Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • The Human Face of Making Nuclear Weapons

    This article was originally published by the Huffington Post.


    Robert AlvarezThe legacy of human suffering from amassing nuclear arsenals remains ignored in the current debate over eliminating these horrific weapons of mass destruction.


    Lest we forget, the Energy Employee Illness Compensation Program Act, which I helped draft and push for, was enacted 11 years ago this week. It was based on legislation first proposed by Senator John Glenn (D-Oh) in 1992. “What good is it to protect ourselves with nuclear weapons,” Glenn would often ask, “if we poison our people in the process?”


    As of 2010, some 50,000 people have received $6.5 billion for illnesses and deaths following exposure to ionizing radiation, beryllium and other toxic substances while making nuclear weapons.


    A lot of credit goes to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson who saw the need for justice for sick workers and their families, ostracized in their communities and driven into poverty by a system that spared no expense to fight their claims in the name of national security. Paul Jacobs, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, was the first to bring public attention to the plight of American radiation victims of the nuclear arms race in the 1950’s. Later in 1999 and 2000, Joby Warrick at the Washington Post and Pete Eisler at USA Today played prominent roles in waking up the nation and the Congress to this injustice.


    This would not have happened were it not for the pioneering research of Harriet Hardy, Alice Stewart, George Kneale, Thomas Mancuso, Gregg Wilkinson, Carl Johnson, Wilhelm Huper, Frank Lundin, Joe Waggoner, Steve Wing, David Richardson, John Gofman, Karl. Z. Morgan and others, some whose research was suppressed until we brought it to light with the help of the White House. Many of these scientists paid a high price for their quest of the truth about the hazards of nuclear weapons production.


    This struggle for justice for people deliberately put in harm’s way in order to amass nuclear arms is not over. For instance, residents living near the Hanford site in Washington State, who were exposed to the radioactive detritus of plutonium production, remained trapped in a 25-year-old lawsuit with no end in sight. The Energy department spends about $1 million a year to fight these claims. Moreover, thousands of tribal people, who were found by the Centers for Disease Control in 2002 to be the most highly exposed from Hanford’s radioactive discharges, are totally ignored.


    The pernicious quest for nuclear arms ­ all in the name of a “greater good” — has tens of thousands of human faces, who paid a bitter price, which we should not forget.

  • McCain Threatens Putin

    Martin HellmanToday’s Moscow News quotes Senator John McCain as warning Putin that he could meet Gaddafi’s fate. I was so shocked by such an incendiary remark from a former presidential candidate that I checked out the alleged threat on McCain’s Twitter feed. Sure enough, yesterday McCain tweeted, “Dear Vlad, the Arab Spring is coming to a neighborhood near you.” Later (presumably after this Moscow News article appeared), he tweeted again, “The Post agrees: ‘Spring is in the Russian air’” with a link to a Washington Post article reporting on demonstrations by Russians opposed to Putin.


    Another McCain tweet had a link to a BBC tweet, that stated “@SenJohnMcCain is no fan of Putin’s Russia: ‘We have an obligation to speak up when we see evil prevailing in the world’ he tells us.” Further searching led me to an October Businessweek article that said:



    Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other “dictators” may be “nervous” after the death of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, U.S. Senator John McCain said. “I think dictators all over the world, including Bashar al-Assad, maybe even Mr. Putin, maybe some Chinese, maybe all of them, may be a little bit more nervous,” McCain said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. late yesterday. “It’s the spring, not just the Arab spring.” Qaddafi was killed yesterday after an eight-month armed conflict that left thousands dead.


    These comments by McCain helped me better understand an earlier, March 29 article in Mir Novosti, that quoted General Leonid Ivashov as saying:



    I have no doubts that our people, like Libyans did, will demand changing the degradation course for a development course, and that it will ask the current authorities to quit. However, when that moment comes, they will hardly bomb Russia as they are currently bombing Libya. … The availability of nuclear weapons in this country is a factor that, in case of possible public protests, may cause international concern. International community may want to take control of our nuclear weapons under the pretext of the need to eliminate unsanctioned use. For that NATO forces may penetrate our territory and take control of our most important infrastructure facilities.


    While the translation is a bit shaky, it still highlights the risk inherent in our exceeding the UN resolution’s mandate to protect Libyan civilians and going instead for regime change. Mr. McCain’s threatening Putin adds to that risk in a significant way.

  • Occupy Peace

    David Krieger


    This article was originally published by Truthout.


    The Occupy Movement is demonstrating its durability and perseverance.  Like a Japanese Daruma doll, each time it is knocked off balance it serenely pops back up.  The movement has been seeking justice for the 99 percent, and justice is an essential element of peace. 


    For decades, our country has been in permanent preparation for war, spending over half of the total annual discretionary funds that Congress allocates on “defense,” our euphemism for war.  World military expenditures exceed $1.5 trillion annually, and the US spends more than half of this amount, more than the rest of the world combined.


    The US has been engaged in wars around the globe from Korea to Vietnam to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya.  In all of these wars, many in the one percent reap financial gains.  Many large corporations, such as Halliburton, formerly led by Dick Cheney, are the beneficiaries of lucrative government contracts that support war, while it is mainly the poor who are enlisted to fight, kill and die in our wars.  War is a surefire way of transferring wealth up the social ladder. 


    It is time to wake up to being used as tools in warfare while others profit.  War is not an effective or reasonable way to settle disputes.  It uses up resources and destroys human lives.  In war, people are expendable.  Civilians all too easily become “collateral damage.”  In the Nuclear Age, civilization itself could become collateral damage.


    As President Eisenhower pointed out in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”  How little our politicians have responded to the deep concern of this former military leader.


    War is costly not only in dollars, but on our national psyche.  We slaughtered innocent men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then celebrated our prowess.  We went to war in Vietnam based on lies, killing millions of Vietnamese and dropping Napalm and Agent Orange on them, while they struggled for their freedom and independence.  Ultimately, after the death of more than 58,000 Americans, we withdrew in defeat, declaring victory.  We seemingly learned little that is meaningful from the experience, as we continue to send our soldiers to fight and die in far-off lands, and still based on lies.  Enough is enough. 


    How do we occupy peace?  First, we change our modes of thinking and stop basing our self-worth as a nation on our military prowess.  Second, we bring our troops home from exploitative foreign wars.  Third, we seek peaceful solutions to conflicts.  Fourth, we make our priority justice, and peace will follow.  Fifth, we work to end deaths due to starvation and preventable diseases rather than inflicting deaths by high altitude bombing and drone attacks.  Sixth, we take the lead in abolishing nuclear weapons so no other cities or countries will suffer the fate of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Seventh, we reallocate our resources to health, education and ending poverty rather than continuing to gorge the military beast until it is too fat to move.


    War is a place of fear and fear is a place of borders.  Fear requires us to dehumanize our enemies and, in the process, to dehumanize ourselves.  Borders should not provide a justification for dehumanization.  That is a trick of militarists, who are in need of enemies, real or imagined, to make the war system work for them.  But there is another way to deal with enemies, and that is to turn them into friends by our actions.


    We need to stop fearing each other and treat each other with kindness.  Consideration for the 99 percent does not stop at a country’s border.  We are all humans together and we need each other to be fully human.  We need to embrace our common humanity.  In the Nuclear Age, war is far too dangerous, having the potential to end civilization and most life on the planet.  Peace is an imperative.  We need to find a way to occupy peace, which begins in our hearts and must expand to encompass the world. 

  • Nuclear Guinea Pigs

    This article was originally published by Honolulu Weekly.


    In the old-timey section of Kalihi, tucked between auto repair shops and boarded-up storefronts, Maza Attari, a Marshall Islander, lived with four family members in a one-bedroom apartment barely bigger than a ping-pong table. When visited by this reporter last summer, Attari had been unable to find steady work since being flown to Honolulu 12 years ago for back surgery that had left him with a severe limp and weakened muscles.


    Attari’s circumstances exemplify the far-reaching impacts of nuclear testing upon irradiated, exiled or dislocated Marshall Islanders. From 1946 to 1962, their home atolls served as experimental grounds where the US detonated nuclear weapons and tested delivery systems in the transition from conventional to intercontinental bombers. In all, the US exploded 86 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, which are situated 3,000 miles west of Honolulu. Those 86 bombs equated to 8,580 Hiroshima-size bombs–or 1.4 weapons per day for 16 years.


    A one-time magistrate and mayor on Utrik, Attari said last summer that he doubted he would be able to return there, prophesying instead, “I’m going to stay here until I die.” He died in September of this year, without ever receiving the reparations that he and other nuclear victims have claimed.


    The Debt


    It is a debt that is not only owed them, but that has compounded over time. Because these nuclear weapons experiments were too dangerous and unpredictable to be conducted on the US mainland, Attari and other Marshallese are part of the reason for America’s superpower status today. A half-century later, the Marshall Islands continue to serve as a crucial part of an outer defense periphery for the US heartland–6,000 miles away. That periphery includes the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, where for more than three decades missiles fired from 4,000 miles away (at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California) have crashed near Kwajalein Atoll, horribly frightening the indigenous inhabitants and leaving them unsure of where the debris will fall.


    A Child Out of Time


    Attari was 7 years old and living on Utrik Island on March 1, 1954, when the US unleashed the most destructive weapon in its history–the 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, code-named Bravo. It was early in the morning, and his family members leaped up when they heard a deafening noise. “Everyone was surprised,” he explains. Radioactive fallout contaminated the uncovered cement containers used for drinking water and local food. “Too bad,” US officials said when they arrived days later to begin evacuating 239 sickened inhabitants of Utrik and Rongelap atolls to the Kwajalein naval base.


    Snow-like radioactive particles fell 100 to 125 miles away on property and persons on these atolls, who had not been evacuated beforehand or alerted about precautions to take.


    The British government, between 1957 and 1958 conducted nine atmospheric tests, yielding the equivalent of about 12,000,000 tons of TNT, and the French carried out 193 Pacific nuclear tests yielding the equivalent of about 13,500,000 tons beginning in 1962 and ending on Jan. 27, 1996. The British and French data were recently gleaned from hard-to-find sources and compiled by University of Hawaii botany professor Mark Merlin and graduate student Ricardo Gonzalez, enabling them to reveal for the first time a pathbreaking, half-century panorama of the environmental consequences of Pacific nuclear testing conducted by all three nations.


    The Things They Carried


    As a result, many exposed Islanders have since suffered from or been operated on for abnormalities of the thyroid, which can lead to stunted growth, mental retardation and cancer. Like many on Utrik, Attari said, his sister died of cancer and three brothers with thyroid abnormalities have also died. Attari had not been subjected to surgery but he medicated his thyroid by daily taking US-supplied white, pea-size tablets called levothyroxin. He continued to be monitored at least twice a year by US Department of Energy medical teams who study Bravo-exposed islanders in a program kept secret for 40 years.


    After three months on Kwajalein, Attari and other Utrik residents were returned home. But it was three years before the more severely contaminated Rongelapese, who suffered skin burns, vomiting, hair loss and diarrhea, were returned to their ancestral island. US photographers extensively documented the move–labeled “Rongelap Repatriation”–that included mug shots of the returnees.


    The Pain of Exile


    It caused some Marshallese to endure the pain and suffering of a long list of verified diseases and exiled them from their ancestral homelands where they had maintained their way of life and a self-sufficient livelihood. It contaminated their islands and marine life, in some cases for decades, if not centuries. It vaporized some of their precious lands and moonscaped others, as shown by the bombing craters on Enewetak.


    The Bikini islanders, for example, were uprooted in 1946 so that their atoll could serve as a Pacific proving ground for the first US nuclear test and are still exiled today. That first test at Bikini inspired creation of the two-piece swimsuit that has ever since populated Waikiki and beaches worldwide. But Bikinians are ignored in their petition for more funding from the US government for land damages and numerous other claims that exceed earlier payments. The testing prompted one irradiated Rongelap woman to exclaim, Americans “are smart at doing stupid things.”


    An Almost-Forever Poison


    The Bravo H-bomb was l,000 times more powerful than the bomb detonated above Hiroshima and it was laced with plutonium, one of the planet’s most deadly substances with a radioactive existence of half a million years that may be hazardous to humans for at least half that time. In addition, Bravo and other US Pacific tests were launched in the atmosphere or underwater, which spewed radioactive mist, pulverized coral and snow-flake-like particles high into the air and, most disastrously, across the Pacific, landing on peoples and soils where it could be absorbed or inhaled for decades and will continue as hazards for a near-eternity.


    Unwittingly and unknowingly, Attari and other Pacific islanders had been thrust from an oral culture into the atomic age; without a vocabulary word for radioactivity, they began calling it a poison and to describe themselves as poisoned people. Attari and the other Bravo–contaminated Marshallese entered history as the first-ever examples of the effects of radioactive fallout on humans who had escaped a nuclear explosion. Unlike the wartime victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic-weapons explosions, a historian notes, Pacific Islanders who experienced the peacetime tests are important because “they have already lived in what might be our common future.”


    APEC and Forgotten Islanders


    Attari and other Marshallese have battled for more than a decade in the US courts, before Congress and with the Bush administration for more funds to pay greater-than-anticipated costs of their health care, property damages, resettlement, cleanup, and compensation for their vaporized islands. A 1995 study by the Congressional Research Service advised Congress that the Marshallese health-related claims and loss-of-land methodologies were reasonable and appropriate but their multi-billion-dollar estimates needed more analysis. The islanders are still awaiting a favorable nod from President Obama, in town this week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference.


    Leaders joining President Obama this week hail from 21 countries including the Russian Federation, People’s Republic of China, Japan, Indonesia, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong. But missing will be the voices and concerns of many peoples of the so-called Small Island States, scattered amidst about 25,000 atolls, islets and islands, that experienced the economic havoc and uniquely violent history that have transformed the Pacific region during half a century. Nor is the Marshallese multi-billion-dollar petition now confronting Obama and Congress on the agenda of APEC leaders, despite its relevance to the continuing controversy cast by Fukushima’s nuclear disaster.


    Long before the fears of drifting contamination seeded by Chernobyl and Fukushima, Bravo and the other shots in the H-Bomb era produced radioactive components that encircled the globe, settling silently from the heavens. One exhaustive study titled “Atomic Audit” concluded that fallout and other residual radioactivity from atmospheric nuclear testing by all nations have caused or will cause through infinity an estimated 3 million premature cancer deaths. As a result, University of Hawaii scientist John Harrison explained, all organisms, including humans, carry the watermark of the nuclear era woven into their bodies, thus changing “the chemical signature of our bones.”


    Guinea Pigs


    Not until 1994, 40 years after Bravo’s fallout, did Attari and other exposed islanders learn they were used as human subjects to research the effects of radioactive fallout and of livin. Within days after Bravo, while still at the naval base to which they had been evacuated, Rongelap and Utrik Islanders were incorporated into Project 4.1. They were neither asked for nor gave their informed consent, nor were told the risks of the studies for which they gained no benefit.


    Titled the “Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation Due to Fallout from High Yield Weapons, the document was classified “Secret Restricted Data.”


    Seven weeks after Bravo, on April 21, the lead US doctor examining them, Dr. E.P. Cronkite, recommended to military officials in Honolulu that these Marshallese should probably be exposed to no more radiation for the rest of their “natural lives.” Despite this recommendation, after three years, US officials in 1957 assured the Rongelapese that their radioactive homeland was safe and returned them there. Rongelapese remained in their radioactive homeland for 28 years. They were shocked to learn that a 1982 US Department of Energy report indicated that parts of Rongelap, where some were living, “were as contaminated as those forbidden to humans.” As a result, in 1985, the islanders beseeched US officials to move them. The US refused. So 70 islanders were removed by the Greenpeace environmental organization. During those years on Rongelap, they lived in an environment that had been contaminated not only by Bravo and five other shots in 1954 but also by the residue from 17 shots in 1956 and 32 shots in 1958. Data on radiation levels from tests in 1956 and 1958, when combined yield greater than Bravo, have been requested by the Marshallese government but almost 50 years later US officials had yet to disclose them.


    During these years, many Marshallese lost their lives or loved ones as exemplified by John Anjain, the mayor of Rongelap in 1954. Because of the fallout, he and four members of his family were operated on for thyroid tumors. His wife’s tumor killed her. His son, who was one year old at the time of Bravo, had a thyroid tumor removed when he was 12 and died seven years later from leukemia. The elder Anjain died in Honolulu’s Straub Hospital in 2004 at age 83.


    Denying the Experiment


    Anjain had accused US officials of using the islanders as “guinea pigs” for regularly monitoring their health for decades without providing them medical treatment. But in October 1995 an advisory committee appointed by President William Clinton “found no evidence that the initial exposure of the Rongelapese or their later relocation constituted a deliberate human experiment.”


    Since being rescued by Greenpeace, Rongelapese have been living 100 miles away on Majetto Island, sustained by US aid. The US has provided $45 million to establish a Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund that has led to cleaning up soil on parts of the main island but not on all of the 60 or so islets in the atoll that are used for food gathering. Some houses, a church, power plant, water-making equipment and paved roads now dot parts of Rongelap Island.


    US officials are vowing this autumn to cut US aid to those electing to remain at Majetto rather than to repatriate home.


    Rongelapese are reluctant to return. “Resettling the people of Rongelap under rules severely restricting their ability to move about their homeland, or to gather food from their traditional sources, does not constitute sensible repatriation,” Marshallese Sen. Michael Kabua, a member of the Rongelap Atoll Local Government Council, told a US House subcommittee on May 20, 2010. The people do not want to return, he said, “to a land where the future well-being of their children will be in jeopardy, and where they themselves cannot be assured of safety and security,” and where “they will remain as strangers in their own home.” And they remember the sad history of the Americans repatriating islanders to their heavily radioactive homelands on the assurance they were safe only to learn otherwise decades and heartbreaks later.

  • Pacta Sunt Servanda: Promises to Keep

    Jonathan GranoffOn United Nations Day, three years ago Secretary General Ban Ki-moon set forth a compass point for international cooperation to eliminate nuclear weapons and to make the world safer on the path to this achievement. In addition to calling for work on a nuclear weapons convention or a framework of instruments to achieve disarmament , he called for entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, negotiations of a fissile material treaty, entry into force of the Protocols to regional nuclear weapons free zones, and efforts to establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, as well as the development of new norms for space weapons, missiles and conventional arms.


    The Secretary General’s Five Point Proposal remains relevant today and can help inspire work in many different forums and levels of diplomacy and civil society. It upholds a clear goal and emphasizes the incremental steps needed to get there. Such bold leadership will be needed to fulfill the aspiration, expressed so eloquently by President Obama, as “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” which will constitute in the words of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, “a global public good of the highest order.” 


    Failure to achieve greater progress in fulfilling this moral and practical imperative will result in  cynicism toward the most important tool the world presently has to ensure peace — solemnly negotiated and agreed upon commitments. Without such explicit commitments — conventions, treaties — we rely upon ad hoc arrangements which are only as strong as short term perceived interests. With treaties norms are set and common purposes achievable. 


    But, these explicit arrangements are only as strong as the integrity of the parties and their adherence to them. The term in international law to remember is pacta sunt servanda – agreements must be kept and honored in good faith. Or, in the words of President Obama: “words must mean something.”


    The 2010 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review’s Final Statement, contains a reaffirmation of an “unequivocal undertaking to accomplish”, not just to aspire, but “to accomplish the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”


    It calls upon states “to undertake concrete disarmament efforts…” in fact “special efforts to establish the necessary framework to achieve and maintain a world without nuclear weapons.” It highlights that this is a matter that requires our most committed actions by saying “there is an urgent need.”


     “Urgent”, “concrete”, “unequivocal” – These are strong words requiring the strongest of actions.


    Many of us were heartened by the attention paid to the progressive five point agenda of the Secretary General’s Five Point proposal and particularly reference to a convention or framework of instruments to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons.
    Without such clarity of purpose the dynamism required to achieve significant threat reducing steps will be difficult to obtain. Thus we are now  seeing how difficult it is just to achieve the very modest incremental steps, such as a fissile materials treaty or strengthening IAEA safeguards, needed to enhance everyone’s security. The galvanizing effect of collectively seeking the common goal of a nuclear weapons free world will make all the steps needed to move there so much easier.


    In the recent United States Nuclear Posture Review, there is a “commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world” and there is even a commitment “to initiate a comprehensive national research and development program to support continued progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” including, but not limited to, “expanded work on verification technologies.”


    What have we seen since these commitments were made?


    Nearly every state with nuclear weapons seems to be upgrading, expanding, or modernizing their weapons. For example in the United States, as part of the negotiations for obtaining the START treaty, a new commitment was made to allocate potentially over 200 billion dollars to modernize  the arsenal – modernizing delivery systems and modernizing weapons.  There may also be some commitment to initiating a comprehensive national research and development program, as called for in the Nuclear Posture Review, but if any funds have been allocated to this task,  they are dwarfed by the commitment to modernize the arsenal.


    The language of the final statement of the NPT Review Conference is very consistent with initiating a comprehensive research and development program at an international level. And if anything is needed now, it is a clear, unambiguous, unequivocal, irreversible, well-funded effort by like-minded states, or all states if possible, on laying out the framework necessary to obtain and maintain a nuclear weapons-free world. There is no ongoing forum in which nuclear disarmament is being discussed and advanced on a daily, regular, systematic basis. There is language, there are statements, but we don’t see the institutionalization, we don’t see the commitment being operationalized and that’s what’s really important.


    Without such a clear course of action, we become subject to backsliding. The ongoing debate should be about how to get rid of nuclear weapons. Yet, continually we are forced to return to the argument whether we should get rid of nuclear weapons. That argument should have been laid to rest in 2000, when the “unequivocal undertaking” to elimination was made at that NPT Review Conference.


    I assure you, we will again be faced with bureaucracies and think-tanks and politicians who will force us to revisit the argument whether we should get rid of nuclear weapons again and again unless we lay out the framework or proceed to negotiate the preparatory process for a nuclear weapons convention.


    Some people say working on a framework or convention is a distraction from the NPT. I very much disagree with that analysis. The NPT contemplates subsidiary instruments to fulfill its non-proliferation and disarmament purposes. Nobody argues that a test ban treaty is a distraction from the non-proliferation purposes of the NPT or that a  Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty is a distraction. The NPT contemplates subsidiary instruments. We need subsidiary instruments to achieve non-proliferation goals and likewise to achieve disarmament goals. It is to fulfill the disarmament pillar of the NPT that a framework of agreements or a convention is needed.


    Some people say there are many preconditions to beginning this process.  There seems to be a proliferation of preconditions. For some the precondition is the elimination of bad people. For others it’s the elimination of bad states. For others it’s a utopian world in utter harmony. But there is no language in the Final Statement of the NPT Review and there is no language in the Nuclear Posture Review that there are preconditions to beginning this process of making progress to move toward negotiating the elimination of nuclear weapons. There is no legal basis for that position.


    It is a political basis and it is for countries’ leaders, and all of us, to educate the public on the consequences of not commencing to more substantially work on nuclear disarmament now.


    There appear to be three paths before us:


    One is ad hoc incremental steps with numerous preconditions before actually commencing the real work of negotiating disarmament.


    Two is beginning the creation of a comprehensive framework that incorporates both incremental steps, but insures the clarity of purpose of disarmament, thus forming a basis to critique diversions from the disarmament process and a context to integrate many programs and approaches.


    Third is a fast-track toward a convention with prompt commencement of preparatory work, leading to negotiations as early as possible.


    I think the latter two are much preferred and the ad hoc incremental approach is proving to be too slow.


    I believe that what can drive this process is the understanding that nuclear weapons are morally, culturally, and humanly repugnant.


    Imagine if the Biological Weapons Convention said that no countries can use smallpox or polio as a weapon, but nine countries can use the plague as a weapon.  We would all say this is incoherent and utterly immoral.  We recognize that the plague is unacceptable.


    The weapon itself is unacceptable. It is not legitimate, legal, or moral for any country, good or bad, to use or threaten to use such a weapon. Such conduct would clearly violate our most basic universal civilized standards which are embodied in international humanitarian law. That is why in the final statement of the 2010 NPT Review Process one of the most important elements is the explicit, positive, and unambiguous commitment to the application of international humanitarian law in nuclear weapons policy.


    This is an area for nuclear disarmament advocacy that should be utilized very forcefully. International humanitarian law is the body of law that governs the use of force in war. It prohibits the use of weapons that are unable to discriminate between civilians and combatants. It necessitates that all weapons must be proportionate to specific military objectives. They must not cause unnecessary or aggravated suffering even to combatants. They must not affect states that are not parties to the conflict, and  they must not cause severe, widespread, or long-term damage to the environment. The International Court of Justice in its landmark advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons highlighted the fact that it is impossible to control nuclear weapons in space and time.


    Indeed, one can with great imagination imagine certain uses that would be compliant with international humanitarian law. A depth charge in the high seas might do so. A small nuke in a desert might do so. But the vast majority of missions and deployments of nuclear weapons are not those exceptions. The vast majority of deployments and missions of nuclear weapons  violate those principles of international humanitarian law.  That highlights the need to operationalize creating the framework of instruments needed to eliminate nuclear weapons, begin the preparatory process for a convention and begin that process now.
    The threat covers everyone on the planet and thus every state, not just nuclear weapon states, have a responsibility to start this process.


    There are no good reasons to wait and there are many good reasons to seize this political moment, a moment where those states that possess nuclear weapons are not existential enemies.


    The global economy has become one fabric. Today, as never before, we are communicating ideas, passions, and art without borders. We share a common climate, common oceans, and it is time that we realized we share a common future. The security our children deserve requires global security with multinational cooperation based on the rule of law. When it comes to nuclear weapons, the pursuit of national self interest must not be distorted by the provincialism of national myopia. Realism requires common efforts. It is in the interest of every nation to work to eliminate nuclear weapons.  We live in one world. It is time that we started living in a civilized fashion. As the late Senator Alan Cranston used to say, “Nuclear weapons are unworthy of civilization.”  We have to get rid of them.  Thank you.

  • The High Costs of Nuclear Arsenals

    David KriegerNuclear weapons are costly in many ways.  They change our relationship to other nations, to the earth, to the future and to ourselves.


    In the mid-1990s a group of researchers at the Brookings Institution did a study of US expenditures on nuclear weapons.  They found that the US had spent $5.8 trillion between 1940 and 1996 (in constant 1996 dollars). 


    This figure was informally updated in 2005 to $7.5 trillion from 1940 to 2005 (in constant 2005 dollars).  Today the figure is approaching $8 trillion, and that amount is for the US alone.


    There are currently nine countries with a total of over 20,000 nuclear weapons, spending $105 billion annually on their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems.  That will amount to more than $1 trillion over the next decade.  The US accounts for about 60 percent of this amount.


    The World Bank has estimated that $40 to $60 billion in annual global expenditures would be sufficient to meet the eight agreed-upon United Nations Millennium Development Goals for poverty alleviation by 2015. 


    Meeting these goals would eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality/empowerment; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop partnerships for development.


    The US is now spending over $60 billion annually on nuclear weapons and this is expected to rise to average about $70 billion annually over the next decade.  The US spends more than the other eight nuclear weapons states combined. 


    We are now planning to modernize our nuclear weapons infrastructure and also our nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.  This was part of the deal that President Obama agreed to for getting the New START agreement ratified in the Senate.  It may prove to be a bad bargain.


    The US foreign aid contribution in 2010 was $30 billion; in the same year, we spent $55 billion on our nuclear arsenal.  Which expenditures keep us safer?


    Another informative comparison is with the regular annual United Nations budget of $2.5 billion and the annual UN Peacekeeping budget of $7.3 billion.  UN and Peacekeeping expenditures total to about $10 billion, which is less than one-tenth of what is being spent by the nine nuclear weapon states for maintaining and improving their nuclear arsenals.


    The annual UN budget for its disarmament office (United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs) is $10 million.  The nuclear weapons states spend more than that amount on their nuclear weapons every hour.  Or, to put it another way, the nine nuclear weapons states annually spend 10,000 times more for their nuclear arsenals than the United Nations spends to pursue all forms of disarmament, including nuclear disarmament.


    The one place the US is saving money on its nuclear weapons is where it should be spending the most, and that is on the dismantlement of the retired weapons.  The amount that the US spends on dismantlement of its nuclear weapons has dropped significantly under the Obama administration from $186 million in 2009 to $96 million in 2010 to $58 million in 2011.  In the 1990s the US dismantled more than 1,000 nuclear weapons annually.  We dismantled 648 weapons in 2008 and only 260 in 2010.


    The US has about 5,000 nuclear weapons awaiting dismantlement, which, at the current rate of dismantlement, will take the US about 20 years.  There are another 5,000 US nuclear weapons that are either deployed or held in reserve.


    Beyond being very costly to maintain and improve, nuclear weapons have changed us and cost us in many other ways.


    They have undermined our respect for the law.  How can a country respect the law and be perpetually engaged in threatening mass murder?


    These weapons have also undermined our sense of reason, balance and morality.  They are designed to kill massively and indiscriminately – men, women and children.


    They have increased our secrecy and undermined our democracy.  Can you put a cost on losing our democracy?


    Uranium mining, nuclear tests and nuclear waste storage for the next 240,000 years have incalculable costs.  They are a measure of our hubris, as are the weapons themselves.


    Nuclear weapons – perhaps more accurately called instruments of annihilation – require us to play Russian Roulette with our common future.  What is the cost of threatening to foreclose the future?  What is the cost of actually doing so?

  • A Farewell to Nuclear Arms

    Mikhail GorbachevTwenty-five years ago this month, I sat across from Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland to negotiate a deal that would have reduced, and could have ultimately eliminated by 2000, the fearsome arsenals of nuclear weapons held by the United States and the Soviet Union.


    For all our differences, Reagan and I shared the strong conviction that civilized countries should not make such barbaric weapons the linchpin of their security. Even though we failed to achieve our highest aspirations in Reykjavik, the summit was nonetheless, in the words of my former counterpart, “a major turning point in the quest for a safer and secure world.”


    The next few years may well determine if our shared dream of ridding the world of nuclear weapons will ever be realized.


    Critics present nuclear disarmament as unrealistic at best, and a risky utopian dream at worst. They point to the Cold War’s “long peace” as proof that nuclear deterrence is the only means of staving off a major war.


    As someone who has commanded these weapons, I strongly disagree. Nuclear deterrence has always been a hard and brittle guarantor of peace. By failing to propose a compelling plan for nuclear disarmament, the US, Russia, and the remaining nuclear powers are promoting through inaction a future in which nuclear weapons will inevitably be used. That catastrophe must be forestalled.


    As I, along with George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and others, pointed out five years ago, nuclear deterrence becomes less reliable and more risky as the number of nuclear-armed states increases. Barring preemptive war (which has proven counterproductive) or effective sanctions (which have thus far proven insufficient), only sincere steps toward nuclear disarmament can furnish the mutual security needed to forge tough compromises on arms control and nonproliferation matters.


    The trust and understanding built at Reykjavik paved the way for two historic treaties. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty destroyed the feared quick-strike missiles then threatening Europe’s peace. And, in 1991, the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) cut the bloated US and Soviet nuclear arsenals by 80% over a decade.


    But prospects for progress on arms control and nonproliferation are darkening in the absence of a credible push for nuclear disarmament. I learned during those two long days in Reykjavik that disarmament talks could be as constructive as they are arduous. By linking an array of interrelated matters, Reagan and I built the trust and understanding needed to moderate a nuclear-arms race of which we had lost control.


    In retrospect, the Cold War’s end heralded the coming of a messier arrangement of global power and persuasion. The nuclear powers should adhere to the requirements of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty and resume “good faith” negotiations for disarmament. This would augment the diplomatic and moral capital available to diplomats as they strive to restrain nuclear proliferation in a world where more countries than ever have the wherewithal to construct a nuclear bomb.


    Only a serious program of universal nuclear disarmament can provide the reassurance and the credibility needed to build a global consensus that nuclear deterrence is a dead doctrine. We can no longer afford, politically or financially, the discriminatory nature of the current system of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”


    Reykjavik proved that boldness is rewarded. Conditions were far from favorable for a disarmament deal in 1986. Before I became Soviet leader in 1985, relations between the Cold War superpowers had hit rock bottom. Reagan and I were nonetheless able to create a reservoir of constructive spirit through constant outreach and face-to-face interaction.


    What seem to be lacking today are leaders with the boldness and vision to build the trust needed to reintroduce nuclear disarmament as the centerpiece of a peaceful global order. Economic constraints and the Chernobyl disaster helped spur us to action. Why has the Great Recession and the disastrous meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan not elicited a similar response today?


    A first step would be for the US finally to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). President Barack Obama has endorsed this treaty as a vital instrument to discourage proliferation and avert nuclear war. It’s time for Obama to make good on commitments he made in Prague in 2009, take up Reagan’s mantle as Great Communicator, and persuade the US Senate to formalize America’s adherence to the CTBT.


    This would compel the remaining holdouts – China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan – to reconsider the CTBT as well. That would bring us closer to a global ban on nuclear tests in any environment – the atmosphere, undersea, in outer space, or underground.


    A second necessary step is for the US and Russia to follow up on the New START agreement and begin deeper weapons cuts, especially tactical and reserve weapons, which serve no purpose, waste funds, and threaten security. This step must be related to limits on missile defense, one of the key issues that undermined the Reykjavik summit.


    A fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT), long stalled in multilateral talks in Geneva, and a successful second Nuclear Security Summit next year in Seoul, will help secure dangerous nuclear materials. This will also require that the 2002 Global Partnership, dedicated to securing and eliminating all weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, chemical, and biological – is renewed and expanded when it convenes next year in the US.


    Our world remains too militarized. In today’s economic climate, nuclear weapons have become loathsome money pits. If, as seems likely, economic troubles continue, the US, Russia, and other nuclear powers should seize the moment to launch multilateral arms reductions through new or existing channels such as the UN Conference on Disarmament. These deliberations would yield greater security for less money.


    But the buildup of conventional military forces – driven in large part by the enormous military might deployed globally by the US – must be addressed as well. As we engage in furthering our Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) agreement, we should seriously consider reducing the burden of military budgets and forces globally.


    US President John F. Kennedy once warned that “every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment.” For more than 50 years, humanity has warily eyed that lethal pendulum while statesmen debated how to mend its fraying cords. The example of Reykjavik should remind us that palliative measures are not enough. Our efforts 25 years ago can be vindicated only when the Bomb ends up beside the slave trader’s manacles and the Great War’s mustard gas in the museum of bygone savagery.

  • Looking Back at Reykjavik

    This article was originally published by The Hill.


    David KriegerTwenty-five years ago, on October 11-12, 1986, Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev met in Reykjavík, Iceland and came close to agreeing to eliminate their nuclear arsenals within 10 years.  The main sticking point was the US “Star Wars” missile defense technology.  Reagan wouldn’t give up its development and future deployment, and Gorbachev wouldn’t accept that. 


    The two men had the vision and the passion to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, but a difference of views about the role of missile defenses that kept them from concluding an agreement.  For Reagan, these defenses were seen as protective and helpful.  For Gorbachev, these defenses upset the strategic balance between the two countries by making the possibility of US offensive attacks more likely.  


    The summit at Reykjavik was a stunning moment in Cold War history.  It was a moment when two men, leaders of their respective nuclear-armed countries, almost agreed to rid the world of its gravest danger.  Both were ready to take a major leap from arms control negotiations to a commitment to nuclear disarmament.  Rather than seeking only to manage the nuclear arms race, they were ready to end it.  Their readiness to eliminate these weapons of annihilation caught their aides and the world by surprise.  Unfortunately, their passion for the goal of abolition could not be converted to taking the action that was necessary.


    When the two leaders met in Reykjavik, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, nearly all in the arsenals of the US and Soviet Union.  Today there is no Soviet Union, but there remain over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world, with over 95 percent in the arsenals of the US and Russia.   In 1986, there were six nuclear weapon states: the US, Russia, UK, France, China and Israel.  Today, three more countries have been added to this list: India, Pakistan and North Korea. 


    In 1986, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was in force and had been since 1972.  An important element of the Soviet position was that this treaty should remain in force, preventing a defensive arms race that would feed an offensive arms race, and maintaining treaty provisions that would prevent an arms race in outer space.  In 2002, George W. Bush unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty, and this has remained a strong element of contention between the US and Russia. 


    At the time of the summit in Reykjavik, there was a strong anti-nuclear movement in the US, the Nuclear Freeze Movement, but its goals were modest: a freeze in the size of nuclear arsenals.  Today, many people have lost interest in nuclear disarmament and it has largely slipped off the public agenda.  Public concern faded rapidly after the end of the Cold War in 1991, although serious nuclear dangers still plagued humanity then and continue to do so.  These include nuclear proliferation, nuclear accidents, nuclear terrorism, and new nuclear arms races (for example, between India and Pakistan).  As long as the weapons exist, the possibility will exist that they will be used by accident, miscalculation or design, all with tragic consequences for the target cities and for humanity.


    There were other differences in the positions of the two sides at Reykjavik that would have needed to be worked out, even had they gotten through the stumbling block of missile defenses.  While both side’s proposals called for a 50 percent reduction in strategic nuclear forces in the first five years, the proposals differed on the next five years.  The Soviet proposal called for the elimination of all remaining strategic offensive arms of the two countries by the end of the next five years.  The US proposal called for the elimination of all offensive ballistic missiles in the next five years, thus not including the elimination of strategic nuclear weapons carried on bomber aircraft.  This was not an insignificant detail.


    What is important to focus on is that these two leaders came close to achieving a goal that has eluded humanity since the violent onset of the Nuclear Age.  They demonstrated that with vision and goodwill great acts of peace are within our collective reach.  These two leaders didn’t reach quite far enough, but they paved the way for others to follow.  In the last 25 years, there has been some progress toward eliminating nuclear weapons, but not nearly enough.


    The people of the world cannot wait another 25 years for leaders like Reagan and Gorbachev to come along again.  They must raise their voices clearly and collectively for a world free of nuclear threat.  It is long past time to stop wasting our resources on these immensely destructive and outdated weapons that could be used again only at terrible cost to our common humanity.


    Five important steps, supported by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, that would move the world closer to the goal are: first, make binding pledges of No First Use of nuclear weapons to reduce concerns about surprise attacks; second, lower the alert levels of all existing nuclear weapons to prevent accidental launches; third, negotiate a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone; fourth, bring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force with the required ratifications of the treaty; and fifth, begin negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

  • 2011 Evening for Peace Message

    Our theme tonight is “From Hiroshima to Hope.” 


    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the end of a terrible war, more costly in human life than any previous war in human history.  The atomic bombings also marked the beginning of the Nuclear Age, an age characterized by its immense destructive power, a power that could leave civilization in shambles.


    In a mad arms race between the US and USSR between 1945 and 1990, nuclear weapons were created and tested that were thousands of times more powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the height of the nuclear arms race in 1986, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, with humanity precariously balanced on the rim of a nuclear precipice.  Today, more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, there are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine countries.


    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation


    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was created in 1982 to confront the challenges of this new era dominated by nuclear threat.  Our mission at the Foundation is: “To educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders.” We do this in many action-oriented ways, including through our Action Alert Network, Peace Leadership Program and this Evening for Peace.


    We hope that all of you with us this evening, and particularly the students, will be inspired to become Peace Leaders.  We need you and the world needs you.


    In this past year, the Foundation held a conference on the Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence at which we took a hard look at the myths surrounding nuclear deterrence and developed the Santa Barbara Declaration, Reject Nuclear Deterrence: An Urgent Call to Action. This Declaration was placed in the Congressional Record by Representative Lois Capps.


    We also worked with the Swiss government in holding a conference at the United Nations in Geneva on the need to lower the alert status of nuclear weapons.  There are still some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.  This is truly MAD.


    We held another conference in Geneva this year supported by the government of Kazakhstan on the need to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force.  President Clinton signed this treaty in 1996, but the Senate voted down ratification in 1999 and still has not ratified it 15 years after it was signed. 


    The Foundation’s membership has grown to nearly 50,000. We have more than 2,500 participants in our Peace Leadership program. More than 600,000 unique viewers visit our websites annually. We have sent more than 70,000 messages on timely nuclear issues to political leaders this year through our Action Alert Network, and we’ve had some recent successes, including stopping a missile launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the International Day of Peace.


    We have also networked with like-minded organizations throughout the world on our common goal of achieving a more peaceful and nuclear weapon-free world.  In addition, 12 hardworking and committed interns from around the country have participated in many aspects of the Foundation’s work in 2011.


    The Hibakusha


    In all our work at the Foundation, we have taken strength from the spirit of Hiroshima and its survivors, the hibakusha.  Hiroshima is more than a city. As the first city to be attacked by a nuclear bomb, it is a symbol of the wanton destructiveness of nuclear weapons.  Along with the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki three days later, some 220,000 people died by the end of 1945 as a result of the two atomic bombings.


    The survivors of the bombings, the hibakusha, have had an unconquerable spirit of hope and commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons. They have not only rebuilt their flattened cities and their lives, but they have taken it upon themselves to speak out so that their past does not become the future of some other city or of humanity as a whole. The hibakusha have said, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.” They have stood firmly for a human future, seeking the abolition of all nuclear weapons. 


    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation we share the passion, commitment and hope of the hibakusha for achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. 


    Shigeko Sasamori, thank you for all you’ve done.  Your life and the lives of Kaz Suyeishi and Kikuko Otake, and all the other hibakusha you represent this evening give us hope and strength to persevere. 


    So does the life of our next honoree.


    Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba


    It is now my privilege to introduce Tadatoshi Akiba, the recipient of the Foundation’s 2011 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.  In his early career, he was a professor of mathematics at Tufts University and later a professor of humanities at Hiroshima Shudo University.  He served in the Japanese Diet, Japan’s House of Representatives, from 1990 to 1999.  He then served as the Mayor of Hiroshima from 1999 to 2011.  During his 12 years as mayor, he served as the president of Mayors for Peace, and oversaw the growth of this organization from some 440 members to nearly 5,000.  Under Mayor Akiba’s leadership, Mayors for Peace initiated the 2020 Vision Campaign, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons by the year 2020, and also the campaign, Cities Are Not Targets, a petition drive that asserts, “No!  You may not target cities.  You may not target children.”
    For his work for peace, Mayor Akiba has received many awards, including the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Award, also known as the Asian Nobel Prize.


    I have known Mayor Akiba since shortly after he became mayor, when I visited him in Hiroshima.  I have admired his energy and eloquence on behalf of the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Mayors for Peace.  He has given leadership to mayors throughout the world to take a stand for abolishing nuclear weapons.  He is an honorable man who is dedicated to eliminating the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. 


    On behalf of the Directors and members of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, I am pleased to present the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2011 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award to Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba.

  • 2011 Earth Charter Award

    David KriegerI’m honored to receive this Earth Charter Award from Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions, and particularly an award presented in memory of two dedicated and lifelong peace makers, Bill Hammaker and Betty Eagle. 


    The Earth Charter is a great collaborative and visionary document.  Its words are both poetic and inspirational.  It opens we this passage: “We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny.”


    How succinct.  How beautiful.  How true.


    I believe we should all strive to live as world citizens.  I believe strongly in the principles embodied in the Earth Charter, including those for which this award is given: democracy, nonviolence and peace.  They are, at the same time, both goals to achieve and maintain, and a way to live our lives. 


    Democracy, from my perspective, means the opportunity for all members of a society to participate fully and fairly in the political process.  That possibility has been usurped in our political process by the power of money to buy candidates, legislators and legislation.  Regardless of what they may rule at the Supreme Court, as they did in Citizens United, money cannot be allowed to equate to free speech in democratic elections.  We can do far better than we have in making our institutions and political process open and fair.


    It concerns me greatly that our democracy, such as it is, has become so militarized.  We now spend more than half of the discretionary funds in our national budget on the military, some $700 billion annually.  This does not include the tens of billions of dollars we also spend for nuclear weaponry through the Department of Energy, or the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the interest on the national debt to pay for our foreign wars.  We spend more on our military than all other countries in the world combined.


    We also have more than 700 military bases and our powerful naval fleets spread throughout the world.  We are the only country on Earth that does this.  We are an empire without formal subjects, but we bind countries and leaders to us by our economic power to reward and punish and by the implied threat of our military might.


    A militarized democracy with global reach becomes a militarized empire.  It fights wars of its choosing, despite its obligations under international law, and its people are easily manipulated and lied into war.  The US is now fighting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and something less than wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.  We are developing a new technology of warfare, based on sanitized long-distance killing with drones and a Global Strike Force that allows the US to attack with no risk of taking casualties.  Recently we have assassinated two American citizens in Yemen using drones.  President Obama signed off on these assassinations.  So much for due process of the law!


    The Global Strike Force plans to replace nuclear warheads with powerful conventional warheads on some inter-continental ballistic missiles, making it possible to attack any target on the globe in under an hour.  Drones and the Global Strike Force make long-distance killing more possible, but no more palatable. 


    Nonviolence is a strategy for social change.  It is more powerful than weapons of war.  These can kill and maim, but they have far less power to influence the human heart than techniques of nonviolence.  The world moves in strange ways.  Gandhi was the great leader of a nonviolent movement to end colonialism in India.  He was influenced by Thoreau and Tolstoy, and in turn he influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and many other leaders of nonviolent revolutions. 


    Nonviolence is the means to bring about a new world order, one based upon peace and justice.  We have seen it again show its remarkable power during the Arab Spring.  We are witnessing it show its power now on Wall Street in what will hopefully become an American Fall.


    A.J. Muste said this about peace: “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”  Without achieving peace in the Nuclear Age, we are all – wherever we live on the planet – potential victims of nuclear annihilation.  Nuclear weapons go beyond the homicide and genocide of warfare, and make possible omnicide, the death of all. 


    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which I helped found three decades ago, works to abolish nuclear weapons.  It is a stretch even to call them weapons.  They are the ultimate long-distance killing devices, making the destruction of our world, including all that we hold dear, all too possible. 


    By our capacity for destruction, we have reached a point in our societal evolution at which peace is not only desirable but necessary for our survival – peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age.  The questions I ask myself are these: Will humanity choose peace?  Will we grow up and put away our adolescent resort to violence as a means of resolving conflicts?  Will we awaken in time to avert catastrophe?


    The answers to these questions remain unclear, but it is clear that we are at a point of decision.  Everything begins with choice and intention.  We need to make the right choices and we need to set our intention to build a new world on a foundation of peace.  We need to stop wasting our resources on war and its preparation.  We need to find news ways to appreciate the miracle of life – our own and others.  We need to become planetary patriots, replacing the acronym MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) with a new acronym: PASS (Planetary Assured Security and Survival).  It is our job to pass the planet on intact to new generations.


    Our world badly needs peace leadership if we are to create peace.  I urge each of you to be a peace leader by speaking out and acting for peace.  There are many areas of study and training, but a critical one that is often overlooked is peace leadership.  This training is one of our most important projects at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  I hope you all will join in this essential effort, keeping in mind the final words of the Earth Charter: “Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life.”


    There is so much left to do.  How can we not commit to this beautiful struggle?


    None of us should be content to sit on the sidelines when there is so much to be done.  Despite all the world’s serious problems, and there are many, we must choose hope, for it is hope that propels us to action.  The opposite of hope is despair, which leads to indifference and inaction.  So, I urge you to see hope as a choice, and choose it and live as though we can and will change the world.