Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: From the President

Nuclear Justice Efforts Are Here to Stay

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The following article was co-authored by Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Christian Ciobanu and published in Common Dreams on November 19, 2024.

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Nuclear Justice Efforts Are Here to Stay

The states that have caused harm to peoples around the planet can finally stop pretending that such harms are either nonexistent or that they have done enough to address them.

On November 7, the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly supported a resolution to help victims of nuclear weapons use and testing. Brought forward by the Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati, and co-sponsored by 39 additional U.N. Member States, the resolution received 169 votes in favor, with only four nuclear weapon possessors—Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—voting against it. The remaining five nuclear armed states (China, India, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States), plus Poland, all abstained.

The vote is a resounding affirmation that nuclear justice efforts are here to stay. The states that have caused harm to peoples around the planet, including their own citizens and those whose care they were entrusted with, can finally stop pretending that such harms are either nonexistent or that they have done enough to address them. The nuclear weapon possessors, most especially the five nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, United States, and the United Kingdom—recognized as such by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, must engage in earnest.

Ultimately, nuclear justice must also include elimination of all nuclear weapon arsenals. This would ensure that the suffering of those impacted by nuclear weapons has not been in vain.

Ever-growing understanding of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapon attacks by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the testing of nuclear weapons that lasted for decades and reached numerous corners of the globe, provided a huge impetus behind the Humanitarian Initiative, a successful effort started in the early 2010s by a group of states in collaboration with civil society, all motivated to change the nuclear weapons status quo. Coupled with the growing appreciation of what nuclear war would bring today or tomorrow (subject of another U.N. resolution that passed this month with 141 in favor votes, 30 abstentions, and France, Russia, and the United Kingdom voting no), as well as the research on the risk of nuclear weapon use and the recognition that no adequate response could be devised for such a possibility, the Humanitarian Initiative led to successful efforts to bring into the U.N. system a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons or TPNW).

When the TPNW was drafted in 2017, the diplomats recognized that it wasn’t enough to prohibit nuclear weapon activities, but that the past and present consequences for people and the environment had to be addressed head-on. This led to the Articles 6 and 7 of the TPNW on victim assistance, environmental remediation, and international cooperation, which are collectively referred to as the humanitarian provisions of the treaty. The goal is not just to make these ongoing harms integral to the effort to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons, but to address them directly and provide tangible results for the communities that have suffered from adverse health and socioeconomic impacts for decades and whose environments may still be radiologically contaminated. Having entered into force in 2021, the TPNW is now faced with the implementation of these provisions for two states that are already parties to the treaty, Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati. Kazakhstan was the site of 456 Soviet nuclear tests from 1949 to 1991, while Kiribati was home from 1957 to 1962 to United States and United Kingdom tests whose cumulative yield was equivalent to more than 2,000 Hiroshima bombs.

The humanitarian provisions of the TPNW have led to the broadening of conversations about these harms and the new norm arising from the treaty of the obligation to address them. While the United States had a Radiation Exposure Compensation Act from the early 1990s until its expiration earlier this year, and France introduced its Loi Morin law in 2010, these efforts have been severely limited in their scope and impact. In both cases, the definition of a victim was restricted in such a way as to prevent many of those harmed from qualifying for the compensation. Even for the people who have qualified, the assistance has been inadequate. Worse yet is the case of all of the communities that have been completely disregarded and excluded from such compensation schemes.

What is particularly powerful about the nuclear justice resolution is that, with the exception of Poland this year, it has left the nuclear weapon possessors totally alone. Even their closest friends and allies have now voted in favor of the resolution for the second year in a row. More than 70 states that have not yet joined the TPNW have now affirmed that nuclear justice is a worthwhile effort they are ready to stand behind. In this way, the resolution is a powerful example of the way in which the TPNW Is already having an impact on international norms and policies even as nearly half of U.N. Members States have yet to join the treaty.

The road to nuclear justice is long. It will include acknowledgment, compensation, and the promise to never cause such harms again. The next phase must consist of genuine and independent assessment of needs both for victim assistance and environmental remediation in all impacted areas, with the international community coming together to offer help, including technical and financial assistance. How much remains to be done will in many ways depend on what the assessments demonstrate.

Ultimately, nuclear justice must also include elimination of all nuclear weapon arsenals. This would ensure that the suffering of those impacted by nuclear weapons has not been in vain. Instead, future generations will see it as the rallying call that brought the international community together to guarantee the right of survival to humanity and our fellow Earth inhabitants for the foreseeable future.

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November 19, 2024
Trump, the self-proclaimed peacemaker, should channel and exceed his inner Reagan

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The following article was co-authored by Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick, published in The Hill on November 18, 2024.

For full article, please visit HERE.

“For all of the decades of rhetoric around nuclear deterrence, thousands upon thousands of pages of written analyses, and trillions of dollars spent to develop, maintain and now also to modernize our nuclear weapons arsenal, there has never been a satisfactory answer by proponents of nuclear arms to a simple question of what will happen if nuclear deterrence fails.”

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November 18, 2024
Nihon Hidankyo’s Bittersweet Receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize

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Our President Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick have published an article in The Nation, following the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize. Read their article to learn more about Nihon Hidankyo and nuclear disarmament efforts, for which Nihon Hidankyo has now won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

The article highlights the awarding of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, emphasizing the urgent need for nuclear disarmament amid de-escalating global conflicts and honoring the Hibakusha’s decades-long advocacy for peace. You can find the original article HERE.

Nihon Hidankyo’s Bittersweet Receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize

The prize is a reminder that we must abolish and eliminate nuclear weapons.

October 18, 2024 | Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick
*Originally published in the The Nation

Friday’s announcement of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, sent waves of elation and excitement through the peace and disarmament movements worldwide. The general public seems to have gotten in on the action, too, given all the media coverage and the many messages we’ve received about the prize. To us, it was also personally gratifying. We have been nominating Hidankyo for the Nobel for years.

The superb recipient choice comes at a moment of global peril. The Ukraine war is heading for its third anniversary, with no signs of diplomatic efforts intended to bring the conflict to a close. If anything, last week’s departure of Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov from Washington, without even a named replacement, confirms that relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest points in decades. As of late, there has been no high-level contact between the two nuclear behemoths, either one of which can single-handedly end human civilization as we know it. Even during the Cold War, the Soviet Union maintained back-channel communications with and an ambassadorial presence in DC at all times. The broadening of the Gaza conflict into a regional war and the continued tensions in East Asia further portend a global catastrophe. Elevating voices of reason, compassion, peace, and yes, nuclear disarmament, is urgently needed. The Norwegian Nobel Committee played an admirable role in making it so.

There is also a sense that the moment is bittersweet. Many of the atomic bomb survivors (Hibakusha), who have been so integral to the anti-nuclear movement, have already passed on. The ones who are still alive—all essentially in their 80s and 90s—watch in despair as children are dying and suffer in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere, and the prospect of nuclear war looms over all of humanity. Have their stories of pain, suffering, and devastation in the aftermath of the atomic bombings been shared in vain? Who has been listening? The world leaders, most especially leaders of the nine nuclear weapons–possessing countries, whose arsenals consist of approximately 12,500 nuclear warheads, have clearly not.

The prize is a reminder—as the Hibakusha themselves are—that we must abolish and eliminate nuclear weapons, whose very existence Pope Francis has called immoral. Acknowledging the Hibakusha’s heroic efforts impels us to ask questions like “How much suffering is acceptable in the course of a war?” and “Are we willing to risk annihilation to achieve our geopolitical goals?” It strikes us as madness that nuclear weapons use is being considered again today.

Russian leaders have made it clear that they would consider a nuclear response if Ukraine, with NATO’s assistance, uses US, United Kingdom, and other nations’ long-range missiles to attack deep inside of Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as UK leaders and American hawks, purportedly including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have been pressuring President Joe Biden to authorize such attacks based on the assumption that Putin will once again back down. Some US military leaders appear to have thus far prevailed upon President Biden not to go down this route. Both democratic and autocratic leaders can only ignore their own red lines so many times before being forced to respond. We saw this situation with Iran’s latest missile launch against Israel and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, President Putin, like President Biden, is surrounded by hawks who push him to act more boldly and show his resolve.

The Middle East is equally alarming. The US appears to have stopped pressuring Israel to accept a ceasefire and given its approval to carry the war to Lebanon and weaken, if not eliminate, Hezbollah. Israel, meanwhile, contemplates its response to Iran’s recent missile attack. Israeli hawks, cheered on by former president Donald Trump and others, demand an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. Should such an attack occur, with or without US assistance, Iran would likely rush to develop a bomb. While Iran was only enriching uranium to 3.67 percent when the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, was in effect, it is now purportedly enriching to 60 percent and could quickly ramp that up to over 90 percent or weapons-grade. If Iran develops a nuclear bomb, which it could probably do in weeks—not the year that it would have taken before Trump abrogated the JCPOA—how far behind would Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt be?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who may be less constrained than other leaders in using Israel’s substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons if Israel were threatened, appears to be doing all he can to draw the United States into a war with Iran. Should Israel strike Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities, the threatened Iranian response may spark the kind of cycle of retaliation that could indeed spark US involvement in defending its close ally. The United States is now sending a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missile battery operated by US troops to Israel to blunt an expected Iranian missile response and Biden administration officials are doubling down on their promise to defend Israel. How will Iran’s friends Russia and China respond to US-Israel war with Iran? With multiple nuclear-armed powers in this volatile region, the chances of nuclear war would skyrocket.

Speaking of China, the situation in the Pacific is equally poised for confrontation. Conflicts over Taiwan and the South China Sea threaten to burst out at any time. The United States under President Biden has been militarizing the region and the Chinese are responding with their own buildup. US Air Force General Mike Minihan has predicted a war between the US and China in 2025. Other analysts and military officials consider Minihan alarmist and push the date for the inevitable war back by two to four years. US regional allies, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand, also appear to be preparing for such an eventuality with new military bases, large-scale military exercises, the introduction of new weapons systems, troop buildups, and sharply increased military spending. Japan’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, has called for the establishment of an Asian NATO to contain China and expressed his desire to engage in nuclear sharing with the US, a long-standing practice currently operative in five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey) and also in Belarus with Russian nuclear weapons. Japan has already effectively shredded its postwar peace constitution and is doubling its military spending, in total and complete abjuration of the message of Nihon Hidankyo and the Hibakusha.

Amidst the bleak international picture and the prospects of nuclear war, there is some good news besides the Nobel Peace Prize—the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The TPNW is the latest international instrument to attempt to control, as other agreements have done, but also to abolish, nuclear weapons. This is the treaty that the Hibakusha community has been utterly devoted to and has worked very hard to support. To get to the full treaty implementation, we not only need a change of course on geopolitical relations, but also a paradigm shift on nuclear weapons, as called for by Ambassador Alexander Kmentt of Austria and as already practiced by the 150 parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that do not rely on nuclear weapons for their security.

Nuclear deterrence works brilliantly until it stops working, and then, as President Kennedy said of his hawkish military advisers who urged an invasion of Cuba during the missile crisis in 1962, “none of us will be alive to tell them they were wrong.” The US relies on nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence for so-called national security. What is security if the US can spend a trillion dollars a year on “defense,” only to be vulnerable to total and utter destruction in nuclear war? How can something that threatens to destroy not just the foundations of our civilization, but humanity itself, at the same time keep us safe? One answer is that we have quite simply been lucky and that our luck may run out, and very soon.

Ultimately, people everywhere will need to help tear down the system that threatens to destroy our world each and every day. This may seem like an exaggeration, but in the fall of 2022, the US Central Intelligence Agency put the probability of nuclear weapon use in Ukraine at 50 percent. Once the genie is out, simulations suggest that the use of a single bomb would inevitably lead to a full-blown nuclear war, in a matter of mere minutes.

Even if the probability of use is far smaller than 50 percent, over time, it adds up. An estimate by professor Martin Hellman of Stanford University, before the Ukraine war and the other current conflicts, was 1 percent per year. This translates to more than a 50 percent chance of nuclear conflict in the 80-year projected lifetime of a child born today. These are unacceptable odds for our children and grandchildren and for humanity as a whole.

We call on President Biden to invite the Nobel Prize recipients to the White House to discuss their experience in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We furthermore call on him to organize a forum on nuclear disarmament at the White House to forge a path forward for eliminating the global nuclear scourge, using the framework of the TPNW.

Moreover, we call for an emergency global summit of the most powerful world leaders to heed the call of the planet’s citizens to find diplomatic offramps to all the global crises before it is too late. In the immediate aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev both understood how close we had come to nuclear annihilation and that we had survived more by luck than by statesmanship in a situation over which they had both lost control. After the crisis, Khrushchev wrote Kennedy a letter urging that they work together to eliminate all conflicts that could cause a new crisis. It took a while, but Kennedy responded in kind, and in his great American University Commencement Address called for an end to the Cold War and the nuclear arms race that hung over humanity like the Sword of Damocles.

Few leaders of the world’s great nations have since spoken for the planet in the way Kennedy and Khrushchev did in 1963. That wisdom and statesmanship are more urgently needed today than at any time since the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war in 1962. We are teetering again today and desperate steps are needed to avert disaster. If Reagan and Gorbachev could come within a hairbreadth of eliminating nuclear weapons in Reykjavik in 1986 as Kennedy and Khrushchev wanted to do in 1963, there is no reason we can’t achieve that today. This is what the Hibakusha have been imploring us to do for decades. We join people around the world in congratulating the members of Nihon Hidankyo on their well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize. May it be a wake-up call, and may their message of peace and nuclear abolition be heeded before it’s too late.

Ivana Nikolić Hughes is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a senior lecturer in Chemistry at Columbia University. Her research on ascertaining the radiological conditions in the Marshall Islands has been covered widely, including by the Los Angeles Times. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Peter Kuznick is a Professor of History and the Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.

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October 18, 2024
Honor the Victims of the Nuclear Age by Bringing It to an End

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On July 23, 2024, NAPF President, Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes, delivered a statement at the NGO session of the NPT Preparatory Committee to the 11^th Review Conference. See below for the full video, the article published by Common Dreams, and the full text of the statement.

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My name is Ivana Nikolić Hughes and I am speaking today on behalf of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Honorable Chair and Distinguished Delegates,

The NPT States parties are meeting for a third year in a row in the shadow of the devastating war in Ukraine, which has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, destroyed key infrastructure in Ukraine and elsewhere, and turned friends and family members into enemies. In the past ten months, the attack on Israel and the war in Gaza have shattered all who have dared to confront the enormous civilian toll, the ongoing justifications of violations of international humanitarian law, and the divisiveness that the conflict has brought to environments from university campuses to the halls of the United Nations.

The human suffering we witness on repeat is unfathomable, and yet, the fact that both of these conflicts involve – directly and indirectly – States that possess nuclear weapons is a stark reminder that things could be far worse. Whether deliberately, as has been threatened by Russian and Israeli politicians, or by accident, and especially if the current conflicts widen to regional wars, the use of nuclear weapons is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. This is so as long as nuclear weapons exist, and most especially as long as current policies not only allow but call for their instantaneous use to defend interests of nation States.

Taking nuclear disarmament seriously is not only an existential imperative at this very moment, but an obligation of all States Parties to the NPT. The Nuclear-Weapon States, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States, have a special responsibility. According to Article 6 of this treaty, they are mandated to negotiate in good faith towards nuclear disarmament, something that they have ostensibly not been doing. This must change.

All other NPT States Parties must move away from threats of nuclear annihilation as a strategy for conducting international affairs. The stationing of US and Russian weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Türkiye in the case of the US and Belarus in the case of Russia must end imminently. So must the so-called nuclear umbrella promise. Nuclear weapons don’t make anyone safer – they put all of us, all of humanity, and all of life on the planet at risk of extinction. To state that this is unacceptable is to state the obvious.

What should be done?

2045 will mark the 100^th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of the end of World War II, and of the founding of the United Nations. The Nuclear-Weapon States should use this and next year’s Preparatory Committee to chart a path that includes signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in conjunction with the other four nuclear weapon possessors: India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. Doing so by 2035 would allocate ten years to make history. Once all possessors have ratified the TPNW, all nuclear weapons should be eliminated by 2045.

As we look towards a future in which nuclear weapons are abolished, eliminated, and no longer threaten to extinguish human civilization, we also must look to the past and present in order to address the suffering of communities that were impacted by nuclear weapons use and testing. The NPT States Parties can no longer pretend that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary evil and sweep the nuclear testing era under a pile of rugs. The evidence of harm is all too real, and the scars are more than visible.

In Algeria, the radioactive equipment from the French nuclear testing program remains buried in the Saharan sands. In the Marshall Islands, the food on the famous Bikini Island, after which the swimsuit was named, still brims with cesium-137 left over from US nuclear testing. On Kiritimati Island in Kiribati, the local population has yet to receive an acknowledgment and assistance for harms done by the UK and the US during their nuclear weapon testing programs. And in Kazakhstan, too many of the victims of the Soviet nuclear testing program need far more help than they have received so far. This is despite the earnest efforts of the Kazakhstan government, which has taken serious steps towards environmental remediation and victim assistance in the affected region. The stories go on and on and circle the globe.

The States responsible for these heinous acts must begin by issuing an apology. Next, they should come together with the international community to right these historical wrongs and to promise never to commit such crimes ever again.

Here too, the TPNW paves the way forward through its humanitarian provisions, spelled out in Articles 6 and 7. We furthermore call on all States, including the nine that abstained or voted last December against the resolution in the UN General Assembly to address the legacy of nuclear testing; the resolution provides an opportunity for a wide-reaching conversation about nuclear justice, which has been elusive for far too many and for far too long. Every state must come to the nuclear justice table.

Honorable Chair,

There is work to be done. Statements and gatherings must be followed by real action and by concrete and time-bound steps.

We must honor the victims of the nuclear age by bringing about its end and by helping them earnestly and wholeheartedly. But beyond these tasks, we must recommit to the promise of the UN Charter where States address their differences through negotiations, engage in peaceful cooperation and competition, and reject all threats, including those of nuclear Armageddon, as not just an enormous risk to humanity, but as an insult to our humanity. We must be better than that.

The work and ideas of Mozart, Gandhi, Mandela, Parks, Franklin, Allende, and so many others blaze the path forward. This path does not include nuclear weapons.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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July 21, 2024
Prolonging the Ukraine War is flirting with nuclear disaster

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On June 27, Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick published an article on the dangers of the Ukraine War in Responsible Statecraft. In response, Nick Mordowanec of Newsweek published the article ‘Nuclear Disaster’ Warning Issued by Analysts Over Ukraine War in response. Both articles are included below.

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“I’ve been concerned all along,” Hughes said. “I wouldn’t say that we weren’t in danger then and now we’re in danger…I’m more concerned about a blunder into oblivion.”

She said the probability of nuclear war has never been zero, notably after national stockpiles in different countries have accumulated over the years and weapons have become more advanced.
– ‘Nuclear Disaster’ Warning Issued by Analysts Over Ukraine War, Newsweek

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The following article was originally published by Nick Mordowanec in Newsweek on June 27, 2024, in response to an article by Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick.

The longer the war in Eastern Europe continues between Russia and Ukraine and the more provocations that occur worldwide, the closer the entire world becomes to “flirting with nuclear disaster,” two nuclear analysts warn in a new editorial.

It has been over 28 months since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, leading to a drawn-out conflict currently viewed by many in the foreign policy realm as a stalemate. Although the exact number of casualties remains unknown, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimates that Russia’s amassed roughly 535,660 dead soldiers compared to the 30,000 minimum soldiers lost by Ukraine.

In January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB) reset the worldwide Doomsday Clock and kept it at 90 seconds to midnight—representing no change in the perceived nuclear threats largely connected to the Russia-Ukraine war, but prompting further caution toward the “closest to global catastrophe” the world has ever been.

Ivana Nikolic Hughes, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and senior lecturer in chemistry at Columbia University, and Peter Kuznick, a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C., co-authored a new piece in Responsible Statecraft—an online magazine of the Quincy Institute—cautioning of how increased military and governmental threats coupled with advanced weaponry could lead the world into a no-win scenario.

“It’s time to change policy on Ukraine and to stop the escalation escalator before it is too late. A Swiss peace conference without Russia or China has done nothing to advance that goal. Nor have the recent G7 meetings in Italy, the NATO pronouncements, or, for that matter, the grandiose war games being conducted by both sides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.”

The pair added: “This is a good place to start, as would be an emergency meeting of world leaders that the U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres could call for. Continuing to play nuclear roulette is not an acceptable path forward.”

[/fusion_text][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” content_alignment_medium=”” content_alignment_small=”” content_alignment=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” sticky_display=”normal,sticky” class=”” id=”” margin_top=”” margin_right=”” margin_bottom=”” margin_left=”” fusion_font_family_text_font=”” fusion_font_variant_text_font=”” font_size=”” line_height=”” letter_spacing=”” text_transform=”” text_color=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_color=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_delay=”0″ animation_offset=”” logics=””]They allude to increased year-over-year defense spending of NATO allies, including an estimated 13 percent increase on global nuclear weapons to a record $91.4 billion in 2023, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

That equates to a $10.7 billion increase in spending on nuclear weapons in 2023 compared to 2022, led by the U.S. funding 80 percent of that increase.

On June 17, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington—touting the spending increases and confirming that 23 allies will spend at least 2 percent of their GDP. He said the number of NATO countries hitting that target has more than doubled in the past four years.

Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Asia as both countries remain isolated from the West. Putin and other Russian officials have routinely and cavalierly made nuclear threats against the West since the invasion first occurred.

The pair struck a deal, pledging mutual military assistance “without delay by all means at its disposal” if either nation is attacked. South Korea, the United States, and Japan condemned the move, saying in a joint statement Sunday that the treaty “should be of grave concern to anyone with an interest in maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”

Avoiding a ‘blunder into oblivion’

Hughes and Kuznick said the most frightening part of nuclear war is that there is “no do-over” and no second chance to revisit a more humane, nonviolent compromise.

Hughes told Newsweek via phone on Thursday that she and Kuznick authored the piece due to recent escalations and geopolitical turmoil, including not just the war in Eastern Europe but threats across Asia and the continued violence in Gaza.

“I’ve been concerned all along,” Hughes said. “I wouldn’t say that we weren’t in danger then and now we’re in danger…I’m more concerned about a blunder into oblivion.”

She said the probability of nuclear war has never been zero, notably after national stockpiles in different countries have accumulated over the years and weapons have become more advanced.

But there are times when that probability is increased, such as in the present. The world is different now than when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev united against nuclear warfare, yet some semblance remains dating back to President John F. Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War that followed.

“Even if you have some low probability estimate that something bad happens in the course of one year, over the course of 50 years or 80 years—the course of a lifetime of a child born today—that probability skyrockets,” she said.

Kuznick told Newsweek via phone that the stakes are heightened in a period of relative global unrest.

He referred to how even U.S. officials, who hail from the same country that has provided Ukraine with over $100 billion in aid, recently expressed concern over Ukrainians attacking Russian radar systems—military moves that also could lead to escalation.

“I think what really was the dramatic change occurred with the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring and summer, and the setbacks on the battlefield that Ukraine had been suffering—combined with the growing realization that Ukraine is just so badly outmanned and unarmed that Ukraine was on the verge of losing or being forced to accept Putin’s terms,” Kuznick said.

The smartest way out of the conflict is for Ukraine, NATO and Western nations to negotiate with Putin, he added, acknowledging that Putin’s wants may be uncompromising in theory.

“As a planet, we are on a path to disaster and potential mutual destruction,” he said.

Otherwise, he foresees hundreds of thousands of more casualties, more physical destruction, more talent and resources wasted in Russian soldiers being conscripted, and more worldwide oppression from an anti-war sentiment.

“I don’t see anything to be gained from continuing the fighting,” he said. “Ukraine is not going to drive Russia all out of Ukraine; Russia won’t let that happen. They’re more sophisticated…I think we’re really on the slipperiest slope towards World War III and nuclear war that I’ve seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis and maybe ever in my lifetime.”[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_builder_container type=”flex” hundred_percent=”no” hundred_percent_height=”no” min_height_medium=”” min_height_small=”” min_height=”” hundred_percent_height_scroll=”no” align_content=”stretch” flex_align_items=”flex-start” flex_justify_content=”flex-start” flex_wrap_medium=”” flex_wrap_small=”” flex_wrap=”wrap” flex_column_spacing=”” hundred_percent_height_center_content=”yes” equal_height_columns=”no” container_tag=”div” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” status=”published” publish_date=”” class=”.post-content h1,.post-content h2,.post-content h3,.post-content h4 { font-family: lato; }” id=”” margin_top_medium=”” margin_bottom_medium=”” margin_top_small=”” 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The following article was co-authored by Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick and published in Responsible Statecraft on June 27, 2024.

Prolonging the Ukraine war is flirting with nuclear disaster

The chances of an atomic catastrophe are low but they aren’t zero

Fighting in the Ukraine war has persisted well into the third year, with hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides.

For more than two years, the West has been stoking Ukraine’s hopes — with funding, military advice, and more and more advanced weapons — that it could push Russia out to its pre-2014 borders. This is an imaginary outcome that words of fiction will do nothing to achieve.

Equally misguided is the contention by Western leaders that if Putin is not defeated in Ukraine, he will gobble up more and more of Europe, beginning with Poland and the Baltics. Not only is there no evidence to support this assertion, but also the notion that a Russia that can barely defeat Ukraine would go to war against NATO simply defies logic.

These developments do, however, push Washington into spending more on “defense,” which enriches the arms manufacturers. Earlier this month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg trumpeted an 18 percent increase in military spending across Europe and Canada in 2024, “the biggest increase in decades,” two-thirds of which goes to U.S. manufacturers.

Meanwhile, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons announced that global spending on nuclear weapons rose 13 percent in 2023, with the U.S. again leading the way. This is happening even though the U.S. already spends almost five times as much as China, its nearest competitor. U.S. nuclear weapons spending over the past five years has increased by 45 percent, trailed by the U.K.’s 43 percent.

The spending announcements coincide with news about the planet sweltering and little is being done to combat global warming. Clearly, we’re too busy fighting each other and spending money on ways to end humanity far faster than global warming will.

As NATO leaders realize that throwing more money into Ukraine alone is not enough to change an increasingly desperate battlefield equation, they have been finding other, more dangerous ways, to escalate in recent weeks. They have not only permitted Ukraine to attack sites within Russia with advanced NATO weapons, they have also assisted in those attacks and have openly discussed sending NATO troops, trainers, and targeters on the ground. The recent attacks on two Russian nuclear warning radar facilities have been particularly irresponsible, bringing us closer not only to full out war, but to nuclear war. And if that is not enough, Stoltenberg recently told the Telegraph that NATO is debating taking additional nuclear weapons out of storage and placing them on standby to prepare for all contingencies.

Russia has responded to these escalations with a series of explicit warnings about the imminence of a broader war and by carrying out provocative tactical nuclear war exercises on its territory bordering Ukraine, with Belarussian participation. The Foreign Ministry said the exercises would send a “sobering signal” that would “cool the hot heads in Western capitals,” making them understand “the potential catastrophic consequences of the strategic risks they are generating.”

Russia then sent warships, including a nuclear-powered submarine, to Cuba, which Western commentators dismissed as a “bluff,” though the U.S. and Canada promptly sent warships into the region. Next, Putin visited Pyongyang and signed a “mutual security” pact with North Korea, committing both nuclear-armed nations to come to each other’s defense if attacked.

These developments heighten the urgency of finding a political settlement for the Ukraine war.

In a recent book titled “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” author Annie Jacobsen details the 72 minutes that unfold after the U.S. detects a North Korea launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile heading for Washington, DC, until the end of the world as we know it. The hypothesized North Korean attack quickly turns into a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, a possibility made even more likely by the Putin-Kim Jong Un agreement. In Jacobsen’s book, the two countries proceed to use a thousand or more warheads to level the other, a prospect that terrified millions of people throughout the Cold War, but which had more recently faded from the public’s consciousness.

Nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia today would bear little resemblance to the American atomic bomb attacks on Japan. Rather than killing a couple hundred thousand people, as Fat Man and Little Boy did in 1945, today’s weapons could kill and injure millions of people, and possibly hundreds of millions. Add to this count the billions around who would starve to death as a result of nuclear winter and subsequent crop failures and you have a recipe for the end of human civilization as we know it.

The concern that Russia could decide to use nuclear weapons if threatened with defeat in the Donbas or Crimea or in a direct war with NATO should not be dismissed lightly. While the U.S. would be less likely to initiate nuclear war given NATO’s conventional superiority, it may respond in kind to Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons. Alternatively, a conventional war between Russia and NATO could turn nuclear.

Arguably, an even more likely scenario than a deliberate start of a nuclear war is a blunder into oblivion, an accidental or miscalculated strike as either side wrongly assumes that it is already or will imminently be under a nuclear attack. This can easily arise due to the “launch on warning” policy that both countries have. Moreover, neither the United States nor Russia has a “no-first-use policy” that would abjure first using nuclear weapons in a crisis, making the miscalculation more likely.

MIT Professor Ted Postol, a former scientific adviser to the chief of naval operations, has warned that Russia’s missile detection capabilities are not as advanced as the ones that the United States has, which he described as a “terrible and dangerous technology shortfall.” Especially, he warns, if nuclear radar facilities are under attack, as they were recently, Russia could falsely assume it is being targeted by nuclear weapons and could unleash the full power of its 5,500+ warhead arsenal. Make that partial, it’s still enough to not only destroy the United States, but the whole world.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan jointly stated in 1985 that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Despite leaders of the five original nuclear weapon states explicitly reaffirming this in January 2022 prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many of those same leaders seem to have forgotten these wise words and have recklessly pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.

As former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev poignantly stated in the aftermath of the greatest previous nuclear crisis, “Peace is the most important goal in the world. If we don’t have peace and the nuclear bombs start to fall, what difference will it make whether we are Communists or Catholic or capitalists or Chinese or Russians or Americans? Who could tell us apart? Who will be left to tell us apart?”

It’s time to change policy on Ukraine and to stop the escalation escalator before it is too late. A Swiss peace conference without Russia or China has done nothing to advance that goal. Nor have the recent G7 meetings in Italy, the NATO pronouncements, or, for that matter, the grandiose war games being conducted by both sides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Brazil and China recently issued a joint statement, declaring that “dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis.” Their proposal includes a six-point plan for peace, with “no expansion of the battlefield, no escalation of fighting, and no further provocation.” China says that the proposal has now received backing from at least 45 countries.

This is a good place to start, as would be an emergency meeting of world leaders that the U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres could call for. Continuing to play nuclear roulette is not an acceptable path forward.

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July 8, 2024
Robert Downey Jr.’s Portrayal of Lewis Strauss May Finally Land Him an Oscar

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Our President Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Director of Policy and Advocacy Christian Ciobanu have published an article in The Nation, on the eve of the Oscars. Read their article to learn more about Lewis Strauss, the character in the film Oppenheimer, portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., for which Downey has now won an Oscar.

The article details the harrowing Bravo test in the Marshall Islands and the villainous role that Strauss played in the test’s aftermath. You can find the article HERE.

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March 11, 2024
Saving the US from Nuclear Weapons

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Published in Transcend Media Service on February 19, 2024.

Why the United States Should Lead the World on Nuclear Disarmament All the Way to a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

For decades, Americans have been told that nuclear weapons ended World War II and that they have kept us safe ever since. This narrative ignores historical evidence suggesting that Japan was already close to surrendering and that nuclear weapon attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the beginning of the Cold War, rather than end of the hot one. This narrative also ignores the Cuban Missile Crisis, which in 1962 brought us to the brink of nuclear war that would have destroyed human civilization as we know it and possibly all of life on the planet. At that time, the United States and the Soviet Union had more than 30,000 nuclear warheads, most of which were vastly more powerful than the atomic bombs used in 1945. Had the two countries used just the weapons that were ready to launch – about 4,000 of them – estimates of deaths range from hundreds of millions of people to over a billion people. Nuclear winter, which we didn’t know about until a couple of decades later, would have ensued, further leading to starvation of many more around the planet, with potential planetary life-ending consequences. The world our ancestors survived in for thousands of generations would have been gone, irreversibly so.

But it wasn’t just the Cuban Missile Crisis. There were accidental drops of nuclear bombs over Canada in 1950, South Carolina in 1958, and North Carolina in 1961; a US and Soviet plane crash over Greenland in 1968 and a submarine crash in the Barents Sea in 1969; fires in missile silos in Arkansas in 1980 and in Wyoming in 2008, and false alarms in 1979 and 1983, all of which could have led to nuclear weapon use and possibly even nuclear war. The list goes on and on. Nuclear weapons do not keep us safe, they put us at unimaginable risk. Nuclear deterrence is simply an illusion of safety.

With more than 12,000 warheads in our world today, the possibility of accidental use of a nuclear weapon that leads to widespread nuclear war continues to loom large. But it’s not just accidental use that experts are worried about. The possibility of a miscalculation – a leader deciding to use a nuclear weapon because they perceive to be under attack when they are not – is arguably even more likely. There is also always the unhinged leader, or one who may be drunk, or one who may be losing their mental acuity due to age or for other reasons. In the United States, nuclear weapon use authorization is in the hands of the President and the President only. That is quite simply a terrifying prospect even when we might have a reasonable leader in power.

The only way that the United States could be not just beaten, but destroyed in a war on its own soil, is if nuclear weapons are used to attack us. Such a prospect makes us totally and completely vulnerable and not just to Russia and China. We are also in danger from North Korea, which has an estimated 30 nuclear warheads that can reach every corner of the United States, enough to destroy our nation. The question of whether or not North Korea would also be destroyed in the course of such a war is irrelevant and would be of little comfort to the survivors. How do you spend on the order of a trillion dollars on the military every year (more than the next ten countries combined) and end up being vulnerable to a country that ranks 56^th in population and among the bottom 10% of states in GDP per capita?

If a major responsibility of a government is to keep its people safe and secure, then a succession of US governments since 1945 has not done a very good job. This needs to change. But failure in the past does not mean we have to keep failing. There are steps we can take now to ensure that our nation does not go the way of empires of the past. Because this time, we could also take humanity along with us.

The following is a good start for how to get back on track.

First, we need to address the actual and potential conflicts that could lead to nuclear war, including Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan. The way to address them is to seek a common ground with the parties that ends or prevents the killing and starts the healing. In the case of Ukraine, we need to restore our promise not to expand NATO to Ukraine and encourage Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table before it’s too late for them and for us. In the case of Gaza, we need to demand, like Reagan did of Begin, that Israel stop killing women and children by the thousands and agree to pursue a permanent solution to the conflict that assures Palestinian sovereignty and self-determination. US funding to perpetuate or fuel war and violence must end. And when it comes to Taiwan, we need to not turn Taiwan into another Ukraine, but rather push for a dialogue that sets the stage for a peaceful conclusion to the decades-long question of Taiwan’s status, agreeable to both China and Taiwan.

As President Kennedy stated in his American University Commencement Address in 1963, we need “not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women.” This should be our goal for all regions of the world. It is most critical for conflicts that can result in the end of humanity as we know it.

Once peace and trust have been restored in current and potential conflicts involving nuclear weapon possessors, we need to get to the negotiating table ourselves, starting with Russia. We need to reinstate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which we left in 2002, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which we withdrew from in 2019. Next, we need to get our missile bases out of Romania and Poland and pursue a new agreement with Russia to end all nuclear sharing arrangements. This would involve getting US nuclear bombs out of Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey (and not putting them in the United Kingdom) and Russia removing theirs from Belarus. Finally, we need to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and call all of the nuclear weapon possessors to the table to finally abolish and eliminate nuclear weapons. The last task is the most difficult, but good leaders have done difficult things before and we can do it again. The fate of the world hangs in the balance.

This plan puts the selfish interests of the US first and completely ignores the moral and ethical reasons as to why we should lead the world in nuclear disarmament. Those include the fact that we were the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only one to ever use them in military attacks on cities full of children and other civilians, and that we wrote the script for the nuclear testing era, which has devastated people around the planet, including our own citizens and those we were meant to protect. But let’s leave those arguments to the peaceniks and focus on self-preservation, morality be damned.

Once we do all of this, we can turn to the ongoing global threats of climate change, emerging infectious diseases, AI, etc., as well as our own challenges at home, like income inequality, lack of universal health care, gun regulation, immigration, and more. That’s the other side of the nuclear weapons coin – the enormous amount of spending on these omnicidal weapons means that we don’t have money for addressing other existential threats, nor adequate social spending.

US leadership on nuclear disarmament is sorely needed to sustain our country and to keep the world whole.

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February 21, 2024
Nuclear deterrence is the existential threat. Not the nuclear ban treaty.

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Over the past week, our President Dr. Ivana Nikolić Hughes rallied the nuclear disarmament community to respond swiftly and forcefully to a recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, written by Zachary Kallenborn, who alleged that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is an existential threat to humanity. Dr. Hughes worked with several colleagues to draft the response (Xanthe Hall of IPPNW Germany and ICAN Germany, Ira Helfand of IPPNW and Back from the Brink, Kati Juva of IPPNW and ICAN Finland, Mays Smithwich of NYCAN, and Frank Boulton of Medact). Their article was published by the Bulletin on January 22, which marked the third anniversary of the entry into force of the TPNW, and in addition to the drafters, was endorsed by over 100 individuals and organizations. The article can be found HERE or you can also read it below.

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AS PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS ON JANUARY 22, 2023

In a deeply misguided article in this publication, Zachary Kallenborn contends that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is a threat to humanity. To build this narrative, Kallenborn does not simply present nuclear deterrence as a stable and useful framework for avoiding conventional wars. Rather, he goes beyond the common deterrence arguments to assert that nuclear weapons restrain world wars, which allows nations to work together on addressing existential threats. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Nuclear deterrence is a myth. Nuclear deterrence involves a nation state maintaining a believable threat of retaliation to deter an adversary’s attack. This relies on demonstrations of the readiness and the capacity to use nuclear weapons—a highly dangerous form of bluff which, in turn, makes those targeted increase their hardware and rhetoric. We are currently witnessing this kind of escalation among several nuclear weapon possessor states, which could result in nuclear war.

Nuclear deterrence rests on decision makers always behaving rationally; even if different states and parties weigh values, threats, and possible consequences in the same way, individual leaders do not always behave rationally. During the closing weeks of his presidency, Richard Nixon’s behavior was so erratic that James Schlesinger, the Secretary of Defense, instructed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to ignore any order to use nuclear weapons unless it was countersigned by himself and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Schlesinger had no authority to do this, and it is not clear the instructions would have been carried out if Nixon had ordered the use of nuclear weapons. After his electoral defeat in 2020, Donald Trump’s behavior was so bizarre that it triggered similar concerns in General Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But troubling behavior is not solely the province of US leaders. Boris Yeltsin, for example, had an alcohol problem, and the recent nuclear rhetoric from Russian leaders has been worrisome at best.

All leaders are capable of making bad decisions, and the stress of a military crisis, during which decisions might have to be made with limited or faulty intelligence and in a very compressed time frame, increases the chance that a leader would abandon the rational position that nuclear weapons should never be used and make a mistake that would be fatal for humanity.

The overarching assumption of nuclear deterrence is that the existence of nuclear weapons can continue indefinitely without anything ever going wrong, leading to the theory’s most concerning aspect: lack of plan B. In the words of Melissa Parke, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), “Nuclear deterrence may well work until the day it doesn’t.” What happens when nuclear deterrence fails? The problem is that it is impossible to create a plan for that day. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has been warning since 1945 that there can be no adequate humanitarian response even to a single nuclear weapon explosion, let alone to the hundreds or thousands that could be used in today’s conflicts. Contrary to the unrealistic logic of deterrence, many medical organizations and other civil society groups, including those that we are a part of, have been arguing, often for decades, that prevention is the only viable option.

The argument that nuclear deterrence has kept the world safe is simply wrong. Numerous close calls and near misses strongly suggest otherwise. From scholarly analyses to a simple list of such known incidents in the United States alone, the message is clear—we have been lucky, rather than smart. As UN Secretary General António Guterres stated at the 10^th Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2022, “Luck is not a strategy.”

Close calls and near misses haven’t led to nuclear war yet. But nuclear weapons have been the cause of human suffering for decades. In addition to the horrors of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have already harmed millions of people in the process of being developed and tested. Devastatingly, governments of nuclear weapon possessors have harmed their own people, such as the people of Kazakhstan and the United States, and those whose care they’ve been entrusted with, such as the Indigenous people of Australia, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Maohi Nui (French Polynesia). These humanitarian consequences have provided the impetus for action that is embedded in Articles 6 and 7 of the TPNW and a recently adopted resolution on nuclear justice in the UN General Assembly. Just in 2022, the global expenditure on nuclear weapons was $83 billion, an amount that could have been better spent on social programs and other needs. We are all harmed when societal needs are ignored in favor of weapons of mass destruction.

What the world needs to address other existential threats. Kallenborn is right that the world faces other global threats. And although some of them—just like nuclear weapons—have the potential to wipe out humanity, including a large asteroid impact or an emerging infectious disease, what is thoroughly different about nuclear weapons is that we have created them, and we can therefore eliminate them.

The majority of states in the world have access to the knowledge and very many have access to the means to build nuclear weapons, but they don’t. These states refrain from doing so because they see no value in having nuclear weapons. On the contrary, they recognize the threat that possessing nuclear weapons poses. Moreover, a verifiable process for ensuring that existing nuclear weapons have been eliminated and that new ones are not developed would have to be put in place as part of any nuclear abolition plan, including through the TPNW, with a competent international authority put in charge of this key process. Significant work on verification is ongoing through the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (IMS of CTBTO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the TPNW’s own Scientific Advisory Group (SAG), which was formed last year.

The elimination of all nuclear weapons and a concurrent international system of verification and monitoring would result in a far better scenario than where we find ourselves today. Even a hypothetical situation in which a nation cheats to make a few weapons following their total elimination would be far less dangerous than where we are today with a current global arsenal of approximately 12,500 warheads, which could destroy the world over and over again.

Climate change is—like nuclear war—an existential threat of great urgency, as its effects are devastating and could make entire regions of the planet uninhabitable. Added to this, climate change is already exacerbating conflicts due to the increase in food scarcity and natural disasters that displace populations and paralyze economies. These impacts will get worse with time. Combined with nuclear weapons, this regional and global instability arguably poses the greatest threat to humanity, as the Bulletin has repeatedly made clear with time adjustments to its Doomsday Clock. At the time of the writing of this article, the clock stands at just 90 seconds to midnight.

Nuclear winter refers to the fact that even limited regional nuclear war, such as between India and Pakistan, will trigger global climate disruption and catastrophic famine. Kallenborn alludes to this potential threat but tries to minimize the importance of nuclear winter studies by stating that there is a significant difference of opinion about this danger in the scientific community. He goes even further to warn us that such studies are motivated by “political biases and agendas.” Indeed, the one recent study from the Los Alamos Laboratory that minimizes the extent of climate change due to nuclear war may well be motivated by an agenda other than science; this study has been thoroughly rebutted. Incredibly, Kallenborn proposes that the response to the threat of global nuclear famine should be stockpiling enough food to feed billions of people for several years and cites the utterly inappropriate example of the 1948 Berlin airlift as the kind of effort needed.

Global cooperation, not threats of annihilation, must be the basis for addressing all existential threats. We live on a beautiful planet with a host of human-made and natural challenges that require us to move away from us vs. them attitudes and instead collectively cooperate to achieve global security for all humans in our common home. To this end, we must not normalize violent conflict on battlefields and threats to destroy one another. Instead, competition between states should be reserved for athletic fields and courts, business and commerce, and pursuit of scientific and artistic achievements.

The truth about the nuclear ban treaty. Arguably, the biggest falsehoods that Kallenborn promulgates revolve around the TPNW itself. For one, the treaty is not a quick fix that will lead to a sudden abolition of nuclear weapons in a vacuum. Rather, the treaty is an instrument that establishes a legal norm, which will lead to a process resulting in the elimination of nuclear weapons. The path that needs to be taken to reach this goal will, in itself, address the problem of great powers’ conflict and regional conflicts, as well as safe disarmament.

It is commonly claimed that nuclear deterrence has prevented a nuclear war from occurring. But we came to the brink of nuclear war several times during the Cold War, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and this claim about deterrence completely ignores the role of international agreements in de-escalating tensions and preventing a nuclear conflict. The process of creating instruments of arms control and disarmament establishes structures for regaining trust and verification. In this regard, the last decade has seen an erosion of the disarmament architecture, with the exception of the TPNW. As it stands, we may soon have no more brakes on the arms race.

As Kallenborn himself states, “the best way to reduce the risks of nuclear war is to ensure it never happens in the first place.” That precisely is the intention and the motivation of all of the 122 states that negotiated the TPNW in 2017 and an even larger number of states that have been voting in support of the treaty at the UN General Assembly every year since. The nine nuclear weapon possessors and their allies are the ones that need to prove that there is a convincing reason, or indeed any right, to hold the rest of the world hostage to their nuclear weapons. Kallenborn asserts that if nuclear weapons are eliminated, the great powers will launch World War III. In fact, the process of eliminating these weapons will create the conditions needed for a more cooperative relationship among the great powers, by removing the most dangerous issue that divides them.

The truth about the nuclear ban is spelled out in the text of the treaty itself, but also in the recently adopted Declaration that was the result of the Second Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW, held in New York late last year. The Declaration highlights the raison d’être for the ban, as well as the way forward.

Abolition is the only reasonable path. Nuclear weapons and current nuclear weapon policies are, in the words of the late peace and nuclear disarmament activist Daniel Ellsberg, “dizzyingly insane and immoral.” Aiming solely for reducing the harm or the possibility of harm that nuclear weapons could cause, rather than being a part of a process to abolish them, is simply not enough. Imagine if the opponents of slavery had aimed not to abolish slavery, but to make life a bit better for the enslaved people? Ultimately, the question of nuclear abolition is not just a moral one, but an existential one. If we don’t abolish nuclear weapons, they will abolish us. John F. Kennedy stated this at the United Nations more than 60 years ago. Let’s heed his words sooner rather than later and, critically, before it is too late.

Acknowledgements

The following individuals contributed significantly to the writing of this article:

Kati Juva, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) Finland, IPPNW

Frank Boulton, Medact (IPPNW UK)

The following individuals endorse the views expressed in this article:

Michael Orgel, Medact Scotland & Medact UK Nuclear Weapons Group, Edinburgh

Timmon Wallis, NuclearBan.US

Hasse Schneidermann, Forbyd Atomvåben – ICAN in Denmark

Christian Ciobanu, NAPF and Reverse the Trend (RTT)

Alice Slater, World BEYOND War

Becker Raymond, Cercle Vivi Hommel, Luxembourg

Michele Di Paolantonio, AIMPGN Italian Medical Association for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW Italy)

Lisa Clark, Italian Peace and Disarmament Network

Kathleen Sullivan, Hiroshima Stories and NYCAN

Emily Welty, Pace University

Anastasia Shakhidzhanova, NAPF and Columbia University

Matthew Breay Bolton, Pace University

Spencer Graves, EffectiveDefense.org and PeaceWorks Kansas City

Gari Donn, UN House Scotland

Bill Kidd MSP, Scottish Parliament

Carol Gilbert, Grand Rapids Dominican Sister

Barbara Rose Johnston, Center for Political Ecology

Gerry Condon, Veterans For Peace, Golden Rule

John LaForge, Nukewatch

John Reuwer, PSR, World BEYOND War

Alan Robock, Rutgers University

Patrick Hiller, War Prevention Initiative

Donald A. Smith, PhD

David Hartsough, World Beyond War

Melissa Parke, ICAN

Steve Leeper, Peace Culture Village, Hiroshima

Carol Wolman, Voices for a Nuclear Free Future

David Swanson, World BEYOND War

Nicolas J. S. Davies, CODEPINK

Bobby Vaughn Jr, Investigative Journalist

Barbara Newsom, United Religions Initiative, Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

Jill Haberman, Peace & Justice Coordinator for Sisters of St. Francis of Assis, WI

Rosemary Field, Medact, UK

Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch New Mexico

Glenn Carroll, Nuclear Watch South

Ruth Mitchell, IPPNW

Susan Mirsky, MA Peace Action

Paul Andrews, Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

Tom Sauer, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium

Oda Andersen Nyborg, The Norwegian Peace Council

Diane Fine, MA 350

Lisa Fredrikson, Veterans For Peace

Veterans for Peace

Cynthia Lazaroff, Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy and NuclearWakeUpCall.Earth

Frank Bognar, NAPF

Kim Joy Bergier, Michigan Stop the Nuclear Bombs Campaign

Andrew S. Kanter, PSR and Columbia University

Linda Pentz Gunter, Beyond Nuclear

John Raby, Peace Action Maine

Michael Ramos, Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

Lynne Hall, Massachusetts Peace Action

Joni Arends, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, New Mexico

Ludo De Brabander, Vrede vzw (Belgian peace movement)

Carol E Green, Peace with Justice Committee, the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church

Haruko Moritaki, Hiroshima Allians for Nuclear Weapons Abollition

WE Rotary Club of International Peace, TRUST Climate Action Strategists

Lynn Jamieson, Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Martin Fleck, PSR

Philip Webber, Scientists for Global Responsibility (UK)

Tom Vilmer Paamand, Aldrig Mere Krig – WRI Denmark

Hsin Yen Phoebe Mok, beHuman

Janet Fenton, Secure Scotland

Cletus Stein, Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

Sunny Robinson, public health nurse, retired.

Jack Cohen-Joppa, the Nuclear Resister

Felice Cohen-Joppa, the Nuclear Resister

Cherrill Spencer, DISARM/End Wars Committee of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section

Gar Smith, Environmentalists Against War

Kathleen Hamill, Mass Peace Action and NuclearBan.US

Helen Caldicott, PSR

Tomohiko Aishima, Soka Gakkai International (SGI)

Anna Ikeda, SGI and Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

John Hallam, People for Nuclear Disarmament

Tove Jensen, Demos, The Initiative for Peace

Angel Ballesteros, Justice and Peace Spain and University of Burgos

Claus Montonen, Technology for Life Finland, International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility

Hunter Peace Group NSW Australia

Martha Inés Romero, Pax Christi International

Fco. Javier Alonso, Comisión General Justicia y Paz de España

Maribel Hernández, Alianza por el Desarme Nuclear

Juliane Hauschulz, ICAN Germany and IPPNW Germany

Anthony Donovan, Veterans For Peace, Catholic Worker, War Resister League, Peace Action NY, Pax Christi NY, ICANW

Per Kristensen

Marian Losse, ICAN Deutschland

Mary T. Yelenick, Pax Christi International

Ranjith Jayasekera, Sri-Lanka Doctors for Peace and Development

Kenneth Chiu, NAPF

Elizabeth Waterston, Medact (IPPNW UK)

Ghassan Shahrour

Richard Krushnic, Massachusetts Peace Action, Mass Public Banking, Cambridge Residents Alliance, Boston Workers Circle

Seth Shelden, ICAN

Robert Kinsey, The Colorado Coalition for Prevention of Nuclear War

Linda Cataldo Modica, Catholic Committee of Appalachia TN Chapter

Linda Chapman, NYCAN & Youth Arts New York

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January 24, 2024
A small victory for nuclear justice. And international cooperation.

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We are excited to share that our President, Ivana Nikolić Hughes, and our Policy and Advocacy Coordinator, Christian N. Ciobanu, have published an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The authors discuss a new resolution in the United Nations General Assembly on addressing the legacy of nuclear weapons testing and use and the stunning adoption vote that occurred on October 27 in the First Committee of the General Assembly. Working closely with the governments of the Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati, Christian has played a pivotal role at every step of the process of bringing this resolution to life and getting it adopted. As the title of the article states powerfully, the 171 votes in favor, and only six abstentions and four no votes represented a victory for nuclear justice. The article discusses the vote and the next steps in this important endeavour and also makes a strong case for the inextricable link between nuclear justice and nuclear abolition.

To read the article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, see HERE.

To read the resolution, see UNGA_C1_Resolution_L52_2023.

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November 7, 2023
Can the UN Help the Nuclear Victims, At Last?

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We are excited to share that our President, Ivana Nikolić Hughes, and our Policy and Advocacy Coordinator, Christian N. Ciobanu, have published an article in the magazine The Nation. The authors discuss one of the latest efforts to address the damage and harm from nuclear weapons testing and use around the world: a new resolution in the United Nations General Assembly. Working closely with the governments of the Republics of Kazakhstan and Kiribati, Christian has played a pivotal role at every step of the process of bringing this resolution to life. The article describes some of the harrowing history of what nuclear weapons have done to peoples around the world, including in Kazakhstan and Kiribati, and delves into the policy background, from the very first United Nations General Assembly resolution, to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, our best hope for a world free of nuclear weapons. The article also makes a strong case for the inextricable link between nuclear justice and nuclear abolition.

To read the article in The Nation, see HERE.

To learn more about the resolution, see HERE.

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October 20, 2023