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Member Publications: Member views not necessarily those of CPG.

Meyer: The War in Ukraine is our Nuclear Arms Wake-up Call

Carefully crafted arms control and disarmament mechanisms are rusting-out before us

In reflecting on the consequences of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine on prospects for nuclear disarmament, the situation we are experiencing today might best be understood as a crisis of communication. Simply put, the nuclear armed protagonists of our manmade crisis are not speaking to one another. And in the absence of such communication the risks attendant upon misunderstandings, misperceptions and miscalculations grow. Couple this breakdown of communication with the ongoing war against a sovereign state, the maintenance of thousands of nuclear missiles on a high-alert status and the maintenance of “launch on warning” doctrines and there is every reason to be alarmed.

Article by Paul Meyer linked here

Simpson: Adressing Challenges Facing NATO

  • Addressing Challenges Facing NATO and the United States Using Lessons Learned from Afghanistan and Ukraine: linked here
    To avoid more suffering among millions of Afghans and Ukrainians due to war necessitates attention to the lessons of Afghanistan vis-à-vis the Russian-Ukraine war. The abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan by the arbitrary deadline of August 30, 2021 led to a disastrous exit and a low point in promulgating a culture of peace. Lessons learned from Afghanistan relevant to involvement in Ukraine are presented in a timeframe dating from the origins of the conflict; to the grounds for intervention by NATO and the United States; to the type and location of intervention; to the types of warfare; to the grounds for NATO’s withdrawal. Recommendations that address the challenges facing NATO and the U.S. over Afghanistan and Ukraine are made based on lessons learned—and spurned—from the early stages of involvement in Afghanistan after 9/11, proceeding to the final stage of withdrawal in 2021.
  • Addressing Challenges Facing NATO Using Lessons Learned From Canada: linked here
    THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IS YET another international crisis that
    necessitates nations learn more from each other about how to solve challenges
    faced by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
  • Pearson and Simpson: How to de-escalate dangerous nuclear weapons and force deployments in Europe, linked here
    Amidst the war in Ukraine, it is important to raise the prospect and vision of creating mutual security guarantees and ridding Europe of its dangerous nuclear weapon systems and provocative force deployments. In view of reckless Kremlin rhetoric and aggressive military action in Russia’s so-called near abroad, it is time for renewed approaches to arms control. As the Ukraine situation plays out, Russia, the United States, and allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must return to their bargaining tables and negotiate strict limits, verification measures, and overarching controls over their nuclear use doctrines, weapon stockpiles, and conventional force deployments. All sides will have to make deep concessions and de-alert and de-operationalize mid- and short-range nuclear weapons while improving command and control safeguards—because, as we see, brandishing weapons and threatening escalation heightens tensions and increases the danger of crises spiralling uncontrollably.

Jaramillo: Canada has a duty to do more for innocent civilians in Gaza

Published in the Globe and Mail, November 9, 2023

Cesar Jaramillo is the executive director of Project Ploughshares and the chair of the Canadian Pugwash Group.

The horrific Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 took the world by surprise. Hundreds of innocent people were massacred at a music festival; many residents of border settlements, including babies, were also brutally murdered. In all, about 1,400 were killed; more than 200 have been taken hostage. These are war crimes.

Now Palestinian civilians are enduring unacceptable and unprecedented suffering at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces. With devastation worsening by the day and no end in sight, today Canada has the opportunity – and the duty – to defend the innocents.

After a month of increasing violence, it is past time for the Canadian government to rise to the occasion. As the leader of one of the great democracies in the world, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must speak out against what appear to be egregious human-rights violations and do everything he can to end the slaughter of innocent Palestinian children, women and men.

Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks has included practices that are inconsistent with the most fundamental precepts of international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, precaution, and proportionality. Israeli military and political leaders have boasted of acting without restraint, including Israel’s defence minister (“I have removed every restriction – we will eliminate anyone who fights us, and use every measure at our disposal“), the head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (“Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction”) and the army’s spokesperson (”The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”).

In Gaza, more than 10,000 civilians – almost half of them children – have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. So have scores of journalists and UN aid workers. Amnesty International has pointed to “damning evidence of war crimes” by the IDF. Refugee camps have been attacked and ambulances have been bombed. “Nowhere is safe,” the UN Secretary-General recently observed. In the view of the International Committee of the Red Cross, “the instructions issued by the Israeli authorities for the population of Gaza City to immediately leave their homes, coupled with the complete siege explicitly denying them food, water, and electricity, are not compatible with international humanitarian law.”

Mr. Trudeau once said that upholding international humanitarian law and the rules-based international order should be “at the very heart of foreign policy.” Now Canada must show what this means in practice. The true value of espousing such principles is only realized when they are defended with rigour, consistency and determination.

The rules-based international order is not an ethereal concept; it is grounded in specific norms and principles that have been crafted over generations. And Canada must always protest, loudly, whenever those rules are transgressed, especially when innocent civilians are forced to pay the price. Only by doing so can Canada remain true to the values that it has long held dear, and be a beacon of hope for those who depend on those values to promote and protect their human rights.

This government has also long championed a feminist foreign policy, recognizing the gendered impacts of armed violence and acknowledging that women often bear a disproportionate burden in times of conflict. How should such a champion respond, when attacks on civilian areas in Gaza are leading to mass casualties, with women and children representing nearly 70 per cent of the reported deaths so far?

Canada’s commitment to a feminist foreign policy must not waver. It must remain consistent with our broader commitments to justice, equality, and the well-being of all, particularly those who are most vulnerable in times of conflict.

It is incumbent upon Canada to challenge all countries, including allies, to live up to the same high standards that it has set for itself. Canada’s enduring friendship with Israel must be built on a foundation of shared values. Mr. Trudeau himself set this out in 2020, congratulating Benjamin Netanyahu on his election and noting the importance of the countries’ shared commitment to international law.

Merely adding the phrase “in accordance with international humanitarian law” to acknowledgments of the right of self-defence falls short of what is required. The extensive harm suffered by Palestinian civilians as a result of Israel’s response to the insurgent attacks is not theoretical, but a grim, continuing reality, supported by mounting evidence of concrete violations.

Upholding international humanitarian law and standing resolutely for the protection of civilians is not an option, but an obligation that defines Canada’s character as a nation. In this critical moment, Canada must do more to respond to the needs and pleas of innocent Palestinians. Now is the time to prove Canada’s principles – and this Prime Minister’s, too.

Polanyi: We cannot give up on the dream of nuclear disarmament

November 6, 2023
Globe and Mail, OPINION

John Polanyi is Professor emeritus at the University of Toronto who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry. This text is adapted from remarks he gave last month at Revitalizing Nuclear Disarmament After the Ukraine War, a round-table discussion in Ottawa.

When I was a young chemist at the University of Toronto in 1961, I found myself drawn into the central debate of the age. The Globe and Mail’s pages were discussing nuclear war, asking “if war comes, would we survive?” The question is as valid today as 62 years ago, but we have learned a little in the interim.

In March, 1961, John Gellner, The Globe’s military commentator, wrote these surprising words on the defeatism that marked the mood of the time: “That humanity can survive a nuclear war, and carry on after it, has been established not by the sort of freewheeling speculation that the proponents of surrender generally indulge, but by a thorough scientific enquiry conducted by the U.S. RAND Corporation.” Basing his remarks on his reading of the 1961 RAND report, On Thermonuclear War, by Herman Kahn, Mr. Gellner went on to say, “If certain basic preparations have been made, economic recovery would be 60 per cent complete within one year of a nuclear attack launched against the U.S. in the early 1960s.” The population, he conceded, would have had to “rough it for a time, but could definitely pick themselves up.”

I responded to Mr. Gellner in the Globe of April 5, 1961, arguing that he had taken from Mr. Kahn’s book the absurdly optimistic and hazardous assumption that the victims of a nuclear attack would respond by evacuating all our sizable cities, thus (in my view) precipitating the greatest panic in history. This alarming debate in a respected newspaper did not pass unnoticed. I found myself invited to the office of the minister of foreign affairs at the time, Paul Martin Sr., in Ottawa. He seized his phone and asked to be connected to the House of Commons library. I heard the librarian explaining, apologetically, that Mr. Kahn’s book was presently unavailable since it had been borrowed by Lester Pearson, the prime minister.

My modest excursion into scientific activism had already led to an invitation to participate in a Pugwash Conference, a global disarmament meeting held in Moscow in 1960. On arrival in Moscow, I was handed a message from my host, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He was confident, he said, that his demand for “universal and complete disarmament” would be accorded the meeting’s unanimous approval.

This was a worthy goal. I regarded it then as pie in the sky. But today I consider it the very best hope for mankind. This desired outcome, as Mr. Khrushchev stated it, was not to be achieved without incident. Two years later, the world was faced with unmistakable evidence of the secret emplacement of nuclear weapons in Cuba by the USSR. The contending nations had been plunged into what we know today as the Cuban Missile Crisis – 13 days in which the world teetered on the brink of all-out nuclear war.

What had happened to the unanimous desire for peace that Mr. Khrushchev anticipated? Had it become a casualty to the foolish complacency of the RAND report? Surely not. It derived from something more real than that. Despite the heartening embrace today by world leaders of the dictum that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” we continue to plan for nuclear war. This is the source of our peril.

It remains evident today in the sustained ambition of states to modernize every branch of nuclear weaponry, whether on land, sea or in the air. The reasoning behind this is simple; these weapons have the purpose of deterring an attack by an opponent who will then cease to be a threat. They exist, therefore, to do the thing that is avowed to be impossible, namely to win a nuclear war.

Last week, Vladimir Putin signed a law revoking Russia’s ratification of the global treaty banning nuclear testing. This is bad news, but fortunately, the 2011 New START Treaty is still in effect. Under that deal, the U.S. and Russia agreed to limit the number of nuclear warheads to 1,550. Each weapon is, however, a city-destroyer. Moreover, the accord is in the process of being weakened by pressure to increase the number of missiles to counter a rising China and to offset an increased pace of warfare anticipated in a world of AI.

For U.S. president John F. Kennedy, the possibility of the destruction of mankind was constantly on his mind. “If we err we do so not only for ourselves … but also for young people all over the world, who would have no say.”

Are we ready to assume that responsibility?

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