Getting to Zero
Working Towards a Nuclear Weapon-Free World
BASIC Project Outline
"Nuclear weapons today present tremendous
dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S. leadership
will be required to take the world to the next stage -- to
a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons
globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation
into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them
as a threat to the world."
George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry, Sam Nunn -
Op-Ed, Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007
"Over the past 15 years, the goal of the
elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back
burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and
a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.
It will be a challenge to the current generation of leaders,
a test of their maturity and ability to act that they must
not fail. It is our duty to help them to meet this challenge."
Mikhail Gorbachev - Op-Ed, Wall Street Journal, January 31,
2007
BASIC launched its "Getting to
Zero" project on its 20th anniversary on November 6, 2007.
This is an ambitious project which will require the organization
to grow and refocus its efforts. Our emphasis will be on cooperation
with others and on our transatlantic partnership, which has
served us well in the past.
The threat presented by nuclear weapons has never been greater.
Unlike conventional terrorism, the nuclear threat calls into
question our very existence. The "Grand Bargain" that has
been the heart of the non-proliferation regime for nearly
forty years is in danger of unraveling. In that bargain, embedded
in the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the non-nuclear
weapons states (NNWS) agreed to foreswear the development
of these weapons in exchange for the nuclear weapons states
(NWS) agreeing to negotiate in good faith to eliminate their
nuclear arsenals. But dissatisfaction with the lack of progress
by the NWS has led a number of NNWS to reconsider their options.
In an October 2006 address to a conference of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Director General Mohamed ElBaradei,that,
should the non-proliferation regime fail, we could be living
in a future world of up to 30 nuclear powers.
It is this growing threat that has revived the idea of the
complete elimination of nuclear weapons. As President Gorbachev
said, this will require both a true political breakthrough
and a major intellectual effort. BASIC can contribute to both.
The next three years will be a crucial period. In the US,
the new Democratic-controlled House has voted to dramatically
scale back, if not completely eliminate, plans to rebuild
the US nuclear weapons complex and to develop a new generation
of nuclear warheads. A bipartisan group of distinguished national
security officials, including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz,
William Perry, and Sam Nunn - continue to actively promote
their plan to move towards a nuclear-free world. This Reykjavik
group or"Hoover Group" (named after theHoover Institution
at Stanford which George Shultz heads) promotes the political
breakthrough required to breathe new life into the NPT. Non-proliferation
already figures in the 2008 Presidential campaign. According
to a recent survey by the Council for a Livable World, all
Democratic Presidential candidates have supported the "Reykjavik
initiative" in varying degrees, as well as other steps to
reverse the trends toward proliferation.
The British government is committed to pursuing multilateral
negotiations to promote disarmament. This was the quid pro-quo
commitment made with the decision to replace Trident, reaffirmed
by the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett at the June 2007
Carnegie conference, and later by the Prime Minister Gordon
Brown at the annual Lord Mayor's Banquet on 12 November. We
will use a combination of insider and outsider advocacy to
encourage the government to pursue concrete proposals with
their governmental and non-governmental partners. We will
also bring internationally respected British opinion-leaders
to Washington to meet with their US counterparts.
Goals and objectives
BASIC embraces both the vision of eliminating nuclear weapons
and the practical steps necessary to get there.
Vision
We advocate cutting the Gordian Knot of the current non-proliferation
impasse by obtaining the endorsement of the US and Russian
presidents, as well as the UK Prime Minister, for renewing
"the spirit of Reykjavik" and pledging new measures to get
there. The US-Russia Commission headed by Henry Kissinger
and Evgeniy Primakov will be meeting in Washington in December,
the second meeting since it was established at the Kennebunkport
summit. Both George Shultz and Henry Kissinger are members
of the group and signatories of the "World Free of Nuclear
Weapons" statement. Working through the US "Reykjavik Group",
which met at the Hoover Institution in October and discussed
concrete milestones on the path towards zero, we hope to prepare
the ground for a public statement by the Commission that could
be endorsed and carried forward by the Russian and American
presidents now or in 2009.
Milestones
In order for the vision of "Getting to Zero" to be credible,
concrete implementing steps should be proposed at an early
stage by US, Russian and UK leaders. In conjunction with our
partner organizations, we can also engage other nuclear weapons
states, such as China and France. The agenda must be flexible,
depending on both technical and political issues, including
especially verification. It must be rooted in the emerging
consensus as articulated by the Hoover Group and others, but
also highlight specific problems and propose practical solutions
to them. A preliminary list of suggested milestones includes:
- Progressive reduction of operationally deployed strategic
warheads, thus reducing the danger of "launch on warning"
where decisions must be made in minutes
- Freeze upgrading, modernization and replacement of nuclear
weapons. For the US that would mean discontinuing the "reliable
replacement warhead" and the rebuilding of the US nuclear
weapons complex. For the UK, that would mean deferring plans
to replace Trident submarines linked to diplomatic initiatives
by the UK Government to revive the non-proliferation and
disarmament regime.
- US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
which the UK and Russia have done.
- The US, with NATO agreement, should withdraw the 480 tactical
nuclear weapons stationed in Europe, and Russia should withdraw
its tactical weapons from operational deployment and place
them in secure storage.
- The US and Russia should extend the START I Treaty for
an additional 15 years, thus ensuring that verification
measures remain in force
- The US and Russia should then agree on further strategic
arms reductions, to include reducing stockpiles of stored
warheads
- International differences over missile defense should
be resolved
- The US should propose new research on ways to verify a
fissile materials cutoff treaty, thus opening the way for
renewed multilateral negotiations
- In preparation for the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the
US, UK and Russia should begin discussing steps towards
nuclear disarmament which could be endorsed multilaterally
(no such steps were mentioned in 2005 due to US opposition)
BASIC will report on progress regularly on this website and
through our Getting to Zero email
updates.
BASIC Publications and Events
Post Oslo meetings in London and Washington:
Washington: "A World Without
Nuclear Weapons: The International Dimension": March 6th
2008
BASIC joined with The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), and
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to co-sponsor
a March 6th debrief on the recent meeting of the "Hoover Group"
in Oslo. Ambassador Max Kampelman, Ambassador James Goodby,
and Dr. George Perkovich, all participants in the Oslo
meeting, discussed the means of revitalizing the international
disarmament movement. Judging from their comments about the
Oslo meeting, the question of how to translate the moral imperative
of nuclear disarmament into the practical steps necessary
to achieving this vision remains open to debate. Whatever
the tactics, it is clear that the current movement is very
different from previous calls for disarmament from civil society.
The Oslo participants were looking for a way to achieve a
negotiated, reciprocal and verifiable agreement to dismantle
nuclear weapons.
USIP has posted an audio file and full summary of the event
on its website: (http://www.usip.org/events/2008/0306_nuclear_weapons.html).
London: February 28 2008
On their way back from Oslo George Shultz and Sam Nunn addressed
a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Security
and Non-Proliferation, clerked by BASIC. They outlined to
a group of assembled Parliamentarians - one of the best attended
meetings seen in Parliament on a Thursday evening, with an
audience including several former Foreign Secretaries and
cabinet members - the importance of taking disarmament seriously.
They warned that the tables were turning in terms of nuclear
dangers, and the US and UK were fast becoming the most likely
targets of any future nuclear strike (particularly from terrorism)
- that the balance of security and danger meant that governments
needed to cooperate more closely in achieving cuts. They emphasised
that the vision and the steps to achieve it go hand in hand,
and outlined what those step look like, and a strategy on
how to achieve it. The reception they received was on the
whole very positive, though there were, of course, voices
of scepticism.
Project launch and groundwork (July 2007-December 2007)
Launch
BASIC officially launched the 'Getting to Zero' (GTZ) project
at a breakfast meeting at the Cosmos Club in Washington on
6 November 2007, also marking our 20th Anniversary:
During the panel discussion former MP Malcolm Savidge, Ambassador
James Leonard, Ambassador Robert Barry, and Paul Ingram evaluated
the prospects and necessary steps for reducing nuclear weapons
arsenals and the measures needed to prevent the further proliferation
of these weapons. The event was followed up by a day of meetings
on Capitol Hill to raise awareness about GTZ-related issues.
Meetings were held with Congressmen Ed Royce, Gene Greene,
and John Boozman, and staff members from the offices of Senators
Robert Casey and Jim DeMint.
BASIC- RUSI Roundtable
In December BASIC organised a joint roundtable with the Royal
United Services Institute in Whitehall on moves needed to
achieve global nuclear disarmament ('Revitalising the Non-Proliferation
Regime'). The event was chaired by Michael Clarke, Director
of RUSI and involved Professor Frank von Hippel, Major-General
Pan Zhenqiang, Ambassador Dr. Miguel Marin-Bosch, Professor
Jack Mendelsohn, participants from the Foreign Office, the
Royal Society and RUSI.
BASIC Board Members in the Media
BASIC Board Member and iconic musician Brian Eno was invited
to open a debate on BBC Radio's flagship programme, Today,
focusing on Britain's role in promoting global disarmament
by not renewing the Trident system. His three-minutes was
responded to by James Arbuthnot MP, Chair of the Commons Defence
Select Committee. The programme was broadcast on 31 December
2007, and the piece is available
online. BASIC Board Member Ambassador Robert Barry published
a piece on the Guardian newspaper's website in response to
the latest Wall Street Journal article calling for renewed
commitment to the vision of a nuclear weapon free world and
the steps towards it, available
online.
Ambassador Kampelman in London
In July 2007 BASIC sponsored a week-long visit by Ambassador
Max Kampelman to London to discuss the 'Zero nuclear weapons'
agenda. Kampelman has been credited with shaping US policy
in the arena of human rights relations with the Soviet Union
in the early 1980s, and as helping to create the diplomatic
conditions that preceded the end of the Cold War. He was also
later responsible as head of the US negotiators for steering
through the crucial reductions in nuclear arms in the INF
and START treaties.
During a highly successful visit, Ambassador Kampelman met
with outgoing Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, the senior
foreign policy advisor to new Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
Members of Parliament, Foreign Office officials, think tanks,
and the media. The insights we gained as a result have guided
the development of the "Getting to Zero" project (see above).
In his speech to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global
Security and Non-Proliferation at Westminster, Ambassador
Kampelman said:
We must keep in mind that the indispensable initial ingredient
for action is leadership in reasserting the vision of a
world free of nuclear weapons - the "ought." Only by clearly
committing to the "ought" can we change the "is" of our
day and achieve our shared vision of a better world for
our children and grandchildren.
The full text of his speech is available
here. Following discussions between Ambassador Kampelman
and senior journalists at The Guardian, this leader
article suggests that more will need to be done to assuage
a number of Russian strategic concerns if the zero agenda
is to be taken seriously in Moscow.
'Getting to Zero' Email Updates
In January 2008, BASIC replaced its long-standing 'Washington
Nuclear Update' with a 'Getting to Zero' Update. The GTZ Update
continues to follow developments that are relevant to nuclear
nonproliferation and the reduction of existing nuclear stockpiles,
as well as reporting on proposals and political initiatives
associated with this new agenda.
Previous editions of BASIC's Getting to Zero and Washington
Nuclear Update are available here.
To subscribe to BASIC Email Updates and receive Getting to
Zero update by email click
here.
Chronology: Key Documents and Statements
6 March 2008, A
World Without Nuclear Weapons: The International Dimension
A public event sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the British
American Security Information Council (BASIC)
March
6, 2008, New York review of Books, Volume 55, Number
3 · The
Greatest Threat to Us All, by Joseph
Cirincione. Cirincione reviews new books by Richard Rhodes,
Jonathan Schell and others highlighting the risks of nuclear
proliferation especially to unstable countries such as Pakistan.
February 2008, Toward
True Security: Ten Steps the Next US President should
take to transform US nuclear weapons policy, Federation of
American Scientists, National Resources Defense Council and
Union of Concerned Scientists, reviewed in the BASIC
blog.
26-27 February 2008: official website of the international
conference on nuclear disarmament in Oslo: Achieving
the Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons. This has
the programme, presentation and list of participants.
5 February, Speech
by the UK Secretary of State for Defence, "Laying the
Foundations for Multilateral Disarmament"
23 January 2008: Bennett Ramberg, A
world free of nuclear weapons: The wrong and right way to
do it, UPI Outside View
21 January 2008: Gordon Brown, in a speech
to the Chamber of Commerce in Delhi, India on January
21, renews the UK government's commitment to move toward a
nuclear-weapon free world. He said: "I pledge that in the
run-up to the Non Proliferation Treaty review conference in
2010 we will be at the forefront of the international campaign
to accelerate disarmament amongst possessor states, to prevent
proliferation to new states, and to ultimately achieve a world
that is freer from nuclear weapons."
15 January 2008: The 'Hoover Group' - George Shultz,
Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and William Perry - publish a renewed
call
to action in the Wall Street Journal, sparking
off another flurry of debate. This came a year after their
original letter in the Journal triggered a series of responses
from governments and civil society around the vision of a
nuclear-weapon free world. The growing and impressive list
of elite US supporters include seven secretaries of state,
seven national security advisors and five former secretaries
of defense.
11 January 2008: US Department of Energy's National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) releases a plan
to 'streamline' the US nuclear weapons program. The plan
is set forth in a draft
Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (SPEIS).
20 December 2007: US Special Representative for Nuclear
Nonproliferation, Christopher Ford, spoke at the UK Foreign
Office Wilton
Park conference about the goal of zero nuclear weapons:
So this is where we are today, with the United States engaged
in broad diplomatic outreach efforts and ongoing dialogue
not just about numbers, doctrine, and treaty interpretation,
but also about our vision for the future - and about
how one might actually hope to achieve nuclear disarmament.
The United States has reaffirmed its commitment to disarmament,
offered a vision of a zero-weapons future, and engaged
in unprecedented discussion of how actually to achieve this.
[emphasis added]
The full text of Ford's
presentation may be found here. He also delivered a presentation
on "Nuclear
Disarmament and the 'Legalization' of Policy Discourse in
the NPT Regime," at an event hosted by The Nonproliferation
Review on November 29 in Washington, DC.
19 December 2007: President Bush announces a reduction
by 15
percent in the active US nuclear weapons arsenal, which
is scheduled to be completed by 2012.
5 December 2007: UN General Assembly adopts numerous
resolutions related to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.
One resolution
calls for the Conference on Disarmament to begin negotiations
toward a ban on the production of military fissile materials
and also calls on members to make deep cuts to nuclear weapons
arsenals, with the overall goal of elimination. Another resolution
calls on members to decrease
the operational readiness of their nuclear weapons.
9 November 2007: A new poll,
conducted in the United States and Russia, finds robust support
for a series of cooperative steps to reduce nuclear dangers
and move toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons.
1 November 2007: UN General Assembly's disarmament
committee approved
a resolution calling for all nuclear weapons to be taken
off high alert, despite objections from the United States,
Britain and France
28 October 2007: Russia and the United States urge
all countries to destroy medium range nuclear-capable missiles,
in a joint
declaration published by the Russian foreign ministry.
24 October 2007: Governor
Schwarzenegger's Nuclear Disarmament Remarks, Hoover Institution,
California
25 June 2007: Keynote Address: A World Free of Nuclear
Weapons?, Remarks by Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State
for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, United Kingdom, Carnegie
International Nonproliferation Conference
31 January 2007: The
Nuclear Threat, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wall Street Journal
4 January 2007: A
World Free of Nuclear Weapons, George P. Shultz, William
J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, Wall Street
Journal
24 April 2006: We
Should, So We Can: Life Without the Bomb, Max M. Kampelman,
International Herald Tribune
Links and Further Reading
US Presidential Candidates' Statements and Positions on
Nuclear Weapons
- The
Democratic Presidential Candidates on Nuclear Weapons Elimination,
Joseph Cirincione and Alexandra Bell, Center for American
Progress, via the Huffington Post, January 17, 2008, (Includes
a chart that lists the former cabinet members who now support
the elimination of nuclear weapons.)
- An
Early Look Ahead: What to Expect from Clinton, McCain, and
Obama on National Security, John Isaacs, Council for
a Livable World, 28 February 2008
- Issue
Tracker: The Candidates and Nuclear Nonproliferation,
Council on Foreign Relations, Updated January 16, 2008.
- Where the presidential candidates stand on nuclear issues,
Lawrence Krauss, The
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, January 9, 2008.
Earlier Detailed Proposals for Nuclear Disarmament
Report of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Weapons
of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and
Chemical Arms, ("Blix Report"), June 2006
Japan Institute of International Affairs, the Hiroshima Peace
Institute and the Japanese Government, Report of the Tokyo
Forum on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, 1999
Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National
Academy of Sciences, The Future of US Nuclear Weapons Policy,
1997
The Stimson Center, An American Legacy: Building a Nuclear
Weapon-Free World, 1997
Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of
Nuclear Weapons (Canberra: Australian Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade), 1996
Further Reading
Overcoming
Nuclear Dangers, The Stanley Foundation, Policy Analysis
Brief, November 2007
Nuclear
Weapons: Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, Jonathan Medalia,
Congressional Research Service Report for US Congress, Updated
November 30, 2007.
Managing
the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Policy Implications of Expanding Global
Access to Nuclear Power, Congressional Research Service,
November 1, 2007.
Global
Fissile Material Report 2007: Second report of the International
Panel on Fissile Materials: Developing the technical basis
for policy initiatives to secure and irreversibly reduce stocks
of nuclear weapons and fissile materials.
Nuclear
Weapons in U.S. National Security Policy: Past, Present, and
Prospects, Amy F. Woolf, Congressional Research Service,
October 29, 2007.
What
Are Nuclear Weapons For? Recommendations for Restructuring
U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces, Sidney E. Drell and James
E. Goodby, Arms Control Association, October 2007.
Securing
U.S. Nuclear Material: DOE Has Made Little Progress Consolidating
and Disposing of Special Nuclear Material, U.S. Government
Accountability Office, October 4, 2007.
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