The Idea of a Nuclear Weapons Convention:
A Workshop at the UK CND Annual Conference

At this year’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) Conference in Leeds, England, (Sept. 16-17, 2000) and on behalf of Abolition 2000 UK, I presented a workshop on the idea of a nuclear weapons convention. One of the most effective plenary talks at the conference, by Lindis Percy of the Campaign for Accountability of American Bases, described her determined acts of civil disobedience against the use of communications sites in the North, at Fylingdales and Menwith Hill, for US national missile defence (NMD) purposes. The subsequent NMD workshop was therefore a crowd-puller, whereas the NWC workshop spoke to a more select gathering.

I outlined the current status of the Model NWC. In the UK Parliament, MP Laura Moffatt’s Early Day Motion 652 had attracted more than 100 signatures, but will need reintroduction in the next Parliamentary session. A Commons Committee recently reported on Weapons of Mass Destruction. Critical of NMD preparations, they nonetheless accepted government arguments for retention of Trident without comment.

I summarised the current draft Model NWC as a set of "obligations." These were: (i) national obligations of the states party to the treaty — both negative (not to use, threaten, develop, or deploy nuclear weapons), and positive (to destroy existing nuclear weapons, to submit to inspection, and to entrench NWC provisions in domestic law); and (ii) personal obligations of citizens of the states party — both negative (not to engage in development or deployment of nuclear weapons) and positive (to report violations of the NWC by their state).

Controversially, sanctions in both domestic and international law will render those who act contrary to the NWC, or who fail to report such actions, liable to prosecution either locally or internationally. A new agency will organise disarmament and will set up compliance and verification procedures. In the event of serious problems, the UN Security Council will face the task of securing compliance. Substantial problems were seen as standing in the way of development of such an NWC. It changes the concept of security ("And you all know security is mortals’ chiefest enemy" — Macbeth); it abolishes the idea of deterrence; it carries with it the difficulties of possible "breakout" by states or groups; and it increases the disposal problems (primarily of long-lived plutonium).

I divided the dozen attendees into two parallel group sessions to discuss: (i) the "internal" NWC problems (surmountable or insurmountable?) including the breakout problem, verification procedures, radioactive and other munitions disposal, and securing a realistic timeframe; and, (ii) the "external" NWC problems: getting the nuclear weapons powers — UK, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, Russia, China, the USA and NATO — to listen: what are the similarities and differences?

Each group selected a rapporteur and a "Devil's Advocate." The latter argued against an NWC and presented the case (in the first session — played vigorously by Bruce Kent) that an NWC is impossible and (in the second session — current CND treasurer Monica Frisch relished her role as defence spokesperson for a variety of nuclear powers) that nuclear weapons are an integral part of the strategies that have kept the peace for 55 years. In the group reports it was apparent that deterrence is a declining concept (hence perhaps the decreased US interest in the ABM treaty), whereas the status and nationalistic roles of nuclear weapons have increased. France, unlike the UK, partially defines its national identity by nuclear weapons possession. China’s support of an NWC in the UN General Assembly was seen largely as a political tactic to retain third world influence. India and possibly Pakistan (despite the "Islamic" bomb) could be persuaded to become parties to an NWC if NATO were on board the NPT in a more meaningful way.

Surprisingly the group was most sympathetic (if that be the word) to the Israeli bomb, Israel being the sole nuclear weapon state that can convincingly argue a direct threat from its neighbours of the kind the ICJ almost allowed as a reason for retention. An important counterexample to the prestige issue is given by New Zealand, where the situation is inverted. Even right wingers are proud of an anti-nuclear New Zealand and support prohibitions such as those keeping nuclear weapons capable vessels away from New Zealand ports.

The "internal" problems group saw technical problems as possibly more important than political ones. Of the latter, they believed that job and conversion issues would be more publicly salient than those of defence and national prestige, at least here in the UK. The proposed NWC deals with the conversion issue, and the need for expertise in verification and disposal may secure a convergence of interests between the nuclear technologists and the disarmers. Like their "external" colleagues the "internal" problems group felt that deterrence was now recognised as a myth (see Arundhati Roy) but that there was a need for public education on this issue. Breakdown of the unitary Soviet state, the rise of various movements prepared to use violence ("terrorists"), and diversification and miniaturisation of weaponry were seen as making the "breakout" problem more difficult as time went by. This argued for an early start on NWC negotiations.

Later in the meeting, John LaForge of Nukewatch and Project ELF spoke. The hi-tech Trident programme is dependent upon extra-low frequency sites in the forests of Wisconsin — wires between wooden poles. Demonstrators cut down the poles, blank the Trident computer screens, and then call the sheriff to arrest them. In some jurisdictions, the harshness of US criminal law has led to such civil disobedience being punished severely. Philip Berrigan, 76 years old, was recently sentenced to several years’ imprisonment for a symbolic act of protest. LaForge's talk combined technical and legal information with a comparative analysis of campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic and the moral issues. It was one of the best events at the meeting, and underlined the distance we need to travel to change political and public opinion as to what is legal and what illegal.

Both lead and second locomotives broke down on the train journey home. I waited for my small quota of complimentary coffee behind two women discussing the Leeds conference they had attended. They then heard that I too had been a conferee. We introduced ourselves. It quickly became evident that there had been two such events that weekend. Theirs was a conference on UFOs. I could not refrain from remarking that it was obviously an open question as to which of us had participated in the more fanciful event.

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