(Egypt, 2011)
the people in the streets and squares
making demands by their presence
the army refusing to shoot their guns
into the crowds of people
The people riding on army tanks
raising their arms with signs of victory
the dictator locked in his palace
knowing he has lost his grip
the people standing in the shadow
of Gandhi and King
the dictator cowering in the shadow
of his own history
The overarching goal of this conference is to examine the dangers of the theory known as nuclear deterrence, and to explore ways to successfully communicate the fallacies inherent in that theory to people everywhere. In this paper I will address several concrete examples of nuclear deterrence based errors, and will also describe some of the social and psychological obstacles which cause many people to ignore the distinct omnicidal nuclear threat to life on this Planet. Finally, I will suggest several excellent educational resources which are available to help nuclear disarmament advocates overcome these obstacles as they work to mobilize individuals and groups to eliminate the overall nuclear danger.
First, let us define nuclear deterrence. According to the New American Foundation:
“Nuclear deterrence is the belief that states can protect themselves by credibly threatening to impose unacceptable costs on an adversary in the event of an attack. Those unacceptable costs typically entail the wholesale slaughter of an adversary’s population centers (counter force) using nuclear weapons.
(http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/rethinking_nuclear_weapons)
In their DVD ” The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence”, David Krieger, Rick Wayman and Eric Choquette detail the many flaws which underpin nuclear deterrence theory.
(www.archive.org/details/The_Myth_of_Nuclear_Deterrence).
In a summary of the DVD’s key points, Professor Martin Hellman says:
• “Although often advanced as if it were proven fact, nuclear deterrence is really an unproven theory about human behavior. That it works is a myth, and there is significant evidence to the contrary;
• Nuclear deterrence cannot deter terrorists;
• Nuclear deterrence assumes rational leaders. That is a questionable assumption when war looms;
• If, as advertised, nuclear deterrence ensured peace, we would encourage global nuclear proliferation. World peace would follow;
• If military leaders really believed that nuclear deterrence worked, they wouldn’t be so concerned with missile defense;
• Belief in the myth of nuclear deterrence creates a false sense of security that hampers efforts to solve the real problems. We need to move from Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Survival.”
(http://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/the-myth-of-nuclear–
deterrence)
One of the primary dangers of nuclear deterrence is its instability in terms
of potential technical and human error. In a 1969 presentation at the Missouri Peace Study Institute, eminent economist and peace scholar Kenneth Boulding said of nuclear deterrence: ” It is a threat system which says if you do bad to me, I will do bad to you. Therefore, no one will do bad to anyone.” In expanding that concept, Professor Boulding also noted, that for mutual threat systems to be viable, they also have to be completely stable. Thus, such stability demands absolute control by the chief threateners, namely, the heads of state of the adversarial nations. Unfortunately, absolute control has been absent on many occasions since 1945. To make matters worse, there have also been numerous false alarms, accidents, miscommunications and other unanticipated events which came very close to triggering World War III, during the last 65 years.
(see: http://www.nuclearfiles.org)
In 1969, I interviewed several U.S. Air Force officers who were stationed at Whiteman Air Force Missouri, and whose job it was to launch nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union if so ordered. One of those launch officers, a young captain, told me: ” The fact is, it is possible for four officers in a Minuteman squadron to launch and start World War III without authorization from anyone. If four officers, in two capsules decide to turn their keys and launch, then they can do so without orders from anyone. There is no absolute guarantee that orders have to be followed. Naturally, this would be ‘illegal”, but who would be around to punish them ?”
Clearly this four man launch scenario ran counter to Kenneth Boulding’s stability criterion. Fortunately, such unauthorized missile launches are said to be no longer possible. Lets hope that is true for both U.S. and Russian nuclear missile systems. The point is that those who have long praised the past safety record of nuclear launch and control procedures might want to rethink that belief.
In 1994, I wrote the late Congressman Ted Weiss of New York concerning the risk of an unauthorized nuclear weapons launch by a U.S. Trident submarine commander. In a letter dated June 15, 1984, he said: “In response to your request, I contacted the Congressional Liaison Office of the Department of the Navy. An officer for the Navy Department informed me that with the support of as few as three other officers, the commander of a Trident submarine could launch an unauthorized attack against Soviet targets … (and) … a conspiracy to engineer an unauthorized launch of a Trident’s missiles could take as few as four officers to accomplish. To be successful, however, such a conspiracy would require the support of the submarine’s radio operator and communications officer, who are responsible for receiving transmissions from the President, and the crew members responsible for actually preparing the missiles for launch.”
Here, again, we had a situation which failed to meet the stability criterion for nuclear deterrence. If such historical weaknesses existed with U.S. command and control, we must wonder what the situation was, and is, with Soviet and Russian ballistic missiles. Are there similar weaknesses in those systems today? We could go on at length concerning past miscommunications, errors and accidents related to nuclear weapons. (See: www.nuclearfiles.org). However, space will not permit an in depth look at all of those phenomena. But, since this conference is primarily concerned with the imminent dangers of nuclear deterrence, I do want to note two past examples of those dangers.
On September 26, 1983, the alarms in a Soviet early warning bunker, just south of Moscow, sounded as a computer screens indicated that the United States had launched a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. The officer in charge of the bunker and its 200 officers and enlisted personnel was Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov. His job was to monitor incoming satellite signals and report directly to the Russian early-warning system headquarters if indicators revealed that a U.S. missile attack was underway. “For several minutes, Col. Petrov held a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other as alarms continued blaring, red lights blinking, and the computers reporting that U.S. missiles were on their way. In the midst of this horrific chaos and terror, with the prospect of the end of civilization itself, Petrov made a historic decision not to alert higher authorities, believing in his gut and hoping with all that is sacred, that contrary to what all the sophisticated equipment was reporting, this alarm was in error… As agonizing minutes passed, Petrov’s decision proved correct. It was a computer error that signaled a U.S. attack.” (Association of World Citizens News-letter, Fall 2004, p.1.)
Had Col. Petrov obeyed standard operating procedures by reporting the erroneous information, it is likely that Soviet missiles would have devastated all major U.S. cities, and the Pentagon would have retaliated. Accordingly, we would not be here today to discuss the myth of nuclear deterrence, and how to put an end to that flawed concept.
On January 25, 1995, another potentially disastrous early warning error occurred when a Russian radar mistook a U.S. scientific research rocket launched from Norway as an incoming nuclear strike from a U.S. Trident submarine. Even though the United States had notified Russia it would launch a non-military research rocket, those in control of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons did not receive the message. Fortunately, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, a man with a drinking problem, who had three minutes to order a retaliatory strike, elected to “ride out” the crisis and did not launch the thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles available on his command. (http://www.trivalleycares.org/prnov99.htm)
Given such close calls, why was there no great public outcry regarding the dangers of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons? First, these incidents were not widely publicized at the time of their occurrence. Second, there are a host of social and psychological mechanisms which were operable then, as they are today, which prevent most individuals from directing serious attention to, and confronting the potential destruction of themselves, their children and people everywhere.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s DVD “Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future: How You Can Help” discusses three such obstacles, namely: ignorance, fear and apathy. My own research strongly supports the DVD’s assumptions regarding those factors. With regard to psychological denial, it is the case that when a potentially horrific atrocity such as nuclear annihilation is discussed, many folks simply experience the “glazed eye” effect, and proceed to stick their heads in the sand (the Ostrich response). Such individuals usually ignore the problem and distance themselves from it by declaring that political, military and scientific experts know how to handle the situation, and it is their job to do so. If the person’s denial runs deeply enough, it is very difficult to engage him or her in a serious dialogue regarding the nuclear threat. In some cases, however, a simple non-academic explanation of psychological denial as it applies to nuclear deterrence will increase the readiness, openness, and willingness of individuals and groups to carefully focus on the topic.
Two other serious psychological blocks to nuclear disarmament dialogue were described by the late Professor Jerome D. Frank of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Frank described those mechanisms as “insensitivity to the remote”; and “habituation”. Regarding insensitivity he said:
” Human sense organs are magnificently equipped to detect tiny changes in the environment – a few parts of illumination gas in a million parts of air brings the housewife rushing into the kitchen; a match flaring a quarter of a mile away on a dark night instantly flags an onlooker’s attention. Only the environmental events within the range of our sense organs matter, and like our ancestors, we have no biological need to detect and respond to stimuli that do not impinge on any sense organ. With distant events becoming increasingly vital to our safety, this deficiency – “insensitivity to the remote” is a particularly important source of the general failure to respond with appropriate vigor to the dangers of nuclear weapons.”
One way to deal with such insensitivity is to remind individuals and groups that decision making time for the launching of U.S. and Russian nuclear missiles is very short (as few as 3 minutes), and launch to landing times are 25 minutes or less.
“The Timeline for Catastrophe” table attached to this paper contains such data, and is one tool that brings the threat of nuclear war out of the abstract into the concrete.
Dr. Frank described “habituation” as follows:
“Habituation, another property of our biological equipment, also impedes adequate appreciation of the nuclear danger. Survival in the wild requires the ability not only to detect tiny changes in the environment, but also to stop detecting them if nothing happens. If an animal kept on attending to every stimulus, his capacity to sense possible fresh dangers would be swamped. Therefore continuing stimuli, except painful ones which represent a continuing danger, rapidly stop registering, thus freeing the sense organs to pick up new ones. The phenomenon is familiar to all of us – a person moving to a busy street soon sleeps through the traffic noise that first kept him awake. As long as it is not overwhelmingly unpleasant or dangerous, any persistent environmental feature gradually comes to be taken for granted. One is reminded of Alexander Pope’s comment on vice:
‘A monster of such evil mien/as to be hated needs but to be seen/ but seen too oft, familiar with her face, /we first endure, then pity, then embrace’.”
“As a new form of destructive power, the Hiroshima atom bomb, with an explosive equivalent of two thousand tons of TNT created considerable apprehension. Since then, the size of available nuclear weapons has about doubled annually, until today (in 1967) the world’s stockpiles total at least 50 BILLION tons. We should be terrified, but because of habituation and insensitivity to the remote we are not.”
( Frank, J.D., 1967. Sanity and Survival in the Nuclear Age: Psychological Aspects of War and Peace: New York: Random House, pp.26-27).
Linguistic Psychologist Charles Osgood also addressed the denial problem as a serious obstacle to nuclear disarmament education and promotion when he explained that many people simply refuse to think about negatives like nuclear extinction. According to the professor, this is particularly prevalent when negatives “… seem remote in time, and are highly symbolic in nature.” In such situations people are ” … less likely to try to do anything about them until it’s too late. Seated in the backyard on a nice Spring day, watching the kids play and sipping a beer, the Neanderthal within us simply cannot conceive of trees suddenly blackened and the voice of the children stilled – or there being no more beer.”
(GRIT: ” A Strategy for Survival in Mankind’s Nuclear Age” in W. Epstein, and B. Feld, eds. New Directions in Disarmament, New York, Praeger, 1981)
Marc Pilisuk and Jaime Rowen have also addressed a number of social and psychological obstacles faced by nuclear disarmament advocates when they approach different audiences with their message. In the introduction to their on-line, no-cost book USING PSYCHOLOGY TO HELP ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, they state:
“The goal for this brief handbook is to be useful for the following audiences:
• Abolition coalition activists and organizers;
• Peace movement activists;
• Supporters of other Progressive causes;
• Psychologists who wish to apply their professional knowledge to the task of abolishing the dangerous threat of nuclear weapons; and,
• Any member of the public concerned with preventing nuclear war.”
“Our intentions here are to share some knowledge and ideas to increase the efficiency of people and groups working to abolish or reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, and to remind psychologists of some of the hurdles for professional involvement in this issue. The Handbook allows you to look up a general group that you might wish to understand or to influence. It also includes a list of psychological concepts that can be applicable to the tasks of both understanding and action in the human response to weapons of mass destruction.”
The four main concept areas discussed in the book include:
• Dealing with how beliefs and attitudes about nuclear weapons are formed
• Attribution error, belief systems, cognitive dissonance, group think, obedience;
• Relevant to the motivations of people in the nuclear weapons establishment — Achievement motivation, addiction, aggression, and destructive motivation, decontextualized language, game theory, masculine identity, narcissism, patriarchy, professional identification;
• Dealing with individuals coping with threats — Alienation, death wish and apocalyptic fantasies, denial, desensitization, dissociation, fear-arousing appeals, guilt, habituation, learned helplessness, paranoia, psychic numbing, repression;
• Relevant to people opposed to nuclear weapons — Attitudes, empowerment, diffusion of information, self-actualization, social networks.
(The aforementioned book was published by Psychologists for Social
Responsibility. To retrieve an on-line, no-cost copy, simply Google:
Using Psychology to Help Abolish Nuclear Weapons)
For additional information on psychological blocks to nuclear disarmament education and citizen action, see my recent book CONFRONTING NUCLEAR WAR: THE ROLE OF EDUCATION, RELIGION, AND THE COMMUNITY, Chapter 7. The link to website for this on-line, no-cost book is: www.confrontingnuclearwar.com
David Barash and Judith Eve Lipton have also provided an analysis of psychological issues surrounding the search for nuclear disarmament. Their well written book, STOP NUCLEAR WAR: A HANDBOOK, includes a chapter titled: “Psychology: Thinking and Not Thinking About the Unthinkable”. Topics include:
• “The Neanderthal Mentality”: fighting pays; we win – you lose; either you’re with us, or you’re against us; it hasn’t happened yet, so it won’t happen.
• “Cognitive Dissonance”;
• “Nuclearism”, or the “Strangelove Syndrome”;
• “Shall We Overcome?”: Religion, Morality, and Sanity; Beyond Psychic Numbing.
(Barash, D.P. and Lipton, J.E. (1982). STOP NUCLEAR WAR; A HANDBOOK. New York: Grove Press. pp. 214-239)
I highly recommend this book.
In late 2008 through mid 2009, three separate research organizations did studies which examined public understanding and acceptance of nuclear weapons: Topos Partnership (done on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists), American Environics, and Greenberg, Quilan and Rosner. The organization, U.S. in the World, issued a summary of findings of those studies which indicated that one of the biggest challenges peace and security advocates face is the American public’s perception of nuclear weapons as a “shield” and the “best/strongest” weapon in our arsenal. Among the key recommendations of the study were two which focused directly on the dangers of nuclear deterrence:
1. “Peace and security advocates should work to help the public think about nuclear weapons in a new way, i.e., ‘reframe’ the issue to help people see that it is the existence of the weapons themselves – not who has them – that poses the primary threat to global security and national security;
2. “The fact that nuclear weapons are a source of risk – not the fact that they are morally wrong – should be presented as the underlying reason why the issue of nuclear weapons matters…. ‘morality’ arguments should not be key elements of advocates’ frame; for most of the public these are losing arguments … because they seem to place principles over safety.”
The title of the U.S in the World paper is: “Talking About Nuclear Weapons with the Persuadable Middle”. To view all of its recommendations simply Google that title.
Despite the numerous psychological mechanisms which hinder public perception and action on behalf of nuclear disarmament, it is important to note that most Americans do have an unfocused concern with the nuclear danger. A 2004 paper published by the Arms Control Association indicated that an overwhelming (84 percent) majority of U.S. citizens say that preventing the spread of nuclear weapons is a very important foreign policy goal of the United States. And, an even higher 86 percent said the United States “… should do more to work with other powers toward eliminating their nuclear weapons.”
(http://www.armscontrol.org/print/1580)
A 2008 poll by World Public Opinion.org found that in five nations with large nuclear arsenals and advanced delivery systems, large majorities favor the elimination of nuclear weapons – the U.S (77%); Russia (69%); China (83%); and Great Britain (81%). (To view the poll, Google: World Public Opinion 2008 Poll on Nuclear Weapons)
The above public attitudes regarding nuclear weapons are the good news. The bad news is, that despite such favorable opinion for nuclear disarmament, there is no substantial evidence that personal action on behalf of nuclear disarmament is high on anybody’s list of things to do, except of course for nuclear disarmament activists. Many recent polls regarding perceived public problems and priorities indicate that nuclear war prevention is nowhere to be found on the list of concerns. Typical lists of U.S. public concerns include: unemployment and jobs; federal deficit and spending; health care; war in Afghanistan; immigration, etc.
When asked directly about nuclear war, people do express their concerns. However, when asked to list problems which they feel are most pressing, nuclear war prevention is rarely mentioned. My general impression is that nuclear war is an abstraction which is basically out of sight and out of mind. And, for many, the threats of nuclear deterrence ended with the Cold War. Without question, this perception, along with the other aforementioned obstacles, has to be addressed if there is any real chance for U.S. and worldwide mobilization to end the myth of nuclear deterrence. This is not to say that we must use psychological “overkill” to the point that we psychologize every issue related to the nuclear danger. However, a case can be made that the overall problem of nuclear deterrence is a psychological one which relates directly to human perception, human attitudes, and human behavior.
Given the increasing amount of funds and resources being garnered by various NGOs for purposes of nuclear disarmament education and promotion, it would seem wise to incorporate sound psychological precepts in the preparation of all education materials, and with all other programming efforts, including those involving the mass media.
On February 6, 2011, Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years old. It is worthwhile to recall that this conservative president’s great dream was the abolition of nuclear weapons. According to his wife, Nancy, “Ronnie had many hopes for the future, and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons.”
President Reagan was a nuclear abolitionist. He believed that the only reason to have nuclear weapons was to prevent the then Soviet Union from using theirs. Understanding this, he asserted in his 1984 State of the Union Address, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” He continued, “The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”
Ronald Reagan regarded nuclear weapons, according to Nancy, as “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”
In 1986, President Reagan and Secretary General Gorbachev met for a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. In a remarkable quirk of history, the two men shared a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Despite the concerns of their aides, they came close to achieving agreement on this most important of issues. The sticking point was that President Reagan saw his Strategic Defense Initiative (missile defense) as being essential to the plan, and Gorbachev couldn’t accept this (even though Reagan promised to share the US missile defense system with the then Soviet Union). Gorbachev wanted missile defense development to be restricted to the laboratory for ten years. Reagan couldn’t accept this.
The two leaders came heartbreakingly close to ending the era of nuclear weapons, but in the end they couldn’t achieve their mutual goal. As a result, nuclear weapons have proliferated and remain a danger to all humanity. Today, we face the threat of terrorists gaining possession of nuclear weapons, and wreaking massive destruction on the cities of powerful nations. There can be no doubt that had Reagan and Gorbachev succeeded, the US and the world would be far more secure, and these men would be remembered above all else for this achievement.
In his book, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow quotes Reagan as saying, “I know that there are a great many people who are pointing to the unimaginable horror of nuclear war…. [T]o those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say, ‘I’m with you.’” Lettow also quotes Reagan as stating, “[M]y dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.”
In the 18th and 19th centuries, individuals struggled for the abolition of slavery because they understood that every man, woman and child has the right to live in freedom. Through the efforts and persistence of committed individuals like William Wilberforce in Great Britain and Frederick Douglass in the United States, institutionalized slavery was brought to an end, and humanity is better for it. In today’s world, we confront an issue of even more transcending importance, because nuclear weapons place civilization and the human species itself in danger of annihilation.
Ronald Reagan was a leader who recognized this, and worked during his presidency for the abolition of these terrible weapons. He believed, according to Nancy, that “as long as such weapons were around, sooner or later they would be used,” with catastrophic results. He understood that nuclear weapons themselves are the enemy.
Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan died before seeing his goal of abolishing nuclear weapons realized. It is up to those of us still living to complete this job. It is not a partisan issue, but rather a human issue, one that affects our common future.
This speech, commonly referred to as the “Cross of Iron” speech, was delivered by President Eisenhower to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953.
In this spring of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples.
To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.
The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world.
Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave, but it is sternly disciplined by experience. It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the chance for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what happened to the vain hope of 1945.
In that spring of victory the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument-an age of just peace. All these war-weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.
This common purpose lasted an instant and perished. The nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads.
The United States and our valued friends, the other free nations, chose one road.
The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.
The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.
First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.
Second: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only ineffective cooperation with fellow-nations.
Third: Any nation’s right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing isinalienable.
Fourth: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.
And fifth: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.
In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.
This way was faithful to the spirit that inspired the United Nations: to prohibit strife, to relieve tensions, to banish fears. This way was to control and to reduce armaments. This way was to allow all nations to devote their energies and resources to the great and good tasks of healing the war’s wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the needy, of perfecting a just political life, of enjoying the fruits of their own free toil.
The Soviet government held a vastly different vision of the future.
In the world of its design, security was to be found, not in mutual trust and mutual aid but in force: huge armies, subversion, rule of neighbor nations. The goal was power superiority at all costs. Security was to be sought by denying it to all others.
The result has been tragic for the world and, for the Soviet Union, it has also been ironic.
The amassing of the Soviet power alerted free nations to a new danger of aggression. It compelled them in self-defense to spend unprecedented money and energy for armaments. It forced them to develop weapons of war now capable of inflicting instant and terrible punishment upon any aggressor.
It instilled in the free nations-and let none doubt this-the unshakable conviction that, as long as there persists a threat to freedom, they must, at any cost, remain armed, strong, and ready for the risk of war.
It inspired them-and let none doubt this-to attain a unity of purpose and will beyond the power of propaganda or pressure to break, now or ever.
There remained, however, one thing essentially unchanged and unaffected by Soviet conduct: the readiness of the free nations to welcome sincerely any genuine evidence of peaceful purpose enabling all peoples again to resume their common quest of just peace.
The free nations, most solemnly and repeatedly, have assured the Soviet Union that their firm association has never had any aggressive purpose whatsoever. Soviet leaders, however, have seemed to persuade themselves, or tried to persuade their people, otherwise.
And so it has come to pass that the Soviet Union itself has shared and suffered the very fears it has fostered in the rest of the world.
This has been the way of life forged by 8 years of fear and force.
What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.
The worst is atomic war.
The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealthand the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.
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.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
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.
These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.
This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.
It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honest.
It calls upon them to answer the questions that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live?
The world knows that an era ended with the death of Joseph Stalin. The extraordinary 30-year span of his rule saw the Soviet Empire expand to reach from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan, finally to dominate 800 million souls.
The Soviet system shaped by Stalin and his predecessors was born of one World War. It survived the stubborn and often amazing courage of second World War. It has lived to threaten a third.
Now, a new leadership has assumed power in the Soviet Union. It links to the past, however strong, cannot bind it completely. Its future is, in great part, its own to make.
This new leadership confronts a free world aroused, as rarely in its history, by the will to stay free.
This free world knows, out of bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty.
It knows that the defense of Western Europe imperatively demands the unity of purpose and action made possible by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, embracing a European Defense Community.
It knows that Western Germany deserves to be a free and equal partner in this community and that this, for Germany, is the only safe way to full, final unity.
It knows that aggression in Korea and in southeast Asia are threats to the whole free community to be met by united action.
This is the kind of free world which the new Soviet leadership confront. It is a world that demands and expects the fullest respect of its rights and interests. It is a world that will always accord the same respect to all others.
So the new Soviet leadership now has a precious opportunity to awaken, with the rest of the world, to the point of peril reached and to help turn the tide of history.
Will it do this?
We do not yet know. Recent statements and gestures of Soviet leaders give some evidence that they may recognize this critical moment.
We welcome every honest act of peace.
We care nothing for mere rhetoric.
We are only for sincerity of peaceful purpose attested by deeds. The opportunities for such deeds are many. The performance of a great number of them waits upon no complex protocol but upon the simple will to do them. Even a few such clear and specific acts, such as the Soviet Union’s signature upon the Austrian treaty or its release of thousands of prisoners still held from World War II, would be impressive signs of sincere intent. They would carry a power of persuasion not to be matched by any amount of oratory.
This we do know: a world that begins to witness the rebirth of trust among nations can find its way to a peace that is neither partial nor punitive.
With all who will work in good faith toward such a peace, we are ready, with renewed resolve, to strive to redeem the near-lost hopes of our day.
The first great step along this way must be the conclusion of an honorable armistice in Korea.
This means the immediate cessation of hostilities and the prompt initiation of political discussions leading to the holding of free elections in a united Korea.
It should mean, no less importantly, an end to the direct and indirect attacks upon the security of Indochina and Malaya. For any armistice in Korea that merely released aggressive armies to attack elsewhere would be fraud.
We seek, throughout Asia as throughout the world, a peace that is true and total.
Out of this can grow a still wider task-the achieving of just political settlements for the otherserious and specific issues between the free world and the Soviet Union.
None of these issues, great or small, is insoluble-given only the will to respect the rights of all nations.
Again we say: the United States is ready to assume its just part.
We have already done all within our power to speed conclusion of the treaty with Austria, which will free that country from economic exploitation and from occupation by foreign troops.
We are ready not only to press forward with the present plans for closer unity of the nations of Western Europe by also, upon that foundation, to strive to foster a broader European community, conducive to the free movement of persons, of trade, and of ideas.
This community would include a free and united Germany, with a government based upon free and secret elections.
This free community and the full independence of the East European nations could mean the end of present unnatural division of Europe.
As progress in all these areas strengthens world trust, we could proceed concurrently with the next great work-the reduction of the burden of armaments now weighing upon the world. To this end we would welcome and enter into the most solemn agreements. These could properly include:
The limitation, by absolute numbers or by an agreed international ratio, of the sizes of the military and security forces of all nations.
A commitment by all nations to set an agreed limit upon that proportion of total production of certain strategic materials to be devoted to military purposes.
International control of atomic energy to promote its use for peaceful purposes only and to insure the prohibition of atomic weapons.
A limitation or prohibition of other categories of weapons of great destructiveness.
The enforcement of all these agreed limitations and prohibitions by adequate safe-guards, including a practical system of inspection under the United Nations.
The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex. Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula. But the formula matters less than the faith-the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively.
The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need.
The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and by timber and by rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are needs that challenge this world in arms.
This idea of a just and peaceful world is not new or strange to us. It inspired the people of the United States to initiate the European Recovery Program in 1947. That program was prepared to treat, with like and equal concern, the needs of Eastern and Western Europe.
We are prepared to reaffirm, with the most concrete evidence, our readiness to help build a world in which all peoples can be productive and prosperous.
This Government is ready to ask its people to join with all nations in devoting a substantial percentage of the savings achieved by disarmament to a fund for world aid and reconstruction. The purposes of this great work would be to help other peoples to develop the underdeveloped areas of the world, to stimulate profitability and fair world trade, to assist all peoples to know the blessings of productive freedom.
The monuments to this new kind of war would be these: roads and schools, hospitals and homes, food and health.
We are ready, in short, to dedicate our strength to serving the needs, rather than the fears, of the world.
We are ready, by these and all such actions, to make of the United Nations an institution that can effectively guard the peace and security of all peoples.
I know of nothing I can add to make plainer the sincere purpose of the United States.
I know of no course, other than that marked by these and similar actions, that can be called the highway of peace.
I know of only one question upon which progress waits. It is this:
What is the Soviet Union ready to do?
Whatever the answer be, let it be plainly spoken.
Again we say: the hunger for peace is too great, the hour in history too late, for any government to mock men’s hopes with mere words and promises and gestures.
The test of truth is simple. There can be no persuasion but by deeds.
Is the new leadership of Soviet Union prepared to use its decisive influence in the Communist world, including control of the flow of arms, to bring not merely an expedient truce in Korea but genuine peace in Asia?
Is it prepared to allow other nations, including those of Eastern Europe, the free choice of their own forms of government?
Is it prepared to act in concert with others upon serious disarmament proposals to be made firmly effective by stringent U.N. control and inspection?
If not, where then is the concrete evidence of the Soviet Union’s concern for peace?
The test is clear.
There is, before all peoples, a precious chance to turn the black tide of events. If we failed to strive to seize this chance, the judgment of future ages would be harsh and just.
If we strive but fail and the world remains armed against itself, it at least need be divided no longer in its clear knowledge of who has condemned humankind to this fate.
The purpose of the United States, in stating these proposals, is simple and clear.
These proposals spring, without ulterior purpose or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all peoples–those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country.
They conform to our firm faith that God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil.
They aspire to this: the lifting, from the backs and from the hearts of men, of their burden of arms and of fears, so that they may find before them a golden age of freedom and of peace.
This article was originally published by TomDispatch.com.
In defense circles, “cutting” the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation. Americans should not confuse that talk with reality. Any cuts exacted will at most reduce the rate of growth. The essential facts remain: U.S. military outlays today equal that of every other nation on the planet combined, a situation without precedent in modern history.
The Pentagon presently spends more in constant dollars than it did at any time during the Cold War — this despite the absence of anything remotely approximating what national security experts like to call a “peer competitor.” Evil Empire? It exists only in the fevered imaginations of those who quiver at the prospect of China adding a rust-bucket Russian aircraft carrier to its fleet or who take seriously the ravings of radical Islamists promising from deep inside their caves to unite the Umma in a new caliphate.
What are Americans getting for their money? Sadly, not much. Despite extraordinary expenditures (not to mention exertions and sacrifices by U.S. forces), the return on investment is, to be generous, unimpressive. The chief lesson to emerge from the battlefields of the post-9/11 era is this: the Pentagon possesses next to no ability to translate “military supremacy” into meaningful victory.
Washington knows how to start wars and how to prolong them, but is clueless when it comes to ending them. Iraq, the latest addition to the roster of America’s forgotten wars, stands as exhibit A. Each bomb that blows up in Baghdad or some other Iraqi city, splattering blood all over the streets, testifies to the manifest absurdity of judging “the surge” as the epic feat of arms celebrated by the Petraeus lobby.
The problems are strategic as well as operational. Old Cold War-era expectations that projecting U.S. power will enhance American clout and standing no longer apply, especially in the Islamic world. There, American military activities are instead fostering instability and inciting anti-Americanism. For Exhibit B, see the deepening morass that Washington refers to as AfPak or the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations.
Add to that the mountain of evidence showing that Pentagon, Inc. is a miserably managed enterprise: hide-bound, bloated, slow-moving, and prone to wasting resources on a prodigious scale — nowhere more so than in weapons procurement and the outsourcing of previously military functions to “contractors.” When it comes to national security, effectiveness (what works) should rightly take precedence over efficiency (at what cost?) as the overriding measure of merit. Yet beyond a certain level, inefficiency undermines effectiveness, with the Pentagon stubbornly and habitually exceeding that level. By comparison, Detroit’s much-maligned Big Three offer models of well-run enterprises.
Impregnable Defenses
All of this takes place against the backdrop of mounting problems at home: stubbornly high unemployment, trillion-dollar federal deficits, massive and mounting debt, and domestic needs like education, infrastructure, and employment crying out for attention.
Yet the defense budget — a misnomer since for Pentagon, Inc. defense per se figures as an afterthought — remains a sacred cow. Why is that?
The answer lies first in understanding the defenses arrayed around that cow to ensure that it remains untouched and untouchable. Exemplifying what the military likes to call a “defense in depth,” that protective shield consists of four distinct but mutually supporting layers.
Institutional Self-Interest: Victory in World War II produced not peace, but an atmosphere of permanent national security crisis. As never before in U.S. history, threats to the nation’s existence seemed omnipresent, an attitude first born in the late 1940s that still persists today. In Washington, fear — partly genuine, partly contrived — triggered a powerful response.
One result was the emergence of the national security state, an array of institutions that depended on (and therefore strove to perpetuate) this atmosphere of crisis to justify their existence, status, prerogatives, and budgetary claims. In addition, a permanent arms industry arose, which soon became a major source of jobs and corporate profits. Politicians of both parties were quick to identify the advantages of aligning with this “military-industrial complex,” as President Eisenhower described it.
Allied with (and feeding off of) this vast apparatus that transformed tax dollars into appropriations, corporate profits, campaign contributions, and votes was an intellectual axis of sorts — government-supported laboratories, university research institutes, publications, think tanks, and lobbying firms (many staffed by former or would-be senior officials) — devoted to identifying (or conjuring up) ostensible national security challenges and alarms, always assumed to be serious and getting worse, and then devising responses to them.
The upshot: within Washington, the voices carrying weight in any national security “debate” all share a predisposition for sustaining very high levels of military spending for reasons having increasingly little to do with the well-being of the country.
Strategic Inertia: In a 1948 State Department document, diplomat George F. Kennan offered this observation: “We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population.” The challenge facing American policymakers, he continued, was “to devise a pattern of relationships that will permit us to maintain this disparity.” Here we have a description of American purposes that is far more candid than all of the rhetoric about promoting freedom and democracy, seeking world peace, or exercising global leadership.
The end of World War II found the United States in a spectacularly privileged position. Not for nothing do Americans remember the immediate postwar era as a Golden Age of middle-class prosperity. Policymakers since Kennan’s time have sought to preserve that globally privileged position. The effort has been a largely futile one.
By 1950 at the latest, those policymakers (with Kennan by then a notable dissenter) had concluded that the possession and deployment of military power held the key to preserving America’s exalted status. The presence of U.S. forces abroad and a demonstrated willingness to intervene, whether overtly or covertly, just about anywhere on the planet would promote stability, ensure U.S. access to markets and resources, and generally serve to enhance the country’s influence in the eyes of friend and foe alike — this was the idea, at least.
In postwar Europe and postwar Japan, this formula achieved considerable success. Elsewhere — notably in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and (especially after 1980) in the so-called Greater Middle East — it either produced mixed results or failed catastrophically. Certainly, the events of the post-9/11 era provide little reason to believe that this presence/power-projection paradigm will provide an antidote to the threat posed by violent anti-Western jihadism. If anything, adherence to it is exacerbating the problem by creating ever greater anti-American animus.
One might think that the manifest shortcomings of the presence/power-projection approach — trillions expended in Iraq for what? — might stimulate present-day Washington to pose some first-order questions about basic U.S. national security strategy. A certain amount of introspection would seem to be called for. Could, for example, the effort to sustain what remains of America’s privileged status benefit from another approach?
Yet there are few indications that our political leaders, the senior-most echelons of the officer corps, or those who shape opinion outside of government are capable of seriously entertaining any such debate. Whether through ignorance, arrogance, or a lack of imagination, the pre-existing strategic paradigm stubbornly persists; so, too, as if by default do the high levels of military spending that the strategy entails.
Cultural Dissonance: The rise of the Tea Party movement should disabuse any American of the thought that the cleavages produced by the “culture wars” have healed. The cultural upheaval touched off by the 1960s and centered on Vietnam remains unfinished business in this country.
Among other things, the sixties destroyed an American consensus, forged during World War II, about the meaning of patriotism. During the so-called Good War, love of country implied, even required, deference to the state, shown most clearly in the willingness of individuals to accept the government’s authority to mandate military service. GI’s, the vast majority of them draftees, were the embodiment of American patriotism, risking life and limb to defend the country.
The GI of World War II had been an American Everyman. Those soldiers both represented and reflected the values of the nation from which they came (a perception affirmed by the ironic fact that the military adhered to prevailing standards of racial segregation). It was “our army” because that army was “us.”
With Vietnam, things became more complicated. The war’s supporters argued that the World War II tradition still applied: patriotism required deference to the commands of the state. Opponents of the war, especially those facing the prospect of conscription, insisted otherwise. They revived the distinction, formulated a generation earlier by the radical journalist Randolph Bourne, that distinguished between the country and the state. Real patriots, the ones who most truly loved their country, were those who opposed state policies they regarded as misguided, illegal, or immoral.
In many respects, the soldiers who fought the Vietnam War found themselves caught uncomfortably in the center of this dispute. Was the soldier who died in Vietnam a martyr, a tragic figure, or a sap? Who deserved greater admiration: the soldier who fought bravely and uncomplainingly or the one who served and then turned against the war? Or was the war resister — the one who never served at all — the real hero?
War’s end left these matters disconcertingly unresolved. President Richard Nixon’s 1971 decision to kill the draft in favor of an All-Volunteer Force, predicated on the notion that the country might be better served with a military that was no longer “us,” only complicated things further. So, too, did the trends in American politics where bona fide war heroes (George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John Kerry, and John McCain) routinely lost to opponents whose military credentials were non-existent or exceedingly slight (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama), yet who demonstrated once in office a remarkable propensity for expending American blood (none belonging to members of their own families) in places like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It was all more than a little unseemly.
Patriotism, once a simple concept, had become both confusing and contentious. What obligations, if any, did patriotism impose? And if the answer was none — the option Americans seemed increasingly to prefer — then was patriotism itself still a viable proposition?
Wanting to answer that question in the affirmative — to distract attention from the fact that patriotism had become little more than an excuse for fireworks displays and taking the occasional day off from work — people and politicians alike found a way to do so by exalting those Americans actually choosing to serve in uniform. The thinking went this way: soldiers offer living proof that America is a place still worth dying for, that patriotism (at least in some quarters) remains alive and well; by common consent, therefore, soldiers are the nation’s “best,” committed to “something bigger than self” in a land otherwise increasingly absorbed in pursuing a material and narcissistic definition of self-fulfillment.
In effect, soldiers offer much-needed assurance that old-fashioned values still survive, even if confined to a small and unrepresentative segment of American society. Rather than Everyman, today’s warrior has ascended to the status of icon, deemed morally superior to the nation for which he or she fights, the repository of virtues that prop up, however precariously, the nation’s increasingly sketchy claim to singularity.
Politically, therefore, “supporting the troops” has become a categorical imperative across the political spectrum. In theory, such support might find expression in a determination to protect those troops from abuse, and so translate into wariness about committing soldiers to unnecessary or unnecessarily costly wars. In practice, however, “supporting the troops” has found expression in an insistence upon providing the Pentagon with open-ended drawing rights on the nation’s treasury, thereby creating massive barriers to any proposal to affect more than symbolic reductions in military spending.
Misremembered History: The duopoly of American politics no longer allows for a principled anti-interventionist position. Both parties are war parties. They differ mainly in the rationale they devise to argue for interventionism. The Republicans tout liberty; the Democrats emphasize human rights. The results tend to be the same: a penchant for activism that sustains a never-ending demand for high levels of military outlays.
American politics once nourished a lively anti-interventionist tradition. Leading proponents included luminaries such as George Washington and John Quincy Adams. That tradition found its basis not in principled pacifism, a position that has never attracted widespread support in this country, but in pragmatic realism. What happened to that realist tradition? Simply put, World War II killed it — or at least discredited it. In the intense and divisive debate that occurred in 1939-1941, the anti-interventionists lost, their cause thereafter tarred with the label “isolationism.”
The passage of time has transformed World War II from a massive tragedy into a morality tale, one that casts opponents of intervention as blackguards. Whether explicitly or implicitly, the debate over how the United States should respond to some ostensible threat — Iraq in 2003, Iran today — replays the debate finally ended by the events of December 7, 1941. To express skepticism about the necessity and prudence of using military power is to invite the charge of being an appeaser or an isolationist. Few politicians or individuals aspiring to power will risk the consequences of being tagged with that label.
In this sense, American politics remains stuck in the 1930s — always discovering a new Hitler, always privileging Churchillian rhetoric — even though the circumstances in which we live today bear scant resemblance to that earlier time. There was only one Hitler and he’s long dead. As for Churchill, his achievements and legacy are far more mixed than his battalions of defenders are willing to acknowledge. And if any one figure deserves particular credit for demolishing Hitler’s Reich and winning World War II, it’s Josef Stalin, a dictator as vile and murderous as Hitler himself.
Until Americans accept these facts, until they come to a more nuanced view of World War II that takes fully into account the political and moral implications of the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union and the U.S. campaign of obliteration bombing directed against Germany and Japan, the mythic version of “the Good War” will continue to provide glib justifications for continuing to dodge that perennial question: How much is enough?
Like concentric security barriers arrayed around the Pentagon, these four factors — institutional self-interest, strategic inertia, cultural dissonance, and misremembered history — insulate the military budget from serious scrutiny. For advocates of a militarized approach to policy, they provide invaluable assets, to be defended at all costs.
“Senate ratification of New START was a small but valuable Christmas present for the world. Its principal value is in helping to stabilise the US-Russia nuclear relationship. However, it does nothing to reduce the threat of nuclear war. For the next ten years, over 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads on each side will remain ready for launch within half an hour, vulnerable to computer malfunction or false warning of attack. As evidence of cyberwarfare grows, this is an unacceptable perpetuation of the Cold War nuclear stand-off, sustained by complacent acceptance of the fallacies of nuclear deterrence. My focus this year, therefore, is to continue to raise awareness of the risks and consequences of nuclear deterrence failure; and to promote safer, more cost-effective strategies to deter aggression and achieve real security for all.”
— Commander Robert Green, Royal Navy (ret’d), author of Security Without Nuclear Deterrence
“Personally I want to focus more on engaging the “persuadable middle.” I thought that the polls that were taken concerning the New START treaty were revealing — the CNN poll said that 73% of Americans favored it. Opinion Research Corp. put the number at 75%. Those are landslide numbers. And if you look at the many, many editorials and op-eds that supported New START in major national publications, they were largely focused on the proposition that the treaty made us safer. The task requires thoughtfulness, dedication, and energy — but I do not think it is daunting. Primarily, I think it requires finding ways to reach people who are not already convinced.
“The problem, of course, is that the “red meat” arguments that energize the progressives (decrying American imperialism, bemoaning the evil military/industrial complex, reasserting the incredible immorality of nuclear weapons …) turn off the persuadable middle, and more temperate arguments that might appeal to the middle are scorned by the militant progressives.
“But the New START treaty did — at the very end — catch the public’s attention, and revealed that people really do want to get rid of the nuclear threat. I think that the goal for 2011 should be to build on that basic public support and to drive home the message that we as a nation are safer and more secure if these weapons can be controlled and ultimately eliminated world wide.”
— Richard Duda, founding member of the NAPF Silicon Valley Chapter
“1. The movement needs to agree on a common theme, and a compelling narrative. The right certainly works that angle, with “death tax”, “death panels”, “nuclear umbrella”, “nuclear deterrent” (see my blog, and your video The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence also hits that point), and more. Maybe something like:
Bloated nuclear arsenals are the greatest cause of our national insecurity.
or
Nuclear weapons are the greatest cause of our national insecurity.
or
A newborn child has at least a 10% risk of being killed by nuclear weapons.
A US In the World Report has some thoughts along these lines, especially about the language of risk.
“2. Getting society to reexamine the fallacious assumptions that have led us to the current crazy situation. So long as American policy is based on false premises, arms control, much less nuclear disarmament, will proceed at best in fits and starts. A critical first step is to root out the myths that cause us to take actions that are against our own best interests. I list 11 possible candidates in one of my course handouts, and there are many others. Getting consensus within the movement on which are most important, and then focusing our communal effort on those would be a big plus.
“3. Forming what I am calling pockets of nuclear awareness. Until people are aware, little of real import will happen. (The New START was only important in that rejection would have been a big setback. It is, at best, a baby step forward.) And people are social animals who require others around them to be thinking the same way or they tend to lose interest. This is explained on my web page.”
— Martin Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and founding member of the NAPF Silicon Valley Chapter.
“Treaties for the people, for the planet, are hard to come by because the politicians, owned and controlled by the non-people, the corporate glob, must ratify the same. Thus the steps are too painfully slow to save us and the world we live in. It is like nailing the occupant of a burning house to the wall, and then, some passer-by comes along and pulls out one of the hundreds of nails. And they would call that a treaty. The house is still burning.”
— Gerry Spence, trial lawyer and author
“I think that now that the two major possessors of nuclear weapons have taken this step in the right direction, the focus on stopping the acquisition of these weapons by other nations is critical. As you know, not just Iran, but Jordan, the Saudis, etc. want to or are already moving forward in the nuclear area, which is very worrisome for a myriad of reasons.”
— Riane Eisler, author, social scientist and lawyer
“Although most people, if asked directly, will say that they favor the abolition of nuclear weapons, very few have any real idea of the threat which existing nuclear arsenals pose to humans and other complex forms of life. In fact, here in the U.S., most people do not even know that immense nuclear arsenals still exist, that their own nation (and Russia) have 95% of the 22,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and that they keep 2,000 strategic nuclear weapons ready to launch with only a few minutes warning. They have no idea that just one of these weapons can instantly ignite tens or hundreds of square miles of the Earth’s surface into a gigantic nuclear firestorm, and that a hundred such firestorms could produce enough smoke to cause deadly climate change, leading to global nuclear famine.
“An uniformed public cannot make informed decisions. We are still conducting our political discussions about nuclear weapons in Cold War terms, focusing upon how we are “behind” if we don’t “modernize” our nuclear arsenal, that we are “locked into a position of permanent inferiority” by agreements with the Russians to limit our nuclear weapons. There is absolutely no discussion of the consequences of the use of existing arsenals, particularly those maintained by the US and Russia, the dialogue is dangerously out of touch with the peer-reviewed scientific predictions that *any* nuclear conflict which detonates as little as 1% of existing nuclear arsenals in cities will likely kill at least 1 billion people through nuclear famine. We must bring current scientific understandings of what nuclear war would do to the biosphere, agriculture, ecosystems and global climate into the active debate about the need for nuclear weaponry.
“Furthermore, In a time when we cannot find enough money to maintain our schools, highways, hospitals and basic infrastructure, do we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild our nuclear weapons manufacturing complex and “upgrade” nuclear weapons systems? No, just the opposite, we need stop or prevent funding for such projects, which guarantee that there will be no “world without nuclear weapons.” I am going to start ending my presentations with a chart which shows what we could do with the endless billions we spend on nuclear weaponry, something like what Eisenhower did with his “Cross of Iron” speech. We have to give concrete examples of what could be immediately gained through the elimination of insane spending for nuclear doomsday machines. We can combat the idea that nuclear spending creates jobs by giving examples of what could be done to construct, for example, needed alternative energy systems (wind, solar, tidal, etc.) that can begin rebuilding our own industrial infrastructure, which has been dismantled and shipped overseas.
“If we are going to get into a race with other nations, let it be a race towards a better human future. Building nuclear weapons does just the opposite, it paves the way for mass extinction of complex forms of life, including human life.”
— Steven Starr, senior scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility
The brutality.
The children.
The deaths of civilians.
The dreams destroyed.
The hand-to-hand combat.
The herd mentality.
The high altitude bombing.
The horror.
The apathy.
The ignorance.
The indecency.
The jingoism.
The land mines.
The defoliants.
The lies.
The long distance killing machines.
The loss of life.
The loss of limbs.
The loss of compassion.
The madness.
The manipulation.
The mothers.
The mushroom cloud.
The needless slaughter.
The patriotic songs.
The pious politicians.
The profiteers.
The propaganda.
The refugees.
The ruined lives.
The smart bombs.
The stereotyping.
The stupidity.
The suffering.
The suppression of reason.
The toll on our souls.
The trauma.
The medals dripping from the chests of generals.
The rewriting of history.
The waste, the terrible waste.
The discussion of the Tucson tragedy should be familiar, as we witness similar massacres in U.S. schools, shopping centers, and other public places played out periodically. Each time, the NRA and other gun apologists tell us that the easy accessibility of firearms, including assault weapons, had nothing to do with it. Indeed, they argue that the key to our safety is to obtain more guns.
But does the fact that nearly 100,000 Americans are shot with guns and nearly 10,000 Americans are killed with them each year really have no connection to the remarkable availability of guns in the United States?
A great deal of evidence suggests otherwise. For example, according to a recent study, when twenty-three populous, high-income countries were compared for the year 2003, it was found that, among civilians, the United States had more firearms and more handguns per capita than the other countries, as well as the most permissive gun control laws. Not surprisingly, the firearm homicide rate in the United States was 19.5 times higher than in the other countries. The U.S. unintentional firearm death rate was 5.2 times higher.
Although this death toll is bad enough, consider also the fact that the same dynamics operate in international relations. No nation in recent decades has rivaled the military might of the United States. Indeed, the U.S. government spends nearly as much on its military forces as the rest of the world combined—presumably, to keep Americans safe. But are they safe? Not long ago, the greatest terrorist attack in history occurred in the United States, and more are constantly threatened. Meanwhile, U.S. military forces have been dying or coming home crippled from two very bloody, seemingly endless wars. Could a key reason for this disastrous situation be that brandishing more and more weapons not only fails to protect us, but actually pulls us into a deadly cycle of violence?
Of course, the safety through weapons theory is particularly dangerous when it comes to nuclear weapons. Like the NRA, nuclear zealots assure us that massive nuclear arsenals will make us safer. Thus, as the price for approving the recent New START Treaty, they demanded—and received—a hefty payoff: a commitment from the Obama administration for $180 billion in funding over the next decade for “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex and the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But this kind of nuclear buildup encourages nuclear nations to do the same thing and helps convince non-nuclear nations to develop their own nuclear arms. Aren’t we supposed to be working for a world free of nuclear weapons?
Certainly, that would be a good idea. The more nuclear weapons that are available, the more likely it is that terrorists will acquire and use them, that embattled governments will employ them in their wars, and that they will be fired or exploded accidentally. We have had some close scrapes along these lines in recent years. These include terrorist nuclear plots, nations drawn to the brink of nuclear war, and the collision of nuclear submarines. Disarmament activists are sometimes accused of naïveté. But isn’t it far more naive to assume that, in an angry world bristling with nuclear weapons, they will never be used?
And so we are brought back to the mass murder in Tucson and the question: Are we safer with more firepower or less? Despite the propaganda of the gunslingers, the arms manufacturers, and the military enthusiasts, it does seem that the world would be a lot safer with fewer guns and fewer nuclear weapons.
January 17, 2011 marked the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the nation in which he warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex. I think he would be shocked to see how this influence has grown over the past half century and how it has manifested in the country’s immense military budgets, the nuclear arms race, our permanent war footing, the failure to achieve meaningful disarmament, and the illegal wars the US has initiated. In addition to all of this, there is the influence of the military-industrial complex on the media, academia, the Congress and the citizenry. It has also ensnared US allies, like those in NATO, in its net. Eisenhower believed that the only way to assure that the military-industrial complex can be meshed “with our peaceful methods and goals” is through “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”
Eisenhower was 70 years old when his term as president came to an end. He had been a General of the Army and hero of World War II, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, and for eight years the president of the United States. His Farewell Address was, above all else, a warning to his fellow Americans. He stated, “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.” He worried about what this conjunction would mean in the future, famously stating, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Eisenhower feared that this powerful complex would weaken democracy. “We must never,” he said, “let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” He felt there was only one force that could control this powerful military-industrial complex, and that was the power of the people. In Eisenhower’s view it was only “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry” that was capable of defending the republic “so that security and liberty prosper together.”
What kind of report card would President Eisenhower give our country today if he could come back and observe what has transpired over the past 50 years? For starters, I believe he would be appalled by the enormous increase in influence of the military-industrial complex. Today the military receives over half of the discretionary funds that Congress allocates, over $500 billion a year for the Department of Defense, plus the special allocations for the two wars in which the country is currently engaged. The Department of Defense budget does not take into account the interest on the national debt attributable to past wars, or the tens of billions of dollars in the Energy Department budget for nuclear arms, or the funds allocated for veterans benefits. When it is totaled, the US is spending over a trillion dollars annually on “defense.”
Surely Eisenhower would be dismayed to see how many national institutions have been drawn into and made subservient to the military-industrial complex, which some would now refer to as the military-industrial-Congressional-academic-media complex. Every district in Congress seems to have links to the complex through jobs provided by defense contractors, putting pressure on Congressional representatives to assure that public funds flow to private defense contractors. At the same time, academia and the mainstream media provide support and cover to keep public funds flowing for wars and their preparations.
Near the end of his speech, Eisenhower lamented that he had not made greater progress toward disarmament during his time in office. He said, “Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.” It was true then, and remains so today. He continued, “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment.” Indeed, there was reason for his disappointment, since the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal increased under his watch from approximately 1,400 in 1953 to over 20,000 in 1960. I suspect that he would be even more disappointed today to find that the US has not been more proactive in leading the way toward disarmament and particularly nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War.
Fifty years ago, Eisenhower feared the threat that nuclear war posed to the world and to our country, and expressed his desire for peace: “As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.” He recognized that much remains to be done to “reach the goal of peace with justice.” That was true when Eisenhower made his Farewell Address and it remains true today.
We would do well to reflect upon the deeply felt concerns of this military and political leader as he retired from public service. He prayed “that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.” That was his vision, and he passed the baton to us to overcome the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex. Our challenge is to exercise our power as citizens of a democracy and to use that power to attain a more peaceful and nuclear weapons-free world.
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“Hay que pensar en ello, nuestra democracia es una luz, un faro que irradia por el mundo porque produce un cambio en las urnas, y no por medio de explosiones, ni de la violencia que existe en muchos casos,”
Congresista Gabrielle Giffords.
Cuando Jared Lee Loughner disparó cobardemente a un grupo de personas reunidas en el ejercicio de un acto democrático fundamental, su misión era la de causar muerte, caos y consternación. La congresista demócrata Gabrielle Giffords, estaba llevando a cabo un diálogo abierto con sus electores afuera de un supermercado en Tucson, Arizona, cuando fue herida de gravedad y permanece en condición estable pero crítica. Otras 11 personas resultaron gravemente heridas.
La lista de asesinados incluye a John M. Roll, un respetado juez federal, Dorwin Stoddard quien protegió con su propio cuerpo a su esposa, Mavanell, Phyllis Schnell, una viuda y bisabuela, Gabriel Zimmerman, director asistente de la congresista Gifford en comunicaciones con la comunidad, él tenía 30 años y estaba comprometido para casarse, Dorothy Morris, una dama de 76 años. Y Christina Taylor Green, de sólo nueve años de edad.
El paso de Christina por la vida fue corto, pero de un enorme significado, como lo demuestra su optimismo, su alegría por la vida, la naturaleza, su amor por la familia, amigos y su interés en aprender cómo servir mejor a su país. Christina fue al evento de Gabrielle Gifford para aprender más sobre el proceso político.
Siendo uno de los 50 bebés nacidos en el fatídico día del 11de septiembre del 2001 presentados en el libro Rostros de la Esperanza: Bebés nacidos en el 11 de septiembre, ella y los otros bebés representan un rayo de esperanza después de uno de los acontecimientos más trágicos en la historia de EE.UU. Christina conocía el significado de haber nacido en una fecha que marcó un cambio radical en la política y las relaciones internacionales. Su deseo de aprender cómo llevar a cabo una vida democrática la llevó a ser miembro del consejo estudiantil y se convirtió en una líder en su escuela primaria de Mesa Verde. Sus padres han dicho que ella quería eliminar los odios y los prejuicios que nos dividen en vez de unirnos. Su vida fue, como la define su padre, John Green, ” ella fue vibrante, la mejor hija del mundo, y hermosos sus nueve años de existencia”
Christina formó parte de la nueva generación nacida en este siglo XXI que nos puede conducir hacia un camino para hacer los cambios urgentes que necesitamos en una sociedad cada vez más apática y egoísta.
Nosotros, en NAPF, creemos firmemente que librarnos de las armas nucleares es la misión primordial para salvaguardar a la humanidad, y ofrecemos aquí un humilde homenaje a esta niña encantadora, llena de amor para su familia y todos los que tuvieron la suerte de conocerla.
Su legado debe ser un ejemplo positivo para todos los que vivimos ahora y para las generaciones futuras.