Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Alice Slater

Testimony to the New York City Council

My name is Alice Slater and I’m on the Board of World Beyond War and a UN Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. I am so grateful to this Council for stepping up to the plate and taking historic action to finally ban the bomb! I was born in the Bronx and went to Queens College, when tuition was only five dollars a semester, in the 1950s during the terrible Red Scare of the McCarthy era. At the height of the Cold War we had 70,000 nuclear bombs on the planet. There are now 14,000 with about 13,000 bombs held by the US and Russia. The other seven nuclear-armed countries—have 1,000 bombs between them. So it’s really up to us and Russia to move first to negotiate for their abolition as outlined in the new Treaty. At this time, none of the nuclear weapons states and our US partners in NATO, Japan, Australia and South Korea are supporting it.

It may surprise you to know, that Russia has generally been the eager proposer of treaties for verified nuclear and missile disarmament, and, sadly, it is our country, in the grip of the military-industrial complex, that Eisenhower warned against, that provokes the nuclear arms race with Russia, from the time Truman rejected Stalin’s request to put the bomb under UN control, to Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama rejecting Gorbachev and Putin proposals, documented in my submitted testimony, to Trump walking out of the INF Treaty.

Walt Kelly, cartoonist of the Pogo comic strip during the 1950s Red Scare, has Pogo saying, “We met the enemy and he is us!”

We now have a breakthrough opportunity for global grassroots actions in Cities and States to reverse course from plummeting our Earth into catastrophic nuclear disaster. At this moment, there are 2500 nuclear tipped missiles in the US and Russia targeting all of our major cities. As for New York City, as the song goes, “If we can make it here, we’ll make it anywhere!” and it’s wonderful and inspiring that a majority of this City Council is willing to add it’s voice for a nuclear free world! Thank you so much!

February 3, 2020
Hiroshima Unlearned: Time to Tell the Truth About US-Russia Relations and Finally Ban the Bomb

This article was originally published by InDepth News.

August 6 and 9 mark 74 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where only one nuclear bomb dropped on each city caused the deaths of up to 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 people in Nagasaki. Today, with the U.S. decision to walk away from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) negotiated with the Soviet Union, we are once again staring into the abyss of one of the most perilous nuclear challenges since the height of the Cold War.

With its careful verification and inspections, the INF Treaty eliminated a whole class of missiles that threatened peace and stability in Europe. Now the U.S. is leaving the Treaty on the grounds that Moscow is developing and deploying a missile with a range prohibited by the Treaty. Russia denies the charges and accuses the U.S. of violating the Treaty. The U.S. rejected repeated Russian requests to work out the differences in order to preserve the Treaty.

The US withdrawal should be seen in the context of the historical provocations visited upon the Soviet Union and now Russia by the United States and the nations under the US nuclear “umbrella” in NATO and the Pacific. The US has been driving the nuclear arms race with Russia from the dawn of the nuclear age:

— In 1946 Truman rejected Stalin’s offer to turn the bomb over to the newly formed UN under international supervision, after which the Russians made their own bomb;

— Reagan rejected Gorbachev’s offer to give up Star Wars as a condition for both countries to eliminate all their nuclear weapons when the wall came down and Gorbachev released all of Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation, miraculously, without a shot;

— The US pushed NATO right up to Russia’s borders, despite promises when the wall fell that NATO would not expand it one inch eastward of a unified Germany;

— Clinton bombed Kosovo, bypassing Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council and violating the UN Treaty we signed never to commit a war of aggression against another nation unless under imminent threat of attack;

— Clinton refused Putin’s offer of cutting massive nuclear arsenals to 1000 bombs each and call all the others to the table to negotiate for their elimination, provided we stopped developing missile sites in Romania;

— Bush walked out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and put the new missile base in Romania with another to open shortly under Trump in Poland, right in Russia’s backyard;

— Bush and Obama blocked any discussion in 2008 and 2014 on Russian and Chinese proposals for a space weapons ban in the consensus-bound Committee for Disarmament in Geneva;

— Obama’s rejected Putin’s offer to negotiate a Treaty to ban cyber war;

— Trump now walked out of the INF Treaty;

— From Clinton through Trump, the US never ratified the 1992 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as Russia has, and has performed more than 20 underground sub-critical tests on the Western Shoshone’s sanctified land at the Nevada test site. Since plutonium is blown up with chemicals that don’t cause a chain reaction, the US claims these tests don’t violate the Treaty;

— Obama, and now Trump, pledged over one trillion dollars for the next 30 years for two new nuclear bomb factories in Oak Ridge and Kansas City, as well as new submarines, missiles, airplanes, and warheads!

What has Russia had to say about these US affronts to international security and negotiated treaties? Putin at his State of the Nation address in March 2018 said:

I will speak about the newest systems of Russian strategic weapons that we are creating in response to the unilateral withdrawal of the United States of America from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the practical deployment of their missile defence systems both in the US and beyond their national borders.

I would like to make a short journey into the recent past. Back in 2000, the US announced its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)Treaty. Russia was categorically against this. We saw the Soviet-US ABM Treaty signed in 1972 as the cornerstone of the international security system.

Under this Treaty, the parties had the right to deploy ballistic missile defence systems only in one of its regions. Russia deployed these systems around Moscow, and the US around its Grand Forks land-based ICBM base.

Together with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the ABM Treaty not only created an atmosphere of trust but also prevented either party from recklessly using nuclear weapons, which would have endangered humankind, because the limited number of ballistic missile defence systems made the potential aggressor vulnerable to a response strike.

We did our best to dissuade the Americans from withdrawing from the Treaty.

All in vain. The US pulled out of the Treaty in 2002. Even after that we tried to develop constructive dialogue with the Americans. We proposed working together in this area to ease concerns and maintain the atmosphere of trust.

At one point, I thought that a compromise was possible, but this was not to be. All our proposals, absolutely all of them, were rejected. And then we said that we would have to improve our modern strike systems to protect our security.

Despite promises made in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that the five nuclear weapons states – US, UK, Russia, France, China – would eliminate their nuclear weapons while all the other nations of the world promised not to get them (except for India, Pakistan, and Israel, which also acquired nuclear weapons), there are still nearly 15,000 nuclear bombs on the planet. All but 1,000 of them are in the US and Russia, while the seven other countries, including North Korea, have about 1000 bombs between them.

If the US and Russia can’t settle their differences and honor their promise in the NPT to eliminate their nuclear weapons, the whole world will continue to live under what President Kennedy described as a nuclear Sword of Damocles, threatened with unimaginable catastrophic humanitarian suffering and destruction.

To prevent a nuclear catastrophe, in 2017, 122 nations adopted a new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). It calls for a ban on nuclear weapons just as the world had banned chemical and biological weapons. The ban Treaty provides a pathway for nuclear weapons states to join and dismantle their arsenals under strict and effective verification.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which received the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts, is working for the Treaty to enter into force by enrolling 50 nations to ratify the Treaty. As of today, 70 nations have signed the Treaty and 24 have ratified it, although none of them are nuclear weapons states or the US alliance states under the nuclear umbrella.

With this new opportunity to finally ban the bomb and end the nuclear terror, let us tell the truth about what happened between the US and Russia that brought us to this perilous moment and put the responsibility where it belongs to open up a path for true peace and reconciliation so that never again will anyone on our planet ever be threatened with the terrible consequences of nuclear war.

Here are some actions you can take to ban the bomb:

– Support the ICAN Cities Appeal to take a stand in favor of the ban Treaty

– Ask your member of Congress to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge

– Ask the US Presidential Candidates to pledge support for the Ban Treaty and cut Pentagon spending

– Support the Don’t Bank on the Bomb Campaign for nuclear divestment

– Support the Code Pink Divest From the War Machine Campaign

– Distribute Warheads To Windmills, How to Pay for the Green New Deal, a new study addressing the need to prevent the two greatest dangers facing our planet: nuclear annihilation and climate destruction.

– Sign the World Beyond War pledge and add your name to this critical new campaign to make the end of war on our planet an idea whose time has come!

August 16, 2019
On the 50th Anniversary of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: An Exercise in Bad Faith

On July 1, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) turned 50 years old. In that agreement, five nuclear weapons states— the US, Russia, UK, France, and China—promised, a half a century ago, to make “good faith efforts” to give up their nuclear weapons, while non-nuclear weapons states promised not to acquire them. Every country in the world agreed to join the treaty except for India, Pakistan, and Israel which then went on to develop their own nuclear arsenals. To sweeten the pot, the NPT’s Faustian bargain promised the non-nuclear weapons states an “inalienable right” to so-called “peaceful” nuclear power. Every nuclear power reactor is a potential bomb factory since its operation produces radioactive waste which can be enriched into bomb-grade fuel for nuclear bombs. North Korea developed its promised “peaceful” nuclear technology and then walked out of the treaty and made nuclear bombs. And it was feared that Iran was on its way to enriching their “peaceful” nuclear waste to make nuclear weapons as well, which is why Obama negotiated the “Iran deal” which provided more stringent inspections of Iran’s enrichment activity, now under assault by the US with the election of Donald Trump.

Despite the passage of 50 years since the NPT states promised “good faith” efforts to disarm, and the required Review and Extension conference 25 years ago, which since then has instituted substantive review conferences every five years as a condition for having extended the NPT indefinitely rather than letting it lapse in 1995, there are still about 15,000 nuclear weapons on our planet. All but some 1,000 of them are in the US and Russia which keep nearly 2,000 weapons on hair-trigger alert, poised and ready to fire on each other’s cities in a matter of minutes. Only this month, the Trump administration upped the ante on a plan developed by Obama’s war machine to spend one trillion dollars over the next ten years on two new nuclear bomb factories, new weapons, and nuclear-firing planes, missiles and submarines. Trump’s new proposal for a massive Pentagon budget of $716 billion, an increase of $82 billion, was passed in the House and now in the Senate by 85 Republicans and Democrats alike, with only 10 Senators voting against it! When it comes to gross and violent military spending, bi-partisanship is the modus operandi! And the most radical aspect of the budget is a massive expansion of the US nuclear arsenal, ending a 15-year prohibition on developing “more usable” low-yield nuclear warheads that can be delivered by submarine as well as by air-launched cruise missiles. “More usable” in this case, are bombs that are at least as destructive as the atom bombs that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki, since the subsequently developed hydrogen bombs in the US arsenal are magnitudes more devastating and catastrophic.

Putin, in his March 2018 State of the Nation Address, also spoke of new nuclear-weapons bearing missiles being developed by Russia in response to the US having pulled out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and then planting missiles in eastern Europe. He noted that:

Back in 2000, the US announced its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Russia was categorically against this. We saw the Soviet-US ABM Treaty signed in 1972 as the cornerstone of the international security system. Under this treaty, the parties had the right to deploy ballistic missile defence systems only in one of its regions. Russia deployed these systems around Moscow, and the US around its Grand Forks land-based ICBM base.

Together with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the ABM Treaty not only created an atmosphere of trust but also prevented either party from recklessly using nuclear weapons, which would have endangered humankind, because the limited number of ballistic missile defence systems made the potential aggressor vulnerable to a response strike.

We did our best to dissuade the Americans from withdrawing from the treaty. All in vain. The US pulled out of the treaty in 2002. Even after that we tried to develop constructive dialogue with the Americans. We proposed working together in this area to ease concerns and maintain the atmosphere of trust. At one point, I thought that a compromise was possible, but this was not to be. All our proposals, absolutely all of them, were rejected. And then we said that we would have to improve our modern strike systems to protect our security.

Ironically, this week the US Department of State, under the heading “Diplomacy in Action”, issued a joint statement with US Secretary of State Pompeo and the Russian and UK Foreign Ministers, extolling the NPT as the “essential foundation for international efforts to stem the looming threat—then and now—that nuclear weapons would proliferate across the globe…and has limited the risk that the vast devastation of nuclear war would be unleashed.”

All this is occurring against the stunning new development of the negotiation and passage of a new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the culmination of a ten-year campaign by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which succeeded in lobbying for 122 nations to adopt this new treaty which prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. Just as the world has banned chemical and biological weapons, as well as landmines and cluster bombs, the new treaty to ban nuclear weapons closes the legal gap created by the NPT which only requires “good faith efforts” for nuclear disarmament, and doesn’t prohibit them.

At the last NPT review in 2015, South Africa spoke eloquently about the state of nuclear apartheid created by the NPT where the nuclear “haves” hold the rest of the world hostage to their devastating nuclear threats which provided even more impetus for the successful negotiation of the ban treaty. ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize for their winning campaign and is now engaged in lobbying for ratification by the 50 states required by the ban treaty to enter into force. To date, 58 nations have signed the treaty, with 10 national legislatures having weighed in to ratify it (see www.icanw.org). None of the nine nuclear weapons states or the US nuclear alliance nations in NATO, as well as South Korea, Australia, and surprisingly, Japan, have signed the treaty and all of them boycotted the negotiations, except for the Netherlands because a grassroots campaign resulted in their Parliament voting to mandate attendance at the ban negotiations, even though they voted against the treaty. Grassroots groups are organizing in the five NATO states that host US nuclear weapons—Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Turkey—to remove these weapons from US bases now that they are prohibited.

There is a vibrant new divestment campaign, for use in the nuclear weapons states and their allies sheltering under the US nuclear umbrella, www.dontbankonthebomb.com. There is also a parliamentary pledge for legislators to sign who live in nuclear weapons states or allied states at http://www.icanw.org/projects/pledge/ calling on their governments to join the ban treaty. In the US, there is a campaign to pass resolutions at city and state levels in favor of the new treaty at www.nuclearban.us. Many of these nuclear divestment campaigns (such as World BEYOND War) are working in cooperation with the new Code Pink Divest from the War Campaign.

It remains to be seen whether the NPT will continue to have relevance in light of the evident lack of integrity by the parties who promised “good faith” efforts for nuclear disarmament, and instead are all modernizing and inventing new forms of nuclear terror. The recent detente between the US and North Korea, with proposals to sign a peace treaty and formally end the Korean War, after a 65 year cease-fire since 1953, and the proposed meeting between the two nuclear gargantuans, the US and Russia, together with the new nuclear ban treaty, may be an opportunity to shift gears and look forward to a world without nuclear weapons if we can overcome the corrupt forces that keep the military-industrial-academic-congressional complex in business, seemingly forever!

Alice Slater serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War.

July 2, 2018
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Is Honored with a Nobel Peace Prize

This article was originally published by The Nation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thurlow went on to say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 2, 2018
Democracy Breaks Out at the UN as 122 Nations Vote to Ban the Bomb

This article was originally published by The Nation.

On July 7, 2017, at a UN Conference mandated by the UN General Assembly to negotiate a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, the only weapons of mass destruction yet to be banned, 122 nations completed the job after three weeks, accompanied by a celebratory outburst of cheers, tears, and applause among hundreds of activists, government delegates, and experts, as well as survivors of the lethal nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and witnesses to the devastating, toxic nuclear-test explosions in the Pacific. The new treaty outlaws any prohibited activities related to nuclear weapons, including use, threat to use, development, testing, production, manufacturing, acquiring, possession, stockpiling, transferring, receiving, stationing, installation, and deployment of nuclear weapons. It also bans states from lending assistance, which includes such prohibited acts as financing for their development and manufacture, engaging in military preparations and planning, and permitting the transit of nuclear weapons through territorial water or airspace.

We are witnessing a striking shift in the global paradigm of how the world views nuclear weapons, bringing us to this glorious moment. The change has transformed public conversation about nuclear weapons, from the same old, same old talk about national “security” and its reliance on “nuclear deterrence” to the widely publicized evidence of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from their use. A series of compelling presentations of the devastating effects of nuclear catastrophe, organized by enlightened governments and civil society’s International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, was inspired by a stunning statement from the International Committee of the Red Cross addressing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war.

At meetings hosted by Norway, Mexico, and Austria, overwhelming evidence demonstrated the disastrous devastation threatening humanity from nuclear weapons—their mining, milling, production, testing, and use—whether deliberately or by accident or negligence. This new knowledge, exposing the terrifying havoc that would be inflicted on our planet, gave impetus for this moment when governments and civil society fulfilled a negotiating mandate for a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.

Perhaps the most significant addition to the treaty, after a draft treaty from an earlier week of talks in March was submitted to the states by the expert and determined president of the conference, Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gómez of Costa Rica, was amending the prohibition not to use nuclear weapons by adding the words “or threaten to use,” driving a stake through the heart of the beloved “deterrence” doctrine of the nuclear-weapons states, which are holding the whole world hostage to their perceived “security” needs, threatening the earth with nuclear annihilation in their MAD scheme for “Mutually Assured Destruction.” The ban also creates a path for nuclear states to join the treaty, requiring verifiable, time-bound, transparent elimination of all nuclear-weapons programs or irreversible conversion of all nuclear-weapons related facilities.

The negotiations were boycotted by all nine nuclear-weapons states and US allies under its nuclear “umbrella” in NATO, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The Netherlands was the only NATO member present, its parliament having required its attendance in response to public pressure, and was the only “no” vote against the treaty. Last summer, after a UN Working Group recommended that the General Assembly resolve to establish the ban-treaty negotiations, the United States pressured its NATO allies, arguing that “the effects of a ban could be wide-ranging and degrade enduring security relationships.” Upon the adoption of the ban treaty, the United States, United Kingdom, and France issued a statement that “We do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it” as it “does not address the security concerns that continue to make nuclear deterrence necessary” and will create “even more divisions at a time…of growing threats, including those from the DPRK’s ongoing proliferation efforts.” Ironically, North Korea was the only nuclear power to vote for the ban treaty, last October, when the UN’s First Committee for Disarmament forwarded a resolution for ban-treaty negotiations to the General Assembly.

Yet the absence of the nuclear-weapons states contributed to a more democratic process, with fruitful interchanges between experts and witnesses from civil society who were present and engaged through much of the proceedings instead of being outside locked doors, as is usual when the nuclear powers are negotiating their endless step-by-step process that has only resulted in leaner, meaner, nuclear weapons, constantly modernized, designed, refurbished. Obama, before he left office was planning to spend one trillion dollars over the next 30 years for two new bomb factories, new warheads and delivery systems. We still await Trump’s plans for the US nuclear-weapons program.

The Ban Treaty affirms the states’ determination to realize the purpose of the Charter of the United Nations and reminds us that the very first resolution of the UN in 1946 called for the elimination of nuclear weapons. With no state holding veto power, and no hidebound rules of consensus that have stalled all progress on nuclear abolition and additional initiatives for world peace in other UN and treaty bodies, this negotiation was a gift from the UN General Assembly, which democratically requires states to be represented in negotiations with an equal vote and doesn’t require consensus to come to a decision.

Despite the recalcitrance of the nuclear-deterrence-mongers, we know that previous treaties banning weapons have changed international norms and stigmatized the weapons leading to policy revisions even in states that never signed those treaties. The Ban Treaty requires 50 states to sign and ratify it before it enters into force, and will be open for signature September 20 when heads of state meet in New York for the UN General Assembly’s opening session. Campaigners will be working to gather the necessary ratifications and now that nuclear weapons are unlawful and banned, to shame those NATO states which keep US nuclear weapons on their territory (Belgium, Germany , Turkey, Netherlands, Italy) and pressure other alliance states which hypocritically condemn nuclear weapons but participate in nuclear-war planning. In the nuclear-weapons states, there can be divestment campaigns from institutions that support the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons now that they have been prohibited and declared unlawful. See www.dontbankonthebomb.com

To keep the momentum going in this burgeoning movement to ban the bomb, check out www.icanw.org. For a more detailed roadmap of what lies ahead, see Zia Mian’s take on future possibilities in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

July 13, 2017
Time to Ban the Bomb

This article was originally published by World Beyond War.

This week, the Chair of an exciting UN initiative formally named the “United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination” released a draft treaty to ban and prohibit nuclear weapons just as the world has done for biological and chemical weapons. The Ban Treaty is to be negotiated at the UN from June 15 to July 7 as a follow up to the one week of negotiations that took place this past March, attended by more than 130 governments interacting with civil society. Their input and suggestions were used by the Chair, Costa Rica’s ambassador to the UN, Elayne Whyte Gómez to prepare the draft treaty. It is expected that the world will finally come out of this meeting with a treaty to ban the bomb!

This negotiating conference was established after a series of meetings in Norway, Mexico, and Austria with governments and civil society to examine the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. The meetings were inspired by the leadership and urging of the International Red Cross to look at the horror of nuclear weapons, not just through the frame of strategy and “deterrence”, but to grasp and examine the disastrous humanitarian consequences that would occur in a nuclear war. This activity led to a series of meetings culminating in a resolution in the UN General Assembly this fall to negotiate a treaty to ban and prohibit nuclear weapons. The new draft treaty based on the proposals put forth in the March negotiations requires the states to “never under any circumstances … develop, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess, or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices … use nuclear weapons … carry out any nuclear weapon test”. States are also required to destroy any nuclear weapons they possess and are prohibited from transferring nuclear weapons to any other recipient.

None of the nine nuclear weapons states, US, UK, Russia, France, China, Indian, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea came to the March meeting, although during the vote last fall on whether to go forward with the negotiating resolution in the UN’s First Committee for Disarmament, where the resolution was formally introduced, while the five western nuclear states voted against it, China, India and Pakistan abstained. And North Korea voted for the resolution to negotiate to ban the bomb! (I bet you didn’t read that in the New York Times!)

By the time the resolution got to the General Assembly, Donald Trump had been elected and those promising votes disappeared. And at the March negotiations, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, flanked by the Ambassadors from England and France, stood outside the closed conference room and held a press conference with a number of “umbrella states” which rely on the US nuclear ‘deterrent” to annihilate their enemies (includes NATO states as well as Australia, Japan, and South Korea) and announced that “as a mother” who couldn’t want more for her family “than a world without nuclear weapons” she had to “be realistic” and would boycott the meeting and oppose efforts to ban the bomb adding, “Is there anyone that believes that North Korea would agree to a ban on nuclear weapons?”

The last 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) five year review conference broke up without consensus on the shoals of a deal the US was unable to deliver to Egypt to hold a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone Conference in the Middle East. This promise was made in 1995 to get the required consensus vote from all the states to extend the NPT indefinitely when it was due to expire, 25 years after It entered into force. The five nuclear weapons states in the treaty, US, UK, Russia, China, and France, promised to make “good faith efforts” for nuclear disarmament. In that agreement and all the other countries of the world promised not to get nuclear weapons, except for India, Pakistan, and Israel who never signed and went on to get their own bombs. North Korea had signed the treaty, but took advantage of the NPT’s Faustian bargain to sweeten the pot with a promise to the non-nuclear weapons states for an “inalienable right” to “peaceful” nuclear power, thus giving them the keys to the bomb factory. North Korea got its peaceful nuclear power, and walked out of the treaty to make a bomb. At the 2015 NPT review, South Africa gave an eloquent speech expressing the state of nuclear apartheid that exists between the nuclear haves, holding the whole world hostage to their security needs and their failure to comply with their obligation to eliminate their nuclear bombs, while working overtime to prevent nuclear proliferation in other countries.

The Ban Treaty draft provides that the Treaty will enter into effect when 40 nations sign and ratify it. Even if none of the nuclear weapons states join, the ban can be used to stigmatize and shame the “umbrella” states to withdraw from the nuclear “protection” services they are now receiving. Japan should be an easy case. The five NATO states in Europe who keep US nuclear weapons based on their soil–Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Turkey– are good prospects for breaking with the nuclear alliance. A legal ban on nuclear weapons can be used to convince banks and pension funds in a divestment campaign, once it is known the weapons are illegal. See www.dontbankonthebomb.org

Right now people are organizing all over the world for a Women’s March to Ban the Bomb on June 17, during the ban treaty negotiations, with a big march and rally planned in New York. See www.womenbanthebomb.org/

We need to get as many countries to the UN as possible this June, and pressure our parliaments and capitals to vote to join the treaty to ban the bomb. And we need to talk it up and let people know that something great is happening now! To get involved, check out www.icanw.org

Alice Slater serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War

May 26, 2017
Seeking Nuclear Disarmament in Dangerous Times

This article was originally published by In Depth News.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has championed efforts for nations to make good on their pledges to abolish nuclear weapons. In 2009 he published a five-point proposal for nuclear disarmament, urging nuclear weapons states in particular to fulfill their promises under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to negotiate for the total elimination of nuclear weapons as well as other complementary steps to that end such as banning missiles and space weapons.

At the end of his term this year, there have been some stunning new developments after years of global gridlock and blocked efforts. At the UN General Assembly First Committee for Disarmament, 123 nations voted this October to support negotiations in 2017 to prohibit and ban nuclear weapons, just as the world has already done for biological and chemical weapons.

The most remarkable upset in the vote was a breach in what had always been a solid single-minded phalanx of 5 nuclear weapons states recognized in the NPT, signed 46 years ago in 1970 – the US, Russia, UK, France, and China. For the first time, China broke ranks by voting with a group of 16 nations to abstain, along with India and Pakistan, non-NPT nuclear weapons states. And to the great surprise of all, North Korea actually voted YES in support of negotiations going forward to outlaw nuclear weapons.

The ninth nuclear weapons state, Israel, voted against the resolution with 38 other countries including those in nuclear alliances with the United States such as the NATO states as well as Australia, South Korea, and, most surprisingly, Japan, the only country ever attacked with nuclear bombs. Only the Netherlands broke ranks with NATO’s unified opposition to ban treaty talks, as the sole NATO member to abstain on the vote, after grassroots pressure on its Parliament.

All nine nuclear-weapon states had boycotted a special UN Open Ended Working Group for Nuclear Disarmament last summer, which followed three conferences in Norway, Mexico, and Austria with civil-society and governments to examine the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, thus opening a new pathway for how we think and speak about the bomb.

This new “humanitarian initiative” has shifted the conversation from the military’s traditional examination and explanations of deterrence, policy, and strategic security to an understanding of the overwhelming deaths and devastation people would suffer from the use of nuclear weapons.

Today there are still almost 16,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, with nearly 15,000 of them in the United States and Russia, now in an increasingly hostile relationship, with NATO troops patrolling on Russia’s borders, and the Russian Emergencies Ministry actually launching a sweeping nationwide civil-defense drill involving 40 million people. The US, under President Obama, has proposed a $1 trillion program for new nuclear-bomb factories, warheads, and delivery systems, and Russia and other nuclear-weapon states are engaged in modernizing their nuclear arsenals as well.

Perhaps one additional way to break the log jam for nuclear disarmament and find a silver lining in the crumbling neo-liberal agenda for globalization evidenced by the Brexit event and the shocking and unanticipated election of Donald Trump in the US, is to encourage Trump’s repeated statements that the US should make “a deal” with Putin and join with Russia to fight terrorists.

Trump has criticized the NATO alliance, the expansion of which has been very provocative to Russia and was the reason Russia gave, together with the US walking out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and installing a new missile base in Romania, for putting a halt to further US-Russian agreements for nuclear disarmament.

Trump, who promotes himself as a “deal maker” has also suggested that he would have no difficulty in sitting down and talking with North Korea. These efforts should be encouraged, as North Korea has actually shown it is willing to enter into negotiations to ban the bomb, which is more than the other eight nuclear weapons states have been willing to support.

Furthermore, North Korea has been seeking an official end to the Korean War of 1953, during which time the US continues to station about 28,000 troops on its borders while trying to starve North Korea out with drastic sanctions all these many years.

Perhaps Secretary General Ban Ki-moon can leave his office with an important victory at the end of his term by seizing this opportunity and encouraging the “deal maker” in Trump to move forward with a US-Russia rapprochement, clearing a pathway for the elimination of nuclear weapons as well as putting an end to the hostilities on the Korean peninsula.

November 28, 2016
The United Nations Votes to Start Negotiations to Ban the Bomb

This article was originally published by The Nation.

In a historic vote on October 27 at the United Nations Committee for Disarmament, what has long seemed to be hopelessly clogged institutional machinery for abolishing nuclear weapons was upended when 123 nations voted to move forward with negotiations in 2017 to prohibit and ban nuclear weapons just as the world has already done for biological and chemical weapons. Civil-society participants broke out into cheers and shouts of jubilation in the normally staid halls of the UN basement conference room, accompanied by beaming smiles and muffled applause from some of the leading government representatives in the room, which included Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico and Nigeria, along with South Africa, who had drafted and introduced the resolution, then sponsored by 57 nations.

The most stunning realization after the vote was posted was the apparent breach in what had always been a solid, single-minded phalanx of nuclear-weapon states recognized in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed 46 years ago in 1970—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. For the first time, China broke ranks by voting with a group of 16 nations to abstain, along with India and Pakistan, non-NPT nuclear-weapon states. North Korea actually voted yes in support of negotiations’ going forward to outlaw nuclear weapons. The ninth nuclear-weapon state, Israel, voted against the resolution with other 38 countries, including those in nuclear alliances with the United States such as the NATO states as well as Australia, South Korea, and, most surprisingly, Japan, the only country ever attacked with nuclear bombs. Only the Netherlands broke ranks with NATO’s unified opposition to ban treaty talks, as the sole NATO member to abstain on the vote, after grassroots pressure on its Parliament.

All nine nuclear-weapon states had boycotted a special Open Ended Working Group for Nuclear Disarmament last summer, which was established at the 2015 UN General Assembly following three conferences in Norway, Mexico, and Austria with civil-society and government representatives to examine the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, opening a new pathway for how we think and speak about the bomb. The recently launched humanitarian initiative has shifted the conversation from the military’s traditional examination and explanations of deterrence, policy, and strategic security to an understanding of the overwhelming deaths and devastation people would suffer from the use of nuclear weapons.

Today there are still 16,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, 15,000 of which are in the United States and Russia, now in an increasingly hostile relationship, with NATO troops patrolling on Russia’s borders, and the Russian Emergencies Ministry actually launching a sweeping nationwide civil-defense drill involving 40 million people. In the United States, President Obama has announced a $1 trillion program for new nuclear-bomb factories, warheads, and delivery systems, and Russia and other nuclear-weapon states are also engaged in modernizing their nuclear arsenals as well. Yet the issue has largely disappeared from public debate in a world lulled by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Back in the 1980s, during the Cold War, when there were some 80,000 nuclear bombs on our planet, most of which were stockpiled in the United States and Russia, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) held a series of widely promoted scientific, evidenced-based symposiums on the disastrous effects of nuclear war and were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for their efforts. The Nobel Committee noted that IPPNW “performed a considerable service to mankind by spreading authoritative information and by creating an awareness of the catastrophic consequences of atomic warfare.” It further observed:

The committee believes that this in turn contributes to an increase in the pressure of public opposition to the proliferation of atomic weapons and to a redefining of priorities, with greater attention being paid to health and other humanitarian issues. Such an awakening of public opinion as is now apparent both in the East and the West, in the North and in the South, can give the present arms limitation negotiations new perspectives and a new seriousness. In this connection, the committee attaches particular importance to the fact that the organization was formed as a result of a joint initiative by Soviet and American physicians and that it now draws support from the physicians in over 40 countries all over the world.

On October 15, at Tufts University in Boston, just two weeks before the historic UN vote to begin negotiations in 2017 to outlaw nuclear weapons, the US affiliate of IPPNW, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), with the sponsorship of all the city’s medical schools as well as nursing schools and state and local public-health institutions, revived PSR’s distinguished heritage at a symposium modeled after the earlier ones that had put nuclear disarmament front and center in the public consciousness and led to the largest demonstration in history when over 1 million people showed up in Central Park in 1982 in NY and called for a nuclear freeze. In this new millennium, the symposium was organized to address the links and similarities between nuclear war and catastrophic climate change.

Dr. Susan Solomon, of MIT, delivered a brutal overview of projected environmental catastrophes from the effects of growing carbon emissions—air pollution, rising sea levels, more frequent and severe droughts, the destruction of the very fertility of our soil…—noting that in 2003 more than 10,000 people died in Europe from a protracted and unprecedented heat wave. She demonstrated the inequality between haves and have-nots with evidence that 6 billion people in the developing world produce four times less CO₂ than the 1 billion people in the developed world, who, with fewer resources, will unjustly be unable to protect themselves from the ravages of climate change—more floods, wildfires, soil erosion, and unbearable heat.

Dr. Barry Levy, at Tufts University, demonstrated the devastation that would be wreaked on our food and water supplies, with rising cases of infectious diseases, mass migrations, violence, and war. Dr. Jennifer Leaning, at Harvard University, explained how the war and violence in Syria was initially caused by a drought in 2006 leading to massive crop failures that precipitated mass migrations of over 1 million northern Sunni Syrian farmers to urban centers populated by Alawite and Shia Muslims, creating unrest and the initial impetus for the devastating war now raging there.

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org which encircled the White House to protest global warming and organized marches with millions of people around the world to halt climate change, reflected, via Skype, that with the coming of the bomb, humanity’s relationship to the earth changed from the vision of the Old Testament’s book of Job— how weak and puny man was in relation to God. For the first time, humanity has achieved overwhelming power to destroy the Earth. Nuclear war and climate change are our two greatest existential threats, since both of these man-made catastrophes, for the first time in history, could destroy the human species.

Dr. Zia Mian, at Princeton University, outlined the frightening prospects of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, which is more likely now that climate change is already affecting their access to clean water. The 1960 Indus Water Treaty regulated the three rivers flowing out of Kashmir between the two countries. India and Pakistan have had a series of wars and skirmishes since 1947, and after a recent attack on India by Pakistani terrorists, the Indian government warned that “blood and water cannot flow together,” threatening to block Pakistan’s access to the rivers.

Dr. Ira Helfand, xhair of PSR’s Security Committee, presented a gut-wrenching cascade of facts demonstrating that even the use of only 100 nuclear weapons would cause a steep drop in temperature, causing crops to fail and producing global famine and the death of possibly 2 billion people. Helfand has presented these shocking facts to governments examining the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war in the series of international conferences that led to this week’s UN vote to hold negotiations to ban the bomb.

PSR’s executive director, Dr. Catherine Thomassen, presented information on the medical responsibility to act. She noted a poll that showed that from a list of professions the American public selected nurses, pharmacists, and doctors as those they respected the most. She urged the participants that this was all the more reason for them to take action.

John Loretz of IPPNW, whose Australian affiliate initiated the campaign to outlaw the bomb in 2007, www.icanw.org, reviewed the stalled “progress” in nuclear disarmament over the years leading up to this week’s historic vote. Adopting a resolution to ban nuclear weapons, just as we have banned chemical and biological weapons as well as landmines and cluster bombs, may be the most significant development since the end of the Cold War. It will stigmatize the bomb in a new way and put grassroots pressure from their parliaments on other states in the US nuclear alliance who are being heavily lobbied by the United States to resist this initiative—NATO members as well as Japan, South Korea, and Australia—to come out in support of the ban, as just occurred this month with Sweden, which was persuaded to vote in favor of starting the ban talks, or to abstain from voting against the ban, as the Netherlands did, even though it is part of the NATO alliance that relies on nuclear weapons in its security policy.

One way citizens in the nuclear-weapon states can support the ban is to check out a new divestment campaign from institutions that rely on nuclear weapons manufacturers, Don’t Bank on the Bomb. For those in the United States, Loretz urged that we start a debate on our military budget and the obscene trillion-dollar projection for nuclear weapons over the next 30 years. It is still clear that if the ICAN campaign actually fulfills its goal for the successful abolition of nuclear weapons, we need a change in the current US-Russian relationship which has deteriorated so badly in Obama’s second term. One reason the Nobel Prize was awarded to the IPPNW physicians in 1985, as set forth in the citation, was “the fact that the organization was formed as a result of a joint initiative by Soviet and American physicians and that it now draws support from the physicians in over 40 countries all over the world.” While IPPNW still has an affiliate in Russia, the Russians physicians have been inactive on this issue. Just as the US affiliate, PSR, has only recently refocused on nuclear issues through the ban campaign and the new humanitarian initiative, efforts will be made to renew relationships with Russian physicians, and to also develop possibilities for meetings with physicians in the Asian nuclear-weapon states that took the world by surprise when four of them broke with the big-power nuclear consensus, to block negotiations on a nuclear -weapons ban, by either voting to abstain on the resolution or by actually voting in favor of moving forward with the talks.

November 4, 2016
World Beyond War: An Idea Whose Time Is Coming

Over 300 people gathered last week at a conference at American University in Washington DC which brought together a remarkable assembly of philosophers, scientists, activists, diplomats, lawyers, doctors, economists, media experts, and activists working against patriarchy, gender discrimination, poverty, and racism, to develop creative answers and intelligent directions on how people can take action to put an end to war.   The event was organized by World Beyond War– a new and vibrant network and campaign, which in less than two years has gained the endorsement of thousands of people and organizations in 135 countries who signed a pledge “to commit to engage in and support nonviolent efforts to end all war and preparations for war and to create a sustainable and just peace”.  The gathering initiated a sorely needed examination of the public perception of the inevitability of war on the planet while promoting the possibilities and solutions for abolishing it.

One of the more astonishing reports was the heart wrenching presentations on the ongoing state of chaos and destruction in the Congo where more than 6 million people have died. We learned how the US and its allies have been supporting brutal dictators who are responsible for these deaths, ever since the CIA was involved in the overthrow and murder of its first democratically elected President, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961.

(To help those trying to spread the word and bring peace to the region, check out www.congojustice.org or www.friendsofthecongo.org ) Dennis Kucinich spoke about his success in establishing a Department of Peace as well as missed opportunities when Congress rejected the impeachment legislation he introduced to hold the Bush administration to account for war crimes in Iraq. Gar Alperovitz gave a challenging analysis of a new initiative to create the post-capitalist economy, The Next System Project, at http://www.thenextsystem.org/ with inspiring examples of programs instituted at the community level, such as worker cooperatives and public ownership of banks and utilities. Barbara Wien delivered a rousing presentation on patriarchy, calling it “the mother’s milk of militarism”. We heard, via video, UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time peace activist who has been campaigning to scrap Britain’s nuclear arsenal, on the very same day he was re-elected to lead his party and be its next candidate for Prime Minister. Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin gave a chilling report on how Saudi Arabia corrupts and buys the US Congress and its army of lobbyists with huge multi-million payments. Bruce Gagnon, with the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, reported on the rising tide of activism in South Korea and Japan to protest the destabilizing new U.S. missile bases in Asia and how more than 10,000 people demonstrated in Seoul.  Journalist Gareth Porter proposed a ten year plan for ending what he described as “the permanent war state”, crediting General Smedley Butler, known for having characterized war as a “racket”. Porter’s talk is posted here.

What Butler said in 1935, underscored by Porter was:

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

Videos of all the panels and speakers are posted here: http://worldbeyondwar.org/NoWar2016/

Workshops addressed issues such as closing the more than 800 US military bases encircling the globe, ending military recruitment in schools, abolishing nuclear weapons, organizing young people to work for Palestinian freedom, bringing the US into the International Criminal Court, mitigating the effects of the new cold war through citizen exchanges with Russia to promote better relations, updating World Beyond War’s strategy manual, A Global Security System: An Alternative to War, providing activists and scholars key information on the myths, obstacles, and solutions that have already worked to end wars.

(See http://worldbeyondwar.org/alternative/)

The conference came at a time when significant global events demonstrated that it is possible to end war. During the weekend of the meeting, Columbia negotiated to settle the longest running armed conflict in the Western hemisphere after 52 years of slaughter and destruction at a peace conference between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Unfortunately a subsequent public referendum rejected the historic settlement by a margin of less than one percent although the ceasefire is still holding.   And the phenomenon of so many previously hostile indigenous tribes of America coming together in North Dakota to help the Standing Rock Sioux defeat the pipeline that is threatening their water and earth—“burying the hatchet” so to speak and using peaceful non-violent means to protect our planet can be seen as a metaphor for what all the nations of the world must now do as well—give up our tribal differences as members of nation states and “bury the hatchet” as global citizens.

It is increasingly dawning on people that the current post-Cold War series of wars and military devastation waged on the world by the US and its alliances only make conditions more violent and perilous at home. We are beginning to understand that these wars may be void of any conceivable purpose except to feed the war machine. A growing number of people are supporting third party candidates that pledge to drastically cut the military budget although their voices are generally ignored.   Despite the difficulty most of us have in imagining an end to war in these distressing times, when our foreign policy is so militarized, and the media is beating the drums for war and shutting out the voices of the peacemakers, the World Beyond War gathering offered new possibilities for shifting our priorities and our mind set. Regardless of who is elected on November 8, this conference demonstrated that there are growing numbers of us who are engaged and understand what is at stake.   Their work and ideas will be needed if we are to end the violence and destruction of war.

Alice Slater is an Advisor to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War. This article first appeared at TheNation.com on October 6, 2016.

October 11, 2016
Pope Francis Statement on Nuclear Weapons

The stirring condemnation of nuclear weapons by Pope Francis today at the United Nations and his call for their prohibition and complete elimination in compliance with promises made in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed by the US in 1970, 45 years ago, should give new momentum to the current campaign to start negotiations on a ban treaty. This initiative endorsed by 117 non-nuclear weapons states to sign the Humanitarian Pledge being circulated initially by Austria, to “fill the legal gap” for nuclear disarmament and ban the bomb just as the world has banned chemical and biological weapons would create a new legal norm, which was not established in the NPT which provided that the five nuclear weapons states (US, Russia, UK, France, China) would make “good faith” efforts for nuclear disarmament, but didn’t prohibit their possession, in return for a promise from all the other nations not to acquire nuclear weapons. Every nation in the world signed the treaty except India, Pakistan, and Israel who went on to get nuclear weapons. North Korea took advantage of the NPTs Faustian bargain to give “peaceful” nuclear power to nations who promised not to make bombs and walked out of the treaty using the keys it got to its own bomb factory to make weapons.

At the NPT five year review conference this spring, the US, Canada, and the UK refused to agree to a final document because they couldn’t deliver Israel’s agreement on a promise made in 1995 to hold a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone conference for the Middle East. South Africa, condemned the nuclear apartheid enshrined in the double standard of the NPT which allowed the five signers to not only keep their nukes but to continue to modernize them with Obama pledging one trillion dollars over the next thirty years for two new bomb factories, delivery systems and new nuclear weapons. Indeed, on the eve of the Pope’s UN talk, it was reported that the US is planning to upgrade its nuclear weapons stationed at a German NATO base, causing Russia to rattle a few nuclear sabers of its own. The obvious bad faith of the nuclear weapons states is paving the way for even more non-nuclear weapons states to create the legal taboo for nuclear weapons just as the world has done for other weapons of mass destruction. Inspired by the Pope’s talk, this may be a time to finally give peace a chance.

September 25, 2015