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  • January: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    January 1, 1947 – President Harry Truman, who ordered the U.S. Army Air Force to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 17 months previously, signed legislation on this date transferring the nation’s supply of nuclear bombs and production facilities to a new civilian agency – the Atomic Energy Commission headed by David Lilienthal.  The idea for the AEC came from Manhattan Project scientists, engineers, and nuclear physicists who had lobbied Congress to take the control of nuclear weapons away from Pentagon commanders.  Comments:  Unfortunately, another critical idea which would have internationalized the development and possession of nuclear weapons, the Baruch Plan, did not materialize in the postwar world.  Despite the valuable precedent of civilian control of nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Club members today continue to reject calls to dramatically reduce and eliminate these doomsday devices as an affront to their national sovereignty and ironically they argue that such moves will actually increase the risk of war.  Meanwhile a growing majority of global citizenry vehemently disagree with these assertions and continue to push for a world without nuclear weapons.  Perhaps Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said it best, “It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.” (Source:  Craig Nelson. “The Age of Radiance.” New York:  Simon & Schuster, 2014, p. 229.)

    January 3, 1976 – As part of the Operation Anvil series of 19 underground nuclear test blasts at the Nevada Test Site, a test designated Muenster was conducted on this date at the bottom of a nearly mile deep shaft (4,759 feet).  This “Intermediate” magnitude test had an estimated yield of 160 kilotons, more than ten times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  Comments:  Although underground nuclear tests, mandated by the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, were obviously not as harmful as earlier atmospheric tests, contamination of underground water and mineral resources was a long-term risk as well as the possibility of the accidental venting of radioactive elements into the atmosphere which occurred on Dec.18, 1970 during the Baneberry ten kiloton test at the Nevada Test Site.  Nevertheless, 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.  (Source:  Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig.  “Nuclear Weapons Databook:  Volume II, Appendix B.” National Resources Defense Council, Inc. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987, p. 171.)

    January 11, 2012 – At the National Press Club in Washington, DC, former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, Co-Chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), and Dr. Page Stoutland, Vice President for Nuclear Materials Security at NTI, unveiled the first-ever Nuclear Materials Security Index of Nations, comparing security conditions on a country-by-country basis in 176 nations.  Prepared with the assistance of The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the Index’s function was to persuade nations to strengthen nuclear security and reduce risks of thefts, diversions, and accidents.  On Jan.14, 2016 the third edition of the NTI Index was released assessing security conditions in 24 nations with one kilogram or more of weapons-usable nuclear materials.  An additional 152 countries with less than one kilogram of such materials or none at all were also assessed.  This “theft ranking” was included in the first and second editions of The Index in 2012 and 2014, respectively.  The 2016 NTI Index also examined a third set of nations, 45 in all, in a new “sabotage ranking” which assessed the risk of an act of sabotage or terrorism against a nuclear facility on the same or larger scale as the radioactive contamination seen in the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.  Comments:  It is critical that the U.S., the other eight nuclear weapons states, and other nations with nuclear capabilities and fissile material inventories lift the heavy veil of secrecy and cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other global nongovernmental entities such NTI to prevent proliferation and nuclear terrorism.  In future decades, as nuclear weapons and fissile materials inventories are dramatically reduced, such cooperation and transparency will be essential in moving toward global nuclear abolition.  (Source:  Nuclear Threat Initiative.  “Nuclear Security Index:  Building a Framework for Assurance, Accountability, and Action.”  http://www.nti.org/about/projects/nti-index/ accessed Dec. 19, 2017.)

    January 20, 2017 – Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States despite serious concerns expressed during and after the election campaign that either he and/or his campaign officials had suspicious ties to Russian governmental representatives.  In addition to multiple allegations of criminal misconduct going back decades (including sexual harassment/assault, violations of the Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution, and conflict of interest charges tied to his refusal to release his tax returns to the American people), before and after taking the oath of office, countless articles and media stories (from mostly non-mainstream media sources) expressed concerns about the mental stability of one of the oldest persons to ever serve as President – he turned 71 years of age on June 14, 2017.  Recently 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health professionals, led by Professor Bandy Lee, released a book on October 3, 2017 titled, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” which concluded that, based on the speech, behavior, and daily tweets of the President over the long course of his public life, he is “a serious danger to the country and the world.”  They continued, “He places the country at grave risk of involving it in a war and of undermining democracy itself because of his pathological narcissism and sociopathy.”  Comments:  Along with his recent history of unwise, belligerent, and sometimes contradictory statements about nuclear weapons and his rants against Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime, taken with the clear knowledge that he might do the unthinkable and press the nuclear button, sending a nuclear holocaust impacting not only North Korea or Iran but also many neighboring nations, including our allies, or other unknown, unpredictable targets, President Trump represents one of the most serious threats to world peace in this century and ultimately to the extremely fragile seven-decade old global nuclear deterrent system since 1945!  Unfortunately, efforts to convince him to resign, to impeach him, or to legally remove him from power appear as unlikely as does the milder action of persuading him to seek immediate psychotherapy.  But, if the global community and the largest majority of Americans possible redouble their efforts, there is increasing optimism that something can be done to prevent breaking the nuclear threshold and increasing the risk of a purposeful, accidental, or unintentional nuclear Armageddon.  Let us hope that in the President’s January 30, 2018 State of the Union Address he announces a clearly peaceful alternative to his previous nuclear saber rattling with North Korea and Iran and the beginning of the end of a renewed Cold War II and nuclear arms race with Russia.  (Sources: Multiple mainstream and alternative news media websites and articles.)

    January 24, 1961 – As part of the 24-hour Operation Coverall U.S. Strategic Air Command plan, consistent with the first Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), to always have one-third of the strategic bomber fleet airborne in order to have available a nuclear strike option against the Soviet Union and its allies, a B-52G Stratofortress bomber carrying two 2.5 megaton Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs left Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina.  When a wing fuel tank leak was detected, the bomber headed back to base but the plane caught fire, exploded in mid-air, and crashed 12 miles north of the airbase near the town of  Goldsboro killing three of the eight-man crew and releasing the two hydrogen bombs from the plane’s payload bay.  Three of the arming devices on one of the bombs activated causing it to trigger the arming mechanisms and deploy a 100-foot diameter retardation parachute which allowed that bomb to hit the ground with little damage.   However, only one of six arming safety devices prevented the warhead from detonating in a nuclear explosion.  The second bomb plunged into a muddy field at about 700 miles-per-hour and disintegrated – although the tritium bottle and plutonium core were later partially recovered from 20 feet underground.  This bomb was in the “armed” setting because of the impact of the crash.  U.S. government reports, including a declassified report from Sandia National Laboratories published by the National Security Archive on June 9, 2014, concluded that the same safety switch involved in this 1961 crash had also failed in other incidents.  In a related development, Eric Schlosser’s 2013 book “Command and Control” presented a declassified 1969 document which quoted Parker F. Jones, a nuclear safety supervisor at Sandia National Laboratories, who said that, “One simple dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe.”  Comments:  If one or both of these multi-megaton hydrogen bombs had exploded four days into the Kennedy Administration, a nuclear war might have inadvertently been triggered.  If not, the U.S. still would have suffered an unprecedented nuclear disaster hundreds of times more significant than the Hiroshima bombing.  With hundreds of thousands killed within a zone of 17 miles and similar numbers injured, millions more people would have been irradiated as prevailing winds would have sent a huge radioactive cloud hundreds of miles northeast to the nation’s capital and on to New York City leaving a large, permanent evacuation zone in and around what some experts claim would have become a new Bay of North Carolina.  Comments:  Many of the hundreds, if not thousands of nuclear accidents involving all nine nuclear weapons states still remain partially or completely classified and hidden from public scrutiny.  These near-nuclear catastrophes provide an additional justification for reducing dramatically and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons arsenals.  (Sources:  Eric Schlosser. “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.”  New York:  Penguin Press, 2013, William Burr.  “The Nuclear Vault” National Security Archive at The George Washington University. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb475/ and “1961 Goldsboro B-52 Crash.”  Military Wiki. http://wikia.com/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash both accessed Dec.19, 2017.)

    January 31, 1935 – Birthdate of Kenzaburo Oe, a renowned Japanese author and winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature.  This contemporary novelist, short story writer, and essayist has long dealt with social, political, and philosophical issues including social nonconformist theory, existentialism, nuclear weapons, and nuclear power.  Born in Ose, a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku, he is a pacifist and historian who revealed that Japanese military officers had coerced many Okinawan civilians into committing suicide during the Allied invasion of that island in 1945.  He also authored books and articles on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as on Article 9, the War Renunciation clause of the Japanese Constitution.  After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, he urged Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to rethink the restart of Japanese nuclear reactors and abandon nuclear energy entirely.  In January 2014 he wrote that, “Hiroshima must be engraved in our memories.  It is a catastrophe more dramatic than natural disasters because it’s man-made.  To repeat it by showing the same disregard for human life in nuclear power stations is the worst betrayal of the memory of the victims of Hiroshima.”  (Sources:  Many mainstream and alternative news media articles and Akira Tashiro. “Japan: Finally No to Nuclear Power.”  The Progressive. http://progressive.org/dispatches/japan-finally-nuclear-power accessed Dec. 19, 2017.)

  • Ten Nuclear Wishes for the New Year

    This article was originally published by Counterpunch.

    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.

    5) That nuclear deterrence will be recognized for the fraud that it is.

    6) That there will be no accidents or miscalculations leading to nuclear catastrophe.

    7) That the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will engage in good faith negotiations, as the treaty requires, for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.

    8) That there will be no cyber-attacks on nuclear weapons systems, leading to the launch of nuclear weapons.

    9) That the nuclear weapons states will halt their plans to spend hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars to modernize their nuclear arsenals.

    10) That people everywhere will realize the necessity for peace in the Nuclear Age and will demand that their governments seek peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

  • My Story: Kristian Rolland

    One year ago, I walked through the Foundation’s doors – uninvited, and uncertain of what I would find. I’d heard about the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation while doing research about policy-oriented organizations in Santa Barbara, and I wanted to learn more.

    My research evolved into a year-long internship in which I learned how to go beyond “regular activism” to become an effective agent of change. It was an experience that profoundly impacts the person I am today.

    Interning at NAPF demands competence in a diverse set of subjects: effectively engaging and informing the public; making a longstanding impact on government; and using advanced technological tools to bolster advocacy efforts. It requires a growth-oriented mindset, and an unwavering willingness to reach out to individuals who can help further your cause. Last, but not least, it requires dedication to approaching the world’s problems with intellectual rigor and empathy.

    I had the privilege of working in many different areas related to advocacy and I came away with a holistic idea of what it takes to run a nonprofit. I tackled projects from intensive, scholarly research, website development, video production, article analysis and the implementation of a public outreach campaign. I had the opportunity to travel to Washington, DC, where I attended an intensive lobbying workshop and met with congressional staffers to advocate on the Foundation’s behalf. I also ran the Foundation’s online Google Adwords campaign, receiving two professional certifications in the process.

    I reached out to those with knowledge and experience, spending time with professors, marketing experts, Google representatives, digital media experts, and hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bomb). These invaluable interactions will stay with me for a long time, no doubt. They furthered my advocacy efforts and also serve as a reminder to continue networking.

    Last week marked the end of my internship at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. It’s as though I’m facing the world with a new pair of eyes: I feel empowered. My time there has given me an extraordinary set of new skills, and the confidence to go out and make a difference. I cannot thank my mentors enough for this opportunity of a lifetime.

  • My Story: Joy Ferguson

    My name is Joy Ferguson. I’m a senior at Westmont College with a double major in Political Science and English. I hope one day to combine my two passions into a career in political communications, working on speechwriting and campaign strategy.

    My interest in nuclear weapons goes back to my freshman year in high school when we read John Hershey’s Hiroshima for my Honors English class. The details Hersey included were so horribly eye opening, I still remember them to this day. I hadn’t yet been exposed to the realities of nuclear bombs beyond the image of a mushroom cloud and the way they were portrayed as evil weapons in action movies. At the time, we were being taught to believe the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were responsible for ending World War II and, therefore, using nuclear weapons was justified.

    Later, as I studied U.S. history in college, I learned of the continued nuclear weapons testing conducted by the United States. I saw that our country was building bigger and more destructive bombs. And I learned further about the gruesome death and destruction the United States had wrought on the people of Japan.

    Westmont has given me many opportunities, from studying abroad in England to meeting important influencers such as Bob Woodward and Doris Kearns Goodwin. One of the most thought-provoking opportunities for me was attending the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Evening for Peace in October 2015. The Foundation had given our poli sci class some free tickets to the event. It was a chance to hear first-hand the harrowing and horror-filled story from a Hiroshima survivor, Setsuko Thurlow. It was this event that led me to an intern position at the Foundation. I couldn’t be more grateful to the many sponsors who made it possible for a student like me to attend this event.

    Fast forward to my first few weeks interning with NAPF. I hope to grow my political communication skills and learn from more experts and peace warriors on how true freedom from the nuclear threat can be achieved. I also hope to help educate more people on what we can do to save humanity and our planet from these horrible weapons of mass annihilation.

  • No Money for New Nuclear Weapons or Testing

    The United States detonated 1,032 nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, under the ocean, and underground between 1945 and 1992 that devastated local communities. Though the U.S. has not conducted a full-scale underground nuclear test in 25 years, resurgent nuclear threats are gaining intensity in the Trump administration. More than inflammatory rhetoric from the President, neocons, nuclear lab managers, and others are urging Trump to hit the accelerator on new nuclear warheads and the underground explosions needed to test them.

    Public pressure from ordinary Americans was essential in halting explosive U.S. nuclear testing in the atmosphere and underground 25 years ago. We must act now to halt funding for a new arms race.

    Join us as we urge White House Budget Office Director, Mick Mulvaney, and the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees of the US Congress not to fund programs that may lead to resumption of nuclear test explosions or new nuclear weapons.

  • Setsuko Thurlow: Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

    The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) received the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2017.

    Your Majesties,
    Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,
    My fellow campaigners, here and throughout the world,
    Ladies and gentlemen,

    Setsuko ThurlowIt is a great privilege to accept this award, together with Beatrice, on behalf of all the remarkable human beings who form the ICAN movement. You each give me such tremendous hope that we can – and will – bring the era of nuclear weapons to an end.

    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.

    We have stood in solidarity with those harmed by the production and testing of these horrific weapons around the world. People from places with long-forgotten names, like Moruroa, Ekker, Semipalatinsk, Maralinga, Bikini. People whose lands and seas were irradiated, whose bodies were experimented upon, whose cultures were forever disrupted.

    We were not content to be victims. We refused to wait for an immediate fiery end or the slow poisoning of our world. We refused to sit idly in terror as the so-called great powers took us past nuclear dusk and brought us recklessly close to nuclear midnight. We rose up. We shared our stories of survival. We said: humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.

    Today, I want you to feel in this hall the presence of all those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want you to feel, above and around us, a great cloud of a quarter million souls. Each person had a name. Each person was loved by someone. Let us ensure that their deaths were not in vain.

    I was just 13 years old when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb, on my city Hiroshima. I still vividly remember that morning. At 8:15, I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window. I remember having the sensation of floating in the air.

    As I regained consciousness in the silence and darkness, I found myself pinned by the collapsed building. I began to hear my classmates’ faint cries: “Mother, help me. God, help me.”

    Then, suddenly, I felt hands touching my left shoulder, and heard a man saying: “Don’t give up! Keep pushing! I am trying to free you. See the light coming through that opening? Crawl towards it as quickly as you can.” As I crawled out, the ruins were on fire. Most of my classmates in that building were burned to death alive. I saw all around me utter, unimaginable devastation.

    Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by. Grotesquely wounded people, they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen. Parts of their bodies were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their intestines hanging out. The foul stench of burnt human flesh filled the air.

    Thus, with one bomb my beloved city was obliterated. Most of its residents were civilians who were incinerated, vaporized, carbonized – among them, members of my own family and 351 of my schoolmates.

    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. Still to this day, radiation is killing survivors.

    Whenever I remember Hiroshima, the first image that comes to mind is of my four-year-old nephew, Eiji – his little body transformed into an unrecognizable melted chunk of flesh. He kept begging for water in a faint voice until his death released him from agony.

    To me, he came to represent all the innocent children of the world, threatened as they are at this very moment by nuclear weapons. Every second of every day, nuclear weapons endanger everyone we love and everything we hold dear. We must not tolerate this insanity any longer.

    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.

    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 every president and prime minister of every nation of the world, I beseech you: Join this treaty; forever eradicate the threat of nuclear annihilation.

    When I was a 13-year-old girl, trapped in the smouldering rubble, I kept pushing. I kept moving toward the light. And I survived. Our light now is the ban treaty. To all in this hall and all listening around the world, I repeat those words that I heard called to me in the ruins of Hiroshima: “Don’t give up! Keep pushing! See the light? Crawl towards it.”

    Tonight, as we march through the streets of Oslo with torches aflame, let us follow each other out of the dark night of nuclear terror. No matter what obstacles we face, we will keep moving and keep pushing and keep sharing this light with others. This is our passion and commitment for our one precious world to survive.

  • Beatrice Fihn: Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

    The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) received the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo on December 10, 2017.

    Your Majesties,
    Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,
    Esteemed guests,

    Beatrice FihnToday, it is a great honour to accept the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of thousands of inspirational people who make up the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

    Together we have brought democracy to disarmament and are reshaping international law.
    __

    We most humbly thank the Norwegian Nobel Committee for recognizing our work and giving momentum to our crucial cause.

    We want to recognize those who have so generously donated their time and energy to this campaign.

    We thank the courageous foreign ministers, diplomats, Red Cross and Red Crescent staff, UN officials, academics and experts with whom we have worked in partnership to advance our common goal.

    And we thank all who are committed to ridding the world of this terrible threat.
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    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.

    Perhaps it is the enormity of this fact, perhaps it is the unimaginable scale of the consequences, that leads many to simply accept this grim reality. To go about our daily lives with no thought to the instruments of insanity all around us.

    For it is insanity to allow ourselves to be ruled by these weapons. Many critics of this movement suggest that we are the irrational ones, the idealists with no grounding in reality. That 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.
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    Today I want to talk of three things: fear, freedom, and the future.

    By the very admission of those who possess them, the real utility of nuclear weapons is in their ability to provoke fear. When they refer to their “deterrent” effect, proponents of nuclear weapons are celebrating fear as a weapon of war.

    They are puffing their chests by declaring their preparedness to exterminate, in a flash, countless thousands of human lives.

    Nobel Laureate William Faulkner said when accepting his prize in 1950, that “There is only the question of ‘when will I be blown up?’” But since then, this universal fear has given way to something even more dangerous: denial.

    Gone is the fear of Armageddon in an instant, gone is the equilibrium between two blocs that was used as the justification for deterrence, gone are the fallout shelters.

    But one thing remains: the thousands upon thousands of nuclear warheads that filled us up with that fear.

    The risk for nuclear weapons use is even greater today than at the end of the Cold War. But unlike the Cold War, today we face many more nuclear armed states, terrorists, and cyber warfare. All of this makes us less safe.

    Learning to live with these weapons in blind acceptance has been our next great mistake.

    Fear is rational. The threat is real. We have avoided nuclear war not through prudent leadership but good fortune. Sooner or later, if we fail to act, our luck will run out.

    A moment of panic or carelessness, a misconstrued comment or bruised ego, could easily lead us unavoidably to the destruction of entire cities. A calculated military escalation could lead to the indiscriminate mass murder of civilians.

    If only a small fraction of today’s nuclear weapons were used, soot and smoke from the firestorms would loft high into the atmosphere – cooling, darkening and drying the Earth’s surface for more than a decade.

    It would obliterate food crops, putting billions at risk of starvation.

    Yet we continue to live in denial of this existential threat.

    But Faulkner in his Nobel speech also issued a challenge to those who came after him. Only by being the voice of humanity, he said, can we defeat fear; can we help humanity endure.

    ICAN’s duty is to be that voice. The voice of humanity and humanitarian law; to speak up on behalf of civilians. Giving voice to that humanitarian perspective is how we will create the end of fear, the end of denial. And ultimately, the end of nuclear weapons.
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    That brings me to my second point: freedom.

    As the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the first ever anti-nuclear weapons organisation to win this prize, said on this stage in 1985:

    “We physicians protest the outrage of holding the entire world hostage. We protest the moral obscenity that each of us is being continuously targeted for extinction.”

    Those words still ring true in 2017.

    We must reclaim the freedom to not live our lives as hostages to imminent annihilation.

    Man – not woman! – made nuclear weapons to control others, but instead we are controlled by them.

    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.

    As fellow Nobel Peace Laureate, Martin Luther King Jr, called them from this very stage in 1964, these weapons are “both genocidal and suicidal”.

    They are the madman’s gun held permanently to our temple. These weapons were supposed to keep us free, but they deny us our freedoms.

    It’s an affront to democracy to be ruled by these weapons. 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.
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    That is the task ICAN has set itself – and my third point I wish to talk about, the future.

    I have the honour of sharing this stage today with Setsuko Thurlow, who has made it her life’s purpose to bear witness to the horror of nuclear war.

    She and the hibakusha were at the beginning of the story, and it is our collective challenge to ensure they will also witness the end of it.

    They relive the painful past, over and over again, so that we may create a better future.

    There are hundreds of organisations that together as ICAN are making great strides towards that future.

    There are thousands of tireless campaigners around the world who work each day to rise to that challenge.

    There are millions of people across the globe who have stood shoulder to shoulder with those campaigners to show hundreds of millions more that a different future is truly possible.

    Those who say that future is not possible need to get out of the way of those making it a reality.

    As the culmination of this grassroots effort, through the action of ordinary people, this year the hypothetical marched forward towards the actual as 122 nations negotiated and concluded a UN treaty to outlaw these weapons of mass destruction.

    The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides the pathway forward at a moment of great global crisis. It is a light in a dark time.

    And more than that, it provides a choice.

    A choice between the two endings: the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us.

    It is not naive to believe in the first choice. It is not irrational to think nuclear states can disarm. It is not idealistic to believe in life over fear and destruction; it is a necessity.
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    All of us face that choice. And I call on every nation to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

    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.

    To 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?

    To all nations: choose the end of nuclear weapons over the end of us!

    This is the choice that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons represents. Join this Treaty.

    We citizens are living under the umbrella of falsehoods. These weapons are not keeping us safe, they are contaminating our land and water, poisoning our bodies and holding hostage our right to life.

    To all citizens of the world: Stand with us and demand your government side with humanity and sign this treaty. We will not rest until all States have joined, on the side of reason.
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    No nation today boasts of being a chemical weapon state.
    No nation argues that it is acceptable, in extreme circumstances, to use sarin nerve agent.
    No nation proclaims the right 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.

    Monumental strides forward never begin with universal agreement.

    With every new signatory and every passing year, this new reality will take hold.

    This is the way forward. There is only one way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons: prohibit and eliminate them.
    __

    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 organisations 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.

    Thank you.

  • The Madness of Deterrence

    At some point in the near or semi-distant future, one way or another, Mr. Trump will have departed public office. For many reasons, perhaps most of all because we managed (if we do manage) to avoid nuclear war during his tenure, we will feel relief. But we may also feel a kind of letdown. Instead of having our anxieties focused upon the shallowness, impulsivity, and macho vengefulness of one particular leader, we will be forced to go back to worrying about the craziness of deterrence itself, irrespective of who is leading us.

    A conference at Harvard on November 4 on “Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons,” examined whether the law should be changed and the choice to initiate nuclear war ought to be placed in the hands of congress rather than the president’s hands alone.

    It may be of academic interest where launch authority should reside, but the question fails to address that moment of maximum awfulness when someone in the military reports to civilian authorities—accurately or not—that incoming missiles have appeared on a screen, requiring that someone decide how to respond, with millions of lives in the balance, in the space of a few inadequate minutes.

    To have drifted into the creation of a system that culminates in such a moment, to put any one person or team of people in that position, is to have participated in a form of collective psychosis. We are all complicit, for example in the way both citizens and the press tolerated the bizarre reality that the topic was never brought up in any of the presidential debates.

    It is not surprising that people find it challenging to think clearly, or to think at all, about the issue of nuclear war. Its utter destructiveness is so impossible to wrap our heads around that we take refuge in the fantasy that it can’t happen, it won’t happen, or if it does happen it will occur somewhere else. Mr. Trump’s ascendency has sharpened our apprehension, which may be a good thing if it helps us reexamine the bigger machine in which he is only an eccentric cog.

    Many argue, speciously, that the potential destructiveness is the very thing that makes the system work to prevent war, forgetting the awful paradox of deterrence: that in order to never be used, the weapons must be kept absolutely ready for use. The complexity of the electronic systems intended to control them keeps on increasing as they are deployed in ever greater variety—on missiles from ships, on tactical battlefield launchers, from bombers and submarines, from aging silos in the Midwest. Error is inevitable, and close calls are legion.

    The planet as a whole has pronounced clearly its judgment on deterrence, in the form of a treaty banning all nuclear weapons signed by 122 nations. The United States, citing the erratic and aggressive nuclear behavior of North Korea, boycotted the conference that led to this majority condemnation.

    16 years ago, Henry Kissinger joined William Perry, George Shultz and Sam Nunn to write a series of editorials in the Wall Street Journal arguing that deterrence is obsolete and abolition must be the ultimate policy goal, even if fiendishly difficult to realize. On October 28, 2017, Kissinger was quoted in the New York Times saying:

    “If they [North Korea] continue to have nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons must spread in the rest of Asia. It cannot be that North Korea is the only Korean country in the world that has nuclear weapons, without the South Koreans trying to match it. Nor can it be that Japan will sit there,” he added. “So therefore we’re talking about nuclear proliferation.”

    It is unclear from this statement whether Dr. Kissinger has changed his mind about the goal of abolition in favor of further proliferation.  If he has, it is a little like arguing that people should take guns to church to prevent mass murder. Which will result in a safer world, one where everyone has nuclear weapons, or the world envisioned by Kissinger and colleagues in the Wall Street Journal, a direction encouraged by the 122 nations who voted so unambiguously at the U.N.?

    The answer to the North Korean crisis is not further nuclear proliferation, nor, God forbid, is it all-out war on the Korean peninsula that would leave millions dead and make the United States, were we to participate with or even without nuclear weapons, a pariah nation.  Instead we can start by reassuring North Korea in word and deed that we are not an existential threat to them, and wait patiently for internal changes in their governance that time will make inevitable.

    Former Secretary of Defense Perry has argued we can afford to entirely eliminate the land-based leg of our land-sea-air nuclear triad with no loss of security. What would happen to planetary balances of power if our country unilaterally joined those 122 nations in a treaty that categorizes nuclear weapons, like chemical weapons, as beyond the pale, and we began to stand some of our weapons down in confidence-building gestures of good will? Would the Chinese or the Russians, or for that matter the North Koreans, really risk nuclear winter by launching unilateral attacks upon the U.S.?  Isn’t the risk of that happening a good deal less than the risk of slipping into war with North Korea merely because leaders in both countries assumed that credible deterrence required the madness of mutual threats?

    Winslow Myers, the author of “Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide,” serves on the Advisory Board of the War Prevention Initiative and writes on global issues for Peacevoice.

  • Sunflower Newsletter: December 2017

    Issue #245 – December 2017
    Invest in Peace this Holiday Season. Shop for everyone on your gift list and benefit the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at Amazon Smile and at our online Peace Store. Support the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation by making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.

    Facebook Twitter Addthis
    • Perspectives
      • Decoding Donald by David Krieger
      • Women Leaders Aren’t Making Enough Foreign Policy Decisions, and it’s a Problem by Meredith Horowski and Lillyanne Daigle
      • Address to Nuclear Disarmament Conference by Pope Francis
    • U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy
      • U.S. Tweeted False Information About Its Nuclear Arsenal
      • University of Texas Seeks to Manage U.S. Nuclear Weapons Lab
    • Nuclear Disarmament
      • ICAN to Accept Nobel Peace Prize on December 10
      • Mexico Ratifies Nuclear Ban Treaty
    • War and Peace
      • South Korea Wants to Cancel Military Drills During Winter Olympics
    • Nuclear Insanity
      • Russia Admits Significant Radioactive Leak
    • Nuclear “Modernization”
      • U.S. and Russia Engaged in a Costly New Nuclear Arms Race
      • U.S. Seeks to Violate INF Treaty as Revenge for Russia Violating the INF Treaty
    • Resources
      • This Month in Nuclear Threat History
      • The Doomsday Machine: New Book by NAPF Distinguished Fellow Daniel Ellsberg
      • Cybersecurity, Nuclear Security, Alan Turing, and Illogical Logic
      • Conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases
      • The Dome
    • Foundation Activities
      • Create Your Own Facebook Fundraiser to Benefit NAPF this Holiday Season
      • Letter in the Los Angeles Times
      • Peace Literacy and Rotary International
      • Rick Wayman Participates in Vatican Nuclear Disarmament Conference
      • New Nukes Are Nuts Merchandise
    • Take Action
      • No Unconstitutional Strike Against North Korea
    • Quotes

     

    Perspectives

    Decoding Donald

    by David Krieger

    The future of the world and of humanity is at the mercy of a lunatic. His name is Donald Trump, and he alone has access to the U.S. nuclear codes. Before he does something rash and irreversible with those codes, it is imperative to decode Donald, taking the necessary steps to remove this power from him.

    Trump is exactly the type of person who should not be anywhere near the nuclear codes. He is not calm, thoughtful, deliberate, cautious, or well-informed. Rather, he is erratic, thin-skinned, narcissistic and self-absorbed. He takes slights personally and likes to punch back hard. He could be insulted and backed into a corner, and decide that nuclear weapons are the solution to what he takes to be taunting behavior. He could be awakened at 3:00 a.m., and make a hasty decision to launch the U.S. nuclear arsenal instead of a tweet.

    To read more, click here.

    Women Leaders Aren’t Making Enough Foreign Policy Decisions, and it’s a Problem

    by Meredith Horowski and Lillyanne Daigle

    While women are leading the resistance, the halls of power in D.C. and states across the country lag pathetically behind. We saw this perhaps most vividly when Trump gathered an all-male group of politicians at the White House to discuss his efforts to gut women’s health care. In a single photograph, the gross underrepresentation of women’s voices in government and on issues directly impacting their lives was crystal clear.

    And it was exactly that photograph — and the utterly out-of-sync gender dynamics it laid bare — that stuck in our minds this month as we sat in a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Trump’s unrestrained power to wage nuclear war. A committee with a 20:1 male-to-female ratio heard testimony from three men on whether one man should have total, unchecked power to start a nuclear war and blow up the planet. This is a system that, as Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said, “boggles the rational mind.”

    Apparently, the Senate has a one-woman limit when it comes to foreign policy.

    To read the full article at Teen Vogue, click here.

    Address to Nuclear Disarmament Conference

    by Pope Francis

    Nor can we fail to be genuinely concerned by the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices. If we also take into account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned. For they exist in the service of a mentality of fear that affects not only the parties in conflict but the entire human race. International relations cannot be held captive to military force, mutual intimidation, and the parading of stockpiles of arms. Weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, create nothing but a false sense of security. They cannot constitute the basis for peaceful coexistence between members of the human family, which must rather be inspired by an ethics of solidarity. Essential in this regard is the witness given by the Hibakusha, the survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with other victims of nuclear arms testing. May their prophetic voice serve as a warning, above all for coming generations!

    To read more, click here.

    U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy

    U.S. Tweeted False Information About Its Nuclear Arsenal

    U.S. Strategic Command, which is in charge of all U.S. nuclear weapons, posted a link on its official Twitter account to an article falsely claiming that the U.S. maintains “secret silos” for its nuclear warheads, and has “B-1 bombers that can drop them from the air.”

    Experts immediately criticized the tweet, since the U.S. does not have secret silos, and B-1 bombers are not nuclear-capable. Tweeting out the article only increases the chance of miscalculation between North Korea and the United States while tensions between the two nuclear powers are already sky-high.

    Alex Ward, “The U.S. Military Tweeted Out Bad Information About Its Nukes. North Korea Will Notice,” Vox, November 15, 2017.

    University of Texas Seeks to Manage U.S. Nuclear Weapons Lab

    The University of Texas (UT) Board of Regents voted 3-2 to submit a bid to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), one of the United States’ two primary nuclear weapons labs. UT submitted an unsuccessful bid to run the lab in 2005.

    LANL has a history of nuclear weapon research and design dating back to the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.

    The lab is currently run by the University of California in a for-profit partnership with Bechtel National, Inc. The University of California has managed the nation’s nuclear weapons labs in New Mexico and California since the labs’ inception.

    Alyssa Goard, “UT System Will Submit Bid to Operate Los Alamos National Laboratory,” KXAN, November 27, 2017.

    Nuclear Disarmament

    ICAN to Accept Nobel Peace Prize on December 10

    Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and a tireless campaigner for the abolition of nuclear weapons, will accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the global campaign in Oslo on December 10. At least two other survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings are expected to attend.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been a Partner Organization in ICAN since its inception in 2007. Setsuko Thurlow is the recipient of NAPF’s 2015 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award and serves on the NAPF Advisory Council.

    “Three A-bomb survivors to attend Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in December,” Kyodo, October 27, 2017.

    Mexico Ratifies Nuclear Ban Treaty

    Mexico is the fourth country to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as its Senate voted unanimously to approve Mexico’s participation in the treaty. Prohibitions in the treaty include developing, acquiring, storing, using or threatening to use any atomic explosive device or nuclear weapon of any kind.

    Fernando Torres Graciano, president of the National Defense Commission, encouraged other countries to ratify the treaty as well. He said, “Instead of resistance to nuclear disarmament, governments should promote programs to address the most important problems in the world, such as poverty and hunger.”

    In order for the treaty to enter into force, 50 countries must ratify the treaty.

    “Mexico’s Senate Approved the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” Puerto Vallarta News, November 28, 2017.

    War and Peace

    South Korea Wants to Cancel Military Drills During Winter Olympics

    Song Young-gil, the chairman of the Presidential Committee on Northern Economic Cooperation, said that the South Korean government wants to stop joint military drills with the United States during the upcoming PyeongChang Olympic Games.

    “The first step toward alleviating tensions is North Korea’s abandoning of its programs and the U.S. and its allies scaling down of joint military drills, simultaneously,” said Igor Morgulov, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

    The Olympics have long been associated with peace or at least a temporary cessation of hostilities. In 776 BC, a truce was announced before the Olympic games to ensure that the host city was not attacked and that spectators and athletes could attend safely.

    Nam Hyun-woo, “Government Wants to Delay Korea-U.S. Military Drills,” The Korea Times, November 27, 2017.

    Nuclear Insanity

    Russia Admits Significant Radioactive Leak

    Authorities detected a radioactive cloud over Europe between September 27 and October 13. After months of denying anything outside the normal levels of radiation, Russian officials admitted that there was a leak of ruthenium-106 in the southern Urals in September. Levels reached 986 times the normal pollution of the element just south of the Mayak facility, where in 1957 an explosion caused the third-most detrimental radioactive accident in history (the first two being Chernobyl and Fukushima.) It affected 227,000 people, exposing them to lethal amounts of radiation. Many accidents have happened at the facility since its opening in 1948.

    The French nuclear safety institute (IRSN) said that such an event in France would have resulted in several kilometers of evacuation.

    Mark Bennets, “Russia Admits Nuclear Leak Near Site of 1957 Disaster,” The Times, November 21, 2017.

    Nuclear “Modernization”

    U.S. and Russia Engaged in a Costly New Nuclear Arms Race

    In 2010, the Obama administration negotiated the New START treaty with Russia, which limited both sides’ deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550. Despite both countries being on track to meeting the limit by the 2018 deadline, experts and former officials say that the risk of nuclear conflict is far from eliminated. In fact, the stricter limitation on the number of weapons allowed has only spurred both countries to initiate modernization programs to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and lethality of their weapons systems.

    The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the U.S. “modernization” effort will cost $1.25 trillion over 30 years. Supporters of the program argue that it consists primarily of tweaks and improvements, not development of new weapons or capabilities. Critics suggest that the new improvements are so substantial that they will reshape U.S. nuclear capability, making the use of nuclear weapons more tempting. They also point to Russia’s parallel modernization as evidence of a dangerous new arms race.

    Scot Paltrow, “Special Report: in Modernizing Nuclear Arsenal, U.S. Stokes New Arms Race“, U.S. News & World Report, November 21, 2017.

    U.S. Seeks to Violate INF Treaty as Revenge for Russia Violating the INF Treaty

    The Obama administration suspected for years, and later confirmed, that Russia built a missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Signed by President Ronald Reagan, the bilateral U.S.-Russian pact prohibits construction, testing or deployment of missiles or delivery systems with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

    The Trump administration is now supporting Congressional efforts to also violate the INF Treaty by building a cruise missile in the prohibited range.

    “It would be a mistake to believe that the pursuit of a INF-noncompliant cruise missile by the United States will compel Russia to acknowledge and rectify its suspected INF violations,” said Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball.

    Josh Rogin, “Russia Has Deployed a Banned Nuclear Missile. Now the U.S. Threatens to Build One,” Washington Post, November 16, 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 December, including the December 18, 1970 U.S. nuclear weapon test in Nevada, which resulted in a significant release of radioactive material into the environment.

    To read Mason’s full article, click here.

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

    The Doomsday Machine: New Book by NAPF Distinguished Fellow Daniel Ellsberg

    The Doomsday Machine, a new book by NAPF Fellow Daniel Ellsberg, is now available for pre-order. It will be released on December 5. Ellsberg, the legendary whistleblower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, was a presidential advisor and nuclear strategist. The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg’s hair-raising account of the most dangerous arms build-up in the history of civilization, whose legacy – and proposed renewal under the Trump administration – threatens the very survival of humanity.

    To pre-order the book from Amazon, click here.

    To read a review by NAPF intern Joy Ferguson, a senior at Westmont College, click here.

    Cybersecurity, Nuclear Security, Alan Turing, and Illogical Logic

    NAPF Associate Martin Hellman received the 2015 Association for Computing Machinery Turing Award for his work on cryptography. In his lecture accepting the prestigious award, Hellman makes a strong connection between cybersecurity and nuclear security.

    In examining the risk involved with nuclear weapons, Hellman said, “To put such risk in perspective, even if nuclear deterrence could be expected to work for 500 years before it failed and destroyed civilization—a time horizon that sounds optimistic to most people—it would be equivalent to playing Russian roulette with the life of a child born today. That is because that child’s expected lifetime is roughly one-sixth of 500 years. If the time horizon is more like 100 years, the child’s odds are worse than 50/50.”

    To read Hellman’s full lecture, click here.

    Conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases

    On January 12-14, 2018, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is co-sponsoring a conference in Baltimore about the hundreds of U.S. military bases around the world. The unity statement that is the basis for the conference states that “U.S. foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars of aggression and occupation, and that the closure of U.S. foreign military bases is one of the first necessary steps toward a just, peaceful and sustainable world.”

    For more information and to register to attend, click here.

    The Dome

    The program Foreign Correspondent on Australia’s ABC TV has produced a new documentary entitled “The Dome.” The program examines the toxic legacy of the Runit Dome, an 18-inch-thick concrete dome constructed by the United States in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The dome contains highly-toxic waste from many of the United States’ 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted in the Marshall Islands from 1946-58.

    The concrete dome, which was intended to last for hundreds of years, is already cracked and leaking. Rising sea levels and the increased intensity of storms due to climate change threaten an even greater catastrophe.

    To watch the 41-minute documentary, click here.

    Foundation Activities

    Create Your Own Facebook Fundraiser to Benefit NAPF this Holiday Season

    NAPF intern Aidan Powers-Riggs, a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has made a video for NAPF supporters explaining how to create a fundraiser to benefit NAPF from one’s personal Facebook page.

    Aidan walks viewers through each step in the simple process. This is a great way for individuals to support the important work of NAPF while sharing their passion for peace and nuclear disarmament with their Facebook community.

    To watch the 3-minute video, click here.

    Letter in the Los Angeles Times

    On November 24, the Los Angeles Times published a letter to the editor by NAPF Director of Programs Rick Wayman. Rick’s letter was in response to an editorial opposing the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017” introduced in Congress by Rep. Ted Lieu and Sen. Ed Markey. The LA Times editors argued that it is vital for President Trump to retain the unilateral authority to use nuclear weapons first against an adversary.

    Wayman wrote in part, “Deterrence will only work up until the moment that it fails. Once it fails, we will only have a moment to regret not taking action when we had the chance.”

    To read the full letter, click here.

    Peace Literacy and Rotary International

    On November 10, 2017, Paul K. Chappell, NAPF Peace Leadership Director, spoke about peace literacy and our shared humanity to over 500 former, current, and future Rotary district governors from six states and Vancouver Island at the Rotary International Institute, Zones 25/26. This represented a new level of interaction between NAPF and one of the world’s largest service organizations with a background of almost 100 years of peace projects and initiatives.

    Recommended by a Rotarian with strong ties to the Dayton International Peace Museum, Chappell began his journey with Rotary in April 2015 with his talk on “Why Peace Is Possible,” at the Southwestern Ohio Rotary District 6670 conference. The event generated comments such as, “He [Paul] presents a unique view on peace that makes you really start to think,” “Very practical approach in presentation,” and “I was changed. I went in thinking that peace was impossible. Left thinking that there is a way to spread peace. Slow and steady, like curing polio.”

    To read more about Paul’s involvement with Rotary International, click here.

    Rick Wayman Participates in Vatican Nuclear Disarmament Conference

    NAPF’s Director of Programs Rick Wayman was invited to participate in the Vatican’s November 10-11 conference “Prospects for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons and for Integral Disarmament.” On the first day of the conference, Rick had the honor of hearing Pope Francis deliver an address on nuclear disarmament (see Perspectives, above) and to personally exchange greetings with the pontiff.

    For those in the Santa Barbara area, Rick will report back on the Vatican trip at a meeting at the NAPF headquarters on December 6 at 2:00 pm. For more information and to RSVP, please contact us at (805) 965-3443.

    New Nukes Are Nuts Merchandise

    Just in time for the holiday season, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has some new “Nukes Are Nuts” merchandise in stock and ready to ship. We have t-shirts for adults, onesies for babies, and reusable organic cotton tote bags for everyone.

    Be sure to check out the NAPF Peace Store for these and many other great gifts, including books on peace.

    For shipping outside of the United States, please contact rwayman@napf.org for a specific quote.

    Take Action

    No Unconstitutional Strike Against North Korea

    A bill in the House of Representatives seeks to stop an unconstitutional attack against North Korea. The bill, H.R. 4140, would prohibit the president from launching a first strike against North Korea without congressional approval. The bill also calls 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 currently has 61 co-sponsors, and more are urgently needed. Click here to take action.

    Quotes

    “Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.”

    — Buddha. This quote appears in the book Speaking of Peace: Quotations to Inspire Action. Order copies today in the NAPF Peace Store for holiday gifts to the peace lovers in your life.

    “They like their nuclear weapons very much and don’t like it when we try to ban them.”

    — Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, speaking about the protest of the U.S., UK, and France, which are sending only low-level diplomats to the December 10 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.

    “We urge you to reject calls to develop new low-yield [nuclear] weapons or to increase nuclear delivery systems beyond those already planned, which are simply divorced from budgetary realities.”

    — A letter to Secretaries Tillerson, Mattis, and Perry from 15 U.S. senators.

    Editorial Team

     

    Joy Ferguson
    David Krieger
    Aidan Powers-Riggs
    Carol Warner
    Rick Wayman

  • December: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    December 1, 2016 – Alex Wellerstein’s Washington Post article, “No One Can Stop President Trump From Using Nuclear Weapons,” concluded that, “When the legal framework for nuclear weapons was developed, the fear was not about an irrational president, but trigger-happy generals,” which was resolved long ago, Wellerstein noted, to mandate civilian control over the military and most importantly its possible firing of nuclear weapons.  Yet he also remarked that, “There is no way today to keep (President) Trump from launching a nuclear attack under the existing system.”  This article was certainly not the first of its kind but it surely helped fuel a continued ongoing debate expressed earlier in a most partisan way by Hillary Clinton’s statement at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2016, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”  More recently at a Nov. 14, 2017 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) titled “Authority to Order the Use of Nuclear Weapons,” despite the admonition of chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) that the proceeding was not intended to target the 45th President, “This is not specific to anybody,” many Democrats on the committee were not so reticent in expressing their concerns.  Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) stated that, “We are concerned that the President of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national interests.” Comments:  Despite seemingly comforting statements during this hearing by Brian McKeon, former Chief Counsel to the Democratic members of the SFRC for 12 years (“Article II of the Constitution mandating the President as sole Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces does not give him carte blanche to take the country to war.”) and General Robert Kehler, former head of U.S. Strategic Command (“The military can refuse to follow what it considers an illegal order, even a nuclear one.”), the entirety of the human species remains deeply concerned about the current very high risk of nuclear conflict involving the U.S.  Even if recent legislation from Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) on “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017” or a future, more bipartisan version of such a bill reached Donald Trump’s desk, it is likely he would veto it and it appears unlikely that Congress could override that veto. Nevertheless, it is time to redouble global efforts to prevent a Nuclear Armageddon.  (Sources:  U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations website and a variety of mainstream and alternative media sources such as Democracy Now and RT.com.)

    December 7, 1993 – On this date, U.S. Secretary of Energy Hazel R. O’Leary announced her Openness Initiative in “a deliberate effort to rebuild a basic level of trust between the American people and their government that is necessary for a democracy to function.”  As part of this initiative, she released documents describing previously classified U.S. nuclear tests, facts about bomb-grade plutonium, and related information.  The most startling release of information related to human radiation experiments, specifically the 1945-47 injections of 18 human subjects with plutonium.  More details on a wide variety of 48 different radiation experiments conducted on uninformed and/or uneducated members of the public came in a June 1994 press release.  Through the efforts of hundreds of Department of Energy (DOE) staff, private stakeholders, and long-time activists, a years-long effort to find, declassify, evaluate, and substantiate abuses by DOE and their subcontractors were revealed in a number of subsequent reports that were published in the ensuing years of the Clinton Administration. One such report was released in February of 1995.  Titled, “Human Radiation Experiments: The Department of Energy Roadmap to the Story and Records” (document number DOE/EH-0445), this report catalogued dozens of experiments conducted on not only adults but also children from the 1930s to 1970s.  One series of tests, which were conducted on unsuspecting hospital patients including the critically ill, pregnant women and their fetuses, the poor, the middle class, the mentally ill, and institutionalized children, resulted in the injection, irradiation, or other exposure to radioactive elements with the compiled data from the resultant cancers and even radioactive body parts forwarded for final analysis to Los Alamos National Laboratory or other DOE or governmental facilities.  Comments:  Such experiments probably represent only the tip of the iceberg in terms of countless, purposeful experiments, tests, and radioactive exposures conducted by representatives of the nine nuclear weapons states and possibly other nations that considered or are today considering acquiring nuclear weapons and/or fissile materials.  This is yet another paramount reason why nuclear weapons and nuclear power should be dramatically reduced and eliminated entirely (except for legitimate medicinal uses or very limited internationally-sanctioned civilian nuclear fusion reactor research) by 2030.  (Source:  Eileen Welsome.  “The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War.”  New York:  Dial Press, 1999.)

    December 10, 2017 – Setsuko Thurlow, an 85 year-old hibakusha survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, along with Executive Director Beatrice Fihn, as dual representatives of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), will receive the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway.  ICAN is being rewarded “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 (a reference to the overwhelming approval by U.N. member countries, except the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states, of the July 7, 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons- TPNW).”  ICAN is a coalition of 468 nonprofit organizations in 101 nations founded in 2007.  Comments:  Two years ago, Setsuko Thurlow honored the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on the 70th anniversary of the attack by remarking that, “Former German President Richard von Weizeker once said, ‘We must look truth straight in the eye – without embellishment and without distortion,’ The truth is, we all live with the daily threat of nuclear weapons.  In every silo, on every submarine, in the bomb bays of airplanes, every second of every day, nuclear weapons, thousands on high alert, are poised for deployment threatening everyone we love and everything we hold dear.  How much longer can we allow the nuclear weapons states to wield this threat to all life on earth?  Let us make the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the appropriate milestone to achieve our goal:  to abolish nuclear weapons, and safeguard the future of our one shared planet earth.” (Sources:  International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.  “Atomic Bomb Survivor to Jointly Accept Nobel Peace Prize on ICAN’s Behalf.”  Press Release, Oct. 26, 2017. http://www.ican.org/campaign-news/atomic-bomb-survivor-to-jointly-accept-nobel-peace-prize accessed Nov.16, 2017 and The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  “70 Years After Hiroshima, It’s Time to Confront the Past.” Sunflower Newsletter, September 2015.)

    December 13, 2001 – The George W. Bush Administration announced that it would withdraw the United States from the 1972 ABM Treaty in six months – the first formal renunciation of an international arms control agreement since 1945.  Months later, in 2002, the President announced he would give the green light to the rapid deployment of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) missile defense system with the goal of having an initial operational capability by late 2004.  Unfortunately, the 43rd President justified building the GMD system by arguing that the need for strategic missile defense was acute and required exempting the system from many of the mandatory oversight, accountability, and financial transparency procedures that Congress and the Pentagon had learned through decades of experience are critical to successfully developing viable, successful, and effective military systems.  The same can be said for the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system which currently has six “operational” batteries deployed.  Both THAAD and the GMD (the latter with a total of 44 deployed interceptors at Ft. Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California) systems’ exemption from the proven fly-before-you-buy process and track record of extremely limited real world capability (as seen in drastically flawed testing programs) has had an impact on the viability and reliability of missile defense systems that the Pentagon falsely claims are “proven.”  Comments:  Not only have unwise accelerated deployments of strategic missile defenses been incredibly expensive and wasteful of hundreds of billions of tax dollars, before and after President Reagan’s March 23, 1983 “Star Wars” speech, these deployments also helped fuel a renewed offensive nuclear arms race as the U.S., Russia, China, and other members of the Nuclear Club commit to spend trillions in the next few decades on new generations of ICBMs, submarine-launched and mobile land-based ballistic missiles, and air-launched cruise missiles, not to mention accelerated research and development on more exotic and destabilizing nuclear weapons systems.  (Sources:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors. “Arms Control Chronology.” Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 98 and Laura Grego, George N. Lewis, and David Wright. “Shielded From Oversight: The Disasterous U.S. Approach to Strategic Missile Defense.”  Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2016 and U.S. Department of Defense.  Missile Defense Agency. “Elements: Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD).” and “THAAD.” https://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html and https://www.mda.mil/system/thaad.html both accessed Nov. 15, 2017.)

    December 18, 1970 – At the Nevada Test Site in Area 8 on Yucca Flat, the eighth of 12 tests in the Operation Emery series of nuclear blasts, code-named Baneberry, caused an unexpected and unprecedented result for an underground explosion – a significant release of radioactive elements.  The ten kiloton blast, detonated at the bottom of a sealed vertical shaft 900 feet deep, created a fissure near the surface of the shaft cap that resulted in the leak of approximately six percent of the explosive’s radioactive products into the atmosphere.  Hot gas and radioactive fallout rained down on workers at the site but the release not only had a local impact but a global one.  The plume released 6.7 MCi of radioactive material including 80 kCi of Iodine-131 and other toxic noble gases that rose to the upper atmosphere and jet stream settling down later in areas of northeastern California, northern Nevada, southern Idaho, and eastern sections of Oregon and Washington with some radionuclides spreading across the U.S., to Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean.  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.  (Source:  Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig.  “Nuclear Weapons Databook:  Volume II, Appendix B.” National Resources Defense Council, Inc. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987, p.169 and “Estimated Exposures and Thyroid Doses Received by the American People from Iodine-131 in Fallout Following Nevada Atmospheric Nuclear Bomb Tests: History of the Nevada Test Site and Nuclear Testing Background.” National Cancer Institute. Chapter 2, September 1997. NIH 97-4264. https://www.cancer.gov.)

    December 24, 1950 – Fifteen days after General Douglas MacArthur first requested that President Truman provide him with atomic bombs to turn back a massive Chinese attack on U.N. forces, he upped the ante on Christmas Eve by submitting to the President a more detailed strategic plan calling for a nuclear first strike. MacArthur’s operational plans included a list of 26 targets in mainland China to be hit by atomic blasts.  He also proposed dropping 30-50 such weapons in a path along the Manchurian border to prevent future invasions into North Korea from Red China for sixty years!  In April of 1951, Truman had had enough and he ordered MacArthur to step down as commander of Allied Forces in Korea.  However, top U.S. military planners continued to focus on using nuclear weapons to break the stalemate on the Korean peninsula.  MacArthur’s replacement, General Matthew Ridgway, requested the use of 38 atomic bombs against enemy targets in May of that year.  Comments:  While some would argue that events two-thirds of a century in the past have little relevance today, in fact recent U.S.-North Korean tensions include unfortunately a renewed dose of nuclear threat and bluster, this time on both sides.  The Korean War that was curtailed dramatically after the July 1953 Armistice has nevertheless been reenergized.  There is a desperate need for global intervention to forestall a 21st century Korean War by signing a permanent peace treaty ending the conflict for good.  All parties at risk should be coerced, persuaded, cajoled, or begged to resolve the crisis through an enlarged “1.5 talks” process that expands this small private channel endeavor to a large-scale negotiating protocol shepherded by neutral nations such as Brazil, India, and South Africa.  The alternative could be the species-threatening breach of the nuclear threshold for the first time since 1945 – possibly the beginning of the end for global civilization.  (Sources:  Eric Schlosser.  “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.”  New York:  Penguin Press, 2013 and numerous mainstream and alternative news media sources.)