Nov 30, 2024 Episodes International relations

Richard Butler — Nuclear Diplomacy at the End of History (#160)

84 min read

Richard Butler AC is a retired Australian diplomat. He served as Australia's first Ambassador for Disarmament (1983-1988), Australian Ambassador to the United Nations (1992-1997), and Chair of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to inspect Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (1997-1999). He also served as Chair of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Earlier in his career, he was Chief of Staff to former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam (1975-1977).

Butler played a crucial role in both the permanent extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995 and the adoption of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996. His work helped establish the framework through which we still manage nuclear weapons risks today.

This is his first ever podcast interview.

If you'd like to support my interview research, you can gain access to my background research materials for the Richard Butler interview here.

Video

Transcript

JOSEPH WALKER: In 2023, I interviewed the great historian of the atomic age and the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes. One of the questions I asked Rhodes was: What explains the relative success of nuclear non-proliferation?

If you go back to the 1960s, there were many dark predictions, including by people like John F. Kennedy, that within a generation there would be a couple of dozen nuclear states. And yet today we have just nine. We managed to contain the breakout from the five nuclear weapon states in 1968 to just four more. So what explains this?

I'd like to quote part of Rhodes' answer to me because I think it sets up the context for today's conversation perfectly.

Here's Rhodes:

"To some degree it followed from the Cuban Missile Crisis where everything was so close to blowing up…

I've looked at the correspondence between Kennedy and Khrushchev after the… crisis. There was a flurry of letters back and forth that led pretty quickly to the decision that some kind of treaty had to be set up to prevent that proliferation from coming along.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was finally tabled in 1968 and signed by enough parties to take effect in 1970, was a promise to non-nuclear powers that if they did not go nuclear, they would be given support from the two major powers to work on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. And another promise—which has not been kept—was that the nuclear powers would work on trying to get to universal nuclear disarmament. We haven't done that.

For that reason the other non-nuclear signatories [were] getting pretty restless and almost abrogated the treaty in 1995 when it came up for renewal. Most treaties are written for in perpetuity. Because nobody quite trusted the deal, the one signed in '68 was given a lifespan of twenty-five years, after which it would be reviewed and either renewed permanently or set aside.

And it was a narrow issue, which is another story. I know the man who made that happen. It was Australian diplomat Richard Butler. He went around to all the countries that might go nuclear and talked their governments out of it. It's a great story. Butler is one of your heroes. I don't know if you know that, but he is."

Well, I'm embarrassed to say I did not know that. So I did some research into Richard Butler and I learned that not only did he play a crucial role in the renewal and extension of the NPT, he also engineered the passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Both of those negotiations saw him as Australia's Ambassador to the UN. Before that, in the 1980s, he was Australia's first Ambassador for Disarmament. And in the late 1990s, he was chair of UNSCOM, the body set up by the UN Security Council to inspect Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

Amidst this long and glittering diplomatic career, Richard was also Chief of Staff to former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam when Gough was leader of the opposition after the 1975 constitutional crisis and was trying to win back government.

So naturally I decided I had to speak with Richard, and I managed to track him down. As fate would have it, we were connected through a mutual friend. And it is a great honour to be speaking with him today here in Melbourne.

Richard, welcome to the podcast.

RICHARD BUTLER: Thank you, Joe. I'm very happy to be here.

WALKER: I'd like to start in the period between 1968 and 1970 because—and this came as a shock to me when I was researching for this conversation—for all of Australia's storied efforts in service of the cause of the elimination of nuclear weapons from the world, we refused to sign the NPT for two years under John Gorton's government. He sat on the signature of the treaty from 1968 to 1970. In fact, Australia was the second-last country to sign the treaty before it came into force in 1970.

And the reason Australia didn't want to sign the treaty was primarily to keep the option open of developing its own nuclear arsenal.

So, I want to start here, both because it's historically interesting, but also because I think it's a useful allegory for non-proliferation more broadly.

Now, at the time you were in the Department of Foreign Affairs and before that, as your first job out of university, you worked at the Australian Atomic Energy Commission.

BUTLER: That's right.

WALKER: Tell me what you remember of the debate about nuclear weapons within the Australian government in the late '60s. And how plausible was it that Australia might actually have gone ahead with building nuclear weapons of its own?

BUTLER: What an interesting question. It was a very difficult time and I think in the end Australia made the right choice. But as you point out, the choice to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty came late and that caught very negative attention in the world of states interested in controlling the spread of nuclear weapons. We weren't supposed to be that kind of country.

So your question is right on point: How was that possible? Was it John Gorton or what was going on? And I think there's a very simple answer, which is that the Australian Atomic Energy Commission was substantially in the control of a person called Philip Baxter. In fact, in the old days when old titles were still in currency, he was Sir Philip Baxter. He had worked as a young scientist in the Manhattan Project that developed the nuclear weapons in the United States.

There were four or five Australian scientists on that project. Another famous one was Sir Ernest Titterton. But Baxter wasn't actually an Australian, he was from the United Kingdom—I’m not even sure that he was Welsh, but he was from the United Kingdom. And he came to Australia and found his way into important jobs and became chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. And he got the ear of John Gorton.

It was all around Jervis Bay: the idea was that we would build a reactor in Jervis Bay where we would make weapons-grade fissionable material and then, of course, make nuclear weapons. Baxter's outlook was that we white folk—sorry if that sounds rough, but he was that kind of fellow—we white folk have a right to develop the weapons that we need to keep the hordes away from harming us. You could say that there are some echoes of that today. But anyway, that's how it was then.

He got Gorton's attention. And there was a very severe argument in Canberra, in the bureaucracy, in the department that I then worked for, in the Atomic Energy Commission, of course, in the defence community about whether or not we should move towards getting nuclear weapons.

The argument in the end came down to joining where the whole world was going, which was to establish this truly important treaty that was designed to put an end to the development of nuclear weapons and of course stop their proliferation.

As you point out, President Kennedy had predicted that we faced a pretty disastrous world unless we did a treaty such as this one.

And in the end we joined it, but we entered reservations.

WALKER: Oh really?

BUTLER: We were one of the only states in joining it that expressed—I can't even remember the weasel words that were used to express this reservation—”in extremis we might want to withdraw”. The treaty has in it a withdrawal clause for any member of the treaty if they felt their supreme national interests justified that. We came in, but we had to sort of make this little reservation, I guess a sop for the right wing of the Liberal Party—a sop for Philip Baxter, I'm not sure.

WALKER: I think you wrote an article for The Bulletin in maybe the late '60s where you compared Philip Baxter to Dr. Strangelove.

BUTLER: Yes. And I don't know how I escaped punishment for that. I have no idea how I got away with that. But I remember being deeply upset the day I heard in the department in Canberra that Gorton's decision initially was that we would not sign that treaty. I couldn't believe it. And, yes, I hit the typewriter—as it probably was then, a typewriter in those days, but that's how old I am. But, yeah, I submitted a piece to the Bulletin and God bless them, they published it. And I thought, well, I can kiss my career goodbye. But I thought it was so important to stand up and be counted on this and point out where the influence was coming from, namely Baxter. And, as I say, I don't know to this day how I got away with it.

WALKER: When I was preparing for this conversation, someone drew to my attention these cables that Dean Rusk, the then US Secretary of State, sent back to Washington after he met with Gorton in 1968. And they're pretty extraordinary. I've got the main one here.

Rusk says:

"Gorton is deeply concerned about giving up the nuclear option for a period as long as twenty-five years when he cannot know how the situation will develop in the area. He sounded almost like de Gaulle in saying that Australia could not rely upon the United States for nuclear weapons under ANZUS in the event of nuclear blackmail or attack on Australia."

And then he goes on:

"I will not recount what I said to him but I opened up all stops."

BUTLER: How interesting.

WALKER: These were declassified by the National Security Archive.

BUTLER: How very interesting. I must say that's perhaps the only issue on which I might have found myself in agreement with John Gorton. I don't think we could then—or can now—rely upon... And why should we—we'll get into this, I'm sure, in this wonderful conversation—but why should we rely upon a nuclear weapon state to protect us? And why do we think that they would do that when a decision to protect us with the threat of use of nuclear weapons simply attracts retaliation to them? Anyway, interesting declassified cable you've got there.

WALKER: Yeah. I want to come back to the possibility of nuclear breakouts and horizontal proliferation in the final part of our conversation. But that Australian anecdote was just fascinating because it shows how—before the NPT—how real the possibility of nuclear breakouts were, if even Australia was considering obtaining the bomb.

BUTLER: I think you've made a good point and I want to emphasise the possibility that we would have accepted Baxter's advice and started a nuclear weapons program was—I want to emphasize this—by no means small. It was line-ball that we got to the decision that we did. The influence of Baxter and other sources in the Australian bureaucracy towards us becoming a nuclear weapons state was very strong.

WALKER: That's so fascinating. So let's now talk about your role in the indefinite extension of the NPT. As I mentioned in that Richard Rhodes quote in my introduction, the NPT came into effect in 1970, but it had a 25-year lifespan. And the question of its indefinite extension was negotiated over a four-week period at the Review and Extension Conference in New York in 1995.

BUTLER: '95. Yeah.

WALKER: You were Australia's ambassador to the UN at the time. Let's just establish some context quickly first. So I have two contextual questions. First, am I right in thinking this was really the only opportunity to permanently extend the NPT? Because if it fell at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference, it would have been much harder to resurrect, because my understanding is that when it was originally ratified, the 25th anniversary vote was pre-approved. But any further votes would require new ratification by a majority of NPT member states. And by the mid-1990s, getting that kind of ratification again was just impossible.

BUTLER: I think that’s right.

WALKER: So this was a pivotal moment.

BUTLER: That's right. And a very conscious political decision was taken to entitle this conference as not simply the Review Conference, but the Review and Extension Conference. That was very much put on the agenda to make sure that an identifiable, clear political action was taken to extend this treaty.

And one of the signs of that was the extent to which the Americans in particular fanned out around the world to cajole—in some cases, I think, threaten—states with all manner of depredations unless we all got together. For them, it was absolute. We had to agree to extend this treaty. It's not why it was extended—and as you kindly recognize, I was involved in it being extended—but I just want to emphasize the importance that was being placed in particular by the Americans on this treaty not lapsing.

WALKER: Second contextual question. Under the terms of the NPT, there's this bifurcation between nuclear weapons states which are defined as states that had built and tested a nuclear explosive device before the 1st of January 1967—so that's the US, the Soviet Union, the UK, France and China—and then everyone else.

And the kind of central bargain at the heart of the NPT was that the nuclear weapon states would agree to disarm in pursuit of full elimination if the non-nuclear weapon states didn't try to acquire nuclear weapons.

And there was this problem whereby the non-nuclear weapon states felt as if the nuclear weapons states hadn't really upheld their end of the bargain. And this problem was looming over the Review and Extension Conference. Could you just take a moment to explain what that problem meant for the possibility of extending the NPT? And then after that I'll ask how you solved that problem.

BUTLER: It meant everything. As you have rightly stated, the fundamental deal with respect to nuclear weapons under this Non-Proliferation Treaty was that those who do not already have them shall never get them, provided those who do have them shall get rid of them.

And these actions were supposed to be continuous and simultaneous, leading to the day when there would be no nuclear weapons in the world, and in the meantime the problem had not enlarged by them proliferating to new owners of those weapons.

That bargain—and it was always called “the bargain”—was not being implemented, in particular by the nuclear weapons states. And that is true to today. It really is a major issue in the whole enterprise of attempting to eliminate or get rid of nuclear weapons, which on the whole, the countries of the world, about 150 of them who have signed up to the new treaty of [2017] that bans or makes nuclear weapons illegal... there's still been no serious progress in moving towards that elimination of existing stockpiles.

They have been reduced in size. But no one kids themselves today that there's been any serious move by the designated nuclear weapons states party to the treaty to get rid of them.

So that the bargain's unfulfilled has been a problem. And it was the problem in getting extension.

One country, for example—Egypt—which was a very important country in this context, was absolutely resolute that “there'll be no extension to this treaty unless that bargain shows real progress”.

WALKER: So tell me how you solved this problem? And actually, sorry, before that, you came up with the solution several months prior to the conference on a flight to Israel, is that right?

BUTLER: If I recall correctly, I did go to Israel to talk to them about it, yes.

WALKER: Right. But do you remember how you came up with this solution?

BUTLER: No, you tell me. You remind me.

WALKER: So this is what I've read, so you can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that you went to Israel to lay some groundwork and you had this, I guess, moment of inspiration on the flight to Israel where you realised that what should happen was that you should propose a separate supplementary set of documents that collectively prescribed better behaviour on the part of the nuclear weapons states with respect to disarmament and elimination.

And that included many things, like a fissile materials cutoff treaty, a reaffirmation of the NPT's Article VI commitments, and crucially, commitment to a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by 1996, which we'll come to a little bit later. But this set of documents wasn't legally binding, but it was politically binding, and it would be submitted and adopted alongside the extension vote.

So tell me why that solution worked? Why was that the solution to this problem of the nuclear weapons states not upholding their end of the bargain?

BUTLER: That’s a fascinating question. I compliment you on it. It really is hard to know sometimes what ultimately does succeed in this kind of negotiation and why. Whether it's the argumentation or the personalities—or that night in my residence in New York.

WALKER: I want to ask you about that as well.

BUTLER: The bottles of fine Australian red wine that were consumed.

WALKER: Shiraz?

BUTLER: You know, I don't recall. I recall drinking it. (I don't drink now; I haven't for 20 years.) But I remember insisting in our office that we get the best Australian red. It wasn't Grange, but it was, you know, that sort of quality from South Australia.

I remember the participants, about a dozen of them around the table, liked it a lot, and the meeting improved as it went along.

WALKER: They liked it so much they extended the NPT.

BUTLER: But what you're saying about supplementary documents and the CTBT, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, is absolutely right.

Israel, of course, was crucial. And that's why I mentioned Egypt. Egypt always had an eye on Israel's known nuclear weapons capability that had never been publicly conceded.

By the way, I was once in a conversation with Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister of Israel, at a time where no one would breathe a word about this, where he let slip that they do have nuclear weapons. Now, it's quite possible in today's world to regularly refer to Israel as a nuclear weapons state, but back then they denied it and no one put the heat on them to make it be revealed. But this weird event took place at a luncheon in the UN where Peres said, “well, of course,” referred to "our nuclear weapons."

But the point is Israel was a problem because it had already proliferated and wasn't talking about it and had done years earlier. Egypt had serious problems with Israel because of that. And the solution that you've described was the one that I had put to the chairman of the Review and Extension Conference, Jayantha Dhanapala from Sri Lanka, an old friend who had actually been in the Australian diplomatic training course when I was a trainee. This is how these things come together. And he was elected president of that Review and Extension Conference. Very, very great man.

And what was put to him is that he should try and shop around these proposals of some supplementary documents complementing the treaty, but not of treaty status, but as you so rightly put it, political commitments by those who agreed to them and that this would enable us to continue with... In the end, people had to accept the best intentions of states to implement the things that were in those documents, while the fundamental commitment and bargain of NPT was still pursued.

And it did include things like a cutoff in—this is a term of art in the nuclear business, “cutoff”—a cutoff of production of weapons-grade fissile material. Fissile material for generating electricity is of a different grade to that you need for the core of a bomb.

WALKER: Right.

BUTLER: And those things became acceptable and the treaty was duly extended really indefinitely. Great achievement by Dhanapala. He shopped it around as president.

But the basic political deal to do it was done around my dining table. I asked people to come for dinner with representatives of each of the main elements of opinion or groups such as Egypt—not Israel—to come have dinner and see if we could reach agreement on it. And we did. The night before the conference was to close. And this agreement was adopted the next day.

WALKER: Yeah. That's amazing. So you got everyone... I just want to dwell on this story for a moment. You got everyone to your apartment at I think at 2 Beekman Place in New York.

BUTLER: That's right.

WALKER: And I think you might have started a bit after 9pm, I read. Finished at about 2am.

BUTLER: Yes, correct. I remember those times. Yes.

WALKER: And I think you had about sixteen different parties there at your apartment.

BUTLER: I said about twelve, didn't I? Yeah, it was... Yeah, sixteen would be right.

WALKER: Something like that. I'm just curious how this—as the person, I guess, chairing that conversation, if you will—I'm curious how you manage that at a practical level. Because I know you had many of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, which principally includes countries from Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, South America. You also had the Iranians there. Did everyone speak fluent English or were there interpreters as well?

BUTLER: Yeah, I was in the chair because it was in my house. The chair, the president of the conference, was Jayantha Dhanapala. He was one of those present. Everything had to go through him in the end.

But I, in consultation with others, selected who should be asked and very carefully, in the manner that you've just suggested: key developing country or non-aligned country representatives; key, what shall we say, Middle Eastern representatives; permanent members of Security Council, not all of them present, but, you know, representatives of, say, the Russian point of view. It was a balanced group.

And what we did was ate and talked and drank. And it took as long as it took, which was many hours, as you pointed out. I think it was 2am by the time we finished. But all in English. No other staff present.

WALKER: So not even interpreters. Everyone spoke English?

BUTLER: No. All in English. And done at a studied, careful pace, hearing everyone's objections and arguments. And I think some amendments to the approach were made at what these documents should cover and what above all their status... What force would they have? They weren't treaty documents… Would anything be signed? Not really. It was all word of mouth, gentleperson's agreement.

And it was done and we had to rely on it holding overnight. I think it was later in the afternoon the next day that the conference adopted the review and extension documents.

Jayantha Dhanapala was under enormous pressure. I remember him asking me to see him urgently at one stage in a back room behind the General Assembly hall where he, you know, he had tears in his eyes. He was just… Tears not of sorrow, but of frustration at all the inward missiles that were hitting him on what to do and what not to do and so on. And I sat with him for a while and we talked it through and agreed that this could be done. Just stay the course, we'll get there. And we did, to his great credit.

WALKER: It's an amazing story, an amazing achievement. I want to step back and invite you to make a broad reflection on the NPT. It's a question about causality, really. So, as we've noted, there hasn't really been much nuclear proliferation in the last 50 or so years, or as much as was expected in the early 1960s. Was the NPT, was the treaty, the cause of that non-proliferation? Or was it merely a reflection, an expression, of an already existing and broadly shared preference for non-proliferation?

BUTLER: The NPT is absolutely fundamental. In fact, it's often referred to as the cornerstone of nuclear arms control. It is the fundamental document that I have often thought and others have said should be viewed on the level of a charter commitment, a commitment equal to this thing, the Charter of the United Nations, and almost incorporated into it, because it states a norm that is in favour of all humanity and is supported overwhelmingly in the world. The norm that says: no one should have nuclear weapons. They are too devastating and dangerous. They threaten the earth itself and certainly its populations, and no one should have them.

How do you put that into law? How do you make that a reality in the lives of the families of the world? And the answer is in something like the NPT. And the NPT, the 1968 Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, was what was produced to give that answer. And it did, and it has done. It's a flawed instrument. There is no question. We can see that the basic bargain has, after all these years, has not actually been completed.

But if you look in practical terms at what has happened, I would make this point. No one has proliferated except for a handful of those who are themselves not members of the treaty. This is a very obvious point to make. Every country that has made that commitment, reflected in their joining the treaty, signing and ratifying their membership of it, has actually conformed to it. They've not acquired weapons themselves or given assistance to anyone else to do the same.

And it’s held the line to these nine states. The five permanent members of the Security Council (the acknowledged nuclear-weapon states under the treaty) are the first five.

Then there’s the four others. And what do they have in common? They are not signatories to NPT, the few countries who aren’t.

Overwhelmingly the countries of the world have agreed that this is a norm of human conduct, that no one should have nuclear weapons. And the first step towards achieving that, the cornerstone of efforts to achieve that, is actually the 1968 treaty.

WALKER: Let me just push you on this a little further. The countries that didn't sign the NPT—I think that's North Korea, India, Israel, Pakistan (and now I think latterly South Sudan as well, but they only became a state a few years ago)—they obviously didn't sign the treaty because they were intending to, or were in the process of, developing nuclear weapons.

BUTLER: In the case of India and Pakistan, that's without the slightest doubt. They were never going to join a treaty that would prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons, including for the reason of their hostile standoff with each other. They're adversarial opposites of an almost unique kind in the world. You couldn't say that now of Egypt and Israel, for example, and some of the other states with Israel. But historically, since partition, that antipathy between the two of them has been there, and there's always been the reflexive thought that maybe one can get ahead of the other by getting nuclear weapons.

That's a classic example of proliferation.

WALKER: Yeah. Okay. So for those four states, the treaty didn't counterfactually change their thinking on nuclear weapons much. For the states that did sign the treaty, were any of them ever really at risk of acquiring nuclear weapons without the treaty?

BUTLER: A number of them had started.

WALKER: Okay.

BUTLER: Sweden had started a significant program towards making nuclear weapons. South Africa did make nuclear weapons, and indeed we'll never quite know, but there were a couple of incidents observed in the South Atlantic which were consistent with their having conducted a test.

WALKER: Oh, interesting.

BUTLER: Years ago. They're normally named after the name of the satellite that observed them, but now I can't remember that name. And it's possible... (I’ll throw this in just to keep the conversation even spicier.) It's possible that one of those tests was conducted on behalf of Israel, because Israel has never tested.

There was a deal done between the Americans and Golda Meir that said, we'll turn a blind eye to your nuclear program as long as you don't reveal it in public. Don't test, don't reveal it. (Which is a nice little reflection on how important the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is.)

Vela, Satellite Vela, V-E-L-A. That was the name of it. Satellite Vela observed two flashes in the South Atlantic, certainly South African origin, because they did have the bomb. They did make the bomb.

But the thought is that they were so close to the Israeli regime… The apartheid regime and Israel got on quite well, and Israel didn't seem to have a problem with that because they had difficult international relations anyway, and here was a state that they could have some reasonable sort of relationship with. And it is thought that one of those flashes was the detonation of an Israeli-origin bomb in the South Atlantic, fostered or helped by South Africa.

WALKER: Wow.

BUTLER: And there were some others. I mentioned Sweden and South Africa. Well, South Africa did actually have the bomb and in the end it joined the... part of the dismissal of the apartheid regime was to end apartheid, but also to end their nuclear program. So they disassembled their program and joined the NPT.

WALKER: Yeah.

BUTLER: There's an example of a state that had become a proliferator, but got rid of that and came into the treaty. I'd have to think now. There are others that could be mentioned in passing. The two adversaries in South America, Argentina and Brazil: both had embarked upon nuclear weapons programs. And at the beginning of this conversation, of course, why leave Australia out? There was serious thought being given to Australia having a nuclear weapons program. But narrowly dismissed at the end. Didn't do it.

WALKER: Okay.

BUTLER: There were some others as well, I think.

WALKER: Right, this is good. So can we take a very brief digression on the question of Israel? Yes, because we've discussed it a couple of times now. I'm just curious, in your travels, did you learn much about the size of Israel's nuclear arsenal?

BUTLER: Not from my travels, no. But there are serious academic and intelligence studies that have been made of it, and it's widely believed from those studies and intelligence assessments that Israel has some 200 nuclear explosive devices. That's the correct terminology for them. To what extent they're weaponised into a missile warhead is another issue. But nuclear explosive devices—a device which if you press the button it goes pop, and that pop is nuclear—they have about 200 of those.

WALKER: Okay, and did you learn anything about Israel's nuclear doctrine—the policy that would guide how it would use its nuclear weapons?

BUTLER: I can't say that I did, I think. No.

WALKER: Would it be something like “minimal deterrence” or…?

BUTLER: Oh, there are all these terms, you know, minimal deterrence. What's minimal? You tell me, Joe, what's minimal deterrence? What makes it minimal? What justifies the use of the word “minimal”? Nuclear deterrence, it seems to me, if you're on the receiving end of it, is nuclear deterrence and you wouldn't be, you know, terribly concerned about whether it's minimal or maximal, would you? It's nuclear deterrence. I don't know. Sorry, do you want to say something about that?

WALKER: Well, I don't know much about Israel, but on minimal deterrence, my understanding of that term of art was that you would acquire a nuclear arsenal that is sufficient to inflict what is very crassly termed “unacceptable damage” on an enemy, and you wouldn't go beyond that. And so that might look like, I don't know, a couple of hundred warheads or something.

BUTLER: Thank you. If I may interrupt, I have to say I utterly reject this kind of straw-splitting. The distinction that should be drawn is between nuclear weapons and other non-nuclear weapons. And there are other weapons of mass destruction, by the way, chemical and biological, which are pretty devastating. But nuclear weapons have a particular characteristic which I think doesn't justify that kind of straw-splitting.

And we have a wonderful example of it in the last 24 hours, may I say. Yesterday, President Putin signed a document in response to President Biden two days previously authorizing Ukraine to use American long-range missiles to attack Russia. He signed a doctrine last night (I just saw this morning) in which he claims that it is licit for Russia to take the view that if it is attacked with conventional weapons by a state that is backed up by a state that has nuclear weapons—in other words, provided those conventional weapons (as is the case now; it just describes the current Ukrainian firing of US longer-range missiles at Russia)—then Russia would be justified in retaliating to that by attacking the United States, threatening it with the use of nuclear weapons if necessary.

Now this is not the first such threat that Putin has made. But what is that? Is that minimal deterrence? I mean, the idea of making the threat of use of nuclear weapons opens up a whole field of concern that is vastly larger than conventional weapons and is not adequately addressed by drawing a distinction between minimal or maximal deterrence. The distinction should be between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons.

WALKER: Let's talk about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. As we've discussed, the key document or goal in the package of documents that you proposed at the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995 was a CTBT by 1996. And I think the CTBT was the first nuclear weapons-related arms control treaty negotiated in the post-Cold War era.

BUTLER: Yes.

WALKER: So again let's establish some context. So again I have two contextual questions. The first one is—and apologies, this will be very obvious to you, but it will help our audience—so obviously nuclear testing causes environmental damage, it causes health problems to populations that might be nearby to the test (people can look up the 1954 Castle Bravo test if they want to learn more about that). But beyond that, banning nuclear testing is also critical for non-proliferation. Could you just very briefly explain—a minute is plenty—how banning nuclear testing is a logical and obvious step in non-proliferation.

BUTLER: A proliferator by definition is a new entry to the possession of nuclear weapons. This is a new experience. (This is in one minute.) The obvious thing you need to know when you enter a new weapons development is: will it work? So you have to test it, to find out if we've got it right: “Did it work?”

WALKER: Perfect. So my second contextual question at the CTBT negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, the negotiations were ultimately held hostage by one particular nation, and that was India. Could you step me through how we ended up in a position where India was ultimately able to block the treaty from being sent from the Conference on Disarmament to the UN General Assembly? And after that I'll ask you how you bypassed that problem. But how did we end up in that kind of stalemate?

BUTLER: Because of the rule of consensus. The treaty was drafted in Geneva at the Conference on Disarmament. We worked day and night on that. I was five years in the job of representative at the Conference on Disarmament. And I would go back to the embassy each night and send messages to Canberra. And it became a kind of joke between my secretary and me. And that was in the days where I would very often dictate messages to a person who had a keyboard, rather than type them myself. That all changed. That's all gone now.

But I would walk in the door and I'd say, “I need to send straight away a cable to Canberra.” And she would say to me, “I know, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.” Every day there'd be yet another message on “CTBT”.

But we got there, we got to a text to which India didn't particularly participate in the drafting of it, just threw rocks at it. But taking comfort from the rule of consensus that we could not send forward for consideration by the General Assembly and then adoption of the treaty other than on the basis of consensus. So they withheld that consensus, and that's where it stood. It was ready. It was clear that a large number of states wanted this treaty. And we had done this deal at 2 Beekman Place's dining table to get the NPT, the cornerstone treaty, extended indefinitely.

We needed that Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty draft in New York so the states there, in the different political environment from Geneva and different rules of procedure, could actually act on it.

WALKER: Got it. So the Conference on Disarmament needs consensus. India blocks the CTBT from being sent to the UN General Assembly. Tell me of the procedural device that you devised to bypass this problem.

BUTLER: This was my devising and it was pretty simple. There was a person, a classics scholar who was a good friend of mine, from South Australia, actually—maybe South Australia has got something to do with not only the wines but this scholar. This scholar once said to me, this bloke who was a classic scholar, he said, “Here's my favourite classic joke from the classics: Scholars studying the manuscripts have discovered that the Iliad, or the Odyssey, was not in fact written by Homer, but by a person of the same name.”

And I thought, “That's what I'll do.” Maybe you could use that. That's what I'll do. I will table, in the General Assembly, the treaty on a comprehensive nuclear test ban in the name of Australia, maybe with some sponsors, who knows? But as a permanent representative of Australia to the UN I had the ability to draft a resolution, submit it, circulate it to the General Assembly, and I would attach to that resolution the text of the CTBT, like Homer...

WALKER: Wait, so did that classics joke really inspire this idea?

BUTLER: I’ve thought of it. I've always found it a hilarious joke. It's like those stories too about Shakespeare not really being written by Shakespeare, but by a person of another name.

But anyway, if you look at that draft resolution that I put to the Assembly, it basically uses that formulation and says: attached to this draft resolution is the text of a treaty on a comprehensive nuclear test ban.

WALKER: Which was identical...

BUTLER: And it happens to be identical to the one that has been considered in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

WALKER: Coincidental.

BUTLER: Yes. And it's recommended in this draft resolution that the General Assembly adopt it for its consideration.

India was furious with me. I mean, from articles in Indian newspapers against this wicked person—me—and, you know, very bad relations on the floor of the Assembly with Indian persons, which is very sad because my wife and I are very attached to India—we’ve spent time there and so on.

But, you know, that's what I did. I said, it happens to be identical to the text of a treaty that has been under consideration at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

And the General Assembly acted on that resolution and adopted the text, that text, for its consideration. And that duly led to the second—you ask how it was done—second set of actions I took apart from this very crafty resolution was that I then, you know, got on my bike, as it were, and went around the town of New York City speaking to groups of permanent representatives—but every one of them, every member state of the United Nations, in groups of a dozen or twenty over a period of I think it was about six weeks or four weeks. Every day I'd have a meeting with a bunch; you know, courteously invite half a dozen, a dozen, fifteen permanent representatives to come to our office, give them tea or coffee and tell them what this resolution enabled to happen and ask for their support. And I got it.

The day came in the General Assembly where that text, which happened to be identical to the one in Geneva, was adopted overwhelmingly by the Assembly and opened for signature by all states on a stated date. And that was about one month later in a conference room in New York in [UN] headquarters. It was opened for signature. And they came, the great and the good. Several heads of government came and put their moniker on it. A person called William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States, came and personally thanked me for getting this on the table. And it was signed about a month later it was. It was signed on that day by some hundred states.

And it kept the bargain, the deal, that had been done over the extension of NPT, and it gave the world a treaty that had been neglected and needed to happen because states under the Partial Test Ban Treaty of a dozen years earlier had basically stopped conducting tests, but not entirely. But it was time to do so. And I had done some travel around the world, too. I went to Beijing for example, and talked to the Chinese about it and in the first instance helped them decide to send their tests underground. They were testing in the atmosphere previously and polluting the world, you know, testing at Lop Nur. And so they went underground.

But in the end, this treaty went further. It's to stop all nuclear tests by explosion in all environments for all time.

And it's adopted and enforced with a verification mechanism. There is a series of seismic stations around the world now that can tell the world at any time if an explosion has taken place and discriminate between it and, say, an earthquake. So it's there. And that's an important step in nuclear non-proliferation. If you can't test, you don't know whether the damn thing works or not.

WALKER: Yeah. I want to come back to that international monitoring system a little bit later because I find that really interesting. But before that... So I guess you found yourself as what would be called the “shuttle diplomat” between these different groupings and positions.

BUTLER: Oh, I don't know. Is there any virtue in making me sound like a quick flight between New York and Washington?

WALKER: It's interesting that you found yourself in this position.

BUTLER: Look... Yeah, let me go back to the beginning of this. It's a way of introducing something I wanted to talk about. In 1983, I was appointed by the Australian government Ambassador for Disarmament. And there was only one other one in the world at that time. It was a Mexican called Alfonso Garcia Robles, who had created the South American Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty, for which he was given the Nobel Prize. And it sent quite a ripple through the international community that Australia had decided to have an ambassador for disarmament. Bill Hayden made that proposal, made that appointment. He did not consult the new prime minister, Bob Hawke, who had knocked him off as leader of the Labor Party about five or six weeks earlier. He didn't consult him about that. And there's another story that attaches to that.

WALKER: What's that? Tell me that story.

BUTLER: Can we come back?

WALKER: Okay.

BUTLER: But... I'm addressing the concept of “shuttle”. It was a unique appointment, not ambassador to a country, but for a subject: disarmament. So I was made permanent representative of Australia to the United Nations for disarmament matters, in both Geneva, with, you know, status in Geneva, and New York, and given a directive direct from cabinet in Canberra that I should lead all Australian disarmament negotiations anywhere in the world—so “shuttle”, you know, go anywhere—on any disarmament related subject: chemical, biological, nuclear, and so on.

So I set off doing that for five years. A little bit later, when I was made Ambassador to the United Nations in New York—in-between time, I'd been ambassador in Thailand and Cambodia—but back in New York, back into disarmament, I suppose shuttle-ism became natural to me. I'd done five years of it, traveling the world, talking about the three main categories of weapons of mass destruction to various governments in their capitals, going to every review conference of every treaty, you know, the Chemical Weapons Treaty as well as the Non-Proliferation, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Always traveling somewhere to some conference or some consultation.

And yes, so when it came for me to stage my, you know, Homeric trick in New York (“this is the document that is the same kind”), yeah, yeah. I'd been doing a fair amount of shuttle-ism, and learned the business of negotiating multilaterally amongst affinity groups—groups of Africans, groups of Asians, whatever—where you would assert: “We surely have a common interest in this. Let's see if we can do it together.”

WALKER: Right. And I suppose you also, because of that role as Ambassador for Disarmament in the 1980s, then by the time you were Ambassador to the UN in the 1990s, you'd built up a lot of credibility, which may have helped you find yourself in that central position that you ended up in.

BUTLER: Yeah, I became tagged with, you know, Mr. Disarmament in some ways, I suppose, for which I thank Richard Rhodes, you mentioned him earlier, for his very felicitous reference to me and the work that I did. And for me, that means a lot because I respect him as much as I respect almost anyone on this planet. His book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, is absolutely a book of record for the human race on what happened and how it happened and why. And then, of course, there are subsequent books. But I know Richard, and I think he's a superb human being and done a great service to the world.

And for him to speak kindly of me means a lot to me.

WALKER: Well, I'm really glad that he spoke about you to me and that was how we came to be in touch.

BUTLER: Well that’s nice.

WALKER: He's also just a lovely man.

BUTLER: Isn’t he wonderful?

WALKER: Yeah. I spent about four hours with him and... Just a very kind, decent, generous person.

BUTLER: Yeah, absolutely.

WALKER: So just very quickly, can we go back? So you mentioned Bob Hawke might have had an unexpected reaction to your appointment by Bill Hayden.

BUTLER: Well, this is all history now. Bob is no longer with us. And nor is Bill. But they were difficult days in the Australian Labor Party. Bill, I think it wasn't Bill who expressed himself of the view that anyone could have beaten Malcolm Fraser, even a drover's dog could have beaten Malcolm Fraser in the forthcoming election. I'm not sure that's right. I think he probably was right. Fraser had, you know, I think destroyed himself with comments like "life wasn't meant to be easy" and so on.

But Hayden was set to become Prime Minister, but Hawke made a move on him. And Hayden was advised by John Button, among other senior ministers, that he probably should move aside and give it to Hawke. And in breathtakingly short time, Hawke was made Prime Minister.

Now, Hawke quite properly appointed Bill Hayden Foreign Minister of Australia. But obviously a lot of ill will had existed between them. And Bill went and gave the Evatt Memorial Lecture in Adelaide a few weeks or a month or so after his appointment. And in that lecture—he hadn't told Hawke in advance—he said that he would create the Office of Ambassador for Disarmament and he'd name me to it because of my background in this field.

And I was immediately brought home. I was on a posting overseas at the time, and I was immediately brought home to commence this. I accepted it because I believe deeply in the field, as will be evident to you and anyone listening to this wonderful podcast. And it was, I think, a gifted idea on Hayden's part.

He was reading correctly the state of affairs in the world where there was one new nuclear weapon being launched or made each week by the Russians and the Americans. Do you know that the number of nuclear weapons in existence in the world reached 60,000? Listen to me, 60,000. Now it's closer to 10 or 11,000. There have been reductions because a series of arms control treaties were done that brought about reductions.

And so I was appointed to this job and within a month was in Moscow with Bill Hayden—and there's a story to tell you about that in Moscow with Bill Hayden—talking, at his decision: we should go and talk to them. Because there was this state of affairs in the world that was nuclear Armageddon looming. Too many weapons, too much reliance on them.

The book on nuclear winter had been written. The Day After, the movie, had been made.

WALKER: The Herman Kahn book on nuclear winter?

BUTLER: Yeah, and Sagan too. People were deeply concerned about the state of stasis on nuclear arms control. And that was what Hayden thought required Australia to become involved in the way that we did. And were then quickly followed at the conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Suddenly there were new ambassadors for disarmament popping up from other countries.

Mexico was first, we're second.

And then it became the norm that countries task a person to give specific attention to this important area. A bit like having climate change ambassadors, environmental ambassadors now, which so many countries do have.

WALKER: So I promise I'll bring us back to the CTBT in a moment. But I just want to follow two leads that you've suggested to me. So, what was Hawke's reaction to Hayden?

BUTLER: Oh, yes, and the story from Moscow.

WALKER: Yeah, yeah. But first Hawke.

BUTLER: I was in Europe at the time, at the OECD mission. When I returned to Australia, Hawke asked to see me. Hawke, Prime Minister, asked to see me pretty promptly.

So there I was in his office in Parliament, the old Parliament House, Canberra, in the presence of the great man sitting behind his desk, looking very sternly at me. And it was brief, but he said straight away—I don't think I’ll break too many confidences, this is some time ago and it's past history, very much so… And I don't think I've said this elsewhere, so there you go.

He began the conversation by saying to me, "Hayden didn't consult me on your appointment." I'm mimicking his broad Australian accent.

WALKER: It's a good impression.

BUTLER: I said, "I'm sorry to hear that."

He said, "And I don't know if it's the right thing or not, but you're in the job. And so I'm going to tell you how you have to do it." And he then gave me… and I won't go into detail of this because that would be improper…

WALKER: You're allowed to swear on this podcast.

BUTLER: No. Do you think the Prime Minister of Australia was a man who swore?

WALKER: Bob Hawke may have been the exception.

BUTLER: No, he wasn't.

There was a bit of swearing. But he basically had one point to make to me: that whatever you do in this job—and yes, disarmament is important and so on, and you know, the party is against nuclear weapons, it's all that sort of thing—but you're not to upset the Americans. Just be careful in however you proceed with this, you don't upset the Americans.

And I steeled myself, summoned up vestigial courage, whatever, and I said, "Prime Minister, that may be difficult."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Prime Minister, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and existing arrangements, they are obliged—as are the Russians and the French and the British, the Chinese—to reduce their number of nuclear weapons. And this job is called disarmament. And I will be out there taking part in meetings and seeking to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. And they will very likely object to this activity. But that's surely okay. I mean, it's something we want to happen and if they object to it, well we’ll discuss it.”

“No, no, no,” he just said to me, “I'm telling you, don't you”—swear, swear, swear—“do anything to upset the Americans."

I said, "Well, I'll do my best, but I've said what I think. I think that's going to be very difficult."

And we had that exchange.

WALKER: That's interesting.

BUTLER: And indeed it did happen.

WALKER: The upsetting of the Americans?

BUTLER: Yeah. Not very long afterwards when I was objecting to—in public, in discussions at the Conference of Disarmament, I think elsewhere—to the Americans testing long-range missiles out into the Pacific. I forget the name of the particular missile. There was a missile test firing out across, sort of across Honolulu, out towards Fiji and so on. And I objected to those. And that was reprinted in the Australian media. Always looking for something of a conflict within the government…

And Secretary of State George Shultz was on the phone to the Prime Minister saying, "What the hell is your bloke, your disarmament person, doing objecting to this?"

And there was a debate on the floor of the House about it. And I think Gareth Evans was one of those who stood up for me. And Hayden. But anyway, there was a debate and I think there was a resolution. I don't mean a formal resolution, but the mood in the Parliament was that the Americans should be told to stop firing their long-range weapons in our direction. So yes, there was objection, but we kind of got through that and I continued on my way as Ambassador for Disarmament.

WALKER: So again, within that role you mentioned there was this story about a trip you and Hayden took to Moscow.

BUTLER: I have two hilarious stories from Moscow. One to do with the KGB and one to do with music. Have we got time for these things?

WALKER: Yes.

BUTLER: So Hayden went to Moscow and took me with him. I was only about six weeks in the new job as Ambassador for Disarmament. Mind you, I had had time as an Australian representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna earlier on, in an earlier part of my career. My career has been a story of various iterations of arms control, especially nuclear.

So shortly after my appointment he said to me that he's asked to make a trip to Moscow and the Russians have agreed. He said, "I want you to come with me. Our Australian ambassador to Moscow, to the Soviet Union,” as it then was, “will join us in Moscow. He's there, but I want you at my side because I want to talk to them about arms control.” I said, "Right."

And we started three days of talks in the Kremlin and you know, in the Foreign Minister's residence over lunch and at the monastery at Zagorsk with the Metropolitan of all Russia, which was pretty hilarious. Lots of vodka was consumed at the monastery.

But after they accommodated us in a dacha in the Lenin Hills just outside Moscow, and we all had little bedrooms in this house and a cherry orchard out the back and so on and on.

The last night we're there, we had a slap-up dinner and there were a few Australian officials around the table. Bill Hayden and his very highly treasured female secretary that he'd had for years—staunch Labor lady and so on—and me. And we had dinner provided by the Russians again with lots of vodka.

And some things were said in the conversation after dinner that were, shall we say, a bit critical of the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Hawke, because he and Bill were still working out their new relationship. And it was pretty vigorous stuff. It was pretty vigorous stuff. And at one stage this female secretary of Bill Hayden, Foreign Minister, jumped up onto the table and said, "Oh, Hayden, you're asking us to believe that. Don't come the raw prawn with us!"

And the next morning, Foreign Minister Hayden said, "Richard, come with me for a walk in the back garden." I said, "Okay."

We went out in the back garden. As I say, I like to think of it as Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. There were cherry trees there. We're out there in the garden. And he said, "I'm very worried." I said, "Minister, what are you worried about?" He said, "Well, that conversation last night about Hawke, you know, and so on, got pretty willing."

I said, "Yes, it did."

He said, "But, you know, the KGB's probably got all that on tape. What do you think? Do they?"

I said, "Oh, you bet they do.” I said, “Of course, they've got every word of it on tape."

"Oh my God," he said, "What'll I do?"

I said, "You don't have to do anything."

He said, "Why?"

“No,” I said, "Don't do anything." I said, "Not even the KGB with all of its skills has any chance of being able to translate 'Don't come the raw prawn with me.'"

He said, "That'll do."

WALKER: Oh, that's great. That's great. Australian slang has its uses in diplomacy, I guess.

BUTLER: But let me tell you, we went to Lenin's apartment in the Kremlin. We were taken there as honored guests to be shown the apartment. And it had in it a Steinway grand piano, which was hooked up to an electronic system of music, so it started to play. This is part of the show that they put on. And it was playing a Beethoven... I'm a musical person, or up to a point I am, because this story will reveal that it's only up to a point, because they were playing a Beethoven piano sonata.

And Bill said to me, Minister Hayden, he said to me, "What is that music, Richard?"

I said, "Oh, it's the Pathétique of Ludwig van Beethoven.”

And the guard said, "No, no. Nyet. Nyet. Not Pathétique."

I said, "Oh, really?"

He said, "Vladimir Ilyich would never listen to Pathétique. He would have Appassionata."

That's true. I said, "Okay."

Bill said, "There you are. He got you."

WALKER: Wait, so he was right?

BUTLER: Yes.

WALKER: That's very funny. Okay, so let me take us back to the CTBT. I just want to draw out a couple of general lessons, and then we can move on to verification and some other topics. So the CTBT hasn't yet entered into force. And if I compare the experience of the CTBT with that of the NPT, one of the lessons that strikes me is the significance of the entry into force provisions in each of the treaties.

The NPT seems to set a much lower threshold for entry into force. So for the NPT, it needed to be ratified by the Soviet Union, the US and the UK and then 40 other unspecified states.

BUTLER: The depository states, they're called.

WALKER: Yeah, the three depository states and then 40 other unspecified states.

For the CTBT, on the other hand, it needed to be ratified by 44 specified states. And I think they were defined as states who had participated in the negotiations between 1994 and 1996 and who at the time had their own nuclear power reactors or nuclear research reactors. And obviously that included India. So the entry into force became hostage to India.

BUTLER: Yes.

WALKER: In hindsight, were the entry into force provisions for the CTBT too stringent?

BUTLER: Yeah, I think so. I think so. Because while therefore it has not yet entered into force, it's being acted upon as if it has. And that's one of the fixes. That's one of the bits of diplomacy that is often pursued, a bit like, you know, “an author of the same name”. I mean, you do what you have to do without actually putting the seal on it, you know?

I was always disturbed. I remember thinking, this is going to make life very difficult. But it's still very important for us to have on the books so overwhelmingly supported by the world and adhered to by the world the maxim that says “thou shalt not test”.

WALKER: So tell me if I'm wrong, but you think it doesn't matter so much that it hasn't entered into force?

BUTLER: Oh, yes, I think it does matter. But those of us who believe in getting what we can as we can right aren't going to complain about that as long as people are observing it. I mean, if you can get it in de facto rather than in de jure terms, let's have what we can get and keep working to change that. One day India might agree if it's done enough testing. I mean, you can say, well, that's a pretty lousy reason to agree, but still, it might.

WALKER: Yeah. So I don't know whether there's some kind of general lesson here, but is it universally better to have a very low entry-into-force threshold and then once the treaty has entered into force, build up the regime and the membership around the treaty like we did for the NPT?

BUTLER: Maybe. Maybe that's imminent good sense. But I would put another piece of good sense to you is that in this absolutely cutthroat business, you get what you can.

WALKER: Right, right.

BUTLER: And make progress where you can.

WALKER: Right. Okay. So the second general lesson from the CTBT and for that matter from the NPT, is that...

BUTLER: Sorry, could I just say in addition to what I said there: but it doesn't mean you give up early. If you get to a point where you're not going to get any more, you get what you can. But you don't give up early. You keep trying to get what you need as long as you can.

WALKER: Got it. The second general lesson I wanted to ask about was these tricks, these tactical maneuvers, that you devised both for the NPT and for the CTBT, at least to a layperson like me they seem kind of obvious in hindsight, but were they obvious at the time—the supplementary package for the NPT and then the submitting the draft resolution for the CTBT to the UN General Assembly?

BUTLER: I think the former was much more familiar. Supplementary packages, side understandings, there are even terms in diplomatic legal language about protocols and codicils and so on, you know, side things that you can do. That's more familiar. The other approach, what I've chosen to call my Homeric approach—this is a document identical to another one that you actually don't like, but this is what it is—that was pretty novel. I don't think I've seen that before or after.

WALKER: Oh, interesting.

BUTLER: Actually, I remember some people saying, "He won't get away with that trick again. I mean, we've seen that one… That won't go down a second time."

WALKER: Right. Do you know whether it has?

BUTLER: I don't think so. I don't think so. I think that was seen as... Once the shuttle diplomacy had built up the weight of nations behind it, it was a done deal. But I think there are some that thought, “We better keep our eye open for this kind of tactic in the future.”

WALKER: Yeah. So it strikes me that for both of those negotiations, it was the Australian delegation, and you in particular, that were critical. Why is Australia so successful at multilateral diplomacy?

BUTLER: I don't know the answer to that question. I just have to pause for a moment. I don't think anything other than to say that we have a history within the UN context. Let's say that's the main context for multilateral diplomacy. There are others. We've just seen the G20 and APEC and those other multilateral smaller groups taking place.

But within the UN context, we've always been true believers from the beginning. From Doc Evatt, who was there at San Francisco and indeed was Chair of the General Assembly when the resolution establishing the State of Israel was adopted. Australia has always looked almost naively actually, if I may say that, with great favour on the notion that the world body with its set of principles that you find in [the Charter of the United Nations], which is actually now pretty thoroughly outdated in some key ways, but does, I was going to say, fantastically clear definition of things that are fundamental, should be fundamental, in human relations. Like you don't commit aggression, aggressive war is right at the top. You're not to attack anybody other than in self-defense. You think of how much that's been dishonored.

But Australians from the beginning were involved in the formulation of that charter and have been active and willing participants in all the iterations of it and the Convention on Human Rights, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and so on. Down through the years. We have believed in the idea that international conduct amongst and between states can be better and healthier if it's regulated by a set of laws and principles to which all agree. And we've therefore played a very active role in making those laws and principles or treaties as they come along.

We've got an extraordinary history that is well above our weight as a middle power. We now call ourselves a middle power. And I think that's right. But as we became a middle power, we did so partly through playing this very active and positive role in developing the laws and principles of good conduct in international affairs. And we added to that twenty years ago specifically the area of arms control and disarmament, partly through deciding to have a special ambassador for it. And now I've gone, we've had them ever since.

And we've always occupied key roles in verification organisations, the International Atomic Energy Agency. We've always made people available to the causes. And in peacekeeping, we did the peacekeeping force for Cambodia.

You didn't know, did you, that I was Ambassador to Cambodia for a while?

WALKER: I did.

BUTLER: Yeah, you did. And you know, we have played a continually positive role in these, the things that are defined by that charter. And our contributions have often been constructive, more often than not and credible. I'm not sure that we could say that today. This is critical of the present circumstances today. But there's something disappeared in recent years, I think, from Australia's role and commitment in the multilateral area. I hope it returns.

WALKER: Oh, interesting. Okay. Well, let me ask... So there's a narrower question, which is why are we much better at multilateralism than we are at bilateralism or even smaller scale regional negotiations? And let me offer five causal explanations and then get your reaction to them.

So the first explanation would be what you've said already, which I would summarise as: we're perceived as a very good international citizen. So we have credibility.

Second reason might be we're a middle power, and middle powers will naturally do much better in multilateral settings because they're not going to be dominated by greater powers in a bilateral setting.

[Thirdly], we're uncomfortable with the exercise of power. So even in the South Pacific, where we are the top dog, we don't really like exercising our own power very often. And so again, multilateralism is the kind of arena where Australia is naturally most comfortable—ideologically, culturally. So, so far that's three reasons.

The fourth reason is I think talent. I think of people like you, people like John Gee. All of these Australian diplomats who played really important roles in multilateral negotiations. And I ask what's the systematic explanation for that? I think Australia generally has very high state capacity. It's a relatively high-status thing to go into the public service in Australia. Maybe not as high status as it is in Singapore, but certainly higher status than it is in the US. We have all this talent in the public service and the diplomatic corps is just an extension of that.

And then the fifth and final explanation would be that we're perceived as relatively neutral by other countries.

So we have all these factors which mean that we're disproportionately good at multilateral diplomacy as distinct from bilateralism or smaller-scale regional diplomacy.

What do you make of that account?

BUTLER: I think that's a pretty good analysis, except for this. This isn't a criticism of that analysis. I think it is good. But I would adjust it in respect to two things. One is you referred to our insecurity, unsureness of ourselves in the Pacific, you know, how to deal with the smaller states. I would extend that a little bit to other bilateral relationships too, even to big ones like Papua New Guinea and then Indonesia, you know, the ones outlying from Australia, but are very important.

But also I think you didn't give enough attention in those remarks to the role that we've come to have in relation to the Americans. Did you say we're not threatening or…?

WALKER: We're shy about exercising power.

BUTLER: I don't think that's any longer the case. I think that there are key countries in the world now who see us simply as a lackey or colony of the United States. And I think that's harming us greatly. And now I'm speaking up on another subject, and I know I'm speaking quite definitely about it, but I am really shocked at the extent to which we have allowed ourselves to become the instrument of American policy.

And I think many countries no longer see us as harmless as your analysis suggested. We're a middle power, we do no harm, we're attached to principles of law and good conduct and we try to spread that good news around the international community in our relations with other states and so on.

I think that we continue to make constructive contributions in a lot of UN agencies. You mentioned John Gee—that was chemical weapons, of course. He made an enormous impact. He's now no longer with us, as you probably know. And John and I were great friends and colleagues and what he did in chemical weapons was a gift to the world. And there’s an example of what good Australian input can do.

But I think we're in jeopardy today of that being overtaken by our identity with the United States. Chosen by us. Absolutely chosen by us. Much earlier in this conversation you talked about the US nuclear umbrella, their protection of us. I think we're just living in cuckoo land about that. I think we're kidding ourselves the extent to which that would be true if the big balloon really goes up.

But we continue to do it and we continue to make it harder and harder by our own actions to be a truly independent foreign policy. To have a truly independent foreign policy. You might want to talk about that in a minute.

But I think your five points were well taken, but I think they need to be updated by that point of what our own self-wrought relationship with the United States today is doing to our ability to be that honest, decent middle power and have good bilateral relations with other states in their own right without them seeing, “Oh yes, but you're really just fronting for the US here. You're really a US colony here.”

WALKER: Yeah, that's a well-made point. I promise to come back to this question of whether we can rely on the US.

But I had a couple of questions on the art of diplomacy generally.

What do you think is the most non-obvious skill or quality that the very best diplomats possess?

BUTLER: Listening. You really have to listen very hard. I used to say to my staff, when I got to be senior enough to have staff working for me, that one of the things you have to get used to in diplomacy is waiting. You wait sometimes for the reply to a question. You don't get straight away the answer that you want. You wait. It takes time. Some of this stuff takes time. Certainly in negotiations you don't always... You have to put what you think is the best proposal, but you can't expect to be told straight away in many cases what the answer is. You wait. And while you're waiting, you listen. You must listen to what others say, because that's the raw material.

Two reasons. That's the raw material you'll then have to work with. They will say what they want you to think they want and will and won't accept, and you can't... That's data that you need. You only get that if you listen carefully. And sometimes it's clothed in more agreeable language than it really should be. And so you have to try and listen carefully and get through that.

And within that context, I'll make one particular point. Very often individuals, negotiators and states, whether they like it or not, will actually reveal to you what they really want by what they say or leave out. And you have to be able to, I call this in addition to listening, you have to be able to decipher what you hear.

It's amazing to me how often people do actually say something which if you point it out to them, they think, "Oh, I shouldn't have said that," but really does reveal their true intention, even though they think they're not.

So the thing that's not so obvious when you're having a charming talk with a diplomat and so on, is whether they're really hearing you, whether they're really listening.

And so the biggest skill in answer to your question, the most important skill a professional diplomat has to have, is the ability to listen and then discern what's really being said.

WALKER: I have one other question: I was curious what the actual quality of work as a diplomat involves. So, back in the ‘80s or ‘90s, if I was to follow you around for a week, what would you actually be doing? So I assume that most of that time or the largest portion of that time is not the charming meetings, it's other kinds of work. But what did that look like? So for me, in my role as host of this podcast, my day-to-day looks a lot like writing emails, reading things. It doesn't look like having these conversations.

BUTLER: Well, you could be a professional diplomat.

First thing in the morning you read all the overnight messages. And today that's like emails or things that have come in, news, things from your government at home, or messages from other embassies or other ambassadors. I mean, you read all the traffic. They are the inputs of material that you will need to know of and then decide whether it's of any use to you or none at all.

You’ve got to get through your inputs. That’s the first thing that you do. This is the raw material that you use.

From that you derive what if any action needs to be taken. Do you need to send a message back to somebody? Do you need to seek further instructions from Canberra? Or do you need to call someone and say, "I saw your message. That's a really interesting subject. I think we ought to have a coffee and talk about that"? So you go somewhere and meet someone. A coffee. Or I think we ought to get a meeting together of our group. Canada, Australia, New Zealand is a group. CANZ, it's called. Let's call CANZ together. (I don't know how active CANZ is these days with the changes of government that have been taking place.) But, you know, an affinity group might exist around a particular subject.

Or if you're in a bilateral post in an embassy dealing with a country… I've done much more in multilateral, but I did a couple of bilateral posts. I was Ambassador in Thailand and Cambodia... Do I need to seek an appointment with the Foreign Ministry and talk to them about this and tell them what Australia is thinking about this? And so on.

So you go out of your office to the work environment. It can be the UN headquarters, or it can be the Foreign Ministry, it can be the Prime Minister's office, or it can be a company that's doing business with Australia. Or an Australian who's in jail because they've done something that's led them to that place. With your consul who does consular assistance, you may feel it's an important thing for you to go and get directly apprised of, and so on.

And then there's the burden of the social side. The last thing I’ll mention. You will be repeatedly invited to lunch, cocktails, National Day receptions, dinners, the opening of the library that's been donated or whatever, in whatever country. Anyway, that's a burden. I found it a bit of a burden, because in busy embassies—and my ambassadorship in Bangkok put me in charge of a 300-person embassy, sort of the fifth or sixth largest in our slew of embassies. It's a big one.

So the call upon your time socially is almost daily or nightly, and that can be a burden. And at the United Nations too, everyone—193 member states—they all have National Day receptions. Most of them. And do you accept all those invitations? How do you do that?

I devised a way at the United Nations of doing it quickly. I'd go and shake the hand of the ambassador on the way in and say, "Congratulations on your National Day. Wonderful, that resolution you're working on in the Third Committee is doing quite well, I see. Congratulations with that too." And blah, blah. And around the room, five or ten minutes.

I had an arrangement with one of the catering staff—of course, I was there for so long—I had an arrangement with one of the catering staff on the top floor, where these reception rooms are, that I could slip out a side door through the kitchen and go. Rather than have to go back through the line and shake his hand again, saying “bye-bye” after only 10 minutes. But in a big crowd, slip out.

WALKER: Was this at the UN building?

BUTLER: At the UN building, yeah. Wonderful young woman would always say, "The coast is clear" so I could slip out. Or I might stay there for an hour if there was a really interesting piece of business to be conducted.

The last conversation I had with Sergey Lavrov—today, Putin's foreign minister; Sergey and I go back 40 years or so; we've known each other a long time—when he was a young diplomat, was in that reception room upstairs at the UN, and we'd come from a Security Council meeting where he and I had a fight inside that meeting. This is when I was in charge of the disarmament of Iraq.

And he accused me of misleading the council—indeed of lying. And I fought back and said that is simply untrue.

And he knew it was untrue. He wasn't getting what he wanted from me by way of a report to the council.

And we're upstairs at this reception. And there he was, smoking his inevitable Marlboro and drinking a very fat whiskey.

And he said, "Oh, Richard, how are you? You alright?"

And I said, "No, I'm pissed off. You know, what happened down there in that council room... was completely…” (This was in the private session of the council, not in the public one.) “...it was completely unwarranted. I mean, I know what you're doing, but for goodness sake."

He said, "Oh, Richard, Richard, come on. You're an adult. It's politics."

I said, "I know it is, and I'm complaining about it. I don't like your politics."

He said, "Oh, well, have a drink."

WALKER: That's interesting.

BUTLER: So that's a way of coming to terms with maintaining the relationship with Sergey Lavrov and having to put up with that sort of thing when it occurs.

Other times we had very good conversations, very constructive conversations, about nuclear arms control and how could the Russians help, and so on. Don't interpret my remarks as being anti him or anti Russian. I'm not victim of that.

But those things can be quick through and out through the kitchen or one hour in which that exchange with Sergey Lavrov—as I say, that's the last time I've physically seen him (see him on television all the time). But that was useful. We cleared the air in a way. Yeah, because he said, "Don't take it personally. It was pure politics. And you're an adult, you should understand that."

I said, "Yeah, I understand that, but I don't like it." He said, "Okay.”

So that's what you do in a multilateral diplomatic situation.

In a bilateral one. You do much more, you know, country-based stuff.

WALKER: More travel.

BUTLER: Yeah, going up country to see the aid programs that we're running and all that sort of… That's what a diplomat does.

WALKER: Right, that's really interesting. Thank you for that.

So I had a couple of questions on verification, and we mentioned earlier that the CTBT spawned this very impressive International Monitoring System. Could you just take a minute or so to explain a little bit more about what that monitoring system entails concretely?

BUTLER: The CTBT’s is a system that I'm nowhere near as close to as I was. The IAEA system where I had such a long involvement with the Atomic Energy Agency…

But the CTBT is basically—we were involved in the establishment of it, we Australians were—it's basically a seismological system which registers tremors in the earth.

WALKER: To detect underground explosions.

BUTLER: To detect underground explosions. There are also overhead systems very often run by member states but on behalf of CTBTO. It doesn't have its own satellites, but there'll be... There are overhead systems that look for other signs, like the flash of satellite Vela that got those two detonations off the east coast of South Africa forty, fifty years ago, whenever it was. And that data that's collected is sent to headquarters in Vienna and analyzed. And then notices are sent out to member states, to participating states, of what has been detected and what the agency reckons has taken place.

WALKER: This next question is unrelated to the CTBT because it precedes it chronologically. But I was just curious. When the Hawke government came into power, there was a big push on the left in Australian politics, both for disarmament and against the US-Australia joint facilities, the chief facility of which is the one at Pine Gap. And Bill Hayden did this, I guess, trick where he managed to fold the function of the joint facilities into a disarmament purpose. And he made the argument that the joint facilities were very important for being able to monitor and verify, I think, missile launches around the world.And so he kind of neutralized that argument against the joint facilities by presenting them as something that was very important for disarmament.

I was curious whether you have any insight on the internal machinations of the Labor Party and that debate? If there’s anything you remember that might be historically valuable?

BUTLER: It's been going on for years and I know where I stand on it. I don't know in any detail because I'm not involved in domestic politics anymore of where it is now. But yes, I was certainly aware of Hayden's position and you've left out, I thought you were going to mention the uranium debate. There was at the same time concern in the party and outside the party—concern with the environment, the Peter Garrett people, you know, Midnight Oil and all that—about the mining of uranium in Australia.

And I was at the national conference of the Labor Party in Perth that year, whenever it was, it would have been, I suppose, in 1976 or ‘77. I had the carriage of that issue on behalf of Whitlam at that conference on the development of our policy. The call was to leave our uranium in the ground and never sell it to anybody.

And Hayden and I devised a policy which I thought was consistent with the NPT, which is that we didn't need to leave it in the ground. We could sell it and make money from it, but provided we only ever sold it to people who had no contact whatsoever with any nuclear weapons program; they would only use it for peaceful purposes. And we got some pretty strong assurances about that.

And I was sent as Ambassador for Disarmament... I was sent on purely national domestic tasks for about a month at one stage, every capital city and towns and villages around the country, talking to groups about a new Labor Party policy which would enable us to mine uranium safely. But it would never, not one gram of it, would end up in anyone's nuclear weapons.

I think that was a bit of an overstatement, but it worked. And Hayden was immensely grateful for that effort and it was made credible by it being tied to our commitment to strong disarmament. And of course there's a self-interested aspect to us having the strong disarmament policies we had, that we could pursue those other areas such as uranium mining. We would not have been able to do that, I think, had we not had the disarmament policies that we did.

Was it the right thing to do? I'm not so sure now. And on the other part of your question: the US facilities, do you want to talk about that? That's a whole other subject.

WALKER: Well, I guess my interest is specifically whether there's any historically valuable information you gleaned from Hayden or anyone else that might not be publicly known, about how the Labor Party, how Hayden folded the...

BUTLER: No, I take your word that's… I think that is exactly what he did. And of course prior to that appointment and working so closely with Bill Hayden, I had actually worked with Whitlam and at that federal conference of the Labor Party, where to leave it in the ground or not—to mine or not mine uranium—was a sort of central issue. Whitlam was still leader, but he was failing a bit. You know, he was declining. I can't stand to use the word declining with respect to Whitlam because he's a towering figure in our history and we should be forever grateful to him. But in the end he was sort of a bit destroyed. If you want to talk about Whitlam in a moment, I'll happily do that.

But you know, I had talks with him about the American facilities more than I did ever with Hayden and they didn't resolve much, although what we tried to do in putting Australia in more control of what happened in those facilities, I don't think quite worked. Because in the end, the Americans did form the view that Whitlam wanted them removed. And perhaps not wrongly, but he wasn't saying so. Well, actually, he'd raised the question. And there's no question that was an element in the United States’ support for his dismissal.

WALKER: Through the CIA.

BUTLER: Well, there are various things that have been written about it. And I can't know exactly what the CIA did at any given time because they do it all in secret. But there is no question, it's been thoroughly researched and demonstrated, that there's no question that the United States was complicit in Kerr's decision to remove Whitlam from government. So was Buckingham Palace.

WALKER: Oh, okay.

BUTLER: Read Jenny Hocking on that subject. She's got it all. But also the United States authorities...

And one of the best pieces of evidence for that I have directly, I have direct experience of, is the visit to Whitlam by Warren Christopher in 1976. I was there. I was in the room. People in the room were Whitlam and me and Warren Christopher, Deputy Secretary of State, and the United States Ambassador. Four people in the room. That's all.

And he came to Sydney especially to see Whitlam en route to... He was going to a meeting in New Zealand, you know, ANZUS meeting or something like that. But he specifically asked to see Whitlam in private en route. And we did that in Sydney at a private room in the Sydney airport. And it was a brief meeting. The whole thing lasted about 30 minutes. I took notes of it. I since subsequently provided them to Whitlam. He put them in a book that he was writing. And others are aware of this as well.

But I say now for this podcast that the conversation began by Christopher saying, "I have been sent to see you by President Carter and it is to give you the assurance that we will never again interfere in the election process in Australia. That the determination of who shall be the government of Australia is exclusively for the Australian people."

Now, was that a confession or not?

WALKER: Sounds a lot like one.

BUTLER: Well, that's what he said. He said: “Carter views us as fraternal parties. The Democrat Party and the Labor Party. We're of the same ilk. Fraternal parties.” But his words were: “Carter has wanted me to assure you that the United States will never again interfere in Australian elections. It is for the Australian people alone to determine who shall be their government.”

WALKER: Wow.

BUTLER: So it's not a simple issue, and it's with us there today. I happen to be of the view, shared by Gareth Evans, for example, who wrote brilliantly recently that this decision on AUKUS and submarines is the worst, Evans said, this is the worst foreign policy and national security decision our country has ever taken. I agree with that and I'm in despair at the way this current government, the Albanese government, is handling it. I think it's wrong. I hold the hope that it actually will collapse, especially under the new arrangements in the United States under Trump and so on. I wish we could make it collapse ourselves.

But anyway, that's an example of getting what you want, whether you get it exactly as you want or not.

But a key issue there in this drive we seem to be experiencing to a higher degree than ever to make ourselves a military colony of the United States in the belief that they will defend us whatever happens against the Chinese in a nuclear exchange, I don't believe it. Only a fool would think so.

But at core in that is these facilities. We came back to the original question. These US joint facilities in Australia, they've just expanded and expanded. They're no longer joint. In many cases, they're airfields with B-52 bombers that are nuclear-capable landing there. By the way, that's contrary to our obligations under the Total Prevention of Nuclear Weapons treaty. That's contrary to that.

WALKER: Is that the 2017 treaty?

BUTLER: Yeah, yeah. And maybe NPT. But we're not supposed to have nuclear-armed—not propelled—but armed vessels or vehicles coming here. Anyway, that's going too far off the point.

Our ability to rid ourselves of this shocking decision as adequately described by Gareth Evans is hemmed in by the existence of those US bases in our country which we continue to expand or allow to be expanded in a way that all... Look, you talk about our diplomatic relationships with other countries. How many countries—ask them the question—how many countries fail today to see us other than as an extension of the United States, as a kind of semi-colony of the United States? It's widespread and we've brought that upon ourselves because they will defend us against the wicked Chinese when they come to bomb us? They won't come to bomb us. And by the way, nor would the United States go to nuclear war with China to save us. They wouldn't.

WALKER: Right. Right. I promise again that I will come back to this question of whether we can rely on extended nuclear deterrence. But I just wanted to tie off a couple of threads. One is on verification, and then I really wanted to ask you some more questions about what it was like working with Gough Whitlam.

So one, maybe two, questions on verification. Taking weapons inspections as, I guess, a subset of this broader question of verification, you were obviously the chair of UNSCOM from 1997 to 1999...

BUTLER: And at some stage had a thousand inspectors in the field.

WALKER: Wow. Under your direction?

BUTLER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

WALKER: Wow. I did not know that.

BUTLER: Provided by various member states. But there was a German group, an Italian group, and so on, depending whether it was chemical or biological we were looking at. But at its height towards the end, when I was trying to wind it all up, there was a day on which there were a thousand people in Toyota Land Cruisers and so on and aircraft, out in the field verifying the non-existence of—that's what we wanted—the non-existence of what we thought might be weapons of mass destruction.

WALKER: Yeah. How much harder is it to verify the non-existence of chemical and biological weapons as opposed to nuclear weapons? And what are the factors that…

BUTLER: They each have readily identifiable markers: that can be the presence of chemicals in the air, the presence of radiation obviously, particular technologies that can be used to manufacture components of weapons but wouldn't be any good for any other manufacturing, not dual-use capabilities.

So we had experts in their field, chemical experts who would know what to look for in a given premises… seeing if chemical weapons had been there, had been made there or were being made there. Obviously see them being made, that's ”lay down misère”, open and shut.

And the same is true in nuclear and biological. Look for those indicators, look for those markers. Look for the residues of work that's taken place, and come to a conclusion.

WALKER: In a strange sense, it feels like we got lucky with nuclear weapons in that the technology leaves such a large, easily detectable footprint. You need these large plants to either enrich the uranium or separate the plutonium. And so you know who's making bombs.

BUTLER: Yeah. And there're clear throughput figures, what amount goes in and what should come out. And you can see if there's been any leakage... That's important.

WALKER: And so I'm clear, do you mean in terms of how much energy a country is using?

BUTLER: Materials.

WALKER: Materials. Okay, right.

BUTLER: There are a couple of key cases in the past where cheating was found because the throughput wasn't right. So much material went into the manufacturing process. It should have produced X amount of product and it produced X minus 2. So where was that material? The answer is, there was one case where a pipe, a hole had been drawn in the side of a piece of machinery and there's a bottle there catching some of that stuff. So there's that kind of thing. Throughput.

WALKER: Interesting. Yeah. Because, I mean, you could imagine some kind of other technology which is as destructive but doesn't leave this kind of footprint.

BUTLER: Biological is more difficult. There's so much dual-use there. It's harder with biological substances and chemical substances to be as clear as you can be, as you said, with nuclear. But it's the same general procedure.

If someone's going to make a weapon, they will need to input a certain amount of raw material for that weapon, which would have an outcome that you know from your science. And you have to look at that. Why are they buying this sort of chemical? Why are they storing it there? How much of it is there tomorrow? Where's it gone? And so on.

It’s accounting. Materials accounting, in some ways.

WALKER: Okay, let’s come to Gough Whitlam now. So there’s this interregnum in your diplomatic career of about two years where you work as his Chief of Staff and Principal Private Secretary.

BUTLER: A little more than two, I think. But anyway, go on.

WALKER: Okay. Well it’s from when he loses government to then the 1977 election. So he’s leader of the opposition at the time. And my first question is, I guess, a question of counterfactual history. If you joined him earlier, imagine you joined him during the constitutional crisis of 1975, would there be any advice you would have given him to act or behave differently or take a different course of action than what he did?

BUTLER: You know, this is really very touchy because I love the man dearly and I believe passionately that he made such a profound difference to your and my country in the things that he did and introduced. He was flawed, of course, but the very idea that I should sit here and say to you, “If I'd been there, I would have said this and it wouldn't have happened,” that would be preposterous.

May I say that he a couple of times said to me afterwards, “I wish you'd been with me at that time.” That was one of the most complimentary things he ever said to me. But I don't know what exactly he had in mind.

But I won't be smart-assed and say, you know, if I'd been there it wouldn't have happened. Mistakes were made that day. He shouldn't have sat in his room drafting a perfect speech for Parliament (I think you know this), other than getting fully acquainted with what action was taking place in the Parliament. Were he so acquainted, he might have recalled the Senate and failed to pass the supply bills. It wouldn't have proceeded; the dismissal would not have proceeded if supply hadn't been passed. But there are other experts in this field who've written volumes on it, and I wouldn't pretend to be in competition with them.

What I will say is that I left my career entirely in foreign service, which I was delighted to be in. But I threw it down the drain to leave my post as Deputy High Commissioner in Singapore and return to Australia to take this job with Whitlam in the belief that Australian democracy had been deeply damaged and if we fought hard we could win the next election and restore it to what it should be. Well, how wrong I was. We didn't.

Many people learned that lesson, as people today in the United States are learning the lesson in arguing to “Vote for us because democracy is at stake.”... Look what happened last week, or two weeks ago, in the United States.

Anyway, I went and I did that and I threw everything to the wind because I thought it was so important. And I learned so much from him. And I am profoundly aware today, as are so many Australians, of how this country was hauled out of this state that it was in as an Anglo colony where lots of things were wrong. And he fixed them.

It was a great privilege to work at his side as his Chief Adviser and Chief of Staff.

And on international affairs, people forget things like that dreadful Vietnam War. He was elected on the 2nd of December, and on the 3rd of December he and Lance Barnard formed a two-person interim government, and they announced the withdrawal of Australian participation from the War in Vietnam that day, in twenty-four hours, and condemned the bombing of Haiphong and Hanoi by the United States, for which Nixon never forgave him.

And signed a whole lot of UN conventions that we’d been lagging on, and so on. Just changed everything—in weeks.

WALKER: Yeah, it was an incredibly productive government. But I just want to ask what you personally learned or witnessed working for Gough. Are there any specific anecdotes you could share about what it was like to work with him? Any stories?

BUTLER: Oh, it was very exacting. He was very hard and tough at getting things done and getting them done right. It sounds almost like an Andersen proverb or something. But Gough was very fastidious about everything. And if you're going to do something, make sure it's done right. If not, don't do it at all. I mean, it was very much like that.

I learned how to work in a way that was so much clearer, sharper and more sophisticated than I'd ever known before.

WALKER: How was it different?

BUTLER: If I succeeded in these disarmament tasks subsequently and so on, so much of it came from having worked with Gough. Oh, how was it different?

WALKER: Yeah, I mean, what was your way of working before? What was your way of working during and after Gough? What exactly did you learn?

BUTLER: You start with making sure that you're absolutely in possession of the facts of any matter. Not prejudices or wishes, the facts. And then you assess their meaning and evaluate them. It's a methodology of facts, meaning, and then decision and action.

There was nothing I could do for Gough and I had to learn on the job very quickly because even though I had a pretty good career after then and I had some abilities, otherwise he wouldn't have asked me to do it… From day one, I realized that I was in another stratosphere. I was dealing with a person of incredible general knowledge, devotion to the facts of history, the facts of parliamentary history in Australia, even classical history. A person who always started with: what are the facts here? Who did what to whom and why, and what is its consequence? What are our options now we'll start writing.

And your writing had to be with crystal clarity. He was absolutely fastidious about expression in writing and orally, in what you said or sought to project about a given thing. A precision in working, an attachment to the facts.

Yeah. I mean, those are the two most important things I learned, and I had to learn those quickly and more thoroughly than I'd ever known them before. And it's never left me.

And take risks, like the risk I took on CTBT. Take risks. If something is right, take the risk that might get it done. As against saying it's too hard.

Gough didn't do "too hard". Not very often. It was always: let's get it done by assembling the data, correct analysis, and then take a decision. And certainly don't shrink from something. If it's right, don't shrink from it because it's hard.

WALKER: It's interesting, these lessons are not intellectually difficult to comprehend, but it feels like you don't really internalize them deeply and viscerally until you actually work alongside someone like that. And you can kind of just see the standard they set for what good work looks like. You can see that intensity. You don't get that through reading about it. You really have to work with them...

BUTLER: No, and you have to be thrown out of the office from time to time. You know, “Get out of here.”

WALKER: Did that happen to you?

BUTLER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. “Get out of here. This is ridiculous. Come back when you've got the facts.” Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

And yeah, we had a couple of fights about things.

I'll tell you this one. I know stories are interesting to people, but I don't want to tell any... There are lots and lots of stories I could tell about Gough, which are naughty and hilarious. I don't mean naughty morally, but I mean wicked and wicked sense of humor. His sense of humor had no equal. And some of them are already out there in the literature and some of them involve four letter words and some...

But I'll tell you a story about him and me, which was a kind of turning-point story.

About three or four months after I joined him, there was something involving a Foreign Affairs matter and he didn't approve of my advice on it in some way. I don't remember exactly what it was, but he got stuck into me and said, you know, "You bastards from Foreign Affairs, you all take so much notice of that stinking department. You’ll do whatever they say, you know, you live in this diplomatic world of courtesy and graces. It's just rubbish." I mean, you know, "Get out of here. I'm not going to go to that reception or whatever it is. It's just a waste of my time." And he said something like, "You still haven't shed your Foreign Affairs attitudes. It's sick." And, you know, "Out of my office."

So I went... My office was adjoining his. There was a side door. I went through the side door into my office and I thought, this is serious. He can't really think that about me, so I'm going to have this out.

So after about 10 minutes, I knocked on the door and walked in.

He looked up and said, "Yes, what is it?"

And I said to him, "Don't you ever talk to me like that again."

And he nearly fell off his chair.

He looked at me. Just blinked and looked at me, and I said, "I gave up everything to serve you. Everything. I have no future beyond this. But we're going to get this job done, restore Australian democracy, and we're going to do it together. And don't you ever accuse me of having some kind of divided loyalty. My loyalty is to you." And I walked out.

He came into my office through that side door four minutes later and said, "Comrade, I'm truly sorry. You are right."

I said, "Thank you, Gough."

And that happened. And to me, that shows the quality of the man. His temperament. But his quality.

WALKER: He still had that compassion.

BUTLER: And he was prepared to say, “Well, I screwed up there. I made a mistake there.”

WALKER: Yeah, yeah. He wasn't beyond...

BUTLER: It almost brings a tear to the eye to remember that... And we never ever had any such problem ever again.

And in fact, the night he was defeated at the end of his career, and we were up in the Sydney office.

WALKER: 1977.

BUTLER: Yeah. He said, “What am I going to do now?” Just the two of us in his office.

And I said, "Gough, you're going to compose yourself, and you're going to go out there to the press waiting outside and you're going to tell them that you acknowledge this defeat and that you'll be tendering your resignation as leader of the party at the next meeting of the caucus. And basically it's been a privilege and honour to be in this role and withdraw and take no questions."

And he said, "That's right, that's what I should do."

I said, "Just get it done, get it over with. There's nothing more to do."

And again, this will bring a tear to my eye. He said to me, "Comrade, will you come with me?"

I said, "Yes."

WALKER: That's lovely.

BUTLER: Yeah. So they're two personal stories.

WALKER: They're beautiful. Thank you for sharing those.

BUTLER: Okay, so what’s next?

WALKER: Well let’s come finally to this question of disarmament and deterrence in the 21st century, which I've been promising we'll come back to. So I guess I have some questions now looking forward. And I'll probably invite you to speculate on a few different things.

So the first question is: has the window on disarmament now closed? It feels like we've entered this new era of strategic competition. Maybe there are a couple of signs. One might have been Putin's speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. Another might have been the Global Financial Crisis a year later, and how China interpreted that as its moment and around that time became much more pushy in the South China Sea.

So we left the bipolar world. Now we've arguably left the unipolar world.

Has the window on disarmament and elimination closed?

BUTLER: I don't know. I think not.

We've not referred in this conversation to the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. I will answer your question, but I have to go via this.

WALKER: Yeah, please.

BUTLER: That was in 1996. Bill Hayden, Foreign Minister, did a wonderful thing in creating the role of Ambassador for Disarmament. It made a big difference, not just because of me, but around the world. Many countries followed it and it resulted in international attention to arms control and real achievements were made. 60,000 nuclear weapons came down to 11,000.

Now, Paul Keating, subsequent Prime Minister, also did a magnificent thing. He's a strange bird, Paul, everyone knows that. But a remarkable man. Remarkable man. Paul Keating, in 1995-96, was appalled by an article he read about the expansion in the number of nuclear weapons that was starting to take place.

So that's the executive summary of a report from the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons in 1996. Paul Keating asked me to be chairman convener of a group of eminent experts which we then found and put together—17 of them. Here they are all here, these people from around the world, to talk about a practical program for the elimination of nuclear weapons. It took about a year, four meetings we had in that year, and we produced this, which is still widely recognized as one of the absolutely fundamentally sound approaches to that task to get rid of nuclear weapons.

Gareth Evans, subsequent Foreign Minister, also was part of a Japanese follow-up twenty years later to this. And yesterday, Harvard, with the Carnegie Foundation, announced the formation of a new such commission to reinvigorate nuclear disarmament with excellent people on it. I know a few of them, worked with them in the past. Jessica Matthews, for example, published a splendid piece last week on why this can't be dead. We can't go into a new nuclear arms race.

So I don't know what's going to happen. The language that's being used about the possible use of nuclear weapons is deeply disturbing.

But there is awareness, Joe, there is awareness in the world community of the axiom that the Canberra Commission framed and is still true.

One, as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will one day be used by accident or design.

Two, any use would be absolutely devastating to the whole world from which we would likely never recover.

Three, the only safe thing to do with nuclear weapons is to see them onto a museum shelf, is to eliminate them.

It can be done. The means to do it are well known, of which the treaties we've been talking about are apart, like the Test-Ban Treaty, a cut-off treaty, no more production of fissile material at weapons-grade, and so on. It can be done.

And my last word obviously is it must be done. Because of the kind of talk that's going on now, people fail to understand any use of nuclear weapons. Putin, yesterday, talking about tactical use of nuclear weapons. You've mentioned the concept of minimal deterrence. It's BS. It's nonsense. There is no such thing. Once that line is crossed, others in possession of nuclear weapons are going to start loading up because they feel they'd have to.

WALKER: On the Canberra Commission, I should just say, I think the core syllogism that emerged from the Canberra Commission...

BUTLER: The one I just mentioned, those three points?

WALKER: Yeah, yeah. I think it's the most elegant and compelling articulation of why we need to work towards elimination that exists. Firstly, as long as nuclear weapons exist, other states will want to acquire them. Secondly, as long as nuclear weapons exist, they are bound one day by accident or by decision to be used. And then, thirdly, any such use would be catastrophic for the planet as we know it.

Just as a small piece of intellectual history, do you remember who... What was the story behind drafting those propositions?

BUTLER: Yes, I know that you're interested in that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure… I've looked through this list of the seventeen who were there, again and again, and I'm not... I think it was a collective effort. It was the Commission. We worked so hard on getting that right, because it's just a simple couple of sentences, but they are categorical and they had to be dead right.

Celso Amorim was a Brazilian Foreign Minister. He was very active. Lee Butler was a general in charge of the Strategic Air Command of the United States. He had charge of all those nuclear weapons. He was wilting. He just really couldn't do it anymore. Michael Carver, Field Marshal Lord Michael Carver from Britain. Jacques Cousteau, the oceanologist and so on. Rolf Ekéus was very important. Swede. And Nabil Elaraby from Egypt. Robert McNamara of Vietnam fame. The former Secretary of Defence of the United States. Robert O'Neill, Australian academic from Oxford, very influential in getting the language right. Michel Rocard had been Prime Minister of France. Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Prize winner, having walked out of the Manhattan Project, he walked away from it. Didn't want any more to do with it because it was clear that the Americans were going to use it on Japan.

WALKER: I think he was one of the only scientists to do that. Maybe the only.

BUTLER: Yeah. And you know, when the report was… I had to present this report to John Howard, who after that had become Prime Minister. There's a little story. He hated that. He didn't want to receive this thing. It was not his kind... You’d think I was handing him a funnel web spider or something, you know. So I took Joseph Rotblat with me to see the Prime Minister and I had Joseph hand it over to him, and he had to behave himself better. Because he's against all this kind of left wing nonsense and so on. And that was a good thing that Joseph did.

WALKER: What was Joseph like?

BUTLER: Wonderful man. He died recently.

WALKER: Oh really?

BUTLER: I think so. Wonderful man. He walked out of the Manhattan Project. He was sort of comfortable with it if it was used on Nazi Germany. But when it was clear that they were finished and it was going to be used instead on Japan, he walked out and he started an arms control organisation. Pugwash—it was a town in Canada—the Pugwash group, and it won him the Nobel Prize. But he was quiet, deeply thoughtful, of course. An incisive mind.

I think he had a lot to do with the drafting of this language. I'm trying to think of the central contention that nuclear weapons can't just be there and never one day be used by accident or design. I'm not sure that Joseph wasn't behind that. I think he might have been.

I think he had a conviction that it was folly to believe that they could sit there and as long as we all did our good diplomacy and politics and so on, someone wouldn't one day reach one, take it off the shelf and use it. I think Joseph was a part of that, but we all were. It was a collective effort. And I remember at the end when we settled this fundamental text, there was real jubilation amongst us. We thought “we've got it”. And I appreciate very much you saying that it is such a clarion statement, simple but clear statement.

WALKER: It's important to have those clear articulations. I think it's really neat. So I want to come back in our final fifteen minutes to these questions on disarmament and deterrence in the 21st century. Looking forward, do you predict that there will be more than nine nuclear-weapon states or nine or fewer nuclear-weapon states by, say, 2040?

BUTLER: God, that's a difficult question. I can't answer that. It depends on two things. One is what governments come to power and the tendency of governments to move to the right, to move to right-wing extremism, a kind of authoritarian or semi-fascistic view of government's role. Authoritarian governments suggests to me that it's possible that some other states might decide to Hell with the restrictions and the norms. “We're going to do this in our national interest.”

That introduces the second point, which is that then what will the keepers of the flame do? Whether it's the existing nuclear weapon states… They're finding it a bit hard to tell others not to do it now, given that they're up to their eyeballs in it. But others, and that's where a good strong Australian position—hopefully it will return soon—would be good. Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, countries like that say “Over our dead bodies”. Well, there are literally dead bodies, I guess. But we're not going to permit you to... This is not admissible. We're not having any... We're not going to allow you to break this norm that no one should have nuclear weapons. So I don’t know which ones.

WALKER: From the perspective of breakouts, which country or countries do you worry about the most? Who's the most likely to develop nuclear weapons next? Is it Japan? South Korea? Iran?

BUTLER: Japan is interested, but it's got a terrible historic problem there of having been the subject of use. Which leads me to say something as an aside, and I don't mean to be smart-alecky about this and so on, but I just want to put this on the table between us for this wonderful conversation for which I thank you. Never forget...

This is an admonition from an older man. Never forget: The only country ever to have used nuclear weapons is the United States of America. Bear that in mind, (a) as history, (b) as the current phase that unfolds, (c) in particular, as the Trump period unfolds. They're the only ones who've done it, and it was a terrible thing to have done.

What was the question?

WALKER: Who's the next most likely nation to break out?

BUTLER: I said not Japan, because it's... They're interested, but it's too hard for them.

Possibly one of the Europeans that feels threatened in proximity to Russia.

WALKER: Right. Germany?

BUTLER: Germany is the obvious one. France has it, you know. Maybe one of the Baltics, you know, Sweden, Finland. I mean, I don't know.

But it involves them... It's just stupidity. I mean, what could they do? Make a few nuclear weapons and stand up to the vast arsenal of Russia? No, I don't think so. I mean, deterrence... When does deterrence become effective? How many do you have to have in comparison with the ones that you're seeking to deter? I mean, I don't know.

Indonesia, you've got a more right-wing government, militaristic sort of government in Indonesia no. They've been interested in the past.

You've got to think of big countries with a big sense of their national pride and they don't have this toy, this adult toy, which is the sign of having left teenagerdom, them having grown up. You have nuclear weapons. Think of it as an adult toy.

WALKER: This next question feels distasteful to ask, but I nevertheless think it's analytically important to ask. If Australia felt it could no longer rely on America's policy of extended nuclear deterrence, and if other countries in our region, such as Indonesia, acquired nuclear forces of their own, would it be justifiable for Australia then to consider building its own nuclear force, like we were considering back in the late 1960s?

BUTLER: Oh, I'm sure there are voices that would say we should consider it and it'll solve all our problems. But it won't surprise you at all to say it would not be, in my view, justified because there's no way that it would solve all our problems. I guess we're getting towards the end of this, to nuclear deterrence. But nuclear deterrence is illusory. It's an illusion that people comfort themselves with because of their belief in the potency of weapons. And these are particularly potent weapons.

Unless you're prepared to really commit massive homicide and remove all those enemies, or suicide, there's no point in acquiring a weapon that would simply encourage that person that you have anxiety about to do the same or more.

WALKER: Right. And to, I guess, incentivise a first strike.

BUTLER: Yeah, and incentivise a first strike.

WALKER: Hypothetically, if Australia did take that decision, how long would it take us to build nuclear weapons here? What's the timeframe? Is it months, years?

BUTLER: Yeah, I don't know about that. We've got plenty of uranium, but...

WALKER: Yeah, we have one-third of the world's uranium deposits.

BUTLER: Oh yeah, we always have had. That's why I was marching around the country at Bill Hayden's insistence, in the great uranium debate. Leave it in the ground debate.

WALKER: Yeah.

BUTLER: And because we then did, and perhaps less so now because some other deposits have been discovered, but we then were in possession of more than half of the world's uranium, you know.

We have the uranium, we'd have to enrich it. And then there's the weapons fabrication, the design of a weapon and the manufacture of all the bits and pieces that are needed to make it.

I don't know, but it's you know, it's not quick.

WALKER: Years?

BUTLER: I think years rather than months.

WALKER: Yeah.

BUTLER: That's the best I can say. Years rather than months.

WALKER: Final questions. I don't know if you share this sense, but it seems to me that the world doesn't seem as concerned about the prospect of proliferation breakouts as maybe it did a few decades ago. Even the great powers don't seem to be... Even China and Russia in Asia or in Western Europe, respectively, don't seem concerned about what seems to be the prospect of breakouts on the horizon in their own spheres. So why does there seem to be this just general complacency about proliferation today? Is it just a fatigue thing? People are sick of talking about it?

BUTLER: Yeah. I'm not sure. I think your proposition is essentially correct. They seem—the nuclear weapon states—seem to be pretty smug about their own continuing uniqueness.

I'm not sure why, but maybe it's, in addition to the reasons you mentioned, maybe it's “other fish to fry”. People have got other things that they need to do at the moment, which is to survive climate change and to get enough food on the table in their countries. You know, I mean, the complex problems of the global economy, food supply and environment in some ways are larger. And I think there may be a calculation that we'll take on the big powers, the nuclear weapons states part, that they'll take care of looking after their own nuclear weapons. And these other people aren't going to get into that. They've got other fish to fry.

WALKER: If there are young people listening to our conversation, thinking that they might like to pursue careers in the service of reducing the risk of nuclear war, do you have any specific pieces of advice for them? Is the best path still to follow in your footsteps as a diplomat? Or are there other, better paths that have opened up in the 2020s? What, what advice would you have? What skills should they build?

BUTLER: That's a very useful question because we will need people in the future and because I've done some teaching in the last decade and a half and I've run into too many young people who quite literally say, “Nuclear weapons... Why are you talking about that? Do they still exist?”

The problem of reality has become enormous. Some young people have got no idea of the fact that they do exist and they're still hideously dangerous.

So, a bit like talking about what did I learn from Whitlam, people have to learn the facts first. And I think young people wanting to get into this field, they could go into learning about nuclear science and technology. They could learn about international politics and especially the multilateral aspect and the sorts of treaty approach that does exist for the maintenance of what is routinely abused these days in reference to international principles and rules that everyone observes. Well, I mean, the thing is, the latter is not true. Everyone does not observe them.

But there are rules and principles out there, and that is a field of study: international law, international politics. One of the things that I discovered as a young diplomat is that the number of people who had relevant education in fields like the latter that I just mentioned, international law and politics, was too small. Traditionally, people went into diplomatic service having studied Latin or classical stuff. Having used the classical illusion earlier, I shouldn't be rude about that, but... And I studied, my first degree had a major in economics, but also in political studies.

I would emphasise the need for people to get themselves properly educated in politics. Political science, not so much because it's too technical now, but international affairs, the stuff of the E. H. Carr’s book, and there are other great texts now on the nature of international relations. Great books have been written. John Mearsheimer, for example. But there's Hans Morgenthau.

WALKER: Mearsheimer's book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics?

BUTLER: Yes.

So relevant courses of study. Can't go wrong with learning a foreign language, really, if you want to get into international affairs, learn a relevant foreign language and accompany that with study in international politics and international science, which would include nuclear, but now AI and so on, because that's going to transform so many things.

Get a proper education and listen to Richard Butler talk about negotiation, where you should always listen and know that people, whether they like it or not, will tell you unwittingly what they're really about as long as you're listening hard. And that will position you to be, with your knowledge base as well, from your education, but that would then position you to be a good international negotiator.

WALKER: That's a nice piece of advice to finish with—to listen—both for aspiring new Richard Butlers and also for podcast hosts like me.

Well, I mean, there's so much in your career that we haven't had time to touch on today. Your time in Vienna, your time as the Ambassador in Cambodia. We only spoke a little about your time as Chair of UNSCOM. But we have covered so much ground and it's been a great honor, really.

BUTLER: I've enjoyed it immensely.

WALKER: And also, I know you have a lot of family and other commitments at the moment, so I really appreciate you being so generous with your time.

BUTLER: Pleasure. It's been a good talk.

WALKER: It has.

BUTLER: I'm impressed by the research that you've done. You're really on top of this. Thank you for having me.

WALKER: Very kind. Thank you, Richard.

Given Richard Butler's eventful career, there were many topics we didn't get to cover in depth. In particular, that includes UNSCOM and Iraq, the role Richard played in the Cambodian peace process, and his views on the UN Security Council. We may save these topics for a future interview.

If you'd like to support my research, you can gain access to the background research materials for this episode here.

Richard Butler — Nuclear Diplomacy at the End of History (#160)

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