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MEDIA COMMENTARY
FOR RELEASE: DECEMBER 9, 1998Foreign Affairs Committee should have said
"Yes" to No-First-Useby Peggy Mason and Simon Rosenblum
(Peggy Mason is Former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament and current
Director of Development, Canadian Council for International Peace and
Security. Simon Rosenblum is a Foreign Policy writer and member of the
Board of Directors of the World Federalists of Canada.)There was much speculation that the report of the Parliamentary committee
on foreign affairs and international trade regarding Canada's nuclear
weapons policies would recommend that NATO adopt a "no-first-use" policy
for its nuclear weapons. Alas, it did not. The analysis provided in the
report's text directly led to such a conclusion. But the Committee pulled
back from making a direct recommendation on this matter. We - as the
convenors of a statement signed by leading Canadian international affairs
and defence experts strongly advocating such a measure - are deeply
disappointed with this ambiguity. We do however remain hopeful that Foreign
Affairs Minister Axworthy, not being constrained by the need to reach a
five party consensus, will actively advance the no-first-use position
within NATO.We do commend the committee for challenging the complacency that nowadays
so often is prevalent on matters concerning nuclear weapons and for
advocating that all nuclear weapons states remove their nuclear forces from
their present alert status. But by not moving forward to advocate a
"no-first-use" policy for NATO, the report fails to confront the essential
military doctrine propping up nuclear weapons today. This is all the more
surprising and frustrating given that the committee report emphasizes the
need to "focus on delegitimizing and reducing the political value of
nuclear weapons."Scientist Joseph Rotblat, an important member of the Manhattan Project and
later a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, currently argues that "the most
important step at the present time - and this can be taken virtually
overnight - is for the nuclear powers to declare that the only purpose of
possessing nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack."What could be more obvious? Yet both NATO and Russia currently reserve the
right to use nuclear weapons first. NATO for a very long time has had a
first-use policy to offset the conventional weapons superiority of the
Warsaw Pact. The conventional weapons picture in Europe has completely
changed, but the NATO policy remains largely in place.There is always the danger of applying yesterday's strategic logic to
tomorrow's problems. This is particularly problematic when the logic of the
past was deeply flawed. Neither deterrence of conventional attacks,
chemical or biological use, requires either a nuclear threat in advance nor
as nuclear response. "As matters now stand," senior arms control experts
McGeorge Bundy, William Crowe and Sidney Drell have written, "every vital
interest of the United States, with the exception of deterring nuclear
attack, can be met by prudent conventional readiness."The committee's reluctance to advocate a "no-first-use" policy is again
surprising given that the report stresses "that the dangers of biological
and chemical weapons cannot be used as a justification for retaining
nuclear weapons." If such dangers cannot be used as a justification for
retaining nuclear weapons, then surely they cannot be accepted as a
justification for the first use of nuclear weapons! The committee must also
have been aware of the fact that the vast majority of the international
community - including the five declared nuclear weapons states - have
through the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) eschewed the right to use or
threaten to use nuclear weapons against states adhering to the treaty. If the nuclear weapons states do not move quickly to a no-first-use agreement, the NPT could once again be in danger.The response to or deterrent against chemical or biological attack must, of
course, be vigorous. Western leaders can credibly promise both a
devastating conventional response and the determination to seek the
unconditional surrender of the offending nation. Paul Nitze, who was a
prominent hawk and nuclear weapons advisor to President Reagan agrees:
"I believe nuclear weapons cannot be relied on to deter chemical or biological
attacks or to deter conventional strikes. In both cases . . . . the
prospect that a nuclear weapon would be used in response to such an attack
is too incredible for deterrence to be reliable."This leads to an obvious conclusion: that NATO and Russia eliminate their
nuclear first-use military doctrines. We are greatly puzzled as to why the
committee did not make a recommendation to this effect; especially where
the logic of the report directly leads to such a conclusion. Yet we are
left only with a recommendation that NATO should include nuclear weapons in
its current strategic review and with the committee's confidence that a
suitably updated Strategic Concept will emerge from that review. We regret
that we cannot be so sanguine.There are enormous political pressures inside NATO to re-confirm its
nuclear first-use policy and Canada must actively join with those allies
trying to change this unfortunate and dangerous policy. Foreign Affairs
Minister Axworthy has eloquently spoken of the need to reject the "new
nuclear realpolitic." The ball - or is it the bomb? - is now in his court
and we implore him to directly challenge the nuclear first-use policy.
After all, it is this very policy that now is the driving force in the
efforts to provide nuclear weapons with an active role in security policy.Recent events at the United Nations and elsewhere have clearly shown that the situation among NATO allies is very fluid and not easily subject to American dictates. We remain hopeful that the Canadian government will make a very positive contribution to the nuclear no-first-use debate.
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