(Egypt, 2011)
the people in the streets and squares
making demands by their presence
the army refusing to shoot their guns
into the crowds of people
The people riding on army tanks
raising their arms with signs of victory
the dictator locked in his palace
knowing he has lost his grip
the people standing in the shadow
of Gandhi and King
the dictator cowering in the shadow
of his own history
Nuclear deterrence is the threat of nuclear retaliation for a proscribed behavior, generally an attack upon the threatening state. The theory of nuclear deterrence posits that such threat, if perceived as real and likely to cause sufficient devastation, will prevent an attack or other proscribed behavior from occurring.
The desire for a nuclear deterrent existed even before nuclear weapons were created. Refugee scientists from Europe, concerned about the possible development of German nuclear weapons during World War II, encouraged the United States to explore the use of uranium for building nuclear weapons. Albert Einstein was among the scientists who urged President Roosevelt to initiate a program to explore the feasibility of creating such weapons as a deterrent to the use of a German nuclear weapon, should the Germans succeed in their quest. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he would consider this to be one of the great mistakes of his life.
By the time the United States succeeded in developing nuclear weapons in July 1945, Germany was already defeated. The US used its powerful new bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In doing so, it sent a nuclear deterrent message to other states, particularly the Soviet Union, that the US possessed nuclear weapons and was willing to use them. This would spur on the secret Soviet nuclear weapons program to deter future use of the US nuclear arsenal. Other states would follow suit. Britain and France developed nuclear arsenals to deter the Soviets. China developed nuclear arms to deter the US and the Soviets. Israel did so to assure its independence and deter potential interventions from the other nuclear weapon states. India developed nuclear weapons to deter China and Pakistan, and Pakistan to deter India. North Korea did so to deter the US.
One steady factor in the Nuclear Age has been the adherence of the nuclear weapon states to the theory of nuclear deterrence. Each country that has developed nuclear weapons has justified doing so by the pursuit of nuclear deterrence. The security of not only the nuclear weapon states but of civilization has rested upon the reliability of the theory of nuclear deterrence. Vast numbers of people throughout the world believe that nuclear deterrence contributes to the security of the planet and perhaps to their personal security and that of their family. But does it? What if nuclear deterrence is a badly flawed theory? What if nuclear deterrence fails? What if political and military leaders in all nuclear weapon states who have treated nuclear deterrence theory as sacrosanct and imbued it with godlike, but unrealistic, powers of protection are wrong? The future itself would stand in grave danger, for the failure of nuclear deterrence could pose an existential threat to humanity.
As a former commander of the US Strategic Command, General George Lee Butler was in charge of all US nuclear weapons. After retiring from the US Air Force, General Butler critiqued nuclear deterrence, stating that it “suspended rational thinking in the Nuclear Age about the ultimate aim of national security: to ensure the survival of the nation.” He concluded that nuclear deterrence is “a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships.”
As volcanoes often give off strong warning signals that they may erupt, so we have witnessed such signals regarding nuclear arsenals and the failure of nuclear deterrence theory over the course of the Nuclear Age. Nuclear arsenals could erupt with volcano-like force, totally overwhelming the relatively flimsy veneer of “protection” provided by nuclear deterrence theory. In the face of such dangers, we must not be complacent. Nor should we continue to be soothed by the “experts” who assure us not to worry because the weapons will keep us safe. There is, in fact, much to worry about, much more than the nuclear policy makers and theorists in each of the nuclear weapon states have led us to believe. I will examine below what I believe are ten serious flaws in nuclear deterrence theory, flaws that lead to the conclusion that the theory is unstable, unreliable and invalid.
1. It is only a theory. It is not proven and cannot be proven. A theory may posit a causal relationship, for example, if one party does something, certain results will follow. In the case of nuclear deterrence theory, it is posited that if one party threatens to retaliate with nuclear weapons, the other side will not attack. That an attack has not occurred, however, does not prove that it was prevented by nuclear deterrence. That is, in logic, a false assumption of causality. In logic, one cannot prove a negative, that is, that doing something causes something else not to happen. That a nuclear attack has not happened may be a result of any number of other factors, or simply of exceptional good fortune. To attribute the absence of nuclear war to nuclear deterrence is to register a false positive, which imbues nuclear deterrence with a false sense of efficacy.
2. It requires a commitment to mass murder. Nuclear deterrence leads to policy debates about how many threatened deaths with nuclear weapons are enough to deter an adversary? Are one million deaths sufficient to deter adversary A? Is it a different number for adversary B? How many deaths are sufficient? One million? Ten million? One hundred million? More? There will always be a tendency to err on the side of more deaths, and thus the creation of more elaborate nuclear killing systems. Such calculations, in turn, drive arms races, requiring huge allocations of resources to weapons systems that must never be used. Leaders must convince their own populations that the threat of mass murder and the expenditure of resources to support this threat make them secure and is preferable to other allocations of scientific and financial resources. The result is not only a misallocation of resources, but also a diversion of effort away from cooperative solutions to global problems.
3. It requires effective communications. In effect, nuclear deterrence is a communications theory. Side A must communicate its capability and willingness to use its nuclear arsenal in retaliation for an attack by adversary B, thereby preventing adversary B from attacking. The threat to retaliate and commit mass murder must be believable to a potential attacker. Communications take place verbally in speeches by leaders and parliamentary statements, as well as news reports and even by rumors. Communications also take place non-verbally in the form of alliance formations and nuclear weapons and missile tests. In relation to nuclear deterrence, virtually everything that each side does is a deliberate or inadvertent form of communication to a potential adversary. There is much room for error and misunderstanding.
4. It requires rational decision makers. Nuclear deterrence will not be effective against a decision maker who is irrational. For example, side A may threaten nuclear retaliation for an attack by adversary B, but the leader of side B may irrationally conclude that the leader of side A will not do what he says. Or, the leader of side B may irrationally attack side A because he does not care if one million or ten million of his countrymen die as a result of side A’s nuclear retaliation. I believe two very important questions to consider are these: Do all leaders of all states behave rationally at all times, particularly under conditions of extreme stress when tensions are very high? Can we be assured that all leaders of all states will behave rationally at all times in the future? Most people believe the answer to these questions is an unqualified No.
5. It instills a false sense of confidence. Nuclear deterrence is frequently confused with nuclear “defense,” leading to the conclusion that nuclear weapons provide some form of physical protection against attack. This conclusion is simply wrong. The weapons and the threat of their use provide no physical protection. The only protection provided is psychological and once the weapons start flying it will become clear that psychological protection is not physical protection. One can believe the weapons make him safer, but this is not the same as actually being safer. Because nuclear deterrence theory provides a false sense of confidence, it could lead a possessor of the weapons to take risks that would be avoided without nuclear threats in place. Such risks could be counterproductive and actually lead to nuclear war.
6. It does not work against an accidental use. Nuclear deterrence is useful, if at all, only against the possibility of an intentional, premeditated nuclear attack. Its purpose is to make the leader who contemplates the intentional use of a nuclear weapon decide against doing so. But nuclear deterrence cannot prevent an accidental use of a nuclear weapon, such as an accidental launch. This point was made in the movie Dr. Strangelove, in which a US nuclear attack was accidentally set in motion against the Soviet Union. In the movie, bomber crews passed their “failsafe” point in a training exercise and couldn’t be recalled. The president of the United States had to get on the phone with his Soviet counterpart and try to explain that the attack on Moscow that had been set in motion was just an accident. The Americans were helpless to stop the accident from occurring, and so were the Soviets. Accidents happen! There is no such thing as a “foolproof” system, and when nuclear weapons are involved it is extremely dangerous to think there is.
7. It doesn’t work against terrorist organizations. Nuclear deterrence is based upon the threat of retaliation. Since it is not possible to retaliate against a foe that you cannot locate, the threat of retaliation is not credible under these circumstances. Further, terrorists are often suicidal (e.g., “suicide bombers”), and are willing to die to inflict death and suffering on an adversary. For these reasons, nuclear deterrence will be ineffective in preventing nuclear terrorism. The only way to prevent nuclear terrorism is to prevent the weapons themselves from falling into the hands of terrorist organizations. This will become increasingly difficult if nuclear weapons and the nuclear materials to build them proliferate to more and more countries.
8. It encourages nuclear proliferation. To the extent that the theory of nuclear deterrence is accepted as valid and its flaws overlooked or ignored, it will make nuclear weapons seem to be valuable instruments for the protection of a country. Thus, the uncritical acceptance of nuclear deterrence theory provides an incentive for nuclear proliferation. If it is believed that nuclear weapons can keep a country safe, there will be commensurate pressure to develop such weapons.
9. It is not believable. In the final analysis, it is likely that even the policy makers who promote nuclear deterrence do not truly believe in it. If policy makers did truly believe that nuclear deterrence works as they claim, they would not need to develop missile defenses. The United States alone has spent over $100 billion on developing missile defenses over the past three decades, and is continuing to spend some $10 billion annually on missile defense systems. Such attempts at physical protection against nuclear attacks are unlikely to ever be fully successful, but they demonstrate the underlying understanding of policy makers that nuclear deterrence alone is insufficient to provide protection to a country. If policy makers understand that nuclear deterrence is far from foolproof, then who is being fooled by nuclear deterrence theory? In all likelihood, the only people being fooled by the promised effectiveness of nuclear deterrence theory are the ordinary people who place their faith in their leaders, the same people who are the targets of nuclear weapons and will suffer the consequences should nuclear deterrence fail. Their political and military leaders have made them the “fools” in what is far from a “foolproof” system.
10. Its failure would be catastrophic. Nuclear deterrence theory requires the development and deployment of nuclear weapons for the threat of retaliation. These weapons can, of course, be used for initiating attacks as well as for seeking to prevent attacks by means of threatened retaliation. Should deterrence theory fail, such failure could result in consequences beyond our greatest fears. For example, scientists have found in simulations of the use of 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons in an exchange between India and Pakistan, the deaths could reach one billion individuals due to blast, fire, radiation, climate change, crop failures and resulting starvation. A larger nuclear war between the US and Russia could destroy civilization as we know it.
The flaws in nuclear deterrence theory that I have discussed cannot be waved aside. They show that the theory has inherent weaknesses that cannot be overcome. Over time, the theory will suffer more and more stress fractures and, like a poorly constructed bridge, it will fail. Rather than staying docilely on the sidelines, citizens of the nuclear weapon states must enter the arena of debate. In fact, they must create the debate by challenging the efficacy and validity of nuclear deterrence theory.
After these many years of accepting nuclear deterrence theory as valid and unimpeachable, it is time to awaken to the reality that it could fail and fail catastrophically. The answer to the risks posed by nuclear deterrence theory is not to shore up an inherently flawed theory, but to take a new path, a path leading to the elimination of all nuclear weapons from the planet. This is not an impossible dream and, in fact, the risks of taking this path are far less than maintaining nuclear arsenals justified by an unstable and unproven theory. But for this dream to be realized, citizens will have to raise their voices, challenge their leaders, and refuse to be docile in the face of the overwhelming threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity.
On February 6, 2011, Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years old. It is worthwhile to recall that this conservative president’s great dream was the abolition of nuclear weapons. According to his wife, Nancy, “Ronnie had many hopes for the future, and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons.”
President Reagan was a nuclear abolitionist. He believed that the only reason to have nuclear weapons was to prevent the then Soviet Union from using theirs. Understanding this, he asserted in his 1984 State of the Union Address, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” He continued, “The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”
Ronald Reagan regarded nuclear weapons, according to Nancy, as “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”
In 1986, President Reagan and Secretary General Gorbachev met for a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. In a remarkable quirk of history, the two men shared a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Despite the concerns of their aides, they came close to achieving agreement on this most important of issues. The sticking point was that President Reagan saw his Strategic Defense Initiative (missile defense) as being essential to the plan, and Gorbachev couldn’t accept this (even though Reagan promised to share the US missile defense system with the then Soviet Union). Gorbachev wanted missile defense development to be restricted to the laboratory for ten years. Reagan couldn’t accept this.
The two leaders came heartbreakingly close to ending the era of nuclear weapons, but in the end they couldn’t achieve their mutual goal. As a result, nuclear weapons have proliferated and remain a danger to all humanity. Today, we face the threat of terrorists gaining possession of nuclear weapons, and wreaking massive destruction on the cities of powerful nations. There can be no doubt that had Reagan and Gorbachev succeeded, the US and the world would be far more secure, and these men would be remembered above all else for this achievement.
In his book, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow quotes Reagan as saying, “I know that there are a great many people who are pointing to the unimaginable horror of nuclear war…. [T]o those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say, ‘I’m with you.’” Lettow also quotes Reagan as stating, “[M]y dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.”
In the 18th and 19th centuries, individuals struggled for the abolition of slavery because they understood that every man, woman and child has the right to live in freedom. Through the efforts and persistence of committed individuals like William Wilberforce in Great Britain and Frederick Douglass in the United States, institutionalized slavery was brought to an end, and humanity is better for it. In today’s world, we confront an issue of even more transcending importance, because nuclear weapons place civilization and the human species itself in danger of annihilation.
Ronald Reagan was a leader who recognized this, and worked during his presidency for the abolition of these terrible weapons. He believed, according to Nancy, that “as long as such weapons were around, sooner or later they would be used,” with catastrophic results. He understood that nuclear weapons themselves are the enemy.
Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan died before seeing his goal of abolishing nuclear weapons realized. It is up to those of us still living to complete this job. It is not a partisan issue, but rather a human issue, one that affects our common future.
The brutality.
The children.
The deaths of civilians.
The dreams destroyed.
The hand-to-hand combat.
The herd mentality.
The high altitude bombing.
The horror.
The apathy.
The ignorance.
The indecency.
The jingoism.
The land mines.
The defoliants.
The lies.
The long distance killing machines.
The loss of life.
The loss of limbs.
The loss of compassion.
The madness.
The manipulation.
The mothers.
The mushroom cloud.
The needless slaughter.
The patriotic songs.
The pious politicians.
The profiteers.
The propaganda.
The refugees.
The ruined lives.
The smart bombs.
The stereotyping.
The stupidity.
The suffering.
The suppression of reason.
The toll on our souls.
The trauma.
The medals dripping from the chests of generals.
The rewriting of history.
The waste, the terrible waste.
January 17, 2011 marked the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the nation in which he warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex. I think he would be shocked to see how this influence has grown over the past half century and how it has manifested in the country’s immense military budgets, the nuclear arms race, our permanent war footing, the failure to achieve meaningful disarmament, and the illegal wars the US has initiated. In addition to all of this, there is the influence of the military-industrial complex on the media, academia, the Congress and the citizenry. It has also ensnared US allies, like those in NATO, in its net. Eisenhower believed that the only way to assure that the military-industrial complex can be meshed “with our peaceful methods and goals” is through “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”
Eisenhower was 70 years old when his term as president came to an end. He had been a General of the Army and hero of World War II, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, and for eight years the president of the United States. His Farewell Address was, above all else, a warning to his fellow Americans. He stated, “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.” He worried about what this conjunction would mean in the future, famously stating, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Eisenhower feared that this powerful complex would weaken democracy. “We must never,” he said, “let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” He felt there was only one force that could control this powerful military-industrial complex, and that was the power of the people. In Eisenhower’s view it was only “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry” that was capable of defending the republic “so that security and liberty prosper together.”
What kind of report card would President Eisenhower give our country today if he could come back and observe what has transpired over the past 50 years? For starters, I believe he would be appalled by the enormous increase in influence of the military-industrial complex. Today the military receives over half of the discretionary funds that Congress allocates, over $500 billion a year for the Department of Defense, plus the special allocations for the two wars in which the country is currently engaged. The Department of Defense budget does not take into account the interest on the national debt attributable to past wars, or the tens of billions of dollars in the Energy Department budget for nuclear arms, or the funds allocated for veterans benefits. When it is totaled, the US is spending over a trillion dollars annually on “defense.”
Surely Eisenhower would be dismayed to see how many national institutions have been drawn into and made subservient to the military-industrial complex, which some would now refer to as the military-industrial-Congressional-academic-media complex. Every district in Congress seems to have links to the complex through jobs provided by defense contractors, putting pressure on Congressional representatives to assure that public funds flow to private defense contractors. At the same time, academia and the mainstream media provide support and cover to keep public funds flowing for wars and their preparations.
Near the end of his speech, Eisenhower lamented that he had not made greater progress toward disarmament during his time in office. He said, “Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.” It was true then, and remains so today. He continued, “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment.” Indeed, there was reason for his disappointment, since the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal increased under his watch from approximately 1,400 in 1953 to over 20,000 in 1960. I suspect that he would be even more disappointed today to find that the US has not been more proactive in leading the way toward disarmament and particularly nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War.
Fifty years ago, Eisenhower feared the threat that nuclear war posed to the world and to our country, and expressed his desire for peace: “As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.” He recognized that much remains to be done to “reach the goal of peace with justice.” That was true when Eisenhower made his Farewell Address and it remains true today.
We would do well to reflect upon the deeply felt concerns of this military and political leader as he retired from public service. He prayed “that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.” That was his vision, and he passed the baton to us to overcome the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex. Our challenge is to exercise our power as citizens of a democracy and to use that power to attain a more peaceful and nuclear weapons-free world.
Nuclear weapons release vast amounts of energy. They do this by breaking apart the bonds of the atom, but this is not all they break apart. They also break apart the bonds of our relationships with the Earth, with other forms of life and with the future. This is part of the nuclear fallout that occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and has continued through the Nuclear Age.
Nuclear weapons are capable of destroying cities, as was demonstrated by the US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We know that the destructive capacity of these weapons does not end there. They are also capable of destroying countries and civilization as we know it. The philosopher John Somerville coined the term “omnicide” to describe the potential destructive capacity of nuclear weapons – the death of all. In the Nuclear Age, our destructive capacity has moved from homicide to genocide to omnicide.
In considering the fallout of nuclear weapons, we might ask: what have these weapons done to our psyches? The destructive potential of our nuclear inventions transcends the death of an individual or group and shows us a glimpse of the death of all. For those of us willing to look, this is a fearful view into the abyss, a darkened world of incineration and shadows, a world barren of life. Although nuclear weapons bring us close to the precipice of such a world, most of us choose to avert our eyes and our minds from grasping the reality. We gamble the human future on the judgment and human fallibility of political and military leaders. This strikes me as a very bad bet.
It is argued that no weapon ever created has been discarded until another, more powerful weapon has taken its place. But with nuclear weapons we do not have this luxury. Nuclear weapons force us to put aside our childish and tribal ways of solving conflicts. They push us to higher levels of maturity. We cannot continue our old ways and survive in a nuclear-armed world.
Ten Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Let me share with you ten reasons to abolish nuclear weapons:
1. They are long-distance killing machines incapable of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, the aged and the newly born, or between men, women and children. As such, they are instruments of dehumanization as well as annihilation.
2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists. Nuclear war could cause deadly climate change, putting human existence at risk.
3. They threaten to foreclose the future, negating our common responsibility to future generations.
4. They make cowards of their possessors, and in their use there can be no decency or honor. This was recognized by most of the leading generals and admirals of World War II, including Dwight Eisenhower, Hap Arnold, and William Leahy.
5. They divide the world’s nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing false and unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.
6. They are a distortion of science and technology, siphoning off our scientific and technological resources and twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.
7. They mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power. The International Court of Justice has ruled that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal and any use that violated international humanitarian law would be illegal. It is virtually impossible to imagine a threat or use of nuclear weapons that would not violate international humanitarian law (fail to discriminate between soldiers and civilians, cause unnecessary suffering or be disproportionate to a preceding attack).
8. They waste our resources on the development of instruments of annihilation. The United States alone has spent over $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems since the onset of the Nuclear Age.
9. They concentrate power in the hands of a small group of individuals and, in doing so, undermine democracy.
10. They are morally abhorrent, as recognized by virtually every religious organization, and their mere existence corrupts our humanity.
New START
In December 2010, the US Senate voted 71-26 to ratify the New START agreement with Russia. It was a struggle to obtain the requisite two-thirds majority of the Senate needed for ratification, but in the end enough Republicans joined with the Democrats to assure the treaty’s ratification. With previous strategic arms reduction treaties, however, the votes for ratification were largely bipartisan, reflected by overwhelming majorities.
The New START agreement was described by Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as “vital to national security.” The treaty has four important benefits.
First, it will reduce the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons on each side to 1,550 by the year 2017. This is about a one-third reduction from the 2,200 agreed to in the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). However, there are some accounting irregularities that were agreed to in New START, such as counting each bomber plane as having one nuclear weapon even though it could carry up to 20.
Second, it will reduce the number of delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons to 800 total, with an upper limit of 700 of these deployed.
Third, it will put inspectors back on the ground in both countries to verify compliance with the treaty. There have been no inspections since December 2009, when the START I agreement expired.
Finally, it will hopefully keep the US and Russia moving forward on reducing their arsenals still further in the years to come. A failure to ratify the New START agreement would have been disastrous for US-Russia cooperation.
Despite the important benefits of the treaty, however, it should not be forgotten that it still leaves the US and Russia with 1,550 deployed strategic weapons each, more than enough to destroy the world many times over. It also does not place limits on the shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons or the strategic nuclear weapons held in reserve. These issues will be on the agenda of future US-Russia negotiations.
There was also a heavy price pledged by President Obama for obtaining Republican votes for the treaty, approximately $185 billion over the next ten years. About $85 billion will go to the modernization of the nuclear infrastructure in the country and the modernization of the US nuclear arsenal. Another $100 billion will go to improving the delivery vehicles to carry the nuclear weapons. These expensive improvements to US nuclear forces cast reasonable doubt on the seriousness of the US commitment to nuclear disarmament.
The Republicans were also able to extract a promise from President Obama regarding missile defenses. As a candidate for President in October 2007, Obama said, “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.” In an effort to get the New START agreement ratified, President Obama wrote in December 2010 to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, “…as long as I am President, and as long as the Congress provides the necessary funding, the United States will continue to develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect the United States, our deployed forces, and our allies and partners.” Candidate Obama had it right that missile defense systems were “unproven.” President Obama had it wrong that such systems are “effective.” In recent months, two missile defense tests from Vandenberg Air Force base have been admitted failures with no intercepts, and these were simple tests without multiple attack missiles or decoys.
New START is only what it says – a start. The only stable number of nuclear weapons in the world is zero, and this must be our goal. The way to get to zero is through a negotiated Nuclear Weapons Convention, a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. A Nuclear Weapons Convention will require leadership from the US and other countries. Leaders must be pushed from below. In effect, the people must lead their leaders. Achieving the goal of Zero must start with each of us.
Implementing Change
The path to achieving change in the Nuclear Age starts with the implementation of some traditional means for bringing about change: conscience, compassion, courage, cooperation, creativity and commitment.
Conscience is the voice inside that distinguishes right from wrong, and moves us to take action for what is right. It is a capacity that is uniquely human. We can recognize right from wrong and choose our course. With conscience there is always choice.
Compassion is the force of love put into action. Along with poet John Donne, we must recognize that we are “a part of the continent, a piece of the main.” We must care for the Earth and all its inhabitants. Compassion does not recognize borders. We all share a common Earth. We are all created equal. We are all diminished by nuclear threats or any other threats to the well-being of people anywhere.
It takes courage to think differently, to break away from the group-think of the tribe. It takes courage to express compassion and to embrace the world. It takes courage to wage peace rather than war.
Cooperation is needed to solve the world’s great problems. There is no significant global problem – war, abuses of human rights, environmental degradation, climate change, nuclear threat – that can be solved by any one nation alone. It takes not only a village, but a world to bring about the changes that are needed.
Creativity is also essential to change. It will take new and creative ways of thinking to prevent the ultimate catastrophe to ourselves and our fellow inhabitants of Earth. Einstein said prophetically, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” We must change our modes of thinking, and replace the old patterns with new ones. We must become world citizens and peace leaders.
Commitment will keep you going when the goal seems distant and the obstacles seem overwhelming. No great goal is easy to attain, but some goals – and I would place the abolition of nuclear weapons among these – are challenges that cannot be ignored or cast aside. The future, which cannot speak for itself and has only our voice, deserves our commitment.
In Apocalypse Never, Forging a Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), author Tad Daley explores the dangers of the Nuclear Age, argues that the only way to prevent future nuclear catastrophes is to eliminate the weapons and provides a roadmap to achieve this goal. While it is a subject that many Americans prefer to avoid or deny, the threats of nuclear devastation are all too real.
When it comes to the serious perils that nuclear weapons pose to the continuation of human civilization that has developed over the past 10,000 years, and to the human future, far too many Americans remain ignorant and apathetic. Perhaps they believe that if they do not think about nuclear dangers, the dangers will disappear. That belief is dispelled by Daley’s important book.
When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many people thought that the nuclear threat to humanity had ended. In fact, the thaw in US-Russian relations gave that appearance. Large numbers of nuclear weapons were eliminated from US and Russian arsenals, but not enough. There are still some 20,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the two countries. There are also an increasing number of nuclear weapon states and potential nuclear weapon states. Today there are nine countries in possession of nuclear weapons and still other countries that have developed or are developing the capabilities to become nuclear weapon states.
Apocalypse Never presents a comprehensive overview of the possibilities of nuclear terrorism, accidental nuclear war, mismanagement of a nuclear crisis, and the intentional use of nuclear weapons. One cannot read about these dangers and the close calls that have occurred in the past and remain complacent. The reality is that there must be zero tolerance for nuclear weapons proliferating to terrorist organizations, such as al Qaeda, that cannot be deterred from nuclear attack because they cannot be located. There must also be zero tolerance for accidental nuclear war or errors in crisis management that would allow a crisis to get out of control and go nuclear.
While zero tolerance is perhaps an unrealistically high standard, it is the only acceptable standard. Anything less could result in a nuclear catastrophe. And this standard must be maintained not only by the US, which has already had more than its share of slip-ups, but by all nuclear weapon states and all that may emerge in the future.
Daley points out that one of the greatest problems of the Nuclear Age is America’s nuclear hypocrisy, its double standards and its do-as-I-say-not as-I-do approach to international treaties and relations among countries. The US, for example, has one standard for its ally Israel’s nuclear arsenal (tolerance and silence) and another for countries such as Iraq and Iran (preventive war and regime change, and threat of attack, respectively). As any parent knows, double standards don’t hold up over time. As a result, America is failing in what is perhaps its most important leadership role. It is failing to discipline its policy to a single standard for all, including itself, a standard that must be zero nuclear weapons rather than zero tolerance only for the countries disapproved of by the US.
Roughly half of Daley’s book elucidates the dangers of continuing with the nuclear status quo. It is clear, to quote William Butler Yeats, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold….” Either the world will spin off toward nuclear proliferation and nuclear catastrophe; or, as a far preferable alternative, we will eliminate nuclear weapons from the world. The latter alternative is the subject of the second half of Apocalypse Never. It is the alternative that common sense and rationality dictate. It is also dictated by international law, specifically by Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which calls for the “good faith” pursuit of nuclear disarmament. This was the principal trade-off in the treaty, promised by the nuclear weapon states to the non-nuclear weapon states, the vast majority of the countries in the world that agreed not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons.
As Daley rightly points out, the NPT should properly have been named the Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Elimination Treaty. Adding the word “elimination” to the title of the treaty would have made it readily understandable to the public that the treaty was not only about non-proliferation, but also about eliminating the existing weapons. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, advised in 1996 that the nuclear weapon states have an obligation to complete the task of achieving nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.
Of course, it will not be easy to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world; it is, in fact, the great challenge that we face in the Nuclear Age. Daley makes a strong case, however, that this is a goal that can be accomplished. He assesses the dangers of a “breakout” scenario and finds that a structure could be established with sufficient disincentives so that the costs of breakout would far exceed the benefits. The path we are currently on is nearly certain to lead to future catastrophes.
Those who think about the future and have a role in designing it must not shy away from the conclusion, reached by the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. The weapons are incompatible with a human future. They put all humanity on the endangered species list. We need to awaken to this reality and then, in Daley’s vision, “build the architecture of a nuclear weapon-free world.”
Another way in which Daley conceptualizes our choices is: apocalypse soon or, as the book is titled, Apocalypse Never. When it comes to nuclear apocalypse, there is no place for neutrality or complacency. It is a life-or-death struggle between humans and the tools we have created, the long-distance devices of mass annihilation we call nuclear weapons. These weapons challenge our humanity. The mere existence of these weapons is a call to action.
Daley’s book provides the background and the vision for individuals to become informed and effective citizens of the Nuclear Age and to fulfill our shared responsibility to pass the world on intact to the next generation. We are the first generation in human history to run the risk of failing in that responsibility. To assure that we succeed, individuals must become agents of change. The existential threat of nuclear weapons is not an issue for leaders alone. In fact, the issue is far too important to be left only in the hands of leaders. The people must care enough to lead their leaders.
Apocalypse Never takes the abolition of nuclear weapons out of the realm of utopian dream, pointing the way to a citizen-led political project. I urge you to read this book and, in the interests of all humanity, to become engaged in the great goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
Vaya aquí para la versión española.
A note recently came to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation that said: “Are you folks out of your minds? The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and isn’t going back in. Shortly even non-state actors will have nukes! Quit wasting your time on this silly dream.” The author of the note, to his credit, signed his name, and also indicated that he is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel.
The colonel poses a critical question: Are we out of our minds to believe that change is possible and that humans might find a way to cooperate to eliminate the existential threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity (and other forms of life)? Perhaps we are, but it seems to me that the future of civilization, the human species and other complex forms of life are worth the effort. The Nuclear Age is distinct from the periods that preceded it in having the capacity to end most complex life, including human life, on the planet. Fighting for the elimination of nuclear weapons is also the fight for human survival and for the rights of future generations. I’ve always believed that we have a choice: nuclear weapons or a human future. Along with the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I believe it is unlikely that both are possible.
Next, the colonel asserts that “[t]he nuclear genie is out of the bottle and isn’t going back in.” I suppose this means that the knowledge of how to create nuclear weapons exists and cannot be erased. Granted, the knowledge now exists. The challenge is whether countries will choose to eliminate nuclear weapons in their common interest, or whether they will be paralyzed by fear into failing to try. Knowledge alone is not sufficient to make nuclear weapons. Scientific and engineering skills are also needed, as are nuclear materials. There may not be a foolproof method to assure the elimination of nuclear weapons, but there is also no foolproof method to assure that existing nuclear weapons will not be used in a nuclear war that could kill billions of people and destroy civilization.
The question is: which is a safer path for humanity? On the one hand, to seek the phased, verifiable and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons and effective international safeguards on nuclear materials; or, on the other hand, to continue the status quo of having the world divided into a small but increasing number of nuclear “haves” and a far larger number of nuclear “have-nots”? I would place my bet on working for the elimination of the weapons, the same path chosen by Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and Ronald Reagan. According to his wife, Nancy, President Reagan “had many hopes for the future, and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons.”
The colonel seems to like the odds of continuing with the status quo, even though he recognizes that “[s]hortly even non-state actors will have nukes!” This is most likely true and it poses an enormous problem for the US and other nuclear armed countries, if we fail to bring nuclear weapons and the materials to make them under strict and effective international control. All of the thousands of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal can’t deter a terrorist organization in possession of a single nuclear weapon. You can’t credibly threaten retaliation against an organization or individuals that you can’t even locate.
“Quit wasting your time,” the colonel admonishes, “on this silly dream.” But all dreams may seem silly before they are realized. Mohandas Gandhi had a dream of an independent India. It must have seemed silly to Winston Churchill and other British leaders at the time. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream of racial equality. Perhaps it seemed silly to many. Nelson Mandela dreamed of an end to apartheid in South Africa. During his 27 years in prison, this dream must have seemed silly to the white power structure in South Africa.
There are dreams of justice and equality that must seem silly to many. There are dreams of alleviating poverty and hunger, and dreams of educational opportunity for all children. There are even dreams of eliminating war. It is not silly to fight for a better future, and certainly not silly to fight to assure the future itself.
For me, a New Year is a new beginning and always brings hope. I will continue to choose hope and to fight for the dream of peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons. Achieving these goals is the great challenge of our time, and on their success depend the realization of all other goals for a more just and decent world.
“Everyone deserves a seat at humanity’s table.” That was a favorite expression of my friend Frank Kelly, who died in 2010, one day before his 96th birthday. Frank believed it was essential for a peaceful future that everyone be seated at that big table and everyone’s voice be heard. I couldn’t agree more. We need a table that has room for all of us, a table at which everyone is fed with opportunity; everyone’s human rights are upheld; and everyone has a chance for their voice to be heard.
Right now there aren’t enough seats at the table, and the seats that exist have been taken by the wealthy and dominant of the world. But who should speak for humanity? Should it be the G-8 or the G-20? Should it be the P-5, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the ones who reserved for themselves the privilege of the veto power? Should it be corporate titans? Should it be representatives of the military-industrial complex? These are the people who have claimed the seats at humanity’s table for themselves, and they seem quite content sitting there, hoarding resources and opportunity, and pulling the strings of the world. But all is not well.
The rich and powerful may not yet recognize it, but they are sitting on a precipice, and they have a long way to fall. The table where they are sitting is not stable. They may believe that they can maintain their exclusive control of the table by using their wealth and power to bring in the police to cordon off the area, but this is only a temporary fix. Unless they open the doors and expand the table, they are headed for a fall. And with them is likely to go the table and all the resources they have sought to maintain for their exclusive use.
To bring everyone to humanity’s table is not just the polite thing to do, it is the right thing to do. It is also necessary. The poor of the world know what is going on behind locked doors. They know that their poverty and suffering are related to the greed at the restricted table. All that those without a seat at the table are asking for is a chance to be heard and to be part of the decision making about the great problems confronting humanity, including the inequitable allocation of resources, the militarization of the planet, the destruction of the environment, the abuse of human rights, and the list goes on. All of these great global issues can only be effectively addressed by global cooperation, and such cooperation is not possible if chairs are missing from humanity’s table.
It is increasingly evident that either everyone will be seated, or at least represented at the table, or the table will become increasingly irrelevant to solving the world’s problems. The world has become too small to treat as a country club and put up “No Trespassing” signs to keep most of the world’s people away from humanity’s table. We’ll either find a way to make room for all of us at the table, or we will fail in achieving the cooperation needed to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
One of the key lessons learned by the United States during the Vietnam War was that conscription leads to middle class discontent with war. Middle class parents joined their college-age children in protesting an illegal and brutal war. Ultimately, these protests made the continuation of the war untenable. A popular protest chant among college students of the era was, “Hell No, we won’t go.”
The political and military establishment in the country found a solution to the problem of middle class protest by doing away with conscription and moving to an all volunteer military force. As long as there was high enough unemployment and lack of affordable higher education, the military would have a large pool of young people to draw upon for its force, and foreign wars could be pursued without fear of widespread protest. Middle class children (and, of course, upper class children) could go to college and then into the workplace undisturbed, and their parents would not be concerned or frightened by the possibility of their children being conscripted into the military in a time of war.
The system has worked reasonably well to dampen protest of foreign wars, even a war as egregiously illegal and needless as the war against Iraq. As volunteers, the soldiers are more pliable and less inclined to protest even the repeated deployments to war zones that they have endured. With rare exceptions, the soldiers seem to believe they are acting patriotically in carrying out orders, without questioning whether the wars themselves are either beneficial or legal.
While the country spends a great amount of money on its military forces (about one-half of the discretionary funds that are allocated annually by the Congress), this does not necessarily extend to protecting the soldiers themselves. There have been reports of inadequate body armor for the troops, prompting communities to hold fundraising events to secure the funds to provide such protection to individual soldiers.
Among the lures that the military uses to fill its recruiting quotas are the promises of job security and future educational benefits. Thus, for poorer members of the society, both jobs and educational opportunities are available through enlistment in the military. Of course, these are only attractive to those who cannot attain them by other means.
Recently, Simon Johnson, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, was interviewed about Obama’s proposed “compromise” with the Republicans to extend tax cuts for the top two percent of Americans. Johnson said, as other economists have, that this deal, if enacted, would add substantially to the national debt while providing very little stimulus to the economy in return. He recommended, as a far better alternative plan for stimulating the economy, to put the majority of the $900 billion it would cost, mostly for tax breaks for the very rich, into education. On purely economic grounds, the funding for education, with its attendant job creation, is a far better investment in society than tax breaks for the very rich.
But if education and job opportunities for the poorest elements of our society were available through non-military governmental incentives, perhaps impoverished young people would reject the education and job incentives offered through the military. They would not have to risk their lives in war to get the educational and job opportunities that middle and upper class children have handed to them. Don’t we owe all young members of our society equal access to education and the workplace, which in essence provides them with equal opportunity?
War should be a last resort for society. By doing away with conscription, we have made it possible for it to be a first resort. But we do so by structuring our society so that the poor must go through the gauntlet of the military (and in recent years also repeated tours of duty in war zones) in order to get their opportunity for higher education and gainful employment.
If the current compromise legislation on the extension of the Bush-era tax breaks for the very rich goes through, it will be largely on the backs of the poor. For the political class promoting this compromise, it will also have the side benefit of assuring enough poverty and unemployment so that the military will have no problem in recruiting soldiers for the ongoing wars of choice that continue to burden our society and our economy.