Ottawa Peace Calendar* August 1987
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Ottawa Peace Calendar * August 1987 |
by Julie Scott
Scientists John Polanyi and Edward Teller openly clashed when they spoke at The Conference on Nuclear Weapons and the Law on June 15 in Ottawa as Polanyi, responding to Teller, said "I don't want you taking this as a criticism but what you have just said is nonsense."
Polanyi, the Canadian 1987 Nobel Chemistry prize winner, and Teller, a Hungarian émigré, inventor of the hydrogen bomb and advisor to President Ronald Reagan, offered the lawyers at the Conference opposite prescriptions for the nuclear uncertainties of the 1980s.
"In the present world we have to have the courage to change the rules," said Polanyi. "There is no winning move in the chess game of the nuclear world."
Recent history in which nuclear weapons have forced restraint among those with them and prevented war shouldn't be a guide for coming years. Said Polanyi: "While avoidance of war is a testimonial to good management it is still a greater testimonial to good luck."
Teller, however, implied that international insecurity can best be appeased by change in the Soviet Union. "As a fellow citizen of the world, I say one thing is needed: openness, glasnost." Laws and rules need not change. Rather, they must be adapted to nuclear weapons, for instance laws relating to the development and inspection of new weapons.
Polanyi said the law must change to address the reality of nuclear weapons. "We have seen the U.S.S.R. renounce defenses and therefore admit the emperor has no clothes. This nakedness must be legislated on the grounds that we are safer without nuclear weapons so we must destroy them."
Safety, argued Teller, is a by-product of nuclear weapons. After fleeing Hungary during the Second World War Teller met with Albert Einstein to devise a plan to beat Nazi Germany in the race for the nuclear bomb.
"I'm coming from an archaic age when there were no nuclear weapons," said Teller. "I know the horrors of the archaic age before nuclear weapons."
He continued: "Many of my closest relatives died then and I've learnt a few things slowly. New technology made for destruction is being developed for protection."
The Strategic Defense Initiative said Teller offers accurate protective measures. Since the Soviets have built up their ballistic missile defenses, the U.S. must respond. "SDI is poorly named. It should be named the Strategic Defense Response. The Soviet Union has worked on missile defense openly for approximately 30 years.
Polanyi disagreed. Soviet defense systems, newly upgraded, compare with American systems of twenty years ago. Proof of this point said Polanyi is that "they were recently overwhelmed by a Cessna." On May 28, 1987 a 19 year-old German, Mathias Rust, flew his Cessna from Finland to Moscow and landed in Red Square.
Since. SDI is a technologically unfeasible proposition, Polanyi refuses to work on it. Also, SDI is damaging politically, he said. In response to SDI, which violates existing treaties, the Soviet Union will likely build up its arms.
Also speaking on the panel at The Conference was Professor Y. P. Davydov of The Institute of U.S. and Canada in Moscow. Like Polanyi he said "It is necessary to change our notion of foreign policy in accordance with the new reality. New thinking is needed."
The consequences of nuclear war are too horrific to neglect preventing such a war. "The way to prevent war is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction," said Davydov. "Our laws must be based not on nuclear strength but on humanity and justice."
Converted June 24, 2002 - Lg
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