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WASHINGTON -- Leading British and U.S. science organizations are calling for a stepped-up campaign of scientific cooperation to help lay the groundwork for global nuclear disarmament (see GSN, Feb. 19).
(Apr. 9) -
Scientists install equipment for monitoring nuclear-related seismic activity in a 2008 exercise. Science groups in the United Kingdom and United States have called for new inquiries into mechanisms for helping to achieve and maintain worldwide nuclear disarmament (Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization photo).
"The time scale for complete nuclear disarmament will be long, and so focusing now on the detailed challenges of the final stages of the process may be premature," according to the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"A more practical approach might be to establish the scientific requirements of a monitoring and verification system to support future negotiations, especially when this can produce tangible and immediate improvements to international security," the groups said in a policy document issued in March.
There has long been deep skepticism that all nations would ever give up their nuclear arsenals and agree to never again pursue such arms. Some critics are calling on advocates to spell out exactly how nuclear abolition could be achieved and maintained (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2008).
However, the disarmament idea has received renewed cachet in recent years.
A "Gang of Four" U.S. statesmen -- former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn -- in a 2007 Wall Street Journal commentary argued for a series of steps leading to "a world free of nuclear weapons."
Similar groups of prominent leaders have emerged in the United Kingdom, Germany and elsewhere, and the idea gained further traction last year in the wake of U.S. President Barack Obama's call in Prague for global nuclear disarmament. Obama returned to the Czech capital this week to sign a new nuclear arms reduction deal with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (see GSN, April 8).
Researchers around the world, in collaboration, could play important parts in the disarmament movement, according to the science organizations. They have the know-how to advise policy-makers on the scientific means to push ahead with disarmament and experience in the sort of cross-border cooperation that would be necessary to turn rhetoric into reality.
"Science doesn't tell us what to do. Science doesn't tell us if nuclear disarmament is a good idea or a bad idea. It tells us if it's even possible," said Benn Tannenbaum, program director for the AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy. "We are now determining the tools and the technologies that we're going to need if ... the eventual goal is to have some kind of disarmament."
Joint development of these tools could strengthen relationships between research communities in different nations, which in turn could support confidence-building efforts between the governments themselves as they consider disarmament, Tannenbaum told Global Security Newswire.
Russia and the United States are not likely to further draw down their arsenals unless they are joined by the other recognized nuclear powers -- China, France and the United Kingdom -- and nuclear-armed states outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, the report says.
Accurate reporting from these nations regarding the size of their nuclear arsenals and stocks of fissile materials would be necessary to initiate the process. Such an accounting would make it more difficult for potential weapons substances to be stolen, lost or illicitly used, according to the report.
One key area for collaboration would be development of technical systems that allow for accurate counting of warhead stockpiles without giving away classified data or information that could promote the spread of nuclear weapons, the science groups said. Researchers in Norway and the United Kingdom have already worked together to address this dilemma and other nuclear security issues.
Scientists could also help produce the tools for accurately verifying that participating nations were carrying out their obligations under future arms reduction pacts, according to the report.
"When 'Country X' says they have dismantled this weapon, we, the rest of the world, or we, the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, can believe that weapon was dismantled," Tannenbaum said. "That's where we need to start, doing this confidence-building sort of work."
In addition, collaborative scientific research could weed out "instabilities" that might threaten the disarmament process, the report says. It lists better security of nuclear materials and installations, management of the nuclear fuel cycle, strengthening the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and verification of a still-theoretical fissile material cutoff treaty among the challenges to be faced.
Tannenbaum said he discussed the recommendations last month with a handful of British lawmakers, who pledged to spread the word to their colleagues. He and other AAAS representatives planned to make their case in Washington, as well.
Failure to achieve this type of collaboration and innovation would make it "much harder to achieve the president's vision and the vision of others to have a world without nuclear weapons," Tannenbaum said.
He expressed confidence that such cooperation was possible, pointing to the example of the Soviet Union and the United States, which pursued arms control even while locked in the Cold War: "If those two countries can do it, then, yes, it can be done."