Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • Celebrating Humanity’s Greatness

    In my 93 years on this planet, through times of trials and tribulations, I have witnessed one great transformation after another, supporting the enormous values of hope and creativity in producing tremendous achievements.

    I saw the world recover from the terrible economic depression of the 1930s.  I saw the League of Nations rise and fall – and the emergence of the United Nations with more strength than the League.  I saw Europe torn by centuries of national antagonisms evolve to a European Union.  I saw totalitarian regimes in Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Asia, Africa and South America give way to governments more responsive to the needs of the people.  I saw women attaining their rightful positions in many cultures.  I saw the leaders of many religious organizations finally working together.  I saw the development of a new world communications system through the Internet.

    To serve the global community of the human family now evident all over the world, I advocate the creation of a Center for Humanity’s Future embodying hope and creativity on the largest possible scale.  Such a Center should be a place of light and listening, a place of friendly explorations and encouragement for people to become even greater than they are now—a launching pad for good ideas from everywhere.  It would enable us to travel into new dimensions; to open new paths before us; to dance forward into the future with high expectations, celebrating life with everlasting expansions, rising and traveling far and fast.

    This would be a revival of a proposal endorsed by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1967 for an Annual Celebration of the Creative Powers of Humanity.  That was a proposal I made in an article published in the Saturday Review, an American magazine edited by the late Norman Cousins.

    I originally offered that proposal from ideas generated by my experience as a founding officer of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, led by Dr. Robert M. Hutchins.  The Center was created in 1959 by the Fund for the Republic, an educational foundation established by the Ford Foundation to help uphold the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  It had a major impact on the world’s horizons for 22 years.  It helped to prevent a war between the United States and the Soviet Union.  It fostered efforts to end the tragic conflict in Vietnam.  It was a pioneer in the environmental movement.  It shed light on the political and economic activities of corporations and labor unions.  It sponsored discussions of the significant roles of religion in a free society.  It called attention to the strength and weaknesses of the mass media.  It published a model for a new American Constitution, designed to protect civil liberties, wipe out racism, and give legal foundations for human responsibilities.  It brought together thousands of people in public dialogues and conferences in Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Washington, Malta, and Geneva.  It gave early warnings of the dangers developing in the nuclear age.

    In my 16 years of participation in the Center’s work, I gained a strong appreciation of the values of unconditional love and global thinking.  I heard the ideas of brilliant people from every field, voiced in open dialogues with all insights welcomed—the flashes of brilliance that came from atomic scientists, anthropologists, astronomers, biologists, philosophers, theologians, human rights advocates, bishops, novelists, poets, painters, labor leaders, Supreme Court Judges, Senators, governors, Congress members, economists, and explorers from all fields.  I found that unconditional respect for persons from all cultures led to a tremendous joy in life.

    On the Center staff, we planned meetings on science and world affairs, on the systematic study of revolutionary technology, on the prospects for creative democracy in the new nations that arose after the collapse of colonial empires, on the possible changes in the American character in an affluent society, and the complex connections between American problems and world problems.

    The dangers presented by global warming and the atomic arms race have produced pessimistic views of humanity’s future.  But I continue to believe that the creative powers of human beings, manifested in many ways in the 20th and 21st century, will lead human beings to new heights.

    In my article for the Saturday Review, I advocated an Annual Report Celebrating the Greatness of Humanity, to be presented around the earth, revealing the glorious connections of human beings to the highest possibilities in the universe.  It attracted the attention and support of former President Eisenhower and other leaders when it was first published forty years ago.

    Eisenhower, who had commanded millions of men in battles that led to the liberation of Europe from Hitler’s forces, saw the terrible effects of war.  He said that “people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments.”  He declared: “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days, governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

    I was delighted when Eisenhower expressed a strong interest in talking with me about my idea for a Global Celebration of Creativity, which could lead the human family into a recognition of the importance of human unity and unconditional love.  Like Harry Truman, he wanted every human being to be freed from poverty and desperation.  Mr. Truman told me in the White House that we must acknowledge the fundamental unity of the human family.

    General Eisenhower said bluntly: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”  I was taken to see him by Everett Clinchy, head of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.  He greeted me warmly, saying: “You’ve got a great idea here.  It’s too big for me, Mr. Kelly.  You should have taken it to my brother Milton, who has served as president of a great university.  His endorsement would mean more than mine.”  I had met Milton Eisenhower, who had been president of Kansas State University, and I knew that Milton was a fine man.  I acknowledged that his approval would carry weight.  But I said to Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I admire your humility, sir.  But you have been elected President of our country twice, sir.  I share Mr. Clinchy’s view that your endorsement, if you’ll make it publicly, might enable us to carry out this idea.”

    We talked for an hour, and then General Eisenhower said: “You’ll hear from me in four or five days.  You can use my letter publicly, if you wish.”  Five days later, I received an envelope with five stars on it.  In it was a one-page letter signed by General Eisenhower, expressing full support for my proposal.

    I brought the letter from the former President to the attention of several Senators, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin introduced a proposal in Congress, advocating an Annual Report on Humanity’s Achievements to be sponsored each year by the Congress.

    But Proxmire and the others who sponsored it were never able to get a majority in the Senate or the House endorsing it.

    It is still my hope that Nobel Peace Prize winners will take it up—and make it a reality.

    An annual report showing the cosmic connections of all human beings could help to prevent a nuclear war.  Eisenhower grasped the revolutionary significance of nuclear weapons when he heard of the enormous impacts of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    “In an instant many of the old concepts of war were swept away,” Eisenhower declared in his book, Crusade in Europe.  “Even the bombed ruins of Germany suddenly seemed to provide but faint warning of what future war could mean to the people of the earth.  I felt and hoped that this latest lesson, added to all the others that six years of unremitting war had brought to the world, would convince everyone everywhere that the employment of force in the international field had to be abjured…I gained increased hope that this development of what appeared to be the ultimate in destruction would drive men, in self-preservation, to find a way of eliminating war.  Maybe it was only wishful thinking to believe that fear, universal fear, might possibly succeed where statesmanship and religion had not yet won success.”

    Eisenhower felt strongly that the United Nations had to be supported by the United States in the nuclear age.  He refused to endorse some of the devastating proposals made by his advisors on the use of hydrogen bombs and other extremely destructive weapons.  He proposed that the enormous energies in atoms be used for peace, not war.  Documents found by Stephen Ambrose, one of Eisenhower’s biographers, showed that Eisenhower rejected “the near-unanimous advice of the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and the Sate Department to use atomic weapons to achieve a victory in Korea.

    In his book entitled Eisenhower: The President, Ambrose wrote:  “The truth was that Eisenhower realized that unlimited war in the nuclear age was unimaginable, and limited war was unwinnable.  This was the most basic of his strategic insights.”

    In my meeting with Eisenhower, I found that he shared the vision of humanity’s new situation, which led years later to the formation of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  David Krieger, Charles Jamison, Wallace Drew and I realized that a new kind of civilization had to be built and extensively supported by leaders all over the planet.

    For 25 years we have participated in efforts to spread recognitions of the strategic insights of an American President who tried to get everyone to realize the costs of war and the possibilities of fostering an atmosphere in which human beings realize how glorious they are, how many gifts they have, how the future may unfold with beauty and unconditional love everywhere.  We work daily, as Eisenhower did, to make that future glow upon our horizons.

    We honor people who have made sacrifices to advance peace and justice.  We have circulated the ideas and initiatives of educators, scientists, religious leaders, artists, and others who embody the noblest characteristics of men and women in every culture.  Among them are Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Mairead Maguire of Ireland, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Carl Sagan, Paul Ehrlich, Yehudi Menuhin, Queen Noor of Jordan, Admiral Gene La Rocque, Senator Claiborne Pell, Jacques Cousteau, Linus Pauling, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, and many others.

    There are many glorious beings on our planet today and many more are emerging.  We must unite ourselves with the flood of creativity pouring through the universes around us.  The poet William Blake said: “That one who kisses joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.”  We are learning to celebrate each moment and each other and all the forms of life.

    The horizons that stretch before us in our swiftly changing world are surrounded by dangers and possibilities.  The future pulls us, shapes our dreams, opens many paths before us.  Let us welcome our days with great expectations!  Let us dance forward into it, celebrating life with everlasting hope.

  • Imagine

    “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” — Albert Einstein

    “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” — John Lennon

    Imagine there are still 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world, over 15 years after the end of the Cold War.

    Imagine that 12,000 of these weapons are deployed, and that 3,500 of them are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in a matter of moments.

    Imagine that the use of a single nuclear weapon could destroy a city, and the use of a small number could destroy civilization.

    Imagine the horror and devastation of Hiroshima, and multiply it by every city and country on earth.

    Imagine that a nuclear war could end human life on our planet, and that the capacity to initiate a nuclear war rests in the hands of only a small number of men.

    Imagine that nuclear weapons threaten the future of humanity and all life.

    Imagine that nuclear weapons challenge as never before our capacity to control violence and live peacefully.

    Imagine that we are not helpless in the face of this threat, and that we can rise to the challenge of ending the nuclear weapons era.

    Imagine that together we can make a difference and that you are needed to create a nuclear weapons free world.

    Imagine a world without the threat of nuclear devastation, a world that you helped to create.

  • We Want Results on Disarmament

    Speech to Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference, Washington, DC

    Thank you very much for that welcome and for those very kind words,

    I expect that many – perhaps all – of you here today read an article which appeared in the Wall Street Journal at the start of this year. The writers would be as familiar to an audience in this country as they are respected across the globe: George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn.

    The article made the case for, and I quote, “a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage”. That initiative was to re-ignite the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and to redouble effort on the practical measures towards it.

    The need for such vision and action is all too apparent.

    Last year, Kofi Annan said – and he was right – that the world risks becoming mired in a sterile stand-off between those who care most about disarmament and those who care most about proliferation. The dangers of, what he termed, such mutually assured paralysis are dangers to us all. Weak action on disarmament, weak consensus on proliferation are in none of our interests. And any solution must be a dual one that sees movement on both proliferation and disarmament – a revitalisation, in other words, of the grand bargain struck in 1968, when the Non-Proliferation Treaty was established.

    What makes this the time to break the stand-off ?

    Today the non-proliferation regime is under particular pressure. We have already seen the emergence of a mixture of further declared and undeclared nuclear powers. And now, two countries – Iran and North Korea, both signatories of the NPT – stand in open defiance of the international community. Their actions have profound and direct implications for global security. Each of them also raises the serious prospect of proliferation across their region.

    In the case of Iran, in particular, if the regime is trying to acquire nuclear weapons – and there are very few either in that region or outside it who seriously doubt that that is the goal – then it is raising the spectre of a huge push for proliferation in what is already one of the most unstable parts of the world.

    That alone makes the debate on disarmament and non-proliferation we have to have today different in degree: it has become more immediate and more urgent.

    On top of that, we must respond to other underlying trends that are putting added pressure on the original non-proliferation regime. One of those, just one, is the emergence of Al Qaeda and its offshoots – terrorists whom we know to be actively seeking nuclear materials.

    Another though is the anticipated drive towards civil, nuclear power as the twin imperatives of energy security and climate security are factored into energy policy across the world. How can we ensure this does not lead to either nuclear materials or particularly potentially dangerous nuclear know-how – particularly enrichment and reprocessing technologies – being diverted for military use or just falling into the wrong hands? How do we do so without prejudice to the economic development of countries that have every right under the NPT to develop a civil, nuclear capability.

    And last there are some very specific triggers for action – key impending decisions – that are fast approaching. The START treaty will expire in 2009. We will need to start thinking about how we move from a bilateral disarmament framework built by the US and Russia to one more suited to our multi-polar world.

    And then in 2010 we will have the NPT Review Conference itself. By the time that is held, we need the international community to be foursquare and united behind a global non-proliferation regime. We can’t afford for that conference to be a fractured or fractious one: rather we need to strengthen the NPT in all its aspects.

    That may all sound quite challenging – I meant it to. But there is no reason to believe that we cannot rise to that challenge.

    Let’s look at some of the facts. Despite the recent log-jam, the basic non-proliferation consensus is and has been remarkably resilient. The grand bargain of the NPT has, by and large, held for the past 40 years. The vast majority of states – including many that have the technology to do so if they chose – have decided not to develop nuclear weapons. And far fewer states than was once feared have acquired and retained nuclear weapons.

    Even more encouragingly, and much less well known outside this room, many more states – South Africa, Libya, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Argentina, Brazil – have given up active nuclear weapons programmes, turned back from pursuing such programmes, or – as the case of the former Soviet Union countries – chosen to hand over weapons on their territory.

    And of course the Nuclear Weapons States themselves have made significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals, which I will come to later.

    So we have grounds for optimism; but we have none for complacency. The successes we have had in the past have not come about by accident but by applied effort. And we will need much more of the same in the months and years to come. That will mean continued momentum and consensus on non-proliferation, certainly. But, and this is my main argument today, the chances of achieving that are greatly increased if we can also point to genuine commitment and to concrete action on nuclear disarmament.

    Given the proliferation challenges we face, it is not surprising that so much of our focus should be on non-proliferation itself.

    For the reasons I gave a moment ago, stopping and reversing nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran has to remain a key priority for the whole international community.

    With North Korea the best hope to reverse their nuclear programme remains patient multilateral diplomacy underpinned by sanctions regimes.

    As for Iran, the generous offer the E3+3 made in June 2006 is still on the table. Sadly Iran has chosen not to comply with its international legal obligations, thereby enabling negotiations to resume. That forced us to seek a further Security Council Resolution. And we will do so again if necessary.

    The US contribution on Iran has, naturally, been critical. It made the Vienna offer both attractive and credible – showing that the entire international community was willing to welcome Iran back into its ranks provided that it conformed to international norms on the nuclear file and elsewhere. And I have no doubt that the close co-operation between the US, Europe, Russia and China has been a powerful point of leverage on the Iranians. We must hope that it succeeds.

    The US has also taken the lead on much of the vital work that is going on to prevent existing nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists and rogue states. That framework is perhaps more robust than ever before – the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, the Proliferation Security Initiative, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism and efforts to prevent the financing of proliferation.

    Meanwhile, there is some imaginative work going on aimed at persuading states that they can have guaranteed supplies of electricity from nuclear power without the need to acquire enrichment and reprocessing technologies. For example, the work on fuel supply assurances following the report of the IAEA expert group; the US’s own Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative on more proliferation-resistant technologies; and the UK’s own proposal for advanced export approval of nuclear fuel that cannot subsequently be revoked – the so-called “enrichment bond”.

    But the important point is this: in none of these areas will we stand a chance of success unless the international community is united in purpose and in action.

    And what that Wall Street Journal article, and for that matter Kofi Annan, have been quite right to identify is that our efforts on non-proliferation will be dangerously undermined if others believe – however unfairly –that the terms of the grand bargain have changed, that nuclear weapon states have abandoned any commitment to disarmament.

    The point of doing more on disarmament, then, is not to convince the Iranians or the North Koreans. I do not believe for a second that further reductions in our nuclear weapons would have a material effect on their nuclear ambitions.

    Rather the point of doing more is this: because the moderate majority of states – our natural and vital allies on non-proliferation – want us to do more. And if we do not, we risk helping Iran and North Korea in their efforts to muddy the water, to turn the blame for their own nuclear intransigence back onto us. They can undermine our arguments for strong international action in support of the NPT by painting us as doing too little too late to fulfil our own obligations.

    And that need to appear consistent, incidentally, is just as true at the regional level. The international community’s clear commitment to a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in successive UN resolutions has been vital in building regional support for a tough line against Iran.

    So what does doing more – and indeed being seen to do more – on disarmament actually mean?

    First, I think we need to be much more open about the disarmament steps we are already taking or have taken. Here in the long-standing, and perhaps understandable, culture of increased secrecy that surrounds the nuclear world we may be our own worst enemy. There is little public remembrance or recognition of the vast cuts in warheads – some 40 000 – made by the US and the former USSR since the end of the Cold War. Nor, for that that matter, the cuts that France and the UK have made to our much smaller stocks. We all need to do more, much more, to address that. And I welcome the US State Department’s recent moves in that direction.

    But we would be kidding ourselves if we thought that this was a problem only of perception– simply of a failure to communicate, although that failure is very real. The sense of stagnation is real enough. The expiry of the remaining US-Russia arms control deals; the continued existence of large arsenals; the stalemate on a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. They all point to an absence of debate at the highest levels on disarmament and a collective inability thus far to come up with a clear, forward plan.

    What we need is both 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, both at the moment are too weak.

    Let me start with the vision because, perhaps, that is the harder case to make. After all, we all signed up to the goal of the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons back in 1968; so what does simply restating that goal achieve today?

    More I think than you might imagine. Because, and I’ll be blunt, there are, I was going to say some, but I think many who are in danger of losing faith in the possibility of ever reaching that goal.

    That would, I think, be a grave mistake. The judgement we made forty years ago, that the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons was in all of our interests – is just as true today as it was then. For more than sixty years, good management and good fortune have meant that nuclear arsenals have not been used. But we cannot rely just on history to repeat itself.

    It would be a grave mistake for another reason, too. It underestimates the power that commitment and vision can have in driving action.

    A parallel can be drawn with some of those other decades-long campaigns conducted as we’ve striven for a more civilised world.

    When William Wilberforce began his famous campaign, the practice of one set of people enslaving another had existed for thousands of years. He had the courage to challenge that paradigm; and in so doing helped with many others to bring an end to the terrible evil of the transatlantic slave trade.

    Would he have achieved half as much, would he have inspired the same fervour in others if he had set out to ‘regulate’ or ‘reduce’ the slave trade rather than abolish it? I doubt it.

    Similarly the Millennium Development Goals, the cancellation of third-world debt, increased overseas aid were all motivated by the belief that one day, however far off it might seem, we could “Make Poverty History”.

    So too with nuclear weapons. Believing that the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons is possible can act as a spur for action on disarmament. Believing, at whatever level, that it is not possible, is the surest path to inaction. If there will always be nuclear weapons, what does it matter if there are 1000 or 10 000?

    And just as the vision gives rise to action, conversely so does action give meaning to the vision. As that Wall Street Journal article put it, and again I quote: “Without the bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair and urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible”

    By actions, I do not mean that the nuclear weapons states should be making immediate and unrealistic promises – committing to speedy abolition, setting a timetable to zero.

    The truth is that I rather doubt – although I would wish it otherwise – that we will see the total elimination of nuclear weapons perhaps in my lifetime. To reach that point would require much more than disarmament diplomacy, convoluted enough though that is in itself. It would require a much more secure and predictable global political context.

    That context does not exist today. Indeed it is why, only a few months ago, the UK took the decision to retain our ability to have an independent nuclear deterrent beyond the 2020s.

    But acknowledging that the conditions for disarmament do not exist today does not mean resigning ourselves to the idea that nuclear weapons can never be abolished in the future. Nor does it prevent us from taking steps to reduce numbers now and to start thinking about how we would go about reaching that eventual goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons.

    That is why in taking the decision to retain our ability to have nuclear weapons, the UK government was very clear about four things. First that we would be open and frank with our own citizens and with our international partners about what we were doing and why. It is all being done upfront and in public – not as in the past, behind the scenes. Second that we would be very clear and up front that when the political conditions existed, we would give up our remaining nuclear weapons. Third that we were not enhancing our nuclear capability in any way and would continue to act strictly in accordance with our NPT obligations. And fourth that we would reduce our stock of operationally available warheads by a further 20 per cent – to the very minimum we considered viable to maintain an independent nuclear deterrent.

    This was our way – and I can assure you it was a difficult process – to resolve the dilemma between our genuine commitment to abolition and our considered judgement that sadly now was not the time to take a unilateral step to totally disarm.

    It’s the same dilemma every nuclear weapons state faces. And we can all make the same choices in recommitting to the goal of abolition and taking practical steps towards achieving that goal.

    Practical steps include further reductions in warhead numbers, particularly in the world’s biggest arsenals. There are still over 20 000 warheads in the world. And the US and Russia hold about 96 per cent of them.

    Almost no-one – politician, military strategist or scientist – thinks that warheads in those numbers are still necessary to guarantee international security. So it should not be controversial to suggest that there remains room for further significant reductions. So I hope that the Moscow Treaty will be succeeded by further clear commitments to significantly lower numbers of warheads – and include, if possible, tactical as well as strategic, nuclear weapons.

    Since we no longer live in a bipolar world, those future commitments may no longer require strict parity. They could be unilateral undertakings. Certainly the UK experience – and indeed the United States’ own experience with the reduction of its tactical weapons in Europe – is that substantial reductions can be achieved through independent re-examination of what is really needed to deter: that approach has allowed the UK to reduce our operationally available warheads by nearly half over the last ten years from what was already a comparatively low base. We have also reduced the readiness of the nuclear force that remains. We now only have one boat on patrol at any one time, carrying no more than 48 warheads – and our missiles are not targeted at any specific sites.

    Commitments like these need not even be enshrined in formal treaties. The UK’s reductions, after all, are not. But clearly both the US and Russia will require sufficient assurance that their interests and their strategic stability will be safeguarded. Part of the solution may be provided by the extension of the most useful transparency and confidence building measures in the START framework, should the US and Russia agree to do so.

    And I should make clear here again, that when it will be useful to include in any negotiations the one per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons that belong to the UK, we will willingly do so.

    In addition to these further reductions, we need to press on with both the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and with the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. Both limit – in real and practical ways – the ability of states party to develop new weapons and to expand their nuclear capabilities. And as such they therefore both play a very powerful symbolic role too – they signal to the rest of the world that the race for more and bigger weapons is over, and that the direction from now on will be down and not up. That’s why we are so keen for those countries that have not yet done so to ratify the CTBT. The moratoriium observed by all the nuclear weapon states is a great step forward; but by allowing the CTBT to enter into force – and, of course, US ratification would provide a great deal of impetus – we would be showing that this is a permanent decision, a permanent change and in the right direction.

    At the same time, I believe that we will need to look again at how we manage global transparency and global verification. This will have to extend beyond the bilateral arrangements between Russia and the US. If we are serious about complete nuclear disarmament we should begin now to build deeper relationships on disarmament between nuclear weapon states.

    For our part, the UK is ready and willing to engage with other members of the P5 on transparency and confidence building measures. Verification will be particularly key – any future verification regime for a world free of nuclear weapons will need to be tried and tested. In my opinion, it will need to place more emphasis on the warheads themselves than the current arrangement which focuses primarily on delivery systems. That will become particularly true as numbers of warheads drop.

    And we have to keep doing the hard diplomatic work on the underlying political conditions – resolving the ongoing sources of tension in the world, not least in the Middle East and between Pakistan and India. We also need to build a more mature, balanced and stable relationship between ourselves and Russia.

    And since I have the non-proliferation elite gathered in one room, let me emphasise the importance this and future UK governments will place on the agreement of an international and legally binding arms trade treaty. Conflicts across the globe are made more likely and more intense by those who trade all arms in an irresponsible and unregulated way. And an arms trade treaty would contribute to a focus on arms reduction and help build a safer world.

    And when it comes to building this new impetus for global nuclear disarmament, I want the UK to be at the forefront of both the thinking and the practical work. To be, as it were, a “disarmament laboratory”.

    As far as new thinking goes, the International Institute of Strategic Studies is planning an in-depth study to help determine the requirements for the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons. We will participate in that study and provide funding for one of their workshops, focussing on some of the crucial technical questions in this area.

    The study and subsequent workshops will offer a thorough and systematic analysis of what a commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons means in practice. What weapons and facilities will have to go before we can say that nuclear weapons are abolished? What safeguards will we have to put in place over civil nuclear facilities? How do we increase transparency and put in place a verification regime so that everyone can be confident that no-one else has or is developing nuclear weapons? And finally – and perhaps this is perhaps the greatest challenge of all – what path can we take to complete nuclear disarmament that avoids creating new instabilities themselves potentially damaging to global security.

    And then we have these new areas of practical work. This will concentrate on the challenge of creating a robust, trusted and effective system of verification that does not give away national security or proliferation sensitive information.

    Almost a decade ago, we asked the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment to begin developing our expertise in methods and techniques to verify the reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons. We reported on this work throughout the last Non-Proliferation Treaty review cycle. Now we intend to build on that work, looking more deeply at several key stages in the verification process – and again report our findings as soon as possible.

    One area we will be looking at further is authentication – in other words confirming that an object presented for dismantlement as a warhead is indeed a warhead. There are profound security challenges in doing that. We need to find ways to carry out that task without revealing sensitive information. At the moment we are developing technical contacts with Norway in this area. As a non-nuclear weapons state they will offer a valuable alternative perspective on our research.

    Then we will be looking more closely at chain of custody issues – in other words how to provide confidence that the items that emerge from the dismantlement process have indeed come from the authenticated object that went into that process to begin with. Here we face the challenge of managing access to sensitive nuclear facilities. We have already carried out some trial inspections of facilities to draw lessons for the handling of access under any future inspections regime.

    And last we intend to examine how to provide confidence that the dismantled components of a nuclear warhead are not being returned to use in new warheads. This will have to involve some form of monitored storage, with a difficult balance once again to be struck between security concerns and verification requirements. We are currently working on the design concepts for building such a monitored store, so that we can more fully investigate these complex practical issues.

    The initiatives I have announced today are only small ones. But they are, I hope you will agree, in the right direction – a signal of intent and purpose to ourselves and to others. We will talk more and do more with our international partners – those who have nuclear weapons, and those who do not – in the weeks and months to come.

    I said earlier that I am not confident, cannot be confident, that I would live to see a world free of nuclear weapons. My sadness at such a thought is real. Mine, like yours, is a generation that has existed under the shadow of the bomb – knowing that weapons existed which could bring an end to humanity itself. We have become almost accustomed to that steady underlying dread, punctuated by the sharper fear of each new nuclear crisis: Cuba in 1962, the Able Archer scare of 1983, the stand-off between India and Pakistan in 2002.

    But there is a danger in familiarity with something so terrible. If we allow our efforts on disarmament to slacken, if we allow ourselves to take the non-proliferation consensus for granted, the nuclear shadow that hangs over us will lengthen and it will deepen. And it may, one day, blot out the light for good.

    So my commitment to that vision, truly visionary in its day, of a world free of nuclear weapons is undimmed. And although we in this room may never reach the end of that road, we can take thos first further steps down it. For any generation, that would be a noble calling. For ours, it is a duty.

  • Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility

    Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility

    I have just returned from Berlin and the annual Council meeting of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES). This is an organization much needed in our world, one that supports the ethical uses of science and technology for disarmament and sustainable development. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has helped to foster the work of this international organization since the inception of INES more than 15 years ago.

    The meeting included an important presentation by Professor Guillermo Lemarchand from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina on the extent to which scientific efforts are driven by large military research and development budgets. Lemarchand presented information on the close relationship between research and development funding and the exponential growth of the lethality of weaponry. During the 20th century the lethality (maximum number of casualties per hour that a weapon can generate) grew from about 100 at the beginning of the century to about six billion at the end of the century. The lethality growth of weapons in the 20th century was 60 million, and now encompasses the population of the planet.

    Scientists may not be concerned with or even know the reasons why their basic research is being funded by military sources. The driving of academic research and development by military budgets is becoming pervasive at universities throughout the world, leading to the variant of the famous statement in President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address that some now find appropriate – the military-industrial-academic complex.

    The University of California is an excellent example of a university providing research and development for military purposes. It provides management and oversight to the US nuclear weapons laboratories. Its funds for doing this come through the US Department of Energy, but the work of the nuclear weapons laboratories is largely secret and military in nature. Currently the labs are working on the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a new hydrogen bomb that the Bush administration hopes will replace every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal.

    The management of the nuclear weapons laboratories by the University of California is just the tip of the iceberg of military involvement with universities around the world. According to the report by Professor Lemarchand, a physicist, the US military assigns officers to practically all areas of the world to seek out scientific researchers who may be helpful in furthering US military purposes. Too often military funding is the only source of funding available for academic researchers.

    This can create a dilemma for professors, who are often under pressure to bring in research funding. On the one hand, they can accept funding from the military, and find themselves contributing toward new means of weaponization – an outcome they may find unethical. On the other hand, they can turn down offers of funding from the military and not be able to continue their research into basic areas of science that they find important.

    There are many issues that confront scientists and engineers in today’s world. These include weapons of mass destruction, genetic engineering, biotechnology, global warming and climate change, food supplies and agricultural production, energy use and alternative energy development, and pollution and health issues. How does one approach such issues from the perspective of global responsibility?

    First, global responsibility means working for the betterment of humanity. Practically this means using one’s talents and skills for constructive rather than destructive purposes. Second, it means speaking out, individually or collectively, against dangerous and destructive uses of science and technology. Third, it means putting the welfare of humanity as a whole ahead of the considerations of any one nation.

    The Council members of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility are a dedicated group that is making its voice heard on the ethical uses of science and technology. If you would like to find out more about their work and become involved in it, visit them online at www.inesglobal.com.

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

  • Duck and Cover

    Children, this is the way you will be saved from a nuclear attack. At the sound of the bell you will scramble as fast as you can under your desk and into a kneeling position facing downward toward the floor with your head resting on your arms. You will keep your eyes squeezed tightly closed, not opening them or looking up until you hear me say “All clear.”This is the way you will be saved from shards of glass and other objects traveling at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. And from the flash of white light that could melt your eyeballs. And from the explosion that could scramble your brains and the rest of your organs. And this is the way you will be saved from the fire that may incinerate you, leaving you all shriveled, charred and lifeless. This is not what we want for our children.

    And this is the way you will be saved from the radiation that will cause your gums to bleed, your hair to fall out, leukemia to form in your blood, and lead to either a slow and painful death or to a more rapid and painful death. Pay close attention to the directions so that you will get it right the first time.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). Please send comments to him at “dkrieger@napf.org”.

  • Responsibility in an Era of Consequences

    Responsibility in an Era of Consequences

    The inaugural meeting of the World Future Council was recently held in Hamburg, Germany. It brought together 50 Councilors from all continents, chosen for their diversity and pioneering commitment to building a better world. At the conclusion of the four-day meeting, the Council released the Hamburg Call to Action, a document calling for action to protect the future of all life. It began, “Today we stand at the crossroads of human history. Our actions – and our failures to act – will decide the future of life on earth for thousands of years, if not forever.”

    The Call to Action is a challenge to each of us to take responsibility for assuring a positive future for humanity and for preserving life on our planet. The document states: “Today there is no alternative to an ethics of global responsibility for we are entering an era of consequences. We must share, co-operate and innovate together in building a world worthy of our highest aspirations. The decision lies with each one of us!”

    We are challenged to consider what we are individually and collectively doing not only to radically undermine our present world through war and its preparation, resource depletion, pollution and global warming, but also the effects of what we are doing upon future generations. Those of us alive now have the responsibility to pass the world on intact to the next generation, and to assure that our actions do not foreclose the future.

    The Hamburg Call to Action is a great document and I urge you to read and reflect upon it. But I draw your attention specifically to the section on nuclear weapons: “Nuclear weapons remain humanity’s most immediate catastrophic threat. These weapons would destroy cities, countries, civilization and possibly humanity itself. The danger posed by nuclear weapons in any hands must be confronted directly and urgently through a new initiative for the elimination of these instruments of annihilation.”

    With this in mind, we should unite in demanding the abolition of these weapons – eliminating the weapons before they eliminate us. There is much to be done in this regard, most important being the negotiation of a new treaty for the phased, verifiable and irreversible elimination of all nuclear arsenals, as required by the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. While these negotiations are in progress, there is much to be done to lower the level of reliance on nuclear weapons and to safeguard nuclear materials, including taking deployed nuclear weapons off high-alert status, ceasing all nuclear weapons tests and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and implementing strategies to bring all weapons-grade fissionable materials and the technologies to create them under strict international control.

    We must also withdraw our support from any programs that seek to maintain nuclear arsenals into the future. A prime example is the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program now being developed at the US nuclear weapons laboratories. This is but one example of a dangerous weapons program unworthy of our humanity. Rather than continuing the nuclear arms race, largely with itself, while ignoring its obligations under international law for nuclear disarmament, the United States must take a leadership role in ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. This is only likely to happen if US citizens demand such action from their government.

    At the University of California, students are challenging the University’s management and supposed oversight of the US nuclear weapons laboratories. They are saying, in effect, “Enough is enough. It is time for the University to stop providing a fig leaf of respectability to nuclear weapons laboratories engaged in a dangerous continuation of the nuclear threat to humanity.” The students are a voice from the future that is with us today. It is their future, and they are demanding nuclear sanity. They deserve our support as they speak out and confront the University of California Regents, political appointees who seem content to promote any nuclear weapons program proposed by the nuclear labs.

    The Hamburg Call to Action challenges each of us to change our way of thinking, and to engage in meaningful actions to assure the future. The time for global sanity has arrived – none too soon.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor of the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org). Please send comments to him at “dkrieger@napf.org”.

  • The Creation of a Student Oversight Committee for the US Nuclear Weapons Laboratories

    For more than five years the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, through its Youth Empowerment Initiative, has conducted a UC Nuclear Free Campaign. The purpose of the campaign is to educate and inform students at the University of California that their University has provided management and oversight to United States nuclear weapons laboratories since the beginning of the Nuclear Age, and that every weapon in the United States nuclear arsenal has been designed and developed under the auspices of the University of California. The Foundation has worked to motivate the students to examine the relationship between their University and the most devastating weapons of mass destruction ever created. We have encouraged the students to speak out for severance of the University’s relationship with the nuclear weapons laboratories.

    Over the years that we have engaged with the UC students, we have found that many students do not even know that their University provides management and oversight to the nuclear weapons laboratories. Often, when students learn of the relationship, they are surprised that their University would use its prestige to provide legitimacy to the design and development of weapons capable of destroying cities, countries and civilization. Such a relationship seems incompatible with the University’s mission of education, teaching and public service.

    Recently, a group of students at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) came up with the idea that there should be a Student Oversight Committee for the nuclear weapons laboratories. They wrote up a bill to create such a committee and presented it to the Legislative Council of the UCSB Associated Students. On April 18, 2007, the bill was heard for the first time. A number of students spoke in favor of it. I was present at the meeting and had a chance to speak to the Council and add my support for the bill. Many of the students present had been to past meetings of the UC Regents, and could report first-hand that the Regents do not seem to take seriously student input in relation to the management and oversight of the nuclear weapons laboratories.

    At the initial vote of the Legislative Council, there was a majority in favor of establishing the Student Oversight Committee, but not the two-thirds majority needed for it to pass. The students supporting the bill were disappointed but undaunted. They came back the next week in larger numbers and made their case even more powerfully. Will Parrish, the Foundation’s Youth Empowerment Initiative Director, spoke to the Council about the history of devastation caused by the US nuclear weapons program. He emphasized the effects of the 67 US tests in the Marshall Islands. The radiation released there was equivalent to the detonation of one Hiroshima bomb daily for 12 years, and continues to cause untold suffering to the islanders.

    At the April 25, 2007 meeting of the Legislative Council, the students supporting the bill brought Shigeko Sasamori, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, to address the Council. Ms. Sasamori told her story, and emphasized that she was speaking out so that her fate and that of her city would never be visited on other people and their cities in the future. A fourth year student, Cricket Clarke, brought Japanese paper cranes, a symbol of peace, and shared the story of Sadako, a young girl in Hiroshima who had died from leukemia caused by radiation from the atomic bomb dropped on her city. In the end, the Council voted unanimously to create the Student Oversight Committee.

    Now the students will seek to provide their own oversight of the nuclear weapons laboratories, and report to their fellow students on their findings. Under the authority of the UCSB Legislative Council, they will investigate what goes on in the laboratories and examine the ethical issues involved in the design, development, testing, manufacture, deployment and use of new nuclear weapons. Thus, the students will amplify their voices regarding what their University supports. They will be able to make recommendations on the appropriateness of supporting the nuclear weapons laboratories. If the Student Oversight Committee takes its responsibility seriously, which it certainly seems poised to do, it will be in a position to challenge the authority and complacency of the UC Regents on the oversight of these laboratories that are so central to the US nuclear weapons program.

    The Student Oversight Committee will also be in a position to speak nationally on the issue of nuclear dangers. It can be a voice for youth in the much needed debate on the future of US nuclear policy. The current generation of college students is on a collision course with potential nuclear catastrophe. Sane nuclear policies, led by the United States, could dramatically reduce the risks of future nuclear devastation. As the bill creating the Student Oversight Committee pointed out, “as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States is required ‘to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament….’”

    The creation of the Student Oversight Committee is a breakthrough moment. The students are making it known to University authorities and to national authorities that they want a voice in shaping their future. Surely, they are entitled to that. Other UC campuses are taking steps to establish their own Student Oversight Committees. Student leadership in providing oversight to the nation’s nuclear weapons laboratories may help to awaken the nation to the dangers of current US nuclear policies and projects that threaten our common future.

     

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

  • Ten-Point Nuclear Policy Platform For US Presidential & Congressional Candidates

    Ten-Point Nuclear Policy Platform For US Presidential & Congressional Candidates

    In a January 4, 2007 Wall Street Journal opinion piece by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, the four former Cold Warriors argued, “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. US 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.”

    Our continued reliance on nuclear weapons only incites non-nuclear countries to acquire or develop nuclear weapons of their own. These include states willing to sell their technology and know-how to terrorist organizations who make no pretense of stockpiling nuclear weapons for deterrence, and in turn cannot be deterred from using the weapons. Therefore, initiating negotiations to ensure the phased, verifiable and irreversible elimination of nuclear arsenals under strict international control is of the utmost urgency. Such negotiations, in fact, are mandated by Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and by the 1996 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat of Use of Nuclear Weapons. The latter states, “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    In accord with assuring its own security from nuclear attack, as well as setting an example for other nations with a principled legal and moral position, the United States should then commit to leading the world away from the nuclear precipice. A number of current US nuclear policies are in need of either renewed commitment or a new direction.

    1. The US and Russia, between them, currently maintain some 3,500 nuclear weapons on high alert status. Thus, we’re in constant danger of an unintended missile launch.
    Policy recommendation: Negotiate with Russia to remove all nuclear weapons from high alert status and create additional safeguards to prevent an accident which would lead to nuclear war.
    2. The US currently maintains the option of not only using nuclear weapons first, but against non-nuclear weapons states. This is an open invitation to nuclear proliferation.
    Policy recommendation: The US should make a commitment that legally binds it from first use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances, assuring that we retain them only for deterrence. Further, the US should sign an agreement that under no conditions would it nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states.

    3. The US is planning to replace every nuclear weapon in its arsenal under the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. While ostensibly intended to increase nuclear security, the RRW program is actually costly, dangerous and unnecessary. By sending the message that the US plans to continue to base its security on nuclear weapons indefinitely, it serves only to encourage nuclear proliferation.

    Policy recommendation: Eliminate funding for and cancel the Reliable Replacement Warhead program.

    4. Contributions on the part of the US to prevent the theft of nuclear weapons and weapons-grade materials in the former USSR and other countries around the world have been far from adequate.

    Policy recommendation: Increase US funding for: programs that secure all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade fissile materials in Russia and other countries; the Global Threat Reduction Initiative and other programs for preventing nuclear proliferation; security upgrades, including anti-theft technology, for all countries in possession of nuclear weapons or weapons-grade nuclear materials. Funds freed up by canceling the RRW program might be allotted to these ends.

    5. The US has not yet ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The US was the first country to sign the CTBT in 1996, but failed to ratify it, even though 138 other states have, when it came before the Senate in 1999. Nor has the Bush administration seen fit to resubmit the treaty for ratification since.

    Policy recommendation: Submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification again, and encourage the other nuclear-capable states that have not signed or ratified it to do so. Further, the US should close the Nevada Test Site.

    6. Some countries, including the US, are continuing sub-critical nuclear tests, which stop short of producing a nuclear chain-reaction explosion. Continued nuclear testing, even in the form of computer simulations, sends a message to the world that nuclear testing is necessary and encourages other countries to follow suit.

    Policy recommendation: Cease testing of nuclear weapons by any means and urge other nations to emulate us.

    7. The US currently maintains some 480 nuclear weapons in Europe and hundreds more on submarines in the oceans.

    Policy recommendation: Repatriate all US nuclear weapons from foreign soil, and negotiate with the other nuclear weapons states for the removal of all nuclear weapons from ocean-going vessels. It’s imperative that the seas retain their status as the common heritage of humankind.

    8. The US military currently espouses a policy of “full spectrum dominance” over not only land, air, and sea, but outer space.

    Policy recommendation: The US should join other countries, including Russia and China, in negotiating a treaty to keep outer space beyond the limits of earthly hostilities.

    9. The US is proceeding with a plan called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which provides for reprocessing nuclear waste to render its plutonium usable in nuclear power plants. Though advertised as proliferation-resistant, GNEP only increases the odds of plutonium falling into the hands of criminals and terrorist organizations.

    Policy recommendation: Eliminate funding for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program, prohibit the reprocessing of nuclear wastes, and house waste from nuclear power plants where it’s generated in hardened on-site storage facilities. Require a low-density, open-frame layout for spent fuel pools, and provide protection for these pools. Mandate periodic review of these facilities.

    10. Most significantly, the US has shown virtually no leadership in fulfilling its obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.

    Policy recommendation: Pursue negotiations without further delay on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, transparent and irreversible elimination of all nuclear weapons globally, as required by Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. We call upon candidates seeking the presidency of the United States and current representatives and candidates seeking seats in the Congress to adopt the recommendations of this ten-point platform designed to assure compliance with US obligations under international law. Thus will a commitment be demonstrated to US leadership in ending the nuclear weapons threat that hangs over humanity.

    We call upon candidates seeking the presidency of the United States and current representatives and candidates seeking seats in the Congress to adopt the recommendations of this ten-point platform designed to assure compliance with US obligations under international law. Thus will a commitment be demonstrated to US leadership in ending the nuclear weapons threat that hangs over humanity.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). Please send comments to him at dkrieger@napf.org.

  • Nuclearism and the Legacy of U.S. Media Coverage of Hiroshima

    Presented at the “Think Outside the Bomb” National Youth Conference on Nuclear Issues, Washington DC, April 21, 2007

    On August 6, 1945, the bomb that we are trying to think outside of here today was used as a weapon of mass destruction for the first time in history. The United States, engaged in a fierce war with Japan, dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, destroying it almost entirely. The blast, heat, and radiation killed more than 140,000 people. The White House delivered the dramatic news about the dawn of the atomic age through a press release of a presidential statement. The press release set the tone for much of the media coverage to come in the final days of the war and the months after. It emphasized vengeance as a motive for bombing Hiroshima. It focused on the technological achievement in producing the bomb. At the same time it omitted any mention of radiation, a key feature of the new weapon. The White House also implied that Hiroshima had been targeted because it had an army base, but failed to mention that the aiming point for the bomb had been the center of a city of more than 300,000 civilians. [1]

    After the White House statement, came 14 press releases from the War Department. [2] This concerted government media campaign anticipated the possibility of public controversy. As General Leslie Groves, head of the secret project to build the bomb, put it, “it may be necessary to control the situation by the issuance of carefully written press releases.” [3]

    Controlling the situation was exactly what General Groves did. A few months earlier he had hired the New York Times science reporter, William Laurence, to become the bomb’s publicist in waiting. Groves’s investment paid off handsomely. Laurence crafted press releases and stories, many of them rhapsodic, about the exciting dawn of a new scientific age, about the heroic effort to produce and use the bomb, and about the positive aspects of atomic energy. Laurence, perhaps the first fully embedded journalist in history, helped shape how we Americans came to think about nuclear weapons and energy. He and other members of the media helped put in place a narrative that legitimized the use of nuclear weapons and absorbed the bomb into American life. They did this by accepting government control of information about atomic power, downplaying the dangers of radiation and marginalizing the civilian victims, obscuring the fact that President Truman could have avoided the bomb in forcing Japan’s surrender, and, in other ways, normalizing the existence of nuclear weapons.

    There has always been a tension between national security and press freedom [4]—one can see this, for example, in how the Bush administration in its early years enjoyed limited critical scrutiny from the press, mostly because of 911 and the threat of terrorism. The limited scrutiny made it easier for the administration to go to war, despite a case for war that was as weak then as it is now. The same tension between security and freedom held true in World War II. The project to build the atomic bomb was understandably never discussed openly. But the Truman administration kept the existence of the bomb a secret until its combat use.

    The administration could have chosen a different path. For example, many scientists recommended that the administration disclose the existence of the bomb and at least attempt to force Japanese surrender through a nonlethal demonstration of the bomb’s power. But despite the efforts of some scientists and the misgivings of some Truman administration and military officials, the US dropped the bomb on an unsuspecting enemy. Once they used it, the administration had to justify its use and this is where the American media came in.

    Much of the coverage of the first few days after the Hiroshima bombing bore the stamp of William Laurence’s work. [5] Either directly through his New York Times byline or through newspaper stories based on material handed to journalists that Laurence had crafted, the media reflected to a large degree an uncritical pro-bomb viewpoint. News reports noted, for example, that the bomb had obliterated an army base, that science had now harnessed the power of the universe, and that revenge had finally been visited on the Japanese. Initial editorial opinion was almost uniformly supportive of the use of the bomb. [6]

    As the Washington Post commented, reflecting a widespread view, “However much we deplore the necessity, a struggle to the death commits all combatants to inflicting a maximum amount of destruction on the enemy…” [7] It wasn’t until eight years later that the Post appeared to take back these words: On the day of his retirement in 1953, Washington Post editor Herb Elliston told a reporter that he had many regrets as he looked back over his tenure. “One thing I regret is our editorial support of the A-bombing of Japan. It didn’t jibe with our expressed feeling [before the bomb was dropped] that Japan was already beaten.” [8]

    All in all, the initial coverage of the atomic attack was remarkably faithful to the official, pro-bomb viewpoint. [9] As General Groves commented, “most newspapers published our releases in their entirety.” [10] Perhaps not surprisingly (and reflecting the uncritical wartime mood), the Washington Press Club, soon after the Hiroshima bombing, responded to the news by offering its members a new drink, an Atomic Cocktail. [11]

    But Laurence represented a-bomb championing at its most vigilant and enthusiastic. He heralded the bomb in poetic, at times biblical terms. And with his descriptions he helped set the predominant image of the a-bomb and of the atomic era—an enormous, powerful mushroom cloud that held viewers in awe—an image that photography and film cemented through repetition. In Laurence’s atomic portraits, the victims simply didn’t merit attention, but the mushroom cloud did. In his eyewitness account of the Nagasaki bombing, for example, he described the explosion in terms of wonder and incredulity:

    “Awe-struck, we watched [the pillar of purple fire] shoot upward … becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the clouds…. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes…. [J]ust when it appeared as though the thing has settled down … there came shooting out of the top a giant mushroom…. The mushroom top was even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam… As the first mushroom floated off into the blue it changed its shape into a flowerlike form, its giant petal curving downward, creamy white outside, rose-colored inside.” [12]

    In his long New York Times article, which included eight paragraphs on individual crew members and others on the mission, [13] Laurence said virtually nothing about the victims. When he did, it was just to dismiss them:

    “Does one feel any pity or compassion for the poor devils about to die? Not when one thinks about Pearl Harbor and the Death March on Bataan.”

    Laurence’s dismissal of the victims of the first use of nuclear weapons was not uncommon. Media focus on righteous vengeance, supposed necessity of the bombings, and the technological accomplishment of American and Allied science pushed the dead and dying out of the spotlight. [14] Government censorship aided in this marginalization, especially through censorship about radiation and of visual evidence.

    The first photograph of Japanese victims appeared in Life magazine about two months after the end of the war. [15] But the magazine used a caption to undercut the power of the photos. The caption stated that the photographer “reported that [the] injuries looked like those he had seen when he photographed men burned at Pearl Harbor.” [16] For the most part, photographs of the human cost of the atomic bombings seldom appeared in the American media until the 1950s, [17] by which time they would have had little influence on nuclear policy, which had fully absorbed nuclear arms and power into American military planning and civilian life.

    The early media neglect of Japanese victims was reinforced by the lack of emphasis on radiation In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, due partly to censorship. The first serious attempt at explaining what had happened in Japan came from an Australian journalist, Wilfred Burchett. Almost a month after Hiroshima had been bombed, Burchett arrived there and understood the horror of the bomb for the first time. Initially supportive of the bomb’s use, Burchett ultimately rejected nuclear weapons because of what he had seen in Hiroshima. Reporting from the scene of the devastation, his account differed dramatically from that of other journalists:

    “In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly—people who were uninjured in the cataclysm—from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague.

    “Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.” [18]

    A war correspondent who had reported from many battlefronts, Burchett compared Hiroshima with what he had witnessed elsewhere: “In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war…. When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around for twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made destruction.” [19]

    Burchett’s reference to the atomic plague immediately moved the War Department into action. At first they ordered Burchett to leave Japan. Then the camera he had used in Hiroshima mysteriously disappeared. The US occupation authorities claimed that Burchett had been taken in by Japanese propaganda about radiation. [20] They decided to let him stay in Japan and opted instead to deal with his charges about atomic sickness by simply denying that radiation had caused any problems. As a result, a New York Times reporter who had a week earlier reported witnessing sickness and death due to the lingering effects of the atomic bomb simply reversed the truth. He now reported that according to the head of the US atomic mission to Japan the bomb had not produced any “dangerous, lingering radioactivity.” [21] The Washington Post uncritically noted that the atomic mission staff had been unable to find any Japanese person suffering from radiation sickness. [22]

    To drive home the point that radiation was not a problem, General Groves invited thirty reporters out to the New Mexico site where the bomb had first been tested two months earlier. This effort paid off with a banner headline in the New York Times: “U.S. Atom Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales; Tests on New Mexico Range Confirm That Blast, and Not Radiation, Took Toll,” [23] Life magazine concluded after the escorted tour in New Mexico that no Japanese person could have died as a result of lingering radiation. [24]

    In fact, radiation killed thousands of Japanese in the months after the bomb was dropped. The 1960 population census in Japan estimated that the leukemia mortality rate for persons entering Hiroshima within three days of the bombing was three times higher than it was in all of Japan. [25]

    The ease with which many reporters went along with official tales about the bomb is evident as well in their acceptance of the bomb’s necessity for ending the war. Necessity in this case had three aspects: vengeance, war-driven inevitability (which was sometimes regrettable), and absence of other reasonable means for ending the war. The last aspect has survived most tenaciously up to the present. According to this view, Truman simply didn’t have any choice except to use the bomb; if he had not, somewhere between half and one million American casualties would have resulted from an invasion of the Japanese homeland. I won’t address this issue here, except to say that historians have picked apart this myth over the years, so much so that even the former chief historian of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls the bomb vs invasion view of history a myth. [26]

    As the media helped to cleanse the new weapon of criticism, it also exalted the benefits of nuclearism to American life. A few months after the bombing, Atlantic magazine commented that “Through medical advances alone, atomic energy has already saved more lives than were snuffed out at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” [27] Life magazine regularly featured picture spreads and stories about the beauty and splendor of atomic energy and the glory of atomic miracles such as a Million Volt Cancer Treatment. [28] The magazine did this hand in hand with the government. For several years after the war, the photos of atomic images that Life published came mostly from the Army or the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than from its own photographers. [29] In the imagery and narrative that unfolded over time, the magazine implicitly urged its readers to set aside residual fears of atomic weapons—just as the arms race was heating up—and instead focus on the benefits and benevolence of the nuclear establishment. [30] Thus the dual nature of most media coverage—limiting the negative view of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while playing up the positive aspects of nuclearism—not only eased the bomb into American life, but it also eased the way for an all out arms race with the Soviet Union.

    As the bomb got absorbed into American life and military planning, the media largely continued to toe the administration’s line about nuclear issues. Nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands and in the American heartland—in places like Nevada—produced little scrutiny. As the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been marginalized, so were the radiation victims in the Marshall Islands and the downwinders at home.

    To be sure, the mass media did pose some challenges to the official narrative—John Hersey’s Hiroshima is the premier example. News outlets did publish contrary opinion and information occasionally. [31] But there was no concerted effort to investigate government claims and challenge the view of nuclear weapons that settled into place after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    * * * * * * * *

    Having laid out this rather bleak story, I do want to end with a quote from Wilfred Burchett, who along with Hersey and a few others, showed what the media was capable of doing when it sided with humanity rather than with official narratives and nuclear glory: As Burchett put it,

    “In visiting Hiroshima, I felt that I was seeing in the last days of [World War 2] what would be the fate of hundreds of cities in a [World War 3]. If that does not make a journalist want to shape history in the right direction, what does?” [32]

    Uday Mohan is the Director of Research for American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute.

    Footnotes

    [1] Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York: Grossett/Putnam, 1995), 5.

    [2] Ibid., 10. Compare Lifton and Mitchell’s account with the Department of Energy’s account of the Manhattan Project’s public relations campaign (www.mbe.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/public_reaction.htm).

    [3] Quoted in ibid., 12.

    [4 See, especially, Jeffery A. Smith. War and Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power (New York: Oxford University Press,1999).

    [5] For Laurence’s impact, see ibid.; Beverly D. Keever, News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004); and Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).

    [6] Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 24.

    [7] Quoted in ibid., 24.

    [8] “Elliston Reviews Post’s Role in Tackling Public Problems,” Washington Post, April 20, 1953, 7. For more on journalistic dissent, see Uday Mohan and Leo Maley III, “Orthodoxy and Dissent: The American News Media and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb Against Japan, 1945-1995,” in Cultural Difference, Media Memories: Anglo-American Images of Japan, ed. Phil Hammond (London: Cassell, 1997), and Uday Mohan and Leo Maley III, “Journalists and the Bomb,” op-ed distributed by the History News Service (HNS) in 2000 and published in several US newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution (published as “Blasting the A-Bomb,” 8/7/00, A11). HNS version available at www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/2000/080100a.html.

    [9] An important issue not addressed here is the sense of dread the atomic bomb introduced into American life. News coverage and commentary reflected this sense of dread, but a public conversation about nuclear weapons never developed, partly because the media helped justify the atomic bombing of Japan and legitimize the existence of nuclear weapons.

    [10] Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 10.

    [11] Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 27.

    [12] William L. Laurence, “Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki Told By Flight Member,” New York Times, September 9, 1945, 1 and 35.

    [13] Keever, News Zero, 70-71.

    [14] This media emphasis was perhaps understandable given the wartime mood, hatred of the Japanese, and government censorship. But at the same time, there were dissenters who suggested that a different perspective was possible regarding the use of the bomb. See references in endnote 8 and Leo Maley III and Uday Mohan, “Time to Confront the Ethics of Hiroshima,” op-ed for History News Service (www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/2005/080405b.html) published in 2005 in various U.S. newspapers; Uday Mohan and Leo Maley III, “Hiroshima: Military Voices of Dissent,” op-ed for History News Service (www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/2001/072601b.html) published in 2001 in various U.S. newspapers; and Leo Maley III and Uday Mohan, “Second-Guessing Hiroshima,” op-ed for History News Service (www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/1998/072998a.html) published in 1998 in various U.S. newspapers.

    [15] George H. Roeder Jr., “Making Things Visible: Learning from the Censors,” in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 93.

    [16] Quoted in ibid.

    [17] Ibid.

    [18] Quoted in Richard Tanter, “Voice and Silence in the First Nuclear War: Wilfred Burchett and Hiroshima,” in Ben Kiernan, ed., Burchett Reporting the Other Side of the World, 1939-1983 (London: Quartet, 1986), 18.

    [19] Ibid.

    [20] Amy Goodman with David Goodman, “Hiroshima Cover-Up: How the War Department’s Timesman Won a Pulitzer,” in Goodman with Goodman, The Exceptions to the Rulers (New York: Hyperion, 1994), 295.

    [21] Lawrence’s September 5, 1945 article quoted and described in Goodman with Goodman, “Hiroshima Cover-Up,” 299-300. However, Lawrence does note in his later article that the atomic mission chief confirmed that some Japanese had died because of low counts of white corpuscles, rather than from blast- or burn-related wounds: William H. Lawrence, “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin; What Our Superfortresses Did to a Japanese Plane Production Center,” New York Times, September 13, 1945. 4. Three days earlier, Lawrence had largely dismissed Japanese claims of the lingering dangers from the atomic attack, but did note that a Dutch medical officer had confirmed that “some persons” (presumably referring to Allied POWs) had died from a “mysterious relapse” and that four Dutch soldiers had died both of their wounds and uranium after-effects: Lawrence, “Atom Bomb Killed Nagasaki Captives; 8 Allied Prisoners Victims– Survivor Doubts After-Effect,” New York Times, September 10, 1945, 1.

    [22] “Radioactivity at Hiroshima Discounted,” Washington Post, September 13, 1945, 2.

    [23] William L. Laurence, “U.S. Atom Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales; Tests on New Mexico Range Confirm That Blast, and Not Radiation, Took Toll,” New York Times, September 12, 1945. 1 and 4.

    [24] Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 52.

    [25] Tanter, “Voice and Silence in the First Nuclear War,” 26.

    [26] See J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 5-6. For detailed accounts of the decision to use the bomb, see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 1995) and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005).

    [27] Quoted in Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon), 123.

    [28] Peter Bacon Hales, “The Mass Aesthetic of Holocaust: American Media Construct the Atomic Bomb,” Tokyo Daigaku Amerika Kenkyu Shiryo Senta Ninpo 17 (March 1996): 10.

    [29] Ibid., 10.

    [30 Ibid., 11.

    [31] A few U.S. officials and leaders responded to these challenges with an article intended to silence the critics. Henry Stimson, who had been secretary of war under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, responded with a seemingly authoritative essay (written with the assistance of General Groves, Harvard University President James Conant, and others): “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” published in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s. For background on the intent behind and drafting of this article, see Barton J. Bernstein, “Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Diplomatic History 17 (Winter 1993), 35-72; James Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Knopf, 1993), 279-304; and Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 445-492.

    [32] Quoted in Tanter, “Voice and Silence in the First Nuclear War,” 37.

  • Mourning the Tragic Death of Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh

    Mourning the Tragic Death of Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation mourns the death of Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh, whose life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet. With this tragedy, the world has lost a great peace leader. As the three-term mayor of the last city to suffer atomic devastation, he became a leading spokesperson for a world free of nuclear weapons.

    Mayor Itoh was the vice president of Mayors for Peace and a leader of their global campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020. The Foundation honored Mayors for Peace and the leadership of Mayor Itoh and Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba with our 2004 World Citizenship Award.

    Mayor Itoh played a significant role in the three Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assemblies held while he was mayor. The most recent of these took place in fall 2006. In his Opening Address to this Assembly, he underscored his deep commitment, and that of the people of his city, that Nagasaki “must be the last place where an atomic bomb is dropped….” He made this a major goal of his life.

    Along with many of my colleagues working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, I had the pleasure and honor of knowing Mayor Itoh. He was a man with an easy smile and open manner, but one with a firm dedication to building a lasting peace. In Nagasaki, he was a gracious host to so many of us who participated in the Nagasaki Citizens’ Assemblies.

    In tribute to Mayor Itoh, we have included a link below to a reprint of the Nagasaki Peace Declaration, which he delivered on August 9, 2006. I urge you to read it as the final testament and call to action by a great man. Let its words sink into your heart, particularly these words: “The time has come for those nations that rely on the force of nuclear armaments to respectfully heed the voices of peace-loving people, not least the atomic bomb survivors, to strive in good faith for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and to advance towards the complete abolishment of all such weapons.” To achieve this goal will require an active citizenry. Citizens of the nuclear weapons states, and particularly the United States, will have to lead their political leaders.

    In closing his speech, he prayed for the undisturbed repose of those who lost their lives in the atomic bombings and proclaimed Nagasaki’s commitment “to continue to strive for the establishment of lasting world peace.” In honoring Mayor Itoh’s life and commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, let us add our own commitment to this cause so critical to humanity’s future.

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