長崎大学 核兵器廃絶研究センター（RECNA）

Lessons from COVID-19 for Tackling Global Existential Risks

A new report by the Asia Pacific Leadership Network, Nautilus Institute and RECNA explores new ways to think about addressing nuclear weapons in a world re-shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic

New analysis by the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, Nagasaki University (RECNA), the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, explores how the far-reaching impacts of COVID-19 and future pandemics could alter the landscape for nuclear risk and disarmament.

In less than a year, the global pandemic has exposed how in an interconnected world states can lack the capacity and political will to effectively manage a public disaster. The new report identifies future scenarios, challenges and opportunities for governments, civil society, and market actors to reduce existential risks, including nuclear risks, in Northeast Asia. The findings are the culmination of a series of scenario planning workshops imagining highly uncertain future conditions and generating a series of “robust actions” that if taken today would ensure that states and societies are better prepared for future risks.

Full text of the report (PDF) is here.
 

It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.

Hope Becomes Law:
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in the Asia Pacific Region
Richard Tanter
 
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project

Richard Tanter is a Senior Research Associate at the Nautilus Institute and teaches international relations at the University of Melbourne. He is immediate past president of the Australian board of the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will enter into force in January 2021, but has a long way to go towards institutionalisation and its intended impact on the dominant presumption of legitimacy and utility of nuclear weapons. Dialogue on the treaty on the treaty in the Asia-Pacific region faces a suite of issues regarding movement of the treaty towards institutionalisation as a regime. The effectiveness of regional dialogues will be affected by the following:

Full text (PDF) is here.
 

Video Release Announcement

We are pleased to announce that we have uploaded a video of Special Symposium to Commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing: “Peace and Disarmament Education in an Emerging Era of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”. (November 25).

in addition to the delay in the start of this Zoom transmission, we have encountered problems where the audio in Japanese was not transmitted for about 20 minutes on that day.

Again, I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience these troubles have caused. Your kind understanding and patience are highly appreciated.

Fumihiko YOSHIDA
Director, RECNA

Program

Zoom Live Stream

It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.

U.S. Planning for Pandemics and Large-Scale Nuclear War
Lynn Eden
 
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project

Lynn Eden is senior research scholar (emeritus), at Stanford University. Her Ph.D. is in sociology from the University of Michigan; she works at the intersections of sociology, history, and political science. For most of her career, Eden was senior research scholar at the Center for International Security & Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University; she was also associate director for research at CISAC for many of those years. Before that, Eden taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon University. Eden has written on how people in small communities do, or plan, harm to others. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown, was a finalist for a U.S. National Book Award. She also wrote on the 1964 Ku Klux Klan murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Cheney, and Goodman in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Most of Eden’s work, including articles, chapters, and co-edited volumes, has been on U.S politics, nuclear arms control, and U.S. foreign and military policy. Her book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation won the American Sociological Association’s 2004 Robert K. Merton award for best book in science and technology studies. Using historical documents and personal interviews, Lynn Eden is currently writing on how organizational routines, narratives of deterrence, and jokes and humor make it possible for highly ethical U.S. military officers to revise and develop the operational war plans to “prevail” in a nuclear war.

This paper focuses on the United States and examines how developing plans to understand, prevent, prepare for, and mitigate disasters that may occur infrequently—for example, pandemics, is different from developing plans to fight and “prevail” in a large-scale nuclear war. We could say that preparing for pandemics makes sense, but that developing—and implicitly threatening to carry out—nuclear war plans only makes sense if such plans are not carried out.

Both kinds of plans involve anticipating large numbers of deaths—but at very different orders of magnitude. And, although the language of prevention and mitigation may be common to both, the probability of a pandemic depends to a considerable degree on human knowledge and social/political action. On the other hand, the reason for developing highly detailed “executable” plans to fight and “prevail” in a nuclear war is to threaten an enemy so “he” will not attack you or your allies. One cannot threaten a pandemic in hopes of deterring it from attacking. But if nuclear war plans do not deter an enemy, carrying out those plans in the hopes of destroying enemy forces will almost certainly lead to the incomprehensible destruction of all.

It is puzzling that the Trump administration did not prepare for a pandemic. It is puzzling how those who develop U.S. nuclear war plans understand what they are planning. I explore both below.

Keywords
Pandemic, scenarios, government organization, U.S. nuclear war planning, planners, outcomes, measurement, displacing emotion, humor

Full text (PDF) is here.
 

RECNA is pleased to host a special live-stream symposium to explore the future of peace and disarmament education as a commemorative event of the 75th anniversary of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, entitled “Peace and Disarmament Education in an Emerging Era of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” on November 25, 2020.

Program

Zoom Live Stream

Requests to all who are planning to come to the venue

It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.

Assessing the modernization of nuclear postures
Petr Topychkanov
 
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project

Dr Petr Topychkanov (Russia) is a Senior Researcher in SIPRI’s Nuclear Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-proliferation Programme, working on issues related to nuclear non-proliferation, disarmament, arms control and the impact of new technologies on strategic stability. Prior to joining SIPRI in 2018, he held the position of Senior Researcher at the Centre for International Security at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences. From 2006–17, Topychkanov was a Fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program. He received his PhD in History in 2009 from the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University. His recent publications include The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Strategic Stability and Nuclear Risk Volume III, South Asian Perspectives (SIPRI: April 2020, editor and co-author).

The article examines the recent decisions taken by central nuclear-armed states to give expanded roles to nuclear weapons in their military plans. The decisions reflect the increased salience of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies. It marks a reversal of the post-cold war trend toward the relative marginalization of nuclear weapons. Political and military leaders in these countries are moving away from the goal of limiting the nuclear weapons role to the sole purpose of deterring aggression with the use of the same type of arms. Instead, they are emphasizing nuclear options to respond to conventional and even cyber-attacks. This lowering of the nuclear threshold coincides with the stagnation of the nuclear arms control. Simultaneously, the political distrust grows between Russia and the USA, NATO, and also between the United States and China.

Keywords
Nuclear weapon, nuclear doctrine, no-first-use, nuclear deterrence, nuclear modernization, arms control

Full text (PDF) is here.
 

It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.

Equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines: cooperation around research and production capacity is critical
David G Legge and Sun Kim
 
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project

David Legge, MD, scholar emeritus at La Trobe University, has practised, researched and taught in public health, health policy and global health for many years. He has been active in the People’s Health Movement since its creation in 2000, including its WHO Watch project. Contact: dlegge@phmovement.org. More about PHM at www.phmovement.org

Sun Kim, MS, PhD, Director of Health Policy Research Center at People’s Health Institute (Seoul, South Korea), has researched vulnerability and health care, and access to medicines and pharmaceutical production, from a political economy of health perspective. She has served as South East Asia and Pacific region coordinator of People’s Health Movement since 2019. Contact: sunkim@phmovement.org

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated families and communities and disrupted society and the economy; it has caused over 1 million deaths globally and left a disturbing burden of chronic morbidity. The prompt availability of effective and affordable vaccines against the SARS-2-coronavirus offers the most promising path out of the disease and disruption that the pandemic has wrought.

From the beginning the WHO Director General was emphasising ‘solidarity’ as the key to the global response. Solidarity was reflected in the early publication of the genome sequence and the sharing of protocols for the nucleic acid test. However, the proposal that vaccine technologies be pooled to accelerate vaccine development and production was a step too far for pharma and its nation state sponsors. WHO’s proposed ‘solidarity vaccine trial’ which would yield comparative data about efficacy, safety and cost was likewise boycotted by pharma.

From late March negotiations toward global cooperation for diagnostics, medicines and vaccines moved from WHO to the G20 sponsored ‘Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator’, a new ‘multi-stakeholder public private partnership’. The ‘vaccine arm’ of the Accelerator was the Covax Facility which would enter into advanced purchase commitments for selected candidate vaccines for participating countries. Covax also provided for the mobilising of donor funds to pay for vaccine supplies for low and lower middle income countries. Covax was designed to deliver vaccines for the priority fraction of countries’ populations (up to 20%). After this, countries would return to bilateral purchasing in the open market.

By July however, it was becoming clear that massive bilateral advanced purchase agreements, in particular, by the US, UK and EU, would reserve most of the early supply of effective vaccines and jeopardise the fund-raising for Covax.

The rejection of technology pooling, the rise of ‘vaccine nationalism’, and the underfunding (and under-supply) of Covax all look set to produce highly inequitable outcomes in terms of access to vaccination, particularly during the first year or so after the first vaccine is approved.

Drawing on a review of access-to-medicines debates over the last two decades, an analysis of the evolving business model of transnational pharma, and taking into account the rising call for universal health cover, we propose a policy platform to promote a more equitable roll out of vaccines in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Core elements of such a platform include:
• full funding of the concessional component of Covax;
• a rapid expansion of local production of vaccines in low and middle income countries (L&MICs) supported by an organised program of technology transfer as appropriate;
• an immediate waiver of key provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to facilitate access to intellectual property and technical knowhow necessary for vaccine development and production;
• full transparency regarding key aspects of vaccine development and production, including clinical trial data, production costs, and patent and market approval status; and
• a moratorium on national debt servicing and repayment for highly indebted L&MICs.

Policy initiatives directed at a more equitable and efficient response to the next pandemic need to be put in place now, including:
• scaling up public sector innovation and manufacturing capacity in L&MICs;
• regional and plurilateral agreements on biopharmaceutical technology transfer and capacity building;
• reforming the TRIPS Agreement to facilitate technology pooling in future pandemic emergencies;
• reforming the International Health Regulations to give WHO the power to trigger mandatory technology pooling and mandatory participation in comparative clinical trials (‘Solidarity trials’) in pandemic emergencies; and
• continued mobilisation around delinking and the creation of a global research and development treaty.

Critical to achieving progress in the implementation of this platform will be:
• institutional reform at the national level including legislation for the full deployment of TRIPS flexibilities and for the imposition of conditionalities on public funding of research (open licensing) and the funding of private pharma (transparency);
• protection of the multilateral member-state fora such the UN and the WHO where L&MIC voices can be heard and which can provide leadership in institutional reform; and
• community mobilization around single payer UHC and equitable access to affordable, effective medicines and vaccines.

Keywords
COVID-19, Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), Covax, vaccines, vaccine development, vaccine production, equity, access, TRIPS Agreement, compulsory licensing, Solidarity Clinical Trials, universal health cover (UHC), pharmaceutical industry, COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP)

Full text (PDF) is here.
 

It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.

The Role of Cities as First Responders to Pandemics: Focusing on the Case of the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Response to COVID-19
Changwoo Shon
 
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project

Changwoo Shon received a Ph.D. in Health Science from Seoul National University and currently works for the Seoul Institute. The main research areas are urban health, healthy cities, and community health. Currently, he is conducting research on establishing a system for new infectious disease management, agenda-setting in the Post-corona era. In addition, he recently published research papers related to COVID-19 in the Korea Journal of hospital management (The Response of the Seoul Municipal Hospitals against COVID-19 and Its Implications for Public Hospitals), and the Journal of Korean Society for Health Education and Promotion (The direction of Healthy Cities through the COVID-19 pandemic experience of Seoul, South Korea). In addition, he is an adjunct professor of the Catholic University of Korea, an academic director of the Korea Health Communication Association, an academic director of the Korean Healthy Cities Partnership, and a member of the Disaster Safety Project Evaluation Committee of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety in Korea.

This study was conducted to discuss the role of urban governments in the future, including intercity network construction, by reviewing cases of responding to COVID-19 in Seoul amid changes in the international situation caused by COVID-19. This paper is organized into four sections. First, this paper described the outbreak of COVID-19 in Seoul from January to August 2020 and the Seoul city’s response over time. Second, the background of Alliance for Multilateralism and inter-city cooperation in accordance with the changes in the international situation due to COVID-19 was explained. Third, the response of the Seoul Metropolitan Government to the pandemic was reviewed based on the following four characteristics: (i) Social distancing; (ii) Enhanced contact tracing; (iii) Widespread testing; and, (iv) Early preparation. Finally, this paper reviewed how Seoul city cooperated with overseas cities in order to overcome the pandemic crisis, as well as the cases in which 25 autonomous districts of Seoul shared their policies using the Healthy Cities Network.

Keywords
COVID-19, Pandemic crisis, City’s response, Intercity network, Role of cities

Full text (PDF) is here.
 

RECNA Newsletter Vol.9 No.1 (September 30, 2020)

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Interview Series: Nuclear Weapons, COVID-19, Climate Change – What Lies at the Roots of these Problems — Fumihiko Yoshida Policy Paper: 50th Anniversary of the NPT Entering into Force “Opposing a World with Nuclear Weapons” (July 2020) — Tatsujiro Suzuki Joint Research on “Disarmament Education” — Keiko Nakamura Nagasaki Peace Declaration 2020: 75 years of a “World with Nuclear Weapons” — Satoshi Hirose Looking back on Nagasaki Youth Delegation Activities — Members of the Eighth Nagasaki Youth Delegation >>for details

It is published simultaneously by RECNA-Nagasaki University, Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), and Nautilus Institute and is published under a 4.0 International Creative Commons License the terms of which are found here.

Nuclear Hotlines: Origins, Evolution, Applications
Steven E. Miller
 
A Working Paper presented to
The 75th Anniversary Nagasaki Nuclear-Pandemic Nexus Scenario Project

Steven E. Miller is Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal, International Security and also co-editor of the International Security Program’s book series, Belfer Center Studies in International Security (which is published by the MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The hotline concept has evolved to a variety of forms and settings, suggesting a broad utility. But it is what might be called a pure or original version of an idea that remains compelling: making sure that the most important, most heavily armed nuclear rivals can communicate directly and effectively at the highest levels in all circumstances, whether crisis or war, in order to minimize escalation, retain control of dangerous situations, and inoculate against potentially disastrous miscommunication or misunderstanding.

Keywords
Nuclear weapons hotlines, Russia, United States, Cuban Missile Crisis, Arms Control Diplomacy

Full text (PDF) is here.