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  • Obama Boosts Nukes

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy In Focus.

    On February 1,
    the Obama administration delivered a budget request calling for a full
    10 percent increase in nuclear weapons spending next year, to be
    followed by further increases in subsequent years.    

    These increases, if enacted, would bring the recent six-year period
    of flat and declining nuclear weapons budgets to an abrupt end. Not
    since 2005 has Congress approved such a large nuclear weapons
    budget. Seeing Obama’s request Linton Brooks, who ran the National
    Nuclear Security Administration for President Bush from 2003 to 2007,
    remarked to Nuclear Weapons and Materials Monitor, “I would’ve killed for this kind of budget.”

    Largest Since Manhattan Project

    Obama’s request includes more than twice last year’s funding for a
    $5 billion upgrade to plutonium warhead core (“pit”) production
    facilities at Los Alamos. If the budget request passes intact, Los
    Alamos would see a 22 percent budget increase in a single year, its
    biggest since the Manhattan Project. 

    The request proposes major upgrades to certain bombs as well as the
    design, and ultimately production, of a new ballistic missile
    warhead. Warhead programs are increased almost across the board, with
    the notable exception of dismantlement, which is set to decline
    dramatically. A continued scientific push to develop simulations and
    experiments to partially replace nuclear testing is evident. 

    All these initiatives and others are embedded in an overall military
    budget bigger than any since the 1940s that includes renewed funding
    for the development of advanced delivery vehicles, cruise missiles, and
    plenty of money for nuclear deployments. 

    Linked to START

    This proposed “surge” responds to a December 2009 request
    from Senate Republicans (plus Lieberman) for significant increases in
    nuclear weapons spending. Such increases, these senators said, were necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) to obtain their ratification votes for a follow-on to the START treaty (which expired in December). 

    As of this writing the new treaty remains under negotiation.
    Ratification of any treaty requires 67 votes, a much higher hurdle than
    the 60 needed to break a filibuster. As the 2010 campaign season begins
    in earnest, it remains to be seen if this expansive nuclear spending
    package is anywhere near hawkish enough to buy the necessary votes. 

    Also, key politicians of both parties have pork-barrel interests in
    the nuclear weapons complex, interests not confined by the boundaries
    of their districts and states. In today’s Congress, money and influence
    flow freely across these lines. The contracts at stake are big by any
    standard. Nuclear weapons complex contractors are among the nation’s largest recipients of contract dollars. So far in FY 2010, seven of the top 10 U.S. contractors are nuclear weapons site management contractors or partners.  

    For their part, most Democrats assume — despite a small mountain of
    evidence otherwise — that a nuclear weapons spending surge is genuinely
    needed. Some of the administration officials behind this surge have
    been retained from the Bush administration. Others, like Undersecretary
    of State Ellen Tauscher, are Democratic hawks. There are no doves. 

    Squared with Prague?

    This increase in spending on the nuclear complex does not contradict
    Obama’s public statements, for example in Prague in April 2009, that he
    would “seek” nuclear disarmament. In contrast to Picasso’s famous
    dictum (“Others seek, I find”), Obama has said only that he would
    “seek” disarmament. Despite the powers theoretically available to him
    as commander-in-chief, which encompass every aspect of nuclear
    deployment and procurement, Obama has said nothing about finding disarmament. 

    In many ways the President is building on the rhetorical foundation
    laid in January 2007 by the so-called “Four Horsemen” — George Schultz,
    Henry Kissinger, William Perry, and Sam Nunn — who with 16 others laid out their rationale
    for a “world free of nuclear weapons.” These men did not, either in
    their original op-ed or in their subsequent ones, actually advocate any
    but the vaguest steps toward actual disarmament. 

    What they offered instead was aspirational rhetoric that was
    all-too-uncritically received in most circles. Subsequently, three of
    the four supported the Bush administration’s Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) or its equivalent, and Perry co-convened an influential nuclear policy report that called for funding increases, new construction, and replacement warheads. Their op-ed
    last month calling for a big increase in nuclear weapons spending
    brought these rhetorical contradictions sharply into view. Nuclear
    disarmament, even as an aspiration, was missing.

    No New Nukes?

    Administration spokespersons have been quick to say there are no
    “new” warheads under consideration. That is because the word “new” can
    simply never be used in connection with warheads, no matter how many
    changes are involved. Last year’s Defense Authorization Act, authored
    by then-congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Livermore), builds a spectrum
    of potential innovation into the structure of the “Stockpile
    Management” program.

    Last year, the administration requested and received a great deal of
    money for what amounts to a new bomb, mostly for European deployment,
    without the embarrassment of talking about a “new” bomb like George
    Bush did. George Orwell would be proud. 

    These linguistic innovations go back to 1996, when weapons
    administrators and contractors sought a politically palatable path to
    warhead innovation. At that time, Clinton administration bureaucrats
    consciously chose to emphasize themes of “replacement” and
    “stewardship” in describing programs they knew (and privately said at
    the time) would result in new warheads. As attendees at one 1996
    meeting said,
    even “the use of the word ‘warhead’ may not be acceptable.” Linguistic
    cleansing paved the way for this month’s proposed spending surge. 

    Next Step: Congress

    Will Congress, especially the Democratic members of Congress, fund
    these increases? In part the answer depends on how seriously they take
    the several converging crises facing the country and the planet, and
    how seriously they address populist anger about the economy, especially
    in relation to their own reelection prospects. 

    In many ways the proposed nuclear weapons budget, and the defense
    budget overall, can be seen as bold raids on a diminishing pool of
    resources, as well as very real commitments to fading imperial
    pretensions. Nuclear weapons compete directly with the renewable energy
    and conservation jobs funded in the Energy and Water funding bills.  

    Congress therefore has to decide, and citizens have to help them
    decide, between a new generation of nuclear weapons and the factories
    to make them or the greener alternative of energy and climate security
    and the better economic prospects that would ensue.

    Nuclear weapons are an especially dangerous investment for a
    declining hegemon.  The sooner we choose a nuclear weapons path
    involving less and less money, not more and more, the sooner we will be
    able to wake from the hubris and pervasive violence currently
    destroying us.

  • The Path to Nuclear Security: Implementing the President’s Prague Agenda

    This speech was delivered by Joe Biden to the National Defense University on February 18, 2010.

    Ladies and gentlemen; Secretaries Gates and Chu; General Cartwright; Undersecretary Tauscher; Administrator D’Agostino; members of our armed services; students and faculty; thank you all for coming.

    At its founding, Elihu Root gave this campus a mission that is the very essence of our national defense: “Not to promote war, but to preserve peace by intelligent and adequate preparation to repel aggression.” For more than a century, you and your predecessors have heeded that call. There are few greater contributions citizens can claim.

    Many statesmen have walked these grounds, including our Administration’s outstanding National Security Advisor, General Jim Jones. You taught him well. George Kennan, the scholar and diplomat, lectured at the National War College in the late 1940s. Just back from Moscow, in a small office not far from here, he developed the doctrine of Containment that guided a generation of Cold War foreign policy.

    Some of the issues that arose during that time seem like distant memories. But the topic I came to discuss with you today, the challenge posed by nuclear weapons, continues to demand our urgent attention.

    Last April, in Prague, President Obama laid out his vision for protecting our country from nuclear threats. 

    He made clear we will take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons, while retaining a safe, secure, and effective arsenal as long as we still need it.  We will work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  And we will do everything in our power to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists and also to states that don’t already possess them.

    It’s easy to recognize the threat posed by nuclear terrorism.  But we must not underestimate how proliferation to a state could destabilize regions critical to our security and prompt neighbors to seek nuclear weapons of their own. 

    Our agenda is based on a clear-eyed assessment of our national interest.  We have long relied on nuclear weapons to deter potential adversaries. 

    Now, as our technology improves, we are developing non-nuclear ways to accomplish that same objective. The Quadrennial Defense Review and Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which Secretary Gates released two weeks ago, present a plan to further strengthen our preeminent conventional forces to defend our nation and our allies.

    Capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield, conventional warheads with worldwide reach, and others that we are developing enable us to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, as other nuclear powers join us in drawing down. With these modern capabilities, even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong.

    As we’ve said many times, the spread of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat facing our country.

    That is why we are working both to stop their proliferation and eventually to eliminate them. Until that day comes, though, we will do everything necessary to maintain our arsenal.

    At the vanguard of this effort, alongside our military, are our nuclear weapons laboratories, national treasures that deserve our support. Their invaluable contributions range from building the world’s fastest supercomputers, to developing cleaner fuels, to surveying the heavens with robotic telescopes.

    But the labs are best known for the work they do to secure our country. Time and again, we have asked our labs to meet our most urgent strategic needs. And time and again, they have delivered.

    In 1939, as fascism began its march across Europe, Asia, and Africa, Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt that the Nazis were racing to build a weapon, the likes of which the world had never seen. In the Southwest Desert, under the leadership of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicists of Los Alamos won that race and changed the course of history.

    Sandia was born near Albuquerque soon after the Second World War and became our premier facility for developing the non-nuclear components of our nuclear weapons program.

    And a few years later the institution that became Lawrence Livermore took root in California. During the arms race that followed the Korean War, it designed and developed warheads that kept our nuclear capabilities second to none.

    These examples illustrate what everyone in this room already knows—that the past century’s defining conflicts were decided not just on the battlefield, but in the classroom and in the laboratory.

    Air Force General Hap Arnold, an aviation pioneer whose vision helped shape the National War College, once argued that the First World War was decided by brawn and the Second by logistics. “The Third World War will be different,” he predicted. “It will be won by brains.” General Arnold got it almost right.  Great minds like Kennan and Oppenheimer helped win the Cold War and prevent World War Three altogether.

    During the Cold War, we tested nuclear weapons in our atmosphere, underwater and underground, to confirm that they worked before deploying them, and to evaluate more advanced concepts. But explosive testing damaged our health, disrupted our environment and set back our non-proliferation goals.

    Eighteen years ago, President George H.W. Bush signed the nuclear testing moratorium enacted by Congress, which remains in place to this day. 

    Under the moratorium, our laboratories have maintained our arsenal through the Stockpile Stewardship Program without underground nuclear testing, using techniques that are as successful as they are cutting edge.

    Today, the directors of our nuclear laboratories tell us they have a deeper understanding of our arsenal from Stockpile Stewardship than they ever had when testing was commonplace. 

    Let me repeat that—our labs know more about our arsenal today than when we used to explode our weapons on a regular basis.  With our support, the labs can anticipate potential problems and reduce their impact on our arsenal.

    Unfortunately, during the last decade, our nuclear complex and experts were neglected and underfunded.

    Tight budgets forced more than 2,000 employees of Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore from their jobs between 2006 and 2008, including highly-skilled scientists and engineers.

    And some of the facilities we use to handle uranium and plutonium date back to the days when the world’s great powers were led by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin. The signs of age and decay are becoming more apparent every day.

    Because we recognized these dangers, in December, Secretary Chu and I met at the White House with the heads of the three nuclear weapons labs. They described the dangerous impact these budgetary pressures were having on their ability to manage our arsenal without testing.  They say this situation is a threat to our security. President Obama and I agree.

    That’s why earlier this month we announced a new budget that reverses the last decade’s dangerous decline.

    It devotes $7 billion to maintaining our nuclear stockpile and modernizing our nuclear infrastructure.  To put that in perspective, that’s $624 million more than Congress approved last year—and an increase of $5 billion over the next five years.  Even in these tight fiscal times, we will commit the resources our security requires.

    This investment is not only consistent with our nonproliferation agenda; it is essential to it.   Guaranteeing our stockpile, coupled with broader research and development efforts, allows us to pursue deep nuclear reductions without compromising our security.  As our conventional capabilities improve, we will continue to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons.

    Responsible disarmament requires versatile specialists to manage it.

    The skilled technicians who look after our arsenal today are the ones who will safely dismantle it tomorrow.

    And chemists who understand how plutonium ages also develop forensics to track missing nuclear material and catch those trafficking in it. 

    Our goal of a world without nuclear weapons has been endorsed by leading voices in both parties. These include two former Secretaries of State from Republican administrations, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense Bill Perry; and my former colleague Sam Nunn, for years the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

    Together, these four statesmen called eliminating nuclear weapons “a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage.”

    During the 2008 Presidential campaign, both the President and Senator McCain supported the same objective.

    We will continue to build support for this emerging bipartisan consensus like the one around containment of Soviet expansionism that George Kennan inspired.

    Toward that end, we have worked tirelessly to implement the President’s Prague agenda.

    In September, the President chaired an historic meeting of the UN Security Council, which unanimously embraced the key elements of the President’s vision.

    As I speak, U.S. and Russian negotiators are completing an agreement that will reduce strategic weapons to their lowest levels in decades. 

    Its verification measures will provide confidence its terms are being met.  These reductions will be conducted transparently and predictably. The new START treaty will promote strategic stability and bolster global efforts to prevent proliferation by showing that the world’s leading nuclear powers are committed to reducing their arsenals. 

    And it will build momentum for collaboration with Russia on strengthening the global consensus that nations who violate their NPT obligations should be held to account. 

    This strategy is yielding results.  We have tightened sanctions on North Korea’s proliferation activities through the most restrictive UN Security Council resolution to date—and the international community is enforcing these sanctions effectively.

    And we are now working with our international partners to ensure that Iran, too, faces real consequences for failing to meet its obligations.

    In the meantime, we are completing a government-wide review of our nuclear posture.

    Already, our budget proposal reflects some of our key priorities, including increased funding for our nuclear complex, and a commitment to sustain our heavy bombers and land and submarine-based missile capabilities, under the new START agreement.

    As Congress requested and with Secretary Gates’ full support, this review has been a full interagency partnership.

    We believe we have developed a broad and deep consensus on the importance of the President’s agenda and the steps we must take to achieve it. The results will be presented to Congress soon.

    In April, the President will also host a Nuclear Security Summit to advance his goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear material within four years.  We cannot wait for an act of nuclear terrorism before coming together to share best practices and raise security standards, and we will seek firm commitments from our partners to do just that.

    In May, we will participate in the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. 

    We are rallying support for stronger measures to strengthen inspections and punish cheaters.

    The Treaty’s basic bargain—that nuclear powers pursue disarmament and non-nuclear states do not acquire such weapons, while gaining access to civilian nuclear technology—is the cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime.

    Before the treaty was negotiated, President Kennedy predicted a world with up to 20 nuclear powers by the mid-1970s.  Because of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the consensus it embodied, that didn’t happen.

    Now, 40 years later, that consensus is fraying.  We must reinforce this consensus, and strengthen the treaty for the future.

    And, while we do that, we will also continue our efforts to negotiate a ban on the production of fissile materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.  

    We know that completing a treaty that will ban the production of fissile material will not be quick or easy—but the Conference on Disarmament must resume its work on this treaty as soon as possible.

    The last piece of the President’s agenda from Prague was the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

    A decade ago, we led this effort to negotiate this treaty in order to keep emerging nuclear states from perfecting their arsenals and to prevent our rivals from pursuing ever more advanced weapons.  

    We are confident that all reasonable concerns raised about the treaty back then – concerns about verification and the reliability of our own arsenal – have now been addressed.  The test ban treaty is as important as ever.

    As President Obama said in Prague, “we cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.”

    Some friends in both parties may question aspects of our approach. Some in my own party may have trouble reconciling investments in our nuclear complex with a commitment to arms reduction. Some in the other party may worry we’re relinquishing capabilities that keep our country safe.

    With both groups we respectfully disagree. As both the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, and as a strong proponent of non-proliferation, the United States has long embodied a stark but inevitable contradiction. The horror of nuclear conflict may make its occurrence unlikely, but the very existence of nuclear weapons leaves the human race ever at the brink of self-destruction, particularly if the weapons fall into the wrong hands.

    Many leading figures of the nuclear age grew ambivalent about aspects of this order. Kennan, whose writings gave birth to the theory of nuclear deterrence, argued passionately but futilely against the development of the hydrogen bomb. And Robert Oppenheimer famously lamented, after watching the first mushroom cloud erupt from a device he helped design, that he had become “the destroyer of worlds.”

    President Obama is determined, and I am as well, that the destroyed world Oppenheimer feared must never become our reality. That is why we are pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. The awesome force at our disposal must always be balanced by the weight of our shared responsibility. 

    Every day, many in this audience help bear that burden with professionalism, courage, and grace. A grateful nation appreciates your service. Together, we will live up to our responsibilities.  Together, we will lead the world.  Thank you.  May God bless America.  May God protect our troops.

  • A Message to Youth: Live to Your Full Capacity and Save the Planet

    This speech was delivered to the youth of Soka Gakkai International in Japan on February 8, 2010.

    I want to talk with you as youth, as a group of youth who care about our world.  One thing is certain: You will inherit the world.  It will not be either the strong or the meek who will inherit the Earth; for better or for worse, it will be the youth.  You will inherit what we, the older generation, leave to you, and you will hopefully do better than we have done in preserving this beautiful planet and the diversity of its life forms.  You will hopefully do better in achieving and maintaining peace on our planet.  You will also have the eventual responsibility, as each generation does, to pass the world on in tact to the next generation.  

    New generations of youth keep coming, like waves against the shore.  Now it is your turn to reach the shore.  As animals once left the sea for the land, you now come of age to take responsibility in the world.  And you come of age at a time of great challenge.  The generations of your parents and grandparents have left you a world that is fraught with dangers and inequities.  The test of your generation will be in the way you create a more just and decent world.  But you will have another challenge as well.  You will have to navigate the dangers of nuclear weapons – weapons capable of ending civilization and destroying most life on Earth.

    The human future is not guaranteed.  That is the most profound meaning of the Nuclear Age.  It is an era in which we have created weapons that are capable of omnicide, the destruction of all.  Omnicide is an extension of suicide and genocide to the entire world.  We live in a time when it is possible to destroy everything.  We have proven our cleverness in creating tools of destruction.  Now it is up to us, and to you as youth in particular, to find the means to assure that these tools are not used and are abolished.

    How will you do this?  To start with, you must recognize the nature of the problem.  This is no ordinary problem that can be left to work itself out.  It requires a plan.  Who will create and implement such a plan?  Who will take the lead in assuring that we are progressing toward zero nuclear weapons?  The problem could become much worse than it is today.  Instead of nine nuclear weapon states, imagine a world in which there are 20 or 50 or 100.  What kind of world would that be?  

    We have a Non-Proliferation Treaty that seeks to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons.  That treaty has a provision for nuclear disarmament, so that there will not be permanent classes of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”  Everyone recognizes that such a world would not be fair, so Article VI of the treaty requires that the nuclear weapon states engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament.  The International Court of Justice interpreted this clause in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.  They said, “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.”

    I would like to share with you some additional reasons to abolish nuclear weapons:

    1. They are long-distance killing machines incapable of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, the aged and the newly born, or between men, women and children.   As such, they are instruments of dehumanization as well as annihilation.

    2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.  Nuclear war could cause deadly climate change, putting human existence at risk.  Here is what one researcher, Steven Starr, concluded from reviewing the recent literature on nuclear weapons and climate change: “The detonation of a tiny fraction of the operational nuclear arsenals within cities would generate enough smoke to cause catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of the protective stratospheric ozone layer.  Environmental devastation caused by a war fought with many thousands of strategic nuclear weapons would quickly leave the Earth uninhabitable.”

    3. They threaten to foreclose the future, negating our common responsibility to future generations.

    4. They make cowards of their possessors, and in their use there can be no decency or honor.  This was recognized by most of the leading US generals and admirals of World War II, including Dwight Eisenhower, Hap Arnold, Omar Bradley, and William Leahy.  Admiral Leahy, chief of staff to President Truman, said: “The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

    5. They divide the world’s nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing false and unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.  

    6. They are a distortion of science and technology, siphoning off our scientific and technological resources and twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.  On the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a senior Manhattan Project scientist, Hans Bethe, called upon “…all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons – and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.”  

    7. They mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.  The International Court of Justice has ruled that the threat of use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal and any use that violated international humanitarian law would be illegal.  It is virtually impossible to imagine a threat or use of nuclear weapons that would not violate international humanitarian law by failing to discriminate between soldiers and civilians, causing unnecessary suffering or being disproportionate to a preceding attack.  

    8. They waste our resources on the development of instruments of annihilation.  The United States alone has spent over $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems since the onset of the Nuclear Age.

    9. They concentrate power in the hands of a small group of individuals and, in doing so, undermine democracy.  They give over to a few individuals, usually men, greater power of annihilation than at any previous time in history.

    10. They are morally abhorrent, as recognized by virtually every religious organization, and their mere existence corrupts our humanity.  If we are willing to tolerate these weapons and their indiscriminate power of annihilation, then who are we?  What do these weapons say about our humanity, our human decency?

    I think it should be clear that one primary goal for youth should be to act and to lead in abolishing nuclear weapons.  

    Later this year, in May, there will be an eighth Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.  This is the only treaty that has provisions requiring the nuclear weapon states to pursue the goal of nuclear disarmament.  It will be an important meeting after the failure of the last NPT Review Conference in 2005.  To give you an idea of how much there is to accomplish, I want to share with you the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s priority recommendations for the conference:

    1. Each signatory nuclear weapon state should provide an accurate public accounting of its nuclear arsenal, conduct a public environmental and human assessment of its potential use, and devise and make public a roadmap for going to zero nuclear weapons.

    2. All signatory nuclear weapon states should reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies by taking all nuclear forces off high-alert status, pledging No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapon states and No Use against non-nuclear weapon states.

    3. All enriched uranium and reprocessed plutonium – military and civilian – and their production facilities (including all uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technology) should be placed under strict and effective international safeguards.

    4. All signatory states should review Article IV of the NPT, promoting the “inalienable right” to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, in light of the nuclear proliferation problems posed by nuclear electricity generation.

    5. Each nuclear weapon state should comply with Article VI of the NPT, reinforced and clarified by the 1996 World Court Advisory Opinion, by commencing negotiations in good faith on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons, and complete these negotiations by the year 2015.

    The problems may seem complex, but the bottom line is this: Nuclear weapons threaten the human future, and they must be abolished.  This is a human issue that is every bit as consequential as was the movement to abolish slavery in the 19th century.  There are some acts that cannot be tolerated, and slavery and the threat of nuclear omnicide are among them.

    You can be a voice for abolition by learning more, supporting the hibakusha, and speaking out for a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.  Don’t be satisfied with anything less than a clear commitment to a world with zero nuclear weapons, and demand more from political leaders who say that the goal is too difficult or cannot be achieved within their lifetime.  

    In addition to working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, your generation faces many other challenges as well.  There is no major international problem in our world that does not require international cooperation to solve.  Thus, we need to work together.  With modern communications and transportation, your generation is well equipped to cooperate across all borders.  Really, borders exist primarily in our minds.  They are not drawn upon the Earth, only on maps.  And all borders are permeable to ideas and trade, as well as to pollution and disease.  The bottom line is that we live in a single unitary world.  We all share one Earth, and we can make of it a paradise or a nightmare.  We choose – by our actions or inaction.    

    We live in a world of some 200 nation states.  Most of these spend far too much on their military forces, so that in total the world spends some $1.5 trillion a year on its militaries.  We know that for a relatively small proportion of this amount – five or ten percent – it would be possible to make enormous progress on the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals.  These goals include ending poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.  The achievement of these goals would reflect real advances in human security, and with relatively small reductions in global military expenditures we could make them happen.

    As you go through life, you will have many challenges.  Each of you will have to find your own way in the world.  I want to share with you 12 ideas on how to meet these challenges.  These involve using all your miraculous gifts to live to your full capacity as human beings.

    1.    Learn from others, but think for yourself.  (Use your mind and judgment.)

    2.    Decide for yourself what is right or wrong.  (Use your conscience.)

    3.    Speak out for what you believe in.  (Use your voice.)

    4.    Stand up for what is right. (Use your power as an individual.)

    5.    Set goals and be persistent in working for them.  (Use your vision and determination.)

    6.    Live by the Golden Rule.  That is, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  (Use your feelings as a point of reference.)

    7.    Recognize the miracle that you are.  You are unique in the universe.  (Be spiritually aware.)

    8.    Never harm another miracle.  Choose to solve conflicts without resort to violence.  (Be nonviolent.)

    9.    Believe in yourself.  (Be trustworthy, even to yourself.)

    10.    Help others.  (Be giving.)

    11.    Be a citizen of the world.  (Be inclusive and embrace all life.)

    12.    Be a force for peace and justice.  (Be courageous and committed.)

    I hope you will find joy in life and also contribute to creating a more just and decent world.  If you care about life and recognize its preciousness, you are needed to create a better future.  Albert Camus, the great French writer and philosopher, said: “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”

    Camus responded to the first atomic bombing in this way: “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.”  I stand with Albert Camus in choosing to wage peace.  I hope you will as well.

    As you may know, I engaged in a dialogue with SGI President Daisaku Ikeda.  We espoused the principle of choosing hope, rather than succumbing to ignorance, apathy or despair.  Hope gives rise to action, and action, in turn, gives rise to hope.  Our shared hope includes the goal of building a more peaceful world, free of nuclear weapons – a daunting but essential goal.  I stand with Daisaku Ikeda in choosing hope.  I’m sure that you stand with him as well.

    You are the future.  May each of you choose hope, wage peace, and live your lives fully and with a full measure of joy.  I wish you all much success.

    Let me conclude with a poem that I wrote for a Soka High School graduation some years ago.  I think its message remains valid today.

    ADVICE TO GRADUATES

    Always remember this:
    You are a miracle
    Made up of dancing atoms
    That can talk and sing,
    Listen and remember, and laugh,
    At times even at yourself.

    You are a miracle
    Whose atoms existed before time.
    Born of the Big Bang, you are connected
    To everything – to mountains and oceans,
    To the winds and wilderness, to the creatures
    Of the sea and air and land.
    You are a member of the human family.

    You are a miracle, entirely unique.
    There has never been another
    With your combination of talents, dreams,
    Desires and hopes.  You can create.
    You are capable of love and compassion.

    You are a miracle.
    You are a gift of creation to itself.
    You are here for a purpose, which you must find.
    Your presence here is sacred – and you will
    Change the world.

  • Steps Toward a Nuclear Free World

    This article was originally published by The Japan Times.

    In recent years there has been a growing chorus of calls for a world free from nuclear weapons. The Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference scheduled for this May will be a crucial test of the international community’s ability to unite toward this goal.

    Two keys to realizing a breakthrough will be creating institutional frameworks for pledges of nonuse of nuclear weapons and establishing clear norms for their prohibition.

    We should work, based on the existing NPT system, to expand the frameworks defining a legal obligation not to use nuclear weapons, in this way laying the institutional foundations for reducing their role in national security, while establishing international norms for their eventual prohibition. This can challenge the thinking that justifies nuclear weapons — the willingness to eliminate others for the sake of one’s own objectives — clearing the way for their abolition.

    U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has stated that nuclear weapons are immoral and should not be accorded any military value. As this indicates, nuclear weapons are not only an absolute evil, entirely impermissible from a humanitarian perspective; they epitomize the military spending that continues to absorb vast amounts of the world’s limited human and economic resources — resources that are needed to respond to the common challenges facing humankind, such as poverty and environmental destruction. Their continued existence represents a fundamental threat to humanity.

    Today, the thought of the possession, much less the use, of chemical or biological weapons inspires widespread revulsion in the international community. We need to give concrete form to a similar recognition regarding nuclear weapons, which are undoubtedly the most inhumane of all.

    As a concrete step toward this, I urge that the Statute of the International Criminal Court be amended to define the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons as a war crime. The objective here is obviously not to punish the actual use of nuclear weapons but to establish a clear norm that such use is always and under any circumstance unacceptable. This could in turn open the way to the eventual adoption of a convention comprehensively banning nuclear weapons.

    An indispensable aspect of this effort must be a redefinition of security policies. The nuclear-weapon states must develop a shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons and break free from the spell of deterrence — the illusory belief that security can somehow be realized through threats of mutual destruction and a balance of terror. A new kind of thinking is needed, one based on working together to reduce threats and creating ever-expanding circles of physical and psychological security until these embrace the entire world.

    In this context I urge the nuclear- weapon states to undertake the following three commitments at this May’s NPT Review Conference and to work to fully implement them by 2015:

    1. To reach a legally binding agreement to extend negative security assurances — the undertaking not to use nuclear weapons against any of the nonnuclear-weapon states fulfilling their NPT obligations.

    2. To initiate negotiation on a treaty codifying the promise not to use nuclear weapons against each other.

    3. Where nuclear-weapon-free zones have yet to be established, as a bridging measure, to declare these as nuclear nonuse regions.

    Declaring nuclear nonuse regions would encourage progress toward global denuclearization. It could be part of a comprehensive system to prevent the proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction and forestall the dire possibility of nuclear terrorism. The key aim would be to encourage shared efforts to reduce threats, which would in turn reduce motivations for countries to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.

    If progress can be made toward these goals, it will make even more obvious the benefits of participating in existing frameworks, as opposed to the further deepening of isolation on the outside. Overlapping assurances of physical and psychological security can encompass not only countries relying on the nuclear umbrellas of nuclear-weapon states, but also North Korea and Iran as well as countries such as India, Pakistan and Israel that are currently not part of the NPT framework.

    None of this will be easy. But no matter how great the divide between our ideals and reality, there is no need to give up hope or accept this with resignation. Instead, the ordinary citizens of the world should come together to create a new reality. The prohibitions on land mines and cluster weapons that have been realized in recent years are the fruit of such solidarity.

    To quote U.S. President John F. Kennedy: “There is no single, simple key to this peace — no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.”

    We must remember that there is always a way, a path to the peak of even the most towering and forbidding mountain. Even when a sheer rock face looms before us, we should refuse to be disheartened, and instead continue the patient search for a way forward.

    What is most strongly required is the imagination that can appreciate the present crises as an opportunity to fundamentally transform the direction of history. Mustering the force of inner will and determination, we can convert challenges into the fuel for positive change.

  • Nagasaki Appeal 2010

    We have gathered from around the world at the Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons for the fourth time to demonstrate our determination that Nagasaki be the last place ever to suffer a nuclear attack. At the first Assembly in 2000, we heard atomic bomb survivors say, “We want to see nuclear weapons abolished in our lifetime.” Since then, ten years have passed without their wish being realized. Hearing again the voices of survivors, we renew our resolve to achieve a world without nuclear weapons. Their stories remind us of the suffering of victims created at the every stage of the nuclear cycle from uranium mining to weapons production and testing.

    With this in mind we must act on the opportunities provided by:

    • The five-point plan for nuclear disarmament proposed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on United Nations Day, 24 October 2008;
    • The tidal-wave of hope inspired by US President Obama’s April 2009 speech in Prague, and the joint statement of US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev in April 2009 pledging to work for nuclear stockpile reductions and supporting the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world;
    • The change of government in Japan and the subsequent statements by Prime Minister Hatoyama and Foreign Minister Okada calling for sole-purpose nuclear doctrines, negative security assurances and advocating for a regional nuclear weapon free zone;
    • The announcement by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle recommending the removal of US nuclear weapons from the territories of NATO states as a step in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in NATO.

    Nuclear weapons are the ultimate threat to life and the environment and the most extreme violation of human rights. They are dangerous in anyone’s hands and any use would be a crime against humanity. We call upon governments, in cooperation with civil society, to launch the process of abolishing nuclear weapons in a visible manner. To that end, the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to be held in May 2010, provides a critical opportunity to achieve this goal.

    Bearing this in mind, we advocate the following actions:

    1. Establishment of a process, involving like-minded countries and representatives of civil society, to undertake preparatory work on a treaty to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. Such a process should be organized with reference to the five-point proposal for nuclear disarmament advanced by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which includes a call on states to commence negotiation on a nuclear weapons convention or package of agreements. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, launched by Mayors for Peace at the 2008 NPT Preparatory Committee meeting in Geneva, also advocates such a process. We call on the 2010 NPT Review Conference to agree to this.

    2. All states possessing nuclear arsenals should halt research, development, testing, and component production while reductions of arsenals are in progress, not afterwards, with production and research facilities subject to an intrusive verification regime at the earliest possible time. States should reduce nuclear weapons in a manner that supports general disarmament, and the financial and human resources currently used to develop and maintain nuclear weapons systems should be redirected towards meeting social and economic needs consistent with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

    3. Increased citizen involvement in nuclear disarmament, including through campaigns and activities of Mayors for Peace, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (PNND), Abolition 2000 Global Network, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and others. We support nonviolent actions to oppose nuclear weapons, including direct action at nuclear weapons facilities. We encourage greater participation of youth in such campaigns and activities.

    4. Creation of more nuclear weapons free zones or zones free of weapons of mass destruction, or single state nuclear weapons free zones, in regions of the world including the Middle East, Northeast Asia, Europe, South Asia and the Arctic. Nuclear weapon free zones provide a practical means for reducing the role of nuclear weapons in security doctrines and decreasing the threat of nuclear weapons being used in the regions covered by the zones, and provide a realistic alternative to reliance on extended nuclear deterrence. In particular, we call on the governments of Japan and South Korea to prepare and publicize plans for creating a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone. This would create a favorable environment for promoting the six-party talks designed to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

    5. Bring world leaders, including U.S. President Obama, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to meet survivors and see for themselves the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, which continue through the lives of survivors and subsequent generations. It is essential to continue to impart the experiences of A-bomb victims in all their aspects to people all over the world. In this matter, Japan as the only country to have suffered atomic bombing, has a unique contribution to make.

    To the leaders of the nations that have nuclear weapons and those that wish to have them, we address our final comments to you:

    Surely you are aware through literature and films of the enormous destructive power of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While you may believe that nuclear weapons serve your national security interests and elevate your prestige, you have not personally experienced the effects of an atomic bomb explosion. The fact is that tens of thousands of innocent citizens were obliterated instantly under those mushroom clouds, that people who did not die instantly died after writhing in agony, covered in blood or burned in fire, and that people who narrowly escaped death had to suffer from radiation-induced illnesses for the rest of their lives. 

    You cannot be proud of possessing nuclear weapons or seeking to have them in the future. It means that you are conspirators in a shameful offence against humanity. From Nagasaki, an atomic bombed city, as global citizens, we demand that you take immediate steps towards the realization of a world without nuclear weapons.

    February 8, 2010

    The 4th Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

  • Omnicide and Abolition

    This speech was delivered by David Krieger to the 4th Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons on February 6, 2010.

    It is a great pleasure to be again in Nagasaki.  Thank you all for welcoming us so warmly to your beautiful city.  I have always been struck by the chance nature of the bombing of Nagasaki.  The target of the bomb that fateful day was another city, Kokura, but clouds prevented the bombing of that city.  If it hadn’t been for those clouds, Nagasaki might never have been bombed.  If there had not been a break in the clouds over Nagasaki, the city might never have been bombed.  Something as ordinary as clouds can change our lives in profound ways.  But so can our actions to build a world of peace and to eliminate nuclear weapons from our planet.  

    Over the years I have written a number of poems about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I would like to share one of these, entitled Echoes in the Sky.  It begins with a quote by the former mayor of Nagasaki, Iccho Itoh.

    ECHOES IN THE SKY

    “Today the bells of Nagasaki echo in the sky…”
    — Mayor Iccho Itoh

    The sky, bitter, blue, unyielding, holds promise.  The city, so welcoming,
    deserved far better.  Clouds opened making space for devastation.  Before
    anyone expected, the flowers returned.  Memories are painful, sometimes
    unbearable.  Words of apology never came.  Survivors grow old and feeble. 
    Generations pass.  The air above the sea is thick with sorrow.  The bells ring
    out for peace, echo in the sky.

    This is the first time I have been in Nagasaki since the tragic death of Mayor Itoh. I remember him vividly as a man of great charm and warmth.  He had a deep commitment to ending the nuclear weapons era and to assuring that Nagasaki’s past does not become any other city’s future.  Many of us throughout the world feel a debt of gratitude for the leadership he provided on this most critical issue of our time.

    Nagasaki is a city at once magical and poetic.  From the ashes of atomic devastation nearly 65 years ago, Nagasaki has arisen to become a leading global city in the movement for a world free of nuclear threat.  These Citizens’ Assemblies are models of engagement to involve ordinary citizens in the task of abolishing nuclear weapons.  The bells of Nagasaki echo in the sky’s embrace.  These bells send forth a call to people everywhere to awaken to the spirit of peace, to global cooperation and the transformative powers of forgiveness and love.  Nagasaki has always been an entry point for foreigners into Japan.  It has also been a gateway outward to the world, and your message is one that is critical for the world to hear.  

    I have worked for nuclear disarmament for four decades, and have done so with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation since its founding in 1982.  Our first and most important goal at the Foundation is the abolition of nuclear weapons.  We also seek to strengthen international law and to empower new generations of peace leaders.  These goals go together hand-in-hand.  We will not achieve abolition without strengthening international law and empowering new generations of peace leaders.  So we need to be firm in our demands for the total abolition of these monstrous weapons in accord with international law, and new generations of peace leaders must join in this demand and stand with us shoulder-to-shoulder.  We need to educate and mentor young leaders to carry forward this struggle until the last nuclear weapon is dismantled and destroyed.  

    I would like to talk to you about Omnicide and Abolition.  Omnicide is a term coined by the philosopher John Somerville.  It is an extension of the concepts of suicide and genocide.  It means the destruction of all, of everything.  Nuclear weapons have the potential for omnicide.  They could destroy everything — civilization, the human species, other forms of life, art, music, memory, poetry, literature, the past, the future.   Anything you can imagine can be destroyed by nuclear weapons, even imagination itself.  How clever we humans are.  We are a tool-creating species, and we have created tools with which we are capable of annihilating ourselves and other forms of life.  This should be a frightening thought to all of us.  

    There is no doubt that the number of nuclear weapons on our planet is sufficient to end human life.  What can justify this risk?  Is it not insane to continue to run this risk?  Why does this seem to be something that our political leaders cannot see?  Where is the leadership for change?  

    One ray of hope is Barack Obama assuming the presidency of the United States.  He seeks “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  But he tells us that he is not naive, and that this is not likely to be achieved in his lifetime.  He tells us we must be patient.  But if he knew that patience might make nuclear proliferation more likely and lead to further nuclear catastrophes, would he not instill his goal with a greater sense of urgency?

    Another ray of hope is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has called for all parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty “to pursue negotiations in good faith – as required by the treaty – on nuclear disarmament either through a new convention or through a series of mutually reinforcing instruments backed by a credible system of verification.”  This is important leadership coming from the top international civil servant.

    Our task as global citizens is to become a strong enough voice that leaders seeking abolition, like President Obama and Ban Ki-moon, will feel a solid base of support behind them, providing them with the strength to seek to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity with a sense of urgency.    

    We have our work cut out for us.  There is no doubt it will be difficult to achieve our goal.  We face powerful forces.  We must make our demands heard.  As the 19th century anti-slavery abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never has and it never will.”  

    We must encourage President Obama to act with greater urgency, but we must also encourage Kim Jong-Il to come to the negotiating table, give up his nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances and development assistance, and join a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone.  We must also bring the spirit of the hibakusha to the negotiating table.  If we can do this, we can use the transforming powers of forgiveness and love to infuse the negotiations with a new energy reflective of the changed “modes of thinking” that Albert Einstein saw as essential to avert “unparalleled catastrophe.”  

    The hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have given testimony to enough pain and suffering for many lifetimes.  Let their voices echo in the sky and throughout the Earth.  I would ask you to take five actions from this Citizens’ Assembly.  

    First, invite President Obama and other world leaders to visit your city.  Help them to see at first hand the nature of the nuclear power of annihilation and compare that to the transformative powers of forgiveness and love.  

    Second, send a strong delegation of hibakusha to the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and lobby each of the delegates to the conference, encouraging them to approach the elimination of nuclear weapons with a sense of urgency.  

    Third, send delegations of hibakusha throughout the world to tell their stories to young people, to share with them the Appeal that will come from this Assembly, and to encourage their leadership in the struggle for a world without nuclear weapons.

    Fourth, lobby the Japanese government to step out from under the US nuclear umbrella and to end its reliance on extended nuclear deterrence.  

    Fifth, continue to lobby for a Nobel Peace Prize for the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  President Obama received the prize for what he might do; the hibakusha deserve the prize for what they have done in powerfully spreading the message, “Never again!”  

    Now I would like to focus on the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which will take place in May.  In their deliberations, states parties to the conference should bear in mind the following in seeking a comprehensive solution to the threat of nuclear weapons rather than narrow advantage:

    • Nuclear weapons continue to present a real and present danger to humanity and other life on Earth.
    • Basing the security of one’s country on the threat to kill tens of millions of innocent people, perhaps billions, and risking the destruction of civilization, has no moral justification and deserves the strongest condemnation.
    • It will not be possible to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons without fulfilling existing legal obligations for total nuclear disarmament.  
    • Preventing nuclear proliferation and achieving nuclear disarmament will both be made far more difficult, if not impossible, by expanding nuclear energy facilities throughout the world.  
    • Putting the world on track for eliminating the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons will require new ways of thinking about this overarching danger to present and future generations.  

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation supports the following five priority actions for agreement at the 2010 NPT Review Conference:

    1. Each signatory nuclear weapon state should provide an accurate public accounting of its nuclear arsenal, conduct a public environmental and human assessment of its potential use, and devise and make public a roadmap for going to zero nuclear weapons.
    2. All signatory nuclear weapon states should reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies by taking all nuclear forces off high-alert status, pledging No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapon states and No Use against non-nuclear weapon states.
    3. All enriched uranium and reprocessed plutonium – military and civilian – and their production facilities (including all uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technology) should be placed under strict and effective international safeguards.
    4. All signatory states should review Article IV of the NPT, promoting the “inalienable right” to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, in light of the nuclear proliferation problems posed by nuclear electricity generation.
    5. All signatory states should comply with Article VI of the NPT, reinforced and clarified by the 1996 World Court Advisory Opinion, by commencing negotiations in good faith on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons, and complete these negotiations by the year 2015.

    The most important action by the NPT Review Conference would be an agreement to commence good faith negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.  Such an agreement would demonstrate the needed political will among the world’s countries to move forward toward a world without nuclear weapons.  If the United States fails to lead in convening these negotiations, I would urge Japan to do so.  Regardless of which countries provide the leadership, however, I would propose that the opening session of these negotiations be held in Hiroshima, the first city to have suffered nuclear devastation, and the final session of these negotiations be held in Nagasaki, the second and, hopefully, last city to have suffered atomic devastation.

    If agreement could be reached to begin these negotiations for a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, we would be on a serious path toward a nuclear weapons-free world, one that would allow the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that their pleas have been heard.

    I would like to conclude by sharing another poem, “The Bells of Nagasaki.”

    THE BELLS OF NAGASAKI

    The bells of Nagasaki
    ring for those who suffered
    and those who suffer still.

    They draw old women to them
    and young couples
    with love-glazed eyes.

    They draw in small children
    walking awkwardly
    toward the epicenter.

    The Bells of Nagasaki,
    elusive as a flowing stream,
    ring for each of us, ring
    like falling leaves.

    Thank you, and let’s make sure that the echoes of the Nagasaki bells are heard throughout the world.  Never lose hope, and never give up the struggle for a safer and saner world, free of all nuclear weapons.

  • William Stafford: A Voice for Peace

    Poet William Stafford was a conscientious objector
    during World War II.  A wonderful 32
    minute documentary video, “Every War Has Two Losers,” has been done of his life
    as a writer and man of peace.  The video,
    directed by Haydn Reiss, includes commentary by Robert Bly, W.S. Merwin and Alice Walker,
    among others. 

    Stafford, who lived from 1914 to 1993, is revealed as a
    down to earth man and artist, who was a voice for peace and simple decency.  The video is available online from Amazon, as
    are many of Stafford’s poetry
    books.

    The flavor of Stafford’s poetic voice for peace can be found in his
    poem:

    At the
    Un-National Monument Along the Canadian
    Border

    This is the field where the battle did
    not happen,
    where the unknown soldier did not
    die.
    This is the field where grass joined hands,
    where no monument stands,
    and the only heroic thing is
    the sky.

    Birds fly here without any sound,
    unfolding their wings across the open.
    No people killed –
    or were killed – on this ground
    hollowed by the
    neglect of an air so tame
    that people celebrate it by forgetting its
    name.

  • A Memory of Howard Zinn

    I just learned that my friend Howard Zinn died today. Earlier this morning, I was being interviewed by the Boston Phoenix, in connection with the release in Boston in February of a documentary in which he is featured prominently. The interviewer asked me who my own heroes were, and I had no hesitation in answering, first, “Howard Zinn.”

    Just weeks ago after watching the film on December 7, I woke up the next morning thinking that I had never told him how much he meant to me. For once in my life, I acted on that thought in a timely way. I sent him an e-mail in which I said, among other things, what I had often told others about him: that he was, “in my opinion, the best human being I’ve ever known. The best example of what a human can be, and can do with their life.”

    Our first meeting was at Faneuil Hall in Boston in early 1971, where we both spoke against the indictments of Eqbal Ahmad and Phil Berrigan for “conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger,” from which we marched with the rest of the crowd to make Citizens’ Arrests at the Boston office of the FBI. Later that spring we went with our affinity group (including Noam Chomsky, Cindy Fredericks, Marilyn Young, Mark Ptashne, Zelda Gamson, Fred Branfman and Mitch Goodman), to the Mayday actions blocking traffic in Washington (“If they won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government”). Howard tells that story in the film and I tell it at greater length in my memoir, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (pp.376-81). But for reasons of space, I had to cut out the next section in which Howard–who had been arrested in DC after most of the rest of us had gone elsewhere–came back to Boston for a rally and a blockade of the Federal Building. I’ve never published that story, so here it is, an out-take from my manuscript:

    A day later, Howard Zinn was the last speaker at a large rally in Boston Common. I was at the back of a huge crowd, listening to him over loudspeakers. 27 years later, I can remember some things he said. “On Mayday in Washington thousands of us were arrested for disturbing the peace. But there is no peace. We were really arrested because we were disturbing the war.”

    He said, “If Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had been walking the streets of Georgetown yesterday, they would have been arrested. Arrested for being young.”

    At the end of his comments he said, “I want to speak now to some of the members of this audience, the plainclothes policemen among us, the military intelligence agents who are assigned to do surveillance. You are taking the part of secret police, spying on your fellow Americans. You should not be doing what you are doing. You should rethink it, and stop. You do not have to carry out orders that go against the grain of what it means to be an American.”

    Those last weren’t his exact words, but that was the spirit of them. He was to pay for that comment the next day, when we were sitting side by side in a blockade of the Federal Building in Boston. We had a circle of people all the way around the building, shoulder to shoulder, so no one could get in or out except by stepping over us. Behind us were crowds of people with posters who were supporting us but who hadn’t chosen to risk arrest. In front of us, keeping us from getting any closer to the main entrance to the building, was a line of policemen, with a large formation of police behind them. All the police had large plastic masks tilted back on their heads and they were carrying long black clubs, about four feet long, like large baseball bats. Later the lawyers told us that city police regulations outlawed the use of batons that long.

    But at first the relations with the police were almost friendly. We sat down impudently at the very feet of the policemen who were guarding the entrance, filling in the line that disappeared around the sides until someone came from the rear of the building and announced over a bullhorn, “The blockade is complete. We’ve surrounded the building!” There was a cheer from the crowd behind us, and more people joined us in sitting until the circle was two or three deep.

    We expected them to start arresting us, but for a while the police did nothing. They could have manhandled a passage through the line and kept it open for employees to go in or out, but for some reason they didn’t. We thought maybe they really sympathized with our protest, and this was their way of joining in. As the morning wore on, people took apples and crackers and bottles of water out of their pockets and packs and shared them around, and they always offered some to the police standing in front of us. The police always refused, but they seemed to appreciate the offer.

    Then one of the officers came over to Howard and said, “You’re Professor Zinn, aren’t you?” Howard said yes, and the officer reached down and shook his hand enthusiastically. He said, “I heard you lecture at the Police Academy. A lot of us here did. That was a wonderful lecture.” Howard had been asked to speak to them about the role of dissent and civil disobedience in American history. Several other policemen came over to pay their respects to Howard and thank him for his lecture. The mood seemed quite a bit different from Washington.

    Then a line of employees emerged from the building, wearing coats and ties or dresses. Their arms were raised and they were holding cards in their raised hands. As they circled past us they hold out the cards so we could see what they were: ID cards, showing they were federal employees. They were making the peace-sign with their other hands, they were circling around the building to show solidarity with what we were doing. Their spokesman said over a bullhorn, “We want this war to be over, too! Thank you for what you are doing! Keep it up.” Photographers, including police, were scrambling to take pictures of them, and some of them held up their ID cards so they would get in the picture. It was the high point of the day.

    A little while after the employees had gone back inside the building, there was a sudden shift in the mood of the police. An order had been passed. The bloc of police in the center of the square got into tight formation and lowered their plastic helmets. The police standing right in front of us, over us, straightened up, adjusted their uniforms and lowered their masks. Apparently the time had come to start arrests. The supporters who didn’t want to be arrested fell back.

    But there was no arrest warning. There was a whistle, and the line of police began inching forward, black batons raised upright. They were going to walk through us or over us, push us back. The man in front of us, who had been talking to Howard about his lecture a little earlier, muttered to us under his breath, “Leave! Now! Quick, get up.” He was warning, not menacing us.

    Howard and I looked at each other. We’d come expecting to get arrested. It didn’t seem right to just get up and move because someone told us to, without arresting us. We stayed where we were. No one else left either. Boots were touching our shoes. The voice over our heads whispered intensely, “Move! Please. For God’s sake, move!” Knees in uniform pressed our knees. I saw a club coming down. I put my hands over my head, fists clenched, and a four-foot baton hit my wrist, hard. Another one hit my shoulder.

    I rolled over, keeping my arms over my head, got up and moved back a few yards. Howard was being hauled off by several policemen. One had Howard’s arms pinned behind him, another had jerked his head back by the hair. Someone had ripped his shirt in two, there was blood on his bare chest. A moment before he had been sitting next to me and I waited for someone to do the same to me, but no one did. I didn’t see anyone else getting arrested. But no one was sitting anymore, the line had been broken, disintegrated. Those who had been sitting hadn’t moved very far, they were standing like me a few yards back, looking around, holding themselves where they’d been clubbed. The police had stopped moving. They stood in a line, helmets still down, slapping their batons against their hands. Their adrenaline was still up, but they were standing in place.

    Blood was running down my hand, covering the back of my hand. I was wearing a heavy watch and it had taken the force of the blow. The baton had smashed the crystal and driven pieces of glass into my wrist. Blood was dripping off my fingers. Someone gave me a handkerchief to wrap around my wrist and told me to raise my arm. The handkerchief got soaked quickly and blood was running down my arm while I looked for a first-aid station that was supposed to be at the back of the crowd, in a corner of the square. I finally found it and someone picked the glass out of my arm and put a thick bandage around it.

    I went back to the protest. My shoulder was aching. The police were standing where they had stopped, and the blockade had reformed, people were sitting ten yards back from where they had been before. There seemed to be more people sitting, not fewer. Many of the supporters had joined in. But it was quiet. No one was speaking loudly, no laughing. People were waiting for the police to move forward again. They weren’t expecting any longer to get arrested.

    Only three or four people had been picked out of the line to be arrested before. The police had made a decision (it turned out) to arrest only the “leaders,” not to give us the publicity of arrests and trials. Howard hadn’t been an organizer of this action, he was just participating like the rest of us, but from the way they treated him when they pulled him out of the line, his comments directly to the police in the rally the day before must have rubbed someone the wrong way.

    I found Roz Zinn, Howard’s wife, sitting in the line on the side at right angles to where Howard and I had been before. I sat down between her and their housemate, a woman her age. They had been in support before until they had seen what happened to Howard.

    Looking at the police in formation, with their uniforms and clubs, guns on their hips, I felt naked. I knew that it was an illusion in combat to think you were protected because you were carrying a weapon, but it was an illusion that worked. For the first time, I was very conscious of being unarmed. At last, in my own country, I understood what a Vietnamese villager must have felt at what the Marines called a “county fair,” when the Marines rounded up everyone they could find in a hamlet–all women and children and old people, never draft- or VC-age young men–to be questioned one at a time in a tent, meanwhile passing out candy to the kids and giving vaccinations. Winning hearts and minds, trying to recruit informers. No one among the villagers knowing what the soldiers, in their combat gear, would do next, or which of them might be detained.

    We sat and talked and waited for the police to come again. They lowered their helmets and formed up. The two women I was with were both older than I was. I moved my body in front of them, to take the first blows. I felt a hand on my elbow. “Excuse me, I was sitting there,” the woman who shared the Zinn’s house said to me, with a cold look. She hadn’t come there that day and sat down, she told me later, to be protected by me. I apologized and scrambled back, behind them.

    No one moved. The police didn’t move, either. They stood in formation facing us, plastic masks over their faces, for quite a while. But they didn’t come forward again. They had kept open a passage in front for the employees inside to leave after five, and eventually the police left, and we left..

    There was a happier story to tell, just over one month later. On Saturday night, June 12, 1971, we had a date with Howard and Roz to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Harvard Square. But that morning I learned from someone at the New York Times that—without having alerted me—the Times was about to start publishing the top secret documents I had given them that evening. That meant I might get a visit from the FBI any moment; and for once, I had copies of the Papers in my apartment, because I planned to send them to Senator Mike Gravel for his filibuster against the draft.

    From Secrets (p. 386):

    “I had to get the documents out of our apartment. I called the Zinns, who had been planning to come by our apartment later to join us for the movie, and asked if we could come by their place in Newton instead. I took the papers in a box in the trunk of our car. They weren’t the ideal people to avoid attracting the attention of the FBI. Howard had been in charge of managing antiwar activist Daniel Berrigan’s movements underground while he was eluding the FBI for months (so from that practical point of view he was an ideal person to hide something from them), and it could be assumed that his phone was tapped, even if he wasn’t under regular surveillance. However, I didn’t know whom else to turn to that Saturday afternoon. Anyway, I had given Howard a large section of the study already, to read as a historian; he’d kept it in his office at Boston University. As I expected, they said yes immediately. Howard helped me bring up the box from the car.

    We drove back to Harvard Square for the movie. The Zinns had never seen Butch Cassidy before. It held up for all of us. Afterward we bought ice-cream cones at Brigham’s and went back to our apartment. Finally Howard and Roz went home before it was time for the early edition of the Sunday New York Times to arrive at the subway kiosk below the square. Around midnight Patricia and I went over to the square and bought a couple of copies. We came up the stairs into Harvard Square reading the front page, with the three-column story about the secret archive, feeling very good.”

  • A Global Push for Clean Energy: The International Renewable Energy Agency

    This article was originally published by YES! Magazine.

    Since 1995, when more than 170 nations voted to extend the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, civil society has been calling for the establishment of an international agency to promote renewable energy sources to take the place of fossil fuels without resorting to nuclear power.

    Recognizing the “inextricable link” between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, Abolition 2000, a global network for the elimination of nuclear weapons, drafted a model statute for the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and lobbied nations around the world to institute it. [1] Joining with other grassroots networks working to avoid catastrophic climate change through a transition to sustainable energy, activists spoke up at numerous international meetings and conferences and conferred with national environmental departments, seeking support for an energy agency focused solely on clean, safe, renewable energy.

    In January 2009, one year ago, Germany, Denmark, and Spain launched the founding meeting for IRENA in Bonn, Germany. [2] A year later, 142 of the 192 member states of the United Nations, as well as the European Union, have signed the IRENA statute. The agency has opened headquarters in Abu Dhabi and branch offices in Bonn and Vienna, and its interim-director general, Helene Pelosse, a former French environmental minister who held positions in trade and finance as well, is determined to hire a staff comprised of at least 50 percent women.

    IRENA is committed to becoming a principal driving force in promoting a rapid transition toward the sustainable use of a renewable energy on a global scale. It has a mandate to promote all forms of renewable energy produced in a sustainable manner, including solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, and appropriate bio energy. It will provide practical advice and support for both industrialized and developing countries, helping them to build capacity and improve their regulatory frameworks.

    This year, “IRENA will focus on building a network of international renewable energy experts, starting to map the global potential of renewables, and build up a comprehensive database of policies to promote renewable energy,” said Pelosse. It “will become a one-stop-shop for up-to-date and relevant information on renewable energy.” [3] As a pilot project, IRENA will help develop renewable energy for a number of islands within the Kingdom of Tonga that lack basic electricity. [4]

    Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year. Wind can satisfy the world’s electricity needs 40 times over, and meet all global energy demands five times over. The geothermal energy stored in the top six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times the energy of the world’s known oil and gas resources. Tidal, wave, and small hydropower can also provide vast stores of energy everywhere on earth, abundant and free for every person on our planet, rich and poor alike. [5]

    While the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been committed to promoting nuclear power and the International Energy Agency (IEA) was established in the 1970s to handle the crisis in fossil fuel distribution, only IRENA will be solely dedicated to promoting clean, safe, renewable energy from the abundant energy resources of our planet.

    As a derivative of the Greek word eirene, meaning “peace,” IRENA is particularly well-named. The rapid development of renewable energy will enable us to forego our reliance on fossil and nuclear fuels, the continued misuse of which will lead inevitably to climate catastrophe, nuclear proliferation, and perpetual resource wars. Universal reliance on sustainable energy will instead create a promising path toward creating peace on earth.

    Sources

    1. www.abolition2000.org/?page_id=153

    2. www.irena.org

    3. www.ameinfo.com/221385.html

    4. www.irena.org/downloads/newsletter/IRENA_Newsletter_Web.pdf

    5. www.abolition2000.org/a2000-files/sustainable-now.pdf

  • Nuclear Weapons After Bush: Prospects for Abolition

    2010_01_25_conference_transcript.pdf