear warheads, the militarisation of space and much else besides. Shockingly, as US states are forced into a life-and-death competition for ventilators, military officials have just put in a further bid of $20bn to bolster ‘deterrence’ against China.

Trump’s ‘blame China’ rhetoric is entering dangerous territory where ideology overwhelms rationality: in the disagreements over trade, it was possible to reach some sort of an agreement, but now, when one side just calls the other a liar, there can be no basis for negotiation.

Is China to blame? Some mistakes were made at first but the Wuhan lock-down, imposed on January 23rd, proved effective. The crucial question to ask is: why were some governments, for example in East Asia, able to contain the virus quickly whilst across Europe and the US the death rate mounts by thousands upon thousands? The fact is that our governments got the priorities badly wrong, we were ‘defended’ against the wrong threats even when the NHS failed the pandemic practice run in 2016. For all the hundreds of £billions spent on ‘hard power’ in Britain, we were not kept safe.

In Britain an influential group of Tory Party hawks have joined the ‘blame China’ chorus. They seek closer alignment with Trump and, post pandemic, will fight tooth and nail to defend, and even demand an increase in, military spending in a delusional commitment to ‘Global Britain’. Pushing against any public pressure to shift government spending priorities, they will insist on the £14bn needed to pay for fleets of F-35 fighter jets to equip our aircraft carriers so as to stand shoulder to shoulder with the US against China’s rise.

Trump’s racist offensive has reverberated around the world, framing China as the new enemy in a campaign of demonisation. Here in Britain, sinophobia is rife across the media, creating a climate of suspicion, fear, anger and hatred. East Asians are targeted in hate crimes; mysterious fires destroy 5G masts across Britain and Europe; Chinese people are made to appear less than human; and a stream of fake news about China fills the political vacuum where racism and jingoism breeds. The situation is not unlike the lead up to the Iraq war over its non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

The new narrative of China’s plot to take over the world is in fact a not-so-new revival of the old familiar ‘Yellow Peril’ trope: some one hundred years ago, the public on both sides of the Atlantic were held in horrified thrall by Hollywood fictional tales featuring the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu and his treacherous schemes for world dictatorship.

International cooperation is desperately needed: the virus knows no borders and cannot be tackled by national action alone. Global powers need to come together to share information, exchange good medical practice and develop a vaccine to be made accessible to all. Scientists from different countries working together are spearheading the way forward. The fact that the Chinese government is sending medical specialists to help in our emergency makes a nonsense of attempts to portray the country as our ‘adversary’. But the bitter truth is that anti-China propaganda stands in the way of the fight against the virus.

Tensions with China may well get even worse as economies around the world deteriorate and governments try to avoid blame for the epidemic. Open hostility will make it harder to limit economic damage. And ahead, climate change threatens new catastrophes. We need a complete reassessment of what security means.

The case for peace and international cooperation could not be stronger. Yet right now British foreign policy is under pressure as the Tory anti-China ideologues seize on the crisis as an opportunity to break with China and follow Trump on the path to confrontation.

Labour’s Atlanticist ‘opposition’ front benchers are out of their depth. Peace campaigners in the US are now speaking out against the deadly ‘blame China’ game, warning of a second Cold War. Britain’s anti-war and peace campaigners must prepare to join them: the enemy is not China; it’s the virus.

Dr Jenny Clegg is a researcher and writer, author of China’s Global Strategy: towards a multipolar world (Pluto Press, 2009); activist in StWC and CND. A version of this article first appeared at www.stopwar.ork.uk

Return of the European Missile Duel?

From END Info 16 | June 2020. Download here

By Joachim Wernicke

In the period 1985-87 Europe was the scene of a nuclear missile duel between the USA and the former Soviet Union. In 1983 US intermediate-range ballistic missiles, Pershing-II, were deployed in Western Germany, followed in 1985 by the deployment of Soviet short-range missiles, SS-23, in the former GDR and Czechoslovakia. The nominal range of the Pershing-II was 1850 km, reaching the Moscow region. A technical innovation was the terminal guidance of the missile’s warhead with a hit accuracy of some ten meters. This precision allowed for the destruction of deep underground hardened shelters by nuclear hits, even with so-called low yield warheads comparable to the Hiroshima bomb of 1945.

In the Soviet Union the political-military command system was concentrated in the Moscow area. The talk was about 100 underground shelters. Due to the improved hit accuracy of the missiles since late 1980s the term of decapitation strike came into the official military vocabulary of the USA, meaning a surprise attack in order to destroy the Soviet leadership. A precondition would be the rush to overthrow the Soviet warning system. The ten-minute flight time of Pershing-II from Western Germany would leave the Moscow leadership no time for situation assessment and ‘rational reaction’.

In order to destroy a target with sufficient confidence, at least two missiles have to be fired on it. Thus a total of about 200 missiles would have been required for a decapitation strike against Moscow. The number of Pershing-II in Western Germany, according to NATO announcements, would be 108. In its open and unprotected deployment in the field these missiles were highly vulnerable and therefore unsuitable for a counterstrike after a Soviet attack: Use them or lose them.

As expected, the Soviet side reacted accordingly, deploying SS-23’s, with a flight time about 5 minutes. The purpose of the SS-23 was presumably to destroy by a nuclear first strike the Pershing-II sites before they could be used. Knowledge that a Pershing-II attack was imminent would have been based on espionage information which possibly would be incorrect, perhaps intentionally incorrect, but plausible for a government declaration in the international media. Following a Soviet first strike on Western Germany, a counterstrike by the USA would have been rather questionable. The Soviet Union, by striking first, would have experienced heavy damage to its international reputation. But the willingness of Continental European NATO countries to allow further US military installations and hardware on their territory would probably have been reduced. Thus the danger of a decapitation strike would have been diminished for the Soviet Union.

In 1987 the Soviet leader Gorbachev and US president Reagan agreed the INF Treaty for the destruction of all land-based intermediate-range missiles on both sides. In the process of agreeing the treaty it was revealed that the number of Pershing-II missiles was not 108 but 234.

Since 2018 Russia has deployed Iskander-M missiles in Kaliningrad, formerly part of the German province of Eastern Prussia. After US president Trump unilaterally withdrew from the INF Treaty, Russia is permitted to deploy land-based intermediate-range missiles. The approximately 500kg Iskander-M conventional warhead can probably be replaced by a nuclear warhead of lower weight, increasing the range.

Germany is the only Continental European country which provides territory to the USA for military bases at large scale. The USA is using these facilities in their wars in Africa and Asia. All their European command centres are located on German soil, including deep underground shelters in Stuttgart, Ramstein and Wiesbaden. Such shelters cannot be destroyed by conventional bombs but by precise nuclear hits, the detonation of which would cause considerable radioactive fallout. Is it unrealistic to assume that amongst the targets of the missiles in Kaliningrad there are US military installations in Germany, with the priority on command shelters? The distance is about 1000 km, an intermediate range.

Today there are no US intermediate-range missiles in European countries, and it is questionable if any European government still would give the US permission for a new deployment on its territory. However, a development in going on which Europe hardly is noticed: In the Pershing-II era sea-launched ballistic missiles were not precise enough to destroy deep underground shelters. Today, with satellite navigation, they are sufficiently precise. Since 2017 tendencies from the US Navy and their supporting industries have introduced intermediate-range ballistic missiles with conventional warheads for surface ships into military discussions2. Sovereignty over the South China sea is given as the reason. As an example of the missile type required, the Pershing-II of 1983 is referenced. It could be redesigned with modern technology and adapted to the launch techniques used in surface ships. The working title employed is Pershing-III2, at a different source Sea Pershing3.

A missile like Pershing-III would offer a new capability: at similar weight as Pershing-II it could be built more compact, in order to fit into the launcher geometry of naval ships. In this weight of a typical conventional warhead also a nuclear warhead can be placed. A main strength of the US Navy’s surface ships are cruisers and destroyers in the global Aegis system. Its European command centre is located in Ramstein, Germany. For the direct radio coordination of the ships such a regional centre is indispensable, because the time-critical commanding of the ships in European waters via satellite communication from the USA would be too sluggish, due to the signal propagation delay.

An Aegis destroyer contains 96 vertical launcher tubes usable for SM-3 air defense missiles or Tomahawk cruise missiles. From the launcher space available it should be feasible to accommodate in such a ship (or a similar type of ship) about 25 Pershing-III missiles in modified launcher tubes. Eight such ships would be sufficient in order to launch a decapitation strike against the Russian leadership, using a total of about 200 missiles from the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea or the Barents Sea, with about 10 minutes flight time. However, this describes a technical feasibility, not any real military conclusions.

It might take some years until missiles of a Pershing-III type will be deployed on US Navy ships. But in this case the nuclear duel of the 1980s would be revived in Europe, instead of Pershing-II/SS-23 this time it will be with Pershing-III and medium-range ballistic missiles from Kaliningrad. The question is: Independent of the real intentions of the US leadership, after observing the first medium-range ballistic missiles on US surface ships, would the Russian military wait until the number of these missiles is sufficient for a decapitation strike before taking action?

These are the tensions and dangers that are building. In order to avoid the dangers, could Germany negotiate a deal with Russia? Could Germany copy the example of neighbouring countries and NATO members France, Denmark or Czech Republic – no foreign military in the country – in exchange for Russia retracting its missiles from Kaliningrad? In the same sense on the European level: could a treaty between the EU and Russia, for instance in the frame of OSCE, be arrived at? The verified ban on intermediate-range ballistic missiles not only in the European countries but also on the European seas? Here the geographical map and the international sea law gives a means to force such a ban towards Non-European states too, via the right for peaceful passage. Thus a new European missile duel would be permanently prevented. Indispensable for the success of such an effort would, however, be to bring the subject of a nuclear war danger into broad public discussion in Europe.

Notes

1. Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine – Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, New York 2017: Bloomsbury USA, ISBN 978-1-6081-9670-8.

2. Captain Sam J. Tangredi U.S. Navy (Retired) (2017), Fight Fire with Fire, Proceedings U.S. Naval Institute, August 2017, www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017/august/fight-fire-fire.

3. Gabriele Collins, US Naval War College, Time to Put China’s Rocketeers on Notice, The National Interest, February 8, 2017, www.nationalinterest.org/feature/time-put-chinas-rocketeers-notice-19372?page=0%2C1.

Trump’s dangerous nuclear test threat

From END Info 16 | June 2020. Download here

On 1 March 1954, the United States carried out its largest ever nuclear test. Named ‘Castle Bravo’, the test was part of a series of similar events, ‘Operation Bravo’, designed to assess the feasibility of high-yield and therefore high-energy devices.

‘Castle Bravo’ was expected to produce a yield of six megatons (375 times larger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima) but the scientists involved miscalculated. The actual yield was fifteen megatons, 2.5 times higher than predicted and more than 900 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Becky Alexis-Martin, author of Disarming Doomsday, describes the test as “the most significant radiological incident in US history.” How so?

The test resulted in a massive nuclear radiation fallout that contaminated the inhabitants of the various atolls close to Bikini Atoll, where the test took place. Coral reefs were vapourised. Radioactive gas spread across the planet. It took three days for nearby residents to be evacuated from the area. The legacies of harm from this test, and others like it, endure.

The tests that Trump is proposing are likely to involve ‘low-yield’ or what the US military likes to call ‘useable’ nuclear weapons. Regardless of the size, any nuclear testing is not only criminally wasteful in terms of the resources involved. Nuclear testing also has an enormously destructive long-term environmental and human impact. For these reasons alone, any moves towards future testing must be vigorously opposed.

The US last conducted an explosive nuclear test in September 1992. Four years later it signed up to, but did not ratify, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Since then, the US has not conducted any nuclear testing. If the US has not tested since 1992, why start again now?

The only technical reason for conducting explosive nuclear tests is to assess new warhead designs. Data from previous tests and sophisticated computer modelling made ‘live’ testing redundant. It would therefore be reasonable to assume that the US intends to fully develop and deploy a new class of warheads.

Of course, Trump does not need a ‘technical’ excuse to violate global arms control agreements. He requires no excuse to ditch yet another multilateral treaty. Such facets of the ‘old’ global order do not seem to concern him very much as he is engaged in desperate and desperately dangerous efforts to assert US power on the global stage.

Any new tests would further destabilise the situation and feed into the already existing, technologically supercharged arms-race. It is possible that any US test would be followed by similar such tests from major nuclear powers.

Opposition to testing should unite peace and anti-war activists, environmentalists, rights campaigners and other. The time to voice our united opposition is now.

END Info 16 | June 2020

Download here

* Trump's dangerous nuclear test threat
* Campaign Update
* New Start negotiations
* French sub catches fire
* French M51 Missile Test
* Ramstein Airbase Online days of action
* Return of the European Missile Duel? Joachim Wernicke
* The Coronavirus Crisis and the New Cold War on China. Jenny Clegg
* Arms Production and Trends in Technology. Ken Coates

Covid-19 & Nuclear Dangers

There is only one place to start when discussing global threats: the current Covid-19 pandemic. The scale and magnitude of the pandemic, and the way in which governments across the world have been exposed as ill-prepared and in some cases unwilling to respond quickly to preserve human life has been widely covered. The cases of the United States and United Kingdom governments stand out as particularly appalling. How does the pandemic link to the other pressing danger with which END Info concerns itself?

On Thursday 30 April, President Trump claimed the following: “We’re going to see where it [Covid-19] comes from ... We have people looking at it very, very strongly. Scientific people, intelligence people, and others. We’re going to put it all together. I think we will have a very good answer eventually. And China might even tell us.” What was Mr Trump talking about? It’s sometimes difficult to know, but not this time.

Trump claims to have seen evidence that Covid-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the Chinese province where the outbreak emerged. Despite the absence of public, verifiable evidence and a great degree of caution on the part of US intelligence agencies, Trump’s claims were repeated by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, on television news. Pompeo told ABC news that:

“There is enormous evidence that that’s where this began ... I can tell you that there’s a significant amount of evidence that this thing came from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

What’s going on here? What are Trump and Pompeo attempting to do by pointing the finger of blame at China? Part of what’s going on is that the Trump administration is making China into a scapegoat to cover for its own mishandling, and patent inability to handle, the pandemic. Every reactionary government looks for someone or something to blame other than itself. Neither Trump nor Pompeo care that their repeated attacks on China have resulted in an increase in racist assaults against Chinese people in the West.

This is because they are pursuing a deliberately racist policy. But scapegoating China for the Pandemic is only part of the story. In mid-April, as the Pandemic was in full development, the US State Department claimed that China ‘may have’ secretly conducted a low-yield underground nuclear test. No conclusive proof was offered for this claim, only satellite photographs that suggested some earthworks at a dormant test site.

In response, China has robustly rejected the claims and has warned of the dangers associated with making them. Both the US and China signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, but neither of them have ratified it. As such, the US and China are not bound by Treaty on this question. However, China’s policy is committed to adhering to the CTBT and the US has been observing a moratorium on testing. Despite neither nuclear armed state being a signatory, there is a mass of international pressure to adhere to the provisions.

There would undoubtedly be a major public outcry if any of the ‘core’ nuclear armed states conducted a nuclear test. If we quickly examine the Trump administrations attitude to other international nuclear treaties and agreements, we will see a clear direction of travel. He sabotaged the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (NPT), withdrew from the Iran Deal and looks likely to scupper attempts to renew New START, which limits numbers of nuclear warheads.

END Info and others have argued that Trump has engaged in a systematic sabotage of such treaties and agreements: a ‘Bonfire of Treaties’. Why, then, is the US behaving in this way? For much of the 1990s and 2000s, the US was the predominant global power. The repeated wars and military interventions carried out by the US alone, under the auspices of NATO or with a ‘coalition of the willing’ were designed to secure US economic and political power on a world scale. There was ‘one pole’ of global power in the world and, unchecked, it ran amok. The situation is no longer the same. The world has moved from a unipolar to a multipolar order. The failure of US strategy in Iraq and the wider Middle-East, combined with the economic shocks of 2008, stripped the US of its sole superpower status but its military strength remains considerably greater than other states.

Substantial economic growth in China meant that it was able to assist to avert the worst consequences of the 2008 crash and has built economic, diplomatic and developmental relationships across the world. The US is aggressively asserting itself in an attempt to preserve influence and to ‘remake’ what it can of the old order. This is a very dangerous strategy. It is especially dangerous given the complex mix of technological development, global economic shifts and international political developments.

The US has forged a ‘global tinderbox’ where one mistake, one misapprehension, one error, could engulf the world in violence. This is why Trump’s claims about China and the Pandemic are not only deeply racist, but incredibly dangerous. Is the US preparing to use its false claims about China testing nuclear warheads as a pretext for staging tests of its own? Will Trump’s ever-hardening line against China simply accelerate the destruction of Treaties and agreements? It seems likely. How will Trump’s anti-China stance play out in NATO member states, like the UK for example, which are seeking to sign trade deals and other such agreements? It seems likely that Trump will seek to pull them closer to the US than is already the case.

Whilst Trump and company threaten China, the peace movements must resist the threats and seek to learn as much as we can about that country.

Germany: ‘Time for U.S. Nukes to go’

The leader of the German Social Democrats (SPD) in the Bundestag, Rolf Mützenich, has called for US nuclear weapons to be removed from the country. He told the Tagesspiegel newspaper (03/05/20) that: “Nuclear weapons on German territory do not heighten our security, just the opposite ... The time has come for Germany to rule out a future stationing.”

Although the call is not shared universally within the SPD, co-leader Saskia Esken backed Mützenich, saying: “Whoever thinks that glasnost and perestroika were made possible by the West’s nuclear deterrent missed something ... Atomic weaponry on German soil, on German airplanes, is neither an end to itself nor desirable”.

The politics of these calls is inseparable from the fact that Chancellor Angela Merkel only remains in power thanks to a coalition with the SPD; that Merkel was widely considered to be a spent force prior to the outbreak of Covid-19 and will not run again and that in such circumstances, politicians with an eye to the future are willing to make a stand on certain issues. But it would be a mistake to simply dismiss these calls as political manoeuvering. Much more is going on here, not least the reality that the presence of US nuclear weapons on German territory has been an important and long-running issue for both German and European politics.

Germany has been under the US’s ‘nuclear umbrella’ since the 1950s and the debate about whether or not such an arrangement ensured greater security or constituted a security risk has been a live one. In the 1980s, when nuclear tensions were particularly high, US plans to station intermediate-range nuclear missiles on German territory sparked an enormous movement of opposition both within Germany and across Europe.

The European Nuclear Disarmament (END) campaign of the time was a vital instrument for building and coordinating the opposition. END called not only for US nuclear weapons to be removed from Germany but for a European Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) to be created.

The force of this argument is once again obvious if we consider what is likely to happen if a future German government does tell the US that it’s time for their nuclear weapons to go. Such a move seems unfeasible for as long as Merkel and her supporters maintain power in Germany, but a future government containing the SPD, Greens and the Left Party would almost certainly demand the removal of US weapons. In such a situation, it is likely that the US will move its weapons to another, more amenable, NATO member state. The most obvious candidate for an alternative host is Poland, though others may well welcome the opportunity. Such a move, closer to Russia, would only heighten nuclear tensions further and must be energetically opposed. A NWFZ seems like the obvious response.

It is worth noting, then, that Mützenich did not alight on this solution when railing against US nuclear weapons. It’s all the more worthy of note because his comment that “Nuclear weapons on German territory do not heighten our security, just the opposite” could be a direct quote from the arguments laid out in Common Security - an idea championed by Swedish Social Democrat Olof Palme and supported by Willy Brandt, a giant of SPD history. NWFZ’s play a central role in their conception of how to ensure a system of Common Security and common peace between the nations of Europe.

According to Matthew Karnitschnig, writing on the Politico website, “The timing of Mützenich’s intervention was no accident. Germany is in the process of phasing out its aging fleet of Tornado fighter jets, the planes it relies on to fulfill its nuclear sharing obligations with the U.S. Under the deal, Germany has agreed to deliver warheads supplied by the U.S. in the event of a nuclear war. The pact has been a pillar of NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy for decades ... What appears to have triggered Mützenich’s demand was an announcement two weeks ago by German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer that she supports purchasing U.S.-made F-18 aircraft to replace the Tornados in order to ensure that Germany could continue to meet its alliance obligations.” (Politico, 03/05/20)

Is Mützenich calling for a break with NATO? This seems to be the logical end-point for his comments and their timing. Such a call would be very welcome indeed. Is there concern about Germany’s agreement with nuclear armed France (the Treaty of Aachen, see END Info 9) which commits them to mutual defence “by all means”? Such concern and a call for the repudiation of the Treaty of Aachen would be very welcome indeed.

These questions are important because if the call for US nuclear weapons to be removed from Germany boils down to expressing distrust that Trump will actually ‘come to Germany’s defence’ rather than a sincere call for a security arrangement in Germany and Europe that promotes peace, then the outcome will be no less dangerous in the longer term.

This is why it’s essential that European peace movements take this opportunity to promote and discuss the idea of a European Nuclear-Weapons-Free zone and why it’s important that we take politicians, trade unionists and the widest possible coalition of forces with us as we forge real security, Common Security.