Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

  • The Young Men With the Guns

    for Father Roy Bourgeois

    “Let those who have a voice speak for the voiceless.”
                           — Bishop Oscar Romero

    None of it could have happened
    not the killings, the rapes, the brutality
    without the young men with the guns.

    Bishop Romero saw this clearly.
    Lay down your arms, he said.
    This, the day before his assassination,

    the day before they shot him at the altar.
    God, forgive them, they only follow orders.
    They know not what they do.

    But the politicians and the generals
    know what they do
    when they give their orders
    to murder at the altar.

    None of it could have happened
    not the killings, the rapes, the brutality
    without the politicians and the generals.

    The ones who sit in dark rooms
    and stuff their mouths with food
    before they give the orders.

    The people are silent.
    Their mouths will not open.
    They hang their heads and avert their eyes.

    Of course, they are afraid
    of the young men with the guns
    who carry out the orders.

    None of it could have happened
    without the people remaining silent.

    The Bishop staggered, he bled, he died.
    But he will never be silenced.

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

  • Los Jovenes con las Armas

    traducción y adaptación de Rubén D. Arvizu* 

                   para el padre Roy Bourgeois

     “ Queremos ser la voz de los que no tienen voz. “

    ‪                       – Obispo Oscar Romero

    Nada de esto podría haber ocurrido
    ‪ni los asesinatos, las violaciones, la brutalidad
    ‪sin los hombres jóvenes con las armas de fuego.

    Monseñor Romero lo vio claramente.
    ‪Bajen las armas, dijo.
    ‪El día antes de su asesinato,

    un día antes de ser acribillado en el altar.
    ‪Señor, perdónalos, sólo siguen órdenes.
    ‪Ellos no saben lo que hacen.

    Pero los políticos y los generales
    ‪sabían lo que hacían
    ‪cuando dieron sus órdenes
    ‪para asesinarlo en el altar.

    Nada de esto podría haber ocurrido
    ‪ni los asesinatos, las violaciones, la brutalidad
    ‪sin los políticos y los generales.

    Los que se sientan en habitaciones oscuras
    ‪y llenan su boca con comida
    ‪antes de dar las órdenes.

    La gente está en silencio.
    ‪Sus bocas no se abren.
    ‪Bajan sus cabezas y eluden la mirada.

    Por supuesto, tienen miedo
    ‪de los jóvenes con las armas de fuego
    ‪que llevan a cabo las órdenes.

    Nada de esto podría haber ocurrido
    ‪sin la gente quedándose en silencio.

    El Obispo tambaleante, se desangró y murió.
    ‪Pero nunca será silenciado.

    *David Krieger es Presidente de la Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    *Rubén D. Arvizu es Director para América Latina de la Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    Click here for the English version.

  • What the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits Seek to Accomplish

    On April 24, 2014, just over a year ago, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) brought lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and separately against the United States in US Federal District Court. The RMI argues that the five nuclear-armed parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which are the US, Russia, UK, France and China, are not meeting their obligations under Article VI of the treaty to negotiate in good faith for complete nuclear disarmament.  The RMI further argues that the other four nuclear-armed countries not parties to the NPT, which are Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, have the same obligations under customary international law.

    David KriegerIn the ICJ, cases go forward only against countries that accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, unless they consent to jurisdiction.  Since only the UK, India and Pakistan accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, cases are limited to these three countries.  The US, Russia, France, China, Israel and North Korean were invited to have their cases heard at the ICJ.  China declined and the other countries did not respond.

    In the US case in Federal District Court, the judge dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds on February 3, 2015.  On April 2, 2015, the RMI filed a Notice of Appeal in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Tony de Brum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, stated, “We are in this for the long haul. We remain steadfast in our belief that nuclear weapons benefit no one and that what is right for humankind will prevail. We place great importance in and hold high respect for the American judicial process and will pursue justice in that spirit, using every available legal avenue to see that Nuclear Zero is achieved in my lifetime.”

    These are important lawsuits.  They have been described as a battle of David versus the nine nuclear Goliaths.  In this case, however, David (the RMI) is using the nonviolent means of the courtroom and the law rather than a slingshot and a rock.  It is worth considering what these lawsuits seek to accomplish.

     

    • To challenge the status quo in which the world is composed of a small number of nuclear “haves” and a large number of nuclear “have-nots.”
    • To use the courts to level the playing field and enforce playing by the same rules.
    • To receive support from the courts in the form of declaratory and injunctive relief, so that the courts declare that the nuclear-armed countries are out of compliance with their obligations and order them to commence good faith negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament.
    • To take a stand for all humanity, by ridding the world of the threat of nuclear catastrophes that could destroy civilization and much of life on the planet.
    • To be good stewards of the Earth for present and future generations, protecting the various forms of flora and fauna dependent upon our doing so.
    • To challenge the “good faith” of the nuclear-armed countries, for their failure to initiate negotiations for nuclear disarmament as required by the NPT and customary international law.
    • To obtain the benefit of the bargain of the NPT, which means not only that its parties without nuclear weapons will not acquire them, but that all parties, including the nuclear-armed states, will negotiate their elimination.
    • To end the complacency surrounding the threats that nuclear weapons pose to cities, countries and civilization.
    • To awaken people everywhere to the magnitude of the threat posed by nuclear weapons.
    • To say a loud and clear “Enough is enough,” and that it is time for action on the abolition of nuclear weapons.
    • To achieve a “conversion of hearts,” recognized by Pope Francis as necessary for effective action in changing the world on this most challenging of threats.

    These are high aspirations from a small but courageous country.  If you would like to know more about the Marshall Islands Nuclear Zero lawsuits, and how you can help support them, visit www.nuclearzero.org.

    David Krieger is a founder and President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a consultant to the Marshall Islands in the Nuclear Zero lawsuits.

  • Hubris Versus Wisdom

    Humankind must not be complacent in the face of the threat posed by nuclear weapons.  The future of humanity and all life depends upon the outcome of the ongoing struggle between hubris and wisdom.

    Hubris is an ancient Greek word meaning extreme arrogance. Wisdom is cautionary good sense.

    Hubris is at the heart of Greek tragedy – the arrogant belief that one’s power is unassailable.  Wisdom counsels that no human fortress is impregnable.

    Hubris says some countries can hold onto nuclear weapons and rely upon them for deterrence.  Wisdom, in the voice of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, says these weapons must be eliminated before they eliminate us.

    Hubris says these weapons of annihilation are subject to human control.  Wisdom says that humans are fallible creatures, subject to error.

    Hubris repeats that we can control our most dangerous technologies.  Wisdom says look at what has happened in numerous accidents with nuclear weapons as well as accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.

    Hubris says the spread of nuclear weapons can be contained.  Wisdom says that the only sure way to prevent the spread or use of nuclear weapons is to abolish those that now exist.

    Hubris says that political leaders will always be rational and avoid the use of nuclear weapons.  Wisdom observes that all humans, including political leaders, behave irrationally at times under some circumstances.

    Hubris says we can play nuclear roulette with the human future.  Wisdom says we have a responsibility to assure there is a human future.

    Hubris says that we can control nuclear fire.  Wisdom says nuclear weapons will spark wildfires of human suffering and must be eradicated forever from the planet.

    The Nuclear Age demands that we conquer complacency with compassion and hubris with wisdom.

  • A Letter to The New York Times

    Below is a letter that I sent to The New York Times about an editorial by their Editorial Board that appeared on April 6, 2015.  Regretfully, they did not publish the letter because it makes a point that is too often overlooked in US nuclear policy: that the US cannot always be attempting to put out nuclear fires while, at the same time, helping to start and fan those fires by its own nuclear policies.  Nuclear dangers need to be dealt with systemically through negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.  That is what the Non-Proliferation Treaty requires and what the Marshall Islands is trying to achieve through its lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries.  Here is the letter:

    Editor:

    David KriegerConcerns expressed in your editorial, “Nuclear Fears in South Asia,” are well warranted.  What seems obvious, but is unstated, is that India and Pakistan are modelling behavior long demonstrated by the US, Russia and other nuclear powers, all of which have policies of nuclear deterrence and are modernizing their nuclear arsenals.

    We’ve already missed the non-proliferation train in South Asia. Now, the only sensible goal is nuclear disarmament, as required by Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and by customary international law for countries not parties to the NPT, such as India and Pakistan. This is the basis for the lawsuits brought by the Marshall Islands against all nine nuclear-armed countries at the International Court of Justice and separately against the US in US Federal Court.  Rather than continuing to evade its obligations for nuclear disarmament, the US should take the lead in convening negotiations for nuclear zero. We owe it to ourselves and to the future of humanity.

  • To the Americans Who Died in the Vietnam War

    Perhaps you thought you were doing the right thing, fighting in a small distant country for president and country.  It is the way we were all indoctrinated.  When the country calls, you must answer.  But the leaders of the country were dead wrong about fighting in Vietnam, and this wall with your names etched on it speaks to the terrible loss of each of you in that savage, brutal and unnecessary war.  I mourn your loss.  I mourn the loss of possibilities that were cut off when your lives ended in that war.  You might have stayed home to live and love, to have children and grandchildren, to follow your dreams, but for that war.

    David KriegerThe war was so wrong in so many ways.  It was wrong for you, for the people you were ordered to kill, and for the soul of America.  It was a war that was neither legal nor moral and, as such, set the tone for future US wars.  After that war, I don’t see how we can ever be proud of our country again.

    Some three million Vietnamese were killed in the war.  Some were fighting for their independence.  Others were innocent civilians.  Many were women and children.  You and other Americans were sent half way around the world because American leaders feared the communists, feared that countries in Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes to the communists.  But Ho Chi Minh was more than a communist.  He was a nationalist, leading his country to independence from colonial rule.  He was a nationalist who admired Thomas Jefferson, and he had once asked the United States for help in seeking that independence.  We turned him down, turning our backs on our own history and on your future.

    Once Lyndon Johnson became president it was all escalation in Vietnam.  General Westmoreland always wanted more men.  He kept upping the ante in his calls for more American soldiers, and LBJ and McNamara kept obliging him.  They kept pulling young Americans from their lives and dreams to fight in the jungles of Vietnam.  You know better than I do that it was a hopeless war, a war in which you were sent to kill and die for no good reason, for the delusions of American leaders who didn’t want to lose a war.  Of course, that’s exactly what happened in the end, and by that time Nixon and Kissinger had joined the Johnson and Westmoreland team in failure.  According to the rigged body counts on the nightly news, we were winning the war, but that was only until we lost.

    One slogan stands out in my mind, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”  We’ll never know how many there were, but there were many.  The war drove LBJ from office, but it brought in Richard Nixon.  He said he had a plan to end the war.  This turned out to be massive bombing of North Vietnam, and secret and illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia.  It was shameful, but not as shameful as Kissinger receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the shape of the table for peace talks with the Vietnamese.

    What kind of a country could pursue such a war against peasants fighting for their freedom?  Answer: The same kind of country that could drop atomic bombs on civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Sadly, in the years since you’ve been gone, our country has learned little about compassion.  We have fought new wars, including one in Iraq, based upon presidential lies having to do with illusory weapons of mass destruction.

    America has continued to waste its treasure in fighting wars around the world, as well as its dignity, its goodwill, its youth and its future.  I wish I could give you a more positive report on what America learned from the Vietnam War, but most of what it has learned seems intended to make wars easier to prosecute, such as ending conscription, relying on a poverty-driven volunteer army, embedding reporters with the troops, and not allowing photographs of returning coffins.  Incidentally, no dominoes ever fell.

    America has yet to learn that war is not the answer, that bombs do not make friends and military power does not bring peace.  Our military budget is immense.  When all is added in, it amounts to over a trillion dollars annually.  Imagine what a difference even a fraction of those funds would make in fulfilling basic human needs for Americans and people throughout the world.

    I wish you were here to stand up and speak out for peace and justice, for a better, more peaceful country and world.  We need you.

  • Vandenberg ICBM Tests Are Not Innocuous

    Regarding the second ICBM test from Vandenberg within a week, it has become tedious to read time after time that the tests “are a visible reminder to both our adversaries and our allies of the readiness and capabilities of the Minuteman III weapon system.”

    We certainly know by now that these missiles, when armed with nuclear weapons, can destroy cities and, in a nuclear war, contribute to human extinction.  We also know that nuclear deterrence is only a hypothesis about human behavior that has not and cannot be proven to be effective.  In the 70 years of the Nuclear Age there have been many close calls when nuclear deterrence came close to failing.

    General Lee Butler, a former commander-in-chief of the US Strategic Command, who was once in charge of all US strategic nuclear weapons, has said, “Nuclear deterrence was and remains a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships.”

    General Butler’s wisdom makes the colonels from Vandenberg who are quoted sound like naïve school children.  Of course, these officers are only doing their job and repeating a simplistic message about the value of nuclear deterrence.  Unfortunately, their perspective endangers the lives of all school children, and the rest of us, now and in the future.

    There are more reasons to oppose ICBM tests from Vandenberg than that they are too expensive and violate treaty agreements, although these are certainly valid.  The tests are a waste of resources and they violate US obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race at an early date.

    Other reasons include: attempting to justify the “use them or lose them” nature of the Minuteman III missile force; the incentives for proliferation that US missile testing provide; the dangers to Santa Barbara County due to the proximity of Vandenberg; and the immorality of threatening to use nuclear-armed missiles that together could result in billions of deaths of humans and other forms of life.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has a new booklet entitled, “15 Moral Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,” available on its website.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • The Merry-Go-Round

    The end could begin with a missile launched by accident.
    And then the response would be deliberate, as would be
    the counter-response, and on and on until we were all

    gone.

    Or, it could be deliberate from the outset, an act
    of madness by a suicidal leader, setting the end in motion.

    First, the blasts and mushroom clouds.  Then the fires
    and burning cities and the winds driving the fires, turning
    humans into projectiles, and all of it mixed with deadly
    radiation.  Finally, for the last act, the soot from destroyed
    cities rising into the upper stratosphere, blocking the sunlight
    and the temperatures falling into a frozen Ice Age, followed
    by mass starvation.

    If any humans were left to name it, they might call it
    “Global Hiroshima,” but none would be left.
    It would be ugly for a while, eerily still and silent
    for some stretch of time, but no one would be there
    to observe.  Still, the Earth would go on rotating
    around the sun and the universe would go on expanding.

    Only we humans would be off the not-so-merry-go-round.

     

     

  • Nuclear Weapons and Possible Human Extinction: The Heroic Marshall Islanders

    Extinction is a harsh and unforgiving word, a word that should make us shiver. Time moves inexorably in one direction only and, when extinction is complete, there are no further chances for revival. Extinction is a void, a black hole, from which return is forever foreclosed. If we can imagine the terrible void of extinction, then perhaps we can mobilize to forestall its occurrence, even its possibility.

    The brilliant American author Jonathan Schell, who wrote The Fate of the Earth and was an ardent nuclear abolitionist, had this insight into the Nuclear Age, “We prepare for our extinction in order to assure our survival.”[i] He refers to the irony and idiocy of reliance upon nuclear weapons to avert nuclear war.

    David KriegerNuclear deterrence is what the political, military and industrial leaders of the nuclear-armed and nuclear-dependent states call strategy. It involves the deployment of nuclear weapons on the land, in the air and under the oceans, and the constant striving to modernize and improve these weapons of mass annihilation.

    Nuclear deterrence strategy rests on the unfounded, unproven and unprovable conviction that the deployment of these weapons, including those on hair-trigger alert, will protect their possessors from nuclear attack. It rests on the further naïve beliefs that nothing will go awry and that humans will be able to indefinitely control the monstrous weapons they have created without incident or accident, without miscalculation or intentional malevolence. In truth, these beliefs are simply that, beliefs, without any solid basis in fact. They are tenuously based, on a foundation of faith as opposed to a provable reality. They are the conjuring of a nuclear priesthood in collaboration with pliable politicians and corporate nuclear profiteers. They are seemingly intent upon providing a final omnicidal demonstration of, in Hannah Arendt’s words, “the banality of evil.”[ii]

    Nuclear strategists and ordinary people rarely consider the mythology that sustains nuclear deterrence, which is built upon a foundation of rationality. But national leaders are often irrational, and there are no guarantees that nuclear weapons will not be used in the future. There have been many close calls in the past, not the least of which was the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Does it seem even remotely possible that all leaders of all nuclear-armed countries will act rationally at all times under all circumstances? It would be irrational to think so.

    In nuclear deterrence strategies there are vast unknowns and unknowable possibilities. Our behaviors and those of our nuclear-armed opponents are not always knowable. We must expect the unexpected, but we cannot know in advance in what forms it will present itself. This means that we cannot be prepared for every eventuality. We do know, however, that human fallibility and nuclear weapons are a volatile mix, and this is particularly so in times of crisis, such as we are experiencing now in US-Russian relations over Ukraine.

    Such volatility in a climate of crisis deepens the concern regarding the possibility of nuclear extinction. We can think of it as Nuclear Roulette, in which the nuclear-armed states are loading nuclear weapons into the metaphorical chambers of a gun and pointing that gun (or those several guns) at humanity’s head. No one knows how many nuclear weapons have been loaded into the gun. Are our chances of human extinction in the 21st century one in one hundred, one in ten, one in six, or one in two? The truth is that we do not know, but the odds of survival are not comforting.

    My colleague, physicist John Scales Avery, views the prospects of human survival as dim at best. He writes: “It is a life-or-death question. We can see this most clearly when we look far ahead. Suppose that each year there is a certain finite chance of a nuclear catastrophe, let us say 2 percent. Then in a century the chance of survival will be 13.5 percent, and in two centuries, 1.8 percent, in three centuries, 0.25 percent, in four centuries, there would only be a 0.034 percent chance of survival and so on. Over many centuries, the chance of survival would shrink almost to zero. Thus, by looking at the long-term future, we can see clearly that if nuclear weapons are not entirely eliminated, civilization will not survive.”[iii]

    Here is what we know: First, nuclear weapons are capable of causing human extinction, along with the extinction of many other species. Second, nine countries continue to rely upon these weapons for their so-called “national security.” Third, these nine countries are continuing to modernize their nuclear arsenals and failing to fulfill their legal and moral obligations to achieve a Nuclear Zero world – one in which human extinction by means of nuclear weapons is not a possibility because there are no nuclear weapons.

    Given these knowable facts, we might ask: What kind of “national security” is it to rely upon weapons capable of causing human extinction? Or, to put it another way: How can any nation be secure when nuclear weapons threaten all humanity? Certainly, it requires massive amounts of denial to remain apathetic to the extinction dangers posed by nuclear weapons. There appears to be a kind of mass insanity – a detachment from reality. Such detachment seems possible only in societies that have made themselves subservient to the nuclear “experts” and officials who have become the high priests of nuclear strategy. Whole societies have developed a gambler’s addiction to living at the edge of the precipice of nuclear annihilation.

    Remember Jonathan Schell’s insight: “We prepare for our extinction in order to assure our survival.” Of course, it is nonsensical to prepare for extinction to assure survival. Just as to achieve peace, we must prepare for peace, not war, we must be assuring our survival not by preparing for our extinction, but by ridding the world of the weapons that make this threat a possibility. We must, as Albert Einstein warned, change our “modes of thinking” or face “unparalleled catastrophe.”[iv]

    The Victims

    There have been many victims of the Nuclear Age, starting with those who died and those who survived the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This year marks the 70th anniversary of those bombings. The survivors of those bombings are growing older and more anxious to see their fervent wish, the abolition of nuclear weapons, realized.

    In addition to the victims in the atomic-bombed cities, there have been many other victims of nuclear weapons. These include the people at the nuclear test sites and those downwind from them. They have suffered cancers, leukemia and other illnesses. The effects of the radiation from the nuclear tests have also affected subsequent generations, causing stillbirths and many forms of birth defects.

    The Marshall Islanders were one group of nuclear victims. They lived on pristine Pacific islands, living simple lives close to the ocean waters that provided their bounty. But between 1946 and 1958 the US conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. The tests had the equivalent power of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs being exploded daily for 12 years. Some of the islands and atolls in the Marshall Islands became too radioactive to inhabit. The people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), who became guinea pigs for the US to study, continue to suffer. They have never received fair or adequate compensation for their injuries resulting from the US nuclear testing program.

    On March 1, 1954, the US conducted a nuclear test on the island of Bikini in the Marshall Islands. The bomb, detonated in a test known as Castle Bravo, had 1,000 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. It contaminated the Bikini atoll and several other islands in the Marshall Islands, including Rongelap (100 miles away) and Utirik (300 miles away), as well as fishing vessels more than 100 miles from the detonation. Crew members aboard the Japanese vessel “Lucky Dragon” were severely irradiated and one crew member died as a result of radiation poisoning. This day is known internationally as “Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day” or “Bikini Day.” Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum remembers the Bravo explosion as “a jolt on my soul that never left me.”[v]

    The Victims as Heroes

    On April 24, 2014, after more than a year-and-a-half of planning and preparations, the Marshall Islands filed lawsuits against nine nuclear-armed states in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and against the United States separately in US Federal District Court in San Francisco. The Marshall Islanders seek no compensation in these lawsuits, but rather declaratory and injunctive relief declaring the nuclear-armed states to be in breach of their nuclear disarmament obligations and ordering them to fulfill these obligations by commencing within one year to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.[vi]

    The Marshall Islands lawsuits referred to obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and under customary international law. Regarding the latter, they relied upon a portion of the ICJ’s 1996 Advisory Opinion on the Illegality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons in which the Court stated: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”[vii]

    The Marshall Islands is the mouse that roared, it is David standing against the nine nuclear goliaths, it is the friend not willing to let friends drive drunk on nuclear power. Most of all, the Marshall Islands is a heroic small nation that is standing up for all humanity against those countries that are perpetuating the risk of nuclear war and the nuclear extinction of humanity and other forms of complex life on the planet. The courage and foresight of the Marshall Islands is a harbinger of hope that should give hope to us all.

    The Current Status of the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits

    In the US case, the US government filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against it on jurisdictional grounds. On February 3, 2015, the federal judge, a George W. Bush appointee, granted the motion. The Marshall Islands have announced their intention to appeal the judge’s decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

    At the International Court of Justice, cases are in process against the three countries that accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court – India, Pakistan and the UK. Both India and Pakistan are seeking to limit their cases to jurisdictional issues. It remains to be seen whether or not the UK will follow suit. Of the other nuclear-armed countries that do not accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, none have accepted the Marshall Islands invitation to engage in the lawsuits, but only China has explicitly said that it will not.

    An important observation about the lawsuits is that there has been reticence by the nuclear-armed states to have the issue of their obligations for nuclear disarmament heard by the courts. It would appear that the nuclear-armed countries are not eager to have their people or the people of the world know about their legal obligations to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament or about their breaches of those obligations. Nor do they want the courts to order them to fulfill those obligations.

    The Lawsuits Are about More than the Law

    With regard to the legal aspects of these lawsuits, they are about whether treaties matter. They are about whether the most powerful nations are to be bound by the same rules as the rest of the international community. They are about whether a treaty can stand up with only half of the bargain fulfilled. They are about who gets to decide if treaty obligations are being met. Do all parties to a treaty stand on equal footing, or do the powerful have special rules specifically for them? They are also about the strength of customary international law to bind nations to civilized behavior.

    These lawsuits are about more than just the law. They are about breaking cocoons of complacency and a conversion of hearts. They are also about leadership, boldness, courage, justice, wisdom and, ultimately, about survival. Let me say a word about each of these.

    Leadership. If the most powerful countries won’t lead, then other countries must. The Marshall Islands, a small island country, has demonstrated this leadership, both on ending climate chaos and on eliminating the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    Boldness. Many of us in civil society have been calling for boldness in relation to the failure of the nuclear-armed countries to fulfill their obligations to negotiate in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and to achieve complete nuclear disarmament. The status quo has become littered with broken promises, and these have become hard to tolerate. Instead of negotiating in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race “at an early date,” the nuclear-armed countries have engaged in massive programs of modernization of their nuclear arsenals (nuclear weapons, delivery systems and infrastructure). Such modernization of the US nuclear arsenal alone is anticipated to cost a trillion dollars over the next three decades. Nuclear modernization by all nuclear-armed countries will ensure that nuclear weapons are deployed throughout the 21st century and beyond. The Marshall Islands is boldly challenging the status quo with the Nuclear Zero lawsuits.

    Courage. The Marshall Islands is standing up for humanity in bringing these lawsuits. I see them as David standing against the nine nuclear-armed Goliaths. But the Marshall Islands is a David acting nonviolently, using the courts and the law instead of a slingshot. The Marshall Islands shows us by its actions what courage looks like.

    Justice. The law should always be about justice. In the case of nuclear weapons, both the law and justice call for an equal playing field, one in which no country has possession of nuclear weapons. That is the bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the requirement of customary international law, and the Marshall Islands is taking legal action that seeks justice in the international community.

    Wisdom. The lawsuits are about the wisdom to confront the hubris of the nuclear-armed countries. The arrogance of power is dangerous, and the arrogance of reliance upon nuclear weapons could be fatal for all humanity.

    Survival. At their core, the Nuclear Zero lawsuits brought by the Marshall Islands are about survival. They are about making nuclear war, by design or accident or miscalculation, impossible because there are no longer nuclear weapons to threaten humanity. Without nuclear weapons in the world, there can be no nuclear war, no nuclear famine, no nuclear terrorism, no overriding threat to the human species and the future of humanity.

    The dream of ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity should be the dream not only of the Marshall Islanders, but our dream as well It must become our collective dream – not only for ourselves, but for the human future. We must challenge the “experts” and officials who tell us, “Don’t worry, be happy” with the nuclear status quo.

    The people of the world should follow the lead of the Marshall Islanders. If they can lead, we can support them. If they can be bold, we can join them. If they can be courageous, we can be as well. If they can demand that international law be based on justice, we can stand with them. If they can act wisely and confront hubris, with all its false assumptions, we can join them in doing so. If they can take seriously the threat to human survival inherent in our most dangerous weapons, so can we. The Marshall Islands is showing us the way forward, breaking cocoons of complacency and demonstrating a conversion of the heart.

    I am proud to be associated with the Marshall Islands and its extraordinary Foreign Minister, Tony de Brum. As a consultant to the Marshall Islands, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has worked to build the legal teams that support the Nuclear Zero lawsuits. We have also built a consortium of 75 civil society organizations that support the lawsuits. We have also created a way for individuals to add their voices of support with a brief petition. Already over 5 million people have signed the petition supporting the Nuclear Zero lawsuits. You can find out more and add your voice at the campaign website, www.nuclearzero.org.

    I will conclude with a poem that I wrote recently, entitled “Testing Nuclear Weapons in the Marshall Islands.”

    TESTING NUCLEAR WEAPONS
    IN THE MARSHALL ISLANDS

    The islands were alive
    with the red-orange fire of sunset
    splashed on a billowy sky.

    The islanders lived simple lives
    close to the edge of the ocean planet
    reaching out to infinity.

    The days were bright and the nights
    calm in this happy archipelago
    until the colonizers came.

    These were sequentially the Spanish,
    Germans, Japanese and then, worst of all,
    the United States.

    The U.S. came as trustee
    bearing its new bombs, eager to test them
    in this beautiful barefoot Eden.

    The islanders were trusting,
    even when the bombs began exploding
    and the white ash fell like snow.

    The children played
    in the ash as it floated down on them,
    covering them in poison.

    The rest is a tale of loss
    and suffering by the islanders, of madness
    by the people of the bomb.

     

    [i] Krieger, David (Ed.), Speaking of Peace, Quotations to Inspire Action, Santa Barbara, CA: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 2014, p. 69.

    [ii] Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1023716-eichmann-in-jerusalem-a-report-on-the-banality-of-evil

    [iii] Avery, John Scales, “Remember Your Humanity,” website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/remember-your-humanity/

    [iv] Krieger, David (Ed.), op. cit., p. 52.

    [v] De Brum, Tony, website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/tony-debrum/

    [vi] Information on the Marshall Islands’ Nuclear Zero Lawsuits can be found at www.nuclearzero.org.

    [vii] “Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons,” United Nations General Assembly, A/51/218, 15 October 1996, p. 37.

  • 2015 Kelly Lecture Introduction

    Welcome to the 14th annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future, a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    I want to thank our sponsors for tonight’s event and make special mention of our principal sponsors: The Santa Barbara Foundation and the Terry and Mary Kelly Foundation. I also want to thank all of you for being here tonight and for caring about humanity’s future.

    kelly_2015The Kelly Lecture Series honors the vision and compassion of Frank K. Kelly, a founder and long-time senior vice president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Frank believed deeply that everyone deserves a seat at humanity’s table. He gave the first lecture in the series in 2002 on the subject, “Glorious Beings: What We Are and What We May Become.” Just the title of his talk gives you an idea of his unbounded optimism.

    For this Lecture series, the Foundation invites a distinguished speaker each year. Recent Kelly Lecturers have included Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich and Daniel Ellsberg. Other lecturers in the series include Dame Anita Roddick, Frances Moore Lappe and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. You can find a complete list of the lecturers and their lectures on-line, as well as other information on the Foundation, at www.wagingpeace.org.

    The Kelly Lecture is one of many projects of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Other major projects include consulting with the Marshall Islands on their Nuclear Zero lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries. These David versus Goliath lawsuits seek no compensation, but rather ask the Courts to order the nuclear-armed countries to fulfill their obligations under international law to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.

    Another important Foundation project is our Peace Leadership Program, headed by Paul Chappell, who travels the world training people to become peace leaders and training peace leaders to be more effective in their efforts. Right now Paul is in Washington, DC, where there is a definite need for an infusion of peace Leadership.

    Another of our projects is exploring the moral reasons to abolish nuclear weapons, and to break the bonds of complacency that have led in the Nuclear Age to putting the future of humanity into the hands of so-called nuclear “experts” and policy makers, a most dangerous nuclear “priesthood.”

    The most important of these moral reasons is that we are putting all of Creation at risk of extinction. Could there be a greater crime or moral shortcoming? It is the multiplication of homicide by more than seven billion. It is moving beyond homicide and genocide to omnicide, the death of all.

    Let me share with you a quote from humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm: “For the first time in history, the physical survival of the human race depends on a radical change of the human heart.”

    Our lecturer tonight has worked for over four decades to create this radical change in the human heart. She is a passionate and committed advocate of a nuclear weapons-free world. She is a medical doctor, a pediatrician, from Australia who works to save the world’s children and, with them, the rest of us. She has diagnosed the severe societal disease of “nuclearism” and has advocated its cure through nuclear abolition.

    Dr. Caldicott is a recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, and has served as a member of our Advisory Council since 1994. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by two-time Nobel recipient Linus Pauling. The Smithsonian has named her one of the most influential women of the 20th century.

    She has just organized and held a vitally important symposium in New York on “The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction.” I was privileged to be one of the speakers at the symposium, which took place this past weekend at the New York Academy of Medicine.

    Tonight Dr. Caldicott will be speaking on “Preserving Humanity’s Future.” It is my pleasure to introduce our 2015 Kelly Lecturer, Dr. Helen Caldicott.

    (The video of Dr. Caldicott’s lecture will be at this link. DVD copies will also be available to use for public screenings. For further information, contact Rick Wayman at rwayman@napf.org.)