|
On December 5, 1996 there was worldwide release of a Statement by International Generals and Admirals calling for the irrevocable elimination of nuclear weapons. Initiated by the late Senator Alan Cranston of the Global Security Institute, the statement was signed by 60 military leaders from around the globe, including from the United States, Russia,6 United Kingdom, France, Canada, Denmark, Ghana, Greece, India, Japan, Jordan, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania. They stated:
| It is our deep conviction that the following is urgently needed and must be undertaken now. |
- First, present and planned stockpiles of nuclear weapons are exceedingly large and should now be greatly cut back;
- Second, remaining nuclear weapons should be gradually and transparently taken off alert, and their readiness substantially reduced both in nuclear weapon states and in de facto nuclear weapon states;
- Third, long-term international nuclear policy must be based on the declared principle of continuous, complete and irrevocable elimination of nuclear weapons.
|
| Their closing words were: |
- We have been presented with a challenge of the highest possible historic importance: the creation of a nuclear-weapons-free world. The end of the Cold War makes it possible.
- The dangers of proliferation, terrorism, and a new nuclear arms race render it necessary. We must not fail to seize our opportunity.
|
|
|
|
A graduate of the U. S. Air Force Academy, General Lee Butler, U.S. Air Force (ret.), served in Vietnam, commanded a heavy bomber wing, and filled a variety positions at the Pentagon. In 1991 he became the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command and its successor agency, the U.S. Strategic Command until his retirement in 1994.
After his retirement General Butler served as member of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. His first public expression of his views on this issue occurred in October 1996 in an Address to the State of the World Forum.
Two months later he addressed a national broadcast audience in Remarks at the National Press Club [linkage to be added]. On this occasion he spoke of the rapid changes taking place since the end of the Cold War and his reflections of what was occurring. In his remarks he indicated
| Most importantly, I could see for the first time the prospect of restoring a world free of the apocalyptic threat of nuclear weapons. Over time, the shimmering hope gave way to judgment which has now become a deeply held conviction: that a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons. |
General Butler elaborated on his concerns which compelled this conviction.
- First, a growing alarm that despite all evidence, we have yet to fully grasp the monstrous effects of these weapons, that the consequences of their use defy reason, transcending time and space, poisoning the earth and deforming its inhabitants.
- Second, a deepening dismay at the prolongation of Cold War policies and practices in a world where our security interests have been utterly transformed.
- Third, that foremost among these policies, deterrence reigns unchallenged, with its embedded assumption of hostility and associated preference for forces on high states of alert.
- Fourth, an acute unease over renewed assertions of the utility of nuclear weapons, especially as regards response to chemical or biological attack.
- Fifth, grave doubt that the present highly discriminatory regime of nuclear and non-nuclear states can long endure absent a credible commitment by the nuclear powers to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
- And finally, the horrific prospect of a world seething with enmities, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and hostage to maniacal leaders strongly disposed toward their use.
|
General Butler noted that "the world has begun to recoil from the nuclear abyss." He indicated that a choice must be made:
| There is a much larger issue which now confronts the nuclear powers and engages the vital interest of every nation: whether the world is better served by a prolonged era of cautious nuclear weapons reductions toward some intermediate endpoint; or by an unequivocal commitment on the part of the nuclear powers to move with much greater urgency toward the goal of eliminating these arsenals in their entirety. |
General Butler chose the latter course. His National Press Club Remarks occurred upon the occasion of the release of the joint statement with General Goodpaster and the Statement of International Generals and Admirals. General Butler said that he had decided
| to join my voice with respected colleagues such as General Goodpaster to urge publicly that the United States make unequivocal its commitment to the elimination of nuclear arsenals, and take the lead in setting an agenda for moving forthrightly toward that objective. |
In subsequent months General Butler continued to speak out on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons. He returned to the National Press Club on February 2, 1998 and gave a speech on The Risks of Nuclear Deterrence: From Superpowers to Rogue Leaders. Among other matters he dealt with the legitimacy of nuclear retaliation.
| What better illustration of misplaced faith in nuclear deterrence than the persistent belief that retaliation with nuclear weapons is a legitimate and appropriate response to post-cold war threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. What could possibly justify our resort to the very means we properly abhor and condemn? Who can imagine our joining in shattering the precedent of non-use that has held for over fifty years? How could America's irreplaceable role as leader of the campaign against nuclear proliferation ever be re-justified?
What target would warrant such retaliation? Would we hold an entire society accountable for the decision of a single demented leader? How would the physical effects of the nuclear explosion be contained, not to mention the political and moral consequences? In a singular act we would martyr our enemy, alienate our friends, give comfort to the non-declared nuclear states and impetus to states who seek such weapons covertly.
In short, such a response on the part of the United States is inconceivable. It would irretrievably diminish our priceless stature as a nation noble in aspiration and responsible in conduct, even in the face of extreme provocation.
|
In a speech given at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston on November 22, 1998, General Butler offered a set of judgments on nuclear weapons and nuclear war, including the following:
- Nuclear weapons are not weapons at all. They are insanely destructive agents of physical and genetic terror, whose effects transcend time and space, poisoning the earth and deforming its inhabitants for generation upon generation.
- The stakes of nuclear war engage not just the survival of the antagonists but the fate of mankind.
- The prospect of shearing away entire societies has no military nor political justification.
|
|
 Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, Jr. (USN ret.) was commissioned an ensign in 1945 just before the end the end of World War II. He served with combat units engaged in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Promoted to rear admiral in 1972, he served as commander of Task Force 60, the carrier striking force of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. His last assignment on active duty was at the Pentagon engaged in U.S. naval planning for conventional and nuclear war. Upon his retirement from the Navy, he worked many years for the Center for Defense Information, serving as deputy director.
In an address to the Olof Palme Institute in Stockholm, Sweden in May 1998, Admiral told of his personal involvement with nuclear weapons and offered his conclusions about their utility. He said:
| First, let me tell you why I am here to advocate the abolition of nuclear weapons. I have been personally involved with these engines of destruction since the beginning of the nuclear era. 42 years ago I was a pilot prepared to destroy a European target with a bomb that would have killed 600,000 people. 20 years ago, as the Director of U.S. Military Operations in Europe, I was the officer responsible for the security, readiness and employment of 7,000 nuclear weapons against Warsaw Pact forces in Europe and Russia, weapons which could never defend anything - only destroy everything.
My knowledge of nuclear weapons has convinced me that they can never be used for any rational military or political purpose. Their use would only create barbaric, indiscriminate destruction. |
In his speech Admiral Carroll outlined a series of steps that could lead to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. These steps include:
- Unqualified non-first use guarantees for both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.
- START III negotiations for deep reductions by the United States and Russia.
- Take thousands of nuclear warheads off of alert status.
- Verification measures with international participation.
- Disassembly of warheads under international supervision.
- Great Britain, France, China, and de facto nuclear states, including Israel, should join the process.
- An international convention should be adopted to prohibit the manufacture, possession or use of nuclear explosive devices.
|
Admiral Carroll has spoken widely for the elimination of nuclear weapons. He dealt with this subject in "America's Future" Confrontation or Cooperation?", an address to the World Federalist Association in November 1998. He stated:
| Empires rise and fall. Alliances wax and wane. Wars erupt and subside -- with few long term changes or benefits. In attempting to perpetuate a concept of foreign relations based on military power, the United States is wasting a priceless opportunity to move from a confrontational posture to a cooperative one.
Jonathan Schell's latest book, "The Gift of Time," focuses on the need to get rid of nuclear weapons while there is no active threat to American security except nuclear weapons. By extension, we can use the gift of time to build a new, long term approach to security in the 21st Century.
On that point, let me draw an analogy between the need to get rid of all nuclear weapons and the need to achieve a cooperative world community of nations living together in peace and governed under the rule of law. The first similarity is that no one, no individual or group, is wise enough today to say how or when we can actually achieve either goal. It is impossible today to foresee or prescribe all the conditions which must exist before nuclear weapons are abolished; or, a system of global governance established.
Today the realities are that the most powerful nation on earth declares that nuclear weapons are the cornerstone of our security and the same nation refuses to surrender the smallest scintilla of national sovereignty in the conduct of international relations. How do ideals triumph over such realities? My answer is the same for both efforts. One step at a time.
|
With respect to nuclear abolition
|
- we begin by working for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
- we work for the universal declaration of a no first-use policy;
- we work for the de-alerting of strategic weapons;
- we work for separation of warheads from delivery vehicles;
- we work for significant reductions in nuclear arsenals until 37,000 weapons become 5,000 and then 1,000 and then 500.
|
Then we hope that those who follow us will be wise enough to work out the means of eliminating the last nuclear weapons on earth.
Can we be certain of success? No, but we can be certain that as we proceed the world will become progressively safer each step of the way. As the danger of nuclear catastrophe fades, each successive step will become more obvious and more beneficial until the rewards of abolition are irresistible and inevitable. |
Admiral Noel Gayler, U.S. Navy (ret.) served during World War II as a carrier fighter pilot. His subsequent sea commands included fighter and experimental squadrons, and carriers. From 1972 until his retirement as a four-star admiral he was Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. In 1984 Admiral Gayler offered "A Commander-in-Chief's Perspective on Nuclear Weapons" in The Nuclear Crisis Reader (Gwyn Prins, editor; New York, Vintage Books, 1984, pp. 16-18).
Let me begin by stating my main proposition plainly, so that there may be no misunderstanding. It is my view that there is no sensible military use for nuclear weapons, whether "strategic" weapons, "tactical" weapons, "theater" weapons, weapons at sea or weapons in space. . . .
Taking the Pacific first, when I was Commander-in-Chief (Pacific) I could not find, in scrutinizing the whole of the Pacific command, any area where it would conceivably have made sense to explode nuclear weapons in order to carry our military objectives. Clearly our experience in the Vietnam War suggests that we would not do such a thing. We did not do even "conventional" things which were well within our capability because of understandable political and humane considerations.
Nor could I see a case for nuclear weapons anywhere else on the Asian continent. For example, the Korean Demilitarized Zone is one flashpoint that comes immediately to mind. My evaluation, together with that of senior generals, both Korean and American, responsible for the defense of the Demilitarized Zone and of the city of Seoul and its approach and environs, was that it simply was not necessary to contemplate a nuclear strategy. The potential channels of attack on Seoul are highly concentrated, the defenses are well in place, and Seoul itself is protected by a river in front of it. . . .
Furthermore, with respect to the Asian continent as a whole, we have to face the fact that there is a political consideration of overwhelming importance. The only use of nuclear weapons has been against an Asiatic people. . . .[It] is my belief that the use of a nuclear weapon against any Asian people, for any purpose whatsoever, would polarize Asia against us. It would clearly not be worth the candle. For all these reasons I saw no need for nuclear weapons in the Pacific theater, and I so stated.
Another potential theater, of course, is maritime Russia: the Soviet naval forces dispersed through the Pacific area, their bases, lines of transit, choke points. All I would say about that is that, while it is an important place, it is less important than the entire problem that would be involved if you were actually to fight Russia. . . .
In the Middle East, there have been various scenarios proposed, including the initiative use of nuclear weapons to block certain passes down into Iran and so forth. Pacific Command did a considerable study of that potentiality and came to the conclusion that we were so outgunned by the Soviets in nuclear delivery capabilities and in respect to the small number of highly critical targets we owned, compared with the very large number of less critical targets that they had, that it was not something that we should open up, on strictly military grounds.
I am now going to turn. . . .to NATO. I have seen some pretty persuasive studies which support my own conclusions that we could not possibly gain an advantage by the initiative use (first use) of nuclear weapons to defend Europe against a conventional attack.
The first consideration is that, were we to use them except as a demonstration, we would have to use them in the number of tens and low hundreds. Attack on this scale would be required to stop, say, four nominal tank breakthroughs (a common assumption). The number of noncombatants killed would be very high. I have seen competent estimates which suggest that a median number killed might be a million people. . . .
The danger of escalation after the first use of nuclear weapons I regard as being extremely high . . .
Finally it does not appear that relative advantage would accrue to NATO from a nuclear first use, because of the fact that we have a far more vulnerable target system, smaller numbers of highly critical targets like harbors, depots and airfields, and that the Soviets have a capability to attack these sorts of targets with nuclear weapons at least comparable to ours. . . .
The problem of authorizing use is very severe. I personally do not believe that a President of the United States would be likely to release tactical nuclear weapons to stop a conventional attack. It think he would see, and his advisers would tell him, that the risk of total destruction of Europe and the total destruction of the United States would be too high. So no commander would count on these weapons when push came to shove. . . .
In The Nuclear Crisis Reader Admiral Gayler contributed a second article, "The Way Out: A General Nuclear Settlement" (pp. 234-243). Writing in 1984 when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in intense nuclear rivalry, he presented six elements of a general nuclear settlement:
- Make an end to the intemperate, childish and threaten rhetoric between us.
- Give up nuclear war-fighting doctrines. The three most dangerous doctrines are:
- First use against conventional force.
- Counterforce, sometimes called "prompt hard target kill".
- Protracted or "winnable" nuclear war. There can be no winners
|
- Improve communications of every kind.
- A mutual moratorium on the further development, testing and deployment of new nuclear weapons.
- Avoid the extension of nuclear war capability in to new areas, whether technical or spatial (that is, exporting war to space).
- We and the Soviets need to make deep, fast and continuing cuts in the number of nuclear weapons of all kinds.
|
In this article Admiral Gayler advocated a scheme for weapons conversion whereby:
| Each country hands over progressively larger numbers of explosive nuclear fission devices to a single conversion facility, built explicitly for this purpose, at a neutral site.
|
Admiral Gayler returned to this subject in recent years in A Proposal for Achieving Zero Nuclear Weapons, posted on the web site of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He wrote:
| Process, as opposed to negotiating numbers, is the basic principle of the proposal that I suggest. It is nothing less than drastic: the continuing reduction to zero of weapons in the hands of avowed nuclear powers, plus an end to the nuclear ambitions of others.
The proposal: Let weapons be delivered to a single point, there to be dismantled, the nuclear material returned to the donors for use or disposal, and the weapons destroyed.
This process, once underway, will be nearly impossible to stop, since its obvious merits, political and substantive, will compel support. The "single point" may well be a floating platform, at sea, in international waters. A handy platform can be an aircraft carrier that has been removed from "mothballs" and disarmed, yet capable of steaming to the desired location and operating support aircraft and ships to handle heavier loads. |
Admiral Gayler in this article dispels come common illusions about nuclear weapons:
- Is physical defense against nuclear weapons possible? No. What's more, it's irrelevant. A half dozen non-technical means of delivery avail.
- Can nuclear weapons be used in any sensible manner? No. This includes "tactical."
- Does nuclear disarmament imperil our security? No. It enhances it.
- Is deterrence of nuclear or other attack by threat of retaliation still possible? No. The many potential aggressors are scattered - even location unknown. No targets!
|
|
 A graduate from the U.S. Military Academy, General Andrew J. Goodpaster commanded a combat battalion in North Africa and Italy during World War II. He was staff secretary to President Eisenhower from 1954 to 1961. He served as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (1969-1974). After retirement he was recalled to active duty as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy. General Goodpaster served as chairman of the Atlantic Council of the United States from 1985 to1997 and chaired its project on nuclear arms control.
At the release of the Statement by International Generals and Admirals in December1996, General Goodpaster offered opening remarks. Among other things he said:
I welcome the opportunity to talk with you about the reduction of the world's nuclear weapons arsenals. It is an issue that ranks in the highest order of importance for American security (and that of others) in the coming century. . . .
Two considerations fundamental to security interests and possibilities should now shape the nuclear future.
First, as so often emphasized by President Eisenhower (who had a talent for getting to the heart of such questions) nuclear weapons are the only thing that can destroy the United States of America.
Second, the Cold War is over and unlikely to return, hard as it may be to comprehend this historic fact in all its dimensions, and to seize the opportunities that are now available to reorient our policies accordingly.
Nowhere is this more salient than in reducing the world's arsenals of nuclear weapons.
To put his concerns into action General Goodpaster since1991 has chaired the Nuclear Arms Control Project of the Atlantic Council of the United States. In this capacity he wrote three policy papers, which are reviewed in the Deep Cuts section [linkage to be added] in the How to Get to Zero page. He was also chair of a study group of the Stimson Center that produced a report on Evolving U.S. Nuclear Policy. [linkage to be added] In these efforts he developed ideas on stages of nuclear arms reduction.
|
[photo] In his twenty years of service in the Royal Navy, Commander Robert Green (ret.) from New Zealand flew nuclear-armed aircraft for nine years and then served in the intelligence service. During his navy career he became disillusioned with nuclear deterrence. Becoming a strong advocate of nuclear abolition in his retirement, he presented his views in The Naked Nuclear Emperor: Debunking Nuclear Deterrence (2000, The Disarmament and Security Center, P.O. Box 8390, Christchurch, New Zealand).
Commander Green summarized his thinking in an article entitled Why Nuclear Deterrence is a Dangerous Illusion, posted by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Highlights are as follows:
- What is at stake from deterrence failing between nuclear weapon states is the devastation and poisoning of not just the belligerent powers, but potentially of all forms of life on the planet.
- Meanwhile, retention of nuclear arsenals encourages proliferation of the problem, and with it this unacceptable risk.
- The Bomb directly threatens security -- both of those who possess it and those it is meant to impress. Indeed, it is a security problem, not a solution. This is because it provokes the greatest threat: namely, the spread of nuclear weapons to megalomaniac leaders and terrorist -- who are least likely to be deterred.
|
|
 In his Air Force career General Charles Horner served two tours of duty as a combat pilot in Vietnam. In 1991, he was Allied Air Forces Commander in Gulf War, and from 1992 to 1994 he served as Commander of the U.S. Space Command. On July 15, 1994, just prior to retirement from the U.S. Air Force, General Horner offered his views on the utility of nuclear weapons at a breakfast meeting of the Defense Writers' Group. As reported in a variety of newspaper accounts, he said the following:
- The nuclear weapon is obsolete. I want to get rid of them all.
- I want to go to zero, and I'll tell you why: If we and the Russians can go to zero nuclear weapons, then think what that does for us in our efforts to counter the new war.
- The new military threat, unlike the superpower tensions of the past, comes from smaller, less stable countries that obtain weapons of mass destruction.
- Think how intolerant we will be of nations that are developing nuclear weapons if we have none. Think of the high moral ground we secure by having none...It's kind of hard for us to say to North Korea, `You are terrible people, you're developing a nuclear weapons,' when we have oh, 8,000.
- I'm not saying that we militarily disarm. I'm saying that I have a nuclear weapon, and you're North Korea and you have a nuclear weapon. You can use yours. I can't use mine. What am I going to use it on? What are nuclear weapons good for? Busting cities. What president of the United States is going to take out Pyongyang?
- So then, you say, `Why do I have nuclear weapons?' To use against small countries creating problems. But then you get into that moral issue...I just don't think nuclear weapons are usable.
|
General Horner was one of 18 military leaders who joined 21 religious leaders in signing the Joint Statement on Nuclear Reduction/Disarmament in June 2000. In his own statement on that occasion he said, among other things:
- The Cold War is over. The United States and Russia no longer require the strategy of nuclear deterrence. Yet the world remains a dangerous place.
- The Statement...addresses the fact that nuclear deterrence increasingly lacks credibility, and if these weapons are retained for such purposes, it may only legitimize their use. It is hopeful, but not overly optimistic, as it calls for reciprocal and phased reductions that may require many years. It is a challenge, for while the banning of nuclear weapons is not the sole responsibility of the United States, we are in a position to lead the effort.
|
|
General Colin Powell, U.S. Army (ret.) entered the Army through the ROTC. He had two tours of duty in Vietnam and served as a battalion commander in Korea. He held a succession of military and civilian positions, culminating as National Security Adviser to President Reagan. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush appointed him Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a position he held until the fall of 1993 under President Clinton. He now serves as Secretary of State under President George W. Bush.
In a commencement address at Harvard University on June 10, 1993 General Powell spoke on the future of nuclear weapons.
| Today -- on what happens to be the 30th anniversary of the talks that led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty -- I declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when the number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place. |
Three months later General Powell articulated his views on the utility of nuclear weapons in a breakfast meeting with the Defense Writers' Group, held on September 23, 1993.
- With respect to nuclear weapons, I think their principal purpose remains deterrence against a major nuclear attack against the United States, however remote that might be, and thank God it's becoming more and more and more remote.
- The second part of that, though, has to do with the fact that there are a number of nations in the Third World who think that they will gain some political or military utility through the possession of nuclear weapons. Every time I get a chance to talk to them, I try to dissuade them of that. And I make the point that I think that it's a wasted investment in a military capability that is limited in political or military utility, and that we have ways of responding and punishing conventionally that you would not wish to see us use. And at the end of the day, we have far more nuclear weapons than you do, so what's the utility that you get out of this?
- I have not been faced with a military situation in the several conflicts we've been involved in over the last four years where I thought there was going to be a need to resort to such weapons, and I'm glad that turned out to be the case. We've had two wars [in Panama and the Persian Gulf], six rescues and 22 other major events in the last four years for these reluctant warriors in the Pentagon.
|
In 2001 General Colin Powell, now retired from the U.S. Army, became secretary of state in the administration of President George W. Bush. He discussed the prospects for use of nuclear weapons in an interview on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on May 30, 2002. The focus was the threat of war between India and Pakistan. Lehrer asked him, " If there is, in fact, a conflict, how likely is it that it would eventually lead to the use of nuclear weapons by these two countries?" Powell replied:
I can't answer that question, but I can say this: In my conversations with both sides, especially with the Pakistani side, I have made it clear that this really can't be in anyone's mind. I mean, the thought of nuclear conflict in the year 2002 -- with what that would mean with respect to loss of life, what that would mean with respect to the condemnation, the worldwide condemnation that would come down on whatever
nation chose to take that course of action -- would be such that I can see very little military, political, or any other kind of justification for the use of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons in this day and age may serve some deterrent effect, and so be it, but to think of using them as just another weapon in what might start out as a conventional conflict in this day and age, seems to me to be something that no side should be contemplating.
|
|
 After serving as Commander of a carrier task group of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean (1970-71), Commander of the Second Fleet in the Atlantic (1974-75), and Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces in Southern Europe, NATO (1975), Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (ret.) was Director of Central Intelligence (1977-81).
In 1997 Admiral Turner offered his ideas on nuclear weapons in a book entitled Caging the Nuclear Genie: An American Challenge for Global Security (Westview Press). He wrote that it is time to move away from the Cold War policy of "sitting on hair trigger alert with thousands of nuclear warheads" (p.99). As an alternative (p. 102), he offered a new vision based on
- Strategic escrow
- Treaty of No First-Use supplemented with sanctions
- Modest defenses
|
Admiral Turner explained his idea of strategic escrow in a 1999 interview recorded by the Center for Defense Information.
| It's a process I call strategic escrow. It's a form of de-alerting both the Russian and American nuclear forces. You take a thousand warheads off of missiles in the United States today and you move them maybe 300 miles away, so they can't just go back overnight. You ask the Russians to put observers on that storage site where you've put the thousand warheads. They can count what went in, they can count if anything went out.
You don't need detailed verification procedures that take years to negotiate in a treaty. What you hope is the Russians then take a thousand off and put our observers on them. A lot of people think they will not, but I say they have to. It's the only quick way to avoid their having one-fourth to one-sixth the number of warheads on line that we have maybe eight or ten years from now, because of the decline inexorably of the size of their force due to the lack of maintenance.
So then we have a process going. We do another thousand, they do another thousand. I mean from today's numbers, we can be down into hundreds in a matter of, in my opinion, four or five years if we do this. And the most urgent thing for the United States today is to get the Russian nuclear arsenal off alert, get it down to as few of these as possible.
And my ultimate objective is to get every nuclear warhead in the world in escrow so nobody can pull the trigger today, but if somebody cheats, like Saddam Hussein, and decides to threaten the world because he's got the nuclear weapons that he shouldn't, then you still have the warheads in escrow and you can bring them back and say, "Saddam, you've got ten, but we just have recombined a hundred, and therefore you have no advantage. In fact, you're very vulnerable if you decide to continue threatening or using nuclear weapons."
|
When Admiral Turner joined military and religious leaders in the release of the Joint Statement on Nuclear Reductions/Disarmament at the Washington National Cathedral in June 2000, he said in his own statement:
- We must go downward much more rapidly than we are if we are going to prevent the further proliferation of these weapons to other states as we've recently had proliferation to Pakistan and India.
- As long as the two nuclear superpowers maintain arsenals in the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, there is no way they can with any consistency urge that other nations not be allowed to acquire these weapons.
|
|
 John J. Shanahan enlisted in the U.S. Navy prior to the outbreak of World War II and retired in 1977 as a vice admiral. He was involved in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He commanded the U.S. Second Fleet in the Atlantic. His shore assignments included staff member for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and director of strategic plans and policy in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
After his retirement Admiral Shanahan remained active in national security issues. For a number of years he was Director of the Center for Defense Information.
In March 1997 Admiral Shanahan presented Remarks to the Olof Palme International Center in Stockholm, Sweden on the subject of nuclear abolition. He recalled his involvement as a junior officer in nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1948 and 1949. He indicated:
| I knew then, but didn't realize it, what I know now, that nuclear weapons have no place in the weapons inventories of any nation and there must be an organized serious international effort to rid the world of this weapon of mass destruction....
The goal must be the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons with near- and mid-term reductions in all nuclear stockpiles. |
In his remarks Admiral Shanahan mentioned several unilateral steps that the United States could take to jumpstart the process. They included:
- Remove the warheads from all missiles and bombers to be eliminated under the START II Treaty.
- Make U.S. command and control more transparent so as to improve confidence that the United States truly does not target Russia or any non-nuclear weapon state that is a signatory of the NPT Treaty.
- Bring home the more than 400 U.S. Air Force tactical bombs currently deployed in Europe and cancel the subcritical nuclear tests that the Department of Energy plans to conduct at the Nevada Test Site.
|
Admiral Shanahan also recommended multilateral efforts, including:
- Separating warheads from delivery systems;
- Placing those warheads and missiles into safe, internationally-monitored storage;
- Dismantling all tactical nuclear weapons;
- Eliminating the thousands of strategic warheads that the United States and Russia plan to maintain in storage indefinitely;
- Cutting further the deployed strategic arsenals of all five declared nuclear weapons states;
- Banning the production of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium for any purpose;
- Enforcing strict controls on all fissile materials worldwide.
|
|
|
|
|
|
