Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

  • Changing the Climate of Complacency

    David KriegerRepresentatives of governments and civil society organizations are gathered in Cancun to take action on the climate change that is threatening our beautiful but beleaguered planet.  The changes, which are resulting in global warming, pose extremely dangerous threats to quality of life and even survival for people today and in the future.  We must heed the warnings of scientists who are examining this phenomenon and change our habits with regard to fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions.  We must dramatically lower our fossil fuel consumption and our carbon imprint on the planet and this must be undertaken immediately and seriously by the over-industrialized nations that are the worst energy and resource abusers.


    There is another way in which the term “climate change” may be used.  That is, to refer to “climate” in the sense of “ambiance.”  There is a strong need to change the climate of our thinking, specifically the passive acceptance of the abuse of our planet and its myriad species, including our own.  In this sense, humanity lives far too much in a “climate” of ignorance and indifference.  We have organized ourselves into consumer societies that demonstrate little concern for our responsibilities to the planet, to each other and to the future.


    There are many ongoing problems in the world that deserve our awareness and engagement.  The fact that these problems receive insufficient attention and action speak to the change of climate that is needed.  Many of these problems were identified in the eight Millennium Development Goals: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality; reducing child mortality; reducing maternal mortality; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and establishing a global partnership for development. 


    While these major problems on our planet are not adequately addressed, the world is wasting more than $1.5 trillion annually on its military establishments.  Many states are attempting to create military security at the expense of human security.  The poor people on the planet are being marginalized while countries use their scientific resources and material wealth to produce ever more deadly and destructive armaments.  In a climate of complacency, the military-industrial complexes of the world fulfill their gluttonous appetites while the poor and politically powerless of the Earth are left to suffer and die. 


    At the apex of the global order, the countries that emerged victorious in World War II anointed themselves as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.  They continue to flaunt international law by their reliance upon nuclear weapons and by failing to engage in good-faith negotiations for the elimination of these weapons as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Because these countries behave as though their power and prestige are built upon these weapons of mass annihilation, other countries seek to emulate them.  Nuclear proliferation is thus encouraged by the very states that seek to set themselves apart with these weapons.


    Large corporations that stand to profit from a “renaissance” of nuclear power are promoting large nuclear energy projects as an alternative to using fossil fuels.  They are trying to make nuclear power appear to be green.  But they have not solved the four major problems with nuclear power: the potential for nuclear weapons proliferation; the failure to find any reasonable solution to storing the nuclear wastes, which will threaten the environment and humanity for tens of thousands of years; vulnerability to terrorism; and propensity to dangerous accidents. 


    If the large global corporations have their way, the Earth will become home for thousands of nuclear power plants, nations will seek to protect themselves with nuclear weapons (an impossibility), the threat of nuclear annihilation and global warming will continue to hang over our collective heads, extreme poverty in its many manifestations will persist, and we will follow either a slow path to extinction or a rapid one. 


    This is why we must change the climate of indifference and complacency that currently prevails upon our planet.  We humans have the gifts of consciousness and conscience, but these gifts must be used to be effective.  We must become conscious of what threatens our common future and we must care enough to demand that these threats be eliminated.  The only force powerful enough to challenge the corporate and military power that is leading us to catastrophe is the power of an engaged global citizenry.  This remains the one truly great superpower on Earth, but it can only be activated by compassion and caring. 


    If we do not care enough about the future to engage in the fight to save our species from catastrophe and our planet from omnicide, we need only to continue our complacency and leave the important decisions about protecting the environment and human life to powerful corporations and the world’s militaries.  They have a plan, one based upon dangerous technologies and plunder.  Their plan is shortsighted, designed to further enrich the already overly rich.  To be silent is a vote for their plan. 


    As Albert Camus, the great French writer and existentialist, wrote in the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing: “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.” 


    Let us stand with Camus in waging peace.  Let us stand with Camus in choosing reason.  Let us raise our voices and choose peace and a human future.  Let us fulfill the responsibility of each generation to pass the world on intact to the next generation.  We may be the only generation that has faced the choice of silence and annihilation, or engagement and rebuilding the paradise of our exceedingly precious planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life.

  • John F. Kennedy Speaks of Peace

    On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated.  Nearly every American who is old enough can remember where he was when he heard the news of Kennedy’s death.  In my case, I was on a train platform in Japan when I was told of the assassination.  A Japanese man came up to me and said, “I’m very sorry to tell you, but your president has been shot and killed.”  I remember being stunned by the news and by a sense of loss. 

    On June 10, 1963, just six months before his life was cut short, Kennedy gave the Commencement Address at American University.  His topic was peace.  He called it “the most important topic on earth.”  As a decorated officer who served in combat during World War II, he knew about war.

    Kennedy spoke of a generous and broad peace: “What kind of peace do I mean?  What kind of peace do we seek?” he asked.  “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons or war.  Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.  I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

    He recognized that nuclear weapons had created “a new face of war.”  He argued, “Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces.  It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.  It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”

    Just eight months before giving this speech, Kennedy had been face to face with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He knew that it was possible for powerful, nuclear-armed nations to come to the brink of nuclear war, and he knew what nuclear war would mean for the future of humanity.  “I speak of peace,” he said, “as the necessary rational end of rational men.”

    Kennedy asked us to examine our attitudes toward peace.  “Too many of us think it is impossible,” he said.  “Too many think it unreal.   But that is a dangerous defeatist belief.  It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed – that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.”

    He understood that there was no “magic formula” to achieve peace.  “Genuine peace,” he argued, “must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.  It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation.  For peace is a process – a way of solving problems.”  He also recognized that peace requires perseverance. 

    Kennedy gave wise counsel in his speech.  In the midst of the Cold War, he called for reexamining our attitude toward the Soviet Union.  “Among the traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war.”  He pointed out the achievements of the Soviet people and the suffering they endured during World War II. 

    In the speech, Kennedy announced two important decisions.  First, he pledged to begin negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear test ban.  Second, he initiated a moratorium on atmospheric nuclear testing.  The Partial Test Ban Treaty would be signed that August, ratified by the Senate in September and would go into effect on October 10, 1963.  The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was not reached until 1996, and the United States Senate rejected ratification of this treaty in 1999.  The treaty still has not entered into force.

    In his insightful and inspiring speech, Kennedy did get one thing wrong.  He said that “[t]he United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”  One can only imagine Kennedy’s severe disappointment had he lived to see the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War and many other costly and illegal wars the U.S. has started and engaged in since his death. 

    Every American should read Kennedy’s Commencement Address at American University and be reminded that peace is a possibility that is worth the struggle.  As Kennedy understood, war does not bring peace.  Peace itself is the only path to peace.  Kennedy believed, “No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.  Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe they can do it again.”  Peace is attainable.  It is within our reach, if only we will learn from the past, stretch ourselves and believe that this is our destiny.

  • Playing Politics with the New START Agreement

    Soon after President Obama came to office he delivered a speech in Prague in which he said, “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  He said America has a responsibility to act and to lead.

    He then initiated negotiations with the Russians that resulted in a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, what has been labeled a “New START.”  This treaty, signed on April 8, 2010 by Presidents Obama and Medvedev, has significant advantages for U.S. national security.  It is an important next step in U.S.-Russian efforts to lessen the nuclear threat to humanity.

    The treaty will accomplish four important objectives.  First, it will lower the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons on each side to 1,550 and the number of delivery vehicles to 800 (700 deployed and 100 in reserve).  Second, it will restore the verification procedures that expired with the START I agreement in December 2009.  Third, it will strengthen our relations with the Russians, and put us on a footing to take future downward steps in the size of nuclear arsenals.  Fourth, it will show the world that the U.S. and Russia are serious about their obligations to pursue negotiations in good faith for nuclear disarmament.  

    Many current and former U.S. military leaders and statesmen have spoken out in favor of the treaty.  The commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Kevin Chilton, for example, has said, “Without New START, we would rapidly lose insight into Russian strategic nuclear force developments and activities, and our force modernization planning and hedging strategy would be more complex and more costly.”

    Republican Senator Richard Lugar, a strong proponent of the treaty, has pointed out, “It is unlikely that Moscow would sustain cooperative efforts indefinitely without the New START Treaty coming into force.”

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released a statement on November 17, in which he said, “It is vitally important to America’™s national security for the Senate to ratify the New START treaty before Congress adjourns this year.  We need our inspectors back on the ground and the critical information they can provide about Russia’s nuclear capabilities.  Ratification of this treaty would accomplish both.”  

    So, what is the problem?  We have a treaty negotiated and signed by the parties that both sides think benefits them and it benefits the rest of the world at the same time.  The treaty should be a slam dunk for Senate ratification, but unfortunately that isn’t the case.  

    Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Minority Whip, who has been the Republican point person on this treaty in the Senate, is preventing a vote on the treaty.  He is doing so despite the fact that the treaty was approved by a vote of 14 to 4 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September.  Sadly, America’s national security is being held hostage by one Republican leader in the Senate.  

    Senator Kyl has already negotiated a commitment from the White House of over $80 billion for modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next ten years.  This is a high price that is being paid, making many countries and world leaders doubt the sincerity of the U.S. commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.   Recently, President Obama went even further to sweeten the deal for Senator Kyl by committing an additional $4.1 billion for modernization of the U.S. nuclear complex over the next five years.  

    The bottom line is that Senator Kyl is playing politics with a treaty that affects the national security interests of the United States.  It appears he is trying to prevent a vote on the treaty in the Senate this year, either in order to embarrass President Obama on the world stage or to push consideration of the treaty off to 2011 when the new Senate is seated and less likely to ratify the treaty.

    Click here to take action by asking your senators to encourage Sen. Kyl and Sen. McConnell to allow the New START agreement to come before the full Senate.

  • Answering Bolton and Yoo: New START Will Strengthen U.S. National Security

    Two staunch ideologues who served in the George W. Bush administration, John Bolton and John Yoo, ask rhetorically in a New York Times opinion piece, “Why Rush to Cut Nukes?”  Bolton, a recess appointment as United Nations Ambassador under Bush II, never met an arms limitation agreement that he supported.  Yoo, the lawyer who wrote memos supporting the legality of water boarding under international law (not a very favorable prospect for captured U.S. soldiers), worked in Bush II’s Justice Department.  Bolton and Yoo can find no good reason to support the New START agreement with the Russians, arguing that without amendments it will weaken “our national defense.”  

    Let me answer the question posed in the title of their article.  The Senate should support and ratify this treaty because it will strengthen U.S. national security by:

    • reducing the size of the bloated nuclear arsenals in both countries, creating a new lower level from which to make further reductions;
    • reinstating verification procedures that ended with the expiration of the first START agreement in December 2009;
    • building confidence in the Russians that we stand behind our agreements; and
    • sending a signal to the rest of the world that we are taking steps to fulfill our legal commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    The downsides of failing to ratify the treaty would be to remove restraints on the size of the Russian arsenal, forego inspection and verification of the Russian arsenal, undermine Russian confidence in U.S. commitments, and encourage further nuclear proliferation by other countries thereby increasing the possibilities of nuclear terrorism. Further, if the treaty is not ratified before the new Congress is seated in January 2011, its future ratification will be far more difficult.

    What do Bolton and Yoo say they want?  First, to remove language in the treaty’s preamble, which is not legally binding, that says there is an “interrelationship” between nuclear weapons and defensive systems.  That language only recognizes a reality.  Of course, there is a relationship between missiles and missile defenses.  Second, they don’t want the U.S. to be limited in putting conventional weapons on formerly nuclear launch systems.  But that is a price, and a fair one, that each side will pay for lowering the other side’s nuclear capabilities.  Third, they want a Congressional act for the financing, testing and development of new U.S. warhead designs before the treaty is ratified.  In other words, they want guarantees that the U.S. nuclear arsenal will be modernized.  They seek long-term reliance on the U.S. nuclear threat, but this means that U.S. citizens will also remain under nuclear threat for the long-term.

    Bolton and Yoo are an interesting pair.  The first would lop ten floors off the United Nations, the second do away with the laws of war when they aren’t convenient.  Do they deserve their own opinions?  Of course.  Do their opinions make any sense?  Only in the context of the American exceptionalism and militarism that were the trademarks of the Bush II administration and have done so much to weaken the spirit, values and resources of the country while continuing to haunt us in our aggressive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

    One must wonder what possessed the New York Times to publish their rantings.  Additionally, using the word “Nukes” in the title suggests somehow that nuclear weapons are cute enough to have nicknames and not a serious threat to the very existence of civilization.  That Bolton and Yoo could rise to high positions in our country is a sad commentary on the country, but perhaps understandable in the context of the Bush II administration’s persistent flouting of international law.  That the New York Times would find sufficient merit in their discredited opinions to publish their article is an even sadder commentary on the editorial integrity of one of the country’s most respected newspapers.

  • De Nuevo El Dia de Veteranos

    Click here for the English version.


    “Lo único que no quiero volver a ver
    es un desfile militar “-
    Ulysses S. Grant
    Comandante General del Ejército de la Unión en la Guerra Civil – (1861-1865)
    Decimo octavo Presidente de Estados Unidos en dos periodos- (1869-1877)


    Ya hemos visto demasiados desfiles militares
    con sus misiles, bandas de música
    y mecanizados hombres jóvenes.


    Hemos sido testigos de los pasos de ganso
    de soldados en sus pulidas botas negras
    marchando al sonido de las trompetas.


    Evitemos más viejos vestidos con uniforme
    con sus gorras descosidas y llenas de parches.
    Evitemos oír más discursos rebuscados de los políticos.


    Regresemos a lo básico: El Día del Armisticio
    los soldados depusieron las armas en la onceava hora
    del onceavo día  del onceavo mes.


    Los supervivientes han tenido suficiente de la guerra.
    La onceava hora está aquí una vez más, y el claro cielo azul
    Yo estoy con Ulises Grant.

  • Of Hawks and Drones

    A red-tailed hawk soars and circles
    above the tall trees and silent fields
    looking down for movement, for prey.
    Gray clouds press against nearby mountains.
    From another direction the sun lights up
    the fields and mountainside.

    Somewhere in an innocuous, but not innocent,
    place in the United States of America,
    a young military technician stares intently
    at a computer screen.  He operates
    the remote control of a predator drone flying
    softly above houses in a far away country,
    namely Pakistan, but it could be any country
    on the planet.  

    The predator drone is armed with precision missiles
    that the young technician from the land of the free
    releases near the target he has been given.  People die.
    They are not always the right people.  Sometimes
    they are children.  Sometimes the information
    is wrong, the coordinates are mistaken. 

    The red-tailed hawk glides on currents of thin air,
    then dives toward earth, talons at the ready.

  • 2010 Evening for Peace

    The lives of our two honorees, like the lives of so many other individuals in this country and throughout the world, have been deeply affected by war.  

    Reverend James Lawson was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, for which he spent time in prison.  It helped mold his life as a leader in peace and nonviolence, and then as a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Professor Glenn Paige served as an enlisted man and officer in the Korean War and then wrote a book justifying the war.  Later, he would criticize his own book and conclude there was no justification for killing in that war or any war.  

    For both men, the experience of war changed the course of their lives and put them on the path of peace.  

    One of the great myths of our time is that war creates peace.  It does not.  War breeds war, laying the groundwork for future wars.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows….  We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.”  As our 2007 honorees – Peter, Paul and Mary – asked in song, “When will we ever learn?”  

    War kills not only with bullets and bombs.  It also kills indirectly by robbing the world’s people of the resources necessary for survival.  As President Eisenhower emphasized in his Farewell Address, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

    The world is spending more than $1.5 trillion annually on war and its preparation.  While it does so, the United Nations struggles to raise the needed resources to meet its eight Millennium Development Goals: to eradicate poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and build a global partnership for development.

    For only five to 10 percent of global military expenditures annually for the next five years, the world could reach the markers that have been set for these Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015.  Instead, we choose to use our scientific and financial resources to build and deploy ever more powerful weapons.  It is a soul-deadening exercise.

    War and violence are the enemies of humanity.  There is a better way forward as shown in the lives of our honorees, based on nonviolence and nonkilling.  

    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we believe that nuclear weapons have made peace an imperative of the Nuclear Age.  We must eliminate these weapons, which threaten civilization and the human future, and we must also eliminate war.  That is the work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and we need all of you to join with us to achieve our goals.

    Let me give you a few relevant statistics about the Foundation.  Our membership is over 37,000 people.  More than 30,000 individuals participate in our Action Alert Network, sending messages to elected representatives. 

    Our Peace Leadership Program Director, Paul Chappell, has given over 100 talks or workshops in the past year to high schools, universities, churches, activist organizations, and veterans groups throughout the country.  There are over 2,100 people now in our Peace Leadership Program. 

    Some 700,000 people have visited our WagingPeace.org and NuclearFiles.org websites in the past year.   Our Sunflower e-newsletter is distributed to tens of thousands of people worldwide. 

    We are intent upon breaking down the walls of ignorance, apathy and complacency that surround issues of nuclear weapons and war, and replacing them with new and abundant energy and commitment directed toward peace and human survival.  This is the responsibility to future generations demanded of those of us alive on our planet today.

    With six hard-working and talented staff members and dozens of volunteers, including our dedicated Board, our distinguished Advisors and Associates and our enthusiastic and competent college interns, we are committed to building a safer and saner world.  We educate and advocate to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen international law, and empower new generations of peace leaders.

    Let me conclude with three short quotations from three giants of the 20th century.

    Albert Camus, an existential philosopher and Nobel Laureate in Literature, said, “I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.”

    Albert Einstein, the great scientist and humanist who changed our understanding of the universe, said, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

    Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

    It is in the creative tension between words and actions that we must seek to fulfill our dreams.  May we never lose hold of the dream of peace.  May we choose hope and find a way to change the world.  May we each do our part to pass the world on intact to future generations.

  • 2010 United Nations Day Keynote Address

    Thank you to the San Francisco Chapter of the United Nations Association for organizing this celebration of the 65th anniversary of the United Nations and for bringing together such an impressive group of leaders for this event.  Thank you also to Soka Gakkai International for hosting this event in your Ikeda Auditorium.  

    I want to draw attention to the beauty of the flower arrangements on the dais.  They are filled with sunflowers, and sunflowers are the universal symbol of a world without nuclear weapons.  Whenever you see a sunflower, I hope you will think of the need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.  Sunflowers are beautiful, natural and nutritious.  They turn toward the sun.  They stand in stark contrast to the manmade missiles that threaten death and destruction on a massive scale.  Sunflowers remind us of the importance of preserving the natural beauty of our planet and ending the manmade threats of massive annihilation with which we currently live.

    My subject today is nuclear disarmament.  The United Nations Charter was signed on June 23, 1945.  The first nuclear weapon was tested successfully just over three weeks later on July 16, 1945.  The United Nations sought to save the world from the “scourge of war,” among other high ideals.  Nuclear weapons threatened to destroy the world.

    The subject of nuclear weapons is one that many people, perhaps most, understandably would like to put out of their minds.  Assuring a human future demands that we resist that temptation.

    We know that a single nuclear weapon can destroy a city and a few nuclear weapons can destroy a country.   Scientists also tell us that an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on cities, such as could occur between India and Pakistan, could result in a billion fatalities, due to blockage of sunlight and crop failures leading to mass starvation, in addition to the blast, fire and radiation.  A full scale nuclear war could destroy the human species and most complex forms of life on Earth.  

    Given such high stakes, why do we tolerate nuclear weapons?  I believe that there are two major reasons.  First, we have been misled to believe that nuclear weapons actually protect their possessors.  They do not.  These weapons can be used to threaten retaliation, to retaliate or to attack preventively in a first-strike, but they cannot protect.  

    Second, we have grown far too complacent about these devices of mass annihilation over the period of 65 years since their last use in warfare.  But the odds of catastrophe are too high for complacency.  According to Stanford Professor Emeritus Martin Hellman, an expert in risk analysis, a child born today has at least a ten percent chance over the course of his or her expected lifetime of dying in a nuclear attack and possibly as high as a fifty percent chance.  These are clearly unacceptable odds.

    Any use of nuclear weapons would be a crime against humanity.  These weapons cannot discriminate between soldiers and civilians, and the unnecessary suffering they cause is virtually boundless and can continue through generations.  The International Court of Justice, in its 1996 landmark Advisory Opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, described the unique characteristics of nuclear weapons as “their capacity to cause untold human suffering, and their ability to cause damage to generations to come.”  The Court wrote: “The destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time.  They have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.”

    The use, even the threat of use, of nuclear weapons is morally abhorrent.  The possession of nuclear weapons should be taboo.  No country has the right to possess weapons that could destroy our species and much of life.  They threaten our true inalienable rights – as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to life, liberty and security of person.  Nuclear weapons are the negation of these rights.  They are an extreme manifestation of fear and militarism, reflecting the most destructive elements of the human spirit.

    The generations who are alive today on the planet are challenged by the imperative to end the nuclear weapons era and strengthen our common efforts for achieving the global good as reflected in the eight Millennium Development Goals.  This will require leadership.  At present, this leadership has resided primarily with the United Nations and with civil society organizations.  The UN and its supporting civil society organizations have provided vision and direction for social responsibility on disarmament, demilitarization and improving the lives of the world’s people.  

    The key to achieving a world without nuclear weapons lies in a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  But agreement on such a treaty will require a far greater commitment by the governments of the world, including the nine nuclear weapon states.  The United States, as the most powerful of these governments, will need to be pushed from below by its citizens.  Each of us needs to embrace this issue, along with whatever other issues move us to action.  It is an issue on which the future of humanity and life rest.  

    I’d like to share with you a reflection from my new book, God’s Tears, Reflections on the Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It is called, “The Final Period?”

    The Final Period?

    “Scientists tell us that the universe was created with a “Big Bang” some 15 billion years ago.  To represent this enormous stretch of time, we can imagine a 15,000 page book.  It would be a very large and heavy book, some 50 times larger than a normal book.  In this book, each page would represent one million years in the history of the universe.  If there were 1,000 words on each page, each word would represent 1,000 years.  

    “Most of the book would be about the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang.  Our solar system would not occur in this history of the universe until page 10,500.  It would take another 500 pages until the first primitive forms of life occurred on Earth some four billion years ago.  The slow evolution of life would occupy the book nearly to its end.  It would not be until page 14,997 that human-like creatures would appear on the planet, and it would not be until just ten words from the end of page 15,000 that human civilization would make its appearance.  

    “The Nuclear Age, which began in 1945, would be represented by the final period, the punctuation mark on the last page of the 15,000 page book.  This small mark at the end of the volume indicates where we are today: inheritors of a 15 billion year history with the capacity to destroy ourselves and most other forms of life with our technological achievements.  It is up to us to assure that the page is turned, and that we move safely into the future, free from the threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity and all forms of life.”

    Let me conclude with these thoughts: As the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have warned us over and over, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.”  We must choose, and we are fortunate that we still have a choice.  In another great war, such as World War II, the war that gave birth to both nuclear weapons and the United Nations, that choice could be foreclosed.  Or, it could be foreclosed in less dramatic ways, by a nuclear accident or nuclear terrorism.  

    Now, today, we have the opportunity to turn the page of that great book that documents the development of our universe, the evolution of life and the history of humankind.  Let us seize that opportunity with all our hearts and all our capacities by working to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen the United Nations and international law, and put the missing Millennium Development Goal, disarmament, to work in achieving the elimination of poverty and hunger, and the promotion of education, health care, opportunity and hope for all of the world’s people.

  • Shining a Light on Peace Leadership

    At the Foundation’s 27th Annual Evening for Peace on October 29, 2010, we will honor two outstanding individuals who have made significant contributions to building a more peaceful world.  

    Reverend James Lawson, a proponent of Gandhian nonviolence, was a mentor in nonviolence to Martin Luther King, Jr.  When Reverend Lawson speaks of nonviolence, he speaks authoritatively of his experience in one of the most important nonviolent movements of the 20th century, the U.S. civil rights movement.   

    Professor Glenn Paige is the author of Nonkilling Global Political Science and founder of the Center for Global Nonkilling.  He is pioneering in working for a nonkilling world, seeking to make the killing of other human beings a taboo.  

    The lives of our two honorees, like the lives of so many other individuals, have been affected by war.  Reverend Lawson was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, for which he spent time in prison.  Professor Paige served as an enlisted man and officer in the Korean War and then wrote a book justifying the war.  Later, he would criticize his own book and conclude there was neither justification for killing in that war nor any war.  For both men, the experience of war changed the course of their lives and put them on the path of peace.  

    War not only kills with bullets and bombs.  It also kills indirectly by robbing the world’s people of the resources for survival.  As President Eisenhower emphasized in his Farewell Address, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

    The world is spending more than $1.5 trillion annually on war and its preparation.  While it does so, the United Nations struggles to raise the resources to meet its Millennium Development Goals to eradicate poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and build a global partnership for development.

    War and violence are the enemies of humanity.  There is a better way forward as shown in the lives of our honorees, nonviolence and nonkilling.  Nuclear weapons have made peace an imperative of the Nuclear Age.  We must eliminate these weapons, which threaten civilization and the human future, and we must also eliminate war.  That is the work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  The support of individuals like you allows us to work each day for a more peaceful and decent world, free of nuclear threat.

  • Que es la Nuclear Age Peace Foundation?

    Click here for the English version.


    Una voz de la conciencia en la era nuclear. La Fundación siempre ha considerado a la paz como un imperativo de la era nuclear, en la creencia de que cualquier guerra en la era nuclear tiene el potencial para convertirse en un conflicto de aniquilación masiva.


    Un defensor de la paz, el derecho internacional y un mundo sin armas nucleares. La Fundación no sólo educa sino que es un defensor no partidista para lograr la paz, fortaleciendo el derecho internacional, y poner fin a la amenaza que representan las armas nucleares para la humanidad.


    Una fuerza de impugnación de la dependencia de las armas nucleares. La Fundación desafía la excusa de los países que justifican la dependencia de las armas nucleares como disuasión (ver nuestro DVD “El mito de la disuasión nuclear”).


    Una fuente de inspiración para los jóvenes de que un mundo mejor es posible. La Fundación se comunica con los jóvenes a través de concursos, pasantías y cursos de capacitación de liderazgo de paz, tratando de elevar su nivel de conciencia y compromiso en las cuestiones de la paz, el desarme nuclear y la seguridad mundial.


    Un líder en la formación de liderazgo para la paz. La Fundación es pionera en entrenamientos de liderazgo para la paz entre jóvenes y adultos en todo el país. El programa está dirigido por Paul Chappell, un graduado de West Point y autor de dos libros para poner fin a la guerra.


    Un catalizador para involucrar a las artes con la paz. La Fundación promueve la paz en las artes a través de su Concurso Anual de Poesía Barbara Mandigo Kelly y el Concurso Anual de Video Premio Swackhamer por el Desarme.


    Un foro para reexaminar las prioridades nacionales y mundiales. La Fundación organiza diálogos y conferencias, incluyendo su Conferencia Anual Frank K. Kelly sobre el futuro de la humanidad, tratando temas clave que enfrenta el planeta.


    Un almacén de datos y fuente de análisis sobre las principales cuestiones nucleares. La Fundación ha creado la NuclearFiles.org como una fuente de información precisa acerca de la Era Nuclear. También mantiene extensos archivos de artículos en su sitio web WagingPeace.org.


    Una organización que busca que las naciones actúen en nombre de la humanidad. La Fundación participa en importantes reuniones internacionales, tales como la Conferencia de No Proliferación y Revisión del Tratado, y trata de influir en las posiciones nacionales para lograr políticas más seguras y sanas, incluido el apoyo a una Convención Sobre Armas Nucleares para la gradual eliminación verificable, irreversible y transparente de las armas nucleares.


    Una comunidad de ciudadanos comprometidos. La Fundación está compuesta por personas de todas las clases sociales y muchas partes del mundo que pretenden acabar con la amenaza que las armas nucleares representan para la humanidad y construir un mundo más justo y pacífico.