Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Articles by David Krieger

Could We Stumble Into World War III?

We’ve stumbled into war before. We could certainly do it again. But doing it in a world with nuclear weapons could be even more devastating than World War I or, for that matter, World War II.

I wrote the short poem below to mark the 100th anniversary on June 28th of the assassination that set in motion what became known as the “Great War” and later came to be referred to as World War I. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand should remind us how easy it is for leaders of countries to stumble into wars that no one seems to want, and the grave and unforeseen consequences of doing so. The U.S. wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq also serve as good reminders, as should the civil wars now going on in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. We should also not be complacent about the U.S.-Russia standoffs that occurred over the country of Georgia in the past and the one now unfolding over Ukraine.

Since the possibility of stumbling into war is always with us, it seems foolish in the extreme to fail to do all in our power to eliminate nuclear weapons – as soon as possible. The national leaders of nuclear-armed states are failing badly in this regard, despite their obligations under international law. There is one country, however, that is doing all it can to move forward on fulfillment of the unkept promises and unmet obligations to achieve a Nuclear Zero world: that is, the small Pacific Island country of 70,000 inhabitants, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), whose people still suffer from 12 years of nuclear testing (1946 – 1958) and whose land remains contaminated by radioactive fallout.

The world owes a collective debt of gratitude to the people and government of the RMI for bringing lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries in the International Court of Justice, and a separate lawsuit against the United States in U.S. Federal District Court. The RMI is acting on behalf of humanity. It is not seeking monetary compensation for itself, but rather to assure that no other people now or in the future suffer as it has. This small island country seeks to hold the nuclear-armed states accountable for breaching their obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law to pursue and complete negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament. The Republic of the Marshall Islands deserves our support. More information on these Nuclear Zero lawsuits can be found at www.nuclearzero.org.

We have not had a nuclear war since nuclear weapons were used at the end of World War II, but that is no guarantee that there will not be one in the future. So long as nuclear weapons exist, they pose a threat to the future of civilization and the human species. The possession of these weapons of mass annihilation is premised on nuclear deterrence, the threat of nuclear retaliation, but nuclear deterrence is not a law of nature. It is a construct of humans, and it is subject to human failure in the same way that fallible humans have experienced major technological failures of nuclear reactors and have stumbled into past wars. We are fallible creatures and we would be wise to eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us.

ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND

Archduke Franz Ferdinand
with no troops at his command
was brought down by an assassin’s hand.
That’s how the war began.

No one thought it would last long,
but they were all sadly wrong,
as with alliances and patriotic song
they moved the war along.

From the very start
the men in trenches did their part
until shot through the head or heart
to be taken away on a medic’s cart.

As history has taught before
the fighting gave us only blood and gore.
If not to stop the next great war,
what are lessons for?

One wonders if in time we’ll learn
to put away our weapons, to discern
the true value of a human life, to turn
from war to peace before we burn.

A century past the Archduke’s time
the game of war is still a crime.
A century past the Archduke’s time
The arts of peace are still sublime.

David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of ZERO: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition. He has written or edited many other books on achieving Nuclear Zero and several books of peace poetry.

June 30, 2014
Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Archduke Franz Ferdinand
with no troops at his command
was brought down by an assassin’s hand.
That’s how the war began.

No one thought it would last long,
but they were all sadly wrong,
as with alliances and patriotic song
they moved the war along.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand
From the very start
the men in trenches did their part
until shot through the head or heart
to be taken away on a medic’s cart.

As history has taught before
the fighting gave us only blood and gore.
If not to stop the next great war,
what are lessons for?

One wonders if in time we’ll learn
to put away our weapons, to discern
the true value of a human life, to turn
from war to peace before we burn.

A century past the Archduke’s time
the game of war is still a crime.
A century past the Archduke’s time
The arts of peace are still sublime.

David Krieger
June 2014

This poem was originally published by Truthout.

June 26, 2014
Accountability for the War In Iraq

The current level of violence in Iraq has a single root: the destabilizing act in 2003 of illegally invading and then occupying Iraq ordered by the George W. Bush administration, with their arrogant claims that US troops would be greeted as liberators. Rather than liberating Iraq, however, our country lost yet another war there, one which left thousands of American soldiers dead, tens of thousands wounded and still more traumatized. We also destabilized the region; slaughtered and displaced Iraqis; left Iraq in a mess; created the conditions for a civil war there; strengthened Iran; created many new advocates of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; and demonstrated disdain for international law.

The Bush administration led and lied the US into an aggressive war, the kind of war held to be a crime against peace at Nuremberg. The lying was despicable, an impeachable offense, but it is too late for the impeachment of a president and vice-president who are now out of office. The initiation of an aggressive war was an act, however, for which there should always be accountability, as there was at Nuremberg. This, of course, would require having the courage and principle as a country to create policies to hold our own leaders to the same standards that we held those leaders whom we defeated in combat.

The failure of militarism to accomplish any reasonable end, compounded by the terrible and predictable loss of life, is a strong argument for pursuing peace by peaceful means. The most important question confronting the US as a society is: have we learned any valuable lessons or gained any wisdom from our defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan? Those wars demonstrate conclusively that as a country we learned all the wrong lessons (worse than nothing) from the grotesque war in Vietnam.

Shall we send US forces back into Iraq because the intensity of the war there is increasing? That is what those who lied us into the war in the first place would have us do. Shall we follow their advice on the deployment of US military might yet again? It is indisputable that the US has caused and set in motion terrible violence in Iraq. But our military forces cannot reverse the harm we have already done and would likely only make matters worse.

History tells us that the use of US force throughout the world since World War II has always made matters worse for the innocent civilians caught in the conflict. There is no reason to believe that this time would be any different. Should our political leaders fail to learn from our recent history, however, and choose to reengage with a military intervention, we can be sure that not only will there be terrible collateral damage, harming the innocent, but that our own soldiers will pay a heavy price and the problems with our Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals will be greatly exacerbated.

David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). His recent book, Summer Grasses, is an anthology of war poetry.

June 19, 2014
He Dances Still

For Hans-Peter Dürr.

A man of peace has died,
a scientist, a quantum physicist,
who saw the world truly, which
is to say, saw it for what it was
in all its manifestations, in all
its grand potential for good and evil,
in all its absences and failures.

I remember talking with him
on a rainy night on a bus in Hamburg.
He leaned into the conversation
speaking earnestly, full of conviction
and good will. I recall the timbre
of his voice, deep and resonant.

On the evening of his 80th birthday
he danced far into the night.
Though his great kind heart has
ceased to beat, I imagine now
he dances still and still somehow
keeps up the fight for peace.

David Krieger
June 2014

June 10, 2014
We Must End the Madness of Nuclear Weapons

Some five decades ago, world leaders came together on an urgent mission to avert “the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind” in the event of a nuclear war. The five then-existing nuclear weapon states – the United States, Soviet Union (now Russia), United Kingdom, France and China – signed the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). They agreed to negotiate in good faith to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and to achieve a world without nuclear weapons.

Five decades later, the nuclear threat has only increased. Four more states – Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea – now have nuclear weapons. The world is more dangerous because the signatories of the NPT have failed to keep their promises and have undermined the rule of law.

Until now, no one has held them accountable. Last month, the Republic of the Marshall Islands courageously took the nine nuclear weapons-wielding Goliaths to the International Court of Justice to enforce compliance with the NPT and customary international law.

This tiny Pacific nation’s firsthand experience with nuclear devastation compelled it to take a stand. The United States exploded 67 nuclear weapons there between 1946 and 1958, including a bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. Marshall Islanders still suffer high cancer rates and environmental poisoning as a result. They are not seeking compensation; in fact, their bold stance could potentially jeopardize the essential funding and protection the US provides them. Yet their desire to protect their fellow humans from the pain and devastation wrought by nuclear weapons outweighs fear of retribution.

Nuclear weapons are fundamentally immoral because they have only one purpose: to indiscriminately destroy human life at the push of a button, without regard for whether they kill innocents or combatants, children or adults. In 1996, the International Court of Justice warned, “The destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time. They have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.”

No government, army, organization or individual should have the ability to impose nuclear devastation on other humans. This truth is enshrined in Article VI of the NPT: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

The five original nuclear weapon states signed onto this statement, but have failed to honor their commitments. The four more recent nuclear weapon states – Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea – have followed their lead in defying international legal obligations.

Instead of working to end the insanity of the nuclear age once and for all, these nine countries waste trillions of dollars on their nuclear arsenals, in violation of both the treaty and customary international law. We can no longer afford this perilous game of nuclear roulette. Every day that world leaders delay action on disarmament, they impose the unacceptable menace of nuclear devastation upon every human on the planet.

Addiction to nuclear weapons costs us all in other ways as well. The price of these weapons keeps rising. The nuclear nations spend a combined $100 billion on them every year. Imagine how far this amount could take us in providing access to education, health care, food and clean water for the people of the world.

The people of the Marshall Islands are standing up to say that it’s time to end the era of nuclear madness. They are joined by Nobel Peace Laureates, and leaders and experts from every field who support this historic legal action.

We call on President Obama and the leaders of the other nuclear weapon states to fulfill their legal obligation to negotiate in good faith to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. It is not unrealistic to ask that the world’s most powerful governments start obeying the law and keeping their promises.

Nothing good has ever come of nuclear weapons. Nothing good ever will. For the sake of all humanity, current and future, it’s time to respect the law and keep the promise.

This article was originally published by Truthout.

May 21, 2014
The Nuclear Zero Lawsuits: Taking Nuclear Weapons to Court

Nuclear weapons remain the most urgent threat confronting humanity. So long as they exist, there is the very real chance they will be used by accident, miscalculation or design. These weapons threaten everyone and everything we love and treasure. They are fearsome destructive devices that kill indiscriminately and cause unnecessary suffering. No man, woman or child is safe from the fury of these weapons, now or in the future. Nor is any country safe from them, no matter how powerful or how much it threatens nuclear retaliation.

Given the extreme dangers of nuclear weapons, we might ask: why isn’t more being done to eliminate them? There has been talk and promises, but little action by the nine nuclear-armed nations – United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. All nine countries are modernizing their nuclear arsenals.

One small Pacific nation, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, has decided to take legal action against the nine nuclear-armed countries, which are threatening our common future. As Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, points out, “The continued existence of nuclear weapons and the terrible risk they pose to the world threatens us all.”

To understand the nature of the legal actions taken by the Marshall Islands, it is necessary to go back in time. Forty-six years ago, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened for signatures; two years later it entered into force. The treaty seeks to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons, but it does more. It also obligates its parties to level the playing field by negotiating in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament. This treaty currently has 190 countries signed on, including five nuclear weapon states and 185 non-nuclear weapon states.

The Marshall Islands is taking its case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague and, in addition, filing against the U.S. separately in U.S. Federal District Court in San Francisco. The lawsuits argue that the nuclear disarmament obligations apply to all nine nuclear-armed states as a matter of customary international law. The courts are being asked in these Nuclear Zero Lawsuits to provide declaratory and injunctive relief, by declaring that the nuclear weapon states are in breach of their obligations under international law and ordering them to begin negotiating in good faith to achieve a cessation of the nuclear arms race and a world with zero nuclear weapons.

The Marshall Islands has shown courage and boldness by taking action in filing these lawsuits. It is a country that knows firsthand the consequences of nuclear detonations. Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. conducted 67 nuclear weapon tests in the Marshall Islands. These tests had an equivalent explosive force greater than 1.5 Hiroshima bombs being detonated daily for 12 years. The Marshall Islanders paid a heavy price in terms of their health and well-being for these destructive tests.

Now this small island nation is standing up against nine of the most powerful countries on the planet. It is “David” against the nuclear nine “Goliaths.” Its field of nonviolent battle is the courtroom.

The Marshall Islands is, in effect, challenging the nuclear weapon countries to be honorable and fulfill their obligations not only to the rest of the countries that signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but to all humanity.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands is offering us a way to live on a planet that is not threatened by nuclear catastrophe due to human fallibility or malevolence. This courageous small island country deserves our strong and unwavering support.

To find out more about the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits and how you can support them, go to www.nuclearzero.org.

April 24, 2014
Earth Day: The Discipline of Tending to Our Own Planet

We live in a vast universe made up of billions of galaxies, each of which is made up of billions of stars. Our home is a small planet that revolves around a small sun in a remote galaxy. It is just the right distance from the sun so that it is not too hot or too cold to support life. It has air that is breathable, water that is drinkable and topsoil suitable for growing crops. In the immensity of space, it is a very small dot, what astrophysicist Carl Sagan referred to as a “pale blue dot.” Our Earth is the only place we know of that harbors life. It is precious beyond any riches that could be imagined.

One would think that any sane, self-reflecting creatures that lived on this planet would recognize its beauty and preciousness and would want to tend to it with care. In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic book, “The Little Prince,” the prince says: “It’s a matter of discipline. When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend to your planet.” But that is an imaginary planet with an imaginary little prince. On the real planet that supports life, the one we inhabit, there aren’t enough of us who exercise such discipline and tend to our planet with loving care.

Think about how we have managed our planet. We have allowed the planet to become divided into rich and poor, where a few people have billions of dollars and billions of people have few dollars. While some live in greed, the majority live in need. We have parceled the planet into entities we call countries and created borders that countries try to protect. We have created military forces in these countries and given them enormous resources to prepare for war and to engage in war. Annual global military expenditures now exceed $1.7 trillion, while hundreds of millions of humans live without clean water, adequate nutrition, medical care and education.

We have eagerly exploited the planet’s resources with little concern for future generations or for the damage we cause to the environment. Instead of using renewable energy from the sun to provide our energy needs, we exploit the Earth’s stores of oil and transport them across the globe. We have turned much of the world into desert. We have polluted the air we breathe and the water we drink. In our excess, we have pushed the planet toward the point of no return in climate change and then argued climate change as a reason to build more nuclear power plants.

We keep relearning, in tragic ways, that we humans are fallible creatures. That is the lesson of our recurrent oil spills. It is also the lesson of the accidents at Chernobyl over a quarter century ago and at Fukushima three years ago. It is a lesson that we urgently need to learn about nuclear weapons – weapons we have come close to accidentally using on many occasions and have twice used intentionally.

Nuclear weapons kill directly by blast, fire and radiation. The nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small in comparison with today’s thermonuclear weapons. In recent years, we have learned some new things about nuclear war. Atmospheric scientists have modeled a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each side uses 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities. In addition to the direct effects of the weapons, there would be significant indirect effects on the environment. Smoke from the burning cities would rise into the stratosphere and reduce warming sunlight for ten years, which would lower average surface temperatures, reduce growing seasons and lead to famine that could kill two billion people globally.

That would be the result of a “small” nuclear war, using less than one percent of the operationally deployed nuclear weapons on the planet. A nuclear war between the United States and Russia could lead to the extinction of most or all complex life on Earth, including human life. As we celebrate Earth Day this year, more than 20 years after the end of the cold war, both the United States and Russia maintain hundreds of launch-ready, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles on high-alert status, ready to be fired in moments.

We who are alive today are the trustees of this planet for future generations. We’re failing in our responsibility to pass it on intact. We need a new Earth ethic that embraces our responsibility for fairness to each other and to future generations. We need new ways of educating that do not simply accept the status quo. We need to trade in our patriotism for a global humatriotism. We need a new approach to economics based on what is truly precious – life and the conditions that support it.

Earth Day will have its greatest value if it reminds us to care for our Earth and each other all the other days of the year, individually and through our public policy. We need to inspire people throughout the world, young and old alike, with a vision of the beauty and wonder of the Earth that we can now enjoy, restore and preserve for future generations if we tend to our planet with the discipline of the little prince.

This article was originally published by Truthout.

April 16, 2014
Arthur N.R. Robinson (1926-2014)

The world lost a great man today and NAPF lost a long-time member of its Advisory Council, Arthur N.R. Robinson. He served as both Prime Minister and President of his country, Trinidad and Tobago. His efforts were instrumental in the creation of the International Criminal Court, demonstrating the extraordinary power of one visionary and determined individual. In 2002, he received the Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

Arthur N.R. Robinson received the NAPF Distinguished Peace Leadership Award in 2002.

Click here to read an article I wrote about him in 2006. I remember him as a kind, compassionate and decent individual, who loved his family, friends and country, and did his utmost to assure that the Nuremberg Principles were carried forward in the 21st century by means of the International Criminal Court.

April 9, 2014
A New Examination for Missile Launch Officers and the Rest of Us
The top brass in the US Air Force have indicated that they were shocked and outraged to discover that missile launch officers have been cheating on their examinations and that their superior officers have turned the other way, allowing the cheating to go on. The Air Force has viewed the cheating as a moral failure and has suspended more than 90 of these officers from their missile launch duties.

This raises important philosophical and practical questions with regard to morality and legality. Which is the greater moral failure: cheating on an examination or being willing to launch nuclear-armed missiles that could lead to the deaths of millions of innocent men, women and children?

What kind of society would give young officers the task of carrying out illegal orders to destroy cities, countries and even civilization, with all the attendant pain, suffering and death that would be caused?

The exams on which there was cheating were most likely technical in nature, aimed at finding out whether the missile launch officers understood the technical issues involved in launching their missiles, upon command to do so, and in preventing unauthorized launches. But shouldn’t the officers in charge of launching also be tested on the legal and moral implications of what they are being asked to do in a worst-case scenario?

With these larger legal and moral issues in mind, a more pertinent examination could be developed that would include True and False questions like these:
1. You are a cog in a nuclear threat system that could lead to tens or hundreds of millions of deaths and bring about the catastrophic destruction of civilization.
2. The nuclear-armed missiles you are responsible for launching would indiscriminately kill men, women and children, which is illegal under international humanitarian law.
3. Nuclear weapons cause unnecessary suffering, which is illegal under international humanitarian law.
4. It is illegal under international humanitarian law to launch a reprisal attack that is disproportionate to an initial attack.
5. The effects of nuclear weapons detonations cannot be contained in space or time.
6. US political leaders are failing to pursue negotiations in good faith for nuclear disarmament, as legally required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
7. US political leaders are failing to pursue negotiations in good faith for a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, as legally required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
8. The defense of following orders by Nazi officers was not accepted as a legitimate defense for criminal acts at the Nuremberg trials.
9. The Nuremberg trials after World War II held the Nazi leaders and officers to account, and some were given death sentences for committing crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
10. You are not required to carry out illegal orders from a superior officer, and an order to fire your missiles with the consequence of indiscriminately killing men, women and children would be an illegal order.
These are examination questions not only for missile launch officers to ponder, but for every member of our society to consider. The missile launch officers are only cogs in the US nuclear apparatus of death and destruction. They are not the only responsible parties, but they are instrumental parties to planning and preparation for indiscriminate murder and perhaps the death of all.

The key responsible parties are political leaders and the people themselves. Only our political leaders, with pressure from the people, can assure that the United States plays a leadership role in pursuing the legal and moral path to achieving the globally necessary number of Nuclear Zero.

The answers to all the above exam questions are True.

This article was originally published by Truthout.
April 8, 2014
The Turn of a Key

The missile launch officers failed to grasp
the ratio of death and destruction to the simple act
of following orders and turning a key.
And they were caught cheating.
All they were after was a good grade, to help
them climb the slippery walls of promotion,
so that one day they could be the ones to give the orders.

It isn’t as if they were the only ones who ever cheated.
It was something of a tradition among the launch officers,
something akin to “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” or turn the other way.
Cheating may have been wrong, but it wasn’t a moral outrage.
While suspended for cheating, they would not be able to launch
their nuclear-armed missiles, capable of ending civilization,
as they were ready to do any moment, day or night,
when they were on duty and received an order to launch.

What is a moral outrage is that we train and expect these young officers
to send their nuclear-armed missiles flying when commanded to do so,
to initiate oblivion with the turn of a key.

David Krieger
March 2014

April 3, 2014