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Former world leaders urge G7 to get nuclear arms control back on track

Letter calls on US and Russia to isolate weapons agreements from other disputes

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor 18 May 23  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/former-world-leaders-urge-g7-to-get-nuclear-arms-control-back-on-track

A global array of former world leaders and defence ministers, nuclear experts and diplomats have called on the leaders of G7 countries at their meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, not to let progress on nuclear arms control continue to be the victim of growing geopolitical conflict, including the conflict between the west and Russia over Ukraine.

The Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who is from Hiroshima, chose the G7 venue to lend seriousness to his personal call to world leaders to at least agree a roadmap to resume nuclear arms control talks.

In February, Russia pulled out of the 2010 New Start treaty, a pact that sets limits on the deployed strategic nuclear arsenals of the world’s two largest nuclear powers, although Moscow said it would nevertheless abide by the limits for the moment.

Kishida intends to take world leaders arriving this week for the summit to the harrowing Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where they will see graphic depictions of the US attack in 1945.

An open letter signed by six former heads of state, 20 cabinet-level ministers and experts from 50 different countries including China, Russia and the US lends momentum to Kishida’s G7 theme by saying the world needs more nuclear arms control, not less.

The letter says: “United States-Russia strategic stability talks are in limbo and the New Start treaty, which has played an indispensable role in ensuring reciprocal security, is now in question.

“As the only existing nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, the world’s two largest nuclear-armed countries, the treaty’s collapse or expiration without a replacement would threaten a destabilising arms race.”

Worsening big-power competition is making nuclear war more likely, the leaders warn, and “failure to agree on a new nuclear arms control framework to replace New Start before it expires in February 2026 would also make it more difficult to bring China, France and the United Kingdom into multilateral arms control, as all three are not ready to consider limits on their nuclear arsenals until the United States and Russia bring down their nuclear stockpiles”.

The letter was organised by the European Leadership Network and Asia-Pacific Leadership Network and signed by former world leaders, including Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico, Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand and Ingvar Carlsson, the former prime minister of Sweden.

In Russia, the signatories include Alexei Arbatov, the director of the International Security Center at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations; Pavel Palazhchenko, the head of the international centre at the Gorbachev Foundation, and Sergey Rogov, who until March last year, was a member of the scientific council of the national security council and a former adviser to the Duma international affairs committee.

One of the most prominent signatories in China is Prof Chen Dongxiao, the president of Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. China has been clear in warning Russia not to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, a threat that has repeatedly been made by Moscow, including by transferring nuclear weapons to Belarus.

UK signatories include the former head of MI6 John Scarlett, the former foreign secretaries Malcolm Rifkind and David Owen, as well as the former defence secretaries Des Browne and Tom King.

The 256 signatories acknowledge they all have different views about geopolitical competition but say “we all agree that it is long past time to start prioritising nuclear arms control and taking unilateral, bilateral and multilateral actions”.

The letter urges Russia and the US to compartmentalise nuclear arms control and isolate it from other disputes by confirming that they will not exceed the New Start limits on deployed nuclear forces, which thus far have not been violated, as well as agreeing to remove the obstacles to full implementation of their New Start obligations.

It also calls for the resumption of the work of the Bilateral Consultative Commission, the body that agrees details of US and Russian inspections of each others’ military sites under the terms of the New Start treaty. The body has not met for nearly two years.

May 18, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics international | Leave a comment

Daniel Ellsberg Warns Risk of Nuclear War Is Rising as Tension Mounts over Ukraine & Taiwan

Democracy Now 1 May 23

As we continue our in-depth conversation with Daniel Ellsberg, the famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower talks about his lifelong antiwar activism and responds to the more recent leak of Pentagon documents about the war in Ukraine. Ellsberg also reflects on the many people who inspired him and says others who look up to his example should know that the sacrifices for building a better world are worth it. “It can work,” he says. Ellsberg, who was recently diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer and given just months to live, spoke to Democracy Now! last week from his home in Berkeley, California.

Transcript

………………This is another excerpt from the 2009 documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. The clip looks at how the Nixon White House responded to the Pentagon Papers leak. You’ll hear White House counsel John Dean; Egil Krogh, who went to prison for his part in Watergate; but first, President Nixon.

DANIEL ELLSBERG:……………………………………………………………………………………… [1969 in Vietnam war] they would send a strong signal to the Chinese. We were prepared to use nuclear weapons right on their border, in the hopes that it would bring Chinese air defenses into the border, and we could pursue them, in hot pursuit, into China and use nuclear weapons against China.………………..

AMY GOODMAN: What about the latest Pentagon leak, the leak of the Pentagon documents, and what they say about the war in Ukraine, and what people understand who are most knowledgeable, who are insiders, about this war?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: It’s shown from the reaction to these leaks, the major leak being, once again like the Pentagon Papers, that when a war appears to be stalemated, it may be stalemated from the inside just as well. That’s what the Pentagon Papers showed, that there is no real prospect for progress and that killing people is, on either side, unjustified by any prospect of any humane result.

Intelligence estimates have shown that a year from now we will probably be in pretty much the same positions — a stalemate — and will not be willing to negotiate. What does that say about our — the people who are making our foreign policy? If that doesn’t define a crisis and emergency, what would? Well, yes, I suppose the prospect that we’re about to lose within a month, and that’s not what either is facing yet.

When Biden is urged to send direct planes, that Ukrainians can’t yet operate, like the F-16, tanks that they cannot yet operate, the tendency to send Americans to operate those tanks and get them right away into business will be very strong along with that. I can only hope that Biden will be pressed by a large part of the public, pressed not to involve the U.S. directly in that war, and to be pursuing negotiations, which it is currently absolutely eschewing, is rejecting the idea of negotiations.

There’s increasing information that one year ago, in early April 2022, Zelensky and Putin essentially had an agreement, were within very close to an agreement, on prewar status quo, returning to a prewar status quo in Crimea and the Donbas, in relation to NATO and everything else, but that the U.S. and the British, Boris Johnson, went over and said, “We are not ready for that. We want the war to continue. We will not accept a negotiation.” I would say that was a crime against humanity. And I say that with all seriousness to the idea that we needed to see people killed on both sides in order, quote, “to weaken the Russians,” not for the benefit of the Ukrainians, but for an overall geopolitical strategy, was wicked.

And however the war started, and, I think, with both incredibly bad judgment by Putin, and aggression and atrocity, and, on the other hand, provocation by the United States, in the sense of policies that were consciously foreseen to increase the probability of a Russian crime of this sort, tells me that I think there were a lot of Americans who wanted this war And they got exactly what they wanted, even better than they could have imagined — huge arms sales to our allies, the U.S. again having an essential role in Europe with an indispensable enemy, an enemy that we could not run the world without, Russia. And Russia stepped into that role very willingly. To say that Russia had no choice but to do what they did do is fairly absurd. That’s like saying you can provoke a person to shoot themselves in the foot or, in this case, to kneecap themselves. Putin had no choice but to kneecap himself and to give himself 800 more miles of adversarial border with Finland and to resuscitate NATO and get these arms sales and so forth — is just absurd.

AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to bring up China, because in 2021 you revealed that the government had drawn up plans to attack China with nuclear weapons over a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Can you talk about the relevance of that today, and when you got that information?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Yes. I revealed that information right after The Economist magazine had a cover with Taiwan on the cover and a big bull’s mark, bull mark, on the front of it, showing that it was, quote, “the most dangerous place” in the world at that point. And what was at stake was a U.S. intervention in the politics of China, namely, supporting a secession movement, an independence movement, by a portion of China regarded almost universally by Chinese as part of China, supporting it in a way which the Chinese were totally forecasting would lead to war, that they would not accept it any more than Lincoln accepted the secession of the Confederacy, in this case.

And we were pressing for that in a way that I have to say I can’t entirely understand. People act as if they want war with China. How can that be? Selling them arms? Yes, I see that. But why they — why they want to change the relation of Taiwan, which has been pretty much the same since 1979, right now in a way that the Chinese guarantee us will lead to war is inscrutable to me. But anyway —

AMY GOODMAN: And you said that these nuclear war plans over the Taiwan Straits were made in 1958?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: ’58, yeah, that’s right. And by the way, there was almost a corresponding crisis earlier, in 1954, ’55, so this was known as the second Taiwan crisis in the ’50s. But the idea there was that we would initiate nuclear war if the Chinese successfully bombarded by artillery islands that were within artillery range, actually within visual range of the mainland, very easy. A couple of them are just a mile or mile and a half off from the mainland. To keep those rocks from control by Beijing, we were prepared to send in U.S. planes to block that blockade — send in U.S. ships to break that blockade. And if the artillery kept that off or there was a danger of losing U.S. ships, we would hit Chinese targets as much as — as far away as Shanghai, which would certainly, in Eisenhower’s terms, and who okayed this, if necessary, if necessary to get through to those islands, we would initiate nuclear war. And he foresaw that as leading to Russian — the ally of China — attacks on Taiwan and on Okinawa, on Guam, even on Japan, which, in turn, guaranteed, in terms of our planning, all-out nuclear war, hitting every city in Russia and China, killing, as our estimates were at that time, 600 million people, a hundred kilowatts —

AMY GOODMAN: And their relevance today?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: — over Taiwan. And that was what they — that’s what they were planning to do then. The number of targets in China has not reduced since then. That was a time when any fighting with the Russians, under Eisenhower, even if it started over Berlin, was guaranteed to include targeting China as a whole, as well. That may have changed to some extent, but to a large extent, at various times, we’ve still continued to say, “Shouldn’t we have a plan for war with Russia that doesn’t include destroying China?” To which the answer is, “Well, do you really want to destroy Russia and not China also? We’ll be destroyed in the process. That would leave China ruling the world.” In short, Russia and China have to be regarded as a joint target complex. OK?

This is insanity. This is a form of insanity as a kind of myth and hoax that has taken over the public. It is as insane as QAnon or as the belief that Trump is the president currently of the United States. And yet, the belief that we can do less bad by striking first than if we strike second is what confronts us in Ukraine with a real possibility of a nuclear war coming out of this conflict — in other words, of most life on Earth — not all, most life on Earth — being extinguished as a matter of the control of Crimea or the Donbas or Taiwan. That’s insane.

Who is going to face up to that? I call again to the young people that Greta Thunberg has mobilized on us to say, “The adults are not taking care of this, and our future absolutely depends on this changing somehow fast, now.”

…………………………. The reason I admire her [Greta Thunberg]so much is not only the brilliance of this movement, her acting on her own initially, taking the initiative, advising others, doing it in the form of a general strike, which is — I think, is a really important way of demonstrating nonviolent action, their withdrawal of support, the withdrawal of support……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

AMY GOODMAN: Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Visit democracynow.org for all our interviews with Dan Ellsberg.

 https://www.democracynow.org/2023/5/1/daniel_ellsberg_ukraine_war_pentagon_leak

May 3, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics international | 2 Comments

Statement by the G7 Parliamentarian Forum for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

 https://www.icanw.org/g7_mp_statement 29 Apr 23,

Ahead of the G7 Leaders’ Summit taking place in Hiroshima in May, ICAN convened the G7 Parliamentarian Forum for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons in Tokyo and Hiroshima. The adopted statement urges the G7 governments to recognize the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, condemn threats to use nuclear weapons and to recognise the TPNW as a the comprehensive and effective legal tool for the abolition of nuclear weapons. See the full statement and list of participants below.

We parliamentarians from G7 countries reiterate our commitment to nuclear disarmament on the occasion of the G7 Summit in the city of Hiroshima, a city that  is marked by nuclear obliteration due to the dropping of the first atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. We are reminded of the 140,000 lives lost in the city as well as over 70,000 lives lost in Nagasaki, by the end of 1945 and the ongoing physical, social, and psychological suffering of the Hibakusha. Their fate remains at the centre of our political agenda towards complete global nuclear disarmament. 

We recognize that the risk of nuclear war increases over time as long as nuclear weapons exist. The repeated missile tests and continued nuclear programs of the DPRK have dangerously and irresponsibly increased this risk. We condemn Russia’s illegal war of aggression on Ukraine, which exposed the unacceptable risks associated with nuclear weapons. The Russian plans to station nuclear weapons in Belarus highlight the importance of halting and reversing such actions and ensuring that nuclear weapons are never again used as tools of aggression and intimidation. The ongoing nuclear arms race, in which all nuclear weapon states are involved, increases the risk of the use of these weapons either by accident or design, with devastating consequences for humanity and the planet and must therefore be stopped as a matter of international urgency.

In order to strengthen the norm of not using and not threatening to use nuclear weapons, we condemn any and all nuclear threats and reiterate that the only guarantee of non-use is the total elimination of nuclear weapons. To this end, we commit to strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which provide the crucial, mutually-reinforcing framework for achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. We underline the importance of Article VI of the NPT, which calls for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, and we welcome the TPNW’s comprehensive provisions as an important reinforcement of the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime especially in a time of heightened risks. Complementary to the TPNW’s explicit prohibition of nuclear weapons testing, the norms of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) must be upheld. 

As representatives of their peoples, parliamentarians have a vital role to play in building support for disarmament and ensuring that our governments prioritise the elimination of nuclear weapons. Let us collaborate with states parties to the TPNW and civil society to achieve our shared goal of a safer and more peaceful world, free from the threat of nuclear war. We encourage all non-signatory states to observe the second Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW and urge our governments to explore options to collaborate with states parties, particularly in the area of victim assistance and environmental remediation, as set out in Article 6 and 7 of the TPNW. We will intensify our political efforts to encourage our countries to sign and ratify the TPNW, with the goal of achieving its universalization at the earliest possible time. 

In the upcoming Hiroshima Summit, we urge the leaders of the G7 to meet with and listen to the Hibakusha, to acknowledge the devastating harm caused by the use of nuclear weapons on people and the environment, to unequivocally condemn any and all threats to use nuclear weapons, and to recognize the significance of the TPNW in advancing global nuclear disarmament efforts. We maintain that all countries should engage in sincere and constructive negotiations to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons so that never again will any person be subjected to the fate endured by the Hibakusha.

Participants of the G7 Parliamentarian Forum on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons:  

Boldrini, Laura / Camera, Partito Democratico, Italy

McPherson, Heather / House of Commons, NDP, Canada

Satouri, Mounir / European Parliament, Green, France/EU  (video message)

Spellerberg, Merle / German Bundestag, Green, Germany (video message)

Ribeiro-Addy, Bell / House of Commons, Labour, UK (video message)

Inoguchi, Kuniko  / House of Councillors, LDP, Japan

Minoru, Terada / House of Representative, LDP, Japan (video message)

Hiraguchi, Hiroshi / House of Representatives, LDP, Japan

Taniai, Masaaki / House of Councillors, Komeito, Japan

May 2, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics international | Leave a comment