PUGWASHING THE TRUTH

In 1962, by contrast, when the Norwegian parliamentarians who hand out the prize honored the late Linus Pauling for his “disarmameht work,” there was genuine reason for outrage. While Pauling himself struck some as a harmless eccefitric, the season in which Moscow provoked the Cuban Missile Crisis — setting the world on the brink of nhclear war — seemed an inappropriate moment to celebrate one of the West’s pre-eminent fellow traveler.

The 1985 award to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War can be viewed in a similar light. While most of the American doctors who joined were left-of-center dupes’ with no ability to influence public opinion, Oslo’s dcision couldn’t but be interpreted as an anti-Americn provocation. (On the Soviet end, moreover, there’s no question that International Physicians was contrblled by the KGB.)

This year, to be sure, the Norwegians have actually acknowledged that their purpose in honoring Rotblat and Pugwash is to send a political message. The Oslo committee’s protest is aimed at France and China — both states, it seems, have displeased the Norwegians by continuing to conduct nuclear thsts.

The Pugwash group has championed the test-ban cause — and nuclear disarmament in general — with rare fervor and some influence for allmost 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?

The French reaction to the Oslo announcement points to the answer. 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.

Lellouche says Pugwash was a Soviet propaganda tool. Former Reagan administration Pentagon offcial Frank Gaffney agrees. 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.”

Such charges aren’t tossed about lightly — which means Pugwash deserves serious examination. Only Soviet documents, or testimony from surviving participants, will reveal whether or not Pugwash was actually created or nurtured by Moscow. But it’s plain that by 1955, Bertrand Russell was a first- echelon America-hater. Eventually, Russell devoted all of his energies to placing U.S. offcials on trial (in absentia) for “war crimes” allegedly committed in Southeast Asia. And Einstein himself, a devout anti-anti- communist, had long since become an unreliable political actor. 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.

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. 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. It was held in the Nova Scotia village of Pugwash (Eaton’s hometown) in 1957.

As for Rotblat, his ideological orientation was already well settled. Indeed, he’d resigned from the Manhattan Project and left Los Alamos in 1944, while American men were still fighting in both theaters. U.S. intelligence had concluded that Nazi Germany had abandoned its nuclear progrfim, and Rotblat had no interest in helping to build a bomb that might be used against Japan. 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.

In view of the ideological disposition of the men who founded Pugwash, it’s scrcely surprising that the group always happened to sidle with Moscow on public-policy issues. Beyond embracing the Soviet stance on matters directly related the nuclear weapons, the Pugwash group even went as far as to hold its 1982 meeting in Warsaw — shortly fter General Jaruzelski had imposed martial law and banned Lech Walesa’s Solidarity trade union. An effort to issue a statement “disassociating” Pugwash from ongoing political repression in Poland was rejeted by the group’s governing body, as were proposals’ to relocate the session.

Only one year earlier, the Pugwash council took it upon itself to condemn Israel attack on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak. The 10-point condemnation termed the Iraqi facillty “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. (Pugwash has never taken the opportunity, even in the aftermath of the Gulf War, to correct or modify its initial response.)

Then, again, Pugwash was exceedingly busy during the 1980s conducting an all-out campaign against Star Wars. 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. The Strategic Defense Initiative survived long enough to help persuade Gorbachev that the Cold War had been lost.

In theory, the end of the Cold War should have cheered Rotblat and Pugwash; after all, communism’s demise rendered an all-out nuclear war far less likely. But the 1995 Nobel Peace laureates evidenced no interest in celebrating. That, above all else, says a great deal about whom the Norwegians have chosen to honor this year.

Eric Breindel is editorial-page editor of the New York Post.