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  • Día de la Tierra 2012

    Click here for the English version.


    David KriegerVivimos en un vasto universo con miles de millones de galaxias, cada una de ellas compuesta de miles de millones de estrellas. Nuestra casa es un pequeño planeta que gira en torno a un pequeño sol en una galaxia remota.   Se localiza a la distancia justa del sol, no es demasiado caliente ni demasiado fría para albergar vida.   Dispone de aire respirable, agua que es potable, y suelo apto para los cultivos.  En la inmensidad del espacio, es un objeto muy pequeño, al que el gran astrofísico y comunicador Carl Sagan se refería como un “punto azul pálido”.   Nuestra Tierra es el único lugar que conocemos que alberga vida.   Es la más preciada de las riquezas que podamos imaginar. 
     
    Uno podría pensar que cualquier criatura con cordura viviendo en este planeta reconocería su belleza y hermosura, y lo trataría con cuidado.  En el libro clásico de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, El Principito, el príncipe dice: “Es una cuestión de disciplina. Cuando hayamos terminado de lavarnos y vestirnos cada mañana, hay que atender el planeta.”   Pero ese es un planeta imaginario con un pequeño príncipe imaginario.   En el planeta real que sustenta la vida, en el que habitamos, no hay suficientes de nosotros que ejerzan esta disciplina y traten a nuestro planeta con amoroso cuidado.
     
    Veamos cómo manejamos este tesoro único.Hemos permitido que el planeta se divida en ricos y pobres, donde pocas personas tienen miles de millones de dólares y miles de millones de personas tienen pocos dólares.   Algunos viven en la codicia, y la mayoría vive en la necesidad.   Hemos repartido el planeta en entidades que llamamos países y creado las fronteras que los países tratan de proteger.   Hemos creado las fuerzas militares en estos países, dándoles enormes recursos para prepararse para la guerra y la destrucción.   Los gastos militares mundiales exceden más de mil seiscientos millones de billones de dólares, mientras que cientos de millones de seres humanos viven sin agua potable, nutrición adecuada, atención médica y educación.
     
    Hemos explotado con avidez los recursos del planeta sin importarnos las generaciones futuras o el daño que causamos al medio ambiente. En lugar de utilizar la energía renovable del sol para proveer nuestras necesidades de energía, explotamos las entrañas de la Tierra por petróleo y lo transportamos a través del globo.   Hemos convertido gran parte del mundo en un desierto.   Hemos contaminado el aire que respiramos y el agua que bebemos.   En nuestro exceso, hemos empujado el planeta hacia el punto de no retorno en el calentamiento global, y luego argumentamos que el calentamiento global es una razón para construir más centrales nucleares.
     
    Continuamos aprendiendo de una manera trágica que los seres humanos somos criaturas falibles. Esa es la lección de nuestros recurrentes derrames de petróleo.   Es también la lección de los accidentes de Chernobyl hace un cuarto de siglo y en Fukushima hace un año.   Es una lección que necesitamos urgentemente aprender acerca de las armas nucleares, las armas que hemos estado muy cerca de utilizar en muchas ocasiones y dos veces usado intencionalmente. 
     
    Las armas nucleares matan directamente por la explosión, el fuego y la radiación. Las bombas nucleares usadas en Hiroshima y Nagasaki eran pequeñas en comparación con las armas termonucleares de hoy.   En los últimos años, hemos aprendido algunas cosas nuevas sobre la guerra nuclear.   Los científicos atmosféricos han modelado una hipotética guerra nuclear entre la India y Pakistán en la que cada parte utiliza 50 armas nucleares del tamaño de la de Hiroshima para devastar sus ciudades. Además de los efectos directos de las armas,habría importantes efectos indirectos sobre el medio ambiente.   El humo de las ciudades en llamas se elevaría a la estratosfera disminuyendo la luz del sol durante diez años, lo que reduciría las temperaturas medias de la superficie, afectando las temporadas de cultivo y dando lugar a una hambruna mundial que podría matar a cientos de millones de personas. 
     
    Ese sería el resultado de una guerra nuclear pequeña, utilizando menos del uno por ciento de las armas nucleares desplegadas operacionalmente en el planeta. Una guerra nuclear entre los EE.UU. y Rusia podría dar lugar a la extinción de la mayor parte de la vida compleja sobre la Tierra, incluyendo a nosotros los humanos   Al celebrar el Día de la Tierra de este año, 20 años después del fin de la Guerra Fría, los EE.UU. y Rusia aún mantienen cientos de misiles balísticos intercontinentales listos para ser lanzados en cualquier momento .
     
    Nosotros, los que estamos vivos hoy en día somos los custodios de este planeta para las generaciones futuras. Estamos fracasando en nuestra responsabilidad de heredarlo intacto.   Necesitamos una ética nueva terrestre que abarque nuestra responsabilidad de ser justos con los demás y con el futuro.   Necesitamos nuevas formas de educar a los que no se limitan a aceptar el status quo.   Es necesario cambiar nuestro patriotismo por un humanismo mundial. Necesitamos un nuevo enfoque de la economía sobre la base de lo que es verdaderamente valioso: la vida y las condiciones que la apoyan. 
     
    El Día de la Tierra tendrá su mayor valor si nos recuerda que debemos cuidar de ella durante todos los demás días del año, de forma individual y global. Tenemos que inspirar a la gente en todo el mundo, jóvenes y viejos por igual, con una visión de la belleza y las maravillas de la Tierra que ahora podemos disfrutar, restaurarla y preservarla para las generaciones futuras, si atendemos a nuestro planeta con la disciplina del pequeño príncipe.

  • Earth Day

    David Krieger


    Vaya aquí para la versión española.


    We live in a vast universe made up of billions of galaxies, each of which is made up of billions of stars.  Our home is a small planet that revolves around a small sun in a remote galaxy.  It is just the right distance from the sun that it is not too hot and not too cold to support life.  It has air that is breathable, water that is drinkable, and topsoil suitable for growing crops.  In the immensity of space, it is a very small dot, what astrophysicist Carl Sagan referred to as a “pale blue dot.”  Our Earth is the only place we know of that harbors life.  It is precious beyond any riches that could be imagined. 


    One would think that any sane, self-reflecting creatures that lived on this planet would recognize its beauty and preciousness and would want to tend to it with care.  In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic book, The Little Prince, the prince says, “It’s a matter of discipline.  When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend to your planet.”  But that is an imaginary planet with an imaginary little prince.  On the real planet that supports life, the one we inhabit, there aren’t enough of us who exercise such discipline and tend to our planet with loving care.


    Think about how we have managed our planet.  We have allowed the planet to become divided into rich and poor, where a few people have billions of dollars and billions of people have few dollars.  While some live in greed, the majority live in need.  We have parceled the planet into entities we call countries and created borders that countries try to protect.  We have created military forces in these countries and given them enormous resources to prepare for war and to engage in war.  Annual global military expenditures now exceed $1.6 trillion, while hundreds of millions of humans live without clean water, adequate nutrition, medical care and education.


    We have eagerly exploited the planet’s resources with little concern for future generations or for the damage we cause to the environment.  Instead of using renewable energy from the sun to provide our energy needs, we exploit the Earth’s stores of oil and transport them across the globe.  We have turned much of the world into desert.  We have polluted the air we breathe and the water we drink.  In our excess, we have pushed the planet toward the point of no return in global warming, and then argued global warming as a reason to build more nuclear power plants.


    We keep relearning in tragic ways that we humans are fallible creatures.  That is the lesson of our recurrent oil spills.  It is also the lesson of the accidents at Chernobyl a quarter century ago and at Fukushima one year ago.  It is a lesson that we urgently need to learn about nuclear weapons – weapons we have come close to accidentally using on many occasions and have twice used intentionally. 


    Nuclear weapons kill directly by blast, fire and radiation.  The nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small in comparison with today’s thermonuclear weapons.  In recent years, we have learned some new things about nuclear war.  Atmospheric scientists have modeled a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each side uses 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities.  In addition to the direct effects of the weapons, there would be significant indirect effects on the environment.  Smoke from the burning cities would rise into the stratosphere and reduce warming sunlight for ten years, which would lower average surface temperatures, reduce growing seasons and lead to global famine that could kill hundreds of millions of people. 


    That would be the result of a small nuclear war, using less than one percent of the operationally deployed nuclear weapons on the planet.  A nuclear war between the US and Russia could lead to the extinction of most or all complex life on Earth, including human life.  As we celebrate Earth Day this year, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, both the US and Russia maintain hundreds of launch-ready, land-based inter-continental ballistic missiles on high-alert status, ready to be fired in moments.


    We who are alive today are the trustees of this planet for future generations.  We’re failing in our responsibility to pass it on intact.  We need a new Earth ethic that embraces our responsibility for fairness to each other and to the future.  We need new ways of educating that do not simply accept the status quo.  We need to trade in our patriotism for a global humatriotism.  We need a new approach to economics based on what is truly precious – life and the conditions that support it. 


    Earth Day will have its greatest value if it reminds us to care for our Earth and each other all the other days of the year, individually and through our public policy.  We need to inspire people throughout the world, young and old alike, with a vision of the beauty and wonder of the Earth that we can now enjoy, restore and preserve for future generations if we tend to our planet with the discipline of the little prince. 

  • Dealing with a Nuclear North Korea

    This article was originally published by Politico.


    Bennett RambergOnce again North Korea befuddles.


    On the cusp of receiving food aid from the United States as the quid pro quo for opening the Yongbong nuclear complex to international inspectors and a halt in missile testing, Pyongyang wasted little time to turn “progress” into a sink hole.


    The rub: a three-stage North Korean rocket set to launch a small satellite into orbit in the next few days. The concern, the data gleaned from the launch will mature Pyonygang’s ambition to build an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten the United States with a nuclear warhead.


    Maturation has been long in coming. North Korea first replicated the Soviet Scud rockets it acquired from Egypt decades ago, and has slowly developed a healthy inventory of short- and intermediate-range missiles. But the long-range rocket proved to be another matter. Its 2006 and 2009 launch attempts failed.


    In anticipating each, Washington first pouted, but then returned to efforts to coax Pyongyang back to the six-party talks to can fulfill the North’s 2005 nuclear disarmament pledge. For a time, Kim Jong Il did return, but winked — attempting to pocket any benefits he could, while continuing to modernize his secret nuclear enrichment enterprise.


    This has left Washington uncertain, as the new Kim prepares the missile launch. There are no perfect options. But there are at least four imperfect alternatives to deal with the North’s missile and nuclear programs, First, continue the policy of coaxing. Second, attempt further to isolate the regime. Third, use force to halt the most threatening nuclear elements. Or, fourth, accept what cannot be changed and learn to live with a nuclear armed North Korea.


    Coaxing is business as usual. Trying to get Pyongyang to reliably say “uncle” and give up the bomb does not seem to be in the cards. The international community has tried and tried again since South Korea, Russia, China and Japan joined the United States and North Korea in the six-party talks in 2003. The approaching rocket launch, coupled with reports that Pyongyang may yet test another nuclear weapon, suggests that the new Kim intends to continue the path of the old to stay in power.


    The second option might be called the Bolton approach. Former U.N. Amb. John Bolton has written many articles pressing for strict isolation of Pyongyang, to bring down the regime. He advocates detaching Pyongyang from “international financial markets, ramping up efforts to prevent trade in weapons…and pressuring China to adhere to existing UN sanctions resolutions.”


    The major impediment is that Beijing refuses to go along — making the strategy a chimera.


    Force marks a third option. Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry and Assistant Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, writing in The Washington Post and Time magazine in 2006, called on the Bush administration to initiate a submarine cruise missile strike to destroy Pyongyang’s long-range rockets on the launch pad. They argued, “the risk of inaction will prove far greater” for the United States — even at the risk of igniting a new Korean war.


    Carter is now deputy secretary of defense. But there is no public talk that his proposal has any traction today in the Obama administration.


    This leaves a fourth option — accepting what we can’t change while attempting to reduce nuclear risks. The stark fact remains that without regime change — which was key in the elimination of other nuclear arsenals, including the former Soviet republics and South Africa — North Korea will remain a nuclear armed state. Washington’s challenge is to assure that Pyongyang never uses the arsenal out of malice or fear.


    North Korea’s use of its arsenal without provocation seems farfetched. More than anything, the leadership seeks to stay in power. It must know that any nuclear launch would result in the regime’s demise in the devastating U.S. and allied response that would be sure to follow.


    Nonetheless, there remains the specter that North Korea could launch due to fear of preemption or as part of an escalating incident. Reducing these risks ought to be the priority.


    This requires better communication between Washington and Pyongyang. At the very least, there should be a negotiated hot-line, replicating the Cold War link between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Better yet, full diplomatic relations could reduce the likelihood of major misunderstanding.


    Neither a hot line nor diplomatic relations should be seen as reward to the North, but rather the realization that a nuclear Pyongyang is likely to be part of the northeast Asian landscape for the foreseeable future.


    Assuming otherwise — without taking the necessary measures to reduce risk — could create is a far greater problem for the United States than either proceeding with the failed policies of the past or the impractical options advanced by some.

  • Nuclear Weapons as Instruments of Peace?

    Richard FalkA few days ago I was a participant in a well-attended academic panel on ‘the decline of violence and warfare’ at the International Studies Association’s Annual Meeting held this year in San Diego, California. The two-part panel featured appraisal of the common argument of two prominent recent publications: Steven Pinker’s best-selling The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined and Joshua Goldstein’s well-researched, informative, and provocative Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide. Both books are disposed to rely upon quantitative data to back up their optimistic assessments of international and domestic political behavior, which if persuasive, offer humanity important reasons to be hopeful about the future. Much of their argument depends on an acceptance of their interpretation of battlefield deaths worldwide, which according to their assessments have declined dramatically in recent decades. But do battlefield deaths tell the whole story, or even the real story, about the role and dangers of political violence and war in our collective lives?


    My role was to be a member of the Goldstein half of the panel. Although I had never previously met Joshua Goldstein I was familiar with his work and reputation as a well regarded scholar in the field of international relations.  To offer my response in the few minutes available to me I relied on a metaphor that drew a distinction between a ‘picture’ and its ‘frame.’ I found the picture of war and warfare presented by Goldstein as both persuasive and illuminating, conveying in authoritative detail information about the good work being doing by UN peacekeeping forces in a variety of conflict settings around the world, as well as a careful crediting of peace movements with a variety of contributions to conflict resolution and war avoidance. Perhaps, the most enduringly valuable part of the book is its critical debunking of prevalent myths about the supposedly rising proportion of civilian casualties in recent wars and inflated reports of casualties and sexual violence in the Congo Wars of 1998-2003. These distortions, corrected by Goldstein, have led to a false public perception that wars and warfare are growing more indiscriminate and brutal in recent years, while the most reliable evidence points in the opposite direction.


    Goldstein is convincing in correcting such common mistakes about political violence and war in the contemporary world, but less so when it comes to the frame and framing of this picture that is conveyed by his title ‘winning the war on war’ and the arguments to this effect that is the centerpiece of his book, and accounts for the interest that it is arousing. For one thing the quantitative measures relied upon do not come to terms with the heightened qualitative risks of catastrophic warfare or the continued willingness of leading societies to anchor their security on credible threats to annihilate tens of millions of innocent persons, which if taking the form of a moderate scale nuclear exchange (less than 1% of the world’s stockpile of weapons) is likely to cause, according to reliable scientific analysis, what has been called ‘a nuclear famine’ resulting in a sharp drop in agricultural output that could last as long as ten years and could be brought about by the release of dense clouds of smoke blocking incoming sunlight.  <http://www.nucleardarkness.org/index2.php>


    Also on the panel were such influential international relations scholars as John Mearsheimer who shared with me the view that the evidence in Goldstein’s book did not establish that, as Mearsheimer put it, ‘war had been burned out of the system,’ or that even such a trend meaningfully could be inferred from recent experience. Mearsheimer widely known for his powerful realist critique of the Israeli Lobby (in collaboration with Stephen Walt) did make the important point that the United States suffers from ‘an addiction to war.’ Mearsheimer did not seem responsive to my insistence on the panel that part of this American addiction to war arose from role being played by entrenched domestic militarism a byproduct of the permanent war economy that disposed policy makers and politicians in Washington to treat most security issues as worthy of resolution only by considering the options offered by thinking within militarist box of violence and sanctions, a viewpoint utterly resistant to learning from past militarist failures (as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran). In my view the war addiction is real, but can only be treated significantly if understood to be a consequence of this blinkering of policy choice by a militarized bureaucracy in nation’s capital that is daily reinforced by a compliant media and a misguided hard power realist worldview sustained by high paid private sector lobbyists and the lure of corporate profits, and continuously rationalized by well funded subsidized think tanks such as The Hoover Institution, The Heritage Foundation, and The American Enterprise Institute. Dwight Eisenhower in his presidential farewell speech famously drew attention to the problem that has grown far worse through the years when he warned the country about ‘the military-industrial complex’ back in 1961.


    What to me was most shocking about the panel was not its overstated claims that political violence was declining and war on the brink of disappearing, but the unqualified endorsement of nuclear weapons as deserving credit for keeping the peace during Cold War and beyond. Nuclear weapons were portrayed as if generally positive contributors to establishing a peaceful and just world, provided only that they do not fall into unwanted hands (which means ‘adversaries of the West,’ or more colorfully phrased by George W. Bush as ‘the axis of evil’) as a result of proliferation. In this sense, although not made explicit in the conversation, Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons set forth at Prague on April 5, 2009 seems irresponsible from the perspective of achieving a less war-prone world. I had been previously aware of Mearsheimer’s support for this position in his hyper-realist account of how World War III was avoided in the period between 1945-1989, but I was not prepared for Goldstein and the well regarded peace researcher, Andrew Mack, blandly to endorse such a conclusion without taking note of the drawbacks of such ‘a nuclear peace.’ Goldstein in his book writes on p.42, “[n]uclear deterrence may in fact help to explain why World War III did not occur during the Cold War—certainly an important accomplishment.” Goldstein does insist that this role of nuclear weapons has problematic aspects associated with some risk of unintended or accidental use and cannot by itself explain other dimensions of the decline of political violence, which rests on a broader set of developments that are usefully depicted elsewhere in the book. These qualifications are welcome but do not offset a seeming willingness to agree that nuclear weapons seemed partly responsible for the avoidance of World War III or the liberal internationalist view, perhaps most fully articulated by Joseph Nye, that an arms control approach is a sufficient indication that the threat posed by the possession and deployment of nuclear weaponry is being responsibly addressed. [Nye, Nuclear Ethics (New York: Free Press, 1986)] 


    Steven Pinker in his book takes a more nuanced position on nuclear weapons, arguing that if it were indeed correct to credit nuclear weapons with the avoidance of World War III, there would be grounds for serious concern. He correctly asserts that such a structure of peace would be “a fool’s paradise, because an accident, a miscommunication, or an air force general obsessed with precious bodily fluids could set off an apocalypse.”  Pinker goes on to conclude that “[t]hankfully, a closer look suggests that the threat of nuclear annihilation deserves little credit for the Long Peace.” (p.268) Instead, Pinker persuasively emphasizes the degree to which World War III was discouraged by memories of the devastation experienced in World War II combined with the realization that advances in conventional weaponry would make a major war among leading states far more deadly than any past war even if no nuclear weapons were used.


    Pinker also believes that a ‘nuclear taboo’ developed after World War II to inhibit recourse to nuclear weapons in all but the most extreme situations, and that this is the primary explanation of why the weapons were not used in a variety of combat settings during the 67 years that have passed since a single atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. But Pinker does not raise deeply disturbing questions about the continued possession and threat to use such weaponry that is retained by a few of the world’s states. Or if the taboo was so strong, why this weaponry remains on hair trigger alert more than 20 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and why on several occasions a threat to use nuclear weapons was used to discourage an adversary from taking certain actions. (see for instance, Steven Starr, “On the overwhelming urgency of de-alerting US & Russian missiles, http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=3358) And it the taboo was so valued, why did the United States fight so hard, it turns out unsuccessfully, to avoid having the International Court of Justice pronounce on the legality of nuclear weapons? (see ICJ Advisory Opinion, 8 July 1996; < http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/95/7495.pdf>) And why has the United States, along with some of the other nuclear weapons states, refused to declare ‘a no first use policy.’ The taboo exists, to be sure, but it is conditional and has been contested in times of international crisis, and its strength rests on the costs associated with any further use of nuclear weapons, including creating a precedent that might work against future interests.


    Most surprising than these comments on how the presence of nuclear weapons dissuaded the United States and the Soviet Union from going to war, was the failure of my co-panelists to surround their endorsement of the war-avoiding presence of nuclear weapons with moral and prudential qualifiers. At minimum, they might have acknowledged the costs and risks of tying strategic peace so closely to threatened mass devastation and civilizational, and perhaps species, catastrophe, a realization given sardonic recognition in the Cold War by the widely used acronym MAD (mutually assured destruction). The questions put by the audience also avoided this zone of acute moral and prudential insensitivity, revealing the limits of rational intelligence in addressing this most formidable challenge if social and political construction of a humane world order was recognized as a shared goal of decent people. It is unimaginable to reach any plateau of global justice without acting with resolve to rid the world of nuclear weaponry; the geopolitical ploy of shifting attention from disarmament to proliferation does not address the moral depravity of relying on genocidal capabilities and threats to uphold vital strategic interests of a West-centric world (Chinese nuclear weapons, and even those few possessed by North Korea, although dangerous and morally objectionable, at least seem acquired solely for defensive and deterrent purposes).


    I doubt very much that such a discussion of the decline of war and political violence could take place anywhere in the world other than North America, and possibly Western Europe and Japan. Of course, this does not by itself invalidate its central message, but it does raise questions about what is included and what is excluded in an Americans only debate (Mack is an Australian). Aside from the U.S. being addicted to war I heard no references in the course of the panel and discussion to the new hierarchies in the world being resurrected by indirect forms of violence and intervention after the collapse of colonialism, or of structural violence that shortens life by poverty, disease, and human insecurity. I cannot help but wonder whether some subtle corruption has seeped into the academy over the years, especially at elite universities whose faculty received invitations to work as prestigious consultants by the Washington security establishment, or in extreme cases, were hosts to lucrative arrangements that included giving weapons labs a university home and many faculty members a salary surge. Princeton, where I taught for 40 years, was in many respects during the Cold War an academic extension of the military-industrial complex, with humanists advising the CIA, a dean recruiting on behalf of the CIA, a branch of the Institute for Defense Analysis on campus doing secret contract work on counterinsurgency warfare, and a variety of activities grouped under the anodyne heading of ‘security studies’ being sponsored by outside financing. Perhaps, such connections did not spillover into the classroom or induce self-censorship in writing and lecturing, but this is difficult to assess.


    The significance of this professional discussion of nuclear weaponry in 2012, that is, long after the militarized atmosphere of the Cold War period has happily passed from the scene, can be summarized: To witness otherwise perceptive and morally motivated scholars succumbing to the demons of nuclearism is a bad omen; for me this nuclearist complacency is an unmistakable sign of cultural decadence that can only bring on disaster for the society, the species, and the world at some indeterminate future point. We cannot count on our geopolitical luck lasting forever! And we Americans, cannot possibly retain the dubious advantages of targeting the entire world with these weapons of mass destruction without experiencing the effects of a profound spiritual decline, which throughout human history, has always been the prelude to political decline, if not collapse. David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and I explore this range of issues in our recently published book, The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2012).

  • Flaws in the Concept of Nuclear Deterrence

    2012_04_04_avery_deterrence.pdf

  • Nuclear Zero: Getting to the Finish Line

    This article was originally published by Truthout.


    David KriegerAlmost five decades ago, I first visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was 18 years after the atomic bombings flattened the cities, and the cities had returned to a kind of normalcy.  At the memorial museums, though, a very different perspective on nuclear weapons was presented than that taught in American schools.  It was the perspective from below the bombs – that of the victims – not the technological perspective of having created and used the bombs.


    Nuclear weapons are not simply a technological achievement, as the West has tended to portray them.  They kill indiscriminately – children, women and men.  They are not weapons of war; they are tools of mass annihilation.  No matter what we call them, they are not truly weapons, but instruments of unbridled mass destruction.  Their threat or use is illegal under international law.  Surely, their possession, like chemical or biological weapons, should be as well.  They are immoral, as has been concluded by all the world’s great religions.  And they have cost us dearly, in financial and scientific resources and in compromises of the soul.


    Three decades ago, in 1982, we founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  Its vision is a just and peaceful world, free of nuclear weapons.  The Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders.  So we educate, advocate and empower – that’s what we do.  We speak out.  We are a voice of conscience.  We advocate for sane policies and for leadership to achieve a world without nuclear dangers.  Our goal is to educate and engage millions of people to move the world to nuclear disarmament and peace.


    We challenge bad theory, such as the theory of nuclear deterrence, a theory that justifies reliance on nuclear weapons, but has many faults.  For nuclear deterrence to work successfully, leaders of nuclear-armed states must be rational at all times and under all circumstances, particularly under conditions of stress when they are least likely to be rational.  Also, nuclear deterrence cannot deter those who have no territory to retaliate against or who are suicidal.  Thus, nuclear deterrence has no possibility of success against terrorist organizations.  To see one of many ways that deterrence can fail, I encourage you to watch the 1964 movie, Fail-Safe, directed by Sidney Lumet, based upon the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.


    The Foundation also challenges bad nuclear policies, including those that tolerate a two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”  We believe that the ultimate consequence of this two-tier structure will be nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war.  We also advocate for nuclear policies that reduce risks and move us toward a world without nuclear weapons, policies such as security assurances to non-nuclear weapon states of: no first use of nuclear weapons; no launch on warning of nuclear attack; lowering the alert status of nuclear weapons; a comprehensive test ban treaty; and a fissile material cut-off treaty.  These are all elements of the critical goal of nuclear weapons abolition and must be viewed in that context.


    Scientists tell us that even a small nuclear war with an exchange of a hundred Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons, destroying cities and sending smoke into the stratosphere, could result in blocking sunlight and lowering the earth’s temperature, leading to massive crop failures and famine, resulting in some one billion deaths.  This would be the kind of nuclear war that could occur in South Asia between India and Pakistan.  A larger-scale nuclear war, fought with a few hundred thermonuclear weapons, the kind that could occur between the US and Russia, could destroy civilization and possibly cause the extinction of the human species and most other forms of complex life on the planet.  We all share a responsibility to assure there are no small- or large-scale nuclear wars, but as long as nuclear weapons exist in any substantial numbers, the possibility of nuclear war also exists.


    In October 1962, the world held its collective breath as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded.  The world was poised on the brink of a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR.  John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev managed to navigate those dangerous currents, but many of their advisors were pushing them toward nuclear war.  Decisions on all sides were made with only partial knowledge, which could have resulted in disaster.  Robert Kennedy’s eye-witness account of the crisis, Thirteen Days, is sobering reading.


    In 1982, the year the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was created, there was considerable concern in the world about nuclear dangers.  There were more than 60,000 nuclear weapons, nearly all in the arsenals of the US and USSR.  More than one million people gathered in Central Park in New York calling for a nuclear freeze.  Of course, they were right to do so.  The nuclear arms race was out of control, and the leaders of the US and USSR were not talking to each other.  An uncontrollable nuclear arms race coupled with a failure to communicate were and are a recipe for disaster.


    By 1986, the nuclear arms race reached its apogee with over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, nearly all in the arsenals of the US and USSR.  But by this time Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power in the USSR and was talking about abolishing nuclear weapons by the year 2000.  Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, who shared Gorbachev’s view about nuclear weapons, came heartbreakingly close to agreeing to abolish their nuclear arsenals at a summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986.  Their attempt to find their way to zero nuclear weapons foundered on the issue of the Strategic Defense Initiative, now commonly referred to as missile defense.  Reagan wanted it; Gorbachev didn’t.


    So, in 1986 there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  Since then, we have made progress in substantially reducing nuclear arsenals to the current number of under 20,000 worldwide, having shed some 50,000 nuclear weapons.  Of the 8,500 nuclear weapons in the US arsenal, about 3,500 are awaiting dismantlement and fewer than 2,000 are deployed, about the same number deployed in Russia.  The US and Russia have agreed that they will each reduce their deployed strategic weapons to 1,550 by the year 2017.  Neither country has conducted an atmospheric or underground nuclear weapon test since 1992 (other than underground subcritical nuclear tests in which the nuclear material does not reach the criticality necessary for a nuclear chain reaction). 


    We have made progress.  We are now on relatively positive terms with Russia, since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.  Through solid US negotiating, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus agreed to give up the nuclear arsenals that the former Soviet Union had left on their territories and to give these weapons over to Russia for dismantlement. 


    A significant event occurred in 1996 when US Secretary of Defense William Perry met with the Russian and Ukrainian Defense Ministers at a former missile base in Ukraine to plant sunflowers.  Secretary Perry said on the occasion, “Sunflowers in the soil instead of missiles will ensure peace for future generations.”  We adopted the sunflower as a symbol of a nuclear weapons-free world.  The sunflower symbolizes everything that a nuclear-armed missile is not, being natural, nutritious, healthy, beautiful, grounded in the earth and powered by the sun.


    We have come a long way, but we haven’t reached the finish line, which is a world without nuclear weapons.  The issue we face now is to educate decision makers and the public that the dangers of nuclear weapons have not gone away.  There are still many flash points of nuclear danger in the world: India-Pakistan, North Korea, the continued possession of nuclear weapons by the UK and France, the possession of nuclear weapons by Israel and the incentive for nuclear proliferation this creates in the Middle East, and the relationship of the nuclear energy fuel cycle to nuclear proliferation.


    The greatest problem related to nuclear weapons is not that Iran might develop such weapons.  It is that the countries with nuclear weapons are not taking seriously enough their obligations to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and achieve nuclear disarmament.  Nuclear weapons do not make their possessors more secure.  When a country has nuclear weapons or seeks to acquire them, that country will also be a target of nuclear weapons.  This goes for both the US and Iran, and for all other countries with nuclear weapons or seeking to develop them.  Nuclear weapons turn cities and countries into targets for mass annihilation.


    What shall we do to advance to zero?  In the spirit of Gorbachev and Reagan, the US and Russia must lead the way. They still possess over 95 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world.  It was recently revealed that President Obama has requested a study of reductions of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to three levels: 1000 to 1,100 weapons; 700 to 800 weapons; and 300 to 400 weapons.  This is significant.  It is worth advocating for US leadership to reduce the US nuclear arsenal to the lower level, to 300 nuclear weapons, as a next step.  But, of course, this would not be the desired end result.  First, it is not low enough; it is not zero.  It still would be more than enough to destroy civilization and potentially cause the extinction of complex life on the planet.  Second, it is unilateral; it must be bilateral and moving toward multilateral.


    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we have never called for unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Going down to 300 deployed strategic nuclear weapons would be a significant reduction, but it should be a joint endeavor with Russia. To get Russia to join us in this next step will require the US to move its missile defense installations away from the Russian border, so that Russia does not feel threatened by these defenses, particularly at lower levels of offensive weapons.  US officials tell Russia not to worry about these missile defense installations, but the Russians are wary.  It is easy to understand this, if one imagines the Russians placing missile defense installations on the Canadian border and telling the US not to worry.  Missile defenses, if they are needed, must be a joint project, just as reductions in the numbers of offensive nuclear weapons must be a joint project.


    The US and Russia must cooperate on continuing to pare down their nuclear arsenals for their own security and for global security.  At the level of 300 deployed strategic nuclear weapons each, they would then be in a position of rough parity with the other nuclear weapon states and in a position to effectively negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  The number that matters most in the nuclear disarmament arena is zero. It is the most secure and stable number of nuclear weapons.  It must be achieved carefully and in phases, but it must be achieved for the benefit of our children, grandchildren and all future generations.

  • Response to NAPF from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

    To see the original PDF in Russian and the unofficial English translation, click here.

    Unofficial translation

    RUSSIAN FEDERATION
    MINISTRY OF FOREIGN RELATIONS

    Moscow, March 2012

    President David Krieger
    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
    PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Rd, Suite 1
    Santa Barbara, CA, 93108-2794
    USA

    Dear Mr. Krieger,

    I have very attentively read the Open Letter to Presidents of Russia and the US concerning the issue of NATO missile defense plans and their influence on the nuclear disarmament.

    I notice the harmony between the ideas expressed in the letter and the fundamental Russian approaches.  We fully share the view that the fact the North Atlanta Alliance refused to include Russia into a joint missile defense is the evidence of its unpreparedness to treat our country as an equitable partner.  This appears to be specifically alarming against the background of enlarging NATO and pursuit of vesting global military functions into the coalition.  One cannot help agreeing to a conclusion that deployment of missile defense system at the very borders of Russia as well as upbuilding system’s capabilities increase the chance of any conventional military confrontation might promptly turn into a nuclear war.  We have numerously been outspoken that such steps taken by the US and NATO undermine strategic stability and make further progress in reducing and limiting nuclear arms problematic.  Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was obliged to remind of this once again in his November 23, 2011 statement.

    Russia has always been and will remain a committed opponent to a military confrontation.  Despite the growing hardship we do not close the door either for continuing the dialogue with the US and NATO on missile defense issues or for a practical cooperation in this field.  In this respect we find undoubtedly interesting the idea of the freeze on US/NATO deployment of missile defense facilities until the joint Russian-US assessment of the threats is conducted.  We believe that its acceptance by the US side would radically relieve the tension around the implementation of the US missile defense program.

    Let me thank you for the considerations and express my hope for continuing this positive and unbiased dialogue.

    Sincerely,

    /s/

    Sergey Lavrov

  • For Nuclear Security Beyond Seoul, Eradicate Land-Based ‘Doomsday’ Missiles

    This article was originally published by the Christian Science Monitor.

    David KriegerPresident Obama and other world leaders gathered at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, this week to address threats posed by unsecured nuclear material. If Mr. Obama is truly concerned about nuclear safety, he should seriously consider doing away with the 450 inter-continental ballistic missiles deployed and ready to fire at Russia on a moment’s notice.

    Last month we were among 15 protesters who were arrested in the middle of the night at Vandenberg Air Force Base, some 70 miles north of Santa Barbara, Calif. We were protesting the imminent test flight of a Minuteman III inter-continental ballistic missile.

    The Air Force rationale for doing these tests is to ensure the reliability of the US nuclear deterrent force; but launch-ready land-based nuclear-armed ballistic missiles are the opposite of a deterrent to attack. In fact, their very deployment has the potential to launch World War III and precipitate human extinction – as a result of a false alarm.

    We’re not exaggerating. Here’s why: These nuclear missiles are first-strike weapons – most of them would not survive a nuclear attack. In the event of a warning of a Russian nuclear attack, there would be an incentive to launch all 450 of these Minuteman missiles before the incoming enemy warheads could destroy them in their silos.

    If the warning turned out to be false (there have been many false warnings), and the US missiles were launched before the error was detected, World War III would be underway. The Russians have the same incentive to launch their land-based missiles upon warning of a perceived attack.

    Both US and Russian land-based missiles remain constantly on high-alert status, ready to be launched within minutes. Because of the 30-minute flight times of these missiles, the presidents of both the US and Russia would have only approximately 12 minutes to decide whether to launch their missiles when presented by their military leaders with information indicating an imminent attack (after lower-level threat assessment conferences).

    That’s only 12 minutes or less for the president to decide whether to launch global nuclear war.  While this scenario is unlikely, it is definitely possible: Presidents have repeatedly rehearsed it, and it cannot be ruled out due to the graveness of its potential consequences.

    Russia came close to launching its missiles based on a warning that came Jan. 25, 1995. President Yeltsin was awakened in the middle of the night and told a US missile was headed toward Moscow. Fortunately, Yeltsin was sober and took longer than the time allocated for his decision on whether to launch Russian nuclear-armed missiles in response.

    In the extended time, it became clear that the missile was a weather sounding rocket from Norway and not a US missile headed toward Moscow. Disaster was only narrowly averted.

    Here is the really compelling part of the story: If all 450 US land-based Minuteman III missiles with thermonuclear warheads were ever launched at Russia – with many of the targets in or near cities, as now planned – most Americans would die as a result, along with most of humanity.  Our own weapons would contribute as much or more to these deaths in America and the rest of the globe as any Russian warheads launched.

    This is because smoke from the enormous nuclear firestorms created by even a “successful” US nuclear first-strike would cause catastrophic disruption of global climate and massive destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer, leading to global famine.

    Recent peer-reviewed studies, done by atmospheric scientists Alan Robock (Rutgers), Brian Toon (University of Colorado-Boulder), Richard Turco (UCLA) and colleagues, predict that such an attack would create immense firestorms that would quickly surround the planet with a dense stratospheric smoke layer.

    The black smoke would be heated by the sun, lofted like a hot air balloon, and would remain in the stratosphere for at least 10 years. There it would block and prevent a large fraction of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. The sharp reduction of warming sunlight would rapidly produce global Ice Age weather conditions. This would eliminate or dramatically reduce growing seasons for a decade and would likely cause the starvation of most or all humans.

    Along with other effects – including prolonged destruction of the ozone layer – most complex life on Earth could be destroyed. Scientists say the process would be similar to when an asteroid hit the Earth some 65 million years ago, raising a global dust cloud that reduced sunlight, lowering temperatures and killing vegetation. That caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70 percent of the Earth’s species.

    The cause of extinction in our case would not be an external, celestial event, but rather the launching of thermonuclear weapons we had created by our own cleverness, supposedly for our own security.

    The Minuteman III missile tests from Vandenberg Air Force Base are thus really tests of an American Nuclear Doomsday Machine.

    Nuclear weapons do not make the US or the world more secure. In particular, the Minuteman III missiles – land-based, vulnerable, on high alert, and susceptible to being triggered by a false alarm – make us less secure. Anyone who cares about humankind having a future should protest these tests and call for the elimination of all nuclear-armed inter-continental ballistic missiles as an initial step toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

    If the US did away now with its nuclear-armed land-based missile force, it would still have 288 invulnerable submarine-launched ballistic missiles (armed with approximately 1,152 warheads) to act as a retaliatory threat to nuclear attack. But it would no longer have tempting targets for the Russians to strike preemptively in a time of tension or in the event of a false warning of attack.

    It would still be imperative to reduce US (and Russian) total warheads to levels that do not threaten the possibility of causing human extinction.

    And even the smaller existing nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan threaten global disaster. Professor Robock and his colleagues have estimated that in a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size bombs (each side now has more than that number), the smoke rising into the stratosphere could cause a global reduction of sunlight and destruction of ozone leading to crop failures and global famine.

    By comparison, the launch-ready thermonuclear forces of the US and Russia contain roughly 500 times the explosive power of the 100 atomic bombs of India and Pakistan.

    Now is the time for the people and nations of the world to stand up against the potential extinction of the human species and demand that political leaders pursue the path to zero nuclear weapons, a path mandated by the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice. Until then, protest and civil resistance will be necessary.

    We should seek two principal goals: first, a commitment by the existing nuclear weapon states to forego launch-on-warning and first use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances; and second, good faith negotiations for a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible, and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    It is our hope that by committing nonviolent civil resistance, being arrested, going to federal court, and explaining our actions to the public, we will help to awaken and engage the American people on this issue of utmost importance to our common future.

  • Renewable Energy Will Bring Peace on Earth

    The drums of war are beating once again as we read of preparations and rehearsals for a US or Israeli military strike against Iran to “take out” its nascent bomb making capability, as Iran asserts its legal right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium from its nuclear reactors for “peaceful” nuclear power. The planned transformation of the imperial US military into a “global strike force”, seeking “full spectrum dominance”, its targeted assassination program, now in eight countries, waged by the US Chair Force, impersonally raining  down deadly drone attacks from their computers on unwary “terrorists” and innocent civilians as well, without benefit of trial, evidence, charges—even the Nazis got a trial at Nuremberg—the abhorrent willingness to wage illegal preemptive wars– we are reaping the grim whirlwind of these policies.  Iran is relying on the Faustian bargain of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which enables it to develop what is ostensibly described as “peaceful” nuclear technology which  gives them the capacity and materials they need to build bombs of their own as a deterrent against US threats.

    The NPT, signed in 1970 contained a promise by the then five nuclear weapons states—the US, Russia, UK, France and China—to give up their nuclear weapons in return for a promise received from all the other nations in the world not to acquire nuclear weapons.  To sweeten the deal, the treaty promised all nations an “inalienable right” to so-called “peaceful” nuclear power. Only India, Pakistan and Israel refused to sign and they used the technology and materials created through the use of their “peaceful” nuclear power to acquire nuclear arsenals, together with North Korea which had signed and them left the treaty to develop its own nuclear bombs.  Now Iran has begun to legally enrich its uranium which could easily enable it to produce bomb-grade material if it steps up its enrichment process.

    Under the guise of “peaceful nuclear power”, other countries, such as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and Libya were also well on their way to developing nuclear bombs, which they later abandoned. Former IAEA Director, Mohammed ElBaradei remarked, “We just cannot continue business as usual that every country can build its own factories for separating plutonium or enriching uranium. Then we are really talking about 30, 40 countries sitting on the fence with a nuclear weapons capability that could be converted into a nuclear weapon in a matter of months.” (1)

    Fukishima was the greatest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind.  The massive tsunami crippled the cooling systems of the reactor complex, with three exposed nuclear reactors and four fuel storage pools all in desperate need of being cooled, as to this day they continue to spew their poisons into the ground, air and water, in an unprecedented meltdown of three nuclear reactors and the exposure of four storage building with irradiated nuclear fuel pools—much graver than the accident at Chernobyl which involved only one nuclear reactor.  But even without a catastrophic meltdown like Fukushima,  Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island, nuclear energy produces toxic environmental devastation at every step along the way in the nuclear fuel chain– from the  lethal radioactive legacy produced by mining uranium ore, mostly on indigenous lands, to the polluted aftermath from the processing of uranium ore into fuel for what must be the most expensive method ever derived for boiling water to make electricity, to the vast tons of irradiated waste, despoiling our planet in every community where nuclear reactors are located–leaching their poisons into the air, water, and soil—and added to all this is perhaps the most terrifying consequences produced by nuclear power. 

    Every nuclear reactor is a bomb factory, producing the deadly material needed to make nuclear weapons.   That is how all the current nuclear weapons states developed their bombs.  And that is how the nuclear wannabes, like Iran and Japan keep their options open by mastering the technology to manufacture nuclear weapons material.  Meanwhile, more than 30 countries, eager to join the old boys advanced technology club are trying to acquire nuclear power including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Guinea, Vietnam and Bangladesh. (2)

    There are now 440 “peaceful” reactors in 31 countries (3)  — all producing deadly bomb materials with 272 research reactors in 56 countries, some producing highly enriched uranium.(4)  The signers of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) were well aware that by having a nuclear reactor, a nation had been given the keys to a bomb factory and would need to be included in any effort to ban nuclear tests, regardless of whether they proclaimed any intention to develop weapons. And US CIA Director, George Tenet, said, “The difference between producing low-enriched uranium and weapons-capable high-enriched uranium is only a matter of time and intent, not technology.” (5)  The current flurry of negotiations and initiatives to try to control the production of the civilian nuclear fuel cycle in one central place simply will not fly. It would be just another discriminatory aspect of the NPT, creating yet another class of haves and have-nots under the treaty, as was done with those permitted to have nuclear weapons and those who are not.

    There are nearly 200 million kilograms of reactor wastes in the world—with only 5 kilograms needed to make one nuclear bomb. The US has just funded Georgia with $8 billion to build two new reactors, the first new ones in the US since the Three Mile Island catastrophe, and China is planning to build 30 new reactors with 32 more under construction around the planet–to churn out more toxic poisons; on tap for bomb-making, with no known solution to safely containing the tons of nuclear waste that will be generated over the unimaginable 250,000 years it will continue to threaten life on earth. (6)  New projects are underway to mine uranium on every continent (7), mostly on indigenous lands, where first peoples have suffered inordinately from radiation poisoning.(8)

    Even without a tragic accident like Fukushima, numerous studies show that in communities with nuclear reactors operating “normally” there are higher incidences of cancer, leukemias and birth defects. How could this be allowed to happen? There is a huge amount of misinformation and lack of information deliberately propagated by industry and industry dominated institutions.   The World Health Organization has a collusive agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which, while it performs a useful service in verifying nuclear disarmament measures, was also established through the UN in 1957 “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy”.

    The IAEA has been instrumental in covering up the disastrous health effects of the Chernobyl tragedy, understating the number of deaths by attributing only 50 deaths directly to the accident. This was a whitewash of health studies performed by Russia and the Ukraine.  Those studies have been reported in 2011, in a NY Academy of Sciences Report estimating that nearly 1 million people died as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe.(9) This cover-up was no doubt due to the highly unethical agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization, which provides that if either of the organizations initiates any program or activity in which the other has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult with the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement. Thus our scientists and researchers at the WHO are required to have their work vetted by the industry’s champion for “peaceful” nuclear technology, the IAEA.

    For example, WHO abandoned its original 1961 agenda for research on the basic human health implications of food irradiation. It ceded to the IAEA, the ultimate power of researching the safety of irradiated foods. The IAEA is leading a global campaign to further the legalization, commercialization and consumer acceptance of irradiated foods. “We must confer with experts in the various fields of advertising and psychology to put the public at ease,” one IAEA report states, also recommending that the process “should not be required on the label.” (10)

    Now there is a Fukushima cover-up.   We read numerous stories in the press about the lack of information or the actual misinformation that is being fed to the Japanese people.  Further, there is a global radiation monitoring network, established by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) to detect any radiation from nations that might be doing nuclear tests clandestinely.   The CTBTO has released that data to governments, scientists, and various UN agencies such as the UNDP, UNODA, and to the countries who are members of the treaty.   We know the Fukushima radiation is traveling around the planet, and has even entered the southern hemisphere now, but there are no public reports available to the public as to where the radiation is falling. In the US, we read from time to time of radiation affecting food in various hot spots all over the continent, but astonishingly, our Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it will stop reporting on the radiation emitting from the Fukushima catastrophe. (11) The LCNP is bringing a FOIA action to pry the data out from our government and make it public.

    The Good News

    In light of the tragedy of Fukushima, the world has taken a time-out on going full speed ahead with nuclear power.  Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Japan have announced their intention to phase out nuclear power.  Japan, laboring under the catastrophic consequences shut down all but one of its 56 nuclear reactors has yet to experience a black out as the people have been fiercely conserving energy and developing substitutes to avoid power outages.

    •    Kuwait pulled out of a contract to build 4 reactors.
    •    Venezuelan -froze all nuclear development projects .
    •    Mexico-dropped plans to build 10 reactors. (12)

    Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year.  Wind can satisfy the world’s electricity needs 40 times over, and meet all global energy demands five times over.  The geothermal energy stored in the top six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times the energy of the world’s known oil and gas resources. Tidal, wave and small hydropower, can also provide vast stores of energy everywhere on earth, abundant and free for every person on our planet, rich and poor alike.  From water, broken down by solar or wind-powered electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen, we can make and store hydrogen fuel in cells to be used when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.   When hydrogen fuel is burned, it recombines with oxygen and produces water vapor, pure enough to drink, with no contamination added to the planet.  Iceland plans to be completely sustainable by 2050, using hydrogen in its vehicles, trains, busses and ships, made from geothermal and marine energy.(13)

    New research and reports are affirming the possibilities for shifting the global energy paradigm.  Scientific American reported a plan in 2009 to power 100% of the planet by 2030 with only solar, wind and water renewables, calling for millions of wind turbines, water machines and solar installations to accomplish that task.  The authors assert that “the scale is not an insurmountable hurdle; society has achieved massive transformations before”, reminding us that “[d]uring World War II, the U.S retooled automobile factories to produce 300,000 aircraft and other countries produced 486,000 more”.  Their scenario for 2030 contemplates, in part, building 3.8 million windmills to provide 51% of the world’s energy demand which would take up less than 50 square kilometers (smaller than Manhattan). They reassure us that even though the number seems enormous, the world manufactures 73 million cars and lights trucks every year. 

    The authors review the policies that would need to be in place to make the energy transition, such as taxes on fossil fuels, or at least the elimination of existing subsidies for fossil and nuclear energy to level the playing field, and an intelligently expanded grid to ensure rapid deployment of clean energy sources.(14)

    The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also issued a Report in 2010, 100% Renewable Energy, which outlined a scenario for relying on sustainable energy that, unlike the Scientific American plan, included biofuels as renewable energy.  The WWF Director for Global Energy Policy, Stephan Singer, took issue with another report issued this year from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which predicted that the world could meet 80% of its energy needs from renewables by 2050. Singer cited the WWF study that looked at a scenario for going to 100% renewables by 2050.(15)

    The Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century(REN), released their Renewables Global Status Report in July, 2011.(16)  Despite countervailing factors like the continuing economic recession, incentive cuts for implementing sustainable energy measures, and low natural-gas prices, there was much encouraging news to report for 2010: 

    •    Existing solar water and space heating capacity increased by 16%
    •    Global solar photovoltaic (PV) production and markets doubled from 2009.
    •    Germany installed more PV than the entire world in 2009; PV markets in Japan and the US doubled
    •    At least 119 countries had enacted renewable national policies, compared to 55 countries in 2005
    •    Investment was $211 billion in renewables, compared to $160 billion in 2009, five times that in 2005
    •    Investments in developing countries surpassed developed nations for the first time

    In 2009 the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) was launched and now has 187 member states.(17) Previously, the world had only the International Atomic Energy Agency to address issues of nuclear power, and the 28 member International Energy Agency, established during the 1973 oil crisis to address the disruptions of the global oil supply.  IRENA’s mission is to empower developing countries with the ability to access the free energy of the sun, wind, marine, and geothermal source. Since Irene is the Greek word for peace, this new institution is especially well named.

    We already have the technology to harness the bounty of the earth. It is clearly not beyond our financial means, as argued by the corporate supporters of toxic fuel industries working against the momentum to move to a green energy economy.  Industry has been able to influence government policy to continue to subsidize polluting fossil, nuclear, and industrial biomass industries at much higher levels than funds made available to clean safe, sun, wind, geothermal and hydropower.  The International Energy Agency estimates indicate that fossil-fuel consumption subsidies worldwide amounted to $409 billion in 2010, up from $300 billion in 2009 which was six times more than the annual subsidies for biofuels, wind power and solar energy.  And the IEA figure doesn’t include the $50 billion a year dollar estimated costs for military infrastructure and naval operations operating during peacetime, on guard duty for the oil tankers plying the seas with their noxious cargo.(18) A report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, The Gift That Keeps on Taking, estimates that the US nuclear industry has received hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 50 years from taxpayers for every aspect of the nuclear chain, including liability insurance to cover catastrophic losses without which industry would never have even built a single nuclear power plant.(19)

    Yet despite these encouraging reports and facts on the ground, the corporate dominated media is still beating the drums for continued reliance on fossil, nuclear and industrial biomass fuels.  It is obvious that they will do all they can to block the development of green energy because they will lose their cash cows.   Once the infrastructure is in, they can’t sell the sun, or the wind or the tides the way they can peddle coal, gas, oil, uranium, and biomass.  We mustn’t buy into the propaganda that clean safe energy is decades away or too costly. We need to be vigilant in providing the ample evidence in its favor to counter the corporate forces arguing that it’s not ready, it’s years away, its’ too expensive—arguments made by companies in the business of producing dirty fuel.  Here’s what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to say about similar forces in 1936:
    We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.(20)

    While it is inspiring to know of the many initiatives, both private and public, that have the capacity to reorder our energy economy in a safer new millennium, there are enormous forces we must overcome.  We are at a time which the eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, describes as”the great turning”.  In shifting the energy paradigm we would essentially be turning away from “the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization”, foregoing a failed economic model which “ measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate profits–in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste.”(21)  Relying on the inexhaustible abundance of the sun, wind, tides, and heat of the earth for our energy needs, freely available to all, will diminish the competitive, industrial, consumer society that is threatening our planetary survival.  By ending our dependence on the old structures, beginning with the compelling urgency to transform the way we meet our energy needs, we may finally be able to put an end to war as well.

    Endnotes

    1. Agence France Press, Feb. 23, 2005
    2. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf102.html
    3. http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htmm
    4. http://www.rertr.anl.gov/RERTR25/PDF/Ritchie.pdf 
    5. http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2004/tenet_testimony_03092004.html
    6. http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm 
    7. http://www.wise-uranium.org/indexu.html
    8. http://www.sric.org/uraniumsummit/
    9. http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1
    10. http://www.citizen.org/documents/Bad%20Taste%20-%202-pager%20-%20PDF.pdf
    11. http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/05/09-0
    12. http://progressive.org/fukushima_nuclear_industry.html
    13. See generally, A Sustainable Energy Future is Possible Now, www.abolition2000.org
    14. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030
    15. http://www.worldwildlife.org/climate/energy-report.html
    16. http://www.ren21.net/REN21Activities/Publications/GlobalStatusReport/GSR2011/tabid/56142/Default.aspx
    17. http://www.irena.org/Menu/Index.aspx?mnu=Cat&PriMenuID=46&CatID=67
    18. Winning the Oil Endgame Fact Sheet, Rocky Mountain Institute.
    19. http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html
    20. http://millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/digitalarchive/speeches/spe_1936_1031_roosevelt
    21. http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/great-turning

  • Why Not Get the Law and Politics Right in Iran?

    This article was originally published on Richard Falk’s blog.

    Richard FalkIn his important article in the New York Times, March 17, 2012, James Risen summarized the consensus of the intelligence community as concluding that Iran abandoned its program to develop nuclear weapons in 2003, and that no persuasive evidence exists that it has departed from this decision. It might have been expected that such news based on the best evidence that billions spent to get the most reliable possible assessments of such sensitive security issues would produce a huge sigh of relief in Washington, but on the contrary it has been totally ignored, including by the highest officers in the government. The president has not even bothered to acknowledge this electrifying conclusion that should have put the brakes on what appears to be a slide toward a disastrous regional war. We must ask ‘why’ such a prudent and positive course of action has not been adopted, or at least explored.
     
    Given that the American debate proceeds on the basis of the exact opposite assumption– as if Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons is a virtual certainty.  This contrary finding that it is a high probability that iran gave up its quest of nuclear weapons almost a decade ago is quite startling. Listening to the Republican presidential candidates or even to President Obama makes it still seem as if Iran is without doubt hell bent on having nuclear weapons at the earliest possible time. With such a misleading approach the only question that seems worth asking is whether to rely on diplomacy backed by harsh sanctions to achieve the desired goal or that only an early attack to stop Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold.
     
    It seems perverse that this public debate on policy toward Iran should be framed in such a belligerent and seemingly wrongheaded manner. After all the United States was stampeded into a disastrous war against Iraq nine years ago on the basis of deceptive reports about its supposed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, trumped up exile allegations, and media hype. I would have assumed that these bad memories would make Washington very cautious about drifting toward war with Iran, a far more dangerous enemy than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It would seem that at present the politicians are distrustful of reassuring intelligence reports and completely willing to go along with the intelligence community when it counsels war as ‘a slam dunk.’
     
    Reinforcing this skepticism about Iran’s nuclear intentions is a realistic assessment of the risk posed in the unlikely event that the intelligence community’s consensus is wrong, and Iran after all succeeds in acquiring nuclear weapons. As former heads of Mossad and others have pointed out the existential threat to Israel even then would still be extremely low. It would be obvious that Iran’s few bombs could never be used against Israel or elsewhere without producing an annihilating response. There is no evidence that Iran has any disposition to commit national suicide.
     
    There is a further troubling aspect of how this issue is being addressed. Even in the Risen article it is presumed that if the evidence existed that Iran possesses a nuclear weapons program, a military attack would be a permissible option. Such a presumption is based on the irrelevance of international law to a national decision to attack a sovereign state, and a silent endorsement of ‘aggressive war’ that had been criminalized back in 1945 as the principal conclusion of the Nuremberg Judgment.
     
    This dubious thinking has gone unchallenged in the media, in government pronouncements, and even in diplomatic posturing. We need to recall that at the end of World War II when the UN was established states agreed in the UN Charter to give up their military option except in clear instances of self-defense. To some extent over the years this prohibition has been eroded, but in the setting of Iran policy it has been all but abandoned without even the pressure of extenuating circumstances.
     
    Of course, it would be unfortunate if Iran acquires nuclear weapons given the instability of the region, and the general dangers associated with their spread. But no international law argument or precedent is available to justify attacking a sovereign state because it goes nuclear. After all, Israel became a stealth nuclear weapons state decades ago without a whimper of opposition from the West, and the same goes for India, Pakistan, and even North Korea’s acquisition of weapons produced only a muted response that soon dropped from sight.
     
    There are better policy options that are worth exploring, which uphold international law and have a good chance of leading to regional stability. The most obvious option is containment that worked for decades against an expansionist Soviet Union with a gigantic arsenal of nuclear weapons. A second option would be to establish a nuclear weapons free zone for the Middle East, an idea that has been around for years, and enjoys the endorsement of most governments in the region, including Iran. Israel might seem to have the most to lose by a nuclear free zone in the Middle East because it alone currently possesses nuclear weapons, but Israel would benefit immensely by the reduction in regional tensions and probable economic and diplomatic side benefits, particularly if accompanied by a more constructive approach to resolving the conflict with the Palestinian people. The most ambitious option, given political credibility by President Obama in his Prague speech of 2009 expressing a commitment to a world without nuclear weapons, would be to table a proposal for complete nuclear disarmament on a step-by-step basis. Each of these approaches seem far preferable to what is now planned, are prudent, accord with common sense, show respect for international law, a passion for the peaceful resolution of conflict, and at minimum deserve to be widely discussed and appraised.
     
    As it is there is no legal foundation in the Nonproliferation Treaty or elsewhere for the present reliance on threat diplomacy in dealing with Iran. These threats violate Article 2(4) of the UN Charter that wisely prohibits not only uses of force but also threats to use force. Iran diplomacy presents an odd case, as political real politik and international law clearly point away from the military option, and yet the winds of war are blowing ever harder. Perhaps even at this eleventh hour our political leaders can awake to realize anew that respect for international law provides the only practical foundation for a rational and sustainable foreign policy in the 21st century.