Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
10/31/2014
The United States should participate in the upcoming Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, scheduled to be held in Vienna in early December, more than two dozen arms control advocates, nuclear policy experts, former U.S. government officials and leaders of peace and security organizations said in a letter sent to three top Obama Administration officials this week. Addressed to National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the letter comes nine days after a top State Department official cautioned against pushing nuclear disarmament discussions into the international humanitarian law arena.
Speaking at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly’s First Committee on Oct. 20, Amb. Robert Wood, special representative to the Conference on Disarmament, said that any such realignment could hinder implementation of the 2010 NPT Action Plan and that any new U.N. disarmament mechanism would not fare better than the current NPT agenda. “Contrary to what some of your advisors may allege or fear, the conference is not the start of a diplomatic process for a ban on nuclear weapons or a convention on the elimination of nuclear weapons,” this week’s letter states. “While some participating states and some nongovernmental organizations support such a ban and the negotiation of such a convention, this conference is not a negotiating conference and is not intended or designed to launch such an effort. Even if it were, there is no clear consensus among the participants about the direction of any such process. Rather, the 3rd Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons is intended and designed to highlight the health and environmental dangers of nuclear weapons use, nuclear testing, and nuclear weapons production, and to underscore the urgency for progress on the NPT action plan.” The letter also urges all P5 nuclear-weapon states to attend the conference and support joint statements warning of the consequences of using nuclear weapons.
Activists: U.S. Participation in Conference Would Bolster Credibility
While Wood, who also serves as the alternate representative of the U.S. delegation to the U.N., acknowledged the reasoning behind humanitarian-impact efforts at an Oct. 20 meeting of the UN General Assembly, he also asserted that the current global disarmament process would be more fruitful than an alternative approach. “We understand the sincere motivations behind efforts to address the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons; indeed, we share the interest of all states in extending the nearly 70-year record of non-use of nuclear weapons forever,” Wood stated in remarks by the State Department. “But any call to move nuclear disarmament into international humanitarian law circles can only distract from the practical agenda set forth in the 2010 NPT Action Plan.”
The letter goes on to state that U.S. participation in the Vienna conference would bolster its credibility and clout at the 2015 NPT Review Conference, as well as support “key U.S. allies and partners,” some of whom are urging the United States to send a delegation. “The conferences on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons are a useful and important venue for raising awareness about the risks of nuclear weapons,” the letter states. “They complement efforts to advance the action plan in the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference final document, many parts of which remain unfulfilled.”
The letter says the United States should continue to engage in disarmament negotiations, regardless of potential hesitation by countries like P5 powers Russia and France. The letter ends by citing President Obama’s June 2013 speech in Berlin, where he said nuclear weapon states should not be complacent in working toward a world free of nuclear weapons. “A decision on the part of the Obama administration not to attend the Vienna conference would be a major lost opportunity and a setback for President Obama’s own call for action toward a nuclear weapons free world,” the letter states.
The letter’s 26 signers include Robert Grey, former U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, and James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace.
