John Polanyi, 2022 Andrei Sakharov Prize recipient

Posted on editor


2022 recipient of the Andrei Sakharov Prize
John C. Polanyi, University of Toronto

Citation:
“For seven decades of tireless activism for a nuclear-weapons-free world, for upholding human rights and freedom of speech globally, for public education on the essential role of science in society, and for a visionary approach to bringing about a hopeful, peaceful future.”

Background:
The Honourable John Charles Polanyi, P.C., C.C., F.R.S., F.R.S.C. John Polanyi, educated at Manchester University, England, was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, U.S.A. and the National Research Council, Canada. Since July 2021 he has held the title Emeritus University Professor at the University of Toronto where he is actively publishing scientific papers and commentaries on public affairs. His research is on the molecular motions in chemical reactions in gases and at surfaces. He is a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Canada (F.R.S.C.), of London (F.R.S.), and of Edinburgh (F.R.S.E.), also of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Rome and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada (P.C.), and a Companion of the Order of Canada (C.C.). His awards include the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of London, and over thirty honorary degrees from six countries. He has served on the Prime Minister of Canada’s Advisory Board on Science and Technology, the Premier’s Council of Ontario, as Foreign Honorary Advisor to the Institute for Molecular Sciences, Japan, and as Honorary Advisor to the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Germany. He was a founding member of the Committee on Scholarly Freedom of the Royal Society, and President of a further international human rights organization, the Canadian Committee for Scientists and Scholars. Additionally he was the founding Chairman of the Canadian Pugwash Group (1960-1980) being active for 40 years in International Pugwash. He has written extensively on science policy, the control of armaments, and peacekeeping. He is co-editor of a book, ‘The Dangers of Nuclear War’, and was a participant in the recent ‘Canada 21’ study of a 21st century defence posture for Canada. He was co-chair (with Sir Brian Urquhart) of the Department of Foreign Affairs International Consultative Committee on a Rapid Response Capability for the United Nations. URL: sites.utoronto.ca/jpolanyi

Selection Committee:
Laura H. Greene, Maglab, Florida State University Ian Jauslin, Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton University Vasudevan (Vengu) Lakshminarayanan, University of Waterloo Saeed Pegahan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Athena Sefat, National Institute of Standards and Technology Virginia Trimble, University of California, Irvine, Annick Suzor-Weiner, Université de Paris

Prospects for Peace (A Conversation with Matt Korda)

Posted on Sean Howard

November 3, 2021 | Cape Breton Spectator

Last October, in anticipation of a change of presidential administration in the United States, I interviewed Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists on the prospects for a progressive reformation of American foreign and defense policy .

Korda expressed what I would characterize as ‘qualified pessimism’ about the potential for Joe Biden to square a rather vicious circle: ending America’s ‘forever wars’ and inaugurating a new era of ‘peace first’ diplomacy, while maintaining what the Democratic Party Platform called “the best-trained, best-equipped, and most effective fighting force in the world.” Given this “bizarre contradiction,” he reasoned, it was “difficult to expect much change in the overall direction of US foreign policy” post-Trump.

Sadly, he was right, though ‘not much’ is still better than ‘none,’ and Biden has ended (in horrible circumstances) America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, while averting the complete collapse of US-Russia nuclear arms control by agreeing to extend until 2026 the New START Treaty, limiting each side to a way-too-high, world-ending ceiling of 1,550 thermonuclear warheads.

Accompanying this relative prudence, however, have been nasty surprises – most shockingly, the Trump-esque folly of selling nuclear-powered submarines to Australia – and the tabling of the biggest ever Pentagon budget, three-quarters-of-a-trillion bucks at a time of fragile pandemic recovery, atrocious inequity, and ‘do or die’ climate emergency .

Korda’s main area of expertise is nuclear weapons policy, and much of our exchange last year explored options for reducing fast-rising nuclear spending and risks. He is also, however, a climate and social justice activist, part of the Sunrise Movement for a Climate Revolution and a founding member of the Foreign Policy Generation initiative, promoting the peace-loving, war-weary perspectives of those “old enough to remember the events of September 11, 2001 and the impact they had on US policy, but…too young to have our voices heard in shaping those policies.” This breadth of perspective deepened our dialogue and made me keen to draw again on his expertise, a year after Biden’s resounding victory. Happily for the Spectator, he kindly agreed.

Our interview (here lightly edited) was conducted by email in the first half of October.

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Does the Conference on Disarmament have a future?

Posted on Paul Meyer

[tandfonline.com]

The Conference on Disarmament (CD) has been in a prolonged state of paralysis. Since its negotiation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, it has not produced any other agreement and has been unable even to agree on a Programme of Work. The dysfunction of the CD has been a product of its extreme version of the consensus rule for decision-making and a counter-productive dynamic among its 65 member states that privileges national preference over the collective good that compromise could yield. The bankruptcy of the CD erodes the credibility of the multilateral disarmament enterprise as does the complicity of its members in perpetuating a diplomatic charade. Moving its core issues out of the CD and into negotiating forums not vulnerable to a de facto “veto” provides an escape route for those states genuinely interested in making progress. Without the political will to engage in creative diplomacy to break out of the CD’s straitjacket, the outlook for the future of the UN’s “single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum” looks bleak.

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The CPG Policy Conference (held online, 19 October 2021)

Posted on editor

October 19, 2021 (3:00-6:30pm EDT)

International Cyber Security – Threats and Opportunities for Canada

Global society is increasingly dependent on a functioning cyberspace for its well-being, yet the “militarization” of this environment is growing apace alongside criminal assaults on its users.

How should Canada position itself with respect to this emerging technology and its implications for security? CPG has assembled eminent Canadian experts to discuss this topic. All are welcome to attend this virtual conference by registering at this link: https://sfu.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5AsduyorTMjGNL1Lei21P9TgTWXrBqVrONT.

Program:

1500-1515 – Welcome and Introduction
1515-1545 – The Threat Environment (Peggy Mason)
1545-1615 – The Legal Restraints (Craig Martin)
1615-1645 – Existing and future roles for the Canadian Forces (Stephanie Carvin)
1645-1715 – The role of CSE and the five Eyes (Bill Robinson)
1715-1745 – The Diplomatic Process (Paul Meyer)
1745-1815 – The role of Civil Society (Allison Pytlak)
1815-1830 – Conclusion

Speakers:

Stephanie Carvin is an Associate Professor at Carleton University. Her research interests are in the area of international and national security, and technology. Stephanie holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and is the author of several books, including Stand on Guard: Reassessing Threats to Canada’s National Security (Toronto, 2021). She is the co-author of Intelligence and Policy Making: The Canadian Experience (Stanford 2021) and co-editor of Top Secret Canada: Understanding the Canadian Intelligence and National Security Community (Toronto: 2021).  In 2009 Carvin was a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University Law School and worked as a consultant to the US Department of Defense Law of War Working Group. From 2012-2015, she was an intelligence analyst with the Government of Canada focusing on national security issues.

Bill Robinson writes the blog Lux Ex Umbra luxexumbra.blogspot.com, which focuses on Canadian signals intelligence activities past and present. Since 2017, he has been a Research Fellow at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. From 1986 to 2001 he was on the staff of the Canadian peace organization Project Ploughshares.

 

Allison Pytlak manages the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) , where she contributes to WILPF’s monitoring of UN disarmament including through direct participation in many prominent civil society campaigns. Pytlak served as the UN-NGO liaison for the first UN OEWG on cyber security. Her work on cyber issues has focused on inter-state cyber conflict, cyber repression, the militarization of cyber space, the role of civil society, and gender.

 

Paul Meyer is Adjunct Professor of International Studies and Fellow in International Security at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is a Senior Advisor to ICT4Peace, an NGO devoted to preserving a peaceful environment in cyberspace. Prior to taking up his university appointments in 2011, Paul had a 35-year career in Canada’s Foreign Service including serving as Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN and the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva (2003-07). He teaches a seminar on diplomacy and his research interests include international cyber security, outer space security and nuclear disarmament.

A former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament to the UN, Peggy Mason has been the President of the President of the Rideau Institute on International Affairs since June of 2014. Under her leadership, this independent think tank has sought – through policy advocacy and public engagement – to revitalize Canada’s peacekeeping, diplomatic peacemaking and peacebuilding roles in the world, through inclusive multilateralism, strengthening the UN capacity for conflict prevention and peaceful conflict resolution and the progressive enhancement of international law.

Craig Martin is a Professor of Law and Co-Director of the International and Comparative Law Center at Washburn University School of Law in the United States. His scholarship primarily focuses on the interrelated legal systems that govern the different aspects of the use of force and armed conflict—namely, the jus ad bellum regime, international humanitarian law, and constitutional war powers. He teaches public international law, the law of armed conflict, international human rights, climate change law, and both comparative and U.S. constitutional law. Martin studied at the Royal Military College of Canada (B.A.), the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (J.D.), Osaka University, Graduate School of Law and Politics (LL.M.), and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (S.J.D.).

Nuclear disarmament must be a priority for the next Canadian government

Posted on Cesar Jaramillo and Paul Meyer

September 16, 2021 | The Hill Times

If Canada wants to be more than just a back-row supporter of nuclear disarmament it will need to invest some diplomatic energy in this endeavour.

Much like the global climate emergency, the continued existence of nuclear weapons constitutes a clear and present threat to human civilization. But if the topics being addressed by party leaders and platforms during this federal election are any indication, nuclear disarmament would seem to be a non-issue in the Canadian political landscape.

Today nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons remain in existence, many of which are many times more powerful than the ones that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 76 years ago. An entirely preventable existential threat lingers over humanity. And Ottawa is not doing all it can to address it.

With credentials as a bridge builder in international disputes, Canada is well positioned to tackle some of the challenges faced by the global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. Key among them: the chasm that has opened up among the 191 states, party to the cornerstone Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), that has pitted supporters of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) against its opponents who defend the status quo.

The dispute revolves around the best means to achieve the NPT’s commitment to nuclear disarmament. The TPNW stipulates a comprehensive prohibition on nuclear weapons, including not just the threat or use of such weapons, but their very possession. Its opponents favour a “step-by-step” approach to realizing the vaguely phrased NPT commitment to pursue “good faith negotiations on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

Since the TPNW’s more stringent requirements would proscribe continued support for nuclear deterrence (i.e., the threat to use nuclear weapons under certain unspecified conditions), the nuclear weapon states party to the NPT and their allies (including Canada) have, to date, rejected the TPNW. Critically, Canada continues to embrace NATO’s nuclear deterrence policy as a legitimate security doctrine, effectively legitimizing the weapons of its nuclear-armed allies.

The disagreement over the TPNW has put additional stress on the NPT which is already in the diplomatic equivalent of an ICU. Its last Review Conference in 2015 failed to produce an outcome and its 2020 iteration, postponed repeatedly, is now scheduled for January 2022.

Limiting the global nuclear regime has seen major setbacks recently with all five nuclear weapon states engaged in multi-billion dollar “modernization” of their nuclear forces, the dismantlement of arms control agreements, paralysis of multilateral disarmament forums and increased sabre rattling by nuclear armed powers.

Canada is participating in the “Stockholm initiative for Nuclear Disarmament” a grouping of 16 non-nuclear weapon states launched by the Swedish foreign minister in June 2019, which has held four ministerial meetings. The initiative has endorsed 22 “stepping stones” relating to nuclear disarmament and has submitted a working paper to the next NPT meeting. These “stones” are generally light-weight and mainly a repackaging of commitments agreed to at past NPT meetings, but there is potential to do more with this grouping of states.

We see three near-term steps that Canada could take to demonstrate leadership on this challenging issue. First, Canada should help heal the rift between TPNW supporters and opponents by attending, as an observer, the first meeting of TPNW states parties (currently 55) slated to be held in Vienna March 22-24, 2022. Such participation would be a welcome sign of engagement with fellow NPT states which have adopted a different route to fulfill the nuclear disarmament obligation.

Second, Canada should advocate for the inclusion in the Stockholm Initiative package, support for a “No First Use” declaration on the part of nuclear weapon states. Such a step would help counter a destabilizing (and proliferation-friendly) expansion of rationales for the use of nuclear weapons on the part of some nuclear states. It would also be timely given the favourable attitude towards such an adjustment of policy expressed earlier by President Joe Biden and the resumption of strategic stability talks between the U.S. and Russia.

Third, Canada should elevate its involvement in the Stockholm Initiative, including participating in the meetings at the ministerial level. Such engagement on the part of Foreign Minister Marc Garneau could be coupled with an invitation by Canada to host a meeting of the group this fall to prepare for the NPT Review Conference.

If Canada wants to be more than just a back-row supporter of nuclear disarmament it will need to invest some diplomatic energy in this endeavour. A contribution along the lines of those suggested above would be a good place for the next Canadian government to start.

Paul Meyer is adjunct professor of international studies at Simon Fraser University and chair of the Canadian Pugwash Group. Cesar Jaramillo is executive director of Project Ploughshares.

Biden Putin Arctic co-operation gives Canada an opportunity

Posted on Adele Buckley

The Hill Times | July 28. 2021

The Arctic region that has for decades been recognized as non-militarized is now heading toward a state that can only be deemed as militarized.

When the American and Russian presidents met in June for their summit, the Arctic represented a rare point of common ground. Arctic watchers noted U.S. President Joe Biden’s intent that “the Arctic remains a region of cooperation,” and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s equally interesting desire for the Arctic to continue as “a zone of understanding.”

As an Arctic nation, Canada could take this opportunity to support Arctic co-operation and understanding by a modest increment in its Arctic policy. In ongoing support of nuclear arms control and disarmament, Canada should have an aspirational statement that it supports a goal of an Arctic region free of nuclear weapons. This is fully in line with existing Canadian policy. This would not be a case of breaking new ground in nuclear disarmament diplomacy since Denmark (Greenland), under the guidance of then-foreign policy minister Holger Nielsen, has included this aspirational position in their Arctic policy since 2012.

Today there is increased tension created by Russia’s remarkable renewal and increase of military bases and operations in the Arctic and by North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) ever-larger military exercises, annually, in the North Atlantic and extending into the Barents Sea. The Arctic region that has for decades been recognized as non-militarized is now heading toward a state that can only be deemed as militarized.

Canada should take note of recent comments made by U.S. President Joe Biden, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Arctic, writes Adele Buckley. Flickr photograph by JLHervàs, photograph courtesy of World Economic Forum

Canada’s Arctic and Northern Policy Framework has an extensive chapter on safety, security, and defence. Canada plans to deploy several new Arctic-capable surface vessels to aid in the defence of Arctic waters in cooperation with its allies in NATO, a nuclear weapons alliance. Arctic waters are host to submarines known to be equipped with multiple nuclear missiles. Both Russia and the United States continue to upgrade and renew their submarine fleets. Other nuclear weapon states, such as Britain, France, and China, will, in the future, send their submarines to Arctic waters. Submarines will be in the central Arctic Ocean, and sooner or later will find it advantageous to enter Canada’s Exclusive Economic Zones (per United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)). Avoiding all mention of this situation in Canada’s policy document is a major shortcoming. One might also wonder how the participant nations of the Search and Rescue Agreement would handle a submarine accident.

Strong, Secure, and Engaged is a policy statement of the Canadian Department of National Defence. The Arctic section rates half a page, with emphasis on cooperation within the Arctic Council, an admirable organization that intentionally does not address military matters.

The appointment of Mary Simon as Canada’s new governor general raises hope that all of Canada will raise its awareness of Arctic issues and that the Government of Canada will expend resources to support its Arctic security policy. Simon was actively involved in the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) from 1980 to 1994 and served as president from 1986 to 1992. ICC’s member countries include Canada, the United States, Denmark (Greenland) and Russia (Inuit of the Chukotka Peninsula).

Arctic peoples have suffered the burden of a spectrum of nuclear operations, from the Second World War and continuing through the Cold War period. The 1983 resolution on a Nuclear Free Zone in the Arctic is the ICC Resolution demanding the absence of nuclear materials from the Arctic. While it is still in force, this forceful resolution has now fallen into obscurity. ICC published the Inuit Arctic Policy in 2009 and also issued a multi-page excerpt relating to Arctic Security, stating full support for the disarmament goals of the United Nations General Assembly and reiterating the requirement for the absence of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons testing.

Continuing to draw attention to the Arctic and the Inuit people, Canada can make a modest contribution to Arctic cooperation through an aspirational statement, similar to Denmark’s, supporting the future attainment of a nuclear-weapon-free Arctic. Note that of the four ICC member countries, Canada and Denmark, both members of NATO, are nuclear weapons free and have the opportunity to step forward, however lightly, toward nuclear disarmament.

Adele Buckley is a physicist, aerospace engineer, and environmental scientist. She is the past chair of the Canadian Pugwash Group.

Canada and the Limits to Missile Defence

Posted on Ernie Regehr

Canadian Defence Policy Briefing Paper
By Ernie Regehr O.C.; Senior Fellow in Arctic Security and Defence, The Simons Foundation Canada

Speculation about Canada joining the North American component of the Pentagon’s ballistic missile defence (BMD) system of systems makes periodic appearances in Canadian defence discourse — though direct participation has never gained broad political support. Now, with a more “progressive” Democrat back in the White House and NORAD modernization moving up the continental defence agenda, the Canada-and-BMD question could be cued for another round of attention. The context undeniably includes a persistent threat to North America from strategic range, nuclear-armed, missiles, but the American “homeland” missile defence system, due to technical and strategic constraints, offers no defence against the overwhelming majority of missiles aimed at North America.

The American BMD system runs the gamut from localized theatre defence against short-range cruise and ballistic missiles, through to defenses aimed at regional- and then strategic-range threats. Strategic-range ballistic missile threats are the focus of North American homeland missile defence operations, using ground-based interceptor missiles designed to knock out attacking warheads in mid-course in outer space.

The main threat is the Russian arsenal of just over 480 land- and sea-launched intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs), collectively carrying just over 2000 warheads, with a maximum of about 1500 warheads actually deployed (to keep the numbers within the limits established by the recently extended US-Russia New START agreement). China adds roughly another 100 similar missiles collectively armed with about 180 nuclear warheads. In addition, both Russia and China are developing hypersonic and new variants of long-range cruise missiles capable of delivering either nuclear or conventional warheads to North America. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) is the only other adversary country that has tested intercontinental-range ballistic missiles and is in possession of nuclear warheads. Estimates of its inventory of warheads range from 10 to 60, but it is still not clear how close it is to being able to mount a warhead on an ICBM and retain sufficient range to reach North America. That said, it would be prudent to assume it is primarily a matter of time, if Korean Peninsula denuclearization efforts remain stalled. The DPRK might well, in an uncertain future, muster a force of as many as 60 ICBMS, each loaded with a nuclear warhead.

So, all told, some 640 ballistic missiles loaded with more than 1,700 nuclear warheads are potentially aimed at North America. Another 580 warheads on air-launched cruise missiles on bombers, and the emerging inventory of hypersonic missiles and long-range sea-launched cruise missiles, must be added to the missile threat. But the ground-based, mid-course interception defence (GMD) system is aimed only at the DPRK’s ballistic missiles (and possible other future small state arsenals) — in other words, less than three percent of the threat is in the GMD sights.

That begs the obvious question: Why is the North American GMD system directed at only a tiny fraction of the missiles pointed at North America? The answer is that there are unavoidable technical and policy limits to strategic missile defence.

Continue reading (PDF download, 12 pages with endnotes)

Fashioning Fission: The Bikini A-Bomb Tests

Posted on Sean Howard

Bikini, which was once inhabited by a hundred Marshallese, which once belonged to the Germans, and then the Japanese, now belongs to an unknown future along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
— David Bradley, No Place to Hide

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No: this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
— Macbeth

Seventy-five Julys ago the United States flaunted the grotesque glory of its ‘world-destroying’ Wonder-weapon, the man-made Sun of the Atomic Bomb. The high drama of Operation Crossroads was staged at Bikini Atoll in the Northwest Pacific, part of the Marshall Islands, a UN Trust territory ‘administered’ by Washington for the first four decades of the atomic age. By the time the Americans stopped ‘protecting’ it, they had hideously poisoned its lands, waters, wildlife and peoples in the course of 67 nuclear tests, the equivalent, historian Alex Wellerstein calculates, of “a Hiroshima every day for almost forty years,” sending waves of cancer and birth defects – including ‘jellyfish babies,’ embryos unable to develop bone structure – through generations of Marshallese.

In 1952, Eniwetok Atoll in America’s ‘Pacific Proving Grounds’ saw the ‘birth’ of the thermonuclear age (“It’s a boy!” the ‘father of the H-Bomb,’ Edward Teller, cabled ecstatically), a 10-megaton detonation over 500 times more powerful than the ‘Little Boy’ Bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Two years later, Bikini endured the 15-megaton ‘Castle Bravo’ test, America’s largest, a 66-mile-wide Cloud poisoning the 23 crew members (and killing one) of the Japanese vessel Fifth Lucky Dragon, fishing 85 miles from Zero. Among other tests were the imperiously code-named ‘Seminole,’ ‘Huron,’ ‘Sequoia,’ ‘Mohawk,’ ‘Aztec,’ ‘Apache,’ ‘Cherokee’ and ‘Dakota,’ a brazen overlay of American conquests and crimes.

And the horror-show all began with the “temporary” removal of 167 islanders to make way for experiments conducted, US Navy Commodore Ben Wyatt assured them, “for the good of all mankind and to end all wars.” The ‘temporary’ was a cynical ruse, designed to secure the ‘approval’ of the tribal leader, King Juda: the Bikinians still await their return to a homeland rendered, as scientists predicted, uninhabitable for decades or centuries. By ‘end all wars,’ Wyatt meant ‘cow all enemies’. And ‘mankind’ gained nothing from the Operation’s two experiments in extravagant violence: the July 1 explosion, 520 feet above ground, of the 23-kiloton ‘Able’, a plutonium weapon identical to the ‘Fat Man’ Bomb dropped on Nagasaki; and the July 25 blast, 90 feet underwater, of the 21-kiloton ‘Baker,’ of the same ‘model.’

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Could an optional protocol be the way to stop the weaponization of outer space?

Posted on Paul Meyer

Paul Meyer | School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, the United Nations General Assembly and its affiliated forum, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, has had the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space issue on its agenda.

In the intervening years, the threat of weapons being introduced into the outer space realm has waxed and waned, but, in the main, a benign environment free from man-made threats has prevailed, allowing for great strides in the exploration and use of space. Recently, a renewal of great power rivalry including the development of offensive ‘counter-space’ capabilities has resurrected the spectre of armed conflict in space.

With widespread political support for the non-weaponization of outer space, has the time come to give legal expression to this goal by means of an optional protocol to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

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