Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Abolition

Anniversary of World Court Advisory Opinion

The International Court of Justice (“Court,” or “ICJ”), the world’s highest court, issued its Advisory Opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons on July 8, 1996. Thus, this week marks the 20^th anniversary of that momentous opinion.

Photograph: CIJ-ICJ/UN-ONU, Capital Photos/Frank van Beek – Courtesy of the ICJ. All rights reserved.

The Court found in a split vote (7 to 7), with the casting vote of the Court’s president Mohammed Bedjaoui deciding the matter, that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal under international law. The Court could not determine whether it would be legal or illegal to threaten or use nuclear weapons “in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

Three of the judges voting to oppose general illegality, however, were concerned with the word “generally” and wanted the Court to go further and remove any ambiguity about the illegality of threat or use of nuclear weapons. Judge C.G. Weeramantry, for example, argued in a brilliant dissenting opinion “that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is illegal in any circumstances whatsoever.” Thus, in actuality, ten of the fourteen judges supported either general illegality or total illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

The Court also found unanimously that any threat or use of nuclear weapons must be compatible with the United Nations Charter and must also be compatible with the international law of armed conflict and particularly with “the principles and rules of international humanitarian law.” This means that the threat or use of nuclear weapons must be capable of distinguishing between combatants and civilians and must not cause unnecessary suffering. It is virtually impossible to imagine any use of nuclear weapons that could meet such limiting criteria.

Finally, the Court concluded, “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” Unfortunately, despite this obligation, such negotiations have not taken place in the past twenty years.

The tiny Pacific Island country, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, has cited the Court’s conclusion regarding this legal obligation in bringing contentious lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries at the International Court of Justice and separately against the United States in U.S. federal court. In the ICJ, only the cases against the UK, India and Pakistan are currently going forward, since the other six nuclear-armed countries do not accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court and have not opted to accept the Court’s jurisdiction in this matter.

The cases brought by the Marshall Islands in the ICJ are currently awaiting the Court’s ruling on preliminary objections filed by the three respondent countries. The case against the U.S. was dismissed in U.S. federal district court on jurisdictional grounds, and is currently on appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Nuclear weapons are devices of mass annihilation. The ICJ found these weapons to be generally illegal and to require good faith negotiations leading to total nuclear disarmament. All nine nuclear-armed countries are in breach of this obligation to the detriment of the people of the world, including the citizens of their own countries. The Republic of the Marshall Islands has had the courage to bring this matter back to the ICJ as contentious cases.

On the illegality of nuclear weapons, the then Court President, Mohammed Bedjaoui, stated: “Nuclear weapons, the ultimate evil, destabilize humanitarian law, which is the law of the lesser evil. The existence of nuclear weapons is therefore a challenge to the very existence of humanitarian law, not to mention their long-term effects of damage to the human environment, in respect to which the right to life can be exercised.”

On the 20^th anniversary of the ICJ Advisory Opinion on threat or use of nuclear weapons, the people must wake up, stand up and speak out. Nuclear weapons are illegal as well as immoral and costly. They are not even weapons, but instruments of mass annihilation. They serve no useful purpose and endanger all countries, all people, and all future generations. It is past time to end the nuclear era.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of Zero: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition.

July 6, 2016
A Moral Revolution?

A MORAL REVOLUTION?
Reflections on President Obama’s Visit to Hiroshima

There is no doubt that President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima this May crossed some thresholds hitherto taboo. Above all the visit was properly heralded as the first time a sitting American president has dared such a pilgrimage, which has already been critically commented upon by patrioteers in America who still think that the Japanese deserved such a punishment for initiating the war or believed that only such “shock and awe” could induce the Japanese to surrender without a costly invasion of the mainland. As well many in Asia believe that Obama by the visit is unwittingly letting Japan off the accountability hook for its seemingly unrepentant record of atrocities throughout Asia, especially given the perception that the current Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is doing his conservative best to reinvigorate Japanese nationalism, and even revive imperial ambitions.

Obama is a gifted orator who excels in finding the right words for the occasion, and in Hiroshima his rhetoric soared once more. There he noted “[t]echnological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of the atom requires a moral revolution as well.” Such stirring words would seem to be a call to action, especially when reinforced by a direct challenge: “..among 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.” Obama at Prague in 2009, shortly after being sworn in as president, set forth an inspiring vision along the same lines, yet the small print there and now makes us wonder whether his heart and head are truly aligned. The words flow with grace and even passion, but where are the deeds?

As in Prague, Obama expressed the cautionary sentiment in Hiroshima that “[w]e may not realize this goal in my lifetime.” At which point Obama associates himself with the stabilizing agenda of arms control, reducing the size of the stockpile, making the weapons less obtainable by “fanatics,” and implementing nonproliferation goals. Apparently, neither Obama nor the media take note of the tension between eliminating the weaponry and these proposals designed to stabilize the nuclear weapons environment by making it more reliably subject to prudent and rational policies of control. Yet at the same time making proposals to eliminate the weaponry seem less needed, and even at risk of threatening the stability so carefully constructed over the course of decades.

The real reason for skepticism about Obama’s approach is his unexplained reasons to defer the abolition of nuclear weaponry to the distant future. When Obama declares that a world without nuclear weapons is not likely to happen in his lifetime without telling us why he is changing his role from an advocate of the needed ‘moral revolution’ so as to achieve the desired political transformation to that of being a subtle endorser of the nuclear status quo. Of course, Obama may be right that negotiating nuclear disarmament will not be easy or quick, but what is the argument against trying, why defer indefinitely?

The global setting seems as favorable as it is likely to get. We live at a time when there are no fundamental cleavages among leading sovereign states, all of whom seek to benefit from a robust world economy and to live together without international wars. It would seem to be an overall situation in which dramatic innovations of benefit to the entire world would seem politically attractive. In such an atmosphere why could not Obama have said at Hiroshima, or seven years earlier at Prague, “that during the Cold War people dreamed of a world without nuclear weapons, but the tensions, distrust, and rivalry precluded a reliable disarming process, but now conditions are different. There are no good reasons not to convert dreams of a world without nuclear weapons into a carefully monitored and verified disarmament process, and there are many important reasons to try to do so.” What holds Obama back? Why does he not table a proposal or work with other nuclear governments to produce a realistic timetable to reach nuclear zero?

Worse than the seeming absence of what the great theologian, Paul Tillich, called “the courage to be” is the worrisome evidence of double dealing—eloquent words spoken to warn us of the menace of nuclearism coupled with deeds that actually strengthen the hold of nuclearism on the human future. How else should we interpret by plans of the U.S. Government to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years for the modernization and further development of the existing nuclear weapons arsenal, including provocative plans to develop nuclear weapons with potential battlefield, as opposed to deterrent, missions? Such plans are provocative because they weaken inhibitions on use and tempt other governments to emulate the United States so as offset feared new vulnerabilities to threat and attack. What stands out is the concreteness of the deeds reinforcing the nuclear established order and the abstractness of the words challenging that same order.

Beyond this, while calling for a moral revolution, Obama seems at the same time to give his blessings to nuclear energy despite its profound moral shortcomings. Obama views nuclear energy as a contribution to reducing carbon emissions in relation to global warming concerns and as a way to sell nuclear technology abroad and at the same time satisfy the energy goals of countries, such as India, in the global South. What is not acknowledged by Obama is that this nuclear energy technology is extremely dangerous and on balance detrimental in many of the same ways as nuclear weapons, prone to accidents of the sort associated with the incidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima, subject to the hazards of accumulating and disposing of nuclear wastes, vulnerable to nuclear terrorism, and creating the technological capacity for the development of the weapons in a series of additional states.

Obama made a point of announcing before visiting Hiroshima that there would be no apology for the attacks by the United States. Clearly, Obama was unwilling to enter a domain that in America remains inflamed by antagonistic beliefs, interpretations, and priorities. There is a scholarly consensus that the war would have soon ended without an invasion or the atomic bomb, but this thesis continues to be challenged by veterans and others who think that the bomb saved American lives, or at minimum, ended the captivity of captured soldiers far sooner than would have been the case without the attacks.

In fairness, Obama did acknowledge the unspeakable tragedy for Japanese civilians that experienced the Hiroshima bomb, and he showed real empathy for survivors (hibakusha) who were there in the front rows when he spoke in Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park, but he held back from saying the use of the bomb was wrong, even the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Obama’s emphasis, instead, was on working together to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. In this sense, Obama was indirectly legitimating the impunity that was accorded to the victors after World War II, which contrasted with the punitive measures of accountability used to deal with the crimes committed by the surviving leaders of defeated Japan and Germany. The main value of an apology is to bring a degree of closure to those directly and indirectly victimized by those terrible, events that took place more than 70 years ago. By so doing the United States would have moved a bit closer to suspending its self-serving insistence on impunity and this would have withdrawn geopolitical legitimacy from the weaponry.

There is something disturbing about America’s unwillingness to live up to the full horror of its past actions even while making a never again pledge. In another recent development that is freighted with similar moral ambiguities, former Senator Bob Kerrey was named the first Chair of the Board of the new Fulbright Vietnam University, a laudable joint educational project of the two countries partly funded by the U.S. Congress, despite his apparent involvement in a shameful atrocity committed during the war. The incident occurred on February 25, 1969 in the village of Thang Phong where a unit of Navy SEALS was assigned the task of assassinating a Viet Cong leader believed to be in the vicinity. Instead of a military encounter, 20 civilians were killed, some brutally. 13 were children and one a pregnant woman.

Kerrey contends that the carnage was a result of mistakes, while both a fellow member of the SEALS squad and village residents say that the killing of the civilians was a result of deliberate actions, and not an accident in the darkness. Kerrey received a Bronze Star for the mission, which was reported falsely to his military superiors as resulted in killing 21 Viet Cong militants. What is almost worse, Kerrey kept silent about the incident for more than 30 years, and only spoke about it in public after learning there was about to be a published piece highly critical of his role. Kerrey now says “I have been haunted for 32 years” and explains, “It was not a military victory, it was a tragedy, and I had ordered it.” The weight of the evidence suggests that Kerrey participated as well as ordered the killings, and that although certainly a tragedy it is more properly acknowledged as a severe war crime amounting to an atrocity.

We can only imagine what would be the American or Chinese reaction if Japan sent to the United States or China a comparable person to provide an honorific link between the two countries. For instance, sending a Japanese officer to the U.S. who had cruelly administered a POW camp where Americans were held captive and tortured or sending to China a Japanese commander who had participated in some of the grisly happenings associated with “the rape of Nanking.” It is good that Kerrey is finally contrite about his past role and appears to have been genuinely involved in promoting this goodwill encouragement of quality education in Vietnam, yet it seems unacceptably insensitive that he would be chosen to occupy such a position in an educational institution in Vietnam that is named after a prominent American senator who is particularly remembered for his efforts to bringing the Vietnam War to an end.

What connects these two seemingly distinct concerns is the steadfast refusal of the United States Government to take responsibility for its past crimes, which ensures that when future political pressures push toward immoral and unlawful behavior a similar disregard for minimal decency will be papered over. Obama’s refusal to consider accountability for the unabashed reliance on torture during the presidency of George W. Bush similarly whitewashes the past while unconvincingly promising to do better in the future. Such a pattern makes a mockery of claims made by Obama on behalf of the United States that unlike its adversaries this is a country that reveres the rule of law whenever it acts at home or abroad. From the pragmatic standpoint of governing America, in fairness, Obama never really had a choice. The political culture would have rebelled against holding the Bush administration accountable for its crime, which brings us closer to the truth of a double standard of suspending the applicability of international criminal law with respect to the policies and practices of the United States while championing individual legal responsibility for its adversaries as an expression of the evolution of moral standards in international life.

I believe that double standards has led Obama to put himself forward both as a visionary who seeks a transformed peaceful and just world and also as a geopolitical manager that accepts the job description of the presidency as upholding American global dominance by force as necessary. Now that Obama’s time in the White House is nearing its end we are better able to grasp the incompatibility of his embrace of these two roles, which sadly, and likely tragically, leads to the conclusion that the vision of a world without nuclear weapons was never meant to be more than empty words. What the peoples of the world need to discover over and over again is that the promising words flow easily from the lips of leaders have little significance unless supplemented by a robust movement from below that challenges those who are governing from above. As activists in the 1960s began to understand is that only when the body pushes against the machine will policies incline toward peace and justice, and we in the 21^st century will have to rediscover this bit of political wisdom if hope for a nuclear free world is to become a genuine political project.

If more than rhetoric is attached to the call for a “moral revolution,” then the place to start would be to question, prior to abandoning, the mentality that is comfortable with double standards when it come to war making and criminal accountability. The whole idea of impunity for the victors and capital punishment for the losers is morally regressive. Both the Obama visit to Hiroshima, as significant as it was, and the Kerrey relationship to the Fulbright Vietnam University, show that American society, even at its best, is far from prepared to take part in the necessary moral revolution.

June 7, 2016
Courage in Words, But Not in Action

It takes courage, in the cynical world of U.S. politics, to visit Hiroshima. Nearly 71 years after the United States used a nuclear weapon on that city, killing at least 140,000 people, President Obama has become the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima.

The White House vociferously proclaimed that this was not going to be an apology for President Truman’s decision in 1945 to use a nuclear weapon against a largely civilian population. That decision aside, President Obama has plenty of his own actions that he could have apologized for.

President Obama had the opportunity to actually do something about eliminating nuclear weapons. He not only did not take action, but he took us in the opposite direction. Under plans designed and implemented by his administration, the U.S. is creating new nuclear weapons and delivery systems that – if the Obama administration gets its way – will still be in use in the 2080s.

This “modernization” program is projected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years. The cost will likely be much higher in the end, as so many weapons programs go wildly over budget. More concerning to me, though, is the message that this sends to the rest of the world and the all-but-inevitable new nuclear arms race that will follow.

The Obama administration’s “modernization” program proposes a full overhaul of every nuclear warhead in the stockpile. In many cases, the new warheads will have new military capabilities, in direct violation of U.S. official policy. The B61-12 Life Extension Program, for example, will endow the B61 nuclear gravity bomb with a variable explosive yield and will include a guided tailfin kit, making it the world’s first “smart” nuclear gravity bomb.

The Obama administration is pursuing a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, new nuclear bomber aircraft and new land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. John McCain, the Republican Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently questioned the need for the U.S. to continue with this nuclear triad. He said that it is “very, very, very expensive.” That’s three “verys” from a person who for decades has been at the center of the political machine that feeds the insatiable appetite of the military-industrial complex. So, we have the Republican defense hawk and Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee questioning the need for the nuclear triad, and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning President fully on board with the trillion dollar trainwreck.

This administration is also fully funding construction of a Uranium Processing Facility in Tennessee, which will produce the highly-enriched uranium secondaries that put the “H” in h-bomb. They also continue to seek ways to fund a plan to produce up to 80 plutonium pits per year at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. At this time, there is no demonstrated need (even under the wildly over-ambitious “modernization” programs) for either of these capabilities. The nation’s two premier nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos as well as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, are run by for-profit entities that seek to maximize shareholder profit.

This is the reality of U.S. nuclear weapons policy under President Obama.

The U.S. Department of Justice is actively seeking to maneuver its way out of a lawsuit filed by the Republic of the Marshall Islands, which seeks to enforce Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Article VI calls for parties to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

It is plain to see that the U.S. (and the world’s other eight nuclear-armed nations, for that matter) is in breach of these obligations. Instead of arguing the case on the merits, the U.S. is seeking dismissal of the lawsuit on technicalities. Because the U.S. does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, U.S. courts were the only option available for the Marshall Islands to hold the U.S. accountable for its broken promises.

It is tragic that President Obama squandered his visit to Hiroshima, and his entire two terms as President, by failing to take any meaningful action to eliminate nuclear weapons. There are significant efforts happening around the world led by courageous non-nuclear nations and civil society organizations that will undoubtedly bring the world closer to nuclear zero. The President had an opportunity to create a legacy unlike any other in history. Instead, he has continued the legacy like all the others.

Rick Wayman is Director of Programs at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, California. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability and Co-Chair of the “Amplify: Generation of Change” network.

Twitter: @rickwayman

June 1, 2016
NAPF’s Messages Hit the Mainstream Media

We’ve had three letters to the editor published in the past six weeks in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

Matter of Perspective
The New York Times
May 31, 2016

As an American who has visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki on many occasions, I believe there is a fundamental difference in the way Americans and Japanese view the bomb. The American perspective is from above the bomb and its symbol, the mushroom cloud. The Japanese perspective is from beneath the bomb.

The view from above the bomb leads to reliance on nuclear weapons and ultimately to an evolutionary dead-end for our species, while the view from beneath the bomb engages our moral decency and leads to abolishing these devices of mass annihilation and preserving the planet for future generations.

David Krieger, Santa Barbara, Calif.

The writer is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

It Isn’t Enough for Obama to Talk About Nuclear Proliferation at Hiroshima
Los Angeles Times
May 13, 2016

Last year, my organization brought Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, to Santa Barbara to honor her for her lifetime of advocacy for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Thurlow and so many other survivors have dedicated their lives to abolishing nuclear weapons so nobody will again suffer as they did.

This is the real lesson of Hiroshima. For the White House to propose a modest speech about the importance of nuclear nonproliferation during the first visit to that city by a sitting president is cowardly and misses the point completely. (“Obama will be first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima — but he’ll make no apologies,” May 10)

Yes, it is important that no additional nations acquire nuclear weapons. But the story of human suffering that Hiroshima tells makes it clear that the 15,000-plus nuclear weapons in the arsenals of a handful of countries must be abolished with urgency.

There exists an international legal obligation to pursue — and bring to a conclusion — negotiations on nuclear disarmament. President Obama should dedicate the final months of his presidency to fulfilling this long-delayed obligation. That would be a legacy worth creating.

Rick Wayman, Santa Barbara

The writer is director of programs for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

The Meaning of Hiroshima, 70 Years Later
Washington Post
April 19, 2016

Regarding the April 16 editorial “The lessons and legacy of Hiroshima”:

The leaders of every nation possessing nuclear weapons should be required to visit Hiroshima. This, of course, includes President Obama and whoever is elected as his successor in November. Abstract theories of national security and nuclear deterrence have been stubbornly followed for more than 70 years while willfully turning a blind eye to the very real catastrophic human consequences of nuclear weapons.

The Post’s call for further reductions in nuclear arsenals is important, but quantitative reductions lose their meaning when the remaining hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons are made more “usable” and equipped with new military capabilities.

The United States is in the midst of a $1 trillion, 30-year program to modernize all aspects of its nuclear arsenal: the warheads, delivery systems, production facilities and command-and-control system. The other eight nuclear-armed nations are also engaged in modernization efforts. A visit to Hiroshima would underline the moral and humanitarian imperatives to abolish nuclear weapons. This, taken together with the existing legal obligations to pursue in good faith — and bring to a conclusion — negotiations on nuclear disarmament, makes it clear that continuing with business as usual is unacceptable.

Rick Wayman, Santa Barbara
The writer is director of programs for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

May 31, 2016
Obama Does Right By Meeting Hibakusha, Describing Atrocities, & Recognizing Victims in Hiroshima– Makes Epic Fail By Not Reducing Nuclear Arsenal

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

In August, 2015, thirty youth leaders from twenty-three countries met in Hiroshima in the hopes of strengthening solidarity and making a breakthrough toward ridding the world of nuclear weapons. We held the International Youth Summit for Nuclear Abolition over three days which culminated in a Youth Pledge, and a year-long action plan to collaborate to abolish nukes. Since then, we’ve continued to collaborate under the banner of ‘Amplify: Generation of Change’, and have taken many actions globally, toward our cause.

When we initially heard that President Obama would become the first sitting US President to visit Hiroshima, we hoped that it would signify a change or at least be a reflective experience. That it was. But the American President left out the most important part– he failed to offer any concrete plan to reduce the US nuclear arsenal, which is the largest in the world.

Like President Obama, about 9 months ago, we visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and like many before us, laid a wreath in remembrance. Like President Obama, we had the chance to meet with resilient Hibakusha (a-bomb survivors) who have dedicated the rest of their days to world peace.

Unlike President Obama, we do not have the authority to announce a dramatic reduction in the nuclear weapons or a u-turn on the United States’ plan to invest over $1 trillion in “modernizing” its nuclear arsenal over the next three decades. If we could, we would, without a doubt, because we believe that actions speak louder than words on nuclear policy and securing a peaceful tomorrow.

In the last year, we, youth activists from around the world, have witnessed first-hand the failure of international players, including the United States, to fulfill their existing nuclear disarmament obligations, despite existing mandates by international law. Many of us who were part of the International Youth Summit to Abolish Nuclear Weapons have participated directly in and around global efforts like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the First Committee meetings on Disarmament and International Security, the Marshall Islands International Court of Justice cases, and the Open Ended Working Group on Nuclear Disarmament, where the U.S. leaders clearly and repeatedly demonstrated a lack of willingness to move forward in nuclear disarmament discussions.

Today, in Hiroshima, the President said: “[A]mong 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… We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles.”

But among the many important points and references he made, President Obama did not lay out any plan or proposal for disarmament. Why not?

If one thing isn’t obvious in today’s global climate, let us be perfectly blunt: young people are beyond tired of empty promises and nice words without the action or political will to back them up. If President Obama wants to make his final months meaningful, he must immediately and unilaterally take steps to reduce the US’s nuclear arsenal, which threatens all life on earth, while encouraging other nuclear powers to do the same. Without concrete signs of progress on nuclear abolition, the President’s trip to Hiroshima seems like mere political theater, like we have seen many times before, by many different world leaders. We simply don’t have the patience for lip service or macabre legacy tour.

We are glad that President Obama took our call to attend Peace Memorial Park, to meet with Hibakusha, and to recognize the atrocities of the past and the suffering of victims. Unfortunately, he failed to take action on what should have been the most important part of his visit and speech; to declare concrete and measurable steps that would guarantee a future where impending nuclear winter is no longer a threat. Calling for nuclear disarmament while planning to spend $1TRILLION on “upgrading” the US nuclear arsenal over the next thirty years is hypocritical and extends the danger that nuclear warheads already pose, to future generations.

Today, the President acknowledged the horrors caused by the US-Atomic-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the learning that has come from it. But that is not enough. We will not take his calls seriously until we see that the US is working earnestly to ensure that these tragedies can never happen again. Younger and future generations are the biggest stakeholders in nuclear abolition will not stand by and allow President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima to be another missed opportunity, where lofty language casts a tall shadow of cynicism over the truth on the ground.

May 27, 2016
Over Seventy Prominent Scholars and Activists Call on Obama to Take Concrete Action in Hiroshima
NAPF President David Krieger signed this letter, along with NAPF Advisory Council members Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Robert Jay Lifton, and NAPF Associates Martin Hellman, Peter Kuznick and Lawrence Wittner.

May 23, 2016

President Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President,

We were happy to learn of your plans to be the first sitting president of the United States to visit Hiroshima this week, after the G-7 economic summit in Japan. Many of us have been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and found it a profound, life-changing experience, as did Secretary of State John Kerry on his recent visit.

In particular, meeting and hearing the personal stories of A-bomb survivors, Hibakusha, has made a unique impact on our work for global peace and disarmament. Learning of the suffering of the Hibakusha, but also their wisdom, their awe-inspiring sense of humanity, and steadfast advocacy of nuclear abolition so the horror they experienced can never happen again to other human beings, is a precious gift that cannot help but strengthen anyone’s resolve to dispose of the nuclear menace.

Your 2009 Prague speech calling for a world free of nuclear weapons inspired hope around the world, and the New START pact with Russia, historic nuclear agreement with Iran and securing and reducing stocks of nuclear weapons-grade material globally have been significant achievements.

Yet, with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons (93% held by the U.S. and Russia) still threatening all the peoples of the planet, much more needs to be done. We believe you can still offer crucial leadership in your remaining time in office to move more boldly toward a world without nuclear weapons.

In this light, we strongly urge you to honor your promise in Prague to work for a nuclear weapons-free world by:
- Meeting with all Hibakusha who are able to attend;
- Announcing the end of U.S. plans to spend $1 trillion for the new generation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems;
- Reinvigorating nuclear disarmament negotiations to go beyond New START by announcing the unilateral reduction of the deployed U.S. arsenal to 1,000 nuclear weapons or fewer;
- Calling on Russia to join with the United States in convening the “good faith negotiations” required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the complete elimination of the world’s nuclear arsenals;
- Reconsidering your refusal to apologize or discuss the history surrounding the A-bombings, which even President Eisenhower, Generals MacArthur, King, Arnold, and LeMay and Admirals Leahy and Nimitz stated were not necessary to end the war.
Sincerely,

Gar Alperowitz, Professor of Political Economy, University of Maryland

Christian Appy, Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, author of American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity

Colin Archer, Secretary-General, International Peace Bureau

Charles K. Armstrong, Professor of History, Columbia University

Medea Benjamin, Co-founder, CODE PINK, Women for Peace and Global Exchange

Phyllis Bennis, Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies

Herbert Bix, Professor of History, State University of New York, Binghamton

Norman Birnbaum, University Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University Law Center

Reiner Braun, Co-President, International Peace Bureau

Philip Brenner, Professor of International Relations and Director of the Graduate Program in US Foreign Policy and National Security, American University

Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation; National Co-convener, United for Peace and Justice

James Carroll, Author of An American Requiem

Noam Chomsky, Professor (emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

David Cortright, Director of Policy Studies, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame and former Executive Director, SANE

Frank Costigliola, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, niversity of Connecticut

Bruce Cumings, Professor of History, University of Chicago

Alexis Dudden, Professor of History, University of Connecticut

Carolyn Eisenberg, Professor of U.S. Diplomatic History, Hofstra University

Daniel Ellsberg, Former State and Defense Department official

John Feffer, Director, Foreign Policy In Focus, Institute for Policy Studies

Gordon Fellman, Professor of Sociology and Peace Studies, Brandeis University.
Bill Fletcher, Jr., Talk Show Host, Writer & Activist.

Norma Field, professor emerita, University of Chicago

Carolyn Forché, University Professor, Georgetown University

Max Paul Friedman, Professor of History, American University.

Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

Lloyd Gardner, Professor of History Emeritus, Rutgers University, author Architects of Illusion and The Road to Baghdad.

Irene Gendzier, Prof. Emeritus, Department of of History, Boston University

Joseph Gerson, Director, American Friends Service Committee Peace & Economic Security Program, author of With Hiroshima Eyes and Empire and the Bomb

Todd Gitlin, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

Andrew Gordon, Professor of History, Harvard University

John Hallam, Human Survival Project, People for Nuclear Disarmament, Australia

Melvin Hardy, Heiwa Peace Committee, Washington, DC

Laura Hein, Professor of History, Northwestern University

Martin Hellman, Member, US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Kate Hudson, General Secretary, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK)

Paul Joseph, Professor of Sociology, Tufts University

Louis Kampf, Professor of Humanities Emeritus MIT

Michael Kazin, Professor of History, Georgetown University

Asaf Kfoury, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Boston University

Peter King, Honorary Associate, Government & International Relations School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Sydney, NSW

David Krieger, President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, is author of Beyond the Laboratory

John W. Lamperti, Professor of Mathematics Emeritus, Dartmouth College

Steven Leeper, Co-founder PEACE Institute, Former Chairman, Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation

Robert Jay Lifton, MD, Lecturer in Psychiatry Columbia University, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, The City University of New York

Elaine Tyler May, Regents Professor, University of Minnesota, Author of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

Kevin Martin, President, Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund

Ray McGovern, Veterans For Peace, Former Head of CIA Soviet Desk and Presidential Daily Briefer

David McReynolds, Former Chair, War Resister International

Zia Mian, Professor, Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University

Tetsuo Najita, Professor of Japanese History, Emeritus, University of Chicago, former president of Association of Asian Studies

Sophie Quinn-Judge, Retired Professor, Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture and Society, Temple University

Steve Rabson, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University, Veteran, United States Army

Betty Reardon, Founding Director Emeritus of the International Institute on Peace Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

Terry Rockefeller, Founding Member, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows,

David Rothauser, Filmmaker, Memory Productions, producer of “Hibakusha, Our Life to Live” and “Article 9 Comes to America

James C. Scott, Professor of Political Science and Anthropology, Yale University, ex-President of the Association of Asian Studies

Peter Dale Scott, Professor of English Emeritus, University of California, Berkleley and author of American War Machine

Mark Selden, Senior Research Associate Cornell University, editor, Asia-Pacific Journal, coauthor, The Atomic Bomb: Voices From Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Martin Sherwin, Professor of History, George Mason University, Pulitzer Prize for American Prometheus

John Steinbach, Hiroshima Nagasaki Committee

Oliver Stone, Academy Award-winning writer and director

David Swanson, director of World Beyond War

Max Tegmark, Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Founder, Future of Life Institute

Ellen Thomas, Proposition One Campaign Executive Director, Co-Chair, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (US) Disarm/End Wars Issue Committee

Michael True, Emeritus Professor, Assumption College, is co-founder of the Center for Nonviolent Solutions

David Vine, Professor, Department of Sociology, American University

Alyn Ware, Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament 2009 Laureate, Right Livelihood Award

Dave Webb, Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK)

Jon Weiner, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California Irvine

Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History emeritus, SUNY/Albany

Col. Ann Wright, US Army Reserved (Ret.) & former US diplomat

Marilyn Young, Professor of History, New York University

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics & Coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies, University of San Francisco
May 23, 2016
On Serendipity, Enlightened Leadership and Persistence

General Lee Butler has generously made the e-book version of his memoirs available for free to NAPF supporters. Both Volume I and Volume II are now available from wagingpeace.org.

Uncommon Cause – Memoirs of General Lee Butler USAF (Ret)

Volume I of General Lee Butler’s elegantly written memoirs covers in highly personal, refreshingly candid detail his origins, upbringing and 33-year stellar US Air Force career. This history of his formative years may not be of compelling interest to non-military readers. However, Volume II is an absorbing, roller-coaster chronicle of Butler’s gradual transformation from top US nuclear warrior to inspiring, uniquely authoritative advocate for a nuclear weapon-free world. It is essential reading for all those who yearn for this – and those who resist it.

Volume II opens with a disturbing discovery. The USAF and US Navy had been allowed to develop and run separate nuclear war machines with no coordination save a compromise Joint Strategic Targeting Planning Staff (JSTPS) that proved to have severe coordination issues of its own. Butler learned this on becoming a three-star General as Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for all US armed forces in 1990, with responsibility for promulgating nuclear weapons targeting guidance from the President and Secretary of Defense to this targeting staff located over a thousand miles away. He was astounded to find that the US Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) created by the JSTPS neither reflected Presidential guidance nor meshed with NATO’s targeting plan. For example,

…in a very large number of cases, U.S. and Allied pilots would have been directed to risk their lives by penetrating Warsaw Pact air defenses in order to strike targets already destroyed by U.S. strategic missiles.

While he and colleagues were ironing out these disconnects between different parts of the nuclear target planning bureaucracy, a momentous instance of serendipity was unfolding in the heart of Europe. The sudden end of the Cold War rendered all their ‘monstrous war plans’ moot.

Butler’s exceptionally perceptive vision – the product of intellectual brilliance and an unusually cosmopolitan world view facilitated by fluency in Russian and French – gave him a swift grasp of the implications and opportunities flowing from the break-up of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. His acceptance of the need to achieve a ‘peace dividend’ through major force reductions fitted comfortably with the ‘informed intuition’ of General Colin Powell, who became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff within weeks of the Berlin Wall coming down in November 1989.

President Bush Senior wanted the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and Italy warned of the impact on NATO of his planned cuts before announcing them in his next State of the Union address. This led to Butler briefing Margaret Thatcher in 10, Downing Street in early January 1990, as the military member of a three-strong US delegation to London, Paris, Bonn and Rome comprising Robert Gates, deputy to Brent Scowcroft, the President’s National Security Advisor, and Lawrence Eagleburger, James Baker’s Deputy Secretary of State. Thatcher, after an imperiously effusive “Welcome, Larry,” allowed Butler an uninterrupted twenty minutes before launching into ten minutes of hard questions. Seemingly satisfied with his responses,

…she turned on Eagleburger. “Well, Larry, all this makes a modicum of sense. You can tell the President that I will, of course, support his initiative; indeed, I have no choice. But, Larry, let us understand each other. This is not consultation. This is take it or leave it.” With that, she stood, smiling, to signal the end of the meeting. She walked us to the door, opened it, and bade us farewell with one final smack of the handbag: “Always good to see you, Larry. You are welcome back at any time. But not on this subject.”

Butler’s controversial recommendation to shift US military preoccupation with the Soviet threat to regional conflicts was soon vindicated by Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Finding himself at the heart of planning the US military response, he was closely involved in top secret research for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney that rejected any use of nuclear weapons, because of their counterproductive effects.

The risk of a chemical-headed Scud missile barrage on Israel was one of his and Powell’s worst fears: ‘No question it would have provoked an Israeli response no matter the damage to our coalition.’ In response to the US blitzkrieg in January 1991, Saddam launched his Scud barrage. Butler sat in on a tense meeting between Cheney and a senior Israeli official, where Cheney had to placate him with sending Patriot anti-ballistic missiles to persuade Israel not to retaliate. US satellites had spotted nuclear-tipped Israeli Jericho missiles deployed ready for launch. While terrified Israelis wearing gas masks cowered in basements, Israel’s nuclear weapons had failed to deter Saddam – but they had coerced the US. The Patriot batteries could not prevent 38 more Iraqi attacks, the Scuds’ conventional warheads luckily causing only minor casualties.

As a relatively young four-star Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC) in 1991-92, General Butler presided over revolutionary changes he had recommended to US President George Bush Senior, including unilaterally taking the strategic B-52 bomber force and their supporting in-flight refueling tanker fleet off quick reaction alert. Strategic Air Command was disestablished, and management of all three legs of the nuclear triad combined under a new joint USAF-USN Strategic Command. This led to massive USAF restructuring, again initiated by Butler. In his final appointment, Butler became the first CINCSTRATCOM, commanding all US strategic nuclear forces from 1992-94. His iconoclastic, yet gently fearless leadership style won over some resistance from among his staff, drawn from hitherto proudly independent USAF and USN nuclear warriors.

On retirement in early 1994, Butler was increasingly dismayed by the Clinton administration’s failure to build on the nuclear disarmament momentum generated by the 1991 mutual initiatives of Bush Senior and Mikhail Gorbachev which he had helped facilitate, and for its ‘dismal’ efforts to improve US-Russian relations.

In 1995, he made a serendipitous decision to accept an invitation to speak on his world view at the annual meeting of members of the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York. This drew him into a CFR Commission, jointly chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex-Defense Secretary Harold Brown, to examine NATO’s post-Cold War role. When Kissinger tried to predetermine that little change was needed, Butler had the temerity to suggest NATO should be stood down while its purposes were rethought. For good measure, he added that

…perpetuating, let alone expanding, NATO is the worst possible signal to send to Russia, a defeated foe whose sensibilities are rubbed raw and which retains an arsenal of nuclear warheads numbering in the thousands.

An apoplectic Kissinger resigned from the Commission, leaving Brown to come up with a unanimous, balanced report on how to rethink NATO’s future.

The ripples from this audacious intervention must have reached John Holdren, chair of another prestigious group, the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences. Having accepted Holdren’s invitation to join them, Butler learned at his first CISAC meeting that the key agenda item was deciding what issue it should study next. He quickly proposed a wholesale review of nuclear weapons policy. Though controversial, with Holdren’s support his persuasive arguments backed by unrivalled experience persuaded most of CISAC to support a sharp critique of nuclear deterrence, and their report recommended that the US should fulfil its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligation to get rid of its nuclear arsenal.

By the time Butler presented CISAC’s views at the National Academy of Sciences to a surprisingly supportive audience, he had been invited to join the Canberra Commission. He chronicles his inside story of that admirable Australian initiative by Prime Minister Keating to explore the elimination of nuclear weapons. There he met, among other commissioners, Robert McNamara, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, British Field Marshal Lord Michael Carver, and Professor Joseph Rotblat, a founder of Pugwash. Butler’s fluent French facilitated an unlikely friendship with Rocard; but this was where he first came up against the more uncompromising demands of the anti-nuclear movement, represented by Swedish ex-MP Dr Maj Britt Theorin, and Sri Lankan disarmament ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala. Sadly, the Commission’s report was ‘dead in the water’ (Butler’s words) because of Australia’s uncritical support for US foreign policy as one of its closest allies.

Butler’s frustration at this outcome spurred him to accept another serendipitous invitation, to be keynote speaker at a gathering of Gorbachev’s State of the World Forum in October 1996. It was here that Butler first fully explained why, in light of his deep inside knowledge and first-hand experience, he had moved from ‘unquestioning acceptance to moral repugnance’ of nuclear deterrence. His goal was

… to make the case that deterrence had driven the Cold War arms race, prompting worst-case planning, immense expenditures, extremely dangerous force postures and monstrous war plans whose destructiveness threatened all life on the planet.

Following his sensational speech, Butler was introduced to veteran former US Senator Alan Cranston. A passionate nuclear abolitionist, Cranston invited him to become spokesman for an international group of ex-military leaders calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons, at the National Press Club in Washington DC. Butler’s account of his ‘coming out’ moment in that ultimate media arena is riveting – not least because of the brutal resistance he now encountered from some former colleagues.

Ex-US President Jimmy Carter invited him to his Atlanta Center. After an intense meeting, Carter wrote to Clinton supporting Butler’s request for all US strategic nuclear forces to be stood down from high alert, and to expedite negotiations for a START III treaty with Russia’s President Yeltsin. Nothing came of it.

Determined to spread his message, Butler flew to Wellington, New Zealand to give the inaugural Erich Geiringer Memorial Oration. In the early 1990s, Geiringer played a crucial role mobilising support for the World Court Project, an international campaign to challenge the legality of nuclear deterrence in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In 1996 the Court confirmed that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal. Butler’s passionately eloquent oration, honed from his earlier speeches, included a searing condemnation of nuclear deterrence. It was a triumph. I was Chair of World Court Project UK, and my New Zealand wife was one of the pioneers of the Project. The next day, I accompanied him on a visit to an island nature reserve, sharing experiences of breaking free from our pro-nuclear deterrence brainwashing.

Butler chronicles how he was buoyed up by responses to his NZ oration: these included supportive meetings with Michael Douglas and Warren Buffet, and an invitation from Michel Rocard to address the European Parliament. While subsequently visiting Paris, Rocard confirmed to him that

… nuclear weapons were still at the core of the [French]nation’s claim to first-tier status on the world stage. That said, I could read between the lines an acknowledgment that, beyond symbolism, their arsenal had no practical use. It simply kept them at the same table with the Americans, the Russians, the British and the Chinese as nations owning the ultimate trump card in international one-upmanship.

On his return home, Senator Cranston and others pressed him to become a fulltime anti-nuclear activist. Butler describes the sobering, hugely stressful experience for him and his wife Dorene after they courageously established their Second Chance Foundation, with a mission to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The title came from this quote from one of Butler’s speeches:

Mankind escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of diplomatic skill, blind luck and divine intervention, probably the latter in greatest proportion. If we now fail to step back from the nuclear abyss, if we persist in courting the apocalypse, we will have squandered our Creator’s gift of a ‘second chance.’

They now found their carefully focused objectives increasingly compromised by the overly ambitious expectations, demands and tactics of some members of the international anti-nuclear and peace movements, who looked to Butler as their potent new spokesman. While trying to keep them at arm’s length and encouraging them to strategise more coherently, he embarked on a gruelling tour of NATO capitals and NATO HQ in Brussels, where he was left in no doubt of their disapproval. In London

…I spent two days meeting with senior officials of the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence and the Chiefs of the Defence Staff. These discussions served only to highlight the degree to which the Brits followed the U.S. lead on nuclear issues.

Undeterred, Butler persisted, visiting France again, India and China, re-engaging with former colleagues in the US nuclear policy bureaucracy, and meeting US Senators. He was shocked to learn that India’s government had not issued a nuclear weapons policy despite having conducted tests the year before. Worse, it had not involved the military; whereas in Pakistan the situation was reversed. He stunned his Indian military hosts by spelling out the utter impracticalities of implementing nuclear deterrence against Pakistan. Later, they arranged for him to give a top adviser to India’s Prime Minister a tutorial on the intricacies of managing a nuclear war machine. This gave added purpose to a discreet gathering he orchestrated in Omaha of three top retired military officers from India with three from Pakistan, which resulted in

…a mutual recognition of how poorly the two sides understood each other professionally, the frightening misperceptions they had harboured throughout their careers about each other’s actions and intentions and, most importantly, the dangerous path they were on with respect to their nuclear planning and force postures.

Butler’s Beijing visit opened his eyes to China’s dramatic advances. He was deeply impressed by the shrewd judgment and high calibre of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Chief of Military Intelligence, senior diplomats and academics who met him. He believed their assurances that China had no intention of wasting resources on nuclear capabilities that were beyond its perceived minimum needs.

George W. Bush’s unlikely replacement of the discredited Clinton as President precipitated the closing of the Second Chance Foundation. It had been a prodigious personal effort to bring some wisdom to the nuclear weapon debate, but he had failed to prevail against years of pro-nuclear hubris, indoctrination and outmoded thinking.

In his closing chapter, Butler reflects on his withdrawal from anti-nuclear advocacy with little sense of success or closure. He acknowledges the toll exacted on himself and his family by his unflinching stand for integrity, justice and doing what he felt was right, however unpopular or controversial. Further Afterthoughts outline his pessimistic prognosis for any substantial progress towards a nuclear weapon-free world. Nonetheless, he expresses his faith in the potential for serendipity, persistence and unanticipated political developments to offer openings for the international anti-nuclear movement.

General Lee Butler’s incisive arguments are of immense value in convincing military and political decision-makers of the increasingly urgent need to step back from the nuclear abyss. These memoirs ensure that the legacy of his courageous, enlightened leadership will endure.

Robert Green served in the Royal Navy from 1962-82. As a Fleet Air Arm Observer (bombardier-navigator), he flew in Buccaneer nuclear strike aircraft with a NATO SIOP target in Russia, and then anti-submarine helicopters equipped with nuclear depth-bombs. On promotion to Commander in 1978, he worked in the Ministry of Defence before his final appointment as Staff Officer (Intelligence) to the Commander-in-Chief Fleet during the 1982 Falklands War. Now Co-Director of the Disarmament & Security Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand (www.disarmsecure.org), his 2010 book ‘Security Without Nuclear Deterrence’ has been translated into Japanese; and a revised, updated English ebook version is available from www.amazon.com/dp/B00MFTBUZS.

May 3, 2016
Obama at Hiroshima

There are mounting hopes that Barack Obama will use the occasion of the Group of 7 meeting in Japan next month to visit Hiroshima, and become the first American president to do so. It is remarkable that it required a wait of over 70 years until John Kerry became the first high American official to make such a visit, which he termed ‘gut-wrenching,’ while at the same time purposely refraining from offering any kind of apology to the Japanese people for one of the worse acts of state terror against a defenseless population in all of human history. Let’s hope that Obama goes, and displays more remorse than Kerry who at least deserves some credit for paving the way. The contrast between the many pilgrimages of homage by Western leaders, including those of Germany, to Auschwitz and other notorious death camps, and the absence of comparable pilgrimages to Hiroshima and Nagasaki underscores the difference between winning and losing a major war. This contrast cannot be properly accounted for by insisting on a hierarchy of evils that the Holocaust dominates.

The United States, in particular, has a more generalized aversion to revisiting its darker hours, although recent events have illuminated some of the shadows cast by the racist legacies of slavery. The decimation of native Americans has yet to be properly addressed at official levels, and recent reports of soaring suicide rates suggests that the native American narrative continues to unfold tragically.

The New York Times in an unsigned editorial on April 12 urged President Obama to make this symbolic visit to Hiroshima, and in their words “to make it count” by doing more than making a ritual appearance. Recalling accurately that Obama “won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 largely because of his nuclear agenda” the editorial persuasively criticized Obama for failing to follow through on his Prague vision of working toward a world free of nuclear weapons. A visit to Hiroshima is, in effect, a second chance, perhaps a last chance, to satisfy the expectation created early in his presidency.

When it came to specifics as to what Obama might do the Times offered a typical arms control set of recommendations of what it called “small but doable advances”: canceling the new air-launched, nuclear-armed cruise missile and ensuring greater compliance with the prohibition on nuclear testing by its endorsement coupled with a recommendation that future compliance be monitored by the UN Security Council. The Times leaves readers with the widely shared false impression that such measures can be considered incremental steps that will lead the world over time to a nuclear-free world. Such a view is unconvincing, and diversionary. In opposition, I believe these moves serve to stabilize the nuclear status quo and have a negative effect on disarmament prospects. By making existing realities somewhat less prone to accidents and irresponsibly provocative weapons innovations, the posture of living with nuclear weapons gains credibility and the arguments for nuclear disarmament are weakened even to the extent of being irrelevant. I believe that it is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that arms control measures, even if beneficial in themselves, can be thought of as moving the world closer to nuclear disarmament.

Instead, what such measures do, and have been doing for decades, is to reinforce nuclear complacency by making nuclear disarmament either seem unnecessary or utopian, and to some extent even undesirably destabilizing. In other words, contrary to conventional wisdom, moving down the arms control path is a sure way to make certain that disarmament will never occur!

As mentioned, many arms control moves are inherently worthwhile. It is only natural to favor initiatives that cancel the development of provocative weapons systems, disallow weapons testing, and cut costs. Without such measures there would occur a dangerous erosion of the de facto taboo that has prevented (so far) any use of nuclear weaponry since 1945. At the same time it is vital to understand that the taboo and the arms control regime of managing the nuclear weapons environment does not lead to the realization of disarmament and the vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

Let me put it this way, if arms control is affirmed for its own sake or as the best way to put the world on a path of incremental steps that will lead over time to disarmament, then such an approach is nurturing the false consciousness that has unfortunately prevailed in public discourse ever since the Nonproliferation Treaty came into force in 1970. The point can be expressed in more folksy language: we have been acting for decades as if the horse of disarmament is being pulled by the cart of arms control. In fact, it is the horse of disarmament that should be pulling the cart of arms control, which would make arms control measures welcome as place holders while the primary quest for nuclear disarmament was being toward implementation. There is no reason to delay putting the horse in front of the cart, and Obama’s failure to do so at Prague was the central flaw of his otherwise justly applauded speech.

Where Obama went off the tracks in my view was when he consigned nuclear disarmament to the remote future, and proposed in the interim reliance on the deterrent capability of the nuclear weapons arsenal and this alleged forward momentum of incremental arms control steps. What is worse, Obama uncritically endorsed the nonproliferation treaty regime, lamenting only that it is being weakened by breakout countries, especially North Korea, and this partly explains why he felt it necessary back in 2009 to consider nuclear disarmament as a practical alternative to a continued reliance on nonproliferation, although posited disarmament more as a goal beyond reach and not as a serious present political option. He expressed this futuristic outlook in these words: “I am not naïve. This goal will not be reached quickly—perhaps not in my lifetime.” He never clarifies why such a goal is not attainable within the term of his presidency, or at least its explicit pursuit.

In this regard, and with respect to Obama’s legacy, the visit to Hiroshima provides an overdue opportunity to disentangle nuclear disarmament from arms control. In Prague, Obama significantly noted that “..as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” [emphasis added] In the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, the judges unanimously concluded that there was a legal responsibility to seek nuclear disarmament with due diligence. The language of the 14-0 ICJ finding is authoritative: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all aspects under strict and effective international control.” In other words, there is a legal as well as a moral responsibility to eliminate nuclear weapons, and this could have made the Prague call for a world without nuclear weapons more relevant to present governmental behavior. The Prague speech while lauding the NPT never affirmed the existence of a legal responsibility to pursue nuclear disarmament. In this respect an official visit to Hiroshima offers Obama a golden opportunity to reinvigorate his vision of a world without nuclear weapons by bringing it down to earth.

Why is this? By acknowledging the legal obligation, as embedded in Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty, as reinforcing the moral responsibility, there arises a clear imperative to move toward implementation. There is no excuse for delay or need for preconditions. The United States Government could at this time convene a multinational commission to plan a global conference on nuclear disarmament, somewhat resembling the Paris conference that recently produced the much heralded climate change agreement. The goal of the nuclear disarmament conference could be the vetting of proposals for a nuclear disarmament process with the view toward establishing a three year deadline for the development of an agreed treaty text whose preparation was entrusted to a high level working group operating under the auspices of the United Nations, with a mandate to report to the Secretary General. After that the states of the world could gather to negotiate an agreed treaty text that would set forth a disarming process and its monitoring and compliance procedures.

The United States, along with other nuclear weapons states, opposed in the 1990s recourse to the ICJ by the General Assembly to seek a legal interpretation on issues of legality, and then disregarded the results of its legal findings. It would a great contribution to a more sustainable and humane world order if President Obama were to take the occasion of his historic visit to Hiroshima to call respectful attention to this ICJ Advisory Opinion and go on to accept the attendant legal responsibility on behalf of the United States. This could be declared to be a partial fulfillment of the moral responsibility that was accepted at Prague. It could even be presented as the completion of the vision of Prague, and would be consistent with Obama’s frequent appeals to the governments of the world to show respect for international law, and his insistence that during his presidency U.S. foreign policy was so configured.

Above all, there is every reason for all governments to seek nuclear disarmament without further delay. There now exists no geopolitical climate of intense rivalry, and the common endeavor of freeing the world from the dangers posed by nuclear weapons would work against the current hawkish drift in the U.S. and parts of Europe toward a second cold war and overcome the despair that now has for so long paralyzed efforts to protect the human interest. As the global approach to nuclear weapons, climate change, and neoliberal globalization should make clear, we are not likely to survive as a species very much longer if we continue to base world order on a blend of state-centric national interests and dominant actor geopolitics. Obama has this rare opportunity to choose the road not often traveled upon, and there is no better place to start such a voyage than at Hiroshima. We in civil society would then with conviction promote his nuclear legacy as ‘From Prague to Hiroshima,’ and feel comfortable that this president has finally earned the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize prematurely bestowed.

April 27, 2016
We Stand With the Marshall Islands

Yesterday marked two years since the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) took a courageous stand against the world’s nine nuclear-armed nations. On April 24, 2014, the RMI filed nine groundbreaking lawsuits at the International Court of Justice and another lawsuit, separately, against the United States in U.S. Federal Court.

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is proud to stand with the Marshall Islands in support of this initiative. NAPF has served as a consultant to the RMI from day one, and will continue to do so as the cases move forward. At this time, we are focused on growing public awareness of the cases through traditional and social media, as well as coordinating a consortium of over 100 non-governmental organizations around the world that have signed on in support of the campaign.

Last month, the International Court of Justice in The Hague heard two weeks of oral arguments in the RMI’s cases against the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan. These were the first contentious nuclear disarmament cases ever brought before the world’s highest court.

We were in The Hague to support the legal team and report on the proceedings for the Pressenza international press agency. You can see a summary of our articles here. If you are interested in reviewing the many articles written in the media about the ICJ cases during the month of March, including from Associated Press, Reuters, NPR and BBC, click here.

The RMI’s case against the United States is currently pending in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

More information about all of the cases is available at www.nuclearzero.org. While you’re there, if you have not yet signed the petition in support of the Marshall Islands’ action, you can join the 5 million-plus who have already done so.

Please consider making a financial contribution to allow us to continue providing support for the Marshall Islands’ critical efforts in the courts.

April 25, 2016
Dramatic Hearings at the International Court of Justice

This article was originally published by Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy.

ICJ Judges on the opening day of the hearings. Copyright: UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ. All rights reserved.

From March 7 to 16, seven days of dramatic, intensely argued hearings were held in The Hague before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on preliminary issues in the nuclear disarmament cases brought by the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) against India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. The Marshall Islands’ legal team, led by former RMI foreign minister Tony deBrum and Amsterdam lawyer and longtime IALANA member Phon van den Biesen, performed brilliantly.

On the first day of the hearings, Tony deBrum riveted the courtroom with his explanation of why his small Pacific nation chose to resort to the Court. As a nine-year old child out fishing with his grandfather in March 1954, he saw the entire sky turn “blood red” as a result of the 15-megaton Bravo nuclear test explosion 200 miles away. Marshallese suffered dislocation and damage to their health and environment effects as a result of the 67 nuclear tests conducted by the United States from 1946 to 1958. He said: “While these experiences give us a unique perspective that we never requested, they are not the basis of this dispute. But they do explain why a country of our size and limited resources would risk bringing a case such as this regarding an enormous, nuclear-armed State such as India.”

On March 11, Phon van den Biesen told the Court that in law school he was taught de minimis non curat praetor – a court does not concern itself with trifles. The United Kingdom, he went on, was trying to introduce the opposite concept, de maximus non curat praetor. He commented that “such a concept does not exist and would be entirely incompatible with a world society that is based on the rule of law.” He added that the ICJ is capable of deciding cases that fall in the category maximus, having dealt with issues of genocide, violations of humanitarian law, use of force, and self-determination.

The Marshall Islands filed applications in the International Court of Justice against the nine nuclear-armed states in April 2014, claiming they are in violation of obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and/or customary international law to pursue in good faith negotiations on cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and the elimination of nuclear weapons. The RMI asked the Court to declare that each state is failing to comply with its obligations and to order that it come into compliance within one year.

The initiative builds upon the ICJ’s 1996 Advisory Opinion. Referring to Article VI and to the long history of UN General Assembly resolutions on nuclear disarmament, the Court unanimously concluded: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” The Marshall Islands contends that this obligation applies universally, binding those few states outside the NPT, India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan.

Three of the nuclear-armed states, India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom, have accepted the jurisdiction of the ICJ as to disputes involving states, including the Marshall Islands, which have done likewise. Those cases have proceeded. The other six states (China, France, Israel, North Korea, Russia, United States) refused the Marshall Islands’ request, under a normal procedure, that they accept the Court’s jurisdiction in this matter.

The recent hearings concerned the preliminary objections of India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom to the Court deciding the cases on the merits. Pakistan withdrew from participation in the oral pleadings at the last minute, saying it had nothing to add to its written submission. Accordingly, the only hearing in that case, on March 8, was devoted to RMI’s response to Pakistan’s written arguments.

The United Kingdom claimed that it has a strong record of support for nuclear disarmament; consequently, it argued, there is no dispute for the Court to adjudicate. The RMI replied that actions speak louder than words, citing the UK’s consistent record of voting against resolutions in the General Assembly calling for commencement of multilateral negotiations on elimination of nuclear arms and its plans to replace its Trident nuclear weapons system.

India made a similar argument, referring to its decades-long history of calling for nuclear disarmament and its restraint in developing and deploying nuclear weapons. In reply, the RMI pointed to India’s current programs for expansion, improvement and diversification of its nuclear arsenal. In a dramatic moment, on March 14 Phon van den Biesen cited press reports that India had conducted a test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile on the first day of the hearings, and that India is poised to deploy a submarine carrying such missiles.

The UK and India also each argued that no bilateral dispute existed with the RMI prior to the filing of the cases; that the cases cannot proceed without other states possessing nuclear arms being before the Court; that the relief requested would be ineffective; and that various exceptions to their declarations accepting the jurisdiction of the Court apply, including India’s exclusion of disputes involving a multilateral treaty, here the NPT.

The RMI’s lawyers made strong counterarguments, with ample reference to precedent of the Court. They emphasized that India and the UK each can be judged as to its own conduct, regardless of the positions and actions of other nuclear-armed states. With regard to the NPT, on March 14 Professor Christine Chinkin explained that the RMI seeks the application of a customary international law obligation arising out of a dynamic process involving not only NPT Article VI but also developments including General Assembly and Security Council resolutions and the Court’s Advisory Opinion itself.

The Court is expected to issue its rulings on preliminary issues in three to six months. If the Court rules for the Marshall Islands, the cases will proceed to the merits; if the Court rules against the Marshall Islands in any case, that case will be over.

In addition to Tony deBrum, Phon van den Biesen, and Christine Chinkin, members of the legal team who argued before the Court were Professor Roger Clark, member of the LCNP Consultative Council, LCNP Executive Director John Burroughs, Professor Luigi Condorelli, Professor Paolo Palchetti, Laurie Ashton of Keller Rohrback, and Professor Nicholas Grief.

April 11, 2016