Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

Preventing Omnicide

Omnicide is a word coined by philosopher John Somerville. It is an extension of the concepts of suicide and genocide. It means the death of all, the total negation and destruction of all life. Omnicide is suicide for all. It is the genocide of humanity writ large. It is what Rachel Carson began to imagine in her book, Silent Spring.

Can you imagine omnicide? No people. No animals. No trees. No friendships. No one to view the mountains, or the oceans, or the stars. No one to write a poem, or sing a song, or hug a baby, or laugh or cry. With no present, there can be no memory of the past, nor possibility of a future. There is nothing. Nuclear weapons make possible the end of all, of omnicide.

From the beginning of the universe some 15 billion years ago, it took 10.5 billion years before our planet was formed, and another 500 million years to produce the first life. From the first life on earth, it took nearly 4 billion years, up until 10,000 years ago, to produce human civilization. It is only in the last 65 years, barely a tick of the cosmic clock, that we have developed, deployed and used weapons capable of omnicide. It took nearly 15 billion years to create the self-awareness of the universe that we humans represent. This self-awareness could be lost in the blinding flash of a thermonuclear war and the nuclear winter that would follow.

In 1955, ten years into the Nuclear Age and shortly after the creation of thermonuclear weapons, a group of leading scientists, including Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, issued a Manifesto in which they said: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” Those are our choices, made necessary by the creation and threat of nuclear weapons.

If omnicide is possible, which it is, we must ask ourselves: What are we going to do about it? Can we be complacent in the face of this threat, or will we find a way to confront and eliminate it? This is the responsibility of all of us alive at this time in human history. It is a human responsibility. We created nuclear weapons. It is up to us to end their threat to present and future generations.

The unfortunate truth is that we humans have been far too complacent in the face of the omnicidal potential of nuclear weapons. There are many reasons for this. For some of us, the threat is too painful to face, and we deny it. For others, nuclear weapons are rationalized as a positive force in preventing wars, despite their omnicidal potential. For still others, the threat is real, but they feel too insignificant to bring about change.

Those who justify nuclear weapons generally do so on the basis of nuclear deterrence, the threat of nuclear retaliation. Deterrence is based upon the belief that all leaders will act rationally at all times and under all conditions, a very shaky proposition at best. One reason that Henry Kissinger and other former leaders are now calling for a world free of nuclear weapons is that they understand that deterrence has no power against terrorists in possession of nuclear arms. There can be zero tolerance of nuclear terrorism; but, if terrorism means the threat to injure or kill innocent people, aren’t all countries in possession of nuclear weapons, including our own, actually terrorists?

Carried to its extreme but logical conclusion, deterrence became Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). This is the threat of omnicide in the name of security. It is a very risky form of security. Today MAD may be thought to have a new meaning: Mutual Assured Delusions – delusions that nuclear weapons can provide security for their possessors.

Nuclear weapons do not and cannot provide physical protection for their possessors. The threat of retaliation is not protection. Unfortunately, these weapons, like other human endeavors, are subject to human fallibility. With nuclear weapons in human hands, there are no guarantees that nuclear war will not be initiated by accident or human error.

The starting point for ending the omnicidal threat of nuclear weapons is the recognition that the threat is real and pervasive, and requires action. Each of us is threatened. All we love and hold dear is threatened. The future is threatened. We are called upon to end our complacency and respond to this threat by demanding that our leaders develop a clear pathway to the total elimination of nuclear weapons and to the elimination of war as a means of resolving conflicts.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council.

October 29, 2009
Daisaku Ikeda’s Proposal for Nuclear Weapons Abolition
Daisaku Ikeda begins his five-point proposal for nuclear weapons abolition with a reference to hope being inherent in the “solidarity of ordinary citizens.” He states, “If nuclear weapons epitomize the forces that would divide and destroy the world, they can only be overcome by the solidarity of ordinary citizens, which transforms hope into the energy to create a new era.”

Thus, Ikeda’s major thesis in his proposal is that it will require the mobilization of citizens throughout the globe – not leaders, but citizens – to create a new era free from the overriding threat of nuclear annihilation that continues to exist today. He does not dismiss leaders, but he understands that necessary change will require the rock-solid support of ordinary citizens.

Ikeda urges leaders reliant on nuclear weapons to ask themselves these questions: “Are nuclear weapons really necessary? Why do we need to keep them? What justifies our own stockpiles of nuclear weapons when we make an issue out of other states’ possession of them? Does humanity really have no choice but to live under the threat of nuclear weapons?” To seriously ask these questions and grapple with answers would be a large step forward.

Ikeda also dismisses the double standards that have been associated with nuclear weapons, quoting the 2006 Report of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission chaired by Hans Blix: “The Commission rejects the suggestion that nuclear weapons in the hands of some pose no threat, while in the hands of others they place the world in mortal jeopardy.” Ikeda is clear that there can be no “good” and “bad” nuclear weapons. They are all dangerous and threatening to humanity.

Ikeda’s proposal is based upon three important foundations that have characterized his leadership: clear vision, unyielding determination and courageous action. He asks that these traits be put into practice by his followers and by people throughout the globe for the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world.

The five points of the proposal are as follows:
1. A shared vision of the five declared nuclear weapons states to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, which they will announce jointly at the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.
2. A United Nations Panel of Experts on nuclear weapons abolition, which will strengthen collaborative relations with civil society.
3. Progress by parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in strengthening nonproliferation mechanisms and removing obstacles to nuclear disarmament.
4. Cooperation among all states in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in national security.
5. A clear manifestation of will by the world’s people for an international norm that will provide the foundation for a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
All of the points are based upon a five-year program, concluding in 2015, to lead the world to the threshold of creating a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, which would provide for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

In addition to the five points, the proposal is filled with important insights, such as this: “The enemy is not nuclear weapons per se, nor is it the states that possess or develop them. The real enemy that we must confront is the ways of thinking that justify nuclear weapons: the readiness to annihilate others when they are seen as a threat or as a hindrance to the realization of our objectives.”

Daisaku Ikeda has set forth a powerful proposal to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. He is clear, however, that such a plan “will be no more than a dream if it remains locked up in one’s heart….What is needed is the courage to initiate action.” He has shown that courage. Now it is up to us to unlock our hearts and our courage, and to join in solidarity in seeking the goal.

Ikeda calls a world free of nuclear weapons “the greatest gift we can offer the future.” It is our collective responsibility to assure this gift is bestowed upon those who will follow us on the planet.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council.
October 20, 2009
Statement on the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

When the Nobel Committee announced the awarding of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama they indicated that they “attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” There is no doubt that Obama’s vision has brought new hope to this issue so critical for humanity’s future. It is clear that without America’s leadership it will not be possible to make serious progress on the elimination of nuclear weapons and, as president, Obama has expressed his commitment to that leadership.

Barack Obama is a purveyor of hope and this was recognized by the Nobel Committee. “Only very rarely,” they said, “has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” That hope is an inspiration to action to bolster cooperation among nations and change the world.

In commenting on the award, Obama was humble about his accomplishments and about being in the company of “the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.” He said he would accept the award “as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.”

President Obama drew attention to the dangers of nuclear proliferation “in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people.” He indicated that this was the reason that America had “begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weapons.” He could have, but did not, point with pride to his recent leadership at the United Nations Security Council resulting in a unanimous council resolution on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

Only one comment of the president in response to the award struck a discordant note, and that was his reiteration of his statement in Prague that the elimination of nuclear weapons may not be completed in his lifetime. He should be careful about lowering expectations on this most critical of all issues for the human future. In this context, he should bolster his own hope, along with the hopes of people across the globe, of achieving this goal within a far more compressed timeframe.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council.

October 9, 2009
A Major Step Forward on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament

The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council possess over 98 percent of the more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Today, President Obama led a session of the Council focusing on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. The other heads of state of the member states on the Security Council joined him for that meeting.

The Security Council is the organ of the United Nations with “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security….” The Council has not been pressing for nuclear disarmament because its five permanent members (US, Russia, UK, France and China) are the five principal nuclear weapons states in the world. These five states are required by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue good faith negotiations on nuclear disarmament, but they have been dragging their feet and consequently they’ve placed the NPT in jeopardy. There are four additional nuclear weapons states that are not parties to the NPT (Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea). These states must also be brought into any serious effort to prevent nuclear proliferation and achieve nuclear disarmament.

President Obama has called for action to achieve a nuclear weapons-free world, but has indicated that it might not be possible within his lifetime. At this special meeting of the UN Security Council, President Obama had a major platform to lead in his pursuit of that goal. He made clear on this global stage that nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament efforts can no longer be deferred without serious consequences for the human future. He underlined the continuing dangers to present and future generations that demands deliberate and urgent action. Bringing these issues to the UN Security Council opens the door for the Council itself to become far more active in pursuing nonproliferation and disarmament, including taking the following steps.

First, reaffirm the 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

Second, make commitments by the permanent members of the Council to never use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are parties to the NPT, and pledge policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances.

Third, endorse the five-point program proposed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, including engaging in negotiations on nuclear disarmament; strengthening security through the nuclear disarmament process; attaining universal membership in multilateral treaties; acting with transparency; and anticipating dangers from other weapons, including eliminating other weapons of mass destruction and limiting missiles, space weapons and conventional arms.

Fourth, instruct its Military Staff Committee, in accordance with the UN Charter, to work out a plan for the total elimination of nuclear weapons and bring this plan back to the Security Council for implementation and enforcement.

Fifth, exercise control over the process of nuclear disarmament, overseeing the manner in which inspections are carried out to assure that weapons are not retained or reintroduced.

Based on today’s unanimous passing of UNSC Resolution 1887, we can share the hope that progress on nuclear disarmament in the Security Council will continue. A bold start has been made and the members could agree to hold such meetings in the future on a regular basis to assure that the task of eliminating nuclear weapons receives high priority among the major threats to global security.

President Obama should be thanked for his initiative in convening and chairing this meeting of the Security Council. What has been missing up to now has been the leadership and political will to move forward the nuclear disarmament agenda. President Obama has demonstrated this leadership. Now it is time for other governments and for ordinary citizens to demonstrate the necessary political will to support this leadership to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council.

September 24, 2009
Still Loving the Bomb After All These Years

Jonathan Tepperman’s article in the September 7, 2009 issue of Newsweek, “Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb,” provides a novel but frivolous argument that nuclear weapons “may not, in fact, make the world more dangerous….” Rather, in Tepperman’s world, “The bomb may actually make us safer.” Tepperman shares this world with Kenneth Waltz, a University of California professor emeritus of political science, who Tepperman describes as “the leading ‘nuclear optimist.’”

Waltz expresses his optimism in this way: “We’ve now had 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It’s striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states.” Actually, there were a number of proxy wars between nuclear weapons states, such as those in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, and some near disasters, the most notable being the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Waltz’s logic is akin to observing a man falling from a high rise building, and noting that he had already fallen for 64 floors without anything bad happening to him, and concluding that so far it looked so good that others should try it. Dangerous logic!

Tepperman builds upon Waltz’s logic, and concludes “that all states are rational,” even though their leaders may have a lot of bad qualities, including being “stupid, petty, venal, even evil….” He asks us to trust that rationality will always prevail when there is a risk of nuclear retaliation, because these weapons make “the costs of war obvious, inevitable, and unacceptable.” Actually, he is asking us to do more than trust in the rationality of leaders; he is asking us to gamble the future on this proposition. “The iron logic of deterrence and mutually assured destruction is so compelling,” Tepperman argues, “it’s led to what’s known as the nuclear peace….” But if this is a peace worthy of the name, which it isn’t, it certainly is not one on which to risk the future of civilization. One irrational leader with control over a nuclear arsenal could start a nuclear conflagration, resulting in a global Hiroshima.

Tepperman celebrates “the iron logic of deterrence,” but deterrence is a theory that is far from rooted in “iron logic.” It is a theory based upon threats that must be effectively communicated and believed. Leaders of Country A with nuclear weapons must communicate to other countries (B, C, etc.) the conditions under which A will retaliate with nuclear weapons. The leaders of the other countries must understand and believe the threat from Country A will, in fact, be carried out. The longer that nuclear weapons are not used, the more other countries may come to believe that they can challenge Country A with impunity from nuclear retaliation. The more that Country A bullies other countries, the greater the incentive for these countries to develop their own nuclear arsenals. Deterrence is unstable and therefore precarious.

Most of the countries in the world reject the argument, made most prominently by Kenneth Waltz, that the spread of nuclear weapons makes the world safer. These countries joined together in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, but they never agreed to maintain indefinitely a system of nuclear apartheid in which some states possess nuclear weapons and others are prohibited from doing so. The principal bargain of the NPT requires the five NPT nuclear weapons states (US, Russia, UK, France and China) to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament, and the International Court of Justice interpreted this to mean complete nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.

Tepperman seems to be arguing that seeking to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons is bad policy, and that nuclear weapons, because of their threat, make efforts at non-proliferation unnecessary and even unwise. If some additional states, including Iran, developed nuclear arsenals, he concludes that wouldn’t be so bad “given the way that bombs tend to mellow behavior.” Those who oppose Tepperman’s favorable disposition toward the bomb, he refers to as “nuclear pessimists.” These would be the people, and I would certainly be one of them, who see nuclear weapons as presenting an urgent danger to our security, our species and our future.

Tepperman finds that when viewed from his “nuclear optimist” perspective, “nuclear weapons start to seem a lot less frightening.” “Nuclear peace,” he tells us, “rests on a scary bargain: you accept a small chance that something extremely bad will happen in exchange for a much bigger chance that something very bad – conventional war – won’t happen.” But the “extremely bad” thing he asks us to accept is the end of the human species. Yes, that would be serious. He also doesn’t make the case that in a world without nuclear weapons, the prospects of conventional war would increase dramatically. After all, it is only an unproven supposition that nuclear weapons have prevented wars, or would do so in the future. We have certainly come far too close to the precipice of catastrophic nuclear war.

As an ultimate celebration of the faulty logic of deterrence, Tepperman calls for providing any nuclear weapons state with a “survivable second strike option.” Thus, he not only favors nuclear weapons, but finds the security of these weapons to trump human security. Presumably he would have President Obama providing new and secure nuclear weapons to North Korea, Pakistan and any other nuclear weapons states that come along so that they will feel secure enough not to use their weapons in a first-strike attack. Do we really want to bet the human future that Kim Jong-Il and his successors are more rational than Mr. Tepperman?

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council. To read the Hiroshima Peace Declaration, click here.

September 4, 2009
The Spirit of Hiroshima

Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima city is the president of Mayors for Peace, an international organization of over 3,000 cities, with a vision of ridding the world of nuclear weapons by the year 2020. He is a tireless campaigner, on behalf of his city and the survivors of the bombing, for a world free of nuclear weapons.

On August 6, 2009, the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Mayor Akiba presented the city’s annual Peace Declaration to a large audience in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The Declaration, which has since been circulated around the world, expresses the “Spirit of Hiroshima,” a spirit characterized by forgiveness, struggle for peace, and determination that no other city suffers the same fate as did the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hiroshima is both a city and a symbol. As a city, it is modern and pleasant, having been rebuilt from the ashes and debris of devastation. As a symbol, Hiroshima’s fate is both a warning siren to humanity and a glimpse of a possible future for our world. It is the greatest hope of the people of Hiroshima that their past will not become humanity’s future. In the 2009 Hiroshima Peace Declaration, Mayor Akiba referred to the atomic bomb as a “weapon of human extinction.” This is an important insight. Too often, we take nuclear weapons for granted as part of the background of our lives, but we should not for a moment forget their existence and their capacity to annihilate the human species.

Mayor Akiba spoke of “the fervent desire” of the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that “No one else should ever suffer as we did,” underlining the central element of the Spirit of Hiroshima. The survivors are growing older, and they must pass the torch soon to younger generations throughout the world committed to ending the threat that nuclear weapons pose to all humanity.

Mayor Akiba also praised President Obama for his speech in Prague on April 5, 2009, and particularly for his statement that the United States, “…as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon…has a moral responsibility to act…and take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.” Mayor Akiba coined a term for the global majority that supports the abolition of nuclear weapons, the “Obamajority,” and called upon the rest of the world to join that majority. He emphasized the importance of the year 2020 in order to allow as many survivors of the bombing as possible “to enter a world without nuclear weapons.”

In the Declaration, Mayor Akiba also offered a creative proposal for restructuring the United Nations in order to “create a mechanism by which the voices of the people can be delivered directly into the UN.” He proposed creating a “Lower House” in the international organization “made up of 100 cities that have suffered major tragedies due to war and other disasters, plus another 100 cities with large populations, totaling 200 cities.” Then, the UN General Assembly would become the organization’s “Upper House.”

In concluding the Declaration, Mayor Akiba emphasized the power of the people and their responsibility to abolish nuclear weapons. It is a message that Americans should take seriously, for the good of America and the world. President Obama has committed the United States to attaining a world free of nuclear weapons. Now the American people must encourage and support that vision and help provide the political will that will be required to achieve it.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council. To read the Hiroshima Peace Declaration, click here.

August 28, 2009
New Hope for Nuclear Disarmament
Dr. Krieger delivered these remarks at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 15th Annual Sadako Peace Day commemoration in Santa Barbara, California on August 6, 2009.

This is the 15th year that we have commemorated Sadako Peace Day in this beautiful garden created by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria. It is a garden inspired by a young girl, Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when she was exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Ten years later, Sadako succumbed to radiation induced leukemia.

Before she died, she inspired her classmates by her valiant attempt to fold 1,000 paper cranes – a symbol of long life in Japan. Sadako wrote on the wings of one of these paper cranes: “I will write peace on your wings, and you will fly all over the world.” Each year, students send colorful paper cranes that they have folded, some 10 million of them, to Hiroshima in honor of Sadako. There is a statue of her with outstretched arms in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Today we join with the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and with people all over the world in remembering a somber and world changing day 64 years ago, when the first atomic weapon was used in warfare. We learned, or should have learned, that one bomb can destroy a city, that no longer would any city on the planet be safe from the threat of annihilation, and that we had created weapons capable of destroying humankind. This is a lot of information to take in, and I doubt that it has been fully absorbed by humanity even now.

I have been many times to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I have always been moved in these cities by the indomitable spirit of the survivors of the bombings. They express forgiveness and a personal desire to assure that no city ever again for any reason suffers their fate.

The simple facts about the Hiroshima bombing are these:
1. The United States created a nuclear weapon and dropped it on the center of the city of Hiroshima;
2. Some 90,000 people died immediately;
3. By the end of 1945, some 140,000 people had died;
4. Most of the victims were civilians;
5. Initial survivors of the bombing, such as Sadako, have continued to die as a result of cancers and leukemias caused by radiation; and
6. The world was introduced to a new weapon capable of ending human life on our planet.
Of all the comments made in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, I find those of Albert Camus most insightful: “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery,” he wrote. “We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests.”

Today we mark the 64th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I believe that humankind has survived for these past 64 years far more by good fortune than by the effectiveness of the theory of deterrence. Accidents, miscalculations and miscommunications have brought us to the precipice of nuclear disaster on many occasions.

What we don’t know is how long our good fortune of avoiding the use of these weapons can last. Given the uncertainties of living in a world with more than 20,000 nuclear weapons, many on hair-trigger alert, we would be wise to move rapidly toward the global abolition of these weapons.

To achieve this goal, only the US can lead the way. This has been the position of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for many years. In March of this year, we delivered an Appeal to the White House with over 200,000 signatures calling for this leadership with a sense of urgency.

Needless to say, we were extremely pleased by President Obama’s speech on nuclear weapons delivered in Prague on April 5, 2009. He demonstrated that he has a firm grasp of the problem. “The existence of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War,” he said. “No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light.”

President Obama did something startling for an American president. He recognized the moral responsibility of the United States to act and lead “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon.” This is a great sign of hope and promise.

“I state clearly and with conviction,” President Obama said, “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” More hope, but hope tempered with a call for patience: “I’m not naïve,” he said. “This goal will not be reached quickly – perhaps not in my lifetime.” The President is a young man, and we wish him a long life, but nuclear dangers require of us a sense of urgency.

What might the President do to express this sense of urgency?

First, visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just as he visited concentration camps in Europe. Be the first US President to take this step. Make the threat of nuclear war, nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation vivid to people everywhere.

Second, direct our negotiators to be bold in agreeing to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the US and Russian arsenals, to de-alert these arsenals and to declare policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons.

Third, assure that the new US Nuclear Posture Review gives an accurate assessment of the risks of continuing to rely upon nuclear deterrence and the benefits of moving rapidly to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

Fourth, convene the leaders of the world to negotiate a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

It has recently been announced that President Obama will personally chair a meeting the heads of state of United Nations Security Council members on nonproliferation and disarmament this fall. This is real cause for hope.

But we can expect opposition from those blind to the risks of continuing to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. President Obama needs our support. The world needs our engagement on this issue.

The most important thing we can do as planetary citizens is to pass the world on intact to the next generation. Ending the nuclear weapons era is a responsibility we owe to the future. We know you are here because you care. Please continue to take a stand and speak out as if the very future of humanity depended upon what you do. It does. The President needs your support and so do the children of the future.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor on the World Future Council.
August 6, 2009
The Hiroshima Challenge

Hiroshima, as the first city attacked by an atomic weapon, was transformed to a city of ashes and death. From this devastation, it would be reborn to challenge humanity to a higher destiny.

Hiroshima became more than a place; it became a symbol of the terrifying threat of a new age of virtually unlimited destructive power. One bomb could destroy one city. By implication, a few bombs could destroy countries and a few dozen bombs could reduce civilization to ruins. As the nuclear arms race gained momentum, the future of life on the planet was placed at risk. Eventually tens of thousands of nuclear weapons would be created and deployed. We humans, by our own scientific and technological cleverness, had created the tools of our own annihilation. Hiroshima was the opening chapter of the Nuclear Age.

Hiroshima was destroyed in August 1945 and by the spring of the next year blades of grass and even flowers had returned. The city engaged in the arduous task of rebuilding. But Hiroshima could never again be just a city. It became something deeper, rooted in the human psyche: a symbol of devastation and potential extinction, but also a symbol of hope and rebirth.

The power of Hiroshima as symbol is to awaken humanity to the threat of its own demise. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the hibakusha, tell us, “We must eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us.” And by “us,” they mean all of us. The hibakusha have been courageous in confronting and revealing their personal tragedies. They have faced their fears and vulnerability and have spoken publicly in an effort to prevent their past from becoming the collective future of humanity. The hibakusha are modern prophets. They have looked into the abyss and returned to sound a warning.

Like other American children, I learned in school the lesson that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were needed to end the war and save the lives of American soldiers. What I didn’t learn was that the use of the atomic bombs violated the laws of warfare as weapons that were indiscriminate and caused unnecessary suffering. Nor did I learn that the victims of the bombs were mostly civilians. The emphasis was on the scientific and technological achievement of creating the bombs. The use of the atomic bombs was not challenged, but celebrated. The US perspective was from above the bomb. We dropped the bomb. We saw it fall and fulfill its purpose of massive destruction, and we justified its use.

When I visited the Peace Memorial Museums at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I gained a very different perspective. The lesson was one of human suffering and death. The bomb killed men, women and children. It could not discriminate. It subjected the survivors of the bomb’s blast and fire to radiation and lingering illness and death. The radiation exposure would take tens of thousands of additional lives and would affect future generations. The bomb kept killing.
In Japan, the bomb was witnessed not from above as a technological achievement, but from below as a fiery hell on earth. More than 200,000 died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but there were survivors who lived to tell their stories. These were stories from the inferno, fierce cautionary tales of what the future portended for humanity should this technology be allowed to go unchecked and uncontrolled.

The Hiroshima challenge is to put the nuclear genie back in its bottle, protecting all humanity, including future generations, by regaining human control over its most deadly tools of destruction. To meet the Hiroshima challenge, the perspective of those who were beneath the bomb must be shared and understood. The best teachers are the survivors, those who experienced the bomb firsthand. But the survivors are growing elderly and they cannot be the only teachers. Others must step up and join them in their quest to abolish nuclear weapons.

It has been more than six decades since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and most people cannot imagine what it was like to experience the bomb. The challenge of Hiroshima requires igniting the global imagination. If we can imagine the terror of the bomb and the silence of extinction, we can respond to it with political action. If we allow ourselves to be lulled into complacency and fail to imagine nuclear weapons erupting in global conflagration, it will be unlikely that sufficient numbers of people will stand up to demand an end to the nuclear era.

In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, Albert Camus, the great French novelist and existentialist philosopher, wrote, “Peace is the only battle worth waging.” Humanity must stand in solidarity against nuclearism and against the militarism in which it is embedded. We must choose: to wage peace and seek an end to the nuclear era, or to be docile in the face of this existential threat.

Some of the greatest scientists of the 20th century signed the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, in which they stated, “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

In 1982, I was a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. The meaning of the Foundation’s name is that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age. The Foundation was created at a time when the leaders of the two most heavily nuclear-armed countries in the world, the United States and Soviet Union, were not speaking to one another. We were founded in the belief that citizens, all of us, can and must make a difference. Our goal has been to meet the Hiroshima challenge, to awaken humanity to the necessity of abolishing nuclear weapons. We have strived to educate and advocate for a world free of nuclear weapons, to strengthen international law and to empower new peace leaders.

In recent years, we have focused on attaining US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world. Earlier this year we delivered more than 70,000 signatures to the White House urging President Obama to demonstrate that leadership. We have been encouraged by the President’s statements, particularly his speech in Prague in April 2009, 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.” In his speech, he stated that America, as the only country to have used nuclear weapons, has a “moral responsibility” to act and to lead. This is an entirely new tone from an American president, and one that has been welcomed throughout the world. But it is not sufficient.

It is not enough for President Obama or other leaders to call for action. These leaders must actually take action, and this will require the support of the people in their countries and throughout the world. The goal of a world free of nuclear weapons will be met with opposition that can only be overcome by a strong and sustained demand from the people of the world. Too often leaders speak of a world without nuclear weapons as the “ultimate goal,” meaning a goal to be achieved in the far distant future or perhaps not at all. We must work now to see that the word “ultimate” is replaced by the word “urgent,” and that this change is converted to action.

We live in an astonishingly beautiful world and we share the miracle of life. As citizens of our unique, life-sustaining planet, we also share a responsibility to pass our world on intact to the next generation. To succeed in doing so, we must meet the Hiroshima challenge. We must accept the struggle of this challenge, and never give up until our world has been freed from the nuclear threat to humanity first revealed at Hiroshima.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor on the World Future Council.

July 29, 2009
Walter Cronkite, An Advocate of Peace

Walter Cronkite, the long-time anchorman for CBS Evening News, was the most trusted man in America. People believed in him. He was an honest newsman who became an American icon. He stood for what was decent and solid in the American heartland. But Walter Cronkite was more than an anchorman on the evening news. Like many of his generation, who had lived through World War II, he was deeply committed to building a peaceful world.

In May 2004, Cronkite gave the commencement address at Pomona College, in which he criticized the Iraq War and encouraged the students to engage in a campaign for peace. He said to them, “the odds are high that you can gain immensely by participating in the campaign for peace – an experience that will profit you handsomely in the work-a-day world. The glory, though, is in playing an important role in history. I urge you not to believe that this dream of peace – and the way to achieve it – is without reality or a solid foundation.”

Leaving no doubt where he stood in his commitment to peace, he continued, “You will be among those making a major contribution toward achieving what realists would say is impossible – a permanent peace among the peoples of our globe. I happen to believe we’ve got to put idealism on at least an equal footing with practicality. We’re going to make it, we human beings — if we cling to the belief — if we work for, bringing to reality the achievement of peace.”

Later that year, in October, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation honored Mr. Cronkite with our Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. In actuality, he honored us by accepting the award. When he was interviewed by Sam Donaldson after receiving the award, he shared a proposal for having a new president organize a panel of retired generals to prepare a plan “to get out of Iraq with honor, to get our troops home and have them do this within the next six months. Unfortunately, there was no new president as a result of the 2004 election, and the war continued.

Soon after the award presentation, Walter Cronkite became a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council. The next summer, nearing the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Cronkite joined a Foundation panel at the United Nations. Expressing his concern for future generations, he told the audience, “The best security, perhaps the only security, against nuclear weapons being used again, or getting into the hands of terrorists, is to eliminate them. Most of the people of the world already know this. Now it is up to the world’s people to impress the urgency of this situation upon their governments. We must act now. The future depends upon us. Anything less would be to abandon our responsibility to future generations.”

In 2007, still disturbed by the illegal war in Iraq, Cronkite wrote an article with me, emphasizing his long-standing concerns about the Iraq War. The article, which was published in the Santa Barbara News Press, was titled, “Time to End U.S. Presence in Iraq.” The article provided a three step program to end the war: “Step one is to proceed with the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and hand over the responsibility for the security of Iraq to Iraqi forces. Step two is to remove our military bases from Iraq and to turn Iraqi oil over to Iraqis. Step three is to provide resources to the Iraqis to rebuild the infrastructure that has been destroyed in the war.”

The article ended with an expression of faith in the American people: “It is not likely, however, that Congress will act unless the American people make their voices heard with unmistakable clarity. That is the way the Vietnam War was brought to an end. It is the way that the Iraq War will also be brought to an end. The only question is whether it will be now, or whether the war will drag on, with all the suffering that implies, to an even more tragic, costly and degrading defeat. We will be a better, stronger and more decent country to bring the troops home now.”

Walter Cronkite was a strong advocate for a U.S. Department of Peace. He wanted our nation to display its “determination to give to peace the full attention we now give to war. We would honor Walter Cronkite’s memory and what he stood for by deepening our own commitments to building a more peaceful world.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor on the World Future Council.

July 20, 2009
Five Proposals for Advancing President Obama’s Nuclear Disarmament Agenda

“I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” — Barack Obama

1. A No First Use commitment will deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons in US security policy. This should be reflected in the new US Nuclear Posture Review, which is currently in progress. More than any other step the US could take, this will demonstrate to the world the US commitment to Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

2. De-alert nuclear arsenals, which remain on high alert status as a relic of the worst threats of the Cold War era. Negotiate in the current arms talks with Russia to take all nuclear weapons off high alert status. Understanding human fallibility, put the gift of increased time between the possibility of misperception or miscalculation and nuclear war.

3. Expand the concept of nuclear security for the Global Summit on Nuclear Security. We applaud President Obama for taking the initiative to convene this summit in March 2010. It provides an opportunity for states to go to the heart of nuclear security issues. All states are endangered by any state’s nuclear arsenal. It is not sufficient to focus only on nuclear terrorism. It is necessary to focus also on existing nuclear arsenals and potential proliferation. The bottom line is that nuclear security will require nuclear weapons abolition. We propose that each participating state come to the table with its own Roadmap to Abolition and open a dialogue on achieving a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

4. Support a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (MENWFZ) to prevent a regional nuclear arms race. The pursuit of a MENWFZ was promised when the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was indefinitely extended in 1995. Now, nearly 15 years later, there has been no progress. At the same time, nearly every country in the region seeks nuclear power programs, moving them closer to weapons programs. If double standards are not ended, Israel not challenged on its nuclear arsenal, and a MENWFZ not achieved, the region may see substantial nuclear proliferation, dramatically diminishing the prospects for achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.

5. Repeat the themes of the President Obama’s Prague speech in the United States. Bring home to all Americans, and particularly our national security establishment, that a world free of nuclear weapons is not a fantasy and that the US is committed to pursuing this goal with a sense of urgency. Continue to make the case to Americans that nuclear weapons do not and cannot provide for our security and we will be far safer and more secure in a world free of nuclear weapons.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a councilor on the World Future Council.

July 17, 2009