1945 - 1993:
Will mankind destroy itself?
Presentation at International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies, Erice, May 11th, 2003
Richard Wilson
Harvard University
Introduction
In the 14th century AD awful events struck mankind. As Churchill said in his "History of the
English Speaking Peoples", "Christendom has no catastrophe equal to the Black Death. Vague tales
are told of awful events in China and of multitudes of corpses spreading their curse afar." Within
20 years at least one third of the population of Europe died, and perhaps one third of the whole
world. 'The records of England tell more by their silence than by the shocking figures that confront
us wherever records were kept"(1). No one knows exactly how the pestilence started. No one is sure
why the plague ran its course. Optimists say that the fact that the plague ended is a proof of the
resilience of the human race. Pessimists say that it might happen again - and not stop this time.
About 1930 it was realized that a large meteorite impact on the earth might wipe out half the human
race, although careful estimates of the probability waited another 50 years. Man's efforts to
control each other and destroy opponents were picyune compared with those of nature. The terrible
chemical weapons that came into prominence in World War I, at Ypres and elsewhere, do not
compete. With them, mankind cannot destroy itself.
But on August 6th 1945 everything changed.
In the discussion which follows I will inevitably describe my own personal thoughts and experiences as events unfolded; for it is these that I know best. But I will endeavor to put them into context and describe how mankind might wish to restrain itself.
Nuclear Bombs
In August 1940 I saw my first air raid. A dozen Junkers 87s from the Luftwaffe dive bombed Croydon airport about 5 miles south of my parents house in South London. One was separated from the others and dropped one bomb on a house 1/4 mile away. The bomb had only about 50 pounds of TNT yet it destroyed the house and killed the occupant By 1943 bomb sizes had increased. A 1 ton bomb was called a block buster because it could destroy a whole city block. In 1944 1 ton these became common with the V1 pilotless plane with a 2 ton warhead. We learned to live our lives in spite of them. We had 7 seconds after the engine cut off before the V1 hit the ground. But I remember looking up as the engine of one cut off and saw it head on 100 yards away.
Incendiary bombs were very effective. Initially they weighed only 3 pounds apiece and a single plane could drop 1000 of them. If left to burn, even a single one could setoff a raging fire in a building. The UK dropped thousands on Dresden, and the USA dropped thousands on Tokyo in summer 1945. These were horrifying to me at the time. The Tokyo fire bombing did more damage and killed more people than the bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But the bomb on Hiroshima was different.
I was helping, as Assistant Scoutmaster, to run a Boy Scout camp in Tichfield in Hampshire, UK, when a boy came back from the farm with some milk and some news. "The allies have dropped an atomic bomb on Japan - What is an atomic bomb?" I had not known that the USA and UK were making a bomb, but I had studied mathematics for a year and physics (with radar) for another year, and understood what nuclear fission was. It was clear to me that this was a weapon of several different orders of magnitude. The immediate reaction of us all was unalloyed pleasure: it was the end of a long 6 year war. But within a month the implications began to dawn on me - as they had already been realized by the scientists at Los Alamos. The single bomb had the explosive potential of 20,000 tons of TNT. This was 10,000 the size of previous bombs. The scale increased as the hydrogen bomb was developed. Now there are bombs over a million times as large as the blockbuster. Not only one. It was, and is, clear that with these weapons mankind could start a war that was like no other. Such a war would last less than a day and end with most of the human race destroyed. Although this simple fact has been stated, it is far from clear that it has been understood.
Although research on a nuclear bomb was done before 1943, including the construction of Fermi's reactor at Stagg Field in Chicago, no actual work on the bomb had been done. But by July 1945, after only 2½ years, the first bomb was exploded. The rapidity of this achievement is important. It was done in spite of the fact that no one had done it before. Many Americans, when discussing the ability of other countries to make an atomic bomb, talk about these countries "stealing atomic secrets". Indeed there were technical spies for the Soviet Union. Allan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs. But these only hastened the inevitable by times of the order of months. The basic secrets became public on August 6th 1945: Firstly, it works and secondly, the large scale of the industrial facilities was detailed a few weeks later in the Smyth report(2).
We can argue about details. How long would it take Japan to make a nuclear bomb if they decided, in May 2003, to do so? Weeks or months? How long would it take Switzerland? Months or years? Would the bomb be a sophisticated one? Would it matter? We have the experience of several countries before us. No country has made a bomb as fast as the USA/UK did; but no country has had that incentive. An industrialized country can clearly make a bomb within a few years, starting from scratch, and if there is a nuclear industry for other purposes that can be a little shorter. A non- industrialized country will take longer. Pakistan is an example of a country that took about 15 years.
In 1946 when I started graduate school we would discuss world affairs at the afternoon tea. Jim Tuck was back from Los Alamos. Nicholas Kurti and others had worked on isotope separation by gaseous diffusion. How would the world look 20 years from then in 1966? We agreed that perhaps 100 nations would have an atomic bomb. But we also thought that no one nation would have more than 100 bombs. More than that would be stupid overkill. We were wrong on both counts. I believe that it is interesting to discuss both errors.
Chemical Weapons
Before proceeding with the main arguments, I want to dispose of the idea that chemical weapons are important in this context. Chemical weapons were used in a major way in battle in World War I. Mustard gas, for example, was used at Ypres, and the material is still sometimes called Yperite. Although it had an immediate success in disabling and killing UK soldiers, preventive measures such as gas masks soon made its use less effective. It was still very effective against an undefended population. The British, acting on behalf of the central Iraqi government used it against the Kurds in the late 1920s as did Saddam Hussein 60 years later. Saddam also effectively used phosgene against an untrained and ill equipped army of Iranian teenagers north of Basra. These were effective for their local military objectives. Winston Churchill is reported to have said about the British use in the 1920s: "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes, The moral effect should be good ... and it would spread a lively terror ....". But chemical weapons are not as large as nuclear bombs and do not spread on their own like germ warfare. Although nasty weapons, about which I learnt, first as a first aid party messenger then as a junior Air Raid Warden, in World War II they do not belong, either in my view or in the views of many others, belong in the list of "weapons of mass destruction" and in this audience I will discuss them no further.
Biological Weapons
The very existence of the Black Death gave me as a teenager, a cause for concern. How legitimate was the concern and how legitimate is it now? How do we cope with it now? Two of my colleagues Professors Pound and Ramsey have correctly stated that these too are not Weapons of Mass Destruction, since they do not cause physical destruction as do nuclear weapons. Nor do they think it is likely that mankind can destroy themselves with them. On the first point I agree wholeheartedly on the importance of precise definitions and on departing from common place usage only reluctantly. On the second point there is uncertainty. Pound and Ramsey may be right, but not all scientists agree with them.
Controlling the Genie
I was not at Los Alamos in 1945 but knew many scientists who were of whom a few are still alive. The scientists seem to have understood at once the implications of what they had made. Oppenheimer has described his sophisticated thoughts of the line from the Bhagavad Gita: "I have become Death; the Destroyer of Worlds". Professor Kenneth (Ken) Bainbridge, who was in charge of the Trinity bomb at White Sands near Alamagordo, turned to Robert Oppenheimer as it exploded and observed more pragmatically: "we'll all be called sons of bitches now". The sentiment was the same but it is, perhaps, the difference between the expression of a theorist and that of an experimenter. The genie was out of the bottle. . How can the world control it?
There were two basically different reactions. The one emphasized in the public mind by Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard is that the whole world must think about this matter and act together to prevent nuclear war. Many other scientists were in agreement and founded the Federation of American Scientists with its Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. I will call this reaction the ES approach.
Another view was expressed by General Groves, which I will call the Groves approach, was urged by General Groves as early as September 1945. America must remain the most powerful country and prevent, by force if necessary, acquisition of an atomic bomb by any country we (the USA) do not trust. I have not asked them this question directly, but it seems to me that both Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner held the Groves point of view. This view has received much prominence in the Presidency of George W. Bush and articulated quite bluntly by Donald Rumsfeld. From 1945 to 2001 the Einstein-Szilard point of view was developed. The sharp distinction between these two points of view has been articulated by the columnist Jonathan Schell.
Arms Control Treaties
Between the world wars European countries and the USA tried to limit the military might of Japan. For example, a naval treaty was made that the number of Japanese naval vessels should not exceed the number of vessels deployed by any European country or the USA in the pacific ocean. The Japanese tried to interpret this to allow them to build ships up to the sum of the number of ships deployed in the pacific by all countries taken together. Such treaties have never lasted any length of time. But it is generally recognized that the nuclear weapons treaties must last forever. Details of the Arms Control agreements are available in a Los Alamos report, and book, by David Thomson(3).
Firstly in 1946 there was the Baruch plan. Then the Acheson-Lilienthal plan in which all bomb making was to be handed over to the United Nations. However this was rejected by the USSR and indeed it probably would not have passed the US congress. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in December 8, 1953 President Eisenhower outlined his proposal of Atoms for Peace(4). Recognizing that "the dread secret [of making nuclear weapons] is not ours alone" and any nation would develop a nuclear weapons unless there was a reason not to do so, Eisenhower proposed that nations share their technology for peaceful uses of the atom. The first international conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from August 8th - 20th , 1955. Homi Bhabba from India was the president of the conference. I. I. Rabi was the key American scientist involved, serving as the U.S. representative on the advisory committee set up by Dag Hammarskjold, secretary general of the UN. The UN has sponsored three such conferences since then - 1958, 1964, and 1971. In 1957 the International Atomic Energy Agency(5) was created which formalized the agreements that followed Eisenhower's speech.
This year will mark the 50th anniversary of this famous speech and it is being discussed in numerous fora. Eisenhower's speech has been widely praised and widely criticized. I will outline the problems that I see and in particular the challenge to the present system being made by the present US administration in winter 2003.
Euphoria
There was widespread enthusiasm after Eisenhower's speech. The leading weapons states, the USA and USSR started competing with each other on helping the smaller countries develop peaceful nuclear programs. England, France and soon Germany joined in. In 1953 nuclear medicine was just beginning. It was thought that every country and region would need its own nuclear reactor to make radioactive sources many of which had short half lives and would need to be made locally. Nuclear Research Reactors using 95% enriched uranium were given or sold to many countries. The US to its "client states" including South Vietnam; the USSR to its "client states" - including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Yugoslavia. They had agreements that the fuel was NOT to be used to make nuclear weapons. There seems to be no record of these agreements being violated, although some actions were taken which we would now consider very careless if not criminal. The first fuel load for the research reactor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville was transported 100 miles from the Babcock and Wilcox fuel fabrication facility in the back of a private station wagon with no police escort. Everyone is more careful now, and moreover most of these reactors are either shut down or have lower enrichment fuel.
No diversion to military use has ever occurred from these light water moderated research reactors. But diversion did occur from heavy water reactors. Canada and France sent heavy water reactors to India and Israel respectively. Safeguards were inadequate in the case of India and Canada was shocked when the reactor was used to make plutonium for a bomb. It seems that France at the time either did not understand or did not care. The Dimona reactor in Israel was, and is, almost exclusively used for making bomb grade plutonium fuel.
Events such as these led to Beaton's criticism: "only a social psychologist could hope to explain why the possessors of the most terrible weapons in history should have sought to spread the necessary industry to produce them in the belief that this would make the world safer"(6)
The sharing of nuclear technology for peaceful purpose has been less than envisaged 50 years ago by Eisenhower in one respect and more in another. The major discoveries of oil throughout the world, and particularly in the Persian/Arabian Gulf has made nuclear electric power much less important than envisaged by Eisenhower. Yet the sharing of nuclear technology in nuclear medicine has exceeded many people's dreams. In many countries one quarter of all hospital admissions involve some application of nuclear technology. Particle accelerators and radioactive sources are used for therapy. CAT scanners, and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance are used for imaging(7).
The weapons states
There is no doubt in my mind that in limiting and controlling the weapons states, particularly the USSR and USA, Atoms for Peace and NPT have been a failure. Article IV of the NPT treaty enjoins all states with nuclear weapons to reduce them. Yet for the first 35 years the USA and USSR steadily increased them. By 1987 each had more than 10,000 bombs ready mounted on delivery vehicles, and pure fuel in reserve for 20,000 more. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the build up had only just begun and both USA and the USSR had fewer. Most Americans were scared (the modern word would be terrified), and the deterrent effect was clear. I would have been scared by 100 bombs(8). Mutually Assured Destruction was assured. No one has ever come up with an physical explanation, plausible to me, why a country should need more. Nuclear weapons are not like ordinary ones and a step by step reduction by two adversaries should not be necessary to ensure the deterrent effect. But deterrence is psychological. If the other party believes in parity it might be tempted to make a preemptive strike if a disparity ever appears.
The education in these matters of the highest leaders of our countries is essential (or the choice of leaders already educated). In this connection I note the comment made (in his office) to a small human rights group at the end of May 1991 by the defense minister of the Soviet Union, Marshal Yazov. "The Chernobyl Accident was very important. If a power station not designed to explode caused that much mess, it showed those of us who did not already know that a nuclear war would destroy the planet". I inferred from his comment that USSR generals before 1986 thought that they could win a nuclear war - even though the USA had 10,000 operational bombs.
Although the test ban treaty now on the table would not have much physical effect, it would be very important psychologically and in my view the failure of the USA to ratify it is very disturbing. Even worse are the explicit statements of the present US administration that a "first strike" might now be considered against "rogue states" and the abrogation of the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. US leaders in 2003 seem to understand the technical implications no better that USSR leaders did before 1996.
I agree with a suggestion made by Richard Garwin in 1995. "As the demilitarization and disposal of weapon material proceeds, attention should be given to a next rung in descending the nuclear ladder in which the U.S. and Russia could maintain a force of 1000 nuclear warheads each, but without "reserve warheads". This should be accompanied by a limit or reduction (as the case may be) to 300 nuclear warheads each in the armories of Britain, China, and France." (9) But I look forward to another phase where we reduce to 100 bombs or fewer.
Are all nations equal?
Clearly all nations are not equal. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace speech appealed to the states with nuclear know-how, peaceful or otherwise to share some of it. The Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) defines two categories: weapons states and non weapons states. It is not specific in what should be shared and to whom. In the intervening 50 years we have sharpened what should be shared and what should not. This has created a third category. In addition to weapons states and non-weapons states there are "supplier" states - countries with extensive nuclear fission know-how and productive capacity but without nuclear weapons. I include in this category countries which could be suppliers but do not in fact do so. I noted above that these supplier countries will no longer freely give or sell nuclear research reactors. But in the early 1970s Germany planned to sell a fuel reprocessing plant capable of processing fuel from many reactors, - to Brazil - a country with one reactor and no foreseeable need except a desire for nuclear bombs. France likewise agreed to sell a reprocessing plant to Pakistan. Neither Brazil nor Pakistan had signed NPT. That these sales were even contemplated shows a lack of thought by the leaders of France and Germany(10). These sales fortunately never came to pass. As I prepared this talk I was, however, reminded that in the 1980s Italy sold to Iraq a fuel fabrication facility that could be used for reprocessing a limited amount of fuel for a bomb.
This has led to suggestions for regional fuel cycle facilities rigidly controlled and inspected, and located in "reliable" or "trusted" supplier countries. This idea has elements of the Acheson-Lilienthal plan.. Before 1975 an important element in non-proliferation was to ask that spent nuclear fuel always be returned for processing and burial to the supplier country. Unfortunately this provision was abandoned by President Carter in 1975, as a sop to some uninformed environmentalists who objected to the USA becoming a nuclear waste dump. These environmentalists almost certainly increased the probability of proliferation of weapons - a problem which dwarfs the problem about which they profess to be concerned(11).
Now is a time to reconsider regional fuel reprocessing and regional high level waste storage. Nuclear power is in a holding pattern - some would say in the doldrums - but spent fuel is piling up. Moreover many energy analysts expect a resurgence in nuclear power within the next two decades, and it would be wise to have plans for international control in place rather than argue about them in a hurry. Indeed, one expert argues that the difficulty is so great that the world should forego nuclear electricity in spite of its advantages(12).
Why would a country make nuclear weapons?
and why might it refrain from doing so?
The Eisenhower proposal of emphasizing Atoms for Peace is often described as offering a carrot and a stick. The carrot of access to peaceful nuclear technology and the stick if they show a tendency to work on bombs. How has this worked out in smaller countries? Let us speculate about their decision processes.
That only 8 countries now have nuclear weapons, the 5 "weapons states" who had them before the start of NPT (USA, Russia as the heir to USSR, UK, France and China) and three non signatories, India, Israel and Pakistan, rather than the 100 countries that we considered to be likely states with weapons in 1946, is obviously a result of decisions, explicit or implicit, by the other countries. Each country must balance the advantage of making a weapon versus refraining. Much of the diplomacy of the weapons states has been to try to tip the balance in favor of restraint. In this it must be said at the outset that the US position is not very consistent. While threatening Iran, and North Korea when they show inclinations in the direction of making bombs, the USA does nothing to persuade India, Israel and Pakistan to give up their weapons and even give Israel the largest per capita subsidy that we give to any country.
There are divergent views for this inconsistency. Clearly, as noted above, none of the weapons states or supplier states, consider all countries to be equal. The USA in particular does not trust either Iran or North Korea and believes that they might well use any nuclear weapons in aggressive actions or sell them to another country with aggressive intent. The USA only trusts Pakistan and India to a limited extent. Why the USA trusts Israel is a matter for dispute. Some argue that because Israel has a western culture, the USA trusts that Israel will only use nuclear weapons for defense. Others are more cynical. Nonetheless every diplomat, including US diplomats, with whom I have discussed the question recognizes (privately) the extraordinary difficulty to which this seeming inconsistency leads when attempting to influence third world countries with a different culture. Clearly we have created a fourth category of states. Those that are "trusted". The crucial question is who is to do the trusting? You? Me? The USA? The UN? Clearly we need the trust of the largest possible group.
We now have over 180 separate sovereign countries in the world. Most have decided not to make nuclear weapons. A few decided to make them and changed their minds. . What are the reasons in each case and can the world enhance the reasons for not making them? As I ponder this question I first note an unfortunate fact. The United States has always provided the biggest incentives for another country to make a nuclear weapon. I will briefly repeat the arguments I made in Erice 20 years ago(13). From 1940 - 1945 the USA and UK cooperated in making an atomic bomb, with agreement that they would share the scientific results for peaceful uses after the war and any financial advantages that accrued therefrom. In 1945 the cooperation stopped. Records suggest that the UK government decided to make a bomb so that they would be taken seriously by the USA and cooperation could resume. My personal conversations, around 1950- 1955, with UK government leaders confirmed the reasons for that decision. In this they succeeded and there exists a "special relationship". Although I do not believe that France would have made a nuclear bomb while Frederic Joliot was alive, De Gaulle decided to make one for similar reasons to the English although more elegantly phrased; it was for "La Gloire de la France". Although the USSR clearly made one to "balance power" it is likely that China made one because the USSR did not take them seriously. If I was a third world leader right now, contemplating firstly the Israeli attack on the OSIRAK reactor in 1981 and even more the recent war on Iraq, I would certainly contemplate making a nuclear weapon so that my country would be taken seriously. This immediately raises the question: why does the US, and now the UK, take more seriously a country with nuclear weapons than a country without? Clearly there is a short term advantage from taking seriously the countries with nuclear weapons. But in the long term the present US attitude may be disastrous.
There are a number of countries that could have made or could make nuclear bombs without being stopped by the USA. Of these I include Japan, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Argentine and Brazil. South Africa, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have had nuclear weapons and removed or destroyed them. Why have they not, and in some instances, started and then stopped? I believe that this should be a very instructive study. The "Pax Americana" satisfies some countries. Some Japanese are very explicit: "In the first instance Japan, if threatened, depends upon the US nuclear umbrella. But if that is ever in doubt, then I hope that my countrymen will have the will to make nuclear weapons". Others such as Canada, Sweden and Switzerland prefer to remain in the background.
Did NPT help to stop proliferation?
Two points of view are often expressed. The first is that NPT has been very successful (in stopping proliferation) Instead of 100 or so countries possessing nuclear weapons there are only 8. The second is that it has been ineffective at controlling the 8, and by the exclusiveness of the "nuclear club" has increased the incentive for another country to possess such weapons and the fact that nuclear weapons are presently limited to 8 countries is for completely different reasons.
There are several countries that started nuclear weapons programs in the 1950s and 1960s and stopped. I know of Switzerland, Sweden, Brazil, Argentine, South Korea, Taiwan. South Africa even made bombs before canceling the program. In any political decision a country must weigh the advantages of each alternative. A nuclear bomb program is relatively cheap. The cost and ease of a small nuclear bomb program is less than the cost and ease of a nuclear power program. As just one example of this, the US chose, during the cold war, to put tactical nuclear weapons in Europe rather than to match the numbers of conventional men and materials the USSR put on the other side of the iron curtain. If the developed nations want to prevent undeveloped nations from making bombs, it behooves us to help provide a disincentive. If not Eisenhower's carrot, then what?(14)
On the other hand the thought that India and Israel were provided research reactors under the mistaken impression that they were to be used for peaceful purposes concerns us all. To the extent that they were provided under the Atoms for Peace Initiative, and would not have been provided otherwise, is an implicit criticism of Eisenhower's initiative and hence NPT .
Should there be preemptive strikes?
The example of OSIRAK
I am not going to say definitively whether there should be preemptive military action against a country making nuclear or biological weapons. But I believe VERY strongly that there are some very important conditions that should be met before there is any consideration at all for such a strike. I note first that the threat of mankind's self destruction will be with us till the end of the human race, and indeed if we are not careful there will be a premature end of the human race. Security will demand eternal vigilance. This puts a premium on openness, accuracy and truthfulness - all virtues that Eisenhower's approach encouraged. An ill conceived preemptive strike may win a battle but lose the war. In this scientific and technical accuracy is vital to avoid mistakes. Yet in the USA, for example, there were in the Clinton administration and are in the present Bush administration, fewer competent scientists in positions of authority than at any time since the second world war. As an example of a preemptive strike that I believe aggravated the world situation I remind you of the Israeli attacks on the OSIRAK reactor in 1981.
In the 1970s France changed. Although France did not join IAEA till about 1979, in 1975 or thereabouts, an agreement was made between the French Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac, and Iraq to provide a research reactor. Citing the DIMONA experience the engineer Yves Girard refused to supply a heavy water reactor of the OSIRIS or DIMONA design(15). Instead he designed a light water reactor with which it is hard to make much plutonium. French engineers were to stay with the reactor for a few years and could have reported any attempts at the rebuild necessary to make it a plutonium producer. Nonetheless the Israelis regarded OSIRAK as a military threat. Firstly the plant was sabotaged while it was still in France, the Egyptian chief engineer was set up by a prostitute and murdered and then the prostitute was knocked down by a car. Israeli activists are widely believed to be responsible. Finally the Israeli air force bombed the reactor just before it went critical, destroying the containment vessel and the controls but since the reactor itself was under water, it was shielded from the blasts.
The Chairman of the Board of Governors of IAEA, the late Bertrand Goldschmidt(16), was livid (as were many other experts). While as a Jew he had especial sympathy with Israel, he was concerned (as I was and am) that Israel had attacked the attempts by the world, with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to control the genie which was let out of the bottle in 1945. I visited the nuclear research reactor in Iraq on December 29th 1982 and visually inspected the reactor (which had been only partially damaged) and its surrounding equipment(17). To collect enough plutonium using OSIRAK would have taken decades not years. The day after the bombing, the Israeli Prime Minister Mr Begin incorrectly described OSIRAK. His description did match the Israeli DIMONA reactor about which we now know from what Mr Vanunu revealed to the Sunday Times(18) in 1986.
Israel was widely condemned by the US Congress and by the UN security council. There is strong evidence that, far from stopping a nuclear bomb program, the preemptive strike started one. I have been told that although Saddam Hussein decided on making a nuclear weapon immediately after OSIRAK was bombed, Iraq's leading nuclear scientist, the high energy physicist Dr Jafar Dhia Jafar, was not immediately released from his confinement in a "mental hospital" but only returned to Tuwaitha on September 3rd 1981(19).
My conclusion is that the bombing achieved the opposite of what was intended(20). We now know (from David Kaye's inspections) that special secret facilities were built at locations other than the Atomic Energy Laboratory in Tuwaitha. But that did not stop Nicholas Kristof(21) stating, without proof, or even argument, that if Israel had not bombed the OSIRAK reactor in 1981 "Iraq would have gained nuclear weapons in the 1980s." By this technically incorrect statement Kristof built up an argument for preemptive strikes. My conclusion is very different(22). A preventive strike should NEVER be undertaken without a full technical understanding - which was not possessed by Kristof and seemingly not by the Israelis. In addition to probably influencing the start of Iraq's nuclear bomb program it lulled the Israelis into a false sense of security and neither they nor the CIA seemed to have no idea of what Iraq was really doing(23).
A general conclusion is that the USA should certainly NOT consider a preemptive strike against North Korea similar to that against OSIRAK. Instead our task is to encourage North Korea to go the peaceful route taken by its neighbors, South Korea and Japan. Japan, the sufferer from the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, has especial credibility. The USA, the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons, and by calling North Korea part of an axis of evil almost invites them to make bombs, must tread warily. Sadly, in the previous and present US administrations there were, and are, fewer persons of technical competence in high positions than at any time since World War II.
But the issue of proliferation is serious. The world (as expressed in the UN) must make it clear whether the world will tolerate further proliferation. I suggest that urging an open society is a better alternative than saying that we, the strongest nation, have a right to make a preemptive strike against any nation a technically uninformed leader might choose for economic or other reasons.
Inspections
Biological Weapons
All the above discussion is about nuclear weapons yet it was the Black Death that first disturbed me. Clearly mankind can now cope with the plague better than 700 years ago. But with genetic engineering can mankind create a modified organism that can defeat existing vaccines? Or perhaps a small pox that can be airborne and more easily spread? If so, the human race might be wiped out before either a vaccine or natural immunity could be developed. I raised this possibility at a Congressional Hearing on Risks of Genetic Engineering 25 years ago - but was laughed at. In March 2003. It was raised again in great seriousness at a conference on bioterrorism(27).
I have repeatedly argued that in protecting physical facilities from terrorism we should carry out a full Probabilistic Risk Assessment, using the event tree approach, and emphasize the Low Probability High Consequence events. A terrorist will make it more probable(28)
To a considerable extent the same argument applies to bioterrorism. We have before us examples of epidemics of diseases in the world that we do not understand or are for social reasons unable to control: AIDS, Lassa Fever and now SARS. A prompt response by fully empowered health authorities may well be the most important step.
There are other similarities between control of nuclear and biological or chemical weapons. The poison gas phosgene is an intermediate in fertilizer manufacture. Supplier countries must therefore be wary of supplying fertilizer plants to developing nations. Likewise the manufacture of biological weapons can use facilities designed for the production of vaccines. Supplier nations must be as wary as they are for nuclear reactors or reprocessing plants.
Inspections of nuclear facilities are comparatively easy because the raw material, separated uranium of plutonium, is not easy to obtain in large enough quantities - although it is becoming easier. However biologically nasty materials can be made in small quantities in small facilities - even as in the case of Iraq in mobile facilities. That makes inspections for biological weapons much harder. It may well be impossible without some degree of cooperation from some of the scientists involved.
But G.K. Menon pointed out to me another important difference. Whereas it I possible to talk about actions by an individual country on control of nuclear weapons, that makes no sense for biological weapons. The experiences of the Black Death, of AIDS and of SARS tell us that a response to be effective MUST be international.
Public Understanding
Most nuclear scientists in the USA understand the facts and implications of the existence of nuclear bombs. Many biologists and medical experts understand the biological weapons. But these terrible weapons are understood much less by other scientists and even less by the general US public. On the whole the understanding of European scientists is similar. But, alas, the understanding in the developing world is far less, and might even be said to be non existent.
I tried, as a father, to explain these facts to my children. They knew that I was worried, even scared, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis but their understanding was slow to develop. More importantly it is a subject on which I cannot get my grandchildren interested. Yet in a few years it will be their world, not mine. It does not seem to be discussed in schools; indeed the fact that there are opposing points of view of the way of coping with the problem and neither has a provable argument, makes it a "political" argument and high school teachers often shy away from such "political" discussions.
When it comes to the third world, or the developing world, the situation is far worse and the fault is often our own. Committees of the government, or the National Academy of Sciences, meet in Washington; at times of concern they sometimes go as far as Moscow or Beijing. But of these committees who discuss the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and make recommendations thereon, how many Chairmen, or even ordinary committee members, actually visit a country which might be considering making a nuclear weapon and explaining the issues to scientists and the people? I know it is few. It may be zero.
Although I have not made a systematic campaign of talking to people in other countries I have done more than most. In January 1982 I visited both India and Pakistan in an attempt to understand and persuade them privately to exercise restraint. In the 1980s I was asked, while visiting these countries for other reasons, to lecture in both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by the departments of physics in their main Universities, on the reasons for concern about nuclear weapons and why we had the posture of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). They were previously almost completely uninformed. Yet it is their world as much as it is ours. I contend that this as a major failing of the developed countries, particularly my own (USA). It is arrogant to make recommendations for other countries without knowing them.
This then leads to one of my strongest recommendations for the future. We must have an education campaign about the crucial technical facts; starting in high schools of the developed world including western Europe and Japan, and proceeding to the third world countries.
Conclusions
There remain some open questions. Can we change the fact that NPT is a colonialist treaty or make it more acceptable to smaller nations?
If preemption is decided upon, who decides? The Most Powerful Nation, or an international organization such as the UN?
If the Most Powerful Nation is it the White House? The Congress? Or both on advice of an NAS committee?
If the UN, the Security Council or the IAEA?
Why should not North Korea or Iran be allowed to withdraw from NPT and make nuclear weapons if they wish to? Under a "pure" AS approach we would not stop them. Under the Groves approach the US will stop them because we don't like either government.
Is there a middle ground?
There are some conclusions that I hold firmly,
(1) It is essential that the proponents of both the Einstein-Szilard and the Groves points of view articulate their reasons more clearly so that one may discuss the features of both. Is there a possibility of a rapprochement between the two approaches?
(2) We need more and continuous education of the American and European people, and their leaders, about the scientific facts and their implications.
(3) We need education of the third world countries: firstly the scientists and then the people about the scientific facts and their implications.
(4) We need to understand why some countries have abandoned nuclear weapons programs and some have abandoned weapons themselves.
(5) We need to emphasize these reasons to all wavering developing countries
(6) Within NPT we need to decide how weapons states and supplier states should behave
towards the three countries which have built nuclear weapons but have not signed NPT.- India, Israel
and Pakistan
(7) The weapons states and supplier states need to decide whether to behave more or less
generously to these three countries or to those who withdraw from NPT to build a nuclear weapons.
The decision must be explained and justified to the public.
(8) We need to understand how the principles developed for nuclear weapons proliferation apply to biological weapons proliferation.
(9) We need to remember and even paraphrase Voltaire:
"the price of existence is eternal vigilance".
References
1. 1 Churchill, W.S. "History of the English Speaking Peoples" Volume I, pp278-279 Cassell, London
2. 2 Smyth, Henry De Wolf, A general account of the development of methods of using atomic energy for military purposes under the auspices of the United States government, 1940-1945 Washington, D. C.: U. S. Govt. Print. Off., 1946
3. 3 Thomson, David B. "A Guide to the Nuclear Arms Control Treaties" Los Alamos National laboratory Report LA-UR-99-3173 (1999)
4. 4 Public papers of the Presidents, Eisenhower pp813-822 (1953). Available on the web at: http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/About/atoms.html
5. 5 History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years, STI/PUB/1032, IAEA, Vienna 1997; available on the web at: http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/publdetpub1032.asp
6. 6 Must the Bomb Spread? Beaton, L. Penguin Books PP 88-89,
7. 7 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging is shortened by physicians to MRI to avoid negative connotations of the word "nuclear".
8. 8According to the listing maintained by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the numbers of
bombs in 2002 are: USA 10,640; Russian Federation 8,600; UK 200; France 350; China
400; India 30-35; Israel 100-200; Pakistan 24-48. It is likely that fewer are operational.
9. 9 The Past Present and Future of Nuclear Weapons: After the 50th Anniversary, What? Richard L. Garwin, talks at Frankfurt University and University of Marburg (1995).
10. 10 The problem exists even in the USA. In 1983 I wrote to a former colleague, Dr Henry Kissinger, then US Secretary of State asking him to intervene. He showed a singular lack of understanding of the issue. In a personal letter he replied "Non-Proliferation is Secondary to maintenance of Our Alliances". But the French were learning. They stopped work on the Pakistan contract and waited for Pakistan to cancel it.
11. 11 Different participants in the discussions that led to these decisions emphasize different aspects. I was very outspokenly critical of many of the participants at the time. I merely summarize the final decision and its effect.
12. 12 .H Feiveson in "Science and Society" published by the American Physical Society (2003)
13. 13 Richard Wilson, "Reducing the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons by Advancing Nuclear Power," talk to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, published by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, April 1978. Richard Wilson, "De-Facto Non-Proliferation Principles," presented to the International Seminar on Nuclear War, Erice, Italy, August 1982. Published as "The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," Progress in Scientific Culture, Autumn 1982, Vol. 7, No. 3, Ed. A. Zichichi.
14. 14 I note here that there is a special fund for help to developing nations administered by IAEA. This used to be for help in nuclear matters. Dr Adnan Shihab-Eldin, who was in charge of this fund for a few years, told me that the USA now insists that it NOT be used for nuclear activities.
15. 15 Described in detail to the author by Yves Girard in a private dinner in about 1995. Yves Girard is the author of "Un Neutron entre les Dents" (1998) Les Editions Rive Droite
16. 16 Detailed in a telephone call from Goldschmidt in Paris to the author in Geneva the day after the bombing.
17. 17 "A visit to the bombed nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha, Iraq," Nature, 302, March 31, 1983 .
18. 18 Sunday Times, UK October 5th 1986
19. 19 Information in an E mail from Dr Imad Khaddouri, a former colleague of Jafar, May 8th 2003
20. 20 Some cynics, including Bertrand Coldschmidt, have contended that the real purpose of the bombing was to reelect Mr Begin in the Israeli elections the next day. If so, it succeeded. He obtained a margin of one vote in the Knesset.
21. 21 Nicholas Kristof in a lead article in the New York Times on November 15th 2002
22. 22 My attempts to get the New York Times, or other major newspaper, to publish a letter correcting Kristof's technical error failed. My comment was published in "The Yellow Times"
23. 23 "Iraq's Uranium Separation: The Huge Surprise", R. Wilson. New Outlook, Sept./Oct., 1991 p. 36.
24. 24 Clandestine activities occur in most countries. For example, the USSR continued to have a chemical weapons and biological weapons program long after they had agreed to stop. There are less egregious examples in the USA and UK.
25. 25 It was explained to me orally both by Dr Ecklund and Dr Hans Blix (successive Directors General of IAEA) that this restriction was essential to get the full support of some developing countries. But it rendered the inspections of Iraq useless.
26. 26 I accept here the statements to the UN security council in February and March 2003 by Dr El-Baradei, Director General of IAEA. However, I note that he did ask for more time to be sure.
27. 27 "Rapid Diagnosis of Genetically Altered Bacteria: a Nightmare" A.F.Azad, BTR 2003 conference, Albuquerque, NM, March 21st 2003
28. 28 "Combating Terrorism: An Event Tree Approach" Richard Wilson at International Seminar
on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies 27th session pp 122-146 Ed. A. Zichichi, World
Scientific (2002). Also: "Combating Terrorism: An Event Tree Approach" Richard Wilson
BTR 2003 conference, Albuquerque, NM, March 20th 2003, available on the web at:
http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/publications/albuquerque.html.