On January 4, 2007, former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal calling for the United States to launch a major effort to eliminate nuclear weapons. [1] The four statesmen noted that the “world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era.” Addressing world leaders, they set out a series of urgent steps, including:

• increasing warning time for deployed nuclear weapons;
• reducing substantially the size of nuclear forces in all states that possess them;
• eliminating forward-deployed short-range nuclear weapons;
• working to secure ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT);
• providing the highest level of security for all nuclear weapons and fissile materials;
• gaining control of the uranium enrichment process while guaranteeing fuel supplies for nuclear power reactors;
• halting the production of fissile materials for weapons and phasing out the use of highly enriched uranium in civil commerce; and,
• redoubling efforts to resolve regional conflicts that give rise to new nuclear powers.

The four statesmen’s nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament proposals have generated notable responses worldwide. The force of the four statesmen’s message gained momentum as governments, international organizations, and think tanks used it to bolster support for their own nuclear disarmament proposals. In the view of many, the message has provided some hope that the next U.S. administration might be more open to international and bilateral nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament efforts.

Gorbachev’s Op-Ed
A few weeks after publication of the four statesmen’s piece, in another Wall Street Journal editorial, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev provided the first public support for the nuclear disarmament call to action from a major world leader. [2] Gorbachev noted that “a failure of political leadership, which proved incapable of seizing the opportunities opened by the end of the Cold War” has allowed the United States and Russia to re-emphasize “nuclear weapons as an acceptable means of war fighting, to be used in a first or even in a ‘pre-emptive’ strike.” He argued that eliminating nuclear weapons is both a moral and security imperative: “It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious.” Gorbachev seconded the call by the U.S. statesmen for the United States to initiate the process, but he also stated that Russian and European leaders should make major efforts toward nuclear disarmament while involving all states that have nuclear weapons and giving the United Nations Security Council a coordinating role. He specifically called for a dialogue on nuclear weapons elimination to be launched within the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) framework and for the members of the nuclear club to demonstrate their commitment to disarmament by immediately ratifying the CTBT and removing nuclear weapons from Cold War-era high alert status. He concluded that, “Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.” [3]

The Early Response from Germany and Britain
In a speech to the February 2007 Munich Conference on Security Policy, Germany’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier noted the four statesmen’s op-ed and directed specific attention to their calls for all states to prevent nuclear capable countries from deploying nuclear weapons and for nuclear weapons states (NWS) to move toward disarmament. He also argued that it was a NWS responsibility to come up with new ideas regarding international control of the fuel cycle, which in his view was particularly important given the on-going efforts to prevent Iran from pursuing uranium enrichment. [4]

In May 2007, during a House of Lords discussion of nuclear nonproliferation, Baroness Crosby referenced the four statesmen’s op-ed in urging her fellow members to increase efforts to abolish nuclear weapons based on realist security grounds rather than on utopian or ethical concerns: “I think that the Minister would agree that that is a rather surprising group and that in light of that it is important that the United Kingdom is seen to be taking the lead on issues such as the fuel energy bank and the cut-off for fissile materials if we are to stop the possibility of a dangerous rush toward proliferation on the part of non-nuclear powers.” [5] Like other commentators, Baroness Crosby noted the celebrity of the authors, their seeming about-face on nuclear disarmament, and the connection between the op-ed and an ongoing nuclear disarmament effort, in this case the Seven-Nation Initiative on Nuclear Nonproliferation. [6]

One of the strongest showings of support for the four statesmen’s proposal came from the UK’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Margaret Beckett, in a speech at the June 2007 Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference. [7] She noted the challenges to the NPT – Iran and North Korea’s quests for nuclear weapons, terrorists seeking nuclear materials – and the stagnation of disarmament measures such as the U.S.-Russian arms control deals, the CTBT, and the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT). She concurred with the assessment that the weapons states’ failure to pursue nuclear disarmament actively undermined efforts to shore up the NPT: “And what that Wall Street Journal article – and for that matter, Kofi Annan – have been quite right to identify is that our efforts on nonproliferation will be dangerously undermined if others believe, however unfairly, that the terms of the grand bargain have changed, that the nuclear weapon states have abandoned any commitment to disarmament.” While Beckett noted that the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons is possible, she also acknowledged that the British government had recently decided to retain its nuclear deterrent while claiming that the United Kingdom would give up its remaining nuclear weapons on Trident submarines when political conditions changed. [8] In pursuing the goals set out by the four statesmen, Beckett urged ratification of the CTBT and FMCT, a new assessment of global transparency and verification measures, and the negotiation of an international and legally binding arms trade treaty. She said that the United Kingdom intended to be at the forefront of this work and that the International Institute of Strategic Studies planned “an in-depth study to help determine the requirements for the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons.”

In August 2007, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Sergio Duarte cited both the Wall Street Journal op-ed and Beckett’s speech while reiterating their message that a commitment to nuclear disarmament is essential for continued progress on nonproliferation goals. Speaking at a brainstorming session on “Disarmament and Non-Proliferation: Breaking the Stalemate” hosted by the Permanent Mission of Indonesia to the United Nations, Duarte outlined the current dilemma: “The pursuit of nonproliferation in parallel with actions that include policies for maintaining nuclear stockpiles for decades to come – coupled with the development of new types of warheads and delivery systems, and the lack of active planning for security in a world without nuclear weapons – all of these scarcely offer a climate that is conducive to real progress in non-proliferation.” [9] Duarte commented that the four authors’ “strong endorsement of concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament shows clearly that strong support for the elimination of nuclear weapons is by no means limited to the longtime advocates of disarmament.”

Duarte’s recommendation to member states of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) [10] in preparing for future disarmament meetings focused on:

• urging heads of state and government to include disarmament and nonproliferation issues in their plenary statements to the General Assembly and on the agenda of any bilateral meeting with states that may have or may acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD);
• encouraging support from civil society and expanded coverage by the media; and,
• stressing legal approaches.

On the third point, Duarte recommended that NAM members work towards compliance with existing treaty commitments, universal membership in multilateral treaties, entry-into-force of the CTBT and the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (Pelindaba Treaty, signed 1996), and negotiations on new treaties such as the FMCT and the Nuclear Weapons Convention.

A few months later, NAM members Malaysia and Costa Rica submitted a revised version of a model Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) to the United Nations General Assembly. Comparable to the conventions banning chemical and biological weapons, the proposed NWC prohibits development, testing, production, use and transfer of nuclear weapons and provides a phased program for their elimination under international control. It also prohibits the production of weapons usable fissile material and mandates that delivery vehicles be destroyed or converted to render them capable only for conventional use. [11] A model NWC was first submitted to the United Nations in 1997. Since then approximately 125 countries (including nuclear weapons states China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) regularly vote for the UN resolution providing for negotiation of a NWC. Costa Rica also presented the NWC to the NPT PrepCom in May 2007. [12]

Renewed Call for a Nuclear Disarmament
A year after the first Wall Street Journal op-ed, Kissinger, Nunn, Perry, and Shultz renewed their call for a nuclear-free world in another editorial endorsed by 37 nonproliferation experts and former policy-makers. [13] Again, they claimed that with nuclear weapons in the hands of more states, nuclear deterrence is decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous. They noted the strong support for the agenda set in their earlier op-ed, most notably from Gorbachev, Beckett, and from a bipartisan group of “other former U.S. officials with extensive experience as secretaries of state and defense and national security advisors.” [14] While the 2007 op-ed addressed world leaders and urged the United States to take the lead on nuclear disarmament measures, the 2008 op-ed, inspired by a joint Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and Stanford University Hoover Institution conference, urged the United States and Russia to immediately take several measures:

• extend key verification and monitoring provisions of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and further reductions as agreed in the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT);
• increase warning time for launch of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles;
• negotiate cooperative multilateral ballistic-missile defense and early warning systems; and,
• accelerate work on securing nuclear weapons and nuclear materials worldwide and helping other nations comply with UN Resolution 1540.

To advance nuclear nonproliferation, the statesmen called on the United States to pursue talks within NATO and with Russia on consolidating and securing forward deployed portable nuclear weapons, strengthening means of monitoring NPT compliance, and adopting measures to bring the CTBT into effect. The four statesmen sought to engage both NWS and non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS) in the quest to develop the political will needed to pursue practical means of achieving complete worldwide nuclear disarmament and an international system to manage the risks of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Run-up to 2008 NPT PrepCom
Much as the year before, in his speech to the February 2008 Munich Conference on Security Policy, Germany’s Foreign Minister Steinmeier said that he expected the most recent op-ed to inject new momentum into the nuclear disarmament debate at the upcoming NPT PrepCom. He commented that the question of whether the NWS had fulfilled their part of the NPT bargain by working for disarmament was particularly relevant because more states are pursuing a complete nuclear fuel cycle and perhaps nuclear weapons. [15] A few days later, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, speaking at the plenary meeting of the Conference on Disarmament, also pointed to the four U.S. statesmen’s op-ed as a glimmer of hope that the United States might engage in negotiations on a new legally binding, verifiable treaty further reducing the number of strategic delivery vehicles and their warheads. Lavrov acknowledged the strain in U.S.-Russian relations exacerbated by the increasing U.S. efforts to deploy its global ABM system, but he found some promise in the op-ed: “We hope that U.S. negotiators will pay heed to the call of such authorities in this field as George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and William Perry, who argued in a convincing manner in favor of the need to continue nuclear disarmament, strengthen international non-proliferation regimes and maintain strategic stability on a multilateral basis.” [16]

Carrying on the theme of combining the four statesmen’s 2008 op-ed with the preparations for the 2008 NPT PrepCom, the Norwegian government hosted a February conference, co-sponsored by the NTI, the Hoover Institution and the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, to formulate disarmament, nonproliferation and risk reduction proposals. [17] In his keynote address, Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre stated that a nuclear free world has been a longstanding goal of Norway and other countries – both NNWS and NWS – and that the four statesmen’s op-ed had given this goal new impetus by suggesting that in the long run the NWS could be safer without nuclear weapons than with them. According to Støre, “Secretary Shultz, Senator Nunn and their colleagues have … argued that U.S. security interests would be best served by working towards a world free of nuclear weapons.” [18] He noted that in 2005 Norway initiated the Seven-Nation Initiative on Nuclear Non-Proliferation to call for similar measures to shore up the NPT and nonproliferation regime and to pursue practical steps toward nuclear disarmament. In both Norway and Britain, government officials used the four statesmen’s op-ed to provide new urgency to that initiative.

IAEA Director General El Baradei spoke at the conference and commended “the Four Horsemen, as I’ve heard them called” for their “landmark” 2007 op-ed and the 2008 follow-up “with the backing of a blue-chip list of supporters – the list reads like a ‘Who’s Who?’ of the U.S. security and foreign policy establishment of the last 50 years.” [19] While El Baradei echoed almost everything the four statesmen said about creating a nuclear-free world, he took issue with a few points. First, he said that rather than looking for agreement on plans to counter missile threats from the Middle East, the United States, Russia, and their allies should concentrate on reaching out to the Middle East and trying to solve the dire social, economic and political problems that are at the root of extremism and violence. Second, while the op-eds called for the advanced nuclear countries and the IAEA to establish a reliable nuclear fuel supply system, El Baradei stated that such a system “must be unambiguously under multinational control, not just managed by the leading nuclear powers.”

Støre drafted a “Minister’s Summary and Preliminary Recommendations” that fully endorsed “the ideas put forward in the two Wall Street Journal articles” and offered five principles for progress in a global nuclear disarmament effort as well as 10 consensus recommendations. [20] In his statement to the 2008 NPT Preparatory Commission for the 2010 Review Conference, Norwegian Ambassador Bente Angell-Hansen promoted these conference principles: leadership at the highest levels for achieving nuclear disarmament; concrete steps toward disarmament; joint work among states – NWS and NNWS – on nuclear disarmament; adherence to the key principle of nondiscrimination; and transparency from both NWS and NNWS. [21] Based on these principles, Angell-Hansen promoted further steps that had also been recommended by the Oslo Conference, including:

• The United States and Russian should sign a verified legally binding treaty obligating them to reduce the size of their arsenals so nuclear weapons are numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands.
• All states with nuclear weapons should reverse their reliance on the weapons and change the weapons’ operational status to increase decision time.
• All states should ratify the CTBT and strengthen the existing moratorium on nuclear testing until the treaty enters into force.
• The International community should start negotiations on a FMCT.
• All states should adopt a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol with the IAEA and ratify all relevant multilateral instruments on securing nuclear materials.
• States should consider forming a high-level Intergovernmental Panel on Nuclear Disarmament to advise governments on the core requirements for abolishing nuclear weapons. [22]

A statement at the NPT PrepCom by New Agenda Coalition non-governmental experts (representing Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and Sweden) also endorsed the recommendations of the Seven-Nation Initiative, the Hoover Initiative as promoted by the four U.S. senior statesmen, as well as those of the 2006 Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and the United Kingdom’s nuclear disarmament laboratory initiative. [23] Two months prior to the PrepCom, New Agenda Coalition countries and other states participated in the Middle Powers Initiative “Article VI Forum” hosted by Ireland. [24] A section of the forum’s briefing paper focused on the significance of the four statesmen’s proposals (or what the author calls the “Hoover program”):

What is most distinctive about the Hoover program is the framing of well-known steps within the abolition of nuclear weapons. Given its proponents, the initiative forever puts to rest the assertion that being for the abolition of nuclear weapons is unrealistic. In the United States, it has freed think tanks and NGOS devoted to influencing policy in Washington to speak more forcefully. It has been approvingly cited by governments, most recently in February 2008 by German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeir in an important speech at the Munich Security Conference and by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in his statements to the Conference on Disarmament. [25]

The briefing paper discussed the Hoover program along with the UN resolution calling for the negotiation of a convention prohibiting and eliminating nuclear weapons; in 2007, the resolution on negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention was approved by 127 states, including those from the New Agenda Coalition as well as China, India and Pakistan.

The NPT PrepCom Chair, Ukrainian Ambassador Volodyrmyr Yelchenko, issued a Factual Summary of the proceedings that included many of the steps proposed by the Seven-Nation Initiative and the Oslo Conference, and it specifically mentioned the senior statesmen’s contribution: “States parties welcomed other new initiatives by governments and within civil society aiming at achieving the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, including the five principles and recommendations developed at an international disarmament conference held in Oslo in February 2008, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and the call from four American elder statesmen.” [26]

Australia Announces New Disarmament Commission, India Holds Nuclear Disarmament Conference
In June 2008 during a state visit to Japan, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced an Australian initiative to sponsor a new International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament to be co-chaired by former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and, Rudd proposed, a Japanese representative. While Rudd made the proposal following a tour of the Hiroshima Peace Museum and memorial, a first for a Western leader, he had originally formulated the idea in January as a way to fulfill a Labor party election commitment. [27] In his press conference at Kyoto University, Rudd stated that the objective of the new commission “is to take the work already done by both the Canberra Commission, Tokyo Forum and elsewhere, including by the eminent group of Americans … to seek a global consensus in the lead up to the NPT review process in 2010.” [28] Rudd set out a three stage process: 1) establishing an international commission to be co-chaired by a representative from Japan; 2) providing the commission’s recommendations to an international conference of experts to be convened by the end of 2009; and 3) using the experts’ conference “as a spring board by way of policy and political momentum into the actual NPT conference itself.” Rudd justified Australia’s leadership role by pointing to its strong credentials on nuclear disarmament and arms control, and concluded: “If you look at the writings of Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn, none of these are a bunch of peaceniks. …. These are hard realists in the tradition of U.S. strategic policy. But they reached a conclusion after extensive and eminent careers that we need to reconstitute a global objective of the world [without] nuclear weapons and that the proper execution of an effective nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is part of that process.” [29]

In an interview soon after the announcement, Evans, [30] currently the head of the International Crisis Group, echoed Rudd’s remark, and noted the growing momentum for a new effort to shore up the NPT and to revisit nuclear disarmament: “I should add that the time is very ripe for this in the context of developments in America, where you not only have both McCain and Obama pretty strongly committed to quite radical rethinking of the U.S.’s traditional reliance on the nuclear armory but … you’ve got Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn and Perry – the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, as I call them – making over the last year or so a realist case for the outlawing, for the elimination, of nuclear weapons, which is a completely new dynamic in U.S. thinking. The trouble is that nobody has moved from that general statement into operationalizing this in any programmatic way.” [31] He stated that a new effort to save the NPT might mean “thinking about a whole new nuclear weapons treaty which builds upon and creates a new framework around the existing Nonproliferation Treaty, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, together with the fissile materials ban that’s being negotiated….” Evans admitted that such an ambitious effort could take “probably 20 years to negotiate.” To move toward nuclear disarmament, Evans noted that it would be necessary to engage the non-NPT nuclear weapons states – India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea – and to create “a new environment in which you don’t have the perceived discrimination that exists at the moment within the NPT between the nuclear have and have nots, where you don’t have outsiders and don’t have insiders….” [32]

The Japanese government welcomed Rudd’s announcement during the state visit. A joint statement issued by Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Rudd on June 12 stated: “The two Prime Ministers reaffirmed that they would continue to closely cooperate with each other with a view to achieving a successful outcome of the 2010 NPT Review Conference including launching a bilateral initiative for high-level expert dialogue on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.” [33] In July, the Japanese government appointed Yoriko Kawaguchi, a former foreign minister, as the co-chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. [34] On September 25, Evans and Kawaguchi announced the 13 commissioners that would serve with them: William Perry (US), Ali Alatas (Indonesia), Turki Al-Faisal (Saudi Arabia), Alexei Arbatov (Russia), Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway), Francois Heisbourg (France), Jehangir Karamat (Pakistan), Brajesh Mishra (India), Klaus Nauman (Germany), Wang Yingfan (China), Shirley Williams (United Kingdom), and Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico). In addition, they listed 23 “eminent individuals,” including Perry’s three Wall Street Journal op-ed co-authors (Kissinger, Nunn, and Shultz), who would serve on an international Advisory Board; and seven Associated Research Centers that would provide specially commissioned research. They noted that the full commission would meet about six times in total beginning on October 19-21 in Sydney, and would publish a major report by January 2010 to build a global consensus prior to the 2010 NPT Review Conference. [35] [For an overview of the politics of Rudd’s new disarmament commission, see the text box on the following page.]

While Rudd was announcing the new commission in Japan, on June 9-10, the Indian Council for World Affairs and the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted an international conference, “Towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons”, in New Delhi to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan to eliminate nuclear weapons. In his inaugural address, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called on all states to commit to nuclear disarmament, “preferably a binding legal commitment through an international instrument, to eliminate nuclear weapons within a time-bound framework.” [36] Another participant, Dr K. Subrahmanyam, the former director of India’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and the convener of the national security advisory board which drafted India’s nuclear doctrine, published an article in June arguing that the NPT is outdated and ineffective and should be replaced with a convention along the lines of the Chemical Weapons Convention that would prohibit the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. He cited the four statesmen’s op-eds, and the support they have received from a large number of U.S. strategists and former policymakers, as a sign that “ [i]t should now be possible for the nuclear powers to firmly establish as a valid professional military conclusion that nuclear weapons are not militarily useful weapons.” [37]

In August, an editorial that appeared in Japan’s Asahi Shimbun on the sixty-third anniversary of the Hiroshima bombings noted the momentum for nuclear disarmament created by the Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn and Perry Wall Street Journal op-ed, including the February Oslo Conference on Nuclear Disarmament and Australia’s new commission. The editorial pointed out that while the Bush administration “has been cool at best toward nuclear disarmament,” then-presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has supported it and John McCain has called for a dramatic reduction in nuclear arsenals. Thus, the op-ed urged Japan to work with Norway and Australia to encourage the next U.S. president to defuse a looming nuclear crisis that “has become too much for the nuclear powers to handle.” [38]

Politics of Australia’s New Nuclear Disarmament Commission Although Prime Minister Rudd and former Foreign Minister Evans promoted the new commission as a follow-on to the Canberra Commission, and support for the new wave of disarmament activities in the wake of the four U.S. statesmen’s proposal, press reports hinted at other motives. [1] The issue of Australia’s stance on selling uranium to India, a nuclear state not party to the NPT, for example, shadows many stories on the new commission. [2] In response to Rudd’s decision not to complete such a sale until India signs the NPT, and his comment that the work of the commission would not change Australia’s position, [3] Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson, while commending the goal of fewer nuclear weapons, described the commission as “a lot of hot air” and said that Australia should export uranium to the rest of the world as a means to tackle climate change. [4] An Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesperson interviewed on Radio Australia TV stated that Australia needs to recognize India’s status as a rising superpower, and because the government would sell uranium to nuclear weapons states such as China and Russia, it should also sell uranium to India under strict safeguards. [5] After NSG members voted on September 6, 2008 to exempt India from NSG guidelines that require comprehensive international safeguards as a prerequisite for nuclear trade, [6] Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean reiterated that the Labour government will “not be supplying uranium to India while it is not a member of the NPT.” [7] The national affairs editor for The Australian saw another underlying purpose of the new disarmament commission: “sending the message that Australia is no longer falling in with the U.S. on just about everything and that we are back in the business of international diplomacy as a middle power, though one that remains a U.S. ally.” [8] (For more background on Australia’s shift away from U.S. policies, see Stephanie Lieggi, “New Australian Leader’s China Policy May Shift Security Relations, Collaboration with Traditional Allies,” WMD Insights.) While the Bush administration has not publicly responded to Rudd’s proposal, a policy advisor for Republican presidential candidate John McCain stated that McCain would support the creation of a commission with a caveat: “It’s a good idea, but before the commission gets too far ahead of itself we’d want Australia to talk to the U.S. and Japan to make sure we have a common understanding of what we need as a minimum credible nuclear deterrent.” [9] Democratic candidate Barack Obama had not commented directly on the Australia Commission, but he “has strongly endorsed the bipartisan effort by former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and former Sen. Sam Nunn to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons.” [10] SOURCES AND NOTES [1] The Australian government formed the Canberra Commission, a group of distinguished international experts and diplomats in 1995, and the group reported its findings on a phased process to completely eliminate nuclear weapons in 1996 during the waning days of Labor Prime Minister Keating’s administration; the Howard government did little work to promote it. For a copy of the report see, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website, http://www.dfat.gov.au/cc/index.html. [View Article] [2] Mike Steketee, “Arms Talks Relaunch,” Australian, June 19, 2008, [http://www.theaustralian.news.com.austory/0,25197,23849171-25072,00.html]; “Australia Won’t Sell Uranium to India,” Economics Times, June 12, 2008, [http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articlesshow/msid-3124041,prtpage-1.cms]; “India Lends Support to Ending Nuclear Arms Race,” ABC Radio Australia, June 11, 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/ra/programguide/stories/200806/s2271005.htm; [View Article] Natasha Chaku, “Australia Refuses to Sell Uranium to India,” June 9, 2008, http://rediff.com/cms/print.jsp?dcopath=//news/2008/jun/09ndeal.htm. [View Article] [3] Gerard McManus, “Kevin Rudd Wants to Rid the World of Nuclear Weapons,” Daily Telegraph, June 10, 2008, http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,222049,23838671-5001021,00.html; [View Article] Matthew Franklin, “PM Kevin Rudd’s New Mission to Ban Nuclear Weapons,” Australian, June 19, 2008, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23838941-2702,00.html?from=public_rss. [View Article] [4] “Push to Ban Nuclear Weapons for Good,” Western Australian, June 10, 2008, http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=489180. [View Article] [5] “India Lends Support to Ending Nuclear Arms Race,” see source in [2]. [6] Somini Sengupta and Mark Mazzetti, “Atomic Club Votes to End Restrictions on India,” New York Times, September 7, 2008, p. 8; Daryl G. Kimball, “Text, Analysis, and Response to NSG “Statement on Civil Nuclear Cooperation with India,” Arms Control Association website, [http://www.armscontrol.org/node/3340]. [7] “Australia Refuses to Sell Uranium to Indian N-programme,” CNN-IBN website, September 8, 2008, http://www.ibnlive.com/news/australia-refuses-to-sell-uranium-to-indian-nprogramme/73083-2.html?from=search. [View Article] [8] Steketee, “Arms Talks Relaunch,” see source in [3]. The Australian’s chief political correspondent made a similar point about Rudd’s proposals for a nuclear disarmament commission and a new Asia-Pacific Community: “These two proposals flesh out Mr. Rudd’s attempts to have Australia punch above its diplomatic weight by presenting itself as a middle power which is able to broker international agreements.” (Franklin, “PM Kevin Rudd’s New Mission to Ban Nuclear Weapons,” see source in [3].) [9] Peter Hartcher, “Rudd Asia Plan Stirs Tensions with U.S., China,” Sydney Morning Herald, June 28, 2008. [10] John Holum, “Holum: Nuclear Weapons, What Obama Actually Said on Deterrence,” Washington Times, August 1, 2008, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/01/nuclear-weapons. [View Article] According to Holum, Obama has also stated that “As long as states retain nuclear weapons, the U.S. will maintain a nuclear deterrent that is strong, safe, secure and reliable.”.

The British Four Statesmen Op-ed
Most recently, on June 30 in the Times of London, four former British Conservative and Labour secretaries of defense and foreign affairs (dubbed the “UK Four”) added their voices to the “influential project” promoted by “hard-headed Americans” Kissinger, Shultz, Perry, and Nunn. [39] The UK Four – former Foreign Secretaries Lord Douglas Hurd, Sir Malcom Rifkind (who was also Defence Secretary), and Lord David Owen, and former Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson [40] – wrote that widespread proliferation, combined with extremism and geopolitical tension, has placed the world “at the brink of a new and dangerous phase.” They stated that the U.S. four statesmen have helped make the case for a dramatic reduction in the stockpile of nuclear weapons, and that a comparable debate is now needed in Britain and across Europe. Notably, the UK Four commented that the “American initiative does not call for unilateral disarmament; neither do we.” [41] Their recommendations echoed those of the four U.S. statesmen: an extension of the 1991 START, including an agreement on missile defense; protection for nuclear stockpiles through UN Resolution 1540 measures; an overhauled NPT with stronger monitoring and compliance measures; CTBT entry-into-force; and a nuclear fuel management system. As with the U.S. op-eds, the real significance was the status of the authors rather than the novelty of their message. As Rebecca Johnson, Director of the Acronym Institute, noted, the authors “were some of the country’s staunchest believers in a British nuclear deterrent.” She further commented, “For any of the UK Four to sign their names to the argument that nuclear disarmament is achievable signals a major shift in the middle ground of British policy.” As she pointed out, however, Britain decided in March 2007 to acquire the next generation of Trident nuclear weapons, signaling that the British establishment is not ready to ditch its nuclear deterrent in the near future despite the new disarmament rhetoric. [42] But as another unsigned Times editorial concluded, the U.S. and UK Four op-ed pieces are chiefly directed at the next U.S. president: “A world without nuclear weapons is an unrealistic goal in 2008, if ever. But a nuclear summit early in 2009 between presidents Medvedev and Obama or McCain is not.” [43]

Conclusion
The nonproliferation and disarmament proposals put forward by the U.S. four statesmen are not new, but nonetheless the op-eds have been influential both in NWS and NNWS. The editorials resonated internationally for several reasons related more to the authors’ status and professional histories than to the novelty of their message. First, the authors were viewed as nuclear realists who had realized that nuclear weapons had become a liability for international security and nonproliferation efforts. Analysts at the German Institute for International Security Affairs argued that the four U.S. statesmen started a debate on the question of the fundamental assumption about nuclear weapons: “Far from being status symbols, they should be treated as a problem.” [44]

Second, the timing of the op-eds is intriguing. Government officials and NGO analysts have emphasized that, at a time when the current U.S. administration resists formal nonproliferation and disarmament measures such as the CTBT, FMCT, and START and seeks funding to develop new nuclear weapons and missions, these four U.S. former senior officials are calling for nuclear disarmament. Baroness Shirley Williams of Crosby at the Middle Powers Initiative forum in March made this point: “Don’t underestimate the extraordinary impact of four American senior officials because it suddenly made it respectable to talk about disarmament in a way that had never been respectable before. I’m not an admirer of Kissinger’s career, but nevertheless he has protected American statesmen and American journalists from what one might call the savagery of the right wing reaction by creating an umbrella that is virtually impenetrable.” [45]

Finally, the op-eds and the Hoover Initiative, clearly aimed at the U.S. presidential candidates, offered some basis for optimism that a new administration would be willing to pursue the nuclear disarmament measures as necessary to save the ailing nonproliferation regime. George Shultz has confirmed this purpose, saying that “the goal is to give the next president the political space and the technical support to launch a major initiative to reduce and eventually eliminate the world’s arsenals.” [46] EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, lamenting the “lost decade” when the Conference on Disarmament made no progress on nuclear disarmament, also found some hope in the four statesmen’s op-ed and the “openness to new thinking on nuclear issues” of the two U.S. presidential candidates. [47] Judging from the response to the four statesmen’s op-ed, the new messengers have given renewed life to a familiar nuclear disarmament debate.

Sarah J. Diehl – James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies