information about Fukushima published in English in Japanese media info publiée en anglais dans la presse japonaise
15 Décembre 2014
December 15, 2014
In an open letter to Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz on Dec. 5, more than 120 current and former senior political, military and diplomatic leaders from 46 countries in five continents affirmed strong support for the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, called on governments to state emphatically that any use of a nuclear weapon anywhere on Earth would have catastrophic human consequences for the whole world, and laid out an ambitious agenda for action coming out of the conference.
Signatories to the letter include a former president, six former prime ministers, six former U.N. undersecretaries general, a former NATO secretary general and 36 former foreign and defense ministers. They call the Vienna conference an “opportunity for all states, whether they possess nuclear weapons or not, to work together in a joint enterprise to identify, understand, prevent, manage and eliminate the risks associated with these indiscriminate and inhumane weapons.”
From Asia the list of 30 signatories includes three former prime ministers (Malcolm Fraser, Australia, and Jim Bolger and Sir Geoffrey Palmer, New Zealand); five former defense and foreign ministers (including Gareth Evans and Robert Hill, Australia, and Yoriko Kawaguchi, Japan); two former U.N. under-secretaries general for disarmament (including Nobuyasu Abe, Japan); two former military chiefs and two former foreign secretaries (vice ministers).
By any standards, that is an impressive list. The Asian members are particularly concerned because, while all countries with nuclear weapons are busy modernizing and upgrading them, this continent is home to the four countries that are still adding to their nuclear warhead stockpiles (China, India, North Korea and Pakistan).
Asia is also considered by most nuclear strategists to be the least unlikely setting for the next use of nuclear weapons.
Consider, for example, four propositions: First, no one in the world — not the governments or peoples of India and Pakistan nor any outsiders — can be confident that there will be not be a repeat of the terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008 with clear links back to Pakistan.
Second, should that happen, no one can be confident that India will not carry out some military retaliation against Pakistan.
Third, if India does conduct a military strike on or in Pakistan, no one could be certain that India and Pakistan will not fight another war.
And, fourth, if they have another war, no one could be confident that the conflict would not quickly escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.
So what relevance does the humanitarian impacts initiative have for such a scenario? Simply this: No country in the world individually, nor all of them collectively and with the help of international organizations, can cope with the humanitarian emergency caused by a nuclear war. We just do not have that sort of capacity.
All the best calculations show that even a limited regional war between India and Pakistan in which they used just a fraction of their nuclear warheads could wreak havoc in global crop production and food distribution networks, killing up to 1 billion people worldwide.
The letter from global leaders is a joint initiative developed following a recent meeting in Buenos Aires of the Global Networks Forum, the regional leadership networks coordinated by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).
In the letter, the leaders “believe it is essential for governments to state emphatically that the use of a nuclear weapon anywhere on Earth would have catastrophic human consequences.”
They accordingly call for global efforts (1) to identify and reduce nuclear risks that “are under-estimated or insufficiently understood by world leaders”; (2) raise public awareness; and (3) improve readiness to prepare for the worst — a nuclear incident anywhere around the world.
The leaders comprise a growing global network of voices united to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. The Global Networks Forum includes the Asia Pacific Leadership Network (APLN), the European Leadership Network (ELN), Latin American Leadership Network (LALN) and the North American Nuclear Security Leadership Council (NSLC).
Building on the seminal work of Henry Kissinger, William Perry, Sam Nunn and George Shultz — four heavyweights from the U.S. strategic community with a keen appreciation of the need for strong national defenses but also the risks of nuclear weapons — since 2007, the steps the global leaders propose include:
• Improved crisis-management arrangements in conflict hot spots and regions of tension around the world.
• Urgent action to lower the prompt-launch status of existing nuclear stockpiles — Russia and the U.S. hold around 1,800 nuclear weapons between them, ready to fire within 30 minutes;
• New measures to improve the security of nuclear weapons and related materials; and renewed efforts to tackle the increasing threat of proliferation from state and nonstate actors.
Awareness of the grave humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons has been growing steeply. In March 2013 Norway hosted a Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons attended by representatives from 127 countries as well as several U.N. organizations, the Red Cross and civil society.
A second conference, hosted by Mexico last February, attracted the participation of 146 countries. It addressed the consequences of any nuclear detonation in areas such as public health, humanitarian assistance, the economy, development and environmental issues, climate change, food security and risk management.
The Vienna conference concluded Dec. 8-9 was the third in the series, and the first to be attended by two (United States and United Kingdom) of the five nuclear weapon states (China, France and Russia being the other three) who previously boycotted Oslo and Mexico.
The movement has also gained strength at the United Nations. The almost indescribable horror associated with any use of nuclear weapons informed the very first resolution of the U.N. General Assembly in 1946 and has been a recurring theme ever since.
A U.N. General Assembly statement on the subject last year was signed by 125 countries. By October this year, support for the New Zealand-led humanitarian consequences statement had swelled to 155 U.N. member states. Regrettably Australia was not among them.
Professor Ramesh Thakur, director of the Center for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, is head of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network secretariat. He participated in the Buenos Aires meeting of the different global networks.