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Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Today, former U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara is in Ottawa urging that Canada push within NATO for a no first use policy on nuclear weapons. While the minister has called for a review of NATO nuclear policy, he has refused to say where he stands on present NATO policy. When will the minister show leadership and join former secretary McNamara and others in clearly calling on NATO to change its dangerous cold war, Reform supported policy and adopt a clear policy of no first use of nuclear weapons?
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I can certainly give you the last part of that question. I had a very informative meeting with the former U.S. secretary of defense along with the former head of the strategic air command. They were very helpful in supplying information about what is happening in the United States.
I would like to remind the hon. member that once a committee tables a report, the Government of Canada has a responsibility to table its response. That response is now being worked on. We have 150 days. It is part of the cabinet process. As soon as the timetable is met, we will be tabling a report. I am sure the hon. member will be very interested in the result.
BONN (CP) - Canada and Germany want to put a contentious element of NATO’s nuclear policy on the table, when the 16-member alliance holds a special summit later this year.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder renewed the call for a "no first-strike" debate Tuesday, following a bilateral meeting during a visit to the German capital as part of Chretien’s seven-day, four-country European tour.
"In Canada, we haven’t come to a final decision but I think all the NATO partners should review this issue seriously and take a decision," Chretien said when asked about the first-strike question.
"The question at this moment creates certain problems but I think Canada and Germany are ready to discuss it, whereas some partners don’t even want to discuss it."
Those include key NATO members the United States, Britain and France, which are firmly opposed to any change in NATO’s policy on the use of nuclear weapons.
"I think a debate of this kind of question has to be possible among NATO friends," Schroeder added.
"And I think if you were to have a strategic debate on general NATO strategy and there were taboos (off-limits topics) to begin with, this is not a proper debate."
But both leaders stressed their countries would accept the majority position in such a debate.
"If the decision were to be taken against Germany’s ideal proposal, that is going to be just fine," Schroeder said.
"We’ll accept it as happily and stand as a loyal partner in NATO. But we just do want to see it discussed."
An anti-nuclear policy was a key element of the agreement with Germany’s Greens party that allowed Schroeder’s Social Democrats to form a coalition government last fall.
In Canada, there were reports late last year that a draft version of a report from the House of Common’s Foreign Affairs committee recommended Ottawa "argue forcefully" that NATO consider changing its policy on nuclear weapons in current attempts to rewrite the alliance’s strategic charter.
But there was no reference to no first-strike in the final report.
Rewriting NATO’s strategic charter will be one of the key issues on the table at when the alliance holds its 50th-anniversary summit April 24-25 in Washington.
The government has not yet responded to the foreign-affairs committee report but a senior government official indicated Tuesday a response is likely before the NATO meeting in April.
On other matters, Chretien pressed Schroeder on the issue of compensation for 26 Canadian airmen who, as prisoners of war in the Second World War, were imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, in contravention of international laws.
Germany has compensated U.S. servicemen in a similar position but insists no legal framework exists to deal with the Canadian cases.
Schroeder made a commitment to take another look at the issue and Canadian officials appeared optimistic a solution could be found.
The federal government included the 26 - only 15 of whom are still alive - into the compensation package announced late last year for Canadians held prisoner by Japan during the war.
Chretien also invited Schroeder to visit Canada. The German chancellor indicated his eagerness to accept the invitation but no date was set.
The visit to Germany was shoe-horned into Chretien’s trip so he could meet Schroeder, who is chairman of this year’s meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrial countries. That gathering is slated for Cologne, Germany, in June.
Chretien’s stop in Bonn followed a three-day visit to Poland, where he was awarded an honourary doctorate Tuesday.
Wednesday, Chretien moves on to Ukraine - the first visit to that country by a Canadian prime minister.
Part of an article published in the Bulletin of Arms Control, Number 32, December 1998, Published by the Centre for Arms Control in Association with the Centre for Defence Studies, Kings College, London.
The NATO Doctrine of Flexible Response
The NATO role deserves further discussion. Under the terms of the North Atlantic Treaty, members undertake to treat an attack upon any one of them as an attack upon all. Supposing that a member country of NATO (take, for example, Hungary) is under threat. For a nuclear response to be considered the assailant must be a nuclear weapon state (eg Russia) or a state acting in association with a nuclear weapon state (eg Ukraine supported by Russia). Otherwise, the assailant is protected from nuclear threat by Britain under the Negative Security Assurance given to all non-nuclear states party to the NPT. Under the present doctrine of flexible response NATO's threat of nuclear 'first use' comes into play when a member state is threatened by a conventional assault so massive that it cannot be fended off by conventional defensive means alone....
... So, we have to believe that in such dire circumstances, rather than see our ally overrun, the British would go it alone and threaten the use of nuclear weapons in order to force the aggressor to desist and come to the negotiating table. The question then arises whether our putative nuclear strike should be targeted on the attacking forces in Hungary, for which the Hungarians might not thank us, or perhaps on Russia as the nuclear backer of the assailant. In either case a likely result would be that Britain, having broken the taboo on nuclear use, would then be subject to massive nuclear retaliation. Putting Birmingham, Manchester and London at hazard in defence of Budapest is a contingency that few Britons would accept if it were spelled out to them. How realistic is such a scenario anyway? A rationale of this kind may have had some plausibility at the height of the Cold War. Today it is flimsy to the point of absurdity.
In any case the first use of nuclear weapons by NATO, in response to a massive conventional attack that could not be contained by other means, is quite outdated. It is NATO that now enjoys the great preponderance of conventional forces in Europe. The existing doctrine of flexible response should logically be replaced in NATO by a policy under which the use of nuclear weapons by any member of the alliance would be countenanced only in retaliation for use of nuclear weapons against a member of the alliance. Russia could then be invited to revert to its own previous No First Use (NW) posture. Since this is already the declared position of China the way would be open for a mutual pledge of NFU among the five nuclear powers together with an undertaking to follow this up with a legally binding treaty. A logical corollary would be the final removal of all American nuclear warheads back to the US. This would open the way to negotiating a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone for Europe, perhaps under the aegis of the UN. The point to repeat is that this would not prejudice in any way the security of any NATO member nor compromise the core concept of deterrence for the nuclear powers. The resulting improved atmosphere via-a-vis the Russians could pay dividends not only in the arms control arena (START) but also in making the expansion of NATO more palpably innocuous, giving more substance to the 'Partnership for Peace' and the 'Foundation Act' between Russia and NATO. This would be good for the future stability of Europe. And, progress along these lines would play well in such areas as the NATO review process, perhaps assisting progress towards a fissile material cut-off and acceptance of the CTBT by India and Pakistan. There is no reason whatsoever why Britain should not give the lead.
Gen. Lee Butler, who earlier sent a letter to German Foreign Minister Fischer in support of raising no first use issues within NATO, has sent the following letter to all of NATO's defense ministers:
Dear Defense Minister,
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s suggestion that NATO revise its nuclear doctrine is most welcome. As you discuss these matters with your colleagues it may be that my own experience in thinking through this question as the Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the U. S. armed forces during the Gulf war might be helpful. I was equally engaged in the matter of prospective nuclear response to attack by WMD during my tenure as Commander-in-Chief of U. S. Strategic Command during the period 1991 to 1994.
As you are keenly aware, the Gulf War presented us with the very real possibility of confronting such an attack by the forces of Iraq. We went through the exercise of imagining how it might unfold and examining a variety of response options. My personal conclusion was that under any likely attack scenario, a nuclear reply by the United States and its allies was simply out of the question.
First, from a purely military perspective, the coalition forces had the conventional capability to impose any desired war termination objectives on Iraq, to include unconditional surrender and occupation. For a variety of reasons, we elected not to go to that extreme but it was clearly an option in the face of a WMD attack.
Second, given our conventional superiority, and the nature of the war zone, the use of nuclear weapons simply made no tactical nor strategic sense. General Powell noted in his memoirs that several weapons would have been required to mount any sort of effective campaign against military targets, an option that Secretary Cheney immediately rejected - and understandably so. Further, whatever the immediate battlefield effects, the problems of radioactive fall-out carrying over into friendly forces or surrounding countries were unfathomable.
Third, the larger political issues were insurmountable. What could possibly justify our resort to the very means we properly abhor and condemn? How could we hold an entire society accountable for the decision of a single demented leader who holds his own country hostage? Moreover, the consequences for the nonproliferation regime would have been severe. By joining our enemy in shattering the tradition of non-use that had held for 45 years, we would have destroyed U.S. credibility as leader of the campaign against nuclear proliferation; indeed, we would likely have emboldened a whole now array of nuclear aspirants.
In short, in a singular act we would have martyred our principal foe, alienated our friends, destroyed the coalition so painstakingly constructed, given comfort to the non-declared nuclear states and impetus to states who seek such weapons covertly.
In the end, we tried to have it both ways, privately ruling out a nuclear reply while maintaining an ambiguous declaratory policy. The infamous and widely misre-presented letter from Secretary Baker to Baghdad was ill-advised; in fact, Iraq violated with impunity one of its cardinal prohibitions by torching Kuwait's oil fields.
When I left my J-5 post in Washington and took up this issue as CINCSTRAT, I found all of the foregoing cautions to be relevant across a wide spectrum of prospective targets in a variety of so-called rogue nations. I ultimately concluded that whatever the utility of a First Use policy during the Cold War, it is entirely inappropriate to the new global security environment; worse, it is counterproduc-tive to the goal of nonproliferation and antithetical to the values of democratic societies.
Please forgive this rather abrupt intrusion into your deliberations. Obviously, I would not take such a liberty if I did not believe it was warranted by the import and the urgency of the issue.
Warm regards,
Lee Butler
General, USAF (Retired)
11122 Williams Plaza
Omaha, NE 68144
The letter was sent to the following officials:
Jean-Pol Poncelet
Minister of Defense
Belgian Ministry of Defense
Belgium
Via Fax: 32-2-550-29-19
Art Eggleton
Minister of Defense
Canadian Department of National Defense
Canada
Via Fax: 613-995-8189
Hans Haekkerup
Minister of Defense
Royal Danish Ministry of Defense
Denmark
Via Fax: 45-33-32-0655
Akis Tsohatzpoulos
Minister of Defense
Greek Ministry of Defense
Greece
Via Fax: 301-644-3832
Eduardo Serra Rexach
Minister of Defense
Spanish Ministry of Defense
Spain
Via Fax: 34-91-55-63958
Joris Voorhoeve
Minister of Defense
Dutch Ministry of Defense
The Netherlands
Via Fax: 31-70-345-9189
Ismet Sezgin
Minister of Defense
Turkish Ministry of Defense
Turkey
Via Fax: 90-312-418-3384
Jose Veiga Simao
Minister of Defense
Portugese Ministry of Defense
Portugal
Via Fax: 351-1-301-95-55
Beniamino Andreatta
Minister of Defense
Italian Ministry of Defense
Italy
Via Fax: 39-06-488-5756
Rudolf Scharping
Minister of Defense
German Ministry of Defense
Germany
Via Fax: 49-228-12-5255
Dag Jostein Fjaevoll
Minister of Defense
Norwegian Ministry of Defense
Norway
Via Fax: 47-23-09-2323
George Roberston
Minster of Defence
UK Ministry of Defence
United Kingdom
Via Fax: 44-171-218-7140
Alain Richard
Minister of Defense
French Ministry of Defense
France
Via Fax: 33-1-47-05-40-91
Hallder Asgrimsson
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Iceland
Via Fax: 354-562-2373
Alex Bodry
Foreign Minister
Ministere de la Force Publique
Luxembourg
Via Fax: 352-46-26-82
(Peggy Mason is Former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament and current Director of Development, Canadian Council for International Peace and Security. Simon Rosenblum is a Foreign Policy writer and member of the Board of Directors of the World Federalists of Canada.)
There was much speculation that the report of the Parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and international trade regarding Canada's nuclear weapons policies would recommend that NATO adopt a "no-first-use" policy for its nuclear weapons. Alas, it did not. The analysis provided in the report's text directly led to such a conclusion. But the Committee pulled back from making a direct recommendation on this matter. We - as the convenors of a statement signed by leading Canadian international affairs and defence experts strongly advocating such a measure - are deeply disappointed with this ambiguity. We do however remain hopeful that Foreign Affairs Minister Axworthy, not being constrained by the need to reach a five party consensus, will actively advance the no-first-use position within NATO.
We do commend the committee for challenging the complacency that nowadays so often is prevalent on matters concerning nuclear weapons and for advocating that all nuclear weapons states remove their nuclear forces from their present alert status. But by not moving forward to advocate a "no-first-use" policy for NATO, the report fails to confront the essential military doctrine propping up nuclear weapons today. This is all the more surprising and frustrating given that the committee report emphasizes the need to "focus on delegitimizing and reducing the political value of nuclear weapons."
Scientist Joseph Rotblat, an important member of the Manhattan Project and later a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, currently argues that "the most important step at the present time - and this can be taken virtually overnight - is for the nuclear powers to declare that the only purpose of possessing nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack."
What could be more obvious? Yet both NATO and Russia currently reserve the right to use nuclear weapons first. NATO for a very long time has had a first-use policy to offset the conventional weapons superiority of the Warsaw Pact. The conventional weapons picture in Europe has completely changed, but the NATO policy remains largely in place.
There is always the danger of applying yesterday's strategic logic to tomorrow's problems. This is particularly problematic when the logic of the past was deeply flawed. Neither deterrence of conventional attacks, chemical or biological use, requires either a nuclear threat in advance nor as nuclear response. "As matters now stand," senior arms control experts McGeorge Bundy, William Crowe and Sidney Drell have written, "every vital interest of the United States, with the exception of deterring nuclear attack, can be met by prudent conventional readiness."
The committee's reluctance to advocate a "no-first-use" policy is again surprising given that the report stresses "that the dangers of biological and chemical weapons cannot be used as a justification for retaining nuclear weapons." If such dangers cannot be used as a justification for retaining nuclear weapons, then surely they cannot be accepted as a justification for the first use of nuclear weapons! The committee must also have been aware of the fact that the vast majority of the international community - including the five declared nuclear weapons states - have through the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) eschewed the right to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against states adhering to the treaty. If the nuclear weapons states do not move quickly to a no-first-use agreement, the NPT could once again be in danger.
The response to or deterrent against chemical or biological attack must, of course, be vigorous. Western leaders can credibly promise both a devastating conventional response and the determination to seek the unconditional surrender of the offending nation. Paul Nitze, who was a prominent hawk and nuclear weapons advisor to President Reagan agrees: "I believe nuclear weapons cannot be relied on to deter chemical or biological attacks or to deter conventional strikes. In both cases . . . . the prospect that a nuclear weapon would be used in response to such an attack is too incredible for deterrence to be reliable."
This leads to an obvious conclusion: that NATO and Russia eliminate their nuclear first-use military doctrines. We are greatly puzzled as to why the committee did not make a recommendation to this effect; especially where the logic of the report directly leads to such a conclusion. Yet we are left only with a recommendation that NATO should include nuclear weapons in its current strategic review and with the committee's confidence that a suitably updated Strategic Concept will emerge from that review. We regret that we cannot be so sanguine.
There are enormous political pressures inside NATO to re-confirm its nuclear first-use policy and Canada must actively join with those allies trying to change this unfortunate and dangerous policy. Foreign Affairs Minister Axworthy has eloquently spoken of the need to reject the "new nuclear realpolitic." The ball - or is it the bomb? - is now in his court and we implore him to directly challenge the nuclear first-use policy. After all, it is this very policy that now is the driving force in the efforts to provide nuclear weapons with an active role in security policy. Recent events at the United Nations and elsewhere have clearly shown that the situation among NATO allies is very fluid and not easily subject to American dictates. We remain hopeful that the Canadian government will make a very positive contribution to the nuclear no-first-use debate.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Peggy Mason: home: (613) 839-1832; office: (613) 562-2736
Simon Rosenblum: (416) 324-0911
World Federalists of Canada
207 - 145 Spruce St.
Ottawa K1R 6P1
CANADA
Tel: (613) 232-0647
E-mail: < A HREF=mailto:"wfcnat@web.net">wfcnat@web.net
Joschka Fischer
Foreign Minister
Auswaertiges Amt
Adenauerallee 99 - 103
53001 Bonn
Germany
FAX: 011 49 228-173402
December 5th, 1998
Dear Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
We fully support your position calling for the abandoning of the current NATO first strike policy. We would like to extend the comments made by Lee Butler, General, USAF, (Retired) has said in his letter to you on this issue.
The role of the most critical elements of current U.S. nuclear military policy has to be considered. This policy has entrenched and operationalized first use/first strike strategies for a wide variety of foreseeable war scenarios including such use against countries who are non-nuclear and even signatories of the NPT regime. The rationale of such use is to deter and defeat so-called "rogue states" i.e. Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya that may be acquiring or have acquired weapons of mass destruction; this rationale undergirds a self assigned role of the U.S.. as an unbridled global police force. However, a variety of "secret" documents have been revealed by researchers using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (see Hans Kristensen "Targets of Opportunity". The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Sept./Oct.1987), which includes living programs to fight and win a nuclear war against China and Russia. The U.S. has designed an arsenal capable of disarming lethal strikes against these nations. In fact the U.S. Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA) has pointed out that the "international environment" has evolved from "a weapon-rich environment" to a "target rich environment", this being viewed with nothing short of exultation.
But beyond the above criminal programs, William Arkin, an expert on military intelligence, again using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act has uncovered a mammoth secret document, the Integrated Database (IDB) which contains a potential 450,000 world wide nuclear targets (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, July/Aug, 1997) .
While the bulk of these targets are concentrated in the territories of current and former enemies, they are not restricted to these. A subset of the IDB, the Bombing Encyclopedia and the Target Data Investing (TDI) contains targets selected by a wide variety of war plans. These targets include, believe it or not, the Jericho missile sites in Israel and an entire category, "CA", coded for Canada; cities, towns, ports, harbours, beaches and even forests are described for every foreseeable target in the world, providing blast, shock and radiation damage together with the number of casualties. There is an entire category for "tree blow-down areas", so that even forests are viewed as enemies. "Friendly" countries should attempt to discover if they are targeted, given friends like this!. Germany could very well also be on this list.
It is essential and necessary to give serious consideration to the ruling from the International Court of Justice that "the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is contrary to international humanitarian Law". U.S. Policy is the total embodiment of "threat to use" making the U.S. the greatest rogue state in the World, and NATO equally implicated.
Even though Canada along with other "friendly states" has been identified as a potential target within the US scenarios, Canada's role in disseminating nuclear technology around the world, in mining uranium used in nuclear weapons, and in selling CANDU reactors must not go unnoticed. Canada is directly implicated in the India and Pakistan acquisition of nuclear weapons.
In the vote in the first Committee of the UN on resolution L. 48 introduced by NAC countries which calls for rapid nuclear disarmament, 12 of the 16 NATO members abstained, including Germany and Canada. While it would have been more in keeping with the ICJ findings if these NATO countries had had the courage to support the resolution, absention of these NATO member countries shows a positive step in breaking away from U.S. domination.
It is time to remind the governments of the member states of the United Nations that in 1972 every government at the UNCHR Conference in Stockholm made a commitment to eliminate weapons of mass destruction..
Yours very truly
Joan Russow (PhD)
National leader of the Green Party of Canada
1 (250) 598-0071
Fred Knelman (Ph.D)
Author of a recently published book. Every Life is a Story: Social
relations of Science Peace, and Ecology. "An anti-nuclear classic"
Scientists Demand NATO:
No First Use of Nuclear Weapons as an Essential First Step Towards a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World
The German initiators of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP) demand a No-First-Use pledge for nuclear weapons as an essential step towards a nuclear-weapon-free world. We support the initiative by the German Foreign Minister for a No-First Use in NATO and demand further steps leading to complete nuclear disarmament. The decision of Germany and 11 further NATO member states, not to vote against resolution A/C.1/53/L.48 "Towards a Nuclear Weapon Free World: The Need for a New Agenda" in the UN First Committee on 13. November 1998 is a courageous step and a signal that even within NATO there is opposition against the indefinite reliance on nuclear weapons.
NATO's nuclear first-use doctrine, stemming from the darkest ages of the Cold War, is completely anachronistic. It is based on the premise of a massive conventional attack of the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe. None of the underlying assumptions, which were already questionable in earlier times, have any justifiable basis, neither in Europe nor elsewhere. Striking first is not defensive, neither against supposed aggressor states nor against terrorists. The threat of striking first is also in complete contradiction to the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice which declared the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons to be generally illegal. First use would be illegal in any case. The insistence of the US government on the first-use doctrine is an indicator that the last remaining superpower wants to keep the right to use nuclear weapons any time against any point on this planet. No other country should find this acceptable. As long as this threat persists, more developing countries could follow India and Pakistan to seek reliance on nuclear weapons, undermining the whole non-proliferation regime. A No-First-Use would be the bare minimal step, signalling the willingness of the nuclear weapon states to diminish the nuclear threat.
No-First-Use could be a first but should not be the last step. Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as the International Court of Justice demand complete nuclear disarmament. No nuclear weapons state can change this fact. What is required is an on-going international negotiation process on the step-wise transformation of the insufficient non-proliferation regime into a new regime of a nuclear-weapon-free world. How this could be done was examined in an expert study of INESAP "Beyond the NPT - A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World" that was presented in April 1995 in New York, as well as in a number of studies by other organizations and individuals that followed. This study sketches a path towards a nuclear-weapon-free world, combined with a process of negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) as a legal framework to ban and eliminate all nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the call for the NWC has been expressed by more than 1000 international non-governmental organizations and citizen groups (Abolition 2000) as well as by more than two thirds of all States in UN resolutions of the years 1996, 1997 und 1998. A model NWC that was drafted by an international Committee of lawyers, scientists and disarmament experts is now an official UN document (UN doc. A/C.1/52/7).
Even though the path towards a nuclear-weapon-free world cannot be planned in all details in advance, the required steps can only be negotiated and realized if the goal is clear. The necessary political initiatives have to be taken now. As a non-nuclear-weapon state and NATO member, Germany has a considerable political weight and a special responsibility.
Therefore, we urge the new German government to insist on its independent path and to take an active role to initiate negotiations on the elimination of all nuclear weapons, aiming at the Nuclear Weapons Convention as a binding framework of international law. It would be consequent and in accordance with the government coalition agreement if the German delegation at the UN would not only abstain on disarmament resolutions in the UN General Assembly but would vote "Yes". What is most pressing is that Germany makes an end to the first-use doctrine and pushes for the removal of all nuclear weapons from its own territory, a dangerous remainder of past ages.
Dr.Wolfgang Liebert, Dr.Jurgen Scheffran (Darmstadt, Germany), Dr. Martin Kalinowski (Vienna, Austria) Nov.27, 1998.
Contact: INESAP, c/o IANUS,
Darmstadt University of Technology,
Hochschulstr.10, D-64289 Darmstadt, Germany;
Tel: +49(6151)164368 (secret.), fax: +49(6151)-166039,
email:liebert@hrzpub.tu-darmstadt.de,
scheffran@hrzpub.tu-darmstadt.de,
kalinowski@hrzpub.tu-darmstadt.de.
WASHINGTON -- Germany's newly elected government Tuesday backed away from a threat to press NATO to renounce a central tenet of its strategy and to pledge never to be the first to use nuclear weapons.
After meeting at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary William Cohen, German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said that "there is no intention in my government to question any core element of NATO strategy, including the fact that nuclear forces play a fundamental political role."
American officials said they were alarmed when the new German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, a member of the environmentalist Green Party, suggested in a magazine interview published this week that Germany would press NATO to renounce the possible first use of nuclear arms.
Cohen publicly rebuffed the German proposal. Welcoming Scharping's remarks Tuesday, Cohen said that NATO's nuclear policy should remain unchanged.
"Based on my conversations with Minister Scharping," Cohen said, "I think that we have a meeting of the minds -- that the strategic concept is critical for NATO's security, that the strategic concept as far as the nuclear component should not be altered."
The United States is firmly opposed to any change in the doctrine allowing NATO to make first use of nuclear weapons in a war, arguing that it proved an effective deterrent during the cold war and remains one today against small, non-nuclear nations that might develop chemical or biological weapons.
"We believe it continues to serve a vital security purpose for the NATO organization and should not be changed," Cohen said, standing next to Scharping at the news conference at the Defense Department.
The public debate within Germany in recent days over nuclear strategy suggests new rifts in the government coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens. In a coalition agreement reached last month, the two parties agreed that NATO should renounce the possible first use of nuclear weapons, a clear concession to the Greens.
But it had been unclear to American officials whether Gerhard Schroeder, the Social Democrat who is the new chancellor, had accepted the declaration as an empty concession to the Greens or would in fact move to question one of the central tenets of NATO doctrine.
Scharping, a Social Democrat on his first visit to Washington as defense minister, said that the new German government had no intention of creating a rift with NATO by acting unilaterally on the issue.
"NATO is the most successful alliance we have ever seen in history so the main goal of our government in Germany is to strengthen NATO and its cohesion and to make NATO able to face the challenges for the next century," he said.
Still, he said that his government "is following the vision of a nuclear-weapons free world" and that "the necessity to use them may be extremely remote as it is written down in the actual NATO strategy."
The United States rebuffed a proposal by the new German government that NATO pledge never to be the first to use nuclear weapons, saying the current nuclear policy is an effective deterrent, especially against smaller, nonnuclear nations that possess chemical and biological weapons.
"It is an integral part of our strategic concept and we think it should remain exactly as it is," Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said yesterday. "We think that the ambiguity involved in the issue of the use of nuclear weapons contributes to our own security, keeping any potential adversary who might use either chemical or biological [weapons] unsure of what our response would be."
Cohen is expected to address the no-first-use issue today when he meets with German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright met with Scharping yesterday and conveyed the same message, said spokesman James P. Rubin.
"We are aware that some in Germany want to bring up the issue of no first use," Rubin said. "Let me say that in our view, nuclear weapons have played a key role in ending the Cold War, and they remain a key element in ensuring the coupling of the security of North America and Europe."
Meanwhile, a senior White House official said that if Russia's parliament ratifies the START II arms reduction treaty as expected next week, the administration is prepared to negotiate immediately the deactivation of each country's largest multi-warhead strategic land-based nuclear ICBMs, all of which are scheduled to be destroyed under the pact.
The official said the deactivation negotiation, agreed to under a 1997 protocol to the START II treaty, would reduce the number of nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert, lowering the possibility of an accidental launch. Some members of Congress and arms control experts have recently called on President Clinton to order unilateral deactivation of U.S. strategic nuclear weapons covered by the treaty.
The Senate, which has ratified START II, must still approve the 1997 protocol and has told the White House that any deactivation agreement reached must be verifiable.
Preliminary discussions with Moscow on deactivation have indicated that the United States wants to remove the warheads from the missiles while the Russians favor less visible methods such as removing the batteries from the guidance systems or disabling the launcher mechanisms, according to sources.
Under START II, which was signed by presidents George Bush and Boris Yeltsin in January 1993, U.S. and Russian warheads are to be reduced from roughly 6,000 on each side to 3,500 to 3,000. The most important provision requires both sides to eliminate multi-warhead land-based ICBMs, primarily the 150 operational Russian SS-18s and the 50 U.S. MXs, each of which carries at least 10 warheads that are individually ten times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Russian ratification of START II will also trigger immediate negotiations for START III, which aims to reduce the number of warheads to between 2,000 and 2,500. The White House official said the framework for that agreement was approved in the March 1997 Helsinki meeting between Clinton and Yeltsin.
Cohen told reporters that the Pentagon has been exploring options for the strategic forces if Russia fails to ratify START II. He noted, however, that Congress approved an amendment to the fiscal 1999 defense authorization bill that prevents any unilateral ICBM reductions below START I levels until the Soviet Duma ratifies START II.
U.S. officials said they did not yet know how committed the government of Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder is to changing NATO's doctrine, which includes the option of first use of nuclear weapons.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told Der Spiegel magazine in Bonn over the weekend that he had told NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana that Germany wanted to discuss the alliance's commitment to the first-use policy "because we see things differently."
But U.S. officials point to statements by Schroeder assuring Washington that his new coalition, made up of Social Democrats and the environmentalist Greens, would maintain "continuity" in its foreign and security policies.
BERLIN, - Germany's new left-wing government is facing its first serious clash with the United States by proposing that NATO break one of its central strategic doctrines and pledge that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's coalition government plans to press its case for the change at a key meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels Dec. 8 and 9. Germany will argue that a new overall strategic doctrine being prepared for NATO, to be unveiled at the alliance's 50th anniversary summit conference in Washington next April, should rule out the use of nuclear weapons before any foe to prove that Western powers are serious about moving toward nuclear disarmament, according to senior German officials.
The initiative has shocked and angered the Clinton administration, which recently was assured that the new German government, made up of Schroeder's Social Democrats and the environmentalist Greens, would maintain continuity in Bonn's foreign and security policies. U.S. officials warned that such a dramatic shift in deterrence strategy -- one that has kept the nuclear peace for more than 50 years -- could gravely undermine faith in NATO's military commitments.
But German officials say fundamental changes in NATO's nuclear doctrine are long overdue now that the Cold War has ended and the threat from the Soviet Union has vanished. They argue that bold initiatives such as a no-first-use pledge are necessary to dissuade other nations from pursuing nuclear arms and to encourage threshold powers such as India and Pakistan to renounce any recourse to weapons of mass destruction.
Officials say they expect debate over the proposal could dominate discussion at the upcoming NATO ministers meeting and lead to an acrimonious public debate among the allies over the coming months. "I have signaled to NATO Secretary General Javier Solana that we want to talk about this, because we see things differently," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told the newsmagazine Der Spiegel. "We must discuss it openly in the alliance without creating the impression that Germany is going its own way now."
The no-first-use pledge was quickly enshrined in the governing program hammered out by the Social Democrats and the Greens after they ousted the conservative alliance led by chancellor Helmut Kohl in the September national elections. Both parties have crusaded for nuclear disarmament in the past, but they played down the issue during the election campaign to avoid arousing controversy with Germany's allies.
Two weeks ago, Germany stunned the United States, Britain and France -- NATO's three nuclear powers -- by breaking ranks and abstaining on a U.N. motion on nuclear disarmament put forward by neutral countries at the world body. German officials acknowledged that endorsing the disarmament proposal would have triggered a major row with its leading allies, but they said the new government wanted to serve notice it was serious about campaigning to have NATO renounce first use and to diminish the alert status of the alliance's nuclear weapons.
With many of NATO's governments now run by leftist parties, the influence of political factions within the alliance that want to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons has grown significantly. Canada, in particular, already has declared its support for incorporating a no-first-use ban into the new strategic concept that is supposed to chart the alliance for the 21st century.
Reserving the option of initiating a nuclear conflict has been a cornerstone of NATO's deterrence strategy for decades. Allied military commanders say that sustaining doubts in the mind of any adversary about NATO's willingness to escalate to the nuclear level is an important psychological tool. They claim its purpose remains crucial in the post-Cold War era because Russia still has tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on alert status.
U.S. officials said Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has expressed serious concern in her discussions with Fischer about the perils that Washington perceives in making any changes in NATO's nuclear doctrine, but her appeals have gone unheeded.
"We believe the Germans are using flawed logic and phony arguments," a senior U.S. policymaker said. "If we adopted a no-first-use policy, it would not only harm our deterrence strategy, but would encourage rather than dissuade other countries to go after nuclear weapons."
He dismissed the German position as sguided and even dangerous"le NATO is groping for a new sense of cohesion as it embraces members from former communist countries and pursues risky peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. ything that departs from the status quo on the alliance's nuclear doctrine could wind up feeding the aggressive tendencies we are trying to contain," U.S. official said.
OTTAWA -- A Canadian push for the NATO defence alliance to renounce the right to first use of nuclear weapons is gaining support and is causing growing discomfort for the United States.
The new German government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, is seeking such a declaration as part of a new strategic concept to mark NATO's 50th anniversary at a summit next April in Washington.
Canada's Commons foreign affairs committee is preparing recommendations to Parliament which implicitly seeks the renunciation of the first-use policy, as well as calling for the removal of the United States' nuclear weapons from Europe.
A third recommendation that runs directly counter to U.S. policy calls for de-arming nuclear weapons, a process which separates the warhead from the delivery system.
The committee also recommends that Canada "redouble its efforts, in cooperation with like-minded states, to mobilize public opinion on the humanitarian aspects of nuclear non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament" in a process similar to that which mobilized the international effort that culminated in last year's signing of the treaty banning the use, production and transfer of anti-personnel landmines.
That coalition is already at work, with Canada and Germany joined by 10 other non-nuclear states resisting U.S. pressure to vote last week against to a United Nations resolution calling for the fast-tracking of negotiations to abolish nuclear weapons.
The 12 abstained in the non-binding vote, which passed by a 97-19 margin, to send a message to the U.S. that they are seeking change but do not want to openly challenge the alliance leader.
New German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a member of the Greens, told foreign journalists last week that he has "no ambition to be a revolutionary," but his party has long advocated the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The option of "first-use" of nuclear weapons has been the underpinning of NATO's deterrence strategy in the second half of the 20th century.
The United States insists that it must reserve the right to determine the time, place and nature of its response to aggression while leaving open the precise character of that response.
To renounce that option, goes the argument, would permit an aggressor to devise strategies that limit the ability to respond.
A paper from the National Defence University in Washington sums up the American position.
"The very uncertain nature of the potential U.S. response, coupled with an ability to respond overwhelmingly, complicates an aggressor's calculations, contributes to his uncertainty of success and makes deterrence credible."
Canada and the like-minded nations argue that such thinking is outdated. One of the recommendations in the parliamentary committee's draft report notes, "the modern alliance is now so strong politically and militarily that the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons is no longer essential as a demonstration of solidarity and the transAtlantic link."
The committee also wants a new NATO strategic concept to recognize the post-Cold War era and the "reduction in any likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons" by committing all member states to the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear arsenals.
Though the Americans and British reject any suggestion that the first-use option be scrapped, peace organizations see a growing repudiation of that position within the alliance.
"The argument we get from the Americans is that first use is required because the European allies demand it and if they didn't provide it that the Europeans might consider going nuclear themselves, which is just not a realistic option," says Bill Robinson of Project Ploughshares. "I think for the European allies to say they want this reviewed is an important step and one which should help free up the Americans to reconsider that idea, too."
Robinson says the committee has put together a good report, but could have gone further. "We would have hoped to see some stronger recommendations; an explicit position, for example, on no first use. We also would have liked explicit support for joining the new agenda coalition."
The committee report is to be presented next month to the government, which will then have 150 sitting days to determine a course of action.
Indications are that the report will not become new government policy despite support from Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy because Prime Minister Jean Chretien is loathe to split with Canada's two largest allies over the issue.
Germany wants Nato to break with half a century of military and strategic doctrine and commit itself not to use nuclear weapons first.
The policy shift by Chancellor Gerhard Schr”der's coalition of Social Democrats and Greens is already encountering resistance in Western capitals and threatens to put the new Bonn government on a collision course with Washington.
In the run-up to next April's Nato summit in Washington, which marks the alliance's 50th anniversary and is to adopt a new "strategic concept" redefining its purpose in the light of its expansion into eastern Europe, senior German officials said they would fight to have the no-first-use commitment enshrined in the document.
"The security and military situation has changed so radically in recent years that the time is right for this," a senior German foreign ministry official said. "It belongs in the Nato review and we want to push it at the April summit."
"These are highly sensitive issues," another German official said. "But if the nuclear states don't move towards more disarmament, then the incentive for those states on the brink of going nuclear is extremely low."
Nato officials in Brussels said they had not been formally notified of the German initiative, but were aware of the new thinking in Bonn.
"At the moment this is a German debate. If they intend to raise it there will be rigorous debate, but the United States will not support that position, will not agree that no-first-use becomes Nato policy," an alliance official said.
Reserving the option of going nuclear first in a conflict has been a keystone of Nato deterrence strategy for decades. It became particularly controversial in the closing phase of the cold war in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union adopted a no-first-use stance in an attempt to force Nato to make a similar commitment.
"Deterrence depends on having and being prepared to use nuclear weapons," a Nato official said.
Western governments are monitoring shifts in German foreign and security policy. The no-first-use demand is a concession to the environmentalist Greens, the junior coalition partner, whose leader, Joschka Fischer, is the new foreign minister.
His foreign policy watchword is "continuity". He told foreign journalists this week: "In foreign policy I have no ambition to be a revolutionary. That's the last thing Germany needs."
But the call to reverse nuclear policy is being seen as a breach in continuity. The 50-page coalition pact agreed by the Social Democrats and the Greens last month included a line stating that the new government "will campaign to lower the alert status of nuclear weapons and for a renunciation of the first use of nuclear weapons".
The first indication of the position emerged last Friday at the United Nations in New York when Germany abstained on a motion by neutral countries for nuclear disarmament. The key Nato allies - the US, France, and Britain - all voted against the resolution.
"There may be question marks over the German approach," a Western diplomat in Bonn said. "The abstention at the UN caused some concern with the Americans."
A German official said: "The abstention showed that we can't say yes because of the allies, but that we don't want to say no."
The US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, is believed to have raised the issue with Mr Fischer, while the Nato secretary-general, Javier Solana, is believed to have voiced concern to Mr Schr”der in Berlin last week.
BONN, Germany (AP) -- Germany's future center-left government will open
talks with nuclear industry leaders within in the next year on shutting
down atomic power plants, a party leader said today.
Wolfgang Thierse, deputy chairman of Chancellor-elect Gerhard Schroeder's
Social Democrats, told German radio, however, that no decision has been
made in coalition talks with the environmentalist Greens on a deadline for
the exit from nuclear power.
Both parties agree on the goal of ending the use of atomic energy, "whose
risks I don't have to describe anymore," Thierse said.
He said industry leaders would be invited to help find a reasonable
solution "so that it doesn't come to (forced) closings of nuclear power
plants and damage claims against the government and the tax payer."
Thierse said Germany's 19 nuclear plants could close at different times,
based on their age and condition.
German utilities, though, have already threatened to file multibillion-mark
lawsuits against any forced shutdowns.
The Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper today reported the two future coalition
partners have agreed to enact a law with a time frame for abandoning
nuclear energy if the talks with nuclear plant operators fail.
Instead of promoting the exploitation of nuclear energy, as current law
does, the new government will pass a new law based on the principle of
ending its use, the newspaper said.
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