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To the Pugwash Community As we went to press, the election of a new US President was still undecided. More than a week after 100 mil-lion Americans went to the polls, the ultimate margin of victory for either George W. Bush or Al Gore appeared to hinge on several hundred Florida votes. Whoever does take office on January 20, the next American President (and Commander in Chief), the man with ultimate authority over the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, will begin his term in office in the most politically tenuous position of any American president in perhaps a century. What does this all mean for the future of reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons? The prospects are not good. In addition to having a President who won on the strength (or weakness) of a few hundred votes, the US Congress is likewise evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, with Republicans holding at best a 51-49 major-ity in the Senate and about a 10-seat edge in the 435-member House of Representatives. With political power split down the middle, and with rancor and partisanship already charac-terizing Washington politics, the US government is unlikely to take bold new steps to reverse the deterioration in arms con-trol that was allowed to accelerate during the final few years of the Clinton presidency. One silver lining in this looming cloud is that neither a Bush nor a Gore administration will have much of a mandate for proceeding full speed ahead with plans for national mis-sile defense. Given public opinion polls showing a majority of Americans opposed to NMD, and with continued opposition to NMD certain to come from Russia, China and even most of America’s allies (see the Pugwash workshop report on page 41), the next president will face substantial political obstacles in committing the US to missile defense deployment. What then to do? Because drift and uncertainty are likely to characterize the next few years, it becomes all the more important for publics and NGOs such as Pugwash to continue to press the case for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and for finding concrete and feasible ways to reach that goal. In addition to its work on missile defenses and nuclear stability, which will continue with a workshop in South Korea in April 2001, Pugwash is also initiating a new study group on the abolition of nuclear weapons, which will meet for the first time in India in March 2001. This concerted effort to examine the fundamental re-orientation of security policies and the progress needed to implement truly coopera-tive security arrangements will continue for several years, years that could well be marked by increased instability and tension among the world’s nuclear powers. The 50th Pugwash Conference and Beyond The Jubilee conference held at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, in August 2000 provided a fitting tribute to the convening of 50 Pugwash conferences since 1957. Great appreciation is due the British Pugwash organizing committee for all its efforts in hosting the meeting. Of special note are Jo Rotblat’s appreciation of Eugene Rabinowitch (page 50) and the occasion of the first Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture, in which Amartya Sen convincingly argued that India’s testing of nuclear weapons in May 1998 was manifestly counterpro-ductive both politically and militarily (page 57). During its sessions before and after the 50th Conference, the Pugwash Council discussed various options for improving the format of future annual conferences, the publications pro-gram, and especially the effectiveness of Pugwash outreach and dissemination efforts. The Council also welcomed two new members, Luis Masperi and Chen Jifeng, while express-ing thanks for their service to two departing members, Julio Carasales and Zhuang Fenggan. Planning for future Pugwash conferences is well under-way, with the 51st Pugwash Conference taking place in Agra, India from 10-16 November 2001 and the Quinquennial 52nd Conference scheduled for 9-14 August 2002 at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, California. Pugwash Publications Future issues of the new Pugwash Occasional Paper series will include essays from the Como workshop of the Pugwash Study Group on Intervention, Sovereignty and International Security (January 2001); a collection of European perspec-tives on missile defenses and nuclear stability from the Sigtuna workshop (February 2001); and a Pugwash Issue Brief on new medical treatments and vaccines being developed in Cuba and the implications of the US embargo for preventing the availability of such treatments in the United States (spring 2001). Discerning readers of the Pugwash Newsletter will notice a re-ordering of Pugwash meetings from previous issues. The nuclear consultation meetings in La Jolla and London in early 2000 were indeed consultations, not formal Pugwash workshops, thus subsequent Pugwash workshops and symposia have been re-numbered accordingly. Appreciation For their continued
support of the Pugwash publications pro-gram, we gratefully acknowledge
the support of the Cyrus Eaton Foundation, the Italian National Research
Council, the German Research Society, the Rockefeller Foundation, and
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Editors |