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Mr. Schell, congratulations on receiving the 2004 Nuclear-Free Future Solutions Award. What does this award mean to you?
It is the only one of its kind in the world - a remarkable thing if you consider the importance of the subject. The nuclear question can no longer be considered in a national or bipolar context. It is a human issue. The Nuclear-Free Future Award takes a global approach and it speaks where no one else does. It is an affirmation of a belief I have held for thirty years: that the only humanly decent thing we can do about nuclear weapons is to get rid of them - totally.
We are in India, because Arundhati Roy suggested having the award ceremony here. We have been to Los Alamos and St. Petersburg because we think it is important to network with people who oppose the nuclear madness from inside a nuclear power. I hear you don't really like to travel; so why did you come all the way to India?
Because in the context of the nuclear threat it is a fundamentally new location. The critical event was the nuclearization of Southeast Asia in 1998. The India-Pakistan conflict is the first conflict which, having nothing to do with the Cold War, has gone nuclear.
In Jaipur, you spoke of a " Second Nuclear Age". What do you mean by that?
What characterizes the second nuclear age is the reality that nuclear danger can now pop up almost anywhere. Currently the points of origin encompass this region here as well as North Korea, the Iraq War and the stand-off with Iran. The threat is truly global in a way it was not during the bipolar years.
In Germany, the media seem to have minimal interest in depleted uranium, the main concern of your fellow award recipient Asaf Durakovic. Is the American public aware of the new "uranium weapons"?
No. They are widely ignored and not covered in the mainstream press.
You described the Iraq War as a "disarmament war". Did you coin that expression?
Yes, I did.
What exactly is a disarmament war?
It's a war aimed at stopping a country from possessing weapons of mass destruction. It is the application of a policy, the policy of trying to stop proliferation by the use of military force. It cannot possibly work, but there is a clear threat that it will be tried repeatedly. So far, the Iraq War is the only example of a disarmament war. But remember that Bush has also threatened North Korea and Iran. The "axis of evil" speech has never been taken back.
At the convention of the Indian Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, I sensed deep divisions among the delegates over the issue of nuclear energy. At the Nuclear-Free Future Award, we envisions a world free of both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, because we say you can't get rid of one without getting rid of the other.
Throughout the nuclear age, nuclear power has been a prime vector of proliferation. It is also of course immensely dangerous in itself. And finally -- to state the obvious -- no one knows what to do with the waste, which will be a great burden to all future generations. It's astonishing that the world embarked on this technology without figuring out what to do with the waste. It's as if you were to cook year after year in your kitchen without having any means of garbage disposal, as if your plan were to let the garbage heap up in the kitchen until the whole house was full of it.
You have been an advocate of total abolition for three decades. Is there any chance you might settle for strictly enforced non-proliferation?
No. Much as I'd like to see proliferation stopped, I never forget the inconceivable destruction that lies coiled in the arsenals of the existing nuclear powers. That is the mother lode of danger, and we must never forget it.
You said, "People just love not to think about nuclear weapons." So how do you teach Nuclear Studies at Yale?
I find that when students are presented with the issue, they do respond. It's just that it is rarely presented. After the end of the Cold War not only the news media but schools and universities pretty well forgot about nuclear weapons. Surely, the horror of the subject has something to do with this ease of forgetting. Our struggle is indeed a Long March.
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