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Member Publications: Member views not necessarily those of CPG.

Littlewood/Lentzos: Strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention

Jez Littlewood is a member of Canadian Pugwash Group

Pubished as the Arms Control Association, December 2024: here

By the end of this month, states-parties will be halfway through their latest attempt to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). This effort was launched in 2022 at the convention’s ninth review conference with the establishment of a working group to “identify, examine and develop specific and effective measures, including possible legally binding measures, and to make recommendations to strengthen and institutionalize the Convention in all its aspects.”

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Substantial progress has been made in some areas, but beneath the surface is a broader conflict about the shape of arms control agreements generally. This raises a question about whether strengthening the BWC needs to follow the traditional model of legally binding multilateral agreements with declarations, inspections, investigations, and an international organization where consensus rules or whether states-parties can agree to a new model that allows states to opt in to the mechanisms with which they agree and opt out of any processes or new commitments they are unable to support.

Continue reading: here

Regehr/Roche: Canada should invest in diplomacy, instead of spending more on defence   

By Ernie Regehr and Douglas Roche

Originally published in The Globe and Mail September 17, 2024

Ernie Regehr was the founding executive director of Project Ploughshares. Douglas Roche was a senator and Canadian ambassador for disarmament. Both a members of Canadian Pugwash Group. 

Powerful voices are driving Canada toward meeting NATO’s arbitrary target of spending 2 per cent of GDP for defence, but this singular focus on military expansion is not the path to a secure and peaceful future. Instead, Canada needs to get off the defensive and launch a new initiative for peace – one that boosts diplomacy as the surer route to global security.

Donald Trump, who is on the campaign trail as the Republican nominee for president, has promised to up the ante if he is elected by pressing NATO to reach a new military spending target of 3 per cent of GDP. NATO’s assistant secretary-general for defence policy and planning, Angus Lapsley, was quick to voice his support, calling the 2 per cent target the “floor” and insisting that spending “will have to rise considerably above” it. The U.S.’s annual spending on defence already represents 3.4 per cent of its GDP.

The world is clearly moving to more and more confrontation in international relations. The relentless Ukraine war, the attacks on Israel and the extraordinary toll of human suffering in Gaza, the breakdown of U.S. and Russian arms-control agreements, and China’s growing nuclear arsenal are tilting the world toward chaos and existential threats that have been unseen since the Second World War.

In this new surge of militarism, diplomacy has been pushed aside, at our collective peril. Without robust diplomacy, sharp increases in military spending lead inevitably to mutual escalation and reduced security. The way out of that self-defeating spiral is strategic dialogue, direct engagement with adversaries, and arms control – in other words, diplomacy.

Canada needs to stop apologizing for its supposedly meagre military efforts and launch an offensive campaign with like-minded countries to put teeth into peace diplomacy and the United Nations’ New Agenda for Peace.

Ottawa should act on two fronts. First, it must debunk the myth that Canada doesn’t carry its weight in military matters. It is already NATO’s seventh-highest military spender by dollar amount, with our $30.5-billion putting us within the top 20 per cent of Alliance military forces. Canada consistently ranks as 15th- to 17th-highest in military spending in the world, well within the top 10 per cent. Canada is also taking timely and sustainable steps to beef up domain awareness and defences through NORAD in the Arctic, and it leads NATO’s multinational battlegroup in Latvia.

Simply repeating the complaint that Canada fails to meet NATO’s 2-per-cent benchmark is not a security strategy. A GDP-linked spending target amounts to a money-making slogan for the defence industry and a formula for perpetually expanding military budgets.

The $10-billion to $15-billion (and counting) of additional annual military spending that it would take to move fully to 2 per cent of GDP, let alone beyond that, would mean starving the already underfunded health, housing, and other social and climate mitigation programs on which Canadians rely.

Second, Canada has the credentials to help invigorate the international system to better understand the underlying drivers of conflict, to renew efforts to build support for more effective collective security responses, and to take meaningful steps to manage emerging risks. In other words, Canada should move to a holistic approach to conflict and peace. Unfortunately, NATO doesn’t do holistic peace.

Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres laid out a comprehensive set of measures for global security in A New Agenda for Peace. He called for the elimination of nuclear weapons, preventative diplomacy to head off wars, more support for the Sustainable Development Goals to address the underlying causes of violence and insecurity, the reinforcement of climate action, and expanded peacebuilding efforts.

Mr. Guterres’s proposed approach is the right one, but he can’t be heard amid today’s clamour for more military spending. For Canada to move beyond the simplistic 2-per-cent formula would require vision and initiative from its political, military, and diplomatic leaders. Instead of playing catch-up in NATO, which is already spending 10 times more than Russia on defence, Canada should advance security by boosting diplomacy, peacekeeping and peacemaking efforts. That is what the world needs – not more arms.

Canada has a history of sparking creative initiatives, including the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, the International Criminal Court, and the Responsibility to Protect pledge. We can summon that creativity again, but only if we refuse to be intimidated by myopic demands by NATO and the U.S. for ever more military spending.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-should-invest-in-diplomacy-instead-of-spending-more-on-defence/

 

Walter Dorn: Here’s Why Ukraine Should Seek Peace

Published in the New York Times, June 14, 2024
By A. Walter Dorn
Dr. Dorn is a professor of defense studies at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, and the Canadian Forces College in Toronto. He is also a board member of Canadian Pugwash Group. 

After more than two years of death and destruction, neither side in the war in Ukraine appears close to victory: Russia will not achieve its imperial conquest of Ukraine, and Ukraine will most certainly not be able to regain control of all the territory occupied by Russia. Sooner or later, both sides will have to agree to a cease-fire and come up with a peace agreement.

That is a welcome prospect. An accord will not only reduce the killing, suffering and enormous cost of the war but will also, in the long run, make Ukraine stronger and better able to defend itself and its democracy. Crucially, it will reduce the chance of a dangerous escalation.

Many in the West argue that making concessions to Russia for a peace agreement would amount to appeasing an aggressor and only encourage further attacks. But it is not appeasement. Ending the war will allow Ukraine to rearm and integrate further into Europe and the West, actually increasing deterrence. Russia has already failed to achieve its initial war aims and will need to make significant concessions of its own as part of any agreement.

The peace conference in Switzerland this weekend, convened by Ukraine to muster diplomatic support for its cause, can provide a much needed opportunity to examine whether an accord is reasonable and achievable. Russia has expressedwillingness to negotiate, though it has not been invited to the conference because Ukraine suspects that Russia will just use the meeting for show. But the host, Switzerland, envisages that Russia will be at future conferences.

No one will know how peace negotiations will fare unless the process is started. When compared with a never-ending war that is swallowing lives and resources at an alarming rate, even an imperfect settlement would be better. So, what could Ukraine reasonably hope to achieve and what kind of concessions would it have to make?

Ukraine has pledged never to cede territory. This is supported by international law that forbids the seizure of territory by force, and Ukraine should not surrender its lawful claim to its land. But to secure a lasting cease-fire, it may need to recognize that Russia has control, though not sovereignty, over portions of four Ukrainian regions and Crimea — and halt its quest to seize back occupied areas by force.

Admittedly, this would be a difficult and painful concession and should be conditional on Russia not launching any major attacks. If Russia remains peaceful, Ukraine may need to wait for a better opportunity to reclaim all its territory, like the one Germany found in 1989 when the fall of the Berlin Wall opened the way for reunification.

As part of a peace agreement, Ukraine may also have to pause its NATO application and promise not to join for a number of years, say five to 10. This is made easier because NATO members are still far from united on allowing a nation at war into the alliance, especially given fears that membership could result in a NATO war with nuclear-armed Russia. Still, it would be a major concession.

But Ukraine can still sign bilateral treaties with individual NATO members for security support — something it has already started to do, for example, with France, Germany and Britain. Future security guarantees will need to include strong provisions for supplying weapons and intelligence to Ukraine, and help to prevent cyberattacks. That said, Ukraine’s allies would probably not be allowed to place military bases on its soil.

Any peace agreement would also need strong measures to prevent another outbreak of conflict. This could involve a demilitarized zone and mutual notifications of exercises and military maneuvers. Early warning, continuous monitoring and transparency are much easier in the age of satellite surveillance, especially of the type currently provided by the United States. International inspections and a United Nations buffer force, made up of troops from non-NATO countries, would also make future incursions harder to launch.

Admittedly, an armistice or peace agreement would give Russia time to regroup and rearm its forces. But Ukraine could do likewise. It would also mean that all prisoners of war could be returned, not just in the small groups being negotiated by the parties so far. War crimes investigations and trials would proceed, however.

Most important is that a tentative peace, even if interrupted by violations, would finally give the people of Ukraine time to rebuild their lives and their country. Millions of refugees could return home and start to repopulate the depleted country. The United States could sponsor a reconstruction effort much like the Marshall Plan. Europe could lead a rebuilding and integration effort. Peace would make it easier for Ukraine to join the European Union.

There are other benefits, too. Ukraine would continue its fight against corruption, having already put a halt to the dominant role of Ukrainian oligarchs. Democratic life could resume after the end of martial law. Ultimately, successful rebuilding will demonstrate to Russians a better alternative to the dictatorship they are under. That could be Ukraine’s and the West’s greatest victory.

To make a peace deal more acceptable to Russia, it could be offered sanctions relief, contingent on compliance with the agreement. Russia could then trade its oil and gas at market prices, though Western countries could institute mechanisms for the immediate reimposition — the so-called snapback — of sanctions if needed. Russia would regain access to its withheld gold and foreign currency reserves in the West.

Violations of any future agreement can be expected, of course, but the level of violence would still be far less than the current war. And if President Vladimir Putin of Russia does escalate to full war, Ukraine will be better able to respond. Importantly, Mr. Putin has now learned a hard lesson that invading Ukraine is not an easy task and taking over the country appears impossible. In the interim, Ukraine’s allies should maintain a steady flow of arms and increase diplomatic and economic support to strengthen the country’s position at a future bargaining table.

Since Ukraine and Russia will continue to be neighbors for decades and centuries to come, the countries must come to some mutual arrangements for peaceful resolution of disputes. And if the current killing goes on for years before a settlement is reached, people will wonder why so many people had to die first. The best way to honor those killed in war is to secure a sustainable peace so that others need not make the same sacrifice.

Roche/Rauf: How Canada Can Regain Leadership in Nuclear Disarmament

Re: Grave crisis in global nuclear arms control and disarmament: Recommendations for Canadian Action

Linked below is the paper entitled, “How Canada Can Regain Leadership in Nuclear Disarmament,” authored by former Senator Douglas Roche, O.C. and Tariq Rauf, former head of Verification and Security at the International Atomic Energy Agency, and published by the four leading nuclear disarmament organizations in Canada:

Canadian Pugwash Group
Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention
Project Ploughshares

This paper is intended to further Canadian government action in response to the grave crisis in global nuclear arms control and disarmament.

Roche/Rauf: How Canada Can Regain Leadership in Nuclear Disarmament

EN / FR