By Deborah Gyapong

If NATO countries do not start reducing their nuclear arsenals, they lack the moral authority to stop terrorists or rogue states from acquiring them, said Senator Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian lieutenant-general (retired) who led UN forces in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.

“If we are moving down a road of disarmament, we can ethically, morally and legally stop rogue nations from going down that route because it is fundamentally against the security of humanity,” he said in an interview from his Ottawa office.

He noted that, with true moral authority, “we could be quite ruthless” with those who threaten humanity with these weapons.

Dallaire, who has been public about his Christian faith, has made ridding the world of nuclear weapons a priority.

He was motivated to do so a year ago, when retired Senator Douglas Roche, a veteran peace and anti-nuclear advocate, asked him to host the 50th anniversary of the Pugwash Conferences.

The conferences, which won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1995, have met ever since a group of the world’s leading scientists gathered in 1957 in the village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to discuss the threat of nuclear weapons. They were invited by American philanthropist Cyrus Eaton, who was born in Pugwash.

Eaton was inspired by a 1955 Manifesto by Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein and philosopher Bertrand Russell who warned that nuclear weapons threatened the future of the human race.

To mark the anniversary, the Pugwash Conferences held an international gathering at the Pugwash birthplace July 5 – 8.

In addition to Dallaire, guests and speakers included Hiroshima mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, founder of Mayors for Peace; Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay; former UN Undersecretary-General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala; and New Zealand’s disarmament and arms control minister, Marian Hobbs.

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Dallaire said the credibility of countries like the United States and Britain that have nuclear weapons but don’t want anyone else to have them is “shot to hell.”

He said he finds it ludicrous that the United States and Britain are modernizing their nuclear arsenal, instead of making moves to reduce the 27,000 nuclear weapons around the world. “You don’t need that many to blow up the whole planet,” he asserted.

The sheer numbers of nuclear weapons make it all the more likely they will fall into the hands of terrorists, he said. “If we think the two towers coming down created paranoia and panic, imagine if we have our first nuclear blast.”

He wants NATO and its members to “shift gears” in their global security strategy and push towards an internal reduction and reduction process. NATO countries could easily start reducing their own arsenals without compromising security.

Since his ordeal in Rwanda, Dallaire has become involved in the promotion of human rights. When Roche asked him to host the conference, he realized that the presence of nuclear weapons systems were a “gross violation of my human right to security.”

Dallaire said the end of the Cold War, and the “peace dividend” did see some movement in the reduction of nuclear weapons, but since then the issue has fallen “off the radar.”

He thinks his views represent that of the majority. Despite experiencing the worst of human nature through his time in Rwanda – leading to his memoir, Shake Hands With The Devil – Dallaire said his view of human nature remains optimistic.

The advancement of human rights, and the reassignment of priorities in human development, in efforts to reduce friction, and eliminate nuclear weapons “will one day lead us to the serenity we are all looking for,” he said – though, he admitted, “it may take two centuries.”

Copyright Canadian Catholic News; no reprinting without permission.

August 2007