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  • Reclaiming the Truth About Vietnam

    “From Ia Drang to Khe Sanh, from Hue to Saigon and countless villages in between, they pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans. Through more than a decade of combat, over air, land, and sea, these proud Americans upheld the highest traditions of our Armed Forces.”

    OK, I get it. Soldiers suffer, soldiers die in the wars we wage, and the commander in chief has to, occasionally, toss clichés on their graves.

    The words are those of Barack Obama, five-plus years ago, issuing a Memorial Day proclamation establishing a 13-year commemoration of the Vietnam War, for which, apparently, about $65 million was appropriated.

    Veterans for Peace calls it money allocated to rewrite history and has begun a counter-campaign called Full Disclosure, the need for which is more glaring than ever, considering that there is close to zero political opposition to the unleashed American empire and its endless war on terror.

    Just the other day, for instance, 89 senators quietly voted to pass the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, signing off on a $700 billion defense budget, which ups annual military spending by $80 billion and, as Common Dreams reported, “will dump a larger sum of money into the military budget than even President Donald Trump asked for while also authorizing the production of 94 F-35 jets, two dozen more than the Pentagon requested.”

    And of course there’s no controversy here, no media clamor demanding to know where the money will come from. “Money for war just is. Like the tides,” Adam Johnson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting tweeted, as quoted by Common Dreams.

    Oh quiet profits! The Full Disclosure campaign rips away the lies that allow America’s wars to continue: GIs slogging through jungles and rice paddies to protect the ideals we hold dear. These words are not directed at the people who put Obama into office, who did so believing he would end the Bush wars. The fact that he continued them mocks the “value” we call democracy, indeed, turns it into a hollow shell.

    The U.S. Air Force dropped over 6 million tons of bombs and other ordnance on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia between 1964 and 1973, more than it expended in World War II, Howard Machtinger notes at the Full Disclosure website. And more than 19 million gallons of toxic chemicals, including the infamous Agent Orange, were dumped on the Vietnam countryside.

    “Accurate estimates are hard to come by,” he writes, “but as many as three million Vietnamese were likely killed, including two million civilians, hundreds of thousands seriously injured and disabled, millions of internally displaced, croplands and forests destroyed: incredible destruction — physical, environmental, institutional, and psychological. The term ecocide was coined to try to capture the devastation of the Vietnamese landscape.”

    And: “All Vietnamese, as a matter of course, were referred to as ‘gooks.’ So the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, which had been eroding throughout 20th century warfare, virtually disappeared.”

    And then there was the war’s effect on the soldiers who fought it and the “moral damage” so many suffered: “To date,” Machtinger writes, “estimates of veteran suicides range from a low of 9,000 to 150,000, the latter almost triple the number of U.S. deaths during the actual conflict.”

    So I pause in the midst of these numbers, this data, letting the words and the memories wash over me: Agent Orange, napalm, gook, My Lai. Such words link only with terrible irony to the clichés of Obama’s proclamation: solemn reverence . . . honor . . . heads held high . . . the ideals we hold dear.

    The first set of words sickened a vast segment of the American public and caused the horror of “Vietnam Syndrome” to cripple and emasculate the military-industrial complex for a decade and a half. Slowly, the powers that be regrouped, redefined how we fought our wars: without widespread national sacrifice or a universal draft; and with smart bombs and even smarter public relations, ensuring that most of the American public could watch our clean, efficient wars in the comfort of their living rooms.

    What was also necessary was to marginalize the anti-war voices that shut down the Vietnam War. This was accomplished politically, beginning with the surrender of the Democratic Party to its military-industrial funders in the wake of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign. Eventually, endless war became the new normal, and blotting the shame of our “loss” in Vietnam from the historical record became a priority.

    The Full Disclosure campaign is saying: no way. One aspect of this campaign is an interactive exhibit of the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which American soldiers rounded up and killed more than 500 villagers. The exhibit was created by the Chicago chapter of Vets for Peace, which hopes to raise enough money to take it on a national tour and rekindle public awareness of the reality of war.

    A slice of that reality can be found in a New Yorker article written in 2015 by Seymour Hersh, the reporter who broke the story some four and a half decades earlier. In the article, Hersh revisits the story of one of the GI participants in My Lai, Paul Meadlo:

    After being told by (Lt. William) Calley to ‘take care of this group,’ one Charlie Company soldier recounted, Meadlo and a fellow-soldier ‘were actually playing with the kids, telling the people where to sit down and giving the kids candy.’ When Calley returned and said that he wanted them dead, the soldier said, ‘Meadlo just looked at him like he couldn’t believe it. He says, “Waste them?” When Calley said yes, another soldier testified, Meadlo and Calley ‘opened up and started firing.’ But then Meadlo ‘started to cry.’

    And that’s the war, and those are our values, buried with the dead villagers in a mass grave.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

  • A Negotiated Curbing of North Korea’s Nuclear Capabilities Is Good, But Not Good Enough

    The North Korean government’s progress toward developing a long-range nuclear weapons capability, accompanied by bellicose pronouncements, has been alarming enough to spark worldwide public dismay and new sanctions by a unanimous UN Security Council.  But even if, at the very best, sanctions (which, so far, have not worked) or diplomatic negotiations (which have yet to get underway) produce a change in North Korea’s policy, that change is likely to be no more than a freeze in the regime’s nuclear weapons program.

    And that will leave us with a very dangerous world, indeed.

    Most obviously, North Korea will still possess its 10 nuclear weapons and the ability to employ them against other nations.

    In addition, eight other countries (the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, Israel, India, and Pakistan) possess a total of roughly 15,000 nuclear weapons, and none of them seems willing to get rid of them.  In fact, like North Korea, they are engaged in a nuclear arms race designed to upgrade their ability to wage nuclear war well into the 21st century.

    There is nothing to prevent these countries from using nuclear weapons in future conflicts, and there is an excellent possibility that they will.  After all, they and their predecessors have been waging wars with the latest weapons in their possession for thousands of years.  Indeed, the U.S. government unleashed nuclear war against a virtually defeated Japan in 1945 and is currently threatening to use nuclear weapons against North Korea.

    Moreover, even if one assumes that the leaders of these nations have reached a higher level of moral development, there are plenty of terrorists around the world who would gladly employ nuclear weapons if they could buy or steal them from these nations.  Given the instability of some of these countries―for example, Pakistan―isn’t this likely to happen at some time in the future?

    Also, many of the world’s nearly 200 nations are quite capable of building nuclear weapons―if they decide to do so.  One reason that they have not is that they have been patiently complying with the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, which provides that signatories refrain from developing nuclear weapons while the nuclear powers disarm.  But, after almost a half-century of waiting for a nuclear weapons-free world to emerge, most non-nuclear nations are fed up with the nuclear monopoly of nine nations.  And some are considering the possibilities of ignoring the treaty and developing their own nuclear arsenals.  That’s what India, Pakistan, and North Korea did.

    Finally, there is the possibility of an accidental nuclear war, triggered by a misreading of “enemy” intentions or defense gadgetry, action by drug-addled or drunken soldiers guarding nuclear missile silos, or crashes by submarines or planes carrying nuclear weapons.  Machines and people are fallible, and it takes only one mistake to create a nuclear disaster.

    Fortunately, there is an alternative to living of the brink of nuclear catastrophe:  abolishing nuclear weapons.  And this alternative is not as far-fetched as some might imagine.

    Thanks to popular pressure and occasional government response, there has been very significant progress on nuclear disarmament.  At the zenith of worldwide nuclear proliferation, nations possessed some 70,000 nuclear weapons.  Today, as a follow-up to international disarmament treaties and independent actions by individual nations, nearly four-fifths of these weapons have been scrapped.

    Indeed, in an historic action on July 7, 2017, the official representatives of 122 out of 124 nations attending a special UN-sponsored conference voted to adopt a treaty prohibiting nations from developing, testing, manufacturing, possessing, or threatening to use nuclear weapons.  The treaty also prohibited nations from transferring nuclear weapons to one another.  According to Costa Rica’s Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the conference:  “This is a very clear statement that the international community wants to move to a . . . security paradigm that does not include nuclear weapons.”

    Unfortunately, the nine nuclear powers boycotted the treaty conference, and have announced their refusal to sign its Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  In a joint statement released after the treaty’s adoption by the conference, the U.S., British, and French governments declared:  “We do not intend to sign, ratify, or ever become party to it.”

    Even so, action on the treaty is proceeding.  On September 20, nations from around the world began formally signing it at the UN headquarters in New York City.  Once 50 nations have become signatories, it will become international law.

    If employed properly, the treaty could facilitate negotiations with the North Korean regime.  Admittedly, there is no particular reason to assume that North Korea is any more eager than the other nuclear powers to agree to this ban on nuclear weapons.  But calling upon North Korea to act within a framework that deals with eliminating the nuclear weapons of all nations, rather than one that prohibits only the nuclear weapons of North Korea, might provide a useful path forward.

    Of course, the most important benefit of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is that it lights the way toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

    Thus, negotiating an agreement with North Korea to restrain its nuclear program remains important.  But, like the signers of the treaty, we should recognize that the danger of nuclear annihilation will persist as long as any nations possess nuclear weapons.

  • 2017 Winning Poems

    These are the winning poems of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2017 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. For more information on this annual peace poetry contest, and to read the winning poems from previous years, click here.

    First Place Adult
    Nicole Melanson

    Manchester

    They went to hear music.
    The lucky ones came home
    missing only friends.

    Raising children in this world
    is like running upstairs
    with a glass of water
    clutched under your arm.

    I have five sons.
    They are frogs and snails
    and feathers dipped in gold.

    They are blueberry eyes
    and backs that curve to the palm
    like soap.

    They are the longest breath
    I’ve ever held.

    Sweat cools on my brow
    as they sleep. This
    is what passes for peace
    to a parent—

    a slackening jaw,
    the heart unclenching

    each night
    every child comes home.

     

    Honorable Mention Adult
    Andrea Livingston

    Paper Cranes

    Let us now find the courage, together,
    to spread peace and pursue a world
    without nuclear weapons.

    Barack Obama, the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima,
    May 27, 2016

    Wanting to make it right,
    President Obama read the instructions carefully.
    Take a square piece of Japanese paper,
    one with flowers, or maybe apricots, cherries,
    fold it from top to bottom, crease and open,
    then fold in half sideways.

    That day at Hiroshima,
    the president gave his handmade paper cranes
    to two schoolchildren, a symbol of peace
    so simple, yet years in the making,
    as if he wanted to promise
    these tallest of birds would forever soar
    above their city, their wings stretching
    into the clearest center of sky.

    Six decades ago,
    12-year-old Sadako Sasaki,
    her bones slowly disintegrating
    from “A-bomb disease,” carefully folded
    medicine labels, faded scraps of wrapping paper
    into a thousand cranes, as if to ask the gods
    that in return for her ancient offering,
    they would make the world well again.

     

    First Place Youth 13-18
    Ana K. Lair

    Before the War

    We never stayed at home.

    We were eleven, bony and wild,
    we sat and carved sticks with our teeth,

    still for an instant as dusk fled,
    then bolting off again, hungry for more chaos, more dirt,

    face paint and saliva.
    We tasted metal, ate bone.

    Smiles greasy with lying,
    our brothers told us a birch tree was a ghost’s hand.

    We slid past, its bent white claws
    screeching down the belly of our canoe.

    I’m sorry we don’t speak anymore,
    the day the telephone stopped announcing

    the other’s need, in its shrill metallic call.
    But no need for talk of that now.

    When I walk back through the autumn woods
    with leaves like raw meat in the cold,

    I see your teeth marks on the birch,
    I hear you crashing ahead through pine, howling mammal cry,

    feet flashing up like the warning of a deer’s tail
    as you caught the very first scent
    of our parents calling us home.

     

    Honorable Mention Youth 13 – 18
    Ella Cowan de Wolf

    The Numbers

    You suddenly see a set of random numbers, such as 374251. What comes to mind?

    I think of science, I think of math.
    I think of “old school” clocks and petals on a daisy gifted by a lover of poetry.
    I think that 3.14 is the start of a number so simple that it has cracked the minds of countless
    mathematicians yet is engraved into the minds of children before they can count to 100 in a
    different language.
    I think that 143, “I love you” flows so easily off the tongue of a 7 year old child with 3 less teeth
    than she wants, telling her 2 parents that she sees the world through looking glasses covered in
    blue waves of her own imagination.
    I think that it only took 4,224 pages and 7 books to redefine my entire childhood to believe that
    magic was granted to those who were chosen and that the boy with the lightning scar was too old
    to think about as I wrapped my head around the next 1,155 pages of a 3 part series of a girl on
    fire. This was my childhood.
    But now, I think of an old joke which makes the wrinkles of my smile shine bright as 4 is
    considered a study group, but 5 is a party. Yet, I wonder that it takes 2 to make a pair which is
    only 1 away from being lonely…
    And I know now that in 374,251 seconds I will be 4.332 days older than I am in existence at this
    moment in time, so I am going to become someone I am proud to show the world.
    Numbers define the essence of society itself, and with each new member I am reminded how
    small I am, how I am 1 in 7.125 billion, a large, never ending, form of 3.14, a number to confuse
    the greatest minds in the century, but then it dawns on me…it only takes 1 to make a difference.

     

    First Place Youth 12 and Under
    Kendall Cooper

    Colorblind

    I am colorblind, can’t you see, I can’t see you and you can’t see me,
    I see no black, no white, nor yellow, I see no harsh and see no mellow,
    I see no sick or healthy, and no poor or wealthy.
    I see no religion or race, no pretty or out of place.
    No skinny or fat, no I-don’t-like-that!
    I see faces, so many faces around the globe from different places.
    I see life, so many lives, like plants that grow and plants that thrive.
    I see sound, sweet music, as the rhythm is abundant in the world of human.
    I see touch, people touching the hearts of others.
    I see smiles, so many smiles, the ones that go on for miles and miles.
    I see laughter, curiosity having fun with the tips of grins,
    the laughs that brighten a day filled with grim.
    I see light, warmth, and a touch of love shining through cracks
    of a broken melody of color.

  • The Reality of the Nuclear Age: U.S. Must Negotiate with North Korea

    David KriegerAnyone with a modicum of sense does not want to see the US teeter at the brink of war with North Korea and certainly not inadvertently stumble over that brink, or intentionally jump.  The first Korean War in the 1950s was costly in terms of lives and treasure.  A second Korean War, with the possibility of nuclear weapons use, would be far more costly to both sides, and could lead to global nuclear conflagration.

    Neither North Korea nor South Korea want a new war, but US leadership in Washington is threatening war, with remarks such as “talking is not the answer”; North Korean threats “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen”; “military solutions are now in place, locked and loaded”; and “all options are on the table.”  Such posturing has only elicited more nuclear and missile tests from North Korea.

    It is clear, though, that threats of attack are not a responsible way of going forward.  This may be difficult for Trump to grasp, since he has built his business and political reputation on threats and bullying behavior.  Like all bullies, he backs down when confronted.  But confrontation with a bully is still risky, particularly this bully, who is also thin-skinned, erratic, impulsive and has the full power of the US military at his disposal.

    The US does not need another war, not with North Korea or any country.  We need, instead, to extract ourselves from the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Nor should we turn our backs on the well-negotiated agreement with Iran to halt their nuclear weapons program.  In fact, this agreement should serve as a model for the type of agreement needed with North Korea.

    What needs to be done?

    The US should agree to negotiate with North Korea and do so without preconditions.  It has been suggested by North Korea, as well as by China and Russia, that North Korea would freeze its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for the US and South Korea ceasing to conduct war games at North Korea’s border.  The US has foolishly, arrogantly and repeatedly ignored or rejected this proposal to get to the negotiating table. It seems that the US would prefer to continue its war gaming on the Korean peninsula than to negotiate with the North Koreans to find a solution to control their nuclear arsenal.

    It would appear that North Korea wants to assure that its regime is not vulnerable to a US attack and occupation, such as occurred in Iraq and Libya.  In each of these countries the leaders were captured and killed.

    Rather than seeking to tighten the economic sanctions on North Korea, which primarily hurt their people, the US should try a different approach, one offering positive rewards for freezing the North Korean nuclear and missile programs and allowing inspections.  Such positive rewards could include food, health care, energy, and infrastructure development.  North Korea has responded positively to such offers of help in the past, and would be likely to do so again.  Kim Jong-un is not, as the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has said, “begging for war.”

    In addition, there has never been a formal end to the Korean War, and it is past time to reach a peace agreement and formally bring the war to an end.  This would be a major step forward and one greatly desired by North Korea.

    The Trump administration needs to engage with its allies, South Korea and Japan, in these negotiations.  It should also bring other interested parties in Northeast Asia into the negotiations.  This would include China and Russia.  All of these countries appear to be ready to talk.  The US just needs to put aside its arrogance and begin the task of negotiating rather than continuing the unworkable approach of trying to force its will on North Korea or any other country by means of threats or bullying.  That is the reality of the Nuclear Age.

  • The President Is Unfit for Office

    With each passing day it becomes increasingly apparent that Donald Trump is unfit to carry out the duties of President of the United States, particularly those of commander in chief. He is erratic, impulsive, thin-skinned and narcissistic. These are dangerous qualities in someone with control over a nuclear arsenal that, if used, could lead to the destruction of civilization and human extinction. Trump is not trustworthy to have such power at his fingertips and should be removed from office.

    To achieve peace with North Korea, the U.S. must be engaged in negotiations with their leadership. It seems simple enough, but the Trump administration appears unwilling. The talks must begin immediately, and the U.S. must do so without preconditions.

    Rather than pursuing this path, however, the Trump administration seems intent on tightening economic sanctions on North Korea, a strategy bound to fail. Trump recently said that the U.S. is considering stopping trade with any country that trades with North Korea. This is a non-starter unless we want to stop trading with China, leading to a serious deterioration in U.S.-China relations and possibly a worldwide recession.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has recently released an Open Letter to Members of Congress. It calls upon Congress to impeach Trump, or, at a minimum, pass legislation that would require a declaration of war and specific authorization of Congress before the president could engage in a first-strike nuclear attack. The Open Letter follows below. If you would like to sign the letter, click here.

    OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS OF THE U.S. CONGRESS: ACT TO PREVENT NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE

    This may be the most dangerous time in human history. The Roman emperor Nero is remembered for having fiddled while Rome burned. We may be witnessing the far more dangerous Nuclear Age equivalent to Nero’s fiddling in the form of the nuclear threat exchanges between Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

    The U.S. has elected a man to its highest office who is erratic, impulsive, thin-skinned and generally imprudent and insufficiently informed on nuclear and foreign policy issues. As president, he possesses unrestricted authority to threaten and use the weapons of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which could lead not only to the destruction of our country but to dire consequences for the entire world.

    The president has already caused widespread national and global alarm by his behavior in office, including his participation in a dangerous and irrational escalation of threats directed at the erratic leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, which if executed would produce a monstrous catastrophe of untold consequences. James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, a normally cautious civil servant, has described the president’s behavior as “downright scary and disturbing.”

    There are currently no restraints on the president’s ability to use the insanely powerful weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including using them in a first-strike attack rationalized as preventive war. To allow this set of conditions to persist would be a perilous, perhaps fatal, abdication of Congressional responsibility, posing severe dangers to the peace and security of the country and world.

    What can be done?

    Having shown himself to be unfit for office, the president should be impeached and removed from office by the Congress as a matter of most urgent priority, or possibly removed from the presidency by recourse to procedures under the 25th amendment.

    Congress should also independently act to put unconditional restraints on any president’s ability to threaten or order a nuclear first-strike. One approach would be enactment of the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act,” introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Ted Lieu, which would prohibit the president from initiating a first-strike nuclear attack without a Congressional declaration of war expressly authorizing such strike. We would urge even stronger legislation that would make illegal any U.S. nuclear first strike and threats to do so.

    We do not suggest that the Markey-Lieu legislation would cure a nuclear first-strike of its essential immorality and illegality under international law. This legislation would, however, broaden the long-standing, dangerously centralized U.S. decision-making authority over a nuclear first-strike and could lead to a U.S. commitment never again to use nuclear weapons except in retaliation against a nuclear attack.

    While this proposed legislative initiative on first-strikes is a responsible effort to limit presidential authority with respect to nuclear weapons under present conditions, we urge a parallel framework of restraint with respect to any contemplated threat or use of nuclear weapons by a U.S. president. Additional legislation to this end needs to be proposed and enacted by Congress after appropriate vetting through hearings and public discussion as a matter of supreme national interest and for the benefit of global security.

    Furthermore, we would hope that in due course the United States would join with the majority of countries in the world in supporting the recently negotiated UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

    Click here to sign the Open Letter.

  • Sunflower Newsletter: September 2017

     

    Issue #242 – September 2017
    Please join our Peace Literacy Movement and help us offer a free curriculum that people can use to spread peace literacy in their schools and communities.
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    • Perspectives
      • What Factors Make Nuclear War More Likely? by David Krieger
      • 2017 Hiroshima Peace Declaration by Mayor Kazumi Matsui
      • Can the World Come to Its Senses on Nuclear Weapons? by Bunny McDiarmid
    • Obituary
      • Remembering Tony de Brum
    • U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy
      • President Trump Threatens “Fire and Fury” Against North Korea
      • U.S. Warns Sweden Not to Sign Nuclear Ban Treaty
    • Nuclear Disarmament
      • German Candidate Pledges to Remove U.S. Nuclear Weapons from German Soil
    • War and Peace
      • North Korea Fires Missile Over Japan
      • White House Pressuring Intelligence Officials to Find Iran in Non-Compliance with Nuclear Deal
    • Nuclear Modernization
      • U.S. Awards Contracts for Nuclear “Modernization” Programs
      • U.S. Conducts Additional Tests of New B61-12 Nuclear Bomb
    • Nuclear Energy and Waste
      • Low Enriched Uranium Fuel Bank Opens in Kazakhstan
    • Resources
      • This Month in Nuclear Threat History
      • Nuclear Close Calls
    • Foundation Activities
      • New Books Now Available
      • Evening for Peace: A Prescription for a Nuclear-Free World
      • Peace Literacy Moves Forward
      • Letter in The New York Times
    • Take Action
      • Sign the Open Letter to Congress: Act to Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe
    • Quotes

     

    Perspectives

    What Factors Make Nuclear War More Likely?

    by David Krieger

    We know that the risk of nuclear war is not zero. Humans are not capable of creating foolproof systems. Nuclear weapons systems are particularly problematic since the possession of nuclear weapons carries an implicit threat of use under certain circumstances. In accord with nuclear deterrence theory, a country threatens to use nuclear weapons, believing that it will prevent the use of nuclear weapons against it.

    Nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons are currently under the control of nine countries. Each has a complex system of command and control with many possibilities for error, accident or intentional use.

    Given the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war, including destruction of civilization and human extinction, identifying and eliminating the factors making nuclear war likely or even possible is imperative. There are simply too many possibilities for failure in such a complex system of interactions.

    To read more, click here.

    2017 Hiroshima Peace Declaration

    by Mayor Kazumi Matsui

    On August 6, at 8:15 a.m., absolute evil was unleashed in the sky over Hiroshima. Let’s imagine for a moment what happened under that roiling mushroom cloud. Pika—the penetrating flash, extreme radiation and heat. Don—the earth-shattering roar and blast. As the blackness lifts, the scenes emerging into view reveal countless scattered corpses charred beyond recognition even as man or woman. Stepping between the corpses, badly burned, nearly naked figures with blackened faces, singed hair, and tattered, dangling skin wander through spreading flames, looking for water. The rivers in front of you are filled with bodies; the riverbanks so crowded with burnt, half-naked victims you have no place to step. This is truly hell. Under that mushroom cloud, the absolutely evil atomic bomb brought gruesome death to vast numbers of innocent civilians and left those it didn’t kill with deep physical and emotional scars, including the aftereffects of radiation and endless health fears. Giving rise to social discrimination and prejudice, it devastated even the lives of those who managed to survive.

    This hell is not a thing of the past. As long as nuclear weapons exist and policymakers threaten their use, their horror could leap into our present at any moment. You could find yourself suffering their cruelty.

    To read more, click here.

    Can the World Come to Its Senses on Nuclear Weapons?

    by Bunny McDiarmid

    President Trump, who is the ultimate commander of the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal, believed to consist of 6,800 warheads, has threatened North Korea with “fire and fury.” North Korea has threatened to attack the U.S. territory of Guam, in the Pacific Ocean. The threat of nuclear attack has become a bargaining chip, a threat spoken about all too easily and lightly.

    These weapons of mass destruction are designed for one purpose only: war. Their use and even the threat of their use poses an existential threat to all life on our precious planet.

    In this time where the threat of war has become thinkable again, world governments must use it as an impetus to come to their senses and disarm.

    To read more, click here.

    Obituary

    Remembering Tony de Brum

    Tony de Brum, former Foreign Minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, passed away on August 22. Ambassador de Brum was a selfless leader in the movements for nuclear weapons abolition and climate sanity, and he will be dearly missed.

    In 2014, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, led by Minister de Brum, filed the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits in the International Court of Justice and U.S. Federal Court, landmark cases against the nine nuclear-armed nations “for failing to comply with their obligations under international law to pursue negotiations in good faith for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons.”

    Tony de Brum was a member of the NAPF Advisory Council and received the Foundation’s 2012 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award for his tireless work for justice and a world free of nuclear weapons.

    Tributes to de Brum have been written from all over the world, including articles by Robert C. Koehler, the Washington Post, and The New York Times.

    U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy

    President Trump Threatens “Fire and Fury” Against North Korea

    On August 8, President Trump warned that North Korea would face “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it continues to threaten the United States. Later that week, he threatened North Korea again, this time on Twitter. He wrote, “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.”

    The same week, he told reporters, “Let’s see what he [Kim Jong-un] does with Guam. If he does something in Guam, it will be an event the likes of which nobody’s seen before, what will happen in North Korea.” He added that his comments on Guam were not a “dare,” just a “statement of fact.”

    Jacob Pramuk, “Trump: Maybe ‘Fire and Fury’ Statement on North Korea Wasn’t Tough Enough,” CNBC, August 10, 2017.

    U.S. Warns Sweden Not to Sign Nuclear Ban Treaty

    U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis sent a letter to Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist warning Sweden of a negative impact on relations should they sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

    According to Svenska Dagbladet, the Swedish newspaper that originally reported the story, “The implication is that if the government signs the convention banning nuclear weapons, including on Swedish territory, it would impact both defense cooperation during peace time and the possibility of military support from the USA in a crisis situation.”

    The treaty opens for signature at the United Nations on September 20.

    “U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis Warned Sweden Not to Sign Anti-Nuclear Weapons Treaty: Report,” The Local, August 30, 2017.

    Nuclear Disarmament

    German Candidate Pledges to Remove U.S. Nuclear Weapons from German Soil

    Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party leader, Martin Fultz, promised to remove 20 U.S. nuclear warheads that are kept in the country under the auspices of NATO if elected as Chancellor in September. Fultz and the Social Democrats face rival Angela Merkel and her conservative Christian Democratic Union party, and are reportedly down 39%-25% in the polls with one month left to campaign.

    Schulz said that President Trump’s conflict with North Korea “shows us more than ever before how urgently we need to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and encourage disarmament.”

    Erik Kirschbaum, “German Rival of Chancellor Merkel Vows to Remove U.S. Nuclear Weapons from the Country,” Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2017.

    War and Peace

    North Korea Fires Missile Over Japan

    In one of its most provocative missile tests to date, North Korea fired a ballistic missile that flew over the island of Hokkaido, Japan, on the morning of August 28. The test sparked outrage and fear across Japan, where officials halted trains and warned residents under its path to take cover. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe requested an emergency meeting of the UN security council to address the increasingly aggressive actions taken by North Korea.

    North Korean state media said the launch was “the first step of the military operation of the (North Korean military) in the Pacific and a meaningful prelude to containing Guam,” a U.S. territory in the Pacific.

    Brad Lendon and Joshua Berlinger, “Next Target Guam, North Korea Says,” CNN, August 30, 2017.

    White House Pressuring Intelligence Officials to Find Iran in Non-Compliance with Nuclear Deal

    The White House is reported to have been putting pressure on intelligence agencies to find evidence that Iran has not been in compliance with the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The deal, negotiated with Iran and five other countries, dictated that Iran would dramatically scale down its nuclear infrastructure and fuel stockpiles in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions.

    President Trump, who has repeatedly bashed the deal as too conciliatory to Iran, seems determined to negate the deal. Yet despite Trump’s outspoken dislike for the deal, the consensus across the nation’s intelligence agencies, governmental departments, and the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)— which is in charge of inspecting Iran’s compliance with the deal— is that Iran has not violated the terms of the deal.

    Julian Borger, “White House ‘Pressuring’ Intelligence Officials to Find Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal,” The Guardian, August 28, 2017.

    Nuclear Modernization

    U.S. Awards Contracts for Nuclear “Modernization” Programs

    Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have been chosen to design and build the next generation of air-launched nuclear cruise missiles for the U.S. military. Individual $900 million dollar contracts have been provided to both companies to develop the new weapon, known as the Long Range Standoff weapon (LRSO). The Air Force is expected to order 1,000 of the missiles. The current estimated cost for the system is $10 billion.

    The Pentagon has additionally recently awarded contracts to weapons companies Boeing and Northrup Grumman to begin work on a new land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system. The total cost of “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear arsenal is expected to exceed $1 trillion over the next thirty years.

    David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “Trump Forges Ahead on Costly Nuclear Overhaul”, The New York Times, August 27, 2017.

    U.S. Conducts Additional Tests of New B61-12 Nuclear Bomb

    On August 8, the U.S. Air Force conducted two flight tests of its new B61-12 nuclear bomb at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. The test assemblies, which were dropped from an F-15E based at Nellis Air Force Base, evaluated the weapon’s non-nuclear functions and the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon.

    The B61-12 is a new nuclear bomb that combines four previous variants of the B61. It introduces new military capabilities to the U.S. arsenal, contributing to the nuclear arms race among the world’s nine nuclear-armed nations.

    “B61-12 Continues to Meet Qualification Test Schedule,” National Nuclear Security Administration, August 28, 2017.

    Nuclear Energy and Waste

    Low Enriched Uranium Fuel Bank Opens in Kazakhstan

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened a “fuel bank” for low enriched uranium (LEU) on August 29 in Kazakhstan. The $150 million facility is designed to discourage countries from enriching their own nuclear fuel.

    “The LEU Bank will serve as a last-resort mechanism to provide confidence to countries that they will be able to obtain LEU for the manufacture of fuel for nuclear power plants in the event of an unforeseen, non-commercial disruption to their supplies,” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in a statement on Monday.

    While the new fuel bank may discourage countries from developing their own uranium enrichment facilities, the issues of catastrophic accidents and an inability to safely, permanently store radioactive waste continue to pose threats to people around the world.

    “UN Nuclear Watchdog Opens Uranium Bank in Kazakhstan,” Reuters, August 29, 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 September, including a September 14, 1954 Soviet nuclear test in which 45,000 Soviet troops were purposely exposed to a ground detonation of a 30-kiloton nuclear device.

    To read Mason’s full article, click here.

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

    Nuclear Close Calls

    NAPF summer intern Sarah Witmer has published an extensive list of close calls involving nuclear weapons, including incidents in which nuclear weapons were misplaced, stolen, damaged, or even detonated.

    Many of these incidents resulted in casualties, including innocent civilians, and many others nearly led to nuclear war. These close calls emphasize the lack of proper security for nuclear weapons, and the lack of training and overall competence of militaries and leaders who possess nuclear weapons. There have been far more incidents than those listed here, and likely many that militaries and world leaders withhold as classified.

    To read the report, click here.

    Foundation Activities

    New Books Now Available

    In August, new books were published by NAPF President David Krieger and NAPF Peace Leadership Director Paul K. Chappell. The fourth edition of Speaking of Peace: Quotations to Inspire Action, was edited by David Krieger. The book features hundreds of quotes organized into ten chapters related to war, peace, nuclear weapons, and the human future.

    Chappell’s new book, Soldiers of Peace: How to Wield the Weapon of Nonviolence with Maximum Force, is the sixth book in his Road to Peace series. This book offers a new paradigm in human understanding by dispelling popular myths and revealing timeless truths about the reality of struggle, rage, trauma, empathy, the limitations of violence, the power of nonviolence, and the skills needed to create lasting peace.

    Evening for Peace: A Prescription for a Nuclear-Free World

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 34th Annual Evening for Peace will take place on Sunday, October 22, in Santa Barbara, California. The theme of this year’s event is “A Prescription for a Nuclear-Free World.” The Foundation will honor Dr. Ira Helfand and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War with its Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

    For more information, including sponsorship opportunities and tickets, click here.

    Peace Literacy Moves Forward

    After a successful five-day summer workshop with 27 participants from around the United States and Canada, NAPF’s Peace Literacy Initiative has begun reaching a broad audience. Participants included teachers, ministers, psychologists, activists, and students. Feedback from fellow participants allowed Shari Clough, a professor of philosophy at Oregon State University, to re-organize and re-launch the Peace Literacy website.

    The website, www.peaceliteracy.org, features lesson plans for different age groups that anyone can download for free. Clough said, “Kids need to learn peace in a sustained fashion – in the same way that they are taught to read and write. And for us adults, too, we have much to learn. It is never too late.”

    To read more about the Peace Literacy summer workshop and the new Peace Literacy website, click here.

    Letter in The New York Times

    On August 1, The New York Times published a letter to the editor from Rick Wayman, NAPF’s Director of Programs. The letter was in response to an article about the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet stating that he would obey an order to launch a nuclear strike against China.

    In the letter, Wayman wrote, “Would you willingly initiate the indiscriminate slaughter of hundreds of thousands or millions of people, risking a massive nuclear exchange that could end human civilization as we know it? That is the deeper meaning of the question that Adm. Scott Swift answered in the affirmative.”

    To read the full letter, click here.

    Take Action

    Sign the Open Letter to Congress: Act to Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe

    This may be the most dangerous time in human history. The Roman emperor Nero is remembered for having fiddled while Rome burned.  We may be witnessing the far more dangerous Nuclear Age equivalent to Nero’s fiddling in the form of the nuclear threat exchanges between Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

    Add your name to this Open Letter to members of Congress that calls on them to act urgently to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Click here to take action.

    Quotes

     

    “All warfare is based on deception.”

    — Sun Tzu. This quote appears in the book Speaking of Peace: Quotations to Inspire Action. The revised 4th edition of this book has just been published. Order copies today in the NAPF Peace Store at a 25% discount.

     

    “I would like to de-nuke the world. I know that President Obama said that global warming is the biggest threat. I totally disagree. I say that it’s a simple one: nuclear is our greatest threat worldwide. Not even a question, not even close. So I’d like to de-nuke the world. I would like Russia, and the United States, and China, and Pakistan, and many other countries that have nuclear weapons to get rid of them. But until such time as they do, we will be the most powerful nuclear nation on Earth by far.”

    — U.S. President Donald Trump, in a media briefing on August 10, 2017.

     

    “I worry about, frankly, the access to the nuclear codes. [If] in a fit of pique he [President Trump] decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him. The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”

    — James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, in an interview with CNN.

     

    “The DPRK (North Korea) will continue to strengthen its defensive capability with nuclear force, as long as U.S. … does not stop military drills on the doorstep of the DPRK. U.S. pressure and provocative acts only justify the DPRK’s measure to strengthen its self-defense capabilities.”

    — Han Tae Song, North Korea’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

    Editorial Team

     

    David Krieger
    Aidan Powers-Riggs
    Carol Warner
    Rick Wayman

  • Open Letter to Members of the U.S. Congress: Act to Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe

    To add your name to this Open Letter, click here.

    This may be the most dangerous time in human history.  The Roman emperor Nero is remembered for having fiddled while Rome burned.  We may be witnessing the far more dangerous Nuclear Age equivalent to Nero’s fiddling in the form of the nuclear threat exchanges between Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

    The U.S. has elected a man to its highest office who is erratic, impulsive, thin-skinned and generally imprudent and insufficiently informed on nuclear and foreign policy issues.  As president, he possesses unrestricted authority to threaten and use the weapons of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which could lead not only to the destruction of our country but to dire consequences for the entire world.

    The president has already caused widespread national and global alarm by his behavior in office, including his participation in a dangerous and irrational escalation of threats directed at the erratic leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, which if executed would produce a monstrous catastrophe of untold consequences.  James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, a normally cautious civil servant, has described the president’s behavior as “downright scary and disturbing.”

    There are currently no restraints on the president’s ability to use the insanely powerful weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including using them in a first-strike attack rationalized as preventive war.  To allow this set of conditions to persist would be a perilous, perhaps fatal, abdication of Congressional responsibility, posing severe dangers to the peace and security of the country and world.

    What can be done?

    Having shown himself to be unfit for office, the president should be impeached and removed from office by the Congress as a matter of most urgent priority, or possibly removed from the presidency by recourse to procedures under the 25th amendment.

    Congress should also independently act to put unconditional restraints on any president’s ability to threaten or order a nuclear first-strike.  One approach would be enactment of the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act,” introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Ted Lieu, which would prohibit the president from initiating a first-strike nuclear attack without a Congressional declaration of war expressly authorizing such strike.  We would urge even stronger legislation that would make illegal any U.S. nuclear first strike and threats to do so.

    We do not suggest that the Markey-Lieu legislation would cure a nuclear first-strike of its essential immorality and illegality under international law.  This legislation would, however, broaden the long-standing, dangerously centralized U.S. decision-making authority over a nuclear first-strike and could lead to a U.S. commitment never again to use nuclear weapons except in retaliation against a nuclear attack.

    While this proposed legislative initiative on first-strikes is a responsible effort to limit  presidential authority with respect to nuclear weapons under present conditions, we urge a parallel framework of restraint with respect to any contemplated threat or use of nuclear weapons by a U.S. president.  Additional legislation to this end needs to be proposed and enacted by Congress after appropriate vetting through hearings and public discussion as a matter of supreme national interest and for the benefit of global security.

    Furthermore, we would hope that in due course the United States would join with the majority of countries in the world in supporting the recently negotiated UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

  • Nuclear Close Calls

    Below is a series of close calls, or “broken arrows,” where nuclear weapons were misplaced, stolen, damaged, or even detonated. Many of these incidents resulted in casualties, including of innocent civilians, and many others nearly led to nuclear war. These close calls emphasize the lack of proper security for nuclear weapons, and the lack of training and overall competence of militaries and leaders who possess nuclear weapons. There have been far more incidents than those listed here, and likely many that militaries and world leaders withhold as classified. 

    Note about ranking incidents:
    1- Very slight alarm, quickly resolved. There are countless issues of this severity level which occur all the time. For the purposes of this compilation, issues of low severity are not cited.
    2- More serious incident with general risk, quickly resolved.
    3- Specific, serious risk possibly leading to escalation with other state. Causes severe damage, but may be self-contained, only affecting the military personnel and property directly involved. Requires more complex resolution.
    4- Serious risk to wider public; has potential to cause widespread casualties and damage beyond military personnel and property, or to cause escalation in conflict.
    5- Nuclear devices detonate and cause casualties, or confrontation nearly leads to the use of nuclear devices.

     

    November 10, 1950—Plane accidentally drops nuclear weapon
    American plane in Canada, Severity: 4
    A B-50 bomber experiencing mechanical failure drops its Mark 4 atomic bomb over Quebec. Its conventional explosives detonate when it lands in a river, scattering nearly 100 pounds of uranium.

    March 10, 1956—Plane carrying nuclear weapons disappears
    United States, Severity: 3
    A B-47 carrying two types of nuclear capsules from Florida to a base overseas loses contact over the Mediterranean, and is never found.

    July 27, 1956—Plane crashes into bomb storage
    American base in United Kingdom, Severity: 3
    A B-47 bomber skids off the runway on landing and rips into a storage igloo containing Mark 6 atomic bombs before exploding. The bombs do not detonate.

    November 5, 1956—False alarm of Soviet attack
    United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and France, Severity: 3
    British and French forces are attacking Egypt over the Suez Canal, and the Soviet government proposes to the U.S. that they combine non-nuclear forces to halt the attack. While considering this option, U.S. defense forces receive word of what seems to be a Soviet invasion: unidentified aircraft are flying over Turkey, Soviet MIGs are flying over Syria, a British bomber has been shot down over Syria, and the Soviet fleet is moving through the Dardanelles in northwestern Turkey. The American military fears that this might trigger a NATO nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R. All four signs of invasion are later disproven by various unrelated events: the unidentified aircraft were actually a flight of swans, the MIGs were a routine air force escort for the Syrian president as he returned from Moscow, the British bomber was forced down for mechanical reasons, and the Soviet fleet was engaging in routine exercises.

    January 31, 1958—Plane fire with nuclear weapon dropped
    American base in Morocco, Severity: 3
    A B-47 bomber armed with a Mark 36 hydrogen bomb on a Strategic Air Command base in Morocco blows a tire on the runway, which starts a fire that gradually engulfs the plane. The explosives in the bomb burn but do not detonate, melting the plane and bomb into an 8,000 pound block of radioactive metal.

    February 5, 1958—Plane collision drops nuclear weapon
    United States, Severity: 3
    A B-47 bomber collides with another plane over Savannah, Georgia. In order to safely land the damaged bomber, its nuclear bomb is dropped over water. While the nuclear capsule was not in the bomb at the time and therefore did not detonate, the bomb was never found.

    March 11, 1958—Bomb accidentally dropped
    United States, Severity: 4
    A B-47 bomber accidentally drops a Mark 6 atomic bomb into a family’s backyard in Mars Bluff, South Carolina. The nuclear core of the bomb is stored elsewhere in the plane and is therefore not dropped, but the conventional explosives of the bomb wreck the family’s home and injure all six family members.

    November 4, 1958—Plane crash with nuclear weapons on board
    United States, Severity: 3
    A B-47 bomber carrying a Mark 39 hydrogen bomb crashes into a field near Abilene, Texas. Conventional explosives in the bomb detonate, but the nuclear core does not.

    October 15, 1959—Plane collision with nuclear weapons on board
    United States, Severity: 4
    A B-52 bomber carrying two atomic bombs over Hardinsberg, Kentucky collides with an aircraft refueling it at an altitude of 32,000 feet. The crash kills eight crew members and partially burns one of the weapons, although no nuclear material is released.

    October 5, 1960—False alarm suggests attack
    American base in Greenland, Severity: 3
    Radar at the Thule Air Base in Greenland detects dozens of nuclear missiles launched from the Soviet Union towards the United States. The American military begins measures for high alert, but suspects something is wrong, considering that Khrushchev is visiting New York. It turns out radar had misinterpreted a moonrise over Norway.

    January 19, 1961—Plane crash with nuclear weapons on board
    United States, Severity: 3
    A B-52 bomber carrying one or more nuclear weapons explodes over Monticello, Utah due to mechanical failure. Five crewmen are killed, but there is no evidence that the nuclear weapons detonated.

    January 24, 1961—Plane crash drops bombs
    United States, Severity: 4
    A nuclear-armed bomber flying over North Carolina loses a wing, dropping two nuclear bombs into Goldsboro, NC. One of the bombs breaks apart on impact due to a failed parachute, although the nuclear core does not detonate. The other bomb lands unharmed, but five of its six safety devices fail. A nuclear explosion was avoided “by the slightest margin of chance,” as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara described it.

    November 24, 1961—Communications failure suggests enemy attack
    United States, Severity: 3
    Communication between Strategic Air Command (SAC) HQ and three ballistic missile early warning sites goes silent. Considering this a possible sign of enemy attack, all SAC bases in the United States are alerted, and B-52 bombers await orders for takeoff. It is later determined that all communications between SAC and these sites ran through one relay station in Colorado, where the lines went down after a motor overheated.

    August 23, 1962—Navigational error into Soviet airspace
    United States, Severity: 3
    A nuclear-armed B-52 bomber conducting routine surveillance over Alaska makes a navigational error that leads it to within 300 miles of an interceptor base in Soviet airspace. Due to the high likelihood of repeating such an error, Strategic Air Command creates a less provocative route, but fails to officially change it in time—meaning that throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis, the same faulty route was flown 24 hours a day.

    October 1962
    Throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, miscommunications due to the chaotic nature of the issue at hand as well as sheer carelessness led to multiple near-nuclear confrontations.

    Miscommunication possibly signals attack
    United States and European allies, Severity: 3
    When the U.S. orders DEFCON 3 for American forces, the Supreme Commander of NATO decides not to put NATO under the same alert to avoid provoking the U.S.S.R. Several lower-ranking NATO commanders, however, place their individual NATO bases across West Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the U.K. on DEFCON 3 alert, due to miscommunication. Soviet intelligence easily could have interpreted this as a signal of imminent attack.

    Prolonged exercise possibly signals attack
    United Kingdom, Severity: 3
    When the U.S. orders DEFCON 2 on October 24, the British Air Force is carrying out an unrelated exercise. The British exercise is prolonged as the Cuban Missile Crisis heats up, and British nuclear forces are put on high alert, meaning they could launch in 15 minutes. The Soviets easily could have interpreted these separate actions by the U.S. and the U.K. to be coordinated preparations for war.

    October 24, 1962—Satellite explosion misinterpreted as attack
    Soviet Union, Severity: 3
    In the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Soviet satellite explodes after entering orbit, leading the U.S. to believe that the U.S.S.R is launching an ICBM attack. The American military’s reaction to this event, and how confrontation did not ensue, is still unknown as relevant records remain classified.

    October 25, 1962—False alarm of sabotage almost leads to attack
    United States, Severity: 4
    Late in the evening, a guard at the Duluth Sector Direction Center sees a figure climbing the security fence. He activates the “sabotage alarm,” which sets off alarms at all bases in the area. At a Wisconsin base, a faulty alarm orders nuclear-armed F-106A interceptor planes to take off. Due to the sudden nature of the warning, the F-106A pilots assume World War III has started. The aircraft are stopped as they are taxiing down the runway; the intruder in Duluth was determined to be a bear.

    October 26, 1962—Unannounced missile test possibly signals attack
    United States, Severity: 3
    As tensions between the USSR and the U.S. heighten, DEFCON 3 is ordered and all ICBMs at Vandenberg Air Force Base are fitted with nuclear warheads—except one Titan missile, which is scheduled for a test later that week. The test occurs on the 26th, which potentially causes significant panic in the Soviet Union: it likely knew that the U.S. had fitted its missiles with nuclear warheads, but not that this was only a test launch.

    October 26, 1962—Unannounced missile test causes false alarm of attack
    United States, Severity: 3
    During the Cuban Missile Crisis, radar warning stations that are still under construction are brought online as quickly as possible, which leads to miscommunications and repeated false alarms. One example is the unannounced testing of a Titan II-ICBM off the coast of Florida, which causes one new radar warning station to nearly sound the alarm for nuclear attack.

    October 26, 1962—Nuclear missile left alone with launch codes
    United States, Severity: 3
    As DEFCON 2 is declared, Minuteman I missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base are hastily prepared for full deployment. At one point on the 26th, all launch-enabling equipment and codes are placed in a silo alongside the corresponding missile. Had there been a miscommunication or desire for sabotage, a single operator could have singlehandedly launched a nuclear-armed missile.

    October 27, 1962
    October 27 is now commonly referred to as “Black Saturday” as it was the most dangerous day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when both the United States and the Soviet Union came close to initiating nuclear attack multiple times.

    Cruise missiles pointed at the United States
    Soviet base in Cuba, Severity: 4
    In the early morning of October 27, the Soviets deploy nuclear cruise missiles in firing position to within 15 miles of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. remains completely unaware.

    Wartime radio frequencies signal war
    Soviet Union, Severity: 4
    In the Soviet Union, Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces fuel a series of nuclear-armed ICBMs that can be launched at a moment’s notice. Wireless communication between divisions of the Soviet military and the Strategic Rocket Forces are transferred to wartime frequencies—effectively signifying to the ICBM command post that war has begun.

    Spy plane enters Soviet air space
    United States, Severity: 4
    Meanwhile, an American U2 spy plane enters Soviet air space, attracting the attention of Soviet MIG interceptors, which are ordered to shoot the plane down. American fighter planes loaded with nuclear missiles and ordered to shoot at their own discretion are sent to escort the U2 plane back to American ground.

    Spy plane shot down over Cuba
    United States, Severity: 5
    On the same day, another U2 spy plane is shot down over Cuba. American leaders had previously agreed that they would interpret the shooting of any of their planes as deliberate escalation from the Soviets, and would automatically launch an attack in response. After the plane is shot down, the U.S. decides against attacking right away. It later comes to light that Khrushchev followed similar reasoning, ordering Soviet troops in Cuba not to shoot any American planes for fear of retaliation. The shooting of the U2 was ordered by a junior commander acting in his own authority.

    Submarine almost launches nuclear torpedo
    Soviet Union, Severity: 5
    Perhaps most seriously, eleven U.S. Navy destroyers and aircraft carrier U.S.S. Randolph corner a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine near Cuba. The temperature onboard the submarine rises to high enough temperatures that machinery short-circuits. The U.S. begins hitting the submarine with small depth charges and, unable to contact Moscow, the submarine crew questions whether war has begun. Authorized to launch nuclear torpedoes without express permission from Moscow, two of the three submarine officers onboard vote to launch. The third officer, Vasili Arkhipov, refuses to authorize the launch. Had any other officer been in Arkhipov’s place—whether one who agreed with the two other officers, or one who was more easily pressured by the other officers to authorize the launch—nuclear war likely would have occurred.

    October 28, 1962—Misplaced simulation tape interpreted as attack
    United States, Severity: 4
    Moorestown, New Jersey radar operators inform the national command post that a nuclear attack is under way. In reality, a test tape simulating an attack from Cuba is running on radar machinery just as a satellite comes over the horizon, simulating an incoming Soviet missile. Crisis is averted when the supposed missile does not detonate as predicted, but this incident illustrates the dangerously poor communication that plagued the Cuban Missile Crisis: the radar post that should have informed the Moorestown post of the incoming satellite had been reassigned to different work.

    October 28, 1962—False alarm and miscommunication suggest missile attack
    United States, Severity: 3
    The Laredo radar warning site has just become operational, and mistakes an orbiting satellite as two missiles flying over Georgia. The national command post misidentifies the warning as coming from the more reliable Moorestown post rather than Laredo, and begins preparing to intercept the incoming missiles. The issue is quietly resolved without incident, despite Moorestown failing to intervene and contradict the false warning.

    November 2, 1962—Captured secret agent gives false alarm of nuclear attack
    United Kingdom, Severity: 4
    Soviet intelligence officer Oleg Penkovsky, working as a double-agent for the CIA and MI6, is caught in Moscow and arrested in October. Penkovsky had been given a secret code to warn the U.S. and the U.K. if the Soviet Union was planning a nuclear attack, which consisted of two phone calls one minute apart, uttering just three short breaths each time. On this day in November, Penkovsky calls the MI6 station in Moscow and gives the code. The MI6 officer who receives it assumes that Penkovsky has been captured, and does not warn London or Washington of an incoming attack, and thereby prevents a pre-emptive strike.

    November 9, 1965—Alarm failure announces nuclear attack
    United States, Severity: 2
    Special bomb alarms are installed near military facilities and cities across the U.S. so that the locations of nuclear explosions can be quickly transmitted before expected communications failures. The alarms normally display green, but display yellow due to operational issues unrelated to a nuclear explosion, and red in the event of a nuclear explosion. During a massive commercial power failure across the Northeast in November 1965, two alarms in different cities display red rather than yellow, announcing a nuclear attack. The Command Center of the Office of Emergency Planning goes on full alert until the power failure is identified.

    December 5, 1965—Plane falls off aircraft carrier
    American plane over the Pacific Ocean, Severity: 3
    A bomber carrying a nuclear weapon rolls off the deck of the U.S.S. Ticonderoga into the ocean. Pilot, plane, and weapon are never found.

    January 17, 1966—Plane collision spews radioactive material
    American plane in Spain, Severity: 4
    A B-52 bomber collides with a plane refueling it mid-air, while carrying four nuclear weapons each more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two bombs are recovered intact, while the conventional explosives in the other two detonate, spewing radiation into the surrounding countryside of Palomares, Spain. Seven crew members are killed in the crash, and American military crew brought in to clean up after the crash show high rates of radiation-related illnesses today. Spanish people from the area also contracted cancer and other illnesses at higher rates, and sections of Palomares remain highly radioactive today.

    May 23, 1967—Communications failure suggests nuclear attack
    United States, Severity: 3
    Multiple early warning radar sites around the world go offline, leading the U.S. to again fear that the Soviets have disabled American radar in the first stage of a nuclear attack. Nuclear bombers prepare to take flight until it is determined that a solar flare knocked out the radar systems.

    January 21, 1968—Plane crash spews radioactive material
    American base in Greenland, Severity: 4
    An American B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashes near Thule Air Base in Greenland, after the crew abandons the plane due to a cabin fire. One crew member dies as the plane crashes into sea ice, causing all four bombs to detonate and radioactive material to be spewed into the ocean. Despite extensive damage, none of the four bombs detonate fully due to flaws in this particular bomb design. Had the plane hit Thule Air Base, American Strategic Air Command would likely have assumed attack and retaliated.

    April 11, 1968—Nuclear submarine sinks
    Soviet submarine in Pacific Ocean, Severity: 3
    A Soviet submarine carrying three nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and numerous nuclear torpedoes sinks about 750 miles north of Oahu. Part of the submarine was later salvaged by the CIA.

    November 15, 1969—American and Soviet submarines collide
    Barents Sea, Severity: 4
    American nuclear submarine Gato collides with a Soviet K-19 nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, just off the northern coast of Russia, severely damaging the K-19.

    October 24-25, 1973—False alarm signals nuclear attack
    United States, Severity: 3
    With the Arab-Israeli war in force, the U.S. orders DEFCON 3 on October 24 as a warning signal to the U.S.S.R. to not intervene in the conflict. On October 25, while under DEFCON 3, mechanics repairing a plane at a base in Michigan accidentally activate the entire base alarm system, sending nuclear-armed B-52 bombers into preparing for takeoff. The alarm is repaired before any B-52s depart.

    August 1, 1974—Unfit president holds power to launch nuclear attack
    United States, Severity: 3
    In his last weeks in office during the Watergate Crisis, Nixon is depressed, drinking heavily, and extremely unstable. U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger instructs the Joint Chiefs of Staff to run any emergency order the president may enact through him first. In Nixon’s impaired state, he could easily have ordered a nuclear launch.

    November 9, 1979—False alarm nearly leads to nuclear strike
    United States, Severity: 4
    President Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, receives a phone call at 3 a.m. by his military assistant adviser General William Odom, announcing that 2200 Soviet missiles have been launched at the United States. President Carter has less than ten minutes to order retaliation. Just as Brzezinski is about to call the president, Odom calls again to say it was a false alarm: someone mistakenly placed military exercise tapes in the operational missile detection computer system.

    March 15, 1980—Training exercise interpreted as attack
    United States, Severity: 2
    As part of a training exercise, the Soviet Union launches four submarine-based missiles. American early warning sensors suggest one of the missiles is actually headed towards the United States, and military officials convene to assess the threat before it naturally resolves itself.

    June 3 & 6, 1980—Faulty computer chip announces missile attack
    United States, Severity: 3
    A faulty chip in American military computers causes warning displays to announce that multiple Soviet missiles have been launched toward the United States. On both days, B-52 bomber crews and missiles are nearly sent out in retaliation, before personnel determine that the missile numbers the computers are displaying are illogical.

    September 18, 1980—Fire at a nuclear missile silo
    United States, Severity: 4
    A missile repairman doing routine maintenance on the Titan II ICBM silo in Damascus, Arkansas drops a wrench from the repair platform, which falls 70 feet and pierces the side of a missile, causing thousands of gallons of highly flammable rocket fuel to pour into the silo. The Titan II ICBM was the largest missile the U.S. ever built—about the size of a ten-story building, and mounted with the most powerful nuclear warhead the U.S. had ever put on a missile. The fuel explodes, killing an airman, and catapults the warhead out of the silo. Its safety mechanisms perform correctly, and the warhead does not detonate.

    September 26, 1983—Radar malfunction warns of missile attack
    Soviet Union, Severity: 3
    The Soviet Oko nuclear early warning system detects five nuclear-armed missiles launched from the U.S., heading toward Moscow. The Soviet soldier on duty, Stanislav Petrov, suspects an Oko malfunction rather than a real attack, and does not call for a retaliatory Soviet strike. Petrov is correct: Oko malfunctioned, and a nuclear attack is averted.

    November 2-11, 1983—NATO military exercise interpreted as attack
    Soviet Union, Severity: 4
    NATO enacts a ten-day exercise codenamed Able Archer 83 involving a hypothetical war with the Soviet bloc, which is set to end in the fictional launching of nuclear weapons. Moscow mistakes the exercise for real preparations, and believes NATO is about to conduct a surprise nuclear attack. Nuclear-armed Soviet bombers in East Germany and Poland are placed on alert, with pilots in the cockpit awaiting orders. The U.S.S.R’s 300 nuclear-armed ICBMS—its most powerful weapons—are stationed for immediate launch. Moscow contacts its Warsaw Pact allies, warning them that war is imminent and that Soviet ballistic submarines are assembling in firing positions off the coast of the U.S. The decisions of a couple of prudent individuals prevent conflict—namely a concerned KGB double agent who convinces the Reagan administration to reach out diplomatically to the U.S.S.R, and an American military intelligence officer who refuses to raise the American DEFCON alert level and further arouse Soviet suspicion. Tensions decrease, although Soviet forces remain on high alert until the exercise concludes on November 11.

    January 10, 1984—Malfunction causes nuclear-armed missile to almost launch
    United States, Severity: 3
    A nuclear-armed Minuteman III missile in a silo on the Nebraska-Wyoming border begins giving off false signals suggesting that it is about to launch. While the Air Force later insisted that multiple technical safeguards would have prevented the missile from launching, it still parked an armored car on top of the silo doors to keep the missile in place, raising concerns about these safeguards.

    August 19-21, 1991—Coup leaders confiscate nuclear briefcases
    Soviet Union, Severity: 4
    An attempted coup in the Soviet Union causes President Mikhail Gorbachev to lose possession of his nuclear briefcase and the launch authorization codes that it contains, after the case was confiscated by one of the coup leaders. The two other nuclear briefcases are also in possession of coup leaders until Gorbachev reclaims control.

    January 25, 1995—Scientific rocket launch interpreted as nuclear missile
    Russia, Severity: 4
    Russian early warning radar detects a scientific rocket launch off the coast of Norway (which the U.S. had informed Russia about beforehand), and mistakenly identifies it as an American submarine-launched ballistic missile. Russian nuclear forces jump to full alert, with President Boris Yeltsin retrieving the nuclear launch codes and preparing for a retaliatory launch. Russian satellites monitoring American missile fields prove that the missile is not headed for Russia, and a strike is called off.

    May-June, 1999—Conflict almost includes nuclear weapons
    India and Pakistan, Severity: 5
    The Kargil crisis is one of the few instances of direct confrontation between two nuclear-armed states, when India and Pakistan clashed over the disputed Kashmir region. Pakistani troops and militants are found in Indian territory, leading the Indian Air Force to bomb Pakistani bases in Kargil. The incident escalates until both sides threaten to use nuclear weapons. The crisis is temporarily defused by mediation from President Clinton.

    December 2001-October 2002—Conflict almost includes nuclear weapons
    Pakistan, Severity: 3
    Conflict over the Kashmir region flares up again, as President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan refuses to rule out first use of nuclear weapons as India had already done publicly. The conflict is resolved when U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage releases a pledge Musharraf made to the U.S. to seek negotiations with India.

    August 2006—Nuclear missile fuses accidentally shipped to Taiwan
    United States, Severity: 2
    The U.S. Defense Department mistakenly ships secret nuclear fuses for Minuteman III missiles to Taiwan, where the boxes sit unattended to for eighteen months, before Air Force officials acknowledge their error.

    August 29-30, 2007—Nuclear missiles accidentally loaded onto plane
    United States, Severity: 3
    By ignoring required protocol for checking for live weapons, six nuclear-armed cruise missiles are mistakenly loaded onto a B-52 bomber at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. The plane sits on the tarmac all night, unguarded, then flies 1500 miles to a base in Louisiana where it sits unguarded for another nine hours until maintenance crews recognize the weapons are live. For a total of 36 hours, the Air Force did not realize that six nuclear weapons were missing.

    May 23, 2008—Fire in missile silo burns unnoticed
    United States, Severity: 4
    A fire breaks out in a silo in Wyoming containing a Minuteman III missile and burns until it runs out of fuel, only discovered five days later when maintenance crews are alerted to cable connectivity problems.

    October 23, 2010—Communications failure leads to lost contact with nuclear missiles
    United States, Severity: 2
    A launch control center at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming loses contact with 50 Minuteman III ICBMs carrying nuclear warheads for 45 minutes. With the rockets off-line, the launch center would have been unable to detect or cancel any unauthorized launch attempts. This incident could have been caused—and could easily be recreated—by hackers from a rogue or terrorist group.

    July 28, 2012—Activists break into top-secret uranium production plant
    United States, Severity: 3
    Three activists, including an 84-year-old nun, break into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and splash human blood on a building in which weapons-grade uranium is processed. The trio roams undetected at the facility for over two hours, suggesting a troubling lack of security measures at one of the most dangerous facilities in the U.S.

    August 5, 2014—Nuclear power plant sabotaged
    Belgium, Severity: 4
    A still unidentified individual drains 65,000 liters of lubricant from a turbine used to produce electricity in the Belgian Doel 4 nuclear power plant. No penetration to the plant is detected, leading investigators to suspect this was an inside job. This event calls attention not only to Belgium’s poor security practices at its nuclear power plants—it did not arm its power plant guards until after the 2016 Brussels terrorist attacks—but also to the potential for nuclear terrorism. In 2012, two workers from the same Doel 4 plant left Belgium to fight for ISIS in Syria.

     

     

     

    Bibliography

    “Accidental Nuclear War: A Timeline of Close Calls,” Future of Life Institute.

    Alan Phillips, “20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, January 15, 1998.

    Alex Shephard, Melville House, “Here’s a List of Every Time Someone Lost Control of Their Nukes,” Business Insider, May 23, 2013.

    Associated Press, “Armored Car Use to Block Missile Told,” LA Times, October 29, 1987.

    “Close Calls With Nuclear Weapons,” Union of Concerned Scientists, April 2015.

    Eric Schlosser, “Accidents will happen: an excerpt from ‘Command and Control,’” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 3, 2014.

    Graham Allison and William H. Tobey, “Could There Be a Terrorist Fukushima?” New York Times, April 4, 2016.

    Jess Sleight, “5 Frightening Nuclear Weapons Close Calls,” Global Zero, October 30, 2015.

    Josh Harkinson, “That Time We Almost Nuked North Carolina,” Mother Jones, November 10, 2014.

    Max Tegmark, “The Top 10 Reasons to Reduce the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War,” Huffington Post, February 26, 2016.

    Michael Krepon, “Broken Arrows,” Arms Control Wonk, December 26, 2011.

    Nate Jones, “Document Friday: False Warning of a ‘Nuclear Missile Attack on the United States,” NSA Archive, March 2, 2012.

    Neil Denny, “Interview: Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control,” Little Atoms, January 17, 2016.

    Patrick Tucker, “Risk of ‘Accidental’ Nuclear War Growing, UN Research Group Says,” Defense One, April 19, 2017.

    Ramesh Thakur, “The Eight Deadly Nuclear Sins,” Australian Institute of International Affairs, February 25, 2016.

    “Twelve Times We Came ‘Too Close for Comfort’ Using Nuclear Weapons,” Chatham House, July 18, 2016.

    Valery Yarynich, “On the brink of the abyss in the Urals,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 25, 2012.

    Warfare History Network, “In 1983, A NATO Military Exercise Almost Started a Nuclear World War III,” National Interest, June 11, 2017.

  • September: This Month in Nuclear Threat History

    September 1, 2014 – An article authored by Ray Henry in the Washington Post titled, “U.S. Seeks Trains to Carry Nuclear Waste, But There’s Nowhere For Them to Go Yet,” was published on this date.  Henry reported that he discovered a public solicitation filed by the Department of Energy that proposed purchasing or leasing rail cars to haul 150 ton casks filled with irradiated spent fuel and other nuclear waste from over 90 existing U.S. civilian nuclear power plants.  The solicitation noted that the rail cars would have to last for up to thirty years and would run at standard speed on regular railroad tracks.  The protective casks, which would be reused up to eight times a year, would carry an estimated 70,000 tons of nuclear waste from 30 states to a permanent underground repository site that does not actually exist yet.  Decades-long plans enacted after Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 focused on shipping this huge volume of waste by both rail and road to the Yucca Mountain, Nevada site located two hours northeast of Las Vegas.  But the site proved scientifically unsound and politically unworkable.  Meanwhile, more and more nuclear waste is piling up in spent fuel ponds and storage areas in and around U.S. nuclear power plants. Even proposals to move the waste to a smaller number of regional above ground storage facilities, until a permanent site can be tested, scientifically approved, and politically agreed to, will take many years of effort and cost tens of billions of dollars.  Comments:  While almost every antinuclear supporter welcomed the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a godsend, there is one significant caveat to this sentiment, the treaty’s preamble which recognizes nations’ “inalienable right” to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.  The global nuclear waste long-term storage conundrum is just one of several critical reasons (another is that nuclear power plants do, in fact, have significant, long-term pre-cradle to grave greenhouse signatures) why nuclear power along with nuclear weapons must both be phased out of existence as soon as possible.  The proliferation threat and the terrorist attack dangers inherent in nuclear power plant operation and especially during nuclear waste transport and long-term storage are other penultimate considerations.  (Sources:  Gregg Levine and Caroline Preston. “Pilgrim’s Progress: Inside the American Nuclear Waste Crisis.” The New Yorker.  Nov. 25, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/pilgrims-progress-inside-the-american-nuclear-crisis accessed Aug. 14, 2017 and other alternative media sources.)

    September 12, 1984 – Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning actress Joanne Woodward served as chairperson of the first National Women’s Conference to Prevent Nuclear War held in the Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.  Retired U.S. Navy Admiral Gene R. La Rocque, director of the antinuclear, antiwar Pentagon watchdog nonprofit organization, the Center for Defense Information (CDI), encouraged board member Woodward to coordinate and host the historic meeting of 250 invitees from the fields of education, science, politics, sports, and entertainment including First Lady Rosalynn Carter, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Coretta Scott King, Bella Abzug, Eleanor Smeal, actresses Sally Field, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Alexander, as well as noted tennis superstar Billie Jean King and women Congressional representatives and staff.  Admiral La Rocque noted that, “My generation has failed to stop the arms race.  But it’s really the men who have failed.  Now it’s up to the women…”  Woodward noted that, “We’re not anti-men, we’re pro-survival. We just thought it would be best for women to hear what other women have to say on the subject because we certainly aren’t being heard in those behind-the-doors meetings where the decisions are made about war and peace.”  Comments:  While much has changed in the 33 years since this conference was held and women have long held meaningful political and military leadership roles in many nations and in international organizations such as the United Nations, one can argue that women have played and should continue to play influential roles in the antinuclear and related peace and social change movements on a global scale.  An opponent of the Vietnam War, like her spouse actor Paul Newman (1925-2008) who also served as a CDI board member, Woodward labored to join with Soviet women in the cause of preventing nuclear conflict by supporting the Nuclear Freeze Movement and other similar efforts to reduce and eliminate the nuclear threat to humanity.  (Source:  Judy Klemesrud.  “Rallying Women on Nuclear War Issues.”  New York Times. Sept. 9, 1984. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/09style/rallying-women-on-nuclear-war-issues.html accessed Aug. 14, 2017.)

    September 14, 1954 – In a military exercise designated Light Snow, 45,000 Soviet soldiers and officers, told only that they would be involved in an exercise involving a new weapon, were purposely exposed to a ground detonation of a 30-kiloton nuclear device, twice as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, at the Totskoye Military Range in Orenburg Oblast, Russia.  The bomb was dropped by a Tu-4 bomber while Deputy Defense Minister and hero of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) Georgy Zhukov observed from a safe distance in an underground bunker.  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:  James Mahaffey.  “Atomic Accidents.”  New York:  Pegasus Books, 2014, p. 79.)

    September 20, 2017 – The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as initiated in U.N. General Assembly Resolution A/RES/71/258 after first being proposed by a core group of six nations (Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa), adopted by 113 nations on Dec. 23, 2016, with the final round of negotiations taking place earlier this summer at U.N. Headquarters in New York City, will be opened for signature on this date.  Article 15 of the treaty requires that it will enter into force 90 days after 50 nation-states ratify the agreement.  The treaty, which was approved after an overwhelmingly favorable vote in the General Assembly on July 7, 2017 (122 countries voted in favor, the Netherlands against, and Singapore abstained), prohibits development, testing, production, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, transporting, and deployment of nuclear arms, as well as assisting other nations in any nuclear weapons-related activities and forbidding the use or threat to use these doomsday weapons.  While the treaty has been negotiated by countries that do not have nuclear weapons, Article 4 of the agreement offers the nine members of the Nuclear Club the opportunity to join the treaty with nuclear arms still in their possession whether based on their own territory or an allied nation’s territory.  However, Article 4 mandates that if Nuclear Club members want to join, the weapons must be immediately removed from operational status and the nation must agree to a “legally binding, time-bound plan for the verified and irreversible elimination of all such weapons” as approved by the treaty’s members.  Comments:  Led by the U.S. and Russia, which possess more than 90 percent of the world’s total nuclear arsenal, most of the Nuclear Club members have expressed strong opposition to this treaty, arguing that not only is the treaty overly idealistic and utopian in nature, but also a danger to the system of supposedly “stable, reliable nuclear deterrence that has prevented the use of such weapons for more than seventy years.”  A growing plethora of global critics including academics, the military, arms control experts, politicians, and the general public have responded that the U.S., Russia and other nuclear weapons possessing nations have unfortunately fooled themselves into believing that deterrence is perfect or nearly so, and that the existing nuclear status quo ante will remain robust, stable, and unerring for the indefinite future of the human species.  This stance is highly illogical and counterintuitive as far as the history of civilization and great power politics is concerned.  Perhaps George Wilhelm Engel’s statement from 1827 says it best, “What experience and history teach is this:  that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it.”  Nevertheless, let us hope that the Nuclear Ban Treaty will enter into force this fall and mark the beginning of the end of the threat of global thermonuclear Apocalypse.  (Sources:  Zia Mian. “After the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty:  A New Disarmament Politics.”  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.  July 7, 2017. http://thebulletin.org/after-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-new-disarmament-politics10932 and Matthew Bolton. “A Brief Guide to the New Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.” JustSecurity.org. July 14, 2017. https://www.justsecurity.org/43004/guide-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty both accessed Aug. 14, 2017.)

    September 23, 1992 – On this date, the U.S. concluded 47 years of nuclear testing (which included a total of 1,030 test blasts) that began with the first test code-named Trinity on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico and ended with a 20 kiloton underground nuclear test code-named Divider at the Nevada Test Site.  Less than two weeks after this test, President George H. W. Bush signed the Hatfield Amendment into law which mandated a nuclear test moratorium.  President Bill Clinton extended the moratorium until September 1996 at which time he signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).  On Oct. 13, 1999, the Senate rejected the CTBT by a vote of 51-48 and has not brought the treaty back to the floor for a vote even though six months after the Senate CTBT rejection, the Russian Duma approved the ratification of the agreement by a vote of 298-74 on April 21, 2000.  For more than 20-plus years, it seemed to be a given that nuclear testing was not only unnecessary but counter to U.S. and international nuclear non-proliferation policies (seen today in widespread opposition to Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons development and testing).  In addition to decades of agreement seen in statements by U.S. defense officials and nuclear weapons laboratory directors, there was a 2012 National Academy of Sciences report, “The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty – Technical Issues for the United States,” which laid out a clear-cut technical agreement that concluded that the U.S. did not need nuclear tests to maintain its arsenal.  And in September 2016, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution urging hold out countries to ratify the CTBT.  The United States actually voted in favor of this resolution.  Comments:  Unfortunately some Republicans in Congress as well as President Trump apparently believe U.S. nuclear testing should return.  Republican Congressmen and allies of the 45th President, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC), proposed legislation (including S.332) in February 2017 to cut the U.S. share of 25 percent funding ($30 million annually) to the Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization which runs a network of 337 monitoring stations to help enforce the CTBT ban on nuclear explosions.  Not only would this bill set the stage for renewed U.S. nuclear testing, it would also dilute nonproliferation efforts to publicize and sanction countries involved in unauthorized nuclear tests such as North Korea or other nations.  U.S. and other Nuclear Club members’ plans to spend trillions of dollars over the next 30 years to build new generations of nuclear weapons as well as upgrade existing arsenals might benefit from an end to nuclear testing prohibition.  But this would also dramatically increase the risk of nuclear warfighting in the 21st century, making human extinction more likely.  (Sources:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.”  Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 5, 15, and 22; Darryl G. Kimball and Tom Z. Collina.  “No Going Back: 20 Years Since Last Nuclear Test.”  Issue Briefs, Vol 3. Issue 14, Arms Control Association. Sept. 20, 2012. http://www.armscontrol.org/issuebriefs/No-Going-Back-20-Years-Since-the-Last -US-Nuclear-Test%20 and David Axe.  “Republicans Move to Strip Away Nuclear Test Ban Funding.” Daily Beast. Feb. 13, 2017. http://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-move-to-strip-away-nuclear-test-ban-funding both accessed Aug. 15, 2017.)

    September 26, 1983 – During a time of great Cold War tension and perhaps the second most dangerous time in human history (after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962), an event occurred that could have resulted in the unthinkable – a global thermonuclear World War III.  Weeks after the Soviets shot down an unarmed civilian South Korean airliner, KAL Flight 007, killing 269 people near Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Japan on September 1, 1983 and weeks before NATO’s Able Archer military exercise (interpreted by a large number of Soviet military and political leaders as a precursor for an actual first strike nuclear attack), this incident took place.  In the early hours of the morning of September 26, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, on duty at Serpukhov-15, a top-secret nuclear command and control station in a rural area just south of Moscow, was monitoring data from a relatively new Soviet early warning satellite.  At 0015 hours, bright red warning lights suddenly lit up the room and a loud klaxon horn directed Petrov to a display showing a U.S. nuclear missile launch from America’s western coast.  Then quickly several more U.S. missile launches were detected.  Petrov asked his colleagues manning the satellite telescopes for “visual confirmation.”  But with the atmosphere cloudy, it was impossible to confirm or deny the alleged nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.  Precious time was speeding by.  He had only 15 minutes or less to make the most important decision of his life.  He was duty bound to report this likely attack, which was registering as the “highest” level of reliability, to his top commanders to recommend an instantaneous nuclear counter-strike.  “All I had to do was to reach for the phone, to raise the direct line (for a counter-strike)…but I couldn’t move.  I felt like I was sitting on a hot frying pan,” he said later.  Instead, Lt. Col. Petrov called the duty officer in the Soviet army’s headquarters and reported a system malfunction.”  If he was wrong, within minutes he would feel the shock wave of U.S. nuclear weapons impacting the Kremlin and hear an alert message on other impacts targeting his nation.  “Twenty-three minutes later, I realized that nothing had happened…It was such a relief,” His sweating, terrified colleagues gathered around him to proclaim him a hero.  Several days later, however, Petrov received an official reprimand for what happened that night – not for what he did, but for mistakes in the log book. “They were lucky it was me on shift that night,” was his understated comment.  This story remained unknown and unreported to the outside world until 1998 when his commanding officer Yury Votintsev revealed details of the incident in a memoir.  Comments:  This is yet another of the very numerous reasons why all nuclear weapons must be eliminated, the sooner the better. (Sources: Pavel Aksenov.   “Stanislav Petrov: The Man Who May Have Saved the World.”  BBC.com. Sept. 26, 2013. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831 and Colin Freeman.  “How Did One Grumpy Russian Halt Armageddon.”  The Telegraph. May 11, 2015. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/the-man-who-saved-the-world/nuclear-war-true-story/ both accessed Aug. 15, 2017.)

  • The Man Who Stood Up to Armageddon

    This article was originally published by Common Wonders.

    Suddenly it’s possible — indeed, all too easy — to imagine one man starting a nuclear war. What’s a little harder to imagine is one human being stopping such a war.

    For all time.

    Tony de BrumThe person who came closest to this may have been Tony de Brum, former foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, who died last week of cancer at age 72.

    He grew up in the South Pacific island chain when it was under “administrative control” of the U.S. government, which meant it was a waste zone absolutely without political or social significance (from the American point of view), and therefore a perfect spot to test nuclear weapons. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 such tests — the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima blasts every day for 12 years — and for much of the time thereafter ignored and/or lied about the consequences.

    As a boy, de Brum was unavoidably a witness to some of these tests, including the one known as Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton blast conducted on Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. He and his family lived about 200 miles away, on Likiep Atoll. He was nine years old.

    He later described it thus: “No sound, just a flash and then a force, the shock wave . . . as if you were under a glass bowl and someone poured blood over it. Everything turned red: sky, the ocean, the fish, my grandfather’s net.

    “People in Rongelap nowadays claim they saw the sun rising from the West. I saw the sun rising from the middle of the sky. . . . We lived in thatch houses at that time, my grandfather and I had our own thatch house and every gecko and animal that lived in the thatch fell dead not more than a couple of days after. The military came in, sent boats ashore to run us through Geiger counters and other stuff; everybody in the village was required to go through that.”

    The Rongelap Atoll was inundated with radioactive fallout from Castle Bravo and rendered uninhabitable. “The Marshall Islands’ close encounter with the bomb did not end with the detonations themselves,” de Brum said more than half a century later, in his 2012 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award acceptance speech. “In recent years, documents released by the United States government have uncovered even more horrific aspects of this burden borne by the Marshallese people in the name of international peace and security.”

    These included the natives’ deliberately premature resettlement on contaminated islands and the cold-blooded observation of their reaction to nuclear radiation, not to mention U.S. denial and avoidance, for as long as possible, of any responsibility for what it did.

    In 2014, Foreign Minister de Brum was the driving force behind something extraordinary. The Marshall Islands, which had gained independence in 1986, filed a lawsuit, both in in the International Court of Justice and U.S. federal court, against the nine nations that possess nuclear weapons, demanding that they start living up to the terms of Article VI of the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which includes these words:

    “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

    Right now, Planet Earth could not be more divided on this matter. Some of the world’s nine nuclear powers, including the United States, have signed this treaty, and others have not, or have withdrawn from it (e.g., North Korea), but none of them has the slightest interest in recognizing it or pursuing nuclear disarmament. For instance, all of them, plus their allies, boycotted a recent U.N. debate that led to the passage of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which calls for immediate nuclear disarmament. One hundred twenty-two nations — most of the world — voted for it. But the nuke nations couldn’t even endure the discussion.

    This is the world de Brum and the Marshall Islands stood up to in 2014 — aligned with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, an NGO that provided legal help to pursue the lawsuit, but otherwise alone in the world, without international support.

    “Absent the courage of Tony, the lawsuits would not have happened,” David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, told me. “Tony was unequaled in being willing to challenge nuclear weapon states for their failure to fulfill their legal obligations.”

    And no, the lawsuits didn’t succeed. They were dismissed, eventually, on something other than their actual merits. The U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals, for instance, eventually declared that Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was “non-self-executing and therefore not judicially enforceable,” which sounds like legal jargon for: “Sorry, folks, as far as we know, nukes are above the law.”

    But as Krieger noted, referring to the recent U.N. vote calling for nuclear disarmament, de Brum’s unprecedented audacity — pushing the U.S. and international court systems to hold the nuclear-armed nations of the world accountable — may have served as “a role model for courage. There might have been other countries in the U.N. who saw the courage he exhibited and decided it was time to stand up.”

    We do not yet have nuclear disarmament, but because of Tony de Brum, an international movement for this is gaining political traction.

    Perhaps he stands as a symbol of the anti-Trump: a sane and courageous human being who has seen the sky turn red and felt the shockwaves of Armageddon, and who has spent a lifetime trying to force the world’s most powerful nations to reverse the course of mutually assured destruction.