Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • Message for 100-Day Countdown to the International Day of Peace

    Ban Ki-moonToday, we start the 100-day countdown to the observance of the International Day of Peace, when we call on combatants around the world to put down their weapons and try to find peaceful solutions to their conflicts.


    The International Day of Peace, marked every year on 21 September, gives us all a chance to reflect on the unconscionable toll – moral, physical, material – wrought by war.  Those costs are borne not only by us today, but by future generations as well.


    That is why this year’s theme is “Sustainable Peace for a Sustainable Future.” It highlights the fact that we cannot possibly think about building a sustainable future if there is no sustainable peace.  Armed conflicts attack the very pillars of sustainable development, robbing people of the opportunity to develop, to create jobs, to safeguard the environment, to fight poverty, to reduce the risk from disasters, to advance social equity and to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.


    One week from today, as the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development opens in Rio de Janeiro, the world will have an opportunity to fight back.  With tens of thousands of politicians, policy-makers, social activists, business leaders and others mobilized for action, Rio+20 can help us to create a global roadmap for a sustainable future, the future we want.


    We want a future where natural resources are protected and valued rather than used to finance wars, where children can be educated at school and not recruited into armies, where economic and social inequalities are resolved through dialogue instead of violence.


    If we are to build such a future, we must all play our individual part.  I urge everyone, between now and 21 September, to think about how they can contribute.  Let us work together to ensure that the Road from Rio leads us to sustainable development, sustainable peace… and a secure future for all.  

  • Do Nuclear Weapons Really Deter Aggression?

    Lawrence WittnerIt’s often said that nuclear weapons have protected nations from military attack.

     

    But is there any solid evidence to bolster this contention? Without such evidence, the argument that nuclear weapons prevented something that never occurred is simply a counter-factual abstraction that cannot be proved.

     

    Ronald Reagan — the hardest of military hard-liners — was not at all impressed by airy claims that U.S. nuclear weapons prevented Soviet aggression. Kenneth Adelman, a hawkish official in the Reagan administration, recalled that when he “hammered home the risks of a nuclear-free world” to the president, Reagan retorted that “we couldn’t know that nuclear weapons had kept the peace in Europe for forty years, maybe other things had.” Adelman described another interchange with Reagan that went the same way. When Adelman argued that “eliminating all nuclear weapons was impossible,” as they had kept the peace in Europe, Reagan responded sharply that “it wasn’t clear that nuclear weapons had kept the peace. Maybe other things, like the Marshall Plan and NATO, had kept the peace.” (Kenneth Adelman, The Great Universal Embrace, pp. 69, 318.)

     

    In short, without any solid evidence, we don’t know that nuclear weapons have prevented or will prevent military aggression.

     

    We do know, of course, that since 1945, many nations not in possession of nuclear weapons and not part of the alliance systems of the nuclear powers have not experienced a military attack. Clearly, they survived just fine without nuclear deterrence.

     

    And we also know that nuclear weapons in U.S. hands did not prevent non-nuclear North Korea from invading South Korea or non-nuclear China from sending its armies to attack U.S. military forces in the ensuing Korean War. Nor did massive U.S. nuclear might prevent the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Also, the thousands of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal did nothing to deter the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on U.S. territory.

     

    Similarly, nuclear weapons in Soviet (and later Russian) hands did not prevent U.S. military intervention in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Nor did Soviet nuclear weapons prevent CIA-fomented military action to overthrow the governments of Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, and other nations.

     

    Other nuclear powers have also discovered the irrelevance of their nuclear arsenals. British nuclear weapons did not stop non-nuclear Argentina’s invasion of Britain’s Falkland Islands. Moreover, Israel’s nuclear weapons did not prevent non-nuclear Egypt and non-nuclear Syria from attacking Israel’s armed forces in 1973 or non-nuclear Iraq from launching missile attacks on Israeli cities in 1991. Perhaps most chillingly, in 1999, when both India and Pakistan possessed nuclear weapons, the two nations — long at odds — sent their troops into battle against one another in what became known as the Kargil War.

     

    Of course, the argument is often made that nuclear weapons have deterred a nuclear attack. But, again, as this attack never took place, how can we be sure about the cause of this non-occurrence?

     

    Certainly, U.S. officials don’t appear to find their policy of nuclear deterrence very reassuring. Indeed, if they were as certain that nuclear weapons prevent nuclear attack as they claim to be, why are they so intent upon building “missile defense” systems to block such an attack — despite the fact that, after squandering more than $150 billion on such defense systems, there is no indication that they work? Or, to put it more generally, if the thousands of U.S. nuclear weapons safeguard the United States from a nuclear attack by another nation, why is a defense against such an attack needed?

     

    Another indication that nuclear weapons do not provide security against a nuclear attack is the determination of the U.S. and Israeli governments to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. After all, if nuclear deterrence works, there is no need to worry about Iran (or any other nation) acquiring nuclear weapons.

     

    The fact is that, today, there is no safety from war to be found in nuclear weaponry, any more than there was safety in the past produced by fighter planes, battleships, bombers, poison gas, and other devastating weapons. Instead, by raising the ante in the ages-old game of armed conflict, nuclear weapons have merely increased the possibility that, however a war begins, it will end in mass destruction of terrifying dimensions.

     

    Sensible people and wise government leaders have understood for some time now that a more promising route to national and international security is to work at curbing the practice of war while, at the same time, banning its most dangerous and destructive implements. This alternative route requires patient diplomacy, international treaties, citizen activism, the United Nations, and arms control and disarmament measures. It’s a less dramatic and less demagogic approach than brandishing nuclear weapons on the world scene. But, ultimately, it’s a lot safer.

  • Cartwright Report Calls for Nuclear Reductions and Elimination of US Land-Based ICBM Force

    This article was originally published by Truthout.


    David KriegerGen. James Cartwright chaired a recently released report by the nuclear disarmament group Global Zero on “Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure and Posture.” General Cartwright is a retired vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and former commander of the US Strategic Command. In the latter capacity, he was in charge of all US nuclear weapons.


    The Cartwright report argues for reducing the number of US nuclear weapons, taking deployed weapons off high alert and eliminating all land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The report proposes an illustrative nuclear force of 900 total nuclear weapons, half deployed and half in reserve. The report recommends that, of the 450 deployed weapons, 360 be submarine-based and 90 carried on bombers. The deployed weapons would be de-alerted so that they would require 24 to 72 hours to be made launch-ready.


    This is a proposal based upon a thorough review of current US nuclear strategy and posture. It calls for reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons to 450 by 2022 and reinforces the belief that current US nuclear policy, which the report critiques, remains stuck in the cold war era despite the world having moved on in the 21st century.


    The report finds that, “ICBMs in fixed silos are inherently targetable and depend heavily upon launch on warning for survival under some scenarios of enemy attack.” It goes on to state that the current ICBM rapid reaction posture, “runs a real risk of accidental or mistaken launch.” Thus, the report calls for elimination of the US ICBM force and for reliance for deterrence upon the invulnerable submarine and bomber forces instead.


    The report’s call for eliminating the US ICBM force elicited a bizarre response from the Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, who said that the plan “introduces the likelihood of instability in the deterrence equation, which is not healthy.” Schwartz continued: “Here’s the reality: Why do we have a land-based deterrent force? It’s so that an adversary has to strike the homeland.”


    Why would any country need or want to maintain such land-based weapons, which provide an attractive target for an adversary in a time of high tension? It would make far more sense for US military leaders to be thinking about how to prevent potential adversaries from striking the US with nuclear weapons.


    The dangers of General Schwartz’s convoluted concept of deterrence can best be understood by reference to the reflections of former commander of the US Strategic Command, Gen. George Lee Butler. In 1999, General Butler wrote, “Nuclear deterrence was and remains a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships.” In other words, the heavily flawed theory of nuclear deterrence is subject to failure in the real world. General Schwartz’s concept of deterrence “so that an adversary has to strike the homeland” shows how deterrence itself can be more focused on strategy than on people and can undermine security.


    The Cartwright report gives backing to President Obama’s call for US leadership to achieve “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” It should be noted, though, that atmospheric scientists have modeled a “small” nuclear war between India and Pakistan, in which each side uses 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities. As a consequence of such a war, soot from the burning cities would rise into the stratosphere, where it would remain for a decade, blocking warming sunlight, shortening growing seasons and causing crop failures, leading to global famine and potentially 1 billion deaths from starvation worldwide.


    This “nuclear famine” study suggests that even a reduction to 450 deployed nuclear weapons by both the United States and Russia would still leave too many nuclear weapons. Since these 450 thermonuclear weapons would be far more powerful than the Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons modeled in the nuclear-famine study, they could potentially do far more damage than a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, as terrible as that would be.


    The Cartwright report provides a fresh look at US nuclear policy and is a valuable contribution to the debate on necessary next steps in moving toward the urgent goal of achieving zero nuclear weapons on the planet.

  • Book Review: Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual

    Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual by Lawrence S. Wittner


    Publisher:  University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN


    Publication Date: February 2012, 288 pages


    Paperback Price: $29.95


    Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual is a must read for all who are interested and involved in the search for peace, racial equality, and other aspects of social justice.  The book is a very well written autobiography by Lawrence S. Wittner, emeritus professor of history at the State University of New York-Albany.


    Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York,  Wittner graduated from Columbia College (B.A., 1962), the University of Wisconsin (M.A., 1963), and Columbia University (Ph.D. in history, 1967).  His teaching assignments were at Hampton Institute, Vassar College, the University of Toyko, and finally, SUNY/Albany from which he retired as a full professor in 2010.  His scholarship included authorship of eight books and the editing or co-editing of another four, plus the writing of over 250 published articles and book reviews.  His most challenging scholarly effort was the completion of a three book series The Struggle Against the Bomb on the history of the nuclear disarmament movement.  The books were:  One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953;  Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970;  and Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present.  An abbreviated version of the entire trilogy is also available as Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement. Additionally, his Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 is a widely acclaimed, comprehensive account of the missing link between the mass peace and justice movements of the 1930s and their rebirth in the 1960s with emphasis on civil rights, non-violent resistance and the prevention of World War III.


    During the course of his research, Wittner delved into the records and periodicals of many peace organizations like the War Resisters League, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and SANE (now Peace Action). Among the prominent peace activists whom he interviewed for his publications were A.J. Muste, Norman Thomas, Dave Dellinger, and Mercedes  Randall.  During his research for the Struggle Against the Bomb series, he interviewed such well known peace movement leaders as Randy Forsberg, Sandy Gottlieb, Helen Caldicott, John Isaacs, Randy Kehler, Jeremy Stone, Bernard Lown, Bob Musil and Frank von Hippel.


    In addition to his research and teaching roles, Wittner was a tireless agitator and social activist.  A paragraph in the Preface of the book describes those activities:


    ” Over the course of my life, I … have been tear-gassed, threatened by police with drawn guns, charged by soldiers with fixed bayonets, spied upon by U.S. government intelligence agencies, and purged from my job for political reasons.  Although, in my opinion, I did nothing that merited this kind of treatment, it is certainly true that much of my behavior was quite unconventional.  Indeed throughout most of my life I worked diligently as a peace agitator, civil rights activist, socialist organizer, labor union militant, and subversive songwriter. My experiences ranged from challenging racism in the South, to building alliances with maquiladora workers in Mexico, to leading the annual antinuclear parade through the streets of Hiroshima.  Like Wendell Phillilps, the great abolitionist leader, I have been a consistent thorn in the side of complacency – at least I hope so.”


    Clearly Wittner paid a price for his agitation and activism.  While he had a very enviable and successful academic career, his road to success was not easy.  Most major U.S. universities require three primary duties of their tenured professors and those who are seeking tenure.  Those duties are research, teaching, and community service.  If there ever was a university professor who excelled in all three of those functions, it was Lawrence Wittner.  That fact, notwithstanding, he had a VERY rough road to promotion and success because of ultra conservative presidents, deans, departmental chairs, and dead-wood academic colleagues.  Several of those individuals threw sand into the gears of his work as researcher, teacher, and community service provider.  Inane university politics delayed his achievement of tenure,  and ensured that his pay was not usually commensurate with his voluminous work output.   Lesser individuals would have succumbed to such outlandish obstacles.  This was not the case with Lawrence Wittner.  His life was, and is, a life of caring, persistence and dedication to the cause of peace, social justice and human survival.  It is important that his life’s contributions and achievements be passed on to young and old alike.  Working for Peace and Justice is an excellent book for general audiences, peace activists, ethicists, students of peace studies, students of history, and social activists of every stripe. 

  • Should NATO Be Handling World Security?

    This article was originally published by History News Network.


    Lawrence WittnerThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization (better known as NATO) is in the news once again thanks to a NATO summit meeting in Chicago over the weekend of May 19-20 and to large public demonstrations in Chicago against this military pact.


    NATO’s website defines the alliance’s mission as “Peace and Security,” and shows two children lying in the grass, accompanied by a bird, a flower and the happy twittering of birds. There is no mention of the fact that NATO is the world’s most powerful military pact, or that NATO nations account for 70 percent of the world’s annual $1.74 trillion in military spending.


    The organizers of the demonstrations, put together by peace and social justice groups, assailed NATO for bogging the world down in endless war and for diverting vast resources to militarism. According to a spokesperson for one of the protest groups, Peace Action: “It’s time to retire NATO and form a new alliance to address unemployment, hunger, and climate change.”


    NATO was launched in April 1949, at a time when Western leaders feared that the Soviet Union, if left unchecked, would invade Western Europe. The U.S. government played a key role in organizing the alliance, which brought in not only West European nations, but the United States and Canada. Dominated by the United States, NATO had a purely defensive mission — to safeguard its members from military attack, presumably by the Soviet Union.


    That attack never occurred, either because it was deterred by NATO’s existence or because the Soviet government had no intention of attacking in the first place. We shall probably never know.


    In any case, with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, it seemed that NATO had outlived its usefulness.


    But vast military establishments, like other bureaucracies, rarely just fade away. If the original mission no longer exists, new missions can be found. And so NATO’s military might was subsequently employed to bomb Yugoslavia, to conduct counter-insurgency warfare in Afghanistan, and to bomb Libya. Meanwhile, NATO expanded its membership and military facilities to East European nations right along Russia’s border, thus creating renewed tension with that major military power and providing it with an incentive to organize a countervailing military pact, perhaps with China.


    None of this seems likely to end soon. In the days preceding the Chicago meeting, NATO’s new, sweeping role was highlighted by Oana Longescu, a NATO spokesperson, who announced that the summit would discuss “the Alliance’s overall posture in deterring and defending against the full range of threats in the twenty-first century, and take stock of NATO’s mix of conventional, nuclear, and missile defense forces.”


    In fairness to NATO planners, it should be noted that, when it comes to global matters, they are operating in a relative vacuum. There are real international security problems, and some entity should certainly be addressing them.


    But is NATO the proper entity? After all, NATO is a military pact, dominated by the United States and composed of a relatively small group of self-selecting European and North American nations. The vast majority of the world’s countries do not belong to NATO and have no influence upon it. Who appointed NATO as the representative of the world’s people? Why should the public in India, in Brazil, in China, in South Africa, in Argentina, or most other nations identify with the decisions of NATO’s military commanders?


    The organization that does represent the nations and people of the world is the United Nations. Designed to save the planet from “the scourge of war,” the United Nations has a Security Council (on which the United States has permanent membership) that is supposed to handle world security issues. Unlike NATO, whose decisions are often controversial and sometimes questionable, the United Nations almost invariably comes forward with decisions that have broad international support and, furthermore, show considerable wisdom and military restraint.


    The problem with UN decisions is not that they are bad ones, but that they are difficult to enforce. And the major reason for the difficulty in enforcement is that the Security Council is hamstrung by a veto that can be exercised by any one nation. Thus, much like the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, which is making the United States less and less governable, the Security Council veto has seriously limited what the world organization is able to do in addressing global security issues.


    Thus, if the leaders of NATO nations were really serious about providing children with a world in which they could play in peace among the birds and flowers, they would work to strengthen the United Nations and stop devoting vast resources to dubious wars.


  • Nuclear Insanity: A Brief Outline

    David KriegerAlbert Einstein, at the request of his friend and fellow physicist, Leo Szilard, sent a letter dated August 2, 1939 to President Franklin Roosevelt, in which he expressed concern about the potential for an atomic weapon and the possibility that the Germans would develop such a weapon.  Einstein recommended increased scientific efforts and better funding in the US.  This led to the establishment of a low-budget Uranium Project and then, in 1942, to the large-scale Manhattan Engineering Project to develop atomic weapons.


    The Nuclear Age began in the summer of 1945 with the first test of a nuclear device at Alamogordo, New Mexico, followed within a month by the destruction of two undefended Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The bombings demonstrated the direct effects of nuclear weapons: blast, fires and radiation.  Approximately 90,000 people in Hiroshima died immediately and 145,000 by the end of 1945.  Approximately 40,000 people in Nagasaki died immediately and 75,000 by the end of 1945.  The survivors of these bombings continue to suffer from radiation-related illnesses.


    By early 1946 the US had tested nuclear weapons in its Trust Territory, the Marshall Islands.  For the next three years, until the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapons, the US engaged in a unilateral nuclear arms race.  Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands with the equivalent explosive power of one-and-a-half Hiroshima bombs each day for 12 years.  The Marshall Islanders continue to suffer from radiation-related illnesses.


    In 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon, breaking the US nuclear monopoly and opening the way for a nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union. 


    In 1970, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) entered into force.  The parties to the treaty agreed that, in exchange for non-nuclear weapon states committing not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapon states would engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament.


    At the height of the nuclear arms race, in 1986, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, with over 97 percent in the arsenals of the US and Soviet Union.


    In 1995, 25 years after the NPT entered into force, the parties to the treaty held a Review and Extension Conference, at which they agreed to extend the treaty indefinitely, despite the fact that the nuclear weapon states had made virtually no progress toward fulfilling their nuclear disarmament obligations. 


    A year later, in 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an Advisory Opinion to the United Nations General Assembly in which they stated, “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”


    In 2012, some 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the number of nuclear weapons in the world has been reduced, but there remain more than 19,000 of them, 95 percent of which are in the arsenals of the US and Russia, but some of which are in the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.


    From the beginning of the Nuclear Age to the present, the US alone has spent more than $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons, their delivery vehicles and their command and control systems.  The US is continuing to spend some $50 to $70 billion annually on its nuclear arsenal.  All nuclear weapon states, including the US, are engaged in modernizing (qualitatively improving) their nuclear arsenals.


    In the 1980s, scientists warned of Nuclear Winter, but their models were not highly sophisticated and were challenged.  In the past several years, though, their findings have been validated using more sophisticated models.


    Leading atmospheric scientists now warn of nuclear famine from the effects of even a small nuclear war.  They modeled a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in which each side detonates 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities.  Smoke from the burning cities would rise into the stratosphere, where it would reduce warming sunlight for up to ten years, dropping temperatures on Earth to the lowest levels in the past 1,000 years and shortening growing seasons across the planet.  The result would be crop failures and a nuclear famine, which could result in the deaths of hundreds of millions to a billion people globally.


    In the modeled India-Pakistan nuclear exchange, less than one-half of one percent of the explosive power in the deployed nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia would be used.  A nuclear war between the US and Russia, in which the cities and industrial areas of the two countries were attacked, could result in lowering global temperatures to those of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago, leading to the extinction of most or all complex life on the planet. 


    Launch-ready, land-based nuclear-armed missiles are particularly dangerous, because there would be very little time for decision makers to determine whether an alarm were real or false.  The presidents of the US and Russia would have 12 minutes or less to decide whether to launch a retaliatory attack to what could be a false warning.


    Nuclear weapons and human fallibility are a dangerous mix, particularly when extinction could be the result of human or technological error.


    The possibility of nuclear famine makes nuclear weapons abolition imperative, since the future of human survival on the planet may well depend upon it.


    To end the threat of nuclear omnicide (death of all) by means of nuclear famine, a three-step process is needed.


    First, a major education program to warn policy makers and the public of the dangers of nuclear famine.


    Second, an advocacy program to obtain commitments from the nuclear weapon states of No Use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states and No First Use of the weapons against other nuclear weapon states.  If no country used their nuclear weapons first, they would not be used.


    Third, an advocacy program to achieve a new treaty for complete nuclear disarmament, as required by the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice.  The new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, would provide for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.


    Achieving such a treaty will require leadership from the US, the only country to have used nuclear weapons and the most technologically advanced country on the planet.  Pressure from US citizens and from non-nuclear weapon states will be needed in support of US leadership.


    To put pressure on the nuclear weapon states to commit to No First Use and a Nuclear Weapons Convention, bold action is needed.  At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we propose that, if the nuclear weapon states have not already begun negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention by the start of the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the non-nuclear weapon states boycott the Review Conference and initiate a process for negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

  • Once Upon a Time Can Be Now: Rescuing Planet Earth and Restoring Paradise

    David KriegerFairy tales often begin with the words, “Once upon a time….”  For example, “Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess….”  In a fairy tale, the hero, perhaps a handsome prince, may kill the dragon and rescue the princess, and they “live happily ever after.”  I want to suggest a fairy tale in which there is a beautiful planet and the heroes and heroines who save it are us.  So, here is a fairy tale about saving a planet in distress.  Our challenge is to bring this fairy tale to life.


    Once upon a time there was a beautiful and pristine planet.  It was the third planet in a remote solar system in a vast galaxy of stars.  While it might have seemed like an ordinary planet, if anything, rather on the small side, it was far from ordinary.  It was, in fact, a very special planet, for it had just the right climate and temperature to support life.  On this planet there were oceans and continents and mountains and rivers, and they teemed with life.  There were broad plains with grasses that rippled in the winds; hillsides covered with wildflowers; trees that spread their branches and bore fruits.  And there were animals of every shape and kind: fish that swam, birds that flew, and animals that hopped and jumped and ran.  This planet had sunrises and sunsets and a night sky filled with twinkling stars.  Compared with the harsh, lifeless planets that filled the solar system, it was a paradise. 


    And into this paradise came a featherless bi-ped capable of knowing.  He called himself man, and he called the paradise he inhabited Earth.  He devised stories about his own creation, stories that helped to explain the mystery of being — the mystery of something emerging from nothing.  Man was clever and he created tools that gave him power over other creatures, even though he was not as strong or fast or agile as they were.  He created powerful gods in his own image and then had those imaginary creatures bestow upon him dominion over all that swam and flew and ran.  Man took charge of the planet.


    Man’s most recent creation story, the science-based creation story, is that the universe grew from a “Big Bang” some 15 billion years ago, and it has been expanding ever since.  Earth was created 4.5 billion years ago and a half-billion years later simple forms of life emerged on Earth.  Early forms of man in this creation story came into existence only a few million years ago and more modern forms of man only some 50,000 years ago.  Only in the past eight to ten thousand years have human civilizations emerged.


    While the science-based creation story gives a skeletal outline of the development of the universe, its large numbers are difficult to grasp.  It is helpful to think of them in terms of a very big 15,000-page book.  Each page of the book represents a million years in the history of the universe.  The “Big Bang” occurs at the top of page one.  It is not until page 10,500 that the Earth is created and not until page 11,000 that life begins on Earth.  It is not until page 14,997 that primitive forms of man come into being.  Assuming that each word on each page represents 1,000 years, it is only in the final ten words on the final page of the book that civilization begins.  Civilization reflects a larger-scale ordering of society, characterized by agriculture, hierarchy and specialization.  Civilization gives rise to larger and larger tribal loyalties, to competing social systems and to increasingly virulent warfare. 


    It is only within the last two or three words of the book that Isaiah, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Zoroaster, Jesus and other spiritual leaders walk the planet.  But, despite their lives and the moral lessons they teach, warfare becomes more prominent within and among human societies.  Man increases his skill in organizing to engage in the large-scale slaughter of other men.  Over the millennia, man develops ever more powerful weapons with which to kill his fellow man.  He advances in the technology of weaponry from stones to spears to arrows to swords to guns to modern artillery and bombs, and finally, to nuclear and then thermonuclear weapons. 


    In describing our time, the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges, writes, “The planet had been parceled out among various countries, each one provided with loyalties, cherished memories, with a past undoubtedly heroic, with rights, with wrongs, with a particular mythology, with bronze forefathers, with anniversaries, with demagogues and symbols.  This arbitrary division was favorable for wars.”  Our time has been favorable for wars, but the development of our technologies of warfare and the resources we have devoted to war and its preparations have made wars unfavorable for us.


    It is not until the final punctuation mark on the final page of the 15,000-page book that the Nuclear Age begins with three explosions: a test explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, followed by the destruction of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki.  In only seven or eight more years, man had created thermonuclear weapons, and two of the many “arbitrary divisions” of the planet that man calls countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, were engaged in a mad nuclear arms race.  It was in this period, the Nuclear Age, that man arrived at a new juncture in his history, one in which his weaponry had become powerful enough to destroy himself and most other forms of complex life on the planet.  In doing so, man had made himself a godlike creature, a god of savagery and destruction.  He now held his fate in his own hands. 


    The final punctuation mark in the 15,000-page book is now being determined.  It may be thought of as a question mark, and the question is: will man be able to summon the will and strength to control his most dangerous technologies and continue his own history, along with that of the remarkable planet on which he lives, on page 15,001?  It may instead be a dramatic exclamation point, another “Big Bang,” this one created by man himself, bringing a cataclysmic end to human life on the planet.
    In many ways, man has taken the beautiful and pristine planet that he inherited from the cosmos and undermined its sustainability.  Man’s powerful technologies combined with his greed threaten the climate and health of the planet.  His waste and pollution are poisoning the planet and its creatures.  Disparities in wealth have turned the planet into a hell for many of the poorest among us.  Man has not been a good trustee of the planet for future generations.  But the most urgent issue of sustainability confronting man is the threat posed by the nuclear arsenals he has created, an issue that has received very little public attention, particularly since the end of the Cold War some two decades ago. 
    The principal points that I want to make are these: first, we are destroying our paradise by our own actions; second, nuclear weapons are incompatible with a sustainable future; and third, the future is in our collective hands.  We must abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us.  We must also abolish war as a means of settling our conflicts.  By doing so, we would release vast amounts of capital and human creativity.
    At the height of the nuclear arms race in the mid-1980s, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, primarily in the arsenals of the United States and Soviet Union.  These weapons were capable of destroying complex life on Earth many times over.  On many occasions, man has come close to a nuclear war – by accident, miscalculation or design – that could have ended the human future on the planet.  Perhaps the most serious of these occasions was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the US and former Soviet Union almost stumbled over the precipice.  The Nuclear Age has been characterized by its policies of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), with opposing sides locked in a life-and-death struggle that would be both suicidal (death of self) and omnicidal (death of all).


    Although the world’s nuclear arsenals have been reduced by over 50,000 nuclear weapons in the past 25 years, there are still slightly under 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  These remain largely in the arsenals of the US and Russia, but also in those of seven other countries: the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Two decades after the end of the Cold War, large numbers of nuclear weapons remain on high alert 24 hours a day, and there has been an unfortunate lack of political leadership for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.


    Most of us are aware of the direct effects of nuclear weapons that result from blast, fire and radiation.  At Hiroshima, some 90,000 people died immediately from the US atomic bombing on August 6, 1945, some being vaporized and leaving shadows etched into stone walls behind where they had been at the time of the explosion.  By the end of 1945, the death toll in Hiroshima had risen to 145,000.  For the survivors of the atomic bombings, the suffering and trauma continues even until today.  Soon the survivors will all be gone, and there will be no first-hand witnesses to the horror of nuclear weapons.


    The indirect effects of nuclear weapons use, we now know from the studies of atmospheric scientists, would be even worse than the direct effects.  A regional war between India and Pakistan, for example, in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities and industrial areas, would have devastating global effects.  The smoke from burning fires would rise into the stratosphere, blocking warming sunlight, lowering global temperatures to the lowest experienced in the last 1,000 years, and shortening growing seasons.  Hundreds of millions of people would likely perish in the resulting global famine. 


    These consequences, as horrendous as they are, would pale in comparison to those in a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia, whose launch-ready, operational nuclear arsenals have a combined explosive power more than 500 times greater than those of India and Pakistan.  Such an exchange would result in global temperatures becoming colder than those experienced in the last Ice Age, some 18,000 years ago.  This radical climate change, along with the destruction of the ozone layer, would create conditions on Earth that would likely result in the extinction of most or all complex forms of life on the planet.


    This is the threat that we live with every moment of each day.  Could it happen?  Of course, it could.  We ignore it at our peril.  We cannot be naïve enough to believe that humans can create fool-proof systems.  To understand this, we need only recall the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, or the many close calls we have had with nuclear weapons, including accidents and false warnings of nuclear attacks.


    Not long ago, I was arrested for protesting the launch of a US Minuteman III missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base, not far from where I live in California.  The Minuteman III is a land-based, nuclear-armed missile.  There are 450 of them in silos in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota.  They are launch-ready, first-strike weapons.  If there is a warning – including a false warning – of attack against the United States, there will be pressure for the US to use these weapons before they are destroyed in their silos.  The same is true of the Russian land-based, nuclear-armed missiles.  They will have the same pressure to use them before incoming missiles could destroy them in their silos.  The land-based, nuclear-armed missile forces of both sides should be thought of as Nuclear Doomsday Machines.  They are triggers for World War III, what would undoubtedly be a short and cataclysmic war.


    The US and Russian presidents would have only a few minutes, perhaps 12 minutes at the most, to evaluate a warning of attack and decide whether or not to launch their own missiles and initiate World War III.  This is an intolerable situation.  President Mikhail Gorbachev recognized this when he said, “It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.”  This is sound advice.  We mortals, all of us, are not gods, and none of us should be trusted with nuclear weapons when the future of our planet, our species and other forms of life are in our hands.  All of us are threatened by the power of our nuclear arsenals and the all-too-real possibilities of nuclear proliferation, nuclear war and nuclear famine.


    When I began, I spoke about the paradise of our Earth, the only place we know of in the universe where there is life.  Our minimum responsibility, in return for living on this planet, is to pass the planet on intact and sustainable to the next generation.  Our technologies of warfare have made this far more challenging than in the past, but we must not fail in confronting the threats posed by nuclear weapons and war. 


    To end the urgent threats of nuclear proliferation, nuclear war and nuclear famine, we must abolish nuclear weapons.  This will require leadership from great states and from great individuals within those states.  Nuclear weapons are illegal under international law, immoral and costly.  Rather than being considered a source of prestige, they should be taboo, like cannibalism and slavery.  We should demand that all states begin negotiations immediately on a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  In the meantime, while this treaty is being negotiated, we should demand that all nuclear weapon states adopt policies of No Use of these weapons against non-nuclear weapon states and No First Use against other nuclear weapon states.  To support such policies and give them credence, nuclear weapon states should separate their warheads from delivery vehicles on land-based missiles, so there will not be temptation to use them first in the event of a false warning.  Finally, before the US proceeds with further deployment of missile defense installations in Europe, it should take seriously Russian security concerns and conduct a joint threat assessment with Russia.


    The abolition of nuclear weapons is our responsibility.  We should take care of it promptly, with the urgency it demands, and not allow this global threat to be passed on to our children and grandchildren.  Then we should dedicate ourselves to doing more than this minimum for survival and take steps to assure the restoration of Earth to being the paradise it was and could be again.  An international appeal for the 2012 RIO + 20 conference, initiated by the International Peace Bureau and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, points out these important linkages: “Without disarmament, there will be no adequate development; without development, there will be no justice, equality and peace.  We must give sustainability a chance.”


    In 1955, a group of scientists, led by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which stated, “There lies before us, if we choose, continued progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom.  Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels?  We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.  If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”


    It is up to us to choose.  Let us choose peace and hope and a sustainable future.  May we show by our actions that we take seriously our roles as trustees of the Earth for our children and their children and all children of the future – that they may enjoy a peaceful and harmonious life on our planetary home. 

  • Youth Speech at the NPT PrepCom

    Vienna International Centre

    Speech written by Mirko Montuori, Abolition 2000; Leonardo Scuto, Atlantic Treaty Association; Christian N. Ciobanu, Raphael Zaffran, and Charlie Sell, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; and Martin Hinrichs, Ban All Nukes Generation.

    Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,

    Two years ago in New York our predecessors asked ironically if, at the age of 65, nuclear weapons had reached the time for compulsory retirement. Today, on the verge of them turning 67, we ask you to declare them not only out of business, but also deprived of any retirement scheme.

    We are young, but we are not naive.

    We are young, but we are not unaware of the world around us.

    We are here, representing the youth movement for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, urging you to comply with your commitments towards your citizens and to start immediate negotiations for a decisive nuclear weapons convention.

    We all know the destructive power of nuclear weapons, as they have been used and tested too often in the past.

    The presence of nuclear weapons in this world leaves us with two possible futures: in the best case scenario, states continue to own weapons that will never be used. In the worst case scenario, these weapons could be used at all times. We reject both futures, for nuclear weapons should simply not exist.

    Mr. Chairman, the very first resolution of the UN General Assembly established the objective to prohibit the possession of nuclear weapons as a top priority of the international community. Then the Cold War broke out and the two superpowers developed the concept of nuclear deterrence. It is not surprising that the resulting military doctrine was called MAD. The Cold War is now over and deterrence is an outdated justification for the existence of such weapons.

    Today, we feel the danger and risk of nuclear weapons more than ever. The source of our fears and frustrations lies in the same events that have recently challenged the goals of the NPT.

    We, the youth, fear an arms race in several regions of the world and the unchecked proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    We, the youth, sit frustrated as we continue to witness the lack of political will and trust needed to confront these obstacles.

    It is crucial to build trust among states by prioritizing the elimination of rapidly deployable nuclear weapons. These weapons can destroy entire cities or countries in a few hours. Increasing trust would mean that states tempted to build new weapons would be universally accountable to the international community.

    There is a man who has used nuclear weapons and is now engaging against them. His name is Robert Green, he is a former Commander of the Royal Navy and now one of the staunchest advocates of nuclear abolition. We can all learn from his experience.
    There are also those who have survived the use of these terrible weapons. They are the victims and witnesses of the only weapons that could destroy our planet. Hibakushas bring on their dignified fight against them, well aware of their risks. They are a living warning against the worst form of death conceived by humankind, and to ignore them is to ignore the worst risk that humanity could face.

    We live in the world of the Third Industrial Revolution, with an increasing power of communication and online interaction. As a result, we are all linked to each other.

    How do you justify the existence, development and maintenance of these weapons in a world where your children and grandchildren do not see the difference between an Asian and European boy, between an American and an African girl? And how do you justify them in a world hit by the worst economic crisis since 1929, where youth unemployment is increasingly designing our instable future?
    Representatives of the world’s nations, how do you justify maintaining nuclear weapons in such a context? Is this the world that you want to hand down to younger generations?

    We, as young people, care a lot about the future of this planet. We are aware that differences of cultures, religions, and political constraints persist. But we will not give up our fight against nuclear weapons.

    Do not ignore our concern! Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

    Thank you very much for your attention.

  • Nuclear Weapons and a Sustainable Future

    2012_05_01_npt_briefing.pdf

  • The Shame of Nations: A New Record is Set for Spending on War

    Lawrence Wittner


    This article was originally published by the History News Network.


    On April 17, 2012, as millions of Americans were filing their income tax returns, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its latest study of world military spending. In case Americans were wondering where most of their tax money — and the tax money of other nations — went in the previous year, the answer from SIPRI was clear: to war and preparations for war.


    World military spending reached a record $1,738 billion in 2011 — an increase of $138 billion over the previous year.  The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion.


    Some news reports have emphasized that, from the standpoint of reducing reliance on armed might, this actually represents progress.  After all, the increase in “real” global military spending — that is, expenditures after corrections for inflation and exchange rates — was only 0.3 percent. And this contrasts with substantially larger increases in the preceding thirteen years.


    But why are military expenditures continuing to increase — indeed, why aren’t they substantially decreasing — given the governmental austerity measures of recent years? Amid the economic crisis that began in late 2008 (and which continues to the present day), most governments have been cutting back their spending dramatically on education, health care, housing, parks, and other vital social services. However, there have not been corresponding cuts in their military budgets.


    Americans, particularly, might seek to understand why in this context U.S. military spending has not been significantly decreased, instead of being raised by $13 billion — admittedly a “real dollar” decrease of 1.2 percent, but hardly one commensurate with Washington’s wholesale slashing of social spending. Yes, military expenditures by China and Russia increased in 2011.  And in “real” terms, too. But, even so, their military strength hardly rivals that of the United States.  Indeed, the United States spent about five times as much as China (the world’s #2 military power) and ten times as much as Russia (the world’s #3 military power) on its military forces during 2011. Furthermore, when U.S. allies like Britain, France, Germany, and Japan are factored in, it is clear that the vast bulk of world military expenditures are made by the United States and its military allies.


    This might account for the fact that the government of China, which accounts for only 8.2 percent of world military spending, believes that increasing its outlay on armaments is reasonable and desirable. Apparently, officials of many nations share that competitive feeling.


    Unfortunately, the military rivalry among nations — one that has endured for centuries — results in a great squandering of national resources. Many nations, in fact, devote most of their available income to funding their armed forces and their weaponry. In the United States, an estimated 58 percent of the U.S. government’s discretionary tax dollars go to war and preparations for war. “Almost every country with a military is on an insane path, spending more and more on missiles, aircraft, and guns,” remarked John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus. “These countries should be confronting the real threats of climate change, hunger, disease, and oppression, not wasting taxpayers’ money on their military.”


    Of course, defenders of military expenditures reply that military force actually protects people from war. But does it? If so, how does one explain the fact that the major military powers of the past century — the United States, Russia, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and China — have been almost constantly at war during that time? What is the explanation for the fact that the United States — today’s military giant — is currently engaged in at least two wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and appears to be on the verge of a third (with Iran)? Perhaps the maintenance of a vast military machine does not prevent war but, instead, encourages it.


    In short, huge military establishments can be quite counterproductive. Little wonder that they have been condemned repeatedly by great religious and ethical leaders. Even many government officials have decried war and preparations for war — although usually by nations other than their own.


    Thus, the release of the new study by SIPRI should not be a cause for celebration. Rather, it provides an appropriate occasion to contemplate the fact that, this past year, nations spent more money on the military than at any time in human history. Although this situation might still inspire joy in the hearts of government officials, top military officers, and defense contractors, people farther from the levers of military power might well conclude that it’s a hell of a way to run a world.