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  • Toward a Nuclear-Free World

    The accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material has brought us to a nuclear tipping point. We face a very real possibility that the deadliest weapons ever invented could fall into dangerous hands.

    The steps we are taking now to address these threats are not adequate to the danger. With nuclear weapons more widely available, deterrence is decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous.

    One year ago, in an essay in this paper, we called for a global effort to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, to prevent their spread into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately to end them as a threat to the world. The interest, momentum and growing political space that has been created to address these issues over the past year has been extraordinary, with strong positive responses from people all over the world.

    Mikhail Gorbachev wrote in January 2007 that, as someone who signed the first treaties on real reductions in nuclear weapons, he thought it his duty to support our call for urgent action: “It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing year they make our security more precarious.”

    In June, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, signaled her government’s support, stating: “What we need is both a vision — a scenario for a world free of nuclear weapons — and action — progressive steps to reduce warhead numbers and to limit the role of nuclear weapons in security policy. These two strands are separate but they are mutually reinforcing. Both are necessary, but at the moment too weak.”

    We have also been encouraged by additional indications of general support for this project from other former U.S. officials with extensive experience as secretaries of state and defense and national security advisors. These include: Madeleine Albright, Richard V. Allen, James A. Baker III, Samuel R. Berger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, Warren Christopher, William Cohen, Lawrence Eagleburger, Melvin Laird, Anthony Lake, Robert McFarlane, Robert McNamara and Colin Powell.

    Inspired by this reaction, in October 2007, we convened veterans of the past six administrations, along with a number of other experts on nuclear issues, for a conference at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. There was general agreement about the importance of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons as a guide to our thinking about nuclear policies, and about the importance of a series of steps that will pull us back from the nuclear precipice.

    The U.S. and Russia, which possess close to 95% of the world’s nuclear warheads, have a special responsibility, obligation and experience to demonstrate leadership, but other nations must join.

    Some steps are already in progress, such as the ongoing reductions in the number of nuclear warheads deployed on long-range, or strategic, bombers and missiles. Other near-term steps that the U.S. and Russia could take, beginning in 2008, can in and of themselves dramatically reduce nuclear dangers. They include:

    • Extend key provisions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991. Much has been learned about the vital task of verification from the application of these provisions. The treaty is scheduled to expire on Dec. 5, 2009. The key provisions of this treaty, including their essential monitoring and verification requirements, should be extended, and the further reductions agreed upon in the 2002 Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions should be completed as soon as possible.

    • Take steps to increase the warning and decision times for the launch of all nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, thereby reducing risks of accidental or unauthorized attacks. Reliance on launch procedures that deny command authorities sufficient time to make careful and prudent decisions is unnecessary and dangerous in today’s environment. Furthermore, developments in cyber-warfare pose new threats that could have disastrous consequences if the command-and-control systems of any nuclear-weapons state were compromised by mischievous or hostile hackers. Further steps could be implemented in time, as trust grows in the U.S.-Russian relationship, by introducing mutually agreed and verified physical barriers in the command-and-control sequence.

    • Discard any existing operational plans for massive attacks that still remain from the Cold War days. Interpreting deterrence as requiring mutual assured destruction (MAD) is an obsolete policy in today’s world, with the U.S. and Russia formally having declared that they are allied against terrorism and no longer perceive each other as enemies.

    • Undertake negotiations toward developing cooperative multilateral ballistic-missile defense and early warning systems, as proposed by Presidents Bush and Putin at their 2002 Moscow summit meeting. This should include agreement on plans for countering missile threats to Europe, Russia and the U.S. from the Middle East, along with completion of work to establish the Joint Data Exchange Center in Moscow. Reducing tensions over missile defense will enhance the possibility of progress on the broader range of nuclear issues so essential to our security. Failure to do so will make broader nuclear cooperation much more difficult.

    • Dramatically accelerate work to provide the highest possible standards of security for nuclear weapons, as well as for nuclear materials everywhere in the world, to prevent terrorists from acquiring a nuclear bomb. There are nuclear weapons materials in more than 40 countries around the world, and there are recent reports of alleged attempts to smuggle nuclear material in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. The U.S., Russia and other nations that have worked with the Nunn-Lugar programs, in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), should play a key role in helping to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 relating to improving nuclear security — by offering teams to assist jointly any nation in meeting its obligations under this resolution to provide for appropriate, effective security of these materials.

    As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put it in his address at our October conference, “Mistakes are made in every other human endeavor. Why should nuclear weapons be exempt?” To underline the governor’s point, on Aug. 29-30, 2007, six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads were loaded on a U.S. Air Force plane, flown across the country and unloaded. For 36 hours, no one knew where the warheads were, or even that they were missing.

    • Start a dialogue, including within NATO and with Russia, on consolidating the nuclear weapons designed for forward deployment to enhance their security, and as a first step toward careful accounting for them and their eventual elimination. These smaller and more portable nuclear weapons are, given their characteristics, inviting acquisition targets for terrorist groups.

    • Strengthen the means of monitoring compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a counter to the global spread of advanced technologies. More progress in this direction is urgent, and could be achieved through requiring the application of monitoring provisions (Additional Protocols) designed by the IAEA to all signatories of the NPT.

    • Adopt a process for bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into effect, which would strengthen the NPT and aid international monitoring of nuclear activities. This calls for a bipartisan review, first, to examine improvements over the past decade of the international monitoring system to identify and locate explosive underground nuclear tests in violation of the CTBT; and, second, to assess the technical progress made over the past decade in maintaining high confidence in the reliability, safety and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear arsenal under a test ban. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization is putting in place new monitoring stations to detect nuclear tests — an effort the U.S should urgently support even prior to ratification.

    In parallel with these steps by the U.S. and Russia, the dialogue must broaden on an international scale, including non-nuclear as well as nuclear nations.

    Key subjects include turning the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a practical enterprise among nations, by applying the necessary political will to build an international consensus on priorities. The government of Norway will sponsor a conference in February that will contribute to this process.

    Another subject: Developing an international system to manage the risks of the nuclear fuel cycle. With the growing global interest in developing nuclear energy and the potential proliferation of nuclear enrichment capabilities, an international program should be created by advanced nuclear countries and a strengthened IAEA. The purpose should be to provide for reliable supplies of nuclear fuel, reserves of enriched uranium, infrastructure assistance, financing, and spent fuel management — to ensure that the means to make nuclear weapons materials isn’t spread around the globe.

    There should also be an agreement to undertake further substantial reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear forces beyond those recorded in the U.S.-Russia Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty. As the reductions proceed, other nuclear nations would become involved.

    President Reagan’s maxim of “trust but verify” should be reaffirmed. Completing a verifiable treaty to prevent nations from producing nuclear materials for weapons would contribute to a more rigorous system of accounting and security for nuclear materials.

    We should also build an international consensus on ways to deter or, when required, to respond to, secret attempts by countries to break out of agreements.

    Progress must be facilitated by a clear statement of our ultimate goal. Indeed, this is the only way to build the kind of international trustandbroad cooperation that will be required to effectively address today’s threats. Without the vision of moving toward zero, we will not find the essential cooperation required to stop our downward spiral.

    In some respects, the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain. From the vantage point of our troubled world today, we can’t even see the top of the mountain, and it is tempting and easy to say we can’t get there from here. But the risks from continuing to go down the mountain or standing pat are too real to ignore. We must chart a course to higher ground where the mountaintop becomes more visible.

    The following participants in the Hoover-NTI conference also endorse the view in this statement: General John Abizaid, Graham Allison, Brooke Anderson, Martin Anderson, Steve Andreasen, Mike Armacost, Bruce Blair, Matt Bunn, Ashton Carter, Sidney Drell, General Vladimir Dvorkin, Bob Einhorn, Mark Fitzpatrick, James Goodby, Rose Gottemoeller, Tom Graham, David Hamburg, Siegfried Hecker, Tom Henriksen, David Holloway, Raymond Jeanloz, Ray Juzaitis, Max Kampelman, Jack Matlock, Michael McFaul, John McLaughlin, Don Oberdorfer, Pavel Podvig, William Potter, Richard Rhodes, Joan Rohlfing, Harry Rowen, Scott Sagan, Roald Sagdeev, Abe Sofaer, Richard Solomon, and Philip Zelikow.

    Originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 15, 2008

    Click here to read the authors’ 2007 article

    Mr. Shultz was secretary of state from 1982 to 1989. Mr. Perry was secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997. Mr. Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. Mr. Nunn is former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

  • Diverse Coalition Launches Campaign to Stop US Nuclear Deal with India

    WASHINGTON, DC –Twenty-three organizations today launched a coalition to stop the Bush Administration’s proposed nuclear trade agreement with India.  The proposed agreement would exempt that nuclear-armed nation from longstanding U.S. and international restrictions on states that do not meet global standards to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

    The Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade believes the agreement would: dangerously weaken nonproliferation efforts and embolden countries like Iran and North Korea to pursue the development of nuclear weapons; further destabilize South Asia and Pakistan in particular; and violate or weaken international and U.S. laws, including the Hyde Act, which Congress passed in 2006 to provide a framework for the bilateral U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement.

    “When Congress takes a close look at the Bush Administration’s proposed agreement, it will find a dangerous, unprecedented deal,” said John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World.  “The proposal undermines over 30 years of nonproliferation policy, will increase India’s capability to produce nuclear weapons and its stockpile of nuclear weapons-material, and sends the wrong message to Pakistan during a time of crisis in that country.  We feel confident that, under the Congressional microscope, the many flaws of this deal will be exposed, and it will ultimately be rejected for the sake of preserving national security and global stability.”

    The U.S.-Indian bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement would allow the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology and material to India.  However, it fails to hold India to the same responsible nonproliferation and disarmament rules that are required of advanced nuclear states. The deal will increase India’s nuclear weapons production capability, exacerbate a nuclear arms race in the region, undermine international non-proliferation norms, and encourage the creation of large nuclear material stockpiles. Its contribution to meeting India’s growing energy needs has been greatly exaggerated and it would create economic opportunities for foreign nuclear industries without any guarantees for U.S. businesses.

    The pact must win approval from the U.S. Congress, which changed U.S. law in December 2006 to allow negotiation of the agreement, under several conditions that have not been met in the final language of the agreement.  Those conditions include a new agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency for safeguarding Indian power reactors and changes to the international guidelines of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, which currently restrict trade with India.

    Members of the Campaign are working to educate the U.S. Congress and public about the dangers of the deal, and are working with experts and organizations in two-dozen countries to inform deliberation over the deal within Nuclear Suppliers Group and its member state governments.

    The new coalition’s partners include:  Council for a Livable World, Arms Control Association, Federation of American Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington office, United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Institute for Religion and Public Policy, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, All Souls Nuclear Disarmament Task Force, British American Security Information Council, Women’s Action for New Directions, Americans for Democratic Action, Peace Action, Peace Action West, Arms Control Advocacy Collaborative, Beyond Nuclear, Bipartisan Security Group, Citizens for Global Solutions, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Nuclear Information Resource Information Service.

    Advisors to the coalition include Ambassador Robert Grey (Ret.), former U.S. Representative to the Conference on Disarmament and Director of the Bipartisan Security Group; Dr. Leonard Weiss, former staff director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation and the Committee on Governmental Affairs; Dr. Robert G. Gard, Jr., Lt. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.), Senior Military Fellow, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; Subrata Ghoshroy, Director, Promoting Nuclear Stability in South Asia Project, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Dr. Christopher Paine, Nuclear Program Director, Natural Resources Defense Council.

    The Campaign’s website is www.responsiblenucleartrade.com.

    About the Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade

    The Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade, a partnership project of 23 nuclear arms control, non-proliferation, environmental and consumer protection organizations, opposes the July 2005 proposal for civil nuclear cooperation with India and the additional U.S. concessions made to India as a result of subsequent negotiations because they pose far-reaching and adverse implications for U.S. and international security, global nuclear non-proliferation efforts, human life and health, and the environment.  More information about the campaign can be found at www.responsiblenucleartrade.com.

    Arms Control Experts, Environmental Activists, Consumer Advocates, Religious Groups and Doctors Find Proposed Agreement Would Dangerously Undermine National Security, Global Stability

  • Ronald Reagan: A Nuclear Abolitionist

    Ronald Reagan: A Nuclear Abolitionist

    With the USS Ronald Reagan in Santa Barbara, it is worth reflecting on Ronald Reagan’s legacy with regard to nuclear weapons. According to his wife, Nancy, “Ronnie had many hopes for the future, and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons.”

    President Reagan was a nuclear abolitionist. He believed that the only reason to have nuclear weapons was to prevent the then Soviet Union from using theirs. Understanding this, he argued in his 1984 State of the Union Address, “A nuclear war cannot be won and 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?”

    Ronald Reagan regarded nuclear weapons, according to Nancy, as “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”

    In 1986, President Reagan and Secretary General Gorbachev met for a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. In a remarkable quirk of history, the two men shared a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Despite the concerns of their aides, they came close to achieving agreement on this most important of issues. The sticking point was that President Reagan saw his Strategic Defense Initiative (missile defenses) as being essential to the plan, and Gorbachev couldn’t accept this (even though Reagan promised to share the US missile defense system with the then Soviet Union). Gorbachev wanted missile defense development to be restricted to the laboratory for ten years. Reagan couldn’t accept this.

    The two leaders came heartbreakingly close to ending the era of nuclear weapons, but in the end they couldn’t achieve their mutual goal. As a result, nuclear weapons have proliferated and remain a danger to all humanity. Today, we face the threat of terrorists gaining possession of nuclear weapons, and wreaking massive destruction on the cities of powerful nations. There can be no doubt that had Reagan and Gorbachev succeeded, the US and the world would be much safer, and these men would be remembered above all else for this achievement.

    The USS Ronald Reagan has the motto, “Peace through Strength.” President Reagan, like the ship bearing his name, was known for his commitment to this motto, but he never saw nuclear weapons as a strength. In his book, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow quotes Reagan as saying, “I know that there are a great many people who are pointing to the unimaginable horror of nuclear war…. [T]o those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say, ‘I’m with you.’” Lettow also quotes Reagan as stating, “[M]y dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.”

    In the 18th and 19th centuries, individuals struggled for the abolition of slavery because they understood that every man, woman and child has the right to live in freedom. Through the efforts and persistence of committed individuals like William Wilberforce in Great Britain and Frederick Douglass in the United States, slavery was brought to an end, and humanity is better for it. In today’s world, we confront an issue of even more transcending importance, because nuclear weapons place civilization and the human species itself in danger of annihilation.

    Ronald Reagan was a leader who recognized this, and worked during his presidency for the abolition of these terrible weapons. He believed, according to Nancy, that “as long as such weapons were around, sooner or later they would be used,” with catastrophic results. He understood that nuclear weapons themselves are the enemy.

    Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan died before seeing his goal of abolishing nuclear weapons realized. It is up to those of us still living to complete this job. It is not a partisan issue, but rather a human issue, one that affects our common future.

    Working to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons would honor the memory of President Reagan, our only recent president with the vision to seek the total elimination of these weapons. He was a president who understood that US leadership was essential to achieving this goal. It behooves us as citizens of the United States to assure that our next president shares President Reagan’s vision on this issue, picks up the baton of nuclear weapons abolition from him and carries it forward.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Required Reading for Assuring the Future

    Required Reading for Assuring the Future

    Few people have looked as deeply into the nuclear abyss, seen the monster of our own making and grappled with it as has the writer Jonathan Schell. But Schell is more than a writer. He is also a philosopher of the Nuclear Age and an ardent advocate of caging the beast and rendering it harmless. Schell’s first book on the subject, The Fate of the Earth, awakened many people to the breadth and depth of the nuclear danger and is now a classic. He has returned to the issue of nuclear dangers (nuclear insanity?) in several of his other books, always providing penetrating insights into the confrontation between humanity and its most deadly invention.

    His latest book, The Seventh Decade, The New Shape of Nuclear Danger, may be Schell’s most important book yet. In this book, he examines the roots of the Nuclear Age and its current manifestations. He unearths the truth, which once brought to light seems obvious, that the bomb began as a construct in the mind. “Well before any physical bomb had been built,” he says, “science had created the bomb in the mind, an intangible thing. Thereafter, the bomb would be as much a mental as a physical object.”

    One of the key concepts of the Nuclear Age is deterrence, the belief that the threat of nuclear retaliation can prevent nuclear attack. Schell takes a hard-headed look at deterrence, and finds the concept “half-sane and half-crazy.” While it seems sane to seek to forestall a nuclear attack, the half-crazy part (perhaps more than half), “consists of actually waging the war you must threaten, for in that event the result is suicide all around.” That suicide writ large becomes what philosopher John Somerville termed “omnicide,” the death of all. “In short,” Schell deduced, “to threaten seems wise, but to act is deranged.”

    In the post-Cold War period, deterrence has become even more complex and less certain, tilting toward the “deranged.” It is no longer the mental task of threat and counter threat aimed at keeping a fixed and powerful opponent at bay, as it was during the Cold War standoff between the US and USSR. Now, states must consider the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups, not locatable and not subject to being deterred. In such circumstances, the rationality of deterrence is shattered and even great and powerful states are placed at risk of nuclear devastation by far weaker opponents. In such circumstances, overwhelming nuclear superiority is of no avail.

    The “bomb in the mind” can only do so much. It cannot deter those who cannot be located or are suicidal. Despite their devastating power, nuclear weapons in the hands of powerful states are actually a tepid threat. Yet, they stand as a major impediment to the post-Cold War imperial project of the United States, a project failing on many fronts, but poised to fail far more spectacularly if nuclear weapons find their way into the hands of terrorist groups.

    In today’s world, when deterrence has for nearly all sane thinkers lost its magical power in the mind (although in truth it was always a highly risky venture), it has become far harder to justify nuclear arsenals, and the United States has resorted to the vague possibility of a reemergent threat. In considering this, Schell finds, “In the last analysis, the target of the U.S. nuclear arsenal became history and whatever it might produce – not a foe but a tense, the future itself.”

    Schell correctly concluded that the George W. Bush administration had far more ambitious and sinister plans for the US nuclear arsenal. Although there was no clearly definable enemy, there was a strongly held vision and normative goal of US global dominance, set forth in the 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Nuclear weapons were required, in Schell’s careful study of the NPR “to dissuade, deter, defeat or annihilate – preventively, preemptively, or in retaliation – any nation or other grouping of people on the face of the earth, large or small, that militarily opposed, or dreamed of opposing, the United States.”

    Schell examines the US imperial project under George W. Bush and its role in shaping US nuclear policy. He points out that the Bush administration ordered its nuclear threats in this way: Iraq, with whom it went to war; Iran, with whom it threatened war; North Korea, which withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed nuclear weapons; and Pakistan, which already had nuclear weapons and a chaotic political environment. Of course, Bush chose exactly the wrong order in terms of the actual security threats posed by these nations. Schell found, “In responding to the universal danger posed by nuclear proliferation, the United States therefore had two suitably universalist traditions that it could draw on, one based on consent and law, the other based on force. Bush chose force. It was the wrong choice. It increased the nuclear danger it was meant to prevent.”

    In the final section of his book, Schell, who is himself an ardent nuclear abolitionist, reviews earlier attempts to achieve abolition of these weapons. He goes into heartbreaking detail of the efforts of Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev to achieve the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. The two leaders, acting on their own initiative, without the advice or support of their aides (George Shultz is an exception), were incredibly close to agreement to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, but as we know faltered on the issue of missile defenses, which Reagan saw as key and which Gorbachev couldn’t accept. After coming so close to agreement on a plan for abolition, the world settled back to nuclear business as usual. As Schell pointed out, after the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit at Reykjavík, “Nuclear arsenals may remain not so much because anyone wants them as because a world without them is outside the imagination of the leadership class.”

    The possibilities of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism led Schell to the conclusion that “with each year that passes, nuclear weapons provide their possessors with less safety while provoking more danger. The walls dividing the nations of the two-tiered [nuclear] world are crumbling.” The Reagan-Gorbachev vision has new advocates in former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn. Their basic premise is that deterrence can no longer be the foundation for 21st century security.

    Schell suggests that should the will for nuclear abolition materialize – something already favored by the majority of Americans – the following principles could guide the effort:

    1. At the outset, adopt the abolition of nuclear arms as the organizing principle and goal of all activity in the nuclear field;
    2. Join all negotiations on nuclear weapons – on nuclear disarmament, on nonproliferation, and on nuclear terrorism – in a single forum;
    3. Think of abolition less as the endpoint of a long and weary path of disarmament and more as the starting point for addressing a new agenda of global action;
    4. Design a world free of nuclear weapons that is not just a destination to reach but a place to remain.

    Schell concludes that the “bomb in the mind,” with us from the outset of the Nuclear Age, will remain with us, but that this is not necessarily a detriment. He points out, “even in a world without nuclear weapons, deterrence would, precisely because the bomb in the mind would still be present, remain in effect. In that respect, the persisting know-how would be as much a source of reassurance as it would be a danger in a world without nuclear weapons.”

    Jonathan Schell has provided an essential book for our time. He peels back the layers of veils and myths surrounding nuclear dangers and strategies, and offers a sound set of guidelines for moving to a nuclear weapons-free world. This book can help to create the necessary political will to achieve this end. It is required reading for every person on the planet who cares about assuring the future.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • A Message for the New Year

    A Message for the New Year

    Dear Friend of the Foundation,

    For 25 years the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has worked daily for a better world. As we enter a New Year, our work to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen international law and empower a new generation of peace leaders has never been more critical. To succeed, we need your involvement and your support.

    I encourage you to have a look at our new DVD, “Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future.” You can request a free copy from the Foundation and show it to your friends. We think it is an important tool to raise the profile of the nuclear threat to humanity – a threat that is still very much with us.

    We also have a great Speakers Bureau at the Foundation. Let us know if you’d like one of our staff or associates to come out and talk with your group about current nuclear dangers and what can be done about them.

    Al Gore has referred to global warming as an “inconvenient truth.” Unfortunately, that is not the only inconvenient truth the world is facing. The dangers of nuclear weapons stand toe-to-toe with global warming in their threat to humanity. Nuclear weapons, in fact, are an even more urgent threat. They could destroy civilization in the virtual blink of an eye.

    As we witness the continuing turmoil in nuclear-armed Pakistan, the urgency of the threat should be clear. No one should feel comfortable with nuclear weapons in the hands of any state or leader, but least of all a state in disarray such as Pakistan.

    US plans to do a “nuclear deal” with India, supplying India with nuclear materials and technology, will only exacerbate the dangers in South Asia, as Pakistan attempts to keep pace with India. The US must be dissuaded from this dangerous project, which could speed up the dismantling of the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

    We badly need US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world. That is becoming more than obvious. Early in 2007, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn, four former high US officials, called for such leadership from the US. Some of the current presidential candidates are also calling for this leadership. Without US leadership, progress toward nuclear disarmament won’t be made.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has prepared an Appeal, “US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World.” It is aimed at the next President of the United States. Won’t you add your voice and help spread the Appeal? It will soon be available for signing on our www.wagingpeace.org website.

    We also need your financial support to help us reach more and more people with our messages. The bottom line is that the US will change and lead the world away from the nuclear precipice when enough of its citizens demand this course. At the Foundation, we know what we need to do, but we need your help to reach as wide an audience as possible.

    Each of our efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons is a gift to humanity and to the future. As we enter the New Year, I urge you to add to your New Year’s resolutions a pledge to work with the Foundation in 2008 for the end of the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. This can only be accomplished by ending the nuclear weapons era, and this will require our joint efforts. Together we can and will change the world.

    Wishing you a very happy New Year,

    In Peace,

    David Krieger President Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Research Shows War Isn’t Caused by Instinct

    Originally published in The Missourian

    When writing or speaking on issues of war and peace, it is not unusual for pundits and others to make the case that war is due primarily to a human instinct that causes nation-states to engage in large scale warfare. Underlying that idea is the notion that human beings have pugnacious inner drives that require an outlet for aggressive behavior if they are to achieve their full potential in a highly competitive world in which people have to dominate others to guarantee their own survival. This theory is often linked to the psychologically and physiologically induced fight-flight reaction process, which provides the necessary adrenaline rush when we are aggressively confronted or personally attacked and enables us to stand and fight or, alternatively, to quickly flee the scene. Conventional wisdom often cites this reaction as the underlying cause for the violent, deadly, large group activity called war.

    In 1986, an international team of biologists, psychologists, ethologists, geneticists and others adopted a statement that rejected biology as the primary cause of war. The “Seville Statement on Violence” has been endorsed by innumerable scientific and scholarly organizations around the world. The following are excerpts from its text: “It is scientifically incorrect to say that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors. … The fact that warfare has changed so radically over time indicates that it is a product of culture. Its biological connection is primarily through language, which makes possible the coordination of groups, the transmission of technology, and the use of tools. Related Articles

    “War is biologically possible, but it is not inevitable, as evidenced by its variation in occurrence and nature over time and space … It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is caused by ‘instinct’ or any single motivation. … Modern war involves institutional use of personal characteristics such as obedience, suggestibility and idealism; social skills such as language; and rational considerations such as cost-calculation, planning and information processing. The technology of modern war has exaggerated traits associated with violence both in training of combatants and in the preparation of support for war in the general population. As a result of the exaggeration, such traits are often mistaken to be the cause of war rather than the consequences of the process.” To retrieve the entire document go to: www.culture-of-peace.info/ssov-intro.html or search “Seville Statement on Violence.”

    If war is not the direct result of instinct, what is it? According to the late anthropologist Margaret Mead, war is a human invention, and the abolition of large scale international violence requires a replacement invention. For the development of that new invention to be undertaken, people and their leaders must be helped to fully understand the nature and characteristics of the old invention. Only then can a new one be created. Scholars have assumed or determined numerous factors that contribute to the onset and prosecution of war. Some of those factors include: the economic benefits of war profiteering; worst-case philosophy war planning which assumes “there will always be wars and rumors of wars;” evil leaders who seek imperial conquests of other nations; mass frustration of basic human needs of large populations, some of whose members engage in systematic terrorism; strife between and within various religious communities; and several other variables. Given the variety and complexity of these factors, it would seem virtually impossible to ever achieve true peace under the rule of law with justice. Clearly such conditions will not be realized in my lifetime or that of the baby boomers. However, we can sow at least one seed of peace for our children and grandchildren.

    One of the world’s finest peace theorists, the late Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg, believed that “a single ‘modest’ change could serve as an initial step toward the abolition of war and, ultimately, the permanent abolition of war.” That single modest change would be the development of a commitment in the great majority of the world’s public “to the democratic value that violence is never morally or politically acceptable except when used in defense against violence by others who have not accepted this principle, and who have in fact initiated acts of violence.” Based on this underpinning premise, she and other colleagues have developed a creative step-by-step systematic plan for world disarmament education known as Global Action to Prevent War. For details of the program go to globalactionpw.org. Space will not permit a full explanation of how this plan relates to some of the aforementioned theoretical causes of war. However there is no question in my mind that it provides a sound basis for the initiation of the war replacement invention of which Margaret Mead spoke.

    Bill Wickersham of Columbia is an adjunct professor of Peace Studies at the University of Missouri, a member of Veterans for Peace and a member of the U.S. Steering Committee of Global Action to Prevent War.

  • Another Perspective on the RRW “Victory”

    It was recently reported that funding for the so-called “Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW) had been zeroed out in the FY 2008 budget passsed by the U.S. Congress. I quickly wrote this two-part response to the announcement of the RRW “victory” (see, for example http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=3065&issue_id=2), in response to an inquiry from a young colleague. I wrote the second part after reading the Summary and Explanatory Statement that accompany the joint House-Senate omnibus appropriations bill, the FY 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act. I offer it as an alternative and distinctly “outside the beltway” point of view.

    Part I: Here’s my basic perspective. This *may* be an important symbolic victory – time will tell, especially following the rejection of the RNEP. It seems to signal that Congress is uncomfortable with the idea of funding *new* nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, it is a *very* small thing. Over the years since the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapon types specifically named in budget line items have been zeroed out several times, reappearing under different names or buried in more vaguely identified budget categories. ALSO, remember that there is an officially acknowledged *black budget* about which we know nothing. And, bear in mind that even with a few million cut from RRW, the overall nuclear weapons R&D budget is enormous, and still higher than during the average Cold War years. MOST IMPORTANTLY, zeroing out the RRW this year doesn’t fundamentally change *anything* about U.S. nuclear weapons policy, posture, readiness, capability, threat or lethality. Here are a few examples:

    • The Stockpile Life Extension Program is going forward. Last I checked the Labs were working on the W-76 warhead, giving it an enhanced ground burst capability, which would improve its first strike capability. “Life extensions” are planned for other warhead models. This begs the question of what “new” means, when talking about a nuclear warhead.
    • Despite the claim made by the U.S. representative to the First Committee of the United Nations in October, that U.S. nuclear weapons are not now and have *never* been on “hair trigger” alert, they do, in fact, remain on high alert status and have taken on an even more central role in U.S. “Global Strike” planning, which has as much or more to do with the delivery systems than the warheads. (See Hans Kristenson’s rebuttal at http://www.lcnp.org/disarmament/kristensen-rebuttal_oct07.pdf) According to Bruce Blair’s rebuttal: “Both the United States and Russia today maintain about one-third of their total strategic arsenals on launch-ready alert. Hundreds of missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads the equivalent of about 100,000 Hiroshima bombs — can be launched within a very few minutes. The end of the Cold War did not lead the United States and Russia to significantly change their nuclear strategies or the way they operate their nuclear forces.” (See http://www.lcnp.org/disarmament/opstatus-blair.htm.)
    • The U.S. is on the only nuclear weapon state that deploys nuclear weapons on foreign territory. It is reliably estimated that 350 U.S. B-61 nuclear bombs are deployed at the following NATO bases in Europe: Aviano, Italy (50); Ghedi, Italy (40); Peer, Belgium (20); Uden, The Netherlands (20); Vulkaneiffel, Germany (20); Incirlik, Turkey (90); Lakenheath, UK (110) (Source: The Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/nato.htm.)
    • In response to an Op-ed signed by 8 European mayors who want the U.S. nukes removed from their territories, the NATO Chief announced that there are no plans to change NATO’s nuclear policy. (The Op-ed is posted at: http://www.2020visioncampaign.org/pages/319. The article about NATO’s response is at: http://www.refdag.nl/artikel/1325579/NAVO+houdt+vast+aan+kernwapens.html.)
    • Almost nobody talks about the delivery systems or the long planning horizons *always* in place for nuclear weapons systems. Consider the following: “Advisers to U.S. Strategic Command this month urged the Defense Department to begin research and development soon for a new nuclear-weapons submarine, according to the Navy…. The review anticipated that a new program would have to begin around 2016 for the first submarine to be fielded in 2029. However, defense sources have told GSN that it now appears initial funding would be sought by 2010.” (See http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2007_11_29.html – 05F6F768. Note the reliance on the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, widely dismissed by the arms control community at the time as a mere “wish list.”)
    • The details are in the fine print. With everyone continuing to sing the praises of Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn for their call for a “nuclear weapon free world,” Kissinger and Shultz have endorsed Sidney Drell’s position that “research work on new RRW designs should certainly go ahead.” (See http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2007_11_15.html – C8DB7944.) The history of military research and development strongly suggests that research and development efforts are not necessarily limited to specific weapon designs, and that even if a particular design in terminated, R&D may very well lead to new weapons concepts or modifications. It’s not over till its over.
    • The draft EIS for “Complex Transformation” (formerly Complex 2030) is expected in early January. I predict with a high degree of confidence that it will not include a plan for closing down the nuclear weapons infrastructure because the RRW isn’t currently funded. So what are they planning to spend that $150 billion on over the next 25 years?
    • The RRW vote not withstanding, the United States is not in any way shape or form acting in good faith with regard to its NPT Article VI obligation to negotiate “in good faith” the end of the arms race “at an early date” and “nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.” Here I offer two resources. One is the statement I made on behalf of the NGOs to the First Committee of the UN in October. (http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com07/statements/26octcabasso.pdf.) The second is a debate between U.S. diplomat and lawyer Christopher Ford and John Burroughs of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, on what Article VI of the NPT legally requires of states. (http://cns.miis.edu/cns/activity/071129_nprbriefing/index.htm)
    • Finally, as I wrote in a paper presented at a recent international conference on the challenge of abolishing nuclear weapons: The Encarta Encyclopedia describes militarism as “advocacy of an ever-stronger military as a primary goal of society, even at the cost of other social priorities and liberties.” And it relates militarism to chauvinism, fascism, and national socialism. As uncomfortable as it may be for many, this chilling definition accurately describes the historical trajectory and current reality of U.S. national security policy. The threatened first use of nuclear weapons remains at the heart of that policy. While it’s important to celebrate small “victories,” we need to keep our eyes on the prize.
    • Much more detailed analysis is included in our book, Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security? U.S. Weapons of Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis and Paths to Peace, available at http://www.wmdreport.org/.

    Part II: It is not at all certain that this outcome is the result of efforts by anti-nuclear activists. There are a couple of Congressmembers, Hobson and Visclosky, who didn’t like the RRW from the beginning, for reasons of their own. I believe it would be intellectually dishonest to proclaim this a major victory. After I wrote my initial response, I read the summary and explanatory statement that accompany the joint House-Senate omnibus appropriations bill, the FY 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act. I found no surprises. According to the official summary, the nuclear weapons budget is the same as FY 2007 and the RRW isn’t even gone, it’s just on hold. (http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/EnergyandWaterOmnibus.pdf) Excerpt:

    “Weapons Programs: $6.3 billion, the same as 2007 and $214 million below the President’s request.

    • Reliable Replacement Warhead: Prohibits the development of a reliable replacement warhead until the President develops a strategic nuclear weapons plan to guide transformation and downsizing of the stockpile and nuclear weapons complex.”

    The explanatory statement, starting at p. 44 (PDF p. 88) provides a detailed breakdown of the funded nuclear weapons activities, including further description of the RRW and a *new* science campaign called “Advanced Certification,” and goes on to talk about the Stockpile Life Extension Program. Under “Warhead Dismantlement” you will find funding for the Device *Assembly* Facility at the Nevada Test Site, for “additional missions.” Read on to discover funding for the “enhanced test readiness program,” Inertial Confinement Fusion including the National Ignition Facility at the Livermore Lab and the Z machine at Sandia, Advanced Simulation and Computing, *including academic partnerships*, and pit manufacturing and certification. And it goes on. (http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/omni/jes/jesdivc.pdf)

    To sum up, from my perspective, one small line item was cut, the FY 2007 funding level was maintained, and the deck chairs were rearranged on the Titanic. I believe that it is imperative to broaden our approach, and to educate ourselves and the public about the profound historical and economic underpinnings of the military-industrial-academic complex. Imagine a scenario in which tens or hundreds of thousands of people around the country were calling unambiguously for the abolition of nuclear weapons *and war* and *demanding* meaningful leadership from the United States. What kind of political space might be opened up, and what kind of results might one expect? Certainly not less than eliminating 3 letters (RRW) from the NNSA’s vocabulary. We might actually get *more* and in the process begin to generate a real national debate on the *purpose* of and therefore the future of nuclear weapons, and the requirements for genuine human and ecological security.

    Jackie Cabasso is Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation (www.wslfweb.org)

  • Japan’s Role in Building Peace in the Nuclear Age

    Japan’s Role in Building Peace in the Nuclear Age

    It is a pleasure to be with you in this 50th anniversary year of the Ozaki Foundation. I am an admirer of this Foundation and of the life and work of Ozaki Yukio. He was a man of principle and of the people and, as such, a man of peace.

    In the latter part of his life, Ozaki Yukio wrote, “The only reason for my persevering at my advanced age was that I might live…so as to contribute what I could to the creation of a new world.” He envisioned contributing toward a world at peace, a noble vision. “I dreamed I would find a way,” he wrote, “for the peoples of the five continents to live in peace.”

    Ozaki was an early proponent of the principle of the “Common Heritage of Mankind,” one of the most important concepts of the modern era. He wrote, “The world’s land and resources should be used for the benefit of all mankind…. The greatest obstacle to attaining this global perspective is the narrow-minded ambition of nations that seek to prevail over others by the exercise of wealth and power.”

    I think that Ozaki Yukio would have agreed with Lao Tzu, who said: “Those who would take over the Earth and shape it to their will never, I notice, succeed.” In other words, imperialism is a recipe for disaster. Every empire that has ever existed has experienced at some point the pain, suffering and humiliation of defeat. This was true in the ancient world and throughout history. It was true in the 20th century, and there is no doubt that it will prove to be true in the 21st century. But today, in the Nuclear Age, the stakes are higher; the future of civilization and even human survival hang in the balance.

    For the past 25 years I have been the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, an organization that I helped to found in 1982. The Foundation has three principal goals: to abolish nuclear weapons; to strengthen international law, particularly as it pertains to the prevention of war and the elimination of nuclear arms; and to empower a new generation of peace leaders to carry on the struggle for a more peaceful world, free of the overriding nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    One of the key formative events in my own life, placing me on the path to work for peace and a nuclear weapons-free world, was an early visit at the age of 21 to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums. At these museums, I learned a lesson that was not part of my education in the United States. In the US, we were taught the perspective of those above the bombs. It was a story of scientific and technological triumph, a story of victors with little reference to loss of life and the suffering of the victims. At the Peace Memorial Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was a human story, a tragedy of massive death and destruction. It was a story told from the perspective of those beneath the bombs, and a warning about our common future: we must eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.

    Nuclear Weapons and the Imperative of Peace

    There are many reasons to oppose nuclear weapons. They are long-distance killing devices, instruments of annihilation that kill indiscriminately – men, women and children; the aged and the newly born; soldiers and civilians. Because they kill indiscriminately, their threat or use is both immoral and illegal. They are weapons that can destroy cities, countries and civilization. They threaten all that is human, all that is sacred, all that exists. If this were not enough, these weapons make cowards of their possessors and, because they concentrate power in the hands of the few, are anti-democratic.

    The creation of nuclear weapons has changed the world. It has made peace an imperative – an imperative brought about by the massive destructive potential of nuclear weapons. This imperative has been recognized by insightful individuals from the onset of the Nuclear Age.

    Almost immediately after learning of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the great writer and philosopher Albert Camus wrote, “Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging.”

    More than fifty years ago, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and nine other prominent scientists issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, in which they stated: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.” But Russell and Einstein were right. We must face this alternative, difficult as it is.

    No nation knows the painful truth about the devastation of nuclear weapons better than Japan, the only country to have suffered such devastation. Those who survived the atomic bombings, the hibakusha, are the ambassadors of the Nuclear Age. Their voices are fading as they grow older and die, but listening to their wisdom may be our best hope for ridding the world of these terrible instruments of death and destruction.

    The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Cenotaph states, “Let all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.” This thought was echoed in the statement of the then President of the International Court of Justice, Mohammed Bedjaoui, when he referred to nuclear weapons as “the ultimate evil” in his 1996 Declaration that accompanied the Advisory Opinion of the Court on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    In the end, nuclear weapons are weapons of the weak. They are a great equalizer, capable of giving a small state or a terrorist group the ability to destroy our cities and even bring a great nation to its knees. For the sake of civilization and humanity, these weapons and those who support continued reliance upon them must not be tolerated. To tolerate these weapons is to assure that eventually they will be used – by accident or design.

    Deterrence is not defense, and can fail due to miscommunication. It has come close to failing on numerous occasions, many much less well known than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, even though there is little to no need for deterrence among the major powers, there are still 26,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine countries, and 3,500 of these in the arsenals of the US and Russia remain on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so.

    I am certain that were Ozaki Yukio alive today, he would be a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons and would be active in the Mayors for Peace, an organization of mayors throughout the world led by Mayor Akiba of Hiroshima. The Mayors for Peace currently has a 2020 Vision Campaign to ban nuclear weapons by the year 2020. It is a campaign that makes sense for mayors, given that cities remain the major targets of these weapons. One World
    We live on a single precious planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life. No matter where lines are drawn on the Earth as boundaries of states, we are a part of one planet and one people. We must unite in protecting the planet and preserving it for future generations.

    In addition to the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, we live in a world that is threatened by global warming, what Al Gore, the 2007 Nobel Peace Laureate, described as “an inconvenient truth.” But if global warming is an inconvenient truth, how much more so is nuclear war. In both cases, the present and future are jeopardized by massive devastation.

    War and structural violence – that is, violence that is built into the societal framework – are prevalent in our world. Each year, war claims countless victims, mostly innocent civilians. It is widely reported that more than 90 percent of the victims of wars today are civilians. In the Iraq war, some 4,000 American soldiers have died, but the number of Iraqis killed, mostly civilians, is reported to be over 1.2 million. That is a ratio of 1 to 300. It is more aptly characterized as a slaughter than a war. In Darfur, genocide has continued unabated for years, with the international community seemingly helpless to stop the killing.

    The structural violence in our world, like war, is a deep stain on the human record. Half the world’s people still live on less than two dollars a day, while the world spends some $1.2 trillion on arms. Of this, the United States spends nearly half, more than the combined totals of the next 32 countries.

    For just a small percentage of global military spending, every child on the planet could receive an education. For a similarly small percentage of military spending, everyone on the planet could have clean water, adequate nutrition and health care. Something is terribly wrong with our ability to organize ourselves to live justly on our planet.

    Our world is one in which human life is devalued for many, and greed is often rewarded. It is a world often not kind to children. Each hour, 500 children die in Africa; 12,000 each day. They die of starvation and preventable diseases, not because there is not enough food or medicine, but because these are not distributed to those who need them. Our world is also not very wise in preparing for the future. We are busy using up the world’s resources, particularly its fossil fuels, and in the process polluting the environment. So hungry and greedy are we for energy and other resources that we pay little attention to the needs and well-being of future generations. Our lifestyles in the richer countries are unsustainable, and they are foreclosing opportunities for future generations that will be burdened by diminishing resources and a deteriorating environment.

    We live in an interdependent world. Borders cannot make us safe. Nor can oceans. We can choose to live together in peace, or to perish together in nuclear war. We can choose to live together with sustainable lifestyles or to perish together as our technologies destroy our environment. We can choose to live together in a world with justice and dignity for all, or to perish together in a world of vast disparity, in which a small minority lives in luxury and overabundance, while the majority of humanity lives in deep poverty and often despair.

    War No Longer Makes Sense

    War no longer makes sense in the Nuclear Age. The stakes are too high. In a world with nuclear weapons, we roll the dice on the human future each time we engage in war. Nuclear weapons must be eliminated and the materials to make them placed under strict international control so that we don’t bring life on our planet to an abrupt end.

    Leaders who take their nations to war without the sanction of international law must be held to account. This is what the Allied leaders concluded after World War II, when they held the Axis leaders to account for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. No leader anywhere on the planet should be allowed to stand above international law.

    Every citizen of Earth has rights, well articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights agreements. We should all know our rights under international law, which include the rights to life, liberty, security of person, and freedom from torture. There is also a human right to peace. We must take responsibility for assuring these rights for ourselves and others across the planet.

    If someone were to observe our planet from outer space, that person might conclude that we do not appreciate the beauty and bounty of our magnificent Earth. I hope you will never take for granted this life-sustaining planet. The planet itself is a miracle, as is each of us. As miracles, how can we engage in wars, or allow our children to engage in wars, that kill other miracles?

    Japan’s Unique Capacity

    Japan is a country uniquely qualified to lead the world toward peace and a world free of nuclear weapons. Japan has great strengths, it has made great mistakes, and it has seemingly learned important lessons.

    Japan is a country with a long history and deep traditions. It is a country with an extraordinary aesthetic, which can be seen in its gardens, its architecture, its arts of tea ceremony, flower arrangement and pottery, its literature and film.

    But along with the subtle imperfect beauty of its aesthetic, Japan has had a history of feudal hierarchy and militarism. It has been an imperial power, colonizing other nations and committing serious crimes against them. It has fought in brutal wars, suffered defeat at the hands of the Allied powers in World War II, and emerged as a stronger, more peaceful and decent nation.

    One of the most remarkable things about Japan as a nation has been its unique ability to transform itself, first with the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century, then with its growth into a modern economic and military power, and finally with its astounding rebound from its military defeat in the second half of the 20th century.

    Japan turned the ashes of war and defeat into an energetic and vital economy and democratic political structure. It is the only country in the world with a “peace constitution.” Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution forbids war forever as an instrument of state power. It states:

    “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. “In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

    This is an extraordinary commitment. It is a beacon to the world, and should be viewed with pride by all Japanese citizens. Despite the attempts of some Japanese political leaders to reinterpret and evade the essential provisions of Article 9, it has thus far held up.

    Japan is the only country in the world to have had two of its cities destroyed by atomic weapons. Its people learned that human beings and atomic weapons cannot co-exist, and as a result the survivors of the atomic bombings, the hibakusha, have been ardent advocates of a nuclear weapons-free world, not wanting others to suffer the fate that they suffered. In 1971, the Japanese Diet adopted three non-nuclear principles: “Japan shall neither possess nor manufacture nuclear weapons, nor shall it permit their introduction into Japanese territory.”

    In recent years, the Japanese government has provided some leadership at the United Nations by sponsoring a resolution on “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” but this seems to be more rooted in words on paper than in action. More is needed.

    Post-War Uneasiness

    Despite its success in rebuilding its economy in the post-World War II period, its unique peace constitution and its position in relation to nuclear weapons, one senses uneasiness in the current state of Japan. Tradition is under assault in modern Japan. The people, and particularly the youth, seem pulled toward Western values of materialism with their emphasis on consumer lifestyles.

    There are periodic challenges to the peace constitution and to Japan’s non-nuclear principles. These values seem to remain in conflict with Japan’s longer and deeper connections to hierarchical authority and military might. Japan seems a reluctant leader toward a nuclear weapons-free world. It has the technology and enough plutonium to rapidly become a major nuclear weapons power. Despite its constitutional limitations, Japan has developed a powerful Self-Defense Force, and is among the top few military spenders in the world.

    Japan has maintained a close relationship with the United States, and the US continues to ask more of Japan in its participation in multilateral military operations. Japan participated in a small non-combat role in the “Coalition of the Willing” in the war in Iraq, although the Japanese government is ambiguous about this participation. The US has pushed Japan to join it in the development and implementation of missile defenses in Northeast Asia. Japan also allows the US armed forces to occupy many military bases in Japan and to use Japanese ports for its Navy. Japan sits willingly under the US nuclear umbrella.

    Thoughtful Japanese citizens might well ask: Who are we? Is Japan following its own destiny? Has Japan become a vassal state of the US? Should Japan preserve Article 9 of its Constitution? Can Japan preserve Article 9 of its Constitution? There is clearly tension in Japan’s aspirations for itself and in its alliance with the US, the country that ended the war against Japan with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Japan has prospered in peace. Now it must decide whether it chooses to lead in peace, or to be a vassal to the United States, as that country – my country – seeks to spread its imperial might throughout the globe. The world stands perilously balanced at the nuclear precipice, and Japan, as the only country in the world that has experienced nuclear devastation, could be the country to lead the way back from the precipice.

    One may well ask: If Japan leads, who would follow? There is no way to answer this question until the first steps are taken. At a minimum, in attempting to provide this leadership, Japan would honor the survivors and the dead of those bombings. It would instill in its behavior a sense of national purpose – that of ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    Rather than accept the militant leadership of the United States, Japan needs to provide the moral leadership of which it is uniquely capable. For its own independence and the good of the world, Japan must be firm in its commitment to its peace constitution and to its non-nuclear principles.

    As a good friend of the United States, Japan could help lead it toward ending its reliance on nuclear weapons and fulfilling its responsibilities under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the US we have a saying, “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” The US has been driving drunk in its use of power in Iraq and its reliance upon nuclear weapons. Japan must be truly a friend and learn to say No to the United States:

    No to reliance on nuclear arms, including by means of the US nuclear umbrella;

    No to missile defenses;

    No to US nuclear armed ships docking at Japanese ports (the Kobe Formula has provided a good example);

    No to participation in any form in illegal wars of aggression, such as the Iraq War;

    No to extending the leases on US military bases in Japan.

    No to the US-India nuclear deal, which will undermine years of international efforts to control nuclear proliferation.

    There is also much to which Japan can say Yes.

    Yes to international cooperation for peace, not war.

    Yes to convening a Nuclear Weapons Convention, and to sustained leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world. The first meeting of states to rid the world of nuclear weapons could be held in Hiroshima, the first city to suffer nuclear devastation.

    Yes to the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in Northeast Asia.

    Yes to bringing all weapons-grade fissionable materials under strict international control.

    Yes to an insistence on resolving conflicts between states by peaceful means, including mandatory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

    Yes to giving its full support to the International Criminal Court to hold leaders accountable for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    Yes to working to protect the oceans, the air, the Arctic and Antarctica, and outer space as the Common Heritage of Mankind for present and future generations. If Japan chooses to follow this path, it will honor its finest traditions and, drawing from its unique experiences in recent history, give leadership to forces all over the world struggling for peace.

    Individual Responsibility

    Nothing changes without individuals taking responsibility and taking action. We all need to realize that with rights come responsibilities. Change does not occur magically. It occurs because individuals engage with societal problems and take actions to create a better world. Often change occurs person to person. Each of us can be an agent for change in the world. We are each as powerful as we choose to be.

    We can each start by choosing peace and making a firm commitment to peace with justice. This means that we make peace a central issue and priority in our lives and demonstrate peace in all we do. We can live peace, educate for peace, speak out for peace, and support and vote for candidates who call for peace. In choosing peace, we also choose hope, rather than ignorance, complacency or despair. Hope gives rise to action, and action in turn gives rise to increased possibility for change and to further hope. It is a spiral in which action deepens commitment, which leads to more action.

    Like others who have chosen the path of peace – Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama – we must realize that it will not be a quick or easy journey. The path will require of you courage, compassion and commitment. The rewards may be few, except your own understanding of the necessity of the journey.

    The path to peace will require persistence. You may be tempted to leave the path, but what you do for peace you do for humanity. In the struggle for a better world and a more decent future, we are not allowed to give up – just as Ozaki Yukio never gave up during his life and as his daughter, Sohma Yukika, has never given up during her long life.

    Our efforts to create a culture of peace are a gift to humanity and the future. What better gift could we give to our fellow citizens of the planet and to future generations than our courage, compassion and commitment in the cause of peace?

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Foiled Again: The Defeat of the Latest Bush Administration Plan for New Nuclear Weapons

    Originally published on History News Network (www.hnn.us)

     

    Advocates of a U.S. nuclear weapons buildup received a significant setback on December 16, when Congressional negotiators agreed on an omnibus spending bill that omitted funding for development of a new nuclear weapon championed by the Bush administration: the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). Coming on the heels of Congressional action in recent years that stymied administration schemes for the nuclear “bunker buster” and the “mini-nuke,” it was the third–and perhaps final–defeat of George W. Bush and his hawkish allies in their attempt to upgrade the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

    The administration’s case for building the RRW–a newly-designed hydrogen bomb–pivoted around the contention that the current U.S. nuclear stockpile is deteriorating and needs to be replaced by new weaponry.

    But studies by scientific experts revealed that this stockpile would remain reliable for at least another fifty years. In addition, critics of the RRW scheme pointed to the fact that building new nuclear weapons violates the U.S. commitment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue nuclear disarmament and that such a violation would encourage other nations to flout their NPT commitments.

    Naturally, peace and disarmament organizations were among the fiercest opponents of the RRW, arguing that it was both unnecessary and provocative. Groups like the Council for a Livable World, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Peace Action, and Physicians for Social Responsibility published critiques of the administration plan, mobilized their members against it, and lobbied in Congress to secure its defeat. Activists staged anti-RRW demonstrations and, despite the nation’s focus on the war in Iraq, managed to draw headlines with protests at the University of California and elsewhere.

    Members of Congress also were skeptical of the value of the RRW, particularly its utility in safeguarding U.S. security in today’s world, where the Soviet Union–once the major nuclear competitor to the United States–no longer exists. “Moving forward on a new nuclear weapon is not something this nation should do without great consideration,” noted U.S. Representative Peter Visclosky (D-IN), chair of the House subcommittee handling nuclear weapons appropriations. With the end of the Cold War and the rise of terrorism, the U.S. government needed “a revised stockpile plan to guide the transformation and downsizing of the [nuclear weapons] complex . . . to reflect the new realities of the world.”

    But is the defeat of the RRW a momentous victory for nuclear disarmers? After all, the U.S. government still possesses some 10,000 nuclear weapons, with thousands of them on launch-ready alert. Moreover, the Bush administration is promoting a plan to rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Called Complex 2030 and intended to provide for U.S. nuclear arsenals well into the future, this administration scheme is supposed to cost $150 billion, although the Government Accountability Office maintains that this figure is a significant underestimate.

    Also, the RRW development plan might be revived in the future. Brooding over the Congressional decision to block funding for the new nuclear weapon, U.S. Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM)—a keen supporter of the venture–remarked hopefully that he expected the RRW or something like it to re-emerge “sooner rather than later.”

    This situation, of course, falls short of the 1968 pledge by the United States and other nuclear powers, under article VI of the NPT, “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to . . . nuclear disarmament.” It falls even farther short of their subsequent pledge, made at the NPT review conference of 2000, to “an unequivocal undertaking . . . to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

    Thus, this December’s Congressional decision to zero out funding for the RRW is only a small, symbolic step in the direction of honoring U.S. commitments and fostering nuclear sanity. If the United States and other nations are serious about confronting the menace of nuclear annihilation that has hung over the planet since 1945, it will require not only the scrapping of plans for new nuclear weapons, but the abolition of the 27,000 nuclear weapons that already exist in government arsenals, ready to destroy the world. Until that action occurs, we will continue to default on past promises and to live on the brink of catastrophe.

    Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His most recent book, co-edited with Glen H. Stassen, is Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (Paradigm Publishers).

  • Nuclear Weapons Abolition: Signs of Hope

    Nuclear Weapons Abolition: Signs of Hope

    Introduction Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan came close to achieving agreement on abolishing nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik summit in 1986. The stumbling block was Reagan’s dream of “Star Wars,” which Gorbachev could not accept. Who could have predicted that within a decade of the founding of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the Berlin Wall would fall and the Soviet Union would cease to exist? Who could have predicted that, despite the end of the Cold War, nuclear dangers would continue to grow? The end of the Cold War helped to disarm public concern about nuclear dangers, but these dangers have not ended.

    Throughout this past quarter century, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been a steady and persistent voice of reason in its calls for abolishing nuclear weapons. We believe, along with the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is an evil that must not be repeated. I am proud that we stand with the hibakusha, who have shown such compassion and strength of character in their forgiveness and their persistence. I have supported their nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, and I continue to do so.

    I want to speak about where we stand on the road to nuclear weapons abolition. I consider this goal – a world free of nuclear weapons – to be the greatest challenge of our time. Humans created nuclear weapons – weapons that could end civilization and the human species. Humans have used nuclear weapons in warfare. We know the results of that use. We know the danger that continues to exist with 26,000 nuclear weapons still in the world. Our cities are threatened, as is our common future. I will try to answer the following questions.

    1. What are nuclear weapons?
    1. Why oppose these weapons?
    1. Why do some countries possess these weapons?
    1. Why do other countries support these weapons?
    1. Do nuclear weapons make a country more secure?
    1. What is the current nuclear policy of the United States?
    1. Whose interests do nuclear weapons serve?
    1. What is the road to nuclear weapons abolition?
    1. Are there signs of hope?

    I will end with signs of hope. I believe that there is a way out of the nuclear dilemma for humanity, and that we must not allow complacency and despair to conquer hope.

    What Are Nuclear Weapons?

    Nuclear weapons derive their power from the energy contained within the atom. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima used enriched uranium (Uranium 235) to create an explosive force equivalent to 12.5 thousand tons of TNT. The bomb that destroyed Nagasaki used Plutonium 239 to create an explosive force equivalent to 20 thousand tons of TNT. Thermonuclear weapons, which use the power of fusion, are capable of yields thousands of times greater than those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The great majority of nuclear weapons today are thermonuclear weapons.

    Nuclear weapons are not instruments of war in any traditional sense. They destroy everything within miles of their detonation. Their radioactive effects linger long after the damage of blast and fire has run its course. The effects of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in time or space. They go on killing and destroying even into new generations of survivors. They cannot be conceived of as simply “weapons.” They are instruments of annihilation, putting the future of humanity itself at risk. Beneath their veneer of scientific achievement, nuclear weapons are the tools of bullies, thugs and madmen. Why Oppose These Weapons?

    Some people support policies that rely upon nuclear weapons and justify the weapons as “instruments of peace.” This a strange way to conceptualize weapons that could destroy most life on the planet in a matter of hours.

    Here are ten reasons to oppose nuclear weapons. They are ten reasons that I oppose nuclear weapons, and I commend them as ten reasons that you, too, should oppose these 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.
    2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.
    3. They threaten to foreclose the future.
    4. They are cowardly weapons, and in their use there can be no honor.
    5. They are a false god, dividing nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.
    6. They are a distortion of science and technology, twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.
    7. They mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.
    8. They waste our resources on the development of unusable instruments of annihilation.
    9. They concentrate power in the hands of the few and undermine democracy.
    10. They corrupt our humanity.

    Why Do Some Countries Possess These Weapons?

    There are currently nine countries that possess nuclear weapons: US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. More than 95 percent of the 26,000 nuclear weapons in the world are in the arsenals of the US and Russia.

    The principal justification for nuclear weapons has always been deterrence – the threat of nuclear retaliation to prevent a nuclear attack. The reason that the United States first developed nuclear weapons was the fear that the Germans might also develop them, and the United States would need to have the weapons to deter the Germans from using their weapons. The Soviet Union developed its nuclear arsenal for deterrence – to keep the United States from threatening or using its nuclear arsenal against them. Every country that has developed nuclear weapons has had the intention of deterring another country. Even the most recent addition to the nuclear weapons club, North Korea, wanted to have a nuclear deterrent capability to assure survival of its regime from potential attack by the United States.

    In addition to deterrence, a second reason that some states have pursued nuclear weapons is prestige. Since the five permanent members of the Security Council were the original five members of the nuclear weapons club, other nations recognized that the possession of these weapons offered a high level of prestige in the international system. When India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, there was buoyant celebrating in the streets of the major cities of these countries. The people in these countries, despite their poverty, took pride in the achievement of their nation’s nuclear weapons capability – ironically, a capability that could lead to their demise.

    Why Do Other Countries Support These Weapons?

    The principal reason that some countries support nuclear weapons, without possessing them, is that they are tied by military compact with a nuclear weapons state. This is sometimes referred to as being under a “nuclear umbrella.” Many countries are under the US nuclear umbrella. These include Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in the Far East; Australia in the Pacific; and the countries belonging to NATO in Europe. These countries tend to give support to US nuclear policy in the belief that they are being protected by the deterrent value of the US nuclear arsenal.

    Some poorer and dependent countries give support to US nuclear weapons policy because their governments are pressured by US economic incentives and disincentives. But there are not too many of these countries, and most countries in the world express support for United Nations General Assembly resolutions aimed at achieving a nuclear weapons free world. To give one example, the Disarmament Committee in the United Nations General Assembly recently voted on a resolution for “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” a resolution spearheaded by Japan. The resolution was passed by a vote of 165 states in favor, 3 states opposed, and 10 states abstaining. The three states voting against the resolution were India, North Korea and the United States.

    Do Nuclear Weapons Make a Country More Secure?

    Security is a concept with both psychological and physical dimensions. Psychologically, one may feel secure, but not be secure in reality. The opposite is also true. One may not feel secure, but actually be quite safe. Nuclear weapons operate at the psychological level. The security they offer is of the psychological variety. These weapons cannot provide actual physical security. Deterrence, for example, is a psychological theory. It cannot provide actual physical protection against a nuclear attack.

    It is worth examining deterrence theory to see how much security it actually provides. For deterrence to work, there must be clear communications, the threat of retaliation must be believed, the decision makers must act rationally, and the targets of deterrence must be locatable. In other words, one cannot deter someone who does not understand you, someone who does not believe you, someone who acts irrationally, or someone who cannot be located. Given all these ways in which deterrence can fail, it seems highly irrational to base the future of one’s country or the planet on the belief that deterrence will work under all circumstances.

    The best evidence that deterrence is not to be relied upon is missile defenses. If leaders thought that deterrence was foolproof, they wouldn’t need to have missile defenses for protection. Instead, many countries are developing missile defenses to provide actual physical protection against a nuclear attack. The problem with missile defenses is that they, too, are unlikely to work under real world conditions. Most of the successful tests with missile defense systems have employed a homing device that guides the “defensive” missile to the “offensive” one, a condition not likely to be present in the real world. Further, many experts have given clear testimony that missile defenses can be defeated by the use of offensive missile decoys. Russia has responded to US missile defenses by developing offensive missiles with greater maneuverability. Missile defenses are also making the prospects for nuclear disarmament increasingly distant.

    In the end, nuclear weapons make a country less secure, since a country that possesses nuclear weapons is almost certainly targeted by nuclear weapons. While nuclear weapons may add little to the security of an already powerful country, they may act for weaker countries as a perceived deterrent to offensive actions by more powerful countries. Thus, North Korea was able to sustain negotiations with the United States to achieve development and security goals by having a small nuclear arsenal, whereas Iraq, which did not have nuclear weapons, was attacked by the United States and its regime overthrown. This is a dangerous strategy for North Korea, but it points out that aggressive policies by powerful states can act as a stimulant to nuclear proliferation.

    Ronald Reagan, when he was President of the United States, recognized that the only viable purpose of nuclear weapons for the US and Soviet Union was to deter the other side from attacking. That being the case, Reagan noted, “…would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” Reagan was right. True security will be found not in possessing nuclear weapons, but in eliminating them.

    What Is the Current Nuclear Policy of the United States?

    In recent years, the United States has not played a constructive role on issues of nuclear disarmament. Rather, it has demonstrated by its policies its intention to rely upon nuclear weapons for the indefinite future. I would characterize US nuclear policy unstable, unreliable and, ultimately, as reckless, provocative and dangerous for itself and humanity. I will discuss below some of the principal elements of US nuclear policy.

    Double Standards. The US has upheld one standard for its friends and allies, and another standard for its perceived enemies. Thus, the US seeks to promote nuclear trade with India, despite the fact that India never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed and tested nuclear weapons. The US has been willing to bend its own laws and pressure the international Nuclear Suppliers Group to support its agreement with India. In the same vein, the US has not complained about Israeli nuclear weapons and has continued to annually give billions of dollars of military support to Israel. At the same time, the US attacked Iraq for supposedly having a nuclear weapons program and is threatening Iran with attack for the same unsubstantiated reasons (Iran claims to be enriching uranium only for its legal nuclear energy program). The Bush administration is currently seeking to replace every weapon in its nuclear arsenal with a new thermonuclear warhead, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead. Such double standards are not sustainable, and are widely recognized as such in the international community.

    Extended Deterrence. The United States seeks not only to deter a nuclear attack against its own territory, but also an attack against its allies. Thus, the US provides nuclear assurances to its NATO allies as well as to its allies in East Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These countries are considered to reside under the US nuclear umbrella. One of the goals of US nuclear policy is to provide assurance to its allies. In the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, it states, “US nuclear forces will continue to provide assurance to security partners, particularly in the presence of known or suspected threats of nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks or in the event of surprising military developments.”

    Ambiguous Messages. The US has not given clear messages about when it may use nuclear weapons. As indicated above, even “surprising military developments” can be viewed as a provocation for the threat or use of US nuclear forces. The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, for example, also states, “Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack….”

    Threat of Preventive Use. In a 2005 draft document, Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, the US expressed a willingness to use nuclear weapons against an enemy “intending to use WMD” against the US or allied military forces, or in the case of an “imminent attack from adversary biological weapons….”

    High Alert Status. The US and Russia continue to keep some 3,500 nuclear weapons on high alert status, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so. This creates a dangerous situation in which these weapons could be launched by accident.

    Preventing Proliferation by force. The US demonstrated its willingness to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons by force when it attacked Iraq in 2003. It has threatened to use force to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons to Iran.

    Launch on Warning. The US continues to employ a policy of launching its nuclear weapons on warning of attack. This increases the chances of launching to a false warning, and thus initiating a nuclear attack.

    Alliance Sharing. US nuclear weapons are currently shared with six US allies in Europe – Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey and the UK. Some 350 US nuclear weapons are currently thought to be deployed in Europe in cooperative agreements with these countries that would leave the weapons in the hands of the European countries in the event of hostilities. The US is the only country in the world to deploy nuclear weapons on foreign soil.

    Negative Leadership. There are two main directions in which leadership can be applied on nuclear weapons issues. One direction is toward ending reliance on nuclear weapons and eliminating them; the other direction is toward sustaining these weapons for the indefinite future. The United States has chosen the latter course. It has blocked progress toward nuclear disarmament in the United Nations General Assembly, the Commission on Disarmament, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conferences, despite its obligation under the NPT to engage in “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament. In the area of nuclear policy, the US has shown negative leadership. It has been an obstacle rather than a beacon in moving toward achieving a nuclear weapons free world.

    When looked at in overview, and when taking the first letters of each of the elements of US nuclear policy described above, they spell Death Plan. While I don’t think that US nuclear policy is consciously meant to be a Death Plan, I do think that it is currently charting a course that will result in nuclear proliferation, potential nuclear terrorism, increased nuclear threats and the eventual use of these weapons.

    Above all countries, the United States should be leading the way toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Not only does it have special responsibilities as the country that first created nuclear weapons and first used them, but it is also the country that would benefit most in terms of security from abolishing these weapons.

    Whose Interests Do Nuclear Weapons Serve?

    Nuclear weapons seemingly serve the interests of countries that are threatened by another nation’s nuclear weapons. The US was originally threatened by the potential of German nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union was threatened by US Nuclear Weapons, the UK and France were threatened by the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, and so on. It is clear, however, that deterrence can fail, defeating reliance upon nuclear weapons for security.

    Beyond the questionable interests of countries in nuclear weapons for deterrence, the most obvious interests are those of the scientists and engineers employed to create and improve these weapons. The engineers and scientists employed by the nuclear weapons laboratories – such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US – have a continuing interest in their job security and prestige. In the US, the University of California has a financial interest in the resources it receives from the government for providing management and oversight to the Nuclear Weapons Laboratories, as does its partner in management, Bechtel Corporation ,and other defense contractors.

    One class of people whose interests are not served by nuclear weapons is the citizens of a country that possesses these weapons. They are the targets and potential victims of nuclear attack by other nuclear-armed states. It is ordinary citizens, the inhabitants of Earth, including the nuclear weapons states, who have the most to lose in a nuclear exchange.

    What Is the Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition?

    The road to nuclear weapons abolition is a road not much traveled, but one that calls out to humanity. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recognized that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. We must choose: humanity or nuclear devastation. The choice should not be difficult. We must end the nuclear weapons era before these weapons end the human era.

    The road to nuclear weapons abolition can be conceived of as a series of steps to lessen nuclear dangers, while engaging in good faith negotiations on an international treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. It is a road to a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). A Draft NWC has been created by some international civil society organizations, including the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP). The Draft Convention was first introduced to the United Nations General Assembly by the Republic of Costa Rica in 1997, and was revised and reintroduced to the UN by Costa Rica in 2007.

    The Draft Nuclear Weapons Convention sets forth a plan for the phased, verifiable, irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. It is only one such guide, but it demonstrates that a feasible plan can be created. It should be an incentive to nuclear weapons states to begin the process of good faith negotiations that they are obligated to fulfill by their membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Among the steps that can be taken in conjunction with negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention are the following:

    1. De-alerting nuclear arsenals;
    2. Legally binding commitments to No First Use of nuclear weapons;
    3. Placing all weapons-grade nuclear materials, as well as uranium enrichment, plutonium separation and other key elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, under strict and effective international control;
    4. Ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
    5. Reestablishing an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
    6. Banning weapons of mass destruction in outer space.

    Are There Signs of Hope?

    There are some signs of hope that our human spirits can prevail over the cold technology of nuclear annihilation.

    1. The vast majority of states in the world support a world free of nuclear weapons. There are currently 188 countries that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The nuclear weapons states party to this treaty agree that they will pursue “good faith” negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. Unfortunately, these states (US, Russia, UK, France and China) have not acted to fulfill their disarmament obligations. Only three countries have not signed the treaty (Israel, India and Pakistan), and one country has withdrawn (North Korea). At the United Nations Disarmament Committee in October 2007, states voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons.” The vote was 165 in favor, three opposed and ten abstentions. The three opposed were India, North Korea and the US.
    1. The vast majority of US and Russian citizens support a world free of nuclear weapons. A 2007 poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org found that the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons was supported by 73 percent of Americans and 63 percent of Russians. In both countries, even larger majorities want their governments to do more to pursue this objective. Sixty-four percent of Americans and 59 percent of Russians favor taking all nuclear weapons off high-alert status. Most Americans (88%) and Russians (65%) endorse the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), but would like to speed up the timetable of the treaty and have reductions far greater than the 2,200 by 2012 that are called for in the treaty. A majority in both countries would support cutbacks to 400 nuclear weapons each, making their arsenals roughly comparable to those of other nuclear weapons states. A large majority of Americans (92%) and Russians (65%) believe that an international organization, such as the United Nations, would need to monitor and verify compliance with such deep reductions.
    1. Cities are standing up for nuclear disarmament. The Mayors for Peace “2020 Vision” Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons has grown to nearly 2000 Mayors in 124 countries. The United Cities and Local Governments organization, the world’s largest and most widely recognized mayoral association, voted in October 2007 to support the Mayors campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. The Declaration of the United Cities and Local Government organization stated, “We call on all nation states and armed groups to cease considering cities as military objectives – ‘cities are not targets’.”
    2. More than half the world is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones. Virtually the entire southern hemisphere is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones, including Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Africa, and Southeast Asia. In addition, central Asia has set up a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.
    1. Former Cold War officials are now coming out in favor of a world free of nuclear weapons and US leadership to achieve such a world. In a January 4, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn argued, “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S. leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage — to a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.” At a follow up conference in late 2007 on the 21st anniversary of the Reykjavic Summit of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Nancy Reagan told the conference, “Ronnie had many hopes for the future and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons. As Ronnie said, these are ‘totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing and possibly destructive of all life on earth.’ I agree and applaud your effort to create a safer world.”
    2. Norway’s Government Pension Fund has divested from companies providing components for nuclear weapons. The Norwegian Government Pension Fund – Global, based upon a recommendation from the Ethics Council for the fund, has divested from companies that develop and/or produce central components for nuclear weapons. According to their ethical guidelines, the fund may not invest in companies that produce weapons that through normal use may violate fundamental international humanitarian principles, a category that includes nuclear weapons. The following companies were excluded from the fund on this basis: BAE Systems Plc, Boeing Co., Finmeccanica Sp.A., Honeywell International Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., Safran SA and United Technologies Corp. The Ethics Council pointed out that this is not an exhaustive list.
    1. Legal measures are being taken to challenge the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament obligations. There is a plan by the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) to encourage the United Nations General Assembly to ask the International Court of Justice whether or not the nuclear weapons states are acting in “good faith” on their obligations for nuclear disarmament in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In Italy, there is a legal case for the removal of US nuclear weapons from Italian soil.
    1. University students are showing increased concern for university involvement in nuclear weapons research and development. At the University of California at Santa Barbara, the students have established a Student Oversight Committee to oversee the US Nuclear Weapons Laboratories for which the University provides management and oversight. They intend to conduct inspections of the laboratories and report to their fellow students on whether the laboratories are fulfilling their obligations under international law.

    Conclusions

    Nuclear weapons are instruments of annihilation. Rather than provide security, the undermine it. US leadership toward nuclear disarmament is needed, but unfortunately the US has been setting up obstacles to nuclear disarmament. This must change.

    There are some signs of hope. The vast majority of countries and people support the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. Large majorities of American and Russian citizens want to move faster in this direction. Some 2000 of the world’s cities are supporting the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020, and are speaking out against the targeting of cities. More than half of the world is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones. Even former American officials during the Cold War are now pressing for US leadership for the elimination of nuclear weapons. These are all good and hopeful signs of intention. But more is needed – in addition to intention, there must also be momentum and raising the issue to a higher priority on national and global agendas.

    Norway has found a way of applying economic pressure to the corporations involved in developing or producing components for nuclear weapons. This is a powerful action that should be adopted by other major funds throughout the world. There should be a global call for divestment from these companies. Legal channels present another powerful avenue for bringing pressure to bear upon the nuclear status quo. One can imagine a global campaign to remove nuclear weapons from the oceans, the common heritage of humankind, and to prevent their introduction into the common province of humankind in outer space.

    Finally, young people are beginning to awaken to this issue, as exemplified by the student activities in opposition to the University of California’s management and oversight of the US Nuclear Weapons Laboratories. Young people must be educated to understand that it is their future that is most endangered by nuclear weapons. They cannot wait to become the leaders of tomorrow; in their own interest, they must step up and become the leaders of today on this critical issue.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).