Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Disarmament

  • Nuclear Deterrence: Impeding Nuclear Disarmament

    David KriegerIn an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, published on March 7, 2011, four former high-level US policy makers – George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn – focused their attention on nuclear deterrence.  They concurred that deterrence based on nuclear weapons is precarious, could destroy civilized life and raises enormous inhibitions against employing nuclear weapons.  They concluded that the US and Russia were “lucky” that nuclear weapons were not used during the Cold War, and asked: “Does the world want to continue to bet its survival on continued good fortune with a growing number of nuclear nations and adversaries globally?” 


    The four former policy makers argued that “nations should move forward together with a series of conceptual and practical steps toward deterrence that do not rely primarily on nuclear weapons or nuclear threats to maintain international peace and security.”  Their first step is to recognize that “there is a daunting new spectrum of global security threats” and that an “effective strategy to deal with these dangers must be developed.”  Their second step is to realize that reliance on nuclear weapons encourages or excuses nuclear proliferation.  Their third step is to cease the deployment of US and Russian nuclear arsenals in ways that “increase the danger of an accidental or unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon, or even a deliberate exchange based on a false warning.” 


    So far, so good.  Their fourth step, however, seems to be a non sequitur: “[A]s long as nuclear weapons exist, America must retain a safe, secure and reliable nuclear stockpile primarily to deter a nuclear attack and to reassure our allies through extended deterrence.”  The former policy makers had just reviewed the great dangers of relying upon nuclear deterrence, and then followed this by indicating the need for America to rely upon nuclear weapons for deterrence, including nuclear deterrence “extended” to US allies.  They also left unstated what uses the US nuclear stockpile might have other than deterring a nuclear attack.  It appears the former policy makers have chosen a “safe, secure and reliable” nuclear arsenal over a safe and secure citizenry.  Nuclear weapons undermine the possibility of a safe and secure citizenry.  As conceived, the modernization of US nuclear forces would also be expensive and provocative and would limit the possibilities for nuclear disarmament.  I’ve often wondered what is meant by a reliable nuclear arsenal: One with sufficient capacity to annihilate a potential enemy down to the last child?


    The four former policy makers do say that the US and Russia “must continue to lead the “build-down” and “must begin moving away from threatening force postures and deployments.”  But such leadership is needed not only for the “build-down,” but also to envision a world with zero nuclear weapons and to commit to doing what is necessary to achieve that vision. 


    In their fifth step, the group of four recognizes that “nuclear weapons may continue to appear relevant” to some nations.  They thus see the need to “redouble efforts” to resolve regional confrontations and conflicts.  Insightfully, they find, “A world without nuclear weapons will not simply be today’s world minus nuclear weapons.”  They demonstrate a lack of urgency, though, in suggesting that “over time” the US and its allies can work together to make changes to extended deterrence.


    The group of four concludes, “Moving from mutual assured destruction toward a new and more stable form of deterrence with decreasing nuclear risks and an increasing measure of assured security for all nations could prevent our worst nightmare from becoming a reality, and it could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations.”


    Just a few weeks before the publication of this Wall Street Journal article on nuclear deterrence by George Shultz and his colleagues, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation convened a conference in Santa Barbara on “The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence.”  The conference concluded with a Santa Barbara Declaration: “Reject Nuclear Deterrence: An Urgent Call to Action.”  The Declaration states, “Nuclear deterrence is discriminatory, anti-democratic and unsustainable.  This doctrine must be discredited and replaced with an urgent commitment to achieve global nuclear disarmament.  We must change the discourse by speaking truth to power and speaking truth to each other.”  In other words, we cannot find nuclear deterrence “precarious” on the one hand, and seek to modernize America’s nuclear forces under the guise of keeping them “safe, secure and reliable” on the other hand. 


    The Santa Barbara Declaration concluded, “Before another nuclear weapon is used, nuclear deterrence must be replaced by humane, legal and moral security strategies.  We call upon people everywhere to join us in demanding that the nuclear weapon states and their allies reject nuclear deterrence and negotiate without delay a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.”  The goal must be a world without nuclear weapons, and reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence remains a major impediment to achieving that goal.

  • Social and Psychological Obstacles to Nuclear Disarmament Education and Promotion

    Bill WickershamThe overarching goal of this conference is to examine the dangers of the theory known as nuclear deterrence, and to explore ways to successfully communicate the fallacies inherent in that theory to people everywhere. In this paper I will address several concrete examples of nuclear deterrence based errors, and will also describe some of the social and psychological obstacles which cause many people to ignore the distinct omnicidal nuclear threat to life on this Planet. Finally, I will suggest several excellent educational resources which are available to help nuclear disarmament advocates overcome these obstacles as they work to mobilize individuals and groups to eliminate the overall nuclear danger.


    First, let us define nuclear deterrence. According to the New American Foundation:
    “Nuclear deterrence is the belief that states can protect themselves by credibly threatening to impose unacceptable costs on an adversary in the event of an attack. Those unacceptable costs typically entail the wholesale slaughter of an adversary’s population centers (counter force) using nuclear weapons.
    (http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/rethinking_nuclear_weapons)


    In their DVD ” The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence”, David Krieger, Rick Wayman and Eric Choquette detail the many flaws which underpin nuclear deterrence theory.
    (www.archive.org/details/The_Myth_of_Nuclear_Deterrence).


    In a summary of the DVD’s key points, Professor Martin Hellman says:


    • “Although often advanced as if it were proven fact, nuclear deterrence is really an unproven theory about human behavior.  That it works is a myth, and there is significant evidence to the contrary;
    • Nuclear deterrence cannot deter terrorists;
    • Nuclear deterrence assumes rational leaders.  That is a questionable          assumption when war looms;
    • If, as advertised, nuclear deterrence ensured peace, we would encourage global nuclear proliferation.  World peace would follow;
    • If military leaders really believed that nuclear deterrence worked, they          wouldn’t be so concerned with missile defense;
    • Belief in the myth of nuclear deterrence creates a false sense of security that hampers efforts to solve the real problems.  We need to move from Mutually Assured Destruction to Mutually Assured Survival.”
             (http://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/the-myth-of-nuclear–
              deterrence)


    One of the primary dangers of nuclear deterrence is its instability in terms
    of potential technical and human error. In a 1969 presentation at the Missouri Peace Study Institute, eminent economist and peace scholar Kenneth Boulding said of nuclear deterrence:  ” It is a threat system which says if you do bad to me, I will do bad to you. Therefore, no one will do bad to anyone.” In expanding that concept, Professor Boulding also noted, that for mutual threat systems to be viable, they also have to be completely stable.  Thus, such stability demands absolute control by the chief threateners, namely, the heads of state of the adversarial nations. Unfortunately, absolute control has been absent on many occasions since 1945. To make matters worse, there have also been numerous false alarms, accidents, miscommunications and other unanticipated events which came very close to triggering World War III, during the last 65 years.
    (see: http://www.nuclearfiles.org)


    In 1969, I interviewed several U.S. Air Force officers who were stationed at Whiteman Air Force Missouri, and whose job it was to launch nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union if so ordered.  One of those launch officers, a young captain, told me:  ” The fact is, it is possible for four officers in a Minuteman squadron to launch and start World War III without authorization from anyone.  If four officers, in two capsules decide to turn their keys and launch, then they can do so without orders from anyone.  There is no absolute guarantee that orders have to be followed.  Naturally, this would be ‘illegal”, but who would be around to punish them ?”


    Clearly this four man launch scenario ran counter to Kenneth Boulding’s stability criterion.  Fortunately, such unauthorized missile launches are said to be no longer possible.  Lets hope that is true for both U.S. and Russian nuclear missile systems. The point is that those who have long praised the past safety record of nuclear launch and control procedures might want to rethink that belief.


    In 1994, I wrote the late Congressman Ted Weiss of New York concerning the risk of an unauthorized nuclear weapons launch by a U.S. Trident submarine commander.  In a letter dated June 15, 1984, he said:  “In response to your request, I contacted the Congressional Liaison Office of the Department of the Navy.  An officer for the Navy Department informed me that with the support of as few as three other officers, the commander of a Trident submarine could launch an unauthorized attack against Soviet targets … (and) … a conspiracy to engineer an unauthorized launch of a Trident’s missiles could take as few as four officers to accomplish.  To be successful, however, such a conspiracy would require the support of the submarine’s radio operator and communications officer, who are responsible for receiving transmissions from the President, and the crew members responsible for actually preparing the missiles for launch.”


    Here, again, we had a situation which failed to meet the stability criterion for nuclear deterrence.  If such historical weaknesses existed with U.S. command and control, we must wonder what the situation was, and is, with Soviet and Russian ballistic missiles.  Are there similar weaknesses in those systems today?  We could go on at length concerning past miscommunications, errors and accidents related to nuclear weapons. (See:  www.nuclearfiles.org).  However, space will not permit an in depth look at all of those phenomena.  But, since this conference is primarily concerned with the imminent dangers of nuclear deterrence, I do want to note two past examples of those dangers. 


    On September 26, 1983, the alarms in a Soviet early warning bunker, just south of Moscow, sounded as a computer screens indicated that the United States had launched a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.  The officer in charge of the bunker and its 200 officers and enlisted personnel was Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov. His job was to monitor incoming satellite signals and report directly to the Russian early-warning system headquarters if indicators revealed that a U.S. missile attack was underway.  “For several minutes, Col. Petrov held a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other as alarms continued blaring, red lights blinking, and the computers reporting that U.S. missiles were on their way.  In the midst of this horrific chaos and terror, with the prospect of the end of civilization itself, Petrov made a historic decision not to alert higher authorities, believing in his gut and hoping with all that is sacred, that contrary to what all the sophisticated equipment was reporting, this alarm was in error… As agonizing minutes passed, Petrov’s decision proved correct.  It was a computer error that signaled a U.S. attack.”  (Association of World Citizens News-letter, Fall 2004, p.1.)


    Had Col. Petrov obeyed standard operating procedures by reporting the erroneous information, it is likely that Soviet missiles would have devastated all major U.S. cities, and the Pentagon would have retaliated. Accordingly, we would not be here today to discuss the myth of nuclear deterrence, and how to put an end to that flawed concept.


    On January 25, 1995, another potentially disastrous early warning error occurred when a Russian radar mistook a U.S. scientific research rocket launched from Norway as an incoming nuclear strike from a U.S. Trident submarine.  Even though the United States had notified Russia it would launch a non-military research rocket, those in control of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons did not receive the message.  Fortunately, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, a man with a drinking problem, who had three minutes to order a retaliatory strike, elected to “ride out” the crisis and did not launch the thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles available on his command. (http://www.trivalleycares.org/prnov99.htm)


    Given such close calls, why was there no great public outcry regarding the dangers of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons?  First, these incidents were not widely publicized at the time of their occurrence.  Second, there are a host of social and psychological mechanisms which were operable then, as they are today, which prevent most individuals from directing serious attention to, and confronting the potential destruction of themselves, their children and people everywhere.


    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s DVD “Nuclear Weapons and the Human Future:  How You Can Help” discusses three such obstacles, namely: ignorance, fear and apathy.  My own research strongly supports the DVD’s assumptions regarding those factors.  With regard to psychological denial, it is the case that when a potentially horrific atrocity such as nuclear annihilation is discussed, many folks simply experience the “glazed eye” effect, and proceed to stick their heads in the sand (the Ostrich response). Such individuals usually ignore the problem and distance themselves from it by declaring that political, military and scientific experts  know how to handle the situation, and it is their job to do so. If the person’s denial runs deeply enough, it is very difficult to engage him or her in a serious dialogue regarding the nuclear threat. In some cases, however, a simple non-academic explanation of psychological denial as it applies to nuclear deterrence will increase the readiness, openness, and willingness of individuals and groups to carefully focus on the topic.


    Two other serious psychological blocks to nuclear disarmament dialogue were described by the late Professor Jerome D. Frank of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Psychiatry.  Dr. Frank described those mechanisms as “insensitivity to the remote”; and “habituation”.  Regarding insensitivity he said: 


    ” Human sense organs are magnificently equipped to detect tiny changes in the environment – a few parts of illumination gas in a million parts of air brings the housewife rushing into the kitchen; a match flaring a quarter of a mile away on a dark night instantly flags an onlooker’s attention.  Only the environmental events within the range of our sense organs matter, and like our ancestors, we have no biological need to detect and respond to stimuli that do not impinge on any sense organ.  With distant events becoming increasingly vital to our safety, this deficiency – “insensitivity to the remote” is a particularly important source of the general failure to respond with appropriate vigor to the dangers of nuclear weapons.”


    One way to deal with such insensitivity is to remind individuals and groups that decision making time for the launching of U.S. and Russian nuclear missiles is very short (as few as 3 minutes), and launch to landing times are 25 minutes or less.


    “The Timeline for Catastrophe” table attached to this paper contains such data, and is one tool that brings the threat of nuclear war out of the abstract into the concrete.


    Dr. Frank described “habituation” as follows: 


    “Habituation, another property of our biological equipment, also impedes adequate appreciation of the nuclear danger.  Survival in the wild requires the ability not only to detect tiny changes in the environment, but also to stop detecting them if nothing happens.  If an animal kept on attending to every stimulus, his capacity to sense possible fresh dangers would be swamped. Therefore continuing stimuli, except painful ones which represent a continuing danger, rapidly stop registering, thus freeing the sense organs to pick up new ones.  The phenomenon is familiar to all of us – a person moving to a busy street soon sleeps through the traffic noise that first kept him awake.  As long as it is not overwhelmingly unpleasant or dangerous, any persistent environmental feature gradually comes to be taken for granted.  One is reminded of Alexander Pope’s comment on vice:
    ‘A monster of such evil mien/as to be hated needs but to be seen/ but seen too oft, familiar with her face, /we first endure, then pity, then embrace’.”


    “As a new form of destructive power, the Hiroshima atom bomb, with an explosive equivalent of two thousand tons of TNT created considerable apprehension.  Since then, the size of available nuclear weapons has about doubled annually, until today (in 1967) the world’s stockpiles total at least 50 BILLION tons.  We should be terrified, but because of habituation and insensitivity to the remote we are not.”
    ( Frank, J.D., 1967.  Sanity and Survival in the Nuclear Age: Psychological Aspects of War and Peace: New York: Random House, pp.26-27).


    Linguistic Psychologist Charles Osgood also addressed the denial problem as a serious obstacle to nuclear disarmament education and promotion when he explained that many people simply refuse to think about negatives like nuclear extinction.  According to the professor, this is particularly prevalent when negatives “… seem remote in time, and are highly symbolic in nature.”   In such situations people are ” … less likely to try to do anything about them until it’s too late.  Seated in the backyard on a nice Spring day, watching the kids play and sipping a beer, the Neanderthal within us simply cannot conceive of trees suddenly blackened and the voice of the children stilled – or there being no more beer.”
    (GRIT: ” A Strategy for Survival in Mankind’s Nuclear Age” in W. Epstein, and B. Feld, eds. New Directions in Disarmament, New York, Praeger, 1981)


    Marc Pilisuk and Jaime Rowen have also addressed a number of social and psychological obstacles faced by nuclear disarmament advocates when they approach different audiences with their message.  In the introduction to their on-line, no-cost book USING PSYCHOLOGY TO HELP ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, they state: 


    “The goal for this brief handbook is to be useful for the following audiences:


    • Abolition coalition activists and organizers;
    • Peace movement activists;
    • Supporters of other Progressive causes;
    • Psychologists who wish to apply their professional knowledge to the task of abolishing the dangerous threat of nuclear weapons; and,
    • Any member of the public concerned with preventing nuclear war.”


    “Our intentions here are to share some knowledge and ideas to increase the efficiency of people and groups working to abolish or reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, and to remind psychologists of some of the hurdles for professional involvement in this issue.  The Handbook allows you to look up a general group that you might wish to understand or to influence.  It also includes a list of psychological concepts that can be applicable to the tasks of both understanding and action in the human response to weapons of mass destruction.”


    The four main concept areas discussed in the book include:


    • Dealing with how beliefs and attitudes about nuclear weapons are formed
    • Attribution error, belief systems, cognitive dissonance, group think,             obedience;
    • Relevant to the motivations of people in the nuclear weapons establishment — Achievement motivation, addiction, aggression, and destructive motivation, decontextualized language, game theory, masculine identity, narcissism, patriarchy, professional identification;
    • Dealing with individuals coping with threats — Alienation, death wish and apocalyptic fantasies, denial, desensitization, dissociation, fear-arousing appeals, guilt, habituation, learned helplessness, paranoia, psychic numbing, repression;
    • Relevant to people opposed to nuclear weapons — Attitudes, empowerment, diffusion of information, self-actualization, social networks.


            (The aforementioned book was published by Psychologists for Social
            Responsibility.  To retrieve an on-line, no-cost copy, simply Google:
            Using Psychology to Help Abolish Nuclear Weapons) 


    For additional information on psychological blocks to nuclear disarmament education and citizen action, see my recent book CONFRONTING NUCLEAR WAR: THE ROLE OF EDUCATION, RELIGION, AND THE COMMUNITY, Chapter 7. The link to website for this on-line, no-cost book is: www.confrontingnuclearwar.com


    David Barash and Judith Eve Lipton have also provided an analysis of psychological issues surrounding the search for nuclear disarmament.  Their well written book, STOP NUCLEAR WAR: A HANDBOOK, includes a chapter titled: “Psychology: Thinking and Not Thinking About the Unthinkable”.  Topics include:


    • “The Neanderthal Mentality”: fighting pays; we win – you lose; either you’re with us, or you’re against us; it hasn’t happened yet, so it won’t happen.
    • “Cognitive Dissonance”;
    • “Nuclearism”, or the “Strangelove Syndrome”;
    • “Shall We Overcome?”: Religion, Morality, and Sanity; Beyond Psychic Numbing.
    (Barash, D.P. and Lipton, J.E. (1982). STOP NUCLEAR WAR; A HANDBOOK. New York: Grove Press. pp. 214-239)


    I highly recommend this book.          


    In late 2008 through mid 2009, three separate research organizations did studies which examined public understanding and acceptance of nuclear weapons:  Topos Partnership (done on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists), American Environics, and Greenberg, Quilan and Rosner.  The organization, U.S. in the World, issued a summary of findings of those studies which indicated that one of the biggest challenges peace and security advocates face is the American public’s perception of nuclear weapons as a “shield” and the “best/strongest” weapon in our arsenal.  Among the key recommendations of the study were two which focused directly on the dangers of nuclear deterrence:


    1. “Peace and security advocates should work to help the public think about nuclear weapons in a new way, i.e., ‘reframe’ the issue to help people see that it is the existence of the weapons themselves – not who has them – that poses the primary threat to global security and national security;
    2. “The fact that nuclear weapons are a source of risk – not the fact that they are morally wrong – should be presented as the underlying reason why the issue of nuclear weapons matters…. ‘morality’ arguments should not be key elements of advocates’ frame; for most of the public these are losing arguments … because they seem to place principles over safety.”


    The title of the U.S in the World paper is: “Talking About Nuclear Weapons with the Persuadable Middle”.  To view all of its recommendations simply Google that title.


    Despite the numerous psychological mechanisms which hinder public perception and action on behalf of nuclear disarmament, it is important to note that most Americans do have an unfocused concern with the nuclear danger.  A 2004 paper published by the Arms Control Association indicated that an overwhelming (84 percent) majority of U.S. citizens say that preventing the spread of nuclear weapons is a very important foreign policy goal of the United States.  And, an even higher 86 percent said the United States “… should do more to work with other powers toward eliminating their nuclear weapons.”
    (http://www.armscontrol.org/print/1580)


    A 2008 poll by World Public Opinion.org found that in five nations with large nuclear arsenals and advanced delivery systems, large majorities favor the elimination of nuclear weapons – the U.S (77%); Russia (69%); China (83%); and Great Britain (81%).  (To view the poll, Google:  World Public Opinion 2008 Poll on Nuclear Weapons)


    The above public attitudes regarding nuclear weapons are the good news.  The bad news is, that despite such favorable opinion for nuclear disarmament, there is no substantial evidence that personal action on behalf of nuclear disarmament is high on anybody’s list of things to do, except of course for nuclear disarmament activists. Many recent polls regarding perceived public problems and priorities indicate that nuclear war prevention is nowhere to be found on the list of concerns. Typical lists of U.S. public concerns include:  unemployment and jobs; federal deficit and spending; health care; war in Afghanistan; immigration, etc.


    When asked directly about nuclear war, people do express their concerns.  However, when asked to list problems which they feel are most pressing, nuclear war prevention is rarely mentioned.  My general impression is that nuclear war is an abstraction which is basically out of sight and out of mind.  And, for many, the threats of nuclear deterrence ended with the Cold War. Without question, this perception, along with the other aforementioned obstacles, has to be addressed if there is any real chance for U.S. and worldwide mobilization to end the myth of nuclear deterrence.  This is not to say that we must use psychological “overkill” to the point that we psychologize every issue related to the nuclear danger. However, a case can be made that the overall problem of nuclear deterrence is a psychological one which relates directly to human perception, human attitudes, and human behavior.


    Given the increasing amount of funds and resources being garnered by various NGOs for purposes of nuclear disarmament education and promotion, it would seem wise to incorporate sound psychological precepts in the preparation of all education materials, and with all other programming efforts, including those involving the mass media.

  • Nuclear Disarmament and Deterrence Education

    Introduction


    Early in 2008 I was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to his Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, as the first Australasian in 25 years.  This has been an amazing experience – giving me the opportunity to feed ideas from ordinary citizen groups into the Secretary General, and to debate with Ambassadors of the 5 nuclear weapon states and nine others on this prestigious Board. 


    The issues we have discussed so far have included pathways to nuclear abolition and nuclear deterrence; nuclear energy security; weapons in outer space; the 2010 Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference; cyber warfare and nanoweapons.


    This month we will look at how to revitalise the Conference on Disarmament in order to implement some of the Secretary General’s Five Point Plan for nuclear disarmament launched during Disarmament Week in October 2008. 
    Ban Ki-Moon’s Points included the following: 



    • All parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, especially the nuclear-weapon States, should fulfill its requirement to enter into negotiations on nuclear disarmament, which could focus on either a convention or framework of agreements banning nuclear-weapons.

    • The nuclear-weapon States could assure non-nuclear-weapon States that they will not be the subject of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.  

    • Existing nuclear arrangements and agreements (e.g. a ban on testing, nuclear-weapon-free zones, and strengthened safeguards) need to be accepted by States and brought into force.

    • The nuclear Powers could also expand the amount of information they publish about the size of their arsenals, stocks of fissile material, and specific disarmament achievements.  

    • Complementary measures are needed such as the elimination of other types of WMD; new efforts against WMD terrorism; limits on conventional arms; and new weapons bans, including of missiles and space weapons.

    We are fortunate to have a UN Secretary General (UNSG) who is strongly advocating nuclear and general disarmament and has openly criticised nuclear deterrence. His 5 Point Plan has become a great rallying point for citizen groups, diplomats, politicians and Mayors who have come in behind him in his courageous urgently pleas for nuclear abolition.  It has therefore become an important vehicle for nuclear disarmament education.


    Ban Ki-Moon believes that “A world free of nuclear weapons is a global public good of the highest order” and that “…the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is contagious, making non-proliferation more difficult and raising new risks that nuclear weapons will be used.”


    The Secretary General opened the May 2010 NPT Review Conference on a high note, and took a leading role throughout. He gave passionate speeches in both the formal and non-governmental events calling for agreement on a comprehensive programme for nuclear disarmament. He used the opening of the Second Conference of States Parties that established Nuclear Weapon Free Zones by encouraging the diplomats. He said:  My goal – our goal – is to make the whole world a nuclear-weapon-free zone. Nuclear-weapon-free zones are the success stories of the disarmament movement. You are leading by example.


    On the eve of the NPT, he addressed the NGO Disarmament conference at the Riverside Church, where Martin Luther King had given his famous speeches. The crowd of nearly 1000 NGOs gave him 3 standing ovations – including after this rousing finale: “What I see on the horizon is a world free of nuclear weapons.  What I see before me are the people who will help make it happen. Please keep up your good work. Sound the alarm, keep up the pressure. Ask your leaders what they are doing … personally… to eliminate the nuclear menace. Above all, continue to be the voice of conscience. We will rid the world of nuclear weapons. And when we do it will be because of people like you. The world owes you its gratitude.”


    At our Board meetings we have been encouraging him to speak out and take actions to implement the rhetoric. He has recently:



    • Visited Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Semipalatinsk as the first UNSG to do so;

    • Convened a Nuclear Security Summit and a High level meeting to revitalize the Conference on Disarmament in September 2010;

    • Addressed the Mayors for Peace and the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non Proliferation and Disarmament Panels at the NPT;

    • Been asked to facilitate a Conference on Middle East zone free of all WMD in 2012;

    • Opened exhibitions promoting disarmament in the UN, eg CTBTO, photo exhibition from Japanese hibakusha; and 

    • Promoted  Disarmament and Non Proliferation Education.

    Last year the Board reviewed the United Nations Study on Disarmament and Non-proliferation Education which was adopted by consensus in the General Assembly in 2002. The Study requested the Secretary-General to prepare biennial reports to submit to the Assembly.  It was prepared by ten government experts with input from UN international organisations and agencies such as the IAEA, OPCW, UNIDIR, UNESCO, UNICEF, CTBTO, UNIFEM and the UNU.


    The Study included 34 far-reaching recommendations including one which encourages municipal leaders, working with citizen groups, “to establish peace cities, as part of the UNESCO Cities for Peace network, through, for example, the creation of peace museums, peace parks, websites, and production of booklets on peacemakers and peacemaking.”


    This recommendation provides a wonderful opportunity for the fast-growing Mayors for Peace network to declare Peace Cities and educate local citizens and policy makers about nuclear disarmament. The Exhibition organised by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been travelling all over the world – and was recently highlighted during a Press conference with Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange in London. In my own country, it has been shown in sixteen cities, and smaller photos displayed in many schools to mark Peace Week.  There have also been very successful exhibitions on Gandhi and Depleted Uranium munitions.


    The twentieth anniversary of the passing of New Zealand’s historic nuclear free legislation in 2007 provided another opportunity for a major exhibition which showcased iconic peace movement memorabilia and highlighted the arguments challenging nuclear deterrence. The exhibition included the original 1963 petition calling for a Southern Hemisphere nuclear free zone, banners, posters, stickers, badges, photos, magazines, stamps, artwork and music. David Lange’s famous Oxford Union debate –in which he rubbishes nuclear deterrence – was available in the red phone box! There was also memorabilia commemorating the World Court Project which began in Christchurch.


    On the anniversary of the legislation many of our elected representatives from all political parties joined together on the steps of parliament wearing ‘nuclear free nation’ tee shirts and badges. Some of them, including the former Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, had been members of the Peace Squadrons which had taken non-violent direct action in small boats to try and prevent US nuclear powered and probably armed vessels entering New Zealand ports during the mid 1970s and early 1980s. The politicians then returned to Parliament House to pass a unanimous resolution, resolving that New Zealand should continue to work for a nuclear weapon free world. 


    Mayors for Peace


    The Mayors for Peace movement is led by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1995 they addressed the International Court of Justice to present the views of the nuclear bomb victims of their cities.  Following the World Court Opinion in 1996, which called on all states ‘to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiation on nuclear disarmament in all its aspects’, they were inspired to renew their call for nuclear abolition and begin a membership drive internationally. To mark the 10th anniversary of the Court’s Opinion in 2006, Mayors for Peace launched the Good Faith Challenge reaffirming the meaning and importance of the World Court opinion.


    At the city level, Mayors for Peace has launched the Cities Are Not Targets project. This encourages and assists cities and municipal associations in demanding assurances from nuclear-weapon states that cities are not and will not be targeted for nuclear attack. To quote the Mayors: Cities are homes and offices. They are not legitimate targets for bombs. To obliterate a city for any reason whatsoever is an illegal, immoral crime against humanity and not to be tolerated.


    Membership in Mayors for Peace has grown exponentially in the last few years.  There are now 4,515 members in 150 countries and regions. The 104 capital cities, include the NWS of Russia (34), China (7), France (134), UK (65), India (16), Pakistan (13) and Israel (55). Japan leads with 901 members, the US has 168 members (including Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston) and Australia with 72. The capital cities of key NATO allies such as Germany (371 cities), Belgium (355), Spain (296), Italy (376), Turkey (11), Greece (30), Netherlands (55), Canada (90), Czechoslovakia (28) and Norway (88) are also signed up.  Citizens in these cities and countries have a special responsibility to challenge their local councils to push their governments to reflect public opinion in support of nuclear abolition.


    One of the recommendations of the UN Study on Disarmament Education was to include NGOs (including Mayors) and politicians, on government delegations to UN disarmament conferences.  New Zealand has done this regularly since 1985 and last year included the chair of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non Proliferation and Disarmament, and a youth worker in our organisation as full members of their delegation to the NPT Review Conference. 


    Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non Proliferation and Disarmament


    In 2001, the Middle Powers Initiative established the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament. It was recently renamed Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non Proliferation and Disarmament and has over 780 members in 80 countries.   PNND has a regular newsletter, and the website is available in 12 languages. A few years ago its coordinator, fellow New Zealander Alyn Ware, produced a briefing book on disarmament which was distributed to all PNND and Mayors for Peace members, and all 550 members of the US Congress. This formidable network is now having a strong impact on government disarmament policies in key nuclear allied states where they regularly debate about nuclear deterrence.


    In February 2010 the UNSG, at PNND’s instigation, sent a letter to all parliaments calling for action on his Five Point plan. PNND launched a campaign of support resulting in resolutions being adopted in the European Parliament; the national parliaments of Austria, Bangladesh, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and Norway; and the Inter-Parliamentary Union which represents 152 parliaments (including France, Russia and the United Kingdom). There has also been support from the 3rd World Conference of Speakers of Parliament and a group of Nobel Laureates. Cross party coalitions of politicians in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey have signed a letter to President Obama calling for removal of US tactical nuclear weapons from their soil. 


    Reports to the UN Secretary General on Disarmament Education


    Every two years governments and NGOs report to the UNSG about disarmament education activities in their countries.   In Canada the government has helped fund the extremely popular Reaching Critical Will website coordinated by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the World Without Weapons website which provides a Teacher’s Guide and Student’s Manual for Secondary School Grades educating youth about disarmament, non-proliferation, landmines, SALW and human security issues.


    Japan supports UN Disarmament Fellowship Programmes for government officials. It has held regional disarmament conferences since 1989 and published a booklet on Disarmament Policy in Japanese and English.


    Sweden, like New Zealand (NZ), gives support to disarmament education (DE) activities by NGOs.  The NZ Ministry of Education distributed a Pamphlet on peace education to every school and the government supports Model UN Assemblies and gives regular briefings to NGOs. The Disarmament Education UN Implementation Fund  helps fund NGOs to implement the Study’s recommendations, such as the creation of Peace Cities, Museum exhibitions, and the production of educational material for schools, politicians and university students. NZ regularly includes NGO advisers on delegations to UN meetings on Landmines, Small Arms and nuclear weapons.  The Peace and Disarmament Education Trust  helps fund post-graduate scholarships for research on disarmament issues.


    The Russian government helps fund academic institutions and NGOs to develop programmes and train specialists in disarmament education. Higher Education institutes have included a new speciality ‘Security and Non Proliferation of nuclear materials’. The PIR centre gives training for experts in relevant government ministries and has developed a manual on nuclear Non Proliferation which has been confirmed as a textbook for tertiary institutions.


    Venezuela is setting up mass literacy campaigns to help prevent international trafficking in small arms and light weapons. Its constitution includes the fundamental values of ‘peace, integration, rejection of war, peaceful dispute settlement and establishing a fairer and more balanced world based on respect for cultural, ethnic and gender diversity.’ Bolivia also has a ‘profound commitment to peace’ arguing that all problems between States should be resolved through dialogue and mutual understanding. Mauritius has no history of war or civil insurrection and does not hold large stocks of arms and ammunitions. 


    Cambodia has introduced a number of activities, laws and regulations such as providing training to technical military staff to enable them to safely control and store weapons and ammunition. It created a national committee on weapons and ammunition in 2006. By May 2008, in collaboration with Japan and EU, they destroyed over 212,735 units of arms.


    Burundi’s Ministry of Defence has established a strict documentation mechanism for the verification and control of legally held small arms.  Qatar created the National Committee for the Prohibition of Weapons which includes a resolution to create and implement programmes to raise awareness of international arms control treaties.


    Spain teaches disarmament education at all levels in the Ministry of Defence and the government regularly participates in seminars, lectures or post-graduate studies on disarmament education with the Spanish Strategic Studies Institute and the Centre for Advanced national Defence Studies.


    UN Agencies


    The revamped UNODA website  has a special section devoted to disarmament education. It links UN agencies focusing on UNDE and some NGO initiatives including films, teacher resources and other publications. 


    The UN CyberSchoolBus site  has been named as one of the 101 best websites for teachers among 25 other complimentary reviews and prestigious awards. It is in 6 languages and is linked to a range of excellent websites such as the Model UN HQ, Peace Education,  and Voices of Youth. It has some examples of games and model units for teachers.


    However one of the main areas where little has been done over the decade is the creation of effective computer and video games which teach non-violence and disarmament.  The interactive media Global Platform aggregate audience of over 550 million has huge educational possibilities especially for youth.  The UN Study recommended (No 18) that ‘efforts should be made by educators, parents and the business community devise and produce toys, computer games and videos that engender such attitudes’ (ie values that reject violence, resolve conflicts peacefully and sustain a culture of peace).


    Youth


    It is exciting to see young people emerging as leaders in disarmament. There were over 500 young people at the 2010 NPT Review Conference.  The NPT-TV was run by the Students Peace Bureau in Germany, and Disarm TV is a youth-led and produced citizen journalism project aimed at empowering young people as grassroots reporters and peer educators on the nuclear weapons issue. There were simulations for negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention, organised by the European youth network Ban all Nukes generation (BANg) and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists against Proliferation (INESAP), held every day which were observed by seasoned diplomats.  


    The Million Pleas video, started by a group of school children from Hiroshima, is addressed to the 9 nuclear weapon states. They are asking people all over the globe to upload a video clip of themselves saying the word “please”. The “pleases” will then be edited into a long virtual chain letter, which will act as a petition to abolish nuclear weapons, worldwide. It is one of the many exciting campaigns being organised by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) based in Australia.


    The International Network of Emerging Nuclear Specialists was established by a group of  young policy specialists concerned that constructive dialogue was largely absent from the ‘nuclear’ debate. They seek to include parties from across these fields and they will facilitate this dialogue.


    In October 2010 the Youth Section of Religions for Peace presented a petition to UN High Representative for Disarmament  calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons – signed by over 20 million people. The petition is part of the Arms Down Campaign for Shared Security, and also calls for a reallocation of 10% of global military spending towards meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015.


    UN Focus


    I would like to finish by giving a couple of other examples of how the United Nations can create a forum and focus for healing, peace and disarmament.  In October 2000, after intense activity by five leading international NGOs working with UNIFEM, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. A landmark victory, this reaffirmed the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and post-conflict reconstruction. It also stressed the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security.  The follow up Security Council resolutions 1820, 1888 and 1889, empowered States to include more women in key decision making positions.  Last October the UN organised a ministerial review conference on women, peace and security to mark the 10th anniversary of Resolution 1325.
    UN Days for Peace and Non-Violence are focal points for educating the general public. The UN International Day of Peace, 21 September, is observed annually as a ‘day of global ceasefire and non-violence’. It provides an opportunity for individuals, organisations and nations to create practical acts of Peace on a shared date. It also highlights the Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, 2001 to 2010. Their website contains many exciting examples of young and old, rich and poor from all difference religions and cultures working together to celebrate peace. 


    Even the UNSG got in on the act using the latest technology to get his message out. On 13 June 2009, he launched a multiplatform campaign under the WMD-We Must Disarm slogan to mark the 100 day countdown to the International Day. He called for governments and citizens to focus on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and used Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to raise awareness particularly among young people. 


    Last year 29 August was named the International Day Against Nuclear Tests   – which gives an opportunity to focus on the ongoing effects of nuclear tests on existing and future generations.  This month the Japanese Peace Boat  hosted nine hibakusha recently appointed by Japan as “Special Communicators for a World Without Nuclear Weapons” together with five Tahitians working on the impact of French nuclear testing, plus five Japanese high school student Peace Ambassadors and four Aboriginal women from uranium mining affected areas in Australia.  The Boat visited Tahiti where the students learned about the ongoing impact of French nuclear testing.


    On 2 October 2009 (UN International Day for Non-Violence and Gandhi’s birthday) the World March for Peace and Non-Violence was launched in New Zealand to mark its position as the country at the top of the Global Peace Index. It attracted thousands of endorsements from former and current Presidents, Prime Ministers, politicians, Mayors, Nobel Laureates, celebrities, musicians, artists and leading NGOs from all over the world. Its colourful website in 30 languages covers the march through 90 countries over six continents in 90 days.  The UNSG met with the group’s leaders because they were promoting his 5 point plan for nuclear disarmament.


    It is my firm belief that education is the key to changing mindsets and mobilising people to take action.  In the past few years we have seen the impact of leadership from the UNSG and retired military and politicians. But still the political will is weak and even Obama, with his fine rhetoric of nuclear abolition, is now saying he may not see nuclear weapons abolished in his lifetime.
    It is indeed encouraging that 140 countries now support the UNSG’s Five Point Plan. However, he felt compelled to issue this challenge to the diplomats and government leaders at the NPT: 


    “…we have a choice: to leave a legacy of fear and inaction, or to act, with vision and courage and leadership…..  we can, and must, do better.”


    I know we can do better. We must keep up the momentum towards nuclear abolition. Whatever Obama thinks, the ordinary people of the world will make it happen in our lifetime. Future grandchildren of mine will be born into a world free of nuclear weapons. Together we can and must achieve this for all of humanity.

  • After New START: Where Does Nuclear Disarmament Go from Here?


    This article was originally published on the History News Network.


    Lawrence WittnerWith U.S. Senate ratification of the New START treaty on December 22, supporters of nuclear disarmament won an important victory.  Signed by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last April, the treaty commits the two nations to cut the number of their deployed strategic (i.e. long-range) nuclear warheads to 1,550 each—a reduction of 30 percent in the number of these weapons of mass destruction.  By providing for both a cutback in nuclear weapons and an elaborate inspection system to enforce it, New START is the most important nuclear disarmament treaty for a generation.


    Nevertheless, the difficult battle to secure Senate ratification indicates that making further progress on nuclear disarmament will not be easy.  Treaty ratification requires a positive vote by two-thirds of the Senate and, to secure the necessary Republican support, Obama promised nearly $185 billion over the next decade for “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex and nuclear weapons delivery vehicles.  Even with this enormous concession to nuclear enthusiasts—a hefty “bribe,” in the view of unhappy arms control and disarmament organizations—Senator Jon Kyl, the Republican point man on the issue, continued to oppose New START and ultimately voted against it.  So did most other Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell (Senate Republican leader) and John McCain (the latest Republican presidential candidate).  Leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, including Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, also opposed the treaty.  As a result, New START squeaked through the Senate by a narrow margin.  With six additional Republicans entering the Senate in January, treaty ratification will become much harder.


    So where do the possibilities for progress on nuclear disarmament lie in the future?


    One obvious focus for action is ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).  Signed by the United States and most other nations in 1996, the treaty provides for a total ban on the nuclear explosions that serve as the basis for the development of new nuclear weapons.  This ban would be enforced by an extensive international verification system.  Republican opposition blocked Senate ratification of the CTBT in 1999, and President George W. Bush—hostile to this arms control measure and others—refused to resubmit the treaty.  Nevertheless, President Obama has consistently supported ratification of the CTBT, and has promised to bring it before the Senate once again.  After the bruising battle over the START Treaty and in the context of heightened Republican strength in the new Senate, however, he might now change his mind.


    A more promising area for progress is a follow-up nuclear disarmament agreement between the United States and Russia.  As these two nations possess the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, other countries have long argued that, before progress can be made in reducing the arsenals of the other nuclear powers or blocking nuclear proliferation, the two nuclear giants must cut their nuclear stockpiles substantially.  In fact, officials from both the United States and Russia have spoken of another round of START negotiations that would reduce their deployment of strategic warheads to 1,000 each.  There is also pressure to cut the number of tactical nuclear weapons they possess—especially the very large numbers still maintained by Russia.  Indeed, Republican opponents of the New START treaty seized on the tactical nuclear weapons issue to argue that the real need for a treaty lay in the tactical weapons area.  Given their rhetorical stance, it might be useful to confront them with such a treaty.


    Nevertheless, stumbling blocks remain to a new arms treaty with Russia.  Not only are the Republicans likely to use their enhanced Senate strength to block its ratification, but the Russians might refuse to accept a new agreement.  The apparent reason for Russian reluctance is U.S. government insistence upon deploying a missile defense system in Europe, on Russian borders.  Although the Obama administration does not appear enthusiastic about missile defense, it has given way before Republican demands to install it.  Conversely, if the administration bargains away missile defense in treaty negotiations with the Russians, it seems quite likely that Republicans will strongly oppose the treaty.


    Perhaps the most promising area for disarmament progress doesn’t involve treaty negotiations or ratification, but simply blocking nuclear “modernization.”  After all, Senator Kyl and most Republicans didn’t accept the “bribe” offered them, but continued to oppose the New START treaty.  Why, then, should the Obama administration follow through on providing $185 billion for refurbishing the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, especially when such a program so clearly flies in the face of his pledge to work for a nuclear weapons-free world? 


    Even if the administration sticks to its “modernization” line, however, there is no reason for other forces, inside and outside Congress, to do so.  Over the coming years, in the midst of a huge debate on budgetary priorities, there will be a fierce battle over scarce government resources.  Are angry seniors (concerned about cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare), parents, students, and teachers (concerned about cutbacks in education), the hungry, homeless, and unemployed (concerned about the collapse of the social safety net), and other groups (facing serious attacks on their living standards) going to welcome spending $185 billion for new nuclear weapons facilities?  Certainly groups with domestic spending priorities, plus peace and disarmament groups, are going to press congress to move the money from funding wars and weapons to meeting social needs.  Perhaps they will succeed.


    Thus, in the next two years, the Republicans may end up choking off the opportunities for negotiated disarmament and opening the floodgates to unilateral action. 

  • New START and the Lingering Nuclear Cold War

    Bennett Ramberg


    This article was originally published on The Huffington Post.


    As the Senate attempts to wrap its lame duck session with the New START finale, lost in the back and forth over ratification lies one question that few senators appear willing to ask: Why, now twenty years after the Cold War, do Moscow and Washington find it acceptable to retain thousands of warheads pointed at the other with or without the treaty? Recent official strategy documents by both countries fail to address the matter convincingly leaving each country dedicated to continuing the mutual nuclear hostage relationship that ought to have been put to bed long ago.


    Today’s Russian-American arsenals remain remnants of a bygone era. During the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons became both the currency of power and the acute source of preemption anxiety born out of the surprise attack scars the two countries suffered in World War II. The result propelled the exponential growth of weapons to prevent a nuclear Pearl Harbor.


    At its height, the United States stocked 31,000 weapons, the Soviet Union over 40,000 by some estimates. Largely reflecting the Cold War’s demise, but also the legacy of earlier arms limitation treaties, Moscow and Washington have come a long way in curbing inventories. Today the United States deploys some 2000 strategic warheads and Russia 2500. Still, under New START, millions of people will remain in the cross hairs of 1550 deployed warheads.


    In February 2010, Moscow unveiled its rationale. Notwithstanding deterrent weight it now gives to a new generation of precision guided conventional weapons, the Kremlin’s continues to see the nuclear arsenal as its ultimate security blanket: “Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against her and (or) her allies, and in a case of an aggression against her with conventional weapons that would put in danger the very existence of the state.”


    In its April 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the Obama administration took a more nuanced approach. It eliminated nuclear targeting of non nuclear weapons states that complied with NPT vows. It added, only in “a narrow range of contingencies” would it use nuclear weapons to deal with chemical, biological and conventional attack. But all other circumstances, including targeting of Russia with the bulk of the arsenal, nuclear war plans remain in tact. The presumption: the Bomb provides “stability.” “As long as nuclear weapons exist, the United States will maintain secure and effective nuclear forces” to deter, reassure allies and promote stability globally and in key regions.


    Despite the president’s pledge to seek nuclear abolition, the Review registered “very demanding” “conditions” that make more dramatic nuclear reductions practically impossible: resolution of regional disputes that motivates nuclear possession, greater nuclear transparency, better verification to detect nonproliferation violators and credible enforcement mechanisms to deter cheating. The Review concluded, “Clearly, such conditions do not exist today. But we can — and must — work actively to create those conditions.”


    New START marks a step to meet the conditions in the Russian-American sphere, but ultimately a modest one. Eighteen on site inspections, data exchanges, a consultative committee to iron out  disputes serve verification goals. But the Obama administration’s  commitment to an $85 billion ten year refurbishment of the nuclear weapons complex signals little reduction in policies that continue the nuclear hostage relationship.


    Indeed the new nuclear doctrines, budgets to boost the weapons  enterprise and congressional skepticism about New START serve as reminders of President Obama’s lament in his 2009 call for a world without nuclear weapons — “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime.” The difficult New START debate punctuates the deeper underlying point: the nuclear Cold War has never gone away. The fact should give comfort to no one.

  • 2010 United Nations Day Keynote Address

    Thank you to the San Francisco Chapter of the United Nations Association for organizing this celebration of the 65th anniversary of the United Nations and for bringing together such an impressive group of leaders for this event.  Thank you also to Soka Gakkai International for hosting this event in your Ikeda Auditorium.  

    I want to draw attention to the beauty of the flower arrangements on the dais.  They are filled with sunflowers, and sunflowers are the universal symbol of a world without nuclear weapons.  Whenever you see a sunflower, I hope you will think of the need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.  Sunflowers are beautiful, natural and nutritious.  They turn toward the sun.  They stand in stark contrast to the manmade missiles that threaten death and destruction on a massive scale.  Sunflowers remind us of the importance of preserving the natural beauty of our planet and ending the manmade threats of massive annihilation with which we currently live.

    My subject today is nuclear disarmament.  The United Nations Charter was signed on June 23, 1945.  The first nuclear weapon was tested successfully just over three weeks later on July 16, 1945.  The United Nations sought to save the world from the “scourge of war,” among other high ideals.  Nuclear weapons threatened to destroy the world.

    The subject of nuclear weapons is one that many people, perhaps most, understandably would like to put out of their minds.  Assuring a human future demands that we resist that temptation.

    We know that a single nuclear weapon can destroy a city and a few nuclear weapons can destroy a country.   Scientists also tell us that an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on cities, such as could occur between India and Pakistan, could result in a billion fatalities, due to blockage of sunlight and crop failures leading to mass starvation, in addition to the blast, fire and radiation.  A full scale nuclear war could destroy the human species and most complex forms of life on Earth.  

    Given such high stakes, why do we tolerate nuclear weapons?  I believe that there are two major reasons.  First, we have been misled to believe that nuclear weapons actually protect their possessors.  They do not.  These weapons can be used to threaten retaliation, to retaliate or to attack preventively in a first-strike, but they cannot protect.  

    Second, we have grown far too complacent about these devices of mass annihilation over the period of 65 years since their last use in warfare.  But the odds of catastrophe are too high for complacency.  According to Stanford Professor Emeritus Martin Hellman, an expert in risk analysis, a child born today has at least a ten percent chance over the course of his or her expected lifetime of dying in a nuclear attack and possibly as high as a fifty percent chance.  These are clearly unacceptable odds.

    Any use of nuclear weapons would be a crime against humanity.  These weapons cannot discriminate between soldiers and civilians, and the unnecessary suffering they cause is virtually boundless and can continue through generations.  The International Court of Justice, in its 1996 landmark Advisory Opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, described the unique characteristics of nuclear weapons as “their capacity to cause untold human suffering, and their ability to cause damage to generations to come.”  The Court wrote: “The destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time.  They have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.”

    The use, even the threat of use, of nuclear weapons is morally abhorrent.  The possession of nuclear weapons should be taboo.  No country has the right to possess weapons that could destroy our species and much of life.  They threaten our true inalienable rights – as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to life, liberty and security of person.  Nuclear weapons are the negation of these rights.  They are an extreme manifestation of fear and militarism, reflecting the most destructive elements of the human spirit.

    The generations who are alive today on the planet are challenged by the imperative to end the nuclear weapons era and strengthen our common efforts for achieving the global good as reflected in the eight Millennium Development Goals.  This will require leadership.  At present, this leadership has resided primarily with the United Nations and with civil society organizations.  The UN and its supporting civil society organizations have provided vision and direction for social responsibility on disarmament, demilitarization and improving the lives of the world’s people.  

    The key to achieving a world without nuclear weapons lies in a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  But agreement on such a treaty will require a far greater commitment by the governments of the world, including the nine nuclear weapon states.  The United States, as the most powerful of these governments, will need to be pushed from below by its citizens.  Each of us needs to embrace this issue, along with whatever other issues move us to action.  It is an issue on which the future of humanity and life rest.  

    I’d like to share with you a reflection from my new book, God’s Tears, Reflections on the Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It is called, “The Final Period?”

    The Final Period?

    “Scientists tell us that the universe was created with a “Big Bang” some 15 billion years ago.  To represent this enormous stretch of time, we can imagine a 15,000 page book.  It would be a very large and heavy book, some 50 times larger than a normal book.  In this book, each page would represent one million years in the history of the universe.  If there were 1,000 words on each page, each word would represent 1,000 years.  

    “Most of the book would be about the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang.  Our solar system would not occur in this history of the universe until page 10,500.  It would take another 500 pages until the first primitive forms of life occurred on Earth some four billion years ago.  The slow evolution of life would occupy the book nearly to its end.  It would not be until page 14,997 that human-like creatures would appear on the planet, and it would not be until just ten words from the end of page 15,000 that human civilization would make its appearance.  

    “The Nuclear Age, which began in 1945, would be represented by the final period, the punctuation mark on the last page of the 15,000 page book.  This small mark at the end of the volume indicates where we are today: inheritors of a 15 billion year history with the capacity to destroy ourselves and most other forms of life with our technological achievements.  It is up to us to assure that the page is turned, and that we move safely into the future, free from the threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity and all forms of life.”

    Let me conclude with these thoughts: As the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have warned us over and over, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.”  We must choose, and we are fortunate that we still have a choice.  In another great war, such as World War II, the war that gave birth to both nuclear weapons and the United Nations, that choice could be foreclosed.  Or, it could be foreclosed in less dramatic ways, by a nuclear accident or nuclear terrorism.  

    Now, today, we have the opportunity to turn the page of that great book that documents the development of our universe, the evolution of life and the history of humankind.  Let us seize that opportunity with all our hearts and all our capacities by working to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen the United Nations and international law, and put the missing Millennium Development Goal, disarmament, to work in achieving the elimination of poverty and hunger, and the promotion of education, health care, opportunity and hope for all of the world’s people.

  • Public Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free World

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.

    One of the ironies of the current international situation is that, although some government leaders now talk of building a nuclear weapons-free world, there has been limited public mobilization around that goal — at least compared to the action-packed 1980s.

    However, global public opinion is strikingly antinuclear. In December 2008, an opinion poll conducted of more than 19,000 respondents in 21 nations found that, in 20 countries, large majorities — ranging from 62 to 93 percent — favored an international agreement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Even in Pakistan, the one holdout nation, 46 percent (a plurality) would support such an agreement. Among respondents in the nuclear powers, there was strong support for nuclear abolition. This included 62 percent of the respondents in India, 67 percent in Israel, 69 percent in Russia, 77 percent in the United States, 81 percent in Britain, 83 percent in China and 87 percent in France.   

    But public resistance to the bomb is not as strong as these poll figures seem to suggest.

    Supporting the Bomb

    For starters, a portion of society agrees with their governments that they’re safer when they are militarily powerful. Some people, of course, are simply militarists, who look approvingly upon weapons and war. Others genuinely believe in “peace through strength,” an idea championed by government officials, who play upon this theme.

    Furthermore, popular resistance to nuclear weapons tends to wane when progress toward addressing nuclear dangers occurs. For example, the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 not only halted most contamination of the Earth’s atmosphere by nuclear tests, but also convinced many people that the great powers were on the road to halting their nuclear arms race. As a result, the nuclear disarmament movement declined. A similar phenomenon occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the United States and the Soviet Union signed the INF Treaty. U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontation eased and the Cold War came to an end. Although public protest against nuclear weapons didn’t disappear, it certainly dwindled.

    Indeed, today, the public in many nations seems complacent about the menace of nuclear weapons. While opposition to nuclear weapons is widespread, it does not run deep. For example, those people who said in late 2008 that they “strongly” favored a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons constituted only 20 percent of respondents in Pakistan, 31 percent in India, 38 percent in Russia, 39 percent in the United States, and 42 percent in Israel — although, admittedly, majorities (ranging from 55 to 60 percent) took this position in Britain, France, and China. Another sign support for a nuclear-free world is weaker than implied by its favorability ratings is that an April 2010 poll among Americans found that, although a large majority said they favored nuclear abolition, 87 percent considered this goal unrealistic.

    Yet another sign of the shallowness of popular support is that, despite widespread peace and disarmament movement efforts to mobilize supporters of nuclear abolition around the U.N.’s nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference this past May, the level of public protest fell far short of the antinuclear outpourings of the 1980s. Indeed, even with the encouragement of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the organizing efforts of numerous peace groups, the best turnout the worldwide nuclear abolition movement could manage was some 15,000 antinuclear demonstrators on May 2.

    That the nuclear disarmament issue does not have the same salience today as in earlier periods can be attributed, in part, to people feeling less directly threatened by nuclear weapons preparations and nuclear war. After all, the present U.S.-Russian nuclear confrontation seems far less dangerous than the U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontation of the past. Today, nuclear war seems more likely to erupt in South Asia, between India and Pakistan. People living far from these nations find it easy to ignore this dangerous scenario.

    Lack of Information

    The public is also very poorly informed about what is happening with respect to nuclear weapons. Although the mass media devoted enormous air time and column space to Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons capability, they have devoted scant resources to educate the public on the nuclear weapons that do exist and on the dangers they pose to human survival. A 2010 survey of people from their teens through thirties in eight countries found that large majorities didn’t know that Russia, China, Britain, France and other nations possessed nuclear weapons. In fact, only 59 percent of American respondents knew that their own country possessed nuclear weapons. Among British respondents, just 43 percent knew that Britain maintained a nuclear arsenal.

    Public ignorance of nuclear issues occurs largely thanks to the commercial mass media’s focus on trivia and sensationalism. This emphasis on lightweight entertainment often reflects the interests of the media’s corporate owners and sponsors, who do their best to avoid fanning the flames of public discontent — or at least discontent with corporate and military elites. But the public is complicit with the blackout on nuclear matters, for many people prefer to avoid thinking about nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

    Thus, although there is widespread opposition to nuclear weapons, it lacks intensity and the global publics are ill-informed about nuclear dangers and nuclear disarmament.

    Lessons for Peace and Disarmament Groups

    The first is that nuclear disarmament and nuclear abolition have majority public support. Second, this support must be strengthened if progress is to be made toward a nuclear-free world.

    To strengthen public support, these organizations could emphasize the following themes:

    Nuclear weapons are suicidal. Numerous analysts have observed there will be no winners in a nuclear war. A nuclear exchange between nations will kill many millions of people on both sides of the conflict and leave the survivors living in a nuclear wasteland, in which — as Soviet party secretary Nikita Khrushchev once suggested — the living might well envy the dead. Even longtime nuclear enthusiast Ronald Reagan eventually concluded, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

    There are no safe havens from a nuclear war. Even in the event of a small-scale nuclear war — a regional conflict with relatively few nuclear weapons — the results would be catastrophic. A study published in the January 2010 issue of the Scientific American concluded that, should such a war occur between India and Pakistan, the consequences would not be confined to that region. The firestorms generated by the conflict would put massive amounts of smoke into the upper atmosphere and create a nuclear winter around the globe. With the sun blocked, the Earth’s surface would become cold, dark, and dry. Agriculture around the world would collapse, and mass starvation would follow.

    Nuclear weapons possession does not guarantee security. This contention defies the conventional wisdom of national security elites and a portion of the public. Yet consider the case of the United States. It was the first nation to develop atomic bombs, and for some time had a monopoly of them. In response, the Soviet government built atomic bombs. Then the two nations competed in building hydrogen bombs, guided missiles, and missiles with multiple warheads. Meanwhile, seven other nations built nuclear weapons. Each year, all these nations felt less and less secure. And they were less secure, because the more they increased their capacity to threaten others, the more they were threatened in return.

    Concurrently, these nations also found themselves entangled in bloody conventional wars. Their adversaries — the Chinese, the Koreans, the Algerians, the Vietnamese, the Afghans, the Iraqis, and other peoples — were not deterred by the nuclear weapons of their opponents. “Throughout the wide range of our foreign policies,” recalled Dean Rusk, the former U.S. Secretary of State, “I was struck by the irrelevance of nuclear weapons to decision making.”

    Nor do nuclear arsenals protect a country from external terrorist assault. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men staged the largest terrorist attack on the United States in its history. Given that terrorists are not state actors, it is difficult to imagine how nuclear weapons could be used strategically in the “war on terror” as either a deterrent or in military conflict.

    There is a significant possibility of accidental nuclear war. During the Cold War and  subsequent decades, there have been numerous false alarms about an enemy attack. Many of these came close to triggering a nuclear response, which would have had devastating consequences. In addition, emerging nuclear states may not have the same safeguards in place that were developed during the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, widening the possibilities of an inadvertent nuclear response. Furthermore, nuclear weapons can be exploded accidentally during their maintenance or transportation.

    As long as nuclear weapons exist, there will be a temptation to use them. Warfare has been an ingrained habit for thousands of years, and it’s unlikely this practice will soon be ended. As long as wars exist, governments will be tempted to draw upon nuclear weapons to win them.

    Nuclear weapons emerged in the context of World War II. Not surprisingly, the first country to develop such weapons, the United States, used them to destroy Japanese cities. President Harry Truman later stated, when discussing his authorization of the atomic bombing, “When you have a weapon that will win the war, you’d be foolish if you didn’t use it.” Recalling his conversation with Truman about the bomb, at Potsdam, Winston Churchill wrote, “There was never a moment’s discussion as to whether the atomic bomb should be used.” It was “never even an issue.”

    Of course, nuclear-armed nations have not used nuclear weapons in war since 1945. But this reflects the effectiveness of popular pressure against nuclear war, rather than the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. Indeed, if nuclear deterrence worked, governments would not be desperately trying to stop nuclear proliferation and deploy missile defense systems. Thus, we cannot assume that, in the context of bitter wars and threats to national survival, nuclear restraint will continue forever. Indeed, we can conclude, the longer nuclear weapons exist, the greater the possibility they will be used in war.

    As long as nuclear weapons exist, terrorists can acquire them. Terrorists cannot build nuclear weapons by themselves. The creation of such weapons requires vast resources, substantial territory and a good deal of scientific knowledge. The only way terrorists will attain a nuclear capability is by obtaining the weapons from the arsenals of the nuclear powers — either by donation, by purchase or by theft. Therefore, a nuclear-free world would end the threat of nuclear terrorism.

    Expanding educational outreach to the public along these lines will not be easy, given corporate control of the mass communications media. Nevertheless, the internet provides new possibilities for grassroots communication. Even within the corporate press, more could be done to encourage letters to the editor and the placement of op-ed pieces. In addition, nuclear disarmament groups could reach broad audiences by working through the very substantial networks of sympathetic organizations, such as religious bodies, unions, environmental groups, and professional associations.

    Intensifying the level of popular mobilization can in turn push reluctant governments further down the road toward a nuclear weapons-free world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that can do so.

  • Ratification of New START is Necessary

    In April 2009, President Obama went to Prague and spoke out for a world free of nuclear weapons.  “I state clearly and with conviction,” he said, “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  He indicated that he was prepared to take necessary steps to advance this cause.  In order “to reduce our warheads and stockpiles,” he promised to negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians during the year.  This treaty, known as New START, took longer than anticipated to negotiate and was signed by Presidents Obama and Medvedev on April 8, 2010.  The next month, the treaty was submitted to the Senate for ratification.

    While the agreement was being negotiated, the first START agreement expired, ending the provisions for verification between the US and Russia.  Since December 2009, there have been no verification procedures in place for conducting inspections of the other side’s nuclear arsenal.  This is a gap that many analysts have noted badly needs filling.  It is one of the principal arguments in favor of ratification.  Beyond this, though, failure to ratify would be a serious setback in US-Russian relations, and would indicate that further progress on nuclear disarmament is stalled and unlikely to proceed.

    The principal provisions of the new treaty would lower the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads on each side to 1,550 (down about a third from current requirements under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty) and the number of deployed delivery vehicles to 700.  There are some nuances to the counting that affect the final numbers, such as counting each bomber as one nuclear warhead despite the fact that each bomber could carry up to 24 warheads.  The Russians also expressed concerns over US plans to continue to deploy missile defenses in Europe, which the Russians believe affect the strategic balance between the two countries in a manner unfavorable to them.  They indicated that, at some point, US deployment of missile defenses could cause them to withdraw from the treaty.  

    A number of conservatives in the US, including Senator Jim DeMint, have expressed the view that the Russian position opposing deployment of US missile defenses should not constrain the US missile defense program.  Others, including Senator Jon Kyl, have taken the position that the US should devote more resources over the next ten years to modernizing the nuclear arsenal and infrastructure and the means for delivery of nuclear weapons.  President Obama has sought to head off these concerns preemptively by committing to $80 billion for modernizing nuclear weapons over the next ten years and $100 billion for improving nuclear weapons delivery systems.  These funds will be added to the more than $50 billion annually already committed to supporting the US nuclear arsenal, a larger amount than during the Cold War.  

    The US nuclear modernization program will increase our capacity to produce new nuclear weapons and will send a message to the world that the US continues to rely upon its nuclear arsenal for security. Even with this extra $180 billion commitment, some conservatives are unlikely to ever be satisfied with the treaty.  John Bolton, a former US Ambassador to the United Nations in the George W. Bush administration, has called New START “unilateral disarmament.”  He has worried publicly that the agreement “will severely limit our small-war capabilities.”

    Against this background, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 16, 2010 voted 14 to 4 in favor of sending the New START agreement to the full Senate for debate.  The majority included three Republicans, more than was expected.  Does this bode well for Senate ratification of the treaty?  This remains unclear.  It suggests, though, that all Republicans will not vote as a block against ratification, which would sink the treaty.  Senator Richard Lugar showed leadership, along with Senator John Kerry, in pushing the treaty to the Senate floor.  Their joint leadership, along with that of President Obama, will remain important in seeking the 67 votes needed for the treaty’s ratification.  

    Failure to ratify would be a major setback not only for the Obama administration, but also for the prospects of achieving President Obama’s vision, and that of many other committed leaders, of a world without nuclear weapons.  Failure to ratify the New START agreement would diminish the prospects for a future free of nuclear catastrophe and even of a human future.  The promise of continuing to modernize the US nuclear arsenal has already been pledged as a price extracted for Senate ratification.  If this price is paid and there is no Senate ratification, it would signal the worst of all possible outcomes for those who seek an end to the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

  • It’s Time for the Senate to Vote on New START

    This article was originally published by the Washington Post.

    The Senate should promptly vote to approve the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) with Russia for one reason: It increases U.S. national security. This is precisely why Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared at the outset of Senate consideration of the treaty that it has “the unanimous support of America’s military leadership.”

    The treaty reduces and caps the Russian nuclear arsenal. It reestablishes and makes stronger the verification procedures that allow U.S. inspectors to conduct on-site inspections and surveillance of Russian nuclear weapons and facilities. It strengthens international efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism, and it opens the door to progress on further critical nonproliferation efforts, such as reducing Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

    Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has urged the Senate to ratify the treaty, and seven former Strategic Command (STRATCOM) chiefs have called on Senate leaders to move quickly.

    In addition to our military leadership, there is overwhelming bipartisan support for the treaty among national security experts. Also, officials from the past seven administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, testified before Senate committees in support of the treaty. In fact, the number of Republican former officials testifying outnumbered the number of Democrats.

    We were part of a group of 30 former national security leaders from both political parties — including former secretary of state Colin Powell, former defense secretary Frank Carlucci and former national security adviser Sandy Berger — who published an open letter in support of the treaty.

    The Senate has done its due diligence: Over the course of 21 hearings and briefings during the last five months, senators have had the opportunity to ask questions and put to rest concerns. From the director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, senators learned that the treaty in no way limits the ability of our military to deploy the missile defenses it needs or wants. From STRATCOM Commander Kevin Chilton, they learned that with the treaty in place, the United States will retain a strong and reliable deterrent. Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even delayed the committee vote on the treaty to give senators an extra month to review background materials and seek answers to their questions.

    Now it is time to act.

    While substantive questions about the treaty have been put to rest, some senators are trying to delay consideration of it based on an unrelated funding issue, namely, claims that future funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal might be insufficient.

    This is wrong for two reasons.

    First, these claims fly in the face of the considered opinions of Chilton and National Nuclear Security Administration head Thomas D’Agostino, the men charged with overseeing our nuclear weapons and weapons laboratories. They, along with Gates and Mullen, have made clear that the administration’s 10-year, $80 billion plan to modernize our nuclear infrastructure, which would result in a 15 percent increase over current spending levels, represents the funding level that is needed and can be executed in a timely manner.

    More important, delaying this treaty over an unrelated matter undermines our national security.

    By the time the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes Sept. 16 on whether to send the treaty to the Senate floor for ratification, it will have been more than 280 days and counting since the United States lost the ability to conduct on-site inspections, monitoring and verification of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. This ability will not begin again until the treaty is ratified.

    As Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) told the committee, “The problem of the breakdown of our verification, which lapsed Dec. 5, is very serious and impacts our national security.”

    Given the national security stakes and the overwhelming support from the military and national security community, we hope that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will send the treaty to the floor with robust bipartisan backing and that senators will promptly ratify it with the kind of resounding margin such measures have historically enjoyed.

    Senate approval of New START would send a strong message to the world that the United States can overcome partisan differences and take concrete, practical action to reduce the nuclear threat and enhance our nation’s security.

  • Address at Hiroshima Peace Park

    Hiroshima no minasama konichiwa. Ohayo gozaimasu.

    We are here, on hallowed ground, to see, to feel, to absorb and reflect.

    I am honored to be the first UN Secretary-General to take part in this Peace Memorial Ceremony on the 65th anniversary of this tragic day. And I am deeply moved.

    When the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I was one year old. Only later in life, could I begin to understand the full dimension of all that happened here. As a young boy, I lived through the Korean War. One of my earliest memories is marching along a muddy road into the mountains, my village burning behind me. All those lives lost, families destroyed — so much sadness. Ever since, I have devoted my life to peace. It has brought me here today.

    Watakushiwa sekai heiwa no tameni Hiroshima ni mairimashita.

    We gather to pay our solemn respects to those who perished, sixty-five years ago, and to the many more whose lives forever changed. Life is short, but memory is long.

    For many of you, that day endures, as vivid as the white light that seared the sky, as dark as the black rains that followed. To you, I offer a message of hope. To all of you, I offer my message of peace. A more peaceful world can be ours. You are helping to make it happen. You, the survivors, who inspired us with your courage and fortitude. You, the next generations, the young generation, striving for a better day.

    Together, you have made Hiroshima an epicentre of peace. Together, we are on a journey from ground zero to Global Zero ? a world free of weapons of mass destruction. That is the only sane path to a safer world. For as long as nuclear weapons exist, we will live under a nuclear shadow.

    And that is why I have made nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation a top priority for the United Nations – and put forward a five-point plan.

    Our moment has come. Everywhere, we find new friends and allies. We see new leadership from the most powerful nations. We see new engagement in the UN Security Council. We see new energy from civil society. Russia and the United States have a new START treaty. We made important progress at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington last April, which we will build upon in Korea.

    We must keep up the momentum. In September, I will convene a high-level meeting in support of the work of the Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations. We will push for negotiations towards nuclear disarmament. A Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. A Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. Disarmament education in our schools — including translating the testimonies of the survivors in the world’s major languages. We must teach an elemental truth: that status and prestige belong not to those who possess nuclear weapons, but to those who reject them.

    Ladies and gentlemen,

    Sixty-five years ago, the fires of hell descended upon this place. Today, one fire burns, here in this Peace Park. That is the Flame of Peace ? a flame that will remain lit until nuclear weapons are no more. Together, let us work for that day ? in our lifetime, in the lifetimes of the survivors. Together, let us put out the last fire of Hiroshima. Let us replace that flame with the light of hope. Let us realize our dream of a world free of nuclear weapons so that our children and all succeeding generations can live in freedom, security and peace.

    Thank you. Domo arigato gozaimasu.