Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Abolition

  • Nuclear Weapons: What Is Our Responsibility?

    Nuclear Weapons: What Is Our Responsibility?

    1. Responsibility to recognize we have a responsibility. (Why is it that US citizens are for the most part so indifferent to this responsibility?)

    2. Responsibility to understand the moral implications of complacency and silence. (Perhaps it would be easier to understand this responsibility if the question was: Gas Chambers: What is Our Responsibility? Mob Lynchings: What is Our Responsibility? Slavery: What is Our Responsibility? Global Hiroshima: What is Our Responsibility?) Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” We are past that time.

    3. Responsibility to imagine the results of inaction. If terrorists destroyed just one city with one nuclear weapon, it would change our country and our world, perhaps irreparably. Current US policies make it likely that this will happen.

    4. Responsibility to care enough to act to preserve and protect humanity, future generations and life itself.

    5. Responsibility to take risks on behalf of humanity.

    6. Responsibility to learn and to educate. (A good starting point for this is the Foundation’s www.wagingpeace.org web site.)

    7. Responsibility to say No, to protest and to demand an end to the nuclear threat.

    8. Responsibility to organize and lead.

    9. Responsibility to persevere.

    10. Responsibility to succeed.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Shaping the Future

    Shaping the Future

    What kind of future do you want? The vision of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a world at peace, free of the threat of war and free of weapons of mass destruction. It is worth contemplating this vision. Is it a vision worth striving for? Is it an impossible dream or is it something that can be achieved?

    Since no one can predict the future with certainty, those who say this vision is an impossible dream are helping to determine our reality and the future of our children and grandchildren. None of the pundits or intelligence agencies could foresee the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Soviet Union, or the end of apartheid in South Africa. It was people who believed the future could be something more and better than the present that brought about these remarkable changes.

    One thing is certain. The future will be shaped by what we do today. If we do nothing, we leave it to others to shape the future. If we continue to do what we have done in the past, the future is likely to resemble the past. When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, which itself was something impossible to predict, he had to make a decision on how the crimes of the apartheid period would be handled. Rather than harsh retribution, he chose amnesty for all who came before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and admitted to their crimes. This choice helped shaped a new future for South Africa and perhaps for the world.

    If we are to shape a new future for a safer and saner world we need to have bold visions of what that world could be. We need to dream great dreams, but we need to do more than this. We need to act to make our dreams a reality, even if those acts appear to be facing enormous obstacles.

    It is hard to imagine an abuse of power that has ended of its own accord. Abuses end because people stand up to them and say No. The world changes because people can imagine a better way to treat the earth and each other and say YES to change.

    If we want a world without war, we need to be serious about finding alternative means to resolve disputes non-violently and to provide justice and uphold dignity for all people. This requires an institutional framework at the global level: a stronger United Nations, an effective International Court of Justice, and a new International Criminal Court to hold all leaders accountable for crimes under international law.

    If we do not begin to redistribute resources so that everyone’s basic needs can be met, the richer parts of the world will face a future of hostility and terrorism. The only way to prevent such a future is by turning tomorrow’s enemies into today’s friends. Creating a better future requires acting now for a more equitable present.

    The future of life on the planet is endangered by weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. We are committed to eliminating these weapons, but we won’t succeed unless we are joined in this effort by far more people. That’s where you come in. Be a force for a future free of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction by being a force for change.

    One of our supporters, Tony Ke, a high-powered Canadian web designer, recently created a new web site called End of Existence (www.endofexistence.org). I encourage you to visit it for an exciting new look at why we must abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us. I also encourage you to join some of the world’s great leaders in signing our Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity athttps://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/secure/signtheappeal.asp

    Let’s not let the future be shaped by our complacency and inaction. We have the power, the privilege and the responsibility to shape a better world, a world free of war and free of weapons of mass destruction. The Foundation works each day to achieve this vision. You can find out more about what we are doing and how you can play a part by exploring our web site:https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com. We invite you to be part of the solution.

  • Why Fight for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons?

    Why Fight for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons?

    There are many reasons to fight for a world free of nuclear weapons. Here are some of the most important.

    Nuclear weapons are not really weapons at all, but instruments of mass annihilation, of genocide, and possibly even of omnicide, the destruction of all.

    They are city destroying weapons that target the innocent, killing and maiming indiscriminately. Their threat and use is immoral by any moral standard, and illegal under any reasonable interpretation of international law.

    These weapons place the human future and most of life in jeopardy.

    Nuclear weapons are inhumane and undermine our humanity by their very existence.

    To threaten or use these weapons is a cowardly act, unbefitting of a brave and decent people.

    Nuclear weapons are profoundly undemocratic, concentrating the power to destroy in the hands of the few.

    These weapons divide the world into nuclear haves and have-nots, creating a world of nuclear apartheid.

    The current policies of the nuclear weapons states will result in nuclear weapons or weapons-grade materials falling into the hands of terrorists and criminals, and the countries likely to suffer the greatest damage as a result are the nuclear weapons states themselves.

    The possession of nuclear weapons by any nation is an impetus to other nations to develop their own nuclear arsenals and thus multiplies the danger.

    If we do not succeed we may not be able to pass the world on intact to the next generation.

    Ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and other forms of life is the greatest challenge of our time. It wouldn’t be so difficult if the governments of the nuclear weapons states accepted their share of responsibility and took leadership of the effort. Since these governments have failed to do so, it is left to the people of the world to take responsibility and fight for a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a fight for a human and humane future.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Nuclear Weapons and Homeland Security

    Nuclear weapons do not make us safer. They make us less secure.

    The greatest vulnerability of the United States and the rest of the industrialized world is not to terrorists who hijack planes or disperse biological agents. It is to terrorists with nuclear weapons.

    September 11th was a shocking reminder of the futility of relying on nuclear weapons for security. Nuclear weapons cannot deter a suicidal terrorist, but a suicidal terrorist with nuclear weapons could destroy the United States.

    US nuclear policies make it more likely that terrorists will be able to attack the United States with nuclear weapons. In general, the US has pursued a nuclear weapons policy of “Do as I say, not as I do.” We have set the wrong example for the world, continuing to rely upon nuclear weapons long after the end of the Cold War.

    The US has slowed the process of nuclear disarmament, leaving many thousands of nuclear weapons potentially available to terrorists. If we want to prevent a nuclear holocaust by terrorist nuclear bombs in American cities, the US must take leadership in a global effort to bring all nuclear weapons and nuclear materials under control. This will require significant policy changes.

    To gain control of nuclear weapons, the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world must be dramatically reduced. Numbers need to be brought down from the over 30,000 currently in the arsenals of the US and Russia to far more reasonable numbers capable of being effectively controlled in each of the eight nuclear weapons states, on the way to zero.

    The numbers being discussed by the Bush administration of 2,000 to 2,500 strategic nuclear weapons are far too high and will send a signal to the world that the US is not serious about nuclear disarmament. The Russians have already proposed many times joint reductions to 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons. Even this number is too high. Just one of these weapons in the hands of terrorists could do immeasurable damage.

    To gain control of nuclear materials, a global inventory of all nuclear weapons and materials must be established immediately. We must know what nuclear materials exist in order to establish a rational plan to guard and eliminate them.

    All nuclear weapons should immediately be taken off hair-trigger alert and policies of launch on warning should be abandoned. The US and Russia still have some 4,500 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. This is an accidental nuclear holocaust waiting to happen, particularly given the gaping holes in the post Cold War Russian early warning system. Smart and determined terrorists could potentially trick one of the nuclear weapons states into believing it was being attacked by another nuclear weapons state, leading to retaliatory strikes by one nuclear power against another.

    The US should forego its plan to build a national missile defense system, and reallocate these funds to more immediate security risks. US deployment of a national missile defense will lead Russia and China to rely more heavily on their nuclear arsenals and to develop them further. No so-called rogue state currently has nuclear weapons or long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States. Nor could a national missile defense system protect us from terrorists.

    The US should rejoin the international community in supporting a treaty framework to control and eliminate nuclear weapons. We should fulfill our treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for good faith negotiations to eliminate all nuclear weapons. We should stop threatening to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. We should honor the Outer Space Treaty, and stop seeking to weaponize outer space. We should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and move forward with START III negotiations. Finally, we must stop putting up obstacles to nuclear disarmament in the United Nations and its Disarmament Commission, and instead actively assist them in their efforts.

    Since September 11th, the US government has made only one change in our nuclear weapons policy. It removed the sanctions on India and Pakistan that were put in place in response to their testing nuclear weapons in 1998. That change was a move in the wrong direction, away from nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

    President Bush made campaign promises, which he has reiterated since assuming office, to move forward with unilateral reductions and de-alerting of our nuclear arsenal. But unilateral actions are not sufficient.

    The US must lead the way in bringing all nuclear weapons states to act swiftly and resolutely in dramatically reducing all nuclear arsenals and assuring that no nuclear weapons or materials fall into the hands of terrorists. If the US fails to provide this leadership, efforts to achieve homeland security could fail even more spectacularly than they did on September 11th.

    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, an international organization on the roster of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

  • Preventing a Terrorist Mushroom Cloud

    The images of the hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania are nightmare images of unspeakable horror that will forever be a part of our reality.

    Imagine, however, another nightmare — that of a mushroom cloud rising over an American city. This is a threat we can no longer ignore. Terrorists have demonstrated their willingness to attack US cities and the possibility of them doing so with nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out. After September 11th, citizens and leaders alike should be better able to understand the seriousness of the nuclear threat.

    The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were powerful warnings. They signaled that determined terrorists are prepared to sacrifice their lives to harm us, that future attacks could involve weapons of mass destruction, and that nuclear dangers are increasing because of terrorist activity.

    Our leaders have failed to grasp that our present nuclear weapons policies contribute to the possibility of nuclear terrorism against our country. We are simply not doing enough to prevent nuclear weapons or weapons-grade nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.

    A US blue ribbon commission, headed by former Senate majority leader Howard Baker, has called for spending $3 billion a year over the next ten years to maintain control of the nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and nuclear scientists in the former Soviet Union. Yet, the Bush administration has proposed funding cuts for this program from $1.2 billion to $800 million next year.

    The Bush Administration’s primary response to the nuclear threat has been to push for a national missile shield costing billions of dollars, the technology of which is unproven, and which would at best be years away from implementation. A missile shield would likely do irreparable harm to our relations with other countries, countries that we need to join us in the fight against international terrorism.

    The mad nuclear arms race during the Cold War, and the paltry steps taken to reverse it since the end of the Cold War, have left tens of thousands of nuclear weapons potentially available to terrorists. Today there is no accurate inventory of the world’s nuclear arsenals or weapons-grade fissile materials suitable for making nuclear weapons. Estimates have it, however, that there are currently more than 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world. We simply don’t know whether these weapons are adequately controlled, or whether some could already have fallen into the hands of terrorists.

    Osama bin Laden claims to possess nuclear weapons. His claim is feasible. Former Russian Security Advisor Aleksandr Lebed has stated that some 80 to 100 suitcase-size nuclear weapons in the one kiloton range are missing from the Russian arsenal. This claim was reiterated by Alexey Yablokov, an advisor to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

    The Russian government has denied the claims of missing Russian nuclear weapons, but former US Deputy Energy Secretary Charles Curtis has expressed doubt about these assurances. According to Curtis, “We believe we have a full accounting of all of Russia’s strategic weapons, but when it comes to tactical weapons – the suitcase variety – we do not know, and I’m not sure they do, either.”

    More than ten years after the end of the Cold War we and the Russians still have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons each with a total of some 4,500 of them on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments. Russia has been urging the US to move faster on START 3 negotiations to reduce the size of the nuclear arsenals in both countries, but US leaders had been largely indifferent to their entreaties.

    In November 2001, President Bush announced that the US was prepared to reduce its arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons to between 2,200 and 1,700 over the next ten years. President Putin indicated that Russia would make commensurate cuts. These steps are in the right direction, but they still indicate reliance on Cold War strategies of deterrence. They also do not address tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons, which are the most likely weapons to be used and to fall into the hands of terrorists.

    Large nuclear arsenals, measured in the thousands, on hair-trigger alert are Cold War relics. They do not provide deterrence against terrorist attacks. Nor could a missile shield have prevented the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, or protect against future nuclear terrorism.

    From the outset, the Bush administration’s foreign policy course has been based on unilateral US actions and indifference bordering on hostility to international law. Since September 11th, the administration seems to have recognized that we cannot combat terrorism unilaterally. A multilateral effort to combat terrorism will require the US to change its policies and embrace multilateral approaches to many global problems, including the control and elimination of all weapons of mass destruction.

    The global elimination of nuclear weapons can no longer be a back-burner, peace activist issue. It is a top-priority security issue for all Americans, and it will require US leadership to achieve.

    *David Krieger, an attorney and political scientist, is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Taking Ourselves Off the Endangered Species List

    Can you imagine a world without human eyes to view its wonder? Nuclear weapons make such a world possible. Our inaction in the face of nuclear dangers may make such a world probable. Despite the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons continue to place human beings on the endangered species list. It is up to us to take ourselves off this list. Before we can do so, however, we must first recognize that we are on it.

    Perhaps this recognition is a motivating factor in US plans to develop and deploy a National Missile Defense system. These plans represent a pursuit of invulnerability to nuclear attack for US citizens. The problem is that there can be no invulnerability for one piece of territory or one country ‘s citizens in the Nuclear Age. There are no perfect defenses and, n the case of nuclear weaponry, even small margins of error can spell disaster.

    The problem is complicated by the fact that if one country proceeds with a defensive system, other countries will feel threatened. The reason for this is that one country ‘s invulnerability or even imagined invulnerability will give it potential offensive advantages over other countries. If, for example, the US has a missile defense system it believes will make it invulnerable to attack, then China will worry about being bullied by the US and further develop its offensive missile capabilities. Thus, improved defensive capabilities can lead to offensive arms races. Such is the contorted logic of security in the Nuclear Age.

    Invulnerability is not an option, but US decision makers are proceeding as though it is. This is a dangerous policy that could rekindle nuclear arms races throughout the world. A far better approach would be to provide leadership toward a nuclear weapons free world. Such an approach would increase global stability and reduce the risks of catastrophe resulting from human fallibility. This approach would be in accord with international law and the precepts of morality basic to all religions. It would also bring nuclear weapons and materials under tighter controls and reduce the risks of the weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or criminals.

    For these reasons, individuals from through- out the world are adding their names and voices to the Foundation ‘s Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity. Walter Cronkite, one of the most respected men in America and a signer of the Appeal, wrote: “Facing a holocaust that could take thousands or perhaps billions of lives and render much of the earth uninhabitable, how is it possible for humankind to continue to believe that the way to settle its disputes is by killing each other? Nuclear weapons represent the utmost fantasy in the perpetuation of this savage philosophy.”

    If you ‘d like to add your name to this Appeal, you can sign up online. If you are not already a member of the Foundation, we invite you to join us in waging peace by educating yourself, educating others and taking action. We try to make this easy for you by providing up-to-date information and suggestions for action.

    There is strength in numbers. When people come together for peace they are a powerful force. Like a mighty ocean, people power can overcome even the dangers of the Nuclear Age. We may not be invulnerable, but we are not without the power to shape our future. I invite you to play a greater role in spreading the Foundation ‘s message of peace, and helping us to grow to fulfill our mission of creating a peaceful, nuclear weapons-free future for humanity and all life.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Who Will Step Forward

    Who speaks for the innocent victims of the Nuclear Age?

    Who speaks for the uranium miners who suffered and died to bring out the ore?

    Who speaks for the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Who speaks for all radiation victims of all nuclear tests?

    Who speaks for the Pacific Islanders who lost their homes, their health and their lives?

    Who speaks for the unknowing victims of Nazi-like nuclear experiments?

    Who speaks for the soldiers deliberately exposed to nuclear tests?

    Who speaks for the radiation-contaminated earth, air and water?

    Who speaks for the unborn future generations who will suffer from nuclear wastes?

    Who speaks for all humanity that stands at risk of nuclear annihilation?

    Who speaks for ending this peril?

    Who will step forward?

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Earth Day is Every Day

    Earth Day comes only once a year (this year on April 22nd), but protecting our Earth matters everyday. As syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman noted, “In the Earth Day flourish of attention, how did we manage to overlook the greatest environmental danger of all – the mushroom cloud over the green space?”

    Earth is home to all life that we know of in the Universe. Most life on Earth, including the human species, is threatened by nuclear weapons. No country or government has the right to jeopardize the human future and life on our planet for its own shortsighted concept of security through nuclear threat. People need to set their governments right, and demand of their governments an end to this threat.

    If you would like to help make a difference, you can join with others from around the world in signing the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity. You can also spread the word by sending this message with a copy of the Appeal to ten friends. Let’s get responsible about saving our planet – it’s the only one we have.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Crisis and Opportunity

    In every crisis there is opportunity. But before the crisis can be converted to opportunity, it is necessary to recognize that the crisis exists. If we are unaware of the crisis, assign it too low a level of priority among our concerns, or are in denial about it, we cannot act to prevent it or turn it to opportunity.

    Humanity today faces more than one crisis. Among these are some that are familiar — the human population explosion, global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, the pollution of our oceans and atmosphere, epidemic diseases such as AIDS, and the deleterious effects of poverty on the health, well-being and mortality of some one-third of the human species. Each of these crises present major problems for humanity. Most of them are interactive; they affect each other. If we were to address these problems in a coordinated way, we could perhaps save millions, perhaps billions, of lives, while creating better living conditions for humans everywhere.

    An important common characteristic of each of these crises is that none can be solved by any one country, no matter how rich and powerful. The most serious crises we face today are species-wide crises. The problems cannot be contained within national borders, nor can they be resolved without global cooperation. National sovereignty is an obstacle to the resolution of a global crisis. If today’s crises cannot be solved at the national level, then we must reconsider the manner of global organization that has sustained the world for the past four centuries. One opportunity inherent in these crises is that of shedding a rapidly deteriorating and increasingly obsolete form of social organization, the nation-state, a form of social organization that contributes to our malaise.

    The list of crises articulated above in not complete. There are many more. In fact, I have not yet listed what I consider the most important crisis facing humanity: the crisis of nuclear arms. The reason that I rank this one above all others is that it has the potential to bring swift and universal death to humanity and to most other forms of life. It has the potential to reverse the evolutionary process by destroying most higher forms of life. All of the other crises listed above, as well as others not listed, inflict their damage more slowly, thus leaving more time to resolve them. This does not mean, of course, that with each of these crises there is not a point of no return, a point at which the damage becomes irreversible. With nuclear arms, this point could be reached at any time, and there have been a number of occasions where humanity has nearly stumbled past the point of no return.

    One evening in 1995 Boris Yeltsin, then the President of Russia, was awakened in the middle of the night and told that Russian radar had detected a US missile launched from Norway at Moscow. Yeltsin was told that he had only a few minutes to decide whether Russia should retaliate. The missile could be aimed at destroying the Russian command and control system, and if Yeltsin did not act quickly it might not be possible to give the order to retaliate against the US after the nuclear detonation had occurred. Yeltsin hesitated and deferred his decision beyond the few minutes given him by the military command. It became clear that the missile was not aimed at Russia, and the world was spared a nuclear exchange.

    It was widely reported that Boris Yeltsin drank too much. The evening he was awakened in the night to decide on the fate of humanity, he might have been drunk. These are not the best of circumstances in which to decide humanity’s future. It is worth reflecting on our current global system of nuclear controls that would result in a man with a highly publicized drinking problem being in charge that evening of our common future. If Boris Yeltsin had acted more hastily and launched what he believed was a counter-attack at the United States, the United States would certainly have countered the Russian attack. The results are almost too catastrophic to contemplate. Tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people could have died that night. The survivors might have envied the dead.

    The fact that it didn’t happen that night or at any other time since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki does not mean that it could not happen with swift and massive destruction. That night in 1995 was not the only time that a close call with nuclear weapons occurred. The world came even closer to all-out nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. There are many other documented instances when the use of nuclear weapons has been contemplated. Today there are still some 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and the United States and Russia each maintain some 2,250 of these on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired on a moment’s notice. It is like sitting on a powder keg of dynamite and playing with matches. We are all in danger.

    Nuclear weapons pose a crisis to humanity of unprecedented magnitude. This crisis began some five and a half decades ago when nuclear weapons were created. In short succession nuclear weapons were used twice at the end of a terrible war. Since then they have been mostly sheathed, but have posed an ongoing and unprecedented threat to humanity. Most of humanity has been complacent in the face of this danger. This must change. We are facing an evolutionary test. We humans have created the means of our own demise as a species. We hold our fate in our own hands. Yet, our fears and our social organization into nations seem to be working against finding a solution to this test. Our first step must be to recognize that we are facing a crisis. Then we can explore our capacity to cooperate to find a solution – a solution that can turn the crisis into an opportunity. We have the crisis. It is up to us resolve it and find the opportunity inherent in it to create a better human future.

    *David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Globalization and the End of Nuclear Weapons

    Nuclear weapons will only be abolished when the moral consciousness of humanity is raised, just as it was raised by the moral re-assessment and rejection of slavery, colonialism and apartheid.

    The Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) would not be able to so blithely carry on with their nuclear weapons programs if world consciousness, raised to a new recognition of this continued affront on humanity, demanded abolition. But world consciousness has been dulled. We have lived with the bomb so long that it has insinuated itself into our thinking.

    Why are some in the abolition movement now saying that the abolition of nuclear weapons is a remote, receding, and unrealistic goal?

    Why are governments still being allowed to claim that the outmoded strategy of nuclear deterrence has even a shred of credibility or morality?

    Why are the nuclear retentionists not being driven to obscurity by the sheer force of the legal, moral, political, and military arguments against the possession of nuclear weapons?

    To address the paramount issue of our time with these searching questions brings us face to face with the hardest question of all: Does 21st century humanity have the vision, the courage, the strength, the perseverance to abolish the very instruments that can obliterate humanity itself? To that question we must give a resounding “yes”.

    Public Priorities: A Common Ground For All Humanity

    The first and perhaps over-arching requirement in building a world free of nuclear weapons is to have the confidence that it can be done. The doubters have had their way long enough. Having shown our anger at mis-placed public priorities where we prepare for war to preserve a fragile peace, let us now display our confidence that enough of us making a difference in the circumstances of our daily lives can indeed make a difference in the world as a whole.

    Let us demand of our governments that they stop their duplicitous conduct and move beyond the traditional approaches of preventing war, which have failed disastrously. Today billions are spent on arms and militarization, while worthwhile peace initiatives and programs for human security are starved for lack of funds. These priorities must be reversed.

    Globalization is a moment for us to express a vision of the kind of world we want in the 21st century.

    Let me tell you my vision.

    I want a world that is human-centered and genuinely democratic, a world that builds and protects peace, equality, justice and development. I want a world where human security, as envisioned in the principles of the United Nations Charter, replaces armaments, violent conflict and wars. I want a world where everyone lives in a clean environment with a fair distribution of the Earth’s resources and where human rights are protected by a body of international law.

    But it is hard to obtain such a world. As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has reminded us, the century just ended was disfigured time and again by ruthless conflict. Grinding poverty and striking inequality persist within and among countries amidst unprecedented wealth. Nature’s life-sustaining services are being seriously disrupted and degraded. These diverse challenges to human security carry a powerful message.

    Globalization must bring a new understanding of the world as a single community.

    Globalization must mean more than creating bigger markets.

    Globalization must use the sweeping power of technology to raise all of humanity to higher levels of civilization under a common global ethic.

    By “global ethic,” I do not mean a global ideology or a single unified religion, and I certainly don’t mean the domination of one religion at the expense of others. Rather, I mean a fundamental consensus on binding values, irrevocable standards, and personal attitudes. This ethic is the expression of a vision of peoples living peacefully together, of peoples sharing responsibility for the care of the planet. The abolition of nuclear weapons must become a central part of this new global ethic of enlightened realism.

    Because of massive transformations in technology, communication and transportation humanity can now see itself, its unity and disunity, as no generation before could do. Humanity must also see not only its coexistence but also its commonality and the need for cooperation with one another.

    Beyond all else, one great fact must stand out – the whole of the Earth is greater than the parts. Global security is of a higher order than national security – security at the expense of others.

    Violence, injustice, war, oppression and poverty are seen not as the inevitable consequences of greed and aggression, but as symptoms of a world disorder caused by putting the parts before the whole. A globalized world of peace and justice can only be achieved by fostering this global ethic. This is an ethic that is not disloyal to community or country, rather, it lifts up the consciousness of one’s surroundings to a new recognition, never possible in the pre-technological age of globalization, of the interdependence of nations and systems making up the whole.

    To address the human security agenda there needs to be an infusion of values-based principles into public policy that would establish and reinforce a common ground for all humanity: One that would emphasize the core values of respect for life, freedom, justice and equity. Sadly, this common ethic remains elusive in public policy. Consider:

    The world’s nuclear arsenals have thus far cost over $8 trillion and counting. The U.S. alone has spent $5.5 trillion on its nuclear weapons and American taxpayers expend about $100 million a day in order to maintain them.

    Despite the end of the Cold War, the world still spends $781 billion a year on armaments. Contrast this preparation for war with the $1.3 billion it spends on maintaining United Nations programs for peace.

    For every dollar that all governments spend on military activities, less than a quarter-of-a-cent is spent on U.N. peacekeeping. Contrast this reality with the following: At least one-quarter of the world’s people live in extreme poverty, meaning they do not get enough food, access to clean water, proper sanitation, are subject to rampant disease, and are deprived of proper education.

    Across the world nearly one billion people, two thirds of them women, will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or so much as write their names. This total includes more than 130 million primary school-aged children who are growing up without access to basic education.

    Despite the purported goal of universal primary education, OXFAM argues that if current trends continue an estimated 75 million children will be out of school in the year 2015. These facts are not indicative of some tragic twist of fate, but are the result of the choices our governments have made, a testament to a deliberate turning of heads away from the poor. We must give meaning and value to all life.

    It is not the resources that are lacking, but the political will. Let us remember such contrasts when we think of globalization and building a common ethic for a culture of peace. Elimination of the instruments of violence, beating swords into plougshares, making the transition from a culture of war, maintained and advanced by the huge war machine human industry has built up over many centuries, would be the greatest legacy we could ever leave to future generations. This must be our resolve.

    Policy-makers must rid themselves of the idea that peace and security can be bought only with weaponry. We need to foster and promote the transition from a culture of war, violence, and discrimination to a culture, an ethic, of non-violence, dialogue, and tolerance. It will have to be based on collective efforts from a variety of partners inside and outside of government. It will depend upon the ability to raise people’s awareness of the fundamental human security needs and rights affecting the daily lives of millions.

    A transformation of human consciousness, as great as the transformative power of globalization itself, must occur.

    The Political Will To Abolish Nuclear Weapons

    The single biggest impediment to successful globalization – that is peaceful and just – is the maintenance of nuclear weapons.

    With the proliferation of nuclear and of other weapons of mass destruction, the weapons themselves have become the main enemy. Because an increasing number of nations will not tolerate the possession of nuclear weapons by some to the exclusion of others, the abolition of nuclear weapons is the indispensable condition for peace in the 21st century. Their abolition must be the focal point to the deep social change required for a global ethic of peace, since there is not hope for an equitable world as long as a handful of powerful States retain and rely on nuclear weapons while trying to prevent others from acquiring them.

    The adherents of nuclear weapons say that their abolition will be the end result of the solidification of peace. They are putting the cart before the horse; the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) – through maintaining their nuclear weapons as instruments of power – are the catalysts for the spread of nuclear weapons and thus destabilizing the regions of the world. Of course, a security architecture must be built to support the abolition of nuclear weapons, but it is the outright refusal of the NWS to enter comprehensive negotiations for elimination that is worsening international relations.

    The maintenance of nuclear weapons into the 21st century is not to fight wars, although that can never be excluded, but to perpetuate power. This power flows from the structures of greed by which the rich think they have a right to the lion’s share of the world’s resources, after which they will, in the right mood and setting, share superfluous largesse. What are the real concerns of the nuclear retentionists? The ability to maintain a free hand to coerce and impose their will globally; ergo the decision to construct a National Missile Defence system in order to preserve asymmetrical power between themselves and the rest of the world.

    Proponents of missile defence claim they will not allow the United States to be black mailed by smaller nuclear powers. But because the U.S. intends to continue do just that with its own nuclear arsenal, it merely postpones the inevitable. Eventually either most nations will possess their own nuclear deterrent for self-defence or no one will.

    The public seems precariously unaware of the present nuclear danger. Let us bring the basic facts into sharp focus. Today, eight nations possess some 32,000 nuclear bombs containing 5,000 megatons of destructive energy, which is the equivalent of 416,000 Hiroshima-size bombs. This is enough to destroy all major cities of 500,000 population or greater in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Korea, Vietnam, Australia, South Africa, and Cuba.

    U.S. and Russian nuclear-weapons systems remain on high alert despite the fact they ceased to be formal enemies a decade ago. Many Americans, as I know many Canadians, do not realize that the U.S. and Russia still rely on the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). This doctrine purportedly made the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable during the Cold War by threatening the launch “on warning” of nuclear arsenals to counter any pre-emptive strike from the enemy, thus ensuring the devastation of all in any scenario.

    The Cold War is supposed to be over, we have entered a new century and a new millennium, yet we still retain the ways and means to destroy ourselves. Indeed those means are spreading to other countries. This fact, combined with the aging and weakness of Russian technical systems, which the Kursk submarine disaster illustrated, has increased the risk of accidental nuclear attack. The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that an accidental intermediate-sized launch of weapons from a single Russian submarine would result in the deaths of 6,838,000 persons from firestorms in eight U.S. cities. A similar catastrophic toll of death would result in Russia from a U.S. accident.

    Why then is there no real action for elimination on the part of all the Nuclear Weapon States? Because the political will has not yet been developed.

    The actual year in which the last nuclear weapon is dismantled or the precise time when the international community recognizes that war is no longer a viable means of resolving disputes is less important than the decision taken today to start down that road. The refusal of States to recognize that war is outmoded and a new architecture of global security must be built leaves the world in an increasingly dangerous condition.

    The opportunity opened up by the end of the Cold War has been squandered. The nuclear retentionists have succeeded in sowing doubts that the abolition goal is feasible, in insisting that regional security everywhere is a precondition, in claiming that the technicalities of compliance and verification are overwhelming. They get away with this intellectual corruption because neither the political order, the media, nor the public has yet summoned up the wrath to denounce the retentionists for the deceit, charlatanry, greed, and power they represent.

    The Right To Peace And The Abolition Of Nuclear Weapons

    Society accepts the maintenance, indeed the reliance, of nuclear weapons because we accept violence. Nuclear weapons are the reflection of society’s willingness to commit violence. It is violence when great sections of humanity are economically discriminated against and even robbed of their right to basic human needs. It is violence when we sell arms to governments to intimidate, if not wage war against, their neighbours and even their own people. Violence is so endemic in our culture that it has become routine. It is the ultimate violence to threaten to use nuclear weapons against other human beings — against people we do not even know and to place in jeopardy not only their own survival as a people but the natural structure upon which all civilization rests.

    The moral, legal and political challenge to nuclear weapons must be reinvigorated. Civil society, by this I mean communities, churches, citizens’ groups, all have a most pivotal role to play in heightening the pressure on governments to begin effective negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. It is essential that non-governmental leaders speak, with one voice, that nuclear weapons are unacceptable. Nuclear planners would then be deprived of any claim to moral legitimacy.

    We must speak out to decry these very instruments that attack humanity. This is not “moralism,” it is not “rhetoric,” it is not “simplism.” It is, rather, the strengthening of a teaching that human conscience must assert itself in any understanding of right and wrong. To fail to do this is to consign humanity to denigration of intellect and loss of will, to deny it the very essence of humanity. I have stressed in this lecture the possibilities of globalization to promote attitudinal change in society so that it seeps into moral and legal thinking to both stimulate and sustain new government policies. A whole new way of thinking about nuclear weapons is required to effectuate change. This is the goal of UNESCO in promoting knowledge of a culture of peace.

    A culture of peace is the set of values, attitudes, traditions, modes of behaviour and ways of life that inspire respect for all life, rejection of violence, and promotion of all human rights. A culture of peace is a process of individual, collective and institutional transformation. It grows out of beliefs and actions of the people themselves and develops in each country within its specific historical, socio-cultural and economic context. Mobilizing public opinion and developing new education programs, at all levels, are essential.

    The themes of a culture of peace are the architecture for the human right to peace. The protection of the right to life and bodily security are at the heart of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When a weapon has the potential to kill millions of people in one blast, human life becomes reduced to a level of worthlessness that totally belies human dignity as understood in any culture. No weapon invented in the long history of warfare has so negated the dignity and worth of the human person as has the nuclear bomb.

    The most devastating attack on the Declaration of Human Rights comes from those who would assault the very existence of human life on the planet.

    We are yet some distance from a general societal recognition that the right to peace demands the abolition of nuclear weapons. But let us have a vision that morality and law, fully developed, will bring us to this vision. While we must bring our head to this matter, we must also bring our heart.

    I reject the thinking of those who hold that the end of nuclear weapons is at least 100 years away and that until then “we must live with nuclear weapons as responsibly and quietly as we can.” That is dangerous pessimism. The world does not have 100 years to stamp out this pernicious cancer that is eroding human security.

    There are too many people suffering, too much political frustration, too much potential for global devastation, to allow a mood of passivity. The abolition of nuclear weapons will not, by itself, bring peace, but it will allow the international community to deal more effectively with other threats to peace.

    All great historical ideas for change go through three stages: first, the idea is ridiculed; then it is vigorously objected to; finally, it is accepted as conventional wisdom. The movement to abolish nuclear weapons has entered the second stage.

    The time for those who understand the threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons to make their voices heard, to wake up the public, to shake up governments is now. My hope lies in the blossoming of human intelligence and the emergence of a caring, activist civil society working along side of like-minded governments. We do not have the luxury of despair. We must believe that, with the application of our minds and hearts, we can overcome the nuclear retentionists.

    When leaders in civil society work with like-minded governments, powerful results can be obtained. It is now the responsibility of civil society to put a worldwide spotlight on the recalcitrance of the NWS governments and show them that human consciousness has moved beyond them.