Limited funding has been available for “advanced concepts” research, which was pushed in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review of the Department of Defense signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But last year Congress deemed it imprudent, funding instead a “reliable replacement warhead” program. What this would consist of would probably be modifications of existing weapons types, or possibly new designs. New or modified warheads would supposedly be more “robust,” meaning they would last longer and there would be less concern about their reliability. Research on “replacement warheads” raises three main concerns. First, it manifests an intention to maintain large, modernized nuclear forces for decades to come, despite the NPT obligation of reduction and elimination of nuclear arsenals. Second, while the weapons designers may say that modified or new warheads need not be tested, the Department of Defense may insist on testing prior to deployment. Third, while the focus of research may be “robustness,” enhancement of military capabilities is not foreclosed.

I worked for a number of years at Western State’s Legal Foundation in Oakland, California, which monitors the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I know that weapons laboratories’ raison d’être since the beginning has been the design of nuclear weapons. I think that there are low-level activities going on, where the designers are just tossing around ideas, but what is significant about these requests for funding from the Bush Administration is that they elevate those activities. The requests give the laboratories more permission to engage in them and point the way to possible later development and deployment. From my perspective, of course, this is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

US Congressman David Hobson, a Republican, has been instrumental in opposing research on earth-penetrators and changing research on advanced concepts to a reliable replacement program. Hobson and many others rightly condemn the idea that the United States can credibly dictate other countries’ abandonment of nuclear ambitions while continuing to modernize its own arsenal. If the United States continues to pursue this sort of research, it will seriously undermine the non-proliferation regime. These actions make the whole regime, and by regime I mean the NPT Review Conferences, the IAEA, and the UN Security Council, less capable of responding to possible emerging nuclear programs. Countries around the world will be less inclined to give their material and moral support to the regime.

How does something like research on a nuclear earth-penetrator affect the decisions of a country like North Korea? Well, I think that North Korea is making its decisions in light of its relationship to South Korea, its relationship to the region, and also its military and confrontational relationship with the United States. US research may have some effect on the decision-making of a country like North Korea, but it is also true that we are, after all, more than 50 years into the nuclear age. A lot of nuclear designers point to nuclear weapons as a mature technology and insist that we have explored all the possibilities already. The United States already has an elaborate, sophisticated, diverse, and huge nuclear arsenal, and although further research may induce arms racing with established nuclear weapons states like Russia or China, how much it will affect arms racing in particular regional situations is hard to say; I think it has a greater effect on the overall regime.

It is important to understand the Bush Administration’s approach in the context of the evolution of the US arsenal. Nuclear weapons have been developed through three generations. The first was the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The second consists of hydrogen bombs miniaturized for use in missiles. The third generation consists of weapons with enhanced effects, such as the famous example of the neutron bomb, which had enhanced radiation. Thus it is not terminologically accurate to refer to a new generation of nuclear weapons, as some people sometimes do when they are talking about earth-penetrators; this is just a modification of an existing weapons type. It is likely that the robust warheads the Bush Administration is now talking about researching under the reliable replacement program fall into that category, namely the modification of designs that have already been worked on in the weapons laboratories. It needs to be understood that the key problem is not the fact that the United States or other countries are modifying their existing weapons types, but rather, the ongoing reliance on already sophisticated and massive nuclear arsenals.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become consistent contributors to the dialogue on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. How are NGOs changing the playing field for nuclear diplomacy?

There has been a remarkable burst of NGO activity in the nuclear arena going back to the late 1980s. While perhaps not as impressive as the NGO roles in the creation of the International Criminal Court and the Ottawa Landmine Treaty, NGOs have strongly influenced some positive developments. They were a determined and informed presence at the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conferences, which agreed on an agenda for the achievement of a nuclear weapons-free world, and they contributed significantly to the CTBT negotiations and the ICJ opinion on nuclear weapons. It was a non-governmental project run by the Parliamentarians for Global Action in the late 1980s that led to the holding of a conference to amend the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). Originally the PTBT banned nuclear testing in every environment except underground, so an effort was made to amend the treaty to make it also apply to underground explosions. Although the amendment was not adopted because the United States was not willing to accept it, the conference laid the groundwork for the later completion of the CTBT in 1996 in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

Another example of NGO activity is one that my organization was intimately involved in, and that is the World Court Project. In the early 1990s, the UN General Assembly requested an advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons from the ICJ, which is the judicial branch of the UN. My predecessor Alyn Ware was very active as the Executive Director of this organization at that time, lobbying governments in New York to help persuade them to support the resolution which asked for the opinion. There was a network of some 700 NGOs around the world that promoted this initiative, contacting their capitals, creating media interest, and so on. In 1995, we had a number of NGO representatives at the hearings before the court in the Hague, and I was one of the NGOs present, serving as the legal coordinator for the NGO effort. The outcome of that case was the 1996 opinion of the Court, advising the General Assembly that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally contrary to international law, specifically international law that prohibits the infliction of indiscriminate harm, unnecessary suffering, disproportionate damage to the environment, and damage to neutral states.