Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Abolition

  • Statement from the Holy See on Nuclear Abolition Day

    This speech was delivered by H.E. Archbishop Bernadito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations at the High-level plenary meeting to commemorate and promote The International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons in New York.

    Mr. President,

    bernadito_auzaThe Holy See fervently hopes that this annual commemoration of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons will contribute to breaking the deadlock that has beset the United Nations’ disarmament machinery for far too long now.

    In February 1943, two years and a half before the Trinity test, Pope Piu XII had already voiced deep concern regarding the violent use of atomic energy. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki  and  given  the totally uncontrollable and indiscriminate consequences of nuclear weapons, Pope Pius XII demanded the effective proscription and banishment of atomic warfare, calling the arms race a costly relationship of mutual terror. The Holy See has maintained this position ever since the advent of nuclear weapons.

    My delegation believes that nuclear arms offer a false sense of security, and that the uneasy peace promised by nuclear deterrence is a tragic illusion. Nuclear weapons cannot create for us a stable and secure world. Peace and international stability cannot be founded on mutually assured destruction or  on the threat of total annihilation. The Holy See believes that peace cannot be solely the maintaining of a balance of power. On the contrary, as Pope Francis affirmed, “Peace must be built on justice, socio-economic development, freedom, respect for human rights, the participation of all in public affairs and the building of trust between peoples.”

    Lasting peace thus requires that all must strive for progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament.

    The Holy See has been a Party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) since the very beginning, in order to encourage nuclear possessing States to abolish their nuclear weapons, to dissuade non-nuclear possessing States from acquiring or developing nuclear capabilities, and to encourage international cooperation on the peaceful uses of nuclear material. While firmly believing that the NPT remains vital to international peace and security and regretting deeply our collective failure to move forward with a positive disarmament agenda, the Holy See will continue to argue against both the possession and the use of nuclear weapons, until the total elimination of nuclear weapons is achieved.

    Indeed, the Holy See considers it a moral and humanitarian imperative to advance the efforts towards the final objective of the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Disarmament treaties are not just legal obligations; they are also moral commitments based on trust between States, rooted in the trust that citizens place in their governments. If commitments to nuclear disarmament are not  made in good faith and consequently result in breaches of trust, the proliferation of such weapons would be the logical corollary.

    For our own good and that of future generations, we have no reasonable or moral option other than the abolition of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a global problem and they impact all  countries and all peoples, including future generations. Increasing interdependence and globalization demand that whatever response we make to the threat of nuclear weapons be collective and concerted, based on reciprocal trust, and within a framework of general and complete disarmament, as Art. VI of the NPT demands. Moreover, there is the real and present danger that nuclear weapons and other arms of mass destruction would fall into the hands of extremist terrorist groups and other violent non-state actors.

    The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls upon all of us to embark on the implementation of the daunting ambition to better every life, especially those who have been and are left behind. It would be naïve and myopic if we sought to assure world peace and security through nuclear weapons rather than through the eradication of extreme poverty, increased accessibility to healthcare and education, and the promotion of peaceful institutions and societies through dialogue and solidarity.

    Mr. President,

    No one could ever say that a world without nuclear weapons is easily achievable. It is not; it is extremely arduous; to some, it may even appear utopian. But there is no alternative than to work unceasingly towards its achievement.

    Let me conclude by reaffirming the conviction that Pope Francis expressed in his December 2014 message to  the  President  of  the  Vienna  Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons: “I am convinced that the desire for peace and fraternity planted deep in the human heart will bear fruit in concrete ways to ensure that nuclear weapons are banned once and for all, to the benefit of our common home.”

  • NAPF Strongly Condemns North Korean Nuclear Test; Urges Broader Perspective

    NUCLEAR AGE PEACE FOUNDATION

    For Immediate Release
    Contact:
    Rick Wayman
    (805) 696-5159 / (805) 965-3443
    rwayman@napf.org

    NAPF Strongly Condemns North Korean Nuclear Test; Urges Broader Perspective

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) deplores the continued testing of nuclear weapons and the provocative statements by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Today’s nuclear test – the fifth by North Korea – makes apparent the growing nuclear dangers in the Northeast Asian region, and generally throughout the world.

    The world’s other eight nuclear-armed nations have tested a great deal. Over 2,000 nuclear tests have been conducted worldwide, and the United States alone has conducted over 1,000 nuclear tests.

    The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which has been open for signature for over 20 years, has still not entered into force. Forty-four key nations, known as “Annex 2 States,” must sign and ratify the CTBT before it can enter into effect. Of these, North Korea, India and Pakistan have neither signed nor ratified the treaty. China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States have signed the treaty, but have not ratified it.

    While all nations other than North Korea have been observing a moratorium on explosive nuclear tests, many nuclear-armed nations, including the United States, have continued conducting sub-critical tests and computer simulations. NAPF believes that all nuclear testing must stop. This includes North Korea’s provocative yield-producing explosions, as well as the sub-critical tests and computer simulations that other nuclear-armed nations engage in.

    Tests of nuclear weapon delivery vehicles, such as last Monday’s launch of a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile by the U.S. Air Force, are also dangerous and destabilizing. The modernization of nuclear arsenals and production infrastructure by all nine nuclear-armed nations is driving a perilous nuclear arms race.

    The Korean War has never officially come to an end. North Korea has asked numerous times to bring the war footing to an end, and has been rejected each time. The U.S. still keeps around 28,000 troops in South Korea and conducts annual war games targeting North Korea. All parties must negotiate an end to the hostilities, instead of relying on a 63 year-old Armistice Agreement.

    Finally, NAPF urges all nine nuclear-armed nations to fulfill their obligations under existing international law. Nuclear-armed countries have an obligation to convene negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament, as required by Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law. As North Korea’s continued nuclear testing shows, the only way to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used is to negotiate their complete abolition.

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    For further information, contact Rick Wayman at rwayman@napf.org or (805) 696-5159.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – NAPF’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders.  Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations.

  • The Simple Act of Pushing a Button

    “Since the appearance of visible life on Earth, 380 million years had to elapse in order for a butterfly to learn how to fly, 180 million years to create a rose with no other commitment than to be beautiful, and four geological eras in order for us human beings to be able to sing better than birds, and to be able to die from love. It is not honorable for the human talent, in the golden age of science, to have conceived the way for such an ancient and colossal process to return to the nothingness from which it came through the simple act of pushing a button.”

    I recently came across this quotation by the great Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.  The quotation is from a 1986 speech by Garcia Marquez entitled “The Cataclysm of Damocles.”  In the short quotation, he captures what needs to be said about nuclear weapons succinctly, poetically and beautifully.  With a few deft literary brushstrokes, he shows that the journey of life from nothingness to now could be ended with no more than “the simple act of pushing a button.”

    The button is a metaphor for setting in motion a nuclear war, which could happen by miscalculation, mistake or malice.  Of course, it matters whose finger is on the button, but it matters even more that anyone’s finger is on the button.  There are not good fingers and bad fingers resting on the button.  No one is stable enough, rational enough, sane enough, or wise enough to trust with deciding to push the nuclear button.  It is madness to leave the door open to the possibility of “a return to nothingness.”

    On one side of the ledger is everything natural and extraordinary about life with its long evolution bringing us to the present and poised to carry its processes forward into the future.  On the other side of the ledger is “the button,” capable of bringing most life on the planet to a screeching halt.  Also on this side of the ledger are those people who remain ignorant or apathetic to the nuclear dangers confronting humanity.

    We all need to recognize what is at stake and choose a side.  Put simply, do you stand with life and the processes of nature that have brought such beauty and diversity to our world, or do you stand with the destructive products of science that have brought us to the precipice of annihilation?  We must each make a choice.

    I fear too many of us are not awakened to the seriousness and risks of the unfolding situation.  We are taken in by the techno-talk that amplifies the messages of national security linked to the button.  Nuclear deterrence is no more than a hypothesis about human psychology and behavior.  It does not protect people from a nuclear attack.  It is unproven and unprovable.  Nuclear deterrence may or may not work, but we know that it cannot provide physical protection against a nuclear attack.  Those who believe in it, do so at their own peril and at our common peril.

    The possibility of “a return to nothingness” is too great a risk to take.  We must put down the nuclear-armed gun.  We must dismantle the button and the potential annihilation it represents.  We must listen to our hearts and end the nuclear insanity by ending the nuclear weapons era.  If we fail to act with engaged hearts, we will continue to stand at the precipice of annihilation – the precipice of a world without butterflies or beautiful roses, without birds or humans.  The golden age of science will come to an end as a triumph of cataclysmic devastation, which will be humanity’s most enduring failure.

    Reading, discussing and understanding the meaning of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short quotation should be required of every schoolchild, every citizen, and every leader of every country.

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).  He is the author and editor of many books on peace and nuclear weapons abolition, including Speaking of Peace: Quotations to Inspire Action.

     

  • The Power of Imagination

    David KriegerAlbert Einstein, the great 20th century scientist and humanitarian, wrote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  Let us exercise our imaginations.

    Imagine the horror and devastation of Hiroshima, and multiply it by every city and country on earth.

    Imagine that a nuclear war could end human life on our planet, and that the capacity to initiate a nuclear war rests in the hands of only a few individuals in each nuclear-armed state.

    Imagine that nuclear weapons threaten the future of humanity and all life.

    Imagine that we are not helpless in the face of this threat, and that we can rise to the challenge of ending the nuclear weapons era.

    Imagine that together we can make a difference and that you are needed to create a nuclear weapons-free world.

    Imagine a world without the threat of nuclear devastation, a world that you helped to create.

    There is an Indian proverb which states, “All of the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.”  We must nurture, with all our human capacities, the seeds of peace and human dignity which have been so poorly tended for so long.

    The time has come for renewed energy and leadership to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity, to restore and maintain peace, to live up to the highest standards of human rights, and to pursue a non-killing world.  Change is coming, if we will use our imaginations, raise our voices, stand firm and persist in demanding it.

  • 2016 Nagasaki Peace Declaration

    Nuclear weapons are cruel weapons that destroy human beings.

    Mayor Tomihisa TaueThe instant that the single nuclear bomb dropped by a U.S. military aircraft on Nagasaki City at 11:02 AM on August 9, 1945, exploded in the air, it struck the city with a furious blast and heat wave. Nagasaki City was transformed into a hell on earth; a hell of black-charred corpses, people covered in blistering burns, people with their internal organs spilling out, and people cut and studded by the countless fragments of flying glass that had penetrated their bodies.

    The radiation released by the bomb pierced people’s bodies, resulting in illnesses and disabilities that still afflict those who narrowly managed to survive the bombing.

    Nuclear weapons are cruel weapons that continue to destroy human beings.

    In May this year, President Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima, a city which was bombed with a nuclear weapon. In doing so, the President showed the rest of the world the importance of seeing, listening and feeling things for oneself.

    I appeal to the leaders of states which possess nuclear weapons and other countries, and to the people of the world: please come and visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Find out for yourselves what happened to human beings beneath the mushroom cloud. Knowing the facts becomes the starting point for thinking about a future free of nuclear weapons.

    This year at the United Nations Office at Geneva, sessions are being held to deliberate a legal framework that will take forward nuclear disarmament negotiations. The creation of a forum for legal discussions is a huge step forward. However, countries in possession of nuclear weapons have not attended these meetings, the results of which will be compiled shortly. Moreover, conflict continues between the nations that are dependent on nuclear deterrence and those that are urging for a start of negotiations to prohibit nuclear weapons. If this situation continues, then the meetings will end without the creation of a roadmap for nuclear weapons abolition.

    Leaders of countries possessing nuclear weapons, it is not yet too late. Please attend the meetings and participate in the debate.

    I appeal to the United Nations, governments and national assemblies, and the civil society including NGOs. We must not allow the eradication of these forums where we can discuss legal frameworks for the abolition of nuclear weapons. At the United Nations General Assembly this fall, please provide a forum for discussing and negotiating a legal framework aimed at the realization of a world without nuclear weapons. And as members of human society, I ask you all to continue to make every effort to seek out a viable solution.

    Countries which possess nuclear weapons are currently carrying out plans to make their nuclear weapons even more sophisticated. If this situation continues, the realization of a world without nuclear weapons will become even more unlikely.

    Now is the time for all of you to bring together as much of your collective wisdom as you possibly can, and act so that we do not destroy the future of mankind.

    The Government of Japan, while advocating nuclear weapons abolition, still relies on nuclear deterrence. As a method to overcome this contradictory state of affairs, please enshrine the Three Non-Nuclear Principles in law, and create a “Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone” (NEA-NWFZ) as a framework for security that does not rely on nuclear deterrence. As the only nation in the world to have suffered a nuclear bombing during wartime, and as a nation that understands only too well the inhumanity of these weapons, I ask the Government of Japan to display leadership in taking concrete action regarding the creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone, a concept that embodies mankind’s wisdom.

    The history of nuclear weapons is also the history of distrust.

    In the midst of this distrust between nations, countries with nuclear weapons have developed evermore destructive weapons with increasingly distant target ranges. There are still over 15,000 nuclear warheads in existence, and there is the ever-present danger that they may be used in war, by accident, or as an act of terrorism.

    One way of stemming this flow and turning the cycle of distrust into a cycle of trust is to continue with persistent efforts to create trust.

    In line with the peaceful ethos of the Constitution of Japan, we have endeavored to spread trust throughout the world by contributing to global society through efforts such as humanitarian aid. In order that we never again descend into war, Japan must continue to follow this path as a peaceful nation.

    There is also something that each and every one of us can do as members of civil society. This is to mutually understand the differences in each other’s languages, cultures and ways of thinking, and to create trust on a familiar level by taking part in exchange with people regardless of their nationality. The warm reception given to President Obama by the people of Hiroshima is one example of this. The conduct of civil society may appear small on an individual basis, but it is in fact a powerful and irreplaceable tool for building up relationships of trust between nations.

    Seventy-one years after the atomic bombings, the average age of the hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, exceeds 80. The world is steadily edging towards “an era without any hibakusha.” The question we face now is how to hand down to future generations the experiences of war and the atomic bombing that was the result of that war.

    You who are the young generation, all the daily things that you take for granted – your mother’s gentle hands, your father’s kind look, chatting with your friends, the smiling face of the person you like – war takes these from you, forever.

    Please take the time to listen to war experiences, and the experiences of the hibakusha. Talking about such terrible experiences is not easy. I want you all to realize that the reason these people still talk about what they went through is because they want to protect the people of the future.

    Nagasaki has started activities in which the children and grandchildren of the hibakusha are conveying the experiences of their elders. We are also pursuing activities to have the bombed schoolhouse at Shiroyama Elementary School, and other sites, registered as Historic Sites of Japan, so that they can be left for future generations.

    Young people, for the sake of the future, will you face up to the past and thereby take a step forward?

    It is now over five years since the nuclear reactor accident in Fukushima. As a place that has suffered from radiation exposure, Nagasaki will continue to support Fukushima.

    As for the Government of Japan, we strongly demand that wide-ranging improvements are made to the support provided to the hibakusha, who still to this day suffer from the aftereffects of the bombing, and that swift aid is given to all those who experienced the bombing, including the expansion of the area designated as having been affected by the atomic bomb.

    We, the citizens of Nagasaki, offer our most heartfelt condolences to those who lost their lives to the atomic bomb. We hereby declare that together with the people of the world, we will continue to use all our strength to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, and to realize everlasting peace.

    Tomihisa Taue
    Mayor of Nagasaki
    August 9, 2016

  • Hiroshima Survivor’s Letter to President Obama

    This letter, by Hiroshima survivor and NAPF Advisory Council member Setsuko Thurlow, was delivered to President Obama via Ben Rhodes on June 6, 2016.

    Dear President Obama,

    Since your historic visit to Hiroshima in May, several people have been asking me to share my thoughts.  What would I have said to you directly if we’d had an opportunity to sit down and speak face to face?

    Setsuko Thurlow
    Setsuko Thurlow at the 2015 NAPF Evening for Peace.

    The first thing that comes to mind that I would have shared with you is an image of my four-year-old nephew Eiji — transformed into a charred, blackened and swollen child who kept asking in a faint voice for water until he died in agony.  Had he not been a victim of the atomic bomb, he would be 75 years old this year. This idea shocks me. Regardless of the passage of time, he remains in my memory as a 4-year-old child who came to represent all the innocent children of the world.  And it is this death of innocents that has been the driving force for me to continue my struggle against the ultimate evil of nuclear weapons.  Eiji’s image is burnt into my retina.

    Many survivors have been passing in recent years with their dreams of nuclear abolition unfulfilled.  Their motto was, “abolition in our lifetime”.  The reality of our twilight years intensifies our sense of urgency, now met with stronger commitment.  When you say: “it may not happen in my lifetime”, this gives us enormous grief.

    I was not in Hiroshima when you visited, but I understand it was packed with media, and I could tell that of course your visit was carefully controlled and choreographed: who sat where; who were invited to approach you; the children and hibakusha who were hand picked by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. But still you came.  Your speech was heartfelt but it avoided the issue.  I know from my personal experience as hellish as all war is nothing can be equivalent to nuclear violence.

    You said, “Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.” To me your words echoed those of former German President Richard von Weizeker’s inspiring speech on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Germany’s surrender.  Many Japanese people were deeply inspired by the manner in which he confronted the past and dealt with wartime atrocities with integrity, when he said, “We Germans must look truth straight in the eye – without embellishment and without distortion… There can be no reconciliation without remembrance.”

    The Japanese Government should emulate this profound sentiment in confronting the past and dealing with our as yet unresolved relationships with neighboring countries, particularly Korea and China.  Tragically, the current Abe Administration is seeking to expand Japan’s military role in the region and forsake our much-cherished Peace Constitution.

    And in the United States, as you are no doubt aware, an unfortunate remembrance has been underway.  The National Park Service and the Department of Energy will establish the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.  Unlike the memorials at Auschwitz and Treblinka, the United States seeks to preserve the history of the once top-secret sites at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford, as a sort of celebration of that technological ‘achievement’. Among the first so-called ‘successes’ of this endeavor was creating hell on earth in my beloved Hiroshima.

    Is this how we should ensure that the “memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade”?

    Setsuko Thurlow's family in 1937.
    Setsuko Thurlow’s family in 1937.

    As a 13-year-old schoolgirl, I witnessed my city of Hiroshima blinded by the flash, flattened by the hurricane-like blast, burned in the heat of 4000 degrees Celsius and contaminated by the radiation of one atomic bomb.  A bright summer morning turned to dark twilight with smoke and dust rising in the mushroom cloud, dead and injured covering the ground, begging desperately for water and receiving no medical care at all.  The spreading firestorm and the foul stench of burnt flesh filled the air.

    Miraculously, I was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building, about 1.8 kilometers from Ground Zero.  Most of my classmates in the same room were burned alive.  I can still hear their voices calling their mothers and God for help.  As I escaped with two other surviving girls, we saw a procession of ghostly figures slowly shuffling from the centre of the city. Grotesquely wounded people, whose clothes were tattered, or who were made naked by the blast.  They were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen.  Parts of their bodies were missing, flesh and skin hanging from their bones, some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands, and some with their stomachs burst open, with their intestines hanging out.

    Through months and years of struggle for survival, rebuilding lives out of the ashes, we survivors, or ‘hibakusha’, became convinced that no human being should ever have to repeat our experience of the inhumane, immoral, and cruel atomic bombing.  And it is our mission, to warn the world about the reality of the nuclear threat; and to help people understand the illegality and ultimate evil of nuclear weapons. We believe that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.

    And still today, to paraphrase President Kennedy, the sword of Damocles dangles evermore perilously.  Most experts agree that nuclear weapons are more dangerous now than at any point in our history due to a wide variety of risks including: geopolitical saber rattling, human error, computer failure, complex systems failure, increasing radioactive contamination in the environment and its toll on public and environmental health, as well as the global famine and climate chaos that would ensue should a limited use of nuclear weapons occur by accident or design.

    Thus, we have a moral imperative to abolish nuclear arsenals, in order to ensure a safe and just world for future generations.  As you said in Hiroshima, “we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.”

    Why then, with all due respect to you Mr. President, is the US government boycotting the United Nations disarmament negotiations born of the Humanitarian Initiative, the most significant advance for nuclear disarmament in a generation?

    Within the last five years, I have witnessed the rapid development of a global movement involving states without nuclear weapons and NGOs working together to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons.  This movement has shown beyond all doubt that nuclear weapons are first and foremost a grave humanitarian problem, and that the terrible risks of these weapons cast all techno-military considerations into irrelevance. Following three International Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons – inexcusably boycotted by your administration – 127 nations have joined the Humanitarian Pledge to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. These nations are calling on Nuclear Weapon States and those who stand with them, to begin a process for nuclear disarmament.

    To repeat the words of Richard von Weizeker: “We must look truth straight in the eye – without embellishment and without distortion.”  The truth is, we all live with the daily threat of nuclear weapons. In every silo, on every submarine, in the bomb bays of airplanes, every second of every day, nuclear weapons, thousands on high alert, are poised for deployment threatening everyone we love and everything we hold dear.

    Last month in Japan you poignantly said: “That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago.”

    I beg you to reframe this profound sentiment to understand that the people we love, our smiling children, the embrace of loved ones, these precious moments and precious people are all under threat of annihilation because of the existence of nuclear weapons, and the policy of deterrence that you currently authorize and provide for nations under the US nuclear umbrella, including my home country Japan.  This perversion, in its truest sense, means that the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack in war now seeks its own protection through far more diabolical hydrogen bombs.  And you Mr. Obama, the only sitting US President to visit Hiroshima, came accompanied by a duty bound officer with the nuclear briefcase, should you need the codes to command a remote missileer to insert a floppy disc as a prelude to the end of life on earth.

    If you truly wanted to hasten our “own moral awakening” through making nuclear disarmament a reality, here are three immediate steps:

    1. Stop the U.S. boycott of international nuclear disarmament meetings and join the 127 countries that have endorsed the Humanitarian Pledge to create a new legal instrument and new norms for a nuclear weapons ban treaty as a first step in their elimination and prohibition.
    1. Stop spending money to modernize the US nuclear arsenal, a staggering $1 trillion over the next three decades, and use this money to meet human needs and protect our environment.
    1. Take nuclear weapons off high alert and review the aging command and control systems that have been the subject of recent research exposing a culture of neglect and the alarming regularity of accidents involving nuclear weapons.

    President Obama, you uniquely have the power to enact real change.  This could be your legacy. To usher in an era of real disarmament where lifting the threat of nuclear war could ease all people to “go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child.”

    Yours sincerely,

    Setsuko Thurlow

  • More Than Profit Is at Stake in Modernization

    A few days ago, the U.S. Air Force announced that it is seeking proposals from “industry” to replace its nuclear weapons and delivery systems. While the Air Force’s plans for nuclear weapons “modernization” aim to please the for-profit weapons industry, the stakeholders it should be considering are the people and the planet.

    The People

    Will the people benefit from $1 trillion being spent on new nuclear weapons, delivery systems and production infrastructure?

    Let’s ask Pope Francis. In a December 2014 message to the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, he said:

    Spending on nuclear weapons squanders the wealth of nations. To prioritize such spending is a mistake and a misallocation of resources which would be far better invested in the areas of integral human development, education, health and the fight against extreme poverty. When these resources are squandered, the poor and the weak living on the margins of society pay the price.

    pope_ungaNow, $1 trillion over 30 years might sound like a lot of money to spend on nuclear weapons. That’s approximately $4 million per hour for three decades. However, we must also keep in mind that this is only the additional money that the U.S. will be spending to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal. It will also be spending money to maintain and deploy its systems, to the tune of tens of billions more dollars annually.

    Also, the U.S. is not the only country engaged in nuclear weapons modernization. Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea are all engaged in some level of modernization of their own nuclear forces.

    The Planet

    Will the planet benefit from a new generation of nuclear weapons?

    landfillLet’s ask the people of St. Louis, Missouri, where an underground landfill fire is approaching buried radioactive waste created over 70 years ago during the Manhattan Project. Community members living near the West Lake Landfill have been organizing to have this extraordinarily dangerous issue addressed as a matter of top priority to the nation, but every day the uncontrolled fire creeps closer to buried radioactive waste.

    There are many other sites in the U.S. that are similarly — and in many cases more — contaminated from nuclear weapons production. Again, the U.S. is but one of nine nuclear-armed countries, and sadly this legacy of environmental carelessness has played out all over the world.

    Profit

    Next time you hear an Air Force general or a member of Congress say just how urgent and necessary it is to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons, think about what they are really saying, and where their priorities truly lie.

    Our collective future should not be held hostage by profit-driven corporations enabled by politicians who believe in the fantasy of indefinite global security through the threat of mass annihilation. As we reflect on the 71st anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this week, we are offered a reminder of what nuclear weapons are really designed to do: indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands of people in an instant.

  • From Hope to Action

    This speech was delivered by Setsuko Thurlow in Toronto, Canada on August 6, 2016.

    Setsuko Thurlow
    Setsuko Thurlow at the 2015 NAPF Evening for Peace.

    Today is the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  The calendar never fails to bring me the special reminder each year of the unforgettable day, August 6, 1945, that changed my life and that of the entire world.  As I attempt to ponder the meaning of my survival from that hell on Earth I remember Einstein’s words, “Splitting the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking, thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe”.  Try to visualize his words!  It is a chillingly frightening truth.  His words have been ringing in our ears for the past 71 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but with more intensity in recent years; as the world we live in is getting more dangerous with over 15,000 nuclear weapons, which are far more destructive than those that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while the majority of the world’s people continue to live in denial, blissfully ignorant and complacent of the reality.

    Having lived through such an unprecedented catastrophe, we survivors, Hibakusha, became convinced of our mission to warn the world about the reality of those indiscriminate, inhumane, and cruel nuclear weapons, and their utter unacceptability.  Thus, we have been calling for the total abolition of such devices of mass murder.  We believe that as long as nuclear weapons exist there is no guarantee of security.

    It was because of this awe-inducing power of the atomic bombs that some enlightened leaders of the world, foreseeing the potential annihilation of civilization, speedily established the United Nations and called for stringent control on nuclear technologies to ensure that no one would ever use them for weapons again.  The UN General Assembly’s first ever resolution tried to address “the problems raised by the discovery of atomic energy”.  The U.S. enjoyed a monopoly for testing and producing nuclear weapons until the USSR caught up in 1949, and other nuclear weapon nations followed soon after.  As the arms race intensified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into force in 1970 and in 1996 the International Court of Justice, the highest court of International Law, was requested to give an advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons and the legal obligations of the nuclear weapon states.  Many of us here remember those days with occasional small “moral victories” we celebrated, but mostly fury and outrage for the lack of progress in the disarmament diplomacy.

    In the past several years witnessing nuclear disarmament diplomacy at work in the United Nations and at international conferences has been a relatively new experience for me.  I found it to be profoundly disturbing to see the lack of tangible progress in diplomatic negotiations in spite of the 46 years since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into force.  The nuclear weapon states are not genuinely committed to the treaty as demonstrated by their not having complied with their legal obligations under Article VI to work toward nuclear disarmament in good faith.  They are acting as if it is their right to keep their nuclear weapons indefinitely, and are manipulating the negotiation process to suit their perceived national interest.  This totally unacceptable nuclear status quo has been driving many exasperated non-nuclear weapon states and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to demand a legally binding instrument to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.

    This condition was conducive to the birth of a rapidly growing global movement, the Humanitarian Initiative, involving 127 non-nuclear weapon states and over 440 non-governmental organizations in 98 countries and the United Nations and its agencies, working together to outlaw nuclear weapons.  Over several years with three successful conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons hosted by the governments of Norway, Mexico and Austria, this movement refocused attention from the military doctrine of deterrence to the humanitarian dimension of nuclear weapons.  The result has been a strong push for a legally binding treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

    The Humanitarian Pledge was issued by the Austrian government at the conclusion of the Vienna conference in December 2014, committing Austria to “identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.  This pledge has now been endorsed by 127 nations although unfortunately not by Canada.  This reference to the “existing legal gap” is the reality that while chemical and biological weapons are banned, nuclear weapons, the most destructive of all weapons of mass destruction, have not yet been explicitly banned under international law.

    In the many years of my work for nuclear disarmament I have never felt as hopeful and as encouraged as I do now.  To witness how the Humanitarian Initiative movement has mobilized people around the world to overcome the resistance by the nuclear weapon states and to move towards prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.  This year the United Nations established the Open Ended Working Group to “substantively address and make recommendations to the United Nations General Assembly about concrete, effective legal measures, legal provisions and norms” to attain and maintain a nuclear weapons free world.  Now, the working group is in its final, crucial phase.  A growing number of non-nuclear weapon states are expressing support for the immediate commencement of negotiations on a legally binding agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons, despite strong opposition from the nuclear weapon states and their allies.  The General Assembly will vote on this report in October.  We are on the verge of a breakthrough for a path for this most significant chance in our lifetime for nuclear disarmament.  We must seize this opportunity.

    Now, let me tell you an inspiring and empowering story about the recent successful campaign that our ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a global coalition of NGOs) colleagues in the Netherlands achieved.  Frustrated by the Dutch government policy of supporting NATO policies a citizens’ initiative by PAX, ASN Bank and the Dutch Red Cross, made great efforts collecting 45,608 Dutch citizens’ signatures for a petition supporting a ban treaty and to calling for a parliamentary debate on nuclear weapons on April 28th of this year.  The result was that a vast majority of their Parliament voted for a nuclear weapons ban, which the government was forced to accept.  The public gallery was so crowded that another room was needed for the overflow of supporters.  The news media extensively covered this huge success of citizens’ action.  The intent of the motion was that the Netherlands should now be working actively to reach out to other NATO member states to build solidarity.  I was gratified to play a small part of this campaign by speaking to the Members of Parliament via a recorded video statement.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Canadian people can follow in the footsteps of the Netherlands?

    And now, where does our Canadian government stand in the fast developing international negotiations for a legally binding instrument for the prohibition of nuclear weapons?  Regrettably, Canada presents itself as a subservient defender of the nuclear weapons superstar state south of the border, and its allies with their heavy reliance on the doctrine of deterrence.

    For many of us working for nuclear disarmament we rejoiced the arrival of the Trudeau government too soon because this government seemed to have inherited the same retrograde nuclear policies from the previous government.  Foreign Minister Stephane Dion’s letters to Canadian peace groups are full of retrograde ideas and leaves me chilled, and it feels as if we are on different planets.  He is rigidly maintaining the nuclear status quo and has a seeming unwillingness to consider different perspectives of disarmament initiatives.  Sadly, his opposition to the Humanitarian Initiative leaves Canada out of step with the majority of the world.  His total lack of sense of urgency about the increasing risk of nuclear weapons can be seen in this quote from one of his letters:

    “Canada has consistently promoted the notion that complete nuclear disarmament can only occur in an environment that guarantees security for all states.”

    Is he waiting for an ideal, perfect time to initiate disarmament?  Has there ever been any time as that in human history?  Will there be in the future?

    We must wake up the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the entire Parliament as our colleagues in the Netherlands have succeeded in doing.  Otherwise, like Einstein says, this beautiful country of Canada, together with the rest of the world, will drift toward “unparalleled catastrophe”.

    The Open Ended Working Group is winding up, with the final report being issued in Geneva this month.  The momentum is growing.  Let’s join the historic initiative for nuclear disarmament.  Let’s seize this opportunity.  This action of hope will be the best way to honour those annihilated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 71 years ago.

  • 2016 Hiroshima Peace Declaration

    hiroshima1945, August 6, 8:15 a.m. Slicing through the clear blue sky, a previously unknown “absolute evil” is unleashed on Hiroshima, instantly searing the entire city. Koreans, Chinese, Southeast Asians, American prisoners of war, children, the elderly and other innocent people are slaughtered. By the end of the year, 140,000 are dead.

    Those who managed to survive suffered the aftereffects of radiation, encountered discrimination in work and marriage, and still carry deep scars in their minds and bodies. From utter obliteration, Hiroshima was reborn a beautiful city of peace; but familiar scenes from our riversides, patterns of daily life, and cultural traditions nurtured through centuries of history vanished in that “absolute evil,” never to return.

    He was a boy of 17. Today he recalls, “Charred corpses blocked the road. An eerie stench filled my nose. A sea of fire spread as far as I could see. Hiroshima was a living hell.” She was a girl of 18. “I was covered in blood. Around me were people with skin flayed from their backs hanging all the way to their feet—crying, screaming, begging for water.”

    Seventy-one years later, over 15,000 nuclear weapons remain, individually much more destructive than the one that inflicted Hiroshima’s tragedy, collectively enough to destroy the Earth itself. We now know of numerous accidents and incidents that brought us to the brink of nuclear explosions or war; today we even fear their use by terrorists.

    Given this reality, we must heed the hibakusha. The man who described a living hell says, “For the future of humanity, we need to help each other live in peace and happiness with reverence for all life.” The woman who was covered in blood appeals to coming generations, “To make the most of the life we’ve been given, please, everyone, shout loudly that we don’t need nuclear weapons.” If we accept these appeals, we must do far more than we have been doing. We must respect diverse values and strive persistently toward a world where all people are truly “living together.”

    When President Obama visited Hiroshima in May, he became the first sitting president of the country that dropped the atomic bomb to do so. Declaring, “… among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them,” he expressed acceptance of thehibakusha’s heartfelt plea that “no one else should ever suffer as we have.” Demonstrating to the people of the U.S. and the world a passion to fight to eliminate all remaining nuclear weapons, the President’s words showed that he was touched by the spirit of Hiroshima, which refuses to accept the “absolute evil.”

    A group of 30 young people from 23 countries met in Hiroshima in August 2015 to work together for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
    A group of 30 young people from 23 countries met in Hiroshima in August 2015 to work together for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Is it not time to honor the spirit of Hiroshima and clear the path toward a world free from that “absolute evil,” that ultimate inhumanity? Is it not time to unify and manifest our passion in action? This year, for the first time ever, the G7 foreign ministers gathered in Hiroshima. Transcending the differences between countries with and without nuclear weapons, their declaration called for political leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and fulfillment of the obligation to negotiate nuclear disarmament mandated by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This declaration was unquestionably a step toward unity.

    We need to fill our policymakers with the passion to solidify this unity and create a security system based on trust and dialogue. To that end, I once again urge the leaders of all nations to visit the A-bombed cities. As President Obama confirmed in Hiroshima, such visits will surely etch the reality of the atomic bombings in each heart. Along with conveying the pain and suffering of the hibakusha, I am convinced they will elicit manifestations of determination.

    The average age of the hibakusha has exceeded 80. Our time to hear their experiences face to face grows short. Looking toward the future, we will need our youth to help convey the words and feelings of the hibakusha. Mayors for Peace, now with over 7,000 city members worldwide, will work regionally, through more than 20 lead cities, and globally, led by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to promote youth exchange. We will help young people cultivate a shared determination to stand together and initiate concrete action for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Here in Hiroshima, Prime Minister Abe expressed determination “to realize a world free of nuclear weapons.” I expect him to join with President Obama and display leadership in this endeavor. A nuclear-weapon-free-world would manifest the noble pacifism of the Japanese Constitution, and to ensure progress, a legal framework banning nuclear weapons is indispensable. In addition, I demand that the Japanese government expand the “black rain areas” and improve assistance to the hibakusha, whose average age is over 80, and the many others who suffer the mental and physical effects of radiation.

    Today, we renew our determination, offer heartfelt consolation to the souls of the A-bomb victims, and pledge to do everything in our power, working with the A-bombed city of Nagasaki and millions around the world, to abolish nuclear weapons and build lasting world peace.

    August 6, 2016
    MATSUI Kazumi
    Mayor
    The City of Hiroshima

  • In an Age of “Smart” Weapons, We Can Live Without Nukes

    This article was originally published by UPI.

    Concern about the dangers of nuclear weapons is nothing new. But with the Republican National Convention in Cleveland about to nominate Donald Trump as its candidate for president, many people are feeling increasingly trapped — a feeling that was intensified this week when the ghost writer for Trump’s book The Art of the Deal said, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

    Regardless what you think about Trump, it is certainly true that the world is getting increasingly dangerous. The Islamic State, sudden coup attempts, instability throughout the Middle East, tensions with Russia and China, strongmen replacing democratic rule — across the board there seems to be cause for concern. One Pulitzer Prize winning historian recently wrote a piece with the despairing title, “Nuclear weapons mess: We’re all in it together but don’t know how to get out alive.”

     It seems like a genuine conundrum. If everyone really wants nuclear weapons, and if the world is getting more dangerous and human beings are fallible, then somewhere down the road there is a nuclear war waiting for us. This pessimistic view is generally shared by almost all in the nuclear weapons community and by many thoughtful people throughout the world.
    But the situation is, in fact, not that dire. It is not time to despair. There are actually sound, pragmatic reasons to reject nuclear weapons. The ideas we use to guide us in thinking about nuclear weapons are actually wrong. The assumptions shared by most members of the nuclear community and that they have assiduously taught the rest of us for 70 years are muddled and mistaken. The reasoning behind our nuclear policy, and the nuclear mindset that generated that reasoning, was developed during a time of intense fear and — like most thinking done when you’re terrified — isn’t very sound.
    But it has been rarely challenged. The anti-nuclear movement has had massive protests, it has had passionate denunciations, it has had dedicated, long-suffering activists, but the one thing it has never brought forward is a serious challenge to the ideas behind the nuclear weapons mindset. The assumptions behind the notion that “everyone wants nuclear weapons” because they are some sort of “ultimate” weapon have simply never been given careful scrutiny.
    And in point of fact, it is high time that they were challenged because they are doubtful, problematic and not very realistic. The nuclear mindset is taught in international relations courses and grad schools, and repeated in think tanks and the corridors of government. The media and public mostly repeat the conclusions the experts have arrived at. But the nuclear mindset is grown in an airtight intellectual compartment where uncomfortable facts, new ideas, and obvious contradictions rarely find their way in. It is carried on in the closed circle of nuclear believers. It is classic groupthink.

    And the results are unsound.

    Take the oft-repeated notion that “you can’t disinvent nuclear weapons.” This is an argument that is rarely questioned and is a key element in the argument that disarmament is impossible. It seems plausible on the face of it, but look closer and you’ll see there’s nothing there. No technology goes away by disinvention. It’s an imaginary process. How is it supposed to work? Does a guy in a white coat sit down at a bench and “disinvent” ancient IBM PCs? Technology goes away because people abandon it. It’s not about technology, it’s about social preference.

    Nuclear believers have disguised this argument because they want the assertion that nuclear weapons are desirable dressed up as a law of technology evolution. The disguise is necessary because the idea that “everyone wants nuclear weapons” is easily and powerfully challenged by the facts. More countries have had programs to build nuclear weapons and abandoned them or had actual nuclear weapons in hand and given them up, than have built nuclear arsenals. The “you can’t disinvent nuclear weapons” argument is a trick designed to hide a questionable assumption.

    The entire nuclear mindset is like this. Dubious assertions about human nature (“decision makers will be more rational in a crisis because they know the stakes are higher”) dressed up in jargon and arcane theories. Dicey interpretations of history (“nuclear deterrence has never failed”) boldly stated as fact. Of course nuclear deterrence has failed in the past. I know we’ve never had a nuclear war, but that isn’t proof. Imagine that you are driving in your car, your brakes fail, you swerve and weave crazily through oncoming traffic and by some miracle end up unhurt in the field on the other side of the road. Do you then get out of your car and say, “Well, I know my brakes didn’t fail, because I didn’t end up dead.” Just because we’ve never ended up in a nuclear war, doesn’t mean the mechanism of nuclear deterrence has never failed.

    It is high time to challenge the nuclear mindset, to understand that nuclear weapons are clumsy, awful weapons rather than “ultimate” weapons, and to see that it’s possible to break free from the dilemma. After all, if nuclear weapons are lousy weapons — too big for any practical purpose — then elimination is just common sense. And as we continue to develop “smart” weapons — tiny, accurate, discriminate drones, for example — a world without nuclear weapons looks increasingly possible. Which would you rather have? Smart, small, discriminate, useful weapons? Or big, clumsy, dangerous, not very useful weapons like nuclear weapons?

    There does appear to be dark danger ahead. Increasingly, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” But we can get out of this alive. We are not trapped. As usual, American pragmatism points the way out of the maze. Americans know you don’t have to keep tools that are dangerous and too big for any real-world job. That’s not dreamy utopian thinking. That’s just common sense.

    Ward Wilson is director of the Rethinking Nuclear Weapons project of BASIC (the British American Security Information Counsel) and the author of “Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons.” He is a NAPF Associate.