Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

  • Ratification of New START is Necessary

    In April 2009, President Obama went to Prague and spoke out for a world free of nuclear weapons.  “I state clearly and with conviction,” he said, “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  He indicated that he was prepared to take necessary steps to advance this cause.  In order “to reduce our warheads and stockpiles,” he promised to negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians during the year.  This treaty, known as New START, took longer than anticipated to negotiate and was signed by Presidents Obama and Medvedev on April 8, 2010.  The next month, the treaty was submitted to the Senate for ratification.

    While the agreement was being negotiated, the first START agreement expired, ending the provisions for verification between the US and Russia.  Since December 2009, there have been no verification procedures in place for conducting inspections of the other side’s nuclear arsenal.  This is a gap that many analysts have noted badly needs filling.  It is one of the principal arguments in favor of ratification.  Beyond this, though, failure to ratify would be a serious setback in US-Russian relations, and would indicate that further progress on nuclear disarmament is stalled and unlikely to proceed.

    The principal provisions of the new treaty would lower the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads on each side to 1,550 (down about a third from current requirements under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty) and the number of deployed delivery vehicles to 700.  There are some nuances to the counting that affect the final numbers, such as counting each bomber as one nuclear warhead despite the fact that each bomber could carry up to 24 warheads.  The Russians also expressed concerns over US plans to continue to deploy missile defenses in Europe, which the Russians believe affect the strategic balance between the two countries in a manner unfavorable to them.  They indicated that, at some point, US deployment of missile defenses could cause them to withdraw from the treaty.  

    A number of conservatives in the US, including Senator Jim DeMint, have expressed the view that the Russian position opposing deployment of US missile defenses should not constrain the US missile defense program.  Others, including Senator Jon Kyl, have taken the position that the US should devote more resources over the next ten years to modernizing the nuclear arsenal and infrastructure and the means for delivery of nuclear weapons.  President Obama has sought to head off these concerns preemptively by committing to $80 billion for modernizing nuclear weapons over the next ten years and $100 billion for improving nuclear weapons delivery systems.  These funds will be added to the more than $50 billion annually already committed to supporting the US nuclear arsenal, a larger amount than during the Cold War.  

    The US nuclear modernization program will increase our capacity to produce new nuclear weapons and will send a message to the world that the US continues to rely upon its nuclear arsenal for security. Even with this extra $180 billion commitment, some conservatives are unlikely to ever be satisfied with the treaty.  John Bolton, a former US Ambassador to the United Nations in the George W. Bush administration, has called New START “unilateral disarmament.”  He has worried publicly that the agreement “will severely limit our small-war capabilities.”

    Against this background, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 16, 2010 voted 14 to 4 in favor of sending the New START agreement to the full Senate for debate.  The majority included three Republicans, more than was expected.  Does this bode well for Senate ratification of the treaty?  This remains unclear.  It suggests, though, that all Republicans will not vote as a block against ratification, which would sink the treaty.  Senator Richard Lugar showed leadership, along with Senator John Kerry, in pushing the treaty to the Senate floor.  Their joint leadership, along with that of President Obama, will remain important in seeking the 67 votes needed for the treaty’s ratification.  

    Failure to ratify would be a major setback not only for the Obama administration, but also for the prospects of achieving President Obama’s vision, and that of many other committed leaders, of a world without nuclear weapons.  Failure to ratify the New START agreement would diminish the prospects for a future free of nuclear catastrophe and even of a human future.  The promise of continuing to modernize the US nuclear arsenal has already been pledged as a price extracted for Senate ratification.  If this price is paid and there is no Senate ratification, it would signal the worst of all possible outcomes for those who seek an end to the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

  • El Día Internacional de la Paz

    Click here for the English version.


    En este día, como cualquier otro,
    Hay soldados luchando y muriendo,
    tratantes de armas ofrecen gustosos,
    misiles y bombas al mejor postor
    y la paz es un sueño lejano.


    No sólo este día, sino cada día,
    envainemos la espada, salvemos el cielo
    para las nubes, los océanos para el misterio
    y la tierra para la alegría.


    Dejemos de honrar a quien hace la guerra
    y demos medallas a quien promueve la paz.


    En este día, como cualquier otro,
    Hay infinitas posibilidades para cambiar
    nuestros caminos.


    La paz es un manzano cargado de frutos,
    una nueva forma de amar al mundo.

  • Nuclear Detonation: Fifteen Scenarios

    Many people are complacent about nuclear weapons.  They would prefer to deny the nuclear threat and put nuclear dangers out of their minds.  Unfortunately, this is a dangerous approach to a serious threat to humanity. There are many ways in which a nuclear detonation could take place, including accident, miscalculation and intentional use.  Any use of nuclear weapons, including by accident or miscalculation, could lead to the destruction of a city as occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Further, a nuclear weapon detonation could trigger a retaliatory response leading to nuclear war and even broader devastation, including the annihilation of complex life on the planet.  Listed below are 15 possible scenarios for a nuclear detonation.  These are 15 arguments against complacency and for engagement in seeking a world without nuclear weapons.

    1. False Alarm:  A false alarm triggers a decision to launch a nuclear attack.
    2. Unauthorized Launch: Launch codes are obtained by hackers, espionage agents or coercion and used to launch high alert forces.  This could involve the physical takeover of a mobile missile, or the use of codes obtained via pre-delegation.
    3. Accidental Nuclear War:  An accidental launch leads to an escalation into a nuclear war.
    4. Control and Communications failure:  A rogue field commander or submarine commander falls out or deliberately puts himself out of communications with his central command and launches a nuclear attack on his own authority.
    5. “Dr. Strangelove” Nuclear War:  The launch of a nuclear attack by a rogue field or submarine commander leads to a retaliatory strike that escalates into a nuclear war.
    6. A Terrorist Bomb:  A terrorist group obtains nuclear materials and creates an unsophisticated nuclear device or obtains a bomb and succeeds in detonating it in a large city.
    7. Terrorist Bomb Triggers Nuclear War:  A terrorist nuclear attack is disguised in such a way as to appear to come from another nuclear weapons state, leading to a “retaliatory strike” that escalates into nuclear war.
    8. Preemptive Attack:  Believing one’s country to be under nuclear attack or about to be under such attack, a leader of a nuclear weapon state launches a preemptive nuclear attack.
    9. Preventive Nuclear War:  A nuclear weapons state launches an unprovoked nuclear attack against another country perceived to pose a future threat.  An example would be the use by Israel of a small tactical nuclear weapon against deeply buried nuclear facilities in Iran.
    10. Escalation of Conventional War:  India and Pakistan, for example, engage in further conventional war over Kashmir.  The conflict escalates into a nuclear exchange of approximately 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons, resulting in potentially a billion deaths.
    11. Military Parity:  In a conventional war, Russia defaults to nuclear weapons due to its deteriorating conventional military capability.
    12. Irrational Leader:  An unstable and paranoid leader, fearing attack and/or regime change, launches a nuclear attack against perceived adversaries.  There are no democratic controls.
    13. Rational Leader:  A leader, making what he deems to be rational calculations, launches a nuclear attack against perceived adversaries to assure the survival of his country.  There are no democratic controls.
    14. Prompt Global Strike:  The US proceeds with plans to place conventional weapons on some of its inter-continental ballistic missiles.  When launching one of these missiles, it is mistaken for a nuclear-armed warhead, resulting in a retaliatory nuclear attack.
    15. Intentional Nuclear War:  Tensions and conflict between major nuclear powers mount, leading to an intentional nuclear war.  Civilization is destroyed and complex life on Earth is ended.

  • Zaid’s Misfortune

    Zaid had the misfortune
    of being born in Iraq, a country
    rich with oil.

    Iraq had the misfortune
    of being invaded by a country
    greedy for oil.

    The country greedy for oil
    had the misfortune of being led
    by a man too eager for war.

    Zaid’s misfortune multiplied
    when his parents were shot down
    in front of their medical clinic.

    Being eleven and haunted
    by the deaths of one’s parents
    is a great misfortune.

    In Zaid’s misfortune
    a distant silence engulfs
    the sounds of war.

  • 2010 Sadako Peace Day

    Welcome to this 16th annual commemoration held in Sadako Peace Garden.  This garden – a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria – is made sacred by your presence; by your willingness to look back at the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and, most of all, by your commitment to building a more peaceful and decent world, free of nuclear threat.

    On this day 65 years ago, a single atomic bomb destroyed the city of Hiroshima, killing some 90,000 people by blast, fire and radiation.  By the end of 1945, some 140,000 victims of the bombing were dead and another 70,000 had died from the Nagasaki bombing.

    Hiroshima ushered in the Nuclear Age.  It was a tragic beginning that pointed toward the possibility of an even more tragic ending.  In the excitement that marked the end of World War II, the atomic bombings cast a dark shadow over the future of civilization and the human species.

    In the past 65 years, we have witnessed a truly mad nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union, based on the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction.  We have ascribed god-like characteristics of power and protection to bombs that have no purpose other than the threat of massive annihilation and the carrying out of that threat.

    At its peak in 1986, there were some 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  Today there are still more than 20,000 of these weapons in the arsenals of nine countries: the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Without a plan of action to eliminate these weapons, they will continue to proliferate and will be used by accident, miscalculation or intention.

    Over the past 65 years, the United States alone has spent more than $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.  We still spend more than $50 billion annually on these weapons.  What a terrible waste of resources and opportunity!

    The possession of these weapons challenges our humanity and our future.  We are here to remember what these bombs have done in the past, to imagine what they are capable of doing in the future, and to reinvigorate our commitment to ending the nuclear weapons era.

    Imagination is the creative beginning of change.  If we can imagine that a world with zero nuclear weapons it is possible to achieve such a world.  President Obama says, “America seeks the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  But he also says that he is not naïve and doesn’t see it happening in his lifetime.

    Perhaps I am naïve, but I can imagine achieving this goal in a far more urgent timeframe.  Over 4,000 Mayors for Peace throughout the world – mayors of cities large and small – believe the goal can be achieved by the year 2020.  Why not?  It is within our human capacity, if we will join together.

    To achieve a world free of nuclear weapons will require serious leadership from the US.  To achieve US leadership the people will need to lead their leaders.  That is our challenge and it is the daily work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  We thank you for caring and for joining us in this most critical work.

    I’d like to end with a poem from my new book, God’s Tears: Reflections on the Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The poem tells the story of Shoji Sawada, a young boy at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima.

    FORGIVE ME, MOTHER

    for

    Shoji Sawada

    After the bomb,
    the young boy
    awakened beneath
    the rubble of his room.

    He could hear
    his mother’s cries,
    still trapped
    within the fallen house.

    He struggled to free
    her, but he lacked
    the
    strength.

    A fire raged
    toward them.  Many people
    hurried past.

    Frightened and
    dazed, they would not stop
    to help him free
    his mother.

    He could hear
    her voice from the rubble.
    The voice was
    soft but firm.

    “You must run
    and save yourself,”
    she told
    him.  “You must go.”

    “Forgive me,” he
    said, bowing,
    “Forgive me,
    Mother.”

    He did as his
    mother wished.
    That was long
    ago, in 1945.

    The boy has long
    been a man, a good man.
    Yet he still runs from those flames.

  • Message for Hiroshima Day 2010

    The Nuclear Age is 65 years old.  The first test of a nuclear device took place on July 16, 1945 at the Alamogordo Test Range in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto Desert.  The Spanish name of this desert means “Journey of Death,” a fitting name for the beginning point of the Nuclear Age.  Just three weeks after the test, the United States destroyed the city of Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon, followed by the destruction of Nagasaki three days later.  By the end of 1945, the Journey of Death had claimed more than 200,000 human lives and left many other victims injured and suffering.  

    Over the past 65 years, the Journey of Death has continued to claim victims.  Not from the use of nuclear weapons in war, but from the radiation released in testing nuclear weapons (posturing).  We can be thankful that we have not had a nuclear war in the past 65 years, but we must not be complacent.  Our relative good fortune in the past is not a guarantee that nuclear weapons will not be used in the future.  Over the years, the power of nuclear weapons has increased dramatically.  They have become capable of ending civilization and complex life on the planet.  What could possibly justify this risk?

    We remember the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as cautionary tales.  The survivors of the bombings, the hibakusha, have been strong proponents of “Never Again!”  They have spoken out about what they experienced so that their past does not become our future.  They have warned us repeatedly, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.”  We must choose: nuclear weapons or a human future.  The choice should not be difficult.  Humanity should shout out with a single voice that we choose a world free of the overarching nuclear threat, a world free of nuclear weapons.

    The people must lead their leaders, choosing hope for a far more decent human future.  The United States alone has spent more than $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons over the span of the Nuclear Age.  The world currently spends more than $1.5 trillion annually on weapons, war and the preparation for war, while spending only a small portion of this on efforts to meet human needs and achieve social justice.  Clearly, change is needed.  Bringing about this change could begin by joining together to eliminate the nuclear weapons threat to the human future.  

    The future is now.  Sixty-five years of nuclear threat to humanity is enough.  We continue to rely upon the theory of deterrence at our peril.  The theory requires rationality from leaders who are not always rational.  The higher rationality and greater good for humanity would be to eliminate the threat by eliminating the weapons.  The time to raise our voices and demand a world free of nuclear weapons is now, before it is too late.  On this demand we must be both insistent and persistent.

  • Countdown to Zero: Your Role in Getting There

    In the Nuclear Age, the potential exists to end civilization and destroy complex life on Earth.  In the 20th century, we moved from homicide to genocide to the potential for omnicide – the death of all.

    A new documentary film, Countdown to Zero, by the producers of An Inconvenient Truth, stresses one core principle of the Nuclear Age: The only safe number of nuclear weapons in the world is zero.  Nuclear weapons do not make us safer; they leave us standing on the precipice of nuclear catastrophe.

    What is still needed, however, is a sense of urgency and a plan to get from where we are, in a world with some 20,000 nuclear weapons, to zero.  

    President Obama, who favors a world without nuclear weapons, says, “This goal will not be reached quickly – perhaps not in my lifetime.”  Secretary of State Clinton has says that the goal may be reached “in some century.”  

    In the meantime, the US continues to rely upon nuclear weapons for its security and continues to spend more than $50 billion annually on its nuclear weapons program, including modernizing its nuclear arsenal.  The US plans to spend $80 billion on improving the US nuclear weapons infrastructure over the next decade and $100 billion on improving nuclear weapons delivery vehicles.  That does not seem like a serious path to zero.  It seems instead like a path for maintaining nuclear “superiority.”

    The problem with nuclear weapons is not just that terrorists or rogue states may acquire and use them.  The problem is that any state has nuclear weapons, including the nine states that currently do: US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.   Nuclear weapons in any hands, including our own, pose a significant threat to humanity.

    A plan to get to zero nuclear weapons will require negotiations on a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  Such good faith negotiations are a requirement of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Other indicators that the US is serious about achieving zero nuclear weapons would include:

    1. Ceasing to provide special favorable treatment to parties outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), such as the US-India Nuclear deal.
    2. Ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and urging other countries to do so, so that the treaty may enter into force.
    3. Stopping to press for strategic advantage – weapons modernization, missile defenses, space weaponization, global strike force, etc.
    4. Recognizing publicly the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal as a starting point for achieving a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East.
    5. Taking all nuclear weapons off a quick-launch or launch-on-warning posture.
    6. Adopting a policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons, with no exceptions, changing the current policy of reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states not in compliance with the NPT.

    Getting to zero will require US leadership and a sense of urgency.  How is that to happen?  In the way any significant change has always occurred; it will require the people to lead their leaders.  That means that each of us has a role to play.

    We can start by supporting ratification of New START, the new agreement between the US and Russia, lowering the number of nuclear weapons on each side to 1,550 each.  This is a step in the right direction.  It is a necessary step, but not sufficient. 

    Here are three steps you can take today to become part of the ongoing solution:

    First, educate yourself.  Sign up at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s website, www.wagingpeace.org, to receive our free monthly newsletter, The Sunflower.

    Second, take action.  Go to www.wagingpeace.org/goto/action to participate in the Foundation’s Action Alert Network.

    Third, educate others.  Speak out and be a force for ending complacency on this most critical of all issues confronting humanity.  Encourage others to see Countdown to Zero and to also sign up for The Sunflower and the Action Alert Network at www.wagingpeace.org. 

  • El sexagésimo quinto aniversario de la Era Nuclear

    El 16 de julio de 1945 marcó el comienzo de la Era Nuclear. Ese día, Estados Unidos llevó a cabo la primera prueba de un artefacto atómico. La prueba fue nombrada Trinidad y se llevó a cabo en el campo de pruebas de Alamogordo, en el desierto Jornada del Muerto en Nuevo México. La bomba tuvo como nombre clave  “El Artefacto”.


    La prueba utilizó un dispositivo de implosión de plutonio, el mismo tipo de arma que se utilizaría en la ciudad de Nagasaki tan solo tres y media semanas después. Su fuerza explosiva fue de 20 kilotones de TNT.


    Los nombres asociados con la prueba merecen reflexión. “El Artefacto”, que indica algo simple e inocuo, se hizo estallar en un desierto llamado Jornada del Muerto. El plutonio, la fuerza explosiva de la bomba, fue nombrado por Plutón, el dios romano del mundo subterráneo. El isótopo de plutonio que se usó en la bomba, plutonio-239, es uno de los materiales radiactivos más mortales en el planeta. En la Tierra sólo existía en pequeñas cantidades antes de que EE.UU. comenzara a crearlo para su uso en las bombas por la fisión del uranio-238.


    No existe una explicación definitiva de por qué la prueba fue nombrada Trinidad, pero en general parece que se asocia con un concepto religioso de Dios. Los pensamientos de J. Robert Oppenheimer, director científico del proyecto creador de la bomba y quien dio nombre a la prueba, ofrecen algunas pistas.


    “No está claro por qué elegí el nombre, pero sé bien las ideas que rondaban por mi cabeza. Hay un poema de John Donne, escrito poco antes de su muerte, que yo conozco y amo. Esta es una cita de ese poema: «En Occidente y Oriente / en todos los mapas – yo soy uno- uno solo, / Y la muerte toca la resurrección.”   Eso aún no explica lo de la Trinidad, pero en otro poema, más conocido como devocionario, Donne dice, ‘Golpea mi corazón, tres personas en un Dios.”’


    La reacción de Oppenheimer al ser testigo de la explosión atómica nos hace recordar estas líneas de la escritura sagrada hinduista Bhagavad Gita.


    Si el resplandor de mil soles


    Estallaran de una vez en el cielo,


    Eso sería como el esplendor del Poderoso …


    Me he convertido en la Muerte,


    El destructor de mundos.


    ¿Oppenheimer pensó que ese día había muerto, o más bien, todos nosotros.? Desde luego que esa primera explosión nuclear presagiaba la posibilidad de que el mundo sería destrozado (¿por un “Poderoso”?), Muy pronto eso ocurriría en Hiroshima y Nagasaki.


    Muchas cosas han pasado en estos 65 años de la Era Nuclear. En Hiroshima y Nagasaki hemos visto la devastación que las armas nucleares inflingen sobre las ciudades y sus habitantes. Hemos sido testigos de una carrera armamentista verdaderamente absurda entre Estados Unidos y la antigua Unión Soviética, en la que el número de armas nucleares en el mundo aumentó a 70.000. Hemos aprendido que un arma nuclear puede destruir una ciudad, unas pocas armas nucleares pueden destruir un país, y una guerra nuclear podría destruir la civilización y la mayoría de las formas de vida en el planeta.


    Las armas nucleares han puesto en peligro la especie humana, y aún hoy existen más de 20.000 armas nucleares en el mundo. Nueve países ya poseen estas armas. La humanidad sigue jugando con el fuego del omnicidio – la muerte de todos. Todavía estamos esperando por los líderes que nos llevarán más allá de esta amenaza global hacia un futuro común. En lugar de seguir esperando, tenemos que convertirnos en líderes.


    En este 65 º aniversario del embarque en el camino de la muerte, debemos cambiar de rumbo y eludir el precipicio nuclear. Las armas son ilegales, inmorales, antidemocráticas e innecesarias militarmente. La manera más segura de ponerlas bajo control es mediante la negociación de un nuevo tratado, una Convención de Armas Nucleares, para que en forma transparente, progresiva, verificable e irreversible se logre la eliminación de las armas nucleares.


    Estados Unidos condujo al mundo a la era nuclear. El presidente Obama ha señalado que el país también tiene una responsabilidad moral para encontrar una salida. Esto se puede lograr, pero no con ciudadanos ignorantes, apáticos y en estado de negación. Sesenta y cinco años en el Camino de la Muerte es demasiado tiempo. Llegó el momento para que los ciudadanos despierten y se involucren en este tema como si su futuro dependiera de ello, y en realidad así es.


    La ferviente oración de los hibakusha, los supervivientes de Hiroshima y Nagasaki, es “¡Nunca más!” Ellos hablan para que su pasado no se convierta en nuestro futuro. Es algo en lo que cada uno de nosotros debe participar, tanto con voces y acciones para lograr un mundo libre de armas nucleares.

  • The Anniversary of the Nuclear Age

    The Anniversary of the Nuclear Age

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    July 16, 1945 marked the beginning of the Nuclear Age. On that day, the United States conducted the first explosive test of an atomic device. The test was code-named Trinity and took place at the Alamogordo Test Range in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto Desert. The bomb itself was code-named “The Gadget.”

    The Trinity test used a plutonium implosion device, the same type of weapon that would be used on the city of Nagasaki just three and a half weeks later.  It had the explosive force of 20 kilotons of TNT.

    The names associated with the test deserve reflection. “The Gadget,” something so simple and innocuous, was exploded in a desert whose name in Spanish means “Journey of Death.”  Plutonium, the explosive force in the bomb, was named for Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. The isotope of plutonium that was used in the bomb, plutonium-239, is one of the most deadly radioactive materials on the planet.  It existed only in minute quantities on Earth before the US began creating it for use in its bombs by the fissioning of uranium-238.

    There is no definitive explanation for why the test was named Trinity, but it generally seems most associated with a religious concept of God. The thoughts of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project to create the bomb and the person who named the test, provide insights into the name:

    “Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: ‘As West and East / In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection.’ That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God.’”

    Oppenheimer’s reaction to witnessing the explosion of the atomic device was to recall these lines from the Bhagavad Gita:

    If the radiance of a thousand suns
    Were to burst at once into the sky,
    That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One…
    I am become Death,
    The shatterer of Worlds.

    Did Oppenheimer think that he had become death that day, or that all of us had?  Certainly that first nuclear explosion portended the possibility that worlds would be shattered (by a “Mighty One”?), as they were soon to be in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Trinity test. We are now 65 years into the Nuclear Age.  At Hiroshima and Nagasaki we have seen the devastation that nuclear weapons can inflict on cities and their inhabitants. We have witnessed a truly mad arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, in which the number of nuclear weapons in the world rose to 70,000. We have learned that one nuclear weapon can destroy a city, a few nuclear weapons can destroy a country, and a nuclear war could destroy civilization and most of the complex life forms on the planet.

    Nuclear weapons have endangered the human species, and yet today there are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Nine countries now possess these weapons. Humanity is still playing with the fire of omnicide – the death of all. We are still waiting for the leaders who will take us beyond this overarching threat to our common future. Instead of continuing to wait, we must ourselves become these leaders.

    On this 65th anniversary of embarking on the Journey of Death, we must change course and move back from the nuclear precipice. The weapons are illegal, immoral, undemocratic and militarily unnecessary. The surest way to bring them under control is by negotiating a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    The United States led the world into the Nuclear Age. President Obama has pointed out that the country also has a moral responsibility to lead the way out. This can be done, but not with a citizenry that is ignorant, apathetic and in denial. Sixty-five years on the Journey of Death is long enough. It is past time for citizens to awaken and become engaged in this issue as if their future depended upon it, as it does.

    The fervent prayer of the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is “Never Again!”  They speak out so that their past does not become our future. It is a prayer that each of us must join in answering, both with our voices and actions to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

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  • Tale of Two Nuclear Whistleblowers

    Reliable sources have revealed that as a result of a secret trial, Iranian nuclear whistleblower Amid Nasri has been sentenced to 18 years in solitary confinement.  Nasri, a former worker at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant, revealed to the The Sunday Times in London that Iran was developing nuclear materials as part of a program to create nuclear weapons.  Lured to Rome by a strikingly beautiful Iranian secret agent, Nasri was kidnapped by the secret service and returned to Iran for trial.  

    The government of Iran issued a brief statement in which they claim that Nasri violated the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran and was tried and punished accordingly.  They state that he had a contractual obligation not to release any information concerning the work of the uranium enrichment plant where he worked.  

    Nasri has been incarcerated in Iran’s highest level security prison and has not been allowed to speak to the press or to foreign officials.  He is under such severe restrictions that he is not allowed even to speak with other prison inmates.  

    There have been widespread protests from Western governments about Nasri’s treatment at the hands of the Iranian government.  A high-level UK official called the secret trial a “sham of the first order,” and harshly criticized the Iranian government for its heavy handed treatment of Nasri.   US officials have also protested Nasri’s conviction, calling him a hero for making public the information on the Iranian nuclear weapon program. 

    Before you become too concerned about the harsh treatment of this Iranian whistleblower acting for the common good, I need to tell you that he is fictional.  He does not exist.  There is no Iranian whistleblower Amid Nasri.  There is also no proof of an Iranian nuclear weapon program, although there are concerns about its nuclear enrichment program.

    The story, though, is not entirely false.  There is an Israeli nuclear whistleblower by the name of Mordechai Vanunu.  He worked as a nuclear technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Israel.  He revealed information on the Israeli nuclear weapon program to the The Sunday Times in London in 1986.  He was lured from London to Rome by a beautiful Israeli secret agent, where he was kidnapped by Israel’s secret service and returned to Israel.  There he was given a secret trial, convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.  He served more than 11 years of his sentence in solitary confinement.  The Israelis claimed that Vanunu violated his contractual obligations of secrecy and was a national security risk. 

    Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, but under harsh parole terms.  He is not allowed to leave Israel or to travel too close to the Israeli border.  Nor is he allowed to talk to foreign journalists.  In 2007, Vanunu was sentenced to six more months in prison for violating the terms of his parole for speaking to the foreign media in 2004.  The sentence was later reduced by half, and in May 2010 Vanunu was returned to prison for three months.  Amnesty International has called Vanunu a prisoner of conscience.  Although he has received many awards for his courage in blowing the whistle on Israel’s nuclear weapons program and has been nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has received virtually no support from Western governments.

    What are we to learn from this tale of two whistleblowers, one fictional, one real?  One important lesson is the danger of nuclear double standards.  We cannot be content to make a hero of a fictional Iranian nuclear whistleblower, while turning a blind eye to the treatment of a real-life Israeli nuclear whistleblower and to the Israeli nuclear arsenal.

    Nuclear weapons are not reasonable weapons in the hands of any nation – not Israel, not Iran, not the US, the UK, or any other nation.  We should not be complacent with the punishment of truth-telling messengers such as Vanunu.  We should laud them and work to assure that no nation holds in its hands the nuclear power of mass annihilation. 

    The Final Document of the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference calls for a Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, a long time aspiration of the people of this region.  If such a zone is created, it will mean that Iran and other countries in the region will not be able to develop nuclear weapons, but it will also mean that Israel will not be able to continue to possess its nuclear arsenal, which is thought to contain some 200 nuclear weapons. 

    If we are going to prevent future replays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or even worse scenarios, we must rid the world of nuclear weapons.  It will not be easy, but it is necessary if we are to assure the continuation of human life on our planet.  President Obama has told us that America seeks “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  In that world, whistleblowers like Mordechai Vanunu will be respected and honored for the courage they displayed in revealing the truth in the face of the overwhelming power and hypocrisy of the state and of a global system that unwisely supported nuclear double standards.