Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Blog

  • Poverty, Tax Breaks and Militarism

    David KriegerOne of the key lessons learned by the United States during the Vietnam War was that conscription leads to middle class discontent with war.  Middle class parents joined their college-age children in protesting an illegal and brutal war.  Ultimately, these protests made the continuation of the war untenable.  A popular protest chant among college students of the era was, “Hell No, we won’t go.”


    The political and military establishment in the country found a solution to the problem of middle class protest by doing away with conscription and moving to an all volunteer military force.  As long as there was high enough unemployment and lack of affordable higher education, the military would have a large pool of young people to draw upon for its force, and foreign wars could be pursued without fear of widespread protest.  Middle class children (and, of course, upper class children) could go to college and then into the workplace undisturbed, and their parents would not be concerned or frightened by the possibility of their children being conscripted into the military in a time of war. 


    The system has worked reasonably well to dampen protest of foreign wars, even a war as egregiously illegal and needless as the war against Iraq.  As volunteers, the soldiers are more pliable and less inclined to protest even the repeated deployments to war zones that they have endured.  With rare exceptions, the soldiers seem to believe they are acting patriotically in carrying out orders, without questioning whether the wars themselves are either beneficial or legal. 


    While the country spends a great amount of money on its military forces (about one-half of the discretionary funds that are allocated annually by the Congress), this does not necessarily extend to protecting the soldiers themselves.  There have been reports of inadequate body armor for the troops, prompting communities to hold fundraising events to secure the funds to provide such protection to individual soldiers. 


    Among the lures that the military uses to fill its recruiting quotas are the promises of job security and future educational benefits.  Thus, for poorer members of the society, both jobs and educational opportunities are available through enlistment in the military.  Of course, these are only attractive to those who cannot attain them by other means.


    Recently, Simon Johnson, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, was interviewed about Obama’s proposed “compromise” with the Republicans to extend tax cuts for the top two percent of Americans.  Johnson said, as other economists have, that this deal, if enacted, would add substantially to the national debt while providing very little stimulus to the economy in return.  He recommended, as a far better alternative plan for stimulating the economy, to put the majority of the $900 billion it would cost, mostly for tax breaks for the very rich, into education.  On purely economic grounds, the funding for education, with its attendant job creation, is a far better investment in society than tax breaks for the very rich.


    But if education and job opportunities for the poorest elements of our society were available through non-military governmental incentives, perhaps impoverished young people would reject the education and job incentives offered through the military.  They would not have to risk their lives in war to get the educational and job opportunities that middle and upper class children have handed to them.  Don’t we owe all young members of our society equal access to education and the workplace, which in essence provides them with equal opportunity? 


    War should be a last resort for society.  By doing away with conscription, we have made it possible for it to be a first resort.  But we do so by structuring our society so that the poor must go through the gauntlet of the military (and in recent years also repeated tours of duty in war zones) in order to get their opportunity for higher education and gainful employment.


    If the current compromise legislation on the extension of the Bush-era tax breaks for the very rich goes through, it will be largely on the backs of the poor.  For the political class promoting this compromise, it will also have the side benefit of assuring enough poverty and unemployment so that the military will have no problem in recruiting soldiers for the ongoing wars of choice that continue to burden our society and our economy.

  • New Momentum for Nuclear Abolition: Opportunities and Obstacles

    On this tenth anniversary of the Indian Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, launched in the wake of India’s nuclear tests and Pakistan’s entry into the nuclear club as well, the world is facing ever new dangers in the nuclear age, even as these growing perils spark burgeoning new demands for nuclear disarmament across the globe. Perhaps the most unexpected call, which kicked off much of the current avalanche of new campaigns, initiatives, and projects for nuclear abolition, was an article in the Wall Street Journal, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons” in January 2007, when four rusty cold warriors, led by Henry Kissinger together with Sam Nunn, William Perry and George Schultz warned of the dangers of terrorism and nuclear proliferation and called for nuclear disarmament.


    Their article inspired a whole series of statements around the world by former military and government officials, echoing their call for a nuclear weapons free world, essentially providing  the political cover for President Obama’s Prague speech in April, 2009, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama pledged “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”– although adding that it might not be reached “in my lifetime.” His Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton subsequently misquoted him, noting that “the President has acknowledged we might not achieve the ambition of a world without nuclear weapons in our lifetime or successive lifetimes.” And then Clinton pushed the ball even further down the road, speaking about the new START Treaty with Russia, foreseeing “a goal of a world someday, in some century, free of nuclear weapons.”


    After the initial statement of Kissinger and company, the group was tagged by various journalists and pundits as “the four horsemen”, perhaps ironically unaware that the biblical reference in the New Testament to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, is to a quartet of mythical marauders representing evil, war, famine and death.  The following year, in 2009, the world welcomed a Five Point Action Plan for Nuclear Disarmament urged by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon   which included the goal of a Nuclear Weapons Convention or framework of agreements to eliminate nuclear weapons.


    Ban Ki-moon’s proposal validated at last the largely unheralded efforts of civil society, which immediately after forming the Abolition 2000 Network at the 1995 Non-proliferation Treaty Review and Extension conference (NPT), extending the 25 year old  NPT’s expiration date indefinitely,  called for negotiations on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2000. The Network’s Working Group of lawyers, scientists, and policymakers drafted a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, submitted by Costa Rica to the UN as an official document. As the millennium approached, Abolition 2000 then enrolled over 2000 members in 95 countries and kept its name, despite the failure of negotiations to materialize. Fifteen years later, the nuclear weapons convention is an idea whose time has come, with calls for negotiations arising from every part of the globe.


    The Kissinger crew noted the growing power of campaigns and initiatives including grassroots pressure on America’s NATO allies, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway for NATO to remove U.S nuclear weapons now stationed in Europe under NATO’s “nuclear sharing” policy, calls to revive the Rajiv Gandhi Plan for Nuclear Disarmament, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Global Zero, the expanding Parliamentary Network for Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament, the Mayors for Peace approaching  5,000 member cities, together with leaders around the world clamoring for negotiations to begin on a treaty to ban the bomb.  They issued a second statement one year later in 2008, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World” .  Clearly walking back from their earlier call, they warned of a “nuclear tipping point” demanding better measures to prevent nuclear terrorism and more secure controls on nuclear material and the nuclear fuel cycle, while bemoaning the fact that:
    In some respects, the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain. From the vantage point of our troubled world today, we can’t even see the top of the mountain, and it is tempting and easy to say we can’t get there from here. But the risks from continuing to go down the mountain or standing pat are too real to ignore. We must chart a course to higher ground where the mountaintop becomes more visible.


    Of course, Civil Society had no difficulty seeing the top of the mountain and was proposing to reach it by urging that negotiations begin on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons, just as the world had done for chemical and biological weapons, and landmines and cluster bombs as well.  It wasn’t as if the world had never banned a class of weapons before. With a third article this year by Kissinger and his colleagues, their lack of good faith is apparent. Titled “How to Protect Our Nuclear Deterrent”, they emphasize the importance of maintaining the credibility of the US nuclear deterrent by supporting  the Congressional drive to undercut, with a multi-billion dollar modernization program for the nuclear weaponeers, the modest START treaty  negotiated by Obama and Medvedev. 


    The treaty would cut deployed weapons in their massive arsenals of about 23,000 nuclear bombs, from 2,200 each to between 1,500 and 1,675. There are 1,000 nuclear bombs, in total, in the remaining nuclear countries—UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. START would also cut strategic bombers and land- and sea-based missiles from 1,600 each to 800. US mid-term elections with Republican control of the Congress and a diminished Democratic Senate majority,  may scuttle START’s ratification, leaving both countries without the ability to resume mutual inspections and verification of their nuclear activity which ended when the old START treaty expired in December 2009. Disturbingly, the international committee of the Russian Duma has rescinded its recommendation that Russia ratify START, pending US action, in light of the disappointing US elections results and the steep price tag the Republicans have attached to buy their votes for ratification.


    Since Russia and the US still have more than 10,000 weapons, START is only a modest step forward but one that is essential to demonstrate US and Russia willingness to tackle the unconscionable numbers of bombs in their arsenals. It was a difficult negotiation, hedged with caveats on missile defenses. The Russians are alarmed at US efforts to surround Russia with a ring of missile ”defenses”, seeking to site missile and radar bases in Poland, the Czech Republic, Rumania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, right up to the Russian border. Indeed, these START negotiations echoed the tragic lost opportunity at the Reagan-Gorbachev 1986 Reykjavik summit when negotiations for the total abolition of nuclear weapons collapsed because Reagan wouldn’t give up plans for a Strategic Defense Initiative to dominate space.


    Obama submitted START to the Senate for ratification attached to a Faustian bargain with the military-industrial-scientific-congressional complex for an additional $80 billion in new nuclear weapons testing and modernization and funding for a plutonium- pit bomb factory at Los Alamos, a uranium processing plant at Oak Ridge, and a new manufacturing facility for non-nuclear bomb parts in Kansas City—spreading the evil largesse across the whole continent– as well as an additional $100 billion for delivery systems—planes, submarines and missiles for launching nuclear bombs by air, sea and land.


    Obama also assured Congress that nothing in the START treaty would preclude the US from developing offensive missile “defenses” and its planned “prompt global strike” weapons systems,  an integral part of US plans to dominate and control the military use of space.  In October, the US and Israel were the only countries to abstain on a UN Resolution against the weaponization of space. This was actually an improvement in the US position since up to now it was the only country to vote NO on the resolution. The US has consistently blocked consensus on voting for negotiations on a draft treaty, submitted to the UN by Russia and China, to ban weapons in space.


    While the U.S. and its allies have been excoriating Pakistan for blocking consensus on proposed negotiations to cut off the production of fissile materials for “weapons purposes”, no countries are holding the U.S. to account for blocking consensus on keeping weapons out of space.  Pakistan is still playing catch up to produce nuclear materials while the other nuclear powers all have excess tons of highly enriched uranium(HEU) and plutonium(PU) from both military and civilian production. There are about 1600 tons of HEU and 500 tons of PU on our planet, enough to produce more than 120,000 nuclear weapons!


    Enacting the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty now, without moving rapidly on nuclear disarmament as well, would give an advantage to older more technologically advanced nuclear weapons states which already have excessive surpluses of bomb making materials.  And it is also an exercise in futility. By calling for the cut- off of fissile materials production only for “weapons purposes” without cutting off the production of materials such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium for so called “peaceful purposes”, the treaty would be no more than a leaking sieve as hundreds of tons of bomb-making material would continually be churned out in civilian reactors in more than 40 countries around the world.


    India was well aware of discriminatory nuclear legislation when it refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970 because the treaty provided that five existing nuclear weapons states, the US, UK, Russia, France and China, need only negotiate in “good faith” for nuclear disarmament while all the other countries of the world had to promise not to acquire nuclear weapons.  India proposed unsuccessfully that a nuclear abolition treaty for all nations be negotiated and then went on to develop its own nuclear capabilities, acquiring the bomb in 1974. In 1988 Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi proposed “An Action Plan for Ushering In a Nuclear-Weapon Free and Non-Violent World Order” which was totally ignored by the U.S although Russia expressed some interest in the plan.


    Every year since 1996, the UN General Assembly votes on a resolution to commence negotiations leading to the conclusion of a Nuclear Weapons Convention based on the 1996 decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control”. At the 2010 NPT Review Conference, a host of countries spoke in support of negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention and proposed a meeting in 2014 to discuss the path forward. Although the meeting proposal was blocked in the final document, the nuclear weapons states for the first time agreed to include a reference to negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention although the language was watered down considerably from the first draft.  Significantly, a unique provision in the outcome document affirmed, for the first time, the need for all States to comply with International Humanitarian Law under which the ICJ held that nuclear weapons are generally illegal. This provides new possibilities for action by non-nuclear weapons states to shift from the usual “step by step” approach of arms control to legislating an outright prohibition of nuclear weapons as illegal under international law, as was done with landmines and cluster bombs.


    There were 140 nations who made statements supporting negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention at the NPT Review, including one nuclear weapons state —China.   And when the annual resolution came to a vote in the UN First Committee of the General Assembly this fall, three nuclear weapons states, China, India, and Pakistan supported the call for negotiations.   Once again, the U.S. attempted to put the brakes on when Rose Gotmoeller, US Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Verification and Compliance, in remarks at the UN, belittled the prospects for a nuclear weapons treaty urging “a pragmatic step-by-step approach rather than the impractical leap of seeking to negotiate a nuclear weapons convention or the pointless calls for convening a fourth special session of the General Assembly devoted to disarmament, for which there is no international consensus.”


    In October, 2010, Obama test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile 5,000 miles away from California to Guam and conducted the first “sub-critical” nuclear test since 2006, 1,000 feet below the desert floor, exploding plutonium with chemicals, without creating a chain-reaction. This was the 24th test in a program started by Clinton who tried to buy the support of the military-industrial-scientific–congressional complex for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which they later reneged on anyway. There were seven billion dollars a year for computer-simulated nuclear tests coupled with sub-critical tests and new laboratory infrastructure, which the Doctor Strangeloves contended were essential to maintain the “safety and reliability” of the arsenal.  Which brings us back full circle to the justification Obama claims for his pay-off to Congress to get START ratified.  Furthermore, the UK and France, emulating the worst in US policy, have just announced a “cost saving” plan to combine efforts and build a brand new joint  nuclear weapons laboratory in France, to test– surprise, surprise– the “safety and reliability” of their arsenals.


    Small wonder that a new statement in October 2010 by a Russian quartet of military and government officials, led by Yevgeny Primakov, asserted that many countries, including “a widespread belief in Russia” believe that their “nuclear potential is a key element of great power status.” Asserting that nuclear disarmament requires “greater confidence among nations, along with greater international security and stability” and referring to inequalities in “armaments, anti-ballistic missile defense, conventional weapons, strategic non-nuclear weapons as well as space militarization plans”, they conclude that to achieve nuclear disarmament “we must reorganize international life on more civilized principles and according to the demands of a new century.”
    President Obama, in his Prague speech, characterized nuclear terrorism as “the greatest danger we face”. Yet Nobel economist Thomas Schelling, who applies game theory to the study of conflict and cooperation  recently described the exceedingly low probability of terrorists ever getting their hands on enough illicit nuclear material to build a bomb. Far more dangerous and terrifying is the more than 3500 nuclear bombs, mounted on missiles and ready to fire within minutes which the US and Russia still aim at each other. Just this year we had reports of computer failures in the US that put 50 nuclear weapons out of commission, a UK Trident nuclear submarine running aground in the mud off the coast of Scotland, and six nuclear bombs mistakenly flown without knowledge of the commanders across the country from North Dakota to Louisiana. A US Defense Department report noted that between 1950 and 1980 there were 32 airplane crashes with nuclear bombs aboard, Luckily none of them ever exploded, although two of them, in Palomares, Spain and Thule, Greenland, spewed plutonium on the ground which had to be cordoned off and contained. Not to mention the incredibly close call when a Norwegian weather satellite went off course in 1983  and was interpreted by the Russians as a possible nuclear attack which a wise commander, Stanislav Petrov, on duty in the nuclear bunker, decided heroically, against orders, and to the great good fortune of the world, to disregard.
    Furthermore, we are creating much greater danger in our efforts to secure and lock down radioactive bomb material.  Rather than containing the toxic poisons in sturdy, above-ground concrete casks, which last for hundreds of years, under guns, gates and guards, we are actually transporting our lethal legacy through populated areas over roads, rail and seas, from the four corners of the earth back to reprocessing facilities. The US and Russia are using the highly enriched uranium they transport, for example, which was spread around to 28 countries during the atoms for peace program for research reactors, in reprocessing facilities where they are blended down for fuel for so called “peaceful nuclear power plants” now in the planning stages for exponential growth in a “nuclear renaissance” around the planet, about to spread their radioactive poisons into the air, water, and soil, while giving ever more nations the reactor- generated capacity to make nuclear bomb material.  
    Even if these materials are never used in a nuclear bomb, they are already causing death, destruction and illness in the communities where the uranium is mined, milled, processed and in the environs surrounding nuclear power plants. A German study found an increased incidence of childhood cancer and leukemias in communities with nuclear reactors. A recent study by Russian scientists published by the New York Academy of Medicine found nearly one million people died from the 1986 Chernobyl accident,  contrary to corrupted reports from the World Health Organization which has a collusive agreement with the nuclear-industry dominated International Atomic Energy Agency to submit its health findings on radiation issues to the IAEA before they can be made public. The two agencies habitually underreport the true extent of the carnage caused by this lethal technology.


    Moreover, while the Non-Proliferation Treaty guarantees every member the right to the “peaceful” use of nuclear technology, the US and its allies are picking which countries can exercise that right—it’s OK for Japan, but not for Iran. In the past few years, there has been an explosion of planned  nuclear power plants in many new countries, including Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Syria, Turkey, Indonesia, Vienam Algeria, Burma, and others who want to get in under the wire before the nuclear “haves” preclude them from freely accessing the whole panoply of technology for the nuclear fuel cycle.  Indeed the US just made a deal with the United Arab Emirates that they would not enrich uranium in return for US technical assistance on civilian nuclear power, but Jordan is balking at making the same agreement. This is a recipe for chaos. The top of the mountain beckons.  It’s time for a moratorium on any further development of nuclear weapons or nuclear power. The sun, wind, tides, and geothermal heat can readily supply humanity with all its energy needs. In the words of the visionary thinker and architect, Buckminster Fuller:


    We may now care for each Earthian individual at a sustainable billionaire’s level of affluence while living exclusively on less than 1 percent of our planet’s daily energy income from our cosmically designed nuclear reactor, the Sun, optimally located 92 million safe miles away from us.


    Building on the burgeoning support for a nuclear weapons convention, civil society, together with parliamentarians and Mayors are exploring possibilities for various governments to put together a like-minded group of governments to  begin an “Ottawa” or “Oslo” process, the way the world was able to ban landmines and cluster bombs. Blocked by consensus rules at the UN, the governments of Canada in the case of landmines, and Norway in the case of cluster bombs, joined in partnership with civil society and like-minded governments to negotiate those landmark treaties. Eventually many of the hold-out countries signed on.


    Who will take the lead for organizing the talks for a nuclear weapons convention? Over one hundred nations spoke in favor of the nuclear weapons convention at the NPT. And there are three nuclear weapons powers, China, India, and Pakistan on the record in support of those negotiations in a UN Resolution. Perhaps in the 21st century, it is time for Asia to take the lead. If a country like Norway, or Switzerland or Austria, which have spoken in favor of negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention, were to host such a conference, having the three Asian powers in attendance would send a powerful signal to the world that the time has come to ban the bomb. Certainly India, with the Rajiv Gandhi plan has already given much thought to this critical dilemma.  


    Even if the other nuclear weapons states were to sit out the negotiations, eventually world opinion would catch up with them and they would have to join in. In the meantime, the steps for moving forward, for dismantlement, verification, monitoring, inspection, handling of nuclear materials, insurance against breakout, additional research, and administration of the treaty could be discussed and debated. Much of this has already been proposed in the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, which can be reviewed, together with commentary on its various provisions, at http://www.icanw.org/securing-our-survival  NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION!


    After 65 years it’s time to retire the bomb.

  • Changing the Climate of Complacency

    David KriegerRepresentatives of governments and civil society organizations are gathered in Cancun to take action on the climate change that is threatening our beautiful but beleaguered planet.  The changes, which are resulting in global warming, pose extremely dangerous threats to quality of life and even survival for people today and in the future.  We must heed the warnings of scientists who are examining this phenomenon and change our habits with regard to fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions.  We must dramatically lower our fossil fuel consumption and our carbon imprint on the planet and this must be undertaken immediately and seriously by the over-industrialized nations that are the worst energy and resource abusers.


    There is another way in which the term “climate change” may be used.  That is, to refer to “climate” in the sense of “ambiance.”  There is a strong need to change the climate of our thinking, specifically the passive acceptance of the abuse of our planet and its myriad species, including our own.  In this sense, humanity lives far too much in a “climate” of ignorance and indifference.  We have organized ourselves into consumer societies that demonstrate little concern for our responsibilities to the planet, to each other and to the future.


    There are many ongoing problems in the world that deserve our awareness and engagement.  The fact that these problems receive insufficient attention and action speak to the change of climate that is needed.  Many of these problems were identified in the eight Millennium Development Goals: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality; reducing child mortality; reducing maternal mortality; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and establishing a global partnership for development. 


    While these major problems on our planet are not adequately addressed, the world is wasting more than $1.5 trillion annually on its military establishments.  Many states are attempting to create military security at the expense of human security.  The poor people on the planet are being marginalized while countries use their scientific resources and material wealth to produce ever more deadly and destructive armaments.  In a climate of complacency, the military-industrial complexes of the world fulfill their gluttonous appetites while the poor and politically powerless of the Earth are left to suffer and die. 


    At the apex of the global order, the countries that emerged victorious in World War II anointed themselves as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.  They continue to flaunt international law by their reliance upon nuclear weapons and by failing to engage in good-faith negotiations for the elimination of these weapons as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Because these countries behave as though their power and prestige are built upon these weapons of mass annihilation, other countries seek to emulate them.  Nuclear proliferation is thus encouraged by the very states that seek to set themselves apart with these weapons.


    Large corporations that stand to profit from a “renaissance” of nuclear power are promoting large nuclear energy projects as an alternative to using fossil fuels.  They are trying to make nuclear power appear to be green.  But they have not solved the four major problems with nuclear power: the potential for nuclear weapons proliferation; the failure to find any reasonable solution to storing the nuclear wastes, which will threaten the environment and humanity for tens of thousands of years; vulnerability to terrorism; and propensity to dangerous accidents. 


    If the large global corporations have their way, the Earth will become home for thousands of nuclear power plants, nations will seek to protect themselves with nuclear weapons (an impossibility), the threat of nuclear annihilation and global warming will continue to hang over our collective heads, extreme poverty in its many manifestations will persist, and we will follow either a slow path to extinction or a rapid one. 


    This is why we must change the climate of indifference and complacency that currently prevails upon our planet.  We humans have the gifts of consciousness and conscience, but these gifts must be used to be effective.  We must become conscious of what threatens our common future and we must care enough to demand that these threats be eliminated.  The only force powerful enough to challenge the corporate and military power that is leading us to catastrophe is the power of an engaged global citizenry.  This remains the one truly great superpower on Earth, but it can only be activated by compassion and caring. 


    If we do not care enough about the future to engage in the fight to save our species from catastrophe and our planet from omnicide, we need only to continue our complacency and leave the important decisions about protecting the environment and human life to powerful corporations and the world’s militaries.  They have a plan, one based upon dangerous technologies and plunder.  Their plan is shortsighted, designed to further enrich the already overly rich.  To be silent is a vote for their plan. 


    As Albert Camus, the great French writer and existentialist, wrote in the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing: “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging.  This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.” 


    Let us stand with Camus in waging peace.  Let us stand with Camus in choosing reason.  Let us raise our voices and choose peace and a human future.  Let us fulfill the responsibility of each generation to pass the world on intact to the next generation.  We may be the only generation that has faced the choice of silence and annihilation, or engagement and rebuilding the paradise of our exceedingly precious planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life.

  • Indefensible

    This op-ed was originally published by the Los Angeles Times.

    A year ago this week, American officials wrapped up a two-day inspection of a Russian strategic missile base at Teykovo, 130 miles northeast of Moscow, where mobile SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missiles are deployed.

    Twelve days later, their Russian counterparts wrapped up a two-day inspection at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, home to a strategic bomb wing.

    These inspections are noteworthy because they are the last to be conducted under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which expired in December 2009. No American inspectors have set foot on a Russian nuclear base since, depriving us of key information about Russian strategic forces.

    Worse, if Republicans in the Senate succeed in delaying ratification of the New START agreement — a distinct possibility — it may be months before American inspectors get another look at Russian nuclear weapons.

    This profoundly negative outcome would damage U.S. national security and set the cause of global arms control back years.

    It would deprive the U.S. of the ability to assess, up close, the status and operations of Russian nuclear forces. It would undermine both nations’ ability to tamp down tensions as they arise. And it would signal to the rest of the world that the nations that hold 90% of nuclear weapons are incapable of taking a leadership role in arms control. This in turn would threaten nonproliferation efforts worldwide.

    There are no substantive objections to the treaty. Instead, it is being held hostage to demands that the Obama administration pour billions more into the United States’ nuclear weapons complex, for modernization of weapons and increased spending on facilities and personnel.

    Last week, the administration offered to add $4.1 billion to its previous commitment to spend $80 billion on modernization over the next decade.

    The fact is, New START — signed on April 9 in Prague, the Czech capital, by President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev — has been thoroughly vetted in 18 hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations, Armed Services and Intelligence committees. Concerns that have been raised, such as claims the treaty would hinder U.S. missile defense plans or interfere with conventional missile forces, have been debunked. The Senate has done its due diligence and is ready for an up-or-down vote on ratification.

    To see what’s at stake, consider the Russian missile base at Teykovo. The Russians have upgraded at least one of the four garrisons there this year, replacing the single-warhead SS-25 ICBMs with new SS-27s capable of carrying multiple warheads, according to Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. All without any oversight by American inspectors.

    So it’s clear why the New START treaty is strongly supported by our military and national security establishment, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael G. Mullen and numerous current and former commanders of U.S. Strategic Command and its predecessor, the Strategic Air Command.

    The New START agreement will not erode our nuclear capabilities, strategic deterrent or national defense. In fact, as arms-control treaties go, it is modest stuff. It would cut deployed nuclear warheads by 30%, to 1,550 each, and launch vehicles — such as missile silos and submarine tubes — by more than 50%, to 800 each.

    These levels are “more than enough … for any threat that we see today or might emerge in the foreseeable future,” said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former head of U.S. Strategic Command.

    During the 15-year lifespan of the old START agreement, the United States conducted 659 inspections of Russian nuclear facilities, and Russia conducted 481 inspections of our facilities.

    It would be foolish and wrong to let partisan politics bring this era of cooperation to an end. Worse, it would make us blind to the true size and capabilities of the Russian arsenal. There is no question this would weaken our national security. That would be indefensible.

  • John F. Kennedy Speaks of Peace

    On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated.  Nearly every American who is old enough can remember where he was when he heard the news of Kennedy’s death.  In my case, I was on a train platform in Japan when I was told of the assassination.  A Japanese man came up to me and said, “I’m very sorry to tell you, but your president has been shot and killed.”  I remember being stunned by the news and by a sense of loss. 

    On June 10, 1963, just six months before his life was cut short, Kennedy gave the Commencement Address at American University.  His topic was peace.  He called it “the most important topic on earth.”  As a decorated officer who served in combat during World War II, he knew about war.

    Kennedy spoke of a generous and broad peace: “What kind of peace do I mean?  What kind of peace do we seek?” he asked.  “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons or war.  Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.  I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

    He recognized that nuclear weapons had created “a new face of war.”  He argued, “Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces.  It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.  It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”

    Just eight months before giving this speech, Kennedy had been face to face with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He knew that it was possible for powerful, nuclear-armed nations to come to the brink of nuclear war, and he knew what nuclear war would mean for the future of humanity.  “I speak of peace,” he said, “as the necessary rational end of rational men.”

    Kennedy asked us to examine our attitudes toward peace.  “Too many of us think it is impossible,” he said.  “Too many think it unreal.   But that is a dangerous defeatist belief.  It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed – that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.”

    He understood that there was no “magic formula” to achieve peace.  “Genuine peace,” he argued, “must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.  It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation.  For peace is a process – a way of solving problems.”  He also recognized that peace requires perseverance. 

    Kennedy gave wise counsel in his speech.  In the midst of the Cold War, he called for reexamining our attitude toward the Soviet Union.  “Among the traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war.”  He pointed out the achievements of the Soviet people and the suffering they endured during World War II. 

    In the speech, Kennedy announced two important decisions.  First, he pledged to begin negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear test ban.  Second, he initiated a moratorium on atmospheric nuclear testing.  The Partial Test Ban Treaty would be signed that August, ratified by the Senate in September and would go into effect on October 10, 1963.  The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was not reached until 1996, and the United States Senate rejected ratification of this treaty in 1999.  The treaty still has not entered into force.

    In his insightful and inspiring speech, Kennedy did get one thing wrong.  He said that “[t]he United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”  One can only imagine Kennedy’s severe disappointment had he lived to see the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War and many other costly and illegal wars the U.S. has started and engaged in since his death. 

    Every American should read Kennedy’s Commencement Address at American University and be reminded that peace is a possibility that is worth the struggle.  As Kennedy understood, war does not bring peace.  Peace itself is the only path to peace.  Kennedy believed, “No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.  Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe they can do it again.”  Peace is attainable.  It is within our reach, if only we will learn from the past, stretch ourselves and believe that this is our destiny.

  • Playing Politics with the New START Agreement

    Soon after President Obama came to office he delivered a speech in Prague in which he said, “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  He said America has a responsibility to act and to lead.

    He then initiated negotiations with the Russians that resulted in a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, what has been labeled a “New START.”  This treaty, signed on April 8, 2010 by Presidents Obama and Medvedev, has significant advantages for U.S. national security.  It is an important next step in U.S.-Russian efforts to lessen the nuclear threat to humanity.

    The treaty will accomplish four important objectives.  First, it will lower the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons on each side to 1,550 and the number of delivery vehicles to 800 (700 deployed and 100 in reserve).  Second, it will restore the verification procedures that expired with the START I agreement in December 2009.  Third, it will strengthen our relations with the Russians, and put us on a footing to take future downward steps in the size of nuclear arsenals.  Fourth, it will show the world that the U.S. and Russia are serious about their obligations to pursue negotiations in good faith for nuclear disarmament.  

    Many current and former U.S. military leaders and statesmen have spoken out in favor of the treaty.  The commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Kevin Chilton, for example, has said, “Without New START, we would rapidly lose insight into Russian strategic nuclear force developments and activities, and our force modernization planning and hedging strategy would be more complex and more costly.”

    Republican Senator Richard Lugar, a strong proponent of the treaty, has pointed out, “It is unlikely that Moscow would sustain cooperative efforts indefinitely without the New START Treaty coming into force.”

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released a statement on November 17, in which he said, “It is vitally important to America’™s national security for the Senate to ratify the New START treaty before Congress adjourns this year.  We need our inspectors back on the ground and the critical information they can provide about Russia’s nuclear capabilities.  Ratification of this treaty would accomplish both.”  

    So, what is the problem?  We have a treaty negotiated and signed by the parties that both sides think benefits them and it benefits the rest of the world at the same time.  The treaty should be a slam dunk for Senate ratification, but unfortunately that isn’t the case.  

    Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Minority Whip, who has been the Republican point person on this treaty in the Senate, is preventing a vote on the treaty.  He is doing so despite the fact that the treaty was approved by a vote of 14 to 4 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September.  Sadly, America’s national security is being held hostage by one Republican leader in the Senate.  

    Senator Kyl has already negotiated a commitment from the White House of over $80 billion for modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next ten years.  This is a high price that is being paid, making many countries and world leaders doubt the sincerity of the U.S. commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.   Recently, President Obama went even further to sweeten the deal for Senator Kyl by committing an additional $4.1 billion for modernization of the U.S. nuclear complex over the next five years.  

    The bottom line is that Senator Kyl is playing politics with a treaty that affects the national security interests of the United States.  It appears he is trying to prevent a vote on the treaty in the Senate this year, either in order to embarrass President Obama on the world stage or to push consideration of the treaty off to 2011 when the new Senate is seated and less likely to ratify the treaty.

    Click here to take action by asking your senators to encourage Sen. Kyl and Sen. McConnell to allow the New START agreement to come before the full Senate.

  • Nobel Summit: Final Declaration on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

    The undersigned Nobel Peace Laureates and representatives of Nobel Peace Prize organizations, gathered in Hiroshima on November 12-14, 2010, after listening to the testimonies of the Hibakusha, have no doubt that the use of nuclear weapons against any people must be regarded as a crime against humanity and should henceforth be prohibited.

    We pay tribute to the courage and suffering of the Hibakusha who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and honour those that have dedicated their lives to teaching the rest of the world about the horrors of nuclear war. Like them, we pledge ourselves to work for a future committed to peace, justice and security without nuclear weapons and war.

    “Nuclear weapons are unique in their destructive power, in the unspeakable human suffering they cause, in the impossibility of controlling their effects in space and time, in the risks of escalation they create, and in the threat they pose to the environment, to future generations, and indeed to the survival of humanity.” We strongly endorse this assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross, three times recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize for its humanitarian work.

    Twenty-five years ago in Geneva, the leaders of the two largest nuclear powers declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” There has been some substantive progress since then. The agreements on intermediate range nuclear forces (INF); strategic arms reductions (START); and unilateral and bilateral initiatives on tactical nuclear weapons, have eliminated tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. We welcome the signing by the United States and Russia of the New START treaty and the consensus Nuclear Disarmament Action Plan that was adopted by the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

    Nevertheless, there are still enough nuclear weapons to destroy life on Earth many times over. The proliferation of nuclear weapons and the possibility of their use for acts of terrorism are additional causes for deep concern. The threats posed by nuclear weapons did not disappear with the ending of the Cold War.

    Nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented, but they can and must be outlawed, just as chemical and biological weapons, landmines and cluster munitions have been declared illegal. Nuclear weapons, the most inhumane threat of all, should likewise be outlawed in keeping with the 2010 NPT Review Conference final document, which reaffirmed “the need for all States at all times to comply with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law”.

    Efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons must proceed along with measures to strengthen international law, demilitarize international relations and political thinking and to address human and security needs. Nuclear deterrence, power projection and national prestige as arguments to justify acquiring and retaining nuclear weapons are totally outdated and must be rejected.

    We support the UN Secretary General’s five point proposal on nuclear disarmament and proposals by others to undertake work on a universal treaty to prohibit the use, development, production, stockpiling or transfer of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon technologies and components and to provide for their complete and verified elimination.

    • We call upon heads of government, parliaments, mayors and citizens to join us in affirming that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral and illegal.

    • We call for the ratification without delay of the START agreement by the United States and Russia and for follow-on negotiations for deeper cuts in all types of nuclear weapons.

    • We call on all nuclear weapon possessor states to make deep cuts in their existing arsenals.

    • We call on the relevant Governments to take urgent steps to implement the proposals agreed on in the 2010 NPT Review Conference Final Document towards realising the objectives of the 1995 resolution on the Middles East.

    • We call on China, the United States, Egypt, Iran, Israel and Indonesia to ratify, and on India, Pakistan and North Korea to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that has already been ratified by 153 nations so that the Treaty can be brought into full legal force.

    • We call on nations to negotiate an universal treaty to abolish nuclear weapons, in partnership with civil society

    To ensure that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki never reoccur and to build a world based on cooperation and peace, we issue this call of conscience. We must all work together to achieve a common good that is practical, moral, legal and necessary – the abolition of nuclear weapons.

  • Answering Bolton and Yoo: New START Will Strengthen U.S. National Security

    Two staunch ideologues who served in the George W. Bush administration, John Bolton and John Yoo, ask rhetorically in a New York Times opinion piece, “Why Rush to Cut Nukes?”  Bolton, a recess appointment as United Nations Ambassador under Bush II, never met an arms limitation agreement that he supported.  Yoo, the lawyer who wrote memos supporting the legality of water boarding under international law (not a very favorable prospect for captured U.S. soldiers), worked in Bush II’s Justice Department.  Bolton and Yoo can find no good reason to support the New START agreement with the Russians, arguing that without amendments it will weaken “our national defense.”  

    Let me answer the question posed in the title of their article.  The Senate should support and ratify this treaty because it will strengthen U.S. national security by:

    • reducing the size of the bloated nuclear arsenals in both countries, creating a new lower level from which to make further reductions;
    • reinstating verification procedures that ended with the expiration of the first START agreement in December 2009;
    • building confidence in the Russians that we stand behind our agreements; and
    • sending a signal to the rest of the world that we are taking steps to fulfill our legal commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    The downsides of failing to ratify the treaty would be to remove restraints on the size of the Russian arsenal, forego inspection and verification of the Russian arsenal, undermine Russian confidence in U.S. commitments, and encourage further nuclear proliferation by other countries thereby increasing the possibilities of nuclear terrorism. Further, if the treaty is not ratified before the new Congress is seated in January 2011, its future ratification will be far more difficult.

    What do Bolton and Yoo say they want?  First, to remove language in the treaty’s preamble, which is not legally binding, that says there is an “interrelationship” between nuclear weapons and defensive systems.  That language only recognizes a reality.  Of course, there is a relationship between missiles and missile defenses.  Second, they don’t want the U.S. to be limited in putting conventional weapons on formerly nuclear launch systems.  But that is a price, and a fair one, that each side will pay for lowering the other side’s nuclear capabilities.  Third, they want a Congressional act for the financing, testing and development of new U.S. warhead designs before the treaty is ratified.  In other words, they want guarantees that the U.S. nuclear arsenal will be modernized.  They seek long-term reliance on the U.S. nuclear threat, but this means that U.S. citizens will also remain under nuclear threat for the long-term.

    Bolton and Yoo are an interesting pair.  The first would lop ten floors off the United Nations, the second do away with the laws of war when they aren’t convenient.  Do they deserve their own opinions?  Of course.  Do their opinions make any sense?  Only in the context of the American exceptionalism and militarism that were the trademarks of the Bush II administration and have done so much to weaken the spirit, values and resources of the country while continuing to haunt us in our aggressive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

    One must wonder what possessed the New York Times to publish their rantings.  Additionally, using the word “Nukes” in the title suggests somehow that nuclear weapons are cute enough to have nicknames and not a serious threat to the very existence of civilization.  That Bolton and Yoo could rise to high positions in our country is a sad commentary on the country, but perhaps understandable in the context of the Bush II administration’s persistent flouting of international law.  That the New York Times would find sufficient merit in their discredited opinions to publish their article is an even sadder commentary on the editorial integrity of one of the country’s most respected newspapers.

  • Open Letter on Public Science Funding and Nuclear Weapons Research

    2010_11_11_uk_scientists.pdf

  • De Nuevo El Dia de Veteranos

    Click here for the English version.


    “Lo único que no quiero volver a ver
    es un desfile militar “-
    Ulysses S. Grant
    Comandante General del Ejército de la Unión en la Guerra Civil – (1861-1865)
    Decimo octavo Presidente de Estados Unidos en dos periodos- (1869-1877)


    Ya hemos visto demasiados desfiles militares
    con sus misiles, bandas de música
    y mecanizados hombres jóvenes.


    Hemos sido testigos de los pasos de ganso
    de soldados en sus pulidas botas negras
    marchando al sonido de las trompetas.


    Evitemos más viejos vestidos con uniforme
    con sus gorras descosidas y llenas de parches.
    Evitemos oír más discursos rebuscados de los políticos.


    Regresemos a lo básico: El Día del Armisticio
    los soldados depusieron las armas en la onceava hora
    del onceavo día  del onceavo mes.


    Los supervivientes han tenido suficiente de la guerra.
    La onceava hora está aquí una vez más, y el claro cielo azul
    Yo estoy con Ulises Grant.