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  • Press Release: 2018 Nuclear Posture Review Released

    NUCLEAR AGE PEACE FOUNDATION

    For Immediate Release

    Contact:
    Rick Wayman
    (805) 696-5159; rwayman@napf.org

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

     

    2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review Released

    Trump administration plan calls for smaller nuclear weapons, making nuclear war far more likely.

     

    February 2, 2018 –The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), released today, represents a reckless realignment of an already dangerous U.S. nuclear policy.

    The review specifically calls for the development of new, low-yield nuclear weapons that have lower explosive force. Many experts warn that such smaller weapons would blur the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, representing a significant and dangerous increase in the likelihood of their use.

    Rick Wayman, Director of Programs at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, stated, “Once nuclear weapons – of any size – are introduced into an armed conflict, no one can guarantee that the cycle of escalation would end. The terrifying reality is that nuclear weapons can end human civilization as we know it. Every person on the planet should be outraged that the Trump administration threatens their future in this way.”

    In another important policy shift, the Trump Nuclear Posture Review would permit the U.S. to use nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of non-nuclear attacks on the United States, including cyber attacks and attacks on American infrastructure. The review seeks to deter nuclear war by making it easier to start nuclear war.

    Last year, the price tag for a 30-year makeover of the U.S. nuclear arsenal was estimated at $1.2 trillion. Analysts say the expanded plan put forth in the Trump NPR review would push the cost vastly higher.

    Just last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight. This is thirty seconds closer to the metaphorical “point of annihilation” and is the closest to midnight the clock has been since the end of the Cold War. Clearly The Trump Doctrine is equivalent to winding the Doomsday Clock in the wrong direction.

    The review does not contain a single reference to Article VI of the U.N. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which obligates the U.S. and the other nuclear-armed nations signatories to the treaty to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament. This posture review signals such a radical and dangerous shift in U.S. nuclear policy direction NATO states will be forced to re-evaluate their positions to not automatically accept and support the U.S. in this changed nuclear policy.

    World leaders now face a clear choice: support the Trump Doctrine and lock the world into a likely nuclear war, or join the rational world in moving towards the elimination of all nuclear weapons. The world’s international security framework must not rely on nuclear weapons.

    David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation said, “The prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons is the only rational choice. World leaders must now take the right step and sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that opened for signatures at the United Nations on September 20, 2017. By doing so, they would lead the world away from almost certain annihilation and toward the worthy goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and creating a safer and more secure world for all of humanity.”

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    If you would like to interview David Krieger or Rick Wayman, please call (805) 696-5159.

    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 www.wagingpeace.org.

     

  • February: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    February 1, 2006 – In one of the twenty known incidents of the attempted illicit sale of Russian bomb-grade fissile material in the last 25 years, especially since the breakup of the Soviet Union, law enforcement officials arrested a number of suspects in Tbilisi, Georgia, a former Soviet republic, on this date, for the attempted sale of 79.5 grams of highly enriched uranium to one or more buyers, who were in actuality undercover security forces.  In April 2015, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Deputy Director Anne Harrington testified at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Strategic Forces that, “Of the roughly 20 documented seizures of nuclear explosive materials since 1992, all have come out of the former Soviet Union.”  Despite recent assurances from Rosatom, the state-owned corporation that runs Russia’s nuclear energy and weapons plants, that their nuclear materials, “are always strictly controlled” and accounted for, a Center for Public Integrity November 2015 investigative report concluded that, “In fact, some 99 percent of the world’s weapons-grade materials have been secured.  But one percent or more is still out there, and it amounts to several thousand pounds that could be acquired by any one of several terrorist organizations.”  Comments:  Although some significant progress in securing and protecting nuclear materials from theft or diversion has been allegedly confirmed by Russia and other Nuclear Club nations at the four biennial nuclear security summits (2010-16), much more needs to be accomplished in the U.N. and other international fora, as well as bilaterally by the Trump and Putin administrations, to prevent the use of fissile materials in dirty bombs or primitive small-yield fission weapons whether the material diverted comes from civilian nuclear plants or military nuclear weapons facilities.  In addition to concerns about the resulting mass casualties and short- and long-term radioactive contamination from such a catastrophe, there is also the frightening possibility that in times of crisis, such an attack might inadvertently trigger nuclear retaliation or even precipitate a nuclear exchange.  (Source: Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey Smith. “The Fuel for a Nuclear Bomb is in the Hands of an Unknown Black Marketeer from Russia, U.S. Officials Say.”  Center for Public Integrity, Nov.12, 2015 reprinted in Courier: The Stanley Foundation Newsletter, Number 86, Spring 2016, pp. 7-14.)

    February 5, 1987 – The Soviet Union ended a nuclear testing moratorium due to continued U.S. testing but expressed a willingness to revisit such a moratorium if the Americans followed suit.  Forty-four months later, on October 24, 1990, the Soviets conducted their last of an estimated total of 715 nuclear explosive tests that began in 1949.  The French, British, and Americans later committed to end their testing programs (the last U.S. test was Sept. 23, 1992) and although the Russian Duma ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (signed by the U.S., Russia, and more than sixty other nations on Sept. 24, 1996) on April 21, 2000, the U.S. Congress has failed to do so since the Senate rejection of the CTBT by a vote of 51-48 on Oct. 13, 1999.  Comments:  The testing of over 2,050 nuclear devices 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 a 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.  President Trump should convince the Senate to ratify the CTBT, which would increase international pressure on North Korea to cease their nuclear testing program.  (Source:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.”  Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 13-15; 19; 22.)

    February 11, 2004 – Bruce Blair’s Nuclear Column on the Center for Defense Information website which featured an article titled, “Keeping Presidents in the Dark – Episode 1:  The Case of the Missing Permissive Action Links,” was published on this date.  Along with information provided in Daniel Ellsberg’s new book “The Doomsday Machine:  Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” we learned that after John H. Rubel, deputy director of defense research and engineering, discovered that operators of Minuteman nuclear-tipped ICBMs had circumvented a design feature to protect against a possibly unauthorized launch of World War III by a single launch control center, he urged then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to require an electronic lock on the missiles.  Decades later, a former Minuteman launch control officer and now prominent nuclear weapons expert and scholar, Dr. Bruce Blair, notified a retired McNamara, “…that the locks had been installed, but everyone knew the combination.  The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the ‘locks’ to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard…SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders.  And so, the ‘secret unlock code’ during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at 00000000.”  Daniel Ellsberg, famously known for his release of the Pentagon Papers to the media in 1971, who earlier in his career served as a Rand Corporation analyst, a consultant to the Pentagon and White House, and drafted McNamara’s plans for nuclear war in 1961, noted that, “…the Joint Chiefs of Staff tolerated the shortcomings of the (nuclear command and) control system (in order) to put up fierce and prolonged resistance to measures that would tighten control of nuclear weapons up and down the line.  That was their distrust, above all in a crisis, of the judgement of civilian commanders and their staff and advisors, especially their willingness to launch nuclear attacks when military commanders believed them to be urgently necessary.  That distrust had emerged under Harry Truman during the Korean War and intensified under Eisenhower (both presidents vetoed the use of nuclear weapons in Korea and in other crises)…It was to become even more intense under JFK and McNamara.”  Comments:  Today serious concerns still exist on how to prevent the unauthorized, accidental, or irrational use of nuclear weapons and unfortunately not much has changed, in terms of U.S. nuclear policy, since the early decades of the Nuclear Age as Ellsberg explained, “The basic elements of American readiness for nuclear war remain today what they were almost sixty years ago:  Thousands of nuclear weapons remain on hair-trigger alert…The declared official rationale for such a system…the supposed need to deter…an aggressive Russian first strike…That widely believed public rationale is a deliberate deception…The nature, scope, and posture of our strategic nuclear forces has always been shaped by the requirements of quite different purposes:  to attempt to limit the damage to the U.S. from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a U.S. first strike against the U.S.S.R. or Russia.  This capability is, in particular, intended to strengthen the credibility of U.S. threats to initiate limited nuclear attacks, or escalate them – U.S. threats of ‘first use’ – to prevail in regional, initially non-nuclear conflicts involving Soviet or Russian forces and their allies.”  (Sources:  Daniel Ellsberg. “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.” New York:  Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 12, 61-63 and Bruce Blair’s 2004 article is available at http://www.webarchive.org/web/20120511191600/http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.cfm)

    February 16, 1904 – George F. Kennan, a U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union who became famous for his “Mr. X” July 1947 article in Foreign Affairs magazine titled, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” that recommended the policy of “containment” rather than war with America’s former World War II ally, was born on this date.  The Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study at  Princeton University for six decades, who passed away on March 17, 2005, wrote several books but one of the most prominent and relevant in the Nuclear Age and beyond was his 1982 work, “The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age.”  In this book, Kennan noted that, “War itself as a means of settling differences…will have to be in some ways ruled out; and with it there will have to be dismantled the greater part of the vast military establishments now maintained…the recognition that the weapons of this age – even the so-called conventional ones – are of such great destructiveness that there can be no clear line between the discriminate ones and the weapons of mass destruction.”  Comments:  Even a war fought in this technologically advanced 21st century, without resorting to the use of weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons, have had devastating human, environmental, societal, and financial impacts as have been proven in many conventional wars fought since World War II.  The use of depleted uranium munitions, phosphorous bombs, modern precision-guided weapons such as Hellfire missiles, cluster bombs, and many other devices such as the Assad regime’s use of barrel bombs have not only killed and injured large numbers of combatants and civilians, but also caused cancers and other long-term mortal diseases.  It also seems increasingly likely that when a regime’s survival is at stake, nuclear weapons will also likely be used.  Therefore not only must we reduce dramatically and eliminate nuclear weapons, as well as enforce existing treaty prohibitions against the use of chemical and biological weapons, but we must also redouble global efforts to make war itself illegal, untenable, and obsolete as a means of settling disputes.  In return, our global civilization will prosper as trillions of dollars in military expenditures are redirected to fighting climate change, eliminating poverty and malnutrition, providing a free education to every person, finding cures for cancer and other chronic diseases, and insuring the survival of the human race indefinitely.  (Source:  George F. Kennan.  “The Nuclear Delusion:  Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age.” New York: Pantheon, 1982 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1982-12-01/nuclear-delusion-soviet-american-relations-atomic-age accessed Jan. 20, 2018.)

    February 20, 1950 – A New York Times article published on this date titled, “Second Capital Urged in Atom Era: Underground Plan to Be Broached,” reported that Congressmen Chet Holifield and John Rankin, cognizant that a recent Atomic Energy Commission report concluded that three atomic bombs of the yield dropped on Hiroshima would “tear the guts out of Washington,” proposed creating an alternative seat of government located possibly in an underground cave such as Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave.  Ten months later on Dec. 1, 1950, President Truman signed Executive Order 10186 establishing the Federal Civil Defense Administration (which in 1958 merged with the military’s Office of Defense Mobilization to become a new agency, the Office of Defense and Civil Mobilization, which eventually became the Federal Emergency Management Agency).  Comments:  For almost seventy years, the U.S. and the other eight nuclear weapons states have spent many billions of dollars on programs to preserve their nations’ leadership or at least a representative sample of such leadership in the midst of a nuclear or WMD attack.  Over several decades, the U.S. government built a top secret Congressional bomb shelter under The Greenbrier resort hotel in West Virginia and secret bunkers for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at Raven Rock near Camp David, Maryland, Mount Weather, Virginia and at dozens of other locations.  A 24-hour airborne command post dubbed Looking Glass was created along with other extensive means of maintaining Continuity of Government (COG) and Continuity of Operations (COOP).  The rest of us, the vast majority of American and global populations were left to fend for ourselves, to find a large public shelter or build our own private bunker.  But the dirty little secret, long indisputably known by all thinking persons around the world, is that surviving a nuclear war is virtually impossible, an unviable option when we consider that even a so-called “limited” nuclear war can destroy global agriculture and result in the starvation of billions.  Now after the false “incoming ballistic missile” alerts in Hawaii on Jan. 13th and in Japan on Jan. 16th, as well as the Center for Disease Control’s recent public relations boondoggle of informing Americans what to do in a nuclear war, it seems clear that continuing to waste even more of our global treasure on not only preparing for nuclear war but surviving such a unprecedented catastrophe is illogical and counterproductive.  This is obviously yet another reason why global citizenry should continue to pressure the leaders of the nine nuclear weapons states to reverse course, eliminate these doomsday weapons, and redouble international efforts to demilitarize the planet.  (Source:  Garrett M. Graff. “Raven Rock:  The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself – While the Rest of Us Die.”  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017, p. 31.)

    February 29, 2012 – A supposed breakthrough occurred on this date when U.S. negotiators convinced those from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) to sign on to an agreement in which all North Korean missile and nuclear testing would be suspended in exchange for extensive food aid assistance (targeting the poorest, most disadvantaged population groups in that nation).  However, somewhat predictably and not unlike a plethora of other agreements between the U.S. and its allies and the North Korean regime over the last several decades, this deal collapsed when a satellite launched by the North Koreans in April of 2012 was interpreted not as a commercial scientific advance, but as another step towards militarizing its ballistic missile capabilities.  Comments:  What many politicians, military leaders, arms control experts, and a growing segment of the global public see as a top U.S. priority – ending the Korean War with a peaceful, nonmilitary solution that not only demilitarizes but unites the two Koreas, rebuilding the North’s economy and redoubling its technological and commercial ties with Western and other nations – is apparently not a priority of the Trump Administration.  The 45th President’s extreme rhetoric and military-focused responses have ratcheted up tensions on the Korean peninsula and throughout Northeast Asia since he took office.  However, recent bilateral successes by the two Koreas, including peaceful cooperation in the upcoming Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, hold promise, long-term, for a peaceful end to the seven-decade long Korean Conflict.  (Sources: Suzanne DiMaggio. “Learn from Iran, Engage North Korea,” pp. 37-40 in Tom Z. Collina and Geoff Wilson, editors. “10 Big Nuclear Ideas for the Next President.”  Ploughshares Fund Study Report No. 2, The Ploughshares Fund, November 2016 and Steven Lee Myers and Choe Sang Hun.  “North Koreans Agree to Freeze Nuclear Work; U.S. to Give Aid.”  New York Times.  Feb. 29, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/world/asia/us-says-north-korea-agrees-to-curb-nuclear-work.html accessed Jan. 20, 2018.)

  • Act Now: No Unconstitutional Strike Against North Korea

    Bills currently before the House of Representatives and the Senate aim to stop an unconstitutional attack against North Korea.

    The bills, H.R. 4837 and S.2016, would prohibit the president from launching a first strike against North Korea without congressional approval. The bills also call on the president to “initiate negotiations designed to achieve a diplomatic agreement to halt and eventually reverse North Korea’s nuclear and missile pursuits.”

    The bill in the House currently has 65 co-sponsors, while the bill in the Senate has only four senators. More are urgently needed. Please take a moment to write your elected officials about H.R. 4837 and S.2016.

    If your representatives are already co-sponsors, your message template will be thanking them for having taken action.

    If your representatives are not yet co-sponsors, your message template will ask them to co-sponsor this important legislation.

    Click here to take action.

  • The Hidden Legacy of the Runit Dome

    As a third-year college student, I have struggled my way through enough United States history courses to know that our government has not always acted in the most benevolent of ways in the past, particularly when dealing with smaller, vulnerable countries. I have always liked to think that most of these transgressions, though unacceptable, are at the very least acknowledged by following generations of leadership, and reparations are paid or apologies extended to affected groups. Yet a recent episode of Australia’s ABC TV series Foreign Correspondent, titled “The Dome”, exposes the lasting effects of U.S. Cold War nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, and puts a spotlight on our government’s decades of negligence and disregard for human and environmental well-being in the Pacific—all justified by the need for nuclear dominance.

    The Marshall Islands, a scattering of over 1000 islands and islets halfway between Hawaii and Australia, was ground zero of U.S. nuclear testing after WW2— over 67 nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons were detonated there between 1946-1958. The impacts of these tests on the Marshallese people remain tangible to this day: many were forced into permanent exile from their home islands, which remain uninhabitable due to high radiation levels, and elevated rates of cancer resulting from radioactive fallout continue to plague generations. The trauma from these experiences has been seared into the cultural memory of Marshallese society, and a sense of injustice persists through the generations. One of the episode’s poignant scenes shows schoolchildren singing together: “this is our land, gone are the days we live in fear, fear of bombs, guns, and nuclear [weapons]”.

    Yet decades after the end of U.S.-led nuclear tests in its backyard, the Marshall Islands remain threatened by the equally irresponsible and immoral actions of the world’s biggest superpower. The episode brings us to an island called Runit in the Enewetok atoll. On the island, tons upon tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste sit hidden away under a huge concrete dome. As the episode uncovers, in order to quickly and cheaply dispose of the highly radioactive waste material from its years of testing, the U.S. military dumped the toxic material (including hundreds of chunks of Plutonium) into a crater from a test explosion on the island, hastily covered it with a layer of concrete— and simply left. U.S. officials claimed that “the dome” would hold for a century or more.

    Over the years, time and nature have caught up to what was meant to be a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Built at sea-level over the porous atoll floor, the dome cannot stop seawater seeping in from below with the rise and fall of the tide, leaking potentially radioactive material into the surrounding waters. An even greater threat, cracks and wear on the concrete from years of weather and seawater erosion place the dome at risk of being blown open by a bad storm or typhoon, which would result in a widespread dispersion of nuclear waste across the Pacific. This fact has been acknowledged even by the U.S. government in recent years.

    Sadly, the Marshallese locals are not the only group to suffer from this negligence and mismanagement. The crew of U.S. soldiers who built the dome, told that they were finishing their deployments in a “tropical paradise”, were sent to Runit island without foreknowledge of the radioactive toxins on the island, or the nature of their mission. Working for months building the dome and filling it with the radioactive waste, they shockingly were not issued any manner of safety equipment. As a result, a large proportion of the crew have since developed medical complications such as cancers and reproductive issues, and many have died young. Yet the U.S. still refuses to acknowledge their maladies as resulting from radioactive exposure, and has provided no assistance in covering the staggering medical costs associated with treatment.

    It is outrageous enough that generations of Marshallese people and an outfit of our own soldiers stationed there have had to suffer such injustices as forced relocation, medical complications due to radioactive exposure, and overt exploitation and silencing by the U.S. Yet the mess remains unaddressed, and the emerging Marshallese youth face even greater threats to their way of life. To them, the crater full of radioactive material is the least of their worries. Rising sea levels associated with climate change (caused largely by the negligence of the world’s wealthiest and most privileged nations, like the U.S.) may leave 75% of the islands inundated by 2100. This would decimate the local economy and wipe out a huge proportion of the country’s already limited agricultural land. It also greatly heightens the risk of widespread nuclear contamination occurring from leakage in the dome.

    There is a telling lack of public knowledge and discourse around the U.S. legacy of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands in the United States. The American media has had little to say about either the history or future consequences of the Runit Dome. It seems that as long as the dome is not in our own backyard, we don’t care where it is or who it effects. To the Marshallese, it represents the connection between the Nuclear Age and the Climate Change Age, and puts on full display one of the biggest culprits of both: American apathy. Most didn’t know, act, or care enough to stop nuclear testing in the Pacific during the Cold War, just as many of us don’t know, act, or care enough to halt the cascading effects of climate change today. We must heed the lesson of Runit Dome— a lesson of injustice, negligence, and complicity— and prevent our planet’s future from being doomed by the same indifference. We must stay informed about these issues and others like it, and together hold our government accountable for its actions, keeping in mind how they affect our precious planet and all of its people.

    Watch the episode “The Dome” here: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/the-dome/9198340

  • The Deterrence Myth

    In his classic The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (1989), Lawrence Freedman, the dean of British military historians and strategists, concluded: ‘The Emperor Deterrence may have no clothes, but he is still Emperor.’ Despite his nakedness, this emperor continues to strut about, receiving deference he doesn’t deserve, while endangering the entire world. Nuclear deterrence is an idea that became a potentially lethal ideology, one that remains influential despite having been increasingly discredited.

    After the United States’ nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, war changed. Until then, the overriding purpose of military forces had ostensibly been to win wars. But according to the influential US strategist Bernard Brodie writing in 1978: ‘From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.’ Thus, nuclear deterrence was born, a seemingly rational arrangement by which peace and stability were to arise by the threat of mutually assured destruction (MAD, appropriately enough). Winston Churchill described it in 1955 with characteristic vigour: ‘Safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.’ Importantly, deterrence became not only a purported strategy, but the very grounds on which governments justified nuclear weapons themselves. Every government that now possesses nuclear weapons claims that they deter attacks by their threat of catastrophic retaliation.

    Even a brief examination, however, reveals that deterrence is not remotely as compelling a principle as its reputation suggests. In his novel The Ambassadors (1903), Henry James described a certain beauty as ‘a jewel brilliant and hard’, at once twinkling and trembling, adding that ‘what seemed all surface one moment seemed all depth the next’. The public has been bamboozled by the shiny surface appearance of deterrence, with its promise of strength, security and safety. But what has been touted as profound strategic depth crumbles with surprising ease when subjected to critical scrutiny.

    Let’s start by considering the core of deterrence theory: that it has worked. Advocates of nuclear deterrence insist that we should thank it for the fact that a third world war has been avoided, even when tensions between the two superpowers – the US and the USSR – ran high. Some supporters even maintain that deterrence set the stage for the fall of the Soviet Union and the defeat of Communism. In this telling, the West’s nuclear deterrent prevented the USSR from invading western Europe, and delivered the world from the threat of Communist tyranny.

    There are, however, compelling arguments suggesting that the US and the former Soviet Union avoided world war for several possible reasons, most notably because neither side wanted to go to war. Indeed, the US and Russia never fought a war prior to the nuclear age. Singling out nuclear weapons as the reason why the Cold War never became hot is somewhat like saying that a junkyard car, without an engine or wheels, never sped off the lot only because no one turned the key. Logically speaking, there is no way to demonstrate that nuclear weapons kept the peace during the Cold War, or that they do so now.

    Perhaps peace prevailed between the two superpowers simply because they had no quarrel that justified fighting a terribly destructive war, even a conventional one. There is no evidence, for example, that the Soviet leadership ever contemplated trying to conquer western Europe, much less that it was restrained by the West’s nuclear arsenal. Post facto arguments – especially negative ones – might be the currency of pundits, but are impossible to prove, and offer no solid ground for evaluating a counterfactual claim, conjecturing why something has not happened. In colloquial terms, if a dog does not bark in the night, can we say with certainty that no one walked by the house? Deterrence enthusiasts are like the woman who sprayed perfume on her lawn every morning. When a perplexed neighbour asked about this strange behaviour, she replied: ‘I do it to keep the elephants away.’ The neighbour protested: ‘But there aren’t any elephants within 10,000 miles of here,’ whereupon the perfume-sprayer replied: ‘You see, it works!’ We should not congratulate our leaders, or deterrence theory, much less nuclear weapons, for keeping the peace.

    What we can say is that, as of this morning, those with the power to exterminate life have not done so. But this is not altogether comforting, and history is no more reassuring. The duration of ‘nuclear peace’, from the Second World War to the end of the Cold War, lasted less than five decades. More than 20 years separated the First and Second World Wars; before that, there had been more than 40 years of relative peace between the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1871) and the First World War (1914), and 55 years between the Franco-Prussian War and Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo (1815). Even in war-prone Europe, decades of peace have not been so rare. Each time, when peace ended and the next war began, the war involved weapons available at the time – which, for the next big one, would likely include nuclear weapons. The only way to make sure that nuclear weapons are not used is to make sure that there are no such weapons. There is certainly no reason to think that the presence of nuclear weapons will prevent their use. The first step to ensuring that humans do not unleash nuclear holocaust might be to show that the Emperor Deterrence has no clothes – which would then open the possibility of replacing the illusion with something more suitable.

    It is possible that the post-1945 US-Soviet peace came ‘through strength’, but that need not imply nuclear deterrence. It is also undeniable that the presence of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert capable of reaching each other’s homeland in minutes has made both sides edgy. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – when, by all accounts, the world came closer to nuclear war than at any other time – is not testimony to the effectiveness of deterrence: the crisis occurred because of nuclear weapons. It is more likely that we have been spared nuclear war not because of deterrence but in spite of it.

    Even when possessed by just one side, nuclear weapons have not deterred other forms of war. The Chinese, Cuban, Iranian and Nicaraguan revolutions all took place even though a nuclear-armed US backed the overthrown governments. Similarly, the US lost the Vietnam War, just as the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan, despite both countries not only possessing nuclear weapons, but also more and better conventional arms than their adversaries. Nor did nuclear weapons aid Russia in its unsuccessful war against Chechen rebels in 1994-96, or in 1999-2000, when Russia’s conventional weapons devastated the suffering Chechen Republic. Nuclear weapons did not help the US achieve its goals in Iraq or Afghanistan, which have become expensive catastrophic failures for the country with the world’s most advanced nuclear weapons. Moreover, despite its nuclear arsenal, the US remains fearful of domestic terrorist attacks, which are more likely to be made with nuclear weapons than be deterred by them.

    In short, it is not legitimate to argue that nuclear weapons have deterred any sort of war, or that they will do so in the future. During the Cold War, each side engaged in conventional warfare: the Soviets, for example, in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979-89); the Russians in Chechnya (1994-96; 1999-2009), Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014-present), as well as Syria (2015-present); and the US in Korea (1950-53), Vietnam (1955-75), Lebanon (1982), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989-90), the Persian Gulf (1990-91), the former Yugoslavia (1991-99), Afghanistan (2001-present), and Iraq (2003-present), to mention just a few cases.

    Nor have their weapons deterred attacks upon nuclear armed states by non-nuclear opponents. In 1950, China stood 14 years from developing and deploying its own nuclear weapons, whereas the US had a well-developed atomic arsenal. Nonetheless, as the Korean War’s tide was shifting dramatically against the North, that US nuclear arsenal did not inhibit China from sending more than 300,000 soldiers across the Yalu River, resulting in the stalemate on the Korean peninsula that divides it to this day, and has resulted in one of the world’s most dangerous unresolved stand-offs.

    In 1956, the nuclear-armed United Kingdom warned non-nuclear Egypt to refrain from nationalising the Suez Canal. To no avail: the UK, France and Israel ended up invading Sinai with conventional forces. In 1982, Argentina attacked the British-held Falkland Islands, even though the UK had nuclear weapons and Argentina did not.

    Following the US-led invasion in 1991, conventionally armed Iraq was not deterred from lobbing Scud missiles at nuclear-armed Israel, which did not retaliate, although it could have used its nuclear weapons to vaporise Baghdad. It is hard to imagine how doing so would have benefited anyone. Obviously, US nuclear weapons did not deter the terrorist attacks on the US of 11 September 2001, just as the nuclear arsenals of the UK and France have not prevented repeated terrorist attacks on those countries.

    Deterrence, in short, does not deter. The pattern is deep and geographically widespread. Nuclear-armed France couldn’t prevail over the non-nuclear Algerian National Liberation Front. The US nuclear arsenal didn’t inhibit North Korea from seizing a US intelligence-gathering vessel, the USS Pueblo, in 1968. Even today, this boat remains in North Korean hands. US nukes didn’t enable China to get Vietnam to end its invasion of Cambodia in 1979. Nor did US nuclear weapons stop Iranian Revolutionary Guards from capturing US diplomats and holding them hostage (1979-81), just as fear of US nuclear weapons didn’t empower the US and its allies to force Iraq to retreat from Kuwait without a fight in 1990.

    In Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (2017), the political scientists Todd Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann examined 348 territorial disputes occurring between 1919 and 1995. They used statistical analysis to see whether nuclear-armed states were more successful than conventional countries in coercing their adversaries during territorial disputes. They weren’t. Not only that, but nuclear weapons didn’t embolden those who own them to escalate demands; if anything, such countries were somewhat less successful in getting their way. In some cases, the analysis is almost comical. Thus, among the very few cases in which threats from a nuclear-armed country were coded as having compelled an opponent was the US insistence, in 1961, that the Dominican Republic hold democratic elections following the assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo, as well as the US demand, in 1994, following a Haitian military coup, that the Haitian colonels restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. In 1974-75, nuclear China forced non-nuclear Portugal to surrender its claim to Macau. These examples were included because the authors honestly sought to consider all cases in which a nuclear-armed country got its way vis-à-vis a non-nuclear one. But no serious observer would attribute the capitulation of Portugal or the Dominican Republic to the nuclear weapons of China or the US.

    All of this also suggests that the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran or North Korea is unlikely to enable these countries to coerce others, whether their ‘targets’ are armed with nuclear or conventional weapons.

    It is one thing to conclude that nuclear deterrence hasn’t necessarily deterred, and hasn’t provided coercive power – but its extraordinary risks are even more discrediting.

    First, deterrence via nuclear weapons lacks credibility. A police officer armed with a backpack nuclear weapon would be unlikely to deter a robber: ‘Stop in the name of the law, or I’ll blow us all up!’ Similarly, during the Cold War, NATO generals lamented that towns in West Germany were less than two kilotons apart – which meant that defending Europe with nuclear weapons would destroy it, and so the claim that the Red Army would be deterred by nuclear means was literally incredible. The result was the elaboration of smaller, more accurate tactical weapons that would be more usable and, thus, whose employment in a crisis would be more credible. But deployed weapons that are more usable, and thus more credible as deterrents, are more liable to be used.

    Second, deterrence requires that each side’s arsenal remains invulnerable to attack, or at least that such an attack would be prevented insofar as a potential victim retained a ‘second-strike’ retaliatory capability, sufficient to prevent such an attack in the first place. Over time, however, nuclear missiles have become increasingly accurate, raising concerns about the vulnerability of these weapons to a ‘counterforce’ strike. In brief, nuclear states are increasingly able to target their adversary’s nuclear weapons for destruction. In the perverse argot of deterrence theory, this is called counterforce vulnerability, with ‘vulnerability’ referring to the target’s nuclear weapons, not its population. The clearest outcome of increasingly accurate nuclear weapons and the ‘counterforce vulnerability’ component of deterrence theory is to increase the likelihood of a first strike, while also increasing the danger that a potential victim, fearing such an event, might be tempted to pre-empt with its own first strike. The resulting situation – in which each side perceives a possible advantage in striking first – is dangerously unstable.

    Third, deterrence theory assumes optimal rationality on the part of decision-makers. It presumes that those with their fingers on the nuclear triggers are rational actors who will also remain calm and cognitively unimpaired under extremely stressful conditions. It also presumes that leaders will always retain control over their forces and that, moreover, they will always retain control over their emotions as well, making decisions based solely on a cool calculation of strategic costs and benefits. Deterrence theory maintains, in short, that each side will scare the pants off the other with the prospect of the most hideous, unimaginable consequences, and will then conduct itself with the utmost deliberate and precise rationality. Virtually everything known about human psychology suggests that this is absurd.

    In Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (1941), Rebecca West noted that: ‘Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our 90s and die in peace …’ It requires no arcane wisdom to know that people often act out of misperceptions, anger, despair, insanity, stubbornness, revenge, pride and/or dogmatic conviction. Moreover, in certain situations – as when either side is convinced that war is inevitable, or when the pressures to avoid losing face are especially intense – an irrational act, including a lethal one, can appear appropriate, even unavoidable. When he ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese defence minister observed that: ‘Sometimes it is necessary to close one’s eyes and jump off the platform of the Kiyomizu Temple [a renowned suicide spot].’ During the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany wrote in the margin of a government document that: ‘Even if we are destroyed, England at least will lose India.’ While in his bunker, during the final days of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler ordered what he hoped would be the total destruction of Germany, because he felt that Germans had ‘failed’ him.

    Consider, as well, a US president who shows signs of mental illness, and whose statements and tweets are frighteningly consistent with dementia or genuine psychosis. National leaders – nuclear-armed or not – aren’t immune to mental illness. Yet, deterrence theory presumes otherwise.

    Finally, there is just no way for civilian or military leaders to know when their country has accumulated enough nuclear firepower to satisfy the requirement of having an ‘effective deterrent’. For example, if one side is willing to be annihilated in a counterattack, it simply cannot be deterred, no matter the threatened retaliation. Alternatively, if one side is convinced of the other’s implacable hostility, or of its presumed indifference to loss of life, no amount of weaponry can suffice. Not only that, but so long as accumulating weapons makes money for defence contractors, and so long as designing, producing and deploying new ‘generations’ of nuclear stuff advances careers, the truth about deterrence theory will remain obscured. Even the sky is not the limit; militarists want to put weapons in outer space.

    Insofar as nuclear weapons also serve symbolic, psychological needs, by demonstrating the technological accomplishments of a nation and thus conveying legitimacy to otherwise insecure leaders and countries, then, once again, there is no rational way to establish the minimum (or cap the maximum) size of one’s arsenal. At some point, additional detonations nonetheless come up against the law of diminishing returns, or as Winston Churchill pointed out, they simply ‘make the rubble bounce’.

    In addition, ethical deterrence is an oxymoron. Theologians know that a nuclear war could never meet so-called ‘just war’ criteria. In 1966, the Second Vatican Council concluded: ‘Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their populations is a crime against God and man itself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.’ And in a pastoral letter in 1983, the US Catholic bishops added: ‘This condemnation, in our judgment, applies even to the retaliatory use of weapons striking enemy cities after our own have already been struck.’ They continued that, if something is immoral to do, then it is also immoral to threaten. In a message to the 2014 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, Pope Francis declared that: ‘Nuclear deterrence and the threat of mutually assured destruction cannot be the basis of an ethics of fraternity and peaceful coexistence among peoples and states.’

    The United Methodist Council of Bishops go further than their Catholic counterparts, concluding in 1986 that: ‘Deterrence must no longer receive the churches’ blessing, even as a temporary warrant for the maintenance of nuclear weapons.’ In The Just War (1968), the Protestant ethicist Paul Ramsey asked his readers to imagine that traffic accidents in a particular city had suddenly been reduced to zero, after which it was found that everyone had been required to strap a newborn infant to the bumper of every car.

    Perhaps the most frightening thing about nuclear deterrence is its many paths to failure. Contrary to what is widely assumed, the least likely is a ‘bolt out of the blue’ (BOOB) attack. Meanwhile, there are substantial risks associated with escalated conventional war, accidental or unauthorised use, irrational use (although it can be argued that any use of nuclear weapons would be irrational) or false alarms, which have happened with frightening regularity, and could lead to ‘retaliation’ against an attack that hadn’t happened. There have also been numerous ‘broken arrow’ accidents – accidental launching, firing, theft or loss of a nuclear weapon – as well as circumstances in which such events as a flock of geese, a ruptured gas pipeline or faulty computer codes have been interpreted as a hostile missile launch.

    The above describes only some of the inadequacies and outright dangers posed by deterrence, the doctrinal fulcrum that manipulates nuclear hardware, software, deployments, accumulation and escalation. Undoing the ideology – verging on theology – of deterrence won’t be easy, but neither is living under the threat of worldwide annihilation. As the poet T S Eliot once wrote, unless you are in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? And when it comes to nuclear deterrence, we’re all in over our heads.

  • Exchange of New Year Greetings

    Your Excellencies,

    Ladies and Gentlemen,

    Our meeting today is a welcome tradition that allows me, in the enduring joy of the Christmas season, to offer you my personal best wishes for the New Year just begun, and to express my closeness and affection to the peoples you represent.  I thank the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, His Excellency Armindo Fernandes do Espírito Santo Vieira, Ambassador of Angola, for his respectful greeting on behalf of the entire Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See.  I offer a particular welcome to the non-resident Ambassadors, whose numbers have increased following the establishment last May of diplomatic relations with the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.  I likewise greet the growing number of Ambassadors resident in Rome, which now includes the Ambassador of the Republic of South Africa.  I would like in a special way to remember the late Ambassador of Colombia, Guillermo León Escobar-Herrán, who passed away just a few days before Christmas.  I thank all of you for your continuing helpful contacts with the Secretariat of State and the other Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, which testify to the interest of the international community in the Holy See’s mission and the work of the Catholic Church in your respective countries.  This is also the context for the Holy See’s pactional activities, which last year saw the signing, in February, of the Framework Agreement with the Republic of the Congo, and, in August, of the Agreement between the Secretariat of State and the Government of the Russian Federation enabling the holders of diplomatic passports to travel without a visa.

    In its relations with civil authorities, the Holy See seeks only to promote the spiritual and material well-being of the human person and to pursue the common good.  The Apostolic Journeys that I made during the course of the past year to Egypt, Portugal, Colombia, Myanmar and Bangladesh were expressions of this concern.  I travelled as a pilgrim to Portugal on the centenary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, to celebrate the canonization of the shepherd children Jacinta and Francisco Marto.  There I witnessed the enthusiastic and joyful faith that the Virgin Mary roused in the many pilgrims assembled for the occasion.  In Egypt, Myanmar and Bangladesh too, I was able to meet the local Christian communities that, though small in number, are appreciated for their contribution to development and fraternal coexistence in those countries.  Naturally, I also had meetings with representatives of other religions, as a sign that our differences are not an obstacle to dialogue, but rather a vital source of encouragement in our common desire to know the truth and to practise justice.  Finally, in Colombia I wished to bless the efforts and the courage of that beloved people, marked by a lively desire for peace after more than half a century of internal conflict.

    Dear Ambassadors,

    This year marks the centenary of the end of the First World War, a conflict that reconfigured the face of Europe and the entire world with the emergence of new states in place of ancient empires.  From the ashes of the Great War, we can learn two lessons that, sad to say, humanity did not immediately grasp, leading within the space of twenty years to a new and even more devastating conflict.  The first lesson is that victory never means humiliating a defeated foe.  Peace is not built by vaunting the power of the victor over the vanquished.  Future acts of aggression are not deterred by the law of fear, but rather by the power of calm reason that encourages dialogue and mutual understanding as a means of resolving differences.[1]  This leads to a second lesson: peace is consolidated when nations can discuss matters on equal terms.  This was grasped a hundred years ago – on this very date – by the then President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who proposed the establishment of a general league of nations with the aim of promoting for all states, great and small alike, mutual guarantees of independence and territorial integrity.  This laid the theoretical basis for that multilateral diplomacy, which has gradually acquired over time an increased role and influence in the international community as a whole.

    Relations between nations, like all human relationships, “must likewise be harmonized in accordance with the dictates of truth, justice, willing cooperation, and freedom”.[2]  This entails “the principle that all states are by nature equal in dignity”,[3] as well as the acknowledgment of one another’s rights and the fulfilment of their respective duties.[4]  The basic premise of this approach is the recognition of the dignity of the human person, since disregard and contempt for that dignity resulted in barbarous acts that have outraged the conscience of mankind.[5]  Indeed, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms, “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.[6]

    I would like to devote our meeting today to this important document, seventy years after its adoption on 10 December 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations.  For the Holy See, to speak of human rights means above all to restate the centrality of the human person, willed and created by God in his image and likeness.  The Lord Jesus himself, by healing the leper, restoring sight to the blind man, speaking with the publican, saving the life of the woman caught in adultery and demanding that the injured wayfarer be cared for, makes us understand that every human being, independent of his or her physical, spiritual or social condition, is worthy of respect and consideration.  From a Christian perspective, there is a significant relation between the Gospel message and the recognition of human rights in the spirit of those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    Those rights are premised on the nature objectively shared by the human race.  They were proclaimed in order to remove the barriers that divide the human family and to favour what the Church’s social doctrine calls integral human development, since it entails fostering “the development of each man and of the whole man… and humanity as a whole”.[7]  A reductive vision of the human person, on the other hand, opens the way to the growth of injustice, social inequality and corruption.

    It should be noted, however, that over the years, particularly in the wake of the social upheaval of the 1960’s, the interpretation of some rights has progressively changed, with the inclusion of a number of “new rights” that not infrequently conflict with one another.  This has not always helped the promotion of friendly relations between nations,[8] since debatable notions of human rights have been advanced that are at odds with the culture of many countries; the latter feel that they are not respected in their social and cultural traditions, and instead neglected with regard to the real needs they have to face.  Somewhat paradoxically, there is a risk that, in the very name of human rights, we will see the rise of modern forms of ideological colonization by the stronger and the wealthier, to the detriment of the poorer and the most vulnerable.  At the same time, it should be recalled that the traditions of individual peoples cannot be invoked as a pretext for disregarding the due respect for the fundamental rights proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    At a distance of seventy years, it is painful to see how many fundamental rights continue to be violated today.  First among all of these is the right of every human person to life, liberty and personal security.[9]  It is not only war or violence that infringes these rights.  In our day, there are more subtle means: I think primarily of innocent children discarded even before they are born, unwanted at times simply because they are ill or malformed, or as a result of the selfishness of adults.  I think of the elderly, who are often cast aside, especially when infirm and viewed as a burden.  I think of women who repeatedly suffer from violence and oppression, even within their own families.  I think too of the victims of human trafficking, which violates the prohibition of every form of slavery.  How many persons, especially those fleeing from poverty and war, have fallen prey to such commerce perpetrated by unscrupulous individuals?

    Defending the right to life and physical integrity also means safeguarding the right to health on the part of individuals and their families.  Today this right has assumed implications beyond the original intentions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which sought to affirm the right of every individual to receive medical care and necessary social services.[10]  In this regard, it is my hope that efforts will be made within the appropriate international forums to facilitate, in the first place, ready access to medical care and treatment on the part of all.  It is important to join forces in order to implement policies that ensure, at affordable costs, the provision of medicines essential for the survival of those in need, without neglecting the area of research and the development of treatments that, albeit not financially profitable, are essential for saving human lives.

    Defending the right to life also entails actively striving for peace, universally recognized as one of the supreme values to be sought and defended.  Yet serious local conflicts continue to flare up in various parts of the world.  The collective efforts of the international community, the humanitarian activities of international organizations and the constant pleas for peace rising from lands rent by violence seem to be less and less effective in the face of war’s perverse logic.  This scenario cannot be allowed to diminish our desire and our efforts for peace.  For without peace, integral human development becomes unattainable.

    Integral disarmament and integral development are intertwined.  Indeed, the quest for peace as a precondition for development requires battling injustice and eliminating, in a non-violent way, the causes of discord that lead to wars.  The proliferation of weapons clearly aggravates situations of conflict and entails enormous human and material costs that undermine development and the search for lasting peace.  The historic result achieved last year with the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference for negotiating a legally binding instrument to ban nuclear arms, shows how lively the desire for peace continues to be.  The promotion of a culture of peace for integral development calls for unremitting efforts in favour of disarmament and the reduction of recourse to the use of armed force in the handling of international affairs.  I would therefore like to encourage a serene and wide-ranging debate on the subject, one that avoids polarizing the international community on such a sensitive issue.  Every effort in this direction, however modest, represents an important step for mankind.

    For its part, the Holy See signed and ratified, also in the name of and on behalf of Vatican City State, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  It did so in the belief, expressed by Saint John XXIII in Pacem in Terris, that “justice, right reason, and the recognition of man’s dignity cry out insistently for a cessation to the arms race.  The stockpiles of armaments which have been built up in various countries must be reduced all round and simultaneously by the parties concerned.  Nuclear weapons must be banned”.[11]  Indeed, even if “it is difficult to believe that anyone would dare to assume responsibility for initiating the appalling slaughter and destruction that war would bring in its wake, there is no denying that the conflagration could be started by some chance and unforeseen circumstance”.[12]

    The Holy See therefore reiterates the firm conviction “that any disputes which may arise between nations must be resolved by negotiation and agreement, not by recourse to arms”.[13]  The constant production of ever more advanced and “refined” weaponry, and dragging on of numerous conflicts – what I have referred to as “a third world war fought piecemeal” – lead us to reaffirm Pope John’s statement that “in this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice…  Nevertheless, we are hopeful that, by establishing contact with one another and by a policy of negotiation, nations will come to a better recognition of the natural ties that bind them together as men.  We are hopeful, too, that they will come to a fairer realization of one of the cardinal duties deriving from our common nature: namely, that love, not fear, must dominate the relationships between individuals and between nations.  It is principally characteristic of love that it draws men together in all sorts of ways, sincerely united in the bonds of mind and matter; and this is a union from which countless blessings can flow”.[14]

    In this regard, it is of paramount importance to support every effort at dialogue on the Korean peninsula, in order to find new ways of overcoming the current disputes, increasing mutual trust and ensuring a peaceful future for the Korean people and the entire world.

    It is also important for the various peace initiatives aimed at helping Syria to continue, in a constructive climate of growing trust between the parties, so that the lengthy conflict that has caused such immense suffering can finally come to an end.  Our shared hope is that, after so much destruction, the time for rebuilding has now come.  Yet even more than rebuilding material structures, it is necessary to rebuild hearts, to re-establish the fabric of mutual trust, which is the essential prerequisite for the flourishing of any society.  There is a need, then, to promote the legal, political and security conditions that restore a social life where every citizen, regardless of ethnic and religious affiliation, can take part in the development of the country.  In this regard, it is vital that religious minorities be protected, including Christians, who for centuries have made an active contribution to Syria’s history.

    It is likewise important that the many refugees who have found shelter and refuge in neighbouring countries, especially in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, be able to return home.  The commitment and efforts made by these countries in this difficult situation deserve the appreciation and support of the entire international community, which is also called upon to create the conditions for the repatriation of Syrian refugees.  This effort must concretely start with Lebanon, so that that beloved country can continue to be a “message” of respect and coexistence, and a model to imitate, for the whole region and for the entire world.

    The desire for dialogue is also necessary in beloved Iraq, to enable its various ethnic and religious groups to rediscover the path of reconciliation and peaceful coexistence and cooperation.  Such is the case too in Yemen and other parts of the region, and in Afghanistan.

    I think in particular of Israelis and Palestinians, in the wake of the tensions of recent weeks.  The Holy See, while expressing sorrow for the loss of life in recent clashes, renews its pressing appeal that every initiative be carefully weighed so as to avoid exacerbating hostilities, and calls for a common commitment to respect, in conformity with the relevant United Nations Resolutions, the status quo of Jerusalem, a city sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims.  Seventy years of confrontation make more urgent than ever the need for a political solution that allows the presence in the region of two independent states within internationally recognized borders.  Despite the difficulties, a willingness to engage in dialogue and to resume negotiations remains the clearest way to achieving at last a peaceful coexistence between the two peoples.

    In national contexts, too, openness and availability to encounter are essential.  I think especially of Venezuela, which is experiencing an increasingly dramatic and unprecedented political and humanitarian crisis.  The Holy See, while urging an immediate response to the primary needs of the population, expresses the hope that conditions will be created so that the elections scheduled for this year can resolve the existing conflicts, and enable people to look to the future with newfound serenity.

    Nor can the international community overlook the suffering of many parts of the African continent, especially in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Nigeria and the Central African Republic, where the right to life is threatened by the indiscriminate exploitation of resources, terrorism, the proliferation of armed groups and protracted conflicts.  It is not enough to be appalled at such violence.  Rather, everyone, in his or her own situation, should work actively to eliminate the causes of misery and build bridges of fraternity, the fundamental premise for authentic human development.

    A shared commitment to rebuilding bridges is also urgent in Ukraine.  The year just ended reaped new victims in the conflict that afflicts the country, continuing to bring great suffering to the population, particularly to families who live in areas affected by the war and have lost their loved ones, not infrequently the elderly and children.

    I would like to devote a special thought to families.  The right to form a family, as a “natural and fundamental group unit of society… is entitled to protection by society and the state”,[15] and is recognized by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Unfortunately, it is a fact that, especially in the West, the family is considered an obsolete institution.  Today fleeting relationships are preferred to the stability of a definitive life project.  But a house built on the sand of frail and fickle relationships cannot stand.  What is needed instead is a rock on which to build solid foundations.  And this rock is precisely that faithful and indissoluble communion of love that joins man and woman, a communion that has an austere and simple beauty, a sacred and inviolable character and a natural role in the social order.[16]  I consider it urgent, then, that genuine policies be adopted to support the family, on which the future and the development of states depend.  Without this, it is not possible to create societies capable of meeting the challenges of the future.  Disregard for families has another dramatic effect – particularly present in some parts of the world – namely, a decline in the birth rate.  We are experiencing a true demographic winter!  This is a sign of societies that struggle to face the challenges of the present, and thus become ever more fearful of the future, with the result that they close in on themselves.

    At the same time, we cannot forget the situation of families torn apart by poverty, war and migration.  All too often, we see with our own eyes the tragedy of children who, unaccompanied, cross the borders between the south and the north of our world, and often fall victim to human trafficking.

    Today there is much talk about migrants and migration, at times only for the sake of stirring up primal fears.  It must not be forgotten that migration has always existed.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the history of salvation is essentially a history of migration.  Nor should we forget that freedom of movement, for example, the ability to leave one’s own country and to return there, is a fundamental human right.[17]There is a need, then, to abandon the familiar rhetoric and start from the essential consideration that we are dealing, above all, with persons.

    This is what I sought to reiterate in my Message for the World Day of Peace celebrated on 1 January last, whose theme this year is: “Migrants and Refugees: Men and Women in Search of Peace”.  While acknowledging that not everyone is always guided by the best of intentions, we must not forget that the majority of migrants would prefer to remain in their homeland.  Instead, they find themselves “forced by discrimination, persecution, poverty and environmental degradation” to leave it behind…  “Welcoming others requires concrete commitment, a network of assistance and good will, vigilant and sympathetic attention, the responsible management of new and complex situations that at times compound numerous existing problems, to say nothing of resources, which are always limited.  By practising the virtue of prudence, government leaders should take practical measures to welcome, promote, protect, integrate and, ‘within the limits allowed by a correct understanding of the common good, to permit [them] to become part of a new society’ (Pacem in Terris, 57).  Leaders have a clear responsibility towards their own communities, whose legitimate rights and harmonious development they must ensure, lest they become like the rash builder who miscalculated and failed to complete the tower he had begun to construct” (cf. Lk 14:28-30).[18]

    I would like once more to thank the authorities of those states who have spared no effort in recent years to assist the many migrants arriving at their borders.  I think above all of the efforts made by more than a few countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas that welcome and assist numerous persons.  I cherish vivid memories of my meeting in Dhaka with some members of the Rohingya people, and I renew my sentiments of gratitude to the Bangladeshi authorities for the assistance provided to them on their own territory.

    I would also like to express particular gratitude to Italy, which in these years has shown an open and generous heart and offered positive examples of integration.  It is my hope that the difficulties that the country has experienced in these years, and whose effects are still felt, will not lead to forms of refusal and obstruction, but instead to a rediscovery of those roots and traditions that have nourished the rich history of the nation and constitute a priceless treasure offered to the whole world.  I likewise express my appreciation for the efforts made by other European states, particularly Greece and Germany.  Nor must it be forgotten that many refugees and migrants seek to reach Europe because they know that there they will find peace and security, which for that matter are the fruit of a lengthy process born of the ideals of the Founding Fathers of the European project in the aftermath of the Second World War.  Europe should be proud of this legacy, grounded on certain principles and a vision of man rooted in its millenary history, inspired by the Christian conception of the human person.  The arrival of migrants should spur Europe to recover its cultural and religious heritage, so that, with a renewed consciousness of the values on which the continent was built, it can keep alive her own tradition while continuing to be a place of welcome, a herald of peace and of development.

    In the past year, governments, international organizations and civil society have engaged in discussions about the basic principles, priorities and most suitable means for responding to movements of migration and the enduring situations involving refugees.  The United Nations, following the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, has initiated important preparations for the adoption of the two Global Compacts for refugees and for safe, orderly and regular migration respectively.

    The Holy See trusts that these efforts, with the negotiations soon to begin, will lead to results worthy of a world community growing ever more independent and grounded in the principles of solidarity and mutual assistance. In the current international situation, ways and means are not lacking to ensure that every man and every woman on earth can enjoy living conditions worthy of the human person.

    In the Message for this year’s World Day of Peace, I suggested four “mileposts” for action: welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating.[19]  I would like to dwell particularly on the last of these, which has given rise to various opposed positions in the light of varying evaluations, experiences, concerns and convictions.  Integration is a “two-way process”, entailing reciprocal rights and duties.  Those who welcome are called to promote integral human development, while those who are welcomed must necessarily conform to the rules of the country offering them hospitality, with respect for its identity and values.  Processes of integration must always keep the protection and advancement of persons, especially those in situations of vulnerability, at the centre of the rules governing various aspects of political and social life.

    The Holy See has no intention of interfering in decisions that fall to states, which, in the light of their respective political, social and economic situations, and their capacities and possibilities for receiving and integrating, have the primary responsibility for accepting newcomers.  Nonetheless, the Holy See does consider it its role to appeal to the principles of humanity and fraternity at the basis of every cohesive and harmonious society.  In this regard, its interaction with religious communities, on the level of institutions and associations, should not be forgotten, since these can play a valuable supportive role in assisting and protecting, in social and cultural mediation, and in pacification and integration.

    Among the human rights that I would also like to mention today is the right to freedom of thought, conscience and of religion, including the freedom to change religion.[20]  Sad to say, it is well-known that the right to religious freedom is often disregarded, and not infrequently religion becomes either an occasion for the ideological justification of new forms of extremism or a pretext for the social marginalization of believers, if not their downright persecution.  The condition for building inclusive societies is the integral comprehension of the human person, who can feel himself or herself truly accepted when recognized and accepted in all the dimensions that constitute his or her identity, including the religious dimension.

    Finally, I wish to recall the importance of the right to employment.  There can be no peace or development if individuals are not given the chance to contribute personally by their own labour to the growth of the common good.  Regrettably, in many parts of the world, employment is scarcely available.  At times, few opportunities exist, especially for young people, to find work.  Often it is easily lost not only due to the effects of alternating economic cycles, but to the increasing use of ever more perfect and precise technologies and tools that can replace human beings.  On the one hand, we note an inequitable distribution of the work opportunities, while on the other, a tendency to demand of labourers an ever more pressing pace.  The demands of profit, dictated by globalization, have led to a progressive reduction of times and days of rest, with the result that a fundamental dimension of life has been lost – that of rest – which serves to regenerate persons not only physically but also spiritually.  God himself rested on the seventh day; he blessed and consecrated that day “because on it he rested from all the work that he had done in creation” (Gen 2:3).  In the alternation of exertion and repose, human beings share in the “sanctification of time” laid down by God and ennoble their work, saving it from constant repetition and dull daily routine.

    A cause for particular concern are the data recently published by the International Labour Organization regarding the increase of child labourers and victims of the new forms of slavery.  The scourge of juvenile employment continues to compromise gravely the physical and psychological development of young people, depriving them of the joys of childhood and reaping innocent victims.  We cannot think of planning a better future, or hope to build more inclusive societies, if we continue to maintain economic models directed to profit alone and the exploitation of those who are most vulnerable, such as children.  Eliminating the structural causes of this scourge should be a priority of governments and international organizations, which are called to intensify efforts to adopt integrated strategies and coordinated policies aimed at putting an end to child labour in all its forms.

    Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

    In recalling some of the rights contained in the 1948 Universal Declaration, I do not mean to overlook one of its important aspects, namely, the recognition that every individual also has duties towards the community, for the sake of “meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society”.[21]  The just appeal to the rights of each human being must take into account the fact that every individual is part of a greater body.  Our societies too, like every human body, enjoy good health if each member makes his or her own contribution in the awareness that it is at the service of the common good.

    Among today’s particularly pressing duties is that of caring for our earth.  We know that nature can itself be cruel, even apart from human responsibility.  We saw this in the past year with the earthquakes that struck different parts of our world, especially those of recent months in Mexico and in Iran, with their high toll of victims, and with the powerful hurricanes that struck different countries of the Caribbean, also reaching the coast of the United States, and, more recently, the Philippines.  Even so, one must not downplay the importance of our own responsibility in interaction with nature.  Climate changes, with the global rise in temperatures and their devastating effects, are also a consequence of human activity.  Hence there is a need to take up, in a united effort, the responsibility of leaving to coming generations a more beautiful and livable world, and to work, in the light of the commitments agreed upon in Paris in 2015, for the reduction of gas emissions that harm the atmosphere and human health.

    The spirit that must guide individuals and nations in this effort can be compared to that of the builders of the medieval cathedrals that dot the landscape of Europe.  These impressive buildings show the importance of each individual taking part in a work that transcends the limits of time.  The builders of the cathedrals knew that they would not see the completion of their work.  Yet they worked diligently, in the knowledge that they were part of a project that would be left to their children to enjoy.  These, in turn, would embellish and expand it for their own children.  Each man and woman in this world – particularly those with governmental responsibilities – is called to cultivate the same spirit of service and intergenerational solidarity, and in this way to be a sign of hope for our troubled world.

    With these thoughts, I renew to each of you, to your families and to your peoples, my prayerful good wishes for a year filled with joy, hope and peace.  Thank you.

  • My Meeting with Pope Francis

    On November 10, 2017, I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis at the Vatican as part of the conference “Perspectives for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons and for Integral Disarmament.” The two-day conference was put on by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

    It was attended by a couple hundred people: Catholic Cardinals, bishops, priests, and religious scholars from around the world, as well as representatives of other faith groups. There were some highly motivated students from Georgetown, Notre Dame, and Catholic University of America. There were ambassadors from dozens of countries. There were 12 Nobel Peace Laureates. And there were a couple dozen representatives of NGOs like ours.

    Rick Wayman and Pope FrancisThe absolute personal highlight was the opportunity to meet Pope Francis and exchange greetings with him. You can probably see his kindness and joy shining through in this picture, and it is even stronger in person. Pope Francis is obviously a very busy person, but he takes this issue extremely seriously. He took the time to meet each of us individually, to shake our hands and greet us. This is not an easy task, but he did it with great joy.

    He started by delivering a 10-minute address to our group. Speaking about the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of nuclear weapons, he said, “The threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned.”

    The threat of use of nuclear weapons is to be firmly condemned. Nuclear deterrence – the idea that our overwhelming ability to destroy an adversary with nuclear weapons will deter them from attacking us or what we call our vital interests – has at its core the threat to use nuclear weapons.

    The very possession of nuclear weapons is to be firmly condemned. Nine countries (the U.S., Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) together possess around 15,000 nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia together possess about 90% of these. In the U.S. alone, our country is in the beginning of a 30-year plan to spend at least $1.25 trillion on new nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and production infrastructure. This is about $80,000 per minute – every minute, for 30 years – on nuclear weapons. Pope Francis also criticized this outrageous spending, saying, “As a result, the real priorities facing our human family, such as the fight against poverty, the promotion of peace, the undertaking of educational, ecological and healthcare projects, and the development of human rights, are relegated to second place.”

    So, the threat of use and the possession of nuclear weapons are firmly condemned. They are morally unacceptable.

    What does this mean for people who work at a nuclear weapons production facility or on a nuclear-armed submarine? What does it mean for the lawmakers who allocate billions of dollars each year to the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons? What does it mean for citizens who pay taxes that fund nuclear weapons production?

    These are big questions in light of Pope Francis’s shift in Catholic teaching from a conditional moral acceptance of nuclear deterrence to an outright declaration of nuclear weapons’ immorality.

    A key challenge moving forward is how to get the important and revolutionary new teachings from Pope Francis off of paper and into the pews on Sunday.

    In his presentation to the conference, Fr. Drew Christiansen of Georgetown University said that Catholic moral theologians who are also just-war analysts have the responsibility with respect to global moral problems like climate change and nuclear abolition to make the Church’s teaching “church-wide and parish deep.”

    Even for non-Catholics, I believe that Pope Francis’s moral guidance is significant and represents a major shift in power towards those of us who believe that human survival is dependent on peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

  • Sunflower Newsletter: January 2018

    Issue #246 – January 2018
    Become a monthly supporter! With a monthly gift, you will join a circle of advocates committed to a peaceful tomorrow, free of nuclear weapons.

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    • Perspectives
      • Ten Nuclear Wishes for the New Year by David Krieger
      • Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech by Beatrice Fihn
      • Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech by Setsuko Thurlow
    • U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy
      • Trump Explicitly Threatens Nuclear War Via Twitter
      • Member of Congress Introduces Bill on No First Use of Nuclear Weapons
      • More Hanford Workers Possibly Exposed to Plutonium
    • Nuclear Disarmament
      • Pope Francis Shows the Fruit of War
      • ICAN Honored with Nobel Peace Prize
    • War and Peace
      • Kim Jong-un Claims to Have “Nuclear Button,” Reaches Out to South Korea
      • Nikki Haley Displays Missile to Allege Iran Is Violating Deal
    • Nuclear “Modernization”
      • $1.24 Trillion “Modernization” Price Tag Omits Environmental Cleanup
    • Resources
      • This Month in Nuclear Threat History
      • TEDx Talk: The Insanity of Nuclear Deterrence
      • Come On: Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet
      • Vote for the Arms Control Person of the Year
    • Foundation Activities
      • NAPF Intern Stories
      • Preventing War: Crisis and Opportunity with North Korea
      • NAPF Peace Leadership 2017 Highlights and 2018 Preview
    • Take Action
      • Congratulate ICAN on the Nobel Peace Prize
    • Quotes

     

    Perspectives

    Ten Nuclear Wishes for the New Year

    by David Krieger

    1) That Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s past will not become any other city’s future.

    2) That the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will get at least 50 ratifications and enter into force.

    3) That there will be no further proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries.

    4) That no insane leader will initiate a nuclear war and leaders of nuclear-armed countries will stop taunting each other.

    To read more, click here.

    Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

    by Beatrice Fihn

    Nuclear weapons, like chemical weapons, biological weapons, cluster munitions and land mines before them, are now illegal. Their existence is immoral. Their abolishment is in our hands.

    The end is inevitable. But will that end be the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us? We must choose one.

    We are a movement for rationality. For democracy. For freedom from fear.

    We are campaigners from 468 organizations who are working to safeguard the future, and we are representative of the moral majority: the billions of people who choose life over death, who together will see the end of nuclear weapons.

    To read more, click here.

    Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

    by Setsuko Thurlow

    I speak as a member of the family of hibakusha – those of us who, by some miraculous chance, survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For more than seven decades, we have worked for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

    On the seventh of July this year, I was overwhelmed with joy when a great majority of the world’s nations voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Having witnessed humanity at its worst, I witnessed, that day, humanity at its best. We hibakusha had been waiting for the ban for seventy-two years. Let this be the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.

    All responsible leaders will sign this treaty. And history will judge harshly those who reject it. No longer shall their abstract theories mask the genocidal reality of their practices. No longer shall “deterrence” be viewed as anything but a deterrent to disarmament. No longer shall we live under a mushroom cloud of fear.

    To the officials of nuclear-armed nations – and to their accomplices under the so-called “nuclear umbrella” – I say this: Listen to our testimony. Heed our warning. And know that your actions are consequential. You are each an integral part of a system of violence that is endangering humankind. Let us all be alert to the banality of evil.

    To read more, click here.

    U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy

    Trump Explicitly Threatens Nuclear War Via Twitter

    On the evening of January 2, U.S. President Donald Trump used his Twitter account to make an explicit threat of nuclear war to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Trump wrote in part, “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Trump’s language and use of Twitter are uniquely and clearly dangerous. No one knows what would push Kim Jong-un over the edge.

    According to former arms-control official Robert Joseph, every U.S. president since Harry Truman “has sought to maintain, in the words of John F. Kennedy, a nuclear-weapons capability ‘second to none’.”

    Uri Friedman, “The Terrifying Truth of Trump’s ‘Nuclear Button’ Tweet,” The Atlantic, January 3, 2018.

    Member of Congress Introduces Bill on No First Use of Nuclear Weapons

    Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, introduced bill H.R. 4415 to the House of Representatives. The bill would make it the policy of the United States not to use nuclear weapons first.

    Rep. Smith said, “A declaratory policy of not using nuclear weapons first will increase strategic stability, particularly in a crisis, reducing the risk of miscalculation that could lead to an unintended all-out nuclear war.”

    “Smith Introduces Bill Establishing ‘No First Use’ Policy for Nuclear Weapons,” Office of Rep. Adam Smith, November 15, 2017.

    More Hanford Workers Possibly Exposed to Plutonium

    On December 13, the government contractor CH2M Hill stopped demolition work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington State. Monitors worn by employees revealed high levels of radiation exposure. Testing showed the particles contained the radioactive isotopes of plutonium and americium.

    A few months earlier, on June 8, a release of radioactive particles led to at least 31 workers ingesting or inhaling radioactive particles.

    Susannah Frame, “More Hanford Workers Possibly Contaminated with Plutonium,” KING 5, December 14, 2017.

    Nuclear Disarmament

    Pope Francis Shows the Fruit of War

    Pope Francis distributed cards featuring an image of a young boy standing in line at a crematorium following the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The boy is carrying his dead brother. On the back of the cards, Pope Francis included the phrase “the fruit of war” along with his signature.

    The photo was taken in 1945 by American photographer Joseph Roger O’Donnell, a Marine who worked for four years after the atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki documenting their impact.

    John L. Allen, Jr., “Pope Circulates Nagasaki Image Under Heading ‘The Fruit of War’,” Crux, December 30, 2017.

    ICAN Honored with Nobel Peace Prize

    On December 10, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and was accepted on behalf of the Campaign by its executive director, Beatrice Fihn, and by Setsuko Thurlow, an ICAN campaigner and survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing. Both spoke for the thousands of campaigners from over 450 organizations in more than 100 countries who succeeded this fall in working with friendly governments to move a majority of states at the United Nations to adopt a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, making their possession, use, or threat of use unlawful.

    It has been just 10 years since ICAN first launched its campaign to ban nuclear weapons, just as chemical and biological weapons have been banned, along with land mines and cluster bombs.

    Alice Slater, “The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Is Honored with a Nobel Peace Prize,” The Nation, December 22, 2017.

    War and Peace

    Kim Jong-un Claims to Have “Nuclear Button,” Reaches Out to South Korea

    North Korean leader Kim Jong-un issued a new year message in which he claimed to have a nuclear button on his desk, which he would only use if threatened. He said that the United States “should properly know that the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike and a nuclear button is always on the desk of my office, and this is just a reality, not a threat.”

    Kim also raised the possibility of sending a delegation of North Korean athletes to the upcoming PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games, which will take place in South Korea in February. Kim said, “North Korea’s participation in the Winter Games will be a good opportunity to show unity of the people, and we wish the Games will be a success. Officials from the two Koreas may urgently meet to discuss the possibility.”

    Simon Denyer, “North Korean Leader Says He Has ‘Nuclear Button’ but Won’t Use It Unless Threatened,” Washington Post, January 1, 2018.

    Nikki Haley Displays Missile to Allege Iran Is Violating Deal

    Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, held a press conference on December 14 to allege that Iran is violating the nuclear deal. Amb. Haley displayed a missile that she claimed was fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen toward the Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia.

    “The weapons might as well have ‘Made in Iran’ stickers on them,” she said. Iran denied the accusation.

    “Make no mistake: What Nikki Haley is doing right now is laying the groundwork for a U.S.-Iran war on behalf of Saudi Arabia,” concluded Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council.

    Jake Johnson, “With Theatrical Missile Speech, Critics Say Nikki Haley ‘Laying Groundwork’ for War With Iran,” Common Dreams, December 14, 2017.

    Nuclear “Modernization”

    $1.24 Trillion “Modernization” Price Tag Omits Environmental Cleanup

    In its recent cost estimate for the United States’ 30-year nuclear “modernization” effort, the Congressional Budget Office excluded $541 billion in projected costs to clean up nuclear weapons production sites.

    The largest of these cleanup costs, at $179.5 billion, is attributed to the stabilization and disposal of high-level radioactive wastes generated from the production of plutonium. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) informed Congress in 2013 that these wastes are “considered one of the most hazardous substances on earth.”

    Robert Alvarez, “CBO Cost Estimation of Nuclear Modernization Omits Hazardous Cleanup,” The Washington Spectator, December 20, 2017.

     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 January, including the January 24, 1961 crash of a B-52G Stratofortress bomber carrying two 2.5-megaton Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs near Goldsboro, North Carolina.

    To read Mason’s full article, click here.

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

    TEDx Talk: The Insanity of Nuclear Deterrence

    When nuclear-armed nations face off, the threat of mutually assured destruction is expected to keep the worst from happening. But is this a rational strategy? Or is it one that is doomed to failure? In this eye-opening and powerful talk, Commander Robert Green shares his experience piloting nuclear-armed aircraft and his shift to becoming a staunch opponent of nuclear deterrence.

    Commander Robert Green served for twenty years in the British Royal Navy. As a bombardier-navigator, he flew in Buccaneer nuclear strike aircraft and anti-submarine helicopters equipped with nuclear depth-bombs. His final appointment was as Staff Officer (Intelligence) to the Commander-in-Chief Fleet during the 1982 Falklands War.

    To watch this TEDx talk, click here.

    Come On: Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet

    The Club of Rome has published a new book entitled Come On: Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet. The book contains contributions from 30 members of the Club of Rome, including NAPF President David Krieger, who contributed to a section entitled “Nuclear Weapons: The Forgotten Threat.”

    Click here to order from Amazon, or find it at your local bookshop.

    Vote for the Arms Control Person of the Year

    The Arms Control Association is holding an online vote for the 2017 Arms Control Person of the Year. This year’s nominees are individuals and institutions that have advanced effective arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament solutions or raised awareness of the threats posed by mass casualty weapons.

    Among the nominees are Pope Francis and the team of ambassadors who led the negotiations for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

    The 2016 Arms Control Person of the Year was the government of the Marshall Islands and its former Foreign Minister, Tony de Brum. They received the distinction for pursuing a formal legal case in the International Court of Justice in The Hague against the world’s nuclear-armed states for their failure to initiate nuclear disarmament negotiations in violation of Article VI of the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law.

    Voting for the 2017 Arms Control Person of the Year ends on January 5. For more information and to cast your vote, click here.

    Foundation Activities

    NAPF Intern Stories

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has a great internship program, empowering students and recent graduates by giving them the opportunity to lead important projects for peace and nuclear disarmament.

    Click here to read what two of our 2017 interns have to say about their experiences at the Foundation, and how it has helped to shape their futures.

    If you know any current students or recent graduates who might be interested in working with us, the application deadline for our full-time, paid summer internships is March 1, 2018.

    Preventing War: Crisis and Opportunity with North Korea

    On March 7, 2018, Christine Ahn will deliver the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 17th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future. Ahn’s lecture is entitled “Preventing War: Crisis and Opportunity with North Korea.”

    Christine Ahn is the Founder and International Coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War, reunite families, and ensure women’s leadership in peace building. She is co-founder of the Korea Peace Network, Korea Policy Institute and Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island.

    The event is free and open to the public. The lecture will begin at 7:00 p.m. at the Karpeles Manuscript Library, 21 W. Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101. For more information, call (805) 965-3443.

    NAPF Peace Leadership 2017 Highlights and 2018 Preview

    In 2017, NAPF Peace Leadership Director Paul K. Chappell gave over 90 talks in 16 states and one Canadian province. He directly reached well over 5,000 people through his lectures and workshops on peace literacy and peace leadership. Paul has worked closely with an outstanding group of educators to revamp the Peace Literacy website and publish a groundbreaking new curriculum for students of most ages.

    In 2017, Paul also published his sixth book, Soldiers of Peace: How to Wield the Weapon of Nonviolence with Maximum Force.

    Paul has a full schedule of talks, workshops, and curriculum development in 2018. To learn more about this exciting initiative, click here.

    Take Action

    Congratulate ICAN on the Nobel Peace Prize

    On December 10, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. The Nobel Committee awarded ICAN “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”

    ICAN is made up of over 450 Partner Organizations, including the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, from 101 countries.

    ICAN stands in stark contrast with those national leaders and their allies who possess nuclear weapons and have been unwilling to give up their claim on them for their own perceived national security. But ICAN is on the right side of history, because those with nuclear weapons threaten the future of civilization, including their own populations.

    ICAN well deserves the Nobel Peace prize. The campaign is effective. It is youthful. It is hopeful. It is necessary. May the Nobel Peace Prize propel it to even greater accomplishments. And may it awaken people everywhere to the threat posed by nuclear weapons, and the need to ban and eliminate them.

    Please join us in congratulating ICAN on this historic achievement!

    Quotes

     

    “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

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

     

    “I consider non-violence to be compassion in action. It doesn’t mean weakness, cowering in fear, or simply doing nothing. It is to act without violence, motivated by compassion, recognizing the rights of others.”

    — His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council, in a December 15 tweet.

     

    “With participation by both Koreas, we believe the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games can help build a peaceful Korean Peninsula and a peaceful global community.”

    — PyeongChang Joint Statement for Peace, issued at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea on December 19, 2017.

     

    “On New Year’s Day 2018, I am not issuing an appeal. I am issuing an alert — a red alert for our world. Conflicts have deepened and new dangers have emerged. Global anxieties about nuclear weapons are the highest since the Cold War.”

    — António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in a January 1, 2018 video message.

    Editorial Team

     

    David Krieger
    Carol Warner
    Rick Wayman

  • Why the “Merchants of Death” Survive and Prosper

    This article was originally published by History News Network.

    During the mid-1930s, a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade, combined with a U.S. Congressional investigation of munitions-makers led by Senator Gerald Nye, had a major impact on American public opinion. Convinced that military contractors were stirring up weapons sales and war for their own profit, many people grew critical of these “merchants of death.”

    Today, some eight decades later, their successors, now more politely called “defense contractors,” are alive and well. According to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, sales of weapons and military services by the world’s largest 100 corporate military purveyors in 2016 (the latest year for which figures are available) rose to $375 billion. U.S. corporations increased their share of that total to almost 58 percent, supplying weapons to at least 100 nations around the world.

    The dominant role played by U.S. corporations in the international arms trade owes a great deal to the efforts of U.S. government officials. “Significant parts of the government,” notes military analyst William Hartung, “are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life. From the president on his trips abroad to visit allied world leaders to the secretaries of state and defense to the staffs of U.S. embassies, American officials regularly act as salespeople for the arms firms.” Furthermore, he notes, “the Pentagon is their enabler. From brokering, facilitating, and literally banking the money from arms deals to transferring weapons to favored allies on the taxpayers’ dime, it is in essence the world’s largest arms dealer.”

    In 2013, when Tom Kelly, the deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Political Affairs was asked during a Congressional hearing about whether the Obama administration was doing enough to promote American weapons exports, he replied: “[We are] advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through. . . and that is something we are doing every day, basically [on] every continent in the world . . . and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.” This proved a fair enough assessment, for during the first six years of the Obama administration, U.S. government officials secured agreements for U.S. weapons sales of more than $190 billion around the world, especially to the volatile Middle East. Determined to outshine his predecessor, President Donald Trump, on his first overseas trip, bragged about a $110 billion arms deal (totaling $350 billion over the next decade) with Saudi Arabia.

    The greatest single weapons market remains the United States, for this country ranks first among nations in military spending, with 36 percent of the global total. Trump is a keen military enthusiast, as is the Republican Congress, which is currently in the process of approving a 13 percent increase in the already astronomical U.S. military budget. Much of this future military spending will almost certainly be devoted to purchasing new and very expensive high-tech weapons, for the military contractors are adept at delivering millions of dollars in campaign contributions to needy politicians, employing 700 to 1,000 lobbyists to nudge them along, claiming that their military production facilities are necessary to create jobs, and mobilizing their corporate-funded think tanks to highlight ever-greater foreign “dangers.”

    They can also count upon a friendly reception from their former executives now holding high-level posts in the Trump administration, including: Secretary of Defense James Mattis (a former board member of General Dynamics); White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (previously employed by several military contractors); Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan (a former Boeing executive); Secretary of the Army Mark Esper (a former Raytheon vice president); Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson (a former consultant to Lockheed Martin); Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Ellen Lord (a former CEO of an aerospace company); and National Security Council Chief of Staff Keith Kellogg (a former employee of a major military and intelligence contractor).

    This formula works very well for U.S. military contractors, as illustrated by the case of Lockheed Martin, the largest arms merchant in the world. In 2016, Lockheed’s weapons sales rose by almost 11 percent to $41 billion, and the company is well on its way to even greater affluence thanks to its production of the F-35 fighter jet. Lockheed began work on developing the technologically-advanced warplane in the 1980s and, since 2001, the U.S. government has expended over $100 billion for its production. Today, estimates by military analysts as to the total cost to taxpayers of the 2,440 F-35s desired by Pentagon officials range from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, making it the most expensive procurement program in U.S. history.

    The F-35’s enthusiasts have justified the enormous expense of the warplane by emphasizing its projected ability to make a quick liftoff and a vertical landing, as well as its adaptability for use by three different branches of the U.S. military. And its popularity might also reflect their assumption that its raw destructive power will help them win future wars against Russia and China. “We can’t get into those aircraft fast enough,” Lieutenant General Jon Davis, the Marine Corps’ aviation chief, told a House Armed Services subcommittee in early 2017. “We have a game changer, a war winner, on our hands.”

    Even so, aircraft specialists point out that the F-35 continues to have severe structural problems and that its high-tech computer command system is vulnerable to cyberattack. “This plane has a long way to go before it’s combat-ready,” remarked a military analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. “Given how long it’s been in development, you have to wonder whether it’ll ever be ready.”

    Startled by the extraordinary expense of the F-35 project, Donald Trump initially derided the venture as “out of control.” But, after meeting with Pentagon officials and Lockheed CEO Marilynn Hewson, the new president reversed course, praising “the fantastic” F-35 as a “great plane” and authorizing a multi-billion dollar contract for 90 more of them.

    In retrospect, none of this is entirely surprising. After all, other giant military contractors―for example, Nazi Germany’s Krupp and I.G. Farben and fascist Japan’s Mitsubishi and Sumitomo ―prospered heavily by arming their nations for World War II and continued prospering in its aftermath. As long as people retain their faith in the supreme value of military might, we can probably also expect Lockheed Martin and other “merchants of death” to continue profiting from war at the public’s expense.

  • The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Is Honored with a Nobel Peace Prize

    This article was originally published by The Nation.

    In Oslo on December 10, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and was accepted on behalf of the Campaign by its executive director, Beatrice Fihn, and by Setsuko Thurlow, an ICAN campaigner and survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing. Both spoke for the thousands of campaigners in over 400 organizations and more than 100 countries around the world who succeeded this fall in working with friendly governments to move a majority of states at the United Nations to adopt a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, making their possession, use, or threat of use unlawful.

    The ceremony opened with a piercing fanfare by four trumpeters, their horns hung with crimson banners, from a stone balcony high up in the sunlit-filled, mosaic-covered Oslo City Hall over a distinguished crowd below that included a former Peace Prize laureate; ambassadors and other government officials, including the prime minister of Norway and the mayor of Hiroshima; movie stars and rock stars; as well as several hundred grassroots ICAN campaigners from every corner of the globe. As the trumpets sounded, the king and queen of Norway and the crown prince and princess strode down the red-carpeted aisle, followed by members of the Nobel Committee and the two ICAN speakers.

    It has been just 10 years since ICAN first launched its astonishing campaign to ban nuclear weapons, just as chemical and biological weapons have been banned as well as land mines and cluster bombs. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has now closed a legal gap in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that only requires “good faith efforts for nuclear disarmament” by the then-five existing nuclear weapons states—the United States, Russia, UK, France, China. ICAN organized a series of three major conferences in Norway, Mexico, and Austria together with government leaders, scientists, lawyers, and other experts, including representatives from the International Red Cross, a critical actor in this journey to ban the bomb. It was the International Red Cross who contributed a unique statement about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons in 2000 that changed the global conversation about these devastating instruments of mass destruction.

    Instead of nuclear weapons’ being described in abstract terms, with references to strategic security needs and deterrence policies, a conversation dominated by the nuclear-weapons states and by US nuclear allies in NATO, as well as Japan, Australia, and South Korea (none of whom support the new treaty), there has been a shift in how nuclear weapons are discussed. There is a a growing realization that these military and security concepts fail to acknowledge the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of a nuclear weapon. The new conversation was given a great boost by the Vatican, which participated in the UN negotiations and held a subsequent nuclear-disarmament conference in November to discuss its newly announced policy change from one that supported the concept of “deterrence” for the use of nuclear weapons in “self-defense” to a new policy declaring that nuclear weapons must never be used under any circumstances.

    Despite the nearly 50-year-old NPT promise by the nuclear-weapons states for nuclear disarmament, ICAN Executive Director Fihn, in her acceptance speech, reminded us that “at dozens of locations around the world—in missile silos buried in our earth, on submarines navigating through our oceans, and aboard planes flying high in our sky—lie 15,000 objects of humankind’s destruction,” adding that “it is insanity to allow ourselves to be ruled by these weapons.”

    Fihn went on to note that critics of ICAN’s success in closing the legal gap in the NPT with the new ban treaty describe its campaigners as “the irrational ones, idealists with no grounding in reality. That the nuclear-armed states will never give up their weapons.”

    But we represent the only rational choice. We represent those who refuse to accept nuclear weapons as a fixture in our world, those who refuse to have their fates bound up in a few lines of launch code. Ours is the only reality that is possible. The alternative is unthinkable. The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be. Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us? One of these things will happen. The only rational course of action is to cease living under the conditions where our mutual destruction is only one impulsive tantrum away.

    Fihn also exclaimed, to enthusiastic applause, “Man—not woman!—made nuclear weapons to control others, but instead we are controlled.”

    They made us false promises. That by making the consequences of using these weapons so unthinkable it would make any conflict unpalatable. That it would keep us free from war. But far from preventing war, these weapons brought us to the brink multiple times throughout the Cold War. And in this century, these weapons continue to escalate us towards war and conflict. In Iraq, in Iran, in Kashmir, in North Korea. Their existence propels others to join the nuclear race. They don’t keep us safe, they cause conflict…. But they are just weapons. They are just tools. And just as they were created by geopolitical context, they can just as easily be destroyed by placing them in a humanitarian context. That is the task ICAN has set.

    Fihn called on all nations and each of the nine nuclear weapons states individually to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, saying,

    The United States, choose freedom over fear.
    Russia, choose disarmament over destruction.
    Britain, choose the rule of law over oppression.
    France, choose human rights over terror.
    China, choose reason over irrationality.
    India, choose sense over senselessness.
    Pakistan, choose logic over Armageddon.
    Israel, choose common sense over obliteration.
    North Korea, choose wisdom over ruin.

    She also asked the nations “who believe they are sheltered under the umbrella of nuclear weapons, will you be complicit in your own destruction and the destruction of others in your name?” And she called on all citizens to “Stand with us and demand your government side with humanity and sign this treaty,” noting “no nations today boast of being a chemical weapons states” or “argue that it is acceptable, in extreme circumstances, to use sarin nerve agent” or “to unleash on its enemy the plague or polio. That is because international norms have been set, perceptions have been changed. And now, at last, we have an unequivocal norm against nuclear weapons.”

    Setsuko Thurlow, an ICAN campaigner who survived the bombing of Hiroshima as a 13-year-old, spoke next, bearing witness to the excruciating pain and terror she saw all around her as she escaped from the rubble she was buried under in the bomb’s aftermath, where so many of her schoolmates died and where so many of her family were lost as well. She reminded us that “in the weeks, months and years that followed, many thousands more would die, often in random and mysterious ways, from the delayed effects of radiation to this day, radiation is killing survivors.”

    She acknowledged the suffering and willingness to bear witness not only of the Hibakusha, as Japanese refer to the survivors of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also of others who suffered from the nuclear age, including peoples “whose lands and seas were irradiated, whose bodies were experimented upon, whose cultures were forever disrupted” in places with “long-forgotten names” like Mururoa, Ekker, Semipalatinsk, Maralinga, Bikini.

    Through our agony and the sheer struggle to survive—and to rebuild our lives from the ashes—we hibakusha became convinced that we must warn the world about these apocalyptic weapons. Time and again, we shared our testimonies.

    But still some refused to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities—as war crimes. They accepted the propaganda that these were “good bombs” that had ended a “just war.” It was this myth that led to the disastrous nuclear-arms race—a race that continues to this day.

    Nine nations still threaten to incinerate entire cities, to destroy life on earth, to make our beautiful world uninhabitable for future generations. The development of nuclear weapons signifies not a country’s elevation to greatness but its descent to the darkest depths of depravity. These weapons are not a necessary evil; they are the ultimate evil.

    Thurlow went on to say:

    On the seventh of July this year, I was overwhelmed with joy when a great majority of the world’s nations voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Having witnessed humanity at its worst, I witnessed, that day, humanity at its best. We hibakusha had been waiting for the ban for seventy-two years. Let this be the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.

    All responsible leaders will sign this treaty. And history will judge harshly those who reject it. No longer shall their abstract theories mask the genocidal reality of their practices. No longer shall “deterrence” be viewed as anything but a deterrent to disarmament. No longer shall we live under a mushroom cloud of fear.

    To the officials of nuclear-armed nations—and to their accomplices under the so-called “nuclear umbrella”—I say this: Listen to our testimony. Heed our warning. And know that your actions are consequential. You are each an integral part of a system of violence that is endangering humankind. Let us all be alert to the banality of evil.

    Both speakers received standing ovations for their moving addresses and calls to action, and, with a room filled with hundreds of grassroots campaigners, the thunderous applause for the speakers was noted to be highly unusual for a Nobel award ceremony. The legal requirement for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to enter into force and to be binding on its signatories is that it must be ratified by 50 nations. To date, 56 countries have signed the treaty and four nations have ratified it in their legislatures.

    To get involved in the ICAN campaign, visit http://www.icanw.org. There is a Parliamentary Pledge there that you can use to enroll your member of Congress or Parliament in calling for your nation to support the ban treaty. In the nuclear-weapons states and in the US nuclear alliance with NATO states and Australia, South Korea, and Japan in the Pacific—the “nuclear umbrella” states—grassroots efforts are under way to begin the stigmatization of their nuclear weapons and policies with a divestment campaign from nuclear-weapons manufacturers, since the treaty prohibits any “assistance” for nuclear weapons.

    There have been demonstrations in Buchel, Germany, where activists have read the new treaty aloud to military personnel at a military base where US nuclear weapons are kept. Four other NATO countries also have US nuclear weapons on their bases—Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Turkey. This activity is banned under the treaty’s prohibition on any “possession” of nuclear weapons. See the new treaty here.