Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Abolition

  • Standing Together for Our Common Future

    David Krieger delivered these remarks at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 29th Annual Evening for Peace on October 21, 2012.


    David KriegerI want to begin with a poem.  I wrote this poem for the International Day of Peace, but I think it works well for our Evening for Peace.



    On this day, like any other,
    soldiers are killing and dying,
    arms merchants are selling their wares,
    missiles are aimed at your heart,
    and peace is a distant dream.


    Not just for today, but for each day,
    let’s sheathe our swords, save the sky
    for clouds, the oceans for mystery
    and the earth for joy. 


    Let’s stop honoring the war makers
    and start giving medals for peace.


    On this day, like any other,
    there are infinite possibilities to change
    our ways. 


    Peace is an apple tree heavy with fruit,
    a new way of loving the world.


    Our theme tonight is “Standing Together for Our Common Future.”  We all share in the responsibility for our common future.  Our challenge is to stand together to assure the best possible future for our children and grandchildren.  This is a global challenge; and it should be a universal desire.


    The Nuclear Age is just 67 years old.  During this short time, we humans have created, by our technological prowess, some serious obstacles to assuring our common future.  Climate change, pollution of the oceans and atmosphere, modern warfare and its preparations, and nuclear dangers are at the top of any list of critical global problems.  None of these dangers can be solved by any one country alone.  It no longer takes just a village.  It takes a world.  And within that world it takes, if not each of us, certainly far more of us.


    Let me share with you how Archbishop Tutu, a Foundation Advisor and one of the great moral leaders of our time, describes nuclear weapons.  He says, “Nuclear weapons are an obscenity.  They are the very antithesis of humanity, of goodness in this world.  What security do they help establish?  What kind of world community are we actually seeking to build when nations possess and threaten to use arms that can wipe all of humankind off the globe in an instant?”


    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we work to abolish nuclear weapons –  insanely destructive weapons that cannot be used, or even possessed, without violating the most basic legal and moral precepts.  Nuclear weapons threaten civilization and our very survival as a species.  And yet, 50 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the US and Russia still keep some 2,000 of these weapons on high-alert, ready to be fired in moments of an order to do so. 


    The weapons have not gone away, nor have the dangers they pose to humanity.  There are still 19,000 of them in the world.  Ninety-five percent of these weapons are in the arsenals of the US and Russia.  The remaining five percent are in the arsenals of seven more nuclear weapon states.


    Nuclear weapons do not protect us. Nuclear weapons are not a defense; they are only good for threatening retaliation or committing senseless acts of vengeance.


    The use of nuclear weapons is beyond the control of any country.  Let me illustrate this by telling you about Nuclear Famine.  Scientists modeled a relatively small nuclear war in which India and Pakistan were to use 50 nuclear weapons each on the other side’s cities.  The result of this war would be to put enough soot from burning cities into the upper stratosphere to reduce warming sunlight to the point that we would experience the lowest temperatures on Earth in 1,000 years. This would result in shortened growing seasons and crop failures, leading to starvation and Nuclear Famine killing hundreds of millions of people, perhaps a billion, throughout the world. 


    Let me emphasize that this would be the consequence of a small nuclear war using less than half of one percent of the world’s nuclear explosive power.  And, it would be a regional nuclear war, over which the US could not exert any control.  It would nonetheless be a war with global consequences for all of us.
     
    All of this is serious and sobering.  But, you may ask, what can we do about it?


    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we are focusing on collective action and collective impact, in which the whole – each of us standing together – is greater than the sum of its parts. 


    We are also pursuing legal action related to breaches of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by the US and other nuclear weapon states parties to the treaty. The treaty calls for the pursuit of negotiations in good faith for effective measures related to a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, to nuclear disarmament and for a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. 


    Since the Treaty entered into force in 1970, it would be hard to argue 42 years later that there has been a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date.  Nor has there been serious nuclear disarmament or a treaty on general and complete disarmament. 


    Our current education and advocacy work reaches and mobilizes our 57,000 members who join in taking action for our common future.  We plan to expand this number exponentially across the world.  We hope that you will all join us in this mission to assure the human future.


    Tonight we stand together with the people of the Marshall Islands, a country that was part of the Trust Territory of the United States after World War II.  The Marshall Islanders are easygoing and friendly people. They put their trust in the United States, but we abused that trust by testing nuclear weapons on their territory.  We began that atmospheric nuclear testing in 1946, when we were the only country in the world with nuclear weapons, and we continued testing there for 12 years until 1958. 


    We tested 67 times in the Marshall Islands, using powerful nuclear and thermonuclear weapons – the equivalent explosive power of having tested 1.7 Hiroshima bombs each day for 12 years.  On March 1, 1954, we tested our largest nuclear bomb ever, code-named Bravo, which had the power of 15 million tons of TNT. 


    We irradiated many of the people of the Marshall Islands, causing them death, injury and untold sorrow.  Many had to leave their home islands and live elsewhere.  Many have suffered cancers and leukemia, and the illness and death has carried over into the children of new generations of Marshall Islanders.


    These are the tragic effects of a world that maintains, tests and relies upon nuclear weapons.  In this world, our human rights are threatened and abused by nuclear weapons, as the Marshallese have experienced first-hand.


    As a traditional island nation, the Marshallese enjoyed a self-sufficient sustainable way of life before nuclear weapons testing.  Now, they struggle to uphold basic human rights:



    • to adequate health and life.
    • to adequate food and nutrition.
    • to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.
    • to enjoyment of a safe, clean and healthy sustainable environment.

    In September of this year, the Foundation’s representative in Geneva spoke to the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of the Marshall Islanders.  He stated: “NAPF aligns itself with the UN Special Rapporteur’s suggestion that the international community, the United States, and the Government of the Marshall Islands must develop long-term strategic measures to address the effects of the nuclear testing program and specific challenges in each atoll.  As such, it is imperative that the U.S. government and the international community implement human rights measures to provide adequate redress to the citizens of the Marshall Islands.” 


    In other words, it is the responsibility of the United States and other nuclear weapon states to clean up the radioactive trail of dangerous debris and redress the suffering and human rights abuses they have left behind in their pursuit of ever more powerful and efficient nuclear arms.


    The man we honor tonight, Senator Tony de Brum, was a child when the US nuclear testing was taking place in his islands.  Born in 1945, he personally witnessed most of the detonations that took place, and was nine years old when the most powerful of those explosions, the Bravo test, took place. 


    He went on to become one of the first Marshall Islanders to graduate from college and focused on helping his people to extricate themselves from the legacy of US nuclear testing in his island country.  He has dedicated his life to helping his people and to working to assure they are fairly compensated for the wrongs done to them by nuclear testing.  He has served his people in many ways – as a parliamentarian and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister for Health and the Environment.  He currently represents Kwajalein in the Parliament and is the Minister in Assistance to the President.


    Like others who have suffered and witnessed the suffering caused by nuclear weapons, he has a larger vision: that what happened to his people should not happen again to any other people or country.  I’ve known Tony de Brum for many years.  He is an untiring leader of his people, deeply engaged in seeking justice.  He is a man with a vision of creating a more decent and peaceful future for all humanity. 


    Senator Tony de Brum is a dedicated Peace Leader, and tonight we are pleased to stand with him and the people of the Marshall Islands as we honor him with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2012 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.

  • Review of Richard Falk’s and David Krieger’s The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers

    Lawrence WittnerAbout a third of the way through The Path to Zero, David Krieger, one of the authors, suggests a Zen koan — a mind-bending riddle designed to foster enlightenment — that runs as follows: “What casts a dark shadow when dormant and a fiery cloud of death when brought to life?” The answer is nuclear weapons, the subject of this book.

    It is certainly a crucial subject. The contradiction between the potential of nuclear weapons to destroy the world and the determination of nations to possess them is a central dilemma of modern times. More than sixty-seven years after U.S. atomic bombs killed much of the population of two Japanese cities, some 20,000 nuclear weapons — thousands of them on alert — remain housed in the arsenals of nine countries. The United States and Russia possess about 95 percent of them. Moreover, despite a rhetorical commitment to building a nuclear weapons-free world, some nations are undertaking multi-billion dollar programs to modernize their nuclear weapons production facilities, while others appear to be en route to becoming nuclear powers.

    Faced with this disastrous indifference by national governments to the fate of the earth, the people of the world would do well to study The Path to Zero, an extended conversation on the nuclear dilemma by two of its most brilliant, knowledgeable, and profound analysts. Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice Emeritus at Princeton University and currently a research professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Krieger is co-founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara and a Councilor on the World Future Council.

    In this outstanding book, Falk and Krieger address with great eloquence a broad range of issues, including nuclear weapons dangers, nuclear power, international law, the strength of militarism, public apathy, nuclear proliferation, nuclear arms control, and nuclear disarmament.

    Falk rests his case against “nuclearism” on morality and law. He explains: “It is unacceptable to kill or threaten to kill innocent people on the basis of a weaponry and a strategic doctrine that is indiscriminate in targeting and would almost certainly result in inflicting mass destruction.” At a later point, he adds: “In a democracy, we should be able to insist that our elected government uphold the law and behave ethically in relation to an issue as important as the role of nuclear weaponry. And when that insistence is met with evasion and silence for decades, we are obliged to expose these deficiencies of national governance and, perhaps, extend the discussion to the deficiencies of a world order built on geopolitical premises of hard-power capabilities and the nonaccountability of nuclear weapon states to international law or the UN Charter.”

    Like Falk, Krieger makes a powerful case against nuclear weapons. It is not at all clear that nuclear deterrence is effective, he observes. Indeed, “missile defenses are, in effect, an admission that nuclear deterrence is insufficient to prevent a nuclear attack.” Furthermore, the deployment of such defenses by country A “is an incentive for country B to improve the quality and increase the quantity of its nuclear arsenal.” Opposition to preparations for nuclear war, Krieger argues, serves as “a voice of conscience … thereby awakening and engaging others in the struggle for a more decent world.”

    Falk and Krieger are not always in agreement. In general, Falk is more dismissive of past nuclear arms control and disarmament activities by governments and somewhat more pessimistic about progress in the future. Not surprisingly, then, while Krieger favors taking a more ameliorative path, Falk calls for a total break with past arms control and disarmament efforts. Indeed, he argues for what he calls “a politics of impossibility” — one focused on a “prudent and rationally desirable end” rather than its apparent political feasibility.

    Nonetheless, both individuals share the belief that a nuclear weapons-free world is essential for global survival and concur on specific steps that should be taken toward that goal. Krieger sums up their consensus nicely. “First, we agree that U.S. [government] leadership may be needed but … is unlikely to be forthcoming without considerable pressure from the people. Second, such pressure from below is not currently on the horizon, but we should not give up in our educational efforts to awaken the American people and engage them in a movement to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.” Third and fourth, observes Krieger, given the absence of U.S. government pressure for disarmament, “we will have to look elsewhere for leadership.” This leadership “could come from the non-nuclear weapon states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” In asserting such leadership, “they would have to band together and make strong demands on the nuclear weapon states” – demands that “might have to be in the form of … delivering an ultimatum to withdraw from the NPT” under the provisions of the treaty’s Article X — unless the nuclear weapon states finally agree to a concrete plan for full-scale nuclear disarmament. They recommend “an initial demand” on the nuclear nations of No First Use, but argue that “the strongest litmus test” of their sincerity would be convening negotiations on a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.

    At the moment, as both men concede, this program does not seem likely to be implemented. Even so, Krieger notes, “the future is always undetermined and subject to change. The currents of history can be redirected by committed individuals and the formation of new institutions. … Creativity and persistence, rooted in hope, can change the world.”

    The Path to Zero — a work of great insight and wisdom — is an important part of that global transformation.

  • Nuclear Weapons and World Peace – Could Malta lead the way?

    This article was originally published by the Malta Independent.


    Martin HellmanHuman beings are so adaptable that we have often accomplished what we previously thought ourselves incapable of achieving. The idea that men could fly was seen as absurd until the Wright brothers, Santos Dumont and others defied conventional wisdom. Because they had the courage to consider what everyone around them “knew” was impossible, today we fly higher and faster than any bird, and have even walked on the moon. Human slavery and the subjugation of women, once seen as immutable aspects of human nature, are now banned in every civilized nation.


    But one dream has eluded us: beating our swords into ploughshares, and learning to make war no more. In this instalment of this series of articles, I argue that we may be close to realising that age-old dream of Isaiah, and that nuclear weapons can be the catalyst for doing so, if only we will view them from the proper perspective.


    The current environment might not seem conducive to that hope, with constant reports of wars, and threats of war. Yet a deeper look also shows signs of promise. Two books that appeared last year, Prof. Joshua Goldstein’s Winning the War on War, and Prof. Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, both argued that the numbers paint a very different picture, with deaths due to war dropping from roughly 150,000 per year in the 1980s to 100,000 per year in the 1990s, and to 55,000 per year in the first decade of this century. While 55,000 deaths per year is a tragedy, that is far less than the number of deaths from road accidents!


    In earlier writings, Prof. John Mueller argued that war was going out of style, much as duelling did in the 19th century: compare the millions of civilian deaths that were planned and actually celebrated during World War II, with the revulsion that even a few accidental ones produce today. Think of London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Nanking, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki – or the siege of Malta – and compare them with the understandable outcry today when an attack on al Qaeda inadvertently kills a few women and children. There are also signs of hope on the nuclear front: the world’s arsenals have fallen several-fold, from a peak of over 70,000 weapons to roughly 20,000 today.


    This data provides hope, but we should not become complacent about the threat posed by nuclear weapons – as Mueller, Goldstein, and to a lesser extent Pinker, tend to do. Part 3 in this series presented evidence that a child born today has at least a 10 per cent chance of being killed by nuclear weapons during his or her 80-year expected life – equivalent to playing Russian roulette with a 10-chambered revolver pointed at that child’s head. This level of risk may be lower than during the Cold War, but it is still unacceptably high. Now is not the time for complacency. Each generation is responsible for passing on a better world to their children. Now is the time to focus and help build the momentum towards eliminating this risk that could otherwise destroy the future.


    A race is on between “the better angels of our nature” and the risk that a mistake, an accident, or simply a miscalculation, will bring on a final, nuclear war. By properly integrating the nuclear threat into the quest for world peace, we can motivate our better angels to run a bit faster, thereby increasing their chance of winning the race. To do that, we need to recognise that every small war – and even the mere threat of war – has some chance of escalating out of control, much as a terrorist act in Sarajevo was the spark that set off the First World War. The only real difference is that World War III would not have a successor.


    The best-known example of a spark that nearly set off the nuclear powder keg is the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Both superpowers were taken by surprise when a minor conflict suddenly erupted into a crisis that had them teetering on the brink of the nuclear abyss. Afterwards, President Kennedy estimated the chance of war as having been “somewhere between one out of three and even.” In Kennedy’s estimation, that crisis was equivalent to playing nuclear roulette – a version of Russian roulette in which the whole world is at stake – with a 2- or 3-chambered revolver.


    Lesser crises have more chambers in the gun, but it doesn’t matter whether there are two chambers or two hundred. If we continually pull the trigger, it is only a matter of time before the gun goes off and civilization is destroyed. We have played this macabre game more often than is imagined. So long as we pretend that the potential gains from war outweigh the risks, each of our actions has some chance of triggering the final global war. Every “small” war – even those in Syria, or Libya, or Kashmir, or Georgia – pulls the trigger; each threat of the use of violence pulls the trigger; each day that goes by in which a missile or computer can fail pulls the trigger.


    The only way to survive Russian roulette is to put down the gun and stop playing that insane game. The only way to survive nuclear roulette is to move beyond war in the same sense that the civilized world has moved beyond human sacrifice and slavery.


    In the past, when it was merely moral and desirable, it might have been impossible to beat swords into ploughshares. Today, in our interdependent and interconnected global village, it is necessary for survival.


    Gen. Douglas MacArthur recognised that reality in his 1961 address to the Philippines Congress: “You will say at once that, although the abolition of war has been the dream of man for centuries, every proposition to that end has been promptly discarded as impossible and fantastic. But that was before the science of the past decade made mass destruction a reality. The argument then was along spiritual and moral lines, and lost. But now the tremendous evolution of nuclear and other potentials of destruction has suddenly taken the problem away from its primary consideration as a moral and spiritual question and brought it abreast of scientific realism.”


    There is potential for this to be the best of times, or the end of time, depending on which direction we take at this critical juncture. Technology has given a new, global meaning to the biblical injunction: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.”


    Choosing life is not a passive decision, and requires an appropriate outward expression.


    To remove this risk of extinction, we must shift from an old mode of thinking, which justifies war as being necessary for survival, to a new mode of thinking, which recognises war as the ultimate threat to our survival. When it was merely moral and desirable, it might have been impossible to beat swords into ploughshares, but today the lives of our children and grandchildren – and quite possibly our own – depend on our once again doing what we previously thought ourselves incapable of achieving. And, as outlined in earlier essays in this series, Malta is an ideal candidate for leading the way in an outward expression of this changed thinking, by becoming the first nation to treat the nuclear threat with the respect and attention it deserves. That would be a game changer, which would give our better angels a second wind in the race against oblivion.


    Through supporting this series of articles, the ICT Gozo Malta project is seeking to create awareness that this is a global issue that can affect every one of us, including our children and their children. This is an issue that can be addressed in a meaningful way in a small country such as Malta. We in Malta have no desire to own or build weapons of mass destruction. We can leave a legacy for a safer world. Because of our small population and certain other advantages, it is easier for us to build a tipping point of public interest and for Malta to take a leadership stance, just as we already have in the area of nuclear power when Malta participated in the anti-nuclear Vienna Declaration, 25 May 2011. To begin this next process of change, and to ask our leaders to be more proactive in this cause, we require numbers! To make an outward expression, you can register your personal support on the online petition page, asking our government to make this issue a higher priority: www.change.org/petitions/global-nuclear-disarmament-malta.


    If you would like us to keep you posted on new developments and ways you might participate in this effort to make Malta a beacon unto the nations of the world, please contact David Pace of the ICT Gozo Malta Project (dave.pace@ictgozomalta.eu).

  • The World Is Over-Armed and Peace Is Under-Funded

    This article was originally published by Eurasia Review.


    Ban Ki-moonLast month, competing interests prevented agreement on a much-needed treaty that would have reduced the appalling human cost of the poorly regulated international arms trade. Meanwhile, nuclear disarmament efforts remain stalled, despite strong and growing global popular sentiment in support of this cause.


    The failure of these negotiations and this month’s anniversaries of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki provide a good opportunity to explore what has gone wrong, why disarmament and arms control have proven so difficult to achieve, and how the world community can get back on track towards these vitally important goals.


    Many defence establishments now recognize that security means far more than protecting borders. Grave security concerns can arise as a result of demographic trends, chronic poverty, economic inequality, environmental degradation, pandemic diseases, organized crime, repressive governance and other developments no state can control alone. Arms can’t address such concerns.


    Yet there has been a troubling lag between recognizing these new security challenges, and launching new policies to address them. National budget priorities still tend to reflect the old paradigms. Massive military spending and new investments in modernizing nuclear weapons have left the world over-armed ― and peace under-funded.


    Last year, global military spending reportedly exceeded $1.7 trillion ― more than $4.6 billion a day, which alone is almost twice the U.N.’s budget for an entire year. This largesse includes billions more for modernizing nuclear arsenals decades into the future.


    This level of military spending is hard to explain in a post-Cold War world and amidst a global financial crisis. Economists would call this an “opportunity cost.” I call it human opportunities lost. Nuclear weapons budgets are especially ripe for deep cuts.


    Such weapons are useless against today’s threats to international peace and security. Their very existence is de-stabilizing: the more they are touted as indispensable, the greater is the incentive for their proliferation. Additional risks arise from accidents and the health and environmental effects of maintaining and developing such weapons.


    The time has come to re-affirm commitments to nuclear disarmament, and to ensure that this common end is reflected in national budgets, plans and institutions.


    Four years ago, I outlined a five-point disarmament proposal highlighting the need for a nuclear weapon convention or a framework of instruments to achieve this goal.


    Yet the disarmament stalemate continues. The solution clearly lies in greater efforts by States to harmonize their actions to achieve common ends. Here are some specific actions that all States and civil society should pursue to break this impasse.


    Support efforts by the Russian Federation and the United States to negotiate deep, verified cuts in their nuclear arsenals, both deployed and un-deployed.


    Obtain commitments by others possessing such weapons to join the disarmament process.


    Establish a moratorium on developing or producing nuclear weapons or new delivery systems.


    Negotiate a multilateral treaty outlawing fissile materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.


    End nuclear explosions and bring into force the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.


    Stop deploying nuclear weapons on foreign soil, and retire such weapons.


    Ensure that nuclear-weapon states report to a public U.N. repository on nuclear disarmament, including details on arsenal size, fissile material, delivery systems, and progress in achieving disarmament goals.
    Establish a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.


    Secure universal membership in treaties outlawing chemical and biological weapons.


    Pursue parallel efforts on conventional arms control, including an arms trade treaty, strengthened controls over the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, universal membership in the Mine Ban, Cluster Munitions, and Inhumane Weapons Conventions, and expanded participation in the U.N. Report on Military Expenditures and the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms.


    Undertake diplomatic and military initiatives to maintain international peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons, including new efforts to resolve regional disputes.


    And perhaps above all, we must address basic human needs and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Chronic poverty erodes security. Let us dramatically cut spending on nuclear weapons, and invest instead in social and economic development, which serves the interests of all by expanding markets, reducing motivations for armed conflicts, and in giving citizens a stake in their common futures. Like nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, such goals are essential for ensuring human security and a peaceful world for future generations.


    No development, no peace. No disarmament, no security. Yet when both advance, the world advances, with increased security and prosperity for all. These are common ends that deserve the support of all nations.

  • 2012 Nagasaki Peace Declaration

    Tomihisa TaueHumankind has senselessly engaged in wars repeatedly throughout history. However, even during wartime there are certain unacceptable actions. Under current international humanitarian law, it is regarded as a criminal act to kill or injure children, mothers, civilians, injured soldiers, or prisoners of war. Moreover, the law unequivocally bans the use of poisonous gases, biological weapons, anti-personnel landmines and other inhumane weapons that indiscriminately cause suffering to people and significantly impact the environment.


    On August 9, 1945 at 11:02 a.m., a single atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki by a United States bomber. The intense heat rays caused by the bomb charred the bodies of many victims. Blast winds, strong enough to bend iron rails, tore apart the bodies of many others. Skin hung off of naked bodies. Mothers carried their headless babies. People who looked healthy died one after another. In that year alone, the atomic bomb took over 74,000 lives and injured another 75,000. Those who survived have continued to suffer a higher incidence of contracting cancer and other serious radiation-induced diseases and, even today, they still live in fear.


    Why haven’t nuclear weapons, capable of indiscriminately and inhumanely taking so many lives and causing a lifetime of anguish for those left behind, been banned yet?


    In November 2011, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, a movement that has long observed the cruelty of warfare, adopted the humanitarian-based resolution “Working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.” In May 2012, the first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference was held in Vienna. At the session, representatives of many countries cited the inhumanity of nuclear weapons, and a Joint Statement on the Humanitarian Dimension of Nuclear Disarmament was presented on behalf of sixteen countries. At long last, calls to define nuclear weapons as inhumane have grown louder, in line with what the people from atomic-bombed cities have long been vocally demanding.


    However, what is the situation we are facing today?


    There are over 19,000 nuclear weapons in the world. People all over the world live with the danger that a nuclear war could break out at any moment. I ask you, what would happen to humanity if a modern nuclear weapon, far more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were to be used?


    To ensure that Nagasaki is the last city ever to be a victim of a nuclear attack, it is essential to definitively ban not only the use of nuclear weapons but everything from their development to their deployment. A new approach is required that goes beyond the confines of the existing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and we have already determined several methods of doing so.


    One method is the Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC). In 2008, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed the need for the NWC. For the first time, the NWC was mentioned in the Final Document of the 2010 NPT Review Conference. The international community must act now by taking the first concrete steps towards concluding the NWC.


    The creation of Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones (NWFZ) is another realistic and concrete method at our disposal. Most of the lands in the Southern Hemisphere are already covered by these zones, and this year efforts are being made to organize a meeting to discuss the creation of a Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone. To date, we have repeatedly called on the Japanese government to work toward the creation of a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone. Along with enacting the Three Non-Nuclear Principles into law, the Japanese government must promote efforts such as these, address the serious challenge presented by nuclear weapons in North Korea, and demonstrate leadership as the only atomic bombed country in the world.


    In April 2012, the long-awaited Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (RECNA) was established at Nagasaki University. RECNA is expected to serve as a hub for networking and disseminating information and proposals pertinent to the abolition of nuclear weapons. With the establishment of RECNA, we here in Nagasaki are determined more than ever to further our work to fulfill the mission tasked to us an atomic bombed city.


    Reaching out to the youth is vital in realizing a world without nuclear weapons. Starting tomorrow, the Global Forum on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education will begin here in Nagasaki co-sponsored by the Japanese government and the United Nations University.


    Nuclear weapons were born out of distrust and fear of other countries as well as the desire for power. Nagasaki will also be emphasizing peace and international understanding education to help create a world where future generations can live in a society based on mutual trust, a sense of security, and the notion of harmonious coexistence.


    The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc. shook the world. We here in Nagasaki will continue to support the people of Fukushima as it brings us great sorrow that every day they still face the fear of radiation. In addition to speeding up restoration of the affected areas, we call on the Japanese government to set new energy policy goals to build a society free from the fear of radioactivity and present concrete measures to implement these policies. We cannot postpone the issue of the disposal of the vast amount of nuclear waste generated from operating nuclear plants. It is up to the international community to cooperate and address this problem.


    The average age of the remaining atomic bomb survivors now exceeds seventy seven. We ask once again of the government to listen to the voices of those suffering with utmost sincerity and make efforts towards the enhancement of additional support policies.


    We offer our sincere condolences for the lives lost in the atomic bombings, and pledge to continue our efforts towards the abolition of nuclear weapons hand-in-hand with the citizens of Hiroshima and all people in the world who share our goal for a nuclear free world.

  • 2012 Hiroshima Peace Declaration

    Kazumi Matsui8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945. Our hometown was reduced to ashes by a single atomic bomb. The houses we came home to, our everyday lives, the customs we cherished—all were gone: “Hiroshima was no more. The city had vanished. No roads, just a burnt plain of rubble as far as I could see, and sadly, I could see too far. I followed electric lines that had fallen along what I took to be tram rails. The tram street was hot. Death was all around.” That was our city, as seen by a young woman of twenty. That was Hiroshima for all the survivors. The exciting festivals, the playing in boats, the fishing and clamming, the children catching long-armed shrimp—a way of life had disappeared from our beloved rivers.


    Worse yet, the bomb snuffed out the sacred lives of so many human beings: “I rode in a truck with a civil defense team to pick up corpses. I was just a boy, so they told me to grab the ankles. I did, but the skin slipped right off. I couldn’t hold on. I steeled myself, squeezed hard with my fingertips, and the flesh started oozing. A terrible stench. I gripped right down to the bone. With a ‘one-two-three,’ we tossed them into the truck.” As seen in the experience of this 13-year-old boy, our city had become a living hell. Countless corpses lay everywhere, piled on top of each other; amid the moans of unearthly voices, infants sucked at the breasts of dead mothers, while dazed, empty-eyed mothers clutched their dead babies.


    A girl of sixteen lost her whole family, one after the other: “My 7-year-old brother was burned from head to toe. He died soon after the bombing. A month later, my parents died; then, my 13-year-old brother and my 11-year-old sister. The only ones left were myself and my little brother, who was three, and he died later of cancer.” From newborns to grandmothers, by the end of the year, 140,000 precious lives were taken from Hiroshima.


    Hiroshima was plunged into deepest darkness. Our hibakusha experienced the bombing in flesh and blood. Then, they had to live with aftereffects and social prejudice. Even so, they soon began telling the world about their experience. Transcending rage and hatred, they revealed the utter inhumanity of nuclear weapons and worked tirelessly to abolish those weapons. We want the whole world to know of their hardship, their grief, their pain, and their selfless desire.


    The average hibakusha is now over 78. This summer, in response to the many ordinary citizens seeking to inherit and pass on their experience and desire, Hiroshima has begun carefully training official hibakusha successors. Determined never to let the atomic bombing fade from memory, we intend to share with ever more people at home and abroad the hibakusha desire for a nuclear-weapon-free world.


    People of the world! Especially leaders of nuclear-armed nations, please come to Hiroshima to contemplate peace in this A-bombed city.


    This year, Mayors for Peace marked its 30th anniversary. The number of cities calling for the total abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020 has passed 5,300, and our members now represent approximately a billion people. Next August, we will hold a Mayors for Peace general conference in Hiroshima. That event will convey to the world the intense desire of the overwhelming majority of our citizens for a nuclear weapons convention and elimination of nuclear weapons. The following spring, Hiroshima will host a ministerial meeting of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative comprising ten non-nuclear-weapon states, including Japan. I firmly believe that the demand for freedom from nuclear weapons will soon spread out from Hiroshima, encircle the globe, and lead us to genuine world peace.


    March 11, 2011, is a day we will never forget. A natural disaster compounded by a nuclear power accident created an unprecedented catastrophe. Here in Hiroshima, we are keenly aware that the survivors of that catastrophe still suffer terribly, yet look toward the future with hope. We see their ordeal clearly superimposed on what we endured 67 years ago. I speak now to all in the stricken areas. Please hold fast to your hope for tomorrow. Your day will arrive, absolutely. Our hearts are with you.


    Having learned a lesson from that horrific accident, Japan is now engaged in a national debate over its energy policy, with some voices insisting, “Nuclear energy and humankind cannot coexist.” I call on the Japanese government to establish without delay an energy policy that guards the safety and security of the people. I ask the government of the only country to experience an atomic bombing to accept as its own the resolve of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mindful of the unstable situation surrounding us in Northeast Asia, please display bolder leadership in the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons. Please also provide more caring measures for the hibakusha in and out of Japan who still suffer even today, and take the political decision to expand the “black rain areas.”


    Once again, we offer our heartfelt prayers for the peaceful repose of the atomic bomb victims. From our base here in Hiroshima, we pledge to convey to the world the experience and desire of our hibakusha, and do everything in our power to achieve the genuine peace of a world without nuclear weapons.

  • For a World Without Wars or Nuclear Weapons

    The Great East Japan Earthquake that hit the region on March 11 last year caused the catastrophic damage, which reminded us of the A-bomb disaster in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that fell upon us Hibakusha. The radiation damage from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, which shook the entire world, has put us into anxiety, distrust and irritation without any perspective for convergence even after a year and half have passed. In the 67th year since the atomic bombing, once again we are facing the terrifying effects of nuclear damage.


    The Hibakusha, who have continued to carry on the message “No more Hibakusha,” are filled with pain and anger.


    Hiroshima after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945.I am a Hibakusha, a victim of the first nuclear war in the history of the world, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. At the time, I was 7 years old, a second grader in primary school.


    At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, I was inside the wooden school building. Suddenly I felt a blinding flash. The next moment, the ceiling of the building collapsed and sharp splinters of windowpanes flew all around. They stuck into the walls, desks and floor of the classroom, and also into my skin. I don’t remember how much time passed before I crawled out of the room to the corridor, leaving behind my classmates trapped between the beams. In the school infirmary I had the glass splinters removed from my skin, but there were no medicines, gauze or bandages to treat my injuries.


    My father managed to come to the school to find me. On my way home, carried on my father’s back, I witnessed hell on earth. I saw a man with burned and peeled skin dangling from his body. A mother was carrying a baby, which was burned-black and looked like charcoal. She herself was heavily burned all over her body and was trying to flee from the place, almost crawling on the ground. Others lost their sight, their eyeballs popped out, or ran around trying to escape, while holding their protruding intestines in their hands. More and more people tried to cling on to us, saying, “Give me water, water, water…” Unable to give any kind of help to them, we just left them there and hurried home.


    Shortly before the atomic bombing, my house was located near ground zero, and I used to go to school about only 350 meters away. But our family was forced to move away from the city center by order of the government, and I changed school too. If we had stayed in our old place, I would not be alive to tell you the story. Later I learned that about 400 pupils in my old school were burned and killed instantly by the bomb, leaving no traces, not even their ashes.


    When I arrived home 3.5 kilometers from the blast center, I found the roof of the house blown away by the blast and fragments of glass scattered all around. “Black Rain” fell into the house, and traces of the “Black Rain” on the wall remained for a long time.


    Neighbors of our old house near ground zero and our relatives began to arrive, seeking help and shelter. Among them was my favorite cousin, who was like a big sister for me. She had been mobilized to work around the area 500 meters from the blast center when the bomb exploded. Half of her face, her entire back and her right leg were severely burned, sore and raw. In the intense summer heat, her burns quickly festered. Flies swarmed and laid their eggs in her flesh. Soon maggots bred and crawled around over her body. All I could do for my beloved cousin was to pick these maggots out and wipe her oozing body. She often cried, “Ouch…oh it hurts,” but her voice became lower and lower, and on the morning of the third day — probably it was August 9 — she breathed her last in my arms. She was 14 years old. Another cousin, who was in fifth grade of primary school, was suffering from diarrhea, although he had no injuries or burns. About a week later, he bled from his ears and nose, vomited blood clots from his mouth and died suddenly. One after the other, several of my uncles and aunts followed my cousins within a matter of month.


    Their deaths were not caused by any illness. They were killed by the atomic bomb used in the war.


    Autumn breezes began to blow and I found my hair starting to fall out. My parents did everything possible to save me, using folk medicines and other means. They later died of cancer. I am so grateful to my parents. I believe I have been able to survive to this day thanks to their love.
    　
    However, the atomic bomb continued to afflict me in my later life. Whenever I tried to get a job or get married, I suffered from prejudice and discrimination just because I was a Hibakusha. When I became pregnant, I was tremendously worried, wondering if I would give birth to a baby who would be seen as a Hibakusha’s child. Around that period, many Hibakusha could not get married, or gave up hope of getting married. Even after marriage, they often suffered repeated stillbirths and miscarriages, or lost their children prematurely due to illness.


    One of my close Hibakusha friends went through 6 stillbirths and miscarriages. Her husband beat her, saying that it was because she was a Hibakusha that they could not have children. She used to say she had a racking pain in her hip, and eventually she died.


    The atomic bomb completely deprived us of ordinary daily lives for human beings.


    It is most painful for me now to speak about my daughter. She was suddenly taken with cancer. She made a tearful and difficult decision to take a major operation, believing that it would make her healthy again. After the 13-hour operation, in fear of the recurrence or metastasis of cancer, she was going through the treatment and rehabilitation, despite great physical and mental pains. But she died abruptly, only 4 months after she was first diagnosed.


    When I got pregnant with her, after much wavering over the possible radiation effect on the baby, I finally decided to give birth to her. So her death has given me deep sorrow and vexation. But now, a year after her death, I am determined to go forward, as I believe she is always with me, encouraging and supporting me.


    It is still not proven whether a second generation Hibakusha is more likely to suffer cancer or not. But it is clear that radiation would affect the human genes, which is a cause for big anxiety among second and third generation Hibakusha.


    The Hibakusha are, even without any physical problems, doomed to suffer, to be distressed, to moan and get angry at every important junction in their lives. The aftereffects of the atomic bomb continue to bring hardships to the survivors across the board throughout their lives, physically, mentally and in their living conditions.


    Such experiences as ours should never be inflicted on any of you, nor on anyone in the world. It is inevitable that nuclear bombs would cause untold damage to human beings if they would ever be used again whether on purpose or by accident.


    We now demand of the leaders of the nuclear weapons states that they should see with their own eyes the reality of the damage caused on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They claim that they are for deterrence. However, deterrence means a threat based on the possible actual use of these weapons. We the Hibakusha refuse to accept any threat or use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are clearly inhumane weapons. Nuclear weapons are weapons of the devil, which cannot coexist with humanity.


    The world is still loaded with more than 20,000 nuclear warheads. Each one of them is said to be dozens of times of more destructive than the Hiroshima-type bomb.


    That nuclear weapons exist on earth should not be allowed from the humanitarian point of view.


    Dear friends, the Hibakusha do not have much time left. Thank you for listening today. Let us work hard together to realize a world without nuclear weapons, with “No more Hibakusha” as the goal. In particular, we have a high expectation for young people.


    We hope that the 2015 NPT Review Conference will achieve significant results. On my part, I will also continue to tell about the damage caused by nuclear weapons as long as I live.


    No More Hiroshimas. No More Nagasakis. No More War.


    Thank you.

  • Nuclear Weapons and a Sustainable Future

    2012_05_01_npt_briefing.pdf

  • Nuclear Zero: Getting to the Finish Line

    This article was originally published by Truthout.


    David KriegerAlmost five decades ago, I first visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was 18 years after the atomic bombings flattened the cities, and the cities had returned to a kind of normalcy.  At the memorial museums, though, a very different perspective on nuclear weapons was presented than that taught in American schools.  It was the perspective from below the bombs – that of the victims – not the technological perspective of having created and used the bombs.


    Nuclear weapons are not simply a technological achievement, as the West has tended to portray them.  They kill indiscriminately – children, women and men.  They are not weapons of war; they are tools of mass annihilation.  No matter what we call them, they are not truly weapons, but instruments of unbridled mass destruction.  Their threat or use is illegal under international law.  Surely, their possession, like chemical or biological weapons, should be as well.  They are immoral, as has been concluded by all the world’s great religions.  And they have cost us dearly, in financial and scientific resources and in compromises of the soul.


    Three decades ago, in 1982, we founded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  Its vision is a just and peaceful world, free of nuclear weapons.  The Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders.  So we educate, advocate and empower – that’s what we do.  We speak out.  We are a voice of conscience.  We advocate for sane policies and for leadership to achieve a world without nuclear dangers.  Our goal is to educate and engage millions of people to move the world to nuclear disarmament and peace.


    We challenge bad theory, such as the theory of nuclear deterrence, a theory that justifies reliance on nuclear weapons, but has many faults.  For nuclear deterrence to work successfully, leaders of nuclear-armed states must be rational at all times and under all circumstances, particularly under conditions of stress when they are least likely to be rational.  Also, nuclear deterrence cannot deter those who have no territory to retaliate against or who are suicidal.  Thus, nuclear deterrence has no possibility of success against terrorist organizations.  To see one of many ways that deterrence can fail, I encourage you to watch the 1964 movie, Fail-Safe, directed by Sidney Lumet, based upon the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.


    The Foundation also challenges bad nuclear policies, including those that tolerate a two-tier structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”  We believe that the ultimate consequence of this two-tier structure will be nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war.  We also advocate for nuclear policies that reduce risks and move us toward a world without nuclear weapons, policies such as security assurances to non-nuclear weapon states of: no first use of nuclear weapons; no launch on warning of nuclear attack; lowering the alert status of nuclear weapons; a comprehensive test ban treaty; and a fissile material cut-off treaty.  These are all elements of the critical goal of nuclear weapons abolition and must be viewed in that context.


    Scientists tell us that even a small nuclear war with an exchange of a hundred Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons, destroying cities and sending smoke into the stratosphere, could result in blocking sunlight and lowering the earth’s temperature, leading to massive crop failures and famine, resulting in some one billion deaths.  This would be the kind of nuclear war that could occur in South Asia between India and Pakistan.  A larger-scale nuclear war, fought with a few hundred thermonuclear weapons, the kind that could occur between the US and Russia, could destroy civilization and possibly cause the extinction of the human species and most other forms of complex life on the planet.  We all share a responsibility to assure there are no small- or large-scale nuclear wars, but as long as nuclear weapons exist in any substantial numbers, the possibility of nuclear war also exists.


    In October 1962, the world held its collective breath as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded.  The world was poised on the brink of a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR.  John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev managed to navigate those dangerous currents, but many of their advisors were pushing them toward nuclear war.  Decisions on all sides were made with only partial knowledge, which could have resulted in disaster.  Robert Kennedy’s eye-witness account of the crisis, Thirteen Days, is sobering reading.


    In 1982, the year the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was created, there was considerable concern in the world about nuclear dangers.  There were more than 60,000 nuclear weapons, nearly all in the arsenals of the US and USSR.  More than one million people gathered in Central Park in New York calling for a nuclear freeze.  Of course, they were right to do so.  The nuclear arms race was out of control, and the leaders of the US and USSR were not talking to each other.  An uncontrollable nuclear arms race coupled with a failure to communicate were and are a recipe for disaster.


    By 1986, the nuclear arms race reached its apogee with over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, nearly all in the arsenals of the US and USSR.  But by this time Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power in the USSR and was talking about abolishing nuclear weapons by the year 2000.  Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, who shared Gorbachev’s view about nuclear weapons, came heartbreakingly close to agreeing to abolish their nuclear arsenals at a summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986.  Their attempt to find their way to zero nuclear weapons foundered on the issue of the Strategic Defense Initiative, now commonly referred to as missile defense.  Reagan wanted it; Gorbachev didn’t.


    So, in 1986 there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  Since then, we have made progress in substantially reducing nuclear arsenals to the current number of under 20,000 worldwide, having shed some 50,000 nuclear weapons.  Of the 8,500 nuclear weapons in the US arsenal, about 3,500 are awaiting dismantlement and fewer than 2,000 are deployed, about the same number deployed in Russia.  The US and Russia have agreed that they will each reduce their deployed strategic weapons to 1,550 by the year 2017.  Neither country has conducted an atmospheric or underground nuclear weapon test since 1992 (other than underground subcritical nuclear tests in which the nuclear material does not reach the criticality necessary for a nuclear chain reaction). 


    We have made progress.  We are now on relatively positive terms with Russia, since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.  Through solid US negotiating, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus agreed to give up the nuclear arsenals that the former Soviet Union had left on their territories and to give these weapons over to Russia for dismantlement. 


    A significant event occurred in 1996 when US Secretary of Defense William Perry met with the Russian and Ukrainian Defense Ministers at a former missile base in Ukraine to plant sunflowers.  Secretary Perry said on the occasion, “Sunflowers in the soil instead of missiles will ensure peace for future generations.”  We adopted the sunflower as a symbol of a nuclear weapons-free world.  The sunflower symbolizes everything that a nuclear-armed missile is not, being natural, nutritious, healthy, beautiful, grounded in the earth and powered by the sun.


    We have come a long way, but we haven’t reached the finish line, which is a world without nuclear weapons.  The issue we face now is to educate decision makers and the public that the dangers of nuclear weapons have not gone away.  There are still many flash points of nuclear danger in the world: India-Pakistan, North Korea, the continued possession of nuclear weapons by the UK and France, the possession of nuclear weapons by Israel and the incentive for nuclear proliferation this creates in the Middle East, and the relationship of the nuclear energy fuel cycle to nuclear proliferation.


    The greatest problem related to nuclear weapons is not that Iran might develop such weapons.  It is that the countries with nuclear weapons are not taking seriously enough their obligations to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and achieve nuclear disarmament.  Nuclear weapons do not make their possessors more secure.  When a country has nuclear weapons or seeks to acquire them, that country will also be a target of nuclear weapons.  This goes for both the US and Iran, and for all other countries with nuclear weapons or seeking to develop them.  Nuclear weapons turn cities and countries into targets for mass annihilation.


    What shall we do to advance to zero?  In the spirit of Gorbachev and Reagan, the US and Russia must lead the way. They still possess over 95 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world.  It was recently revealed that President Obama has requested a study of reductions of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to three levels: 1000 to 1,100 weapons; 700 to 800 weapons; and 300 to 400 weapons.  This is significant.  It is worth advocating for US leadership to reduce the US nuclear arsenal to the lower level, to 300 nuclear weapons, as a next step.  But, of course, this would not be the desired end result.  First, it is not low enough; it is not zero.  It still would be more than enough to destroy civilization and potentially cause the extinction of complex life on the planet.  Second, it is unilateral; it must be bilateral and moving toward multilateral.


    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we have never called for unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Going down to 300 deployed strategic nuclear weapons would be a significant reduction, but it should be a joint endeavor with Russia. To get Russia to join us in this next step will require the US to move its missile defense installations away from the Russian border, so that Russia does not feel threatened by these defenses, particularly at lower levels of offensive weapons.  US officials tell Russia not to worry about these missile defense installations, but the Russians are wary.  It is easy to understand this, if one imagines the Russians placing missile defense installations on the Canadian border and telling the US not to worry.  Missile defenses, if they are needed, must be a joint project, just as reductions in the numbers of offensive nuclear weapons must be a joint project.


    The US and Russia must cooperate on continuing to pare down their nuclear arsenals for their own security and for global security.  At the level of 300 deployed strategic nuclear weapons each, they would then be in a position of rough parity with the other nuclear weapon states and in a position to effectively negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  The number that matters most in the nuclear disarmament arena is zero. It is the most secure and stable number of nuclear weapons.  It must be achieved carefully and in phases, but it must be achieved for the benefit of our children, grandchildren and all future generations.

  • Creating a World Without Nuclear Weapons

    2011_12_09_krieger_dream_of_nation.pdf