Pugwashing the Truth
Breindel, Eric
Pugwashing the Truth by Eric Breindel The fact that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to an individual who heads an organization that long seemed to serve the interests of the Soviet Union...
...The Pugwash group has championed the test-ban cause-and nuclear disarmament in general-with rare fervor and some influence for almost four decades...
...Why not, then, use this elect fraternity of scientists, which grew out of a disarmament manifesto drawn up by Bertrand Russell- and signed by Albert Einstein- to protest French and Chinese policy in this sphere...
...officials on trial (in absentia) for "war crimes" allegedly committed in Southeast Asia...
...More to the point, the young physicist concluded that the weapon would eventually be employed to counter postwar Soviet aspirations-a possibility that distressed him profoundly...
...As for Rotblat, his ideological orientation was already well settled...
...In theory, the end of the Cold War should have cheered Rotblat and Pugwash...
...While Pauling himself struck some as a harmless eccentric, the season in which Moscow provoked the Cuban Missile Crisis- setting the world on the brink of nuclear war-seemed an inappropriate moment to celebrate one of the West's pre-eminent fellow travelers...
...The Strategic Defense Initiative survived long enough to help persuade Gorbachev that the Cold War had been lost...
...And Einstein himself, a devout anti-anti-communist, had long since become an unreliable political actor...
...In this sense, the decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee to honor the 86-year-old London-based physicist Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs-the organization over which Rotblat presides-is more bizarre than distressing...
...The Oslo committee's protest is aimed at France and China- both states, it seems, have displeased the Norwegians by continuing to conduct nuclear tests...
...That, above all else, says a great deal about whom the Norwegians have chosen to honor this year...
...Lellouche says Pugwash was a Soviet propaganda tool...
...Only one year earlier, the Pugwash council took it upon itself to condemn Israel's attack on Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak...
...Pugwashing the Truth by Eric Breindel The fact that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to an individual who heads an organization that long seemed to serve the interests of the Soviet Union shouldn't surprise...
...This isn't the first time the prize has been conferred on folks who didn't mind carrying water for Moscow...
...Eric Breindel is editorial-page editor of the New York Post...
...Eventually, Russell devoted all of his energies to placing U.S...
...In 1962, by contrast, when the Norwegian parliamentarians who hand out the prize honored the late Linus Pauling for his "disarmament work," there was genuine reason for outrage...
...The goal, of course, was to persuade Washington to abandon the "threat to world peace" allegedly inherent in space-based missile defense...
...Happily, Ronald Reagan wasn't listening, either to Pugwash or to Mikhail Gorbachev, who advanced the identical argument at the Reykjavik summit in 1986...
...An effort to issue a statement "disassociating" Pugwash from ongoing political repression in Poland was rejected by the group's governing body, as were proposals to relocate the session...
...after all, communism's demise rendered an all-out nuclear war far less likely...
...The 1985 award to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War can be viewed in a similar light...
...In view of the ideological disposition of the men who founded Pugwash, it's scarcely surprising that the group always happened to side with Moscow on public-policy issues...
...It was held in the Nova Scotia village of Pugwash (Eaton's hometown) in 1957...
...But the 1995 Nobel Peace laureates evidenced no interest in celebrating...
...This year, to be sure, the Norwegians have actually acknowledged that their purpose in honoring Rotblat and Pugwash is to send a political message...
...On the Soviet end, moreover, there's no question that International Physicians was controlled by the KGB...
...Beyond embracing the Soviet stance on matters directly related to nuclear weapons, the Pugwash group even went so far as to hold its 1982 meeting in Warsaw-shortly after General Jaruzelski had imposed martial law and banned Lech Walesa's Solidarity trade union...
...Indeed, he'd resigned from the Manhattan Project and left Los Alamos in 1944, while American men were still fighting in both theaters...
...Affording the Pugwash crowd the benefit of the doubt, Gaffney argues that while most members may simply have been dupes, the nature of "the [Pugwash] operation made them unwitting tools of the Kremlin...
...The French reaction to the Oslo announcement points to the answer...
...The Einstein-Russell manifesto-Pugwash's "charter"- was signed by nine other scientists including Rotblat and French physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie, a Nobel laureate and prominent French communist...
...Former Reagan administration Pentagon official Frank Gaffney agrees...
...Only Soviet documents, or testimony from surviving participants, will reveal whether or not Pugwash was actually created or nurtured by Moscow...
...Thus, after Einstein's death, Cleveland-based industrialist Cyrus Eaton-an early advocate of enhanced U.S.-Soviet trade-offered to finance the first such meeting...
...Then, again, Pugwash was exceedingly busy during the 1980s conducting an all-out campaign against Star Wars...
...Such charges aren't tossed about lightly-which means Pugwash deserves serious examination...
...The document, which warns of the imminent risk to humanity's survival posed by atomic weapons, calls for international scientific meetings to discuss the danger of nuclear war...
...Pugwash has never taken the opportunity, even in the aftermath of the Gulf War, to correct or modify its initial response...
...intelligence had concluded that Nazi Germany had abandoned its nuclear program, and Rotblat had no interest in helping to build a bomb that might be used against Japan...
...What's curious, here, is that it is 1995, and the Soviet Union no longer exists...
...Although Paris issued a pro forma expression of congratulations to Rotblat, Pierre Lellouche-a member of parliament and former adviser to Jacques Chirac-gave voice to the feelings of many when he described himself as "perfectly scandalized" by the decision...
...While most of the American doctors who joined were left-of-center dupes with no ability to influence public opinion, Oslo's decision couldn't but be interpreted as an anti-American provocation...
...But it's plain that by 1955, Bertrand Russell was a first-echelon America-hater...
...The 10-point condemnation termed the Iraqi facility "experimental" and made light of Israel's fear that an operative nuclear reactor in the hands of Saddam Hussein might pose a danger to its security...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 7
