Antinuclear

Australia can have defence co-operation without supporting nuclear weapons

SYDNEY (IDN) – 17 Dec 13   “…..Defence cooperation sans nukes possible  “To make matters worse, Australia’s increasing military involvement with the US is making particularly the huge and expanding military spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs an even higher priority nuclear target in the event of any war the US gets embroiled in with China or any other nuclear armed state,” Ruff, who is also co-president International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, told IDN.

New Zealand’s healthy and growing defence cooperation with the US makes plain that it is perfectly feasible for countries to have a military relationship with the US which excludes nuclear weapons. “Pursuing such a path would be the best thing Australia could do to actually help in freeing the world from nuclear weapons,” Ruff added.

Advocates for a nuclear free world argue that a global ban on nuclear weapons can be achieved through sustained public pressure and leadership from governments. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who was critical of Australia’s decision not to endorse the humanitarian statement, is of the view that the current Australian Government may wish to please the US even more than the previous government.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) told IDN that Australia had welcomed the New Zealand statement and it shares most of the sentiments expressed in it, “but we were not in a position to support this statement which was prepared without giving us an opportunity to contribute substantively and did not appropriately acknowledge the security dimensions of the debate. We remain committed, as a long time and active advocate of disarmament, to achieving and maintaining the shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons”.

To pressurise the Australian Government to work towards nuclear abolition, Fraser said: “Make Australians understand how much we are bound by America and how much we are influenced by American decisions. The past three wars we have fought, have been fought because of our relationship with America. We should tell them (the US) that we are not going to join them in their next war. We should establish an independent foreign policy and only then we will be able to work for disarmament more effectively.”

Australia is in an interesting situation because as a country it does not have any nuclear weapons, but it subscribes to the doctrine of extended nuclear deterrence under the US alliance, which is seen as key to Australia’s national security. It also has almost 40 per cent of the world’s known uranium reserves and it is a significant exporter of uranium.

Today, there are at least 20,000 nuclear weapons worldwide, around 3,000 of them on launch-ready alert. The potential power of these would roughly equate to 150,000 Hiroshima bombs.

The focus is moving from non-proliferation to abolition and Australia is concerned that it could shift the focus away from the nuclear-weapon states and Iran to US allies, such as Australia, that subscribe to extended nuclear deterrence.

In March 2013, the Norwegian government had hosted a landmark inter-governmental conference in Oslo on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, which was attended by 128 governments (including Australia) and representatives from major UN agencies and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

In the lead-up to the NPT preparatory committee meeting, South Africa had invited all parties to the treaty to endorse a two-page statement calling on all states to “intensify their efforts to outlaw nuclear weapons and achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”. Australia did not endorse the statement.

The growing unity of civil society working on weapons-related issues was reflected in the Humanitarian Disarmament Campaigns Forum hosted on October 19 and 20 in New York. Mexico will host a conference of states, civil society and academia in February 2014, which will be a critical next step in acknowledging and responding to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.

*Neena Bhandari is a Sydney-based foreign correspondent, writing for international news agencies IPS-Inter Press Serviceand IDN-InDepthNews, as well as India-based Indo Asian News Service (IANS) and other national and international publications. [IDN-InDepthNews – December 16, 2013]       http://www.indepthnews.info/index.php/global-issues/1953-no-nuke-australia-thwarts-nuclear-free-world

December 17, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, weapons and war