New Zealand’s contribution to a world free of nuclear weapons
Speech to the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs
Lecture Theatre 2, Old Government Building
Monday 31 May 2010
Thank you for the invitation to speak with you tonight. As a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trade, Disarmament and Arms Control and of Defence, I am happy to address your questions on any issue within the broad spectrum of foreign affairs.
However, with the conclusion of the five yearly Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York last Friday, it seems appropriate that the focus of my comments tonight should be on New Zealand’s role in achieving a world free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
New Zealand is a small country.
It has neither the military nor the economic power to impose its views on the world. It has nevertheless shown time and again that it can play a constructive role politically in addressing issues of international concern, be they matters affecting trade, environment, peacekeeping or disarmament.
When we have shown leadership, independence and integrity in the views that we have advocated, we have won respect for our views and have influenced outcomes.
The role we played in peacekeeping in Timor, the Solomons, and Bamyan; our leadership in the WTO Green Room and in promoting the Trans Pacific Partnership in trade; and our role in the banning of cluster munitions and de-alerting of nuclear weapons in 2007 and 2008 are a few examples.
New Zealand has over time played a significant role in the area of non-testing and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and disarmament.
As a baby boomer, I grew up under the shadow of the nuclear arms race and the Cold War.
At school, we read John Hersey’s book “Hiroshima” as a prescribed school text, and as a young activist, I showed the film “The War Game” to audiences around the country.
The warning that Einstein left us that “splitting the atom changed everything except the way we think, and hence we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe” has sunk deeply into the political consciousness of my generation of political activists.
We were the children of the twentieth century. Our parents and grandparents went through two world wars. It was the bloodiest century in human history.
And for the first time in the history of humanity, humans had the power literally to destroy themselves.
Having survived for 65 years since the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the real danger is that we have become complacent about the threat that nuclear weapons pose.
We survived the Cold War but there are many reasons why the danger posed by nuclear weapons has increased rather than reduced.
Countries possessing or in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons have grown in number. Beyond the five nuclear weapon powers, control over nuclear weapons has expanded to India and Pakistan, two countries with a history of recurrent conflict since partition; to North Korea, a country with an appalling human rights record and history of aggressive action; Israel and now potentially to Iran, countries which regard each other with suspicion and enmity.
There is wide knowledge of how to make a nuclear bomb, increasing availability of materials from which bombs can be constructed and a lack of inventories of fissile materials.
Perhaps most disturbing is the growth of terrorist groups which have indicated their readiness to use such weapons if they could acquire them and a track record of extremism to back that up.
And for a decade or more, a stalemate and a lack of resolution among countries to do anything about the threat of nuclear weapons – the failure of the Conference on Disarmament and the 2005 NPT Review Conference which broke down without any progress.
It is perhaps ironic that one of the countries to have taken the strongest stance to advance non-testing, non-proliferation and disarmament is the most geographically isolated, New Zealand.
At the height of the Cold War in 1959, Prime Minister Walter Nash at the United Nations stood apart from Anzus partners to support a treaty to ban nuclear testing.
In 1973 Norman Kirk as Prime Minister sent a frigate up to Mururoa to protest at French nuclear testing and Martyn Findlay took a case to the International Court of Justice to end atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.
The fourth Labour Government passed the Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act in 1987 which set out in statute a prohibition on nuclear weapons in New Zealand and visits by nuclear powered ships.
The strong reaction against that legislation by the United States resulted in the end of the Anzus Alliance and limited defence and other cooperation between our two countries seems to have strengthened rather than undermined the resolve of New Zealanders to be proudly nuclear free.
The Bolger Administration which commissioned studies designed to support the repeal of the legislation backed away from doing so for electoral reasons.
It was Don Brash and not the legislation he undertook to repeal who was gone by lunch time.
And the current National Administration undertook before the election that it would not alter New Zealand’s nuclear free status.
Now the United States, while it has not removed the Presidential Order restricting cooperation with New Zealand based on its nuclear free legislation, has changed its practice first to work around it ‘as a rock in the road’ and then to move the rock to one side of the road.
The Obama Administration has gone even further. US Vice-President, Joe Biden, openly expressed the view that on the basis of its track record New Zealand could play “a leadership role working with other countries demonstrating that a world free of nuclear weapons could be a better place.”
President Obama extended an invitation to attend his Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in April to New Zealand on the basis of our activism against nuclear weapons.
For eight years, the Bush Administration opposed multilateral efforts to promote disarmament and saw first strike capability missile defence and the use of tactical nuclear weapons as core defence policy.
The Obama Administration with its new Nuclear Posture Review, its progressing of the New START treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear warheads and Obama’s stated commitment in Prague in April 2009 to a world without nuclear weapons, has created new opportunities for progress in disarmament.
New Zealand should be seizing this opportunity with determined leadership to push for the greatest possible progress towards nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
Now is the time not to ease pressure for achievement of those goals but to intensify it.
We need to be working strongly with like-minded nations to set a new agenda for progressing disarmament and non-proliferation initiatives.
I believe we dropped the ball in staking out this position at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington where our statement was devoid of new initiatives and proposals to carry the discussion forward.
Our officials did a good job in New York at the Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, and I acknowledge in particular the role of Jennifer MacMillian. New Zealand was active in the area of non-proliferation and in advancing the concept of de-alerting nuclear weapons. The latter is a concept I had promoted as Minister of Disarmament and in 2008 New Zealand led the resolution for taking nuclear warheads off high level alert. It secured 141 votes in support to 3 against and 34 abstentions.
The NPT Review Conference ended last Friday with an agreed declaration.
The 189 nations party to the Treaty reaffirmed their commitment to eliminating all nuclear weapons and set a 2012 deadline for holding a regional conference to eliminate nuclear weapons from the Middle East.
The proposed Middle East conference was considered a landmark achievement on an issue on which there had been no movement for 15 years. Delivering on holding the conference let alone accomplishing any of its goals is not guaranteed.
It nevertheless has the attraction of bringing Israel and Iran together around the same table to address pressing security concerns.
Likewise the consensus document singles out North Korea saying its Nuclear Programme constitutes a threat to peace and security.
It also calls on India and Pakistan to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
With respect to the five nuclear states it requires them to speed up nuclear arms reductions and to report on progress in four years.
The Conference made 64 recommendations as part of a 28 page final document. After the 2005 failure it was a positive outcome though many of the proposed steps were watered down in order to achieve a consensus.
While it is a platform to build upon, it’s not as strong as we wanted it to be.
No timeframe is set for nuclear disarmament.
No constraint is set on the modernization or further development of nuclear weapons.
Nor is there a commitment to end nuclear testing.
The text does commit nuclear weapons states to ‘undertake further efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate all types of nuclear weapons.’
But it dropped the invitation to the UN Secretary General to convene a conference to agree on a roadmap for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had led the charge with his call for action. During the month long conference an overwhelming majority of countries spoke in favour of a comprehensive approach to disarmament in line with Ban’s Five Point Plan. Many expressed support for the goal of a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
A Nuclear Weapons Convention would be similar to other international treaties banning entire categories of weapons such as the Chemical Weapons Conventions, the Biological Weapons Convention and the Mine Ban Treaty.
It would be achieved through careful sensible and practical measures. Benchmarks would be set, definitions agreed, timetables and transparency requirements drawn up and agreed upon.
Instead the P4 nuclear weapons states (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and France) worked together to strip out most of the time-bound commitments to specific actions.
Despite the rhetoric they are clearly not yet ready to give up the power they derive from possession of weapons and the concept of nuclear deterrent.
This failure to do so gives the unofficial nuclear weapons states the excuse why they should also not give up their possession of such weapons.
The UN consensus-based system means at best that processes will be incremental and very drawn out.
The International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons in 1996 held unanimously that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”
While the NPT is a cornerstone international agreement for non-proliferation and disarmament, it is unlikely to produce this outcome any time soon.
Without disregarding it, the time may now be right for like-minded nations together with civil society to begin a parallel process to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
The success of movements to ban landmines under the Ottawa Convention and the Dublin Convention to ban cluster munitions demonstrates an alternative way forward.
Both showed the power of like minded governments working in partnership with civil society to mobilize public opinion and generate a momentum for change.
Both demonstrated the effectiveness of middle power diplomacy to overcome the stand-off when nuclear weapons states and the Non-Aligned Movement are polarised.
Together with like-minded friends such as Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Costa Rica and others, we could put in place an Oslo-style process to develop a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
Earlier this month, the New Zealand Parliament unanimously agreed a resolution which called on the New Zealand Government to work together with other like-minded partners to support the UN Secretary General’s Five Point Plan for Nuclear Disarmament including preparations for the development of a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
We should act on this resolution.
There are other practical steps the New Zealand Government could be taking.
It should revive the UN resolution on ‘Decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons systems’ we so successfully promoted in 2008 but which National shelved in 2009.
Decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons systems is one of the key steps that can be taken as part of an incremental nuclear disarmament process.
It reduces the risk of authorized or unauthorized launch of nuclear weapons.
The maintenance of nuclear weapons on high levels of alert is a relic of the Cold War, is not consistent with the contemporary security environment and does nothing to enhance our security.
The New Zealand Government could be working to draw the international community’s attention to new research highlighting the long-term climatic, environmental and health consequences of even a regional nuclear war.
Research published in the Scientific American this year highlights that the detonation of 100 fifteen kiloton nuclear weapons in a South Asian conflict would, for example, lead to global famine.
New Zealand could offer to host and co-sponsor a Southern Hemisphere Nuclear Weapons Free Zone conference emphasizing the need for nuclear weapon states to sign protocols to the various treaties as a confidence building measure.
This would strengthen Obama’s initiative in the new US Nuclear Posture Review to provide negative security assurances to all those states in compliance with their intentional obligations.
The point I am making is that New Zealand needs to press the boundaries.
I am concerned that a lack of strong commitment by the Government in this area will simply lead us to stay in the mainstream without promoting new initiatives for fear that we will offend someone.
New Zealand should as it has in the past be prepared to lead and to seize the window of opportunity that movement in the Obama Administration has created.
We have no way of telling how long that window may remain open.
Nor can we be totally confident that incremental progress in disarmament will be sufficient to prevent the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons which would be catastrophic.
We have the opportunity and the obligation to make a difference and to make New Zealand a safer place. We should take it.
Thank you.
