"NUCLEAR DANGERS IN THE 21^ST CENTURY"

Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.),

Pres., Center for Defense Information

HOST:

Admiral John Shanahan (USN, Ret.)

Director, Center for Defense Information

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH:

David T. Johnson

DIRECTOR of TELEVISION:

Mark Sugg

NARRATOR:

Kathryn Schultz

PRODUCERS:

Glenn Baker

Jennifer Hazen

Daniel Sagalyn

Stephen Sapienza

PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER:

Kathryn Schultz

SEGMENT PRODUCER:

Daniel Sagalyn

VIDEO GRAPHICS:

Adam Luther

ORIGINATION:

Washington, D.C.

PROGRAM NO.:

1022

INITIAL BROADCAST: February 9, 1997

CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"

(Center for Defense Information).

"ELIMINATING NUCLEAR WEAPONS" features comments from:

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

WILLIAM SLOANE COFFIN

President Emeritus, Peace Action

DAVID CORTRIGHT

Fourth Freedom Forum

LACHLAN FORROW

Chairman of the Board, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

DAVID KRIEGER

President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

RAJ MUTALIK

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

MAJ BRITT THEORIN

European Parliament

President, International Peace Bureau

PETER WEISS

Chair, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Gen. ANDREW GOODPASTOR, USA(Ret.)

Former head of NATO forces in Europe

Gen. Lee Butler, USAF (Ret.)

Former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command

"NUCLEAR DANGERS IN THE 21^ST CENTURY"

America's Defense Monitor presents a three part series: "Nuclear Dangers in Our Midst". Discover what every citizen needs to know about vital nuclear issues.

This week on America's Defense Monitor.....

ADM JOHN SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.): I'm Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, director of the Center for Defense Information.

As we approach the next millennium, the spread of weapons of mass destruction around the globe continues to constitute a peril to world peace and security. Members of the international community have succeeded in concluding agreements banning chemical and biological weapons, that's two out of three of the weapons of mass destruction. Why not make it a clean sweep and begin serious work towards the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

["Nuclear Weapons in the 21^st Century" program begins]

President Bill Clinton:[1997 Inaugural Address]

"the demands of our time are great and they are different. Let us meet them with faith and courage, with patience and a grateful, happy heart. Let us shape the hope of this day into the noblest chapter in our history...yes let us build our bridge."

Narration: As we approach the turn of the century many people are concerned with the role of nuclear weapons in the next millennium. Currently there are approximately 40,000 nuclear weapons on the planet. Under present arms control agreements that number is expected to decrease to 20,000. There are no plans to reduce this number further.

The explosive power of 20,000 nuclear weapons is equal to about 350 thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs.

[December 4, 1996 -- National Press Club]

Gen. ANDREW GOODPASTOR, USA(Ret.): "Let me first say that I really welcome the opportunity to talk with you about the reduction of the world's nuclear weapons arsenals. It's an issue that in my opinion ranks high, in the highest order of importance for American security and for that of others in the coming century."

NARRATOR: At a press conference in December of 1996, retired General Andrew Goodpastor, the former head of NATO forces in Europe, emphasized the need for the United States to reduce its large nuclear weapons stockpile.

Gen. ANDREW GOODPASTOR, USA(Ret.): "strictly in terms of security, because of their narrowed role, their reduced utility, yet their continuing risks, there is much now to be gained by reducing their numbers and their readiness, meanwhile exploring the feasibility of their ultimate complete elimination."

NARRATOR: General Goodpastor was joined by retired Air Force General Lee Butler, former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command.

Gen. LEE BUTLER, USAF (Ret.): "I came away form that experience deeply troubled, by what I now see as the burden of building and maintaining nuclear arsenals. The increasingly tangled web of policy and strategy as the number of weapons and delivery systems multiply, the staggering costs the relentless pressures of advancing technology, the grotesquely destructive war plans, the daily operational risks, and the constant prospect of a crisis that would hold the fate of entire societies in the balance.

Standing down nuclear arsenals requires only a fraction of the ingenuity and resources as were devoted to their creation. As for those who believe nuclear weapons desirable or inevitable, I would say that these devices extract a terrible price even if never used.

Accepting nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of conflict condemns the world to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety.

But there is a much larger issue that now confronts the nuclear powers and engages the vital interests of every nation. Whether the world is better served by a prolonged era of cautious nuclear weapons reductions towards some indeterminate endpoint or by an unqualified commitment on the part of the nuclear powers to move with much greater urgency toward the goal of eliminating these arsenals in their entirety."

NARRATOR: Generals Butler and Goodpastro are not alone in their beliefs. In fact people all over the world share the same goal of living in a nuclear weapon free 21^st Century.

Dr. DAVID KRIEGER: The United States, first of all, has no enemy at this point, and why should they try to base their security on nuclear weapons?

NARRATOR: Dr. David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which is promoting the vision of a nuclear weapons-free world.

Dr. KRIEGER: And it's only by ridding the world of nuclear weapons and ridding our souls of the shadow that nuclear weapons cast upon them that we have a chance for a secure world for our children and our grandchildren and the future of humanity.

NARRATOR: But others feel that we still need nuclear weapons.

Dr. KATHLEEN BAILEY: We need a nuclear deterrent, not as something to threaten other nations with on a first strike basis, but rather as a retaliatory capability should other nations choose to threaten us with nuclear weapons.

NARRATOR: Dr. Kathleen Bailey is a social scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Her own view is that America must maintain nuclear weapons to counter those nations which have the bomb, as well as those nations which may get nuclear weapons sometime in the future.

Dr. BAILEY: We also have emerging threats, emerging nuclear threats. I think the most recent examples of Iraq having had a very sophisticated nuclear program underway, although they didn't yet have a weapon.

Dr. RAJ MUTALIK: Did you need nuclear weapons to teach a lesson to Iraq?

NARRATOR: Dr. Raj Mutalik is the program director of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. IPPNW won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its work in helping to defuse the US-Soviet arms race.

Dr. MUTALIK: You don't need nuclear weapons to safeguard some one or two countries which even you may characterize as rogue states because today's conventional weapons have enough firepower to punish any offender.

NARRATOR: In the Gulf War, the United States proved that it has the most powerful and capable conventional weapons in the world.

GEN. ANDREW GOODPASTER (USA, Ret.) (22 September '94, NGO Commission on Nuclear NPR):

"The high-tech conventional weapons that are available to us can do all or nearly all that could be done with nuclear weapons while avoiding much of the very heavy damage and collateral costs that would be attended with nuclear weapons."

NARRATOR: Nuclear weapons haven't been exploded in war since the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 50 years ago. Even in the face of a military defeat in Vietnam, the United States did not use a single one of its 30,000 nuclear weapons. Nor did the Soviet Union use a nuclear weapon in its long, tormented war in Afghanistan.

Why? Because the use of nuclear weapons would have sparked an international uproar and brought overwhelming condemnation on the leaders who approved such action. Nuclear weapons would have destroyed the very land that these wars were fought over. For many, the indiscriminate and uncontrollable nature of nuclear weapons simply makes them unusable.

ROBERT McNAMARA, former Secretary of Defense, 1961-68 (at NGO Commission on Nuclear NPR, 22 September '94):

"As far as use of nuclear weapons is concerned, there is no military use, in my opinion, other than the purpose of deterring nuclear attack by others."

NARRATOR: Robert McNamara, secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and other military leaders share the conviction that nuclear weapons could someday be eliminated.

Mr. McNAMARA (at same conference):

"General Charles Horner, then on active duty, chief of the US Space Command, said, and I quote: 'The nuclear weapon is obsolete. I want to get rid of them all.'

"Now in the early sixties, I reached very similar conclusions."

GEN COLIN POWELL, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (10 June '93 at Harvard University):

"And today, I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place."

NARRATOR: Five nations acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons, another three are believed to possess nuclear weapons or at minimum the capability to build nuclear weapons quickly should they so desire.

Forty-five additional nations have the basic building blocks for nuclear weapons. Why do so many nations have the capability "to go nuclear?"

Because any nation which has a nuclear research reactor or a nuclear electrical-generating reactor, like this one in Bulgaria, has the raw materials and rudimentary knowledge necessary to launch a nuclear weapons program.

FRED IKLE (at NGO Commission on Nuclear NPR):

"The greatest threat for the security of the United States from abroad today is the existence of nuclear weapons or the existence of the materials and know-how to make nuclear weapons."

NARRATOR: Fred Ikle served a director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Ambassador IKLE (at same conference):

"It is only a matter of time for a modern industrial nation with nuclear power industry to build hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons."

NARRATOR: Japan, for example, has been accumulating plutonium and now has more than four tons of the deadly material, enough to make thousands of bombs.

The nuclear Non-Proliferation or NPT Treaty, signed in 1968, is supposed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The NPT, however, perpetuates a world of nations with nuclear weapons and those without. This two-tiered system is a bone of contention for many non-nuclear states.

Dr. MUTALIK: Who should keep them? Is there some chosen few who are guardians of the earth?

Dr. BAILEY: I understand that there is discrimination. We've lived with it for over 45 years now. And I think that the discrimination is going to continue and that it should continue.

Dr. MUTALIK: Will not other countries feel exactly the same way? That if US and UK, and China, and Russia keep it, are they the keepers of the peace on earth? Why should we not develop?

Dr. BAILEY: No, it's not fair that every XYZ nation in the world doesn't have this capability. But can you imagine the havoc that we would have if they did?

Rev. COFFIN: If you have them, somebody else is going to have them, and that's the whole story of the nuclear arms race. We got 'em, they got 'em. We improve them, they improve them.

NARRATOR: The Reverent William Sloane Coffin is president emeritus of Peace Action and for many years served as senior minister of New York's Riverside Church.

Rev. COFFIN: So, it's a matter of zero, nobody has nuclear weapons, or probably everybody's going to get them eventually.

NARRATOR: Would a ban on nuclear weapons make other countries forego nuclear weapons, as Reverent Coffin suggests? Or, would it increase their desire for the bomb?

Dr. BAILEY: When you take your weapons down to zero, it adds an incentive to other nations to say, 'Ah-ha, the US has no nuclear deterrent right now. If we had a nuclear weapon or a few nuclear weapons, we could coerce them much more readily. We could keep them out of our region.'

NARRATOR: However, some believe that if the nations that have nuclear weapons downplay their role and gradually eliminate them, then other nations will be less likely to want the bomb.

DAVID CORTRIGHT: We have to be willing to say these nuclear weapons do not confer power and prestige. It's really our democratic values, our prosperous economy that brings us strength in the world, not nuclear weapons, and start to get rid of them.

NARRATOR: David Cortright is president of the Fourth Freedom Forum, a private foundation dedicated to eliminating nuclear weapons.

Mr. CORTRIGHT: If you go outside the borders of the United States and talk to people around the world, the idea of getting rid of nuclear weapons, of getting rid of these instruments of mass destruction is widely supported and understood.

NARRATOR: There is a global movement of activists working for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Many of them met at a conference in New York in April 1995:

Dr. ZORESLAVA SHKIRYAK-NIZHNIK (Ukraine): So, as mother, as physician, as woman, I am only for disarmament.

Dr. ZIA MIAN (Pakistan): Nuclear weapons are a fundamentally immoral source of power.

KATIE DEWES (New Zealand): So, I think we should have no nuclear weapons at all on this planet and I think they threaten the whole survival of the planet, both human beings and the animal and plant world, and I want them stopped now.

BAHIG NASSAR (Egypt): In this region, we are striving to build up a kind of zone free from nuclear weapons.

Ambassador MIGUEL MARIN BOSCH (Mexico): We've advocated nuclear abolition since the beginning of the nuclear age.

JANET BLOOMFIELD (Britain): Abolition is really the only sustainable long-term solution to the problem of nuclear weapons.

LUIS MASPERI (Argentina): Our governments and our militaries in Argentina and Brazil, for instance, were convinced that their security was not based on nuclear weapons.

MIYOKO MATSUBARA (Hiroshima, Japan): I was 12 years old and exposed at a point of less than a mile away from the hypocenter. I was one of the 50 who survived out of 250 classmates on that morning of August the 6th, 1945.

NARRATOR: Atomic bomb survivors, like Miyoko Matsubara, have helped to raise fundamental moral issues.

Ms. MATSUBARA: We have to appeal for the abolition of the nuclear weapon.

Mr. CORTRIGHT: It's immoral to base our security and defense on the threatened annihilation of millions of people and the potential destruction of all life on the planet, which is the way it now exists.

Dr. BAILEY: Until the threats go away and until we are able to reach a situation where we can believe the other side doesn't have nuclear weapons that they could use against us, we are obligated to maintain that deterrent, morally and otherwise.

MAJ BRITT THEORIN: It is immoral to have nuclear weapons. It is immoral to use nuclear weapons. But it is not immoral to get rid of any weapons in the world.

NARRATOR: Maj Britt Theorin was chairperson of the Swedish Disarmament Commission for nine years. She currently serves as president of the International Peace Bureau in Geneva and is a member of the European Parliament.

Ms. THEORIN: They are the most enormous threat to every humankind in the world. Those are weapons which should never be used and we should absolutely get rid of them.

NARRATOR: In July of 1996, the International Court of Justice found that the use or threatened use of nuclear weapons was contrary the rules of international law.

Peter Weiss is chair of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy.

Mr. WEISS: Every country in the world agrees in principle that it is not perishable to use weapons which inflict indiscriminate damage on civilians. Every country in the world agrees in principle that it is not perishable to use weapons which adversely affect neutral countries. Every country in the world agrees again in principle that it's not perishable to use weapons that are particularly cruel, even against combatants. You can see, I don't have to explain it to you how nuclear weapons would fundamentally violate all of those principles.

NARRATOR: Nuclear abolitionists are also concerned about the economic burden of maintaining a nuclear arsenal.

Ms. THEORIN: They are economically enormously costly, enormously costly. That is the first, of course, let's say easy argument for a politician, I would say, to understand that they could use the money in much better ways.

NARRATOR: Between 1943 and 1994, the United States spent nearly $4 trillion to design, test, build and maintain nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Currently, this is comparable to the entire federal debt of the United States.

Mr. CORTRIGHT: But even today, we're still spending $20-, $30 billion or more on our nuclear weapons systems.

NARRATOR: Although the United States is not longer producing nuclear warheads, it continues to buy nuclear bombers and missiles which were designed during the Cold War. Today, the US has some 15,000 nuclear weapons. If all current treaties and initiatives are implemented as scheduled, by the year 2003, the United States will still have roughly 10,000 deployed and stored long and short range nuclear weapons.

In renewing the Non-Proliferation Treaty in May 1995 at the United Nations, the United States and the other nuclear weapons states pledged themselves to the "determined pursuit" of "systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally with the ultimate aim of eliminating those weapons." However, to date, there are no talks aimed at making this pledge a reality.

While there has been a reversal in the arms race, critics say that you can't put the nuclear genie back in the bottle.

Mr. CORTRIGHT: That's true. You can't put it back in the bottle, but we can monitor it. And we can look at the bottle and we can put instruments around it to make sure that if anything comes out of it further, we'll know about it and we can move quickly to stop it.

Dr. MUTALIK: Chemical weapons are more easy to manufacture, more easy to conceal. But are we not living with a chemical weapons ban convention? How did we reach that? If we could ban biological weapons, if we could ban chemical weapons, why not nuclear weapons?

NARRATOR: Maj Britt Theorin wonders what the big obstacle is.

Ms. THEORIN: Even the military people declare that there is no use, there is no military purposes for nuclear weapons. When they say it, why can't politicians understand that? That is my big question.

NARRATOR: The answer for some is the uncertainty in the former Soviet Union.

JOHN DEUTCH, Assistant Secretary of Defense (22 September '94, NGO Commission on Nuclear NPR):

"It is also possible that Russia will not develop as we hope, and therefore it is also necessary for us to maintain a hedge to return to a more robust nuclear posture should that be necessary."

Mr. CORTRIGHT: It's in our interests to see those Russian and Ukrainian weapons reduced down as low as possible to zero, because it's unpredictable what may happen politically in that region of the world in years to come. But we also have to understand that we can't get those weapons reduced down to near zero or zero unless we do so, as well.

NARRATOR: In addition to political obstacles, there are scientific hurdles which must be cleared in order to achieve a lasting ban on nuclear weapons. The principal one is verification.

Dr. BAILEY: Now if a country has a couple thousand tactical nuclear weapons and they put 500 of them in a cave in a mountainside and only a few people know about it, we don't have a way of knowing where that is.

NARRATOR: Given the fact that Iraq apparently came close to building the bomb without anyone knowing, is it possible to ensure compliance with a universal ban on the research, development, testing, acquisition, maintenance, deployment and use of nuclear weapons?

Mr. CORTRIGHT: Right now in Iraq as a result of the Gulf War, we have a permanent monitoring systems manned by UN personnel. Cameras are in place at likely facilities. We have monitoring stations in their waterways. We have satellite monitoring.

NARRATOR: When it comes to on-site verification, however, Iraq is the exception, not the rule. Nuclear weapons states are not subject to any inspections. Nuclear facilities in other countries are infrequently monitored.

Mr. CORTRIGHT: You have to have a uniform standard and apply a rigorous inspection and monitoring of all nuclear facilities in every country, especially our own.

NARRATOR: These inspections should be at least as strict as those forced upon Iraq, according to David Cortright.

Mr. CORTRIGHT: And that's the only way we can really have a reasonable assurance that blackmail will not take place, that you won't have a cheater, you won't have a group that can try to break out beyond the nuclear ban.

NARRATOR: Lachlan Forrow is the chairman of the board for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He compares the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons to President Kennedy's reaching for the moon.

Dr. LACHLAN FORROW: He said what would it take to put a man on the moon? And people answered, well, we can't put a man on the moon unless we build a rocket launcher that perhaps is four or ten times more powerful than any rocket launcher we have, unless we've learned how to have human beings orbit safely for two weeks around the earth, unless we've done a whole list of other things. And then people looked at that list and said, boy, that's going to be a tough job, but we can do that.

Once he got people to realize all you had to do was this list of things, then in July 1969 there was a man on the moon. The abolition of nuclear weapons is not technically even as difficult, I think, as the challenge of putting a man on the moon seemed in 1962.

NARRATOR: Those who see the possibility of eliminating nuclear weapons admit that it won't happen overnight.

Mr. CORTRIGHT: You don't have to go all the way immediately. You can kind of go down to a very minimal level, take a breath, look around, see where you are and determine whether it truly is a better and more secure world, as I'm convinced it will be. It'd certainly be less expensive, less insane in terms of the constant threat of nuclear annihilation that still hangs over us. And then I think the nations of the world will be able to say, let's keep on going down and get rid of these weapons.

NARRATOR: Other steps which may be taken toward achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons include ending all production of weapons and weapons-grade material, ceasing all design work on warheads, achieving a truly comprehensive test ban treaty, and subjecting all nuclear facilities in all nations to international inspections as stringent as those placed upon Iraq.

Dr. MUTALIK: Let us de-emphasize, let us de-legitimize them, let's get rid of them all, but don't do it in such a manner that we jeopardize our own safety, and that is where exactly the work lies. That means the strategies. Work out a foolproof system, work out common security, work out inspections, go stage by stage, but first politically commit to their elimination.

Dr. KRIEGER: We should enter the 21st Century committed to a world free of nuclear weapons within a reasonable time period and we should lay out the steps that takes.

NARRATOR: Despite outspoken military leaders who have questioned their usefulness and critics who have pointed to the illegality, economic burden and immorality of maintaining nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states are reluctant to give up the bomb. The views of Kathleen Bailey are prevalent among policymakers.

Dr. BAILEY: If we are going to be responsible to our own citizens in the United States, then we must defend them against all possible or all likely attacks and threats. And right now, the possibility of nuclear attack or nuclear threat against the United States still exists.

Dr. KRIEGER: There would hardly be any other threat to the United States if there were no nuclear weapons in the world.

NARRATOR: For Miyoko Matsubara, who still struggles with the physical and emotional scars of the Hiroshima blast, the reason for eliminating nuclear weapons is quite simple. For her, human beings and nuclear weapons...

Ms. MATSUBARA: ...cannot coexist.

Dr. MUTALIK: There's a tremendous appeal and power in saying that let us get rid of these weapons, let us not take the baggage of nuclear weapons into the new century, and let us leave the world free of nuclear weapons to our children and grandchildren.

ADM SHANAHAN: We currently have about 15,000 nuclear weapons in our stockpile. If the START II treaty is implemented, that number will decrease to about 10,000 in the year 2003. But why stop with START II and why wait until then? The United States should seize the moment. The United States should demonstrate world leadership by unilaterally reducing its nuclear weapons stockpile as an example for others to follow.

For "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I am Jack Shanahan.

[End of broadcast.]

© Copyright 1997. Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.

Videotapes also available.