Intervention by Peter Weiderud, President of the Christian Social Democrats in Sweden at the Panel Reaching Critical Will for Disarmament, Nuclear Weapons Conference, Stockholm 6-8 November 2009

Moderator

Dear friends and Colleagues

I am most grateful for this initiative taken by the Swedish Network for Nuclear Disarmament, exactly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

These kinds of conferences were common 25 years ago. A few years before the end of the Cold War we had 70.000 nuclear aimed at each other and at some of our major cities. The total capacity for destruction was enough to extinguish all human life over and over again. The nuclear tests created enormous environmental destruction and health tragedies in remote parts of the Soviet Union, in the desert of Nevada, in China and in French Polynesia.

Never before, nor after, has humanity been so close to total self-destruction. Never before, nor after, have so many been living in the grip of deprivation and oppression. Never before, nor after, have so many people demanded, determined and demonstrated that the world leaders should listen and take responsibility.

For us involved in the struggle against nuclear weapons, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War offered a liberation that I will never forget.

After the end of the Cold War, the development on nuclear disarmament was very positive, with the help of the in-built political energy from the decades of the Cold War.

The NPT was extended indefinitely at the Review Conference in 1995 and more countries became parties. We achieved the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The nuclear arsenals were drastically reduced.

Although India, Pakistan and Israel still remained outside the NPT and were confirmed as states with nuclear arsenals, the Review Conference in 2000 still made progress. In order to secure the treaty, the five nuclear parties to the NPT, committed themselves to ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals. By that the delicate balance of the NPT, were the nuclear parties commit themselves to disarmament and elimination and others not to obtain, was kept.

A handful countries – Sweden, Ireland, Brasil, Mexico, South Africa, Egypt and New Zeeland (the New Agenda Coalition) – were able to act as critical, constructive and creative brokers between the conflicting pools of the NPT in the 2000 Conference, and present a program of 13 steps.

Five years later we were at a situation were the NPT Review Conference collapsed. The conflicting pools stood further apart than ever, and the New Agenda Coalition was unable to play any important role, not even help to produce an agenda the conflicting parties could agree upon.

The mistrust expressed in the 2005 Conference was a direct result of September 11 and the following war on terror. Multilateralism froze in a climate of fear.

The failure of the NPT Review 2005 sent a clear signal that nuclear arms are back on the agenda of world politics and again a serious threat. Not in a the same way as before in a Cold War-like nuclear arms race and the threat of a nuclear winter.

The risk we are facing today is rather a situation of nuclear anarchy with a clear risk that single nuclear arms would be used against urban centres or in some of the asymmetric wars of today. Although we have fewer weapons compared to 20 years ago, there are more fingers on the triggers today, and there are even more people who have the possibility to put their fingers where they should not be.

Unlike during the Cold War, nuclear technology can be sold for profit and non-state actors are organized in a way that they might be able to obtain nuclear arms.

Therefore, the time has come to reach critical political will for disarmament. The only defence against the use of nuclear arms is prohibition, elimination and strong mechanisms for verification.

All countries have a responsibility to keep the NPT together. Hence we should carefully look into specific responsibilities for each and every country. How can we help countries to better see the benefits of taking responsibility for nuclear disarmament and how can we increase the political price for non-action.

Let me start with one group of countries, who have had the capacity and potential to obtain nuclear arms, but chosen to reject it for their own security and the security of others. In this group we find Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, Ukraine, Libya and Kazakhstan.

This is an interesting mix of countries, all with special relation to the five official nuclear weapons states, the three un-official and non-parties to the NPT and the more critical non-nuclear parties to the treaty. These countries need to improve coordination and need to use their moral power in a more convincing way  

Another group of countries who could do more are the non-nuclear members of NATO. They have to reconcile between their conflicting obligations. As parties to the NPT they have committed themselves to total nuclear disarmament. However as members of NATO they continue to rely on nuclear weapons as “essential” to their security according to the strategic concept of NATO from 1999.

The non-nuclear NATO-members have to be reminded about this discrepancy, in particular in the process leading up to the NATO Summit in a year time. When I was working with the World Council of Churches we send delegations to discuss this with some of  them – Canada, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Norway.

In particular Canada and Norway were very sensitive to be looked at as political hypocrites, and hence willing to raise these concerns in NATO. The EU countries in this position that we talked to were at that time less willing to commit closing this political discrepancy, which makes it necessary also for the European Union to address this issue – by the Presidency of the Council and the members of the European Parliament.

Germany burned its fingers, when Joschka Fischer took an initiative along these lines about ten years ago, and might be less enthusiastic to open this agenda again. However Germany can make its contribution by getting rid of the American nuclear weapons which are stationed to be launched from Germany, as recently was addressed by the newly formed German Government Coalition.

I believe it is time to increase the political price for those countries who continue to be non-parties or unclear parties to the NPT, by not complying with IAEA or by hosting other countries nuclear weapons. If the international community made it clear that only those countries who are full and clear parties to the NPT could be possible new permanent members in a reformed future Security Council, it would be a help for both India and Germany to make their priorities.

We could also go one step further and say that we only accept full and unequivocal NPT-members elected on the Security Council, and we might help also Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, Israel and Iran with their struggle.

Moderator,

The main responsibility for keeping the NPT together lies with ten countries. Five of them are not parties to the NPT or are in breach with the treaty as non-nuclear parties.

India, Israel and Pakistan need to reject their nuclear programs and become parties to the NPT. North Korea and Iran need to return to and comply with the Treaty and abandon all uranium enrichment programs for nuclear weapons.

Two of these countries are in the Middle East and two are immediate neighbours to the Middle East Region, the most unstable and vulnerable of regions. All countries in the Middle East are immediately affected by nuclear arms, and it is time for these countries to take their responsibilities and implement the nuclear weapons free zone which they agreed upon within the UN already 1980.

The other five – the official nuclear weapons parties to the NPT – are challenging the NPT because of their reluctance to fulfil article VI of the Treaty to “general and complete disarmament” of the nuclear arms.

Non-proliferation and disarmament are inextricably linked. As long as some countries insist that nuclear weapons are essential to their security, other countries might claim the same – and the vicious circle will continue.

There are many lost opportunities for the five permanent members of the Security Council since the NPT Review Conference in 2000. The list of demands on them is long and in particular on the two mains, Russia and the US. The 13 steps program remains to be implemented.

The US President elected a year ago, Barack Obama, has brought new hope to the disarmament process. He has pointed to a road away from the climate of fear. He has proposed a new start of negotiation with the aim of reaching a world free from nuclear arms. He has changed the provocative project to deploy a new missile shield system in Eastern Europe.

The Summit in the UN Security Council in September this year, chaired for the first time by the President of the US, is an indication of the vulnerability of NPT, but at the same time a hopeful investment for the next NPT Review Conference in 2010.

The initiative by Mr Obama to seek a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia and his promise to move ahead with ratification of the test ban treaty are indeed hopeful signs.

They were in fact so hopeful that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee decided to offer the Peace Prize for 2009 on promises rather than on achievements, turning the Nobel Peace Prize from a carrot to a moral stick.

It remains to be seen, if this was a clever move or not by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Nuclear Weapons and disarmament is a world of Realpolitik, and I believe a real carrot has more value than a moral stick.

However, it is up to all of us to raise the value of the moral stick, turn it into a call to action, by reminding the five about their obligation and their own interests there are at stake.

All politics are at the end of the day local, and the tools for reaching the critical will for disarmament are hence in our hands – the informed local and international public opinion.

We are the once to tell that nuclear weapons cannot bring security and that nuclear arsenals deliver only insecurity and peril through their promise to annihilate life itself and to ravage the global ecosystem.

Our immediate task is to advocate before and during the NPT Review Conference in New York in May 2010.

We need to mobilize all possible ethical, spiritual and political energy to meet the challenges of the new and more complex nuclear arms era.

Our ultimate demand should be for the nuclear weapons states to set a clear date for the nuclear weapons free world, a target date should be put for the fulfilment of article VI of the NPT. We should demand an additional protocol of that sort to be adopted at the Review Conference in 2015, one and a half year before the end of Mr. Obama’s second period.

If we succeed with that, the Review Conference in 2020 could be a celebration of the fulfilment of the Treaty and making nuclear arms a 75 year parentheses in human history.