Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Lawrence Wittner

  • How Japan Learned About Nuclear Safety

    This article was originally published on the History News Network.


    Lawrence WittnerAlthough people can be educated in a variety of ways, experience is a particularly effective teacher.  Consider the Japanese, who today are certainly learning how dangerous nuclear power can be.


    Of course, the Japanese people also have had a disastrous experience with nuclear weapons—not only in 1945, when the U.S. government destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, but in 1954, when a U.S. government H-bomb test showered a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, with deadly radioactive fallout, and a vast nuclear disarmament movement began.


    The Lucky Dragon incident occurred in the context of the first U.S. H-bomb test, conducted by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in March 1954.  The AEC had staked out a danger zone of some 50,000 square miles (an area roughly the size of New England) around Bikini atoll, the test site in the Marshall Islands, which the United States governed as a UN “trust territory.”  But the blast proved more than twice as powerful as expected, and sent vast quantities of radioactive debris aloft into the atmosphere.  When large doses of this nuclear fallout descended on four inhabited islands in the Marshall chain (all outside the official danger zone), the U.S. government evacuated U.S. weather station personnel and, days later, hundreds of Marshall Islanders.  The islanders quickly developed low blood counts, skin lesions, hemorrhages under the skin, and loss of hair.  Eventually, many came down with radiation-linked illnesses, including thyroid cancer and leukemia.


    Meanwhile, about 85 miles from the test site—and also outside the danger zone—radioactive ash from the H-bomb test fell on a small Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon.  Two weeks later, when the vessel had reached its home port of Yaizu, the crew members had become seriously ill, with skin irritations, burns, nausea, loss of hair, and other radiation-linked afflictions.  In short order, the Japanese government hospitalized the stricken fishermen and destroyed their radioactive cargo.  Although most of the fishermen survived, the Lucky Dragon’s radio operator, Aikichi Kuboyama, died during hospital treatment.


    As the news of the Lucky Dragon incident spread throughout Japan, a panic gripped the nation, as well as a fierce determination to end the victimization of people, in Japan and the world, through nuclear weapons.  Nuclear fallout—or, as the Japanese referred to it, “the ashes of death”—became a household term.  A poll found that only two percent of the population approved of nuclear testing unconditionally.  In May 1954, a group of middle class housewives in the Suginami ward in Tokyo began a petition campaign to ban H-bombs.  Carried in their shopping baskets, this “Suginami Appeal” grew into a nationwide movement and, by 1955, had attracted the signatures of 32 million people—about a third of the Japanese population.  Japan’s nuclear disarmament campaign blossomed into the largest, most powerful social movement in that nation’s history.  Polls showed overwhelming popular support for it.


    Naturally, this upsurge of “ban the bomb” sentiment shocked U.S. government officials, who—with their nuclear weapons program at stake—engaged in a systematic policy of denial.  The chair of the AEC, Lewis Strauss, publicly declared that the Marshall Islanders were “well and happy.”  The Japanese fishermen, he conceded, had experienced a few minor problems; but, in any case, he stated falsely, they “must have been well within the danger area.”  Privately, he was more caustic.  The Lucky Dragon, he told the White House press secretary, was really a “Red spy outfit,” a component of a “Russian espionage system.”  At the request of Strauss, the CIA investigated this possibility and categorically denied it.  Nonetheless, Strauss continued to maintain that the irradiation of the Lucky Dragon “was no accident,” for the captain of the vessel must have been “in the employ of the Russians.”  He also told authors to ignore the contention of the “propagandists” that a crew member of the vessel had died of radiation exposure.


    Other American officials, too, saw no justification for the Japanese response to the Lucky Dragon incident.  From Japan, the U.S. ambassador lamented that nation’s “uncontrolled masochism.”  He reported that Japan, “aided by [an] unscrupulous press, seemed to revel in [its] fancied martyrdom.”  According to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, President Dwight Eisenhower found this message “of great interest and value from [the] standpoint of policy formulation.”  Like Strauss, Eisenhower insisted in his memoirs that the fishermen were within the danger zone.  Commenting on the effects of the Lucky Dragon incident, the acting secretary of state added his own warnings about public attitudes in Japan.  “The Japanese are pathologically sensitive about nuclear weapons,” he told Eisenhower.  “They feel they are the chosen victims.”


    In reality, most Japanese had learned from the tragic events of 1954 that, when it came to nuclear arms, everyone was a potential victim.  Or, to put it another way, there are no safe nuclear weapons.  But many Japanese continued to cling to a belief in safe nuclear energy—at least until this month, when their crippled nuclear reactors began spewing out radioactivity and heading toward a meltdown.


    Plenty of people in other countries, including the United States, remain in denial about the safety of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.  What kind of experience will it take to convince them to rid the world of these monstrous things?  More to the point, is it really necessary to wait for that experience to occur?

  • It’s Still the Same Old Story – From Guns to Nukes

    Lawrence WittnerThe discussion of the Tucson tragedy should be familiar, as we witness similar massacres in U.S. schools, shopping centers, and other public places played out periodically.  Each time, the NRA and other gun apologists tell us that the easy accessibility of firearms, including assault weapons, had nothing to do with it.  Indeed, they argue that the key to our safety is to obtain more guns.


    But does the fact that nearly 100,000 Americans are shot with guns and nearly 10,000 Americans are killed with them each year really have no connection to the remarkable availability of guns in the United States?


    A great deal of evidence suggests otherwise.  For example, according to a recent study, when twenty-three populous, high-income countries were compared for the year 2003, it was found that, among civilians, the United States had more firearms and more handguns per capita than the other countries, as well as the most permissive gun control laws.  Not surprisingly, the firearm homicide rate in the United States was 19.5 times higher than in the other countries.  The U.S. unintentional firearm death rate was 5.2 times higher.


    Although this death toll is bad enough, consider also the fact that the same dynamics operate in international relations.  No nation in recent decades has rivaled the military might of the United States.  Indeed, the U.S. government spends nearly as much on its military forces as the rest of the world combined—presumably, to keep Americans safe.  But are they safe?  Not long ago, the greatest terrorist attack in history occurred in the United States, and more are constantly threatened.  Meanwhile, U.S. military forces have been dying or coming home crippled from two very bloody, seemingly endless wars.  Could a key reason for this disastrous situation be that brandishing more and more weapons not only fails to protect us, but actually pulls us into a deadly cycle of violence?


    Of course, the safety through weapons theory is particularly dangerous when it comes to nuclear weapons.  Like the NRA, nuclear zealots assure us that massive nuclear arsenals will make us safer.  Thus, as the price for approving the recent New START Treaty, they demanded—and received—a hefty payoff:  a commitment from the Obama administration for $180 billion in funding over the next decade for “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex and the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  But this kind of nuclear buildup encourages nuclear nations to do the same thing and helps convince non-nuclear nations to develop their own nuclear arms.  Aren’t we supposed to be working for a world free of nuclear weapons?


    Certainly, that would be a good idea.  The more nuclear weapons that are available, the more likely it is that terrorists will acquire and use them, that embattled governments will employ them in their wars, and that they will be fired or exploded accidentally.  We have had some close scrapes along these lines in recent years.  These include terrorist nuclear plots, nations drawn to the brink of nuclear war, and the collision of nuclear submarines.  Disarmament activists are sometimes accused of naïveté.  But isn’t it far more naive to assume that, in an angry world bristling with nuclear weapons, they will never be used?


    And so we are brought back to the mass murder in Tucson and the question:  Are we safer with more firepower or less?  Despite the propaganda of the gunslingers, the arms manufacturers, and the military enthusiasts, it does seem that the world would be a lot safer with fewer guns and fewer nuclear weapons.

  • After New START: Where Does Nuclear Disarmament Go from Here?


    This article was originally published on the History News Network.


    Lawrence WittnerWith U.S. Senate ratification of the New START treaty on December 22, supporters of nuclear disarmament won an important victory.  Signed by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last April, the treaty commits the two nations to cut the number of their deployed strategic (i.e. long-range) nuclear warheads to 1,550 each—a reduction of 30 percent in the number of these weapons of mass destruction.  By providing for both a cutback in nuclear weapons and an elaborate inspection system to enforce it, New START is the most important nuclear disarmament treaty for a generation.


    Nevertheless, the difficult battle to secure Senate ratification indicates that making further progress on nuclear disarmament will not be easy.  Treaty ratification requires a positive vote by two-thirds of the Senate and, to secure the necessary Republican support, Obama promised nearly $185 billion over the next decade for “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex and nuclear weapons delivery vehicles.  Even with this enormous concession to nuclear enthusiasts—a hefty “bribe,” in the view of unhappy arms control and disarmament organizations—Senator Jon Kyl, the Republican point man on the issue, continued to oppose New START and ultimately voted against it.  So did most other Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell (Senate Republican leader) and John McCain (the latest Republican presidential candidate).  Leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, including Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, also opposed the treaty.  As a result, New START squeaked through the Senate by a narrow margin.  With six additional Republicans entering the Senate in January, treaty ratification will become much harder.


    So where do the possibilities for progress on nuclear disarmament lie in the future?


    One obvious focus for action is ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).  Signed by the United States and most other nations in 1996, the treaty provides for a total ban on the nuclear explosions that serve as the basis for the development of new nuclear weapons.  This ban would be enforced by an extensive international verification system.  Republican opposition blocked Senate ratification of the CTBT in 1999, and President George W. Bush—hostile to this arms control measure and others—refused to resubmit the treaty.  Nevertheless, President Obama has consistently supported ratification of the CTBT, and has promised to bring it before the Senate once again.  After the bruising battle over the START Treaty and in the context of heightened Republican strength in the new Senate, however, he might now change his mind.


    A more promising area for progress is a follow-up nuclear disarmament agreement between the United States and Russia.  As these two nations possess the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, other countries have long argued that, before progress can be made in reducing the arsenals of the other nuclear powers or blocking nuclear proliferation, the two nuclear giants must cut their nuclear stockpiles substantially.  In fact, officials from both the United States and Russia have spoken of another round of START negotiations that would reduce their deployment of strategic warheads to 1,000 each.  There is also pressure to cut the number of tactical nuclear weapons they possess—especially the very large numbers still maintained by Russia.  Indeed, Republican opponents of the New START treaty seized on the tactical nuclear weapons issue to argue that the real need for a treaty lay in the tactical weapons area.  Given their rhetorical stance, it might be useful to confront them with such a treaty.


    Nevertheless, stumbling blocks remain to a new arms treaty with Russia.  Not only are the Republicans likely to use their enhanced Senate strength to block its ratification, but the Russians might refuse to accept a new agreement.  The apparent reason for Russian reluctance is U.S. government insistence upon deploying a missile defense system in Europe, on Russian borders.  Although the Obama administration does not appear enthusiastic about missile defense, it has given way before Republican demands to install it.  Conversely, if the administration bargains away missile defense in treaty negotiations with the Russians, it seems quite likely that Republicans will strongly oppose the treaty.


    Perhaps the most promising area for disarmament progress doesn’t involve treaty negotiations or ratification, but simply blocking nuclear “modernization.”  After all, Senator Kyl and most Republicans didn’t accept the “bribe” offered them, but continued to oppose the New START treaty.  Why, then, should the Obama administration follow through on providing $185 billion for refurbishing the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, especially when such a program so clearly flies in the face of his pledge to work for a nuclear weapons-free world? 


    Even if the administration sticks to its “modernization” line, however, there is no reason for other forces, inside and outside Congress, to do so.  Over the coming years, in the midst of a huge debate on budgetary priorities, there will be a fierce battle over scarce government resources.  Are angry seniors (concerned about cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare), parents, students, and teachers (concerned about cutbacks in education), the hungry, homeless, and unemployed (concerned about the collapse of the social safety net), and other groups (facing serious attacks on their living standards) going to welcome spending $185 billion for new nuclear weapons facilities?  Certainly groups with domestic spending priorities, plus peace and disarmament groups, are going to press congress to move the money from funding wars and weapons to meeting social needs.  Perhaps they will succeed.


    Thus, in the next two years, the Republicans may end up choking off the opportunities for negotiated disarmament and opening the floodgates to unilateral action. 

  • Public Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free World

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.

    One of the ironies of the current international situation is that, although some government leaders now talk of building a nuclear weapons-free world, there has been limited public mobilization around that goal — at least compared to the action-packed 1980s.

    However, global public opinion is strikingly antinuclear. In December 2008, an opinion poll conducted of more than 19,000 respondents in 21 nations found that, in 20 countries, large majorities — ranging from 62 to 93 percent — favored an international agreement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Even in Pakistan, the one holdout nation, 46 percent (a plurality) would support such an agreement. Among respondents in the nuclear powers, there was strong support for nuclear abolition. This included 62 percent of the respondents in India, 67 percent in Israel, 69 percent in Russia, 77 percent in the United States, 81 percent in Britain, 83 percent in China and 87 percent in France.   

    But public resistance to the bomb is not as strong as these poll figures seem to suggest.

    Supporting the Bomb

    For starters, a portion of society agrees with their governments that they’re safer when they are militarily powerful. Some people, of course, are simply militarists, who look approvingly upon weapons and war. Others genuinely believe in “peace through strength,” an idea championed by government officials, who play upon this theme.

    Furthermore, popular resistance to nuclear weapons tends to wane when progress toward addressing nuclear dangers occurs. For example, the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 not only halted most contamination of the Earth’s atmosphere by nuclear tests, but also convinced many people that the great powers were on the road to halting their nuclear arms race. As a result, the nuclear disarmament movement declined. A similar phenomenon occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the United States and the Soviet Union signed the INF Treaty. U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontation eased and the Cold War came to an end. Although public protest against nuclear weapons didn’t disappear, it certainly dwindled.

    Indeed, today, the public in many nations seems complacent about the menace of nuclear weapons. While opposition to nuclear weapons is widespread, it does not run deep. For example, those people who said in late 2008 that they “strongly” favored a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons constituted only 20 percent of respondents in Pakistan, 31 percent in India, 38 percent in Russia, 39 percent in the United States, and 42 percent in Israel — although, admittedly, majorities (ranging from 55 to 60 percent) took this position in Britain, France, and China. Another sign support for a nuclear-free world is weaker than implied by its favorability ratings is that an April 2010 poll among Americans found that, although a large majority said they favored nuclear abolition, 87 percent considered this goal unrealistic.

    Yet another sign of the shallowness of popular support is that, despite widespread peace and disarmament movement efforts to mobilize supporters of nuclear abolition around the U.N.’s nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference this past May, the level of public protest fell far short of the antinuclear outpourings of the 1980s. Indeed, even with the encouragement of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the organizing efforts of numerous peace groups, the best turnout the worldwide nuclear abolition movement could manage was some 15,000 antinuclear demonstrators on May 2.

    That the nuclear disarmament issue does not have the same salience today as in earlier periods can be attributed, in part, to people feeling less directly threatened by nuclear weapons preparations and nuclear war. After all, the present U.S.-Russian nuclear confrontation seems far less dangerous than the U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontation of the past. Today, nuclear war seems more likely to erupt in South Asia, between India and Pakistan. People living far from these nations find it easy to ignore this dangerous scenario.

    Lack of Information

    The public is also very poorly informed about what is happening with respect to nuclear weapons. Although the mass media devoted enormous air time and column space to Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons capability, they have devoted scant resources to educate the public on the nuclear weapons that do exist and on the dangers they pose to human survival. A 2010 survey of people from their teens through thirties in eight countries found that large majorities didn’t know that Russia, China, Britain, France and other nations possessed nuclear weapons. In fact, only 59 percent of American respondents knew that their own country possessed nuclear weapons. Among British respondents, just 43 percent knew that Britain maintained a nuclear arsenal.

    Public ignorance of nuclear issues occurs largely thanks to the commercial mass media’s focus on trivia and sensationalism. This emphasis on lightweight entertainment often reflects the interests of the media’s corporate owners and sponsors, who do their best to avoid fanning the flames of public discontent — or at least discontent with corporate and military elites. But the public is complicit with the blackout on nuclear matters, for many people prefer to avoid thinking about nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

    Thus, although there is widespread opposition to nuclear weapons, it lacks intensity and the global publics are ill-informed about nuclear dangers and nuclear disarmament.

    Lessons for Peace and Disarmament Groups

    The first is that nuclear disarmament and nuclear abolition have majority public support. Second, this support must be strengthened if progress is to be made toward a nuclear-free world.

    To strengthen public support, these organizations could emphasize the following themes:

    Nuclear weapons are suicidal. Numerous analysts have observed there will be no winners in a nuclear war. A nuclear exchange between nations will kill many millions of people on both sides of the conflict and leave the survivors living in a nuclear wasteland, in which — as Soviet party secretary Nikita Khrushchev once suggested — the living might well envy the dead. Even longtime nuclear enthusiast Ronald Reagan eventually concluded, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

    There are no safe havens from a nuclear war. Even in the event of a small-scale nuclear war — a regional conflict with relatively few nuclear weapons — the results would be catastrophic. A study published in the January 2010 issue of the Scientific American concluded that, should such a war occur between India and Pakistan, the consequences would not be confined to that region. The firestorms generated by the conflict would put massive amounts of smoke into the upper atmosphere and create a nuclear winter around the globe. With the sun blocked, the Earth’s surface would become cold, dark, and dry. Agriculture around the world would collapse, and mass starvation would follow.

    Nuclear weapons possession does not guarantee security. This contention defies the conventional wisdom of national security elites and a portion of the public. Yet consider the case of the United States. It was the first nation to develop atomic bombs, and for some time had a monopoly of them. In response, the Soviet government built atomic bombs. Then the two nations competed in building hydrogen bombs, guided missiles, and missiles with multiple warheads. Meanwhile, seven other nations built nuclear weapons. Each year, all these nations felt less and less secure. And they were less secure, because the more they increased their capacity to threaten others, the more they were threatened in return.

    Concurrently, these nations also found themselves entangled in bloody conventional wars. Their adversaries — the Chinese, the Koreans, the Algerians, the Vietnamese, the Afghans, the Iraqis, and other peoples — were not deterred by the nuclear weapons of their opponents. “Throughout the wide range of our foreign policies,” recalled Dean Rusk, the former U.S. Secretary of State, “I was struck by the irrelevance of nuclear weapons to decision making.”

    Nor do nuclear arsenals protect a country from external terrorist assault. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men staged the largest terrorist attack on the United States in its history. Given that terrorists are not state actors, it is difficult to imagine how nuclear weapons could be used strategically in the “war on terror” as either a deterrent or in military conflict.

    There is a significant possibility of accidental nuclear war. During the Cold War and  subsequent decades, there have been numerous false alarms about an enemy attack. Many of these came close to triggering a nuclear response, which would have had devastating consequences. In addition, emerging nuclear states may not have the same safeguards in place that were developed during the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, widening the possibilities of an inadvertent nuclear response. Furthermore, nuclear weapons can be exploded accidentally during their maintenance or transportation.

    As long as nuclear weapons exist, there will be a temptation to use them. Warfare has been an ingrained habit for thousands of years, and it’s unlikely this practice will soon be ended. As long as wars exist, governments will be tempted to draw upon nuclear weapons to win them.

    Nuclear weapons emerged in the context of World War II. Not surprisingly, the first country to develop such weapons, the United States, used them to destroy Japanese cities. President Harry Truman later stated, when discussing his authorization of the atomic bombing, “When you have a weapon that will win the war, you’d be foolish if you didn’t use it.” Recalling his conversation with Truman about the bomb, at Potsdam, Winston Churchill wrote, “There was never a moment’s discussion as to whether the atomic bomb should be used.” It was “never even an issue.”

    Of course, nuclear-armed nations have not used nuclear weapons in war since 1945. But this reflects the effectiveness of popular pressure against nuclear war, rather than the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. Indeed, if nuclear deterrence worked, governments would not be desperately trying to stop nuclear proliferation and deploy missile defense systems. Thus, we cannot assume that, in the context of bitter wars and threats to national survival, nuclear restraint will continue forever. Indeed, we can conclude, the longer nuclear weapons exist, the greater the possibility they will be used in war.

    As long as nuclear weapons exist, terrorists can acquire them. Terrorists cannot build nuclear weapons by themselves. The creation of such weapons requires vast resources, substantial territory and a good deal of scientific knowledge. The only way terrorists will attain a nuclear capability is by obtaining the weapons from the arsenals of the nuclear powers — either by donation, by purchase or by theft. Therefore, a nuclear-free world would end the threat of nuclear terrorism.

    Expanding educational outreach to the public along these lines will not be easy, given corporate control of the mass communications media. Nevertheless, the internet provides new possibilities for grassroots communication. Even within the corporate press, more could be done to encourage letters to the editor and the placement of op-ed pieces. In addition, nuclear disarmament groups could reach broad audiences by working through the very substantial networks of sympathetic organizations, such as religious bodies, unions, environmental groups, and professional associations.

    Intensifying the level of popular mobilization can in turn push reluctant governments further down the road toward a nuclear weapons-free world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that can do so.

  • Can We Live With the Bomb?

    This article was originally published on the History News Network.

    For some time now, it has been clear that nuclear weapons threaten the existence not only of humanity, but of all life on Earth.

    Thus, Barack Obama’s pledge to work for a nuclear weapons-free world—made during his 2008 presidential campaign and subsequently in public statements—has resonated nicely with supporters of nuclear disarmament and with the general public.

    But recent developments have called that commitment into question.  The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review does not indicate any dramatic departures in the use of nuclear weapons, while its nuclear weapons budget request for the next fiscal year represents a 14 percent increase over this year’s counterpart.  The most alarming sign that the administration might be preparing for a nuclear weapons-filled future is its proposal to spend $180 billion over the next ten years to upgrade the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex.

    From the standpoint of nuclear critics, the best interpretation of such measures—and one that might be accurate—is that they are designed to win support among hawkish Republican senators for the New START Treaty, which will reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.  After all, the political argument goes, if Obama is to secure the sixty-seven Senate votes necessary to ratify the treaty, he needs to pick up some Republican support.  Of course, these pro-nuclear measures might reflect a quite different scenario, one in which Obama is abandoning yet another political promise.

    In this context, we might ask:  would abandoning the promise of nuclear abolition be a bad idea?

    There are at least five good reasons why it would be:

    1. 1. If nuclear weapons are not scrapped, it is inevitable that, sooner or later, they will be used in war.  Nations (and before them, competing territories) have engaged in war for thousands of years, and for these wars they have been tempted to draw upon the most powerful weapons in their arsenals.  Today, such weapons are nuclear weapons—some 23,000 of them.  Although supporters of these weapons maintain that they deter nuclear war, there is no reason to assume that nuclear deterrence works, or at least works in all cases.  This is indicated by the U.S. government’s pursuit of national missile defense and its attempts to head off other nations (e.g. Iran) from developing nuclear weapons.
    2. If nuclear weapons are not scrapped, it is inevitable that additional nations will develop them.  When some nations maintain large, devastating nuclear arsenals, it is naïve to expect other nations to tamely sit back and accept their non-nuclear status.  Over the decades, this situation of military inequality has spurred on nuclear proliferation and, unless nuclear nations divest themselves of their nuclear weapons, it will continue to do so.
    3. If nuclear weapons are not scrapped, it is likely that they will be used by terrorists.  Terrorists do not have the production facilities for building or testing nuclear weapons, but they have the possibility of obtaining them, though theft or bribery, from national arsenals.  While nuclear weapons exist in national arsenals, obtaining and using them against civilian populations will provide a constant temptation to terrorists.
    4. If nuclear weapons are not scrapped, it is likely that they will be exploded accidentally.  Numerous nuclear accidents—from nuclear weapons dropped to mistaken nuclear war alerts—have already occurred, although so far without detonation.  In an age of BP oil explosions and other technological disasters, there are limits to how long we can press our luck with nuclear weapons technology.
    5. If nuclear weapons are not scrapped, they—and the uranium mining, warhead production, and testing they necessitate—will continue to pollute the earth with radioactive waste for thousands of years.  Nuclear waste disposal is already a very significant problem in the United States, and, not surprisingly, no state has yet volunteered to serve as the permanent dumping ground for it.

    In short, while nuclear weapons exist, we are living on the brink of an unprecedented catastrophe.

    Thus, if we are wise, we should draw back from the brink and address the problem posed by nuclear weapons.  If the U.S. government and others are serious about building a nuclear weapons-free world, they should begin negotiations on a nuclear abolition treaty.  And, if they are not serious about nuclear abolition, the public should raise enough of a ruckus so that they have no alternative to becoming serious.

    If we can’t live with the Bomb, we should begin planning to get rid it.

  • The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Past and Present

    This article was originally published on the History News Network

    The opening this May of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference at the United Nations seems likely to feature a conflict that has simmered for decades between nuclear nations and non-nuclear nations.

    By the mid-1960s, five nations had developed a nuclear weapons capability:  the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and, most recently, China.  But numerous other nations were giving serious consideration to joining the nuclear club.  They included Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa, and West Germany.  Millions of people and many governments feared that the nuclear arms race — already dangerous enough — was on the verge of spiraling totally out of control.

    In this context, the U.S. and Soviet governments suddenly found something upon which they could both agree.  Having amassed vast nuclear arsenals for their Cold War confrontation with one another, both decided that it would be a good idea if other nations refrained from developing nuclear weapons.  Thus, in the fall of 1965, the two governments submitted nonproliferation treaties to the U.N. General Assembly.  “Both superpowers really got behind the Nonproliferation Treaty,” recalled U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “because we and the Soviets basically were on the same wavelength.”

    But the non-nuclear powers sharply objected to the U.S. and Soviet proposals, which they pointed out – correctly — would establish a two-tier system.  Alva Myrdal, Sweden’s disarmament minister and a leading proponent of nuclear disarmament, declared that “the non-aligned nations . . . strongly believe that disarmament measures should be a matter of mutual renunciation.”  They did not want a treaty that “would leave the present five nuclear-weapon parties free to continue to build up their arsenals.”  The governments of numerous NATO nations raised the same objection.  Willy Brandt, West Germany’s foreign minister, maintained that a nonproliferation treaty was justified “only if the nuclear states regard it as a step toward restrictions of their own armaments and toward disarmament.”  In short, non-nuclear nations were unwilling to forgo the nuclear option in the absence of a similar commitment by the nuclear nations.

    As a result, the NPT was reshaped to provide for mutual obligations on the part of non-nuclear and nuclear nations.  Under its terms, each non-nuclear signatory pledged “not to make or acquire nuclear weapons,” as well as to accept a safeguard system, administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, to prevent diversion of nuclear material from nuclear reactors to nuclear weapons development.  Furthermore, Article VI of the final version provided that nuclear signatories would “pursue negotiations in good faith at an early date on effective measures regarding cessation of the nuclear arms race and disarmament.”

    On June 12, 1968, this revised NPT, now incorporating provisions for both nonproliferation and disarmament, swept through the U.N. General Assembly by a vote of 95 to 4, with 21 abstentions.  Although, ominously, a number of nations with nuclear ambitions refused to ratify the treaty, the NPT did provide an important milestone in global efforts to avert nuclear catastrophe.

    In some ways, the NPT was a success.  After it went into force in 1970, almost all nations capable of building nuclear weapons rejected this option.  Furthermore, through disarmament treaties and individual action, the nuclear nations divested themselves of a significant number of their nuclear weapons.

    Even so, thanks to a lingering belief that national security ultimately lies in military strength, nations have resisted honoring their full obligations under the NPT.  The nuclear powers delayed implementing their rhetorical commitment to full-scale nuclear disarmament.  Meanwhile, some non-nuclear nations, charging the nuclear powers with hypocrisy, began to develop nuclear weapons themselves.  Today, 42 years after the signing of the NPT, more than 23,000 nuclear weapons remain in existence and the number of nuclear powers has grown from five to nine.

    Thus, the NPT review conference this May could simply continue the old game of duplicity and delay.  Nuclear nations could avoid making plans to eliminate their very substantial nuclear arsenals, while demanding that other countries remain non-nuclear.  Non-nuclear nations could point to the failure of the nuclear nations to disarm and use that as their justification for joining the nuclear club.

    But there is an alternative.  The world public might decide that enough is enough — that it’s time to move beyond the cautious, half-way measures of the past and bring an end to the terrible danger of nuclear annihilation.  That would require a massive outpouring of public sentiment, this May and in the following months, demanding nothing less than the abolition of nuclear weapons.  Such an outpouring would provide a solid basis on which reluctant government officials might finally do what they should long ago have done:  take effective action to build a nuclear weapons-free world.

  • Lying About Nuclear Weapons

    One of the most popular muckraking American journalists of the late twentieth century, I.F. Stone, once remarked:  “All governments lie.”  Even a prominent government official — Andrei Gromyko, the veteran Soviet diplomat — once admitted, in a weak moment:  “Governments are never sincere.”

    This gloomy assessment appears all too true when it comes to national security policy, and particularly so with respect to nuclear weapons.  Indeed, in early March, a new Japanese political party — swept into governmental power last year thanks to a political upheaval — revealed that its predecessors had lied for more than four decades about one of the most hallowed principles in Japanese public life:  Japan’s nuclear-free status.

    In 1968, Japan’s ruling conservatives — the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — under enormous pressure from an antinuclear public, had proclaimed Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles:  the government would not manufacture, own, or allow the entry of nuclear weapons into Japan.  Ever since that time, there has been considerable controversy over whether U.S. warships in Japanese harbors were armed with nuclear weapons.  As it was hard to imagine how U.S. nuclear warships could dispose of their nuclear weapons before entering Japanese harbors, massive antinuclear demonstrations erupted in Japan’s port cities.  Meanwhile, the U.S. government refused to confirm or deny that its warships carried nuclear weapons, while the Japanese government swore that they did not.

    In recent years, although occasional statements by U.S. government officials indicated that nuclear weapons were probably entering Japan aboard U.S. warships, the Japanese government clung to its lies.  The latest denial was by Taro Aso, the last LDP prime minister before the new Democratic Party of Japan administration revealed the long record of deception.  A Foreign Ministry official told the Associated Press that he and other high-ranking officials of the past feared that disclosing the agreements with the American government to bring nuclear weapons into Japan would have created massive upheaval in Japanese life and, perhaps, toppled the prime minister.  “The political costs were too great,” he explained.

    Actually, in the case of nuclear weapons, the Japanese government had been playing a double game for years.  During the 1950s, Japanese officials issued numerous protests against nuclear weapons testing that were designed less to halt the testing than to soothe public opinion.  In May 1956, the Japanese ambassador explained that his government’s protests were “largely a public opinion matter inside Japan.”  The following day, secretly apologizing for delivering a diplomatic note calling for a halt to U.S. nuclear testing — and “off-the-record,” expressing his disagreement with it — the second in command at the Japanese embassy depicted it as an attempt to woo parliament and public opinion.

    Much the same policy continued in subsequent years.  In 1957, explaining his government’s critique of nuclear testing, the Japanese foreign minister told U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and other U.S. officials that “the Japanese people, old and young, are very sensitive on this question.”  Thus, “the Japanese government was placed in a position where it had to lodge a protest.”  He added, apologetically, that if the government failed to criticize nuclear testing, “the very existence of the Liberal Democratic Party might be endangered.”

    In the early 1960s, when the U.S. government resumed underground and, later, atmospheric nuclear testing, the Japanese government again assailed nuclear tests, but as in the past accompanied such statements with private assurances to U.S. officials that the protests had been made “to offset domestic political pressures.”  Secretly, some Japanese officials went so far as to remark that they favored Japan’s development of nuclear weapons.

    Thus, the Japanese government’s duplicity in connection with the Three Non-Nuclear Principles should not come as a total surprise.

    Of course, lying about nuclear weapons has not been limited to Japanese officials.  The French government argued for years that it was developing nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes — until it abruptly moved forward with its nuclear weapons program.  The Indian government denied that it had conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1974, when it set off a “Peaceful Nuclear Explosion.”  Meanwhile, the Soviet government, while posing for decades as a fierce foe of nuclear weapons, developed the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.  As for the U.S. government, it lied for years about the dangers of nuclear testing, downplayed the ability to detect nuclear testing and development abroad, and made nuclear disarmament offers based on their propaganda value.  One of the more interesting nuclear gambits has been pursued by the Israeli government, which has never admitted that it possesses nuclear weapons — although that government had Mordechai Vanunu kidnapped, tried, and locked in prison for eighteen years (eleven of them in solitary confinement) for the “crime” of publicly revealing their existence.

    In addition, one might ask what has been done to honor the pledge, made at the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference of 2000, for an “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapons states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals”?  At the moment, there remain more than 23,000 nuclear weapons, 96 percent of them in the hands of Russia and the United States.

    But this outrageous record is only part of the story.  Over the years, intense pressure from disarmament organizations and the general public has forced reluctant governments to abandon their foremost nuclear ambitions.  Indeed, numerous non-nuclear nations have decided to forgo the nuclear option, while nuclear nations have scrapped roughly two-thirds of their nuclear weapons and have backed away from plans for nuclear war.  And this May, when the 2010 NPT review conference convenes at the United Nations, there will be a massive public outpouring of people from diverse nations demanding that long-promised — but never delivered — nuclear-free world.  Good luck to them!  They certainly deserve better than further nuclear lies and duplicity.

  • Nuclear Terrorism: How It Can Be Prevented

    The recent furor over an unsuccessful terrorist attempt to blow up an airliner is distracting us from considering the possibility of a vastly more destructive terrorist act: exploding a nuclear weapon in a heavily-populated area.

    Such a disaster — which would kill hundreds of thousands of people — is not a remote possibility at all.  Although terrorist groups do not have the fissile material (that is, material capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction) necessary to build nuclear weapons on their own, they have been trying to obtain such weapons, either by purchase or theft, for decades.  According to the U.S.government, Osama bin Laden sought to acquire nuclear weapons at least since 1992.  Not only have there been dozens of thefts and sales of fissile material to potential terrorists (all of whom were supposedly arrested), but a significant number of nuclear weapons have been “lost” by nuclear-armed nations.  In addition, if either nuclear weapons or fissile material were available to overseas terrorists, it would not be very difficult to smuggle them into the United States.

    In 2004, when Dr. Graham Allison — founding dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former top Pentagon official — published his classic study, Nuclear Terrorism:  The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, he argued that if governments continued their past policies, a nuclear terrorist attack was inevitable.  The problem, as he saw it, reflected a combination of terrorist activity, the ease of smuggling weapons across U.S.borders, and the accessibility of nuclear weapons and fissile materials. 

    Unfortunately, not much has changed since that time.  Terrorism, of course, shows no sign of disappearing.  Even if the “war on terror” produced a significant decline in terrorism (which it shows no sign of doing) and even if proper intelligence and police work reduced the number of terrorist activities, some terrorist acts almost certainly would continue, as they have for centuries.  Furthermore, as we have seen in the case of immigration, securing U.S.borders is not an easy task, and perfect security seems unlikely to be obtained.   

    But what about the third leg of the problem:  the accessibility of nuclear weapons and fissile materials?  Not much has been done about this.  But a lot could be done.

    Allison focused particularly on securing fissile material.  As he put it:  “No fissile material, no nuclear explosion, no nuclear terrorism.  It is that simple.”  He explained:  “There is a vast — but not unlimited — amount of it in the world, and it is within our power to keep it secure.”  Actually, in recent years there has been a tightening up of governmental controls over fissile material.  Also, there has been significant interest by the U.S.government and others in negotiating a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.  During the 2008 presidential campaign, both Barack Obama and John McCain endorsed such a treaty, and since then both have spoken out in favor of it.

    Then, of course, there is the possibility of eliminating the vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons accumulated by nine nations.  At the moment, there are some 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence (mostly in Russia and the United States) — ripe pickings for any would-be mass murderer.  Any significant reduction in their number would significantly reduce the opportunities for nuclear terrorism.  And their elimination would wipe out these opportunities entirely.  To draw upon Allison’s phrasing:  no nuclear weapons, no nuclear explosion, no nuclear terrorism.

    Of course, there are other good reasons to eliminate nuclear weapons, as well, including the danger of nuclear war.  Doubtless this point will be on the minds of many government officials and citizens alike as the world prepares for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference this coming May, at the United Nations.  The U.N. conference will consider the treaty pledges of non-nuclear nations to forgo nuclear weapons and the treaty pledges of nuclear nations to divest themselves of these implements of mass destruction.

    Even so, the ongoing danger of nuclear terrorism provides yet another reason to rid the world of fissile material and its final, terrible product, nuclear weapons.  Let’s not forget that.

  • The Commitment to a Nuclear-Free World: A Historical Perspective

    This article was originally published on the History News Network

    Addressing a U.N. Security Council Summit on September 24, 2009, President Barack Obama observed that the resolution unanimously adopted by the Security Council earlier that day “enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”

    But the enthusiasm for this measure among the representatives of major nations should not obscure the fact that securing their commitment to a nuclear-free world was for years an uphill struggle—one that began, with some political sleight-of-hand, in a nuclear superpower, the Soviet Union.

    Of course, for the first four decades of the Cold War, the Soviet government had spoken glibly about abolishing nuclear weapons. But it was never serious about this enterprise. Such talk was meant for propaganda purposes—to convince people of other nations that the Soviet Union was a peace-loving nation with their best interests at heart. In practical terms, about the most that could be hoped for from the Kremlin was a series of rather modest arms control agreements.

    But, then, in March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected Soviet party secretary. And Gorbachev was dead serious about nuclear disarmament. Faced with the “self-destruction of the human race,” he declared, it was time to “burn the black book of nuclear alchemy” and make the next century one “of life without fear of universal death.” The “nuclear era requires new thinking from everybody,” he argued and “the backbone of the new way of thinking is . . . humankind’s survival.” Gorbachev’s ideas and rhetoric clearly came from the tumultuous popular campaign against nuclear weapons that swept around the world during the early 1980s. As the Soviet leader put it: “The new thinking took into account and absorbed the conclusions and demands . . . of the public and the scientific community, of the movements of physicians, scientists and ecologists, and of various antiwar organizations.”

    Gorbachev not only changed Soviet rhetoric, but Soviet policy. Shortly after taking office, he appointed sharp critics of the nuclear arms race as his key advisors on foreign and military affairs. In April 1985, he announced the cessation of the controversial SS-20 nuclear missile deployments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. That July, he proclaimed a unilateral Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing and implored the U.S. government to join it. And by early 1986, the “new thinking” had produced a Soviet blueprint for a nuclear-free world. Announced by Gorbachev on January 15 of that year, it consisted of a three-stage plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons around the globe by the year 2000. Gorbachev recalled that it was not “another Soviet propaganda trick,” but a sincere effort to prevent nuclear war and create a peaceful world.

    But how did Gorbachev manage to secure the acquiescence of Soviet hawks in this official commitment to a nuclear-free world? It’s an intriguing story. In the spring of 1985, Soviet military officials were worried that Gorbachev and his advisors were getting ready to offer serious concessions to the U.S. government in negotiations over the removal of intermediate range nuclear missiles from Europe. To head off such concessions, they suggested what they considered would a good combination of useful propaganda and a non-negotiable proposal: a nuclear-free world! Nikolai Detinov, an official in the Soviet Ministry of Defense who drafted the nuclear abolition proposal, recalled: “They could show, on the one hand, that the Soviet Union and its General Secretary were eager to eliminate nuclear weapons and, on the other . . . that they understood that such a declaration hardly could lead to any practical results . . . or affect . . . the ongoing negotiations.” But Gorbachev outsmarted them, for he used the military’s backing of nuclear abolition to legitimize the proposal and, then, to make it official government policy. Thus, Detinov recalled, “the real authors of this idea became entrapped by their own gambit.”

    Things now moved rapidly forward. Sensitive to the strong public demand for nuclear disarmament, President Ronald Reagan responded eagerly to Gorbachev’s nuclear-free world proposal, asking: “Why wait until the end of the century for a world without nuclear weapons?” Although most national security officials in Washington and Moscow were horrified by the unexpected tilt toward nuclear abolition, Gorbachev and Reagan were considerably more enthusiastic. At the Reykjavik summit conference of October 1986, they came tantalizingly near a breakthrough on this score. And in the next two years, they did hammer out the basis for major nuclear disarmament agreements: the INF Treaty (1987); the START I Treaty (1991); and the START II Treaty (1993).

    Today, when the call for a nuclear-free world has been revived by the nuclear powers, skeptics might wonder if it is merely another propaganda ploy. Are the warriors and would-be warriors ready to forgo their nuclear toys? Probably not. But clever politicians, particularly when pushed along by popular pressure, can sometimes use public commitments in unexpected ways. And this might be such a time.

    Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

  • Another Nobel Controversy

    This article was originally published on the History News Network

    The swirling controversy over President Barack Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize brings to mind another controversy that began in October 1985, when the Norwegian committee announced that that year’s prize would go to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

    This global physicians’ movement was initiated in 1979 by Dr. Bernard Lown, a prominent American cardiologist deeply concerned about the spiraling nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and what it portended for the future. Approaching the distinguished Soviet cardiologist, Dr. Evgenii Chazov, with whom he had had previous professional contacts, Lown sought to convince Chazov that they should build an international physicians’ movement that would alert the world to the nuclear peril. Chazov was initially reluctant to involve himself in this venture, for it seemed likely to lead to the sacrifice of the modern hospital he was building and, worst of all, engage him in political difficulties with the Soviet authorities. Even so, he succumbed to Lown’s pleas and, in late 1980, a small group of U.S. and Soviet physicians laid the groundwork for IPPNW, with Lown and Chazov and co-chairs.

    Riding the wave of antinuclear protest during the early 1980s, IPPNW grew dramatically. By 1985, it had affiliates in 41 nations, with a membership of 135,000 physicians. Its U.S. affiliate was Physicians for Social Responsibility, which claimed some 37,000 members. As doctors were figures of considerable prestige, the reports, conferences, speeches, and lobbying by IPPNW, its affiliates, and its members on behalf of nuclear disarmament had considerable credibility and impact. As Chazov feared, he did draw a sour response from Soviet party conservatives. But he was shielded from their wrath thanks to his role as the personal physician to aging and ill Soviet government officials.

    In October 1985, when it was announced that IPPNW had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the status of this global physicians’ movement soared. Irate at this turn of events, conservative parties and portions of the Western communications media launched a blistering attack upon it, charging that Chazov and other Soviet doctors were agents of the Kremlin and that Western doctors were hopeless dupes. In an editorial headed “The Nobel Peace Fraud,” the Wall Street Journal claimed that the Nobel committee had “hit a new low.” Forbes magazine—which advertised itself as “Capitalist Tool”—charged that “these medicine men are more eager to pounce on Uncle Sam than on the Red Bear.” It concluded: “The Norwegian Nobel committee blew it; this year they should’ve taken a powder.” A headline in the New York Daily News proclaimed “Soviet Propaganda Wins the Prize,” while the Detroit News assailed “Nobel Lunacies.” Chazov, particularly, was charged with everything from torturing Soviet dissidents to inventing the AIDS virus.

    The conservative governments of a number of NATO countries weighed in against IPPNW, with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl appealing to the Nobel Committee to rescind the prize. When Jakob Sverdrup, the secretary of the Nobel Committee, was asked on German national television if a government had ever before urged that the award be rescinded, he responded affirmatively. In 1935, he noted, Adolf Hitler had issued an appeal against giving the award to a German pacifist, Carl von Ossietzky, then imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. Deeply embarrassed, the West German government dropped the issue.

    IPPNW leaders defended the organization’s integrity, but the best rebuttal occurred at the Nobel ceremonies that December. Lown and Chazov were doing their best to respond to hostile questions at a crowded press conference when a Soviet journalist tumbled to the floor, felled by a cardiac arrest. Immediately, Lown, Chazov, and other doctors raced to the stricken man’s side, taking turns pounding on his chest and giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Ultimately, they saved his life. When the press conference resumed, Lown, shaken but quick-witted, said: “What you have just seen is a parable of our movement. When a crisis comes, when life is in danger, Soviet and American physicians cooperate. . . . We forget ideology, we forget our differences.” And “the big issue confronting humankind today is sudden nuclear death.”

    This dramatic incident rallied support for IPPNW, which pressed forward with its antinuclear campaign—a campaign that made a significant contribution to subsequent nuclear disarmament treaties signed by the major powers. By late 1988, IPPNW had grown to a federation of physicians’ groups in 61 countries, with over 200,000 members. It continues its efforts today, as does its U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility.

    With this incident in mind, we should be wary before assailing the considered judgment of the Nobel Committee today, as it once again presents an award to a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament. Indeed, we might ask the conservative critics of awarding the prize to Obama what they have done for peace lately. And, if they have done nothing—or worse—we might well question their motives.

    Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).