nuclear-news

“Nuclear weapons are again becoming embedded in national defence strategies. Support has deepened for misguided doctrines of deterrence,” Mr. Ban said in a message delivered by UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Angela Kane to the Symposium and High-Level Panel on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Nuclear Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Energy; Fresh Ideas for the Future.

“Modernization programmes envisage retention of these deadly weapons for decades to come. Nuclear weapon States have not demonstrated the leadership required to break the status quo, instead attaching hollow conditions to their disarmament obligations,” Mr. Ban added in the message.

The Symposium, a side event held in connection with the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which opened yesterday at UN Headquarters, was also expected to hear from UN Messenger of Peace, Michael Douglas.

“This Review Conference offers an opportunity to change the narrative; to remind all States parties that their collective good is best served by the full implementation of – and compliance with – all of the Treaty’s goals; and to put us back on course,” Mr. Ban said, calling on participants to provide ideas that will “propel us down the path to a world free of nuclear weapons.”

For over four decades, the Treaty has been a bulwark against the spread of the most dangerous and inhumane weapons ever devised, and it has been a central and essential mechanism for their elimination. Calling it “indispensable,” Mr. Ban said the Treaty has strengthened the security of all States parties, serving as a foundation for international security. Over the course of its history, the NPT has also helped cope with multiple challenges and competing positions.

While the ultimate goal of the NPT – to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and to bring about their elimination – has not changed, the international security climate has evolved and continued to do so, with new problems constantly “testing our resolve,” Mr. Ban said.

To be effectively implemented, the Treaty requires constant tending to ensure that it remains strong and capable of safeguarding against the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons.

“We need new ideas to shore up the NPT, to confront new obstacles head on, and to overcome them,” he said. “Proliferation challenges persist. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continues with its dangerous and destabilizing activities, flouting international law and the will of the international community.”

At the same time, despite valiant efforts, the conference on a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction has not yet taken place, Mr. Ban noted. The benefits of such a zone are manifold, including regional peace and stability.

“We have seen the sheer emergence of a movement seeking to address the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. This has re-energized a frozen debate, reminding us that the indiscriminate and catastrophic costs of nuclear weapons are, at their core, human costs,” he added.

The 2015 Review Conference will run at UN Headquarters in New York through 22 May. The President-designate of the Conference is Ambassador Taous Feroukhi from Algeria.

The NPT is a landmark international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. It represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon States.

“The only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons will never be used again is through their total elimination,” Kurz told the 191 parties to the treaty, the world’s benchmark arms control accord. “All states share the responsibility to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.”

Diplomats from the 159 countries supporting the ban, presented ahead of the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atom bombs dropped on Japan, said the initiative was modelled on successful campaigns to ban land mines and other weapons and could take years to move forward.

The initiative has virtually no support among NPT nuclear weapons states and veto-wielding Security Council members – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – or the countries of NATO, an alliance that provides a kind of “nuclear umbrella” security guarantee for its members.

But most of the 193 U.N. members back it.

The five permanent Security Council members signed the NPT as nuclear weapons states, although the pact calls on them to negotiate the reduction and eventual elimination of their arms caches. Non-nuclear states complain that there have been too few steps toward nuclear disarmament.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday demanded countries possessing nuclear weapons scrap any plans to modernize their arsenals.

Four other states presumed to have nuclear weapons – Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea – are not listed as supporters of the initiative…….http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/28/uk-nuclear-un-austria-idUKKBN0NJ2IE20150428

Diplomatic efforts have done little to ease the new nuclear tension. This makes it all the more critical for Russia and the United States to talk, to relieve the pressures to “use or lose” nuclear forces during a crisis and minimize the risk of a mistaken launch.

The fact is that we are still living with the nuclear-strike doctrine of the Cold War, which dictated three strategic options: first strike, launch on warning and post-attack retaliation. There is no reason to believe that Russia and the United States have discarded these options, as long as the architecture of “mutually assured destruction” remains intact.

For either side, the decision to launch on warning — in an attempt to fire one’s nuclear missiles before they are destroyed — would be made on the basis of information from early-warning satellites and ground radar. Given the 15- to 30-minute flight times of strategic missiles, a decision to launch after an alert of an apparent attack must be made in minutes.

This is therefore the riskiest scenario, since provocations or malfunctions can trigger a global catastrophe. Since computer-based information systems have been in place, the likelihood of such errors has been minimized. But the emergence of cyberwarfare threats has increased the potential for false alerts in early-warning systems. The possibility of an error cannot be ruled out………..

In theory, no sensible head of state would authorize a launch-on-warning strike after receiving information that just one missile, or a small number of missiles, were inbound, on the assumption that this was not an intentional, full-scale attack. But the launch-on-warning doctrine still rules in both Russia and the United States — in which case the risk, however small, of cataclysmic error remains.

This risk should motivate the presidents of Russia and the United States to decide in tandem to eliminate the launch-on-warning concept from their nuclear strategies. Continue reading →