Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Author: Robert Dodge

  • Nuclear Weapons – The Time for Abolition is Now

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Nuclear weapons present the greatest public health and existential threat to our survival every moment of every day. Yet the United States and world nuclear nations stand in breach of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which commits these nations to work in good faith to end the arms race and to achieve nuclear disarmament. Forty eight years later the efforts of the nuclear nations toward this goal is not evident and the state of the world is equally as dangerous as it was during the height of the Cold War and arguably more dangerous with current scientific evidence on the catastrophic effects of even limited regional nuclear war.

    This year’s presidential campaign has once again done little to focus on the dangers of nuclear weapons focusing more on who has the temperament to have their finger on the button with absolutely no indication of any understanding of the consequences to all of humanity by the use of these weapons even on a very small scale. In addition to tensions between Russia and the U.S. in Ukraine and Syria, there is a real danger of nuclear war in South Asia which could kill more than 2 billion people from the use of just 100 Hiroshima size weapons.

    The rest of the world is finally standing up to this threat to their survival and that of the planet. They are taking matters into their own hands and refusing to be held hostage by the nuclear nations. They will no longer be bullied into sitting back and waiting for the nuclear states to make good on empty promises.

    At the United Nations this past week, 123 nations voted to commence negotiations next year on a new treaty to prohibit the possession of nuclear weapons.  Despite President Obama’s own words in his 2009 pledge to seek the security of a world free of nuclear weapons, the U.S. voted “no” and led the opposition to this treaty.

    Rather than meet our obligations under international law, the U.S has proposed by stark contrast to begin a new nuclear arms race spending $1 trillion dollars over the next 30 years to modernize and rebuild every aspect our nuclear weapons programs. A ‘jobs’ program to end humanity. Each of the nuclear nations is expected to do the same in rebuilding their weapons programs continuing the arms race for generations to come.

    The myth of deterrence is the guise for this effort when in fact deterrence is the principle driver of the arms race. For every additional weapon my adversary has, I need two and so on and so on to our global arsenals of 15,500 weapons.

    Fed up with this inaction and doublespeak, the non-nuclear nations of the world have joined the ongoing efforts of the world’s NGO, health and religious communities in demanding an end to the madness. Led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a global partnership of 440 partners in 98 countries, the International Red Cross, the world’s health associations representing more than 17 million health professionals worldwide along with religious communities including the Catholic Church and World Council of Churches they are calling for a treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.

    The effort to ban nuclear weapons has several parallels to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines led by Jody Williams, recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. This effort was dismissed and called utopian by most governments and militaries of the world when it was launched by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in 1992 only to succeed in 1997 through partnerships, public imagination and political pressure resulting in the ultimate political will. The nuclear ban movement has been vigorously fought by the nuclear nations trying desperately to hold onto their weapons and pressuring members of their alliances to hold the line.

    Unfortunately these weapons and control systems are imperfect. During the Cold War there were many instances where the world came perilously close to nuclear war. It is a matter of sheer luck that this scenario did not come to pass by design or accident. Our luck will not hold out forever. Luck is not a security policy. From a medical and public health stance based on our current evidence-based understanding of what nuclear weapons can actually do, any argument for continued possession of these weapons by anyone in untenable and defies logic. There is absolutely no reasonable or adequate medical response to nuclear war.

    As with any public health threat from Zika, to Ebola, Polio, HIV, prevention is the goal. The global threat from nuclear weapons is no different. The only way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons is to ban and eliminate them. Our future depends upon this.

    President Kennedy speaking on nuclear weapons before the U.N. Security Council in September 1961 said, “The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us”. Our children’s children will look back and rightly ask why we the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons remained on the wrong side of history when it came to abolishing nuclear weapons.

  • On President Obama’s Hiroshima Visit

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Robert DodgePresident Obama will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima since the bombing 71 years ago in 1945.

    Japan seeks not an apology or reparation but an awareness and intimate connection to the common humanity we all share and that is at once threatened by the continued existence of nuclear weapons.

    Any nation that continues to keep these weapons is not more secure or powerful but rather a bully ready to threaten others and indeed themselves.

    “In Hiroshima, we don’t need another speech. We need a new nuclear weapons policy.”

    Current scientific and medical research has drawn an even closer connection between nuclear war and catastrophic climate change. We now recognize that a small regional nuclear war for example between Pakistan and India using 100 Hiroshima size bombs and representing less than ½% of the global nuclear arsenals would put at risk the lives of 2 billion people on the planet from the global famine that would follow.

    The weapons on a single U.S. Trident submarine can produce this same disaster. The U.S. has 14 of them, plus a fleet of land based missiles and strategic bombers.

    The old adage of MAD for Mutually Assured Destruction is now better termed SAD for Self Assured Destruction as whomever would unleash such an attack would put their own people at risk from this climate change becoming defacto suicide bombers.

    We must ignore the voices who continue to promote the myth of nuclear deterrence which in reality is the greatest driver of the arms race. They do so out of ignorance on the effects of these weapons, suicidal ideation or financial gain from the purveyors of these weapons of extinction.

    The continued existence of these weapons comes at a heavy financial cost as well.  Currently we are spending $4 million dollars an hour on nuclear weapons and the Obama administration proposes the U.S. spend $1 trillion dollars over the next 30 years to pursue a second nuclear arms race which in turn will encourage the other nuclear powers to follow our lead and do likewise.  These current and proposed massive expenditures rob future generations of critical funds needed to address their basic needs including the threat of climate change.

    It is important for President Obama to meet with Hibakusha, survivors of the attack and listen to what they are saying. For more than seven decades the Hibakusha have tried to make the world understand the full horror of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to make sure that nuclear weapons are never used again. Like survivors of the Nazi Holocaust they have, over and over again, made themselves relive the most painful experiences imaginable in the hope that others will not have to suffer their fate. For decades nuclear armed states have talked about these weapons as though they were playing some abstract game of chess. The Hibakusha make flesh and blood the real nature of nuclear war.

    President Obama came to office offering the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, but since the successful negotiation of the New START treaty which was a major step in that direction, his administration has seemingly abandoned that goal.

    The United States has refused to join the growing Open Ended Working Group of over 140 nations supporting a nuclear weapons ban treaty just as other weapons from chemical to biologic and land mines have been banned.

    If the President is serious about seeking a world free of nuclear weapons, we must change course. We need to abandon the trillion dollar nuclear spending spree and embrace instead the international movement to eliminate nuclear weapons and the existential threat to human survival that they pose.

    In Hiroshima, we don’t need another speech. We need a new nuclear weapons policy.

    We have a choice – to continue down the path of a second nuclear arms race or to abide by our legal treaty obligations as required under Article VI of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and to move toward nuclear disarmament.

    So, we the people implore you, Mr. President, as you process your experience, the choice is clear. You have the opportunity to make history. Choose life Mr. President. The world longs for your leadership on this issue. This is our prescription for survival.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

  • From Flint’s Children to Nuclear Weapons, Funding Our Nation’s Priorities

    This article was originally published on Common Dreams.

    This week our nation funds our national priorities on tax day. In this era of growing discussion about participatory democracy and citizens engaging in the decisions of how their community tax dollars should be allocated it is important for each of us to identify what our priorities are.

    The priorities we set provide a moral mirror of our humanity and are the fabric of our nation. From social security to Medicare, education, rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, environmental protection to defense and yes the funding of nuclear weapons programs this is the time we fund each of these priorities. Yet what role does the latter, nuclear weapons really play in our humanity. We now recognize that their use in any way is unacceptable and would forever change our world. Even a “tiny” nuclear war using ½ of 1% of the global nuclear arsenals or approximately 100 Hiroshima size bombs could kill 2 billion people from the climate change that would follow. Any use therefore would be the ultimate “reset” button in this crazy game we play ending life as we know it on the planet.  Yet we continue to gamble allowing luck to be the overriding determinant. Luck is not a security policy!

    The myth of nuclear deterrence has been one of the greatest driving forces of the nuclear arms race. Because if your country has 1 weapon then I must have 2 and so on and so on. Currently there are 15,375 nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals.

    For this 2015 tax year, the U.S. will spend ~$55.9 billion on all nuclear weapons programs.  This expenditure effects every single community from the very poorest to wealthiest robbing these communities of vital resources that could provide for their basic needs.  The children of Flint, Michigan who have unwittingly become the mine canaries of a society that chose cost savings over clean drinking water will see their city pay $8,781,398.10 for nuclear weapons programs. These weapons due nothing but add to the uncertain future of these children. My community ofVentura County north of Los Angeles, California with a population of 850,536 and per capita average income of $33,308 will spend $155,321,482.10 as our share of these nuclear weapons programs. Our wealthiest American’s from the Zuckerberg’s to the Buffett’s and Gates with their generous philanthropathy will contribute in excess of $6.09 million for every billion dollars income last year. How does this help the world they envision? Is this really the best use of these precious dollars?

    Nuclear weapons programs have been allowed to take on a life of their own seemingly without end. We are planning to embark on a $1 trillion dollar nuclear modernization program over the next 30 years.

    While the danger of a nuclear disaster is as high as or higher than during the height of the cold war, it is an unexamined assumption that this is what must be.  There is much that is happening as peoples, leaders and nations are awakening to the realities of our nuclear world. There is an ever growing awareness of the potential impact and ultimate costs of nuclear weapons and war. The winds of change are blowing.

    To date, 127 Nations have formally endorsed the Humanitarian Pledge – a commitment by nations to fill the unacceptable “legal gap” that allows nuclear weapons to remain the only weapons of mass destruction not yet explicitly prohibited under international law. It is time to change the rules!

    In June 2015, the American Medical Association passed a resolution urging the U.S. and all national governments to continue to work to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons and has committed to collaborate with relevant stakeholders to increase public awareness and education on the topic of the medical and environmental consequences of nuclear war – what could be called the final epidemic.

    On April 24, 2014, the tiny Republic of the Marshall Islands filed landmark lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed nations for failing to comply with their obligations under international law to pursue negotiations for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. This David vs. Goliath effort continues to work through the International Court of Justice.

    Rotary programs around the world are now hearing presentations on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear war and more importantly get it and are figuring out how best to deal with this international health risk for which there is no cure.

    Pope Francis has also spoken out and called for the elimination of nuclear weapons when he said “A world without nuclear weapons is essential for the future and survival of the human family … we must ensure that it becomes a reality” on 12/7/14.

    There is much that is happening and the choice is ours. The time is now! Silence implies consent. It is time to let our voices be heard and let our representatives know what our priorities are.  We can and must do better.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

    Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. He writes for PeaceVoice.

  • North Korea’s Nuclear Ambition and the US Presidential Campaign

    Robert DodgeWith the news of North Korea testing another nuclear weapon its leadership continues the fallacy of nuclear deterrence promoted by the nuclear powers of the world. This action by North Korea must be condemned just as the continued possession of nuclear weapons by all of the nuclear states. This action is against the growing international consensus for a universal treaty banning all nuclear weapons and making their possession illegal just as chemical and biological weapons have been prohibited.

    In a year of U.S. presidential elections, where is the voice of reason? Who among the candidates or media has spoken to the legal obligations of the United States and all nuclear powers to work in good faith for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Particularly in view of the current climate science confirming that a small regional limited nuclear war using only ½ of 1 percent of the global nuclear arsenals has the potential to cause the deaths of more than 2 billion people from the ensuing climate change following such a war. Who has the courage to speak the truth and put forth a plan to eliminate these weapons?

    Where is the media in it’s investigative obligation and engagement of dialogue on this issue in the campaign. Outlets like PBS continue to cover the arms race and modernization of our Trident submarines, each with the potential for the above scenario many times over, as though it is an acceptable outcome of global doomsday if they are activated. This is accepted without question as a fait accompli. We must ask the candidates if they are actually aware of this science and if so under what circumstance they are ready to end life as we know it becoming defacto suicide bombers. For it would be only a matter of time before the global climatic effects of such a use would result in our own deaths. There can be no doublespeak in this response. You are either in favor of the status quo with existing arsenals that drive the arms race and promote nations like North Korea to develop their own capabilities or you work in earnest to eliminate these weapons.

    Time is not on our side. The chance of accidental or intentional nuclear war is placed by probability theorists at 1% per year or more. A child born today is not likely to reach their 30th birthday without some nuclear event occurring in their world. Is this the world we want for our children and grandchildren?

    The candidates and the media must overcome their cowardice in addressing this issue at this critical time.

    We must demand answers to these questions about the greatest imminent existential threat to our world. We cannot rely on the hope that someone else will take care of this or the notion that I cannot make a difference. In our democracy each of us has a duty and responsibility to be informed and to take action.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

    Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. He writes for PeaceVoice.

  • Our Nuclear World at Seventy

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Robert DodgeThis week the world remembers events of 70 years ago. Events that killed instantly over 100 thousand human beings as the U.S. dropped the first atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on August 6th and 9th respectively. In the days and weeks that followed tens of thousands would also die from injuries suffered by the bomb and “A bomb disease”. From 4:15 pm PST August 5th, the exact moment the bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, there will be planetary vigils remembering the events of those days. If we forget these events we run the risk of repeating them and so must educate those among us who are unaware or uniformed.

    Over the years, the aging Hibakusha survivors of the atomic bombs are a constant reminder as they speak of the horrors they experienced those August days and in the aftermath.

    Unfortunately in the seven decades that have followed, the world has done little to move away from the subsequent use of these weapons and instead moved closer to the brink of destroying civilization and possibly the extinction of our species.

    Witnessing the horrific potential of these weapons mankind had two options that remain with us to this day. The first option was to rid the planet of these weapons and the second was to build more. The world chose the latter. The insane doctrine throughout the Cold War, appropriately called MAD for Mutually Assured Destruction, guaranteed the annihilation of an adversary in the event of any use a nuclear weapon. This resulted in a mythological notion of nuclear deterrence that persists to this day, providing a false sense of security and being the major driver of the arms race resulting in 15,685 nuclear weapons on the planet!

    Following the bombings of Japan and with continued testing we have seen how destructive these weapons were. However, recently we have learned that they are much more dangerous than we had ever imagined. We now know that even a unilateral attack using the weapons of either the U.S. or Russia without retaliation would ultimately result in such catastrophic global climate change that billions would die from starvation and disease including the attacking nation. In effect the MAD doctrine of the Cold War has become the SAD doctrine of Self Assured Destruction ultimately turning any nation that would unleash its nuclear arsenals into suicide bombers and the destroyers of civilization.

    Even a limited regional nuclear war using only 100 Hiroshima size bombs possibly between India and Pakistan, felt by many defense experts to be a vulnerable nuclear hot spot on the planet, would cause death and destruction never imagined. It would kill 20 million people outright but the after effects resulting from global climate change in the days that follow would be catastrophic killing over 2 billion people around the world. These effects would last for over 10 years. Even more remarkably this scenario uses less than ½ of 1% of the global arsenals!

    On this 70th Anniversary of the nuclear age we have an opportunity and responsibility to act. Knowing what we now know, we cannot do nothing. Ultimately our luck will run out with the potential of nuclear war either by accident or intent. We must work together with the majority of nations now numbering 113 who have signed the “Humanitarian Pledge” to ban nuclear weapons by convention just as every other weapon of mass destruction has been banned. All attempts at nonproliferation and diplomacy must be supported including the nuclear deal with Iran. We must demand that our nation join the non-nuclear nations of the world whom we hold hostage and work together to abolish these weapons. We owe this to the Hibakusha, to our children and to future generations.

  • A Nuclear Weapons Ban Emerging

    United NationsEvery moment of every day, all of humanity is held hostage by the nuclear nine. The nine nuclear nations are made up of the P5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and their illegitimate nuclear wannabes Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan spawned by the mythological theory of deterrence. This theory has fueled the nuclear arms race since its inception wherein if one nation has one nuclear weapon, its adversary needs two and so on to the point that the world now has 15,700 nuclear weapons wired for immediate use and planetary destruction with no end in sight. This inaction continues despite the forty-five year legal commitment of the nuclear nations to work toward complete nuclear abolition. In fact just the opposite is happening with the U.S. proposing to spend $1 trillion dollars on nuclear weapons modernization over the next 30 years fueling the “deterrent” response of every other nuclear state to do likewise.

    This critical state of affairs comes as the 189 signatory nations to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) concluded the month long Review Conference at the U.N. in New York. The conference was officially a failure due to the refusal of the nuclear weapons states to present or even support real steps toward disarmament with an unwillingness to recognize the peril that the planet faces at the end of their nuclear gun and continuing to gamble on the future of humanity. Instead presenting a charade of concern, blaming each other and bogging down in discussions over a glossary of terms while the hand of the nuclear Armageddon clock continues to move ever forward.

    The nuclear weapons states have chosen to live in a vacuum, one void of leadership. They hoard suicidal nuclear weapons stockpiles and ignore recent scientific evidence of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons that we now realize makes these weapons far more dangerous than we thought before. They fail to recognize that this evidence must be the basis for prohibiting and eliminating them.

    Fortunately there is a powerful and positive response coming out of the NPT Review Conference. The Non-Nuclear Weapons States representing a majority of people living on the planet frustrated and threatened by the nuclear nations have come together and demanded a legal ban on nuclear weapons like the ban on every other weapon of mass destruction from chemical to biologic and including land mines. Their voices are rising up. Following a pledge by Austria in December 2014 to fill the legal gap necessary to ban these weapons, 107 nations have joined them at the U.N. this month committing to do so. That means finding a legal instrument that would prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. Such a ban will make these weapons illegal and will stigmatize any nation that continues to have these weapons as being outside of international law.

    Costa Rica’s closing NPT remarks noted, “Democracy has not come to the NPT but Democracy has come to nuclear weapons disarmament.” The nuclear weapons states have failed to demonstrate any leadership toward total disarmament and in fact have no intention of doing so. They must now step aside and allow the majority of the nations to come together and work collectively for their future and the future of humanity. John Loretz of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said, “The nuclear-armed states are on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of morality, and the wrong side of the future. The ban treaty is coming, and then they will be indisputably on the wrong side of the law. And they have no one to blame but themselves.”

    “History honors only the brave,” declared Costa Rica. “Now is the time to work for what is to come, the world we want and deserve.”

    Ray Acheson of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom says, “Those who reject nuclear weapons must have the courage of their convictions to move ahead without the nuclear-armed states, to take back ground from the violent few who purport to run the world, and build a new reality of human security and global justice.”

  • Taxes and the End of the Nuclear Age

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Robert DodgeFollowing the arrival of spring each year, on Tax Day, April 15, our nation renews its commitment to our priorities from education to health care to infrastructure to national defense.

    Included among these expenditures are billions of dollars for nuclear weapons programs—for weapons that must not ever be used. The funding for these programs, while more transparent than in the past, is still quite secretive. From the beginnings of our nuclear program in 1940, we have spent in excess of $6 trillion on them. This Tax Day, we are slated to spend $56.3 billion more on these same programs. From Ventura County, California at $177 million, to Los Angeles County’s expenditure of $1.785 billion, to our nation’s capital at $107 million, these are monies that we can ill afford to spend. The squandering of these dollars, while continuing to inadequately fund national programs on infrastructure, education, health care and the environment, speaks to who we are as a nation. No logical person would argue against spending the entirety of these monies to secure, dismantle and clean up the existing environmental legacy of these weapons. Thereafter, these monies could be more appropriately allocated to programs that benefit all.

    This year’s expenditures come at a critical time. Just when international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons through the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the remarkable and long-sought controls over Iran’s capability to acquire a nuclear weapon are coming to fruition, some of our leaders propose these massive expenditures. Is this the best we can do to lead by example?

    This month’s preliminary accord between the P5+1 and Iran, for Iran to remove its capability to build a nuclear weapon, would significantly enhance security of the region and the world. It needs the support of anyone who wishes to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war. Yet this, too, is being held in abeyance by political hardliners in Iran and in the U.S. Congress.

    Seventy years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we continue to maintain and modernize our nuclear arsenals as though locked in a Cold War time warp.  Our president, held hostage by Congressional leadership, proposes to spend an additional $1 trillion over the next 30 years just on the modernization of our arsenals. This is in spite of being bound, along with the other nuclear states, by Article VI of the NPT to work in good faith toward complete disarmament. The NPT Review Conference will begin this month in New York City at the U.N. This year’s conference comes at a critical time as the non-nuclear states have grown impatient with the lack of progress of the nuclear states in meeting their legal obligations. Failure to make real progress threatens the entire treaty and will likely shift the focus to a nuclear weapons ban convention similar to conventions on other weapons of mass destruction, like chemical and biological weapons.

    The world must come together this 70th year of the Nuclear Age and speak with one voice for humanity and the future of our children. Now is the time to end the insanity that hangs over us, the threat of nuclear annihilation. We must move forward with a shared sense of tomorrow. Our children deserve this.

    Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full-time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angles, serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level, where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. He writes for PeaceVoice.

  • 3 Minutes to Midnight

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Three Minutes to Midnight
    Image: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (www.thebulletin.org)

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just announced its latest nuclear Doomsday Clock moving ahead the minute hand to three minutes till midnight. The clock represents the count down to zero in minutes to nuclear apocalypse – midnight. This significant move of TWO minutes is the 22nd time since its inception in 1947 that the time has been changed.

    In moving the hand to 3 minutes to midnight, Kennette Benedict the Executive Director of the Bulletin, identified in her comments: “the probability of global catastrophe is very high”… “the choice is ours and the clock is ticking”…”we feel the need to warn the world” …”the decision was based on a very strong feeling of urgency”. She spoke to the dangers of both nuclear weapons and climate change saying, “they are both very difficult and we are ignoring them” and emphasized “this is about doomsday, this is about the end of civilization as we know it”. The Clock has ranged from 2 minutes to midnight at the height of the Cold War to 17 minutes till midnight with the hopes that followed the end of the Cold War. The decision to move the minute hand is made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

    What is clear is that the time to ban nuclear weapons is now. Today’s announcement by the Bulletin further corroborates the dangers confirmed by recent climate science. These studies identify the much greater dangers posed by even a small regional nuclear war using just 100 Hiroshima size bombs out of the 16,300 weapons in today’s global stockpiles. The ensuing dramatic climate changes and famine that would follow threaten the lives of up to 2 billion on the planet with effects that would last beyond 10 years. There is no escaping the global impact of such a small regional nuclear war.

    Medical science has weighed in on the impacts and devastation of even the smallest nuclear explosion in one of our cities and the reality is there is no adequate medical or public health response to such an attack. We kid ourselves into a false sense that we can prepare and plan for the outcome of a bomb detonation. Every aspect and facet of our society would be overwhelmed by a nuclear attack. Ultimately the resultant dead at ground zero would be the lucky ones.

    Probability theorists have long calculated the dismal odds that the chance for nuclear event either by plan or accident are not in our favor. Recent documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act detail over 1000 mishaps that have happened in our nuclear arsenals. Time is not on our side and the fact that we have not experienced a nuclear catastrophe is more a result of luck than mastery and control over these immoral weapons of terror.

    The time to act is now. There is so much that can and must be done. Congress will soon begin budget debates that include proposals to increase nuclear weapons spending for stockpile modernization by $355 Billion over the next decade and up to a Trillion in the next 30 years. Expenditures for weapons that can never be used and at a time when the economic needs for our country and world are so great.

    Around the world, there is a growing awareness of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, and a corresponding desire to rid the world of these weapons.The Vienna Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons conference last month saw 4/5 of the nations of the world participating. In Oct., 2014, at the UN, 155 nations called for the elimination of nuclear weapons. At Vienna, 44 nations plus the pope advocated for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

    The people are making their voices heard and demanding a change of course from the status quo.

    In this week’s State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized that we are one people with a common destiny. He said this both in reference to our nation and our world. The threat of nuclear weapons unites us even as it threatens our very existence. This reality can also be remembered in the words of Martin Luther King when he said,

    “We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

    The time for action is now, before it is too late. It’s 3 minutes till midnight.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

    Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. He writes for PeaceVoice.

  • In 2015, Let There Be Peace on Earth

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Robert DodgeAt the beginning of each new year people around the world express their hopes and desires for seemingly elusive peace on earth. In the past year there have been many strides toward that goal. The greatest threat to peace and our survival, nuclear weapons are at long last on the road to abolition. The people have spoken and leaders have heard. This new year we must recommit to the steps necessary to make this a reality.

    In the words of Pope Francis,

    Nuclear weapons are a global problem, affecting all nations, and impacting future generations and the planet that is our home. A global ethic is needed if we are to reduce the nuclear threat and work towards nuclear disarmament.

    Nuclear deterrence and the threat of mutually assured destruction cannot be the basis for an ethics of fraternity and peaceful coexistence among peoples and states. The youth of today and tomorrow deserve far more. They deserve a peaceful world order based on the unity of the human family, grounded on respect, cooperation, solidarity and compassion. Now is the time to counter the logic of fear with the ethic of responsibility, and so foster a climate of trust and sincere dialogue…

    The desire for peace, security and stability is one of the deepest longings of the human heart… This desire can neither be satisfied by military means alone, much less the possession of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction….

    …peace must be built on justice, socio-economic development, freedom, respect for fundamental human rights, the participation of all in public affairs and the building of trust between peoples.

    This profound message was delivered Dec. 7 to representatives of 158 nations, the UN and over 100 international, civil society, academic and religious organizations in two days of testimony about nuclear weapons from experts on health, humanitarian and environmental law, climate change, agriculture and the global economy at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons.

    This conference focused on the recent scientific reports on global humanitarian effects of these weapons and the impotence of any effective response to their use. These weapons long known to threaten our extinction if large numbers were used are now recognized to be much more dangerous threatening the lives of up to 2 billion from the climatic disruption that would come with the use of only 100 weapons representing 1/2 of 1% of the global nuclear arsenals.

    This meeting was followed days later by the annual Nobel Peace Laureate Conference in Rome where they stated,

    If we fail to prevent nuclear war, all of our other efforts to secure peace and justice will be for naught. We need to stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons…

    We welcome the pledge by the Austrian government “to identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons” and “to cooperate with all stakeholders to achieve this goal.”

    We urge all states to commence negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons at the earliest possible time, and subsequently to conclude the negotiations within two years. This will fulfill existing obligations enshrined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which will be reviewed in May of 2015, and the unanimous ruling of the International Court of Justice. Negotiations should be open to all states and blockable by none.

    And yet the governmental actions of the principal nuclear nations of the United States and Russia who hold ~94% of the global stockpiles fail to recognize the reality of the people’s demands. As though stuck in a Cold War time warp, the U.S. is planning to spend a trillion dollars over the next 30 years on modernizing our nuclear arsenals and Russia is unveiling its rail ICBM system as we are all held hostage to these immoral weapons of genocide. The mythological illusions of security based on deterrence only serve to fuel an ongoing arms race robbing our children and indeed the poorest nations of the world of precious resources creating the very conditions that foster additional conflict and violence.

    This is not acceptable and the growing chorus of world leaders and the people are getting louder every day. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The diminishing Hibakusha survivors of these explosions are a daily reminder of the atrocities that mankind has wrought.

    Let 2015 be the year when the words of President Eisenhower move closer to a reality. “I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

    When your children’s children ask what you did to make peace a reality, what will be your response? Now is the time to take action and make your voice heard. Let there be peace on earth.

    Robert Dodge is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Board of Directors.

  • Making the Connection: The People’s Climate March and the International Day of Peace

    Robert DodgeThis article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Climate change and world peace will each be highlighted on Sunday September 21, the International Day of Peace. In our nuclear armed, temperature rising, resource depleting world these issues are intricately related and represent the greatest threats to our planet. It is not coincidence that they be highlighted together. We must make the connection between peace on the planet and peace with the environment. Sunday’s Peoples Climate March will empower citizens the world over to demonstrate the will of the people and demand action as global leaders convene in New York on Tuesday for the U.N. Climate Summit.

    As our planet warms causing severe droughts and weather conditions, crop losses at home and around the world, conflict ensues as competition for finite resources develops.  Entire populations and countries are at risk with rising sea levels. Climate change is a catalyst for conflict. This is occurring the world over where 2/3 of global populations live on less than two dollars a day.

    No institution recognizes this connection and threat more than the U.S. military.  In the Pentagon’s 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, released on March 4, the Department of Defense notes: “The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions—conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.” While Congress is paralyzed in climate deadlock by those who would rather play charades denying climate change for purely short sighted short term economic gains the problem marches critically forward. Climate change is a national and international security threat.

    According to retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni speaking on climate change, “We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives.”

    We have long known of the devastating annihilating potential of all-out nuclear war. Recent medical scientific and climatic reports have shown the humanitarian consequences of even a limited nuclear war using less than half of 1 percent of the global arsenals resulting in significant climatic change that would put 2 billion people at risk of dying from the global famine that would follow.

    Currently U.S. and international cities and governments are rapidly trying to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. While this is understandable it is analogous to someone whose house is flooding trying to mop up without turning off the water first. You can never get ahead of the situation. In climate change we must STOP the process before it is too late.  When medicine deals with public health threats we recognize that we must prevent what we cannot cure. We cannot cure the effects of climate change—we must prevent it!

    So while the military and government makes plans for the effects and conflicts resulting from climate change, the people are stepping up and demanding action to stop the process. There is no more critical time in this effort. We the people demand action. If you are concerned about either issue, you must be concerned about both issues. The future of our planet depends on it.

    Join us on this International Day of Peace in the Peoples Climate March. Make the connection. Demand peace with the planet for peace on the planet.

    To join activities in your area check http://peoplesclimate.org/.