Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Articles by David Krieger

  • John F. Kennedy Speaks of Peace

    On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated.  Nearly every American who is old enough can remember where he was when he heard the news of Kennedy’s death.  In my case, I was on a train platform in Japan when I was told of the assassination.  A Japanese man came up to me and said, “I’m very sorry to tell you, but your president has been shot and killed.”  I remember being stunned by the news and by a sense of loss. 

    On June 10, 1963, just six months before his life was cut short, Kennedy gave the Commencement Address at American University.  His topic was peace.  He called it “the most important topic on earth.”  As a decorated officer who served in combat during World War II, he knew about war.

    Kennedy spoke of a generous and broad peace: “What kind of peace do I mean?  What kind of peace do we seek?” he asked.  “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons or war.  Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.  I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

    He recognized that nuclear weapons had created “a new face of war.”  He argued, “Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces.  It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.  It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”

    Just eight months before giving this speech, Kennedy had been face to face with the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He knew that it was possible for powerful, nuclear-armed nations to come to the brink of nuclear war, and he knew what nuclear war would mean for the future of humanity.  “I speak of peace,” he said, “as the necessary rational end of rational men.”

    Kennedy asked us to examine our attitudes toward peace.  “Too many of us think it is impossible,” he said.  “Too many think it unreal.   But that is a dangerous defeatist belief.  It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed – that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.”

    He understood that there was no “magic formula” to achieve peace.  “Genuine peace,” he argued, “must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.  It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation.  For peace is a process – a way of solving problems.”  He also recognized that peace requires perseverance. 

    Kennedy gave wise counsel in his speech.  In the midst of the Cold War, he called for reexamining our attitude toward the Soviet Union.  “Among the traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war.”  He pointed out the achievements of the Soviet people and the suffering they endured during World War II. 

    In the speech, Kennedy announced two important decisions.  First, he pledged to begin negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear test ban.  Second, he initiated a moratorium on atmospheric nuclear testing.  The Partial Test Ban Treaty would be signed that August, ratified by the Senate in September and would go into effect on October 10, 1963.  The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was not reached until 1996, and the United States Senate rejected ratification of this treaty in 1999.  The treaty still has not entered into force.

    In his insightful and inspiring speech, Kennedy did get one thing wrong.  He said that “[t]he United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”  One can only imagine Kennedy’s severe disappointment had he lived to see the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War and many other costly and illegal wars the U.S. has started and engaged in since his death. 

    Every American should read Kennedy’s Commencement Address at American University and be reminded that peace is a possibility that is worth the struggle.  As Kennedy understood, war does not bring peace.  Peace itself is the only path to peace.  Kennedy believed, “No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.  Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe they can do it again.”  Peace is attainable.  It is within our reach, if only we will learn from the past, stretch ourselves and believe that this is our destiny.

  • 2010 Sadako Peace Day

    Welcome to this 16th annual commemoration held in Sadako Peace Garden.  This garden – a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria – is made sacred by your presence; by your willingness to look back at the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and, most of all, by your commitment to building a more peaceful and decent world, free of nuclear threat.

    On this day 65 years ago, a single atomic bomb destroyed the city of Hiroshima, killing some 90,000 people by blast, fire and radiation.  By the end of 1945, some 140,000 victims of the bombing were dead and another 70,000 had died from the Nagasaki bombing.

    Hiroshima ushered in the Nuclear Age.  It was a tragic beginning that pointed toward the possibility of an even more tragic ending.  In the excitement that marked the end of World War II, the atomic bombings cast a dark shadow over the future of civilization and the human species.

    In the past 65 years, we have witnessed a truly mad nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union, based on the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction.  We have ascribed god-like characteristics of power and protection to bombs that have no purpose other than the threat of massive annihilation and the carrying out of that threat.

    At its peak in 1986, there were some 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  Today there are still more than 20,000 of these weapons in the arsenals of nine countries: the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Without a plan of action to eliminate these weapons, they will continue to proliferate and will be used by accident, miscalculation or intention.

    Over the past 65 years, the United States alone has spent more than $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.  We still spend more than $50 billion annually on these weapons.  What a terrible waste of resources and opportunity!

    The possession of these weapons challenges our humanity and our future.  We are here to remember what these bombs have done in the past, to imagine what they are capable of doing in the future, and to reinvigorate our commitment to ending the nuclear weapons era.

    Imagination is the creative beginning of change.  If we can imagine that a world with zero nuclear weapons it is possible to achieve such a world.  President Obama says, “America seeks the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  But he also says that he is not naïve and doesn’t see it happening in his lifetime.

    Perhaps I am naïve, but I can imagine achieving this goal in a far more urgent timeframe.  Over 4,000 Mayors for Peace throughout the world – mayors of cities large and small – believe the goal can be achieved by the year 2020.  Why not?  It is within our human capacity, if we will join together.

    To achieve a world free of nuclear weapons will require serious leadership from the US.  To achieve US leadership the people will need to lead their leaders.  That is our challenge and it is the daily work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  We thank you for caring and for joining us in this most critical work.

    I’d like to end with a poem from my new book, God’s Tears: Reflections on the Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The poem tells the story of Shoji Sawada, a young boy at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima.

    FORGIVE ME, MOTHER

    for

    Shoji Sawada

    After the bomb,
    the young boy
    awakened beneath
    the rubble of his room.

    He could hear
    his mother’s cries,
    still trapped
    within the fallen house.

    He struggled to free
    her, but he lacked
    the
    strength.

    A fire raged
    toward them.  Many people
    hurried past.

    Frightened and
    dazed, they would not stop
    to help him free
    his mother.

    He could hear
    her voice from the rubble.
    The voice was
    soft but firm.

    “You must run
    and save yourself,”
    she told
    him.  “You must go.”

    “Forgive me,” he
    said, bowing,
    “Forgive me,
    Mother.”

    He did as his
    mother wished.
    That was long
    ago, in 1945.

    The boy has long
    been a man, a good man.
    Yet he still runs from those flames.

  • El sexagésimo quinto aniversario de la Era Nuclear

    El 16 de julio de 1945 marcó el comienzo de la Era Nuclear. Ese día, Estados Unidos llevó a cabo la primera prueba de un artefacto atómico. La prueba fue nombrada Trinidad y se llevó a cabo en el campo de pruebas de Alamogordo, en el desierto Jornada del Muerto en Nuevo México. La bomba tuvo como nombre clave  “El Artefacto”.


    La prueba utilizó un dispositivo de implosión de plutonio, el mismo tipo de arma que se utilizaría en la ciudad de Nagasaki tan solo tres y media semanas después. Su fuerza explosiva fue de 20 kilotones de TNT.


    Los nombres asociados con la prueba merecen reflexión. “El Artefacto”, que indica algo simple e inocuo, se hizo estallar en un desierto llamado Jornada del Muerto. El plutonio, la fuerza explosiva de la bomba, fue nombrado por Plutón, el dios romano del mundo subterráneo. El isótopo de plutonio que se usó en la bomba, plutonio-239, es uno de los materiales radiactivos más mortales en el planeta. En la Tierra sólo existía en pequeñas cantidades antes de que EE.UU. comenzara a crearlo para su uso en las bombas por la fisión del uranio-238.


    No existe una explicación definitiva de por qué la prueba fue nombrada Trinidad, pero en general parece que se asocia con un concepto religioso de Dios. Los pensamientos de J. Robert Oppenheimer, director científico del proyecto creador de la bomba y quien dio nombre a la prueba, ofrecen algunas pistas.


    “No está claro por qué elegí el nombre, pero sé bien las ideas que rondaban por mi cabeza. Hay un poema de John Donne, escrito poco antes de su muerte, que yo conozco y amo. Esta es una cita de ese poema: «En Occidente y Oriente / en todos los mapas – yo soy uno- uno solo, / Y la muerte toca la resurrección.”   Eso aún no explica lo de la Trinidad, pero en otro poema, más conocido como devocionario, Donne dice, ‘Golpea mi corazón, tres personas en un Dios.”’


    La reacción de Oppenheimer al ser testigo de la explosión atómica nos hace recordar estas líneas de la escritura sagrada hinduista Bhagavad Gita.


    Si el resplandor de mil soles


    Estallaran de una vez en el cielo,


    Eso sería como el esplendor del Poderoso …


    Me he convertido en la Muerte,


    El destructor de mundos.


    ¿Oppenheimer pensó que ese día había muerto, o más bien, todos nosotros.? Desde luego que esa primera explosión nuclear presagiaba la posibilidad de que el mundo sería destrozado (¿por un “Poderoso”?), Muy pronto eso ocurriría en Hiroshima y Nagasaki.


    Muchas cosas han pasado en estos 65 años de la Era Nuclear. En Hiroshima y Nagasaki hemos visto la devastación que las armas nucleares inflingen sobre las ciudades y sus habitantes. Hemos sido testigos de una carrera armamentista verdaderamente absurda entre Estados Unidos y la antigua Unión Soviética, en la que el número de armas nucleares en el mundo aumentó a 70.000. Hemos aprendido que un arma nuclear puede destruir una ciudad, unas pocas armas nucleares pueden destruir un país, y una guerra nuclear podría destruir la civilización y la mayoría de las formas de vida en el planeta.


    Las armas nucleares han puesto en peligro la especie humana, y aún hoy existen más de 20.000 armas nucleares en el mundo. Nueve países ya poseen estas armas. La humanidad sigue jugando con el fuego del omnicidio – la muerte de todos. Todavía estamos esperando por los líderes que nos llevarán más allá de esta amenaza global hacia un futuro común. En lugar de seguir esperando, tenemos que convertirnos en líderes.


    En este 65 º aniversario del embarque en el camino de la muerte, debemos cambiar de rumbo y eludir el precipicio nuclear. Las armas son ilegales, inmorales, antidemocráticas e innecesarias militarmente. La manera más segura de ponerlas bajo control es mediante la negociación de un nuevo tratado, una Convención de Armas Nucleares, para que en forma transparente, progresiva, verificable e irreversible se logre la eliminación de las armas nucleares.


    Estados Unidos condujo al mundo a la era nuclear. El presidente Obama ha señalado que el país también tiene una responsabilidad moral para encontrar una salida. Esto se puede lograr, pero no con ciudadanos ignorantes, apáticos y en estado de negación. Sesenta y cinco años en el Camino de la Muerte es demasiado tiempo. Llegó el momento para que los ciudadanos despierten y se involucren en este tema como si su futuro dependiera de ello, y en realidad así es.


    La ferviente oración de los hibakusha, los supervivientes de Hiroshima y Nagasaki, es “¡Nunca más!” Ellos hablan para que su pasado no se convierta en nuestro futuro. Es algo en lo que cada uno de nosotros debe participar, tanto con voces y acciones para lograr un mundo libre de armas nucleares.

  • The Anniversary of the Nuclear Age

    The Anniversary of the Nuclear Age

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    July 16, 1945 marked the beginning of the Nuclear Age. On that day, the United States conducted the first explosive test of an atomic device. The test was code-named Trinity and took place at the Alamogordo Test Range in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto Desert. The bomb itself was code-named “The Gadget.”

    The Trinity test used a plutonium implosion device, the same type of weapon that would be used on the city of Nagasaki just three and a half weeks later.  It had the explosive force of 20 kilotons of TNT.

    The names associated with the test deserve reflection. “The Gadget,” something so simple and innocuous, was exploded in a desert whose name in Spanish means “Journey of Death.”  Plutonium, the explosive force in the bomb, was named for Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. The isotope of plutonium that was used in the bomb, plutonium-239, is one of the most deadly radioactive materials on the planet.  It existed only in minute quantities on Earth before the US began creating it for use in its bombs by the fissioning of uranium-238.

    There is no definitive explanation for why the test was named Trinity, but it generally seems most associated with a religious concept of God. The thoughts of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project to create the bomb and the person who named the test, provide insights into the name:

    “Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: ‘As West and East / In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection.’ That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God.’”

    Oppenheimer’s reaction to witnessing the explosion of the atomic device was to recall these lines from the Bhagavad Gita:

    If the radiance of a thousand suns
    Were to burst at once into the sky,
    That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One…
    I am become Death,
    The shatterer of Worlds.

    Did Oppenheimer think that he had become death that day, or that all of us had?  Certainly that first nuclear explosion portended the possibility that worlds would be shattered (by a “Mighty One”?), as they were soon to be in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Trinity test. We are now 65 years into the Nuclear Age.  At Hiroshima and Nagasaki we have seen the devastation that nuclear weapons can inflict on cities and their inhabitants. We have witnessed a truly mad arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, in which the number of nuclear weapons in the world rose to 70,000. We have learned that one nuclear weapon can destroy a city, a few nuclear weapons can destroy a country, and a nuclear war could destroy civilization and most of the complex life forms on the planet.

    Nuclear weapons have endangered the human species, and yet today there are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Nine countries now possess these weapons. Humanity is still playing with the fire of omnicide – the death of all. We are still waiting for the leaders who will take us beyond this overarching threat to our common future. Instead of continuing to wait, we must ourselves become these leaders.

    On this 65th anniversary of embarking on the Journey of Death, we must change course and move back from the nuclear precipice. The weapons are illegal, immoral, undemocratic and militarily unnecessary. The surest way to bring them under control is by negotiating a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    The United States led the world into the Nuclear Age. President Obama has pointed out that the country also has a moral responsibility to lead the way out. This can be done, but not with a citizenry that is ignorant, apathetic and in denial. Sixty-five years on the Journey of Death is long enough. It is past time for citizens to awaken and become engaged in this issue as if their future depended upon it, as it does.

    The fervent prayer of the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is “Never Again!”  They speak out so that their past does not become our future. It is a prayer that each of us must join in answering, both with our voices and actions to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

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  • Tale of Two Nuclear Whistleblowers

    Reliable sources have revealed that as a result of a secret trial, Iranian nuclear whistleblower Amid Nasri has been sentenced to 18 years in solitary confinement.  Nasri, a former worker at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant, revealed to the The Sunday Times in London that Iran was developing nuclear materials as part of a program to create nuclear weapons.  Lured to Rome by a strikingly beautiful Iranian secret agent, Nasri was kidnapped by the secret service and returned to Iran for trial.  

    The government of Iran issued a brief statement in which they claim that Nasri violated the national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran and was tried and punished accordingly.  They state that he had a contractual obligation not to release any information concerning the work of the uranium enrichment plant where he worked.  

    Nasri has been incarcerated in Iran’s highest level security prison and has not been allowed to speak to the press or to foreign officials.  He is under such severe restrictions that he is not allowed even to speak with other prison inmates.  

    There have been widespread protests from Western governments about Nasri’s treatment at the hands of the Iranian government.  A high-level UK official called the secret trial a “sham of the first order,” and harshly criticized the Iranian government for its heavy handed treatment of Nasri.   US officials have also protested Nasri’s conviction, calling him a hero for making public the information on the Iranian nuclear weapon program. 

    Before you become too concerned about the harsh treatment of this Iranian whistleblower acting for the common good, I need to tell you that he is fictional.  He does not exist.  There is no Iranian whistleblower Amid Nasri.  There is also no proof of an Iranian nuclear weapon program, although there are concerns about its nuclear enrichment program.

    The story, though, is not entirely false.  There is an Israeli nuclear whistleblower by the name of Mordechai Vanunu.  He worked as a nuclear technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Israel.  He revealed information on the Israeli nuclear weapon program to the The Sunday Times in London in 1986.  He was lured from London to Rome by a beautiful Israeli secret agent, where he was kidnapped by Israel’s secret service and returned to Israel.  There he was given a secret trial, convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment.  He served more than 11 years of his sentence in solitary confinement.  The Israelis claimed that Vanunu violated his contractual obligations of secrecy and was a national security risk. 

    Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, but under harsh parole terms.  He is not allowed to leave Israel or to travel too close to the Israeli border.  Nor is he allowed to talk to foreign journalists.  In 2007, Vanunu was sentenced to six more months in prison for violating the terms of his parole for speaking to the foreign media in 2004.  The sentence was later reduced by half, and in May 2010 Vanunu was returned to prison for three months.  Amnesty International has called Vanunu a prisoner of conscience.  Although he has received many awards for his courage in blowing the whistle on Israel’s nuclear weapons program and has been nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has received virtually no support from Western governments.

    What are we to learn from this tale of two whistleblowers, one fictional, one real?  One important lesson is the danger of nuclear double standards.  We cannot be content to make a hero of a fictional Iranian nuclear whistleblower, while turning a blind eye to the treatment of a real-life Israeli nuclear whistleblower and to the Israeli nuclear arsenal.

    Nuclear weapons are not reasonable weapons in the hands of any nation – not Israel, not Iran, not the US, the UK, or any other nation.  We should not be complacent with the punishment of truth-telling messengers such as Vanunu.  We should laud them and work to assure that no nation holds in its hands the nuclear power of mass annihilation. 

    The Final Document of the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference calls for a Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, a long time aspiration of the people of this region.  If such a zone is created, it will mean that Iran and other countries in the region will not be able to develop nuclear weapons, but it will also mean that Israel will not be able to continue to possess its nuclear arsenal, which is thought to contain some 200 nuclear weapons. 

    If we are going to prevent future replays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or even worse scenarios, we must rid the world of nuclear weapons.  It will not be easy, but it is necessary if we are to assure the continuation of human life on our planet.  President Obama has told us that America seeks “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  In that world, whistleblowers like Mordechai Vanunu will be respected and honored for the courage they displayed in revealing the truth in the face of the overwhelming power and hypocrisy of the state and of a global system that unwisely supported nuclear double standards.

  • Why We Wage Peace

    Some things are worth Waging Peace for: our planet and its diverse life forms, including humankind; our children and their dreams; our common future.  All of these are threatened by the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.

    We live on an amazing planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life, and does so in abundance and diversity.  Our planet is worth Waging Peace for – against those who are despoiling and ruining its delicate and beautiful environment.  

    On our unique planet are creatures of all shapes and sizes: Birds that fly, fish that swim, animals that inhabit jungles and deserts, mountains and plains, rivers and oceans.  Life is worth Waging Peace for – against those who are disrespecting and destroying the habitats of creatures great and small.

    Among the diverse creatures on our planet are human beings.  We are homo sapiens, the knowing ones, and are relative newcomers to the planet.  Yet, our impact has been profound.  We are creatures capable of learning and loving, of being imaginative and inventive, of being compassionate and kind.  We are worth Waging Peace for – against those who would diminish us by undermining our dignity and human rights.

    Human beings, like other forms of life, produce offspring who are innocent and helpless at birth.  These human children, all children, require care and nurturing as they grow to maturity.  The world’s children are worth Waging Peace for – against those who would threaten their future with war and other forms of overt and structural violence.

    Children as they grow have dreams of living happy and decent lives, dreams of building a better future in peaceful and just societies.  These dreams are worth Waging Peace for – against those whose myopia and greed rob children anywhere of a better future.

    Each generation shares a responsibility to pass the planet and civilization on intact to the next generation.  Accepting this responsibility is an important part of Waging Peace.  It is a way of paying a debt of gratitude to all who have preceded us on the planet by assuring that there is a better future.

    In the Nuclear Age, we humans, by our cleverness, have invented tools capable of our own demise.  Nuclear weapons are not really weapons; they are instruments of annihilation and perhaps of omnicide, the death of all.  Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age requires that we awaken to the dangers that these weapons pose to humankind and all life, and work to rid the world of these insane tools of global devastation.

    For too long humanity has lived with nuclear policies of Mutually Assured Destruction, with the appropriate acronym of MAD.  We need a new and distinctly different formulation: Planetary Assured Security and Survival, with the acronym PASS for passing the world on intact to the next generation.

    Among the greatest obstacles to assuring survival in the Nuclear Age are ignorance, apathy, complacency and despair.  These can only be overcome by education and advocacy; education to raise awareness of what needs to change and advocacy to increase engagement in bringing about the needed change.   

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has three major goals: the abolition of nuclear weapons, the strengthening of international law, and the empowerment of new peace leaders.   The Foundation was created in 1982 in the belief that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age and that the people must lead their leaders if we are to assure a safe and secure human future.  We need your generous support to continue to educate and advocate for a brighter future for humanity.

  • Remembering Frank King Kelly

    Click here to view our Frank K. Kelly memorial page, which includes photos, reflections and more.

    Frank King Kelly lived a long and full life.  He died peacefully just one day before his 96th birthday.  He was a fortunate man and all of us whose lives were touched by him were fortunate as well.

    Frank was married to his great love, Barbara, for 54 years.  She was his rock, his partner and his strongest booster.  She also kept his feet on the ground, or at least tried.  Frank had two sons, Terry and Stephen.  He was very proud of them and of their wives.  He took joy in their accomplishments and those of his three grandsons.  He was delighted by the recent birth of his great grandson. 

    Frank had a remarkable career.  He was a reporter for the Kansas City Star, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a soldier in World War II, a speech writer for Harry Truman, assistant to the Senate Majority Leader, vice president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and a founder and senior vice president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. 

    To everything he did, Frank brought creativity and optimism.  He believed firmly that everyone deserves a seat at humanity’s table, and he worked for this goal throughout his life. 

    Frank loved to tell stories and he had many of them.  As a young boy, he would be sent in to awaken his father who had recurring nightmares after returning from World War I.  His father’s strong and lasting torment from the hand-to-hand combat he had experienced was Frank’s initiation to the trauma of war.

    As a teenager, Frank wrote science fiction stories.  He often finished 15,000 word stories at one go, with no revisions required.  The editors to whom he sent his stories thought they were publishing the work of an older man rather than that of a teenager.  In 1996, Frank would be inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame, an award for contributions to science fiction dating back more than 30 years.

    At the Kansas City Star Frank met Ernest Hemingway, who told him that he would have to leave Missouri if he ever hoped to be a writer.  Frank did leave, and over the course of his lifetime wrote ten books, including one only a few years before his death. 

    As a soldier and reporter in World War II, Frank interviewed many dying soldiers.  At the end of their young lives, he said, they all cried out for their mothers.  Frank was with the first group of American troops to liberate Paris.  He loved it that they were greeted with such warmth and excitement, but Frank had seen enough to have a deep loathing for war and its consequences.

    Frank was asked to write speeches for Harry Truman in his 1948 campaign.  Most of his friends thought that Truman was a sure loser and that Frank would be crazy to take the job, but Barbara encouraged him and he did take it.  Throughout his life, Frank was fiercely loyal to Truman, a man he admired greatly.  When Frank introduced his mother to Harry Truman in the Oval Office, she told Truman how wonderful she thought it was that Frank and he had won that election.

    Frank next took a position as assistant to the Senate Majority Leader and then as staff director of the Senate Majority Policy Committee.  I don’t think he enjoyed that experience of power politics, and he was happy to accept a series of new assignments.

    In 1952, Frank served as Washington director of the Harriman for President Committee.  In 1952 and 1953, Frank was the US director of the Study of World News, conducted by the International Press Institute.  In 1953 and 1954, Frank directed a national campaign against book censorship.

    In 1956, Frank became the vice president of the Fund for the Republic, a nonprofit organization funded by the Ford Foundation, which was established to “support activities directed toward the elimination of restrictions on freedom of thought, inquiry and expression in the United States….”  The fund was a staunch opponent of McCarthyism. 

    When the Fund established the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara in 1959, Frank and Barbara moved their family to Santa Barbara.  Frank worked closely at the Center with its founder and president, Robert Hutchins, for the next 17 years.  At the Center, Frank initiated two major international convocations around Pope John XXIII’s papal encyclical, “Pacem in Terris.”

    It was at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions that I met Frank when I joined the staff there in 1972.  Later, after Robert Hutchins had died and the Center for all practical purposes had ceased to exist, Frank wrote a seminal book about it, The Court of Reason.

    Frank and I worked together in founding the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  At first, he thought it was a farfetched idea that we could create a new organization that could make a difference in building a more peaceful world, but he believed we should try and we did.  We founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 1982, along with three other Santa Barbarans.  We had no resources to start with, but a fervent belief that peace was an imperative of the Nuclear Age and that it would be necessary for citizens to lead their leaders.  That was 28 years ago, and throughout that time Frank and I conferred on almost a daily basis.

    Frank’s wife, Barbara, was a poet and, after her death in 1995, the Foundation established the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards in her honor.  Each year these awards are given “to encourage poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit.”  The awards are given in three categories: adult, teenage, and 12 and under.

    Frank had many wonderful characteristics that stand out.  He was unfailingly optimistic and believed that better days were ahead.  He was a staunch advocate of women, and believed that their nurturing style of leadership was needed to build a better world.  He was deeply loyal to his friends and colleagues.  He had a special sense of humor and couldn’t resist a good pun.  He was committed to ending war, abolishing nuclear weapons and building a better future for humanity. 

    In 2002, the Foundation established the Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future.  These lectures are given annually by a distinguished individual “to explore the contours of humanity’s present circumstances and ways by which we can shape a more promising future for our planet and all its inhabitants.”  Frank himself gave the first lecture.  He entitled it, “Glorious Beings: What We Are and What We May Become.”  He believed that each of us is a glorious being.

    Frank lived by one of the core values of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: shameless idealism.  He was an idealist without regret, a visionary who saw that a better future was not only necessary but possible.   He worked daily throughout his life to achieve a more decent world.

    I would sum up Frank’s life by saying that he was decent, kind and loving, and he never gave up his desire to create a better world.  His life brought dignity to being human.  He was a glorious being.

    Frank was fond of quoting this line by William Blake, “…he who kisses joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”  Frank had a special relationship with joy, and I believe he continues to live in “eternity’s sunrise.”

  • A Message to Youth: Live to Your Full Capacity and Save the Planet

    This speech was delivered to the youth of Soka Gakkai International in Japan on February 8, 2010.

    I want to talk with you as youth, as a group of youth who care about our world.  One thing is certain: You will inherit the world.  It will not be either the strong or the meek who will inherit the Earth; for better or for worse, it will be the youth.  You will inherit what we, the older generation, leave to you, and you will hopefully do better than we have done in preserving this beautiful planet and the diversity of its life forms.  You will hopefully do better in achieving and maintaining peace on our planet.  You will also have the eventual responsibility, as each generation does, to pass the world on in tact to the next generation.  

    New generations of youth keep coming, like waves against the shore.  Now it is your turn to reach the shore.  As animals once left the sea for the land, you now come of age to take responsibility in the world.  And you come of age at a time of great challenge.  The generations of your parents and grandparents have left you a world that is fraught with dangers and inequities.  The test of your generation will be in the way you create a more just and decent world.  But you will have another challenge as well.  You will have to navigate the dangers of nuclear weapons – weapons capable of ending civilization and destroying most life on Earth.

    The human future is not guaranteed.  That is the most profound meaning of the Nuclear Age.  It is an era in which we have created weapons that are capable of omnicide, the destruction of all.  Omnicide is an extension of suicide and genocide to the entire world.  We live in a time when it is possible to destroy everything.  We have proven our cleverness in creating tools of destruction.  Now it is up to us, and to you as youth in particular, to find the means to assure that these tools are not used and are abolished.

    How will you do this?  To start with, you must recognize the nature of the problem.  This is no ordinary problem that can be left to work itself out.  It requires a plan.  Who will create and implement such a plan?  Who will take the lead in assuring that we are progressing toward zero nuclear weapons?  The problem could become much worse than it is today.  Instead of nine nuclear weapon states, imagine a world in which there are 20 or 50 or 100.  What kind of world would that be?  

    We have a Non-Proliferation Treaty that seeks to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons.  That treaty has a provision for nuclear disarmament, so that there will not be permanent classes of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”  Everyone recognizes that such a world would not be fair, so Article VI of the treaty requires that the nuclear weapon states engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament.  The International Court of Justice interpreted this clause in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.  They said, “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    I would like to share with you some additional reasons to abolish nuclear weapons:

    1. They are long-distance killing machines incapable of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, the aged and the newly born, or between men, women and children.   As such, they are instruments of dehumanization as well as annihilation.

    2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.  Nuclear war could cause deadly climate change, putting human existence at risk.  Here is what one researcher, Steven Starr, concluded from reviewing the recent literature on nuclear weapons and climate change: “The detonation of a tiny fraction of the operational nuclear arsenals within cities would generate enough smoke to cause catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of the protective stratospheric ozone layer.  Environmental devastation caused by a war fought with many thousands of strategic nuclear weapons would quickly leave the Earth uninhabitable.”

    3. They threaten to foreclose the future, negating our common responsibility to future generations.

    4. They make cowards of their possessors, and in their use there can be no decency or honor.  This was recognized by most of the leading US generals and admirals of World War II, including Dwight Eisenhower, Hap Arnold, Omar Bradley, and William Leahy.  Admiral Leahy, chief of staff to President Truman, said: “The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

    5. They divide the world’s nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing false and unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.  

    6. They are a distortion of science and technology, siphoning off our scientific and technological resources and twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.  On the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a senior Manhattan Project scientist, Hans Bethe, called upon “…all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons – and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.”  

    7. They mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.  The International Court of Justice has ruled that the threat of use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal and any use that violated international humanitarian law would be illegal.  It is virtually impossible to imagine a threat or use of nuclear weapons that would not violate international humanitarian law by failing to discriminate between soldiers and civilians, causing unnecessary suffering or being disproportionate to a preceding attack.  

    8. They waste our resources on the development of instruments of annihilation.  The United States alone has spent over $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems since the onset of the Nuclear Age.

    9. They concentrate power in the hands of a small group of individuals and, in doing so, undermine democracy.  They give over to a few individuals, usually men, greater power of annihilation than at any previous time in history.

    10. They are morally abhorrent, as recognized by virtually every religious organization, and their mere existence corrupts our humanity.  If we are willing to tolerate these weapons and their indiscriminate power of annihilation, then who are we?  What do these weapons say about our humanity, our human decency?

    I think it should be clear that one primary goal for youth should be to act and to lead in abolishing nuclear weapons.  

    Later this year, in May, there will be an eighth Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.  This is the only treaty that has provisions requiring the nuclear weapon states to pursue the goal of nuclear disarmament.  It will be an important meeting after the failure of the last NPT Review Conference in 2005.  To give you an idea of how much there is to accomplish, I want to share with you the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s priority recommendations for the conference:

    1. Each signatory nuclear weapon state should provide an accurate public accounting of its nuclear arsenal, conduct a public environmental and human assessment of its potential use, and devise and make public a roadmap for going to zero nuclear weapons.

    2. All signatory nuclear weapon states should reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies by taking all nuclear forces off high-alert status, pledging No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapon states and No Use against non-nuclear weapon states.

    3. All enriched uranium and reprocessed plutonium – military and civilian – and their production facilities (including all uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technology) should be placed under strict and effective international safeguards.

    4. All signatory states should review Article IV of the NPT, promoting the “inalienable right” to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, in light of the nuclear proliferation problems posed by nuclear electricity generation.

    5. Each nuclear weapon state should comply with Article VI of the NPT, reinforced and clarified by the 1996 World Court Advisory Opinion, by commencing negotiations in good faith on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons, and complete these negotiations by the year 2015.

    The problems may seem complex, but the bottom line is this: Nuclear weapons threaten the human future, and they must be abolished.  This is a human issue that is every bit as consequential as was the movement to abolish slavery in the 19th century.  There are some acts that cannot be tolerated, and slavery and the threat of nuclear omnicide are among them.

    You can be a voice for abolition by learning more, supporting the hibakusha, and speaking out for a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.  Don’t be satisfied with anything less than a clear commitment to a world with zero nuclear weapons, and demand more from political leaders who say that the goal is too difficult or cannot be achieved within their lifetime.  

    In addition to working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, your generation faces many other challenges as well.  There is no major international problem in our world that does not require international cooperation to solve.  Thus, we need to work together.  With modern communications and transportation, your generation is well equipped to cooperate across all borders.  Really, borders exist primarily in our minds.  They are not drawn upon the Earth, only on maps.  And all borders are permeable to ideas and trade, as well as to pollution and disease.  The bottom line is that we live in a single unitary world.  We all share one Earth, and we can make of it a paradise or a nightmare.  We choose – by our actions or inaction.    

    We live in a world of some 200 nation states.  Most of these spend far too much on their military forces, so that in total the world spends some $1.5 trillion a year on its militaries.  We know that for a relatively small proportion of this amount – five or ten percent – it would be possible to make enormous progress on the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals.  These goals include ending poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.  The achievement of these goals would reflect real advances in human security, and with relatively small reductions in global military expenditures we could make them happen.

    As you go through life, you will have many challenges.  Each of you will have to find your own way in the world.  I want to share with you 12 ideas on how to meet these challenges.  These involve using all your miraculous gifts to live to your full capacity as human beings.

    1.    Learn from others, but think for yourself.  (Use your mind and judgment.)

    2.    Decide for yourself what is right or wrong.  (Use your conscience.)

    3.    Speak out for what you believe in.  (Use your voice.)

    4.    Stand up for what is right. (Use your power as an individual.)

    5.    Set goals and be persistent in working for them.  (Use your vision and determination.)

    6.    Live by the Golden Rule.  That is, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  (Use your feelings as a point of reference.)

    7.    Recognize the miracle that you are.  You are unique in the universe.  (Be spiritually aware.)

    8.    Never harm another miracle.  Choose to solve conflicts without resort to violence.  (Be nonviolent.)

    9.    Believe in yourself.  (Be trustworthy, even to yourself.)

    10.    Help others.  (Be giving.)

    11.    Be a citizen of the world.  (Be inclusive and embrace all life.)

    12.    Be a force for peace and justice.  (Be courageous and committed.)

    I hope you will find joy in life and also contribute to creating a more just and decent world.  If you care about life and recognize its preciousness, you are needed to create a better future.  Albert Camus, the great French writer and philosopher, said: “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”

    Camus responded to the first atomic bombing in this way: “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”  I stand with Albert Camus in choosing to wage peace.  I hope you will as well.

    As you may know, I engaged in a dialogue with SGI President Daisaku Ikeda.  We espoused the principle of choosing hope, rather than succumbing to ignorance, apathy or despair.  Hope gives rise to action, and action, in turn, gives rise to hope.  Our shared hope includes the goal of building a more peaceful world, free of nuclear weapons – a daunting but essential goal.  I stand with Daisaku Ikeda in choosing hope.  I’m sure that you stand with him as well.

    You are the future.  May each of you choose hope, wage peace, and live your lives fully and with a full measure of joy.  I wish you all much success.

    Let me conclude with a poem that I wrote for a Soka High School graduation some years ago.  I think its message remains valid today.

    ADVICE TO GRADUATES

    Always remember this:
    You are a miracle
    Made up of dancing atoms
    That can talk and sing,
    Listen and remember, and laugh,
    At times even at yourself.

    You are a miracle
    Whose atoms existed before time.
    Born of the Big Bang, you are connected
    To everything – to mountains and oceans,
    To the winds and wilderness, to the creatures
    Of the sea and air and land.
    You are a member of the human family.

    You are a miracle, entirely unique.
    There has never been another
    With your combination of talents, dreams,
    Desires and hopes.  You can create.
    You are capable of love and compassion.

    You are a miracle.
    You are a gift of creation to itself.
    You are here for a purpose, which you must find.
    Your presence here is sacred – and you will
    Change the world.

  • Martin Luther King’s Legacy of Peace

    Martin Luther King’s Legacy of Peace

    Forty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. King was 39 years old, and was already a towering figure on the American and global landscape. He was best known as a civil rights leader, but he was also an activist for the alleviation of poverty and a strong critic of the US war in Vietnam. King, following in the footsteps of Gandhi, stood firmly for nonviolence and peace, and against the advice of many of his supporters spoke out powerfully against the war.

    In the forty years that have passed since King’s assassination, his commitment to peace and strong statements against the US war in Vietnam have often been omitted in recalling his legacy. But today, as the US fights another illegal and immoral war in a distant land, again killing young Americans and hundreds of thousands of civilians, his fierce opposition to the Vietnam War should be remembered for the lessons he left us.

    Just three weeks after the assassination, his widow, Coretta Scott King, gave a speech in New York City that Dr. King had been scheduled to give. In that speech, she read from some notes that Dr. King had scribbled in preparation for the speech, “Ten Commandments on Vietnam.” With small changes, these could be called, “Ten Commandments on Iraq.” They go to the very roots of our culture of militarism.

    These are Dr. King’s “Ten Commandments on Vietnam,” written shortly before his untimely death:

    1. Thou shalt not believe in a military victory. 2. Thou shalt not believe in a political victory. 3. Thou shalt not believe that the Vietnamese people love us. 4. Thou shalt not believe that the Saigon government has the support of the people. 5. Thou shalt not believe that the majority of the South Vietnamese look upon the Viet Cong as terrorists. 6. Thou shalt not believe the figures of killed enemies or killed Americans. 7. Thou shalt not believe that the generals know best. 8. Thou shalt not believe that the enemies’ victory means communism. 9. Thou shalt not believe that the world supports the United States. 10. Thou shalt not kill.

    Dr. King knew how to speak truth to power, and in his courage and commitment lay his own power. Had he lived, he would have been an imposing force for peace in America and the world. His commandments confront the comfortable lies our leaders tell about war, which are so widely accepted without questioning.

    In Iraq, there will be no military victory, nor political victory. Victory is a dangerous illusion, and we have already lost the war. The Iraqi people do not love us. We have destroyed their lives and their country. The Iraqi government does not have the support of the Iraqi people and is only held up by our military power. We don’t know how the Iraqi people view the Iraqi fighters, but we do know that they want the US to leave their country.

    In the Iraq War, the US does not even bother to count the numbers of Iraqis that have been killed, and it hides the body bags of Americans killed in the war from the American people. The generals do not know best. They know only how to wage war and even at that they are failing. The enemies’ victory no longer means communism, but neither does it mean victory for terrorism. The world does not support the United States in this war. It never has. The war was never sanctioned by the United Nations and, like the war in Vietnam, is an illegal and immoral war.

    And finally, Dr. King, a Baptist minister, reminds us, of this age-old wisdom: “Thou shalt not kill.” He challenges us to rise above our leaders, our culture and our history. He challenges us to be something we have never been, a nation that is peaceful and just.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a councilor of the World Future Council.

  • Arthur N.R. Robinson and the Power of One

    I believe in the Power of One, the capacity of a single individual to make an important difference in our world. In many ways, this may seem like an article of faith, rooted in hope. But, in fact, it is more than an article of faith, for there are indeed individuals whose lives have made a significant difference in improving our world. One such individual is Arthur N.R. Robinson, who has served as both Prime Minister and President of his country. He has had a remarkable and charmed life, and he has altered the course of history by his extraordinary leadership in the creation of an International Criminal Court.

    In the 1980s, I became a supporter of the creation of an International Criminal Court, having been introduced to the idea by Robert Woetzel, a man who was also a close and long-time friend of President Robinson. I made many trips to the United Nations to encourage progress on this lofty idea of creating a court that would follow in the Nuremberg tradition of holding individual leaders to account for the commission of heinous crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Although it was clear that this was a much needed innovation to the international system of institutions, it seemed quite unlikely at that time that it would be possible to gain the requisite international support for this bold conception.

    And yet, by 1998, the countries of the world gathered in Rome and established a Treaty to create this new Court, a court that would give life to the Principles of Nuremberg as we moved into a new century. It is certain that this essential innovation in international institution building could not have occurred were it not for a single individual, Arthur N.R. Robinson, who as the Prime Minister of Trinadad and Tobago put the United Nations on track to achieve this goal. Of course, many other people played important roles as well, but without this head of government taking bold action to put the matter on the agenda of the United Nations it could not have happened.

    Some people believe that only the big and powerful countries can influence the international system and the course of history. They are wrong. Trinidad and Tobago, under the leadership of a man of vision and determination, led the way to the establishment of an International Criminal Court, an institution that holds the promise of restoring integrity to world affairs. President Robinson and Trinidad and Tobago should be justly proud of what they have accomplished. By this effort and accomplishment Trinidad and Tobago has earned a vaulted place on the international map.

    A.N.R. Robinson, even as he enters his ninth decade of life, has not chosen to rest upon his laurels, as much as he may deserve to do so. Rather, he has recently accepted the responsibility to join the distinguished five-member Board of Directors of the Trust Fund for Victims of International Crime, and in that capacity he continues to play an important role in working for justice in the international system.

    I wonder if the people of Trinidad and Tobago recognize how significant their contribution to building this new international institution has been. Perhaps they appreciate President Robinson’s efforts, but do they embrace these efforts with a sense of national pride? And, most important, do they join in the commitment to strengthening the structure of international criminal law so that the world may be spared future aggressive wars, genocides and crimes against humanity by having in place a mechanism to hold individual leaders to account for the commission of such crimes?

    There remains an important role for the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago to play on this issue – both at the government level and also at the level of civil society – that is so critical for humanity’s future. I hope that the government of Trinidad and Tobago will not give up its efforts to further the system of international criminal justice represented by the International Criminal Court. Perhaps, though, the government of this country, like most governments, will need a push from below, from its citizens, if it is to rise to a higher plane.

    I would like to propose that citizens of Trinidad and Tobago create a civil society organization that will provide creative ideas and assert public pressure for strengthening the International Criminal Court. The work of such a civil society organization could connect with the United Nations and with like-minded citizens throughout the world. It could carry forward the vision of A.N.R. Robinson and build upon his work. And I would hope that for many years to come he would be a wise and patient mentor to the youthful participants in such an organization.

    There is much still to be done. Sadly, I must recognize that my country, a country of enormous economic and military power but presently lacking a sound moral foundation, has refused to join the International Criminal Court and has actively opposed it. The United States government has forced other countries throughout the world to sign bilateral agreements with it, stating that they will never turn over US citizens to the International Criminal Court, regardless of the crimes committed. This is a very different United States government than the one that supported and encouraged the Nuremburg Tribunals following World War II. It is a government that is unfortunately seeking to protect its own high authorities from scrutiny and accountability for their own wrongdoing.

    We know that changing the world is not an easy matter. There is no magic wand. It takes the determination of great leaders of vision like A.N.R. Robinson, but it also takes the commitment and persistence of many people who join together for a noble cause. I think it would be extremely significant for Trinidad and Tobago and useful for the world to establish here the civil society organization I have mentioned with the purpose of forwarding the goal of an International Criminal Court that will be universal in its jurisdiction and by its legal force will raise the moral standards of humankind. Personally, I would like to see this organization originate in Trinidad and Tobago and be called, the A.N.R. Robinson Center for International Criminal Justice. It could be an institute within the newly established A.N.R. Robinson Museum, Library and Ethics Center that will be located in Castara on the island of Tobago.

    A.N.R. Robinson’s life strengthens my faith in the power of an individual to make a difference in our world. He is a man of rock solid principles. Integrity and courage have been the hallmarks of his life and career. As a political leader, he understood clearly the need for all leaders to be held to high standards if we are to have justice. And thus, in pursuing an International Criminal Court, A.N.R. Robinson acted for the benefit of all humanity.

    The number of people of whom this can be said is not large, and includes some of the greatest peace leaders of our time. I believe that it is a high badge of honor. At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we honored President Robinson with our Distinguished Peace Leadership Award in 2002, and he was kind enough to come to Santa Barbara to receive the award. This is only one of the many awards he has received for his efforts to establish an International Criminal Court.

    When a man of such great accomplishments in the world as A.N.R. Robinson is kind and humble, it reveals a nobility of spirit. I feel very fortunate to count among my friends a man of such bright and noble spirit, sterling character and significant achievements as Arthur N.R. Robinson.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.