Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • Our Purpose

    This poem was read at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 15th annual Sadako Peace Day commemoration on August 6, 2009

    I believe the orange leaves should fall I believe that the water in a stream should run I believe fish should swim nothing should be stopped from its purpose

    don’t stop flowers from growing nor the lightning from striking

    Our purpose is not to fly in heavy metal contraptions or to flatten land for our own selfishness

    Our purpose is simple but important Our job is not to kill or destroy

    We are here to open up to the world and enjoy its miracles but even more than that, we are here to make peace

    Maia Ziaee, 12, is a seventh-grade student in Santa Barbara, CA.

  • Japan Ready for “No Nukes”

    As the Obama administration contemplates major reductions to its nuclear arsenal, Japan’s commitment to nuclear disarmament is being tested as never before.

    In his Prague speech on April 5, President Barack Obama said, “We will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy and urge others to do the same.” He went on to say, “we will begin the work of reducing our arsenal.”

    But in between these two landmark pledges he said, “as long as these weapons exist, we will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.”

    The goal that Obama articulated of “a world without nuclear weapons” was overwhelmingly supported by the Japanese public. Yet, the way the Japanese government views U.S. extended nuclear deterrence, otherwise referred to as the “nuclear umbrella,” is turning out to be a key sticking point, which may end up blocking progress on nuclear disarmament.

    Reportedly, the specific reduction in the role of nuclear weapons that is being contemplated is that they would be retained for only one purpose. Their sole purpose would be to deter the use of other people’s nuclear weapons. This is sometimes referred to as a policy of “No First Use” (NFU).

    The Japanese government has long taken a different undeclared view that the U.S. nuclear umbrella should also cover potential threats from biological weapons, chemical weapons and even conventional weapons.

    At a press conference Aug. 9, on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Prime Minister Taro Aso criticized demands for nuclear powers, including the United States, to pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. He said, “I wonder if that’s a realistic way to ensure Japan’s safety.” Likewise, Foreign Ministry officials have repeatedly made unofficial comments opposing NFU.

    The key test for the vision spelled out by Obama in Prague is the Nuclear Posture Review, now being prepared. We understand that a substantial reduction in the role of nuclear weapons in national security strategy is being considered.

    It is distressing to note that Japan is being used as an excuse to prevent Washington from making an important policy change that would be a step forward toward a world without nuclear weapons. Some argue that a reduction in the role of nuclear weapons would weaken the U.S.-Japan security relationship.

    Others, for example former U.S. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, even suggest that Japan might choose to acquire its own nuclear weapons.

    In fact, there are signs of greater flexibility than these people acknowledge. It is widely predicted that there will be a change of government after the Aug. 30 elections and that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), currently the largest opposition party, will win. The attitude to NFU by the DPJ and its potential coalition partners is likely to be quite different from the LDP.

    DPJ secretary general Katsuya Okada has suggested that Japan work with Washington to achieve a NFU policy. In response to a questionnaire sent recently to Japanese political parties by disarmament nongovernment organizations, the DPJ said that NFU was an issue that should be discussed with the U.S. government.

    The Social Democratic Party, a potential coalition party in a new government, and the Japanese Communist Party also supported an NFU policy. Even New Komeito, which is a member of the current government, supported an NFU policy if there is an international consensus.

    Opposition to NFU within the LDP is by no means universal. So the picture of monolithic Japanese opposition to NFU, presented by some U.S. commentators, is really quite misleading.

    As for the argument that Japan will go nuclear if Washington reduces the number and missions of U.S. nuclear forces, this is nonsense. Japanese political leaders are intelligent enough to know that going nuclear would have huge ramifications that would not be in Japan’s national interest. No political party in Japan supports acquiring nuclear weapons.

    Sixty-four years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the anti- nuclear sentiment in Japan remains strong. Over 1,400 local authorities (about 80 percent) have made nuclear-free pledges. These local authorities represent the spirit of nuclear abolition in Japanese society far better than the LDP-led central government.

    If the Obama administration moves decisively to get rid of “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.” the joy of the vast majority of the Japanese people will overwhelm the reservations of an unrepresentative clique in the Japanese bureaucratic system. So, Mr. Obama, act boldly. Grasp the opportunity that is before you. Japan is ready.

    This article was originally published by the Japan Times

    Shingo Fukuyama is secretary general of the Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs (Gensuikin). Hiromichi Umebayashi is special adviser to Peace Depot, a nonprofit organization.

  • President Obama Needs Friends on Nuclear Weapons

    This article was originally published by Embassy Magazine

    When President Barack Obama chairs a summit of the UN Security Council Sept. 24 on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, a new and exciting moment will have arrived in the long struggle to rid the world of nuclear weapons. This unprecedented event gives Canada a rare political opportunity to obtain several political goals with one stroke.

    We must understand how high the stakes are in this new round of the nuclear poker game. Unlike his predecessors, President Obama has moved nuclear disarmament to the centre of US foreign policy. He said in his Prague speech in April that he has a “commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He has re-launched nuclear negotiations with Russia, stated that he will “aggressively pursue” US ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), started work on a verifiable fissile material ban, and announced he will host a global summit on nuclear security next spring.

    All this will prepare the US for a leadership role at the 2010 Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, preparations for which have already been energized by the stunning U-turn in US nuclear diplomacy. From being the biggest obstacle to nuclear disarmament, the US, under Obama, is poised to become a vigorous proponent.

    The nuclear weapons abolition movement sees news rays of hope.

    But wait a minute. A landmine is waiting to trip up Obama. The nuclear defenders, led by the military-industrial complex and their Congressional spokespersons, are by no means succumbing to the aspirations of their president. They are determined that the US maintain what they call a “safe, secure, effective and reliable nuclear deterrent.”

    Former US defense secretary Jim Schlesinger is trying to frame the all-important US Nuclear Posture Review, now being brought up to date, around the concept of “extended deterrence.” The US, it is argued, needs an effective, if smaller, nuclear arsenal to counter a nuclear threat anywhere.

    This means that the US would keep its nuclear weapons to protect not only itself but its allies who do not possess nuclear weapons. In other words, so the argument goes, the US would be weakening itself and also letting down its friends if it gave up its nuclear weapons. If Schlesinger & Co. can get “extended deterrence” written into the new Nuclear Posture Review, scheduled for publication in December, this will stop Obama cold in his quest for a nuclear weapons-free world.

    The nuclear defenders have already signalled that they will not oppose US ratification of the CTBT if they get “extended deterrence” codified. This will allow them to modernize US nuclear arsenals indefinitely through lab work rather than explosive testing. They think this “carrot”—CTBT ratification—will be enough to get the US safely through the 2010 NPT Review.

    A huge fight is looming because Obama knows he cannot be left in an incoherent position: calling for a nuclear weapons-free world while the US modernizes its nuclear arsenal on the supposed grounds that it must do so to protect its allies. This is but a perpetuation of the two-class nuclear world and is completely unsustainable in the 21st century.

    There is only one way to prevent North Korea and Iran and any other aspiring nuclear state from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that is through a global, verifiable ban on all nuclear weapons. Putin of Russia and Singh of India, to name just two of the other leaders of nuclear powers, understand this and are ready to move to comprehensive negotiations toward a global ban. In Obama, we see for the first time the abolition of nuclear weapons moving from aspiration to the strategic centre.

    This final dismantling of the Cold War architecture will be a Herculean task. Fearmongers who pretend nuclear weapons bring security will shout from the rooftops. Though such former US officials as Henry Kissinger and George Schultz have given their support to the abolition of nuclear weapons, they have been countered by others, such as Richard Perle and Sen. John Kyle, who are urging the US to keep nuclear weapons “for the foreseeable future.”

    In short, Obama, no matter how well motivated, cannot bring us to a nuclear weapons-free world alone. In addition to powerful domestic support, he needs strong international backing. The countries that are friends of the US—those very states that are said to be depending on the US nuclear umbrella—now need to speak up and blow away the phony “extended deterrence” argument. This brings us to Canada.

    A nuclear weapons-free world has always been a value and a goal of Canada. We have been prevented from fully exercising that value because of the need to support the US, which until now has always wanted to maintain its nuclear stocks. Suddenly, the Obama moment gives Canada an opening to demonstrate its seriousness in nuclear disarmament.

    The Harper government must be urged to recognize the importance of this moment. Sadly, the government seems tongue-tied. There is no program of work, no clear-cut statements from political leaders, and indeed the last round of UN voting showed Canada clinging to negative votes on time-bound measures for nuclear disarmament.

    To me, this is politically incomprehensible. This is the very moment that Canada should be openly and loudly supporting the president of the United States (a posture that otherwise Canadians are accustomed to). Obama desperately needs the help of his friends. Let us give it to him. When Harper meets with Obama on Sept. 16 in Washington, the Canadian leader should put this support high on the agenda.

    There’s plenty of support in Canada for the prime minister to move: 280 recipients of the Order of Canada have called for international negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention, which would be a verifiable treaty on the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons; four major peace groups (Canadian Pugwash, Science for Peace, Physicians for Global Survival and Voice of Women) are planning a “Zero Nuclear Weapons” forum at Toronto City Hall Nov. 13-14 where the keynote speaker will be the pre-eminent author Jonathan Schell; the Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is scheduling a major meeting in Ottawa in January.

    Besides this public support, there are a couple of other political points the government might consider. If Canada wants to reject any overtures from the US and NATO to extend our combat role in Afghanistan beyond 2011, how better to match this rejection than with whole-hearted support for Obama’s nuclear disarmament plans. And then there’s the matter of Canada wanting a seat on the UN Security Council. Would there be a better demonstration of our sense of international responsibility than playing a serious role with Obama and other like-minded states in working actively to make a reality the vision of a world without nuclear weapons? In politics, that’s called win-win.

    Douglas Roche is a former senator and Canadian ambassador for disarmament. He is chairman emeritus of the Middle Powers Initiative.

  • The Hawkish Case for Nuclear Disarmament

    This article was originally published by the Los Angeles Times

    Last week, peace activists around the world commemorated the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, arguing that nuclear weapons should be abolished so that such destruction will never be repeated. Their call for peace through disarmament has traditionally been a rallying cry of the left. In fact, the peace sign, that ultimate icon of 1960s war protests, is actually a rendering of the semaphoric symbols for the letters “N” and “D”: “Nuclear Disarmament.”
    Conservatives, by contrast, have put their faith in “peace through strength,” an ancient notion made fresh during the Cold War by Ronald Reagan. Which is why, in April, when President Obama outlined his vision of a world without nuclear weapons, the right reacted with incredulity, as if he had suggested pacifying the Taliban with a group hug. Newt Gingrich, for one, called the president’s disarmament speech a “fantasy.”
    As the president moves to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal in concert with Russia’s and implement new arms control measures, the allegedly foolish goal of disarmament has become an obvious target for hawks hoping to undermine the president’s agenda. But if the abolition of nuclear weapons is a fantasy, it’s one that ought to excite the country’s hawks as much as its doves.
    Traditionally, military power was measured in relative, not absolute, terms, meaning that your security was a function not of how many weapons you had, but of how many more you had than your enemy. The advent of nuclear weapons skewed that calculation. Because it would take only a few nuclear weapons to destroy a civilization, the atomic bomb became an equalizer for Davids confronting Goliath-sized enemies.
    During the Cold War, one could argue that that dynamic helped the U.S. because Warsaw Pact forces outnumbered NATO’s. But today, with the specter of rogue-state nuclear programs, it’s more likely that we are the ones who would be deterred. For example, would we have waged Operation Desert Storm (let alone Operation Iraqi Freedom) if Saddam Hussein had been able to strike New York or Washington with a nuclear weapon? Probably not. Our half-trillion-dollar-a-year military can, in essence, be defanged by any dictator with a handful of A-bombs.
    That is a remarkable waste of America’s incredible conventional superiority. Our fleet of stealth fighters and bombers can establish air dominance in virtually any scenario, allowing us to obliterate an adversary’s military infrastructure at will. At sea, our fleet is larger than the next 17 navies combined and includes 11 carrier battle groups that can project power around the globe. (By contrast, few of our potential adversaries field even a single carrier.) All in all, the U.S. accounts for just shy of half the world’s defense spending, more than the next 45 nations combined. That’s six times more than China, 10 times more than Russia and nearly 100 times more than Iran.

    Yet despite potential flash points with nations such as Russia (over Georgia) or China (over Taiwan), it would be lunacy to engage in combat with either because of the risk of escalation to a nuclear conflict. Abolishing nuclear weapons would obviously not make conflict with those states a good idea, but it would dramatically increase American freedom of action in a crisis. That should make hawks, with their strong faith in the efficacy of American military power, very happy. Indeed, if anyone opposes disarmament, it should be our rivals.
    American conservatives cling to our arsenal as though it gives us great sway over foreign countries. Yet when our conventional power has proved insufficient, nukes have done little to augment our influence abroad.
    In the early years of the Cold War, when we had a nuclear monopoly, the Soviet Union reneged on promises made at Yalta and solidified its control over Eastern Europe. In 1949, despite our assistance to the Kuomintang, the Chinese Communists took over the mainland and formed the People’s Republic, and the following year they stormed across the Yalu River and into the Korean War even though our atomic arsenal could have wiped out their cities as easily as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Years later, the bomb did nothing to prevent, shorten or decide the Vietnam War. And, of course, nukes have provided no assistance in stabilizing Iraq or Afghanistan. Today, they threaten us far more than they protect us: Nuclear terrorism is the greatest threat we face, but our own nuclear arsenal cannot protect us from an attack.
    Nuclear weapons do deter states from attacking us with nuclear weapons — and few would suggest that we unilaterally give up our arsenal while others retain theirs. But, oddly, it is here that conservatives seem to doubt the utility of nuclear weapons more than their counterparts on the left. Whereas many liberals and realists believe that Iran could be deterred if it built the bomb, conservatives are far less sanguine, insisting that a nuclear Tehran is an unacceptable threat. They too understand that the U.S. arsenal is no guarantor of security, and that even a handful of nuclear weapons in enemy hands threatens to neuter our conventional advantage.
    Of course, we’re a long way from disarmament. But, today, beyond the small number of weapons each nuclear state can justify as a credible deterrent, every additional weapon represents only a greater risk — of theft, accident or unauthorized use. Which is why the president’s efforts to reduce the U.S. and Russian arsenals, ban nuclear testing and prevent the further production of fissile material are so valuable. Each of these measures will help protect the U.S., and if they bring us closer to disarmament, then that is a cause for celebration by hawks and doves alike.

    Peter Scoblic is executive editor of the New Republic and author of “U.S. vs. Them: Conservatism in the Age of Nuclear Terror.”

  • The Obama-Kennedy Nuclear Policy

    This article was originally published by the Huffington Post

    The death of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, still unfairly blamed even in his obituaries for Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam, ironically removes from the current national dialogue on President Obama’s nuclear weapons policy a champion of John F. Kennedy’s original dream of a nuclear weapons-free world.

    Let us “bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations,” said Kennedy in his Inaugural Address in January 1961. “Weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us,” he told the United Nations General Assembly later that year. “…No longer is the quest for disarmament a sign of weakness, (nor) the destruction of arms a dream — it is a practical matter of life or death. The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race.”

    McNamara supported President Kennedy’s decision not to use nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Crisis or on any other occasion; and JFK’s success in ending those crises without initiating a nuclear exchange or even firing a shot convinced all of us who served with him never to rely on nuclear weapons in the future, never, as he put it, “to risk a nuclear war in which the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth.”

    The old Eisenhower-Dulles policy of threatening massive retaliation, he told Congress in January 1963, reflecting upon the Cuban Missile Crisis, “may not deter piecemeal aggression; but a line of destroyers in a quarantine (like that around Cuba) or a division of well-equipped men on a border (like that around West Berlin) may be more useful to our real security than the multiplication of awesome weapons beyond all rational need.”

    In the single best speech of his presidency, delivered at American University’s 1963 Commencement, he declared that “the acquisition of idle stockpiles which can only destroy and never create is not the most efficient means of assuring peace.”

    President Barack Obama made clear in his Prague speech in April of this year that he too has a “commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons… as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it.” Decades earlier, Obama had specified this same goal in a college student essay. He was not talking at Prague, nor was Kennedy at American University, about unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament, but about an enforceable global nuclear pact, covering Russia as well as China, Israel as well as Iran, both India and Pakistan, and all other present and potential nuclear powers. Achievable not quickly, easily or automatically, but achievable, this pact would depend on comprehensive, invasive and effective inspections, backed by the credible threat of swift, multilateral enforcement.

    The same kind of “mad bombers” critical of what they called Kennedy’s “no-win policy,” who believed that a nuclear exchange in which millions of American dead totaling less than tens of millions of enemy dead would be a proud victory for the United States, are still with us. Richard Perle and Senator Jon Kyl, in a June 30 Wall Street Journal article, urged the United States to keep a nuclear arsenal “for the foreseeable future.” President George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sought to build even more powerful nuclear “bunker buster” and outer space weapons, contrary to Obama’s view and Kennedy’s vow. The same crowd opposes ratification of a global treaty to ban nuclear testing, which would be a crucial first step toward realizing the goal of global nuclear disarmament. Even a universal ban, these pessimists and skeptics argue, would be dangerous to U.S. national security, if some day some hostile nation sought an advantage by suddenly secretly testing and preparing for a surprise launch and treaty repudiation. But no nation, large or small, as JFK pointed out, would want to violate and thus terminate a treaty essential to the security of all; and the United States has even greater ability now to detect such tests and preparations. Nor would a potential violator fail to realize that any temporary advantage it might gain by such secret tests or preparations would clearly be far outweighed by the global sanctions, obloquy and isolation it would suffer for such illegal misconduct.

    As for America’s own military strategy, Kennedy — a World War II hero, no pacifist — declared that we have “deliberately chosen to concentrate on more mobile and efficient weapons with lower but entirely sufficient yield,” and thus “(our) security would not be diminished by a reduction of our nuclear stockpile.”

    All Americans gratefully respect the nuclear laboratories and production plants that have contributed so much to our security for so long; but their concern about their future funding must not be allowed to override the long-held convictions of their best scientists that all nations of the world, including our own, would be safer when all nations of the world cease the testing, production and possession of all weapons of mass destruction; and while this is being achieved, a fully adequate U.S. deterrent could be maintained with a sharply reduced number of nuclear weapons in the stockpiles of both the United States and Russia. That step in turn would facilitate the initial items on Obama’s nuclear agenda: (a) to safeguard and secure all vulnerable nuclear weapons and material anywhere in the world from falling into the hands of terrorists or failed states; (b) speed the termination of the North Korea and Iran nuclear weapons programs; and (c) enhance and encourage the long-neglected enforcement of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as the proposed new ban on making fuel for nuclear arms; all this while the United States ratifies and works to bring into force the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Such a reduced U.S. arsenal would also be easier and cheaper for us to maintain, to modernize and to make certain of its security and stability.

    The critics of the Kennedy-Obama goal of a nuclear weapons-free world like to cite Ronald Reagan. But not his 1984 State of the Union message in which he spoke directly to the people of the Soviet Union: “A nuclear war cannot be won… it must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” His wife said he “had many hopes…to create a world free of nuclear weapons.” Those critics should also be careful about citing Reagan’s last two Chiefs of Staff, Howard Baker and Ken Duberstein, his Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, his Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, his National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, his Secretary of State George Schultz and his Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead, all of whom joined in a statement this year by the bipartisan Partnership For a Secure America calling for a “verifiable, irreversible and non-discriminatory fissile material cut-off treaty, a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing, and a reduction of all nuclear arsenals, including our own, to the minimum achievable level.”

    Other steps on the Obama nuclear agenda include increased U.S. support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency at the Treaty Review Conference next year; and the elimination of unnecessary irritants between the United States and Russia to facilitate the aforementioned mutual reduction of their respective nuclear stockpiles.

    This is a formidable number of steps facing Obama to reach the Kennedy dream, involving a host of controversial issues. But the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons is not only a diplomatic issue, although it will require masterful diplomacy; not only a military security issue, although we must keep our conventional weapons ready; and not only a political issue (although the nay-sayers will try to make political hay out of it). It is a moral issue — indeed, a moral imperative.

    Ted Sorensen is former Special Council and Advisor to President John F. Kennedy.

  • Poem for Sadako

    This poem was read by Barry Spacks at the Foundation’s Sadako Peace Day commemoration on August 6, 2009

    The child Sadako, leukemia victim of Hiroshima, folded some 600 paper cranes in hope of health in the year before she died.

    Tell the story; the heart from horrors hardens like ice; pray that words may melt to tears the heart. Sadako’s friends completed the thousand cranes

    to bear away Sadako’s poisons. Imagine those stumbling, ardent fingers, fingers folding cranes of hope. Tell the story again and again.

    The children raised a monument to Sadako, bomb-sickened child of war. Her image there holds a golden crane in triumph over mindless death.

    We weep for Sadako, weep for her friends, until all blasted flesh is ours, for still comes news of rage and war, still comes hope in the folding of cranes.

    Tell the story, tell the story: salt tears, my friends, must make a start. Fold the cranes, the thousand cranes meaning Never again. Never again.

    Barry Spacks is First Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara.

  • Woo

    This poem was read by Perie Longo at the Foundation’s Sadako Peace Day commemoration on August 6, 2009

    After 9/11 before the Iraq war began, before terror became a common word to rhyme with error, I stood before a third grade poetry class, their poems to return in hand, noted each had the word WOO after their first name. “So you’re all related?” I asked. “Manuel Woo, Brandon Woo, Kui-Sun Woo?”

    Over geysers of laughter, Manuel spoke. “Oh Missus! Woo is short for teacher’s name. Woodburn.” The joke on me, I joined in. He grinned, “That shows we’re all brothers and sisters after all.” Glee subsided into hush, faces plump with hope.

    Manuel’s words tumble down to join the news today, eight years past, as Neda’s face tears across the airwaves; beautiful Neda of Tehran caught in a post-election, demonstration traffic jam, stepping out of the stifling heat of a car for a breath of fresh air, struck instead by the heat of a bullet. “It burned me,” her last words.

    Neda, a lightning rod, sister of uncounted brothers and sisters standing up for freedom, her family not allowed to bury her in public—she not a martyr— only a young girl who liked to sing pop. Pop, pop. On the front pages of news lies Neda, meaning voice, silenced; voice of the world that will never rest until we learn all our last names begin with something like woo, not woe, not the sound of death pressing between cracks of locked doors, but the wind between us all, rushing through.

    Perie Longo is Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara.

  • The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence

    The human race stands on the verge of nuclear self-extinction as a species, and with it will die most, if not all, forms of intelligent life on the planet earth. Any attempt to dispel the ideology of nuclearism and its attendant myth propounding the legality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence must directly come to grips with the fact that the nuclear age was conceived in the original sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined by the Nuremberg Charter of August 8, 1945, and violated several basic provisions of the Regulations annexed to Hague Convention No. 4Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907), the rules of customary international law set forth in the Draft Hague Rules of Air Warfare (1923), and the United States War Department Field Manual 27-10, Rules of Land Warfare (1940). According to this Field Manual and the Nuremberg Principles, all civilian government officials and military officers who ordered or knowingly participated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been lawfully punished as war criminals. The start of any progress toward resolving humankind’s nuclear predicament must come from the realization that nuclear weapons have never been legitimate instruments of state policy, but rather have always constituted illegitimate instrumentalities of internationally lawless and criminal behavior.

    THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

    The use of nuclear weapons in combat was, and still is, absolutely prohibited under all circumstances by both conventional and customary international law: e.g., the Nuremberg Principles, the Hague Regulations of 1907, the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocol I of 1977, etc. In addition, the use of nuclear weapons would also specifically violate several fundamental resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly that have repeatedly condemned the use of nuclear weapons as an international crime.

    Consequently, according to the Nuremberg Judgment, soldiers would be obliged to disobey egregiously illegal orders with respect to launching and waging a nuclear war. Second, all government officials and military officers who might nevertheless launch or wage a nuclear war would be personally responsible for the commission of Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and Protocol 1, and genocide, among other international crimes. Third, such individuals would not be entitled to the defenses of superior orders, act of state, tu quoque, self-defense, presidential authority, etc. Fourth, such individuals could thus be quite legitimately and most severely punished as war criminals, up to and including the imposition of the death penalty, without limitation of time.

    THE THREAT TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS

    Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter of 1945 prohibits both the threat and the use of force except in cases of legitimate self-defense as recognized by article 51 thereof. But although the requirement of legitimate self-defense is a necessary precondition for the legality of any threat or use of force, it is certainly not sufficient. For the legality of any threat or use of force must also take into account the customary and conventional international laws of humanitarian armed conflict.

    Thereunder, the threat to use nuclear weapons (i.e., nuclear deterrence/terrorism) constitutes ongoing international criminal activity: namely, planning, preparation, solicitation and conspiracy to commit Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, Additional Protocol I of 1977, the Hague Regulations of 1907, and the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, inter alia. These are the so-called inchoate crimes that under the Nuremberg Principles constitute international crimes in their own right.

    The conclusion is inexorable that the design, research, testing, production, manufacture, fabrication, transportation, deployment, installation, maintenance, storing, stockpiling, sale, and purchase as well as the threat to use nuclear weapons together with all their essential accouterments are criminal under well-recognized principles of international law. Thus, those government decision-makers in all the nuclear weapons states with command responsibility for their nuclear weapons establishments are today subject to personal criminal responsibility under the Nuremberg Principles for this criminal practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism that they have daily inflicted upon all states and peoples of the international community. Here I wish to single out four components of the threat to use nuclear weapons that are especially reprehensible from an international law perspective: counter-ethnic targeting; counter-city targeting; first-strike weapons and contingency plans; and the first-use of nuclear weapons even to repel a conventional attack.

    THE CRIMINALITY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

    As can be determined in part from the preceding analysis, today’s nuclear weapons establishments as well as the entire system of nuclear deterrence/terrorism currently practiced by all the nuclear weapon states are criminal — not simply illegal, not simply immoral, but criminal under well established principles of international law. This simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons can be utilized to pierce through the ideology of nuclearism to which many citizens in the nuclear weapons states have succumbed. It is with this simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons that concerned citizens can proceed to comprehend the inherent illegitimacy and fundamental lawlessness of the policies that their governments pursue in their names with respect to the maintenance and further development of nuclear weapons systems.

    THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE/TERRORISM

    Humankind must abolish nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons abolish humankind. Nonetheless, a small number of governments in the world community continue to maintain nuclear weapons systems despite the rules of international criminal law to the contrary. This has led some international lawyers to argue quite tautologically and disingenuously that since there exist a few nuclear weapons states in the world community, therefore nuclear weapons must somehow not be criminal because otherwise these few states would not possess nuclear weapons systems. In other words, to use lawyers’ parlance, this minority state practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism practiced by the great powers somehow negates the existence of a world opinio juris (i.e., sense of legal obligation) as to the criminality of nuclear weapons.

    There is a very simple response to that specious argument: Since when has a small gang of criminals — in this case, the nuclear weapons states — been able to determine what is legal or illegal for the rest of the community by means of their own criminal behavior? What right do these nuclear weapons states have to argue that by means of their own criminal behavior they have ipso facto made criminal acts legitimate? No civilized nation state would permit a small gang of criminal conspirators to pervert its domestic legal order in this manner. Moreover, both the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo Tribunal made it quite clear that a conspiratorial band of criminal states likewise has no right to opt out of the international legal order by means of invoking their own criminal behavior as the least common denominator of international deportment. Ex iniuria ius non oritur is a peremptory norm of customary international law. Right cannot grow out of injustice!

    To the contrary, the entire human race has been victimized by an international conspiracy of ongoing criminal activity carried out by the nuclear weapons states under the doctrine known as “nuclear deterrence,” which is really a euphemism for “nuclear terrorism.” This international criminal conspiracy of nuclear deterrence/terrorism currently practiced by the nuclear weapons states is no different from any other conspiracy by a criminal gang or band. They are the outlaws. So it is up to the rest of the international community to repress and dissolve this international criminal conspiracy as soon as possible.

    THE HUMAN RIGHT TO ANTI-NUCLEAR CIVIL RESISTANCE

    In light of the fact that nuclear weapons systems are prohibited, illegal, and criminal under all circumstances and for any reason, every person around the world possesses a basic human right to be free from this criminal practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism and its concomitant specter of nuclear extinction. Thus, all human beings possess the basic right under international law to engage in non-violent civil resistance activities for the purpose of preventing, impeding, or terminating the ongoing commission of these international crimes. Every citizen of the world community has both the right and the duty to oppose the existence of nuclear weapons systems by whatever non-violent means are at his or her disposal. Otherwise, the human race will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs, and the planet earth will become a radioactive wasteland. The time for preventive action is now!

    Francis A. Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
  • New Hope for Nuclear Disarmament

    New Hope for Nuclear Disarmament

    Dr. Krieger delivered these remarks at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 15th Annual Sadako Peace Day commemoration in Santa Barbara, California on August 6, 2009.

    This is the 15th year that we have commemorated Sadako Peace Day in this beautiful garden created by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria. It is a garden inspired by a young girl, Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when she was exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Ten years later, Sadako succumbed to radiation induced leukemia.

    Before she died, she inspired her classmates by her valiant attempt to fold 1,000 paper cranes – a symbol of long life in Japan. Sadako wrote on the wings of one of these paper cranes: “I will write peace on your wings, and you will fly all over the world.” Each year, students send colorful paper cranes that they have folded, some 10 million of them, to Hiroshima in honor of Sadako. There is a statue of her with outstretched arms in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

    Today we join with the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and with people all over the world in remembering a somber and world changing day 64 years ago, when the first atomic weapon was used in warfare. We learned, or should have learned, that one bomb can destroy a city, that no longer would any city on the planet be safe from the threat of annihilation, and that we had created weapons capable of destroying humankind. This is a lot of information to take in, and I doubt that it has been fully absorbed by humanity even now.

    I have been many times to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I have always been moved in these cities by the indomitable spirit of the survivors of the bombings. They express forgiveness and a personal desire to assure that no city ever again for any reason suffers their fate.

    The simple facts about the Hiroshima bombing are these:

    1. The United States created a nuclear weapon and dropped it on the center of the city of Hiroshima;
    2. Some 90,000 people died immediately;
    3. By the end of 1945, some 140,000 people had died;
    4. Most of the victims were civilians;
    5. Initial survivors of the bombing, such as Sadako, have continued to die as a result of cancers and leukemias caused by radiation; and
    6. The world was introduced to a new weapon capable of ending human life on our planet.

    Of all the comments made in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, I find those of Albert Camus most insightful: “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery,” he wrote. “We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests.”

    Today we mark the 64th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I believe that humankind has survived for these past 64 years far more by good fortune than by the effectiveness of the theory of deterrence. Accidents, miscalculations and miscommunications have brought us to the precipice of nuclear disaster on many occasions.

    What we don’t know is how long our good fortune of avoiding the use of these weapons can last. Given the uncertainties of living in a world with more than 20,000 nuclear weapons, many on hair-trigger alert, we would be wise to move rapidly toward the global abolition of these weapons.

    To achieve this goal, only the US can lead the way. This has been the position of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for many years. In March of this year, we delivered an Appeal to the White House with over 200,000 signatures calling for this leadership with a sense of urgency.

    Needless to say, we were extremely pleased by President Obama’s speech on nuclear weapons delivered in Prague on April 5, 2009. He demonstrated that he has a firm grasp of the problem. “The existence of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War,” he said. “No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light.”

    President Obama did something startling for an American president. He recognized the moral responsibility of the United States to act and lead “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon.” This is a great sign of hope and promise.

    “I state clearly and with conviction,” President Obama said, “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” More hope, but hope tempered with a call for patience: “I’m not naïve,” he said. “This goal will not be reached quickly – perhaps not in my lifetime.” The President is a young man, and we wish him a long life, but nuclear dangers require of us a sense of urgency.

    What might the President do to express this sense of urgency?

    First, visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just as he visited concentration camps in Europe. Be the first US President to take this step. Make the threat of nuclear war, nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation vivid to people everywhere.

    Second, direct our negotiators to be bold in agreeing to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the US and Russian arsenals, to de-alert these arsenals and to declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons.

    Third, assure that the new US Nuclear Posture Review gives an accurate assessment of the risks of continuing to rely upon nuclear deterrence and the benefits of moving rapidly to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

    Fourth, convene the leaders of the world to negotiate a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    It has recently been announced that President Obama will personally chair a meeting the heads of state of United Nations Security Council members on nonproliferation and disarmament this fall. This is real cause for hope.

    But we can expect opposition from those blind to the risks of continuing to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. President Obama needs our support. The world needs our engagement on this issue.

    The most important thing we can do as planetary citizens is to pass the world on intact to the next generation. Ending the nuclear weapons era is a responsibility we owe to the future. We know you are here because you care. Please continue to take a stand and speak out as if the very future of humanity depended upon what you do. It does. The President needs your support and so do the children of the future.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor on the World Future Council.

  • 64 Years and Counting

    This editorial was originally published by Asahi Shimbun on August 6, 2009

    This summer has special significance for Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that it is the first since U.S. President Barack Obama gave his landmark speech in Prague in April to declare that the United States will “take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.”

    It is enormously significant that Obama said the United States, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, has “a moral responsibility to act.” But this is not the only reason why his Prague speech was so galvanizing.

    In this age of globalization, the world is becoming increasingly interdependent. A nuclear explosion in any major city in the world would not only kill a great number of people but also bring the global economic system to the brink of collapse. The consequences would be the same whether it was a nuclear strike or a terrorist attack.

    The argument that nuclear deterrence is more effective in securing stability around the world still enjoys considerable support among the nuclear powers and their allies. But succumbing to the allure of nuclear deterrence could result in the acceleration of nuclear proliferation. The world is also facing a real danger of nuclear arms falling into the hands of terrorists. If that nightmare becomes reality, the risks would be immeasurable.

    What must be done? Shouldn’t we come up with a new security strategy to move toward a nuclear-free world? That is the question posed by Obama.

    On Obama’s initiative, it has been decided that leaders of the United Nations Security Council member countries will meet on Sept. 24 to discuss nuclear issues. No pre-emptive nuclear attacks

    Creating a security framework that doesn’t rely on nuclear arms will require formulating and implementing a broad array of policies. We have a raft of proposals for countries that have nuclear arsenals. In particular, we want them to work on spreading the “nonnuclear umbrella.”

    The idea is that nuclear powers will pledge not to use nuclear weapons against any nonnuclear countries that are part of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). If this is established as a global rule, nonnuclear parties of the treaty could significantly reduce their risks of coming under nuclear attack. This is how the nonnuclear umbrella works.

    Expanding the nonnuclear umbrella would help decrease the role of nuclear weapons and lead to a substantial reduction in the number of nuclear weapons in the world. This approach, which would contribute to both arms reduction and global security, should be promoted as much as possible while Obama is in office.

    There are many ways to expand the nonnuclear umbrella. One would be a Security Council resolution that bans nuclear attacks against nonnuclear countries in the NPT camp. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has said that it is possible for the Security Council permanent members, which are all nuclear powers, to guarantee they will not use nuclear arms to attack countries without nuclear capability. Such a Security Council resolution should be adopted as soon as possible.

    A second way would make use of nuclear-free zone treaties. There are treaties on nuclear-weapon-free zones for five regions–Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. The treaty for Africa has not yet come into force. Each of these treaties comes with a protocol that commits the nuclear powers to refraining from nuclear attacks against the treaty participants.

    Only the nuclear-free zone treaty for Latin America, however, has been ratified by all the five original members of the nuclear club–the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. The nonnuclear umbrella should be established as an obligation under international law through efforts to put the treaty for Africa into effect as soon as possible and to have the nuclear powers ratify all the protocols to those treaties.

    A third way would be for nuclear-armed nations to declare that they will not stage pre-emptive nuclear strikes and thereby confine the role of their arsenals to deterrence to nuclear attacks from other countries. Since nonnuclear countries cannot stage nuclear attacks, such declarations by nuclear-capable nations would spread the nonnuclear umbrella drastically.

    The Japanese government is cautious about the United States vowing not to launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes. North Korea has conducted nuclear tests, and the reclusive regime may have biological and chemical weapons as well. Japan’s position is that the option of a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the United States should be left open to deter Pyongyang from using those weapons.

    However, the credibility of Japan’s nonnuclear diplomacy would be badly damaged if Tokyo emphasizes the importance of nuclear deterrence too much and obstructs Obama’s efforts to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and promote nuclear disarmament. Even if it wants to keep nuclear deterrence intact for the time being, Japan should adopt a policy of promoting the nonnuclear umbrella. Nuclear-free zone in Northeast Asia

    One worthwhile idea would be a nuclear-free zone treaty for Northeast Asia. Japan and South Korea could take the initiative by signing such a treaty first and putting it into force. If the United States, China and Russia all ratify a protocol that bans them from launching nuclear attacks against Japan and South Korea, a nonnuclear umbrella would be raised for the region.

    North Korea should be able to join the treaty for protection under the nonnuclear umbrella after it abandons its nuclear program and returns to the NPT. This prospect would give North Korea a strong incentive to abandon its nuclear ambitions and help bolster regional stability.

    It is also vital to deal with China’s rapid military buildup. During the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue meeting in Washington in July, Obama underlined the importance of bilateral cooperation. He cited the denuclearization of North Korea as one such policy challenge, saying neither Washington nor Beijing has an interest in a nuclear arms race in East Asia. “A balance of terror cannot hold,” he said in his speech at the conference.

    The U.S. and Chinese economies are rapidly become entwined. Their relations are completely different from those between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Back then, the two superpowers could have destroyed the other’s industry without suffering much damage to its own economy. Integrating China into arms reduction

    Japan should understand the reality of the U.S.-China relationship and propose a plan for enhancing regional stability while curtailing the role of nuclear arms in Northeast Asia. The Japan-U.S. security alliance should evolve from the current security architecture based primarily on nuclear deterrence into a platform for broader cooperation to expand the nonnuclear umbrella and enhance arms control in the region. That would give a big boost to efforts to engage China in nuclear disarmament efforts.

    The problem of nuclear proliferation in the world is linked closely to regional and religious conflicts. India and Pakistan have both carried out nuclear tests. Israel is widely regarded as a virtual nuclear power. Iran is continuing with its program to enrich uranium. Regional or religious conflicts are behind all these examples of nuclear proliferation.

    Pushing these countries into giving up their nuclear ambitions will require tenacious efforts to resolve the conflicts and convince them that they only endanger themselves by possessing nuclear arsenals.

    As the only country to have come under nuclear attack, Japan should make greater contributions to such diplomatic efforts.

    Asahi Shimbun is Japan’s leading newspaper.