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  • June: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    June: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    June 1, 2006 – Hans Blix, the Chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s WMD Commission, which included 13 other prominent global experts such as former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and Dr. Alexei Arbatov, a member of the Soviet delegation to the START I Treaty negotiations and a long-time Russian parliamentarian, released its final report titled, “Weapons of Terror:  Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Arms.”  Its 231 pages presented sixty concrete proposals to the world’s nation-states to rein in destabilizing spending on WMD, stop the proliferation of these weapons, and create a future climate for continued reductions and the eventual elimination of these threats to global peace.  Blix’s concluding remarks stated that, “It seems to me that not only successes in the vital work to prevent proliferation and terrorism, but also progress in the additional areas could transform the current gloom into hope.  Bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into force would significantly impede the development of new nuclear weapons.  The weapons that exist today are bad enough.  Negotiating a global treaty to stop the production of fissile material for weapons would close the tap for new such material and help hinder possible arms races notably in Asia.  In both these areas, the U.S. has the decisive leverage.  If it takes the lead, the world is likely to follow.  If it does not take the lead, there could be more nuclear tests and new nuclear arms races.”  Comments:  Twelve years later, Blix’s prediction proved to be very accurate.  Despite some limited efforts by the Bush Administration and even more push and rhetoric by President Barack Obama, the CTBT and a worldwide fissile materials ban never became U.S. priorities and today under the Trump Administration and a neo-con dominated Republican Congress, the “current gloom” is not only back but grower darker every day.  However, a growing global public consensus on reducing and eliminating WMDs may yet prevail as protests, marches, and specific action by global municipalities and even legislatures continues the uphill fight to reorient planetary priorities away from nuclear war, the use of chemical or biological weapons, and wars in general toward a New Paradigm of Peace.  One shining example of this movement is the tremendous support by global citizenry for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  (Sources: Press Conference by Hans Blix Upon the Release of “Weapons of Terror:  Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Arms.” IranWatch.org. June 1, 2006, https://www.iranwatch.org/library/international-organization/other-international-organization/press-conference-hans-blix-upon-release-weapons-terror-freeing-world-nuclear and “Weapons of Terror.” International Atomic Energy Agency’s WMD Commission.  https://ycsg.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/weapons_of_terror.pdf, both accessed May 7, 2018.)

    June 4, 2009 – In his first few months in office as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama gave a historic speech at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt that primarily focused on a more pragmatic, internationalist perspective in U.S. relations with the whole of the Muslim world, repairing the damage caused during the previous Bush Administration.  Critically, the President also stated that, “I strongly reaffirm America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.”  This continued the President’s early rhetoric to push for the end of the nuclear arms race, which was stated much more forcefully two months earlier in his speech on April 5, 2009 in Prague, The Czech Republic, “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War…Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not.  In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up…The technology to build a bomb has spread…Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere.  One nuclear weapon exploded in one city – be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague – could kill hundreds of thousands of people.  And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be – for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival…the United States has a moral responsibility to act…So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to see the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  Later that year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee on October 9th surprised the commander-in­-chief by announcing he had won the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”  They also cited “his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation,” as well as “the President’s efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.”  Nevertheless despite the fact that Barack Obama’s anti-nuclear rhetoric remained strong, the Pentagon did convince him to begin spending a trillion dollars over the next 30 years to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  In a March 30, 2016 editorial in The Washington Post, the President noted that, “I said in Prague that…As the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons, the United States has a moral obligation to continue to lead the way in eliminating them.”  Comments:  Unfortunately President Obama’s attempt to work towards the elimination of these doomsday weapons was primarily circumvented, although his administration did negotiate and follow-through with Russia in agreeing to the 2010 New START agreement.  The fact that a well-meaning Barack Obama was derailed not only by opposition from a Republican-dominated Congress but also by the military-industrial-news media-corporate complex was not so surprising.  It has happened to other U.S. presidents including Eisenhower, who first warned Americans of the threat in his 1961 Farewell Address; Kennedy, who just barely avoided having to act on a unanimous Joint Chiefs of Staff recommendation to invade Cuba in October 1962, most probably triggering a nuclear war, but overcoming that near-miss with the assistance and advice of similar-minded peace advocates, both in government and through private channels (one example is Mary Pinchot Meyers), to push Congress to accept then ratify the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963; Carter, who first proposed denuclearizing and demilitarizing the Korean Peninsula despite being roundly criticized as an appeaser to the Communists; Reagan, who at the Reykjavik Summit in 1986 almost agreed to Gorbachev’s proposal to eliminate all nuclear weapons; and Clinton, who signed the CTBT but ultimately failed to convince Congress to ratify the agreement even though the Russian Duma accomplished this historic task.  (Sources: “Obama’s Prague Speech on Nuclear Weapons: Full Text.”  HuffingtonPost.com. May 5, 2009, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/05/obama-prague-speech-on-nu_n_183219.html, “Obama’s Speech in Cairo.” New York Times. June 4, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html, “President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize.” CBSNews.com. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-obama-wins-nobel-peace-prize/ all accessed May 7, 2018.)

    June 11, 1945 – Several scientists, including Leo Szilard, in the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, who were working on the Manhattan Project and had formed a committee chaired by Jerome Franck, formulated and distributed the draft of a petition for submittal to President Truman written by Eugene Rabinowitch titled, “The Franck Report” that argued against dropping an atomic bomb on Japan.  The report concluded that using the atomic weapon on a Japanese target without warning and without direct Soviet participation in the testing of the weapon would make international control of nuclear weapons very unlikely while also inflicting on the world a never-ending arms race that would put U.S. and other world cities in “continuous danger of sudden annihilation.”  The petition argued that even if the bomb might shorten the war and save the lives of U.S. troops, its use was still not justified on not only moral grounds but also for the sake of the long-term survival of civilization itself.  Comments:  The awful and seemingly inevitable momentum of the Manhattan Project and the alleged need to intimidate the Soviets is evident from the fact that General Lesley Groves, the military director of the A-bomb project, had the petition classified “Secret” and purposely kept it from getting to President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson until after the bomb was dropped.  The petition was also withheld from the American people for reasons of national security.  The war crime committed against the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, particularly because military experts before and after August 6 and 9 said there was no military necessity requiring the use of nuclear weapons, must never be repeated again.  Its use against another human population must be strictly and for all time forbidden.  The best way to ensure this is to redouble global efforts to dramatically reduce and eliminate these doomsday weapons at the earliest possible opportunity or it is likely that Omnicide will be the result.  (Sources:  “Atomic Bomb Decision – The Franck Report.” Dannen.com. http://www.dannen.com/decision/franck.html, and Daniel Ellsberg. “Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.” New York:  Bloomsbury, 2017, p. 287.)

    June 22, 1987 – On this date, The Washington Post published a brief article titled, “MIT Nuclear Study Figures Aftermath If Soviets Attack,” quoting an Associated Press story that reported that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had conducted a study that was directed by Dr. Kostas Tsipis of MIT’s Program in Science and Technology for International Security.  The study called “Nuclear Crash” was based on four years of computer-simulated attacks and the results indicated that even a “limited” nuclear attack on the United States, involving only one percent of  the Soviet nuclear arsenal, that targeted only liquid fuels such as petroleum, and other nationwide energy production, transportation, and distribution points as well as other related U.S. industries, would cause the collapse of the American economy for decades which would precipitate the mass starvation of most of the U.S. population in a very short period of time.  Comments:  While overall levels of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons have declined significantly in the last generation since this study was completed, it is still true that so-called limited or tactical nuclear strikes could not only destroy a nation but also trigger nuclear winter scenarios that can impact huge regions of the globe if not the entire planet – destroying civilization and possibly the vast majority of humanity.  Therefore, ridding the world of the main stocks of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons is not sufficient to ensure the long-term survival of our species.  Thousands of other tactical nuclear weapons and other warheads held in reserve or storage as well as those awaiting decommission must also be eliminated from the arsenals of all nine nuclear weapons states.

    June 26, 2017 – On the fourth and final day of the 85th Annual Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, held in Miami Beach, Florida, a set of resolutions were adopted and released for distribution to the press and public.  Relevant to the nuclear threat was a series of resolutions titled, “Calling on President Trump to Lower Tensions, Prioritize Diplomacy, and Redirect Nuclear Weapons Spending to Meet Human Needs and Address Environmental Challenges.”  One of the resolutions pointed to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock being advanced earlier that year to 2.5 minutes to midnight, the closest it has been since 1953 and the language emphasized that, “Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink.”  Another related resolution discussed the May 5, 2017 creation of a Nuclear Crisis Group composed of retired diplomats, generals, and national security experts from key nations such as the U.S., Russia, China, South Korea, India, Japan, Pakistan, and Poland to “engage in high-level efforts to prevent these flashpoints from escalating to the use of nuclear weapons.”  Another entreaty by the Conference was stated as, “Mindful that no national or international response capacity exists that could adequately respond to the human suffering and humanitarian harm that would result from a nuclear explosion in a populated area, and that such capacity most likely will never exist, 127 countries have endorsed the Humanitarian Pledge to stigmatize, prohibit, and eliminate nuclear weapons.”  Yet another resolution remarked that, “Whereas, Mayors for Peace, which calls for the global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020, has grown to 7,295 cities in 162 nations and regions, with 210 U.S. members, representing in total over one billion people.”  Comments:  Despite tremendous concern and fear about the actions of the governments, militaries, and politicians of the nine nuclear weapons states and their allies, it seems clear that more and more global citizenry are taking matters into their own hands and directing municipalities, local, state, provincial, and regional governmental entities to say “enough is enough.”  Increasingly it seems apparent that growing numbers of denizens of this Pale Blue Dot are remembering the words of Frederick Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” and Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  (Source:  “85th Annual Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.” Miami Beach, Florida, June 23-26, 2017, http://legacy.usmayors.org/resolutions/85th_Conference/proposedcommittee.asp?committee-InternationalAffairs accessed May 8, 2018.)

    June 28, 1958 – As part of the Operation Hardtack I series of 35 nuclear test blasts, 32 of which occurred at either Bikini or Enewetak, a test designated Oak was conducted on a barge in the Enewetak Lagoon in this Marshall Islands chain of the Pacific Ocean – one of the most powerful U.S. nuclear tests with a magnitude of 8.9 megatons, almost six hundred times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.  This tremendous blast, one of a total of 67 tests conducted in the late 1950s which resulted in a total yield of around 30 megatons exploded in and around that atoll by the U.S. contaminating a huge inhabited region with cesium-137 and strontium-90 for generations, produced a crater 4,400 feet in diameter and 183 feet deep.  It is believed that the B/W53 nuclear device used in this test blast was eventually incorporated into the Titan II ICBM system.  Comments:  The testing of over 2,050 nuclear explosives over the last seven decades by nine nuclear weapons states has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations, especially native peoples and veterans who participated in observing tests at relatively close range.  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people due to nuclear testing.  (Sources:  Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig.  “Nuclear Weapons Databook:  Volume II, Appendix B.”  Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987, pp. 157-58 and Michael B. Gerrard.  “A Pacific Isle, Radioactive and Forgotten.”  New York Times. Dec. 3, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/a-pacific-isle-radioactive-and-forgotten.html, accessed May 8, 2018.)

  • 20 Years of Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan: the Real Nuclear Danger in Asia That Nobody is Talking About

    20 Years of Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan: the Real Nuclear Danger in Asia That Nobody is Talking About

    [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” overlay_color=”” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” padding_top=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” padding_right=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” center_content=”no” last=”no” min_height=”” hover_type=”none” link=””][fusion_text]While the global diplomatic circuits, international media and opinion makers are busy discussing whether North Korea would de-nuclearise itself, or if Iran would go nuclear, there seems to be a complete silence this month as the world’s only nuclear-armed neighbours with ongoing conflicts complete 20 years of their nuclear tests conducted in May 1998.

    Real and escalating danger

    Even a cursory look at these 20 years would dispel the carefully-crafted myths around nuclear weapons, and would bring out their sheer absurdity. Far from providing security and strategic stability, introduction of nuclear weapons in the region has pushed both the countries into an ever-spiraling arms race – of both nuclear and conventional kinds.

    Ever since the 1998 nuclear tests – in the Pokharan desert by India on 11th and 13th May and in Chagai Hills by Pakistan on 28th May – both countries have spent heavily on expanding military infrastructure mostly imported from the US, Russia, Israel, and China. As per the March 2018 SIPRI Report titled ‘Trends in International Arms Transfer’, India leads the global imports of conventional weapons while Pakistan is on the 9th position this year. India has become the world’s largest arms importer, with a share of 14% in the entire world’s weapons’ trade. India’s weapons imports have grown by 90%, between 2006-10 and 2011-15. There is a steep upward curve in this trend and India has topped global weapons imports for most years since 1998. The security that the nuclear weapons were supposed to bestow is conspicuously absent.

    The overall military expenditure has also grown in this period. In terms of military budget, India is now the world’s fifth largest spender on the military, spending $55.5 billion in 2017, a hike of 6% since the previous year. The country’s defence expenditure has escalated sharply particularly since 2006, its share in the world’s military expenditure rose from 2.5%-3%. This amounts to 2.3% of India’s total GDP.

    The obscenity of this massive militarism becomes apparent when compared with the widening wealth gap, and the steep decline in government expenditure in crucial sectors such as health and education. More than 194 million Indians go hungry daily and 37% of deaths in India are still caused by “poor country” diseases such as TB and malaria. Even India’s middle classes – flag-bearer of nuclear nationalism – are actually poor as shown by recent data and their numbers are often inflated.  Similarly, Pakistan’s 22% population is hungry and it was ranked 107 in a ranking of 118 developing nations in the Global Hunger Index. On other indices, such as child undernourishment and mortality rates, education, sanitation, both India, and Pakistan are among the worst-performing nations on the world map.

    On average, India and Pakistan have flight-tested one nuclear-capable missile every year since 1998. A 2012 report by the Nobel-winning International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear Weapons(IPPNW) warned of a severe nuclear war-induced famine in South Asia that would kill a staggering two billion people in its hypothetical study on the consequences of a nuclear exchange in the region.

    Rising belligerence and nuclear war-drums

    The risk in South Asia has become worse with the rise of ultra-nationalist politics in both India and Pakistan with avowed religious fervour. Open nuclear threats to each other by top-most political and military leaders have severely undermined faith in strategic stability in the recent years.  While the former Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar made a dangerously frivolous statement in 2016 about revising India’s nuclear doctrines of No-First-Use and credible minimum deterrence, his counterpart in Pakistan raised concerns internationally when he threatened Israel with nuclear war, merely over a fake tweet! Revision of the ‘No-First-Use’ policy and a ‘credible minimum deterrence’ posture, that India adopted in 2003 as part of its Nuclear Doctrine, is being openly discussed by strategic experts and political leaders as the incumbent PM Narendra Modi fought his elections in 2014 with a poll promise to revise the nuclear posture.

    The Doomsday Clock statement this year mentioned the “simmering tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan”. It refers to the “threats of nuclear warfare” hanging in the background “as Pakistan and India faced each other warily across the Line of Control in Kashmir”, a reference to the surgical strikes by the Indian military across the LoC on September 29. The 2017 statement also mentioned the militant attacks on two Indian army bases in 2016 – the September 18 Uri attack that killed 20 soldiers and the Nagrota attack on November 29, in which seven soldiers died – that led to the exchange of not-so-veiled nuclear threats in South Asia.

    Inching closer to nuclear midnight

    Unsurprisingly, the escalating nuclear tensions between India and Pakistan have been cited in the Atomic Doomsday Clock in the past two consecutive years, as the clock reached closest ever to midnight.

    Even as the world saw some progress towards disarmament last year as the UN adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or the Nuclear Ban Treaty, India and Pakistan joined the Nuclear Weapons States(NWS) in boycotting the negotiations and voting. This went against India’s carefully crafted image of a reluctant nuclear-armed nation ready to disarm if the world discusses it seriously going beyond the NPT. When the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons(ICAN) was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo last year, diplomats of both India and Pakistan remained away from the ceremony, citing rather lame excuses.

    Celebration of murderous weapons

    A few weeks ago, when the doctors of IPPNW organised an international seminar in New Delhi on the Nuclear Ban Treaty, they met with shockingly disappointing treatment devoid of basic courtesy. The Indian government did not just deny the visa for participants from Pakistan and Bangladesh, the government-appointed Chair of the cross-party Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence refused to meet their delegation despite prior approval. While the world has made progress in criminalising nuclear weapons, a Bollywood movie glorifying nuclear tests is getting released this month to commemorate the Pokharan nuclear tests of 1998. Such apathy towards nuclear insanity does not bode well for the region, and calls for an urgent attention by the international civil society.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_global id=”13042″]

  • Interview with Seikyo Shimbun

    Interview with Seikyo Shimbun

    [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” overlay_color=”” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” padding_top=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” padding_right=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” center_content=”no” last=”no” min_height=”” hover_type=”none” link=””][fusion_text] Interview with Dr. David Krieger,

    President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation,

    by Shuichi Minami, for Seikyo Shimbun

     

    1. How do you think civil society has influenced international efforts for abolition of nuclear weapons over recent years?

    David KriegerI think civil society has been very influential in the achievement of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). In doing so, they have worked closely with like-minded countries, those that are tired of hearing excuses from the nuclear-armed countries about why they cannot fulfill their Non-Proliferation Treaty nuclear disarmament obligations. I think that Abolition 2000, which is a network formed in 1995, has helped to pave the way for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). I also think that the Middle Powers Initiative, in which a small number of key civil society organizations worked closely with middle power countries, helped lay the groundwork for the civil society-governmental cooperation that ICAN used so successfully in achieving the TPNW. ICAN itself had over 450 civil society organizations in its campaign. It has been civil society, the voice of the people from throughout the world, that has kept hope alive throughout the Nuclear Age. I don’t think there are people anywhere who want to become victims of nuclear warfare. ICAN and other civil society organizations have given voice to the reasonable hopes and desires of people everywhere. The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize recognizes all who have spoken out for a world free of nuclear weapons, including importantly the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and those who suffered the folly of the many decades of nuclear testing.

     

    1. Setsuko Thurlow said that adoption of the TPNW is a beginning of the end of nuclear weapons. And our era has been characterized as the “nuclear age” with such weapons. Can you share with us what “nuclear age” means?

    Different eras have been called by different names; for example, the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. I believe that our time is best thought of as the Nuclear Age. It is the predominant technology of our time and the greatest threat to the human future. For me, the Nuclear Age represents a time in which our technologies have become powerful enough to destroy humankind. It requires us to achieve new and higher standards of ethics and morality. It requires us, as Einstein suggested, to change our modes of thinking or face “unparalleled catastrophe.” Our challenge now is to get out of the Nuclear Age with our world still intact.

    Setsuko Thurlow is a wise and compassionate woman. She is a recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award and a member of our Advisory Council. I respect her tremendously, but I think it is still too soon to know if the TPNW is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons. It may be, but it is not yet clear, and may become clear only in retrospect. The nuclear-armed countries are still fighting the Treaty, and not yet showing any real signs of sanity when it comes to nuclear weapons abolition. As an example, the US, UK and France issued a joint statement when the TPNW was adopted at the United Nations, in which they said they would not sign, ratify or ever become parties to the Treaty. Right now these nuclear-armed countries are digging in their heels and refusing to cooperate with the vast majority of the world when it comes to nuclear disarmament.

     

    1. You have said: “Hope does not just occur. It is a conscious choice, an act of will. One must choose hope in the face of all we know.” Can you expand more about hope?

    I still believe that hope is a conscious choice. Hope gives us the power to act, and our actions, in turn, reinforce our hope. Without hope, we might just fall into despair and stop trying to make the world right. I also think that Beatrice Fihn is correct when she says that we have a choice to make: the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us. That’s the stark choice that nuclear weapons present to us. It is essentially the choice presented in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto: “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?”

    I’m not sure that we can change the minds of the leaders and politicians in the nuclear-possessing countries. If we really want to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons, we would be better off changing out the leaders and politicians who will not recognize the abolition of nuclear weapons as an urgent goal. Current leaders in nuclear-possessing countries are locked into old ways of thinking. We need leaders who are committed to ending the nuclear weapons threat to all humanity. To bring such leaders into positions of authority will require a much stronger people’s movement. We must continue to build such a movement and never give up.

     

    1. As a Buddhist faith-based organization, SGI has been working toward the abolition of nuclear weapons from the moral and ethical perspective by raising public awareness. What do you think about the efforts made by SGI?

    I hold SGI’s work on nuclear weapons abolition in very high regard. In the early days of Abolition 2000, SGI gathered more than 13 million signatures on the Abolition 2000 petition to end the nuclear weapons threat, support a new abolition treaty and reallocate resources from nuclear weapons to meeting human needs. I was honored to present these petitions to the chair of the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Since then, we’ve worked closely with SGI on many other nuclear abolition issues.

    SGI brings a moral perspective to nuclear weapons, going back to Soka Gakkai’s second president, Josei Toda, who called nuclear weapons an “absolute evil.” SGI President Daisaku Ikeda has always been mindful of this and has been committed to achieving the abolition of nuclear weapons. I was particularly pleased that we could work closely with SGI in supporting the Marshall Islands’ Nuclear Zero lawsuits against the nuclear-armed countries. I also appreciate the moral perspective that SGI brings to bear on nuclear weapons issues.

     

    1. SGI launched a new campaign titled “People’s Decade Ⅱ” this year. What do you expect from SGI with regard to the campaign?

    The SGI campaign “People’s Decade II” is very much needed. The more people are engaged in the nuclear abolition movement, the more progress will be made. A decade-long campaign is enough time to make some real progress through a focus on disarmament education. For example, it should be more than enough time to achieve the 50 ratifications needed for the TPNW to enter into force. It is also enough time to make progress on empowering the people in nuclear-armed countries and their allies to stand up and speak out for a world free of nuclear weapons, and to demand both leadership and progress toward this goal from their countries.

    I would offer five brief pieces of advice. First, focus on youth, the leaders of tomorrow, helping to support them in becoming the leaders of today. Second, add some advocacy elements to the education. Help people, through education, to express their activism. Third, look into the NAPF Peace Literacy Program headed by Paul Chappell. It’s a very exciting new program which holds great promise for creating new peace leaders. Fourth, help people to understand the importance of choosing hope. Fifth, instill in the young people the importance of never giving up.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

  • Gaza: Grief, Horror, Outrage, Remembering

    Gaza: Grief, Horror, Outrage, Remembering

    [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” overlay_color=”” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” padding_top=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” padding_right=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” center_content=”no” last=”no” min_height=”” hover_type=”none” link=””][fusion_text]

    GRIEF

    How can one not feel intense grief for the young Palestinians who out of despair and fury joined the Great March of Return, and so often found death and severe injury awaiting them as they approached the border unarmed!!?

    This was not a gratuitous event, or something that happened spontaneously on either side. After 70 years of Palestinian suffering, with no end of torment in sight, to show the world and each other their passion was what would be seen as normal, even admirable, demonstrating a spirit of resistance that endured after decades of repression, violence, humiliation, and denial of the most fundamental of rights. After 70 years of Israeli statehood, this violent confirmation of our worst fears and perceptions, seals a negative destiny for Israel as far as the moral eye can see.

    HORROR

    When exposed to such visual images of resistance and sniper violence the scene expresses the horror of burning steel rubbing against raw flesh. There is no way to grasp this particular cartography of risk, vulnerability, and security than to have recourse the language and imagery of horror. Such a sad narrative of horror will linger on both sides to haunt both collective and individual memories, but one with tragic pride, the other with repressed shame.

    The horror was magnified by coinciding with obscene celebratory events in Jerusalem where Americans representing the Trump presidency, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and the American Ambassador, David Friedman, brought infamy to the United States by this unseemly display of indifference to crimes against humanity being unabashedly committed as they spoke. Such moral and political insensitivity will not and should not be forgotten.

    OUTRAGE

    Words are all we have, but they will do. As Thomas Merton taught, some crimes are situated in the domain of the unspeakable.

    The occasions for outrage about the treatment of the Palestinian people are many, but the Israeli reaction to this Palestinian march reaches a new level of moral, political, and legal wretchedness. It recalls the cry of religious leaders of conscience in the last stage of the Vietnam War, expressed by their dutiful compilation of criminal acts of American violence committed in relatively defenseless Vietnam bearing the telling title—NOT IN OUR NAME.

    As Jews, as Americans, as human beings, isn’t it about time to take a similar stand, and at least create symbolic distance between the perpetrators of these crimes and ourselves?

    The feeble Israeli claims of its right of self-defense or attributing Palestinian martyrdom to Hamas are so shallow and lacking in credibility as to discredit further rather than provide justifications for this exhibition of homicidal violence on a massive scale not as isolated incident but as a series of arrogant reenactments.

    REMEMBERING

    Not with words or argument, but with tears, and tears will not do.

    Certainly as the Martyrdom of Gaza, and quite possibly seen as a kind of silent bonding by the Palestinian people with the African victims of the Sharpeville Massacre (1960)!

    From this darkness will come an as yet undisclosed inspiration.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_global id=”13042″]

  • Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Heads to DC

    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Heads to DC

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    For Immediate Release

    Contact:
    Sandy Jones: (805) 965-3443; sjones@napf.org

    NUCLEAR AGE PEACE FOUNDATION HEADS TO D.C.

    30TH ANNUAL ALLIANCE FOR NUCLEAR ACCOUNTABILITY “DC DAYS” aims to enhance global security

    Santa Barbara–Rick Wayman, Director of Programs and Operations at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (Napf) , will be in Washington, D.C. from May 20 to 23 pressing federal policy makers to increase global security by cutting dangerous nuclear weapons production programs.

    DC Days brings together activists from 20 states across the country. The meeting is organized by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA). This year Napf’s newest summer intern, Kate Fahey, will join Wayman at DC Days, raising her voice for the first time on a national stage to lobby representatives regarding nuclear weapons policy.

    Wayman commented about some important priorities going into DC Days, “We’ll meet with dozens of members of Congress, committee staffers, and administration officials responsible for U. S. nuclear policies.” Wayman continued, “The U.S. is in the midst of a $1.25 trillion, 30-year spending spree to completely rebuild its nuclear arsenal and production infrastructure. That’s $80,000 per minute for the next thirty years. These weapons have one purpose: to kill millions of people. Our elected officials have a responsibility to stop supporting the development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction. Getting them to act on that responsibility is what DC Days will be about this year.”

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a non-profit headquartered in Santa Barbara, has been a strong and steady voice in the struggle to abolish nuclear weapons for 35 years. Their work provides hope and inspiration that a peaceful world is possible.                                                                                   

     #        #         #

    If you would like to interview Rick Wayman, Director of Programs and Operations, please call the Foundation at (805) 965-3443. Photos of Rick Wayman and Kate Fahey are below.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders. Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations. For more information, visit wagingpeace.org.

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  • Press Release: Minuteman III Missile Test Launched from Vandenberg

    Press Release: Minuteman III Missile Test Launched from Vandenberg

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    For Immediate Release

    Contact:
    Sandy Jones: (805) 965-3443; sjones@napf.org

    Minuteman III Missile Test Launched from Vandenberg Early Monday Morning

    U.S., North Korea summit just one month away – what message does missile test send?

    Kwajalein Atoll
    The U.S. fired an intercontinental ballistic missile at Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

    Vandenberg–The U.S. tested a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile carrying a mock nuclear warhead early Monday morning at 1:23 AM (PDT). from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The U.S. typically conducts three to four ICBM tests each year. Monday’s test comes less than a month prior to the high-stakes summit between the U.S. and North Korea that is aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

    What kind of message is the U.S. sending to North Korea with this latest launch when these are the same class of missiles for which the U.S. has been highly critical of the North Koreans for developing and testing?

    David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, commented, ”When it comes to ballistic missile tests, the U.S. continues to operate on a hypocritical double standard. Its own missile tests and those of its allies are treated as necessary and business-as-usual, while the missile tests of non-allied countries are treated as provocative and dangerous. What the world needs is a single standard aimed at ending the nuclear arms race and achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.  It also needs U.S. leadership rather than U.S. hypocrisy.”

    One month ago, Kim Jong-un suspended nuclear and missile tests in North Korea and stated that he will shut down the site where the previous six nuclear tests had been conducted. One cannot help but view this as a sign of good faith on the part of North Korea heading into the negotiations with the United States. As its own sign of good faith, the U.S. should also cancel all its planned ballistic missile tests prior to its summit meeting with North Korea.

    #        #         #

    If you would like to interview David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation or Rick Wayman, Director of Programs and Operations, please call the Foundation at (805) 965-3443.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders. Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations. For more information, visit wagingpeace.org.

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  • Violating the Iran Deal: Playing With Nuclear Fire

    Violating the Iran Deal: Playing With Nuclear Fire

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    David KriegerPresident Trump has demonstrated yet again why he lacks the understanding, intelligence and temperament to be president of the United States. By violating the Iran nuclear deal, he is undermining the security of the U.S., our allies and the world. There are many good reasons that the U.S. should have remained in the agreement, but Trump exploded those when he took the U.S out of the agreement.

    First, the U.S. withdrawal makes it more likely that Iran will return to pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Given Trump’s threats, this will increase the possibility of a war with Iran, which would be costly in blood and treasure.

    Second, it will be detrimental to U.S. relations with allies UK, France and Germany, all of which tried to dissuade the U.S. from withdrawing. Further, it will be detrimental to U.S. relations with Russia and China, which are also parties to the agreement. Under Trump, the U.S. is isolating itself and diminishing its leadership role in world affairs.

    Third, it demonstrates that U.S. commitments are not to be relied upon. This will make it harder for other nations to trust the U.S. to keep its word. This may be a problem for the prospects for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

    What lies behind Trump’s decision to leave the Iran deal? Again, there are different possibilities. One possibility is his seeming desire to reverse whatever Barack Obama achieved. In Trump logic, Obama’s legacy is to be reversed, regardless of the costs of doing so. Another possibility is that Trump is playing to his base, those who support U.S. arrogance in international relations regardless of the costs involved. Yet another possibility is that Trump wants to have a reason to go to war with Iran, and to use this as an excuse to solidify his power in the U.S. in the same way that Hitler did with the Reichstag fire.

    Trump is literally playing with fire – nuclear fire – whether he understands it or not. He just made a very dangerous and ill-considered move on the chessboard of international affairs. But now, instead of having General H. R. McMaster, a relatively steady and sane person at the helm of the National Security Council, he has John Bolton, a cheerleader for regime change and a man who never met a war he didn’t like. In March 2018, Bolton published an opinion piece in The New York Times with the title, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” monumentally dangerous advice.

    America, beware. Trump has just fired another serious warning shot across the bow of democracy, one that bodes ill for the nuclear non-proliferation regime, for peace and for the future of our democratic institutions. Once again, Trump has shown clearly that he is not fit to be president, and his impeachment should be undertaken as a matter of urgency.

    David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and has served as its president since 1982.

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  • Trump Withdraws U.S. from Iran Nuclear Deal: There Will Be Negative Consequences

    Trump Withdraws U.S. from Iran Nuclear Deal: There Will Be Negative Consequences

    For Immediate Release

    Contact:
    Sandy Jones: (805) 965-3443; sjones@napf.org

    Washington, D.C.–Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran Nuclear Accord is a dangerous move and will have major international consequences. The U.S. is preparing to reinstate the sanctions it had waived as part of the nuclear accord and impose additional economic penalties as well.

    The decision to withdraw from the treaty:

    1. Makes it more likely Iran will pursue nuclear weapons.
    2. Makes war between the U.S. and Iran more likely.
    3. Separates the U.S. from its major allies.
    4. Shows U.S. commitments are not reliable.
    5. Further reinforces lack of U.S. leadership in the world.
    6. Will likely have adverse effects on achieving nuclear deal with N. Korea.

    Trump’s decision puts America’s relations with its allies into new and uncertain territory. U.S. allies are committed to staying in the deal, thus raising the prospect of diplomatic and economic disputes as the U.S. reimposes stringent sanctions on Iran. Importantly, it also raises the potential for increased tensions with Russia and China, also parties to the agreement.

    The decision flies in the face of intense lobbying by European leaders who made numerous attempts to produce fixes to the deal that would satisfy Trump. Trump’s prior advisers had persuaded him twice last year not to go this route. However, his newest set of considerably more hawkish advisers, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, did not act to restrain Trump this time around.

    David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation commented, “This may be the worst foreign policy decision of our time. It vividly demonstrates the downsides to having a U.S. president who is an incompetent bully. He appears more intent on punishing Iran than on maintaining a well-worked out deal, supported by our major allies, to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. This is yet another reason that there is urgency to impeach Mr. Trump.”

    #   #   #

    If you would like to interview David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation or Rick Wayman, Director of Programs and Operations, please call the Foundation at (805) 965-3443.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders. Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations. For more information, visit wagingpeace.org.

  • Sunflower Newsletter: May 2018

    Issue #250 – May 2018
    We’re celebrating mothers this month! Make a donation for peace in your mother’s honor or memory.

    Donate now

    Facebook Twitter Addthis
    • Perspectives
      • U.S. Should Accept Putin’s Offer to Negotiate on Nukes by David Krieger
      • A New Generation Against the Bomb by Ray Acheson
      • Looking Reality in the Eye by Rick Wayman
      • Peace in Korea? Hope and Uncertainty Mix in the Wake of Kim-Moon Summit by Cesar Jaramillo
      • Panmunjeom Declaration by Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un
    • U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy
      • U.S. Continues Testing ICBMs
    • Nuclear Disarmament
      • More Nations Set to Ratify Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
    • War and Peace
      • North Korean Leader Visits South Korea for First Time in History
      • Israeli Prime Minister Claims to Have Proof of Iranian Nuclear Program
    • Nuclear Waste
      • Four Barrels of Nuclear Waste Rupture in Idaho
    • Nuclear Insanity
      • Lawsuit Filed Over Plan to Allow Public in Radioactive Zone
    • Resources
      • This Month in Nuclear Threat History
      • Russian Nuclear Forces in 2018
      • Podcast on the Nuclear Age
      • ICRC President Issues Appeal on Risk of Nuclear Weapons
    • Foundation Activities
      • NAPF Event at the United Nations in Geneva
      • Building Peace Literacy with the Corvallis School District
      • Moms Against Bombs
      • 30th Annual DC Days
    • Quotes

     

    Perspectives

    U.S. Should Accept Putin’s Offer to Negotiate on Nukes

    by David Krieger

    The fuel for a new nuclear arms race was already on the fire, and a Russian strategic response was predictable, when the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty [in 2002] and began developing and emplacing missile defense systems globally. The U.S. withdrawal and abrogation of the ABM Treaty may prove to be the greatest strategic blunder of the nuclear age.

    As the two most powerful nuclear powers on the planet, with enough nuclear weapons to end civilization as we know it and possibly the human species, the two countries need to be engaged in productive and good-faith negotiations to end the nuclear weapons threat to each other and to all humanity.

    To read more, click here.

    A New Generation Against the Bomb

    by Ray Acheson

    “I’m not old enough to vote but I’m old enough to get shot,” say the students agitating for gun control in the United States. The same, of course, can be said about nuclear weapons. We are old enough to be incinerated by an atomic bomb.

    There are quite a few similarities between the struggle against guns and the struggle against the bomb. The violent, militarized masculinities associated with gun violence are the same associated with the acquisition, use, and threats of use of nuclear weapons. The privileging of “gun rights” above the rights of human beings to live in safety and security is similar to the privileging of the possession and modernization of nuclear weapons above the lived experience of those who have suffered from the use and testing of nuclear weapons and the reality of the impacts any future use of nuclear weapons will have on our bodies, our cities, our societies, and our planet.

    To read more, click here.

    Looking Reality in the Eye

    by Rick Wayman

    In the introduction to the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review – and subsequently repeated in official statements the U.S. has made – the authors write, “We must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

    The glasses they are looking through are very, very dark. Because what they propose over and over in this document is a readiness and a willingness to use nuclear weapons, including to use nuclear weapons first. They unashamedly say that they are ready to resume nuclear testing in response to “geopolitical challenges.”

    To this day, some of the people I admire most in the world are hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who openly share the unimaginable suffering imposed upon them when nuclear weapons were used on their cities. One of my personal and professional role models was Mr. Tony de Brum, who passed away last August from cancer, a fate that has befallen so many of his fellow Marshall Islanders following 12 years of brutal atmospheric nuclear testing by the U.S. I’ve spoken with nuclear testing survivors from many countries around the world, and their stories are real.

    That is reality. To see the world as it is, we must look into their eyes.

    To read more, click here.

    Peace in Korea? Hope and Uncertainty Mix in the Wake of Kim-Moon Summit

    by Cesar Jaramillo

    In a widely circulated image from the recent summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, the two men, with their backs to the camera, are seen holding hands. As they briefly stepped together into North Korea, across the infamous Demilitarized Zone, they seemed the antithesis of one of the planet’s most dangerous rivalries.

    And so the waves of enthusiasm with which the encounter on April 27 has been met are hardly unexpected. The change in tone and rhetoric is palpable, especially from Kim. Perhaps not surprisingly, the general feeling seems to be at least cautiously optimistic.

    To read more, click here.

    Panmunjeom Declaration

    by Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un

    The two leaders, sharing the firm commitment to bring a swift end to the Cold War relic of long-standing division and confrontation, to boldly approach a new era of national reconciliation, peace and prosperity, and to improve and cultivate inter-Korean relations in a more active manner, declared at this historic site of Panmunjom as follows:

    1. South and North Korea will reconnect the blood relations of the people and bring forward the future of co-prosperity and unification led by Koreans by facilitating comprehensive and groundbreaking advancement in inter-Korean relations.

    2. South and North Korea will make joint efforts to alleviate the acute military tension and practically eliminate the danger of war on the Korean Peninsula.

    3. South and North Korea will actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. Bringing an end to the current unnatural state of armistice and establishing a robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is a historical mission that must not be delayed any further.

    To read the full declaration, click here.

    U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy

    U.S. Continues Testing ICBMs

    On April 25, the U.S. Air Force launched an unarmed Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The United States maintains 400 nuclear-armed Minuteman III missiles in silos spread around Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.

    The launch came just hours before Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un met in a high-profile summit. The United States has repeatedly called North Korean missile testing “provocative” and has demanded that an end to North Korea’s missile program be part of the negotiation process.

    Rick Wayman, Director of Programs at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said, “At such a sensitive time that we’re in right now in terms of peace negations with North Korea, I would have hoped for more sensitivity around this issue.”

    Janene Scully, “Vandenberg AFB Officials Mum After Test of Minuteman III ICBM,” Noozhawk, April 25, 2018.

    Nuclear Disarmament

    More Nations Set to Ratify Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

    Palau is the latest nation to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and more nations are set to ratify in the coming weeks. Austria and Costa Rica, two countries that were at the forefront of the effort to adopt the treaty, have completed their national processes and will soon officially deposit their instruments of ratification at the UN.

    As of May 3, eight countries have ratified the treaty. The treaty will enter into force once 50 nations have ratified. The pace of ratification is similar to other key multilateral nuclear weapons-related treaties, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Click here to view the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons’ running tally of which countries have signed and ratified the treaty.

    War and Peace

    North Korean Leader Visits South Korea for First Time in History

    On April 27, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met in Panmunjeom, on the South Korean side of the De-Militarized Zone. The summit marked the first time in history that a North Korean leader stepped foot in the South.

    In a signal to the United States and China, the two leaders “affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord.”

    The summit and the Panmunjeom Declaration mark a huge leap past the tensions of the previous year, when the United States and North Korea appeared to be lurching disastrously toward war, with South Korea caught in the crosshairs.

    Tim Shorrock, “Historic Korean Summit Sets the Table for Peace – and U.S. Pundits React with Horror,” The Nation, May 2, 2018.

    Israeli Prime Minister Claims to Have Proof of Iranian Nuclear Program

    In a presentation styled after TED talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims to have secret evidence of an Iranian nuclear program. Using language similar to President Trump’s speaking style, Netanyahu said, “”Tonight, I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied — big time.”

    The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was negotiated among seven countries: Iran, the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, and Germany. Following Netanyahu’s presentation, a spokesperson for the United Kingdom said, “The IAEA inspection regime agreed as part of the Iran nuclear deal is one of the most extensive and robust in the history of international nuclear accords. It remains a vitally important way of independently verifying that Iran is adhering to the deal and that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.”

    Following Netanyahu’s presentation, U.S. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement that said, “These facts are consistent with what the United States has long known: Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people.” The U.S. later claimed that a “clerical error” led to them using the present tense instead of the past tense regarding an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

    Eliot McLaughlin, “Netanyahu Says he has Proof of of Secret Iranian Nuclear Program,” CNN, May 1, 2018.

    Nuclear Waste

    Four Barrels of Nuclear Waste Rupture in Idaho

    Four barrels containing radioactive sludge ruptured at the Idaho National Laboratory. Firefighters had to extinguish one barrel that was smoldering. Officials were not sure exactly what was in the barrels, but said it was likely radioactive material produced in the 1960s at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado.

    The barrels were going to be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. WIPP only recently reopened after a barrel of radioactive waste ruptured there in 2014.

    Keith Ridler, “Officials Say Radioactive Sludge Barrel Ruptures Now Total 4,” Associated Press, April 25, 2018.

    Nuclear Insanity

    Lawsuit Filed Over Plan to Allow Public in Radioactive Zone

    A number of Colorado groups have come together to file a lawsuit to prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from allowing the public on the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. The wildlife refuge is in the “buffer zone” of the former Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, which the U.S. used to produce plutonium pits for its nuclear weapons from 1952 to 1989, when the FBI raided the plant and shut it down for environmental crimes.

    The lawsuit argues that the Fish and Wildlife Service did not complete a required analysis of environmental risks. Many local school boards, including Denver Public Schools, have announced that they will not permit students to visit the wildlife refuge because of health concerns. While Rocky Flats underwent a $7 billion cleanup, there are many reasons to believe that plutonium is still present in the environment.

    “Suit Filed Over Ex-Nuclear Weapons Plant Converted to Refuge,” Associated Press, May 1, 2018.

     Resources

    This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    History chronicles many instances when humans have been threatened by nuclear weapons. In this article, Jeffrey Mason outlines some of the threats that have taken place in the month of May, including the May 11, 1969 fire at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver involving five kilograms of plutonium.

    To read Mason’s full article, click here.

    For more information on the history of the Nuclear Age, visit NAPF’s Nuclear Files website.

    Russian Nuclear Forces in 2018

    Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris have published their assessment of Russia’s nuclear forces. As of early 2018, the authors estimate that Russia has a stockpile of roughly 4,350 nuclear warheads assigned for use by long-range strategic launchers and shorter-range tactical nuclear forces. Of these, roughly 1,600 strategic warheads are deployed on ballistic missiles and at heavy bomber bases, while another 920 strategic warheads are in storage along with about 1,830 non-strategic warheads. In addition to the military stockpile for operational forces, a large number – perhaps almost 2,500 – of retired but still largely intact warheads await dismantlement, for a total inventory of more than 6,850 warheads.

    To read the full report, click here.

    Podcast on the Nuclear Age

    A new podcast entitled “Einstein’s Regret” features portraits of Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Harry Truman, and a grandmother who experienced Hiroshima. The stories are told through historical clips and the poetry of David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    You can listen or download a copy of the podcast here.

    ICRC President Issues Appeal on Risk of Nuclear Weapons

    Peter Mauer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has issued a new statement appealing to all States, global leaders and citizens to act on the increasing risk of the use of nuclear weapons.

    Mauer wrote, “If a nuclear conflict happened today, there is no international plan nor capacity to respond adequately to even a limited use of nuclear weapons. Therefore, the only sound course of action is prevention. We appeal for urgent efforts to ensure that nuclear weapons are never again used.” Suggested measures include quickly signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

    To read Mauer’s full statement, click here.

    Foundation Activities

    NAPF Event at the United Nations in Geneva

    On April 24, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation hosted an event at the United Nations in Geneva entitled “The Trump Nuclear Doctrine: The Nuclear Posture Review’s Threats to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Humanity.” The event took place during the 2018 Preparatory Committee meetings for the 2020 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

    Speakers included Jackie Cabasso of Western States Legal Foundation, Lisa Clark of International Peace Bureau, Kate Hudson of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Cesar Jaramillo of Project Ploughshares, Hans Kristensen of Federation of American Scientists, and Rick Wayman of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    To read Rick’s take on the Nuclear Posture Review and the event at the UN, click here.

    Building Peace Literacy with the Corvallis School District

    The first step to a peace literate world begins in the classroom. The average American spends twelve years honing literacy skills, moving from the basic alphabet to writing short paragraphs to deeper levels of reading, writing, composition, and critical thinking to allow for civic participation in our ever-growing and complex world.

    Why not twelve years of Peace Literacy in the classroom? Through the curriculum, across social studies, history, language arts, math, science, health and many other subjects, classes would be grounded in peace literacy skills for getting along in complicated and fast-changing times. Study of peace literacy skills would continue for higher grades at deeper levels. This can begin to create a path to a new peace literate society.

    Steps are being taken to build a new peace literate community in Corvallis, Oregon. On April 9-10, the local school district sent more than 30 teachers, administrators, behavioral support staff, and students from three high schools and two middle schools to a peace literacy workshop.

    To read more about the Peace Literacy movement in Corvallis, click here.

    Moms Against Bombs

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has published a new booklet entitled “Moms Against Bombs.” In honor of Mother’s Day and the women who have taught us important lessons in our lives, the women of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation speak about why they chose to work for peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    To download a copy, click here.

    30th Annual DC Days

    Representatives of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation will participate in the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s 30th Annual DC Days lobbying event in Washington, DC from May 20-23. NAPF summer intern Kate Fahey will join Director of Programs Rick Wayman for a day of issue and lobbying training, followed by three days of meetings with members of Congress and key staffers on nuclear weapons and waste issues.

    Around 60 experts and activists from around the U.S. will take part in this year’s DC Days. It’s not too late for you to register as well. Click here to learn more about DC Days and to register.

    Quotes

     

    “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”

    — Maya Angelou. This quote appears in the book Speaking of Peace: Quotations to Inspire Action, which is available to purchase in the NAPF Peace Store.

     

    “We applaud the two Koreas’ pursuit of dialogue with the United States and China to achieve the formal end of the Korean War by replacing the temporary ceasefire agreement with a Peace Treaty and thus establishing a permanent peace regime. We are inspired by the decision to transform the DMZ, so long a symbol of separation and enmity, into a Peace Park, and the West Sea, the site of violent skirmishes, into a Maritime Peace Zone.”

    — Women Cross DMZ, in a statement following the historic summit between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un.

     

    “From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

    — Julia Ward Howe, in the original Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870.

    Editorial Team

     

    David Krieger
    Carol Warner
    Rick Wayman

  • May: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    May 3, 1947 – Twenty one months after the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a new postwar Japanese constitution, promulgated on Nov. 3, 1946, was established on this date.  The most notable section of this document, and one tied inexorably to the fact that Japanese militarism eventually resulted in their people being subjected to the horrors of nuclear attack, was and is Chapter 2: The Renunciation of War, which is framed by Article 9:  “…the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes…the right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”  Nevertheless, the Japanese did recognize the need to establish Self-Defense Forces, as well as participate in United Nations’ peacekeeping operations in the ensuing decades after the Second World War ended.  However, in July of 2014, due in part to long-time pressure applied by the U.S. and other Western allies, the government of Japan approved a reinterpretation of this clause to allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to defend other nations, although some Japanese politicians and citizens argued that this change was illegitimate or unconstitutional.  Then, in September of 2015, the Japanese National Diet made the reinterpretation of Article 9 official by passing several laws to allow Japanese military units to provide material support to allies engaged in combat.  Comments:  Despite these changes to the War Renunciation section of the Japanese Constitution, that historic clause represents a precedent internationally for the eventual end of not only all nation-state war but even all resort to the use of military force – a development that is necessary, along with the phasing-out of national sovereignty, and the transition to peaceful global sovereignty that must include full and universal democratic representation in a global parliament of all peoples, ethnicities, racial and cultural groupings of humanity.  Global military forces will be transitioned to a planetary defense component essential to peacefully exploring the solar system and defending our planet from threats such as diverting incoming asteroids.  A parallel and equally powerful precedent, along with the War Renunciation Clause, was the July 7, 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  Obviously, much more progress needs to be made before the era of armaments and war ends, but at least our species can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  (Sources:  “The Constitution of Japan (1947).”  Hanover Historical Texts Project.  https://history/hanover.edu/texts/1947con.html, Reuters. “Japan Takes Historic Step From Postwar Pacifism, Okays Fighting For Allies.” July 1, 2014 and Erik Slaven.  “Japan Enacts Major Changes to Its Self-Defense Laws.  Stars and Stripes.  Sept. 18, 2015. https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/japan-enacts-major-changes-to-its-self-defense-laws-1.3688783 all of which were accessed on April 17, 2018.)

    May 11, 1969 – On this date, one of the key components of the U.S. nuclear bomb making complex suffered a serious accident.  The sprawling Rocky Flats production facility, run by the Atomic Energy Commission’s contractor Dow Chemical Company, and its large buffer area which covered eleven square miles, located in Golden, Colorado about 16 miles northwest of downtown Denver, experienced a serious fire in Building 776-777 when five kilograms of plutonium ignited and spread from a containment area causing what was then the costliest industrial accident ever to occur in the United States.  It took two years to complete the clean-up of this toxic event which involved the dispersal of highly radioactive particles of plutonium 239-240, uranium, beryllium, a carcinogenic cleaning solvent called carbon tetrachloride, and other dangerous chemicals too numerous to list here.  This was possibly the first time that people living in and around Denver became aware of containment releases from the plant where it was later revealed that since 1952 workers had been fabricating nuclear weapons triggers called “pits,” which were, in turn, shipped to the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas to be incorporated into thermonuclear warheads.  Twenty years later, on June 6, 1989, FBI, Justice Department, and EPA representatives raided the Rocky Flats plant to investigate allegations of environmental crimes.  After large-scale public outcry, nuclear weapons production at the plant was stopped and clean-up of the site began in 1992.  Comments:  This is just one of dozens if not hundreds of serious accidents that have occurred in the bomb making factories of the nine nuclear weapons states and with a commitment by all or most of these nations to modernize and expand the production of their nuclear arsenals in the next 20-30 years, there is the need to strengthen growing opposition by global citizenry against the renewed Cold War II effort to build even more doomsday weapons.  Recently the Pentagon told the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that it must produce 80 new plutonium cores per year by 2030 just to sustain existing nuclear weapons and obviously even more “pits” consistent with a renewed nuclear modernization and expansion commitment made by both Presidents Obama and Trump.  But NNSA has responded that only Los Alamos National Laboratory is able now to produce the cores even though a Center for Public Integrity analysis found that there were not enough personnel able to safely handle plutonium at the laboratory.  This is just one of many related concerns that justify the logical conclusion that it is well past time to reduce and eliminate global nuclear arsenals rather than ratchet up the already high risks of nuclear war, deadly radioactive accidents, and further contamination of our fragile ecosystem.  (Sources:  David Brennan.  “U.S. Nukes Will Be Useless Without More Plutonium, Military Warns.”  Newsweek.  March 22, 2018, Government of the State of Colorado. “What is the History of Rocky Flats:  A Study of Rocky Flats Exposures.”  https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/HM_st-rocky-flats-exposures-study-history-of-site.pdf, and Laura Snider.  “Looking Back on Mother’s Day Fire at Rocky Flats.”  Boulder Daily Camera. May 10, 2009.)

    May 12, 2018 – “Two Minutes to Midnight: How Do We Move from Geopolitical Conflict to Nuclear Abolition?” a conference organized by the International Peace Bureau, Peace and Planet, the Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, American Friends Service Committee, Peace Action New York State, and Brooklyn for Peace will be held at the Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South & Thompson Street, in New York City. Speakers include Noam Chomsky, University of Arizona; Daniel Ellsberg; Christine Hong, UC-Santa Cruz and others.  Comments:  This conference’s subject matter is of utmost importance and its paramount topic should be routinely discussed in U.N. and other forums as well as in the U.S. and the other eight nuclear weapons states at regular conferences that include top military, political, and scientific participants as well as arms control and civil society activists.  The nuclear threat is growing due to large-scale nuclear modernization by the Nuclear Club members and thus the world is facing an increasing risk of the triggering of the nuclear doomsday machine through miscalculation, misperception, accident or unintentional causes, or the growing likelihood of a terrorist WMD event that might also trigger a larger nuclear catastrophe.  Even if humanity’s luck continues to hold out and we avoid such disasters (an increasingly unlikely scenario as each year passes, unfortunately), the growing radioactive threat caused by existing and new enrichment activities associated with a new generation of nuclear bomb making and the continued buildup of toxic nuclear wastes associated with military and civilian nuclear power plants, which contaminates the human gene pool as well as the larger ecosphere, makes the abolition of nuclear weapons and nuclear power the penultimate priority for the human species in the early 21st century.  (Source:  Anthony Wier and Abigail Stowe-Thurston, Editors.  “Nuclear Calendar.”  Friends Committee on National Legislation, April 2018. http://www2.fcnl.org/Nuclear/Calendar/index/php accessed April 17, 2018.)

    May 26, 1972 – On the same day that the U.S. and Soviet Union signed the SALT I Treaty that placed a ceiling on the number of offensive nuclear weapons, both Cold War antagonists also signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty which limited strategic defense launchers and interceptors.  A later July 3, 1974 ABM Treaty Protocol cut the number of ABM deployment areas permitted to each side from two to one and the number of launchers and interceptors from 200 to 100.  The SALT II Treaty signed in 1979 further reduced strategic offensive nuclear weapons.  Despite President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative proposal of March 23, 1983 and subsequent commitments to spend tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars on space- and land-based strategic defenses, the ABM Treaty survived and further strategic offensive reductions were mandated in the July 31, 1991 START Treaty and the January 3, 1993 START II agreement.  However, on Dec. 13, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the ABM Treaty and carried forward with this promise in 2002.  Although another offensive reduction treaty, New START, was signed by the U.S. and Russia in 2010, that treaty’s reductions have lapsed since February of this year.  Comments:  Due to missile defense developments by both Russia and the U.S. and its allies, especially the deployment of dozens of U.S. strategic defense interceptors in Alaska and California, as well as tactical missile defense systems deployed along the borders separating NATO countries and Russia, it appears that the lifting of restrictions on missile defenses, triggered by U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in 2002, has accelerated not only strategic defenses but also the strategic offensive arms race.  Comments:  In a March 1, 2018 address to the Russian Federal Assembly, President Vladimir Putin outlined the development of new Russian nuclear weapons systems including the Sarmat ICBM equipped with multiple warheads, an intercontinental undersea drone, new long-range cruise missiles and two hypersonic weapons – the Kinzhal air-launched cruise missile and the Avangard glide vehicle.  Putin specifically described the rationale for the weapons largely in terms of U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty and concern about U.S. missile defense systems.  In turn, American military and political leaders are demanding from Congress even more funding for strategic offensive and defensive weapons.  The arms race cycle continues and now without restrictions on defenses, even more money will be spent to fuel riskier strategic instability.  The only alternative is to end this 21st century race to nuclear Armageddon before it is too late. (Sources:  “Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet:  Ground-based Midcourse Defense.”  Jan. 12, 2018. https://mda.mil/global/documents/pdf/bmds.pdf, Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.” Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp, 2-4, 84-85, Kingston Reif.  “New Russian Weapons Raise Arms Race Fears.”  Arms Control Today. Arms Control Association.  April 2018.  https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2018-04/news-russian-weapons-raise-arms-race-fears, both websites accessed April 17, 2018.)

    May 28, 2000 – America’s Defense Monitor, a half-hour documentary PBS-TV series that premiered in 1987, released a new film, “Dark Cloud:  Our Strange Love Affair With the Bomb,” produced by the Center for Defense Information, a non-partisan and nonprofit organization and independent monitor of the Pentagon, founded in 1972, whose board of directors and staff included retired military officers (Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr.), former U.S. government officials (Philip Coyle, who served as assistant secretary of defense), and civilian experts (Dr. Bruce Blair, a former U.S. Air Force nuclear missile launch control officer).  This episode, as described in a press release, focused on, “Nukes as portable infantry weapons, Nukes for digging tunnels, Nuclear decontamination with a whisk broom.  Secret government films of the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s form the backdrop for this darkly entertaining exploration of America’s fascination with the Bomb.  At times, humorous, strange, and disturbing, these films reveal how the culture of nuclear weapons shaped American society during the Cold War, and how the advocates of nuclear culture sought to make atomic weapons a part of everyday life.  This show provides a valuable lesson in media literacy by exploring the nature of propaganda and deconstructing its messages.”  Comments:  Public acceptance and even affection for militarism and the myth that nuclear weapons have “kept the peace” and “made America great” is commonplace in 2018. Films and television programs increasingly focus on post-apocalyptic nuclear scenarios and even the language of officialdom is contaminated by militarism and love of the Bomb.  The term used for over a decade to describe changing U.S. Senate procedural rules to enable judicial and executive nominees to be confirmed with 51 votes, a simple majority, rather than 60 is termed, “the nuclear option.”  The good news is, as this television documentary proposed almost twenty years ago, through peace education and literacy, a growing number of denizens of our Pale Blue Dot are seeing war, doomsday weapons, and military speak as counterproductive to the long-term survival of our species.

    Late May-Early June 2018 – A hopeful breakthrough for peace on the Korean Peninsula may occur sometime in this time period when U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.  Essential precursor steps toward a permanent treaty ending the nearly seventy year old Korean Conflict were taken in March when Mr. Kim secretly visited Beijing, China and met with President Xi Jinping and when South Korean President Moon Jae-in proposed and Mr. Kim accepted an offer to meet Mr. Moon at Peace House, a South Korean building inside the truce village at Panmunjom on April 27th.  When the North Korean leader met with the Chinese President in March, Mr. Kim proposed “phased, synchronized moves toward denuclearization,” which is the same approach that saw negotiating successes as well as setbacks in past discussions with Washington.  Comments:  President Trump would be wise to accept the advice of 93-year old former President Jimmy Carter who helped prevent two wars during his tenure – a possible violent insurgency in Panama nipped in the bud by his push for the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 and another Mideast war between Egypt and Israel circumvented by his personal diplomacy culminating in the Camp David Accords of 1978.  The 39th President, who called President Trump’s selection of war hawk John Bolton to the post of National Security Adviser, “a disaster for our country,” nevertheless urged that Trump’s negotiators listen closely to the North Koreans for the core of their demands.  The best-selling author, Carter Center founder, and former peace envoy who travelled to Pyongyang to lay the groundwork for the 1994 Agreed Framework denuclearization deal signed by North Korea, delivered this specific advice to the 45th President, “What the North Koreans have wanted for a long time is just assurance confirmed by the Six Powers Agreement – with China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and so forth – that the U.S. will not attack North Korea as long as North Korea stays at peace with its neighbors.”  President Carter noted that this may require concessions by the U.S. including a draw-down of U.S. troop levels in South Korea or an agreement to forego annual military exercises conducted off the coast of North Korea.  Considering Mr. Trump’s past belligerent rhetoric toward Mr. Kim and vice versa, as well as the history of failed Korean negotiations, it seems unlikely that the result of the Trump-Kim meeting will be a resolution of long-standing issues, but it is obviously better for the two men to meet peacefully rather than mutually escalate past nuclear threats.  (Sources:  Susan Page. “Jimmy Carter Calls Trump’s Decision to Hire Bolton ‘A Disaster’ for Our Country.” USA Today. March 26, 2018. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/26/jimmy-carter-decries-donald-trump-decision, Choe Sang-Hun. “North and South Korea Set a Date for Summit Meeting at Border.  The New York Times. March 29, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/world/asia/north-korea-south-summit-border.html, and Anthony Wier and Abigail Stowe-Thurston, Editors.  “Nuclear Calendar.”  Friends Committee on National Legislation, April 2018. http://www2.fcnl.org/Nuclear/Calendar/index/php, all of which were accessed April 17, 2018.)