Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Lawrence Wittner

  • Which Would You Prefer―Nuclear War or Climate Catastrophe?

    Which Would You Prefer―Nuclear War or Climate Catastrophe?

    To:      The people of the world

    From:  The Joint Public Relations Department of the Great Powers

    The world owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Boris Johnson, and other heroic rulers of our glorious nations.  Not only are they hard at work making their respective countries great again, but they are providing you, the people of the world, with a choice between two opportunities for mass death and destruction.

    Throughout the broad sweep of history, leaders of competing territories and eventually nations labored at fostering human annihilation, but, given the rudimentary state of their technology, were only partially successful.  Yes, they did manage to slaughter vast numbers of people through repeated massacres and constant wars.  The Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, for example, resulted in more than 8 million casualties, a substantial portion of Europe’s population.  And, of course, World Wars I and II, supplemented by a hearty dose of genocide along the way, did a remarkably good job of ravaging populations, crippling tens of millions of survivors, and blasting much of world civilization to rubble.  Even so, despite the best efforts of national rulers and the never-ending glory they derived from these events, large numbers of people somehow survived.

    Therefore, in August 1945, the rulers of the great powers took a great leap forward with their development―and immediate use―of a new, advanced implement for mass destruction:  nuclear weapons.  Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin were all eager to employ atomic bombs against the people of Japan.  Upon receiving the news that the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima had successfully obliterated the population of that city, Truman rejoiced and called the action “the greatest thing in history.”

    Efforts to enhance national grandeur followed during subsequent decades, as the rulers of the great powers (and some pathetic imitators) engaged in an enormous nuclear arms race.  Determined to achieve military supremacy, they spared no expense, employed Nazi scientists and slave labor, and set off vast nuclear explosions on the lands of colonized people and in their own countries.  By the 1980s, about 70,000 nuclear weapons were under their command―more than enough to destroy the world many times over.  Heartened by their national strength, our rulers threw down the gauntlet to their enemies and predicted that their nations would emerge victorious in a nuclear war.

    But, alas, the public, failing to appreciate these valiant efforts, grew restive―indeed, disturbingly unpatriotic.  Accordingly, they began to sabotage these advances by demanding that their governments step back from the brink of nuclear war, forgo nuclear buildups, and adopt nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties.  The popular clamor became so great that even Ronald Reagan―a longtime supporter of nuclear supremacy and “winnable” nuclear wars―crumpled.  Championing nuclear disarmament, he began declaring that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”  National glory had been sacrificed on the altar of a cowardly quest for human survival.

    Fortunately, those days are long past.  In the United States, President Trump is determined to restore America’s greatness by scrapping nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, spending $1.7 trillion on refurbishing the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and threatening to eradicate other nations through nuclear war.  Meanwhile, the president’s good friends in Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, New Delhi, and elsewhere are busy spurring on their own national nuclear weapons buildups.  As they rightly insist:  The only way to stop a bad nation with the Bomb is with a good nation with the Bomb.

    Nor is that all!  Recently, our rulers have opened up a second opportunity for a planetary destruction:  climate catastrophe.  Some scientists, never satisfied with leaving the running of public affairs to their wise rulers, have claimed that, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels, rising temperatures are melting the polar icecaps, heightening sea levels, and causing massive hurricanes and floods, desertification, agricultural collapse, and enormous wildfires.  As a result, they say, human and other life forms are on their way to extinction.

    These scientists―and the deluded people who give them any credence―are much like the critics of nuclear weapons:  skeptics, nay-sayers, and traitorously indifferent to national grandeur.  By contrast, our rulers understand that any curbing of the use of fossil fuels—or, for that matter, any cutbacks in the sale of the products that make our countries great―would interfere with corporate profits, undermine business growth and expansion, and represent a retreat from the national glory that is their due.  Consequently, even if by some remote chance we are entering a period of climate disruption, our rulers will refuse to give way before these unpatriotic attacks.  As courageous leaders, they will never retreat before the prospect of your mass death and destruction.

    We are sure that you, as loyal citizens, are as enthusiastic as we are about this staunch defense of national glory.  So, if you notice anyone challenging this approach, please notify your local Homeland Security office.  Meanwhile, rest assured, our governments will also be closely monitoring these malcontents and subversives!

    Naturally, your rulers would love to have your feedback.  Therefore, we are submitting to you this question:  Which would you prefer―destruction by nuclear war or destruction by climate catastrophe?  Nuclear war will end your existence fairly quickly through blast or fire, although your death would be slower and more agonizing if you survived long enough to die of radiation sickness or starvation.  On the other hand, climate catastrophe has appealing variety, for you could die by fire, water, or hunger.  Or you might simply roast slowly thanks to unbearable temperatures.

    We’d appreciate receiving your opinion on this matter.  After all, providing you with this kind of choice is a vital part of making our nations great again!

  • Dear Moderators of the Presidential Debates: How About Raising the Issue of How to Avert Nuclear War?

    Dear Moderators of the Presidential Debates: How About Raising the Issue of How to Avert Nuclear War?

    You mass media folks lead busy lives, I’m sure.  But you must have heard something about nuclear weapons―those supremely destructive devices that, along with climate change, threaten the continued existence of the human race.

    Yes, thanks to popular protest and carefully-crafted arms control and disarmament agreements, there has been some progress in limiting the number of these weapons and averting a nuclear holocaust.  Even so, that progress has been rapidly unraveling in recent months, leading to a new nuclear arms race and revived talk of nuclear war.

    Do I exaggerate?  Consider the following.

    In May 2018, the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the laboriously-constructed Iran nuclear agreement that had closed off the possibility of that nation developing nuclear weapons.  This U.S. treaty pullout was followed by the imposition of heavy U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, as well as by thinly-veiled threats by Trump to use nuclear weapons to destroy that country.  Irate at these moves, the Iranian government recently retaliated by exceeding the limits set by the shattered agreement on its uranium stockpile and uranium enrichment.

    At the beginning of February 2019, the Trump administration announced that, in August, the U.S. government will withdraw from the Reagan era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty―the historic agreement that had banned U.S. and Russian ground-launched cruise missiles―and would proceed to develop such weapons.  On the following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that, in response, his government was suspending its observance of the treaty and would build the kinds of nuclear missiles that the INF treaty had outlawed.

    The next nuclear disarmament agreement on the chopping block appears to be the 2010 New START Treaty, which reduces U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 each, limits U.S. and Russian nuclear delivery vehicles, and provides for extensive inspection.  According to John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor, this fundamentally flawed treaty, scheduled to expire in February 2021, is “unlikely” to be extended.  To preserve such an agreement, he argued, would amount to “malpractice.”  If the treaty is allowed to expire, it would be the first time since 1972 that there would be no nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the United States.

    One other key international agreement, which President Clinton signed―but, thanks to Republican opposition, the U.S. Senate has never ratified―is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).  Adopted with great fanfare in 1996 and backed by nearly all the world’s nations, the CTBT bans nuclear weapons testing, a practice which has long served as a prerequisite for developing or upgrading nuclear arsenals.  Today, Bolton is reportedly pressing for the treaty to be removed from Senate consideration and “unsigned,” as a possible prelude to U.S. resumption of nuclear testing.

    Nor, dear moderators, does it seem likely that any new agreements will replace the old ones.  The U.S. State Department’s Office of Strategic Stability and Deterrence Affairs, which handles U.S. arms control ventures, has been whittled down during the Trump years from 14 staff members to four.  As a result, a former staffer reported, the State Department is no longer “equipped” to pursue arms control negotiations.  Coincidentally, the U.S. and Russian governments, which possess approximately 93 percent of the world’s nearly 14,000 nuclear warheads, have abandoned negotiations over controlling or eliminating them for the first time since the 1950s.

    Instead of honoring the commitment, under Article VI of the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to pursue negotiations for “cessation of the nuclear arms race” and for “nuclear disarmament,” all nine nuclear powers are today modernizing their nuclear weapons production facilities and adding new, improved types of nuclear weapons to their arsenals.  Over the next 30 years, this nuclear buildup will cost the United States alone an estimated $1,700,000,000,000―at least if it is not obliterated first in a nuclear holocaust.

    Will the United States and other nations survive these escalating preparations for nuclear war?  That question might seem overwrought, dear moderators, but, in fact, the U.S. government and others are increasing the role that nuclear weapons play in their “national security” policies.  Trump’s glib threats of nuclear war against North Korea and Iran are paralleled by new administration plans to develop a low-yield ballistic missile, which arms control advocates fear will lower the threshold for nuclear war.

    Confirming the new interest in nuclear warfare, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, in June 2019, posted a planning document on the Pentagon’s website with a more upbeat appraisal of nuclear war-fighting than seen for many years.  Declaring that “using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability,” the document approvingly quoted Herman Kahn, the Cold War nuclear theorist who had argued for “winnable” nuclear wars and had provided an inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s satirical film, Dr. Strangelove.

    Of course, most Americans are not pining for this kind of approach to nuclear weapons.  Indeed, a May 2019 opinion poll by the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland found that two-thirds of U.S. respondents favored remaining within the INF Treaty, 80 percent wanted to extend the New START Treaty, about 60 percent supported “phasing out” U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles, and 75 percent backed legislation requiring congressional approval before the president could order a nuclear attack.

    Therefore, when it comes to presidential debates, dear moderators, don’t you―as stand-ins for the American people―think it might be worthwhile to ask the candidates some questions about U.S. preparations for nuclear war and how best to avert a global catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude?

    I think these issues are important.  Don’t you?

    Dr. Lawrence Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

  • How About a Peace Race Instead of an Arms Race?

    How About a Peace Race Instead of an Arms Race?

    In late April, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that, in 2018, world military expenditures rose to a record $1.82 trillion.  The biggest military spender by far was the United States, which increased its military budget by nearly 5 percent to $649 billion (36 percent of the global total).  But most other nations also joined the race for bigger and better ways to destroy one another through war.

    This situation represents a double tragedy.  First, in a world bristling with weapons of vast destructive power, it threatens the annihilation of the human race.  Second, as vast resources are poured into war and preparations for it, a host of other problems―poverty, environmental catastrophe, access to education and healthcare, and more―fail to be adequately addressed.

    But these circumstances can be changed, as shown by past efforts to challenge runaway militarism.

    During the late 1950s, the spiraling nuclear arms race, poverty in economically underdeveloped nations, and underfunded public services in the United States inspired considerable thought among socially-conscious Americans.  Seymour Melman, a professor of industrial engineering at Columbia University and a peace activist, responded by writing The Peace Race, a mass market paperback published in 1961.  The book argued that military spending was undermining the U.S. economy and other key aspects of American life, and that it should be replaced by a combination of economic aid abroad and increased public spending at home.

    Melman’s popular book, and particularly its rhetoric about a “peace race,” quickly came to the attention of the new U.S. President, John F. Kennedy.  On September 25, 1961, dismayed by the Soviet Union’s recent revival of nuclear weapons testing, Kennedy used the occasion of his address to the United Nations to challenge the Russians “not to an arms race, but to a peace race.”  Warning that “mankind must put an end to war―or war will put an end to mankind,” he invited nations to “join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.”

    Kennedy’s “peace race” speech praised obliquely, but powerfully, what was the most ambitious plan for disarmament of the Cold War era:  the McCloy-Zorin Accords.  This historic US-USSR agreement, presented to the UN only five days before, outlined a detailed plan for “general and complete disarmament.”  It provided for the abolition of national armed forces, the elimination of weapons stockpiles, and the discontinuance of military expenditures in a sequence of stages, each verified by an international disarmament organization before the next stage began.  During this process, disarmament progress would “be accompanied by measures to strengthen institutions for maintaining peace and the settlement of international disputes by peaceful means.”  In December 1961, the McCloy-Zorin Accords were adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly.

    Although the accelerating nuclear arms race―symbolized by Soviet and American nuclear testing―slowed the momentum toward disarmament provided by the McCloy-Zorin Accords and Kennedy’s “peace race” address, disarmament continued as a very live issue.  The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), America’s largest peace organization, publicly lauded Kennedy’s “peace race” speech and called for “the launching of a Peace Race” in which the two Cold War blocs joined “to end the arms race, contain their power within constructive bounds, and encourage peaceful social change.”

    For its part, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, created by the Kennedy administration to address disarmament issues, drafted an official U.S. government proposal, Blueprint for the Peace Race, which Kennedy submitted to the United Nations on April 18, 1962.  Leading off with Kennedy’s challenge “not to an arms race, but to a peace race,” the proposal called for general and complete disarmament and proposed moving in verifiable steps toward that goal.

    Nothing as sweeping as this followed, at least in part because much of the subsequent public attention and government energy went into curbing the nuclear arms race.  A central concern along these lines was nuclear weapons testing, an issue dealt with in 1963 by the Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed that August by the U.S., Soviet, and British governments.  In setting the stage for this treaty, Kennedy drew upon Norman Cousins, the co-chair of SANE, to serve as his intermediary with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.  Progress in containing the nuclear arms race continued with subsequent great power agreements, particularly the signing of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968.

    As is often the case, modest reform measures undermine the drive for more thoroughgoing alternatives.  Certainly, this was true with respect to general and complete disarmament.  Peace activists, of course, continued to champion stronger measures.  Thus, Martin Luther King, Jr. used the occasion of his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in Oslo, on December 11, 1964, to declare:  “We must shift the arms race into a ‘peace race.’”  But, with important curbs on the nuclear arms race in place, much of the public and most government leaders turned to other issues.

    Today, of course, we face not only an increasingly militarized world, but even a resumption of the nuclear arms race, as nuclear powers brazenly scrap nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties and threaten one another, as well as non-nuclear nations, with nuclear war.

    Perhaps it’s time to revive the demand for more thoroughgoing global disarmament.  Why not wage a peace race instead of an arms race―one bringing an end to the immense dangers and vast waste of resources caused by massive preparations for war?  In the initial stage of this race, how about an immediate cut of 10 percent in every nation’s military budget, thus retaining the current military balance while freeing up $182 billion for the things that make life worth living?  As the past agreements of the U.S. and Soviet governments show us, it’s not at all hard to draw up a reasonable, acceptable plan providing for verification and enforcement.

    All that’s lacking, it seems, is the will to act.

    [Dr. Lawrence Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).]

  • Don’t Expect Rulers of Nuclear-Armed Nations to Accept Nuclear Disarmament―Unless They’re Pushed to Do So

    Don’t Expect Rulers of Nuclear-Armed Nations to Accept Nuclear Disarmament―Unless They’re Pushed to Do So

    At the beginning of February 2019, the two leading nuclear powers took an official step toward resumption of the nuclear arms race.  On February 1, the U.S. government, charging Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, announced that it would pull out of the agreement and develop new intermediate-range missiles banned by it.  The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended his government’s observance of the treaty, claiming that this was done as a “symmetrical” response to the U.S. action and that Russia would develop nuclear weapons outlawed by the agreement.

    In this fashion, the 1987 Soviet-American INF Treaty―which had eliminated thousands of destabilizing nuclear weapons, set the course for future nuclear disarmament agreements between the two nuclear superpowers, and paved the way for an end to the Cold War―was formally dispensed with.

    Actually, the scrapping of the treaty should not have come as a surprise.  After all, the rulers of nations, especially “the great powers,” are rarely interested in limiting their access to powerful weapons of war, including nuclear weapons.  Indeed, they usually favor weapons buildups by their own nation and, thus, end up in immensely dangerous and expensive arms races with other nations.

    Donald Trump exemplifies this embrace of nuclear weapons.  During his presidential campaign, he made the bizarre claim that the 7,000-weapon U.S. nuclear arsenal “doesn’t work,” and promised to restore it to its full glory.  Shortly after his election, Trump tweeted:  “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability.”  The following day, with his customary insouciance, he remarked simply:  “Let it be an arms race.”

    Naturally, as president, he has been a keen supporter of a $1.7 trillion refurbishment of the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex, including the building of new nuclear weapons.  Nor has he hesitated to brag about U.S. nuclear prowess.  In connection with his war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump boasted:  “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his.”

    Russian leaders, too, though not as overtly provocative, have been impatient to build new nuclear weapons.  As early as 2007, Putin complained to top-level U.S. officials that only Russia and the United States were covered by the INF Treaty; therefore, unless other nations were brought into the agreement, “it will be difficult for us to keep within the [treaty] framework.”  The following year, Sergey Ivanov, the Russian defense minister, publicly bemoaned the INF agreement, observing that intermediate-range nuclear weapons “would be quite useful for us” against China.

    By 2014, according to the U.S. government and arms control experts, Russia was pursuing a cruise missile program that violated the INF agreement, although Putin denied that the missile was banned by the treaty and claimed, instead, that the U.S. missile defense system was out of compliance.  And so the offending missile program continued, as did Russian programs for blood-curdling types of nuclear weapons outside the treaty’s framework.  In 2016, Putin criticized “the naïve former Russian leadership” for signing the INF Treaty in the first place.  When the U.S. government pulled out of the treaty, Putin not only quickly proclaimed Russia’s withdrawal, but announced plans for building new nuclear weapons and said that Russia would no longer initiate nuclear arms control talks with the United States.

    The leaders of the seven other nuclear-armed nations have displayed much the same attitude.  All have recently been upgrading their nuclear arsenals, with China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea developing nuclear weapons that would be banned by the INF Treaty.  Efforts by the U.S. government, in 2008, to bring some of these nations into the treaty were rebuffed by their governments.  In the context of the recent breakdown of the INF Treaty, China’s government (which, among them, possesses the largest number of such weapons) has praised the agreement for carrying forward the nuclear disarmament process and improving international relations, but has opposed making the treaty a multilateral one―a polite way of saying that nuclear disarmament should be confined to the Americans and the Russians.

    Characteristically, all the nuclear powers have rejected the 2017 UN treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.

    But the history of the INF Treaty’s emergence provides a more heartening perspective.

    During the late 1970s and early 1980s, in response to the advent of government officials championing a nuclear weapons buildup and talking glibly of nuclear war, an immense surge of popular protest swept around the world.  Antinuclear demonstrations of unprecedented size convulsed Western Europe, Asia, and North America.  Even within Communist nations, protesters defied authorities and took to the streets.  With opinion polls showing massive opposition to the deployment of new nuclear weapons and the waging of nuclear war, mainstream organizations and political parties sharply condemned the nuclear buildup and called for nuclear disarmament.

    Consequently, hawkish government officials began to reassess their priorities.  In the fall of 1983, with some five million people busy protesting the U.S. plan to install intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe, Ronald Reagan told his secretary of state: “If things get hotter and hotter and arms control remains an issue, maybe I should . . . propose eliminating all nuclear weapons.”  Previously, to dampen antinuclear protest, Reagan and other NATO hawks had proposed the “zero option”―scrapping plans for U.S. missile deployment in Western Europe for Soviet withdrawal of INF missiles from Eastern Europe.  But Russian leaders scorned this public relations gesture until Mikhail Gorbachev, riding the wave of popular protest, decided to call Reagan’s bluff.  As a result, recalled a top administration official, “we had to take yes for an answer.”  In 1987, amid great popular celebration, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty.

    Although the rulers of nuclear-armed nations are usually eager to foster nuclear buildups, substantial public pressure can secure their acceptance of nuclear disarmament.

    Dr. Lawrence Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

  • Reviving the Nuclear Disarmament Movement: A Practical Proposal

    Reviving the Nuclear Disarmament Movement: A Practical Proposal

    In late November 2018, Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned public intellectual, remarked that “humanity faces two imminent existential threats:  environmental catastrophe and nuclear war.” 

    Curiously, although a widespread environmental movement has developed to save the planet from accelerating climate change, no counterpart has emerged to take on the rising danger of nuclear disaster.  Indeed, this danger―exemplified by the collapse of arms control and disarmament agreements, vast nuclear “modernization” programs by the United States and other nuclear powers, and reckless threats of nuclear war―has stirred remarkably little public protest within the United States and even less public debate during the recent U.S. midterm elections.

    Of course, there are U.S. peace and disarmament organizations that challenge the nuclear menace.  But they are fairly small and pursue their own, separate antinuclear campaigns.  Such campaigns―ranging from cutting funding for a new nuclear weapon, to opposing the Trump administration’s destruction of yet another disarmament treaty, to condemning its threats of nuclear war―are certainly praiseworthy.  But they have not galvanized a massive public uprising within the United States against the overarching danger of nuclear annihilation. 

    In these circumstances, what is missing is a strategy that will rouse the general public from its torpor and shift the agenda of the nuclear powers from nuclear confrontation to a nuclear weapons-free world.

    The Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, launched decades ago in another time of nuclear crisis, suggests one possible strategy.  Developed at the end of the 1970s by defense analyst Randy Forsberg, the Freeze (as it became known) focused on a simple, straightforward goal:  a Soviet-American agreement to stop the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.  As Forsberg predicted, this proposal to halt the nuclear arms race had great popular appeal (with polls showing U.S. public support at 72 percent) and sparked an enormous grassroots campaign.  The Reagan administration, horrified by this resistance to its plans for a nuclear buildup and victory in a nuclear war, fought ferociously against it.  But to no avail.  The Freeze triumphed in virtually every state and local referendum on the ballot, captured the official support of the Democratic Party, and sailed through the House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority.  Although the Reaganites managed to derail it in the Senate, the administration was on the defensive and, soon, on the run.  Joined by massive antinuclear campaigns in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world, the Freeze campaign forced a reversal of administration priorities and policies, leading to previously unthinkable Soviet-American nuclear disarmament treaties and an end to the Cold War.

    How might a comparable strategy be implemented today?

    The campaign goal might be a halt to the nuclear arms race, exemplified by an agreement among the nuclear powers to scrap their ambitious nuclear “modernization” plans.  Although the Trump administration would undoubtedly rail against this policy, the vast majority of Americans would find it thoroughly acceptable.  An alternative, more ambitious goal―one that would probably also elicit widespread public approval―would be the ratification by the nuclear powers of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  This UN-brokered treaty, signed in July 2017 by the vast majority of the world’s nations and scorned by the governments of the United States and other nuclear-armed countries, prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, using, or threatening to use nuclear weapons.

    The second stage of a current campaign strategy, as it was in the strategy of the Freeze, is to get as many peace groups as possible to endorse the campaign and put their human and financial resources behind it.  Working together in a joint effort seems feasible today.  Some of the largest of the current organizations―such as the American Friends Service Committee, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Veterans for Peace―are already thoroughly committed to building a nuclear weapons-free world.

    The third stage of an effective strategy is winning the battle for public opinion.  In the case of the Freeze, this entailed not only distributing crucial information to members of the general public, but introducing Freeze resolutions at local gatherings or national conventions of religious denominations, unions, professional associations, and the vast panoply of voluntary organizations, where they almost invariably passed. 

    A final stage involves turning the objective into government policy.  The Freeze campaign found that many politicians were quite willing to adopt its program.  Similarly, at present, some key Democrats, including the chair of the incoming House Armed Services Committee and likely Democratic presidential candidates, are already attacking the Trump administration’s nuclear “modernization” program, its withdrawal from disarmament treaties, and its eagerness to launch a nuclear war.  Consequently, if a major public campaign gets rolling, substantial changes in public policy are within reach.

    To be fully effective, such a campaign requires international solidarity—not only to bring domestic pressure to bear on diverse nations, but overseas pressure as well.  The Freeze movement worked closely with nuclear disarmament movements around the world, and this international alliance produced striking results in both East and West.  Today, a new international alliance, enhanced by the current strong dissatisfaction of non-nuclear nations with the escalation of the nuclear arms race and the related dangers of nuclear war, could help foster significant changes in public policy.

    Of course, this proposal suggests only one of numerous possible ways to develop a broad nuclear disarmament campaign.  But there should be little doubt about the necessity for organizing that public mobilization.  The alternative is allowing the world to continue its slide toward nuclear catastrophe.

    [This is a revised version of an article published by Foreign Policy in Focus on December 7, 2018.]

    Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

  • Lurching Toward Catastrophe: The Trump Administration and Nuclear Weapons

    Lurching Toward Catastrophe: The Trump Administration and Nuclear Weapons

    In July 2017, by a vote of 122 to 1, with one abstention, nations from around the world attending a United Nations-sponsored conference in New York City voted to approve a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.  Although this Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received little coverage in the mass media, its passage was a momentous event, capping decades of international nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements that, together, have reduced the world’s nuclear weapons arsenals by approximately 80 percent and have limited the danger of a catastrophic nuclear war.  The treaty prohibited all ratifying countries from developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, using, or threatening to use nuclear weapons.

    Curiously, though, despite official support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by almost two-thirds of the world’s nations, the Trump administration―like its counterparts in other nuclear-armed countries―regarded this historic measure as if it were being signed in a parallel, hostile universe.  As a result, the United States and the eight other nuclear powers boycotted the treaty negotiations, as well as the final vote.  Moreover, after the treaty was approved amid the tears, cheers, and applause of the UN delegates and observers, a joint statement issued by the UN ambassadors of the United States, Britain, and France declared that their countries would never become party to the international agreement.

    One clear indication that the nuclear powers have no intention of dispensing with their nuclear arsenals is the nuclear weapons buildup that all of them are now engaged in, with the U.S. government in the lead.  Although the Trump administration inherited its nuclear weapons “modernization” program from its predecessor, that program―designed to provide new weapons for nuclear warfare, accompanied by upgraded or new facilities for their production―is constantly increasing in scope and cost.  In October 2017, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the cost for the planned “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex over the next three decades had reached a staggering $1.2 trillion.  Thanks to the Trump administration’s plan to upgrade the three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad and build new cruise and ballistic missiles, the estimated cost of the U.S. nuclear buildup rose in February 2018 to $2 trillion.

    In this context, the Trump administration has no interest in pursuing the nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, discussed or signed, that have characterized the administrations of all Democratic and Republican administrations since the dawn of the nuclear era.  Not only are no such agreements currently being negotiated, but in October 2018 the Trump administration, charging Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, announced a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from it.  Signed in 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the treaty removed all medium range nuclear missiles from Europe, established a cooperative relationship between the two nations that led to the end of the Cold War, and served subsequently as the cornerstone of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms controls.

    Although some Allied leaders joined Trump in questioning Russian compliance with the treaty, most criticized the U.S. pullout, claiming that treaty problems could be solved through U.S.-Russian negotiations.  Assailing the U.S. action, which portended a nuclear weapons buildup by both nations, a spokesperson for the European Union declared:  “The world doesn’t need a new arms race that would benefit no one and on the contrary would bring even more instability.”  Nevertheless, Trump, in his usual insouciant style, immediately announced that the U.S. government planned to increase its nuclear arsenal until other nations “come to their senses.”

    Of course, as Daniel Ellsberg has noted in his book, The Doomsday Machine, nuclear weapons are meant to be used―either to bully other nations into submission or to wage a nuclear war.  Certainly, that is President Trump’s view of them, as indicated by his startling nuclear threats.  In August 2017, angered by North Korea’s nuclear missile progress and the belligerent statements of its leaders, Trump warned that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States” or “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”  In January 2018, referring to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, Trump boasted provocatively that “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his.”  Fortunately, largely thanks to the skillful diplomatic maneuvers of South Korean President Moon Jae-in―Trump’s threats of nuclear war against North Korea have recently ground to a halt, at least temporarily.

    But they are now being redirected against Iran.  In May 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an agreement with Iran that had been negotiated by the governments of the United States and other major nations.  Designed to ensure that Iran did not develop nuclear weapons, the agreement, as UN inspectors reported, had been strictly complied with by that nation.  Even so, Trump, angered by other actions of the Iranian regime, pulled out of the agreement and, in its place, instituted punitive economic sanctions on Iran, accompanied by calls to overthrow its government.  When, in July, the Iranian president cautioned Trump about pursing policies hostile to his nation, the U.S. president tweeted, in bold capitals:  “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”  Just in case Iranians missed the implications of this extraordinary statement, Trump’s hawkish national security advisor, John Bolton, followed up by declaring:  “President Trump told me that if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid.”

    This obsession of the Trump administration with building nuclear weapons and threatening nuclear war underscores its unwillingness to join other governments in developing a sane nuclear policy.  Indeed, it seems determined to continue lurching toward unparalleled catastrophe.

    [Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).]

  • Although Two Out of Three Americans Oppose Increasing U.S. Military Spending, the U.S. Government Is Boosting It to Record Levels

    Early this February, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed new federal budget legislation that increased U.S. military spending by $165 billion over the next two years.  Remarkably, though, a Gallup public opinion poll, conducted only days before, found that only 33 percent of Americans favored increasing U.S. military spending, while 65 percent opposed it, either backing reductions (34 percent) or maintenance of the status quo (31 percent).

    What is even more remarkable for a nation where military spending has grown substantially over the decades, is that, during the past 49 years that Gallup has asked Americans their opinions on U.S. military spending, in only one year (1981) did a majority of Americans (in that case, 51 percent) favor increasing it.  During the other years, clear and sometimes very substantial majorities opposed spending more on the military.

    Although the Gallup survey appears to be the only one that has covered American attitudes toward military spending in 2018, reports by other polling agencies for earlier years reveal the same pattern.  The Pew Research Center, for example, found that, from 2004 to 2016, the percentage of Americans that favored increasing U.S. military spending only ranged from 13 to 35 percent.  By contrast, the percentage of Americans that favored decreasing U.S. military spending or continuing it at the same level ranged from 64 to 83 percent.

    This opposition to boosting U.S. military spending became even stronger when pollsters provided Americans with information about the actual level of federal government spending and arguments for and against particular programs.  In March 2017, before opinion polling began by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Integrity, it distributed a rough outline of the federal budget and a series of statements about spending programs vetted for fairness by opposing groups.  The result was that a majority of survey respondents reported that they favored cutting the military budget by $41 billion.

    Current public opinion on military spending has a clear partisan dimension.  In its February 2018 polling, Gallup found that, among Republicans and independents leaning Republican, 54 percent said that the U.S. government was spending too little on the military.  Conversely, among Democrats and independents leaning Democratic, 53 percent said the federal government was spending too much on it.  Today, with Republicans dominating both Congress and the White House, it’s not surprising that U.S. military spending is once again soaring to record heights.

    It’s hard to say, of course, where the current vast U.S. military buildup will lead.  Critics―and there have been many―predict war, bankruptcy, or both.  Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action, the largest grassroots peace organization in the United States, remarked:  “Our tax dollars pay for military policies that spur a global arms race―one that increasingly endangers our country’s security and undermines its economic viability.”

    Americans might also want to ponder the fact that, with $700 billion per year now being pumped into the Pentagon by U.S. taxpayers, military spending consumes 54 percent of the federal discretionary budget.  And, if President Trump’s official recommendations for future years are followed, the military’s share of the federal budget will surge to 65 percent by fiscal 2023.  Combined with the huge budget deficits that will be produced by the GOP tax cuts for the wealthy and their corporations, this will almost certainly lead to devastating slashes in federal spending for education, healthcare, parks and recreation facilities, food distribution, jobs, infrastructure, and other public programs.

    Of course, there are possibilities for blocking the current flood of military spending and its consequences.  The political mobilization of the widespread, but thus far latent, constituency against increased funding for the Pentagon, coupled with enough Democratic victories at the polls in 2018 to return of the House of Representative to Democratic control, would slow―and perhaps halt―the drift toward an overwhelmingly military-oriented public policy.

    Short of these developments, however, it seems likely that the U.S. government’s discretionary spending will be devoted primarily to preparations for war.

    Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

  • Why the “Merchants of Death” Survive and Prosper

    This article was originally published by History News Network.

    During the mid-1930s, a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade, combined with a U.S. Congressional investigation of munitions-makers led by Senator Gerald Nye, had a major impact on American public opinion. Convinced that military contractors were stirring up weapons sales and war for their own profit, many people grew critical of these “merchants of death.”

    Today, some eight decades later, their successors, now more politely called “defense contractors,” are alive and well. According to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, sales of weapons and military services by the world’s largest 100 corporate military purveyors in 2016 (the latest year for which figures are available) rose to $375 billion. U.S. corporations increased their share of that total to almost 58 percent, supplying weapons to at least 100 nations around the world.

    The dominant role played by U.S. corporations in the international arms trade owes a great deal to the efforts of U.S. government officials. “Significant parts of the government,” notes military analyst William Hartung, “are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life. From the president on his trips abroad to visit allied world leaders to the secretaries of state and defense to the staffs of U.S. embassies, American officials regularly act as salespeople for the arms firms.” Furthermore, he notes, “the Pentagon is their enabler. From brokering, facilitating, and literally banking the money from arms deals to transferring weapons to favored allies on the taxpayers’ dime, it is in essence the world’s largest arms dealer.”

    In 2013, when Tom Kelly, the deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Political Affairs was asked during a Congressional hearing about whether the Obama administration was doing enough to promote American weapons exports, he replied: “[We are] advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through. . . and that is something we are doing every day, basically [on] every continent in the world . . . and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.” This proved a fair enough assessment, for during the first six years of the Obama administration, U.S. government officials secured agreements for U.S. weapons sales of more than $190 billion around the world, especially to the volatile Middle East. Determined to outshine his predecessor, President Donald Trump, on his first overseas trip, bragged about a $110 billion arms deal (totaling $350 billion over the next decade) with Saudi Arabia.

    The greatest single weapons market remains the United States, for this country ranks first among nations in military spending, with 36 percent of the global total. Trump is a keen military enthusiast, as is the Republican Congress, which is currently in the process of approving a 13 percent increase in the already astronomical U.S. military budget. Much of this future military spending will almost certainly be devoted to purchasing new and very expensive high-tech weapons, for the military contractors are adept at delivering millions of dollars in campaign contributions to needy politicians, employing 700 to 1,000 lobbyists to nudge them along, claiming that their military production facilities are necessary to create jobs, and mobilizing their corporate-funded think tanks to highlight ever-greater foreign “dangers.”

    They can also count upon a friendly reception from their former executives now holding high-level posts in the Trump administration, including: Secretary of Defense James Mattis (a former board member of General Dynamics); White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (previously employed by several military contractors); Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan (a former Boeing executive); Secretary of the Army Mark Esper (a former Raytheon vice president); Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson (a former consultant to Lockheed Martin); Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Ellen Lord (a former CEO of an aerospace company); and National Security Council Chief of Staff Keith Kellogg (a former employee of a major military and intelligence contractor).

    This formula works very well for U.S. military contractors, as illustrated by the case of Lockheed Martin, the largest arms merchant in the world. In 2016, Lockheed’s weapons sales rose by almost 11 percent to $41 billion, and the company is well on its way to even greater affluence thanks to its production of the F-35 fighter jet. Lockheed began work on developing the technologically-advanced warplane in the 1980s and, since 2001, the U.S. government has expended over $100 billion for its production. Today, estimates by military analysts as to the total cost to taxpayers of the 2,440 F-35s desired by Pentagon officials range from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, making it the most expensive procurement program in U.S. history.

    The F-35’s enthusiasts have justified the enormous expense of the warplane by emphasizing its projected ability to make a quick liftoff and a vertical landing, as well as its adaptability for use by three different branches of the U.S. military. And its popularity might also reflect their assumption that its raw destructive power will help them win future wars against Russia and China. “We can’t get into those aircraft fast enough,” Lieutenant General Jon Davis, the Marine Corps’ aviation chief, told a House Armed Services subcommittee in early 2017. “We have a game changer, a war winner, on our hands.”

    Even so, aircraft specialists point out that the F-35 continues to have severe structural problems and that its high-tech computer command system is vulnerable to cyberattack. “This plane has a long way to go before it’s combat-ready,” remarked a military analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. “Given how long it’s been in development, you have to wonder whether it’ll ever be ready.”

    Startled by the extraordinary expense of the F-35 project, Donald Trump initially derided the venture as “out of control.” But, after meeting with Pentagon officials and Lockheed CEO Marilynn Hewson, the new president reversed course, praising “the fantastic” F-35 as a “great plane” and authorizing a multi-billion dollar contract for 90 more of them.

    In retrospect, none of this is entirely surprising. After all, other giant military contractors―for example, Nazi Germany’s Krupp and I.G. Farben and fascist Japan’s Mitsubishi and Sumitomo ―prospered heavily by arming their nations for World War II and continued prospering in its aftermath. As long as people retain their faith in the supreme value of military might, we can probably also expect Lockheed Martin and other “merchants of death” to continue profiting from war at the public’s expense.

  • A Negotiated Curbing of North Korea’s Nuclear Capabilities Is Good, But Not Good Enough

    The North Korean government’s progress toward developing a long-range nuclear weapons capability, accompanied by bellicose pronouncements, has been alarming enough to spark worldwide public dismay and new sanctions by a unanimous UN Security Council.  But even if, at the very best, sanctions (which, so far, have not worked) or diplomatic negotiations (which have yet to get underway) produce a change in North Korea’s policy, that change is likely to be no more than a freeze in the regime’s nuclear weapons program.

    And that will leave us with a very dangerous world, indeed.

    Most obviously, North Korea will still possess its 10 nuclear weapons and the ability to employ them against other nations.

    In addition, eight other countries (the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, Israel, India, and Pakistan) possess a total of roughly 15,000 nuclear weapons, and none of them seems willing to get rid of them.  In fact, like North Korea, they are engaged in a nuclear arms race designed to upgrade their ability to wage nuclear war well into the 21st century.

    There is nothing to prevent these countries from using nuclear weapons in future conflicts, and there is an excellent possibility that they will.  After all, they and their predecessors have been waging wars with the latest weapons in their possession for thousands of years.  Indeed, the U.S. government unleashed nuclear war against a virtually defeated Japan in 1945 and is currently threatening to use nuclear weapons against North Korea.

    Moreover, even if one assumes that the leaders of these nations have reached a higher level of moral development, there are plenty of terrorists around the world who would gladly employ nuclear weapons if they could buy or steal them from these nations.  Given the instability of some of these countries―for example, Pakistan―isn’t this likely to happen at some time in the future?

    Also, many of the world’s nearly 200 nations are quite capable of building nuclear weapons―if they decide to do so.  One reason that they have not is that they have been patiently complying with the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, which provides that signatories refrain from developing nuclear weapons while the nuclear powers disarm.  But, after almost a half-century of waiting for a nuclear weapons-free world to emerge, most non-nuclear nations are fed up with the nuclear monopoly of nine nations.  And some are considering the possibilities of ignoring the treaty and developing their own nuclear arsenals.  That’s what India, Pakistan, and North Korea did.

    Finally, there is the possibility of an accidental nuclear war, triggered by a misreading of “enemy” intentions or defense gadgetry, action by drug-addled or drunken soldiers guarding nuclear missile silos, or crashes by submarines or planes carrying nuclear weapons.  Machines and people are fallible, and it takes only one mistake to create a nuclear disaster.

    Fortunately, there is an alternative to living of the brink of nuclear catastrophe:  abolishing nuclear weapons.  And this alternative is not as far-fetched as some might imagine.

    Thanks to popular pressure and occasional government response, there has been very significant progress on nuclear disarmament.  At the zenith of worldwide nuclear proliferation, nations possessed some 70,000 nuclear weapons.  Today, as a follow-up to international disarmament treaties and independent actions by individual nations, nearly four-fifths of these weapons have been scrapped.

    Indeed, in an historic action on July 7, 2017, the official representatives of 122 out of 124 nations attending a special UN-sponsored conference voted to adopt a treaty prohibiting nations from developing, testing, manufacturing, possessing, or threatening to use nuclear weapons.  The treaty also prohibited nations from transferring nuclear weapons to one another.  According to Costa Rica’s Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the conference:  “This is a very clear statement that the international community wants to move to a . . . security paradigm that does not include nuclear weapons.”

    Unfortunately, the nine nuclear powers boycotted the treaty conference, and have announced their refusal to sign its Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  In a joint statement released after the treaty’s adoption by the conference, the U.S., British, and French governments declared:  “We do not intend to sign, ratify, or ever become party to it.”

    Even so, action on the treaty is proceeding.  On September 20, nations from around the world began formally signing it at the UN headquarters in New York City.  Once 50 nations have become signatories, it will become international law.

    If employed properly, the treaty could facilitate negotiations with the North Korean regime.  Admittedly, there is no particular reason to assume that North Korea is any more eager than the other nuclear powers to agree to this ban on nuclear weapons.  But calling upon North Korea to act within a framework that deals with eliminating the nuclear weapons of all nations, rather than one that prohibits only the nuclear weapons of North Korea, might provide a useful path forward.

    Of course, the most important benefit of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is that it lights the way toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

    Thus, negotiating an agreement with North Korea to restrain its nuclear program remains important.  But, like the signers of the treaty, we should recognize that the danger of nuclear annihilation will persist as long as any nations possess nuclear weapons.

  • Playing Nuclear “Chicken” With Our Lives

    What kind of civilization have we developed when two mentally unstable national leaders, in an escalating confrontation with each other, threaten one another―and the world―with nuclear war?

    That question arises as a potentially violent showdown emerges between Kim Jong Un of North Korea and Donald Trump of the United States.  In recent years, the North Korean government has produced about 10 nuclear weapons and has been making them increasingly operational through improvements in its missile technology.  The U.S. government first developed nuclear weapons in 1945, when it employed them to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and currently possesses 6,800 of them, mostly deployed on missiles, submarines, and bombers.

    According to the North Korean government, its nuclear weapons are necessary to defend itself against the United States.  Similarity, the U.S. government argues that its nuclear weapons are necessary to defend itself against countries like North Korea.

    Although, in recent decades, we have grown accustomed to this government rhetoric about the necessity to possess nuclear weapons as a deterrent, what is particularly chilling about the current confrontation is that Kim and Trump do not appear deterred at all.  Quite the contrary, they brazenly threaten nuclear war in an extremely provocative fashion.  Responding on August 8 to North Korean threats, Trump publicly warned that North Korea “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”  Later that day, North Korea’s state media announced that its government was considering a strategy of striking the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam with mid- to long-range nuclear missiles―a strategy that a spokesman for the Korean People’s Army said would be “put into practice” once Kim authorized it.

    This kind of reckless and potentially suicidal behavior is reminiscent of the game of “Chicken,” which achieved notoriety in the 1950s.  In the film Rebel Without a Cause (1955), two rebellious, antisocial male teenagers (or juvenile delinquents, as they were known at the time) played the game before a crowd of onlookers by driving jalopies at top speed toward a cliff.  Whoever jumped out of the cars first was revealed as “chicken” (a coward).  A more popular variant of the game involved two teenagers driving their cars at high speed toward one another, with the first to swerve out of the way drawing the derisive label.  According to some accounts, young James Dean, a star of Rebel Without a Cause, actually died much this way.

    With news of the game spreading, Bertrand Russell, the great mathematician and philosopher, suggested in 1959 that the two sides in the Cold War were engaged in an even crazier version:  nuclear “Chicken.”  He wrote:  “As played by irresponsible boys, this game is considered decadent and immoral, though only the lives of the players are risked.”  But the game became “incredibly dangerous” and “absurd” when it was played by government officials “who risk not only their own lives but those of many hundreds of millions of human beings.”  Russell warned that “the moment will come when neither side can face the derisive cry of `Chicken!’ from the other side.”  When that moment arrived, “the statesmen of both sides will plunge the world into destruction.”

    It was a fair enough warning, and only several years later, during the Cuban missile crisis, the game of nuclear “Chicken” played by Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy could have resulted in a disastrous nuclear war.  However, at the last minute, both men backed off―or, perhaps we should say, swerved to avoid a head-on collision―and the crisis was resolved peacefully through a secret compromise agreement.

    In the current situation, there’s plenty of room for compromise between the U.S. and North Korean governments.  The Pyongyang regime has offered to negotiate and has shown particular interest in a peace treaty ending the Korean War of the 1950s and U.S. military exercises near its borders.  Above all, it seems anxious to avoid regime change by the United States.  The U.S. government, in turn, has long been anxious to halt the North Korean nuclear program and to defend South Korea against attack from the north.  Reasonable governments should be able to settle this dispute short of nuclear war.

    But are the two governments headed by reasonable men?  Both Kim and Trump appear psychologically disturbed, erratic, and startlingly immature―much like the juvenile delinquents once associated with the game of “Chicken.”  Let us hope, though, that with enough public resistance and some residual sanity, they will back away from the brink and begin to resolve their differences peacefully.  That’s certainly possible.

    Even if the current confrontation eases, though, we are left with a world in which some 15,000 nuclear weapons exist and with numerous people who, in the future, might not scruple about using them.  And so the fundamental problem continues:  As long as nuclear weapons exist, we teeter on the edge of catastrophe

    Fortunately, this past July, in an historic development, the vast majority of the world’s nations voted at a UN conference to approve a treaty banning nuclear weapons.  Nations will begin the process of signing onto the treaty this September.  Although, sadly, all of the nuclear powers (including the United States and North Korea) oppose the treaty, it’s long past time for nuclear weapons to be prohibited and eliminated.  Until they are, government officials will remain free to play nuclear “Chicken” with their lives . . . and with ours.