Pugwash History Featured on Blog

Adele Wick has published a post about the first Pugwash Conference. Please see, "Peace and Pugwash: the 1957 Conference" by clicking here.

And stay tuned, I will soon provide a link to my recent talk on the "Women of the First Pugwash Conference" at Thinkers' Lodge.

Pugwash history to be explored at July Conference

This exciting conference in Halifax Nova Scotia includes a day at the historic Thinkers' Lodge in Pugwash. It includes multiple sessions on the Pugwash history and nuclear weapons issues, in addition to other topics related to peace education and engaging young people. Director of the Pugwash History Project Sandra Ionno Butcher and several members of Canadian Pugwash are featured speakers. Pugwash history topics to be addressed include: the role of women at the first conference (featuring Ruth Adams and Anne Kinder Jones, later Anne Eaton); the imperative of dialogue in times of crisis; and insights into the bravery and perspectives of the participants at the first conference, as shared by Ru Ling Susie Chou, daughter of Chou Pei Yuan, and members of Cyrus Eaton's family. To register, go to the conference website.

Thinkers' Lodge Renovations

Thinkers' Lodge, where the first Pugwash Conference took place due to the generosity of Cyrus Eaton, has been undergoing restoration.

A short story on this from CBC News is available here.

John Eaton tells me they are very pleased with the restoration so far....

The photo above is from July 2009, when the International Student/Young Pugwash board were the last group to stay at Thinkers' Lodge prior to the renovations (I was invited as a resource person). You can see the beginning hints of work on the chimneys.

Joseph Rotblat on Charlie Rose, 1996

To see an interview with Joseph Rotblat on the Charlie Rose show in 1996, please click here.

"A discussion with Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project before the A-bomb was tested. He talks about his signing of the historic Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which called for the end to all nuclear weapons and was the beginning of Rotblat's fifty year fight for total nuclear disarmament."

Russell at the 1962 Pugwash Conference - Video

Just came across this wonderful short video from the London 1962 Pugwash Conference...

Here's what Russell said about this conference in his autobiography:

The Pugwash movement now seems to be firmly established and part of the respectable progress of scientific relations with international affairs. I myself have had little to do directly with its progress in the last years. My interest turned to new plans towards persuading peoples and Governments to banish war and in particular weapons of mass extermination, first of all nuclear weapons. In the course of these fresh endeavours, I felt that I had become rather disreputable in the eyes of the more conservative scientists. The Pugwash movement held a great meeting of scientists from all over the world in London in September 1962. I was to speak about the founding of the movement and I warned my friends that I might be hissed--as I was fully convinced that I should be. I was deeply touched by being given a standing ovation when I rose to speak which included, I was told, all the participants, all, that is, save Lord Hailsham. He was present in his capacity as the Queen's Minister of Science. He was personally, I think, friendly enough to me, but, weighed down by office, he sat tight. That was the last occasion on which I have taken public part in a Pugwash conference.(1)

(1) The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. Vol III, 1944-1969, Simon, 1969, p. 111.

Hideki Yukawa

Here is a concise and interesting bio of Prof. Hideki Yukawa, a signatory of the Russell-Einstein manifesto and a participant in subsequent Pugwash Conferences.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/hideki-yukawa-info.htm

McNamara and Pugwash--From PENNSYLVANIA to a NWFW

McNamara at the 1990 Pugwash Conference, Egham, England

Robert McNamara, who died 6 July 2009 at the age of 93, will be remembered by the Pugwash movement for his efforts for peace and a nuclear weapons free world during the final decades of his life.

Pugwash: McNamara’s Last Effort for Peace in Vietnam?

His importance to the Pugwash movement began long before he himself was a “Pugwashite”. While he was still Secretary of Defense, McNamara was responsible for convincing President Johnson to allow him to take personal charge of a secret Pugwash back channel to Ho Chi Minh that sought to end the Vietnam War.

The background to this initiative (code named PENNSYLVANIA) began at a June 1967 Pugwash meeting in Paris, attended by three scientists from France, three from the US, two from the Soviet Union, and Joseph Rotblat as Secretary General, where a “formula to stop the escalation of the war” emerged. Henry Kissinger, one of the US participants, was also then a consultant to the US President. It was ultimately decided that two Frenchmen, Herbert Marcovich and Raymond Aubrac, a hero of the French Resistance, would take a message directly to Ho Chi Minh. This was possible because Ho Chi Minh was friends with Aubrac and godfather to Aubrac’s daughter. They spent four days in July in Hanoi and met with Ho Chi Minh and the Prime Minister Pham Van Dong and other officials. Upon their return, they were debriefed in Paris by Kissinger. McNamara then gave Kissinger the following instructions, which were approved by the President on 11 August 1967:

MEMORANDUM FOR DR KISSINGER

You may give your contacts the following message and ask that they deliver it to Pham Van Dong:
The United States is willing to stop the aerial and naval bombardment of North Vietnam if this will lead promptly to productive discussions between representatives of the U.S. and DRV [Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam] looking toward a resolution of the issues between them. We would assume that, while discussions proceed either with public knowledge or secretly, the DRV would not take advantage of the bombing cessation or limitation. Any such move on their part would obviously be inconsistent with the movement toward resolution of the issues between the U.S.
and DRV which the negotiations are intended to achieve…
The U.S. is ready to have immediate private contact with the DRV to explore the above approach or any suggestions the DRV might wish to propose in the same direction. (1)

In a briefing in Paris with Chester Cooper and Henry Kissinger, the Frenchmen asked for a signal to be sent to the Vietnamese of the serious intent of the U.S. On 19 August the President agreed to suspend bombing within a 10-mile radius of Hanoi from 24 August to 4 September to ensure the safety of Aubrac and Marcovich when they were to go back to Hanoi and also to signal Kissinger’s validity as an intermediary.(2) However, something went wrong, and on 20 August there were 200 “weather backed up” sorties flown, “more than any previous day in the war” according to McNamara. He wrote, “Once again, we had failed miserably to coordinate our diplomatic and military actions.”(3) Their second visit was cancelled and while the channel stayed open through October, these negotiations in the latter half of 1967 failed. McNamara, however, credited them with laying the groundwork for the San Antonio accords, “the foundation for the start of the negotiations between North Vietnam and the U.S. in Paris.” (4)

This sentiment is backed up by Vietnamese sources in an interesting book called Argument Without End, in which senior Americans sat down with senior Vietnamese to sort through the various outstanding questions about the Vietnam tragedy. One participant, Nguyen Khac Huynh said, “PENNSYLVANIA did not fail. PENNSYLVANIA proved to us in the Foreign Ministry of the DRV—and to the leadership—that talks were about to begin. As such, it gave tremendous support and encouragement to those of us who were at that moment working on a negotiating strategy. We were very encouraged…. PENNSYLVANIA succeeded several months after it was initiated, because it provided the basis for beginning the Paris peace process. There is your answer. Our ears were not ‘deaf.’ We ‘heard’ you. And we gave you our answer after Tet.” (5)The Tet offensive planning started in March or April of 1967 (6) , and some Vietnamese believed that they would have a better negotiating position after Tet. (7)

Robert McNamara clearly had a personal stake in this initiative. One of the Frenchmen, Herbert Marcovich, wrote, “It was asserted afterwards that the dismissal of McNamara in the autumn of 1967 was linked to the failure of this enterprise…” (8)

McNamara and Pugwash Efforts for a Nuclear-Weapons-Free World

Between 1982 and 2004, McNamara participated in 24 Pugwash meetings, preferring the expert workshops compared to the larger annual international conferences. During this time, McNamara participated in Pugwash meetings in Beijing, New Delhi, Lahore, and Arzamus-16, locales which show his great interest in finding common ground on the central issues that challenge the nuclear disarmament regime. He took part in 15 of a special series of Geneva-based Pugwash workshops on nuclear forces, and two of the Pugwash workshops in the early 1990s on the “Desirability and Feasibility of a Nuclear Weapons-Free-World.” These workshops and the resulting publications were the inspiration for the Canberra Commission, of which he was a member along with then-Pugwash President Joseph Rotblat and current Pugwash President Jayantha Dhanapala. Indeed it is most likely not an exaggeration to say that much of the Pugwash work in which McNamara played a significant role laid the intellectual groundwork for today’s wider acceptance of the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world.

McNamara was also involved with another initiative that was dear to Joseph Rotblat’s heart: the launching of the WMD Awareness Programme. McNamara came to the UK in May/June 2005 to give a lecture at the Hay Literary Festival, he was supposed to share the stage with Jo Rotblat, but Rotblat was too ill to travel. McNamara’s speech was, according to John Finney, Chair of the WMD Awareness Programme and a Pugwashite, “a stunning occasion” that “grabbed media attention for several days.” As a result of the success of this event, the annual Rotblat Lecture at Hay was instituted. McNamara also visited Jo during while in England, and the two men who had become friends saw each other for the final time.

In a book celebrating Joseph Rotblat’s 90th birthday, McNamara’s essay concluded with the following challenge to us all:

“[W]ith the end of the Cold War, if we act to establish a system of collective security, and if we take steps to return to a non-nuclear world, the twenty-first century, while certainly not a century of tranquility, need not witness the killing, by war, of another 160 (or even 300) million people. Surely that must be not only our hope, not only our dream, but our steadfast objective. I know that some—perhaps many—may consider such a statement so naïve, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic. But as human beings, citizens with power to influence events around the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not.” (9)

Notes
(1)Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, New York: Times Books, 1995, p. 298.
(2)Ibid, p. 299.
(3)Ibid, p. 299.
(4)“A Life in Public Service: Conversation with Robert McNamara” Interview by Harry Kreisler, 16 April 1996. Available at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/McNamara/mcnamara7.html
(5)Nguyen Khac Huynh, quoted in Robert S. McNamara et al., Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy, New York: Public Affairs, 1999, pp 300-301.
(6)Luu Doan Huynh, in Argument Without End, p. 296.
(7)Nguyen Khac Huynh, “Our view was that, after Tet, the conditions [for negotiations] would be favorable.” Argument Without End, p. 300.
(8)H. Marcovich, “Pugwash and Vietnam—1967: A Memoir,” Pugwash Newsletter, April 1976, Vol. 13, No. 4 , p. 207.
(9) Robert McNamara, “Reflections on War in the Twenty-First Century,” in Maxwell Bruce and Tom Milne (eds), Ending War: The Force of Reason. London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1999, p. 102.

Pugwash and Sadat's 1977 Visit to Israel

In the same FT article mentioned in the prior post, the author writes:

"Feld also claims that President Anwar Sadat's historic journey to Jerusalem in 1977 was facilitated by earlier contacts and exchanges between Israeli and Egyptian Pugwash scientists." Elon Salmon, "Against the Bomb," Financial Times, 11/12 February 1989.

This also needs further study...

Click here for a link to the Sadat's speech in the Knesset on 20 November 1977.

Photo source: http://www.knesset.gov.il/description/images/sadat.jpg

Pugwash Role in Cuban Missile Crisis

I just came across a quote from Bernie Feld, former Secretary General of Pugwash, who makes the most direct statement I have seen about Pugwash's role during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis:

"During the Cuba missile crisis in 1962, President Kennedy came under pressure to act militarily. But a group of American scientists urged negotiations. Through British colleagues in Pugwash, a message was conveyed to the Russians offering to withdraw American missiles near the Turkish-Soviet border if the Russians removed their missiles from Cuba. Nothing was said about this at the time. However, shortly after the Soviets pulled back from Cuba, the US removed its missiles from the sensitive spots in Turkey." (Elon Salmon, "Against the Bomb," Financial Times, 11/12 February 1989.)

Rotblat, who was Secretary General at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, did not make such direct claims. For example, in his 1972 history, Scientists in the Quest for Peace, he wrote:

[T]he Secretary-General called an emergency meeting of influential scientists from the United States and the Soviet Union to discuss means of solving the crisis. For several days he was in almost continuous telephone communication with Washington and Moscow. Such a meeting could obviously not be held without the approval of the highest authorities in the countries concerned, but this approval was very quickly obtained, and an agreement was reached to hold the meeting in London within a few days; however, the resolution of the crisis made the meeting unnecessary. While it is impossible to say how useful this meeting would have been if it had been held, the very fact that in a time of crisis it was possible to plan at very short notice, for a meeting of eminent scientists, with top level approval for it, shows the importance of the channel of communication provided by Pugwash."

These two versions are not necessarily incompatible and clearly need further study in the archives of the two countries.

Photo Source: United Nations http://www.un.org/UN50/Photos/un50-049.gif

Herb York (1921-2009): On Pugwash History and a NWFW

Herb York has died. I would like to share some of his insights: about the imperative of a nuclear weapons free world, and about the Pugwash history.

While a great deal of appropriate attention has gone to the recent ‘revival’ of the notion of a nuclear weapons free world, it is important to note that people like Herb York and others in Pugwash have been out there for decades, paving the way for the many very senior and very important recent voices calling for an eventual end to these horrendous weapons. Here is a quote from York…(from 1971!):

“[O]ur final goal must remain the ideal of general and complete disarmament….Any reasonable extrapolation of history tells us that if we keep all those weapons around they will be used. While no one can say how to get from the present situation all the way to total nuclear disarmament, it is clear that throwing weapons away heads us in the right direction and building more weapons, be they MIRVs, ABMs, or SS-9s, heads us in the wrong direction. We have fussed too much and too long about fine structure. We must begin to focus on directions rather than details.” Herb York, “A Little Arms Control Can be a Dangerous Thing,” War/Peace Report, August/September 1971, pp. 3 - 7

_________________________

I had the chance to interact with Herb through Student Pugwash. I found him one of the most charming, friendly, and thought-provoking people I have met. My first encounter with him was at my first-ever (senior) Pugwash Conference, in Cambridge, Mass, in 1989, when as a student working on my master’s thesis, I was simply dumbfounded to be in a room with Herb and Dick Garwin talking about technical aspects of nuclear weapons as they related to arms control. I guess Jo Rotblat was there, but it was Herb who made the biggest impact on me: a former weapons lab director--a man with security clearances up the wazoo, who knew the science inside and out--was talking about disarmament! I was hooked…

Following are excerpts from an interview I conducted with Herb York, 28 April 1998.

About the impact of Pugwash:

“The important thing that Pugwash did is it enabled people to meet each other at a time when there were no other good places to do that, particularly East and West. So what matters about Pugwash is not whether they got a certain idea and it doesn’t matter whether or not this idea was adopted. But what matters is that, by example, the fact that Primakov was a member of the Pugwash group and while at Pugwash John Holdren, who is now a member of the White House science advisory committee and Catherine Kelleher, who has been a defense official, were all at the same meetings. That’s what Pugwash did. It got people like them together at a time when there was no other good way for people like them to get together. … And then with others who had other different kinds of connections, like the Kapitsa father and son. The Arbatov father and son. One of the most important of those combinations was Primakov with…Shalheveth Freier….For something like five or six years immediately after the Six-Day War, the primary contact between Moscow and Jerusalem or Tel Aviv was Primakov and Freier meeting either in Pugwash meetings or using that as an alibi for meeting. They were entirely secret, these meetings. They
were fully sanctioned…by both governments. They were the primary way of getting certain detailed messages back and forth.

So the number one thing that Pugwash did was provide a venue. Now the remarkable thing about that was that a lot of people might try to do that. And anybody can identify former officials and invite them to come, but the trick that Pugwash succeeded at was inviting future officials. That’s the trick. That’s the hard part. Primakov wasn’t ex-foreign minister, he became foreign minister.”

“[T]he concrete thing…where [Pugwash was] instrumental in moving immediately to policy was in connection to the ABM Treaty of SALT I. And there it was important. and there one of the important communication channels involved Ruina and Murray Gell-Mann on our side and Millionshchikov and Artsimovich … on their side. They seriously discussed questions of ABM.”

About the Pugwash/Rotblat Nobel Peace Prize:

“I thought it was reasonable [that Pugwash received the Nobel Peace Prize]. I thought that they were a likely candidate for some time….And no surprise that within Pugwash Rotblat got it. I mean, Rotblat does stand out….Without him, it probably would’ve collapsed. It’s just simply his determination that kept it going during some otherwise dry years. …Rotblat is very bossy and very opinionated and that’s what enabled him to keep Pugwash together. And it’s not just that he was like that when he was 90, he was like that when he was 70, 60. It’s not just the rigidity of old age. He’s a terribly rigid person, but he has this dedicated purpose to rid the world of nuclear weapons somehow or the nuclear threat. And it’s the kind of
thing that just seizes his whole life. He has dedicated himself to it and the result of that dedication is he kept Pugwash going. …Pugwash would’ve somehow fallen apart years ago or otherwise gotten off the track except for Rotblat’s determination.”

Advice to young people:
“It’s a question of odds and the biggest thing is opportunity. Opportunities do come along, the problem is to, when you see one, ditch everything else and take it if it’s a good one. …That often takes, especially if you’re young and have a family…that can be not only gutsy but can even be harmful...if you’ve got other responsibilities. But opportunity comes to everybody and what you have to do is be ready to seize it, no matter what else you’re doing. …give up everything else that’s career-related. That’s where the talent comes in. Opportunities are related to talent in the sense that you have come to somebody else’s attention because of some talent, even if it’s just for comity, some talent. But the real trick is to then recognize the opportunity and do something about it.”

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Please click here for the New York Times obituary (web version, 24 May 2009).

Please click here for the Physics Today obituary (21 May 2009).

Please click here for an obituary from the LA Times (21 May 2009).

Please click here for the obituary from the San Francisco Chronicle (22 May 2009).

Bruce Larkin's website contains (with Herb's permission) the full text of Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race (1970). Click here for the link.

Here is "Reminiscences from a Career in Science, National Security, and the University: Conversation with Herb York," by Harry Kreisler, 6 February 1988. Click here for the link.