Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters | Hans Blix | Talks at Google

Hi, everyone. Thanks for waiting and thanks for coming today. We're very pleased to have former chief UN Weapons inspector Hans Blix speak with us today as part of the authors a Google program after Blitz will be discussing nuclear disarmament, the subject of his new book, why Disarmament Matters. After an impressive career as a scholar of international law, Dr. Blitz served a wide variety of high profile international disarmament missions before assuming the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As part of his work with the organization, Dr. Blitz began traveling the world conducting nuclear inspections, including several trips to Iraq during construction of that country's nuclear reactors. After 16 years of service, Dr. Blix left the IAEA, only being called out of retirement by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to lead the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in charge of monitoring Iraq. Dr. Blix Inspections were able to stay very closely watched by the international community and the rest we can say is history. We're pleased to have Dr. Blix here today to discuss his new book and his views on the issues at hand. He will also have time to take and answer any of your questions. So let's please join me in welcoming Hans Blitz to Google today.

Thank you very much for that kind introduction. I'm going to talk to you about the topic why disarmament matters. And as Introducer told you, I had some experience of the problem from Iraq, the Iraq War in the war was waged for the political justification to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Well, that was an expensive way of doing something that was not needed because the disarmament had taken place already and the Iraqis had destroyed their weapons of mass destruction for the major part in 1991 after the Gulf War, and only chemical weapons remained. And they were declared to UNSCOM and they were destroyed under the supervision of unscombe. So here was an effort at disarmament costing, you know, how many billions of dollars and how many lives, more important American lives than Iraqi lives? So that's not the way we would like disarmament to happen. And today you have a problem of Iran going for enrichment of uranium and many people fearing that they might have the intention to go for nuclear weapons again. That's the question of disarmament and how can we achieve it. And this is the topic I'm going to address now. At the peak of the Cold War, people were marching in the streets to show their concern about the risk for the Mutually Assured Destruction. There were at that time about 55,000 nuclear weapons in the world and an intense struggle between the communist part of the world and the non communist part. And a duel between these two parts could have led not only to what to call Mutually Assured Destruction mad acronym, but perhaps even to the wiping out of human civilization altogether. At that time, during the peak of the Cold war, there were eight states with nuclear weapons. There were the P5, the permanent members of the Security Council, the U.S. russia, China, France and the UK plus India, Pakistan and Israel. They were the ones who had nuclear weapons during the peak of the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War, the number of nuclear weapons states has increased by 1, North Korea that set off a device not so long ago. Why? The number of nuclear weapons in the world have gone down from some peak of the 55,000 to something like 27,000 weapons which you have now. Most of them either in the US or in Russia. The governments of the US and the other P5 states give the impression of not really worrying much about the nuclear weapon arsenals in their own good hands, but only about the risk that would be posed by nuclear weapons in what they term unsafe hands, let's say in the hands of rogue states or non state actors. And people are no longer marching in the streets against nuclear weapons. So are the dangers from the nuclear weapons over? No, regrettably, the inconvenient truth presented by Al Gore, that of global warming threatening us with a slow suicide of the human civilization, is not the only one. A second inconvenient truth is that currently remaining and contemplated new nuclear weapons and new nuclear strategies and new tensions could again push the world to deadly dangers. The Cold War has been followed by what might term a cold peace. And we need a wind of change in this to improve relations between the big powers and to revive disarmament, of which a good deal occurred in the 1980s and during the Cold War. I'd like to discuss why, despite many several signs of hope in the world for more peaceful relations, there are other signs of alarm that prevail. So let me begin with what is hopeful. The United nations has now lasted over 60 years, providing the global village a universal forum and an instrument for joint action. And the first world organization that we had, the League of Nations, lasted only some 20 years between the first and the Second World War. There are today much fewer interstate conflicts than they used to be. The areas of peace in the world have been expanding. War between members of the European Union have become unthinkable. And this is an area where the soil in the European countries are drenched by blood over the centuries that have passed. More and more people in Europe also doubt that there is a risk of any war between the European Union and Russia, even though relations have soured somewhat between Europe and Russia in the last few years. And looking outside Europe, in your part of the world, I think you will see that, yes, war between the United States and Mexico occurred in the past. There were interstate wars between. Today, I don't think anyone would think the possibility of a war between the United States and Mexico. Further, many historically common types of controversies have disappeared in large parts of the world. And I mentioned four of them. The first is wars of independence. Wars of national liberation were common in former colonies. They had largely disappeared as a result of the end of colonialism in the world. Struggles for self determination occurs in a few places still, but by and large it's over. Wars about borders disappeared in most parts of the world as a result of geopolitical settlements. Some conflicts should remain, especially result of arbitrary lines drawn by colonial states in the past. And with free international trade and traffic, many borders have lost some of their past significance in Europe. The Oder Neise line that existed between Western Europe and the communist world was a border of death in the communist time during the Cold War. Today the Oder Neisse, the two rivers form, is simply an internal waterway in the European Union now. Wars for the conquest of territory was common in history and they hardly occur any longer. Perhaps Saddam Hussein was one of the last rulers to wage a war of conquest when he set out to attack Iran to gain a larger part of the Shatt Al Arab in the Persian Gulf. And when he tried to occupy, and did occupy Kuwait. The ambition to spread religion or ideology has led Christian crusaders to Christians, to crusades and Islamic people, to jihad and to a communist expansion. And there may today be desperate suicide bombers. But there are no wars of there will be no wars of civilization. While there is competition about the access to oil and to gas and to other raw materials, it would seem reasonable to expect that such competition between industrial countries in the world would play out in prices rather than in wars than in bullets. Lastly, the end of the Cold War gave a great number of important dividends. While during the Cold War the Security Council was largely blocked by the veto given to each one of the permanent members. The situation changed drastically at the end of the Cold War when consensus became common between the permanent members of the Council and allowed important joint decisions and actions. Today you have more than 100,000 people under UN United Nations Command in peacekeeping operations in different parts of the world and helping to avoid any armed struggle there. So the end of the Cold War meant a lot of pacification in the specific areas of arms control and disarmament. And several positive results also came from the end of the Cold War. In 1993, a convention was concluded against chemical weapons after some 20 years of negotiation. And they couldn't agree during the Cold War. But after the end of the Cold War, yes, the world agreed to prohibit the production, possession or use of chemical weapons. And in 1995, the Non Proliferation Treaty, that's treaty. I'll describe it more in greater details later about non spreading of nuclear weapons that was extended without any final date set for it. And in 1996, lastly, a treaty which comprehensively prohibited all nuclear weapons tests was concluded and adopted. But now to the signs of alarm by the end of the Cold War gave some important peace dividends to the world. In the first half of the 90s, as from 1996, we had seen a disappointing development and going downhill. The disarmament process that had started stagnated. And the UN Disarmament Conference that had been sitting in Geneva since the 1960s. And I was myself a young lawyer there in 1962. That group, that conference has not been able to adopt even a work program for 10 years. The comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that was adopted was signed by the Clinton administration in 1996, was rejected by the U.S. senate. And the moratorium on nuclear tests that had been respected by the P5 states was broken by the India and Pakistan in new nuclear test and by North Korea later on. And the 2005 review conference on the weapons on the non proliferation Treaty ended in bitterness and without any result. No final declaration at all. The non nuclear weapons states were totally disagreed with the nuclear weapons states two years ago. Kofi Annan rightly noted that the world was sleepwalking into new arms races. And by now we have had several wake up calls. The UK has taken decisions that will keep the option open of to contain to continue the nuclear Trident weapon program submarine program. And the U.S. administration has proposed to develop a new standard nuclear weapon, the RRV and seeks to expand the missile shield by placing elements of it in Poland and in the Czech Republic, claiming a need for defense against missiles that might be sent by Iran in the future. And China is modernizing its armed forces and they shot down a weather satellite of its own not so long ago, demonstrating a capability for military action in space and spreading debris in space. And Russia has resumed long distance fights with nuclear arm planes and is withdrawing from very important arms control agreements that were concluded at the end of the Cold War between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, Iran is developing an enrichment uranium enrichment capability that could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons. And the US has at the present time three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and non state actors lastly may be planning for further terrorism. So this is a long list of sad developments. And to that list about disarmament of arms, we must add that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the war in Lebanon and the military threats against Iran suggest that the authors of these actions Lebanese war in Lebanon and Iraq that the authors of these actions and threats have felt a readiness also to use the arms available to them regardless of any authorization by the UN Security Council. We must add also a serious political development in the renewed souring of relations between the big powers. The mutual confidence between Russia and China on the one hand and the US and major Western states is not a very deep 1. The US is showing concern about China's modernizing her navy. But the US itself is strengthening very drastically its forces in Guam, its naval and military forces in Guam. And the US has been seeking nuclear cooperation agreement with India not long ago, and the question is whether India will go along with the conditions set. A welcome result of that agreement. Nuclear agreement within draft nuclear agreement with India, in my view would be that India would be able to import the latest modern nuclear technology for efficient carbon dioxide free electricity generation. However, the nuclear agreement will also facilitate for India to import nuclear enriched nuclear fuel for their power reactors and thereby enabling them to make use of the rather scarce uranium resources of their own to enrich it by themselves and perhaps enrich it to the levels in which could be used in nuclear weapons. And that would set off a race, could set out a race with Pakistan and with China that might suspect that India adds to its nuclear weapons capability. Many also see in the US Initiative for Nuclear Cooperation with India an effort to bring India into chain of states that if need be, could contain China in the future. Now these measures look like traditional balance of power politics and so do the efforts look to expand NATO to the Ukraine and to Georgia, perhaps to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, as suggested by Senator Lugar, who was one of the moderate people or was one of the moderate in Senate. Is anyone then surprised when this expansion of NATO occurs that Russia fails to welcome North Atlantic Treaty Organization naval exercises in the Black Sea just around in their own area? The fear one might have about is that this traditional balance of power politics will prompt traditional responses and that new tensions will grow. So the Cold War is over, but A cold peace has resulted. And can we hope that this cold peace that we have at the present time, that this can be followed by a more peaceful evolution? If we have on the one hand the stepwise development of disarmament of the members international community and the development of international law, would that help to bring more peaceful relations in the national sphere? We know that our nation states in Europe that the peaceful peace resulted in our societies from a disarming of the individual citizens and placing of the arms and power in the hands of the executive, usually kings in the past and at the same time a development of law of the countries that helped to settle disputes between citizens and gave guidance to how they should conduct themselves. So I'll address the two subjects. First, the question of the development of law as an instrument to reduce the conflicts between individuals in the national society and reduce the conflicts between states in the international society. And then I'll turn to the issue of possible disarmament. Where we are one of the premises of a peaceful community is the existence of law and institutions for the settlement of disputes between individuals. I'm not suggesting that law invariably leads to social or international peace, because there are also unfair laws and unjust laws, and they may indeed lead to conflict. But by and large it's true to say that the existence of law helps to avoid conflict. When we meet on the road, we don't need to go out and discuss with the fellow comes from the other side. Whether we shall meet on the right or on the left, that is settled by the law. And we need, if a court, if it were to come to the court, the court will also go by that rule. So that's a simple example. The Law General reduces potential for conflict between states as between individuals. The rules of international law, let's say the rules that govern the relations between states grew over centuries. And during the last hundred years these rules have expanded exponentially through the conclusion of treaties. We don't have an international legislator. The General assembly, the UN doesn't adopt law for the international community. The rules between states are adopted through treaties that say agreements between states. And we have a vast number of such agreements nowadays that regulate the most different relations, space relations or relations in your field or transport, of course, aviation space, what have you now. International tribunals and various mechanisms for the supervision and dispute settlement have also grown in number. But most rules that regulate the behavior between states are routinely respected without any access to courts. Just as we as individuals, we also respect the rules and we don't need to go to the courts every Day we go by the rules because they have been adopted and recognized by our national assemblies. There's one area, however, in which the international rules that have developed has developed very late and still remain very weak. And these are the rules relating to the use of force. Now, in our national community we also have rules relating to when we can use force in self defense. If someone is threatening us or attacking us, we can act in self defense. And there's a lot of adjudication of that and telling you in which situations are you allowed to do that and to what extent are you allowed to do that between the states Also we have rules about the use of force in self defence, but they are developed much later and they are much weaker than they are in the national sphere. Clear cut restrictions on the use of armed force in the international community have in fact been asserted only from the 20th century century. And the Covenant of League of nations only obliged states to seek peaceful settlement of controversy before they restore to war. You might not even have heard about the League of Nations. That was the predecessor of the United nations, which was set up after the First World War and that lasted only 20 years, let's say between the end of the First War and the beginning of the Second World War. So that organization, which was mainly European organization, not exclusively, and the United States having taken the initiative to it through President Wilson, the US didn't take part in it. Wilson created it, but it didn't take part in it. That organization only enjoined and obliged its members to seek a peaceful solution before they went to war. However, in 1945 the Charter of the United nations was adopted at San Francisco and that included a leap forward in the development of legal restrictions on the use of armed force between states. The authors of this UN Charter in San Francisco were no pacifists, but they also knew the horrors of war. They had lived through the Second World War and they laid down general rules prohibiting the threat or use of force between states members. They made two exceptions however, to that prohibition of the use of force. And the first one was that States will have the right to use force in self defense if an armed attack occurs. And until the Security Council has succeeded in taking the necessary measures. This right has generally been interpreted to comprise also the use of force when an attack is imminent. States do not have thus to wait for the bombs to fall on their territory before they can strike back. They can already meet the bombers outside the national territory and to attack them. Secondly, an exception from the rule against the use of force was that the Security Council can decide on or authorize the use of force in a broader category of cases, namely when the Council determines that there is a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression. So you see the difference between these two cases. On the one hand, individual states can go to use of force and use of war if they are attacked until the Security Council takes action. That means a clear attack. The Security Council, on the other hand, can assess the situation and say that this is a threat to the peace even before an attack has occurred, this is a threat to the peace and we decide to take action, or we authorize individual states to take a much broader mandate to the Council than to the individual states. Now, during the Cold War, the Security Council action was largely blocked by the veto given to each one of the P5 members. However, this changed situation, as I noted, changed drastically with the end of the Cold War when consensus decisions became common in the Security Council. Most importantly, in 1991, the Council authorized the broad alliance that was created by President Bush the elder to use force to stop Iraq's naked aggression against an occupation of Kuwait. And President Bush then spoke at the time about a new world order that here was the UN authorizing states to take action against an aggressor. Regrettably, as we know, that order didn't last very long because in March 2003 the alliance of willing states invaded Iraq without there being any armed attack by Iraq. And in the full awareness that the Security Council would not authorize any armed action against Iraq. The political justification given for the Iraq war was above all the contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and were continuing working on them in violation of earlier Security Council resolutions. And it is indeed unlikely that any other argument would have persuaded the US Congress to authorize use of force or are likely that the UK Parliament would have authorized the British government to use force against Iraq. The US National Security Strategy that had been published in September 2002 had stated flatly that a limitation in the right of use to armed force in self defense to cases of armed attacks that, say the UN Charter were occurring or were imminent would be insufficient in the era of missiles and terrorists. So they felt uncomfortable with these limitations that had been laid down in San Francisco and said that no, we will need to have a greater latitude to go to use armed force not in self defense. As I see it, this strategy of 2002 and the war that was opened in 2003 show that the administration actually said goodbye to the legal restrictions that the US itself had participated in formulating in 1945. At any rate, as regards action to stop the development of weapons of mass destruction, now one might ask how damaging is to the UN legal restriction on the use of armed force is the unauthorized use in 2003 of the invasion of Iraq. It is true that that restriction has been violated by. You might remember that Tanzania carried out an incursion into Uganda when Mr. Amin was a horrible dictator there and it was not condemned by the United Nations. So there's been some pragmatism in the way in which armed action has been viewed by members of the un, but the actions have not been. These actions have not been preceded, such as action by Tanzania not being been preceded by doctrines amounting to a renunciation of the Charter restrictions. It is hard to see that the recognition. It's not hard to see that a recognition of a freedom for states to act unilaterally to launch preventive wars against any state they claim is a threat would be to dismantle the legal barrier that was created in San Francisco. If the United States or any other state says claims that we have a right to take action, military action against any threat that we discern, well then it is not only open to that state, but it will be open to all states in the world to do the same and the whole of the restrictions that were erected in San Francisco would fall. Perhaps it was the awareness of this danger of the precedent that led both the US and the UK not to stress the argument of a preventive war, but but to stress that they based the right to go to war on the Iraqi failure to respect a number of resolutions of the Security Council was not a particularly good legal explanation either. But it was better than to create a precedent of a claim to the right to preventive war. Now the problem with this theory or this doctrine of preventive military action, apart from that of legality, is that to carry out a war preventively you must rely on intelligence. Before an attack has taken place or is visible or is imminent, how do you know that it actually will come and justify action in self defense? In the case of Iraq, much of the evidence that was invoked in 2002 and 2003 was what has been termed faith based on. And indeed when you look at the alleged contract between Iraq and Niger for the import of uranium oxide, which was forged, it was also evidence was fake based. The inspection reports of the UN inspectors that I headed on the IEA were ignored by the alliance of willing states. The inspectors that I led had carried out some. When the war broke out about 6, 700 inspections in Iraq and 500 different sites. And dozens of these sites had been proposed to us by the intelligence agencies, by the CIA and by the British and by others. We went to them and said that you are convinced, you are 100% convinced that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so tell us, where do you think they are? And it turned out, as we inspected these places, that none of them had weapons of mass destruction because they had been destroyed. So While they were 100% convinced that the weapons were there, they had zero percent knowledge of where they were. One of the lessons of the Iraq war is that information gained by independent international inspection should not be ignored. Maybe they were partly ignored because. Well, they were partly ignored because they didn't want to listen to what we had to say, but also because we were so cheap. They only cost about $80 million a year. And the intelligence, of course, went into billions of dollars. We never claimed that our inspectors were smarter or more intelligent or more smarter than the agents of national intelligence. But we could sincerely say that we were in nobody's pocket, we were independent. I'm not against intelligence. I think intelligence is needed in the world today with terrorism. But I think that it would be wise of the governments if they listen not only to what they get through national intelligence, but also listen to and hear what independent international inspection organizations do. Because intelligence, they listen to the satellites and they listen to our telephone conversations. And I was told frequently that my telephone calls were listened to. I usually say to that I wish at least that they listened a little better to what I have to say would have been useful. But the inspectors, they do not eavesdrop on anybody. But they have the right to be on the ground. They can go into the buildings, they can interrogate people. So it's good to have this evidence, too. The governments can listen both to their own intelligence and to the international organizations. This, I think, is one of the lessons of the Iraq war. If the inspections had continued another two months, I think it would have been much more difficult to launch an armed intervention in Iraq because we would have been able to go to all the sites that were suspected by the national intelligence. And since there weren't any weapons of mass destruction, we would have reported that to the Security Council and to the intelligence, and they would then have realized that their sources, which for the most part were defectors, that this was not trustworthy. The defectors were not keen to have inspection. They were keen to have invasion. Now, having discussed the legal rules and then the restrictions on the use of force which is a shaky one in the UN Charter and has thus been transgressed and possibly torpedoed, but certainly undermined by the action in 2003 Iraq. Let me turn to disarmament. I mentioned that in the national sphere, the disarming of the citizens is a part of creating a more peaceful society. This society you treasure your right to, or some of you treasure the right to wear arms yourself. But it's never the small arms you have to talking about. It's not bazookas, it's not tanks that you are claiming the right to use. But in Europe, the disarming of the citizens, of the sables and what have you. This was a part of the civilizing process. So can arms control or reduction of arms in the international community, can this lead to a lessening of the use of armed force? Fundamentally, the political and economic relations that we have developed after the end of Cold War should actually facilitate disarmament. The current incipient arms races do not seem to be in line with the trend to international interdependence between states and the tendency to integration. And will the taxpayers be content to foot the gigantic bills in the absence of difference between the big powers on significant issues of substance? Currently the world spends about 1,300 billion dollars a year on military expenses and about half of that is paid by US taxpayers in the United States. So the need to guard against terrorists is that one that will require new nuclear weapons or new aircraft carriers or big heavy items? I don't think so. The terrorists will require much more cooperation between intelligence in different countries, with intelligence in the US and Europe and also with Russia and with China. You will not use new types of nuclear weapons against terrorists, nor will you use new generations of nuclear weapons. A serious Cold war ended nearly 20 years ago and the big powers missed then the opportunity to move towards significant disarmament. There were some important agreements like the sea weapons convention, etc. But significant disarmament was missing. And rather than now relaunching themselves into new arms races, the US and the other nuclear weapons, they should take the initiative to resume detente and disarmament and reduce the military expenses, money that could be used. I know that you are quite interested in global warming here and they could certainly be used a good deal of money to modify our use of energy and the use of generation of energy. Perhaps also the shortcomings of the military approaches in Iraq and Lebanon will speak in favor of a greater use of diplomacy and joint action through the UN and non military leverages. And this of course is Various acute, important. In two acute cases I'm thinking of North Korea and of Iran. In the case of North Korea, a move to diplomacy has evidently taken place during the Bush administration through the six power talks in Beijing in the last few years. And these talks offer better chances of success and less danger than the military threats. Military threat against North Korea is normal responded to by that state state with the hardening of the positions. And any idea of using military means against North Korea is very dangerous. After all, Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea. In the case of Iran, in my view, positive results will also be much more likely to emerge from negotiations without preconditions than from a threat of armed force sending of aircraft carriers to the Gulf. I think it's more likely to strengthen the hands of Ahmadineads and also whip up more of national resistance in Iran than any use of economic pressures or use of carrots. It is of great importance that peaceful solutions be found both in the case of the North Korean nuclear program and in the case of Iran. Because if one does not succeed, there can be domino effects in both cases. If the North Koreans were indeed to move on in nuclear weapons program, then it will have an impact in Japan. Japan is one of the most staunch anti nuclear countries in the world. Anti nuclear weapons countries in the world. But if North Korea were to move towards nuclear weapons, public opinion in Japan might indeed change. And if Japan were to move to nuclear weapons and they could do that very quickly with the capability they have, then atmosphere in the Far east would change dramatically to the worse in the case of the Middle east, similarly, if Iran were to move on in the path to nuclear weapons, then the situation and tensions would increase in the Middle east, but more slowly than in the Far east because the countries in the Middle east, the others are not so well developed in the nuclear sphere. So both of these cases are dangerous and they are acute and they need immediate attention and negotiations. I think it's very encouraging. I've been here in San Francisco and it's very encouraging that a non partisan initiative has been taken by a group of U.S. elder statesmen, including the former Secretaries of State Schultz, Anne Kissinger and former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and former Senator Nunn to that, urging the United States to take the lead with other nuclear weapon states stepwise to get to nuclear disarmament. They have been joined by a large number of foreign policy elites in the U.S. including Colin Powell and many others to form what one might hope be an important non partisan movement in the US in favor of disarmament during the Cold War. These statesmen say the nuclear weapons were necessary for deterrent. And we talked about mad mutually assured destruction during the Cold War when Russia and the communists wanted to expand was an existentialist question. To withstand, to resist it. Today they say this is not needed. It's unthinkable that the P5 states will throw nuclear weapons at each other. And it's also I thinkable that the US would use nuclear weapons against Iran or even less against North Korea. So they say nuclear weapons are not really useful as a deterrent for the P5 states. That doesn't exclude that it has an effect nuclear effect between India and Pakistan and between Israel and its neighbors. They are thus suggesting, these elder statesmen, that the US should take an initiative and begin talking to the Russia and the other nuclear weapons states beginning nuclear disarmament and aiming at a nuclear weapon free world. Well, a nuclear weapon free world that's far away and it's a vision, it's the direction where we should go and but the problems we have today is to take the steps towards going in that direction. And I think it's very important that this initiative has been taken by former leaders, political leaders in the US and hope that it will have an impact in the debate in the election campaign. Now what then should go onto an agenda for disarmament in the world today? Well, two years ago, the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction that I chaired, International Commission of 14 people, including Bill Perry here from Stanford, we presented a report called Weapons of Terror Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms. And it is available on the, on the net, on the www.wmdcommission.org and I think maybe there are some copies here too that those of you who are interested could have. The commission recognized that the Non Proliferation Treaty that I mentioned is the central instrument for global disarmament. And that treaty that was concluded in 1968 and entered into force in 1970 that committed the non nuclear weapons states parties to the treaty not to acquire nuclear weapons. They say we'll stay away from any nuclear weapons. We commit ourselves and we accept international inspection. It also committed the nuclear weapons states, the five that then existed at the time, to negotiate towards nuclear disarmament. So it was a deal that was intended to lead to a nuclear weapon free world in which those who didn't have it say we won't get it. And those who have it, they say yes, we negotiate towards nuclear disarmament. That was the deal in 1970. If all states had adhered to the treaty and all states didn't do that. India, Pakistan and Israel the did not adhere to it. But if all had adhered to it and if all had respected their obligations, then we would have been nuclear weapon free today, which we are not since we have today, eight nuclear weapon states and we still have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Some people are pessimistic about this treaty and say, look here, Iraq and North Korea and Libya violated their obligations. There may be other states that intend to do so. So they warn then about possible collapse of the treaty and a cascade of states developing nuclear weapons. I think this view is somewhat too alarmist. Most vast number of states in the world today do not go for nuclear weapons because they do not feel they have a need for it. They do not feel that they security requires it. Security is normally the reason why states have gone for nuclear weapons. China developed it when US and Russia had nuclear nuclear weapons. India developed because of China, Pakistan because of India, Israel because of the Arab states, etc. Maybe some exceptions. Saddam Hussein I think didn't really feel threatened by anybody, nor do I think Gaddafi did. But in most cases when states have gone for nuclear weapons, it is because they have a perception of a threat to their security. So there are threats to this treaty. But we have seen the world is not milling with would be proliferators. We have seen two cases which were stopped. The Iraqis were stopped through the Gulf War in 1991 and Libya was stopped through intelligence and diplomacy. Intelligence discovered that Libya was importing centrifuges and were having a program and diplomatic negotiations and carrots really took them out of it. They promised. Gaddafi said, if you do away with this program, you will be again be into the community of nations. And indeed both Blair and Chirac visited Qaddafi. Bush hasn't done it so far and I think it's unlikely he will do it. But anyway, these were carrots that were given to Libya. So these two cases were stopped. And we only are left with two other cases, North Korea and Iran that I mentioned. And there you have currently active negotiations going on. However, for the longer term, one would have reason to be a little worried because the first wave or action against the spread of nuclear weapons in 1968, 1970, when the treaty came about, was due to a fear that there would be dozens of nuclear weapons states in the world. There was President Kennedy who warned against this and said we must have a barrier against that. But the states they were thinking of at that time were those who were industrialized and who would have had the capability to go for nuclear weapons like Austria or Switzerland or Sweden and Germany in particular. Now they committed themselves and no diversion took place towards weapons in these days. The next wave was one of India and Pakistan. These were developing countries, but nevertheless technologically sufficiently advanced to go for nuclear weapons. And then you had Argentina, Brazil, they were also able to get there. And third wave you would see now in the form of Iraq, Iran, North Korea. Now what will come in 10 years time. The North Korean reprocessing plant in which they make plutonium is one that I don't think they have had very much foreign assistance in. The Iranians have imported centrifuges. Yes, but the North Koreans could read a lot about this in the literature and on the net. And if you look 10 years ahead in time, well, there will be more and more countries in the world who will be able, through the literature to make both enrichment and reprocessing. It's not easy, it costs money, but it will be less difficult in the future. So here, unless we create a system and an atmosphere and cooperation and integration in the world that will assure states of security, that will make them feel that they are not threatened. Unless we do that, we may risk that we will have another wave of countries in 10 years time. And this leads them to the demand for disarmament. These states are not going to say that yes, we will also commit ourselves and we will accept the ever further reaching inspections. They will say that yes, we, we can do this, provided that you who have the nuclear weapons are also going ahead and disarm. We won't accept the double moral that nuclear weapons are necessary for the security of a few states, but it's very bad for the others. That's a double moral that will not be tolerated. And hence that's another argument for reducing the risk in future proliferation. Also reducing the risk at the present time. An argument in favor of dialogue and disarmament at the present time. The treaty has also been successful in already in actually taking some states away from a nuclear path where they were. And I'm thinking first of South Africa. South Africans during the Cold War were worried that they could be attacked from the outside. They developed nuclear weapons, they developed enrichment and nuclear weapons. And at the end of the Cold War they said no, we don't feel any threat any longer and we are dismantling our nuclear weapons and we invite international. They joined the Non Proliferation Treaty as non nuclear weapons states. You had three other states that had nuclear weapons on their territory. That was Ukraine and Belorussia and Kazakhstan. And as the Soviet Union collapsed and disintegrated, you had Russia. There were negotiations with the US and Russia together persuaded these states that they would hand over their nuclear weapons to Russia. So here were three states that had nuclear weapons then. They are now joining the Non Proliferation Treaty as non nuclear weapons states. So there has been success as well in that treaty. Now the non nuclear open states today will agree that this treaty of non proliferation should be strengthened and that we should have in particular more intrusive inspection, more intrusive highway safeguards. However, some 20 years after the end of the Cold War, many of these states insist that that it is time now for the nuclear weapons states to begin negotiating their exit from the nuclear weapons era as they promised in 1970. They find it is not enough that the numbers of nuclear warheads has gone down since the end of the Cold War. In their view, their nuclear weapons stage should draw up timetables for the phasing out of their nuclear arsenals rather than drawing up timetables for renewed construction of nuclear weapons. By 2010, the next review conference of the Non Proliferation Treaty will take place. And the world needs by that time to see a new and active agenda for disarmament, in particular nuclear disarmament. Now you might ask yourself in what order should such an agenda for disarmament occur? I think the order of items is less important than the establishment of the agenda. And there is no doubt that the top of the agenda should be an entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has not entered into force because it was not ratified by the US Senate. And since the US did not ratify it, the Chinese didn't do it. If, however, a new Senate would ratify the treaty and the US were to adhere to it, the likelihood is that China will also do the same in India, Pakistan. They will have a virtuous circle of states that would rally to a total ban of all nuclear weapons tests in the future. This is the top of the agenda. And if it were to happen, then the world would know that the agenda for disarmament is open. You would also need to have discussions as urged by these LGU statesmen for reduction of the stocks of nuclear weapons, in particular in Russia and in the the United States. Not just a redeployment of the weapons, but a reduction of them, dismantling of them and taking the plutonium and the rich uranium and make use of the rich uranium to nuclear power plants. Talks could also be started about stopping the arms race in space. I mentioned the Chinese shooting down a satellite of their own and creating debris. The US Shot down also a satellite of their own recently. And at the current time, we have thousands of engineers who are working on how we can use space better for our communications and for satellite, for television and whatnot. We have another thousands and thousands of engineers who are planning how can we shoot down the whole thing and make a junkyard of space and the tremendous asset that space is. So disarmament talks about stopping an arms race in space is also among the most important things. We also need to take nuclear weapons off hair trigger alert, which they are now. We have thousands of nuclear weapons in Russia and the United States on hat trigger alert. It will take only seconds to set them in motion. And there could be misunderstandings and miscalculations. They have been pretty close to such misunderstandings, so I shan't prolong that list. There's a long catalog of things that can be started on today. But let me conclude instead and say that the best approach to this disarmament is to create a political situation economically in foreign affairs. So that will assure states that they have security without the weapons. And that requires a new detente. In the same way as we had a detente after the end of the Cold War. Cooperative foreign security and economic policies may be the most important means to reach the result of promoting peace. And in a number of areas, we have no choice. We have to cooperate. You cannot manage to do much about global warming unless everybody's along. You have to talk also Mr. Kim Jong Il and about other persons who remain politically. They also have to participate in this or if you want to counter SARS or hiv. Again, it's a global action you need. It's not a question of democracy against others. Everybody has to be on board. And the UN is the organization where everybody is on board. So let me say end by citing a country man, fellow countryman of mine, Doug Hammarschel, who was the Secretary General of the un. He said that the United nations may not take us to heaven, but it might at least help us to avoid going to hell. If any one of you has questions, I'd be glad to try to answer.

First of all, thank you for the talk, for the interesting talk. I too wish a world free of completely free of weapons of mass destruction. But I think I'm afraid it's a wrong goal to search. Reduction, yes. Free, completely free, not. And the reason is the model of the prisoner's dilemma. Prisoner's dilemma. For those who don't know what is the prisoner's dilemma, you can Search Google. But to apply the model for this context, it says that when the world is completely free of weapons of mass destruction, if there is a way that the state can develop a weapon of mass destruction without anybody knowing, then it will be done and by evil states, not by the trustworthy states. So in that respect, we should be feel blessed that the first state to have a nuclear weapon was the US and not Nazis Germany. In current perspective, maybe not at the time. We should also be thankful that the second state to have nuclear weapon was Russia and not Iran, for instance. So the situation is that only when there is. The capability of stopping evil states from developing weapons of mass destruction. And the model should be thought as maybe some state comes and say in 30 minutes we are able to launch 100 missiles with nuclear weapons and the only thing that we can do is if we are ready. Sorry, before that. So this should be thought about also.

Well, let me make a couple of comments on it. The first is you ask yourself whether a total elimination of all weapons of mass destruction is possible or desirable. There is a discussion between those who call themselves abolitionists and look to zero and those who say that now let us go step wise. I think I talk today, Secretary Shultz, and he explains why they say that yes, our vision must be a world free of nuclear weapons and other weapons. That's far away, though. But we must know in what direction the compass points us. It's far away. And you might say that if we really attach ourselves to discuss that, what kind of verification system are we going to have then? Well, then you get bogged down in things that are very hypothetical. And I think today what we need to discuss are the steps leading in that direction. And I put a lot of emphasis on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, that no one will be allowed to test nuclear. They commit themselves not to test any nuclear. Now, that is something that is very verifiable. There's nothing that is more verifiable than that there is an organization for it available already. They discovered immediately when the North Koreans were testing a device some time ago. So I don't think that the fact that the goal is very distant should prevent us from now taking the first steps. As we heard, even the long journey has to begin with the first steps. And they are the kind of steps that I talk about. Take nuclear weapons off, hair trigger alert. There's a risk that it might go off, that it might be sent off by mistake in the future. And the world free of these weapons will be further away and there will have to be many modifications in it. I also said that you assume that there will be what you term evil states in the future. Well, I think we may be looking too much that we're looking at Iran today or Bush talks about the axis of evil and so forth. But we see that when states have gone for nuclear weapons, it's largely been because they have perceived threats to their security. And we also see that when they talk with the North Koreans about abandoning any nuclear program that could leave to. What they're saying to them is that, look, if you do that and if you accept intrusive inspections for it, we will commit ourselves not to attack you from the outside and not to seek regime change. We don't like your regime, but we are not going to seek a change in your regime. They also say to him that, look, we will no longer freeze you out from international intercourse. We will have open diplomatic relations. You can be able to make relations with Japan and with the United States. They haven't said the same thing to Iraq. Iraq. The Iraqis remember that Mossadegh was thrown out with the help of the CIA in 1952. They haven't forgotten that. They haven't said to the Iraqis that look, if we can have a settlement with you about the nuclear issue, then we will also commit ourselves not to attack Iraq. Well, Iraq is today three nuclear, three aircraft carriers in the Gulf. And they remember the Mossadegh case. So a commitment by the outside world not to change the Iranian regime, which is one that many of us had many reservations about, that this may be helpful to get their commitment. Similarly, diplomatic relations is something that also would end their isolation. So I'm not so pessimistic. I wouldn't assume that some states are evil and will remain evil. I think they're all capable of being both. And we have to create relations in the world where they will not be tempted to use any weapons. And it seems to me that the interdependence that is developing in financial spheres, in trade spheres, in the biological sphere, information sphere, that leads to a tremendous interdependence that we must build upon. So I'm a little less pessimistic than you, but I agree with you that yes, we should not say that any illusions that we can have a nuclear weapon free world within 10 years time, it's going to take much, much more time than that. Hi, it seems like most of our discussion is centered around state versus state or looking at the nation state level. And I think earlier you mentioned that there were non state actors that might be a threat to have nuclear weapons. Could you expand upon that a little bit more? Because at least from my perspective it seems like the major threat isn't necessarily states fighting states, but rather a non state actor getting a nuclear weapon. Well, the focus has been on non state actors and what are term rogue states. I think perhaps partly tactical because it takes away the attention from the fact that practically all the the 55,000 nuclear weapons in the world they are in the hands of states to then say that well the real risk they're not, they're in good hands, that's not dangerous. The real risk are if they get into the hands of unsafe character. In the view of the commission that I had, all nuclear weapons are dangerous. They may be more dangerous in some hands than others, but they are in danger in all hands. Now terrorists, of course they've been said by US President President, I think that we must prevent that the worst weapons gets into the worst hands and often pointing to terrorists. I cannot say that risk is zero that they would take an interest in it. There have been some evidence published to the effect that Al Qaeda people were interested in nuclear development, contact between Pakistanis and Al Qaeda and so forth. But it's not altogether easy to make a nuclear weapon. To steal one is also not easy. But non state actors would require a tremendous apparatus in order to produce nuclear weapons. Setting up enrichment or reprocessing. We have seen in Iraq there's been millions, millions or even billions of dollars that were used by them. And the Iranian, Iranians also use enormous amount of money to do that. For scattered terrorist groups this is not easy. Whether it's risk is zero. I mean I was afraid of saying that the risk is zero in anything. But I think most experts would agree that nuclear weapons is the least likely to have to be used and developed by terrorists. By non state actors, not excluded, but the least likely. We've seen from experience what they have used and that has been conventional weapons. Very much so. We've also seen that chemical weapons were used. There was this sect in Japan that developed which they spread in the subway of Tokyo many years ago and killed quite a number of people. Chemical weapons are not so difficult to handle and there's a lot of chemical industries around the world. So out of the weapons of mass destruction, nuclear or biological or chemical may be the most, the least unlikely. Biologicals are not easy to handle. The Iraqis developed biological weapons, they even weaponized them. But they didn't find it help helpful or useful to try to make use of them. The Second, in Japan had plenty of money, they tried to develop biological weapons, but failed to do so. There's another type of weapon that has been discussed, and these are called dirty bombs. Now, dirty bombs are not weapons that have a nuclear explosion. They are sort of containers, munitions, in which you fill with chemicals or in particular, nuclear material like cobalt or cesium and then conventional explosives. You set it off somewhere in a square of a big city, and it will not have such devastating effect by the explosion as a nuclear bomb would, but it would spread the radioactivity of the cobalt and the cesium. So there would be contamination and the terror effect would be considerable. But it's not nothing that you really could do a war with. So the risks are not zero. But I think that there is a certain hyping also of the threat of terrorists. And of course, we live still under the memory of the 9 11. And it's easy, therefore, to talk about it, and no one can be complacent about it. And I think that the measures that are taken in the checking of examination of containers that go around the world, et cetera, that this is wise and prudent. At the same time, one has to be cautious in not creating a system that is sort of stifling the civil liberties. Because in the battle against terrorism in the world, I think that the free society and the orderly society, the society with civil liberties, is perhaps the best argument and against these people.

Unfortunately, we've come to the end of our time, but Dr. Blix has great graciously agreed to stick around and answer some of our questions and perhaps sign some books which are in the back of the room. So with that, Dr. Blix, thank you very much for coming to Google.