Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

  • Delegitimziing Nuclear Weapons: The Role of Citizens and Hibakusha

    David KriegerTo understand how to delegitimize nuclear weapons, it is necessary to understand and deconstruct their legitimization.   Let us explore some of the beliefs by which these weapons have been legitimized.

    1.    Nuclear weapons ended World War II.
    2.    Nuclear weapons prevent war.
    3.    No rational leader would use nuclear weapons.
    4.    Nuclear weapons make countries more secure.
    5.    Nuclear weapons are needed to protect against a nuclear attack.

    Let’s examine these beliefs, and check their basis in fact.

    Nuclear weapons ended World War II.  At the end of World War II Japan was trying to surrender.  Nearly all of its major cities had already been destroyed by conventional bombing.  With the Soviet entry into the war in the Pacific on August 9, 1945, Japanese leaders knew they had no chance to prevail.  It wasn’t nuclear weapons that ended World War II.  It was the Soviet entry into the war in the Pacific.  Nuclear weapons caused massive suffering and death in a country that was already defeated and trying to surrender.

    Nuclear weapons prevent war.  It is said that the threat to use nuclear weapons has prevented war, but actually many wars have occurred during the Nuclear Age.  Nuclear weapons have not caused wars, but they also have not prevented wars.  Countries with nuclear weapons have thankfully been reluctant to use them, even when losing a war.  Examples include the US in Vietnam, the UK in the Falkland Islands, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

    No rational leader would use nuclear weapons.  Actually, a presumably rational leader, Harry Truman, did use nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There is no guarantee that another rational leader in possession of nuclear weapons will not decide that the use of these weapons is in his or her country’s best interests.  In addition, not all national leaders are rational at all times and particularly in times of stress.  Some national leaders are simply not rational, even under normal circumstances.

    Nuclear weapons make countries more secure.  They actually do not.  If a country has nuclear weapons, it is certain that it will also be targeted by nuclear weapons.  The ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons does not assure that another country will not attack you by accident or design; it only assures that you can retaliate.  This would be small compensation after a nuclear attack.
    Nuclear weapons are needed to protect against a nuclear attack.  Not so.  The best protection against a nuclear attack is the global elimination of nuclear weapons.  If there are no nuclear weapons on the planet, no country can be attacked.

    What Nuclear Weapons Really Are

    To delegitimize nuclear weapons, people need to understand what nuclear weapons really are and really do.  They need to understand that nuclear weapons undermine their security rather than enhance it.  They need to call these weapons by their true names: devices of mass annihilation and instruments of omnicide (the death of all).

    When we speak of nuclear weapons, we refer to the most deadly and dangerous weapons ever created.  This is how retired US Air Force General George Lee Butler, once in charge of all US strategic nuclear weapons, describes nuclear weapons:

    “Nuclear weapons give no quarter. Their effects transcend time and space, poisoning the Earth and deforming its inhabitants for generation upon generation. They leave us wholly without defense, expunge all hope for survival. They hold in their sway not just the fate of nations but of civilization.”

    Religious leader and Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has an equally strong view of the nature of nuclear weapons:

    “Nuclear weapons are an obscenity.  They are the very antithesis of humanity, of goodness in this world.  What security do they help establish?  What kind of world community are we actually seeking to build when nations possess and threaten to use arms that can wipe all of humankind off the globe in an instant?”

    Importance of Hibakusha

    No group of people can reach the hearts of their fellow humans and make clearer what these weapons really are than the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  That is why their words and their pleas are so important.  They have lived with the pain and sounded the warning.  Because the hibakusha are growing older and becoming fewer, their message to the world is even more precious and comes with a greater sense of urgency.  I urge young people to reach out to hibakusha, learn from them, and help in conveying their message to the world; make their conclusions about the need to abolish nuclear weapons also your own message to the world.

    Nuclear weapons endanger all of us.  In the crisis of shared danger, comes the possibility of shared action to overcome that danger.  The hibakusha and civil society organizations are helping to lead the way out of the Nuclear Age.  They are leading, but the nuclear weapons states are not yet demonstrating the political will to follow.

    New Ethic

    Nuclear weapons are an absolute evil.  They are the ultimate suicide note to the planet.  They could render the planet uninhabitable for humans and other complex forms of life, but the planet itself would survive the worst we could do.  It is not the planet that is endangered; it is we humans.
    I believe we humans need a new ethic to see us safely through and out of the Nuclear Age.  For me, this new universal ethic would have the following elements:

    •    Reverence for life.  This is the central philosophy of Albert Schweitzer.  It requires us to care for our fellow humans and for all creatures.  We must be kind and good stewards of the planet.

    •    Earth citizenship.  We owe our allegiance to the Earth and to people everywhere.  Our problems are global and our solutions must be global as well.

    •    Universal human rights, including the sacred right to peace.  All humans are entitled by virtue of being human to the basic rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  As the United Nations has declared, there is also a sacred right to peace.

    •    Universal human responsibilities.  With rights come responsibilities, including each generation’s responsibility to pass the planet on intact to new generations.

    Nuclear weapons are incompatible with these ethical foundations.  As the ultimate mass killing device, they are the antithesis to reverence for life.  They divide countries and their inhabitants into nuclear haves and have-nots.  They are an assault on human rights and life itself, and their possession and threat of use are a violation of our responsibilities to humankind as a whole and to future generations.

    Immediate Goals

    Immediate goals include:

    •    either a treaty or individual pledges by all nuclear weapons states of No First Use of nuclear weapons;

    •    de-alerting of nuclear arsenals; and

    •    commencement of negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Our best hope for the human future is to unite in support of the abolition of nuclear weapons.  National security must give way to planetary security through the acts of individuals joining together with compassion, commitment, creativity and cooperation, and acting with courage.  We need to awaken from our slumber and be the noble people we are capable of being.  When nuclear weapons are abolished, it will be time for a new “C”: celebration.  We can celebrate our gift to ourselves and to the future.

    Why Work to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

    I will conclude with 12 reasons to work to abolish nuclear weapons.

    We can change the world in important and necessary ways.
    We can take a giant step forward for humankind.
    We can join with others in demonstrating good stewardship of the planet.
    We can take control of our most dangerous technology.
    We can help shape a more decent common future.
    We can end the threat of omnicide posed by nuclear weapons.
    We can uphold international law for the common benefit.
    We can lead the way toward ending war as a human institution.
    We can meet the greatest challenge confronting our species.
    We can put compassion into action and action into compassion.
    We can help to protect everything in life that we love and treasure.
    We can pass on a more secure world to our children and grandchildren and all future generations.

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

  • Hubris vs. Wisdom

    David Krieger delivered this speech in Nagasaki, Japan, on November 2, 2013.

    David KriegerMayor Taue, Dr. Tomonaga, people of Nagasaki, conference participants, I bring greetings from the 60,000 members of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and wish to express to you and the city of Nagasaki our deep appreciation for continuing this tradition of Nagasaki Global Citizens Assemblies for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. It is a great pleasure to be back in this beautiful city, and I am particularly happy to renew old friendships.

    The steadfast commitment of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to nuclear weapons abolition for nearly seven decades is both admirable and honorable. Along with many millions of other thinking and caring people throughout the world, I share with you the hope and goal that Nagasaki will remain the last place on Earth where nuclear weapons are ever used in warfare.

    It is evident that there is only one way to assure this goal, and that is to abolish nuclear weapons. To do so will require leadership and a massive demand from people throughout the world. As one who has worked toward this goal for more than four decades, I know that this is an extremely difficult challenge, but I also know that we are making progress.

    In 1986, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Today there are just over 17,000. It is progress that the world has shed some 53,000 nuclear weapons in roughly the past quarter century, but we still have far too many. To assure that there are no more Hiroshimas or Nagasakis will require achieving a world with Zero nuclear weapons.

    Hubris Versus Wisdom

    In the Nuclear Age, humankind must not be passive 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 power is impregnable.

    Hubris says some countries can hold onto nuclear weapons and rely upon them for deterrence. Wisdom says these weapons must be eliminated before they eliminate us.

    Hubris says these terrible weapons 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 happened at 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 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 some times under some circumstances.

    Hubris says we can play Russian 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 Necessity of Wisdom

    In the Nuclear Age, wisdom is the best antidote to hubris. I want to go back in time to the horrific opening of the Nuclear Age and explore the wisdom of three men who understood clearly that the creation and use of atomic bombs changed the world. These men were Albert Camus, Mohandas Gandhi and Albert Einstein. Their responses to the use of atomic weapons were very different from that of then-President of the United States Harry Truman, who, when he heard of the bombing of Hiroshima, is reported to have said, “This is the greatest thing in history.” He also thanked God that the bomb had come to the United States and not to its enemies.

    Albert Camus was a great French novelist and existentialist who, during World War II, edited the underground French Resistance newspaper, Combat. Twelve years after the war, in 1957, he would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. After learning of the bombing of Hiroshima, even before the second bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, he wrote:

    “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”

    Camus recognized instantly that, after the atomic bomb was created and used, peace needed to be elevated to the top of our hierarchy of values and goals. It needed to be pursued actively, that is waged, with the same strategic thinking, discipline, commitment and courage as for waging war. For Camus, the new circumstance of nuclear weapons in the world required the people to wage peace and to lead their leaders.

    Gandhi was the great proponent of satyagraha (truth-force) and nonviolence. He was leading India to independence from the British when the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Gandhi recalled his reaction to the bombs: “I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, ‘Unless now the world adopts nonviolence, it will spell certain suicide for humanity.’ Nonviolence is the only thing the atom bomb cannot destroy.” For Gandhi, the violence of the atomic bomb could only be overcome by the nonviolence of humanity.

    Albert Einstein, the great scientist and humanitarian, wrote, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    Einstein saw that the old ways of thinking were a trap and that people must learn to think in new ways. I believe the most important new ways of thinking that are needed are species identification and solidarity, that is, we must think like members of one race, the human race. In doing so, we will learn to settle our differences peacefully and not through violence, and we will build institutions, such as the United Nations, that will support these ways of thinking. For Einstein, the critical factor brought about by atomic weaponry was the need for new modes of thinking if humankind is to avert “unparalleled catastrophe.”

    Three great men; three powerful expressions of wisdom.

    Ending the Nuclear Threat

    The only number of nuclear weapons that makes sense is Zero and that must be our goal: a world with Zero nuclear weapons. This world is only as far away as our imaginations, our determination and our perseverance. To achieve Nuclear Zero, we must wage peace, take nonviolent actions, and change our modes of thinking to identify as members of the human species. The Nuclear Age demands of us that we conquer hubris with wisdom.

    We must never give up on seeking the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. We can follow wisdom and live together as humans, seeking solutions to our common problems; or we can follow the path of hubris and perish together stuck in our apathy, our ignorance and our national allegiances.

    The most important next step on the journey to a peaceful and non-killing world is ending the nuclear weapons era. This can be accomplished by the negotiation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. Progress is being made toward this goal, but it seems unbearably slow.

    Civil society and non-nuclear-weapon states must bring more pressure to bear upon the existing nuclear weapon states to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. I would also encourage the countries participating in the upcoming Mexico conference to begin negotiations, with or without the nuclear weapons states, for a legal ban on the manufacture, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. The process must begin, and it must be approached with a sense of urgency.

    Having identified the problem – that nuclear weapons endanger the human species and much of complex life – we should move rapidly toward eliminating the threat. In doing so, we will free up scientific and financial resources to deal with other pressing global threats, including climate change, development of renewable energy resources, pollution of the oceans and atmosphere, scarcity of potable water, food insecurity and loss of forests, biodiversity and arable land. For the future of humanity, we must also move forward to eliminate war as a human institution.

    A Few Simple Truths

    I will end with a short poem I wrote earlier this year. It is titled “A Few Simple Truths.”

    A FEW SIMPLE TRUTHS

    Life is the universe’s most precious creation.

        There is only one place we know of where life exists.

        Children, all children, deserve a full and fair chance.

        The bomb threatens all life.

        War is legitimized murder with collateral damage.

        Construction requires more than a hammer.

        The rising of the oceans cannot be contained by money.

        Love is the only currency that truly matters.

        One true human brings beauty to the earth.

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

  • 2013 Evening for Peace Remarks

    David KriegerLet me add my welcome to our 30th annual Evening for Peace.  Over the years we’ve honored some remarkable Peace Leaders, and tonight we do so again.

    Thirty-one years ago we founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation with a dream that citizens could make a difference on the most important issues of our time – Peace in the Nuclear Age and the abolition of nuclear weapons.  We knew that what we were doing was important, but we only glimpsed the full potential of what the Foundation could be and how much we were needed in the world.

    Since our founding, the world has dismantled more than 50,000 nuclear weapons.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is there are still 17,000 in the world, and one is too many.  A relatively small regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan could result in a global nuclear famine taking the lives of upwards of a billion people.  A full-scale nuclear war would end civilization and most complex life on the planet.  So, there remains important work to do.

    I want to offer a few words of advice and encouragement to the young people here tonight.  I have five brief points.

    1. Be citizens of the world, embrace the world, see it in all its magnificence, and work to make it a more decent place for all.
    2. Be leaders of today; don’t wait for tomorrow.  The truth is that we need you now, and what you do now will help shape the future.
    3. Always choose hope.  Hope inspires action, as action inspires hope.
    4. Never give up.  To accomplish any great thing requires perseverance.
    5. Finally, learn how you can strengthen your vision and skills by working with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  Find out more about the Foundation at wagingpeace.org.

    Now, a few words of thanks to our supporters in the room and beyond.

    • Thank you for caring so deeply.
    • Thank you for joining your dreams of a better world with ours.
    • Thank you for making possible what we do each day to build peace and abolish nuclear arms.

    It is a rare and beautiful thing to have an organization like this Foundation, through which people can work day in and day out for the noble goals of assuring humanity’s future.  If you would like to become more involved in the Foundation’s work, let us know.

    Now, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to our honoree, Rabbi Leonard Beerman.

    We honor him as the co-founder, with George Regas, of the Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race – an Interfaith Center that made it clear that nuclear weapons are a paramount moral issue of our time.

    We honor him as a wise and compassionate man.

    We honor him as a man of conscience and uncommon decency.

    When peace has needed a voice, Rabbi Beerman has spoken.

    When justice has needed an ally, Rabbi Beerman has stood firm.

    When dark clouds of war have gathered, Rabbi Beerman has been a ray of light.

    When nuclear weapons have put all that we love and treasure at risk, Rabbi Beerman has been a source of hope and moral strength.

    On behalf of the Directors and members of the Foundation, I am very pleased to present to Rabbi Leonard Beerman the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2013 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

  • Are Nuclear Weapons Really the U.S.’s Instruments of Peace?

    David KriegerThere are serious problems with communications in a society when mainstream media sources, such as the Washington Post, will publish articles touting nuclear weapons as instruments of peace and ignore serious rebuttals.  The Post recently published an op-ed, “Nuclear weapons are the U.S.’s instruments of peace,” by Robert Spalding, a Military Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.  The title really speaks for itself.  The article can be read here.

    I sent a response to the Washington Post in the form of a letter to the editor, but it was not published by them.  My letter, which is under their 200-word limit, sought to point out some of the fallacies in Mr. Spalding’s op-ed.  Here it is:

    “Robert Spalding’s enchantment with nuclear weapons would keep the US prepared to refight the Cold War for decades.  But nuclear weapons do not make the U.S. more secure.  Rather, they make us targets, and they spur nuclear proliferation.   A major nuclear war would destroy civilization and possibly all complex life on the planet.  A regional nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan using 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons each on the other side’s cities would put enough soot into the stratosphere to block warming sunlight, shorten growing seasons, cause crop failures and result in a billion deaths worldwide.

    “Nuclear deterrence is not foolproof because we humans, despite our best efforts, are fallible, as convincingly demonstrated at Fukushima.  Spalding is dead wrong.  It is not only through strength that peace can be obtained; it is also through diplomacy, cooperation, international law and a generosity of spirit in our foreign policy.  Nuclear weapons are illegal, immoral and ultimately uncontrollable.  They are a path not to peace, but to catastrophe.  In our own interests, the US should lead in negotiating their elimination from the planet.”

    Nuclear weapons place at risk everyone we love and everything we treasure.  They have no place in a civilized society, and US leaders should be doing all they can to fulfill our obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue negotiations for their total elimination from the planet.  But this will not happen if the mainstream media provides a one-sided view that “nuclear weapons are the U.S.’s instruments of peace.”  They are hardly that, and our continued reliance upon them will encourage nuclear proliferation and eventually result in nuclear war by accident or design.

  • Global Survival 101

    David KriegerA missing element in the standard university curriculum is a course that provides awareness of the global nature and dangers of the world’s most serious problems and the attendant global solutions that are needed to solve these problems.

    The most serious dangers confronting humanity are those that endanger species survival.  Falling into this category are nuclear weapons with their potential for triggering an intentional or inadvertent nuclear war, and climate change resulting in global warming.  These dangers are directly affecting the survival potential of the human species and other forms of complex life on the planet.

    Other global dangers include population growth; pollution of the oceans and atmosphere; scarcity of safe drinking water; food shortages and famines; continued reliance on fossil fuels; creation of nuclear wastes; spread of communicable diseases; disparity in resource distribution; the ill-effects of poverty; international terrorism and war.

    In today’s world, all borders are permeable to people, pollution, ideas and disease.  No country, no matter how powerful militarily, can protect its citizens from the global threats confronting humanity.  Without cooperation among nations, the problems will not be resolved and people everywhere and the planet will suffer.  Destruction of civilization and extinction of the human species are within the range of possibility.

    University students need grounding in the global dangers that confront humans as a species, as well as a sense of the interconnectedness of these dangers and the ways forward to solutions that can alleviate and reverse the dangers.

    I propose the creation of a multi-disciplinary course entitled “Global Survival 101.”  The course would be a foundation for global concerns in the 21st century.  I envision this as a mandatory course for all college students regardless of discipline that would be aimed at creating an awareness of global dangers, an understanding of their interconnected nature, and what courses of action would increase or decrease global well-being and improve the odds of human survival.

    Course content could include:

    1. The uniqueness of planet Earth
    2. Global dangers
    3. Species responsibilities
      a. To pass the planet on intact to new generations
      b. To take into account the rights of future generations
      c. To be good stewards of the planet for ourselves and other forms of life
    4. Nuclear weapons and the Nuclear Age
      a. The  power of our technologies
      b. The flaws in nuclear deterrence theory
    5. Climate change
    6. Protection of the Common Heritage of Humankind
      a. The oceans
      b. The atmosphere
      c. The Arctic and Antarctica
      d. Outer space
    7. Population growth
    8. The right to clean water
    9. Food insecurity and famine
    10. Nuclear wastes
    11. Epidemic diseases
    12. Resource distribution and disparity
    13. Poverty
    14. International terrorism
    15. War
    16. Peace
    17. Human rights and responsibilities
    18. Changing our modes of thinking
    19. A new global ethic: liberty, justice and dignity for all
    20. Changing the world
      a. The role of education
      b. The role of the individual
      c. The role of civil society
      d. The role of technology
      e. The role of the arts

  • Chemical Weapons, Then Nuclear Weapons

    David KriegerEveryone can agree that chemical weapons are terrible weapons.  When used, they kill indiscriminately and cause their victims to suffer and die horrible deaths.  The use of chemical weapons in Syria resulted in US threats to strike the Syrian regime with cruise missiles.  Fortunately, this response to the use of chemical weapons was averted, as it might well have caused even more death, injury and displacement for the Syrian people.  With pressure from their ally, Russia, the Syrian government agreed to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and turn over its stock of chemical weapons for destruction.

    Chemical weapons are dangerous and deadly weapons, but they are not the worst weapons created by humans.  By any measure, the worst weapons are nuclear weapons.  They kill by blast, fire and radiation, and they are capable of causing a nuclear winter and sending the globe into an ice age.  Even the two relatively small nuclear weapons (by today’s standards) used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki each thoroughly destroyed a city.  The nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima killed some 90,000 people immediately and 145,000 by the end of 1945.  The nuclear weapon dropped on Nagasaki killed some 40,000 people immediately and 75,000 by the end of 1945.

    People are continuing to die from the effects of the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and also from the radiation released by the atmospheric and underground testing of far more powerful nuclear weapons subsequently.  The effects of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either time or space.  They are weapons that cause stillborn births and birth defects in succeeding generations, as well as genetic mutations.  Like chemical weapons, they are weapons that violate international humanitarian law, the law of warfare, because they cannot discriminate between soldiers and civilians and they cause unnecessary suffering.

    So, with last-minute collaboration by the US and Russia, the unexpected outcome was that Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons.  This demonstrates the power of the US and Russia working cooperatively on solving global problems.  Of course, there are many more such problems to work through, including pollution of the oceans and atmosphere, climate change, human rights abuses, starvation, epidemic diseases and the list goes on.  There is not a single serious global problem that can be solved by any one nation alone, no matter the strength of its military power.

    Further, the unexpected success in Syria opens the door to moving from chemical weapons to nuclear weapons.  There is an obstacle, though, with nuclear weapons, and that is that the foxes are guarding the nuclear hen houses.  The five permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, UK, Russia, France and China) are the initial five states to develop nuclear arsenals, to test these weapons and to threaten their use.  They are also the five nuclear weapon states designated in the Non-Proliferation Treaty that have agreed to negotiate in good faith for a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.

    Understanding that the US and Russia aren’t pursuing their own nuclear disarmament obligations with the same vigor that they are pursuing Syria to give up its chemical weapons, it makes sense that they need pressure from below, from their citizens as well as from people throughout the world, to take the lead in ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.  Join us at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in putting pressure on the US and Russia to lead the world in negotiating in good faith for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (similar to the Chemical Weapons Convention) to ban nuclear weapons and set forth a plan for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.

    On the way to that goal, and as a follow-up to their success with Syria, it would be a large step forward for the US and Russia to throw their weight behind a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone, long a goal of the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The possibilities for US-Russian cooperation for a more decent world order are exciting.  We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to fan these sparks of hope.

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

  • Learning from World War I

    David KriegerWe are approaching the 100th anniversary of the onset of World War I.  One of the lessons of that horrendous war was that chemical weapons cause inhumane suffering and death and that they are not reliable weapons.  Their effectiveness depends on which way the wind is blowing, a situation subject to change.  After the war, the use of chemical and biological weapons in warfare was banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925.   More recently, the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force in 1997, and today 189 countries are parties to this treaty.

    But the deadliness and unreliability of chemical weapons were not the only lessons of World War I.  A far more important lesson is that a war can take on a life of its own.  No one expected that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hungary would lead to a world war, but that is the way it worked out.  The assassination set in motion a chain of events leading to all-out war, in which national leaders felt bound to their allies and were unwilling to back down.  It was a war that no one wanted, but one that took four years to halt and resulted in 37 million casualties, including 16 million deaths.

    The Syrian civil war has been going on since spring 2011, but suddenly it has taken on new potential for morphing into a regional or global conflagration.  President Obama said that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would be the crossing of a red line.  When leaders of superpower countries say such things, they are to be taken as warnings to less powerful states to behave accordingly or face serious consequences.  Someone in Syria appears to have used chemical weapons, and the US government is expressing certainty that it was the Syrian government.  Thus, for US leaders, the red line has been crossed.

    What does this mean?  It means, if true, that a tacit code of international behavior has been violated.  A weaker state, rather than accepting the warning of the superpower state, committed a prohibited act.  From the perspective of the superpower state, someone must be punished or the superpower’s credibility will be destroyed.  The crossing of red lines must be punished by military means, or so goes the argument of President Obama and his administration.  Are they right?

    There are serious problems with this argument.

    First, it is not confirmed that the offending party that used the chemical weapons was the government of Syria.  The Russian government has suggested that the chemical warfare agents were used by Syrian opposition forces.  President Obama was initially rushing to a US military attack and not taking the necessary time and caution to assure that the offending party was the party it warned.

    Second, if the US were to attack Syria with missiles, as President Obama initially intended to do, it would not be in accord with international law and would thus be illegal.  All countries have a responsibility under the United Nations Charter to act in accord with international law.  The Charter prohibits the use of force, such as missile strikes, except in self-defense against an actual attack, or unless authorized by the UN Security Council.  The proposed US missile attack against the Syrian government fits neither of these criteria.

    Third, it puts the perceived credibility of a superpower leader, no matter how ill-advised, ahead of the importance of maintaining peace or, as the UN Charter states, “ending the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind….”

    Fourth, US missile strikes against Syria are unlikely to improve conditions for the Syrian people and are likely to cause them serious harm.

    Fifth, there are other means of punishing the Assad regime for the use of chemical weapons (if this is proven) that do not require the use of military force.  One such means would be organizing an international boycott on the sale or transfer of military equipment to the government of Syria.  Another means would be to refer the evidence on the use of chemical weapons to the International Criminal Court, an institution that can impose criminal liability on national leaders for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

    Once acts of war are commenced, all promises become subject to being broken.  US leaders are promising “no boots on the ground,” but can they keep that promise or will they if things start to go very wrong?  What if a US attack on Syria results in a Syrian attack on US warships or US embassies in the region?  What if it results in a Syrian or Iranian attack on Israel?  What if it brings Russia into the war on the side of Syria, and pits the US and Russia, both nuclear-armed giants, against each other?

    Is it possible that attempting to assure the credibility of President Obama, a Nobel Peace Laureate, through military strikes, could lead to stumbling into a new world war?  No one knows what may happen.  The Middle East is a tinder box.  Throwing a lighted match or a missile strike into that incendiary environment for reasons of credibility is an act of hubris, which could have fiery and tragic consequences that no one wants and none of our experts or political leaders can foresee, just as was the case when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was stuck down by assassination in 1914.

    For now, we must consider it most fortunate that Secretary of State Kerry made a seemingly offhand remark to a reporter’s question about what could lead the US to refrain from a military attack.  Kerry responded that a US military attack could be avoided if Syria were to turn over its stocks of chemical weapons for disposal.  Russian leaders quickly pursued this course of action and convinced Syrian President Assad to commit to turning over his chemical weapons stocks.  Thus, diplomacy may have averted the far more dangerous and deadly resort to acts of war by the US and, at the same time, reinforced international law and prevented the possibility of future chemical weapons use by the Syrian government.  Such a path makes the march to an unintended world war far less likely.

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

  • Another War Is Not the Answer

    The actions leading toward US involvement in the civil war in Syria have been moving at a rapid pace. US officials, starting with President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry, have been strong advocates of a limited attack on Syria to punish the Assad regime for an alleged chemical attack on its own citizens. It is unlikely, though, that a limited US military attack on the Syrian regime will result in a positive outcome.  More likely, it will cause additional death and untold sorrow to Syrian civilians, make Syrian President Assad a hero in the region, increase the possibilities of a broader regional war, increase tensions between the US and Russia, further undermine respect for international law, and diminish rather than uphold US credibility in the region and beyond.

    Below is a sketch of the sequence of events leading to where we are now; important choice points for the Congress with implications for the president and the American people; and some conclusions and recommendations.

    Sequence of Events

    1. The president threatens to take military action if Syria uses chemical weapons. This was a deterrent threat — a threat meant to prevent the Syrian government from using chemical weapons.
    2. The deterrent threat apparently fails when chemical weapons are used in the Syrian civil war, although it is not known with certainty what party to the conflict actually used them.
    3. US leaders accuse the Syrian government of being the perpetrator of the chemical attack, which is believed by US leaders to have killed over 1,400 people, including over 400 children.
    4. The president indicates his intention to punish the Syrian government by initiating a missile attack on Syrian government forces. Other administration officials, including the secretary of state, publically support the president.
    5. Some commentators argue that a US attack is necessary to maintain US credibility in the world, despite the fact that in this case it will pit the US against Russia, with each country still maintaining some 1,000 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert. That is, when the president makes a threat, even an ill-advised and dangerous one, it must be carried out so that US threats will be credible in the future.
    6. Other commentators point out that a US military attack on Syria would be illegal under international law since it is neither a military action made in self-defense nor one authorized by the United Nations Security Council. They also point out that US law requires Congress to authorize such an act of war.
    7. The president responds by ignoring concerns about the planned attack being a breach of international law, but says he will send the matter to Congress for consideration when Congress reconvenes, even though he believes that Congressional approval is not necessary for him to act as commander-in-chief.

    Congressional Choice

    1. Congress will have to make a choice to approve or not approve the president’s plan to initiate a US military attack on Syria.
    2. Even if Congress approves US military action, a likely possibility, a US attack on Syria will not be legal under international law.  Nor will such an attack be moral, in that it would likely kill large numbers of innocent Syrians and bring more suffering to the people of Syria. Nor would such an attack be prudent, with its potential to bog the US down in yet another war in the Middle East, at the expense of the people of Syria and US citizens at home.
    3. If Congress votes against approval of US military action, an unlikely possibility, the president will have to decide whether he bends to the will of Congress and backs down, or initiates the attack on his own authority with the potential to trigger a constitutional crisis in addition to all the other negative consequences of initiating an illegal war.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    1. The American people should speak out against US military action that could involve the US in yet another war with unknown consequences and of unknown duration.
    2. Congress should say No to authorization of the president’s proposed military action against Syria.
    3. The president should back down on his threat to attack Syria. Following through on every presidential threat with military action is a dangerous game for the US, as well as for the world, particularly on threats that violate and undermine international law.
    4. The US should work with the United Nations, and specifically with Russia, on finding a peaceful settlement of the civil war in Syria and, in general, on resolving the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East that are poisoning the well of international relations.
    5. Those responsible for the chemical attack in Syria should be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution under international law. The US should also sign and ratify the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court and become a member of the Court.

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

  • The Story of Sadako

    Sadako was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. She was two kilometers away from where the bomb exploded. Most of Sadako’s neighbors died, but Sadako wasn’t injured at all, at least not in any way people could see.

    Up until the time Sadako was in the seventh grade (1955) she was a normal, happy girl. However, one day after an important relay race that she helped her team win, she felt extremely tired and dizzy. After a while the dizziness went away leaving Sadako to think that it was only the exertion from running the race that made her tired and dizzy. But her tranquillity did not last. Soon after her first encounter with extreme fatigue and dizziness, she experienced more incidents of the same.

    One day Sadako became so dizzy that she fell down and couldn’t get up. Her school-mates informed the teacher. Later Sadako’s parents took her to the Red Cross Hospital to see what was wrong with her. Sadako found out that she had leukemia, a kind of blood cancer. Nobody could believe it.

    At that time they called leukemia the “A-bomb disease”. Almost everyone who got this disease died, and Sadako was very scared. She wanted to go back to school, but she had to stay in the hospital where she cried and cried.

    Shortly thereafter, her best friend, Chizuko, came to visit her. Chizuko brought some origami (folding paper). She told Sadako of a legend. She explained that the crane, a sacred bird in Japan, lives for a hundred years, and if a sick person folds 1,000 paper cranes, then that person would soon get well. After hearing the legend, Sadako decided to fold 1,000 cranes in the hope that she would get well again.

    Sadako’s family worried about her a lot. They often came to visit her in hospital to talk to her and to help her fold cranes. After she folded 500 cranes she felt better and the doctors said she could go home for a short time, but by the end of the first week back home the dizziness and fatigue returned and she had to go back to the hospital.

    Sadako kept folding cranes even though she was in great pain. Even during these times of great pain she tried to be cheerful and hopeful. Not long afterwards, with her family standing by her bed, Sadako went to sleep peacefully, never to wake up again. She had folded a total of 644 paper cranes.

    Everyone was very sad. Thirty-nine of Sadako’s classmates felt saddened by the loss of their close friend and decided to form a paper crane club to honor her. Word spread quickly. Students from 3,100 schools and from 9 foreign countries gave money to the cause. On May 5, 1958, almost 3 years after Sadako had died, enough money was collected to build a monument in her honor. It is now known as the Children’s Peace Monument, and is located in the center of Hiroshima Peace Park, close to the spot where the atomic bomb was dropped.

    Many of the children who helped make the Children’s monument a reality participated in the ceremony. Three students, including Sadako’s younger brother Eiji Sasaki pulled the red and white tape off the statue to symbolize its completion, while Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was played. The little bell, contributed by Dr. Yukawa, inscribed with “A Thousand Paper Cranes” on the front and “Peace on Earth and in Heaven” on the back, rang out and the sound carried as far as the A-bomb Dome and the Memorial Cenotaph.

    Children from all over the world still send folded paper cranes to be placed beneath Sadako’s statue. In so doing, they make the same wish which is engraved on the base of the statue:

    “This is our cry, This is our prayer, Peace in the world.”

  • Nukes Are Nuts

    When asked by a reporter why nuclear weapons are useless, Colin Powell, former US secretary of state and four-star general said: “Because they’re such horrible weapons. And so no sane leader would ever want to cross that line to using nuclear weapons. And, if you are not going to cross that line, then these things are basically useless.” In other words, one could say, nukes are nuts.

    There are innumerable global security issues that need to be addressed, some of which are poverty, terrorism, the climate crisis, pollution of the oceans, loss of biodiversity and forest depletion. Not one of these issues can be addressed with nuclear weapons. In fact, nuclear weapons draw much-needed resources away from solving these global problems. Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons are justified by their possessors for nuclear deterrence, but nuclear deterrence is only a hypothesis about human behavior. While “no sane leader would ever want to cross that line,” even the best of political and military leaders can be less than rational at times, particularly when they are under stress. Nuclear deterrence is only as sound as the craziest political or military leader with a finger on the nuclear button. Does the name Kim Jong-un raise any concerns? Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons are weapons of vast overkill. They are equal-opportunity destroyers of men, women and children. The radioactive effects of these weapons cannot be contained in time or space. They affect not only the living, but generations yet to be born. Their radioactive material will affect countless future generations. Even a small regional nuclear war could result in a global nuclear famine, killing a billion people. Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons can destroy everything we hold dear and love most. They can destroy every special thing, every sacred thing that has ever been created. Nuclear weapons are anti-human weapons: they threaten us all, even their possessors, and place all of humanity at risk of annihilation. But they also place all of complex life at risk of destruction. The possession of these weapons makes us irresponsible stewards of our environment and of all the creatures dependent upon our stewardship. Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons are extremely costly, with anticipated global expenditures for the next decade at over $1 trillion. The US plans to modernize its B61 bombs, which it deploys in five European countries, at a cost that is more than two times that of building them out of solid gold. Nuclear weapons take away resources from the education of the world’s children, medical treatment from the world’s sick and infirm and food from the world’s hungry. Nukes are nuts.

    Nuclear weapons divide us when we need to unite to find cooperative, diplomatic and nonviolent solutions to the great global issues of the 21st century. Only nine countries have nuclear weapons and, of these, only two countries, the US and Russia, possess more than 90 percent of the more than 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Nukes are not useful, nor are they status symbols. Nukes are nuts.

    Every man, woman and child on the planet can understand that nukes are nuts. So, if we understand that, what are we going to do about it? My answer is to wage all-out peace with a sense of urgency until the last nuclear weapon is eliminated from the planet. We would be nuts to settle for anything less.

    This article was originally published on Truthout.