Tom Unterrainer
(Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation & Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament)

The sabotage of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by the United States drastically undermines peace and security in Europe. The risk of ‘limited’ nuclear war has emerged once more. The call for a European Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (NWFZ) is a coherent countermeasure to both the undermining of arms control regimes and to the threats posed by ‘limited’ nuclear war and ‘useable’ nuclear weapons. The Palme Commission report, Common Security: A Blueprint for Survival, made clear advocacy for Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones as a step towards establishing common security. There are, however, issues – some practical, some a matter of historical reckoning – that need to be addressed in order for a useful approach to the question of a NWFZ in Europe to be formulated. 

Background

As nuclear weapons proliferated from the 1950s onward, so did moves to create Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones. Such zones exist on every continent of the planet and extend from the floors of our oceans to the moon¹. Europe is one of the few places bereft of NWFZs, despite repeated efforts. Indeed, the whole concept of NWFZs originated in initiatives, consultations and negotiations of varying compositions and political orientations, to safeguard Europe.²

Why, then, did such efforts fail? In the early 1980s Ken Coates argued:

“If the pressure for denuclearised zones began in Europe, and if the need for them … remains direst there, why have governments in the Third World been, up to now, so much more effectively vocal on this issue than those of the European continent? Part of the answer surely lies in the prevalence of the non-aligned movement among countries in the Third World. Apart from a thin scatter of neutrals, Europe is the seed-bed of alignments, and the interests of the blocs as apparently disembodied entities are commonly prayed as absolute within it. In reality, of course, the blocs are not ‘disembodied’. Within them, in military terms, superpowers rule. They control the disposition and development of the two major ‘deterrents’. They keep the keys and determine if and when to fire…”³

Coates, through the Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament (END) – which he and the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation launched together with others  – campaigned for a NWFZ to be established in Europe. The END Appeal, formally launched in April 1980, declared:

“We must act together to free the entire territory of Europe, from Poland to Portugal, from nuclear weapons, air and submarine bases, and from all institutions engaged in research into or manufacture of nuclear weapons. We ask the two superpowers to withdraw all nuclear weapons from European territory.”⁴

Like previous such initiatives and despite significant political mobilisation and coordination across Europe, END was unsuccessful in this particular respect. However, success emerged elsewhere. Coupled with the call for a European NWFZ was the following text:

“In particular, we ask the Soviet Union to halt production of the SS-20 medium range missile and we ask the United States not to implement the decision to develop cruise missiles and Pershing II missiles for deployment in Europe.”⁵

The enormous CND demonstrations, the grassroots camps at Greenham Common and Molesworth, and END initiatives coupled with similar Europe-wide mobilisations of the ’80s demanded that such weapons be withdrawn from the continent. These mobilisations were sparked by the deployment of SS-20 and Pershing missile systems from 1977 onwards. Both the Soviet Union and NATO states – in practical terms, the USA – pursued a “dual-track” strategy, combining deployment with preliminary Treaty talks which began in 1980.⁶ 

A full ten years after deployment and seven years after the opening of negotiations, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was signed whereby:

“…the Soviet Union and USA agreed not to possess, produce or flight test a ballistic missile or ground-launched cruise missile … with a range capability of 500 to 5500 kilometres, or to possess or produce launchers for such missiles.”7

Over the course of negotiating the INF Treaty – a full seven years of meetings, proposals, formulations, summits, ‘walks in the woods’ and tête-à-tête’s between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev – many other aspects of disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation were discussed. For example – and at the extremes of what was discussed – on 15 January 1986 General Secretary Gorbachev announced plans for a ‘Soviet Nuclear Disarmament Initiative’ with the commitment to achieve “complete nuclear disarmament by the year 2000”.⁸

The nature of the INF Treaty negotiations throws significant light on Ken Coates’ diagnosis of the historic problems surrounding European NWFZ proposals: within Europe, “superpowers rule”. 

The remarkable processes through which the INF Treaty was finally agreed reflect significant political changes within the Soviet Union at the time and robust international structures, a ‘mature’ diplomatic outlook and a willingness to engage. Indicative of the seriousness of Gorbachev’s commitment is the following comment, made in the context of the economic, social, environmental and military issues faced by the Soviet Union and the world at large:

“Many have suddenly begun to perceive all these things not as something abstract, but as quite a real part of their own experience. The confidence that ‘this won’t affect us’, characteristic of the past outlook, has disappeared. They say that one thorn of experience is worth more than a whole forest of instructions. For us, Chernobyl became such a thorn…”⁹

The nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, Ukraine, exploded in April 1986, contaminating wide areas. 

Likewise, President Reagan publicly professed a personal commitment to eliminating nuclear weapons.10 To suggest that no such individual commitments and diplomatic conditions exist today should be uncontroversial. As such, the United States, which now conceives of itself as the sole superpower, is prepared to tear up the INF Treaty and, in so doing, significantly escalate nuclear tensions in Europe. 

In its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, (NPR) the United States made the following ‘commitment’ to ‘Strengthening Deterrence in Europe’: 

“The United States will make available its strategic nuclear forces, and commit nuclear weapons forward-deployed to Europe, to the defense of NATO. These forces provide an essential political and military link between Europe and North America and are the supreme guarantee of Alliance security. Combined with the independent strategic nuclear forces of the United Kingdom and France, as well as Allied burden sharing arrangements, NATO’s overall nuclear deterrence forces are essential to the Alliance’s deterrence and defense posture now and in the future.”¹¹

The bulk of ‘analysis’ in the Nuclear Posture Review is given over to highlighting the ‘risks’ posed by Russia in particular and the growing ‘risks’ associated with China’s rise as a global power. The commitment to maintaining the ‘availability’ of US strategic nuclear forces¹² as the “supreme guarantee of Alliance security” – above and beyond the nuclear capabilities of Europe’s two declared nuclear powers – emphasises once more the degree to which the US continues to dominate the European defence and security agenda via its status as ‘superpower’. 

Note also the clear intertwining of ‘Europe’ and ‘NATO’. It is no secret that the majority of the 28 EU member states are also members of NATO, with exceptions including Austria and neutral Ireland. From 2001 onwards, relations between NATO and the EU were institutionalised but the scope of the relations does not extend to nuclear weapons.¹³ It should be assumed, then, that the EU was not consulted in any substantial way before Trump announced withdrawal from the INF Treaty despite the importance placed on ‘protecting Europe’ as outlined in the latest NPR and despite seventeen years of institutional relations between NATO – in which the US is the major force – and the EU. No wonder, then, that the response from a number of European leaders to news of the withdrawal was so sharp¹⁴. Others, notably the UK and Poland, supported the move. The typical response from European leaders can be found in the words of French President, Emanuel Macron, who firmly re-stated the importance of the INF Treaty and asserted France’s commitment to regimes of arms control.¹⁵

In fact, the text of the Nuclear Posture Review, Trump’s conduct at the 2018 Brussels NATO summit¹⁶ and his unilateral withdrawal from the INF Treaty are rendered comprehendible by simple acknowledgement that the US has enjoyed the status of an unrivalled hegemonic power – sole superpower status – since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is taking reckless measures to shore-up its position in response to the emergence of rival centres of global power. As the global situation develops from a uni-polar to a multi-polar order, as the risks of nuclear confrontation grow¹⁷ and in the absence of countervailing political will – governmental or otherwise – the US will likely continue to assert itself in this manner. This means that NATO as an organisation and individual NATO member states will continue to be subjects of US dominance. In the context of a substantially expanded and expanding NATO, which pushed to the borders of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union against the stated intentions of the organisation¹⁸, the dominance of the US within NATO structures is pointing European states and their armed forces towards increasing confrontation with Russia.¹⁹

It is in this context that the call for a Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in Europe should again be posed. “If the powers want to have a bit of a nuclear war, they will want to have it away from home”²⁰ wrote Ken Coates some 38 years ago. That warning, and the calls for action that came with it, are as pressing today as they were in 1981. 

Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones – how they work

If the INF Treaty arose, at least in part, from the campaign for a NWFZ in Europe, then it acted as an important instrument against the threat that Europe could become an actual ‘theatre’ of nuclear war. Such a function is an essential component of NWFZ proposals. It has been suggested that the INF Treaty, in combination with the START 1 Treaty and ‘Presidential Nuclear Initiatives’ signed in 1991 and the 1992 Lisbon Protocol, combined – to all intents and purposes – to create a NWFZ in the Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine.²¹ This combination of states composed the ‘core group’ of a NWFZ proposed by Belarus in 1990.²² The states in the core group have no nuclear weapons deployed within their boundaries. With the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the INF Treaty, this arrangement is under severe threat. 

Threats to this arrangement are of some considerable consequence, not only due to the likely disestablishment of a quasi-NWFZ in and of itself but because NWFZ’s carry the function of reducing risks of proliferation and escalation. The location of a quasi-NWFZ in the geographical periphery of Russia is of obvious importance and functionality: 

“To the extent that the incentive to acquire nuclear weapons may emerge from regional considerations, the establishment of areas free of nuclear weapons is an important asset for the cause of nuclear nonproliferation. Countries confident that their enemies in the region do not possess nuclear weapons may not be inclined to acquire such weapons themselves.”²³

More broadly, the objectives of NWFZs were deliberated in some detail in a 1976 report by the United Nations Committee on Disarmament:

“the purpose of nuclear-weapon-free zones is to provide additional means for averting nuclear-weapon proliferation and halting the nuclear-arms race … It is thus argued that [NWFZs] provide complementary machinery to other collateral measures of disarmament, non-proliferation or nuclear weapons and the development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Most experts felt that [NWFZs] must not be regarded as alternatives to the principle of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons … but should be entirely consistent with the objectives of the Treaty.”²⁴

The complementary nature of NWFZ proposals is important to emphasise. Any proposal for a new initiative for the creation of a European NWFZ should be seen as specific measure in response to the proposed US withdrawal from the INF Treaty and not as an alternative to existing disarmament measures such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.²⁵ In fact, encouraging the creation of NWFZs is the responsibility of signatories to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). In the action plan agreed at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, Action 9 states:

“Action 9: The establishment of further nuclear-weapon-free zones, where appropriate, on the basis of arrangements freely arrived at among States of the region concerned, and in accordance with the 1999 Guidelines of the United Nations Disarmament Commission, is encouraged. All concerned States are encouraged to ratify the nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties and their relevant protocols, and to constructively consult and cooperate to bring about the entry into force of the relevant legally binding protocols of all such nuclear-weapon free zones treaties, which include negative security assurances. The concerned States are encouraged to review any related reservations.”²⁶

So the basis for the creation of a NWFZ in Europe is established, but what – beyond a response to the destabilising of the INF – could be its main objectives? The 2016 Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) working paper, A Nuclear Weapon-Free-Zone in Europe: Concepts-Problems-Chances,²⁷ outlines a number of such objectives: 1. Security objectives in the narrow sense, 2. Political-symbolic objectives and 3. Adapting defence policies to the political situation in Europe. More detail is given within each of the three objectives, as outlined below:

1. Security objectives in the narrow sense

Confidence-building in the regional neighbourhood: “All states in the region are loyal parties to the NPT, and for many of them, membership goes beyond compliance and involves active promotion of the spirit and letter of that treaty.”²⁸ Acting upon Action Point 9 of the 2010 NPT Review Conference would build and reinforce trust amongst regional signatories to the NPT, and would signal to neighbours – Russia in particular – that no threat is posed.

Irreversibility and Stability: The creation of the NWFZ in Europe would be the result of a legally binding, verifiable and therefore “hard to revoke”²⁹ arrangement. 

Immunizing the region against the consequences of a nuclear confrontation: “one objective of any NWFZ has always been to protect the region concerned against becoming a nuclear battleground”.³⁰

2. Political-symbolic objectives

Strengthening the non-proliferation regime: Developing a NWFZ in Europe would mean signatories to the NPT acting on the 2010 Review Conference Action Plan. Such an act could only reinforce existing arms control and disarmament regimes.

Fostering nuclear disarmament: “Sub-strategic nuclear weapons are today one of the most nagging issues for nuclear disarmament … A NWFZ in Europe would intend to, eventually, cover an area in which NATO’s sub-strategic nuclear weapons are presently sited and to stimulate adequate reciprocal concessions by Russia concerning her capabilities in the same weapons category”.³¹

Helping delegitimize nuclear weapons/provoking debate: As the PRIF study points out, the legitimacy of nuclear weapons as an issue of debate has never been “dormant”. There have, however, been identifiable periods when debate and discussion adopted a much higher pitch than usual. The stark threats posed to the continuation of the INF should be an opportunity for the debate to gain traction and the proposal for a NWFZ in Europe can only boost such debates. 

3. Adapting defence policies to the political situation in Europe

“One of the most frequently heard observations by non-Europeans is the disconnect between the nuclear constellation and the political situation in Europe. The relation between the West and Russia is not without disputes and occasional tensions … but the idea of a war against each other sounds still far-fetched.”³² Developments since the PRIF study was published now make it much easier to imagine war, even nuclear war, breaking out between “the West and Russia”. Further, the general political situation in Europe has deteriorated markedly in the three years since the PRIF study, much ‘adaptation’ of defence policies is already underway.³³ The development of plans for the NWFZ in Europe would add something definitively more positive to the current debate and could unleash an all-too-necessary political counter-dynamic to the current direction of travel. 

An important aspect of any proposal for a NWFZ in Europe is that it would, in fact, benefit from being part of a international system of such zones. In his indispensable study, Security without Nuclear Deterrence, Commander Robert Green notes:

“Every year since 1996 the UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution introduced by Brazil calling upon the states parties and signatories to the regional NWFZ treaties ‘to promote the nuclear weapon free status of the Southern Hemisphere and adjacent areas’, and to explore and promote further cooperation among themselves.”³⁴

The first conference of states already participating in NWFZs took place in Mexico, April 2005. The declaration adopted by the conference reaffirmed a commitment to the “consolidation, strengthening and expansion of NWFZs, the prevention of nuclear proliferation and the achievement of a nuclear weapons free world.”³⁵ So not only do signatories to the NPT share a commitment to establish NWFZs, but existing such zones are committed to their expansion. 

This only leaves the rather important question of ‘who’, or ‘what’, will have the capacity to drive forward the call for the NWFZ in Europe. 

Steps Forward

The President of the United States has pledged to begin the process of withdrawing from the INF Treaty on 2 February 2019. The immediate priority of peace and disarmament campaigns has been to campaign against the withdrawal. This is the right, proper and obvious course of action when faced with such a threat. As already considered, US withdrawal from the INF poses significant threats and sends ominous signals of the shape of things to come. 

The unfortunate reality is that conventional campaigning is unlikely to reverse Trump’s decision, nor will it be enough to deal with the consequences of withdrawal. The reason for this is not simply because of his individual failings, his appalling conduct, reactionary outlook and the rest. Trump’s presidency has coincided with a global political situation commonly heralded as another ‘Cold War’. As Michael Klare and others have pointed out, things are actually much worse.³⁶ Klare describes not a “New Cold War” but a “new global tinderbox” where we are being steered “ever closer to a new Cuban missile crisis, when the world came within a hairsbreadth of nuclear incineration.”³⁷

Such a miserable state of affairs is characterised by a blurring of distinctions between ‘peace time’ and ‘war’, “as the powers in this tripolar contest engage in operations that fall short of armed combat but possess some of the characteristics of interstate conflict”;³⁸ a perpetual state of military assertiveness best represented by enormous and aggressive military exercises; a commitment to developing new – and ‘useable’ – nuclear weapon systems; economic protectionism and burgeoning trade wars; and the breaking down of ‘conventional’ diplomatic practice, amply demonstrated by the flight of experienced diplomats from the US State Department.³⁹

We face a convergence of factors that have turned the world into a ‘global tinderbox’. One false move – just one spark – could set the world alight. 

What are these factors? First, developments in technology and the introduction of artificial intelligence into weapons systems has massively accelerated the destructive capabilities and the risks pertaining to the new weaponry. Between 2002 and 2016, the top 100 weapons manufacturers and ‘military service’ companies logged 38% growth in global sales. In 2016, these sales – excluding Chinese companies – amounted to $375 billion, turning $60 billion profit. Between 1998 and 2011, the Pentagon’s budget grew in real terms by 91% while defence industry profits quadrupled. 

 In the 1970s, investment in the ‘information technology’ sector stood at $17 billion. By 2017, investment in this sector exceeded $700 billion. In the same year, Apple’s market capitalisation stood at $730 billion, Google stood at $581 billion, and Microsoft stood at $497 billion. Meanwhile, Exxon Mobile – the highest placed ‘industrial’ company – had a market capitalisation of $344 billion. By comparison, the arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin had a capitalisation of around $321 billion and Rolls-Royce $21 billion at the end of 2017.

 Whilst the United States  and other countries continue to purchase – and use – vast quantities of ‘conventional’ weaponry, the extraordinary figures quoted above occurred alongside the unleashing of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, powered by significant leaps in capability in computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, ‘autonomous’ vehicles and the rest. Ever greater sums are being spent on military and policing applications of the ‘fruits’ of this ‘Revolution’. So much so, that the sociologist William I. Robinson identifies a trend towards what he terms ‘militarised accumulation’ as a ‘major source of state-organised profit-making’. 

 If this trend endures – as it surely will, unless arrested by concerted political action – then not only will ‘battlefields’ of the future look like a science fiction dystopia, but the processes that presently blur the lines between ‘wartime’ and ‘peacetime’ will surely accelerate. At what point will a large-scale computer hacking operation spill over into a ‘hot’ war? How much surveillance, how many drones, how many robotic weapons can be deployed before critical mass is reached? How many things must go wrong – and in what sequence – before these embodiments of what Mike Cooley terms our ‘delinquent genius’ might bring an end to us all?

 There is already a technological ‘arms race’ and with each new drone, autonomous field gun, hack or military satellite, this race intensifies. Any such intensification will drastically increase the risks of wide-scale military confrontation, including the prospect of nuclear war.

Second, these developments are fuelling nuclear arms renewal across the nuclear armed states. Third, this renewal involves hypersonic missiles and what have been termed ‘usable’ nuclear weapons. Fourth, the system of arms control treaties and arrangements has been sabotaged, removing any semblance of restraint or standard diplomatic functioning. Fifth, and lastly, the once dominant global power is no longer the only global power. 

Yet the United States continues to behave as if this is not the case. In the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world order, the US has adopted an aggressive, hyped-up and unpredictable posture. Part of the reason for it sabotaging the INF Treaty and Iran Deal, for example, will be a determination in US policy circles that the ‘old power’ must reassert itself and re-shape global arrangements in its own favour. This is a desperate and dangerous move. 

The US has already tested a new intermediate-range nuclear-capable missile and is undoubtedly working on ‘useable’ nuclear weapons. There can be little doubt that the US will press to base such weapons systems in Europe. Such moves must be resisted but we will only be successful in preventing their deployment with a Europe-wide agreement, one which includes the ‘expansion’ of Europe’s existing nuclear-weapons-free zone.

Expanding Europe’s Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone?

Article 5, subsection 3, of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to Germany, signed in Moscow on 12 September 1990, states:

“(3) Following the completion of the withdrawal of the Soviet armed forces from the territory of the present German Democratic Republic and of Berlin, units of German armed forces assigned to military alliance structures in the same way as those in the rest of German territory may also be stationed in that part of Germany, but without nuclear weapon carriers. This does not apply to conventional weapons systems which may have other capabilities in addition to conventional ones but which in that part of Germany are equipped for a conventional role and designated for such. Foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons or their carriers will not be stationed in that part of Germany or deployed there.” [emphasis added]

The circumstances around the drafting and agreement of this Treaty were undoubtedly exceptional. In invoking Article 5, subsection 3, of the Treaty there is no intention to downplay or minimise this reality. However, the existence of a ‘really existing’ nuclear-weapons-free zone in a part of Europe, is of some significance when considering paths to common security and common peace. 

Section 5.2 of the recommendations issued in Common Security states:

“5.3 Nuclear-weapon-free zones

The Commission believes that the establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones on the basis of arrangements freely arrived at among the states of the region or sub-region concerned constitutes an important step towards non-proliferation, common security and disarmament. They could provide mutual reassurance to states preferring not to acquire or allow deployment of nuclear weapons as long as neighbouring states exercise similar restraint. This would improve the chances for the region not to become enveloped in the competition of the nuclear-weapon states. The nuclear-weapon states would have to undertake a binding commitment to respect the status of the zone, and not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against the states of the zone …

Should it prove impossible to agree on legally defined nuclear-weapons-free zones, states could, as an interim measure, pledge themselves not to become the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the region. The nuclear-weapon states would have to guarantee the countries concerned that they would not be threatened or attacked with such weapons.”⁴⁰

Such proposals bring us back to the question of US power, and the exercise of US power in the Europe. Whereas Europe was once a “seedbed of alignments”, this is no longer the case. Alignment persists, but it points overwhelmingly in one direction: to the US. As has been explained, this situation is a consequence of shifts in world order, the consolidation and expansion of NATO in the post-Soviet era and the entanglement of the European Union within this matrix. Any approach to common security will have to confront these realities. 

All approaches will necessitate some form of confrontation with US power and a practical approach to common security will necessitate that European states – perhaps only some of them in the first instance – stage a ‘break out’. Such a necessity implies state level political action within the EU and wider coordination. For such moves to come about, the peace movements must act with an urgency that matches the urgent perils we all face. 

In 1981, Ken Coates posed the situation thus:

“Solemnly, we must ask ourselves the question, knowing what we know of the acute social and economic privations which beset vast regions of the world: is it even remotely likely that humanity can live through the next ten years without experiencing, somewhere, between these or other conflicting parties, an exchange of nuclear warheads?”⁴¹

Solemnly, we must ask ourselves these questions, knowing what we know: aren’t we now talking about such a risk in a much slimmer time-frame? Are we not at the point where another ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ could develop at any time? As such, isn’t Coates’ 1981 call to action even more relevant?

“In this new world of horror, remedies based on national protest movements alone can never take practical effect, while Governments remain locked into the cells of their own strategic assumptions. Yet something must be done, if only to arrest the growing possibility of holocaust by accident. 

We think the answer is a new mass campaign, of petitions, marches, meetings, lobbies and conferences. The fact that … confrontation has replaced negotiation only makes it more urgent that the peoples of Europe should speak out. All over Europe the nations can agree, surely must agree, the none will house nuclear warheads of any kind. The struggle for a nuclear free Europe can unite the continent, but it can also signal new hope to the wider world…

No-one believes that such a campaign as this can win easily, but where better than Europe to begin an act of renunciation which can reverse the desperate trend to annihilation?”⁴²

 

Notes

1. NWFZs exist and are regulated under the following treaties: The Treaty of Tlatelolco (Latin America and the Caribbean), The Treaty of Rarotonga (South Pacific), The Treaty of Bangkok (Southeast Asia), The Treaty of Pelindaba (Africa), Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty. Source: Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones (NWFZ) At a Glance, Arms Control Association (armscontrol.org). Other Treaties that also deal with denuclearisation include: The Antartic Treaty, Outer Space Treaty, Moon Agreement, Seabed Treaty. Source: United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/nwfz/) 
2. NWFZ efforts and initiatives in Europe include: 1956 proposal from Soviet Union to USA, 1957 Rapacki Plan, 1957 Balkan Initiative, 1963 Mediterranean Initiative, 1963 Nordic Initiative, 1964 Poland proposed a Central European plan, 1969 Soviet Union revises Balkan Initiative, 1982 Palme Commission. Source: A Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in Europe: Concept – Problems – Chances, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, Working Papers No. 27, January 2016
3. Coates, Ken (1984) The Most Dangerous Decade: World Militarism and the New Non-aligned Peace Movement, Spokesman, Nottingham, p 51
4. The full text of the 1980 END Appeal can be accessed at:  http://www.russfound.org/END/EuropeanNuclearDisarmament.html 
5. Ibid
6. Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Chronology, Federation of American Scientists. Source: https://fas.org/nuke/control/inf/inf-chron.htm 
7. Sile, Shannon N. (2018) ‘II. Russian-United States nuclear arms control’ in SIPRI Yearbook 2018: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Oxford.
8. Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Chronology, Federation of American Scientists. Source: https://fas.org/nuke/control/inf/inf-chron.htm
9. Gorbachev, Mikhail (1987) ‘The Reality and Guarantees of a Secure World’, Pravda, 17th September 1987 quoted from Coates, Ken (Editor) (1988) Perestroika: Global Challenge, Spokesman, Nottingham
10. In a message to Congress on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Reagan stated: “My central arms control objective has been to reduce substantially, and ultimately to eliminate, nuclear weapons and rid the world of the nuclear threat. The prevention of the spread of nuclear explosives to additional countries is an indispensable part of our efforts to meet this objective.  I intend to continue my pursuit of this goal with untiring determination and a profound sense of personal commitment”, 25th March 1988
11. Nuclear Posture Review, United States Department of Defense, 2018, page 36
12. Strategic nuclear forces include weapons and weapon systems trained on territory away from an immediate battlefield according to a systematic, strategic plan. A chilling example of such a plan, the Strategic Air Command Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, which includes detailed assessments of projected casualty figures, can be viewed online at the US National Security Archive: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear-Target-List-Declassified-First-Ever/ 
13. ‘Relations with the European Union’, 18th July 2018, NATO website. Source: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49217.htm
14. The German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, criticised the “damaging effect” of Trump’s unilateral action and warned that international agreements struck with the US were “no longer reliable”. Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/heiko-maas-attacks-donald-trump-on-foreign-policy/
15. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/22/eu-us-nuclear-arms-race-inf-treaty-bolton-moscow
16. For a taste of what transpired, see https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-nato-summit/ 
17. See Rogers, Paul (2018) ‘Nuclear Posture Review: Sliding Towards Nuclear War?’, Will we be blown up? The Spokesman 138, Spokesman, Nottingham for an assessment of the risks
18. See Sarotte, Mary Elise (2014) ‘A Broken Promise? What the West Really Told Moscow About NATO Expansion’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014 for a survey of evidence on what assurances were made about NATO expansion and for a lively engagement with counter-claims
19. See Mikhail Gorbachev’s most recent intervention on this question, published as an editorial in the New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/opinion/mikhail-gorbachev-inf-treaty-trump-nuclear-arms.html. For an analysis of the impact of withdrawal from the INF on US/China relations, see Jude Woodward’s article ‘US launches ‘all-front’ attack offensive against China’ here: https://newcoldwar.typepad.com/blog/2018/11/us-launches-all-front-offensive-against-china.html
20. Coates, Ken (1981) European Nuclear Disarmament, Spokesman Pamphlet No. 72, Spokesman, Nottingham
21. Finaud, Mark (2014) The Experience of Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones, BASIC. Source: http://www.basicint.org/publications/marc-finaud/2014/experience-nuclear-weapon-free-zones
22. Non-core states included Albania, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the states of the former Yugoslavia, with Norway, Denmark and Germany proposed as additional members. Source: http://www.basicint.org/publications/marc-finaud/2014/experience-nuclear-weapon-free-zones. See also https://fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/ArmsControl_NEW/nonproliferation/NFZ/NP-NFZ-CE.html for more information on the Belarus proposals of 1990. 
23. Goldblat, Joseph (1997) ‘Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones: A History and Assessment’, The Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer 1997
24. Comprehensive Study of the Question of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones in all its Aspects, Special Report of the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament, United Nations, New York, 1976
25. See http://www.icanw.org/why-a-ban/positions/ for the most recent information on the status of the TPNW
26. Text accessed at https://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/security/non-proliferation-disarmament-arms-control/policies-agreements-treaties/treaty-on-the-non-proliferation-of-nuclear-weapons/Pages/2010-npt-review-conference-64-point-action-plan.aspx
27. Műller, Harald et al (2016) A Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in Europe: Concepts-Problems-Chances, PRIF Working Paper No. 27, January 2016
28. Ibid
29. Ibid
30. Ibid
31. Ibid
32. Ibid
33. See Lösing, Sabine (2018) ‘Militarising Europe Again’, Europe for the Many, The Spokesman, issue 140, Spokesman, Nottingham
34. Green, Robert (2018) Security without Nuclear Deterrence, Spokesman, Nottingham
35. Ibid
36. Klare, Michael (2018) ‘This is Not Your Mother’s Cold War’, The Nation, 30 October 2018, accessed at https://www.thenation.com/article/this-is-not-your-mothers-cold-war/ 
37. Ibid
38. Ibid
39. Savransky, Rebecca (2018) ‘60 percent of State Department’s top-ranking career diplomats have left: report’, The Hill, 17 January 2018, accessed at https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/369279-60-percent-of-state-depts-top-ranking-career-employees-have-left
40. Palme Commission (1982), Common Security: A Blueprint for Survival, Simon and Schuster, Lodnon 
41. Coates, Ken (1981) European Nuclear Disarmament, Spokesman Pamphlet No. 72, Spokesman, Nottingham
42. Ibid