Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • References on High Alert and Nuclear Famine Dangers

    Bruce Blair, “Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark,” Bruce Blair’s Nuclear Column (Episode #2:  The SIOP Option that Wasn’t), Feb. 16, 2004. Retrieved from http://www.cdi.org/blair/launch-on-warning.cfm

    Bruce G. Blair,”A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on the Alert Status of U.S. Nuclear Forces,” October 13, 2007. Retrieved from http://lcnp.org/disarmament/opstatus-blair.htm

    Bruce G. Blair, Harold Feiveson and Frank N. von Hippel, “Who’s Got the Button? Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert,” Scientific American, November 1997. Retrieved from http://www.cdi.org/aboutcdi/SciAmerBB

    False Warnings of Soviet Missile Attacks during 1979-80 Led to Alert Actions for U.S. Strategic Forces; National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 371 Posted – March 1, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb371/index.htm

    Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, Co-Chairs. Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Reference/reports/ent/part-ii-2.html

    Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger, “The Ever-Ready Nuclear Missileer,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 64, No. 3, pp. 14-21 DOI: 10.2968/064003005. Retrieved from http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064003005.pdf

    ICAN Nuclear Weapons Convention: http://icanw.org/nuclear-weapons-convention

    M.Mills, O. Toon, R. Turco, D. Kinnison and R. Garcia, “Massive Global Ozone Loss Predicted Following Regional Nuclear Conflict,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Apr 8, 2008, Vol 105(14), pp. 5307-12. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/105/14/5307.abstract

    A. Robock, L. Oman and G. Stenchikov, “Nuclear Winter Revisited with a Modern Climate Model and Current Nuclear Arsenals: Still Catastrophic Consequences,” Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Vol. 112, No. D13, 2007. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf

    A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, O. B. Toon, C. Bardeen and R. Turco, “Climatic Consequences of Regional Nuclear Conflicts,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, p. 2003-2012. Retrieved from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/7/2003/2007/acp-7-2003-2007.pdf

    O.B.Toon, R. Turco, A. Robock, C. Bardeen, L. Oman, and G. Stenchikov, “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, pp. 1973-2003. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf

    O.B. Toon and A. Robock, “2010:  Local Nuclear War, Global Suffering,”  Scientific American, 302, 74-81. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf

    O. Toon, A. Robock and R. Turco, “The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War,” Physics Today, vol. 61, No. 12, 2008. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf

    S. Starr, “Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict,” International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, December 2009. Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Documents/Starr_Nuclear_Winter_Oct_09.pdf

    S. Starr, “Launch-Ready Nuclear Weapons: A Threat to All Nations and Peoples,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, August 2011. Retrieved from https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2011_06_24_starr.pdf

    http://www.nucleardarkness.org

  • The Ayatollah Is Right About One Thing: Nuclear Weapons Are Sinful

    This article was originally published by Truthdig.

    Given my own deep prejudice toward religious zealotry, it has not been difficult for me to accept the conventional American view that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme theocratic ruler of Iran, is a dangerous madman never to be trusted with a nuclear weapon. How then to explain his recent seemingly logical and humane religious proclamations on the immorality of nuclear weapons? His statement challenges the acceptance of nuclear war-fighting as an option by every U.S. president since Harry Truman, who, in 1945, ordered the deaths of 185,000 mostly innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    “We do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons—quite the opposite,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Tuesday in summarizing the ayatollah’s views. Salehi added, “The production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin.”

    Of course, the ayatollah’s position will be largely interpreted by the media and politicians in the United States as a devious trick to lull critics, but words of such clarity will not be so easily dismissed by his devout followers. They are words that one wishes our own government would embrace to add moral consistency to our condemnation of other countries we claim might be joining us in holding nuclear arms.

    As awkward as it may be to recall, it was the United States that gifted the world with these sinful weapons. And even more to the point of assessing sin, ours is the only nation that has ever used such weapons toward their intended purpose of killing large numbers of the innocent. That fact alone should provoke some measure of humility in responding to Salehi’s offer this week at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to negotiate a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

    Unfortunately, his remarks were all too predictably met with swift condemnation by the United States. Laura E. Kennedy, the American ambassador to the conference, said that Iran’s claim to be opposed to such weapons “stands in sharp contrast” to that nation’s failure to comply with international obligations. But the fact is that the administration she represents has stated that there is as yet no evidence that Iran is committed to building a nuclear bomb.

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    She is right that Iran’s resistance to inspection “is hardly illustrative of a commitment to nuclear disarmament,” but such a remark is grotesquely hypocritical coming from the representative of a nation that has produced more than half of the world’s nuclear arsenal under the most severe conditions of secrecy. It is also true that U.S. acceptance of nuclear weapons in Israel and Pakistan, both of which have been recipients of American military aid despite breaking international nonproliferation codes to which U.S. presidents have long subscribed, is hardly a sign of consistency on this issue.

    It is obvious, in a week when the U.S. welcomed North Korea’s renewed commitment to inspections, that even the most recalcitrant of nations can be induced to reason. The treatment of Iran is complicated by this being a U.S. election season, during which the Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, have been beating the war drums over what they claim is Iran’s nuclear threat. In no way has the GOP’s zeal for military confrontation been chastened by the fact that a similar crusade in 2003 by Republican hawks led to the invasion of Iraq over patently false claims that it was developing a nuclear arsenal. The result was a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad.

    Neither Iraq nor Iran had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks that launched our nation on a never-ending and essentially irrational “war on terror.” Irrational, because the terrorist enemy has come to be defined through political convenience rather than through an objective threat assessment. Iran’s Shiite leaders were sworn enemies of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida, which was inspired and financed by the Wahhabi Sunnis of Saudi Arabia. Yet when the Obama administration recently concluded a huge, 10-year arms deal with the Saudi kingdom, the top Republican candidates were in full approval.

    Of course the world’s people should be alarmed by the prospect of Iran, or any other nation, joining the nuclear weapons club. But demonizing Iran and attempting to further isolate that nation’s leadership hardly advances the cause of nonproliferation. If Washington can find a basis of reasonable accommodation with a bizarrely erratic and paranoid North Korea, serious negotiations with Iran should be eminently possible. A place to begin would be with the acceptance that the justifiably reviled ayatollah might for once be demonstrating moral leadership when he denounces all nuclear weapons, including those in our own massive arsenal, as sinful.

  • Iran in the Crosshairs Again

    This article was originally published by Red Pepper.

    Here we go again with the Iran hysteria. It is tempting to think this time will be just like previous periods of sabre rattling against Iran. But there are significant new dangers. The Arab Spring, Israel’s position, changes in the regional and global balance of forces, and national election campaigns, all point to this round of anti-Iranian hysteria posing potentially graver risks than five or six years ago.
     
    We have seen all this before. The US ratchets up its rhetoric, Israel threatens a military attack, escalating sanctions bite harder on the Iranian people, Iran refuses to back down on uranium enrichment. But at the same time, top US military and intelligence officials actually admit Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not building a nuclear weapon, and has not decided whether to even begin a building process.
     
    In 2004 Israel’s prime minister denounced the international community for not doing enough to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In 2005 the Israeli military was reported to ‘be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran’. In 2006 the US House Armed Services Committee issued a report drafted by one congressional staffer (an aide to hard-line pro-war John Bolton, then US ambassador to the UN), claiming that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons-grade 90 per cent. That same year a different Israeli prime minister publicly threatened a military strike against Iran. In 2008, George W Bush visited Israel to reassure them that ‘all options’ remained on the table.
     
    The earlier crisis saw a very similar gap between the demonisation, sanctions, threats of military strikes against Iran, and the seemingly contradictory recognition by US, Israeli, United Nations and other military and intelligence officials that Iran actually did not possess nuclear weapons, a nuclear weapons programme, or even a decision to try to develop nuclear weapons.
     
    The 2005 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) determined that even if Iran decided it wanted to make a nuclear weapon, it was unlikely before five to ten years, and that producing enough fissile material would be impossible even in five years unless Iran achieved ‘more rapid and successful progress’ than it had so far. By 2007, a new NIE had pulled back even further, asserting ‘with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme … Tehran had not started its nuclear weapons programme as of mid-2007’. The NIE even admitted ‘we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons’. That made the dire threats against Iran sound pretty lame. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that Newsweek magazine described how, ‘in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document’.
     
    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA – the UN’s nuclear watchdog) issued report after report indicating it could find no evidence that Iran had diverted enriched uranium to a weapons programme. The UN inspection agency harshly rejected the House committee report, calling some of its claims about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons activities incorrect, and others ‘outrageous and dishonest’. And outside of the Bush White House, which was spearheading much of the hysteria, members of Congress, the neo-con think tanks, hysterical talk show hosts, and much of the mainstream media went ballistic.
     
    Then and now

    All of that sounds very familiar right now. Military and intelligence leaders in Israel and the US once again admit that Iran does not have nukes. (Israel of course does, but no one talks about that.) Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asked and answered his own Iran question: ‘Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.’ Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. admitted the US does not even know ‘if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons’. The latest 2011 NIE makes clear there is no new evidence to challenge the 2007 conclusions; Iran still does not have a nuclear weapons programme in operation.
     
    According to the Independent, ‘almost the entire senior hierarchy of Israel’s military and security establishment is worried about a premature attack on Iran and apprehensive about the possible repercussions.’ Former head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said ‘it is quite clear that much if not all of the IDF leadership do not support military action at this point.’
     
    But despite all the military and intelligence experts, the threat of war still looms. Republican candidates pound the lecterns promising that ‘when I’m president…’ Iran will accept international inspectors – as if the IAEA had not maintained an inspection team inside Iran for many years now. We hear overheated rumours of Iranian clerics promising nuclear weapons to their people – as if Iran’s leaders had not actually issued fatwas against nuclear weapons, something that would be very difficult to reverse.
     
    Some strategic issues are indeed at stake, but the current anti-Iran mobilisation is primarily political. It doesn’t reflect actual US or Israeli military or intelligence threat assessments, but rather political conditions pushing politicians, here and in Israel, to escalate the fear factor about Iranian weapons (however non-existent) and the urgency for attacking Iran (however illegal). And the danger, of course, is that this kind of rhetoric can box leaders in, making them believe they cannot back down from their belligerent words.
     
    Israel at the centre

    One of the main differences from the propaganda run-up to the Iraq war is the consistent centrality of Israel and its supporters, particularly AIPAC in the US, in this push for war against Iran. Israel certainly jumped aboard the attack-Iraq bandwagon when it was clear that war was indeed inevitable, but US strategic concerns regarding oil and the expansion of US military power were first and primary. Even back then, Israel recognised Iran as a far greater threat than Iraq. And now, Israelis using that alleged threat to pressure US policymakers and shape US policy – in dangerous ways. During this campaign cycle, Obama is under the greatest pressure he has ever faced, and likely ever will face, to defend the Israeli position unequivocally, and to pledge US military support for any Israeli action, however illegal, dangerous, and threatening to US interests.
     
    Iran simply is not, as former CIA analyst and presidential adviser Bruce Reidel makes clear, ‘an existential threat’ to Israel. Even a theoretical future nuclear-armed Iran, if it ever chose that trajectory, would not be a threat to the existence of Israel, but would be a threat to Israel’s longstanding nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. That is the real threat motivating Israel’s attack-Iran-now campaign. Further, as long as top US political officials, from the White House to Congress, are competing to see who can be more supportive of Israel in its stand-off with Iran, no one in Washington will even consider pressure on Israel to end its violations of international law and human rights regarding its occupation and apartheid policies towards Palestinians. Israel gets a pass.
     
    Israel is more isolated in the region than ever before. The US-backed neighbouring dictatorships Israel once counted on as allies are being challenged by the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Egypt’s Mubarak was overthrown, the king of Jordan faces growing pressure at home, and the threats to Syria’s regime mean that Israel could face massive instability on its northern border – something Bashar al-Assad and his father largely staved off since Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.
     
    Syria’s two struggles in one

    The calamity underway in Syria is also directly linked to the Iran crisis. There are two struggles going on in Syria, and unfortunately one may destroy the potential of the other. First was Syria’s home-grown popular uprising against a brutal government, inspired by and organically tied to the other risings of the Arab Spring, and like them calling first for massive reform and soon for the overthrow of the regime. Syria is a relatively wealthy and diverse country, in which a large middle class, especially in Damascus and Aleppo, had prospered under the regime, despite its political repression. As a result, unlike some other regional uprisings, Syria’s opposition was challenging a regime which still held some public support and legitimacy.
     
    The regime’s drastic military assault on largely non-violent protests led some sectors of the opposition to take up arms, in tandem with growing numbers of military defectors, which of course meant waging their democratic struggle in the terrain in which the regime remains strongest: military force. The government’s security forces killed thousands, injuring and arresting thousands more, and in recent weeks even the longstanding support for Assad in Damascus and Aleppo began to waver. Simultaneously, attacks against government forces increased, and the internal struggle has taken on more and more the character of a civil war.
     
    The further complication in Syria, and its link to Iran, is that it has simultaneously become a regional and global struggle. Syria is Iran’s most significant partner in the Middle East, so key countries that support Israel’s anti-Iran mobilisation have turned against Syria, looking to weaken Iran by undermining its closest ally. Perhaps because the Assad regimes have kept the occupied Golan Heights and the Israeli-Syrian border relatively quiet, Israel itself has not been the major public face in the regionalisation of the Syrian crisis. But clearly Saudi Arabia is fighting with Iran in Syria for influence in the region. The Arab League, whose Syria decision-making remains dominated by the Saudis and their allied Gulf petro-states (such as Qatar and the UAE), is using the Syria crisis to challenge Iran’s rising influence in Arab countries from Iraq to Lebanon. And of course the US, France and other Western powers have jumped on the very real human rights crisis in Syria to try to further weaken the regime there – in the interest again of undermining Iran’s key ally far more than out of concern for the Syrian people.
     
    Diminishing US power

    Facing economic crisis, military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the loss or weakening of key client states in the Arab world, the US is weaker and less influential in the Middle East. But maintaining control of oil markets and US strategic capacity are still key regional goals for the US, which means that military power remains central. The nature of that military engagement is changing – away from large-scale deployments of ground troops in favour of rapidly expanding fleets of armed drones, special forces, and growing reliance on naval forces, navy bases and sea-based weapons.
     
    Thus the US backs Saudi intervention in Bahrain to insure the US Fifth Fleet maintains its Bahraini base; Washington’s escalating sanctions give the West greater leverage in control of oil markets; the Iranian rhetorical threat to close the Strait of Hormuz (only in desperation since it would prevent Iran from exporting its own oil) is used to justify expansion of the US naval presence in the region. Along with the possibility of losing Syria as a major military purchaser and regional ally, concerns about those US strategic moves played a large part of Russia’s veto of the UN resolution on Syria.
     
    In Iran, the pressure is high and the sanctions are really starting to bite, with much greater impact felt by the Iranian population, rather than the regime in Tehran. The assassination of Iranian nuclear experts, particularly the most recent murder of a young scientist which was greeted by Israeli officials with undisguised glee and barely-disguised triumph, are more likely aimed at provoking an Iranian response than actually undermining Iran’s nuclear capacity. So far, Iran has resisted the bait. But if Israel makes good on its threat of a military strike – despite the virtually unanimous opposition of its own military and intelligence leadership – there is little reason to imagine that Iran would respond only with words. The US and Israel are not the only countries whose national leaders face looming contests; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its president face huge political challenges as well.
     
    The consequences of a strike against Iran would be grave – from attacks on Israeli and/or US military targets, to going after US forces in Iran’s neighbours Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, to attacks on the Pentagon’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, to mining the Strait of Hormuz … and beyond. An attack by the US, a nuclear weapons state, on a non-nuclear weapons state such as Iran, would be a direct violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran might kick out the UN nuclear inspectors. The hardest of Iran’s hard-line leaders would almost certainly consolidate ever greater power – both at home and in the Arab countries, and the calls to move towards greater nuclearisation, perhaps even to build a nuclear weapon, would rise inside Iran. Indeed, the Arab Spring’s secular, citizenship-based mobilisations would likely lose further influence to Iran – threatening to turn that movement into something closer to an ‘Islamic Spring’.
     
    Nuclear weapons-free zone

    At the end of the day the crisis can only be solved through negotiations, not threats and force. Immediately, that means demanding that the White House engage in serious, not deliberately time-constrained negotiations to end the current crisis – perhaps based on the successful Turkish-Brazilian initiative that the US scuttled last year. That means that Congress must reverse its current position to allow the White House to use diplomacy – rather than continuing to pass laws that strip the executive branch of its ability to put the carrot of ending sanctions on the table in any negotiations. And it means an Iran policy based on the real conclusions of US intelligence and military officials, that Iran does not have and is not building a nuclear weapon, rather than relying on lies about non-existent nuclear weapons, like the WMD lies that drove the US to war in Iraq.
     
    In the medium and longer term, we must put the urgent need for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East back on the table and on top of our agenda. Such a multi-country move would insure Iran would never build a nuclear weapon, that Israel would give up its existing 200 to 300 high-density nuclear bombs and the submarine-based nuclear weapons in its arsenal, and that the US would keep its nuclear weapons out of its Middle East bases and off its ships in the region’s seas. Otherwise, we face the possibility of the current predicament repeating itself in an endless loop of Groundhog Day-style nuclear crises, each one more threatening than the last.

  • Try a Little Nuclear Sanity

    On February 8, 2012, Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) took to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to introduce the Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act (H.R. 3974). This SANE Act would cut $100 billion from the U.S. nuclear weapons budget over the next ten years by reducing the current fleet of U.S. nuclear submarines, delaying the purchase of new nuclear submarines, reducing the number of ICBMs, delaying a new bomber program, and ending the nuclear mission of air bombers.

    “America’s nuclear weapons budget is locked in a Cold War time machine,” noted Markey, the senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “It doesn’t reflect our twenty-first-century security needs. It makes no sense. It’s insane.” He went on to explain: “It’s insane to spend $10 billion building new plants to make uranium and plutonium for new nuclear bombs when we’re cutting our nuclear arsenal and the plants we have now work just fine.” Furthermore: “It’s insane that we’re going to spend $84 billion for up to fourteen new nuclear submarines when just one sub, with 96 nuclear bombs on board, can blow up every major city in Iran, China and North Korea.” Finally, “it is insane to spend hundreds of billions on new nuclear bombs and delivery systems . . . while . . . seeking to cut Medicare, Medicaid and social programs that millions of Americans depend on.”

    Since its introduction, the SANE Act has picked up significant support. Not surprisingly, it is backed by major peace and disarmament organizations, such as Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and the Ploughshares Foundation. But it has also attracted the support of the National Council of Churches, the Project on Government Oversight, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Indeed, the SANE Act now has 45 Congressional co-sponsors.

    In light of the vast and very costly nuclear weapons enterprise operated by the U.S. government, cutting the nuclear weapons budget makes a lot of sense. The U.S. government currently possesses over five thousand nuclear weapons and, as the New York Times noted in a caustic editorial late last October (“The Bloated Nuclear Weapons Budget”): “The Obama administration, in an attempt to mollify Congressional Republicans, has also committed to modernizing an already hugely expensive complex of nuclear labs and production facilities. Altogether, these and other nuclear-related programs could cost $600 billion or more over the next decade.”

    Of course, if America’s vast nuclear arsenal were absolutely necessary to protect U.S. national security, the case for maintaining it would be strengthened. But, with the exception of Russia, no nuclear-armed nation has more than a few hundred nuclear weapons. It is not even clear what military or deterrent purpose is served by maintaining an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons. As Congressman Markey observed: The “U.S. nuclear arsenal could destroy the world five times over.” The New York Times concluded that the United States “does not need to maintain this large an arsenal,” and “it should not be spending so much to do it, especially when Congress is considering deep cuts in vital domestic programs.”

    The real nuclear threat to the United States does not lie in the fact that it does not (or will not) possess enough nuclear weapons to deter a nuclear attack. Rather, it is that there is no guarantee that nuclear deterrence works. That is why the U.S. government is so worried about North Korea possessing a few nuclear weapons or Iran possibly obtaining a few. That is also why the U.S. government squanders billions of dollars every year on a “missile defense” shield that is probably ineffective. The grim reality is that, if governments are reckless or desperate, they will use nuclear weapons or perhaps give them to terrorists to attack their foes. While nuclear weapons exist, there is always a danger that they will be used.

    Thus, what has made the United States safer in this dangerous world has not been piling up endless numbers of nuclear weapons but, rather, nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, for example — by trading promises of the nuclear powers to disarm for promises of the non-nuclear powers to forgo nuclear weapons development — has persuaded the vast majority of nations not to develop nuclear weapons. In this fashion, the willingness of the U.S. government to decrease its nuclear arsenal (something it has done, although reluctantly) has made Americans safer from nuclear attack by other nations.

    As a result of patient U.S. diplomacy, even the leaders of North Korea, one of the worst-governed countries in the world, seem to have shown glimmers of sanity in recent weeks. In late February, they announced that, thanks to an agreement with the U.S. government, they would suspend nuclear tests and uranium enrichment, as well as allow international inspection of their nuclear facilities.

    If even the government of North Korea can manage to display a measure of common sense, then is it too much to ask our own government to do the same? Our leaders in Washington could join Representative Markey and his Congressional allies in cutting back the U.S. government’s vast and expensive nuclear doomsday machine and using the savings to provide for the needs of the American people. Surely it’s time to try a little nuclear sanity.

  • Movement Challenging U.S. Missile Testing Grows

    Early in the morning on February 25, the United States Air Force test-launched a first-strike, nuclear-capable Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) despite the largest anti-test demonstrations in almost 30 years. The launch took place in the dark fog of night at 2:46 a.m. from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) on the central California coast, firing the missile to the other end of the Ronald Reagan Missile Range in the Marshall Islands over 4,000 miles away. Despite the military’s ability to follow through with the test, the offensive nature of delivery systems and the threatening message of their test flights is growing in significance in anti-nuclear circles around the globe.
     
    The next test-launch was scheduled for March 1, extremely soon after last Saturday’s test, but was canceled abruptly on Tuesday, just as a media campaign began to cancel the test. March 1 is the anniversary of the tragic “Castle Bravo” test of a hydrogen bomb in the Bikini atoll for which the swimwear received its name. That test dropped radioactive fallout on the people of Rongelap, leading to catastrophic health and genetic problems that continue to this day, necessitating the on-going evacuation of their island. It also sparked the Japanese anti-nuclear movement which had been prevented to exist under the U.S. occupation that followed World War II. The Lucky Dragon #5 fishing vessel, a Japanese ship, was also caught in the fallout of the March 1 test.
     
    The test-launch of a Minuteman III on July 28, 2011, was a rare failure necessitating the destruction of the missile mid-flight. A subsequent test scheduled for September 21, 2011, the U.N.-designated International Day of Peace, was postponed as a growing chorus of international opposition was decrying the contradiction of a peace-loving nation testing such a thing on that special day.
     
    Following on the energy of the demonstration last Saturday, a group of activists spoke on the phone on Monday to develop a quick, proactive plan for the next 48 hours to try to stop this week’s second test. The group decided to address people’s comments to both President Obama and also U.N. Secretary General Moon. The groundwork for the outreach had been well laid already, and key communities to reach were identified: Japanese activists, people from Micronesia, downwinder groups, Native land rights organizers, faith-based networks, etc.
     
    Testing warhead, bomb and delivery systems all violate the spirit of working towards nuclear disarmament to which the United States has obligated itself. The February 24 protest began at 5 minutes to midnight—the current setting of the Federation of American Scientist’s “Doomsday Clock”—in the hopes that public pressure would force President Obama to turn away from his pro-nuclear budget (with increases for both nuclear weapons and power). The test-launch of ICBMs makes hypocrites of U.S. foreign policy planners who demand a stand down of nuclear ambitions from countries they’re hostile to, while further upgrading our own weapons of mass destruction. The quantity and quality of U.S. nuclear weapons dwarf all others; we must not wait for other nations to pull back, but must increase the rate of dismantlement of our own nuclear weapons.
     
    Daniel Ellsberg, who as a military analyst for the RAND Corporation in the 1960s developed strategic plans for the Secretary of Defense MacNamara and later leaked the lies of Vietnam war planners in what became known as the Pentagon Papers, crossed the line at the base and was taken into custody along with 14 other men and women in an act of civil resistance. “They cannot be allowed to test these lightning rods of doomsday without arresting American citizens. We need to push this. It takes public pressure through education and public protest,” Ellsberg said at the rally before entering the base. Twenty-nine years ago, Ellsberg was also arrested at VAFB with hundreds of others who went into the back-country of the huge base to disrupt launch plans for another ICBM, the MX missile, which ultimately was not deployed, largely due to public pressure. Ellsberg continued by stating, “No one in this country should have their hands on the destruction of the world. We can’t trust these folks with the future of humanity.”
     
    Ellsberg also pointed out that Cold War deterrence was based on various lies and mistakes, like when U.S. plans were based on the thought that the U.S.S.R. had 1,000 missiles but actually only had 4 at that time. Current war plans continue to be based on misrepresentations, including those regarding Iraq, Iran, North Korea and the ongoing nuclear programs of Israel, Pakistan and India.
     
    Our peace actions and civil resistance at VAFB, and at the Nevada Test Site, Y-12 Plant in Tennessee and elsewhere in the expanding nuclear “bombplex” all are part of an international effort to wake up the public and our leaders to the immorality, illegality and stupidity of maintaining nuclear capabilities. The U.S. program encourages horizontal proliferation. All nuclear weapons must be eliminated. “Theirs” are bad; ours are at least as horrific. The move to make ICBMs dual use—meaning they carry nuclear or non-nuclear warheads—further increases nuclear danger by potentially confusing adversaries into thinking they’re under nuclear attack.
     
    With about a hundred demonstrators braving the damp cold of the designated protest area outside of Vandenberg, other important attendees crossed the line in an “anti-test”: David Krieger, founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and his wife Carolee committed their first-ever acts of civil resistance and were exhilarated by the experience. Cindy Sheehan, who’s son was killed as a soldier in Iraq and who has become an outspoken peace activist, also was cited and released. Judy Talaugon, a grandmother and descendant of the local Chumash people blessed and welcomed the protesters. Importantly, Paul O’Toko, an elder from Micronesia and founder of Indigenous Stewards International, brought a sizable group including several of his children—although they did not engage in the trespass itself. Fr. Louis Vitale, a frequent presence at VAFB and other demonstration sites said, “I would gladly give my life even to delay a missile launch.”

  • 2012 Kelly Lecture Introduction

    David KriegerThis is the 11th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future.  The lecturer is Daniel Ellsberg, a true American hero.

    This lecture series honors the memory of Frank Kelly, a founder and senior vice president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  Frank had great optimism about the human future.  He thought that we humans were “glorious beings” and that we all deserve a seat at humanity’s table.

    Each year the Foundation invites a distinguished individual to deliver this lecture.  Past lecturers have included Richard Falk, Robert J. Lifton, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Dame Anita Roddick, Jakob von Uexkull and Francis Moore Lappe.

    Last year’s Kelly Lecturer was Commander Robert Green, who spoke on “Breaking Free from Nuclear Deterrence.”  The booklet of his lecture led to him being invited to address the British Trident Commission, where he argued that the UK should lead the way toward zero nuclear weapons by being the first country to eliminate its nuclear arsenal.

    Daniel Ellsberg is one of the greatest living Americans and citizens of the world.  He is a graduate of Harvard University with a B.A. and Ph.D. in Economics.  Between his undergraduate degree and his graduate studies, Dan spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps.  He was a platoon leader, operations officer and rifle company commander.

    In his early career, Dan worked at the highest levels of the American government.  In 1959, he joined the RAND Corporation as a strategic analyst and consultant to the Defense Department and White House, focusing on problems of command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans and crisis decision-making.  In 1961, he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war.  He was a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

    In 1964, he joined the Defense Department as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.  He worked on the escalation of the war in Vietnam.  The following year he transferred to the State Department to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification in the field.

    When Dan returned to the Rand Corporation in 1967, he went to work on the top secret McNamara study of US Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68.  This later became known as the Pentagon Papers.  Dan came to believe that this information was vital for the public to know and understand in evaluating the war in Vietnam.  In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  In 1971, he gave the study to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other papers.  For doing so, he was put on trial for 12 felony counts for which he faced a possible 115 years in prison.  The charges against him were dismissed based upon US government misconduct.

    Daniel Ellsberg is one of the brightest men I know and one of the most moral and courageous.  He is the recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award and also the Right Livelihood Award, which is presented in the Swedish Parliament and known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.”

    He is the author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.  He is working on a new book based upon his experiences as a US strategic nuclear policy analyst and their application to current US nuclear policy.  He serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Afghanistan: The War Turns Pathological – Withdraw!

    Richard Falk


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


    The latest occupation crime in Afghanistan is a shooting spree on March 11 by a lone American soldier in the village of Balandi in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province of Afghanistan. 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children, were shot in their homes in the middle of the night without any pretense of combat activity in the area. Such an atrocity is one more expression of a pathological reaction by one soldier to an incomprehensible military reality that seems to be driving crazy American military personnel on the ground in Afghanistan. The main criminal here is not the shooter, but the political leader who insists on continuing a mission in face of the evidence that it is turning its own citizens into pathological killers.


    American soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters, Koran burning, and countryside patrols whose members were convicted by an American military tribunal of killing Afghan civilians for sport or routinely invading the privacy of Afghan homes in the middle of the night: whatever the U.S. military commanders in Kabul might sincerely say in regret and Washington might repeat by way of formal apology has become essentially irrelevant.


    These so-called ‘incidents’ or ‘aberrations’ are nothing of the sort. These happenings are pathological reactions of men and women caught up in a death trap not of their making, an alien environment that collides lethally with their sense of normalcy and decency. Besides the desecration of foreign lands and their cultural identities, American political leaders have unforgivably for more than a decade placed young American’s in intolerable situations of risk, uncertainty, and enmity to wage essentially meaningless wars. Also signaling a kind of cultural implosion are recent studies documenting historically high suicide rates among the lower ranks of the American military.


    Senseless and morbid wars produce senseless and morbid behavior. Afghanistan, as Vietnam 40 years earlier, has become an atrocity-generating killing field where the ‘enemy’ is frequently indistinguishable from the ‘friend,’ and the battlefield is everywhere and nowhere. In Vietnam the White House finally speeded up the American exit when it became evident that soldiers were murdering their own officers, a pattern exhibiting ultimate alienation that became so widespread it give birth to a new word ‘fragging.’


    Whatever the defensive pretext in the immediacy of the post-9/11 attacks, the Afghanistan War was misconceived from its inception, although deceptively so. (to my lasting regret I supported the war initially as an instance of self-defense validated by the credible fear of future attacks emanating from Afghanistan) Air warfare was relied upon in 2002 to decimate the leadership ranks of Al Qaeda, but instead its top political and military commanders slipped across the border. Regime change in Kabul, with a leader flown in from Washington to help coordinate the foreign occupation of his country, reverted to an old counterinsurgency formula that had failed over and over again, but with the militarist mindset prevailing in the U.S. Government, failure was once again reinterpreted as an opportunity to do it right the next time! Despite the efficiency of the radical innovative tactic of target killing by drones, the latest form of state terror in Afghanistan yields an outcome that is no different from earlier defeats.


    What more needs to be said? It is long past time for the United States and its NATO allies to withdraw with all deliberate speed from Afghanistan rather than proceed on its present course: negotiating a long-term ‘memorandum of understanding’ that transfers the formalities of the occupation to the Afghans while leaving private American military contractors—mercenaries of the 21st century—as the outlaw governance structure of this war torn country after most combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014, although incredibly Washington and Kabul, despite the devastation and futility, are presently negotiating a ten-year arrangement to maintain an American military presence in the country, a dynamic that might be labeled ‘re-colonization by consent,’ a geopolitical malady of the early 21st century.


    As in Iraq, what has been ‘achieved’ in Afghanistan is the very opposite of the goals set by Pentagon planners and State Department diplomacy: the country is decimated rather than reconstructed, the regional balance shifts in favor of Iran, of Islamic extremism, and the United States is ever more widely feared and resented, solidifying its geopolitical role as the great malefactor of our era.


    America seems incapable of grasping the pathologies it has inflicted on its own citizenry, let alone the physical and psychological wreckage it leaves behind in the countries it attacks and occupies. The disgusting 2004 pictures of American soldiers getting their kicks from torturing and humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib should have made clear once and for all to the leaders and the public that it was time to bring American troops home, and keep them there if we cared for their welfare.  Instead punishments were inflicted on these hapless young citizens who were both perpetrators and victims, and their commanders resumed their militarist misadventures as if nothing had happened except an unwelcome ‘leak’ (Donald Rumsfeld said as much) What this pattern of descretation exhibits is not only a criminal indifference to the wellbeing of ‘others’ but a shameful disregard of the welfare of our collective selves. The current bellicose Republican presidential candidates calling for attacks on Iran amounts to taking another giant step along the road that is taking American over the cliff. And the Obama presidency is only a half step behind, counseling patience, but itself indulging war-mongering, whether for its own sake or on behalf of Israel is unclear.


    President Obama recently was quoted as saying of Afghanistan “now is the time for us to transition.”  No, it isn’t. “Now is the time to leave.”  And not only for the sake of the Afghan people, and surely for that, but also for the benefit of the American people Obama was elected to serve. 

  • The Risk of Humiliating Adversaries

    Martin HellmanWhile many factors propelled the rise of Hitler and Nazism, humiliating Germany at the end of World War I played a major role. Hitler even forced the French to surrender in the same railway car –  in the exact same spot –  that had witnessed Germany’s earlier capitulation. Because of the risk involved in humiliating an adversary, I have been concerned by the belittlement Russia has experienced in recent years. Just as the ending of World War I played a major role in the start of World War II, let’s not have the ending of the Cold War lead to World War III.



    The most recent evidence of this risk surfaced in yesterday’s edition of Fareed Zakaria’s GPS (Global Public Square) on CNN. Zakaria asked Henry Kissinger:



    Henry, you’ve met with Vladimir Putin probably more often than any … senior American official. You’ve had something like 20 odd one-on-one meetings with him. What do you think of Vladimir Putin? … Is he a thug? Is he a modernizer? Is he … pro-Western, anti-Western?


    To which Kissinger replied:



    He is, above all, a Russian patriot who feels humiliated by the experience of the 1990s, which were in the most formative period of his career. He is not anti-western. When I first met him, he was very anxious to have a kind of strategic partnership with the United States. He is very resentful of what he interprets as intervention in Russian domestic affairs and even more, of course, in what he may interpret and does interpret as some American tendencies to support his political opponents in order to encourage his overthrow, … but I believe that a dialogue is possible and on specific issues he can turn out to be a constructive partner.


    Conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan blames our humiliation of Russia as being partly responsible for the Georgian War of 2008. In a column entitled Blowback from Bear Baiting, he wrote:



    But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia’s nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany. … For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia’s space and getting into Russia’s face.


    Speaking of the Georgian War, Buchanan also noted that “American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight — Russia finished it.” Wrongly placing all blame for that war on Russia – as is consistently done in our media – adds to Russia’s feeling wrongly humiliated.


    Along similar lines, in 2007, former Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser, head of the policy and planning staff in the German Ministry of Defense from 1992 to 1998, wrote:



    Moscow also feels provoked by the behavior of a number of newer NATO member states in central and Eastern Europe. Poland and the Baltic states use every opportunity to make provocative digs at Russia; they feel themselves protected by NATO and backed by the U.S.


    Humiliating an opponent may have short term, egotistical benefits. But are they worth the long term risk to our survival?

  • War Is Not Inevitable

    David KriegerThere have not always been wars; and there need not always be wars.  Before the onset of civilization, there may have been tribal skirmishes but there was not organized warfare between competing military forces. 


    It was not until agriculture allowed for societal specialization, hierarchy and the generation of a warrior class loyal to a military or political leader or social system that wars began in earnest.  Agriculture required defense of boundaries and crops.  Such defense required the specialization of a warrior class organized into military forces.  Such forces required organization and a willing youthful pool of potential soldiers.  But legitimate purposes of defense can also be turned to offensive uses.  Leaders throughout history have been adept at justifying aggressive war in terms of defense. 


    War is a byproduct of civilization, and it is made more likely by having distinct competing social entities, such as city-states or today’s nation-states.  In the 20th century, wars became global or nearly so.  In World War I, soldiers mostly slaughtered other soldiers.  In World War II, however, with the development of modern air warfare, cities and civilians became targets of warfare.  Some 20 million people were killed in WWI and some 50 million in WWII. 


    The technology of warfare has increased in sophistication and lethality.  WWII ended with the destruction of two unprotected Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by two US atomic bombs, one dropped on each city.  This opened a new era, the Nuclear Age, in which it became possible to destroy civilization and complex life, including human life, on the planet.  By our own cleverness, we humans have created instruments capable of destroying ourselves.  The creation of nuclear weapons has made the world too dangerous for warfare. 


    Warfare requires a high level of social organization, but peace requires an even higher level of social organization.  The United Nations Charter prohibits the use of force between nations except under very limited conditions of self-defense or when the Security Council authorizes the use of force.  Of course, this prohibition against the use of force has not been very successful, largely because the major powers have relied upon the law of force rather than the force of law. 


    We have created a situation in which either warfare or humanity is obsolete.  We humans can choose.  We can choose to put an end to warfare, or we can continue to run the risk of warfare putting an end to us.  This is the way that Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein put it in a 1955 statement calling for an end to warfare due to the power of thermonuclear weapons: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.”


    But people must face this alternative.  Peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age.  It is both a right and responsibility.  The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can get on with the necessary task of abolishing nuclear weapons and building a warless world.  In doing so, we will free up vast resources that can be used to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals to end poverty, improve health, protect the environment and better the lives of people everywhere.


    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

  • The Myth of Nuclear Safety

    Martin HellmanIn memory of the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda acknowledged that his government had failed by believing in “a myth of safety” about nuclear power. Before an even worse tragedy befalls us, we need to disabuse society of a similarly dangerous myth regarding the safety afforded by nuclear weapons. Political and military leaders, routinely talk of maintaining a safe, secure nuclear arsenal, as if just uttering those words makes it so. 


    As one example, consider President Obama’s famous 2009 Prague speech in which he committed America “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He goes on to say, “I’m not naive. … As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.” (emphasis added)


    How safe is it to threaten to destroy civilization in order to achieve much less important national objectives? If you agree that the myth of nuclear safety might apply to nuclear weapons as well as Fukushima, please sign my petition asking Congress to authorize a risk analysis of nuclear deterrence, and encourage friends to do the same. Let’s not make the same mistake twice, with even more horrific consequences.