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  • Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter

    Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter

    For most Americans, nuclear weapons are a distant concern, and deciding what to do about them is a low priority. As a culture, we are relatively comfortable possessing nuclear weapons, believing that they are, on balance, a good security hedge in a dangerous world. We leave it to our leaders to determine what should be done with these weapons. But our leaders may be moving in exactly the wrong direction.

    Seymour Hersh reported in the April 17, 2006 New Yorker magazine that the US government is developing plans for the possible preemptive use of nuclear weapons against Iranian nuclear facilities. Although George Bush dismissed such reports as “wild speculation,” he did not deny them. The reports should awaken the American people to some relevant issues. First, our political and military leaders are considering the preemptive first-use of nuclear weapons, an act that would undoubtedly constitute aggressive war and a crime against humanity. Second, these leaders hold open the possibility of using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapons state, despite official pledges not to do so. Third, the decision about whether or not to use nuclear weapons preemptively rests in the hands of a single individual, the president.

    The framers of our Constitution could not have imagined the circumstances of the Nuclear Age, in which the possibility exists of one leader triggering a nuclear holocaust, yet they wisely stipulated that the consent of Congress, the political arm of the people, would be necessary to initiate any war.

    We need an open and vigorous discussion in every village, town and city about the anti-democratic and anti-Constitutional tendencies inherent in the presidential control of nuclear weapons. Without such discussion, we relegate the fate of the country and the world to the whims of a single individual.

    In addition, an equally fundamental question must be confronted – have nuclear weapons increased or decreased our security as a nation? In today’s world, nuclear weapons are a far more powerful tool in the hands of a weak actor than in the hands of a powerful state. Thus, Pakistan can deter India and China can deter the US and Russia. A powerful state, such as the US, has everything to lose and very little to gain from the possession of nuclear weapons. This concern isn’t being effectively addressed in the US.

    The more the US relies on nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that other countries will do so as well. The most reasonable course for the US to take is to provide leadership to bring the world back from the nuclear precipice by working to achieve global nuclear disarmament.

    An argument can be made that a small number of nuclear weapons are needed for deterrence until they are all eliminated. But any threat or use of nuclear weapons for purposes other than minimum deterrence will certainly encourage other states to seek their own nuclear arsenals, if only to prevent being bullied by nuclear weapons states. This is the position that North Korea and Iran find themselves in today.

    Current US nuclear policy favors allies, such as Israel and India, and threatens perceived enemies, such as Iran and North Korea. We are already engaged in an aggressive, illegal, protracted and costly war against Iraq, initiated on the false basis that it had a nuclear weapons program. Iran, because of its uranium enrichment, is currently within US gun sights.

    There is no conceivable US use of nuclear weapons, with their powerful and unpredictable consequences, that would not turn the US into a pariah state. The US engenders animosity by pushing beyond the limits imposed by minimum deterrence and failing to take seriously its disarmament obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also creates a climate in which other states may seek to develop nuclear arsenals and in which these weapons may end up in the hands of terrorists. This should be a major concern for all Americans because it could lead to US cities being the targets of nuclear weapons used by extremist groups.

    Polls show that Americans, like most other people in the world, favor nuclear disarmament. However, as a nation, we neither press for it nor question the nuclear policies of our government. But we refrain from such actions at our peril, for a bad decision involving nuclear weapons could destroy us. Inattention and apathy leave the weapons and the decision to use them beyond our reach.

    Thus, we continue with nuclear business as usual, drifting toward the catastrophic day when our policies will lead either to nuclear weapons again being used by us or, as likely, against us by extremist organizations that cannot be deterred by threat of retaliation. We are long past time to bring our nuclear policies back onto the public agenda and open them to thoughtful public discourse.

     

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Find out more at the Foundation’s website www.wagingpeace.org and its blog, www.wagingpeace.org/blog.

  • Remembering Camilla

    We first met you when you were ninety
    or thereabouts, slender, verging on frail.

    In your softness there was a core of firmness
    like a full wind within a sail.

    You chose to live in harmony with what you
    knew was true.

    We were enchanted by your sweetness,
    though you surely meant only to be you.

    You brought us the lesson of the hungry wolves
    that live within us like fighting brothers.

    We can choose to feed our avarice, or we can choose
    compassion to meet the needs of others.

    The seasons turn and life, with all its trials,
    moves on far too fast.

    The brightness of the flower, rich and vibrant now,
    all too soon is past.

    Too soon you slipped away from life,
    leaving us behind

    with memories of your gentle presence,
    warm and kind.

  • Bush’s Latest Nuclear Gambit

    In 2005, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, recognizing that the Bush administration’s favorite new nuclear weapon–the “Bunker Buster”–was on the road to defeat in Congress, told its leading antagonist, U.S. Representative David Hobson (R-Ohio): “You may win this year, but we’ll be back.”

    And, now, like malaria or perhaps merely a bad cold, they are.

    The Bush administration’s latest nuclear brainchild is the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). According to an April 6, 2006 article in the Los Angeles Times (Ralph Vartabedian, “U.S. Rolls Out Nuclear Plan”), the RRW, originally depicted as an item that would update existing nuclear weapons and ensure their reliability, “now includes the potential for new bomb designs. Weapons labs currently are engaged in design competition.”

    Moreover, as the Times story reported, the RRW was part of a much larger Bush administration plan, announced the previous day, “for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation’s system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War.” The plan called for a modern U.S. nuclear complex that would design a new nuclear bomb and have it ready within four years, as well as accelerate the production of plutonium “pits,” the triggers for the explosion of H-bombs.

    Although administration officials justify the RRW by claiming that it will guarantee the reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and reduce the need for nuclear testing, arms control and disarmament advocates are quite critical of these claims. Citing studies by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers, they argue that U.S. nuclear weapons will be reliable for decades longer than U.S. officials contend. Furthermore, according to Hoover Institution fellow Sidney Drell and former U.S. Ambassador James Goodby: “It takes an extraordinary flight of imagination to postulate a modern new arsenal composed of such untested designs that would be more reliable, safe and effective than the current U.S. arsenal based on more than 1,000 tests since 1945.” Thus, if new nuclear weapons were built, they would lead inevitably to the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing and, thereby, to the collapse of the moratorium on nuclear testing by the major nuclear powers and to the final destruction of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

    Most worrisome for nuclear critics, however, is the prospect that the administration will use the RRW program to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, remains convinced that the replacement process initiated by the RRW program could serve as a back door to such development. Peace Action, the nation’s largest peace and disarmament organization, maintains that “the weapons labs and the Department of Defense will be the ones to decide the real scope” of the RRW program.

    Even Representative Hobson, who seems to favor the RRW, appears worried that the administration has a dangerously expansive vision of it. “This is not an opportunity to run off and develop a whole bunch of new capabilities and new weapons,” he has declared. “This is a way to redo the weapons capability that we have and maybe make them more reliable.” Hobson added: “I don’t want any misunderstandings . . . and sometimes within the [Energy] department, people hear only what they want to hear. . . . We’re not going out and expanding a whole new world of nuclear weapons.”

    Certainly, some degree of skepticism about the scope of the program seems justified when one examines the Bush administration’s overall nuclear policy. Today, despite the U.S. government’s commitment, under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, to divest itself of nuclear weapons through negotiated nuclear disarmament, the U.S. nuclear stockpile stands at nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads, with more than half of them active or operational.

    Not only does the Bush administration steer clear of any negotiations that might entail U.S. nuclear disarmament, but it has pulled out of the ABM treaty and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (negotiated and signed by former President Bill Clinton). According to the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review Report of February 2006, “a robust nuclear deterrent . . . remains a keystone of U.S. national power.”

    Furthermore, there are clear signs that the Bush administration is shifting away from the traditional U.S. strategy of nuclear deterrence to a strategy of nuclear use. The nuclear Bunker Buster, for example, was not designed to deter aggression, but to destroy underground military targets. Moreover, in recent years, the U.S. Strategic Command has added new missions to its war plans, including the use of U.S. nuclear weapons for pre-emptive military action. Seymour Hersh’s much-cited article in the New Yorker on preparations for a U.S. military attack upon Iran indicates that there has already been substantial discussion of employing U.S. nuclear weapons in that capacity.

    This movement by the Bush administration toward a nuclear buildup and nuclear war highlights the double standard it uses in its growing confrontation with Iran, a country whose nuclear enrichment program is in accordance with its NPT commitments. Of course, Iran might use such nuclear enrichment to develop nuclear weapons–and that would be a violation of the NPT. But Bush administration policies already violate U.S. commitments under the treaty, and this fact appears of far less concern to Washington officialdom. Logic, however, does not seem to apply to this issue–unless, of course, it is the logic of world power

    Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).

  • America’s Blinders

    Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no longer trust Bush and his Administration, now that the evidence of deception has become overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always late, have begun to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many people were so easily fooled?

    The question is important because it might help us understand why Americans—members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen—rushed to declare their support as the President was sending troops halfway around the world to Iraq. A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the press is the way it reacted to Colin Powell’s presentation in February 2003 to the Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech which may have set a record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell confidently rattled off his “evidence”: satellite photographs, audio records, reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this and that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with admiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled “Irrefutable” and declared that after Powell’s talk “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”

    It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture, and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people. If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being deceived.

    One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.

    If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. I am not speaking of the history we learned in school, a history subservient to our political leaders, from the much-admired Founding Fathers to the Presidents of recent years. I mean a history which is honest about the past. If we don’t know that history, then any President can stand up to the battery of microphones, declare that we must go to war, and we will have no basis for challenging him. He will say that the nation is in danger, that democracy and liberty are at stake, and that we must therefore send ships and planes to destroy our new enemy, and we will have no reason to disbelieve him.

    But if we know some history, if we know how many times Presidents have made similar declarations to the country, and how they turned out to be lies, we will not be fooled. Although some of us may pride ourselves that we were never fooled, we still might accept as our civic duty the responsibility to buttress our fellow citizens against the mendacity of our high officials.

    We would remind whoever we can that President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn’t that Mexico “shed American blood upon the American soil,” but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.

    We would point out that President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that we really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to “civilize” the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.

    President Woodrow Wilson—so often characterized in our history books as an “idealist”—lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to “make the world safe for democracy,” when it was really a war to make the world safe for the Western imperial powers.

    Harry Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was “a military target.”

    Everyone lied about Vietnam—Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin, Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia, all of them claiming it was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanting to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.

    Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States.

    The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country.

    And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991—hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait (can one imagine Bush heartstricken over Iraq’s taking of Kuwait?), rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.

    Given the overwhelming record of lies told to justify wars, how could anyone listening to the younger Bush believe him as he laid out the reasons for invading Iraq? Would we not instinctively rebel against the sacrifice of lives for oil?

    A careful reading of history might give us another safeguard against being deceived. It would make clear that there has always been, and is today, a profound conflict of interest between the government and the people of the United States. This thought startles most people, because it goes against everything we have been taught.

    We have been led to believe that, from the beginning, as our Founding Fathers put it in the Preamble to the Constitution, it was “we the people” who established the new government after the Revolution. When the eminent historian Charles Beard suggested, a hundred years ago, that the Constitution represented not the working people, not the slaves, but the slaveholders, the merchants, the bondholders, he became the object of an indignant editorial in The New York Times.

    Our culture demands, in its very language, that we accept a commonality of interest binding all of us to one another. We mustn’t talk about classes. Only Marxists do that, although James Madison, “Father of the Constitution,” said, thirty years before Marx was born that there was an inevitable conflict in society between those who had property and those who did not.

    Our present leaders are not so candid. They bombard us with phrases like “national interest,” “national security,” and “national defense” as if all of these concepts applied equally to all of us, colored or white, rich or poor, as if General Motors and Halliburton have the same interests as the rest of us, as if George Bush has the same interest as the young man or woman he sends to war.

    Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people, this is the biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in this country. To ignore that—not to know that the history of our country is a history of slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against poor—is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to us by people in power.

    If we as citizens start out with an understanding that these people up there—the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all those institutions pretending to be “checks and balances”—do not have our interests at heart, we are on a course towards the truth. Not to know that is to make us helpless before determined liars.

    The deeply ingrained belief—no, not from birth but from the educational system and from our culture in general—that the United States is an especially virtuous nation makes us especially vulnerable to government deception. It starts early, in the first grade, when we are compelled to “pledge allegiance” (before we even know what that means), forced to proclaim that we are a nation with “liberty and justice for all.”

    And then come the countless ceremonies, whether at the ballpark or elsewhere, where we are expected to stand and bow our heads during the singing of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” announcing that we are “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” There is also the unofficial national anthem “God Bless America,” and you are looked on with suspicion if you ask why we would expect God to single out this one nation—just 5 percent of the world’s population—for his or her blessing. If your starting point for evaluating the world around you is the firm belief that this nation is somehow endowed by Providence with unique qualities that make it morally superior to every other nation on Earth, then you are not likely to question the President when he says we are sending our troops here or there, or bombing this or that, in order to spread our values—democracy, liberty, and let’s not forget free enterprise—to some God-forsaken (literally) place in the world. It becomes necessary then, if we are going to protect ourselves and our fellow citizens against policies that will be disastrous not only for other people but for Americans too, that we face some facts that disturb the idea of a uniquely virtuous nation.

    These facts are embarrassing, but must be faced if we are to be honest. We must face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Indians were driven off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations. And our long history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation, and racism. We must face our record of imperial conquest, in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, our shameful wars against small countries a tenth our size: Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq. And the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not a history of which we can be proud.

    Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted that belief in the minds of many people, that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate the world. At the end of World War II, Henry Luce, with an arrogance appropriate to the owner of Time, Life, and Fortune, pronounced this “the American century,” saying that victory in the war gave the United States the right “to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.”

    Both the Republican and Democratic parties have embraced this notion. George Bush, in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 2005, said that spreading liberty around the world was “the calling of our time.” Years before that, in 1993, President Bill Clinton, speaking at a West Point commencement, declared: “The values you learned here . . . will be able to spread throughout this country and throughout the world and give other people the opportunity to live as you have lived, to fulfill your God-given capacities.”

    What is the idea of our moral superiority based on? Surely not on our behavior toward people in other parts of the world. Is it based on how well people in the United States live? The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked countries in terms of overall health performance, and the United States was thirty-seventh on the list, though it spends more per capita for health care than any other nation. One of five children in this, the richest country in the world, is born in poverty. There are more than forty countries that have better records on infant mortality. Cuba does better. And there is a sure sign of sickness in society when we lead the world in the number of people in prison—more than two million.

    A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power on some other part of the world. It might also inspire us to create a different history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars and killers who govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join the rest of the human race in the common cause of peace and justice.

    Howard Zinn is the co-author, with Anthony Arnove, of “Voices of a People’s History of the United States.”

  • On Seeing Chick Streetman’s Play: Touch the Names

    I didn’t think that I would cry, or even That I could, but the words of mothers,

    Fathers, friends and lovers penetrated deep.

    Each name on that polished black granite Wall Is still connected to our lives.

    The saddest messages of all were those From the children that the dead men

    Never knew.

    I sat there thinking about those who lied To send these young men off to face their deaths.

    I thought about the politicians who are doing It again, as though they’d learned nothing,

    Less than nothing, from the Wall.

    Different places, Vietnam and now Iraq, But the outcomes are the same.

    Some died in jungles, some in arid deserts, Some from roadside bombs.

    In the end, what’s left are memories and names, And some slim hope we shall not fail

    Our children yet again.

  • Your Role in Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    Your Role in Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    Future historians, looking back at our time, may be perplexed at humanity’s tepid collective response to nuclear weapons. Of course, if there are future historians, it will be a positive sign, for it will mean that humanity has survived the nuclear threat that has confronted the world since the onset of the Nuclear Age in the mid-twentieth century.

    Nuclear weapons, a human invention, make possible the end of civilization and the human species, along with most other life on the planet. In light of this threat, humanity has done very little to safeguard its future. Why, future historians may ask, has humankind been so slow and ineffective in its response to a threat of this magnitude? By examining this question now, we may encourage greater awareness of the threat and creative initiatives for overcoming the most serious dangers of the Nuclear Age.

    While nuclear weapons were created secretly in the US nuclear weapons program, the Manhattan Project, since then the threat has not been hidden, but rather quite open. In his first speech to the public after the use of the atomic bomb to destroy Hiroshima, US president Harry Truman thanked God that the bomb had come to America rather than to its enemies and prayed for divine guidance in its use. Since the use of the bomb and the ending of the Second World War appeared to have a causal relationship, many celebrated the advent and use of nuclear weapons.

    Others, grasping the destructive power and potential of nuclear weapons, after hearing of Hiroshima, immediately warned humanity of the peril it now faced. Albert Camus, the great French writer and existentialist, wrote in Resistance: “Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”

    Within four years of the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States, the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons. In less than a decade from the destruction of Hiroshima, both the US and USSR went from fission bombs to fusion bombs, increasing the power of nuclear weapons a thousand-fold. Many scientists warned against the leap to thermonuclear weapons, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific leader of the Manhattan Project, but their warnings went unheeded.

    A seminal warning of scientists, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, was issued in 1955. It concluded: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    More than 50 years later, we live in a world of nuclear double standards, with one set of rules for the nuclear weapons states and another set of rules for the rest of the world. With the Bush doctrine of preventive war demonstrated against Iraq, it is little wonder that other countries named by him as part of the “Axis of Evil,” North Korea and Iran, would be interested in acquiring nuclear arms. In the case of these countries, the likelihood is that they seek nuclear weapons to deter a pre-emptive US attack against them, and would themselves be deterred from using their weapons by threat of retaliation.

    The longer states cling to nuclear deterrence for their security and the more states that acquire nuclear weapons, though, the more likely it is that nuclear weapons or the materials to make them will end up in the hands of terrorist organizations. Such organizations will not be subject to deterrence because they will not be locatable to retaliate against. This means that nuclear weapons will have more value and will be more likely to be used in the hands of terrorists than in the hands of states. This is the paradox of nuclear weapons: In addition to being immoral and illegal, they are more likely to undermine than enhance the security of powerful states.

    Most people, including the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, do not appear to understand this, and thus they cling tenaciously to these weapons that may prove to be the source of their own destruction. National leaders of the nuclear weapons states justify these weapons in terms of deterrence, but without being able to articulate who it is that they are deterring. In the end, they rationalize the weapons as necessary in the event that conditions were to change in the future. They fail to grasp that the only safe number of nuclear weapons in the world is zero. And they seem to believe that these weapons enhance their prestige in the world, because they are weapons possessed by powerful and once-powerful nations, including all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

    The only way in which this situation may change is by education and advocacy within the nuclear weapons states. The United States, as the strongest nuclear power and as the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, has a special responsibility to lead the way toward a world free of nuclear weapons, but its leadership shows little inclination to do so. The Bush administration has shown contempt for international treaties to control and reduce nuclear arms and to prevent their proliferation. Among these treaties are the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which it has abrogated; the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which it refuses to submit to the Senate for ratification; and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament and is at the heart of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

    The US is following a breathtakingly hypocritical path with regard to nuclear weapons. It tells other nations not to develop these weapons, but seeks new designs for its own nuclear arsenal to make its weapons more reliable and serve specific functions, such as “bunker-busting.” It threatens sanctions against Iran for its uranium enrichment program, while promoting a nuclear deal with India, a known nuclear proliferator, which would provide India with US nuclear technology and allow India to have international safeguards on only some of its nuclear reactors and thereby increase the size of its nuclear arsenal even more rapidly than it is already doing. It threatens North Korea for developing nuclear weapons, but turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

    Our dilemma today is that there appears to be no way for the vast majority of humanity, which favor a world free of nuclear weapons, to bring pressure to bear on the leadership of the US and other nuclear weapons states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. Nuclear weapons are cowardly because they kill indiscriminately and from a vast distance, but it is equally true that a significant percentage of humanity lacks the will and courage to confront the leaders of the nuclear weapons states about abolition of these weapons.

    The words “nuclear weapons” are flat and dull, and do not convey the horror that is the weapons themselves. People may not act unless they can empathize with the victims and potential victims of these weapons. Perhaps we have become flat and dull people, living only within the bubble of nationalism and losing touch with our humanity. To achieve change, more and more people are going to have to wake up to the great threats of the Nuclear Age and make the abolition of nuclear weapons a high priority in their lives.

    Once individuals do wake up, there is much they can do to educate themselves about nuclear weapons issues. A starting point is the website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, www.wagingpeace.org. At that website, one can find extensive background information on nuclear weapons issues; sign up for a free monthly e-newsletter, The Sunflower, which provides regular updates on key nuclear issues; and join the Turn the Tide Campaign to receive regular action alerts to change US nuclear policy. To become involved internationally, visit the website of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (www.abolition2000.org) and the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Eliminate Nuclear weapons by the year 2020 (www.mayorsforpeace.org).

    Once you become educated on these issues, you can start spreading the word, changing from a passive member of a polity to an active force for peace. To abolish nuclear weapons, so essential for our common future, will require more from all of us and far less tolerance of political leaders who think that “business as usual” will get us through the Nuclear Age unscathed. A commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons is a commitment to all life, including a future not yet born. It is nothing less than a solemn responsibility that all living humans share to pass the world on intact to future generations. We must not shirk that responsibility.

     

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

  • India, Iran, and US Nuclear Hypocrisy

    India, Iran, and US Nuclear Hypocrisy

    The Bush administration has approached nuclear non-proliferation with Iran and India by two very different measures. Iran, a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has been threatened with sanctions, if not actual violence, for its pursuit of uranium enrichment, although there is no clear evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. India, on the other hand, has now been offered US nuclear technology, although India is not a party to the NPT, is known to have tested nuclear weapons and is thought to possess a nuclear weapons arsenal of 60 to 100 weapons.

     

    The Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entered into force in 1970, is at the heart of worldwide nuclear non-proliferation efforts. The US was one of the original signers of the treaty, and was one of the major supporters of its indefinite extension in 1995. The principal goal of the treaty is to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation by assuring that nuclear weapons and the materials and technology to make them are not transferred by the nuclear weapons states to other states.

     

    The five nuclear weapons states parties to the treaty (US, Russia, UK, France and China) all made this pledge. They also pledged “good faith” negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. The 183 non-nuclear weapons states that are parties to the treaty pledged not to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons and the materials and technology to make them.

     

    A problem arises with the treaty because it also promotes peaceful nuclear technology – which is inherently dual-purpose, capable of being used for peaceful or warlike purposes – as an “inalienable right” for all nations. Iran claims to be exercising this right, arguing that it is pursuing uranium enrichment for nuclear power generation and not for weapons purposes. The Bush administration disputes this claim, and insists Iran must stop enriching uranium altogether, a policy inconsistent with its proposed deal with India, a country that has already developed nuclear weapons.

     

    India never became a party to the NPT, and conducted its first nuclear test in 1974, which it claimed was for peaceful purposes. India did not test again until 1998, when it conducted a series of nuclear tests and announced to the world that it had become a nuclear weapons state. Pakistan followed India with nuclear tests of its own. While India and Pakistan were not restricted by the NPT because they had never joined the treaty, they were initially sanctioned by the US and other states for going nuclear. But now this has changed. Mr. Bush wants to provide nuclear technology to India in exchange for India allowing international safeguards at 14 of its 22 existing nuclear power reactors by the year 2014. This makes little sense, as it would leave eight of India’s reactors without safeguards, including those in its fast breeder program, which would generate nuclear materials that could be used in weapons programs.

     

    The Bush administration seeks to reward India for non-cooperation with the treaty and for developing a nuclear weapons arsenal, while Iran is threatened with punishment for being part of the treaty and seeking to exercise its rights under the treaty. The implications of the hypocritical US approach to proliferation are to leave countries questioning whether their participation in the NPT is worthwhile. This approach is likely to lead to a major breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the international regime that supports it.

     

    To prevent such a breakdown, a number of important steps should be taken, which will require US leadership. First, there should be a worldwide moratorium on uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, subject to international inspections and verification. This means a moratorium by all countries, including the US and other nuclear weapons states.

     

    Second, all current stocks of weapons-usable uranium and plutonium in all countries should be placed under strict international controls.

     

    Third, there should be no “nuclear deal” with India until it agrees to give up its nuclear weapons program and dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Congress should turn Bush down flat on this poorly conceived and opportunistic deal.

     

    Fourth, the US should give up its plans to develop new nuclear weapons such as the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which signal to the rest of the world that the US intends to keep its nuclear arsenal indefinitely.

     

    Fifth, the Non-Proliferation Treaty should be replaced by two new treaties: a Treaty to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, which sets forth a workable plan for the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons under strict international controls; and an International Sustainable Energy Agency that develops and promotes sustainable energy sources (such as solar, wind, tidal and geothermal) that can replace both fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

    The alternative to this ambitious agenda, or one similar to it, is a world in nuclear chaos, in which extremist terrorist organizations may be the greatest beneficiaries. This is the direction in which current US nuclear policy, with its flagrant disregard for international law, is leading us. The double standards in US dealings with Iran and India are the latest evidence of this misguided policy.

     

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

  • Turning Away from the Nuclear Abyss

    Turning Away from the Nuclear Abyss

    “Is elimination of nuclear weapons, so naïve, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not.”

    • Robert S. McNamara, former US Secretary of Defense

    “I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

    ”If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.”

    • Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Lecture

    The world is following a sure and steady path toward the nuclear abyss. It is being led in this direction not so much by small rogue states as by the most powerful of all states, the United States of America. US nuclear policies are placing the world on a collision course with disaster. The US seeks to deter and inhibit states deemed to be unfriendly to US interests from developing nuclear arsenals, while at the same time turning a blind eye to the nuclear programs of states deemed to be friendly to US interests. Moreover, US policies assume an unquestioned right for the US and other established nuclear weapons states to maintain this status. Such continued and blatant double standards cannot hold.

    The US initiated a war against Iraq on the false premise that it had programs to create nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Further, the US has developed contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya.(1) At the same time the US protects Israel’s nuclear program from international censure, and seeks to change US non-proliferation laws in order to provide nuclear materials and technology to India and Pakistan, two countries that developed nuclear weapons outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

    The only real hope to avoid lurching into the nuclear abyss is that people throughout the world, and particularly those in the US, will demand that these weapons be abolished before they abolish us. It is a daunting task, but one that is necessary if we are to save civilization and life on earth. In light of the modest gains that have been achieved to date in relation to the enormity of the challenge presented by nuclear weapons, the task is all the more essential.

    Deterrence Is a Failed Strategy

    For most of the Nuclear Age, the security of powerful nations has rested upon a theoretical construct known as deterrence. Deterrence theory posits that nuclear attacks can be prevented by the threat of nuclear retaliation. For the most powerful nations, the theory has spawned threats of massive nuclear retaliation, sufficient to destroy not only the attacking nation, but likely civilization and much if not all life on Earth.

    One of the great fallacies of strategic thinking in the Nuclear Age is that deterrence theory is based upon rationality. The theory holds that a rational actor will not attack an enemy that could massively retaliate against one’s own country. But what would happen if there were irrational actors in the system? What would happen, for example, if the leader of a small nation in possession of nuclear weapons believed irrationally that he could attack a more powerful country with impunity? What would happen if a leader was suicidal and didn’t care about the prospects of retaliation? In such cases, deterrence would fail and the nuclear threshold would again be crossed with devastating consequences that cannot be fully foreseeable.

    In addition to being a theory based upon only rational actors, deterrence theory requires that it must be physically possible to retaliate against an attacker and that a potential attacker must understand this. Thus, deterrence theory has no validity against a non-state terrorist organization such as al Qaeda. Should such an organization obtain nuclear weapons, deterrence would be of no avail. The only security against a terrorist nuclear attack is prevention – preventing nuclear weapons or the materials to make them from falling into the hands of terrorists. There is no tolerance for error.

    In the case of non-state extremism, security cannot rest upon deterrence. This means that a powerful country does not increase its security by adding to the quality or quantity of its nuclear arsenal. Rather, the opposite is the case. The fewer nuclear weapons there are in the world, the less possibility there would be for one or more of these weapons to fall into the hands of an extremist organization. The same is true of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

    Nuclear Weapons and Power

    The advent of nuclear weapons represented a enormous leap in the power of weaponry. The development of these weapons by elite scientists during World War II successfully tapped the potentially vast power inherent in Einstein’s theory, E = mc2, for destructive purposes. While humans have always devised destructive weapons, nuclear weapons moved the bar of destructiveness to new heights. With nuclear weapons, a single weapon could destroy a city, as demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who created or obtained these weapons seemed to possess a unique and special power of death over life. In the aftermath of World War II, this power was possessed at first only by the United States, but over the next decades other countries would join the nuclear club: the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and, most recently, North Korea.

    But the power conferred by nuclear weapons is ghostly and illusory, for it cannot be used without causing death and destruction on such a massive scale that the attacker would be branded by all the world as cowardly and inhuman. In the case of the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US justified its attacks both to its own people and to the world as necessary to end a long and brutal war in which it had been the victim of an unprovoked attack. Since then, nuclear weapons have dramatically increased in power, but the ability to use the weapons has been curtailed by psychological constraints against such massive killing. This has been true even when a nuclear-armed country is losing a war, as was the case with the US in Vietnam or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

    Nuclear weapons are more useful to relatively weak actors than to those who are already powerful in other ways. For example, they may give North Korea the ability to deter the United States, and Pakistan the ability to deter India. Beyond the possibility of deterrence, nuclear weapons in the hands of an extremist organization would provide the potential to bring even the most powerful countries to their knees by destroying their cities.

    The Logic of Self-Interest

    A further negative consequence of reliance upon nuclear weapons is that a nuclear weapons state must not only be concerned with safeguarding its own nuclear arsenal and weapons grade nuclear materials, but must also be concerned with the capacity of all other nuclear weapons states to protect their arsenals and nuclear materials. It must be assumed that extremist groups would seek to prey upon the weakest links among the states in possession of nuclear weapons.

    It is in the self-interest of the most powerful states to lead the way to nuclear disarmament. The logic for this position can be set forth as follows:

    1. Large nuclear arsenals are like dinosaurs in having little adaptability to changing strategic circumstances.
    2. The more powerful the nation in conventional terms, the less utility for security is provided by a nuclear arsenal.
    3. Weaker countries, particularly those threatened by more powerful adversaries, have the greatest incentive to develop nuclear arsenals for purposes of deterring a nuclear armed adversary.
    4. The more states that develop nuclear arsenals, the greater the danger will be that these weapons or the materials to make them will fall into the hands of non-state extremists.
    5. Non-state extremists will not hesitate to use these weapons against far more powerful states without fear of retaliation.
    6. It is strongly in the security interests of powerful states to minimize the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremist groups.
    7. The nuclear policies of the most powerful nuclear weapons states must have zero tolerance for nuclear weapons or materials from any state falling into the hands of extremist groups.
    8. Preventing extremist groups from obtaining nuclear weapons can only be achieved by dramatically reducing the number of nuclear warheads in the world and bringing the remaining weapons and materials to make them under effective international control.
    9. To achieve this will require a high degree of international cooperation with leadership from the principal nuclear weapons states.
    10. Only the United States, as the world’s most militarily powerful state, can effectively initiate such cooperative action, and it is strongly in US security interests to do so.

    A Failure to Heed Warnings

    From the very beginning of the Nuclear Age, prophets have warned of the dangers to humanity. The warnings have been passionate and numerous. They have come from individuals in all walks of life – scientists, physicians, literary figures, philosophers and generals. Albert Einstein warned, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    But such warnings seem to have fallen on deaf ears among our political leaders. Despite the end of the Cold War, reliance on nuclear weapons for the security of powerful nations has not diminished. The United States appears intent upon developing a Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), a move that will ensure not only the reliability but the continuation of the US nuclear arsenal for many decades into the future. In doing so, we are sending a message to other nuclear and potential nuclear weapons states that these weapons are useful. With the US abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), Russia has improved the capabilities of its missile delivery system to assure that its nuclear-armed missiles would not be intercepted by the US missile defense system. China has responded by modernizing and expanding its nuclear arsenal.

    In the sixty years of the Nuclear Age, there has been no fundamental shift in thinking among those in possession of nuclear weapons. The weapons are deemed necessary to prevent others from initiating a nuclear attack, even in post-Cold War circumstances in which nuclear weapons states do not view each other as enemies, with the exception of India and Pakistan. Rather than seize the opportunity to dramatically reduce and dismantle their nuclear arsenals, the principal nuclear weapons states seek to assure the reliability of the weapons and their delivery systems. In doing so, they fail to close the door on nuclear proliferation to other states and extremist organizations. They leave open the possibility of future nuclear attacks.

    A Unique Responsibility

    On the fifth anniversary of the United Nations Millennium Summit, Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, issued a report, “In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all.” In this report, the Secretary-General stated, “…the unique status of nuclear-weapon States also entails a unique responsibility, and they must do more, including but not limited to further reductions in their arsenals of non-strategic nuclear weapons and pursuing arms control agreements that entail not just dismantlement but irreversibility. They should also reaffirm their commitment to negative security assurances. Swift negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty is essential. The moratorium on nuclear test explosions must also be upheld until we can achieve the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.”(2) The Secretary-General urged the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to endorse these measures at the 2005 NPT Review Conference, but unfortunately the nuclear weapons states, led by the United States, exercised their power in such a way as to assure that the Review Conference ended without agreement and in failure.

    The “unique responsibility” of the nuclear weapons states falls to them both because of their power and because of their obligations. The Non-Proliferation Treaty itself lays out the basic responsibility of the nuclear weapons states: “…to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament….”(3) Following the entry into force of the NPT in 1970, the US and USSR continued to improve their nuclear arsenals for the next three decades. But at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, they agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament, including an “unequivocal undertaking…to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….”(4) This promise, like others made over the years, proved to be little more than words, as the US worked against progress on nuclear disarmament in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament and at the 2005 NPT Review Conference.

    The ICJ Opinion

    In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The Court found that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.”(5) The Court went on to indicate its inability to determine the law in the particular instance when the survival of a state was at stake. It found that “in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”(6) It is important to note that the Court was not saying that under such circumstances the threat or use would be lawful, but only that it could not make that determination.

    The Court then took the unusual step of going further than asked and unanimously concluding, “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.”(7) The Court left no doubt that the nuclear disarmament commitment set forth in Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was a legal commitment binding upon the nuclear weapons states.

    Barriers along the Path

    There have been legal and moral barriers, as well as those of practicality and security, along the twisted path leading to the nuclear abyss. But despite promises, obligations and apocalyptic warnings, the nuclear weapons states continue to move surely and steadily down this deadly path. Legal, moral and practical barriers have not been sufficient to move the leaders of nuclear weapons states to step away from this path. It is perhaps worth contemplating what might lead to a change in direction.

    Changing Direction

    Determining what needs to be done is not the difficult part of the task. Many important proposals have been put forward for changing directions and moving away from the nuclear abyss. One example of these was the seven-step proposal by Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the 2005 Nobel Peace Laureate. He called for the international community to take the following seven steps:

    1. A five-year hold on additional facilities for uranium enrichment and plutonium separation;
    2. Speeding up existing efforts to modify the research reactors worldwide operating with highly enriched uranium and converting them to use low-enriched uranium, not suitable for making bombs.
    3. Raising the bar for inspection standards to verify compliance with Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations.
    4. Calling upon the UN Security Council to act swiftly and decisively in the case of any country withdrawing from the NPT.
    5. Urging states to pursue and prosecute any illicit trading in nuclear material and technology.
    6. Calling upon the five nuclear weapon states that are parties to the NPT to accelerate implementation of their “unequivocal commitment” to nuclear disarmament.
    7. Acknowledging the volatility of longstanding tensions that give rise to proliferation, in regions such as the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, and take action to resolve existing security problems and, where needed, provide security assurances.(8)

    ElBaradei emphasized that all steps required a concession from someone, and that none would work in isolation. As ElBaradei stresses, concessions must come from all, including the nuclear weapons states, which must change their policies. At present, the nuclear weapons states seek to prevent proliferation, but are failing to fulfill their disarmament obligations. They seem content to live indefinitely in a world of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” This is a short-sighted perspective, one that is not sustainable. Until this is recognized by the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, there is not much hope to achieve a balanced approach to preventing nuclear proliferation and achieving nuclear disarmament.

    The Need for Leadership

    If the world is going to move in a new direction, away from the nuclear abyss, certain qualities of leadership will be needed. These include:

    Imagination: the ability to imagine the consequences of remaining on the path we are on.

    Respect for human dignity: the recognition that nuclear weapons and human dignity are incompatible.

    Vision: the ability to see another way forward, a world in which security can be obtained without reliance on nuclear weapons.

    Courage: the willingness to challenge the business-as-usual ingrained attitudes of the defense establishment and its so-called security experts.

    One notable leader of a nuclear weapons state, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to office with these qualities and proposed in the mid-1980s that nuclear weapons be abolished by the year 2000. Unfortunately, he was not in a position to act alone, but needed the support of the United States. He came close to achieving this when he met with US President Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavic Summit in 1986. The two leaders talked seriously about eliminating all nuclear weapons, but their agreement faltered on the issue of missile defenses, which Reagan was committed to implementing and Gorbachev feared.

    We cannot count on another political leader to emerge with these qualities. Rather than waiting for such a leader to come along and save humanity, ordinary people must become leaders and create the necessary political will that leaders of nuclear weapons states will have no choice but to act nobly and in the interests of all humanity. Awakening the people of the world to accept this responsibility is the work of civil society organizations committed to these issues. It is certainly the greatest challenge of our time.

    1. Excerpts from the Nuclear Posture Review, submitted to the Congress on 31 December 2001, can be found at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm.
    2. In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all, Report of the Secretary-General, United Nations General Assembly, A/59/2005, 21 March 2005, p. 28.
    3. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, entered into force March 5, 1970.
    4. Final Document Issued by 2000 NPT Review Conference, 20 May 2000. Federation of American Scientists website: http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/npt/docs/finaldoc.htm.
    5. Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, United Nations General Assembly, A/51/218, 15 October 1996, p. 36.
    6. Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, United Nations General Assembly, A/51/218, 15 October 1996, p. 37.
    7. Ibid.
    8. ElBaradei, Mohamed. “Seven Steps to Raise World Security,” Financial Times, 2 February 2005.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of many studies of peace in the Nuclear Age, and a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Personal Responsibility and Nuclear Weapons

    One thing we humans often do, according to psychologists, is scapegoat others for our problems. It makes us feel better and above all takes away from any responsibility for our own actions. We tend to think that nuclear weapons have nothing to do with us. That is the business of politicians, scientists, etc. Others who are part of the chain of violence sometimes say, “I was only following orders.” Many people follow orders and keep their jobs, and progress up their career ladder. Yet, taking personal responsibility (as well as having rights) is so important if we are to really change things in our world today.

    Another way of not taking responsibility is to refuse to apply critical thinking and analysis to our actions, and to follow the way it’s always been done. I am been inspired by the writings of Thomas Merton, and particularly when he talks about the need to have a clear conscience, and to follow that conscience in doing what is right.

    We all have a responsibility to follow our conscience and do what is right, but particularly those who make weapons such as nuclear weapons, which, if used, would cause the death of millions of people.

    We live in an age of advanced technology and much of what has been produced by scientists has improved many of our lives (though tragically not the lives of millions in the developing world). What would we do without email and so much more, but on the other hand, we could have done well without weapons of mass destructions.

    In many prestigious American universities and others around the world, scientists have designed and continue to design advanced killing machines. These scientists must take responsibility for their actions and stop their misguided rationalization of the killing of human beings.

    I am reminded of the words of Galileo: “If only I had resisted, if only the natural scientists had been able to evolve something like the Hippocratic Oath of doctors, the vow to devote their knowledge wholly to the benefit of mankind! As things now stand, the best one can hope for is a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for anything. I surrendered my knowledge to those in power, to use, or not to use, or to misuse just as suited their purposes.”

    They will of course argue they need nuclear weapons to protect the world. However, the world has changed. The main conflicts now are not between states, but intra-state. The violent conflicts we see, as in Northern Ireland, are ethnic/political or failed states. These problems cannot be solved by dropping nuclear weapons on them. Nor will threatening to use nuclear weapons on other countries help dialogue, negotiations and trading, all of which are necessary in our inter-dependent, inter-connected world. Nuclear weapons are big money for governments, arms manufacturers and distributors. They rob the poor of their right to justice and equality. We all want security, but I believe the best form of security for us all is to make friends with our enemies. We all have a responsibility to do this, people to people, government to government, and solving problems through nonviolent conflict resolution.

    I once met Fr. George Zabelka, the chaplain who blessed the crew which flew the Enola Gay plane. This was the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He applauded the crew upon their return on a job well done. Years later, after visiting Japan, he was horrified to meet with people who had survived the bombings, but carried the scars of radiation and pain for the rest of their lives. George Zabelka dedicated his life to campaigning for abolishment of nuclear weapons. He went around the world saying he was sorry for his part in this horrific act of desolation and desecration of the Japanese people by the US Administration.

    We can and must all speak out against nuclear weapons. It will not be easy. Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear weapons whistleblower, is still held in Israel after 20 years. He told the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons program. He tried to warn us against the dangers of nuclear weapons. We salute him for his courage and his sacrifice to humanity, and we look forward to the day he will be released from Israel and we can personally thank him.

    In the meantime, let us take up the challenge Mordechai places upon us all. Let us take personal responsibility not to be part of the chain of violence of nuclear weapons by supporting the nuclear policies of the American, or any government, and instead dedicating our lives to being part of the work of celebrating and enhancing life for all our brothers and sisters wherever we live in this little planet, of which we are planetary citizens.

    Mairead Corrigan Maguire received the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize and the 1991 Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. She recently participated in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2006 International Law Symposium, “At the Nuclear Precipice: Nuclear Weapons and the Abandonment of International Law.”

  • Gandhi, Bush, and the Bomb

    On February 24, at a press briefing, White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley announced that, when U.S. President George W. Bush travels to India, he will lay a wreath in honor of Mohandas Gandhi.

    For those familiar with the cynical gestures of government officials, it might come as no surprise that an American President would attempt to derive whatever public relations benefits he can by linking himself to one of the most revered figures in Indian and world history.

    But the level of hypocrisy is heightened when one recalls that Bush is currently one of the world’s leading warmakers and that Gandhi was one of the world’s leading advocates of nonviolence. Furthermore, the American President’s major purpose for traveling to India is to clinch a deal that will provide that nation with additional nuclear technology, thus enabling it to accelerate its development of nuclear weapons.

    Gandhi, it should be noted, was not only a keen supporter of substituting nonviolent resistance for war, but a sharp critic of the Bomb. In 1946, he remarked: “I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women, and children as the most diabolical use of science.” When he first learned of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Gandhi recalled, he said to himself: “Unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide.” In 1947, Gandhi argued that “he who invented the atom bomb has committed the gravest sin in the world of science,” concluding once more: “The only weapon that can save the world is non-violence.” The Bomb, he said, “will not be destroyed by counter-bombs.” Indeed, “hatred can be overcome only by love.”

    That is certainly an interesting backdrop against which to place President Bush’s plan to provide India with nuclear technology. India is one of only four countries that have refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—a treaty endorsed by 188 nations. Thumbing its nose at the world, India has conducted nuclear tests and has developed what experts believe to be 50 to 100 nuclear weapons. Under the terms of the NPT, the export of nuclear technology is banned to nations that don’t accept international inspections of their nuclear programs. In addition, U.S. law prohibits the transfer of nuclear technology to a country that rejects full international safeguards. U.S. law also bans such technology transfer to a non-NPT country that has conducted nuclear test explosions.

    Thus, if the President were to give any weight to Gandhi’s ideas, international treaty obligations, or U.S. law, he would not be working to provide India with the same nuclear-capable technology that he so vigorously condemns in Iran—a country, by the way, that has signed the NPT, has undergone inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and has not conducted any nuclear weapons tests.

    There are other reasons to oppose this deal, as well. Although India’s relations with Pakistan are relatively stable at the moment, they might well be very adversely affected by any perception that the Indian government was racing ahead with a buildup of its nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, Pakistan might demand the same nuclear assistance as India. Indeed, if India can simply ignore the NPT and, then, receive nuclear technology from the United States, why should other countries observe its provisions? The Iranians, certainly, will make this point.

    At home, the Bush administration’s double standard has not gone unnoticed. In Congress, Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Fred Upton (R-MI) have introduced a bipartisan resolution—H.Con.Res. 318–expressing strong concern about the proposed U.S.-India nuclear deal. Although this resolution affirms humanitarian and scientific support for India, it contends that full civil nuclear cooperation between the two nations poses serious dangers. For example, it points to the possibility that the supply of nuclear fuel to India could free up India’s existing fissile material production, thereby enabling it to be used to expand India’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The resolution also opposes transfer of nuclear technology to any country that is not a party to the NPT and has not accepted full safeguards.

    Whatever happens to this resolution, if the Bush administration were to implement its nuclear agreement with the Indian government, it would have to convince Congress to amend U.S. law. And arms control and disarmament groups are determined to prevent that from happening.

    Thus, the Bush administration might genuflect to Gandhi in its efforts to arrange a nuclear pact with India, but it is going to have to convince a lot of very skeptical observers before it implements this agreement.

    Dr. Wittner, a Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Associate, is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).

    Originally published by the History News Network.