Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

  • UN Voting on Nuclear Disarmament Shows Abysmal US Record

    UN Voting on Nuclear Disarmament Shows Abysmal US Record

    Each year the United Nations considers resolutions that seek to limit, control or eliminate the dangers that nuclear weapons pose to the inhabitants of the planet. In general, these resolutions can be described as nuclear disarmament measures.*

    In 2007, in the 62nd General Assembly of the United Nations, 20 resolutions on nuclear disarmament were considered. Of these, five were not voted upon. Of the 15 resolutions that were voted upon by the UN General Assembly in 2007, only one country in the world, the United States, had a record of opposing all of them. It is an abysmal voting record, and the people of the United States should be aware of the dangerous and obstructionist role their government is playing in opposing a serious agenda for nuclear disarmament.

    The votes of the nine nuclear weapon states are listed in the chart below. Countries were given one point for each Yes vote, zero points for each abstention, and a point was taken away for each No vote:

    China Pakistan N. Korea India Russia UK Israel France US
    Yes (+1) 11 10 11 8 5 3 1 2 0
    No (-1) 0 0 2 3 1 9 8 10 15
    Abstain (0) 4 5 0 4 8 3 6 3 0
    Vote Tally 11 10 9 5 4 -6 -7 -8 -15

    United States

    In three of the votes, the United States was the only country in the world to vote against the resolutions. The resolutions called for:

    1. Giving security assurances to non-nuclear weapons states that nuclear weapons would not be used against them;
    2. Supporting the Treaty on the South-East Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone;
    3. Supporting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, to permanently end all nuclear weapons testing.

    Four other resolutions had only three votes against, and in each case the US was one of the three. These resolutions called for:

    1. Supporting a nuclear-weapon-free southern hemisphere (US, France, UK opposed);
    2. Decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons systems (US, France, UK opposed);
    3. A UN conference on eliminating nuclear dangers (US, France, UK opposed);
    4. Supporting renewed determination toward the elimination of nuclear weapons (US, India, North Korea opposed).

    France & United Kingdom

    The other nuclear weapons states had more positive voting records, although in the case of the UK and France, only slightly more so. Both France and the UK voted Yes on a resolution highlighting the risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and on supporting for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The UK’s other Yes vote was on renewed determination towards elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Russia & China

    Russia’s sole No vote was on supporting the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. Of the five principal nuclear weapons states, China had by far the best voting record, casting no negative votes.

    Israel, India, Pakistan & North Korea

    The other nuclear weapons states, those outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, are Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel cast only one Yes vote, on support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India, Pakistan and North Korea were more supportive of nuclear disarmament resolutions, voting Yes a majority of the time. North Korea did not vote on two resolutions.

    Weapons in Space

    One other aspect of UN voting on disarmament measures deserves comment, that of disarmament aspects of outer space. On the two measures on this subject, the countries of the world voted overwhelmingly in favor of keeping outer space free of weapons. The first vote was on prevention of an arms race in outer space. Out of 180 countries voting on this resolution, 179 voted in favor. Only the United States voted against and Israel abstained. On the second measure on transparency and confidence building in outer space, 181 countries voted. Again, only the US voted against the measure, and only Israel abstained.

    In the area of nuclear disarmament, as well as in keeping outer space free of weapons, the US has shown itself to be an obstacle to progress. In a time when the world badly needs leadership toward a saner and safer future, the US has chosen to oppose progress on nuclear disarmament in many ways, including its votes in the UN General Assembly.

    In many respects the US government has demonstrated by its votes in the UN General Assembly its disdain for the deep concerns of the vast majority of the rest of the international community as well as of the American people. Such behavior leaves the US and the world a more dangerous place and undoubtedly contributes to the extremely low level of respect in which the US is held throughout most of the world.

    * The voting records of countries on these resolutions can be found in the Winter 2007 issue of Disarmament Times, a publication of the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Needs You

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Needs You

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) is a civil society organization, made up of and supported by individuals who care about its goals. Like thousands of other civil society organizations throughout the world, the Foundation tries to accomplish goals that will make the world a better place.

    The principal goal of NAPF is to abolish nuclear weapons. This is a goal that it cannot accomplish directly. It is a goal, for example, that differs from the direct assistance of providing food or medical supplies to disaster victims or people living in extreme poverty. To achieve its goal of abolishing nuclear weapons, NAPF must exert influence on public policy, leading to creating a world free of nuclear weapons. The Foundation works by educating and advocating. For its work, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been recognized by the United Nations as a Peace Messenger organization.

    Since the goal of creating a world free of nuclear weapons requires a broad international effort and the Foundation has limited resources, it must be strategic in fulfilling its mission. Thus, NAPF has concluded that it is best to direct its efforts for change by working with international networks of like-minded civil society organizations and by focusing specifically on changing US nuclear policy.

    In its networking, NAPF helped found the Abolition 2000 Global Network for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a network now linking over 2,000 organizations and municipalities worldwide. It was also a founding member of the Middle Powers Initiative, a coalition of international organizations that works with middle power governments to apply pressure to the nuclear weapons states for nuclear disarmament. NAPF helped found the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. The Foundation also maintains an office in Washington, DC where it networks with US arms control and disarmament organizations on nuclear policy issues coming before the Congress. The Foundation continues to be active in all of these networks, providing leadership where it can.

    The Foundation is a US-based organization, and it has concluded that US leadership is necessary in order to make significant progress in eliminating nuclear weapons. Thus, NAPF puts special emphasis on educating the US public on issues of nuclear weapons dangers and the need to abolish these weapons. It also seeks to influence US policy makers to assert greater leadership in this policy area.

    More than 60 years into the Nuclear Age, there is today not one US Senator that champions the abolition of nuclear weapons as one of his or her principal legislative goals. Nor has such leadership been exerted by any US President, although many have noted the importance of this issue.

    The Foundation has concentrated on building its base by educating the public on the need to abolish nuclear weapons and by advocating positions that the public can press for with their elected representatives. The Foundation believes that public pressure is needed to move policy makers to take stronger positions on the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    There are many obstacles to achieving change in the area of US nuclear policy. First, the mainstream media are not highly receptive to the Foundation’s message. Second, psychological factors of fear, denial and apathy make this a difficult issue for attracting widespread public involvement. Third, the public most likely also feels that their voices do not count on this issue and that policy makers do not pay attention to them. Fourth, there are corporate interests with profit motivations exerting a strong counterinfluence on the US government.

    Despite these obstacles, public opinion polls show that over 70 percent of Americans favor nuclear disarmament. It is significant that there is a major disconnect between the majority of people in the US and their government on the issue of eliminating nuclear arsenals. The US government, for reasons having more to do with power and profit than security, finds it preferable to continue to rely upon nuclear weapons, even in light of the dangers of these weapons falling into the hands of terrorists who could not be deterred from using them.

    A number of former high-level US policy makers – including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn – have concluded that the world is at a nuclear “tipping point,” and that it is strongly in the US interest to provide leadership for a world free of nuclear weapons. This is the position that the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation reached 25 years ago.

    The Foundation has been a voice of conscience and sanity on the nuclear threat confronting humanity for 25 years. It has also been a voice largely in the wilderness. NAPF has been right, but it has been ignored. It is time for new leadership in America. The Foundation’s vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and US leadership to obtain this goal should be at the forefront of a new direction for the country.

    Without US leadership, the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world is not a possibility. With US leadership, the US can take important steps to assure its own future security, as well as that of humanity, and can free up resources for constructive pursuits.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s work is more critical than ever. But to succeed as a civil society organization, the Foundation needs greater personal and financial support from civil society. Those who give low priority to abolishing nuclear weapons are rolling the dice on the future of their children, grandchildren and all generations to follow. Abolishing nuclear weapons is the Foundation’s mission; it is also a responsibility of all of us alive on the planet today.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • The Case for US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World

    The Case for US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World

    1. Continued reliance on nuclear weapons by powerful countries will lead to nuclear proliferation and increase the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups.
      1. Terrorists cannot be deterred from using nuclear weapons. Terrorist groups do not have a fixed territory, and it isn’t credible to threaten retaliation against a group that you cannot locate.
    3. A terrorist use of nuclear weapons against a powerful country could destroy cities and have many other detrimental effects on the social, political and economic fabric of the state.
    4. Graham Allison, an expert at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, thinks there is a 50 percent chance of terrorists using nuclear weapons over the next ten years.
    5. The only way to assure that terrorists do not obtain and use nuclear weapons is to dramatically reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world and bring all nuclear weapons and the material to make them under strict international control.
    6. To achieve this goal will require US leadership. If the US does not lead, there is no incentive for Russia to substantially reduce its arsenal, and consequently other states will not join in.
    7. US leadership for a nuclear weapons free world is very much in its own interest – to assure that terrorists do not obtain the only weapons that could inflict major damage on the US population, and to assure that major nuclear states do not use nuclear weapons by accident or design.
    8. A further reason that the US should provide leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world is that the US was the first country to develop nuclear weapons and to use them.
    9. An even more important reason for US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world is to move toward creating a safe and sustainable world of opportunities for our children, grandchildren and generations to follow.
    10. Already some US leaders have seen the need for US leadership for a nuclear weapons free world and attempted to exercise such leadership. Ronald Reagan did so at a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986. Former high-level US officials Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn are calling now for such leadership.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • NATO Nuclear First Use Option

    David KriegerA recent article in The Guardian, “Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told” by Ian Traynor, January 22, 2008, refers to a report by a group of former senior military officers and strategists that calls for keeping open the prospect of resorting to the first use of nuclear weapons. The report’s five authors – including John Shalikashvili, a former NATO commander and a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Clinton administration – argue that current threats and challenges require NATO to keep open this option.

    The report states, “The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.” In their worldview, similar to that of President Bush, nuclear weapons are not just tools of deterrence; they are weapons that can be used preemptively.

    While the world is clearly dangerous, the threat of first use of nuclear weapons is unlikely to make it safer. The greatest dangers to the West now come from non-state terrorist organizations, which are generally not locatable, making it impossible to strike either before or even after an attack has occurred. The policy of first use of nuclear weapons, which the report’s high-ranking authors support, will speed the erosion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, encouraging other states to develop nuclear arsenals, if only to protect themselves from such policies in the West.

    The reality is that NATO, in the aftermath of the Cold War, is an organization searching for a purpose. Threatening first use of nuclear weapons would be a provocative and dangerous direction for the organization. It would make its members less secure rather than more so. It would push the world closer to the brink of the nuclear precipice.

    Einstein warned, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” A start toward the new way of thinking that Einstein saw as essential can be found in the thinking of those that support the total elimination of nuclear weapons, a prospect the authors of the report dismiss as unrealistic (“simply no prospect of a nuclear-free world”). If we want real security and freedom from the fear of nuclear holocaust, we had best focus on making the prospect of a world free of nuclear weapons realistic.

    There are a growing number of former US leaders, including George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, who believe that a nuclear weapons-free world is possible and should be our goal. They have also argued that the United States must lead the way to attaining this goal. Their recent article, “A Nuclear-Free World,” in the Wall Street Journal (January 15, 2008), sets forth their thinking on the necessity of this vision and the steps that are needed to achieve it.

    If we are going to succeed in removing the greatest danger facing humanity – that of nuclear war – it is necessary to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the security policies of the states that still possess these weapons. Developing doctrines for the first use of these weapons moves us 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Like war itself, nuclear weapons use should never be a strategy of first resort, and policies of first use move us dangerously in that direction.

    There is only one way to assure that nuclear weapons will never be used again – by accident or design – and that is to negotiate the abolition of these weapons and the strict international control of all weapons-grade nuclear materials and the technologies to create such materials. This would be consistent with the well-established obligation for nuclear disarmament in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It would be a far better way forward than standing at the nuclear precipice and thundering out the threat of nuclear first use.

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • At the Nuclear Tipping Point

    At the Nuclear Tipping Point

    The latest Wall Street Journal article by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,” published on January 15, 2008, has a greater sense of urgency than their first joint article a year earlier. They express grave concerns that we are at a nuclear “tipping point” with “a very real possibility that the deadliest weapons ever invented could fall into dangerous hands.” As if these weapons are not already in dangerous enough hands. The former policy makers and Cold Warriors are warning us that, without change, nuclear dangers will worsen. They leave to our imaginations what will happen in a world in which “deterrence is decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous.”

    As the former Cold Warriors soberly suggest, we can no longer count on the threat of retaliation with overwhelming nuclear force to prevent those unnamed “dangerous hands” from detonating nuclear weapons in our cities or the cities of our friends and allies. In other words, our nuclear weapons cannot be relied upon to prevent nuclear attacks against us. It is not like the tense days of the Cold War, when at least we knew who the enemy was and where he was located. Now we have shadowy and slippery enemies and our thermonuclear weapons provide no defense against such enemies.

    Actually, thermonuclear weapons never did provide a defense, even during the Cold War. Deterrence is not defense – it is only a psychological pseudo-barrier, a wish and a prayer. Against nuclear weapons, there is no defense, not even so-called missile defenses, which are easily overcome. Even Henry Kissinger gets it now and is speaking out, or at least lending his name, to the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. Zero nuclear weapons. None for anyone, including us. The US must lead the way, must convene the other nuclear powers. There are steps that must be taken, which the former policy makers outline. Their suggestions are sensible, although they do not go far enough, nor is there any real hope that Washington under the Bush administration will respond to them rapidly enough. The situation may be even more urgent than the former Cold Warriors grasp.

    Nuclear weapons do not make us safer. They leave us more exposed. They are military equalizers. Minor foes, terrorist groups and small countries, can inflict horrendous damage on even the most powerful states. What is to be done? The former Cold Warriors offer the following: Work with Russia to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons by saving the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty of 1991; pursue further reductions in nuclear arms than agreed upon in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty; increase warning and decision times for the launch of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles; discard Cold War plans for massive attacks; develop cooperative multilateral ballistic missile defense and early warning systems; secure nuclear weapons, including those designed for forward deployment, and weapons-grade nuclear materials; strengthen monitoring of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force.

    The former Cold Warriors also call for broadening the dialogue on an international scale. Here they will find that many countries without nuclear weapons have been trying to send a message to the nuclear weapons states for a long time, urging them to do all that Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn seek and more. Progress has been blocked since the end of the Cold War by the lack of political will of US leaders. That is where it continues to be blocked. The Bush administration’s approach to a world free of nuclear weapons is to place as many obstacles in its way as possible.

    As the former Cold Warriors point out, “Progress must be facilitated by a clear statement of our ultimate goal.” They have made that statement. It is doubtful, though, if it will have any effect on the current US administration, perhaps the darkest, most criminal administration in US history. Mr. Kissinger and his colleagues must look beyond George W. Bush, and hope for a new president of the United States who will be prepared to climb the mountain with them, rather than trying to blow it up. But they are absolutely right to speak up now, and to continue to strongly promote the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. As Albert Camus said immediately after the bombing of Hiroshima, “Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging.” Wage on, Henry Kissinger!

    To read the 2008 Wall Street Journal article by the aforementioned authors, click here.

    To read their 2007 Wall Street Journal article, click here.

    To read David Krieger’s “A Bipartisan Plea for Nuclear Weapons Abolition,” click here.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Ronald Reagan: A Nuclear Abolitionist

    Ronald Reagan: A Nuclear Abolitionist

    With the USS Ronald Reagan in Santa Barbara, it is worth reflecting on Ronald Reagan’s legacy with regard to nuclear weapons. According to his wife, Nancy, “Ronnie had many hopes for the future, and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons.”

    President Reagan was a nuclear abolitionist. He believed that the only reason to have nuclear weapons was to prevent the then Soviet Union from using theirs. Understanding this, he argued in his 1984 State of the Union Address, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”

    Ronald Reagan regarded nuclear weapons, according to Nancy, as “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.”

    In 1986, President Reagan and Secretary General Gorbachev met for a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. In a remarkable quirk of history, the two men shared a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Despite the concerns of their aides, they came close to achieving agreement on this most important of issues. The sticking point was that President Reagan saw his Strategic Defense Initiative (missile defenses) as being essential to the plan, and Gorbachev couldn’t accept this (even though Reagan promised to share the US missile defense system with the then Soviet Union). Gorbachev wanted missile defense development to be restricted to the laboratory for ten years. Reagan couldn’t accept this.

    The two leaders came heartbreakingly close to ending the era of nuclear weapons, but in the end they couldn’t achieve their mutual goal. As a result, nuclear weapons have proliferated and remain a danger to all humanity. Today, we face the threat of terrorists gaining possession of nuclear weapons, and wreaking massive destruction on the cities of powerful nations. There can be no doubt that had Reagan and Gorbachev succeeded, the US and the world would be much safer, and these men would be remembered above all else for this achievement.

    The USS Ronald Reagan has the motto, “Peace through Strength.” President Reagan, like the ship bearing his name, was known for his commitment to this motto, but he never saw nuclear weapons as a strength. In his book, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow quotes Reagan as saying, “I know that there are a great many people who are pointing to the unimaginable horror of nuclear war…. [T]o those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say, ‘I’m with you.’” Lettow also quotes Reagan as stating, “[M]y dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.”

    In the 18th and 19th centuries, individuals struggled for the abolition of slavery because they understood that every man, woman and child has the right to live in freedom. Through the efforts and persistence of committed individuals like William Wilberforce in Great Britain and Frederick Douglass in the United States, slavery was brought to an end, and humanity is better for it. In today’s world, we confront an issue of even more transcending importance, because nuclear weapons place civilization and the human species itself in danger of annihilation.

    Ronald Reagan was a leader who recognized this, and worked during his presidency for the abolition of these terrible weapons. He believed, according to Nancy, that “as long as such weapons were around, sooner or later they would be used,” with catastrophic results. He understood that nuclear weapons themselves are the enemy.

    Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan died before seeing his goal of abolishing nuclear weapons realized. It is up to those of us still living to complete this job. It is not a partisan issue, but rather a human issue, one that affects our common future.

    Working to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons would honor the memory of President Reagan, our only recent president with the vision to seek the total elimination of these weapons. He was a president who understood that US leadership was essential to achieving this goal. It behooves us as citizens of the United States to assure that our next president shares President Reagan’s vision on this issue, picks up the baton of nuclear weapons abolition from him and carries it forward.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Required Reading for Assuring the Future

    Required Reading for Assuring the Future

    Few people have looked as deeply into the nuclear abyss, seen the monster of our own making and grappled with it as has the writer Jonathan Schell. But Schell is more than a writer. He is also a philosopher of the Nuclear Age and an ardent advocate of caging the beast and rendering it harmless. Schell’s first book on the subject, The Fate of the Earth, awakened many people to the breadth and depth of the nuclear danger and is now a classic. He has returned to the issue of nuclear dangers (nuclear insanity?) in several of his other books, always providing penetrating insights into the confrontation between humanity and its most deadly invention.

    His latest book, The Seventh Decade, The New Shape of Nuclear Danger, may be Schell’s most important book yet. In this book, he examines the roots of the Nuclear Age and its current manifestations. He unearths the truth, which once brought to light seems obvious, that the bomb began as a construct in the mind. “Well before any physical bomb had been built,” he says, “science had created the bomb in the mind, an intangible thing. Thereafter, the bomb would be as much a mental as a physical object.”

    One of the key concepts of the Nuclear Age is deterrence, the belief that the threat of nuclear retaliation can prevent nuclear attack. Schell takes a hard-headed look at deterrence, and finds the concept “half-sane and half-crazy.” While it seems sane to seek to forestall a nuclear attack, the half-crazy part (perhaps more than half), “consists of actually waging the war you must threaten, for in that event the result is suicide all around.” That suicide writ large becomes what philosopher John Somerville termed “omnicide,” the death of all. “In short,” Schell deduced, “to threaten seems wise, but to act is deranged.”

    In the post-Cold War period, deterrence has become even more complex and less certain, tilting toward the “deranged.” It is no longer the mental task of threat and counter threat aimed at keeping a fixed and powerful opponent at bay, as it was during the Cold War standoff between the US and USSR. Now, states must consider the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups, not locatable and not subject to being deterred. In such circumstances, the rationality of deterrence is shattered and even great and powerful states are placed at risk of nuclear devastation by far weaker opponents. In such circumstances, overwhelming nuclear superiority is of no avail.

    The “bomb in the mind” can only do so much. It cannot deter those who cannot be located or are suicidal. Despite their devastating power, nuclear weapons in the hands of powerful states are actually a tepid threat. Yet, they stand as a major impediment to the post-Cold War imperial project of the United States, a project failing on many fronts, but poised to fail far more spectacularly if nuclear weapons find their way into the hands of terrorist groups.

    In today’s world, when deterrence has for nearly all sane thinkers lost its magical power in the mind (although in truth it was always a highly risky venture), it has become far harder to justify nuclear arsenals, and the United States has resorted to the vague possibility of a reemergent threat. In considering this, Schell finds, “In the last analysis, the target of the U.S. nuclear arsenal became history and whatever it might produce – not a foe but a tense, the future itself.”

    Schell correctly concluded that the George W. Bush administration had far more ambitious and sinister plans for the US nuclear arsenal. Although there was no clearly definable enemy, there was a strongly held vision and normative goal of US global dominance, set forth in the 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Nuclear weapons were required, in Schell’s careful study of the NPR “to dissuade, deter, defeat or annihilate – preventively, preemptively, or in retaliation – any nation or other grouping of people on the face of the earth, large or small, that militarily opposed, or dreamed of opposing, the United States.”

    Schell examines the US imperial project under George W. Bush and its role in shaping US nuclear policy. He points out that the Bush administration ordered its nuclear threats in this way: Iraq, with whom it went to war; Iran, with whom it threatened war; North Korea, which withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed nuclear weapons; and Pakistan, which already had nuclear weapons and a chaotic political environment. Of course, Bush chose exactly the wrong order in terms of the actual security threats posed by these nations. Schell found, “In responding to the universal danger posed by nuclear proliferation, the United States therefore had two suitably universalist traditions that it could draw on, one based on consent and law, the other based on force. Bush chose force. It was the wrong choice. It increased the nuclear danger it was meant to prevent.”

    In the final section of his book, Schell, who is himself an ardent nuclear abolitionist, reviews earlier attempts to achieve abolition of these weapons. He goes into heartbreaking detail of the efforts of Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev to achieve the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. The two leaders, acting on their own initiative, without the advice or support of their aides (George Shultz is an exception), were incredibly close to agreement to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, but as we know faltered on the issue of missile defenses, which Reagan saw as key and which Gorbachev couldn’t accept. After coming so close to agreement on a plan for abolition, the world settled back to nuclear business as usual. As Schell pointed out, after the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit at Reykjavík, “Nuclear arsenals may remain not so much because anyone wants them as because a world without them is outside the imagination of the leadership class.”

    The possibilities of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism led Schell to the conclusion that “with each year that passes, nuclear weapons provide their possessors with less safety while provoking more danger. The walls dividing the nations of the two-tiered [nuclear] world are crumbling.” The Reagan-Gorbachev vision has new advocates in former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn. Their basic premise is that deterrence can no longer be the foundation for 21st century security.

    Schell suggests that should the will for nuclear abolition materialize – something already favored by the majority of Americans – the following principles could guide the effort:

    1. At the outset, adopt the abolition of nuclear arms as the organizing principle and goal of all activity in the nuclear field;
    2. Join all negotiations on nuclear weapons – on nuclear disarmament, on nonproliferation, and on nuclear terrorism – in a single forum;
    3. Think of abolition less as the endpoint of a long and weary path of disarmament and more as the starting point for addressing a new agenda of global action;
    4. Design a world free of nuclear weapons that is not just a destination to reach but a place to remain.

    Schell concludes that the “bomb in the mind,” with us from the outset of the Nuclear Age, will remain with us, but that this is not necessarily a detriment. He points out, “even in a world without nuclear weapons, deterrence would, precisely because the bomb in the mind would still be present, remain in effect. In that respect, the persisting know-how would be as much a source of reassurance as it would be a danger in a world without nuclear weapons.”

    Jonathan Schell has provided an essential book for our time. He peels back the layers of veils and myths surrounding nuclear dangers and strategies, and offers a sound set of guidelines for moving to a nuclear weapons-free world. This book can help to create the necessary political will to achieve this end. It is required reading for every person on the planet who cares about assuring the future.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • A Message for the New Year

    A Message for the New Year

    Dear Friend of the Foundation,

    For 25 years the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has worked daily for a better world. As we enter a New Year, our work to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen international law and empower a new generation of peace leaders has never been more critical. To succeed, we need your involvement and your support.

    I encourage you to have a look at our new DVD, “Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future.” You can request a free copy from the Foundation and show it to your friends. We think it is an important tool to raise the profile of the nuclear threat to humanity – a threat that is still very much with us.

    We also have a great Speakers Bureau at the Foundation. Let us know if you’d like one of our staff or associates to come out and talk with your group about current nuclear dangers and what can be done about them.

    Al Gore has referred to global warming as an “inconvenient truth.” Unfortunately, that is not the only inconvenient truth the world is facing. The dangers of nuclear weapons stand toe-to-toe with global warming in their threat to humanity. Nuclear weapons, in fact, are an even more urgent threat. They could destroy civilization in the virtual blink of an eye.

    As we witness the continuing turmoil in nuclear-armed Pakistan, the urgency of the threat should be clear. No one should feel comfortable with nuclear weapons in the hands of any state or leader, but least of all a state in disarray such as Pakistan.

    US plans to do a “nuclear deal” with India, supplying India with nuclear materials and technology, will only exacerbate the dangers in South Asia, as Pakistan attempts to keep pace with India. The US must be dissuaded from this dangerous project, which could speed up the dismantling of the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

    We badly need US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world. That is becoming more than obvious. Early in 2007, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn, four former high US officials, called for such leadership from the US. Some of the current presidential candidates are also calling for this leadership. Without US leadership, progress toward nuclear disarmament won’t be made.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has prepared an Appeal, “US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World.” It is aimed at the next President of the United States. Won’t you add your voice and help spread the Appeal? It will soon be available for signing on our www.wagingpeace.org website.

    We also need your financial support to help us reach more and more people with our messages. The bottom line is that the US will change and lead the world away from the nuclear precipice when enough of its citizens demand this course. At the Foundation, we know what we need to do, but we need your help to reach as wide an audience as possible.

    Each of our efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons is a gift to humanity and to the future. As we enter the New Year, I urge you to add to your New Year’s resolutions a pledge to work with the Foundation in 2008 for the end of the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. This can only be accomplished by ending the nuclear weapons era, and this will require our joint efforts. Together we can and will change the world.

    Wishing you a very happy New Year,

    In Peace,

    David Krieger President Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Japan’s Role in Building Peace in the Nuclear Age

    Japan’s Role in Building Peace in the Nuclear Age

    It is a pleasure to be with you in this 50th anniversary year of the Ozaki Foundation. I am an admirer of this Foundation and of the life and work of Ozaki Yukio. He was a man of principle and of the people and, as such, a man of peace.

    In the latter part of his life, Ozaki Yukio wrote, “The only reason for my persevering at my advanced age was that I might live…so as to contribute what I could to the creation of a new world.” He envisioned contributing toward a world at peace, a noble vision. “I dreamed I would find a way,” he wrote, “for the peoples of the five continents to live in peace.”

    Ozaki was an early proponent of the principle of the “Common Heritage of Mankind,” one of the most important concepts of the modern era. He wrote, “The world’s land and resources should be used for the benefit of all mankind…. The greatest obstacle to attaining this global perspective is the narrow-minded ambition of nations that seek to prevail over others by the exercise of wealth and power.”

    I think that Ozaki Yukio would have agreed with Lao Tzu, who said: “Those who would take over the Earth and shape it to their will never, I notice, succeed.” In other words, imperialism is a recipe for disaster. Every empire that has ever existed has experienced at some point the pain, suffering and humiliation of defeat. This was true in the ancient world and throughout history. It was true in the 20th century, and there is no doubt that it will prove to be true in the 21st century. But today, in the Nuclear Age, the stakes are higher; the future of civilization and even human survival hang in the balance.

    For the past 25 years I have been the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, an organization that I helped to found in 1982. The Foundation has three principal goals: to abolish nuclear weapons; to strengthen international law, particularly as it pertains to the prevention of war and the elimination of nuclear arms; and to empower a new generation of peace leaders to carry on the struggle for a more peaceful world, free of the overriding nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    One of the key formative events in my own life, placing me on the path to work for peace and a nuclear weapons-free world, was an early visit at the age of 21 to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums. At these museums, I learned a lesson that was not part of my education in the United States. In the US, we were taught the perspective of those above the bombs. It was a story of scientific and technological triumph, a story of victors with little reference to loss of life and the suffering of the victims. At the Peace Memorial Museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was a human story, a tragedy of massive death and destruction. It was a story told from the perspective of those beneath the bombs, and a warning about our common future: we must eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.

    Nuclear Weapons and the Imperative of Peace

    There are many reasons to oppose nuclear weapons. They are long-distance killing devices, instruments of annihilation that kill indiscriminately – men, women and children; the aged and the newly born; soldiers and civilians. Because they kill indiscriminately, their threat or use is both immoral and illegal. They are weapons that can destroy cities, countries and civilization. They threaten all that is human, all that is sacred, all that exists. If this were not enough, these weapons make cowards of their possessors and, because they concentrate power in the hands of the few, are anti-democratic.

    The creation of nuclear weapons has changed the world. It has made peace an imperative – an imperative brought about by the massive destructive potential of nuclear weapons. This imperative has been recognized by insightful individuals from the onset of the Nuclear Age.

    Almost immediately after learning of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the great writer and philosopher Albert Camus wrote, “Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging.”

    More than fifty years ago, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and nine other prominent scientists issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, in which they stated: “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? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.” But Russell and Einstein were right. We must face this alternative, difficult as it is.

    No nation knows the painful truth about the devastation of nuclear weapons better than Japan, the only country to have suffered such devastation. Those who survived the atomic bombings, the hibakusha, are the ambassadors of the Nuclear Age. Their voices are fading as they grow older and die, but listening to their wisdom may be our best hope for ridding the world of these terrible instruments of death and destruction.

    The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Cenotaph states, “Let all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.” This thought was echoed in the statement of the then President of the International Court of Justice, Mohammed Bedjaoui, when he referred to nuclear weapons as “the ultimate evil” in his 1996 Declaration that accompanied the Advisory Opinion of the Court on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    In the end, nuclear weapons are weapons of the weak. They are a great equalizer, capable of giving a small state or a terrorist group the ability to destroy our cities and even bring a great nation to its knees. For the sake of civilization and humanity, these weapons and those who support continued reliance upon them must not be tolerated. To tolerate these weapons is to assure that eventually they will be used – by accident or design.

    Deterrence is not defense, and can fail due to miscommunication. It has come close to failing on numerous occasions, many much less well known than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, even though there is little to no need for deterrence among the major powers, there are still 26,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine countries, and 3,500 of these in the arsenals of the US and Russia remain on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so.

    I am certain that were Ozaki Yukio alive today, he would be a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons and would be active in the Mayors for Peace, an organization of mayors throughout the world led by Mayor Akiba of Hiroshima. The Mayors for Peace currently has a 2020 Vision Campaign to ban nuclear weapons by the year 2020. It is a campaign that makes sense for mayors, given that cities remain the major targets of these weapons. One World
    We live on a single precious planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life. No matter where lines are drawn on the Earth as boundaries of states, we are a part of one planet and one people. We must unite in protecting the planet and preserving it for future generations.

    In addition to the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, we live in a world that is threatened by global warming, what Al Gore, the 2007 Nobel Peace Laureate, described as “an inconvenient truth.” But if global warming is an inconvenient truth, how much more so is nuclear war. In both cases, the present and future are jeopardized by massive devastation.

    War and structural violence – that is, violence that is built into the societal framework – are prevalent in our world. Each year, war claims countless victims, mostly innocent civilians. It is widely reported that more than 90 percent of the victims of wars today are civilians. In the Iraq war, some 4,000 American soldiers have died, but the number of Iraqis killed, mostly civilians, is reported to be over 1.2 million. That is a ratio of 1 to 300. It is more aptly characterized as a slaughter than a war. In Darfur, genocide has continued unabated for years, with the international community seemingly helpless to stop the killing.

    The structural violence in our world, like war, is a deep stain on the human record. Half the world’s people still live on less than two dollars a day, while the world spends some $1.2 trillion on arms. Of this, the United States spends nearly half, more than the combined totals of the next 32 countries.

    For just a small percentage of global military spending, every child on the planet could receive an education. For a similarly small percentage of military spending, everyone on the planet could have clean water, adequate nutrition and health care. Something is terribly wrong with our ability to organize ourselves to live justly on our planet.

    Our world is one in which human life is devalued for many, and greed is often rewarded. It is a world often not kind to children. Each hour, 500 children die in Africa; 12,000 each day. They die of starvation and preventable diseases, not because there is not enough food or medicine, but because these are not distributed to those who need them. Our world is also not very wise in preparing for the future. We are busy using up the world’s resources, particularly its fossil fuels, and in the process polluting the environment. So hungry and greedy are we for energy and other resources that we pay little attention to the needs and well-being of future generations. Our lifestyles in the richer countries are unsustainable, and they are foreclosing opportunities for future generations that will be burdened by diminishing resources and a deteriorating environment.

    We live in an interdependent world. Borders cannot make us safe. Nor can oceans. We can choose to live together in peace, or to perish together in nuclear war. We can choose to live together with sustainable lifestyles or to perish together as our technologies destroy our environment. We can choose to live together in a world with justice and dignity for all, or to perish together in a world of vast disparity, in which a small minority lives in luxury and overabundance, while the majority of humanity lives in deep poverty and often despair.

    War No Longer Makes Sense

    War no longer makes sense in the Nuclear Age. The stakes are too high. In a world with nuclear weapons, we roll the dice on the human future each time we engage in war. Nuclear weapons must be eliminated and the materials to make them placed under strict international control so that we don’t bring life on our planet to an abrupt end.

    Leaders who take their nations to war without the sanction of international law must be held to account. This is what the Allied leaders concluded after World War II, when they held the Axis leaders to account for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. No leader anywhere on the planet should be allowed to stand above international law.

    Every citizen of Earth has rights, well articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights agreements. We should all know our rights under international law, which include the rights to life, liberty, security of person, and freedom from torture. There is also a human right to peace. We must take responsibility for assuring these rights for ourselves and others across the planet.

    If someone were to observe our planet from outer space, that person might conclude that we do not appreciate the beauty and bounty of our magnificent Earth. I hope you will never take for granted this life-sustaining planet. The planet itself is a miracle, as is each of us. As miracles, how can we engage in wars, or allow our children to engage in wars, that kill other miracles?

    Japan’s Unique Capacity

    Japan is a country uniquely qualified to lead the world toward peace and a world free of nuclear weapons. Japan has great strengths, it has made great mistakes, and it has seemingly learned important lessons.

    Japan is a country with a long history and deep traditions. It is a country with an extraordinary aesthetic, which can be seen in its gardens, its architecture, its arts of tea ceremony, flower arrangement and pottery, its literature and film.

    But along with the subtle imperfect beauty of its aesthetic, Japan has had a history of feudal hierarchy and militarism. It has been an imperial power, colonizing other nations and committing serious crimes against them. It has fought in brutal wars, suffered defeat at the hands of the Allied powers in World War II, and emerged as a stronger, more peaceful and decent nation.

    One of the most remarkable things about Japan as a nation has been its unique ability to transform itself, first with the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century, then with its growth into a modern economic and military power, and finally with its astounding rebound from its military defeat in the second half of the 20th century.

    Japan turned the ashes of war and defeat into an energetic and vital economy and democratic political structure. It is the only country in the world with a “peace constitution.” Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution forbids war forever as an instrument of state power. It states:

    “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. “In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

    This is an extraordinary commitment. It is a beacon to the world, and should be viewed with pride by all Japanese citizens. Despite the attempts of some Japanese political leaders to reinterpret and evade the essential provisions of Article 9, it has thus far held up.

    Japan is the only country in the world to have had two of its cities destroyed by atomic weapons. Its people learned that human beings and atomic weapons cannot co-exist, and as a result the survivors of the atomic bombings, the hibakusha, have been ardent advocates of a nuclear weapons-free world, not wanting others to suffer the fate that they suffered. In 1971, the Japanese Diet adopted three non-nuclear principles: “Japan shall neither possess nor manufacture nuclear weapons, nor shall it permit their introduction into Japanese territory.”

    In recent years, the Japanese government has provided some leadership at the United Nations by sponsoring a resolution on “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” but this seems to be more rooted in words on paper than in action. More is needed.

    Post-War Uneasiness

    Despite its success in rebuilding its economy in the post-World War II period, its unique peace constitution and its position in relation to nuclear weapons, one senses uneasiness in the current state of Japan. Tradition is under assault in modern Japan. The people, and particularly the youth, seem pulled toward Western values of materialism with their emphasis on consumer lifestyles.

    There are periodic challenges to the peace constitution and to Japan’s non-nuclear principles. These values seem to remain in conflict with Japan’s longer and deeper connections to hierarchical authority and military might. Japan seems a reluctant leader toward a nuclear weapons-free world. It has the technology and enough plutonium to rapidly become a major nuclear weapons power. Despite its constitutional limitations, Japan has developed a powerful Self-Defense Force, and is among the top few military spenders in the world.

    Japan has maintained a close relationship with the United States, and the US continues to ask more of Japan in its participation in multilateral military operations. Japan participated in a small non-combat role in the “Coalition of the Willing” in the war in Iraq, although the Japanese government is ambiguous about this participation. The US has pushed Japan to join it in the development and implementation of missile defenses in Northeast Asia. Japan also allows the US armed forces to occupy many military bases in Japan and to use Japanese ports for its Navy. Japan sits willingly under the US nuclear umbrella.

    Thoughtful Japanese citizens might well ask: Who are we? Is Japan following its own destiny? Has Japan become a vassal state of the US? Should Japan preserve Article 9 of its Constitution? Can Japan preserve Article 9 of its Constitution? There is clearly tension in Japan’s aspirations for itself and in its alliance with the US, the country that ended the war against Japan with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Japan has prospered in peace. Now it must decide whether it chooses to lead in peace, or to be a vassal to the United States, as that country – my country – seeks to spread its imperial might throughout the globe. The world stands perilously balanced at the nuclear precipice, and Japan, as the only country in the world that has experienced nuclear devastation, could be the country to lead the way back from the precipice.

    One may well ask: If Japan leads, who would follow? There is no way to answer this question until the first steps are taken. At a minimum, in attempting to provide this leadership, Japan would honor the survivors and the dead of those bombings. It would instill in its behavior a sense of national purpose – that of ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    Rather than accept the militant leadership of the United States, Japan needs to provide the moral leadership of which it is uniquely capable. For its own independence and the good of the world, Japan must be firm in its commitment to its peace constitution and to its non-nuclear principles.

    As a good friend of the United States, Japan could help lead it toward ending its reliance on nuclear weapons and fulfilling its responsibilities under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the US we have a saying, “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” The US has been driving drunk in its use of power in Iraq and its reliance upon nuclear weapons. Japan must be truly a friend and learn to say No to the United States:

    No to reliance on nuclear arms, including by means of the US nuclear umbrella;

    No to missile defenses;

    No to US nuclear armed ships docking at Japanese ports (the Kobe Formula has provided a good example);

    No to participation in any form in illegal wars of aggression, such as the Iraq War;

    No to extending the leases on US military bases in Japan.

    No to the US-India nuclear deal, which will undermine years of international efforts to control nuclear proliferation.

    There is also much to which Japan can say Yes.

    Yes to international cooperation for peace, not war.

    Yes to convening a Nuclear Weapons Convention, and to sustained leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world. The first meeting of states to rid the world of nuclear weapons could be held in Hiroshima, the first city to suffer nuclear devastation.

    Yes to the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in Northeast Asia.

    Yes to bringing all weapons-grade fissionable materials under strict international control.

    Yes to an insistence on resolving conflicts between states by peaceful means, including mandatory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

    Yes to giving its full support to the International Criminal Court to hold leaders accountable for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    Yes to working to protect the oceans, the air, the Arctic and Antarctica, and outer space as the Common Heritage of Mankind for present and future generations. If Japan chooses to follow this path, it will honor its finest traditions and, drawing from its unique experiences in recent history, give leadership to forces all over the world struggling for peace.

    Individual Responsibility

    Nothing changes without individuals taking responsibility and taking action. We all need to realize that with rights come responsibilities. Change does not occur magically. It occurs because individuals engage with societal problems and take actions to create a better world. Often change occurs person to person. Each of us can be an agent for change in the world. We are each as powerful as we choose to be.

    We can each start by choosing peace and making a firm commitment to peace with justice. This means that we make peace a central issue and priority in our lives and demonstrate peace in all we do. We can live peace, educate for peace, speak out for peace, and support and vote for candidates who call for peace. In choosing peace, we also choose hope, rather than ignorance, complacency or despair. Hope gives rise to action, and action in turn gives rise to increased possibility for change and to further hope. It is a spiral in which action deepens commitment, which leads to more action.

    Like others who have chosen the path of peace – Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama – we must realize that it will not be a quick or easy journey. The path will require of you courage, compassion and commitment. The rewards may be few, except your own understanding of the necessity of the journey.

    The path to peace will require persistence. You may be tempted to leave the path, but what you do for peace you do for humanity. In the struggle for a better world and a more decent future, we are not allowed to give up – just as Ozaki Yukio never gave up during his life and as his daughter, Sohma Yukika, has never given up during her long life.

    Our efforts to create a culture of peace are a gift to humanity and the future. What better gift could we give to our fellow citizens of the planet and to future generations than our courage, compassion and commitment in the cause of peace?

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Nuclear Weapons Abolition: Signs of Hope

    Nuclear Weapons Abolition: Signs of Hope

    Introduction Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan came close to achieving agreement on abolishing nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik summit in 1986. The stumbling block was Reagan’s dream of “Star Wars,” which Gorbachev could not accept. Who could have predicted that within a decade of the founding of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the Berlin Wall would fall and the Soviet Union would cease to exist? Who could have predicted that, despite the end of the Cold War, nuclear dangers would continue to grow? The end of the Cold War helped to disarm public concern about nuclear dangers, but these dangers have not ended.

    Throughout this past quarter century, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been a steady and persistent voice of reason in its calls for abolishing nuclear weapons. We believe, along with the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is an evil that must not be repeated. I am proud that we stand with the hibakusha, who have shown such compassion and strength of character in their forgiveness and their persistence. I have supported their nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, and I continue to do so.

    I want to speak about where we stand on the road to nuclear weapons abolition. I consider this goal – a world free of nuclear weapons – to be the greatest challenge of our time. Humans created nuclear weapons – weapons that could end civilization and the human species. Humans have used nuclear weapons in warfare. We know the results of that use. We know the danger that continues to exist with 26,000 nuclear weapons still in the world. Our cities are threatened, as is our common future. I will try to answer the following questions.

    1. What are nuclear weapons?
    1. Why oppose these weapons?
    1. Why do some countries possess these weapons?
    1. Why do other countries support these weapons?
    1. Do nuclear weapons make a country more secure?
    1. What is the current nuclear policy of the United States?
    1. Whose interests do nuclear weapons serve?
    1. What is the road to nuclear weapons abolition?
    1. Are there signs of hope?

    I will end with signs of hope. I believe that there is a way out of the nuclear dilemma for humanity, and that we must not allow complacency and despair to conquer hope.

    What Are Nuclear Weapons?

    Nuclear weapons derive their power from the energy contained within the atom. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima used enriched uranium (Uranium 235) to create an explosive force equivalent to 12.5 thousand tons of TNT. The bomb that destroyed Nagasaki used Plutonium 239 to create an explosive force equivalent to 20 thousand tons of TNT. Thermonuclear weapons, which use the power of fusion, are capable of yields thousands of times greater than those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The great majority of nuclear weapons today are thermonuclear weapons.

    Nuclear weapons are not instruments of war in any traditional sense. They destroy everything within miles of their detonation. Their radioactive effects linger long after the damage of blast and fire has run its course. The effects of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in time or space. They go on killing and destroying even into new generations of survivors. They cannot be conceived of as simply “weapons.” They are instruments of annihilation, putting the future of humanity itself at risk. Beneath their veneer of scientific achievement, nuclear weapons are the tools of bullies, thugs and madmen. Why Oppose These Weapons?

    Some people support policies that rely upon nuclear weapons and justify the weapons as “instruments of peace.” This a strange way to conceptualize weapons that could destroy most life on the planet in a matter of hours.

    Here are ten reasons to oppose nuclear weapons. They are ten reasons that I oppose nuclear weapons, and I commend them as ten reasons that you, too, should oppose these weapons.

    1. They are long-distance killing machines incapable of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, the aged and the newly born, or between men, women and children.
    2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.
    3. They threaten to foreclose the future.
    4. They are cowardly weapons, and in their use there can be no honor.
    5. They are a false god, dividing nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.
    6. They are a distortion of science and technology, twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.
    7. They mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.
    8. They waste our resources on the development of unusable instruments of annihilation.
    9. They concentrate power in the hands of the few and undermine democracy.
    10. They corrupt our humanity.

    Why Do Some Countries Possess These Weapons?

    There are currently nine countries that possess nuclear weapons: US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. More than 95 percent of the 26,000 nuclear weapons in the world are in the arsenals of the US and Russia.

    The principal justification for nuclear weapons has always been deterrence – the threat of nuclear retaliation to prevent a nuclear attack. The reason that the United States first developed nuclear weapons was the fear that the Germans might also develop them, and the United States would need to have the weapons to deter the Germans from using their weapons. The Soviet Union developed its nuclear arsenal for deterrence – to keep the United States from threatening or using its nuclear arsenal against them. Every country that has developed nuclear weapons has had the intention of deterring another country. Even the most recent addition to the nuclear weapons club, North Korea, wanted to have a nuclear deterrent capability to assure survival of its regime from potential attack by the United States.

    In addition to deterrence, a second reason that some states have pursued nuclear weapons is prestige. Since the five permanent members of the Security Council were the original five members of the nuclear weapons club, other nations recognized that the possession of these weapons offered a high level of prestige in the international system. When India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, there was buoyant celebrating in the streets of the major cities of these countries. The people in these countries, despite their poverty, took pride in the achievement of their nation’s nuclear weapons capability – ironically, a capability that could lead to their demise.

    Why Do Other Countries Support These Weapons?

    The principal reason that some countries support nuclear weapons, without possessing them, is that they are tied by military compact with a nuclear weapons state. This is sometimes referred to as being under a “nuclear umbrella.” Many countries are under the US nuclear umbrella. These include Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in the Far East; Australia in the Pacific; and the countries belonging to NATO in Europe. These countries tend to give support to US nuclear policy in the belief that they are being protected by the deterrent value of the US nuclear arsenal.

    Some poorer and dependent countries give support to US nuclear weapons policy because their governments are pressured by US economic incentives and disincentives. But there are not too many of these countries, and most countries in the world express support for United Nations General Assembly resolutions aimed at achieving a nuclear weapons free world. To give one example, the Disarmament Committee in the United Nations General Assembly recently voted on a resolution for “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” a resolution spearheaded by Japan. The resolution was passed by a vote of 165 states in favor, 3 states opposed, and 10 states abstaining. The three states voting against the resolution were India, North Korea and the United States.

    Do Nuclear Weapons Make a Country More Secure?

    Security is a concept with both psychological and physical dimensions. Psychologically, one may feel secure, but not be secure in reality. The opposite is also true. One may not feel secure, but actually be quite safe. Nuclear weapons operate at the psychological level. The security they offer is of the psychological variety. These weapons cannot provide actual physical security. Deterrence, for example, is a psychological theory. It cannot provide actual physical protection against a nuclear attack.

    It is worth examining deterrence theory to see how much security it actually provides. For deterrence to work, there must be clear communications, the threat of retaliation must be believed, the decision makers must act rationally, and the targets of deterrence must be locatable. In other words, one cannot deter someone who does not understand you, someone who does not believe you, someone who acts irrationally, or someone who cannot be located. Given all these ways in which deterrence can fail, it seems highly irrational to base the future of one’s country or the planet on the belief that deterrence will work under all circumstances.

    The best evidence that deterrence is not to be relied upon is missile defenses. If leaders thought that deterrence was foolproof, they wouldn’t need to have missile defenses for protection. Instead, many countries are developing missile defenses to provide actual physical protection against a nuclear attack. The problem with missile defenses is that they, too, are unlikely to work under real world conditions. Most of the successful tests with missile defense systems have employed a homing device that guides the “defensive” missile to the “offensive” one, a condition not likely to be present in the real world. Further, many experts have given clear testimony that missile defenses can be defeated by the use of offensive missile decoys. Russia has responded to US missile defenses by developing offensive missiles with greater maneuverability. Missile defenses are also making the prospects for nuclear disarmament increasingly distant.

    In the end, nuclear weapons make a country less secure, since a country that possesses nuclear weapons is almost certainly targeted by nuclear weapons. While nuclear weapons may add little to the security of an already powerful country, they may act for weaker countries as a perceived deterrent to offensive actions by more powerful countries. Thus, North Korea was able to sustain negotiations with the United States to achieve development and security goals by having a small nuclear arsenal, whereas Iraq, which did not have nuclear weapons, was attacked by the United States and its regime overthrown. This is a dangerous strategy for North Korea, but it points out that aggressive policies by powerful states can act as a stimulant to nuclear proliferation.

    Ronald Reagan, when he was President of the United States, recognized that the only viable purpose of nuclear weapons for the US and Soviet Union was to deter the other side from attacking. That being the case, Reagan noted, “…would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” Reagan was right. True security will be found not in possessing nuclear weapons, but in eliminating them.

    What Is the Current Nuclear Policy of the United States?

    In recent years, the United States has not played a constructive role on issues of nuclear disarmament. Rather, it has demonstrated by its policies its intention to rely upon nuclear weapons for the indefinite future. I would characterize US nuclear policy unstable, unreliable and, ultimately, as reckless, provocative and dangerous for itself and humanity. I will discuss below some of the principal elements of US nuclear policy.

    Double Standards. The US has upheld one standard for its friends and allies, and another standard for its perceived enemies. Thus, the US seeks to promote nuclear trade with India, despite the fact that India never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed and tested nuclear weapons. The US has been willing to bend its own laws and pressure the international Nuclear Suppliers Group to support its agreement with India. In the same vein, the US has not complained about Israeli nuclear weapons and has continued to annually give billions of dollars of military support to Israel. At the same time, the US attacked Iraq for supposedly having a nuclear weapons program and is threatening Iran with attack for the same unsubstantiated reasons (Iran claims to be enriching uranium only for its legal nuclear energy program). The Bush administration is currently seeking to replace every weapon in its nuclear arsenal with a new thermonuclear warhead, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead. Such double standards are not sustainable, and are widely recognized as such in the international community.

    Extended Deterrence. The United States seeks not only to deter a nuclear attack against its own territory, but also an attack against its allies. Thus, the US provides nuclear assurances to its NATO allies as well as to its allies in East Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These countries are considered to reside under the US nuclear umbrella. One of the goals of US nuclear policy is to provide assurance to its allies. In the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, it states, “US nuclear forces will continue to provide assurance to security partners, particularly in the presence of known or suspected threats of nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks or in the event of surprising military developments.”

    Ambiguous Messages. The US has not given clear messages about when it may use nuclear weapons. As indicated above, even “surprising military developments” can be viewed as a provocation for the threat or use of US nuclear forces. The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, for example, also states, “Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack….”

    Threat of Preventive Use. In a 2005 draft document, Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, the US expressed a willingness to use nuclear weapons against an enemy “intending to use WMD” against the US or allied military forces, or in the case of an “imminent attack from adversary biological weapons….”

    High Alert Status. The US and Russia continue to keep some 3,500 nuclear weapons on high alert status, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so. This creates a dangerous situation in which these weapons could be launched by accident.

    Preventing Proliferation by force. The US demonstrated its willingness to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons by force when it attacked Iraq in 2003. It has threatened to use force to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons to Iran.

    Launch on Warning. The US continues to employ a policy of launching its nuclear weapons on warning of attack. This increases the chances of launching to a false warning, and thus initiating a nuclear attack.

    Alliance Sharing. US nuclear weapons are currently shared with six US allies in Europe – Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey and the UK. Some 350 US nuclear weapons are currently thought to be deployed in Europe in cooperative agreements with these countries that would leave the weapons in the hands of the European countries in the event of hostilities. The US is the only country in the world to deploy nuclear weapons on foreign soil.

    Negative Leadership. There are two main directions in which leadership can be applied on nuclear weapons issues. One direction is toward ending reliance on nuclear weapons and eliminating them; the other direction is toward sustaining these weapons for the indefinite future. The United States has chosen the latter course. It has blocked progress toward nuclear disarmament in the United Nations General Assembly, the Commission on Disarmament, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conferences, despite its obligation under the NPT to engage in “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament. In the area of nuclear policy, the US has shown negative leadership. It has been an obstacle rather than a beacon in moving toward achieving a nuclear weapons free world.

    When looked at in overview, and when taking the first letters of each of the elements of US nuclear policy described above, they spell Death Plan. While I don’t think that US nuclear policy is consciously meant to be a Death Plan, I do think that it is currently charting a course that will result in nuclear proliferation, potential nuclear terrorism, increased nuclear threats and the eventual use of these weapons.

    Above all countries, the United States should be leading the way toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Not only does it have special responsibilities as the country that first created nuclear weapons and first used them, but it is also the country that would benefit most in terms of security from abolishing these weapons.

    Whose Interests Do Nuclear Weapons Serve?

    Nuclear weapons seemingly serve the interests of countries that are threatened by another nation’s nuclear weapons. The US was originally threatened by the potential of German nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union was threatened by US Nuclear Weapons, the UK and France were threatened by the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, and so on. It is clear, however, that deterrence can fail, defeating reliance upon nuclear weapons for security.

    Beyond the questionable interests of countries in nuclear weapons for deterrence, the most obvious interests are those of the scientists and engineers employed to create and improve these weapons. The engineers and scientists employed by the nuclear weapons laboratories – such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US – have a continuing interest in their job security and prestige. In the US, the University of California has a financial interest in the resources it receives from the government for providing management and oversight to the Nuclear Weapons Laboratories, as does its partner in management, Bechtel Corporation ,and other defense contractors.

    One class of people whose interests are not served by nuclear weapons is the citizens of a country that possesses these weapons. They are the targets and potential victims of nuclear attack by other nuclear-armed states. It is ordinary citizens, the inhabitants of Earth, including the nuclear weapons states, who have the most to lose in a nuclear exchange.

    What Is the Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition?

    The road to nuclear weapons abolition is a road not much traveled, but one that calls out to humanity. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki recognized that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. We must choose: humanity or nuclear devastation. The choice should not be difficult. We must end the nuclear weapons era before these weapons end the human era.

    The road to nuclear weapons abolition can be conceived of as a series of steps to lessen nuclear dangers, while engaging in good faith negotiations on an international treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. It is a road to a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). A Draft NWC has been created by some international civil society organizations, including the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP). The Draft Convention was first introduced to the United Nations General Assembly by the Republic of Costa Rica in 1997, and was revised and reintroduced to the UN by Costa Rica in 2007.

    The Draft Nuclear Weapons Convention sets forth a plan for the phased, verifiable, irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. It is only one such guide, but it demonstrates that a feasible plan can be created. It should be an incentive to nuclear weapons states to begin the process of good faith negotiations that they are obligated to fulfill by their membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Among the steps that can be taken in conjunction with negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention are the following:

    1. De-alerting nuclear arsenals;
    2. Legally binding commitments to No First Use of nuclear weapons;
    3. Placing all weapons-grade nuclear materials, as well as uranium enrichment, plutonium separation and other key elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, under strict and effective international control;
    4. Ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
    5. Reestablishing an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
    6. Banning weapons of mass destruction in outer space.

    Are There Signs of Hope?

    There are some signs of hope that our human spirits can prevail over the cold technology of nuclear annihilation.

    1. The vast majority of states in the world support a world free of nuclear weapons. There are currently 188 countries that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The nuclear weapons states party to this treaty agree that they will pursue “good faith” negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. Unfortunately, these states (US, Russia, UK, France and China) have not acted to fulfill their disarmament obligations. Only three countries have not signed the treaty (Israel, India and Pakistan), and one country has withdrawn (North Korea). At the United Nations Disarmament Committee in October 2007, states voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for “Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons.” The vote was 165 in favor, three opposed and ten abstentions. The three opposed were India, North Korea and the US.
    1. The vast majority of US and Russian citizens support a world free of nuclear weapons. A 2007 poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org found that the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons was supported by 73 percent of Americans and 63 percent of Russians. In both countries, even larger majorities want their governments to do more to pursue this objective. Sixty-four percent of Americans and 59 percent of Russians favor taking all nuclear weapons off high-alert status. Most Americans (88%) and Russians (65%) endorse the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), but would like to speed up the timetable of the treaty and have reductions far greater than the 2,200 by 2012 that are called for in the treaty. A majority in both countries would support cutbacks to 400 nuclear weapons each, making their arsenals roughly comparable to those of other nuclear weapons states. A large majority of Americans (92%) and Russians (65%) believe that an international organization, such as the United Nations, would need to monitor and verify compliance with such deep reductions.
    1. Cities are standing up for nuclear disarmament. The Mayors for Peace “2020 Vision” Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons has grown to nearly 2000 Mayors in 124 countries. The United Cities and Local Governments organization, the world’s largest and most widely recognized mayoral association, voted in October 2007 to support the Mayors campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. The Declaration of the United Cities and Local Government organization stated, “We call on all nation states and armed groups to cease considering cities as military objectives – ‘cities are not targets’.”
    2. More than half the world is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones. Virtually the entire southern hemisphere is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones, including Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Africa, and Southeast Asia. In addition, central Asia has set up a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.
    1. Former Cold War officials are now coming out in favor of a world free of nuclear weapons and US leadership to achieve such a world. In a January 4, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn argued, “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S. leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage — to a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.” At a follow up conference in late 2007 on the 21st anniversary of the Reykjavic Summit of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Nancy Reagan told the conference, “Ronnie had many hopes for the future and none were more important to America and to mankind than the effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons. As Ronnie said, these are ‘totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing and possibly destructive of all life on earth.’ I agree and applaud your effort to create a safer world.”
    2. Norway’s Government Pension Fund has divested from companies providing components for nuclear weapons. The Norwegian Government Pension Fund – Global, based upon a recommendation from the Ethics Council for the fund, has divested from companies that develop and/or produce central components for nuclear weapons. According to their ethical guidelines, the fund may not invest in companies that produce weapons that through normal use may violate fundamental international humanitarian principles, a category that includes nuclear weapons. The following companies were excluded from the fund on this basis: BAE Systems Plc, Boeing Co., Finmeccanica Sp.A., Honeywell International Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., Safran SA and United Technologies Corp. The Ethics Council pointed out that this is not an exhaustive list.
    1. Legal measures are being taken to challenge the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament obligations. There is a plan by the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) to encourage the United Nations General Assembly to ask the International Court of Justice whether or not the nuclear weapons states are acting in “good faith” on their obligations for nuclear disarmament in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In Italy, there is a legal case for the removal of US nuclear weapons from Italian soil.
    1. University students are showing increased concern for university involvement in nuclear weapons research and development. At the University of California at Santa Barbara, the students have established a Student Oversight Committee to oversee the US Nuclear Weapons Laboratories for which the University provides management and oversight. They intend to conduct inspections of the laboratories and report to their fellow students on whether the laboratories are fulfilling their obligations under international law.

    Conclusions

    Nuclear weapons are instruments of annihilation. Rather than provide security, the undermine it. US leadership toward nuclear disarmament is needed, but unfortunately the US has been setting up obstacles to nuclear disarmament. This must change.

    There are some signs of hope. The vast majority of countries and people support the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. Large majorities of American and Russian citizens want to move faster in this direction. Some 2000 of the world’s cities are supporting the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020, and are speaking out against the targeting of cities. More than half of the world is covered by Nuclear Weapons Free Zones. Even former American officials during the Cold War are now pressing for US leadership for the elimination of nuclear weapons. These are all good and hopeful signs of intention. But more is needed – in addition to intention, there must also be momentum and raising the issue to a higher priority on national and global agendas.

    Norway has found a way of applying economic pressure to the corporations involved in developing or producing components for nuclear weapons. This is a powerful action that should be adopted by other major funds throughout the world. There should be a global call for divestment from these companies. Legal channels present another powerful avenue for bringing pressure to bear upon the nuclear status quo. One can imagine a global campaign to remove nuclear weapons from the oceans, the common heritage of humankind, and to prevent their introduction into the common province of humankind in outer space.

    Finally, young people are beginning to awaken to this issue, as exemplified by the student activities in opposition to the University of California’s management and oversight of the US Nuclear Weapons Laboratories. Young people must be educated to understand that it is their future that is most endangered by nuclear weapons. They cannot wait to become the leaders of tomorrow; in their own interest, they must step up and become the leaders of today on this critical issue.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).