Anti-nuclear strike force

George Shultz, who cemented a place in New Zealand's history books as United States Secretary of State during the crisis over our anti-nuclear policy, has a new mission in life.

At 89, he is on the cutting edge of a renewed anti-nuclear movement in the US.

He and three other elder statesmen - former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Defence Secretary William Perry, and former Senator Sam Nunn - were feted at the White House on Thursday at a special screening of the documentary Nuclear Tipping Point which features the four crusaders, along with Hollywood A-lister Michael Douglas.

The film screening is a small part of the political choreography leading to next week's nuclear security summit for about 45 leaders to be hosted by President Barack Obama in Washington. Prime Minister John Key will attend.

Obama is building a mood for change on the nuclear diplomacy front.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is also supporting change with his advocacy of a Nuclear Weapons Convention to set out, step-by-step, how to abolish nuclear weapons from all countries.

The Nuclear Tipping Point film builds on two significant articles the four men jointly authored in the Wall St Journal.

The features, which ran in January 2008 and in April 2007, called for a world free of nuclear weapons.

But make no mistake: Shultz has not gone soft or changed sides.

It is safe to assume he still feels a certain grumpiness about the New Zealand bust-up with the Anzus Alliance.

He and his bipartisan band have not renounced the doctrine of deterrence that drove the United States and the former Soviet Union to stockpile weapons in the Cold War.

They still insist that nuclear weapons were "essential to maintaining international security".

But they say that in today's environment, the reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.

Shultz talks about the deterrence factor in the film.

"If terrorists get their hands on nuclear weapons or materials, and you don't even know their return address," Shultz says, "we will be faced with a very dangerous moment."

"If you think of the people who are committing suicide attacks and people like that get a nuclear weapon, they are almost by definition not deterrable."

The Wall St Journal pieces were published during the presidency of George W Bush - a long time before President Obama was elected or delivered his visionary speech in Prague last year setting out his plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Obama was back in Prague on Thursday signing a new deal with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev for a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to cut their strategic nuclear warheads - the big ones that could be launched against each other.

He also released the United States' new "posture" on nuclear weapons, promising more cuts and promising not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The five-yearly review of the 40-year-old NPT is the next big event on the nuclear calendar after the Obama summit.

Opinion over the NPT is divided.

The treaty gives all parties the "inalienable right" to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes; it requires non-nuclear states not to acquire nuclear weapons; and requires five nuclear powers (US, Russia, China, Britain and France) to work towards disarmament.

Some see it as a failure because it has not prevented India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons and Iran from heading that way, and sets up two classes of nuclear states, those inside the treaty and those outside the treaty.

Former Disarmament Minister Phil Goff sees value in the NPT, it being the one treaty in which major nuclear powers had agreed to disarmament.

But he says New Zealand is no longer taking a leadership position on anti-nuclear issues such as on a nuclear weapons convention.

"We should be at the forefront of promoting Ban Ki-Moon's call for a convention to abolish nuclear weapons."

Goff says that Obama and the United States had helped to create a new mood "and that means there are new opportunities for New Zealand if it chooses to take them".

"It is good that Key is going to Washington next week but at the moment most New Zealanders wouldn't know who the minister for disarmament was."

New Zealand's Disarmament Minister, Georgina te Heuheu, says the NPT has "served humanity very well in drastically slowing the spread of nuclear weapons".

She says New Zealand considers that a nuclear weapons convention or similar "will one day be necessary but the necessary conditions for such a convention have not yet been reached".

Asked what the conditions were, her spokesman said she would go no further than that.

New Zealand votes in favour of the annual resolution on beginning a nuclear weapons convention put forward at the United Nations.

Wellington-based Alyn Ware, the global co-ordinator for Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, played a key role in drawing up an 81-page model convention that Ban Ki-Moon is promoting.

Ware believes the convention will not get any traction at the Washington summit and that Obama has other priorities at present - such as getting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ratified and getting support for the new arms reduction treaty and Nuclear Posture Review.

But he believes it could begin to get real traction at next month's NPT Review Conference.

Another elder statesman from this part of the globe, former conservative Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, is critical of the NPT, not least for the inconsistencies that arise.

He cites the concerns about the moves of Iran, a member of the NPT, towards a nuclear weapons programme, as opposed to the attitude towards Israel.

"The silent international tolerance of Israel's nuclear weapons is a powerful driver for proliferation in the Middle East, undermining the security of all, including Israel," Fraser said in an address in October.

He described the NPT as "crumbling" and warned there was a drift towards a "nuclear law of the jungle."

In his view, the non-proliferation regime has "broken down and the only safe path for all of us is to work for and achieve the zero option," a reference to Ban's proposed nuclear weapons convention.

Fraser said Obama deserved all the support and encouragement in the world.

"We do not know how long this opportunity will last. Unlike the last one, at the end of the Cold War, it must not be squandered."

A process for getting to zero, even if in 20 years time, should be locked in place as quickly as possible, he said.

"We are at an alarming tipping point on proliferation of nuclear weapons."

* Political editor Audrey Young will cover President Obama's Washington summit for the Herald.