By Erika Tomatore, USCM Intern
August 11, 2008

At the 76th Annual Conference of Mayors in Miami, June 20-24, the nation’s mayors passed the policy resolution “Support for the Elimination of All Nuclear Weapons by the Year 2020.” Dating back to 1984, the Conference of Mayors has enacted strong policy calling for the reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons. This resolution is a continuation of this stance.

In this resolution, the Conference “recommended that the United States Government urgently consider the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol as a direct means of fulfilling the promise of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by the year 2020, thereby meeting the obligation found by the International Court of Justice in 1996 “to conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade considered the issue of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty at a hearing on July 24, entitled Saving the NPT and the Nonproliferation Regime in an Era of Nuclear Renaissance. In attendance were four witnesses before the House: Dr. Graham Allison, Director of Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government; Dr. Pierre Goldschmidt, former Deputy-Director-General for Safeguards at the International Atomic Energy Agency; Orde F. Kittrie, Esq., Professor of Law at Arizona State University; and Jack Spencer, Research Fellow for the Nuclear Energy Policy, The Heritage Foundation.

During the hearing, Allison stated in his assessment of the risks of the nuclear renaissance that, “The nuclear renaissance that most observers expect to significantly expand the number of nuclear energy plants over the next several decades increases the risk that the nonproliferation regime will unravel.”

This threat to the nonproliferation regime stems not just from the introduction and operation of nuclear power plants, according to Allison, but also from current interpretation of the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Allison said that the problem arises from the written text of the treaty in Article IV, which says, “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes....”

All parties to the treaty have the right to participate in the exchange of equipment, materials, and scientific information, with other states “especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty,” in the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Representative Ed Royce (CA), member of the committee, felt that such an interpretation of the treaty sets the stage for all countries, whether already nuclear-capable or not, to seek the technology to have nuclear plants within their respective states based on the belief that they have a right to do so.

Currently, nuclear energy worldwide is on the rise in Nigeria, Egypt, and Morocco, and in 40 other countries with an interest in starting nuclear power programs, according to Royce.

The biggest question the hearing sought to answer was whether or not the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as it stands today is relevant. According to Dr. Orde F. Kittrie, “The regime as it exists now has little remaining capacity to coerce, contain, or deter violations.”

Royce acknowledged that checking for nuclear proliferation is a task that is becoming more difficult, and based on experiences in the past with India, Pakistan, and North Korea, the line between military and civil use of nuclear energy is not sharp and is easily crossed.

From Kittrie’s standpoint, the nuclear nonproliferation regime has been weakened because of the decline in sanctioning proliferators, weaknesses within the International Atomic Energy Agency to catch proliferators, the increased availability of nuclear weapon technology, and a sense that states of the nonproliferation regime, such as the United States and Russia, have not lived up to their disarmament commitments.

For several years, the Conference of Mayors has cooperated with the international organization, Mayors for Peace, based in Hiroshima. The mission of Mayors for Peace is to raise international public awareness of the need to abolish nuclear weapons through close cooperation among cities and to ensure that nuclear weapons are eliminated by the year 2020.

Mayors for Peace is headed by Hiroshima Mayor Dr. Tadatoshi Akiba. Past Conference of Mayors President Akron Mayor Donald L. Plusquellic is one of its ten Vice Presidents.

In August of 2005, Conference of Mayors CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran traveled to Hiroshima, Japan for the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Cochran dedicated a park bench at Peace Memorial Park in commemoration of the tragic event. This was the first time an American organization had been granted approval to place a memorial within the park.