Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

  • A Response to Brown and Deutch

    A Response to Brown and Deutch

    On November 19, 2007, Harold Brown, a former Secretary of Defense in the Carter administration, and John Deutch, a former CIA Director in the Clinton administration, published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. The title of their piece was “The Nuclear Disarmament Fantasy.” Their article began by pointing out that the end of the Cold War has led “several former senior foreign policy officials who wrote on this page [that is, the Wall Street Journal opinion page]…to make the complete elimination of nuclear weapons a principal U.S. foreign policy goal….”

    Brown and Deutch were referring to an article published in the Wall Street Journal on January 4, 2007, co-authored by Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn. The article was entitled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” and the authors made the case for US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world. They argued, “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. US 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.”

    Disturbingly, Brown and Deutch were dismissive of even the aspirational goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. They quoted Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which obligates parties to good faith negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons, but dismissed it, stating “hope is not a policy.”

    According to Brown and Deutch, “Nuclear weapons are not empty symbols; they play an important deterrent role, and cannot be eliminated.” But if these weapons are not “empty symbols,” what is it that they symbolize? A power beyond our ability to control? Human folly? A pinnacle of destructive achievement? They based their arguments on “the important deterrent role” of nuclear weapons, but never bother to mention who exactly is being deterred by the current US arsenal of 10,000 nuclear weapons.

    Rather than looking for a new direction for US nuclear policy more than 15 years after the Cold War, Brown and Deutch seem convinced that nuclear weapons are here to stay, and with their approach they will make this outcome inevitable. Without US leadership, there will be no possibility of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. With US leadership, it is a possibility.

    No country would benefit more from a world free of nuclear weapons than the United States. These are the only weapons that could destroy this country, and perhaps will if we continue to rely upon them for phantom deterrence. Nuclear weapons are really weapons of the weak, giving great asymmetrical advantage to smaller, less powerful nations or to extremists. If the US continues to rely upon these weapons, they will eventually proliferate to extremists who cannot be deterred, and they will be used against us.

    Brown and Deutch’s vision looks directly into a rearview mirror toward the 20th century. Their vision will sustain a future of nuclear threat and make nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war more likely. We desperately need a new vision in our country – a vision that we can lead the world in a more positive direction based upon human security and encompasses ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    To view the Brown/Deutch article and see other responses to it, click here.

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

  • You Can Help End the Thermonuclear Threat to Humanity

    You Can Help End the Thermonuclear Threat to Humanity

    Do you think the threat of nuclear weapons is a relic of the past? If so, think again.

    The nuclear threat remains very real. At any moment of the day or night, a nuclear war could be triggered by accident or design. This isn’t an exaggeration or a paranoid delusion. It’s a fact.

    Did you know that there are still 26,000 nuclear weapons in our world? Twelve thousand of these are deployed and ready to be used. Some 3,500 are on hair-trigger alert, which means that these weapons could be fired within moments of an order to do so.

    No one would give that kind of order, right? Some say it is delusional to worry – after all, the Cold War is over. But what is delusional is to believe that we can maintain such arsenals for the indefinite future without a catastrophe – either a deliberate act of fanatical madness or Murphy’s law playing out at a cataclysmic scale.

    Imagine waking up and discovering one (or many or most) of the world’s great cities – New York, Moscow, London, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, New Delhi, Karachi, or Tel Aviv – lies in rubble and ashes. It could be your city.

    We know this is possible. It’s not a Hollywood thriller. It’s an all too real possibility played out to the brink every day as new shifts of potential button-pushers and obedient followers take over the keys to Armageddon. Why aren’t more of us taking steps to save our cities and our common future – steps to end this game of planetary Russian roulette?

    Perhaps the reason we’re not acting is that the nuclear threat seems too remote – an artifact of bygone days. After all, we have lived for over sixty years without the use of nuclear weapons in warfare. But the weapons have been there, and they have been poised at the brink and ready to launch – just not triggered to the blinding flash.

    So we have become complacent – to our own detriment. Maybe we believe that we are just too smart to ever have a nuclear war – the fallacy in believing in never and in our own prowess. But there have been many accidents and many near misses with nuclear weapons. Just recently, six nuclear-tipped missiles were mistakenly loaded onto a US B-52 bomber and flown across the central US. Officials are still trying to figure out how that major breach in security could have happened – a mega-error that could have led to a mega-disaster. If such a breach can happen inside the US, with all our supposed controls and safeguards, it can happen anywhere.

    The current instability in Pakistan could result in their nuclear weapons falling into the hands of fanatics or terrorists. As a human community on a planet we share, we cannot afford to run such risks. The era of nuclear weapons must be brought to an end – for our own good, for the good of humanity and for the sake of life on Earth.

    By failing to be part of the solution, we are allowing our world to drift toward nuclear catastrophe. This is an even more urgent and “inconvenient truth” than that of climate change. We know full well that nuclear weapons are 100 percent human-created. While continued global warming could irrevocably change our planet, causing great dislocation and suffering, our self-created nuclear dangers are even more urgent. They could destroy civilization and end intelligent life on the planet in the virtual blink – or blinding flash – of an eye.

    Einstein concluded, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    The old way of thinking leaves important decisions to leaders who surely “know better,” relies upon brute force to solve conflicts, and believes that strong nations can solve their own problems. The new way of thinking that is needed to prevent nuclear catastrophe understands that ordinary citizens must lead their political representatives, relies upon dialogue and diplomacy to solve conflicts so all sides can “win,” and recognizes that even the most powerful nations cannot solve the great global problems confronting humanity without cooperation and collaboration.

    The Nuclear Age we have created requires new modes of thinking based upon collective problem solving in which everyone has a seat at humanity’s table for one simple reason: our mutual survival depends upon it. There are many unknowns in our human future that we will have to deal with. One thing known for certain, though, is that nuclear weapons – monsters of our own making – can make our planet uninhabitable overnight. That is one looming threat we can choose to eliminate. For the sake of all that is dear to us – for the past as well as the future – that is a choice we must make.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is committed to abolishing nuclear weapons. For 25 years the Foundation has worked to change thinking in order to change the world. We need your thinking. We need your participation. We urge you to take these five steps now to help end the thermonuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    1. Change your thinking – put nuclear weapons in the unacceptable category, along with other major threats to human survival.
    2. Be vocal, strong and persistent in expressing this new thinking. Help make a world free of nuclear weapons an idea whose time has come.
    3. Lobby your Mayor to join the Mayors for Peace and support its “2020 Vision” Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons (www.mayorsforpeace.org). Lobby your Congressional or Parliamentary representatives to join the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament (www.pnnd.org) in order to work with parliamentarians from throughout the world to eliminate nuclear weapons.
    4. Sign up to be a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at www.wagingpeace.org. View and share the Foundation’s DVD, “Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future.” Read our free monthly e-newsletter, The Sunflower. Participate in our Turn the Tide Campaign.
    5. Provide financial support to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and other organizations that work daily for a world free of nuclear weapons. Contribute online at https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/menu/donate/index_secure.htm.

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

  • Nuclear Dangers and Challenges to a New Nuclear Policy

    Nuclear Dangers and Challenges to a New Nuclear Policy

    It is worthwhile asking the question: What are nuclear weapons? In some respects the answer to this question may seem obvious, but this is not necessarily the case. To some, nuclear weapons are a scientific achievement that bestows prestige. This is the view that has been taken by each of the nuclear weapons states, with the exception of Israel. Most recently, this perspective was on display when India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

    To others, nuclear weapons are a deterrent that protects a weaker state from a more powerful one. This is likely the view of North Korea and perhaps Iran, after having been designated by the US president as part of the “Axis of Evil” and observing the United States attack Iraq, the third designated country in this axis. To still others, such as Israel, nuclear weapons represent a final response to an existential threat. To North Korea, nuclear weapons may represent a response to an existential threat and also a “bargaining chip” for security guarantees and development aid.

    To others, nuclear weapons demonstrate a state’s power in the international system. This likely reflects the view of the five original nuclear weapons states, the ones that also hold permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council – the US, UK, Russia, China and France – and quite possibly the rest of the nuclear weapons states as well.

    Thus far, I have only given the probable views of states that possess nuclear weapons or may wish to do so. Let me now offer another view of nuclear weapons. They are weapons that kill massively and indiscriminately. As such, they are long-distance instruments of annihilation. Weapons that kill indiscriminately are illegal under international law. In this respect, any threat or use of nuclear weapons that failed to discriminate between civilians and combatants would be illegal. It is hard to imagine any threat or use of these weapons that would or even could discriminate.

    The International Court of Justice has found that any threat or use of nuclear weapons would be generally illegal, allowing for the possible but uncertain exception under current international law of a circumstance in which the very existence of a state is at stake. But even then, for such use to be legal it would have to meet the standards of international humanitarian law. In other words, it would have to discriminate between soldiers and civilians, be proportionate, and not cause unnecessary suffering.

    Nuclear weapons are also cowardly and anti-democratic. More accurately, the weapons themselves may not be cowardly, but those who would threaten or use these long-distance killing machines are cowardly. Nearly all of the leading military figures of World War II recognized this and commented upon it. Admiral William Leahy, referring to the use of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said, “[I]n being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

    Nuclear weapons are anti-democratic because they concentrate power in the hands of single individuals or a small cabal. They take away the most basic right of people everywhere – the right to survive. There will never be a democratic vote to use nuclear weapons. These weapons place in the hands of leaders the capacity to destroy cities, countries and civilization, with the high likelihood that any use of nuclear weapons would lead to the destruction of the country that initiated a nuclear attack.

    No Defense against Nuclear Attack

    It is not possible to defend against a nuclear attack. Deterrence, which has been the main line of prevention, cannot provide physical defense against a nuclear attack. It is simply the threat of retaliation. This threat must be effectively communicated and believed by a potential attacker. It is, of course, not a meaningful threat against a non-state extremist organization, which cannot be located. Deterrence theory is rooted in rationality. It posits leaders acting rationally to assure their survival, even in times of severe crisis. Basing protection against nuclear attack on rationality, unfortunately, is irrational.

    This is what the former commander-in-chief of the United States Strategic Command, General George Lee Butler, had to say about deterrence: “Deterrence serves the ends of evil as well as those of noble intent. It holds guilty the innocent as well as the culpable. It is a gamble no mortal should pretend to make. It invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the Creator.”

    Early in 2007, four former high-level US officials – George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn – published an article, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” in the Wall Street Journal. They addressed the issue of deterrence, arguing: “The end of the Cold War made the doctrine of mutual Soviet-American deterrence obsolete. Deterrence continues to be a relevant consideration for many states with regard to threats from other states. But reliance on nuclear weapons for this purpose is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”

    If deterrence is becoming more dangerous and less effective, what remains? US leaders have put significant emphasis on missile defenses, but few knowledgeable scientists, other than those working on government contracts, believe that missile defenses would actually work under real-world conditions. There is a widespread understanding that missile defenses, in addition to being unreliable, can be easily overcome by offensive forces and the use of decoys. The US push to deploy missile defenses has frayed relations between the US and Russia and China, and led these countries to improve their offensive nuclear capabilities.

    If neither deterrence nor missile defenses provide security against nuclear attack, what is left? Nothing is viable but diplomacy to eliminate nuclear arsenals. There is no reliable defense against nuclear attack. Major countries might consider returning to the “duck and cover” drills of the 1950s, although they might update the drills so that they took place in legislatures rather than in schools. These drills, of course, offer no protection to those who do them, but they might help awaken them to the dilemma and the need to take action to eliminate the threat by eliminating the weapons.

    Nuclear Dangers

    Since nuclear weapons continue to exist, nuclear dangers have not gone away, despite the ending of the Cold War and the break up of the Soviet Union. What has largely ended is public concern for the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The end of the Cold War has created a false sense of security, largely attributable to inertia and poor leadership. It is worthwhile reviewing current nuclear dangers.

    1. The proliferation of nuclear weapons to other state actors. The more states in possession of nuclear weapons, the more likely they are to proliferate further and to be used. The spread of nuclear weapons dramatically increases problems of control, as was demonstrated by the case of Pakistan’s A. Q. Khan.
    2. The proliferation of nuclear weapons to extremist organizations. This is a danger that cannot be ruled out. Nuclear weapons in the hands of an extremist organization, such as al Qaeda, pose substantial danger to all countries, including the major nuclear weapons states.
    3. The use of a nuclear weapon by an extremist organization against a state. The actual use of a nuclear weapon by an extremist organization against a state could result in destruction comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with added widespread security and economic implications. Questions would arise about the viability of the world economy, human rights and democratic processes in the face of such attack.
    4. The use of a nuclear weapon by a nuclear weapons state against another state. Such use would be devastating and could trigger a nuclear war. It would end the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons that has existed since 1945.
    5. An all-out nuclear war, initiated either intentionally or accidentally. The danger of an all-out nuclear war is always with us. It would be insane, but it could happen. Just as states stumbled into World War I, they could stumble again, by accident or miscalculation, into an all-out nuclear war.

    These dangers are obviously not trivial, nor are they dangers with which anyone should feel comfortable. They are dangers that place civilization and even the human species at risk of annihilation.

    Current nuclear dangers are fueled by the continued reliance of the nuclear weapons states on their nuclear arsenals for their security. Whereas these states once lived in a world of Mutually Assured Destruction, they now live in a world of Mutually Assured Delusions. Their greatest delusion is that they can continue to rely upon nuclear weapons for their own security and that of their friends, while preventing these weapons from spreading to others or being used again.

    There have been repeated warnings over a long period of time that nuclear double standards cannot hold. In 1955, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto warned: “We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?”

    In 1996, the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons warned, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defines credibility. The only complete defense is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    This warning was repeated in 2006 by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, chaired by Hans Blix. Their report, entitled Weapons of Terror, Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, stated: “So long as any state has such weapons – especially nuclear arms – others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain in any state’s arsenal, there is a high risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. Any such use would be catastrophic.”

    A New Nuclear Policy

    There have been many proposals for a new nuclear policy. The essence of such a policy is rooted in the following:

    1. The obligation for good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament in Article VI of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty;
    2. The 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, which stated, “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.”
    3. The pledge in the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to unanimously at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference: “An unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.

    US leadership will be necessary in order to move forward in implementing such a policy. Without US leadership there will be little incentive for the other nuclear weapons states to act, and we are likely to remain frozen in the nuclear double standards of the status quo.

    While US leadership for a new nuclear policy has not been forthcoming, some hope exists in that the group of former US officials – Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn – called for it in their January 2007 Wall Street Journal article. They endorsed “the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal….” The four former officials argued, “Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations.”

    Once the political will for the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons exists, it will be possible to take the necessary actions to move from where we are to the goal. There have been many proposals for how to achieve the goal. A group of leading civil society organizations has drafted a plan for a Nuclear Weapons Convention that would lead to the elimination of nuclear weapons in a series of stages. This draft Convention has been introduced to the United Nations by the Republic of Costa Rica. The 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference sets forth another series of steps. The four former Cold Warriors set forth their own series of steps. What is most important in achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons, once there is sufficient political will, is that the disarmament be phased, transparent, verifiable, irreversible, and subject to strict and effective international control.

    Challenges to a New Nuclear Policy

    There are many challenges to a new nuclear policy, but the greatest challenges lie in the orientation of the current leadership of the US. In July 2007, the US Secretaries of State, Defense and Energy issued a joint statement, “National Security and Nuclear Weapons: Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century.” This statement, contrary to the position taken by the four former US officials, began by extolling “the essential role that nuclear weapons play in maintaining deterrence.” It ended up by calling for replacing every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal with a new type of thermonuclear weapon, the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). They argued that “RRW is key to sustaining our security commitment to allies, and is fully consistent with U.S. obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty – including Article VI.” They also threatened that delays on RRW “raise the prospect of having to return to underground nuclear testing to certify existing weapons.”

    The Bush administration is clearly not seeking to achieve a new nuclear policy, but a retrenchment of the status quo, one in which the United States remains the dominant nuclear weapons state. They seem unaware of the risks they are running, particularly the dangers that their nuclear policies create for the US itself.

    Further challenges to a new nuclear policy come from those states that want to defy the nuclear status quo of privileged nuclear “haves” maintaining their superiority over nuclear “have-nots.” Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea were not content living in that two-tiered nuclear world, and pursued nuclear programs that led to the development of nuclear arsenals. South Africa had followed this path in earlier years, developed a small nuclear arsenal, and then reconsidered and dismantled its weapons. Without more concerted action to achieve nuclear disarmament, we can anticipate that more states will move toward a nuclear option in the future. Even today, some countries, like Japan, hold open the nuclear option as virtual nuclear weapons states, having both the technology and nuclear materials to develop nuclear arsenals in a very short time.

    A general challenge to a new nuclear policy is the belief that a firewall can be drawn between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. No such firewall is possible, and nuclear reactors, for power or research, have fueled the nuclear programs of Israel, India and Pakistan. The designation of peaceful nuclear power as an “inalienable right” in the Non-Proliferation Treaty is a contradiction that must be addressed if nuclear proliferation is to be controlled.

    A Way Forward

    In the end, the most important consideration may be that suggested by the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in their statement, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.” This is patently true. The two are now placed in an uneasy juxtaposition. One represents the technology of annihilation. The other represents the sum total of human achievement – past, present and potential future. It should not be a difficult choice, but many of us on the planet seem to be voting against ourselves by our ignorance, apathy and denial. An awakened populace may prove to be a potent force to achieve a nuclear weapons free world.

    Our challenge, as leaders in civil society, is to educate and advocate for a new nuclear policy that will move the world away from the nuclear precipice. In doing so, we may find many important partners, including the mayors of cities throughout the world who have joined Mayors for Peace led by Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima; the network of parliamentarians in the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament; and the governments of non-nuclear weapons states, such as those in the New Agenda Coalition, which have worked closely with the Middle Powers Initiative.

    What has been accomplished thus far is not nearly enough. The world remains in peril. In Einstein’s words, “we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Our challenge is to reverse that drift, to move back from the nuclear precipice, to prevent the catastrophe Einstein foresaw. To achieve a new and human-centric nuclear policy will require major national efforts within nuclear weapons states, and a major global campaign to bring pressure to bear upon these states from without. Already the southern hemisphere of the planet has organized itself into a series of Nuclear Weapon Free Zones.

    Europe could play an important role in the effort to achieve a nuclear weapons free world by demanding that US nuclear weapons be removed from Europe, by refusing to participate in missile defense programs, by stepping out from under the US nuclear umbrella, and by convening a forum for the good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament called for in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Now is the time to begin planning for a saner, more reasonable and law abiding US administration that will replace the current one in early 2009.

    Nuclear weapons currently divide humanity, but the recognition of their danger could be a force for uniting humanity for their elimination. This would be a great achievement not only for its expression of common human purpose, but also for the resources it would free for meeting basic human needs for food, health care, housing, education, the alleviation of poverty and the protection of the environment. A new nuclear policy aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons should be the top priority on the global agenda.

     

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

  • Nuclear Weapons and the Responsibility of Scientists

    Nuclear Weapons and the Responsibility of Scientists

    Nuclear weapons are unique among weapons systems – they are capable of destroying civilization and possibly the human species. Nuclear weapons kill massively and indiscriminately. They are powerful. They are also illegal, immoral and cowardly. They are long-distance killing machines, instruments of annihilation. They place the human future in jeopardy. In spite of all of this, or perhaps because of it, these weapons seem to bestow prestige upon their creators and possessors.

    Nuclear weapons were first created by scientists and engineers working in the US nuclear weapons program, the Manhattan Project, during World War II. The project began simply and, ironically, with a letter to President Roosevelt from a great man of peace and humanitarian, Albert Einstein, who also happened to be the greatest and most celebrated scientist of his time. Later, after the use of the US nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein would lament having written the letter to Roosevelt.

    By examining the subsequent responses of three leading scientists whose earlier work had involved them in significant ways with the creation of nuclear weapons, I will show how they set an example for scientists today. I will seek to answer these questions: Do the scientists who created nuclear weapons have special responsibility for these weapons? Do scientists today continue to have responsibility for nuclear weapons?

    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein is one of great men of the 20th century, and one of the men I most admire. His penetrating intellect changed our view of the world. His understanding of the relationship between mass and energy, as contained in his famous formula E=mc2, gave the original theoretical insight into the power of mass converted to energy. Einstein, however, for all his theoretical brilliance, did not foresee the potential power that might be released by the atom and give rise to nuclear weapons.

    By 1939 Einstein was living in the United States, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, and had a position at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. A fellow physicist and friend, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian refugee from Nazi Germany, became concerned that the Germans would develop an atomic weapon and use it to defeat the Allied powers fighting against Hitler. Szilard came to Einstein, explained his fear, and asked Einstein to sign a letter explaining the danger to President Franklin Roosevelt. The letter that Einstein sent said that “uranium may turn into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future,” and that, while not certain, “extremely powerful bombs of a new type may be constructed.” The letter called upon the President Roosevelt to have his administration maintain contact with “a group of physicists working on chain reactions in America.” The letter led Roosevelt to take the first steps toward what would become the Manhattan Project, a very large US government program to create atomic weapons. President Roosevelt set up an Advisory Committee on Uranium, headed by Lyman J. Briggs, to evaluate where the US stood with regard to uranium research and to recommend what role the US government should play.

    Einstein never worked on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb, and was deeply disturbed and saddened when the bombs were used on Japan. He was reported to have said later, “If only I had known, I would have become a watch maker.” Einstein would join and lend his name to many organizations working to control and eliminate nuclear weapons during the final ten years of his life after the bombs were used. He was also outspoken in his condemnation of atomic weapons. He fought against the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1946, Einstein joined a group of atomic scientists that formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. Einstein and his fellow trustees of the Emergency Committee released a statement at the end of a conference held in Princeton in November 1946 that included the following “facts…accepted by all scientists”:

    1. Atomic bombs can now be made cheaply and in large number. They will become more destructive.
    2. There is no military defense against the atomic bomb and none is to be expected.
    3. Other nations can rediscover our secret processes by themselves.
    4. Preparedness against atomic war is futile, and if attempted will ruin the structure of our social order.
    5. If war breaks out, atomic bombs will be used and they will surely destroy our civilization.
    6. There is no solution to this problem except international control of atomic energy and, ultimately, the elimination of war.

    These six points remain as valid today as they were in 1946.

    The final public document that Einstein signed, just days before his death, was the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. It is an eloquent call to scientists to act for the good of humanity. The document began, “In the tragic situation that confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in the spirit of the appended draft.”

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto is one of the most powerful anti-nuclear and anti-war statements ever written. It expresses the fear of massive destruction made possible by nuclear weapons that could bring an end to the human species. It states: “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?” Einstein and Russell were joined by nine other prominent scientists in calling upon people everywhere, and particularly scientists, to take a simple but critical step: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

    One of Einstein’s most prescient warnings to humanity was this: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” More than five decades after Einstein’s death, his warning remains largely unheeded.

    Leo Szilard

    Leo Szilard was one of the most remarkable men of the 20th century. He first conceived of the possibility of an atomic chain reaction that could result in atomic bombs while standing at a stoplight in London in 1933. One of the people Szilard credits with influencing his discovery was British novelist H.G. Wells, who talked about atomic bombs in his 1913 science fiction book, The World Set Free.

    Six years later, it was Szilard who encouraged Einstein to warn President Roosevelt about the possibility of a German atomic bomb. Once the Manhattan Project was underway, Szilard would work with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago on creating a controlled chain reaction. The two men succeeded in conducting the first controlled and sustained chain reaction in their laboratory under the bleachers at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942. In doing so, they left no doubt that the creation of an atomic weapon would be possible.

    By early 1945, it seemed clear to Szilard that Germany would not succeed in creating an atomic bomb, but that America would. Szilard became concerned that the US would choose to use its new weapon as an instrument of war rather than as a means of deterring the German use of an atomic weapon. Szilard made frantic attempts to stop the US from using the bomb that he had been so instrumental in creating. He went back to Einstein in an attempt to arrange a meeting with President Roosevelt. Einstein wrote another letter to Roosevelt on Szilard’s behalf. The President’s wife, Eleanor, wrote back agreeing to meet with Szilard in her Manhattan apartment. Szilard received the letter with great excitement, but his excitement was dashed when later in the day the news was announced that President Roosevelt had died. It was April 12, 1945.

    Next Szilard tried to arrange a meeting with the new President, Harry Truman. Truman arranged for Szilard to meet with Jimmy Byrnes, a Senate mentor of Truman’s who would soon be named his Secretary of State. Szilard, along with scientists Walter Bartky and Harold Urey, traveled to Spartanburg, South Carolina to meet with Byrnes. The meeting went badly. Szilard expressed concern about a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Byrnes seemed to be more concerned with the possibility of using the new weapon as a demonstration of military might to make the Soviets more manageable. Szilard made an unfavorable impression on Byrnes. Szilard later wrote, “I was rarely as depressed as when we left Byrnes’ house and walked to the station.”

    Szilard next worked energetically on the Social and Political Committee of the Met Lab scientists working on the bomb at the University of Chicago. The Committee was headed by Nobel Laureate physicist James Franck. The Committee report concluded that the bomb should be demonstrated to Japan before being used against Japanese civilians. The Scientific Committee of the Manhattan Project’s Interim Committee – composed of Arthur Holly Compton, Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer – rejected the report, recommending against a demonstration and for military use of the bomb.

    Finally, Szilard drafted a petition to the President of the United States. The petition, dated July 17, 1945, began, “Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future….” The petition argued against attacking Japanese civilians on moral and practical grounds. It argued that “a nation which sets a precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.” The petition was held by General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach Secretary of Defense Stimson or President Truman until after their return from Potsdam and after Hiroshima had been destroyed by the first attack with a nuclear weapon.

    After the war, Szilard was a leader among atomic scientists in working to alert the public to nuclear dangers. He was a founder of the Council for a Livable World. He remained active in opposing nuclear weapons until his death.

    Joseph Rotblat

    Joseph Rotblat was one of the great men of the 20th century. He was a Polish émigré, who went to London in 1939 to work with Nobel Laureate physicist James Chadwick. Rotblat became concerned about a German atomic weapon, which led him to work on the British atomic bomb project and later in the US Manhattan Project. He believed that an Allied atomic bomb was necessary to deter the Germans from using an atomic bomb. By late 1944, however, Rotblat had concluded that the Germans would not succeed in creating an atomic weapon. He had been shocked to hear from General Groves one evening that the purpose of the US bomb had always been directed against the Soviets, then US allies in the war. As an act of conscience, Rotblat left the Manhattan Project in December 1944 and returned to London. The following August his worst fears were realized when the US used their newly created weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Rotblat would dedicate the rest of his life to working for a nuclear weapons free world. He helped in the creation of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, and was its youngest signer. Two years later, he helped organize the first meeting of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, bringing together scientists from East and West. He would serve as a leader of the Pugwash movement for the rest of his long life, always as a voice of conscience and reason and a strong and uncompromising advocate of nuclear weapons abolition. He was the living embodiment of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, calling for nuclear weapons abolition and the abolition of war.

    In 1995, Joseph Rotblat received the Nobel Peace Prize. He appealed in his Nobel Lecture in part to his fellow scientists. In doing so, he referred approvingly to the statement made earlier that year by former Manhattan Project scientist Hans Bethe on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and he quoted Bethe’s statement in full:

    As the Director of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, I participated at the most senior level in the World War II Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic weapons.
    Now, at age 88, I am one of the few remaining such senior persons alive. Looking back at the half century since that time, I feel the most intense relief that these weapons have not been used since World War II, mixed with the horror that tens of thousands of such weapons have been built since that time – one hundred times more than any of us at Los Alamos could ever had imagined.
    Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.
    Accordingly, I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons – and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.

    Rotblat concluded his remarks to scientists with the following appeal: “At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society, when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role, and conduct themselves accordingly. I appeal to my fellow scientists to remember their responsibility to humanity.”

    In the final words of his Nobel Lecture, he spoke as an elder statesman of humanity: “The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity.”

    Conclusions

    I have discussed the manner in which three important scientists reacted to nuclear weapons. Of course, there have been many other scientists – including Linus Pauling, Eugene Rabinowitch and Andrei Sakharov – who have also joined in publicly seeking to free the world from the dangers of nuclear arms. But there have also been many other scientists who have supported the nuclear arms race and continue to work on designing and improving nuclear weapons.

    Einstein, Szilard and Rotblat believed that nuclear weapons threaten the future of humanity and must be brought under international control and abolished. They sought to eliminate not only nuclear weapons, but war as a human institution. They all contributed to the creation of nuclear weapons, influenced by the threat of a potential Nazi atomic weapon, but they all regretted their part and sought to change the course of history. They believed that scientists had an important role to play in educating the general population about nuclear threats and encouraging the public and political leaders to support effective nuclear disarmament.

    These men have become historical figures, but they lived real and courageous lives. They were all men of conscience, who understood that nuclear weapons cast a dark shadow across the human future. They stood not with the power establishments of their day, but with humanity. They are important role models for young scientists and engineers. Their lives and their words convey a crucial message for the scientists of today: Contribute your talents constructively to humanity, but withhold them from making and improving armaments, in particular nuclear arms.

    The atomic scientists were influential in initiating many institutions that continue to work for a nuclear weapons free world. These include Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Council for a Livable World, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the Federation of American Scientists. To these can be added newer organizations committed to science for social responsibility such as Science for Peace in the UK and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.

    As the scientists directly connected with the World War II US Manhattan Project and the British MAUD Committee have passed on, new responsibilities have fallen to a younger generation of scientists. It remains to be seen, though, whether this new generation of scientists will have the passion and persistence to carry on effectively in fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a positive sign that one of the world’s most renowned physicists, Stephen Hawking, has stated, “As scientists we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects…as citizens of the world we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action to render nuclear weapons obsolete.”

    Today the University of California manages and provides oversight to the main US nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore. These laboratories have designed every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. They have recently designed a new nuclear weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which the US government would like to develop to replace all existing weapons in the US nuclear arsenal. To this enterprise, the University of California lends its prestige and legitimacy. Leaders of the University proudly proclaim that they are performing a national service, and seem to give little thought to the dangerous nuclear nightmare they are perpetuating.

    Scientists everywhere should join together, in the spirit of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, to speak out and demand that Universities, such as the University of California, stop supporting the design, development, testing and manufacture of any weapon of mass destruction, most of all nuclear weapons. They should bring collective pressure to bear upon those scientists who choose to participate in such work. In short, they should follow in the footsteps of Einstein, Szilard and Rotblat, and accept personal and professional responsibility for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    As Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue pointed out in his 2007 Nagasaki Peace Declaration, “[A] major force for nuclear abolition would be for scientists and engineers to refuse to cooperate in nuclear weapons development.” To achieve this end, it will be necessary to apply peer pressure within the scientific community to strip away any semblance of prestige and legitimacy that remains connected to the creation of weapons capable of destroying humanity.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.com).

  • US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons Free World?

    US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons Free World?

    Since the onset of the Nuclear Age, nuclear weapons have posed an existential threat to humanity. With the development of thermonuclear weapons in the early 1950s and the ensuing Cold War nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union, humanity has stood at the brink of catastrophe. Albert Einstein noted famously, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s many people breathed a sigh of relief, believing incorrectly that there was no longer a threat of nuclear annihilation. Today, more than 15 years after the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear devastation remains very much with us. In some respects, in this time of extremism, the possibilities for nuclear weapons proliferation and use may have actually increased.

    Richard Garwin, a respected nuclear scientist, estimates the risk of a terrorist nuclear attack against an American or European city to be greater than 20 percent per year, not a figure that gives reassurance that the dangers have dramatically diminished. Graham Allison, director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and an expert in international terrorism, believes that the chances of a nuclear terrorist nuclear attack in the next decade are greater than 50 percent.

    The surest and perhaps only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear annihilation is to eliminate nuclear weapons. To achieve this goal will require US leadership. Without such leadership, the other nuclear weapons states are unlikely to move toward the elimination of their arsenals. With US leadership it will be possible to forge a path forward. Unfortunately, for those of us who accept the centrality of US leadership on this issue, there have been few signs of hope that such leadership will be forthcoming. The US has been more inclined to place obstacles on the path to nuclear disarmament than to lead the way back from the nuclear precipice. If the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament set forth at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference are taken as a benchmark, the US has failed to lead virtually across the board. If anything, the US has led in the wrong direction.

    The Bush administration has committed in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) to reduce its arsenal of deployed strategic nuclear weapons from about 6,000 to 2,200 or below by the day the Treaty ends, December 31, 2012. It has, however, purposely left out of the agreement any provisions for transparency, verifiability or irreversibility. Weapons taken off deployed status can be put on a shelf in a reserve status for later redeployment. By the terms of the Treaty, the US and Russia are free to again expand their deployed strategic arsenals the day after the Treaty ends.

    In addition, the US has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to pursue missile defenses and space weaponization. Despite US assurances that the missile defenses are aimed at rogue nations and not at Russia and China, leaders of these countries have repeatedly stated that US deployment of missile defenses is provocative and is spurring them to increase their offensive nuclear capabilities. China and Russia have also called for banning weapons in outer space, and the US has persisted in blocking their efforts.

    Since the end of the Cold War, the US has failed to take its nuclear arsenal off high alert status; failed to give legally binding pledges of No First Use of nuclear weapons, failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, failed to support a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty and failed to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons for its security. To the contrary, it has developed contingency plans for nuclear weapons use against seven countries, including five that were thought to be non-nuclear weapons states at the time. And it has sought to develop new nuclear weapons, such as the “bunker buster” and the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).

    The principal elements of US nuclear policy favor continued reliance on these weapons. When taken together, the first letters of these elements actually spell out “Death Plan.” I don’t mean to imply that there is a conscious plan to destroy humanity, but that is the result of such policy. These elements are:

    — Double standards — Extended deterrence — Ambiguous messages — Threat of preventive use — High alert status

    — Preventing proliferation by force — Launch on warning — Alliance sharing — Negative leadership

    A Bipartisan Plea for US Leadership

    Against this bleak background, a bipartisan plea early in 2007 for US leadership for nuclear disarmament from four former high US officials stands out as a ray of hope. Their commentary, entitled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 4, 2007. It was remarkable not so much for what it proposed but for who was making the proposal. It was written by four former Cold Warriors: former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn. Shultz and Kissinger served in Republican administrations, while Perry served in a Democratic administration and Nunn was a Democratic Senator from Georgia. Sixteen other former US foreign and defense policy officials also endorsed the view represented in the statement.

    The statement began by recognizing a present opportunity for diminishing nuclear dangers that will require US leadership to achieve. The authors stated: “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. US 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.”

    The authors expressed their belief in the importance of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War, but its decreasing relevance in a post Cold War world. They, in fact, found that Soviet-American mutually assured deterrence is “obsolete.”

    The four prominent former US officials reviewed current nuclear dangers and called for US leadership to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. In essence, the argument leading them to this position was based on the following premises:

    1. Reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence “is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”
    2. Terrorist groups are outside the bounds of deterrence strategy.
    3. We are entering a new nuclear era that “will be more precarious, disorienting and costly than was Cold War deterrence.”
    4. Attempting to replicate Cold War strategies of deterrence will dramatically increase the risk that nuclear weapons will be used.
    5. New nuclear weapons states lack the safeguarding and control experiences learned by the US and USSR during the Cold War.
    6. The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty envisions the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
    7. Non-nuclear weapons states have grown increasingly skeptical of the sincerity of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
    8. There exists an historic opportunity to eliminate nuclear weapons in the world.
    9. To realize this opportunity, bold vision and action are needed.
    10. The US must take the lead and must convince the leaders of the other nuclear weapons states to turn the goal of nuclear weapons abolition into a joint effort.

    In other words, the bipartisan group found that it was in the self-interest of the US to lead the way toward a world without nuclear weapons. They are not a group of men likely to encourage US leadership for altruistic reasons or humanitarian concerns. They were hardened Cold Warriors, willing to risk humanity’s future during the Cold War nuclear arms race, even if it meant blowing up the world, including the United States, for what they perceived as America’s security.

    The group outlined a number of steps that need to be taken to lay the groundwork for a world free of nuclear threat. They specifically called for the following:

    • de-alerting nuclear arsenals;
    • reducing the size of nuclear arsenals;
    • eliminating tactical nuclear weapons;
    • achieving Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and encouraging other key states to also ratify the Treaty;
    • securing nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials everywhere in the world; and
    • reducing proliferation risks by halting production of fissile materials for weapons, ceasing to use enriched uranium in civil commerce and removing weapons-usable uranium from research reactors.

    Evaluation of the Bipartisan Plea

    For individuals and organizations long committed to the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons, there is nothing new in the arguments of the former Cold Warriors. They are arguments that many civil society groups have been making for decades and with particular force since the end of the Cold War. The proposals of the former officials include many of the steps long called for by the international community such as those in the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Other former high-level US officials, such as former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and former head of the US Strategic Command General George Lee Butler, have also made such arguments.

    What is new is that these former Cold Warriors have joined together in a bipartisan spirit to publicly make these arguments to the American people. This means that the perspectives of civil society organizations working for nuclear weapons abolition are finally being embraced by key former officials who once presided over Cold War nuclear strategy.

    The bipartisan advice of Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn to abolish nuclear weapons will require a full reversal of the current Bush administration nuclear policies. The Bush administration has thumbed its nose at the other parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, behaving as though the US has been in full compliance with its obligations under that Treaty.

    If the Bush administration wants to demonstrate leadership toward nuclear weapons abolition, it could immediately take the following steps:

    • submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification;
    • halt its missile defense program;
    • remove US nuclear weapons from Europe;
    • call for negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament on a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty;
    • negotiate with Russia to take nuclear weapons off high-alert status;
    • reach an agreement with Russia to begin implementing deeper cuts in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries, which Russia supports; and
    • call for a summit of leaders of all nuclear weapons states to negotiate a new treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    The Bush Administration Issues Its Own Plea (for RRW)

    The Bush administration unfortunately does not seem to have been influenced by the bipartisan statement. It released a July 2007 Joint Statement by the Secretaries of Defense, State and Energy, entitled, “National Security and Nuclear Weapons: Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century.” The Statement begins from the perspective that nuclear weapons will be necessary to maintaining deterrence in the 21st century, although it makes no effort to indicate exactly who is being deterred. Rather, it states the perceived threat in very vague terms, “[t]he future security environment is very uncertain, and some trends are not favorable.”

    Two-thirds of the way through the Joint Statement, one discovers that it is basically a sales pitch for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which Congress has been reluctant to embrace and fund. “To address these issues of sustainability, safety, security and reliability, and to achieve a smaller yet credible nuclear deterrent force,” the three Secretaries argue, “the United States needs to invest in the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. Pursuit of this program is critical to sustaining long-term confidence in our deterrent capability….”

    Ironically, the Bush administration bases its argument for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which will replace every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal with a new thermonuclear weapon, on allowing the US to assure its allies, reduce its nuclear arsenal and continue the nuclear testing moratorium. Despite the fact that scientists have concluded that the current US nuclear weapon stock will remain reliable for some 100 years, the Statement actually threatens that “[d]elays on RRW also raise the prospect of having to return to underground nuclear testing to certify existing weapons.”

    Conclusion

    If the United States becomes serious about leading the way to a world free of nuclear weapons, as called for by the former Cold War officials in their bipartisan plea, it can assume a high moral and legal ground, while improving its own security and global security. Each day that goes by without US leadership for achieving a nuclear weapons-free world diminishes the prospects for the future of humanity and the US itself. There is no issue on which US leadership is more needed, and there is no issue on which the US has more to gain for its own security by asserting such leadership.

    The former Cold War officials conclude with a call to vision and action. They state: “Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations. Without bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible.”

    These men have seen a new light, one consistent with a human future, and their statement is a fissure in the wall of Cold War security based upon deterrence and mutually assured delusions. It remains to be seen whether their combined bipartisan political clout is sufficiently hefty to move the mountain of US nuclear policy in the direction of their vision. This will depend in part upon the priority they give to this effort and to their persistence in seeking to influence policy. It is certain that one statement will not end the debate.

    In June 2007, Sam Nunn, one of the authors of the bipartisan plea, made an important speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. It was entitled, “The Mountaintop: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.” He argued that “the accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material has brought us to a nuclear tipping point. The world is heading in a very dangerous direction.” He further stated that the dangers of nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation and accidental nuclear war can only be prevented through cooperation with Russia and China. He reiterated the call for US leadership “to take the world to the next stage.” He likened achieving nuclear abolition to reaching the top of a mountain, and set forth steps to be taken to ascend the mountain.

    Nunn quoted Ronald Reagan, who said, “We now have a weapon that can destroy the world – why don’t we recognize that threat more clearly and then come together with one aim in mind: How safely, sanely, and quickly can we rid the world of this threat to our civilization and our existence?”

    It is late in the day, but the question continues to hang in the air before us. Nunn’s answer was this: “If we want our children and grandchildren to ever see the mountaintop, our generation must begin to answer this question.”

    If we fail to address and adequately answer this question and continue with business as usual, choosing new nuclear weapons systems and continued reliance on these weapons, we tempt fate. If we lack the vision and impetus to change and lead, we will stay stuck, and eventually the mountain will explode and our cities, our countries and civilization at the base of the mountain will be destroyed. We will have failed ourselves and worse, our children and grandchildren.

    The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” The truth that if we are to have a human future the US must lead the way in abolishing nuclear weapons has been frequently ridiculed and violently opposed. The commentary by Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn offers the hope that this truth may now be passing the stage of violent opposition and entering the stage of being self-evident – at least to those who stand outside the halls of power.

    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 Tribute to Ethel Wells

    A Tribute to Ethel Wells

    The world lost a remarkable woman when Ethel Wells died on September 2, 2007.

    Ethel was strong, determined, far-sighted and persistent. She took on tough causes with unwavering commitment: anti-smoking, peace, nuclear disarmament, strengthening international law, ending genocide, and the social responsibility of scientists.

    She believed that it is possible to change the world with dynamic strategies and unflinching honesty. Ethel was always a strategic thinker. She looked for points of leverage.

    Let me give one example of her strategic thinking in action, one that gave her great satisfaction. In the mid-1980s the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation coordinated an International Week for Science and Peace. Ethel reasoned that scientists were at the heart of creating constructive or destructive technologies. She decided that the Foundation should offer a prize for the best proposal for using science for constructive rather than destructive purposes. We received proposals from throughout the world competing for the $50,000 prize that Ethel contributed.

    The winning proposal came from the Hungarian Engineers for Peace. It was a proposal to create an International Network of Engineers for Peace that would link engineers working for peace globally. A short time later the Hungarian Engineers joined with a group of like-minded scientists and established the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Due to Ethel’s continued support and stewardship, that organization continues to thrive, working internationally for disarmament, sustainability and high ethical standards in science.

    Ethel often wrote short and pointed letters to the editor, which she sent to major newspapers across the country. Her letters offered solid perspectives on critical issues related to peace, international law and other issues. Here are a few excerpts:

    February 26, 2004: “The rule of international law must be the basis for the settling of differences between the sovereignties of the world in order to have global stability and world peace.”

    September 7, 2004: “The existence of weapons of mass destruction has outlawed war forever, because Global Genocide is not an option.”

    April 26, 2006: “We need to have an International Law Enforcement Corps under the UN to promptly stop the act of genocide on an emergency basis.”

    In a letter to me dated May 13, 2004, Ethel wrote: “Nuclear weapons are weapons of continual annihilation and total insanity.”

    Ethel believed that Peace was the result of turning the negatives of despair, hate, prejudice, avenging and destructive thought into hope, love, understanding, forgiving and constructive thought.

    Ethel played a very important role in the work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and in my life. When difficult issues arose, she was a person I went to for advice. Without her support, the Foundation would be far less prominent than it is today – perhaps it would not even exist. Her support has been at the heart of any success we have had.

    Ethel made a difference in the world because she chose to make a difference. She could have lived a life of luxury. She chose to live a life of service to humanity. Her choices inspire me. I know they have inspired many others.

    In the daily work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, along with that of ASH and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, her spirit will live on. It is a great spirit, as she was a great woman.

    Below are Letters to the Editor Written by Ethel Wells

    April 26, 2006

    Genocide was the first and most important crime against humanity that was to be wiped out by International Law at the Nuremberg Trials. Too many countries have violated this law over too many years. We need to have an International Law Enforcement Corps under the UN to promptly stop the act of Genocide on an emergency basis.

    May 24, 2004

    The violation of basic human rights by the United States government in the prisons of Iraq clearly indicates the need for International Law to protect human beings from atrocities by any national sovereignty including the U.S.A. International law protecting human rights and the global environment must be above national law and national sovereignty.

    May 13, 2004

    Nuclear weapons are weapons of continual annihilation and total insanity. Bombs and missiles are weapons of mass destruction. There is no honor in any of the above, because the playing fields are not level. There are only mass murderers and innocent, helpless victims in that no-win situation. It behooves all of us to insist on replacing the rule of force with the rule of law for the very survival of us all.

    May 3, 2004

    The U.S. Constitution is the highest legal authority in the United States. President Bush promised to uphold the U.S. Constitution when he was sworn into office. He is governed by that constitution the same as the rest of the United States citizens. The separation of church and state is clearly stated in the U.S. Constitution. It does not separate integrity and state, and that is what has to be remedied. INTEGRITY and STATE must INSEPARABLE be.

    February 26, 2004

    The rule of law is the basis for stability within peaceful sovereignties. The rule of international law must be the basis for the settling of differences between the sovereignties of the world in order to have global stability and world peace. President Bush bypassed due process in Iraq by unilaterally choosing the rule of force and the resulting increased anarchy and worldwide terrorism that is now an increasing threat to all of us.

    November 12, 2003

    The Global Economy needs some global guidelines to protect the global environment, and the basic human rights of workers everywhere who are now classified as slave labor. This is essential for establishing a free world trade market with no tariffs.

    September 8, 2002

    Would a greater military budget have prevented the tragedy of Sept. 11? Do we want to divert $48 billion away from education, public health, Social Security, etc.? Isn’t it time to increase the brain power in government in order to replace the rule of force with the rule of law, worldwide?

    September 3, 2002

    Prior to the Gulf War, genocide made Saddam Hussein a violator of international law and subject to being reprehended by an international tribunal to enforce international law. This violation should have illegitimized him as a head of state and categorized him as an international criminal. A temporary head of state would have had to be provided to carry on. Implementation of the above is difficult. However, military action at this time would only bring us to the same crossroads after further devastating innocent people and their land. Let’s focus on these difficult solutions without repeating the horrible devastations of war.

    February 25, 2002

    When a high government official like Donald Rumsfeld states that he did nothing wrong, after killing a number of innocent people who were actually on our side, I, as an American, cringe at the demonstrated arrogance and lack of compassion that is not typical of the average American. In a democracy, we as Americans, have to correct that false impression some of our government officials are portraying to the rest of the world. We also need to monitor the attitudes of these government officials lest they acquire the attitudes of the very terrorists we are trying to eliminate.

    May 18, 1987

    The philosophy of the Defense Department is to maintain the peace by being strong enough to win a possible war. In the Nuclear Age, however, we cannot maintain the peace by preparing for war, because preparing for war is to prepare for annihilation. So why are we continuing on this path of self destruction?

    The answer is economic necessity in our present war economy. Millions of “gainfully” employed people would be out of work today if the defense industry came to a halt. It is this vital economic need for employment that is largely responsible for the strength of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned our country against before leaving office. So how can we get off this expressway to annihilation?

    One possible answer is to modify the philosophy of the Defense Department to maintaining the peace by actively waging peace, rather than preparing for a war nobody can win. Waging peace would need to include shifting from a war economy bent on destruction to a peace economy aimed at full employment for constructive goals. Here is a challenge for our economists, scientists, politicians and industrialists to work on together for the very preservation of life on earth.

    WAGING PEACE

    The process of actively turning negative thoughts, feelings and actions into positive ones.

    PEACE

    The result of turning these negatives into positives.

    NEGATIVES POSITIVES

    Despair into Hope

    Hate into Love

    Prejudice into Understanding

    Avenging into Forgiving

    Destructive into Constructive

     

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

  • Meeting the Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

    Meeting the Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

    A recent conference on “The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons” brought together experts from ten countries, including the US, Russia, China, India, Germany and Japan, for two days of intensive discussions. The conference, which was held in San Francisco, was sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the Toda Institute for Peace and Policy Research. The participants examined the obstacles in the way of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.

    There was general agreement that the United States, as the world’s most militarily and economically powerful country, needed to lead the way. Many participants noted that the United States is currently leading the way, but in the wrong direction – toward continued reliance upon nuclear weapons rather than toward their elimination. One participant pointed out that the United States is currently using nuclear weapons in a manner analogous to holding a loaded gun to someone’s head, threatening to shoot if they do not do as you instruct them. There was strong agreement that a US attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities would not only be a major crime, but would result in Iran’s withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the likely development of a well-protected program to achieve a nuclear arsenal.

    It was acknowledged that, in addition to preventing a US attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities, a series of steps are needed to reduce nuclear dangers and advance prospects for complete nuclear disarmament. These steps need to be taken in the context of a vision of a nuclear weapons free world. Among the steps called for were reductions in nuclear arsenals; de-alerting of nuclear arsenals (taking the weapons off hair-trigger alert status); ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; agreement on a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty; the strengthening of international agreements to control the nuclear fuel cycle and prevent nuclear proliferation; and legally binding commitments to No First Use of nuclear weapons.

    It has been a long-standing policy of the Chinese government to commit to No First Use, and to orient their nuclear doctrine accordingly. If all states adhered to this policy, and backed it up with their nuclear doctrine, there would be assurance that nuclear weapons states would not initiate a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear weapons state and would be restrained from first-use against another nuclear weapons state. This is currently the policy of only China and India among the nuclear weapons states. The United States continues to frame its nuclear weapons policy in terms of “all options are on the table.”

    The Chinese participant, a retired army general, thought that the only legitimate use of nuclear weapons was for deterrence. Other participants questioned whether deterrence, which relies on rationality, was a rational strategy and pointed out the many ways in which deterrence could fail by miscommunication, miscalculation or a failure of rationality in a time of crisis. It was acknowledged that deterrence cannot work against terrorist organizations that would not be locatable.

    Participants emphasized the importance of attaining a Nuclear Weapons Convention that would set forth a plan for the phased, verifiable, irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. A draft Nuclear Weapons Convention has already been created by civil society organizations and has been submitted by Costa Rica to the United Nations.

    The Russian participant in the conference, an academic, suggested that many existing treaties between the US and Russia are in jeopardy due to the policies of the United States related to developing new nuclear weapons and moving missile defense components into countries in Eastern Europe. While the US claims these defenses are to protect against Iranian missiles, the Russian political and military leaders do not assess the situation in this way; they conclude US missile defenses have serious security implications for both Russia and China.

    The 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty between the US and Russia could be in particular jeopardy. This treaty led to the elimination of a whole class of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Over 4,000 nuclear warheads and 2,692 missiles were eliminated (1,846 by the USSR and 846 by the US). There was support for saving the existing treaties by acting to assure that there were no new nuclear weapons (such as the US is planning with its so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead); no nuclear weapons in space; limitations on deployment of missile defenses; de-alerting; reestablishing the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, extending the START I agreement, which is set to expire in December 2009, and completing ratification of the START II agreement to bring it into force; strengthening the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (Moscow Treaty) by making it verifiable, irreversible and indefinite; agreeing to the elimination of tactical nuclear weapons; and working to achieve expanded Nuclear Weapons Free Zones and a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

    The conference was unique in bringing forth the important role of youth in the effort to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. There were suggestions for increasing the education of the post-Cold War generation on nuclear dangers. There were also suggestions for focusing on the moral issues of threatening either first use or retaliatory use of nuclear weapons, and bringing people of faith into the discussion of these issues.

    Among the ideas for change emphasized were a Nuclear Threat Convention (outlawing nuclear threats); increased development of transnational coalitions for abolishing nuclear weapons; reaching out to the public explaining the successes that have been achieved and building momentum for a Nuclear Weapons Convention; building support in cities by joining the Mayors for Peace Campaign for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons; de-legitimizing nuclear weapons use; and supporting a UN Decade of Nuclear Disarmament.

    One participant, a former president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, summed up the dilemma of achieving security in the Nuclear Age in this way: “The paradox of the Nuclear Age is that the greater the striving for power and security through nuclear weapons, the more elusive the goal of human security.” He added, “The greatest priority for the future is to ensure that there will be a future.”

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

  • The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

    The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

    There are many serious problems confronting humanity, including climate change, infectious diseases, poverty and pollution, but none poses a more pervasive and urgent threat than the continuing dangers of nuclear weapons. There are still some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Twelve thousand of these are deployed, and some 3,500 are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments. Nuclear weapons are a delicately balanced “Sword of Damocles” hanging over our human future.

    We have seemingly failed to learn the lessons made evident by the atomic destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nine nuclear weapons states remain poised to inflict such mind-numbing devastation again, but on a far greater scale. The current nuclear weapons states show no signs of giving up their reliance on nuclear weapons and, as a result, other states may seek to join the nuclear club. The spread of nuclear weapons to additional states will only increase the risks of nuclear catastrophe.

    We are now in the seventh decade since nuclear weapons were created and used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the outset of the Nuclear Age, the world has witnessed an insane nuclear arms race, which has threatened the human species with annihilation. Despite the end of the Cold War more than 15 years ago, this threat has not gone away. The future of civilization and even the human species hangs in the balance, and yet, among the world’s major problems, very little attention is being paid to ending this threat. We are challenged, individually and collectively, to address and end this ultimate danger to humanity. This is surely one of the greatest challenges of our time, and we share a common responsibility to meet this challenge and pass the world on intact to the next generation.

    Warnings

    Nuclear weapons unleash the power within the atom. The creation of these weapons demonstrated significant scientific achievement, but left humankind threatened as never before and faced with the challenge of what to do with them. Albert Einstein, whose theoretical understanding of the relationship of energy and mass paved the way for nuclear weapons, was deeply troubled by the creation of these weapons. “The unleashed power of the atom,” he stated, “has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein, who died in 1955, lived long enough to see the onset of the nuclear arms race and the development and testing of thermonuclear weapons.

    By 1955, ten years after the first use of nuclear weapons, both the US and USSR had developed thermonuclear weapons, potentially thousands of times more powerful than the weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nuclear arms race had begun. The US and USSR had begun testing nuclear weapons on the lands and in the surrounding waters of indigenous and island peoples, demonstrating little concern for the health and well being of the native peoples affected. Along with philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein issued an appeal to humanity called the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which was additionally signed also by nine other prominent scientists. The Manifesto 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.” It was a stark warning.

    Other warnings from highly credible sources throughout the Nuclear Age sought to put the world on notice of the peril nuclear weapons pose to humanity. Warnings came from soldiers and scientists, politicians and literary figures. A notable warning was issued by a high-level group of eminent personalities in 1996 in the Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The Report stated:

    “The Canberra Commission is persuaded that immediate and determined efforts need to be made to rid the world of nuclear weapons and the threat they pose to it. The destructiveness of nuclear weapons is immense. Any use would be catastrophic.

    “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility. The only complete defense is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    One of the members of the Canberra Commission was General George Lee Butler, who had served as the commander-in-chief of the United States Strategic Command. In this capacity General Butler had been in charge of all US strategic nuclear weapons. After retiring from the US Air Force, General Butler devoted himself to the abolition of nuclear weapons. He argued, “What is at stake here is our capacity to move ever higher the bar of civilized behavior. As long as we sanctify nuclear weapons as the ultimate arbiter of conflict, we will have forever capped our capacity to live on this planet according to a set of ideals that value human life and eschew a solution that continues to hold acceptable the shearing away of entire societies. This simply is wrong. It is morally wrong, and it ultimately will be the death of humanity.”

    In 2006, another expert commission, the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, also known as the Blix Commission after its chairman, former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix, issued a report, echoing the Canberra Commission Report. Referring to weapons of mass destruction, the Blix Commission Report stated: “So long as any state has such weapons – especially nuclear arms – others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain in any state’s arsenal, there is a high risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. Any such use would be catastrophic.” The Blix Commission Report continued:

    “The accumulated threat posed by the estimated 27,000 nuclear weapons, in Russia, the United States and the other NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] nuclear-weapon states, merits worldwide concern. However, especially in these five states the view is common that nuclear weapons from the first wave of proliferation somehow are tolerable, while such weapons in the hands of additional states are viewed as dangerous….

    “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. Governments possessing nuclear weapons can act responsibly or recklessly. Governments can also change over time. Twenty-seven thousand nuclear weapons are not an abstract theory. They exist in today’s world.”

    In May 2007, the Founding Congress of the World Future Council issued “The Hamburg Call to Action.” In this document they warned: “Nuclear weapons remain humanity’s most immediate catastrophic threat. These weapons would destroy cities, countries, civilization and possibly humanity itself. The danger posed by nuclear weapons in any hands must be confronted directly and urgently through a new initiative for the elimination of these instruments of annihilation.”

    With the serious dangers that nuclear weapons pose to the human future, it is curious that so many warnings, over so long a period of time, have gone unheeded. Some 97 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons are in the arsenals of the United States and Russia. These must be the countries that lead the way, working with the seven other countries that also have nuclear weapons: the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. They must also work with the more than 35 nuclear capable countries that could choose to develop nuclear arsenals – countries that possess the technological capability of developing nuclear weapons. Some countries, such as Japan, are virtual nuclear powers, possessing the technology and nuclear materials to develop nuclear arsenals in weeks or months.

    Awakening Humanity

    What will it take to awaken humanity, and change its course? Many people think that this will not happen until there is another catastrophic use of nuclear weapons. This would, of course, be an immense tragedy and a great failure of imagination. If we can imagine that another nuclear catastrophe is possible, shouldn’t we act now to prevent it?

    Throughout the Cold War, humanity lived with the danger of Mutually Assured Destruction, which has the appropriate acronym of MAD. Today MAD has an additional meaning, Mutually Assured Delusions. It is delusional to think that nuclear weapons protect us. Despite the official justifications that nuclear weapons provide security, it should be clear to those who think about it that nuclear weapons themselves cannot provide protection in the sense of physical security. At best, they can provide psychological security if one believes that they provide a deterrent against attack. But belief in and of itself does not make a person or a society safe, certainly not from nuclear dangers. The belief itself is a well-promoted delusion.

    The United States is currently spending tens of billions of dollars to develop a missile defense system, which its proponents argue is capable of defending against nuclear attacks by rogue states. The only reasonable interpretation of this expenditure is that US defense planners understand that deterrence is not foolproof and that it can fail. Of course, missile defenses themselves are far from foolproof, and many experts believe that they will not work as promised in real-world conditions. In fact, most scientists not being paid by the missile defense program and the industry benefiting from it believe that missile defenses will not be reliable. Like the French Maginot Line, they are a defensive barrier that is unlikely to provide security. Missile defenses may be thought of as a “Maginot Line in the sky,” a highly touted and expensive defensive system with a very low probability of actually providing defense.

    The Shortcomings of Deterrence

    The United States government bases its need for nuclear weapons in the 21st century on deterrence. The US Secretaries of Defense, Energy, and State released a joint statement in July 2007, “National Security and Nuclear Weapons: Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century.” The statement begins, “A principal national security goal of the United States is to deter aggression against ourselves, our allies, and friends. Every American administration since President Truman’s day has formulated US national security policy in much the same terms, making clear to adversaries and allies alike the essential role that nuclear weapons play in maintaining deterrence.” What the statement fails to state is who is being deterred, why nuclear weapons are critical to deterrence, and whether the US wouldn’t make its citizens and the world safer by negotiating the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Reliance on deterrence is dangerous. Deterrence is a theory about human behavior and it has many shortcomings. For it to be effective, a threat of retaliation must be accurately communicated and it must be believed. Such a threat is likely to increase an opponent’s military might rather than to reduce conflict. In addition, deterrence won’t work when an opponent is suicidal or not locatable. This is surely the case against non-state extremist actors, groups such as al Qaeda.

    Should Nuclear Weapons Confer Prestige?

    If nuclear weapons cannot provide protection for a population, and almost certainly guarantee that a state possessing them will become a target of other states’ nuclear weapons, what other advantages do they offer? One possible answer to this question is prestige. Since the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council all developed nuclear weapons, it may seem to other states that nuclear weapons would contribute to their prestige in the world. This idea was given credence by the large-scale celebrations in the streets of India and Pakistan when these two countries tested nuclear devices in 1998.

    Even the capacity to make nuclear weapons by enriching uranium or separating plutonium appears to attract attention and is perceived to bestow prestige. Although there is no clear evidence that Iran seeks to develop nuclear arms, its uranium enrichment program has brought it under intense international scrutiny. This is reflective of current nuclear double standards, in which some countries, such as Iran, are highly criticized for developing nuclear technology, while others, such as India, seem to increase their status in the international community for having developed and tested nuclear weapons.

    Reflecting the positive view of his country’s nuclear capacity, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil stated in July 2007, “Brazil could rank among those few nations in the world with a command of uranium enrichment technology, and I think we will be more highly valued as a nation – as the power we wish to be.”

    Whatever prestige nuclear weapons or the technology to produce them may confer, it comes with a heavy price. Nuclear weapons are costly and possessing them will almost certainly make a country the target of nuclear weapons.

    Weapons of the Weak

    Nuclear weapons serve the interests of the weak more than they do the powerful. In the hands of a relatively weak nation, nuclear weapons can serve as an equalizer. One has only to look at the difference in the way the US has treated the three countries that Mr. Bush incorrectly labeled as being part of an axis of evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The US invaded Iraq on the false charge of having a nuclear weapons program, is threatening Iran for enriching uranium, but has negotiated with North Korea, which has tested long-range missiles and is believed to have a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.

    From the perspective of a powerful state, even one heavily armed with nuclear weapons, the worst nightmare would be for nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of a non-state extremist organization, whose members were both suicidal and not locatable. This could create the ideal conditions for these weapons to be used against a major nuclear power or another state. The US, for example, would be relatively helpless against a nuclear-armed al Qaeda. The US would not be able to deter al Qaeda. It could only hope to be able to prevent al Qaeda from obtaining a nuclear weapon or the materials to create one, or locate and destroy the weapon before it was detonated.

    Why Abolish Nuclear Weapons?

    Nuclear weapons undermine security. Under current circumstances, with so many nuclear weapons in the world and such an abundance of fissile materials for constructing nuclear weapons, there is a reasonable likelihood that nuclear weapons will eventually end up in the hands of non-state extremist organizations. This would be a disastrous scenario for the world’s most powerful counties, opening the door to possible nuclear 9/11s.

    In addition, nuclear weapons are anti-democratic. They concentrate power in the hands of single individuals or small cabals. The president of the United States, for example, could send the world spiraling into nuclear holocaust with an order to unleash the US nuclear arsenal. The undemocratic nature of nuclear weapons should be of great concern to those who value democracy and the participation of citizens in decisions that affect their lives.

    Nuclear weapons and their delivery system are also extremely expensive. The US alone has spent over $6 trillion since the onset of the Nuclear Age. The Soviet Union bankrupted itself and broke apart after engaging in a nuclear arms race with the United States for over 40 years. The funds currently expended for nuclear arsenals could be used far more constructively.

    Nuclear weapons should also be viewed in terms of their consequences. They are long-range weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction. They destroy equally civilians and combatants; infants and the aged; the healthy and the infirm; men, women and children. Viewed from this perspective, these weapons must be seen as among the most cowardly ever created. By their possession, with the implicit threat of use that possession implies, nuclear weapons also destroy the souls of those who rely upon them.

    They are a coward’s weapon and their possession, threat and use is dishonorable. This was the conclusion of virtually all of the top military leaders of World War II, most of whom were morally distraught that the US used these weapons against Japan. Truman’s Chief of Staff, Admiral William Leahy, for example, wrote this about the use of atomic weapons on Japan: “My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

    Humanity Has a Choice

    Humanity still has a choice; in fact, it is the same choice posed in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. We can choose to eliminate nuclear weapons or risk the elimination of the human species. A continuation of the status quo, of reliance by some states on nuclear arsenals, is likely to result in the proliferation of nuclear weapons to others states and to extremist organizations. Ultimately, it will lead to their use. Richard Garwin, a leading US atomic scientist who helped develop thermonuclear weapons, believes that there is a 20 percent per year probability of nuclear weapons being used on a US or European city. This is a dangerous probability. The alternative is to pursue the path of eliminating nuclear weapons.

    What would it take to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons? On the one hand, the answer to this question is “very little.” On the other hand, because of the resistance, complacency and myopia of the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, the answer may be “a great amount.”

    To move forward with the elimination of nuclear weapons would require compliance with existing international law. The International Court of Justice concluded in 1996: “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.” In the decade since the Court announced its opinion, there has been scant evidence of “good faith” negotiations by the nuclear weapons states moving toward any reasonable conclusion.

    The negotiations that the Court describes as an obligation of the nuclear weapons states would need to move toward the creation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty setting forth a program for the phased and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons with appropriate means of verification. With the political will to pursue these required negotiations, a treaty would not be a difficult task to achieve. What is lacking is the requisite political will on the part of the leaders of nuclear weapons states. To achieve the requisite political will, the citizens of the nuclear weapons states, and particularly of the United States, must make their voices heard.

    A Special Responsibility, A Tragic Failure

    The United States, as the world’s most powerful country and the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, has a special responsibility to lead in fulfilling its obligations under international law. In fact, without US leadership, it is unlikely that progress will be possible toward nuclear disarmament. But rather than lead in this direction, the United States under the Bush administration has been the major obstacle to nuclear disarmament. It has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to pursue missile defenses, space weaponization and increased military dominance; opposed a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty; and in general has acted as an obstacle to progress on all matters of nuclear disarmament.

    The US has also pursued a double standard with regard to nuclear weapons. It has been silent on Israeli nuclear weapons, and now seeks to change its own non-proliferation laws to enable it to provide nuclear technology and materials to India, a country that has not joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has developed a nuclear arsenal. At the same time, in its 2001 Nuclear Posture Review the US called for contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against seven countries, five of which were at the time thought to be non-nuclear weapons states.

    It is tragic that the American people don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of their government’s failure. They are lacking in education that would lead to an understanding of the situation. Their attention has been diverted to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and they fail to see what is closest to home: the failure of their own government to lead in a constructive and lawful manner to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons. “And thus,” in Einstein’s words, “we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    To bring about real change in nuclear policy, people must begin with a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and then they must speak out as if their lives and the lives of their children depended on their actions. It is unlikely that governments will give up powerful weapons on their own accord. They must be pushed by their citizenry – citizens unwilling to continue to run the risk of nuclear holocaust or to accept the logic of Mutually Assured Delusions.

    A New Story

    We need a new story for considering nuclear dangers, a story that begins with the long struggle of humans over some three million years to arrive at our present state of civilization. That state is far from perfect, but few would suggest that it should be sacrificed on the altar of weapons of mass annihilation capable of reducing our major cities to rubble.

    The first humans lived short and brutal lives. They were both predators and preyed upon. They survived by their nimbleness, more of body than mind, doing well if they lived into their twenties. Enough early humans were able to protect and nurture their infants in their hazardous environments that some of the children of each generation could survive to an age when they could themselves reproduce and repeat the cycle.

    Without these clever and capable early ancestors, and those that followed who met the distinct challenges of their times and environments for many hundreds of thousands of generations, we would not be here. Our human ancestors needed to survive the perils of birth, infancy, childhood and at least early maturity in order for each of us to have made it into the world.

    On the basis of the pure physical capacity to survive, we owe a debt to our ancestors, but with this debt comes something more. We each have a responsibility for helping to assure the chain of human survival that passes the world on intact to the next generation. In addition to this, we share an obligation to preserve the accumulated wisdom and beauty created by those who have walked the earth before us – the ideas of the great storytellers and philosophers, the great music, literature and art, the artifacts of humankind’s collective genius in its varied forms. Our responsibility extends not only to each other and to the future, but to preserve and protect the rich legacy we have received from the past – from Socrates to Shakespeare; from Homer to Hemingway; from Beethoven to the Beatles; from Michelangelo to Monet.

    All of the manifestations of human genius and triumph are placed in jeopardy by nuclear weapons and the threat of their use. Why do we tolerate this threat? Why are we docile in the face of policies that could end not only humanity, but life itself?

    Those of us alive today are the gatekeepers to the future, but the management of power by the nuclear-armed states has left us vulnerable to the continuing threat of nuclear annihilation. The only way to be free of this threat is to be free of nuclear weapons. This is the greatest challenge of our time. It will require education so that people can learn to think about nuclear weapons and war in a new way. We will need organizational modes of collective action to bring pressure to bear on governments to achieve nuclear disarmament. Ordinary people must lead from below; citizens must lead their political leaders.

    The Role of Citizens

    Organizations working for nuclear disarmament – such as the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Abolition 2000, the Middle Powers Initiative and the Mayors for Peace – can help give shape to efforts to put pressure on governments. But the change that is needed cannot be the sole responsibility of interest groups. Without the intervention of large numbers of people, we will go on with business as usual, a course that seems likely to lead to nuclear proliferation and further catastrophic uses of nuclear weapons. This is not a distant problem, nor one that can be shunted aside and left to governments.

    We who have entered the 21st century are not exempt from responsibility for assuring a human future. Fifty years ago, Japanese Buddhist leader Josei Toda called for young people to take the lead in pursuing nuclear disarmament. His proposal has great merit given the fact that it is their future and the future of their children that is imperiled by these weapons. But we must ask: How do we educate young people to care and to believe that they can make a difference in what must seem an often indifferent and terribly dangerous world? How do we empower young people to live with integrity as citizens of the world and press for the changes that are needed to assure their future?

    Change occurs one person at a time. Each of us must take responsibility for creating a world free of nuclear threat. Noted anthropologist Margaret Mead offered this hopeful advice: “Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

    In the end, the necessary changes to eliminate nuclear dangers cannot be left to governments alone. For the most part, governments have failed to come to grips with the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity. Most governments have not even tried. They have lived with double standards, engaged in insane nuclear arms races, lived under “nuclear umbrellas,” and continued to rely upon nuclear weapons against the security interests of their own people.

    It is up to each of us to play a role. What can we do? There is no panacea, no magic wand. Change requires recognizing that this is not someone else’s problem, but a shared problem of humanity. It requires rolling up our sleeves and becoming active.

    I have five suggestions for those who would like to contribute to ending the nuclear threat to humanity. First, become better informed. You can do this by visiting the website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at www.wagingpeace.org as well as many other informative websites focused on nuclear disarmament. Second, speak out, wherever you are. You can raise these issues with your family, friends, and other people around you. Third, join an organization working to abolish nuclear weapons, and help it to become more successful. By becoming active in an organization working for nuclear disarmament you can help the outreach and effectiveness of the effort. Fourth, use your unique talents. Each of us has special talents that can help make a difference. Use them. Fifth, be persistent. This is a tough job requiring strength and persistence. Even if desired results don’t come about quickly, we must remain committed and not give up.

    By working for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons, you can be a force for saving the world. Being a nuclear weapons abolitionist will require all the courage and commitment of those who worked in the 19th century for the abolition of slavery. Abolishing slavery was the challenge of that time; abolishing nuclear weapons is the even more consequential challenge of our time.

    [Please note this related upcoming event: “The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons” Conference, San Francisco, September 8-9.]

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

    Why I Oppose Nuclear Weapons

    I oppose nuclear weapons because 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.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they threaten the destruction of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they threaten to foreclose the future.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they are cowardly weapons, and in their use there can be no honor.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they are a false god, dividing nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they are a distortion of science and technology, twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they waste our resources on the development of instruments of annihilation.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they concentrate power and undermine democracy.

    I oppose nuclear weapons because they corrupt our humanity.

    Shortly after graduating from college, I visited the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums. At these museums, I was awakened to the human suffering caused by the use of these weapons. This suffering is not part of the American lore about the use of the bombs. These museums gave me insight into the differences in perspective between those who had been above the bomb and those beneath the bombs.

    Those above the bombs, the victors, celebrated the technology of triumph, and went on to engage in a mad nuclear arms race. Those beneath the bombs, the victims, learned the simple lesson: “Never again! We shall not repeat the evil.”

    The vision of the future held by those above the bombs and those beneath the bombs may be the decisive struggle of our time. On the side of nuclear weapons is the arrogance of power that is willing to put at risk the future of civilization, if not of life itself. On the side of the survivors, the hibakusha, is the moral clarity of calling evil by its name.

    Resolving this struggle is the challenge presented to humanity by nuclear weapons. Each of us must choose. Ignorance, apathy and denial are de facto votes for continuing the nuclear threat. Only by unalterably opposing nuclear weapons and working actively for their elimination can an individual align himself or herself with those who experienced first-hand the absolute devastation of these weapons. This is my choice. I seek without reservation the elimination of all nuclear weapons from our unique planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life.

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

  • 2007 Sadako Peace Day

    2007 Sadako Peace Day

    Welcome to Sadako Peace Day, which this year is also on Nagasaki Day – the day 62 years ago that Nagasaki was destroyed by a single nuclear weapon.

    Please join me in a moment of silence for the victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for Mayor Iccho Itoh of Nagasaki, who was cut down during this past year by an assassin’s bullet.

    Three days ago, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima delivered the 2007 Hiroshima Peace Declaration. It began with this description:

    “That fateful summer, 8:15. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast – silence – hell on Earth.” I will spare you the gory details he goes on to recount.

    Now, 62 years later, we would be remiss not to ask: What lessons have we learned from the use of nuclear weapons? Judging from the fact that there are still 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world and 3,500 of these are on hair-trigger alert, it seems we have clearly not learned enough.

    The overriding facts about nuclear weapons are that they kill massively and indiscriminately – soldiers and civilians; men, women and children; the aged and the newly born.

    Weapons that kill indiscriminately are illegal under international law. Therefore, nuclear weapons are illegal under international law.

    They are also immoral, cowardly and anti-democratic. In a world in which states rely upon nuclear weapons for security, children are not safe.

    Nuclear weapons destroy cities, and are capable of destroying civilization and possibly the human species.

    And there is no physical protection against nuclear weapons. Not duck and cover. Not deterrence. And certainly not missile defenses.

    It should be obvious that if we want to create a world that is safe for our children, we must rid the world of nuclear weapons, and use the financial resources heretofore devoted to nuclear weapons – some $40 billion annually – for food, education, health care and housing.

    It isn’t complicated. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had it right when they said, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.” Which side are you on – that of steel-hearted nuclear weapons or that of humanity? We each choose by our actions.

    We should not elect anyone to high office who believes that “all options are on the table.” That is code for “If state X does Y (Y being something we don’t like), we hold open the option of responding with nuclear weapons.” That is further code for “Do what we want, or we are willing to destroy you and to risk destroying the world.” That is not the kind of leader that we need – not if we want security and the assurance of a human future.

    We need courageous leaders who will stop promoting nuclear double standards, meet their obligations under international law for nuclear disarmament, and lead us back from the nuclear precipice. We need leaders who have a vision of a nuclear weapons free world, and who are willing to act upon that vision – not leaders who try to outdo each other with their macho, nuclear or otherwise. We will not have such visionary and courageous leaders without an informed and active citizenry who make known and persist in pursuing an uncompromising demand for a nuclear weapons-free future.

    I will end with a poem.

    PARALLEL UNIVERSES

    “If only I had known, I would have become a watch maker.” — Albert Einstein

    In a parallel universe, Einstein sits at his workbench making watches. Light still curves around bodies of mass, but the watch maker knows nothing of it. He only makes watches, simple and precise. In this universe, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have no special meaning. David Krieger

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