Nuclear weapons, human security, and international law.

• Author: Nanda, Ved P.

1. INTRODUCTION

   The end of the Cold War did not remove the threat nuclear weapons pose to human civilization. The danger of mistaken or inadvertent nuclear launching cannot be discounted, nor is there a fail-safe device to ensure that terrorists will not get ahold of nuclear weapons or will not use them if acquired. Numerous experts point to a causal relationship between nuclear weapons and international and national insecurity. A broadened concept of national security includes human security and nuclear weapons are unquestionably a main source of the people's insecurity. The role of international law is to provide a framework for nuclear disarmament, a prerequisite for human security.

   President Barack Obama called the future of nuclear weapons in the Twenty-first Century an issue that is "fundamental to the security of our nations and to the peace of the world," in his remarks at Prague, Czech Republic, on April 5, 2009. (2) Calling nuclear weapons the "most dangerous legacy" of the Cold War, he emphasized the infinite consequences of a nuclear weapons explosion in any major city "for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival," stating "clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." (3) In his words, "as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act." (4)

   A U.S. president's commitment that America "will take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons ... [,] will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same[, and] will begin the work of reducing our arsenal" (5) is indeed a promising development. Just a few days before this, on April 1, President Dmitriy Medvedev of the Russian Federation and President Obama discussed nuclear arms control and reduction issues and issued the following joint statement:

   As leaders of the two largest nuclear weapons states, we agreed to work together to fulfill our obligations under Article VI of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and demonstrate leadership in reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. We committed our two countries to achieving a nuclear free world, while recognizing that this long-term goal will require a new emphasis on arms control and conflict resolution measures, and their full implementation by all concerned nations. We agreed to pursue new and verifiable reductions in our strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process, beginning by replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with a new, equally-binding treaty. We are instructing our negotiators to start talks immediately on this new treaty and to report on results achieved in working out the new agreement by July. (6) These developments place the issue in the forefront of the international attention.

   Thus, I consider it timely to discuss this topic with the next section briefly reviewing the destructive force of nuclear weapons and their utility as instruments of war. This will be followed by a quick look at the new concept of human security. Next, I study the illustrative action the world community--international organizations, especially the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals--has thus far undertaken to eliminate nuclear weapons. The next section, which precedes the conclusion, discusses the role of international law in the elimination of nuclear weapons.

2. THE DESTRUCTIVE FORCE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THEIR MINIMUM UTILITY AS INSTRUMENTS OF WAR

   1. The Destructive Power of Nuclear Weapons.

   Obviously there is no lack of awareness about the death and destruction nuclear weapons cause. The human misery associated with the dropping of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945 is vividly captured in the accounts of horrific, ghastly scenes witnessed by medical and rescue workers. (7) This was the beginning of the nuclear era. (8) In his testimony before the International Court of Justice, the Mayor of Nagasaki described the bomb's effects on his city:

   Nagasaki became a city of death where not even the sounds of insects could be heard. After a while, countless men, women and children began to gather for a drink of water at the banks of nearby Urakami River, their hair and clothing scorched and their burnt skin hanging off in sheets like rags. Begging for help, they died one after another in the water or in heaps on the banks. Then radiation began to take its toll, killing people like a scourge of death expanding in concentric circles from the hypocenter. Four months after the atomic bombing, 74,000 were dead and 75,000 had suffered injuries, that is, two-third[s] of the city population had fallen victim to this calamity that came upon Nagasaki like a preview of the Apocalypse. (9) In 2005 then Secretary-General Kofi Annan reminded the world of the destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and warned that a nuclear catastrophe in any city would create chaos, as

   [t]ens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people would perish in an instant, and many more would die from exposure to radiation. The global impact would also be grave.... Hard-won freedoms and human rights could be compromised.... And world financial markets, trade and transportation could be hard hit, with major economic consequences. This could drive millions of people in poor countries into deeper deprivation and suffering. (10) B. The Minimum Utility of Nuclear Weapons as Instruments of War

   Equally important, many security experts have argued that nuclear weapons have minimal utility as instruments of war and that their continued possession has a negative effect on the maintenance of regional and global security. (11) To illustrate, in a 2005 article, (12) Robert S. McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, recalled that in 1983 he had decided to "go public" with some information that he "felt was needed to inject reality into these increasingly unreal discussions about the ostensible military utility of nuclear weapons." (13) He was referring to the ongoing discussions in the early 1980s regarding how the U.S. could "fight and win a nuclear war" with the Soviets. The information that Robert McNamara referred to was published in a 1983 article that he had written in Foreign Affairs:

   Having spent seven years as Secretary of Defense dealing with the problems unleashed by the initial nuclear chain reaction 40 years ago, I do not believe we can avoid serious and unacceptable risk of nuclear war until we recognize--and until we base all our military plans, defense budgets, weapons deployments, and arms negotiations on this recognition--that nuclear weapons serve no military purpose whatsoever. (14) McNamara then discussed what he called the "unacceptable risk" of accidental or inadvertent use of nuclear weapons as a result of misjudgment or miscalculation in times of crisis. He explained:

   Senior Russian military officials have stated that, due to lack of resources, the Russian nuclear arsenal is increasingly at risk of accidents, theft, and serious malfunction in its command and control systems. As for the risk of inadvertent use of the weapons in a crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated that the United States and the Soviet Union--and indeed the rest of the world--came within a hair's breadth of a nuclear disaster in October 1962 as a result of misinformation and misjudgment. (15) After analyzing the U.S. policy to sustain and modernize the existing nuclear force, to rely "far into the future" upon the projected deployment of large numbers of strategic nuclear weapons, and to integrate a national ballistic missile defense into its offensive weapons system, (16) McNamara concluded that

   we are at a critical moment in human history with respect to offensive nuclear forces. There is a strong temptation to continue the strategies of the past 40 years. Such actions would, in my opinion, be a serious mistake leading to a high risk to all nations across the globe. (17) III. HUMAN SECURITY

   A new understanding of the concept of security is emerging in the twenty-first century. The need for a redefinition of the traditional concept of security was eloquently addressed in 2003 by the Commission on Human Security. (18) The Commission, co-chaired by Sadako Ogata, former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in economics, was launched at the 2000 Millennium Summit convened by then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and was established at the initiative of the government of Japan.

   Contrasted with the traditional focus on state security, the new concept of security is aimed at ensuring protection of the people. As the Commission stated,

   the security debate has changed dramatically since the inception of state security advocated in the 17th century. According to that traditional idea, the state would monopolize the rights and means to protect its citizens. But in the 21st century, both the challenges to security and its protectors have become more complex. The state remains the fundamental purveyor. Yet it often fails to fulfill its security obligations--and at times has even become a source of threat to its own people. That is why attention must now shift from the security of the state to the security of the people--to human security. (19) Thus, according to the Commission, the international community "urgently needs a new paradigm of security." (20)

   Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, provides the following grim account as an appropriate context to help us understand why human security needs to supplement the narrow traditional concept of state security. She led an Amnesty delegation to Burundi in September 2002, days after the Burundi army had massacred more than 170 civilians in a remote village, and went to the local hospital to meet the...