Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: David Krieger

  • Amazing Grace and Cindy

    Amazing Grace and Cindy

    There is a wonderful movie, Amazing Grace and Chuck, which came out in 1987. It tells the story of a star Little League pitcher, Chuck, who, along with other youngsters on a field trip visits a missile silo in his home state of Montana. Chuck is an unusually sensitive and decent young person with wisdom beyond his years and the experience makes him aware of the threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons. Instead of remaining complacent in the face of this threat, like most Americans, Chuck commits himself to doing something about the situation. He decides to give up the most important thing in his life, baseball, in protest of nuclear weapons. He stops pitching for his Little League team until the world is on the path to eliminating these weapons.

    A lot of people in Chuck’s community become upset with him because his protest jeopardizes his team’s chances in the Little League championships. There is considerable pressure on Chuck to conform, get back to his pitching, and just get over it. Chuck is committed, though, and doesn’t capitulate to the pressure. He thinks that nuclear weapons are a real problem, not only because Americans are threatened but also because by their existence tens of million, perhaps hundreds of millions, of innocent people could be annihilated with our nuclear weapons.

    When a small article about Chuck and his protest appears in the national media, a professional basketball star, Amazing Grace, reads about it, and is sympathetic to Chuck and his courageous position. So Amazing Grace decides to join Chuck in Montana, giving up basketball in protest of the threat of US nuclear policies. He announces that he will not be rejoining his team until the problem of nuclear weapons dangers is eliminated and Chuck is willing to go back to pitching. This starts a movement among professional athletes, and pretty soon professional stars from all major sports are showing up in Montana to join Chuck in protest.

    With so many big-time athletes gathered in support of Chuck, the media has little choice but to pay attention to Chuck’s demands. Before long, Chuck’s simple wisdom has captured the imagination of people across America. He has meetings with the President, and forces the President (Gregory Peck) to implement policies leading to global nuclear disarmament.

    Chuck’s fictional story, one that every American should know about, has a lot in common with the story of Cindy Sheehan. Chuck responded to the dangers of US nuclear policies after becoming aware of them. Cindy responded to the tragedy of her son’s death as a US soldier in Iraq. Both wanted answers from the US President and both aroused interest and concern throughout the country. Chuck got his meeting with the President and the President agreed to new policies. So far, Cindy, who is camped out outside the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, has gotten the cold shoulder from Mr. Bush, while he tries to get on with his vacation and fundraising.

    But Cindy has put the eyes of the world on Mr. Bush and his Iraq War policies. Mr. Bush has said that US troops are dying for a “noble cause” in Iraq. Cindy Sheehan wants Mr. Bush to tell her what the “noble cause” is that her son, Casey, died for in Iraq. Cindy’s presence in Crawford reminds her fellow citizens that Mr. Bush and many of his top officials lied to the American people, the US Congress and the world about nuclear weapons in Iraq. Her presence in Crawford reminds her fellow citizens that the President is on another of his long vacations while US soldiers continue to die in Iraq. Her presence in Crawford challenges the President’s veracity, his competence and his compassion. Her presence in Crawford reveals a President lacking in the courage to answer a grieving mother’s questions about what purpose her son died for in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

    Cindy Sheehan’s stand in Crawford is sending a powerful message to the American people, just as Chuck’s fictional protest did. Cindy’s protest is forcing Americans to probe deeper and to not accept the facile responses of the administration in the increasingly deteriorating situation in Iraq. Cindy Sheehan is a true American hero, reminding us of the power of one. She is forcing Americans to wake up and pay attention to a war that is continuing to spill the blood of young Americans, drain our resources, and stretch our military to its limits. She is forcing Americans to face her grief, and that of other soldiers’ relatives, who suspect that there is no nobility in fighting and dying under the false pretenses of this war – a war that appears to many Americans to be for oil and military bases in an oil-rich country rather than for any noble cause.

    Mr. Bush owes Cindy an honest answer to her question, and the rest of America should be standing shoulder to shoulder with Cindy. It is long past time that Mr. Bush and his colleagues be held to account for their policies in Iraq. We should also be demanding that Mr. Bush provide the American people with answers to the questions the fictional Chuck posed to his President in Amazing Grace and Chuck concerning the continuing dangers of US nuclear policies and the obstacles these policies pose to global nuclear disarmament.

    Cindy Sheehan’s courage should help restore our faith in the power of individuals to speak truth to power and make a difference. Her protest is in the best traditions of this country, those of Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez. She has showered us all with her Amazing Grace.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and the author of a recent book of peace poetry, Today Is Not a Good Day for War.

  • From Hiroshima to Humanity

    From Hiroshima to Humanity

    The first test of a nuclear weapon occurred on July 16, 1945. The test took place in the New Mexico desert at a place called Jornada del Muerto, the “Journey of Death.” The head of the scientific research effort for the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer, quoted these lines from the Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita, when he saw that first nuclear explosion turn the sky white: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

    Within a month, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, first at Hiroshima and then at Nagasaki, on August 6th and 9th respectively. While there was general elation in the US at the subsequent ending of the war, some American leaders expressed misgivings about the necessity and morality of the use of nuclear weapons.

    General Dwight Eisenhower was critical of the use of the bomb and voiced his concerns to Secretary of War Stimson. Eisenhower later wrote, “ Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with minimum loss of ‘face.’ It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

    Admiral William Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of Staff, was even stronger in his condemnation of the use of atomic weapons on Japan. “My own feeling,” he said, “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….”

    This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the first use of atomic weapons. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the aging hibakusha, survivors of the bombings, will gather to again make their plea that nuclear weapons be abolished. Many of these survivors have made it their life work to assure that their past is not humanity’s future. They are convinced that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist, and that we must eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.

    Sixty years after Hiroshima and nearly fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, there are still some 20,000 to 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world. The US and Russia have over 95 percent of these weapons, and each still maintain some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments. In all, nine countries are believed to have nuclear weapons: US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Japan is a virtual nuclear weapons state, having both the plutonium and the technology to become a major nuclear power in a matter of weeks. There is much concern that Iran is on its way to also becoming a nuclear weapons state.

    Nuclear proliferation is a serious problem, but so is the failure to achieve nuclear disarmament. In the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the non-nuclear weapons states agreed not to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons states agreed to assist them with developing peaceful nuclear technology and to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament.

    Most of the parties to the treaty, nearly all countries in the world, believe that the nuclear weapons states have not fulfilled their obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament. At the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2000, the nuclear weapons states agreed to move toward fulfilling their part of the bargain by adopting 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. The Bush administration has since disavowed these obligations.

    In 2005, at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the Bush administration’s policies of non-cooperation were made clear to the world, although not necessarily to the American people, when the US put up obstacles to even creating an agenda for the conference. The administration doesn’t seem to understand that nuclear proliferation and nuclear disarmament are inextricably interlinked: without nuclear disarmament, nuclear proliferation is virtually assured.

    Nor is there a clear understanding of the ineffectiveness of a nuclear arsenal in defending against a terrorist nuclear threat. If terrorists succeed in obtaining nuclear weapons, they will not hesitate to use them. They will not be deterred by the thousands of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear weapons states because it is impossible to deter a group you can’t locate. Thus, nuclear weapons provide no defense against extremist nuclear threats or attacks. Additionally, a costly missile defense system offers no protection against a terrorist nuclear attack that is more likely to be delivered by a suitcase or van than by an intercontinental ballistic missile.

    George Bush has pointed out that “free societies don’t develop weapons of mass terror and don’t blackmail the world.” This suggests that either he does not think the US is a free society, which is unlikely, or he doesn’t understand that nuclear weapons are weapons of mass terror. On the sixtieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, it would be valuable for someone on his staff to explain to him that the US was the first country to develop such weapons of mass terror and the only country to have used them.

    The American people need to wake up to the jeopardy we face due to the lack of US leadership toward nuclear disarmament. So long as the US holds onto these weapons, others will be encouraged and inspired to develop them. By taking seriously its legal and moral obligations to achieve the elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world, the US will be improving its own security, protecting its cities, and leaving behind the Journey of Death – the all too apt name of the birthplace of nuclear weapons – in favor of the path of peace.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of many studies of peace in the Nuclear Age. His latest books are Today Is Not a Good Day for War and Einstein – Peace Now!

  • Hiroshima, America, and Humanity’s Future

    We are again in the season of Hiroshima. Many will gather at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to remember that fateful day 60 years ago when an atomic weapon was first used on a human population and obliterated the city of Hiroshima.

    In America, unfortunately, far too few individuals will take note of this anniversary. Many of those who do remember Hiroshima will recall it as an event of triumph, not disaster.

    Throughout most of the world, the name Hiroshima has come to represent man’s technological capacity for massive destruction. Hiroshima was the culmination of the high-altitude bombing and long-range killing that came increasingly to characterize World War II.

    Hiroshima opened the door upon a new world, a world in which it is possible for humanity to destroy itself by its own inventions of highly destructive weaponry. Hiroshima was the world’s first look at a technology that could destroy countries, end civilization, and foreclose a human future.

    Following the bombing on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was a wasteland. It might have been left this way as a monument and reminder of the new dangers confronting humanity. But that wasn’t to be.

    The bombed Hiroshima is the Hiroshima of death. It is a harbinger of what may befall humanity. It is a warning, but a warning that seems far distant in our fast-moving, materialistic world.

    The physical evidence of the crime has been largely covered over and a thriving new Hiroshima has been built from the ruins – a Hiroshima that demonstrates humanity’s capacity for healing and rebuilding. Sixty years after the bombing, Hiroshima itself is a place of hope. It is a city resurrected, and filled with life.

    What remains of the destroyed Hiroshima can now be found in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and in the hearts of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings. They cling to the message, “Never Again! Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.” They also cling to the hope that humanity can rise above its destructive impulses.

    The rebirth of Hiroshima reflects the power of the human spirit, but the problem presented to humanity by Hiroshima has not gone away. As the leading scientists who signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto put it fifty years ago: “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?”

    Many of the scientists who created nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project thought that they should not be used on human populations. They warned that if nuclear weapons were used on Japan, the result would be a nuclear arms race. They unsuccessfully tried to convince US political leaders that the atomic bomb should first be demonstrated to Japanese leaders in a remote, uninhabited place, in order to allow them a chance to surrender. But the pleas of the scientists were unsuccessful. They had lost control of their creation, and government leaders chose to use the bomb before the Soviets entered the war in the Pacific.

    The atomic bombing of Hiroshima occurred at the end of a terrible war, but it marked the beginning of a new collective madness that would result in the US and USSR each threatening the other with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Today the numbers of weapons is lower than at the height of the Cold War, but the collective insanity continues.

    Fifteen years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US and Russia have friendly relations. Yet, each side still maintains more than 2,000 long-range nuclear weapons targeted on the other on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments. Can this be described in any other way than collective madness?

    Do the people of the world, particularly Americans and Russians, understand what this means? Opinion polls indicate that 85 to 90 percent of people everywhere would choose to eliminate nuclear weapons, so long as all countries do so. They understand that it would improve their security, as well as be morally and legally correct. But among politicians, there is little movement toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

    In the year 2000, the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament, including an “unequivocal undertaking…to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….” It seemed to be a significant breakthrough. Yet, five years later, at the 2005 NPT Review Conference, the United States had fulfilled none of its obligations under the 13 Practical Steps, and refused to allow an agenda for the conference that even made reference to them.

    The Bush administration wants funding for new nuclear weapons, particularly earth penetrating nuclear weapons or “bunker busters.” They want a world in which there is no place outside the range of their nuclear weapons. It is a frighteningly dangerous world in which the United States would remain reliant upon nuclear weapons and continue to threaten their use for the indefinite future.

    At Hiroshima, the bomb dropped by the United States killed 140,000 people, mostly civilians, and it was celebrated in the US as a military victory. In doing so, the US made victims not only of the people of Hiroshima, but of all humanity, including ourselves. In today’s world, any city anywhere is subject to being destroyed at a moment’s notice.

    It is painful, yet necessary, to recall details of that fateful day. On the morning of August 6, 1945, people in Hiroshima set off to work or school. Earlier a US plane had flown over the city, and an alarm had sounded. Then came the all-clear signal. Then another plane, this one the US B-29, Enola Gay. It dropped its single bomb, which fell for 43 seconds, and at 8:15 a.m. the city of Hiroshima was destroyed. Individuals close to the epicenter were incinerated. Those further away were killed by blast and fire. Many of the initial survivors developed “radiation sickness,” and died in the coming days, weeks, months and years of cancers and leukemias.

    On August 9, 1945, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki was bombed and destroyed with another atomic weapon. On the same day, Harry Truman told the American people about Hiroshima. He struck a religious note in talking about the bomb, “We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.”

    Herbert Hoover, a former American president, had a far different reaction: “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

    Leading American generals and admirals were equally appalled by the use of atomic weapons. Eisenhower later said, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff, wrote: “…the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…. 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….”

    Nuclear weapons do not discriminate. They kill men, women and children. In this way, among others, they are illegal under International Humanitarian Law, as the International Court of Justice ruled in 1996.

    Nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapon of cowards. Those who would possess nuclear weapons need only find men and women willing to make them, service them and press the button to release them.

    Nuclear weapons destroy the destroyers. Reflecting on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gandhi said, “What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see. Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner.”

    As Americans look back at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we, too, should be reflecting on what has happened to our collective soul. We should be reflecting on who we are, as we cling to our weapons of massive destruction, and lead the world in opposing nuclear disarmament.

    It may be a dangerous world, but our future lies in forgiveness and decency, not force of arms. In the US, we spend half of the world’s total military expenditure, more than $500 billion annually, and we still are not secure. We seek inexpensive sources of oil, and we pay the price in blood, our own but mostly that of others.

    If we continue on the path we are on, an American Hiroshima will be in our future. It is inevitable. If the disillusioned and disaffected extremists of the world obtain nuclear weapons, they will use them and the US will be a likely target. The irony of this is that none of our thousands of nuclear weapons will make us any safer. In fact, they make us less secure by creating a situation in which others will also keep nuclear weapons and some of these may end up in the hands of extremists.

    But when it comes to nuclear weapons, there are no moderates. All nuclear policies are dangerous and extreme, except those that contribute to the elimination of nuclear weapons. All possessors of nuclear weapons are extremists. If terrorism is threatening or killing innocent civilians, then nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapon of terrorism and those who possess them are the ultimate terrorists.

    How are we to change? Perhaps Hiroshima provides a place to begin. The horrors of Hiroshima are not only the past, but potentially in the future as well. We can begin with finding our sorrow. We can begin with recognizing the suffering we have caused and are causing still. We can begin with apologies and forgiveness.

    Hiroshima has largely recovered from its wounds. The city has been rebuilt. The flowers have returned. The survivors have made it their mission to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. They have forgiven the crime.

    But America will not heal from the trauma of the devastation we have caused and continue to cause until Americans say No to wanton power, No to nuclear weapons, No to war and No to leaders who lie us into war. Until we summon the power to resist, we will continue to be victims of our own massive and unbridled power. It is within our power to change, but not without ending our addiction to power and our double standards that support this addiction. America must reassert its commitment to decency, not destruction.

    The 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto – issued ten years after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as thermonuclear weapons were being developed and tested – concluded with these words: “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.”

    We have a choice, and where there is choice there is hope. If we do nothing, we will remain on the path of universal death. If we choose to change the world, it is within our power to do so. Hiroshima is our past; it doesn’t need to be our future. We can join with the survivors of Hiroshima in committing ourselves to assuring that atomic weapons will never again be used by taking the sensible and reasonable step of abolishing these instruments of genocide.

    Unfortunately what is reasonable is not always possible. To end the threat to humanity and other forms of life created by nuclear weapons, there are two different sets of problems to be solved. The first is to articulate what needs to be done. The second is to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of accomplishing these goals.

    Let us look first at what needs to be done. At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we have proposed the following eight commitments by the nuclear weapons states.

    1. Commitment to good faith negotiations to achieve total nuclear disarmament.
    2. Commitment to a timeframe for marking progress and achieving the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.
    3. Commitment to No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapons states and to No Use against non-nuclear weapons states.
    4. Commitment to irreversibility and verifiability of disarmament measures.
    5. Commitment to standing down nuclear forces, removing them from high alert status.
    6. Commitment to create no new nuclear weapons.
    7. Commitment to a verifiable ban on the production of fissile materials, and placing existing materials under strict international control.
    8. Commitment to accounting, transparency and reporting to build confidence and allow for verification of the disarmament process.

    We view these as a minimal level of commitment to demonstrate the “good faith” effort to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons that is required by international law. Other commitments could be added to these, such as support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and agreement to refrain from weaponizing outer space.

    Essentially, the international community knows what needs to be done to achieve the phased elimination of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the larger problem is with not what is needed but what is politically possible. This leaves behind the realm of what is reasonable and sensible, and enters the realm of prerogatives of political decision makers.

    Despite the threat to humanity and despite reason, none of the commitments above have been acted on by the United States, the world’s most powerful nuclear weapons state. Without US commitment to these goals, it is unlikely that less powerful nuclear weapons states will commit to them. Thus, progress on nuclear disarmament is stalled by US intransigency. The US is not the leader in nuclear disarmament, but rather its major obstacle. This was apparent at the 2005 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, where the US pointed the finger at others, such as Iran and North Korea, but was unwilling even to discuss its own obligations to achieve nuclear disarmament under the treaty and under international law in general.

    Within the US, democracy is the province of the people and their representatives, with the mass media playing a critical role in educating the people so that they may make reasoned political choices and give their informed consent to the actions of leaders. It is the political leaders of the US who have been the obstacle to global nuclear disarmament, and for the most part the people are unaware of this because they do not learn about it from the mass media.

    The only way to change the policies of the government is for the people to voice their concerns, but largely the people are not informed of the positions of their government on nuclear issues. Nor are they given reasonable analyses of the pros and cons of US nuclear policies because the media has been lax in doing its job.

    Humanity’s best hope for ending the nuclear weapons threat that confronts us all is for the American people to engage this issue as if their lives depended upon its outcome. The truth is that our lives, and those of people throughout the world, do depend upon US nuclear policies. We cannot wait for leaders who will recognize and solve these problems for us. We must speak up and we must educate our neighbors and our elected officials.

    The choices are clear. One way is to continue on the disastrous path we are on, a path on which our nuclear arsenal plays a pivotal role in providing a false sense of security. Or we can change the direction of our policies, with the US seeking to strengthen its own security and global security by providing leadership to achieve the phased and total elimination of nuclear weapons. To move to this path, the American people are going to have to wake up and demand that their government, acting in their names, end its reliance on nuclear weapons and fulfill its moral and legal obligations to end the nuclear weapons era.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of Today Is Not a Good Day for War.

  • Searching for the Words

    “Poetry is an act of peace.” — Pablo Neruda

    I want to write a poem that feeds the hungry, a poem that makes the world healthy, one that ends torture and replaces greed with compassion.

    I want to write a poem that awakens people to the horror of war, a poem that ends our addiction to violence, one that reveals the obscenity of sending young men and women to war.

    I want to write a poem that defeats nationalism and militarism and every other “ism,” a poem that celebrates human dignity and the beauty and abundance of the earth.

    I want to write a poem that brings down leaders before they commit genocide and other intolerable crimes, a poem that ends impunity.

    I want to write a poem that celebrates the miracle of life, one that makes young people aware of their own beauty and fills them with courage to fight for justice.

    I am searching for the words, the grammar, the language, the rhythms to write such a poem.

    Such words are still forming like cooling lava, and the rules of grammar are as uncertain as mist. But the language, the language must be of the heart’s pulse. And the rhythms must be those of the wind and tides.

    A poem of such magic cannot be found in books or on ancient scrolls. Such a poem cannot be written in stone, or ink or even blood. It can only be lived.

  • To the Graduates

    To the Graduates

    Congratulations on completing this phase of your life. I’m sure you have learned many things in your studies. Let me mention a few things about the world you are entering – things you may already feel but don’t yet fully understand. It is a world in which human life is devalued for many, and greed is often rewarded.

     

    Each hour, 500 children die in Africa: 12,000 each day. They die of starvation and preventable diseases, not because there is not enough food or medicine, but because these are not distributed to those who need them.

     

    Our world is not particularly kind to children, but it is very kind to the military-industrial complex. Global spending on the world’s militaries now tops $1 trillion. Of this, the United States spends nearly half, more than the combined totals of the next 32 countries. For just one percent of global military spending, every child on the planet could receive an education, but these are not the values we choose to espouse.

     

    Our world is also not very wise in preparing for the future. We are busy using up the world’s resources, particularly its fossil fuels, and, in the process, polluting the environment. So hungry are we for energy and other resources that we pay little attention to the needs and well-being of future generations. Our lifestyles in the richer countries are unsustainable, and they are foreclosing opportunities for future generations who will be burdened by a world with diminishing resources and a deteriorating environment.

     

    Militarism and social progress are inversely related. In 1949, Costa Rica dismantled its military force and devoted its resources instead to achieving a better life for its people. Since then, it has been a stable democracy in a region often shattered by turmoil. The country has a low infant mortality rate, a high life expectancy rate and a literacy rate of 96 percent.

     

    If someone were to observe our planet from outer space, that person might conclude that we do not appreciate the beauty and bounty of our magnificent earth. I hope you will never take for granted this life-sustaining planet – the only one we know of in the universe. The planet itself is a miracle, as is each of us.

     

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

     

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

     

    Every citizen of Earth has rights, well articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights documents. You should know your rights under international law, which include the rights to life, liberty, security of person, and freedom from torture. There is also a human right to peace. Take responsibility for assuring these rights for yourselves and others everywhere on our globe.

     

    We live in an interdependent world. Borders cannot make us safe. We can choose to live together in peace, or to perish together in war. We can choose to live together with sustainable lifestyles or to perish together in overabundance for the few and poverty for many.

     

    Our choice is relatively simple: to create a world with dignity for all, or to maintain a world with special privileges for the few. You will make your choice by how you live and who and what you support. You are fortunate in that you have received a good education. Now you must choose how you will use your education, whether you will devote your life to the pursuit of financial success and personal attainment only or to making a difference by helping improve our planet and the lives of those who inhabit it.

     

    The future, if there is to be a future, will be claimed by those who work for peace, justice and human dignity. I hope that you will be among them.

     

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and a leader in the struggle for a nuclear weapons-free world. His most recent book is one of anti-war poetry, Today Is Not a Good Day for War.

  • US Nuclear Hypocrisy: Bad For The World

    US Nuclear Hypocrisy: Bad For The World

    Every five years the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meet in a review conference to further the non-proliferation and disarmament goals of the treaty. This year the conference ended in a spectacular failure with no final document and no agreement on moving forward. For the first ten days of the conference, the US resisted agreement on an agenda that made any reference to past commitments.

    The failure of the treaty conference is overwhelmingly attributable to the nuclear policies of the Bush administration, which has disavowed previous US nuclear disarmament commitments under the treaty. The Bush administration does not seem to grasp the hypocrisy of pressing other nations to forego their nuclear options, while failing to fulfill its own obligations under the disarmament provisions of the treaty.

    The treaty is crumbling under the double standards of American policy, and may not be able to recover from the rigid “do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do” positions of the Bush administration. These policies are viewed by most of the world as high-level nuclear hypocrisy.

    Paul Meyer, the head of Canada’s delegation to the treaty conference, reflected on the conference, “The vast majority of states have to be acknowledged, but we did not get that kind of diplomacy from the US.” Former UK Foreign Minister Robin Cook also singled out the Bush administration in explaining the failure of the conference. “How strange,” he wrote, “that no delegation should have worked harder to frustrate agreement on what needs to be done than the representatives of George Bush.”

    What the US did at the treaty conference was to point the finger at Iran and North Korea, while refusing to discuss or even acknowledge its own failure to meet its obligations under the treaty. Five years ago, at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the parties to the treaty, including the US, agreed to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Under the Bush administration, nearly all of these obligations have been disavowed.

    Although President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, the Bush administration does not support it and refused to allow ratification of this treaty, which is part of the 13 Practical Steps, to even be discussed at the 2005 review conference. The parties to the treaty are aware that the Bush administration is seeking funding from Congress to continue work on new earth penetrating nuclear weapons (“bunker busters”), while telling other nations not to develop nuclear arms.

    They are also aware that the Bush administration has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to pursue a destabilizing missile defense program, and has not supported a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, although the US had agreed to support these treaties in the 13 Practical Steps.

    The failure of this treaty conference makes nuclear proliferation more likely, including proliferation to terrorist organizations that cannot be deterred from using the weapons. The fault for this failure does not lie with other governments as the Bush administration would have us believe. It does not lie with Egypt for seeking consideration of previous promises to achieve a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. Nor does the fault lie with Iran for seeking to enrich uranium for its nuclear energy program, as is done by many other states, including the US, under the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It would no doubt be preferable to have the enrichment of uranium and the separation of plutonium, both of which can be used for nuclear weapons programs, done under strict international controls, but this requires a change in the treaty that must be applicable to all parties, not just to those singled out by the US.

    Nor can the fault be said to lie with those states that, having given up their option to develop nuclear weapons, sought renewed commitments from the nuclear weapons states not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. It is hard to imagine a more reasonable request. Yet the US has refused to relinquish the option of first use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear weapons states.

    The fault for the failure of the treaty conference lies clearly with the Bush administration, which must take full responsibility for undermining the security of every American by its double standards and nuclear hypocrisy.

    The American people must understand the full magnitude of the Bush administration’s failure at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. This may not happen because the administration has been so remarkably successful in spinning the news to suit its unilateralist, militarist and triumphalist worldviews.

    As Americans, we can not afford to wait until we experience an American Hiroshima before we wake up to the very real dangers posed by US nuclear policies. We must demand the reversal of these policies and the resumption of constructive engagement with the rest of the world.

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and the Deputy Chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.org). He has written extensively on nuclear dangers.

  • In the Spirit of Einstein: Scientists Advancing Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    In 1955, fifty years ago and ten years after the harsh inception of the Nuclear Age at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein issued an appeal, known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. It is the last public document signed by Einstein before his death. In addition to Russell and Einstein, the document was signed by nine other prominent scientists. The appeal warned that powerful new nuclear weapons raised the possibility of “universal death” in an all-out war, and called for the renunciation of war itself. “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?” The appeal concluded: “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.”

     

    Over the ensuing decades of the Cold War and beyond it, many scientists and citizens throughout the world have grown complacent in the face of continuing nuclear dangers. The Cold War may have ended in the early 1990s, but nuclear dangers to humanity have not abated. In some respects, the dangers have increased. Among the scientists who have banded together to educate the public and offer constructive solutions to the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity are those who are or have been associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Pugwash) and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES).

     

    Many scientists have been involved in both organizations. Pugwash, which grew directly from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, began in 1957 and has tended to work in more closed circles of scientists in the hopes of being viewed by governments as more trustworthy. Pugwash shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize with its founder, Sir Joseph Rotblat. INES, by contrast, which was established at a large scientific meeting in Berlin in 1991, has been far more open to interactions with other civil society organizations and with the general public. One of the principal aims of INES has been to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. This aim has been carried out by an extraordinarily dedicated group of scientists, engineers and experts in the INES project, the International Network of Scientists and Engineers Against Proliferation (INESAP). In the remainder of this article, I will discuss INESAP’s activities that have sought to move beyond the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other efforts to halt proliferation and to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

     

    INESAP was formed in 1993 by three young German scientists: Wolfgang Liebert, Martin Kalinowski and Juergen Scheffran. From its inception, the network focused on the central issue of the Nuclear Age: achieving total nuclear disarmament. The principal objectives of INESAP are “to promote nuclear disarmament, to tighten existing arms control and non-proliferation regimes, [and] to implement unconventional approaches to curbing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to controlling the transfer of related technology.”

     

    The founding conference of INESAP took place in Germany in August 1993, and was entitled, “Against Proliferation: Towards General Disarmament.” Some 50 scientists, engineers and other experts from 20 countries participated. In 1994, INESAP established a Study Group on non-proliferation, called “Beyond the NPT,” referring to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The work of the Study Group led to the publication of a document in early 1995, “Beyond the NPT: A Nuclear Weapon-Free World.” The document was prepared by some 50 authors from 17 countries, including soon-to-be Nobel Peace Laureate Joseph Rotblat.

     

    Among the conclusions of this study were that the Non-Proliferation Treaty was insufficient to control nuclear proliferation, and that the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of this treaty should be followed by multilateral negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention. The document proposed that the parties to the treaty, along with the few states still outside the treaty, should begin immediate negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a framework treaty for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The Executive Summary of “Beyond the NPT” stated, “In its Final Document the NPT Review and Extension Conference should, in its call for decisive steps towards a NWFW [nuclear weapons-free world], include a mandate for the Conference on Disarmament to start negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). The pattern has to be that which has already been set by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) – a total ban.”

     

    The 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference was held at United Nations headquarters in New York. It was one of the most important meetings in the then 25-year history of treaty and may turn out to be one of the significant events of the Nuclear Age, with broad implications for the future of civilization. At issue during the conference was whether the treaty should be extended indefinitely or for periods of time. The United States and other nuclear weapons states were strong supporters of indefinite extension, their goal being to prevent nuclear proliferation while maintaining the two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.” Many civil society organizations, along with some non-nuclear weapons states, argued against indefinite extension on the basis that it would be like giving a blank check to parties (the nuclear weapons states) who were notorious for overdrawing their accounts and could not be trusted to keep their promises.

     

    The essential bargain of the NPT was that non-nuclear weapons states would not develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons states would cease the nuclear arms race and engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. From the perspective of the non-nuclear weapons states, the treaty was never meant to establish permanent nuclear double standards, making nuclear weapons acceptable for the small minority while prohibiting them to the vast majority.

     

    INESAP was a leader among the civil society organizations at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference pressing the point that preventing proliferation was not sufficient and that it was necessary to move expeditiously toward a nuclear weapons-free world. In cooperation with other leading international organizations, INESAP sponsored a two-day forum on the abolition of nuclear weapons, based upon its study, “Beyond the NPT: A Nuclear Weapon-Free World.” The INESAP forum provided an opportunity to present a variety of proposals on how to attain a nuclear weapons-free world and for civil society representatives from around the world to debate strategies for moving forward.

     

    The NPT Review and Extension Conference ended with a victory for the nuclear weapons states and a sound defeat for humanity. The treaty was extended indefinitely with no further requirements that the nuclear weapons states fulfill their obligations under the treaty to achieve nuclear disarmament. Having achieved the indefinite extension of the treaty, the nuclear weapons states showed no inclination to proceed with negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, as INESAP had proposed.

     

    The outcome of the NPT Review and Extension Conference created a strong reaction by civil society organizations and an increased determination among them to work for the abolition of nuclear weapons. INESAP and other civil society groups coalesced to form Abolition 2000, a global network for the abolition of nuclear weapons, which has now grown to over 2,000 organizations and municipalities throughout the world.

     

    In 1996, a year after the conclusion of the NPT Review and Extension Conference, civil society organizations played a significant role in bringing the issue of the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court. The ICJ issued an opinion in which the court unanimously declared: “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.”

     

    By 1997, INESAP, along with two other important international organizations – the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) – put forward a comprehensive text for a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention. The text, relying heavily on the technical information provided by INESAP, provided for a system of societal and technical verification that would make it possible for the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their obligation under international law for the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals. This would not only make the world far safer, but would be the only truly effective way to assure against nuclear proliferation. The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention was introduced to the United Nations as a discussion paper by Costa Rica in 1997.

     

    Since then, INESAP has continued its efforts to promote a Nuclear Weapons Convention. In a 1999 Briefing Paper (No. 7/1999), it explored the question, “Has the Time Come for the Nuclear Weapons Convention?” During that same year, INESAP continued its collaboration with IALANA and IPPNW in producing a book: Security and Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. In the year 2000, INESAP put out an edited book on Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The book, emphasizing scientific expertise, provides analysis of the deadlock in achieving progress on the elimination of nuclear weapons and on the means of overcoming the obstacles.

     

    The Model Nuclear Weapons Convention has provided a basic tool for the global nuclear abolition movement. It has been used over the years by Abolition 2000 and its constituent organizations as an example of how countries, if they had the political will to do so, could proceed toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. Most recently, the model convention has been used by the Mayors for Peace, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in their Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons. This campaign calls for negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention to commence in 2005, to be completed by 2010, and for the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

     

    In 2000, INESAP organized a workshop entitled “Abolition of Nuclear Weapons” at the Stockholm Congress of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Intensive discussions at this meeting gave rise to a new INESAP program, initiated in cooperation with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, to explore the control and elimination of missile technologies for warlike purposes. The project, Moving Beyond Missile Defense, has held four international conferences over the past five years, in Santa Barbara, Shanghai, Berlin and Hiroshima, focusing on regional and global issues of nuclear disarmament and missile control.

     

    Einstein warned, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” The scientists, engineers and other experts associated with INESAP have worked to bring about such a change in thinking. They have exemplified a commitment to social responsibility by raising their voices to warn of continuing dangers and by using their scientific and technical expertise to propose solutions to the gravest danger confronting humanity. They carry on in the tradition of truth and courage exemplified by Albert Einstein.

     

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and the Deputy Chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • It Is Up To Us

    I am very honored by this award, and I accept it on behalf of all the people I work with and have struggled with to build a better world – particularly my colleagues at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    When we founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we believed that we cannot sit back and wait for leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev. Such leaders – with his wisdom, vision and courage – are all too rare.

    We believed that we ordinary citizens must step forward, and create the change we wish to see in the world.

    My life was transformed when, shortly after graduating from college, I visited Hiroshima.

    The Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima awakened me, as I had not been before, to the true extent of the dangers of the Nuclear Age.

    Over the years since then, I have come to know many of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are called hibakusha. With one voice, they say, “Never again! We will not repeat the evil.”

    The hibakusha understand, as few others in this world do, that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist, and that we must eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us.

    That is our challenge. It is the challenge that I confront daily. It is the challenge of our time and of our generation. It is a challenge we cannot fail to accept and we cannot fail to accomplish.

    I believe that each generation has a responsibility to pass the world on intact to the next generation. You might say that that is the least we can do for the future.

    But for us in the Nuclear Age, this is a more difficult task than ever before. Nuclear weapons contain the potential to foreclose a human future.

    If we succeed in eliminating these weapons of genocide, indeed omnicide, we will be viewed in the future as having done our part to save the world.

    If we fail, there may be no future generations to remember us or to judge us.

    We in the United States must press our government to stop being the greatest obstacle to nuclear disarmament. It is not in our interest, nor that of our children, for our government to cling tenaciously to these terrible weapons and even try, as it is doing now, to create new nuclear weapons for specific purposes.

    Rather, the United States, as the world’s most powerful nation, should, in our own interest and that of humanity, lead the way to a world free of nuclear weapons.

    It is up to us to change our country and the world.

    Each of us can be as powerful as anyone who ever lived. All we need to do is set our intentions and take a first step. Without doubt, a first step will lead to a second, and we will be on our way.

    We are all gifted with consciences to guide us, with voices we can raise, with arms to embrace, and with feet to take a stand. These are the gifts with which the future calls out to us to act.

    We must fight ignorance with education, apathy with direction, complacency with vision, and despair with hope. We owe this to ourselves and to our children.

    I’d like to conclude with an excerpt from a poem in my new book. The poem is about hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it is about silence. It is called Hibakusha Do Not Just Happen, and this is the way it ends:

    For every hibakusha many must contribute For every hibakusha many must obey For every hibakusha many must be silent

    It is up to us to break the silence – for each other, for humanity and for the future.

  • To an Iraqi Child

    So you wanted to be a doctor?

    It was not likely that your dreams would have come true anyway.

    We didn’t intend for our bombs to find you.

    They are smart bombs, but they didn’t know that you wanted to be a doctor.

    They didn’t know anything about your dreams and they know nothing of love.

    They only know how to find their targets and explode in fulfillment.

    We call them smart, but they cannot be trusted with dreams.

    After all, they are only gray metal casings with violent hearts.

    They do only what they were created to do.

    It isn’t their fault that they found you.

    Perhaps you were not meant to be a doctor.

  • Iraq War Casualties Continue to Mount

    When President Bush stood safely on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 2, 2003 and announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” 138 American soldiers had died in the Iraq War. The number has now increased over ten-fold. In March 2005, the 1500th American soldier died in Iraq. The number now exceeds 1,525 and is growing daily. Seriously wounded American military personnel may now exceed 20,000.

    One prominent study by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore estimates Iraqi deaths from the war at greater than 100,000. At a minimum, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have died in the war.

    Prior to the Iraq War, US leaders made statement after statement expressing certainty that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and even that they knew precisely where they were located. After extensively searching the country following the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, US intelligence has concluded that there are no weapons of mass destruction or programs to create them in Iraq.

    There was, therefore, no legal or moral basis for a preventive war as presented by US leaders to the American people and to the United Nations. In fact, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has referred to the war as an illegal act. He stated, “ I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal.”

    The Bush administration has now changed its justification for the war as being to bring democracy to Iraq specifically and to the Middle East in general, but as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has pointed out, “Democracy is not imposed with tanks and missiles, but with respect of other peoples and international law.”

    The questions remaining are how can this illegal and immoral war be ended with the fewest further casualties to Iraqis and Americans, and what consequences under law should be applied those leaders who initiated this war under false pretenses and outside the boundaries of international law. Unfortunately, neither of these questions is being discussed or debated in a serious way in the halls of government.

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

    Another Soldier by David Krieger, March 2005

    The fifteen hundredth American soldier has died In an ancient land.

    I don’t know his name, nor can I imagine his face, Surprised or perhaps contorted, as he fell like an anchor Through the sea.

    Like all of us, he had dreams.

    One is seized by the penetrating beauty of flowers, By their arrangement in a crystal vase, and cannot help Sinking to the sad earth, sobbing and bleeding.

    When the flowers, too, have faded and fallen, The empty container will remain solid and solitary, Still reflecting light, but lifeless and achingly alone.