The bells of Nagasaki
ring for those who suffered
and those who suffer still.
They draw old women to them
and young couples
with love-glazed eyes.
They draw in small children
walking awkwardly
toward the epicenter.
The Bells of Nagasaki,
elusive as a flowing stream,
ring for each of us, ring
like falling leaves.
“It wasn’t necessary to hit them
with that awful thing”
— General Dwight Eisenhower
We hit them with it, first
at Hiroshima and then at Nagasaki –
the old one-two punch.
The bombings were tests really, to see
what those “awful things” would do.
First, of a gun-type uranium bomb, and then
of a plutonium implosion bomb.
Both proved highly effective
in the art of obliterating cities.
It wasn’t necessary.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is an island country in the northern Pacific with a population of approximately 70,000 people. For such a small country, it is making big waves. As a country at risk of being submerged due to rising ocean levels, the RMI has played a leadership role in the international conferences concerned with climate change. As a country that suffered 12 years of devastating U.S. nuclear testing, it has also chosen to take action to assure that the no other country suffers the fate its citizens have due to nuclear weapons. It has sued the nine nuclear-armed countries for failing to meet their obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.
The RMI is a bold, courageous country. It may be small, but its leaders are not intimidated by the most powerful countries in the world. It speaks truth to power and it is tackling two of the most critical survival issues of our time. It is acting for its own survival, but also for the future of humanity and other forms of complex life on the planet.
In a July 12, 2014 article in the Guardian, “Why the next climate treaty is vital for my country to survive,” RMI Foreign Minister Tony de Brum wrote, “As I said to the big emitters meeting in Paris, the agreement we sign here next year must be nothing less than an agreement to save my country, and an agreement to save the world.”
In an interview published on the Huffington Post on May 30, 2014, de Brum was asked about what effects the lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries would have on the discourse of nuclear disarmament worldwide. He replied, “It should stimulate intelligent discourse and wise solutions. For what would it gain the world for instance, to be protected from climate change, only to suffer massive destruction from nuclear weapons? All our efforts to be sane about the future must be connected to survival and peace. The right hand cannot be out seeking climate peace while the left is busy waging nuclear war.”
How are we to regard the bold actions of this small country? One way they have been viewed is as quixotic, tilting at windmills. But this misses the point. They are doing what they can to save the world. They are saying, in effect, that power does not have special prerogatives, particularly when the survival of their islands and of all humanity is at stake. They are modelling by their behavior that we all have a stake in these survival issues. If they can speak up, so can we, and the more of us who do speak up, the more likely we will save our planet and ourselves.
I like to think of the lawsuits brought by the Marshall Islands as David pitted against the nine nuclear Goliaths, with the exception that the Marshalls have substituted the courts and the law for a slingshot. Their action is nonviolent, seeking a judicial order to require the nuclear-armed countries to cease modernizing their nuclear arsenals and to begin negotiating for complete nuclear disarmament.
Another way to think about the Marshall Islands is as “The Mouse that Roared.” The RMI is small, but mighty. In the classic Peter Sellers’ movie, a small, fictional country sets out to lose a war against the United States in order to obtain reparations and save itself from bankruptcy. In the case of the Marshall Islands, they hope to win the battle, not for reparations, but for human survival on both the climate change and nuclear abolition fronts.
Finally, it is worth observing that the Marshall Islands is not acting with malice toward the countries that it challenges on climate change or toward those it is suing for failing to meet their legal and moral obligations for nuclear disarmament. In this sense, it is following the old saying, “Friends do not let friends drive drunk.” The big, powerful countries have been driving drunk for too long. The safety of their citizens is also at stake, as is the safety of every inhabitant of the planet, now and in the future.
The Marshall Islands has given humanity a wake-up call. Each of us has a choice. We can wake up, or we can continue our complacent slumber. If you would like to be a hero for nuclear zero, you can support the Marshall Islands at www.nuclearzero.org.
The stain of death spreads below,
but from my cockpit I see none of it.
I only drop bombs as I have been trained
and then, far above the haze and blood,
I speed toward home.
I am deaf to the screams of pain.
Nor can I smell the stench of slaughter.
I try not to think of children shivering
with fear or of those blown to pieces.
They tell me I am brave, but
how brave can it be to drop bombs
on a crowded city? I am a cog,
only that, a cog in a fancy machine
of death.
The conventional wisdom that nuclear weapons keep their possessors safe, though it may be widespread, is neither true nor rooted in wisdom. The fact is that nuclear weapons are far too dangerous for any country to possess – let alone use – and that the U.S. and other countries have been playing nuclear roulette with them for nearly seven decades.
Nuclear weapons have come close to being detonated by accident or design on numerous occasions during the nuclear age. U.S. and Russian leaders have come close to “retaliating” to false warnings of nuclear attack on several occasions, acts which would have set in motion full-scale nuclear wars. Planes carrying nuclear weapons have had mid-air collisions and crashes that have released their bombs. It is far more likely that the world has benefited by great good fortune than it is that the weapons have kept us safe.
Nuclear deterrence is only a hypothesis about human behavior. It is a hypothesis that requires all leaders playing the deadly-serious nuclear game to behave rationally at all times, and we know that all leaders do not act rationally under all circumstances. Do we really want to gamble that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un will always behave rationally? But this may be said about many, perhaps all, leaders of nuclear-armed states. Here, for example, is a conversation recorded in the White House on April 25, 1972, between President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger:
Nixon: How many did we kill in Laos?
Kissinger: In the Laotian thing, we killed about ten, fifteen [thousand] …
Nixon: See, the attack in the North [Vietnam] that we have in mind … power plants, whatever’s left – POL [petroleum], the docks … And I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
Nixon: No, no, no … I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
Nixon: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you? … I just want you to think big, Henry, for Chrissakes.
The possession of nuclear weapons models behavior that other countries will see fit to emulate. If the most powerful nation on Earth insists that it “needs” nuclear weapons, why wouldn’t every country “need” them? If the rationale is “because they deter nuclear attack,” then we should give nuclear weapons to everyone and thereby ensure the peace.
The truth is that each new country that develops a nuclear arsenal adds to—not reduces—the global threat. Since the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force in 1970, four additional countries have developed nuclear arsenals: Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. More countries may well join them, responding to the continued nuclear posturing of the original five nuclear-armed countries: U.S., Russia, UK, France and China.
An additional impetus to nuclear proliferation is the failure of the original nuclear weapon states to fulfill their obligations under the NPT to pursue negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament. The Marshall Islands, a small Pacific island country, has brought lawsuits against all the nuclear “Goliaths” to hold them to account for breaches of their nuclear disarmament obligations under the NPT and/or customary international law.
Conventional wisdom also has it that the more powerful the nuclear arsenal, the safer are its possessors. But this is not true for two reasons. First, a country that possesses nuclear weapons will be targeted by nuclear weapons. Second, the use of a powerful nuclear arsenal could thrust the globe into a new ice age and thus be suicidal for the attacking country, even without retaliation.
It is commonly believed that nuclear weapons “ended the war in Japan” and saved (American) lives during World War II. That, too, is a myth. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, published in 1946, concluded that, even without the atomic bombs, and even without the Soviet Union entering the war in the Pacific, the fighting would have ended in 1945 without an Allied invasion of Japan. Japan had put out feelers to surrender, and the U.S. had broken Japan’s secret codes and knew about its desire to surrender, but we went ahead and bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki anyway. Admiral William D. Leahy, the highest ranking member of the U.S. military at the time, wrote in his memoir that the atomic bomb “was of no material assistance” against Japan, because the Japanese were already defeated. He went on to say that, in being the first to use the bomb, the U.S. “had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
Nuclear weapons not only do not keep their possessors safe, but the secrecy and consolidation of power they require undermine democracy, and have been a major reason for consolidation of power in the executive branch of government and the creation of an “imperial presidency” in the U.S. Further, these weapons and their delivery systems have drained trillions of dollars in resources from meeting basic social needs. In addition, the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be illegal under international law and the possession of these instruments of mass annihilation undermines the very fabric of international law. Finally, there is no moral justification for threatening the populations of cities, countries, continents and, in fact, the whole planet. The development and possession of nuclear arsenals has made us bad stewards of the planet and its various forms of life, including human life, now and in the future.
There is another, painfully obvious, way that nuclear weapons jeopardize our safety: Through the middle of the last decade, the U.S. had spent $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. The annual figure now is $50 to $60 billion for the U.S. and $100 billion for all nuclear-weapons states. That $100 billion a year is a figure roughly equivalent to the cost of achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. Which investment would make the world a safer place?
Nuclear weapons are relics of the Cold War. What possible scenario would require any country to keep hundreds, or even thousands, of nuclear weapons, ready to fire on a few moments’ notice? It’s time to wake up, shake off our apathy and ignorance, challenge conventional wisdom, and take a stand for a nuclear weapons-free planet now, before it’s too late. The U.S., as the most powerful country on the planet and the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war, should lead the way in convening these negotiations.
David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and has served as its president since 1982. He is the author of many books and articles that challenge the conventional wisdom that nuclear weapons keep us safe. Find out more at www.wagingpeace.org and www.nuclearzero.org.
This article was originally published by The Moon Magazine.
We’ve stumbled into war before. We could certainly do it again. But doing it in a world with nuclear weapons could be even more devastating than World War I or, for that matter, World War II.
I wrote the short poem below to mark the 100th anniversary on June 28th of the assassination that set in motion what became known as the “Great War” and later came to be referred to as World War I. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand should remind us how easy it is for leaders of countries to stumble into wars that no one seems to want, and the grave and unforeseen consequences of doing so. The U.S. wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq also serve as good reminders, as should the civil wars now going on in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. We should also not be complacent about the U.S.-Russia standoffs that occurred over the country of Georgia in the past and the one now unfolding over Ukraine.
Since the possibility of stumbling into war is always with us, it seems foolish in the extreme to fail to do all in our power to eliminate nuclear weapons – as soon as possible. The national leaders of nuclear-armed states are failing badly in this regard, despite their obligations under international law. There is one country, however, that is doing all it can to move forward on fulfillment of the unkept promises and unmet obligations to achieve a Nuclear Zero world: that is, the small Pacific Island country of 70,000 inhabitants, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), whose people still suffer from 12 years of nuclear testing (1946 – 1958) and whose land remains contaminated by radioactive fallout.
The world owes a collective debt of gratitude to the people and government of the RMI for bringing lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries in the International Court of Justice, and a separate lawsuit against the United States in U.S. Federal District Court. The RMI is acting on behalf of humanity. It is not seeking monetary compensation for itself, but rather to assure that no other people now or in the future suffer as it has. This small island country seeks to hold the nuclear-armed states accountable for breaching their obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law to pursue and complete negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament. The Republic of the Marshall Islands deserves our support. More information on these Nuclear Zero lawsuits can be found at www.nuclearzero.org.
We have not had a nuclear war since nuclear weapons were used at the end of World War II, but that is no guarantee that there will not be one in the future. So long as nuclear weapons exist, they pose a threat to the future of civilization and the human species. The possession of these weapons of mass annihilation is premised on nuclear deterrence, the threat of nuclear retaliation, but nuclear deterrence is not a law of nature. It is a construct of humans, and it is subject to human failure in the same way that fallible humans have experienced major technological failures of nuclear reactors and have stumbled into past wars. We are fallible creatures and we would be wise to eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us.
ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
with no troops at his command
was brought down by an assassin’s hand.
That’s how the war began.
No one thought it would last long,
but they were all sadly wrong,
as with alliances and patriotic song
they moved the war along.
From the very start
the men in trenches did their part
until shot through the head or heart
to be taken away on a medic’s cart.
As history has taught before
the fighting gave us only blood and gore.
If not to stop the next great war,
what are lessons for?
One wonders if in time we’ll learn
to put away our weapons, to discern
the true value of a human life, to turn
from war to peace before we burn.
A century past the Archduke’s time
the game of war is still a crime.
A century past the Archduke’s time
The arts of peace are still sublime.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of ZERO: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition. He has written or edited many other books on achieving Nuclear Zero and several books of peace poetry.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
with no troops at his command
was brought down by an assassin’s hand.
That’s how the war began.
No one thought it would last long,
but they were all sadly wrong,
as with alliances and patriotic song
they moved the war along.
the men in trenches did their part
until shot through the head or heart
to be taken away on a medic’s cart.
As history has taught before
the fighting gave us only blood and gore.
If not to stop the next great war,
what are lessons for?
One wonders if in time we’ll learn
to put away our weapons, to discern
the true value of a human life, to turn
from war to peace before we burn.
A century past the Archduke’s time
the game of war is still a crime.
A century past the Archduke’s time
The arts of peace are still sublime.
David Krieger
June 2014
This poem was originally published by Truthout.
The current level of violence in Iraq has a single root: the destabilizing act in 2003 of illegally invading and then occupying Iraq ordered by the George W. Bush administration, with their arrogant claims that US troops would be greeted as liberators. Rather than liberating Iraq, however, our country lost yet another war there, one which left thousands of American soldiers dead, tens of thousands wounded and still more traumatized. We also destabilized the region; slaughtered and displaced Iraqis; left Iraq in a mess; created the conditions for a civil war there; strengthened Iran; created many new advocates of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; and demonstrated disdain for international law.
The Bush administration led and lied the US into an aggressive war, the kind of war held to be a crime against peace at Nuremberg. The lying was despicable, an impeachable offense, but it is too late for the impeachment of a president and vice-president who are now out of office. The initiation of an aggressive war was an act, however, for which there should always be accountability, as there was at Nuremberg. This, of course, would require having the courage and principle as a country to create policies to hold our own leaders to the same standards that we held those leaders whom we defeated in combat.
The failure of militarism to accomplish any reasonable end, compounded by the terrible and predictable loss of life, is a strong argument for pursuing peace by peaceful means. The most important question confronting the US as a society is: have we learned any valuable lessons or gained any wisdom from our defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan? Those wars demonstrate conclusively that as a country we learned all the wrong lessons (worse than nothing) from the grotesque war in Vietnam.
Shall we send US forces back into Iraq because the intensity of the war there is increasing? That is what those who lied us into the war in the first place would have us do. Shall we follow their advice on the deployment of US military might yet again? It is indisputable that the US has caused and set in motion terrible violence in Iraq. But our military forces cannot reverse the harm we have already done and would likely only make matters worse.
History tells us that the use of US force throughout the world since World War II has always made matters worse for the innocent civilians caught in the conflict. There is no reason to believe that this time would be any different. Should our political leaders fail to learn from our recent history, however, and choose to reengage with a military intervention, we can be sure that not only will there be terrible collateral damage, harming the innocent, but that our own soldiers will pay a heavy price and the problems with our Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals will be greatly exacerbated.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). His recent book, Summer Grasses, is an anthology of war poetry.
For Hans-Peter Dürr.
A man of peace has died,
a scientist, a quantum physicist,
who saw the world truly, which
is to say, saw it for what it was
in all its manifestations, in all
its grand potential for good and evil,
in all its absences and failures.
I remember talking with him
on a rainy night on a bus in Hamburg.
He leaned into the conversation
speaking earnestly, full of conviction
and good will. I recall the timbre
of his voice, deep and resonant.
On the evening of his 80th birthday
he danced far into the night.
Though his great kind heart has
ceased to beat, I imagine now
he dances still and still somehow
keeps up the fight for peace.
David Krieger
June 2014
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
with no troops at his command
was brought down by an assassin’s hand.
That’s how the war began.
No one thought it would last long,
but they were all sadly wrong,
as with alliances and patriotic song
they moved the war along.
From the very start
the men in trenches did their part
until shot through the head or heart
to be taken away on a medic’s cart.
As history has taught before
the fighting gave us only blood and gore.
If not to stop the next great war,
what are lessons for?
One wonders if in time we’ll learn
to put away our weapons, to discern
the true value of a human life, to turn
from war to peace before we burn.
A century past the Archduke’s time
the game of war is still a crime.
A century past the Archduke’s time
The arts of peace are still sublime.