Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Threat

  • The Human Face of Making Nuclear Weapons

    This article was originally published by the Huffington Post.


    Robert AlvarezThe legacy of human suffering from amassing nuclear arsenals remains ignored in the current debate over eliminating these horrific weapons of mass destruction.


    Lest we forget, the Energy Employee Illness Compensation Program Act, which I helped draft and push for, was enacted 11 years ago this week. It was based on legislation first proposed by Senator John Glenn (D-Oh) in 1992. “What good is it to protect ourselves with nuclear weapons,” Glenn would often ask, “if we poison our people in the process?”


    As of 2010, some 50,000 people have received $6.5 billion for illnesses and deaths following exposure to ionizing radiation, beryllium and other toxic substances while making nuclear weapons.


    A lot of credit goes to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson who saw the need for justice for sick workers and their families, ostracized in their communities and driven into poverty by a system that spared no expense to fight their claims in the name of national security. Paul Jacobs, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, was the first to bring public attention to the plight of American radiation victims of the nuclear arms race in the 1950’s. Later in 1999 and 2000, Joby Warrick at the Washington Post and Pete Eisler at USA Today played prominent roles in waking up the nation and the Congress to this injustice.


    This would not have happened were it not for the pioneering research of Harriet Hardy, Alice Stewart, George Kneale, Thomas Mancuso, Gregg Wilkinson, Carl Johnson, Wilhelm Huper, Frank Lundin, Joe Waggoner, Steve Wing, David Richardson, John Gofman, Karl. Z. Morgan and others, some whose research was suppressed until we brought it to light with the help of the White House. Many of these scientists paid a high price for their quest of the truth about the hazards of nuclear weapons production.


    This struggle for justice for people deliberately put in harm’s way in order to amass nuclear arms is not over. For instance, residents living near the Hanford site in Washington State, who were exposed to the radioactive detritus of plutonium production, remained trapped in a 25-year-old lawsuit with no end in sight. The Energy department spends about $1 million a year to fight these claims. Moreover, thousands of tribal people, who were found by the Centers for Disease Control in 2002 to be the most highly exposed from Hanford’s radioactive discharges, are totally ignored.


    The pernicious quest for nuclear arms ­ all in the name of a “greater good” — has tens of thousands of human faces, who paid a bitter price, which we should not forget.

  • Nuclear Guinea Pigs

    This article was originally published by Honolulu Weekly.


    In the old-timey section of Kalihi, tucked between auto repair shops and boarded-up storefronts, Maza Attari, a Marshall Islander, lived with four family members in a one-bedroom apartment barely bigger than a ping-pong table. When visited by this reporter last summer, Attari had been unable to find steady work since being flown to Honolulu 12 years ago for back surgery that had left him with a severe limp and weakened muscles.


    Attari’s circumstances exemplify the far-reaching impacts of nuclear testing upon irradiated, exiled or dislocated Marshall Islanders. From 1946 to 1962, their home atolls served as experimental grounds where the US detonated nuclear weapons and tested delivery systems in the transition from conventional to intercontinental bombers. In all, the US exploded 86 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, which are situated 3,000 miles west of Honolulu. Those 86 bombs equated to 8,580 Hiroshima-size bombs–or 1.4 weapons per day for 16 years.


    A one-time magistrate and mayor on Utrik, Attari said last summer that he doubted he would be able to return there, prophesying instead, “I’m going to stay here until I die.” He died in September of this year, without ever receiving the reparations that he and other nuclear victims have claimed.


    The Debt


    It is a debt that is not only owed them, but that has compounded over time. Because these nuclear weapons experiments were too dangerous and unpredictable to be conducted on the US mainland, Attari and other Marshallese are part of the reason for America’s superpower status today. A half-century later, the Marshall Islands continue to serve as a crucial part of an outer defense periphery for the US heartland–6,000 miles away. That periphery includes the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, where for more than three decades missiles fired from 4,000 miles away (at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California) have crashed near Kwajalein Atoll, horribly frightening the indigenous inhabitants and leaving them unsure of where the debris will fall.


    A Child Out of Time


    Attari was 7 years old and living on Utrik Island on March 1, 1954, when the US unleashed the most destructive weapon in its history–the 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, code-named Bravo. It was early in the morning, and his family members leaped up when they heard a deafening noise. “Everyone was surprised,” he explains. Radioactive fallout contaminated the uncovered cement containers used for drinking water and local food. “Too bad,” US officials said when they arrived days later to begin evacuating 239 sickened inhabitants of Utrik and Rongelap atolls to the Kwajalein naval base.


    Snow-like radioactive particles fell 100 to 125 miles away on property and persons on these atolls, who had not been evacuated beforehand or alerted about precautions to take.


    The British government, between 1957 and 1958 conducted nine atmospheric tests, yielding the equivalent of about 12,000,000 tons of TNT, and the French carried out 193 Pacific nuclear tests yielding the equivalent of about 13,500,000 tons beginning in 1962 and ending on Jan. 27, 1996. The British and French data were recently gleaned from hard-to-find sources and compiled by University of Hawaii botany professor Mark Merlin and graduate student Ricardo Gonzalez, enabling them to reveal for the first time a pathbreaking, half-century panorama of the environmental consequences of Pacific nuclear testing conducted by all three nations.


    The Things They Carried


    As a result, many exposed Islanders have since suffered from or been operated on for abnormalities of the thyroid, which can lead to stunted growth, mental retardation and cancer. Like many on Utrik, Attari said, his sister died of cancer and three brothers with thyroid abnormalities have also died. Attari had not been subjected to surgery but he medicated his thyroid by daily taking US-supplied white, pea-size tablets called levothyroxin. He continued to be monitored at least twice a year by US Department of Energy medical teams who study Bravo-exposed islanders in a program kept secret for 40 years.


    After three months on Kwajalein, Attari and other Utrik residents were returned home. But it was three years before the more severely contaminated Rongelapese, who suffered skin burns, vomiting, hair loss and diarrhea, were returned to their ancestral island. US photographers extensively documented the move–labeled “Rongelap Repatriation”–that included mug shots of the returnees.


    The Pain of Exile


    It caused some Marshallese to endure the pain and suffering of a long list of verified diseases and exiled them from their ancestral homelands where they had maintained their way of life and a self-sufficient livelihood. It contaminated their islands and marine life, in some cases for decades, if not centuries. It vaporized some of their precious lands and moonscaped others, as shown by the bombing craters on Enewetak.


    The Bikini islanders, for example, were uprooted in 1946 so that their atoll could serve as a Pacific proving ground for the first US nuclear test and are still exiled today. That first test at Bikini inspired creation of the two-piece swimsuit that has ever since populated Waikiki and beaches worldwide. But Bikinians are ignored in their petition for more funding from the US government for land damages and numerous other claims that exceed earlier payments. The testing prompted one irradiated Rongelap woman to exclaim, Americans “are smart at doing stupid things.”


    An Almost-Forever Poison


    The Bravo H-bomb was l,000 times more powerful than the bomb detonated above Hiroshima and it was laced with plutonium, one of the planet’s most deadly substances with a radioactive existence of half a million years that may be hazardous to humans for at least half that time. In addition, Bravo and other US Pacific tests were launched in the atmosphere or underwater, which spewed radioactive mist, pulverized coral and snow-flake-like particles high into the air and, most disastrously, across the Pacific, landing on peoples and soils where it could be absorbed or inhaled for decades and will continue as hazards for a near-eternity.


    Unwittingly and unknowingly, Attari and other Pacific islanders had been thrust from an oral culture into the atomic age; without a vocabulary word for radioactivity, they began calling it a poison and to describe themselves as poisoned people. Attari and the other Bravo–contaminated Marshallese entered history as the first-ever examples of the effects of radioactive fallout on humans who had escaped a nuclear explosion. Unlike the wartime victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic-weapons explosions, a historian notes, Pacific Islanders who experienced the peacetime tests are important because “they have already lived in what might be our common future.”


    APEC and Forgotten Islanders


    Attari and other Marshallese have battled for more than a decade in the US courts, before Congress and with the Bush administration for more funds to pay greater-than-anticipated costs of their health care, property damages, resettlement, cleanup, and compensation for their vaporized islands. A 1995 study by the Congressional Research Service advised Congress that the Marshallese health-related claims and loss-of-land methodologies were reasonable and appropriate but their multi-billion-dollar estimates needed more analysis. The islanders are still awaiting a favorable nod from President Obama, in town this week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference.


    Leaders joining President Obama this week hail from 21 countries including the Russian Federation, People’s Republic of China, Japan, Indonesia, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong. But missing will be the voices and concerns of many peoples of the so-called Small Island States, scattered amidst about 25,000 atolls, islets and islands, that experienced the economic havoc and uniquely violent history that have transformed the Pacific region during half a century. Nor is the Marshallese multi-billion-dollar petition now confronting Obama and Congress on the agenda of APEC leaders, despite its relevance to the continuing controversy cast by Fukushima’s nuclear disaster.


    Long before the fears of drifting contamination seeded by Chernobyl and Fukushima, Bravo and the other shots in the H-Bomb era produced radioactive components that encircled the globe, settling silently from the heavens. One exhaustive study titled “Atomic Audit” concluded that fallout and other residual radioactivity from atmospheric nuclear testing by all nations have caused or will cause through infinity an estimated 3 million premature cancer deaths. As a result, University of Hawaii scientist John Harrison explained, all organisms, including humans, carry the watermark of the nuclear era woven into their bodies, thus changing “the chemical signature of our bones.”


    Guinea Pigs


    Not until 1994, 40 years after Bravo’s fallout, did Attari and other exposed islanders learn they were used as human subjects to research the effects of radioactive fallout and of livin. Within days after Bravo, while still at the naval base to which they had been evacuated, Rongelap and Utrik Islanders were incorporated into Project 4.1. They were neither asked for nor gave their informed consent, nor were told the risks of the studies for which they gained no benefit.


    Titled the “Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation Due to Fallout from High Yield Weapons, the document was classified “Secret Restricted Data.”


    Seven weeks after Bravo, on April 21, the lead US doctor examining them, Dr. E.P. Cronkite, recommended to military officials in Honolulu that these Marshallese should probably be exposed to no more radiation for the rest of their “natural lives.” Despite this recommendation, after three years, US officials in 1957 assured the Rongelapese that their radioactive homeland was safe and returned them there. Rongelapese remained in their radioactive homeland for 28 years. They were shocked to learn that a 1982 US Department of Energy report indicated that parts of Rongelap, where some were living, “were as contaminated as those forbidden to humans.” As a result, in 1985, the islanders beseeched US officials to move them. The US refused. So 70 islanders were removed by the Greenpeace environmental organization. During those years on Rongelap, they lived in an environment that had been contaminated not only by Bravo and five other shots in 1954 but also by the residue from 17 shots in 1956 and 32 shots in 1958. Data on radiation levels from tests in 1956 and 1958, when combined yield greater than Bravo, have been requested by the Marshallese government but almost 50 years later US officials had yet to disclose them.


    During these years, many Marshallese lost their lives or loved ones as exemplified by John Anjain, the mayor of Rongelap in 1954. Because of the fallout, he and four members of his family were operated on for thyroid tumors. His wife’s tumor killed her. His son, who was one year old at the time of Bravo, had a thyroid tumor removed when he was 12 and died seven years later from leukemia. The elder Anjain died in Honolulu’s Straub Hospital in 2004 at age 83.


    Denying the Experiment


    Anjain had accused US officials of using the islanders as “guinea pigs” for regularly monitoring their health for decades without providing them medical treatment. But in October 1995 an advisory committee appointed by President William Clinton “found no evidence that the initial exposure of the Rongelapese or their later relocation constituted a deliberate human experiment.”


    Since being rescued by Greenpeace, Rongelapese have been living 100 miles away on Majetto Island, sustained by US aid. The US has provided $45 million to establish a Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund that has led to cleaning up soil on parts of the main island but not on all of the 60 or so islets in the atoll that are used for food gathering. Some houses, a church, power plant, water-making equipment and paved roads now dot parts of Rongelap Island.


    US officials are vowing this autumn to cut US aid to those electing to remain at Majetto rather than to repatriate home.


    Rongelapese are reluctant to return. “Resettling the people of Rongelap under rules severely restricting their ability to move about their homeland, or to gather food from their traditional sources, does not constitute sensible repatriation,” Marshallese Sen. Michael Kabua, a member of the Rongelap Atoll Local Government Council, told a US House subcommittee on May 20, 2010. The people do not want to return, he said, “to a land where the future well-being of their children will be in jeopardy, and where they themselves cannot be assured of safety and security,” and where “they will remain as strangers in their own home.” And they remember the sad history of the Americans repatriating islanders to their heavily radioactive homelands on the assurance they were safe only to learn otherwise decades and heartbreaks later.

  • Time to Disband NATO: A Rogue Alliance

    Alice SlaterWhen the Cold War ended, many believed there would be a peace dividend, nuclear disarmament, and dismantling of the war machine with industrial conversion to peaceful technology. Instead, we’ve witnessed the aggressive expansion of NATO, to include the former Soviet Republics, right up to the Russian border, which should be a wake-up call to many living in the American Empire. Many people still labor under the apparently false impression that the US is exemplary in holding up the rule of law, the sanctity of the United Nations, and human rights. After all, Americans were the good guys who defeated Hitler and made the world safe for democracy. The NATO expansion took place despite promises made to Gorbachev after the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union with the fall of the Berlin Wall that if he dropped his objections to the admission of a unified Germany as a full-fledged, fully armed member of NATO, the western states would freeze NATO membership and not expand any further east. Russia lost 20 million people in World War II to the Nazi onslaught, and Russian wariness of a strengthened reunited Germany participating with their former NATO foe was certainly understandable.

    I visited the Soviet Union in 1989 on a delegation of the NY Professional Roundtable during the heady days of Gorbachev’s newly announced doctrine of glasnost and perstroika—openness and reconstruction. It seemed as though every man over sixty was sporting a chest covered with medals, commemorating their service in the Great War. On every other street corner in Moscow and Leningrad, there were memorials to the war dead. The Piskaryovskoye Cemetery at Leningrad, with acres of mass graves, anonymous mounds of over 500,000 buried there who perished in the 872 day siege of Leningrad, was a painful, searing vision which haunts me still. The siege resulted in the tragic deaths of up to 1,500,000 soldiers and civilians and the evacuation of 1,400,000 more, many of whom died due to starvation and bombardment. The guide for our delegation at one point asked me, “Why don’t you Americans trust us?” “Why don’t we trust you?” I exclaimed indignantly. “What about Hungary? What about Czechoslovakia? Why should we trust you?” He looked at me with a pained expression, “But we had to protect our borders from Germany!” I looked into his watery blue eyes and heard the fervent sincerity in his voice. At that moment, I felt betrayed by my government and the years of constant reminders about the communist threat. The land was flat as a table between Russia and Germany. There was no buffer against the German onslaught, except the mountains of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The Russians were in a defensive posture as they built their military might. They were using Eastern Europe as a buffer against any repetition of the ravages of war they had experienced at the hands of Germany.

    And the huge multi-trillion dollar buildup of nuclear armaments and NATO forces—what were we defending? We had our forces amassed, including nuclear weapons parked in eight NATO countries on their continent. And when we were the only country on the planet in possession of the bomb—after Hiroshima and Nagasaki– we refused to turn it over to international control under UN auspices, which had been urged by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the bomb. Instead President Truman insisted on an unfair advantage for the US in his Baruch plan—letting the American people think he was being reasonable, pretending to present fair terms for controlling the bomb which in reality impelled Stalin to get his own bomb—putting us into a tragic and costly arms race—imperiling our own national security and the entire fate of the earth.

    Nothing has changed. The Empire has no clothes. It has been revealed. Having unilaterally withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, the US is leading NATO to build a ring of missiles round Russia in Europe. It is globalizing its military forces and operations. An armada of missile-laden NATO war ships is deployed in oceans around the world with nearly 1,000 US military bases on every continent on the planet. Working in this expanded military capacity, NATO members and their allies are encircling China in the Pacific, just as we are surrounding Russia, while rejecting Russia and China’s repeated proposals to negotiate a ban on weapons in space. NATO is a lawless rogue alliance, determined to control the world’s oil and other scarce resources, by brute force.

    The US first led NATO into illegal action when it bombed Kosovo in the interests of “protecting” people, without the UN’s legally required authorization for any acts of warfare that are not taken in self-defense against an armed attack as required by the UN Charter. The US and its NATO allies refused to go to the UN for permission to enter into hostilities, as required under the UN Charter, because Russia was threatening to veto any such action in the Security Council to protect its ally, Serbia. Despite the lip service NATO gave to some sort of trumped up “responsibility to protect” Kosovo’s Albanians, (by bombing the Serbians to smithereens) Clinton was on the record saying: “If we’re going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a key …. That’s what this Kosovo thing is all about.”1

    It’s beyond belief that NATO’s assault on Libya is only about “protecting civilians” while at the same time hundreds of civilians are being killed by NATO bombs and drones. Here too NATO’s old boy colonial network is seeking to secure Libya’s oil. NATO is now engaged in three wars in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The US is also bombing blindly away in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia as well, with “pilots” sitting at their computers and playing with their joysticks, lawlessly targeting “terrorists” with their unmanned drones, raining death and destruction down on the unseen people below, assassinating those whom they suspect may be wishing to do harm, without evidence, trial, finding of guilt, along with a host of innocent men, women and children.

    It’s time to disband NATO. There will be a NATO summit meeting in Chicago, in May 2012. Grassroots activists are organizing around the world to gather at a counter summit in Chicago to restore the rule of law as a means of resolving international disputes and to voice a new vision of global security and peace. To sign on to this new Call for Action and make common cause with the movement to disband NATO, contact: Judith LeBlanc jleblanc@peaceaction.org or Joseph Gerson jgerson@afsc.org.

  • International Day Against Nuclear Tests: Translating Words Into Actions

    Tom CollinaOn behalf of ACA, I would like to thank the organizers of this meeting—the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the Mission of Kazakhstan to the International Organizations in Geneva—for inviting me here today to speak.


    It is particularly fitting for Kazakhstan to be represented here, as it was twenty years ago—in 1991– that the people of Kazakhstan succeeded in closing the former Soviet test site at Semipalatinsk. This was followed by Soviet President Gorbachev’s declaration of a moratorium on nuclear testing, and then the United States announced its moratorium in 1992. The CTBT was then negotiated and signed in 1996.


    So in many ways it all began with Kazakhstan, and we owe them many thanks.


    But of course, 15 years later our work is not done, and I am glad we have such things as “international days against nuclear tests” to remind us that we must still bring the CTBT into force.


    Some might ask, why is the CTBT still important? Because the test ban is a crucial barrier to the spread of nuclear weapons to additional nations AND to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by terrorist groups.


    Indeed, the treaty is more important today than ever.


    By banning all nuclear tests, the CTBT prevents the established nuclear-weapon states from proof-testing new, more sophisticated warhead designs. And newer members of the nuclear club would not be able to perfect smaller, more easily deliverable warheads without testing.


    The treaty also serves to reinforce the nonproliferation system by serving as a confidence-building measure about a state’s nuclear intentions, and it can help head-off and de-escalate regional tensions.


    For these and other reasons, CTBT entry into force has long been considered a key part of fulfilling Article VI of the NPT.


    With the CTBT in force, capabilities to detect and deter possible clandestine nuclear testing by other states will be significantly greater. Entry-into-force is essential to making short-notice, on-site inspections possible and for maintaining long-term political and financial support for the monitoring system.


    How can we Accelerate Entry Into Force?


    Now, 182 states have signed the CTBT, an impressive number, but the treaty must still be ratified by nine states before it can formally enter into force —the United States, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, and North Korea.


    In three weeks, states parties will gather in New York to speak about the value of the treaty and the need for prompt entry into force. We appreciate this effort, but actions speak louder than words. That conference must help produce a serious diplomatic action plan for getting the remaining hold out states on board.


    Ratification by the United States and China is particularly important. Given their existing nuclear test moratoria and treaty signatures, Washington and Beijing already bear most CTBT-related responsibilities, yet their failure to ratify has denied them—and others—the full security benefits of the treaty.


    In April 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to “immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of” the CTBT. He said, “After more than five decades of talks, it is time for the testing of nuclear weapons to finally be banned.” We agree.


    But now, President Obama must translate those words into action and mount a serious public campaign to win the support of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate for ratification of the treaty.


    With the support of a wide array of NGOs in the United States and around the globe, the Obama administration can and must make the case that the Treaty enhances international security, is effectively verifiable, and is essential to curb the spread of nuclear weapons in the decades to come.


    The technical and political case for the CTBT is much stronger today than it was in 1999 when the Senate briefly considered the treaty. The Senate must honestly review the new evidence for the treaty rather than arrive at judgments based on old information.


    It is also time for China’s leaders to act. For years, Beijing has reported that the CTBT is before the National People’s Congress but has apparently taken no action on ratification. We note the January 19, 2011 Joint Statement by Presidents Hu Jintao and Obama stating that “… both sides support early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.”


    Washington’s renewed pursuit of CTBT ratification opens up opportunities for China and other Annex 2 states—such as Indonesia—to lead the way toward entry into force by ratifying before the United States. Action by Beijing would increase its credibility as a nonproliferation leader and improve the chances that other states would follow suit.


    India and Pakistan could advance the cause of nuclear disarmament and substantially ease regional tensions by converting their unilateral test moratoria into a legally binding commitment to end nuclear testing through the CTBT.


    With no shortage of conflict in the Middle East, ratification by Israel, Egypt and Iran would reduce nuclear-weapons-related security concerns in the region. It would also help create the conditions necessary for a regional zone free of weapons of mass destruction.


    Likewise, if Israel were to ratify, it would get closer to the nuclear nonproliferation mainstream and help encourage other states in the region to follow suit.


    Iranian ratification could help reduce concerns that its nuclear program would be used to develop smaller, deliverable nuclear warheads. Iran’s failure to ratify the CTBT raises further questions about the nature of its nuclear activities.


    North Korea’s nuclear tests undermine Asian security. The DPRK should declare a halt to further testing pending the resumption of the Six-Party talks. The participants in those talks should make North Korea’s approval of the CTBT one of the key steps in the process.


    In closing, we sincerely urge all states that have not done so to ratify the CTBT. To those that have ratified, we thank you and ask you to contribute to the Article XIV Conference on Entry Into Force in September.


    ACA and supporters of the CTBT the world over stand ready to help bring the treaty into force.


    Thank you.

  • The Decision to Bomb Hiroshima

    This article was originally published by CounterPunch.


    Gar AlperovitzToday is the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.


    By the summer of 1945 Japan was essentially defeated, its navy at the bottom of the ocean; its air force limited by fuel, equipment, and other shortages; its army facing defeat on all fronts; and its cities subjected to bombing that was all but impossible to challenge. With Germany out of the war, the United States and Britain were about to bring their full power to bear on what was left of the Japanese military. Moreover, the Soviet Union—at this point in time still neutral—was getting ready to attack on the Asian mainland: the Red Army, fresh from victory over Hitler, was poised to strike across the Manchurian border.


    Long before the bombings occurred in August 1945—indeed, as early as late April 1945, more than three months before Hiroshima—U.S. intelligence advised that the Japanese were likely to surrender when the Soviet Union entered the war if they were assured that it did not imply national annihilation. An April 29 Joint Intelligence Staff document put it this way: “If at any time the U.S.S.R. should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.”


    For this reason—because it would drastically shorten the war—before the atomic bomb was successfully tested (on July 16, 1945) the U.S. had strongly and repeatedly urged the Soviet Union to join the battle as soon after the defeat of Hitler as possible. A target date of three months after Germany’s surrender was agreed upon—which put the planned Red Army attack date at roughly August 8, the war in Europe having ended on May 8. (In late July the date was temporarily extended by a week.)


    Nor was there any doubt that the Soviet Union would join the war for its own reasons. At the Potsdam Conference in July (before the successful atomic test) President Truman entered the following in his diary after meeting with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin on July 17: “He’ll be in the Jap War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.”


    The next day, July 18, in a private letter to his wife, the President wrote: “I’ve gotten what I came for—Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it…I’ll say that we’ll end the war a year sooner now…”


    The President had also been urged to offer assurances that the Japanese Emperor would be allowed to remain in some form of powerless figurehead bomb garrole by many top advisers—including, importantly, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the man who oversaw the development of the atomic bomb. Before the bomb was used he explicitly urged the President that in his judgment the war would end if such assurances were given—without the use of the atomic bomb.


    Nor were there insuperable political obstacles to this approach: Leadings newspapers like the Washington Post, along with leaders of the opposition Republican Party were publically demanding such a course. (Moreover, the U.S. Army wanted to maintain the Emperor in some role so as to use his authority both to order surrender and to help manage Japan during the occupation period after war’s end—which, of course, is what, in fact, was done: Japan still has an Emperor.)


    As the President’s diary entry and letter to his wife indicate, there is little doubt that he understood the advice given by the intelligence experts as to the likely impact of the upcoming Russian attack. Further evidence is also available on this central point: The American and British Joint Chiefs of Staff—the very top military leaders of the two nations—also met at Potsdam to consolidate planning for the final stages of the war in the Pacific. General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, summarized the latest (early July) combined US-UK intelligence evidence for Prime Minister Churchill this way: “[W]hen Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”


    The July joint intelligence finding, of course, for the most part simply restated what had been the essential view of American intelligence and many of the President’s top advisers throughout the spring and summer months leading up to the July meeting at Potsdam.


    Among the many reasons the shock of Soviet entry was expected to be so powerful were: first, that it would directly challenge the Japanese army in what had been one of its most important strongholds, Manchuria; second, it would signal that there was literally no hope once the third of the three Great Powers was no longer neutral; and third, and perhaps even more important, with the Japanese economy in disarray Japanese leaders were extremely fearful that leftist groups might be powerfully encouraged, politically, if the Soviet Union were to play a major role in Japan’s defeat.


    Furthermore, U.S. intelligence had broken Japanese codes and knew Japanese leaders were frantically hoping against hope as they attempted to arrange some form of settlement with Moscow as a mediator. Since their strategy was so heavily focused on what the Russians might or might not do, this further underscored the judgment that when the Red Army attacked, the end would not be far off: the illusory hope of a negotiation through Moscow would be thoroughly dashed as Soviet tanks rolled into Manchuria.


    Instead, the United States rushed to use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8 Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.


    Some modern analysts have urged that Japanese military planning to thwart an invasion was much more advanced than had previously been understood, and hence more threatening to U.S. plans. Others have argued that Japanese military leaders were much more ardently committed to one or more of four proposed ‘conditions’ to attach to a surrender than a number of experts hold, and hence, again, would likely have fought hard to continue the war.


    It is, of course, impossible to know whether the advice given by top U.S. and British intelligence that a Russian attack would likely to produce surrender was correct. We do know that the President ignored such judgments and the advice of people like Secretary of War Stimson that the war could be ended in other ways when he made his decision. This, of course, is an important fact in its own right in considering whether the decision was justified, since so many civilian lives were sacrificed in the two bombings.


    Moreover, many leading historians who have studied both the U.S. and Japanese records carefully (including, among others, Barton Bernstein and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa) have concluded that Japan was indeed in such dire straits that–as U.S. and British intelligence had urged long before the bombings–the war would, in fact, have likely ended before the November invasion target date once the Russians entered.


    It is also important to note that there was very little to lose by using the Russian attack to end the war. The atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9. There were still three months to go before the first landing could take place in November. If the early August Russian attack did not work as expected, the bombs could obviously have been used anyway long before any lives were lost in the landing.


    (Since use of the atomic bombs and Russia’s entry into the war came at almost exactly the same time, scholars have debated at great length which factor influenced the surrender decision more. This, of course, is a very different question from whether using the atomic bomb was justified as the only way to end the war. Still, it is instructive to note that speaking privately to top Army officials on August 14 the Japanese Emperor stated bluntly: “The military situation has changed suddenly. The Soviet Union entered the war against us. Suicide attacks can’t compete with the power of science. Therefore, there is no alternative…” And the Imperial Rescript the Emperor issued to officers and soldiers to make sure they would lay down their arms stated: “Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war, to continue under the present conditions at home and abroad would only result in further useless damage… Therefore…I am going to make peace.”)


    The most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that (quite apart from the inaccuracy of this figure, as noted by Samuel Walker) most Americans haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S. military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified, many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.


    Here is how General Dwight D. Eisenhower reports he reacted when he was told by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the atomic bomb would be used:



    “During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”


    In another public statement the man who later became President of the United States was blunt: “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”


    General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” was also dismayed. Shortly after the bombings he stated publically: “The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”


    Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, went public with this statement: “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. . . . The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.”


    I noted above the report General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, made to Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.” On hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private reaction was one of “revulsion.”


    Shortly before his death General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one. Even more important, well before the atomic bombs were used, contemporary documents record show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers….”


    As the document concerning Marshall’s views suggests, the question of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified turns not only on whether other options were available, and whether top leaders were advised of this. It also turns on whether the bombs had to be used against a largely civilian target rather than a strictly military target—which, in fact, was the explicit choice since although there were Japanese troops in the cities, neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was deemed militarily vital by U.S. planners. (This is one of the reasons neither had been heavily bombed up to this point in the war.) Moreover, targeting was aimed explicitly on non-military facilities surrounded by workers’ homes. Here we can gain further insight from two additional, equally conservative military leaders.


    Many years later President Richard Nixon recalled that



    “[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants. . . . MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off.”


    Although many others could be cited, here, finally, is the statement of another conservative, a man who was a close friend of President Truman’s, his Chief of Staff (as well as President Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff), and the five star Admiral who presided over meetings of the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff during the war—William D. Leahy:



    “[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

  • Seminar on Lowering the Operational Readiness Status of Nuclear Weapons Systems

    On June 24, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation held a seminar in Geneva for invited diplomats and civil society leaders on “The Importance of Lowering the Operational Readiness Status of Nuclear Weapons Systems” at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. The seminar encouraged delegates to the Conference on Disarmament to support efforts to de-alert nuclear arsenals. Furthermore, during the seminar, Mr. Steven Starr (Senior Scientist for the Physicians for Social Responsibility and Associate of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation) and Mr.  Dominique Lalanne (Chair of Abolition 2000 Europe) described the threat of launch-ready weapons to nations and people. They further discussed the connections between lowering the operational readiness status of the nuclear weapon systems and the Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC).

    In the discussion of the threat of launch-ready weapons, Starr stated that the US and Russia have at least 1739 strategic nuclear weapons that remain on high alert. He illustrated that the total combined explosive power of all deployed and operational US and Russian nuclear weapons are 600 times more destructive than the total combined explosive power of all bombs detonated in World War II. Additionally, he underscored that launch-ready weapons, including land-based ICBMS and sea-based SLBMs, can be launched with only a few minutes warning. This high state of operational readiness makes accidental nuclear war possible through a launch in response to a false alarm or an unauthorized launch. Starr further described the ecological ramifications of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and the U.S. and Russia respectively.  India and Pakistan are believed to each possess 100 nuclear weapons with an average yield similar to the atomic bombs, which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Starr reviewed recent peer-reviewed studies that predict the detonation of 100 of these weapons, in the megacities of India and Pakistan, would create nuclear firestorms, which would cause 5 million tons of smoke to rise above cloud level, into the stratosphere.  This smoke would block 7% to 10% of warming sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere; this would create the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1000 years.  Scientists predict this would cause massive reductions in agricultural production leading to global famine that would kill up to 1 billion people.

    The detonation of the launch-ready U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals would cause up to 150 million tons of smoke to rise into the stratosphere and block up to 70% of sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface. This would create daily sub-freezing temperatures in North America and Eurasia for several years, and produce Ice Age weather conditions on Earth.  This would eliminate growing seasons for a decade on all continents, and cause most humans to perish from starvation.

    Regarding the relationship between lowering the operational readiness status of the Nuclear Weapon Systems and the Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC), Lalanne expressed his disappointment that the majority of the Nuclear Weapon States refuse to remove their weapons from their high-alert status and commence negotiations on a NWC. He further argued that their resistance is closely associated with their concerns that nuclear deterrence would be jeopardized by de-alerting their nuclear weapon systems. Moreover, he emphasized that the States must realize that the ability to launch an instantaneous nuclear strike is a not a fundamental aspect of nuclear deterrence.  The elimination of launch-ready nuclear weapons is a necessary step towards further significant reductions of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and movement towards the participation of the Nuclear Weapon States in a NWC.

    Overall, the speakers informed delegates on the need for the international community to engage in and support multilateral measures to lower the operational readiness status of the nuclear weapon systems.

  • De-Alerting and the Nuclear Weapons Convention

    Dominique LalanneSignatories to the NPT took a small but significant step toward the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world in May 2010 when they agreed that: “All States need to make special efforts to establish the necessary framework to achieve and maintain a world without nuclear weapons.”. The most significant step was in December 2010 at the General Assembly, 65th plenary meeting, 8 December 2010, 133 yes, 28 no, 23 abstain for the vote of the Convention:  ” The General Assembly Calls once again upon all States immediately to fulfill that obligation by commencing multilateral negotiations leading to an early conclusion of a nuclear weapons convention prohibiting the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat or use of nuclear weapons and providing for their elimination”.


    Results for nuclear weapon States : China (yes), France (no), Russia (no), UK (no), US (no), India (yes), Pakistan (yes), Israel (no).


    The Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) also committed in the 2010 NPT Final Document to “Consider the legitimate interest of non-nuclear-weapon States in further reducing the operational status of nuclear weapons systems in ways that promote international stability and security.”. And most significant is the vote on de-alerting at the UN General Assembly with only 3 votes “no” by France the UK and the US.


    So the NWS have resisted any commitment to go further in either area – i.e. to immediately de-alert and remove all nuclear weapons from high operational readiness or to commence negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention in the near or intermediate future. This resistance is linked to their continuing reliance on nuclear deterrence, and a mistaken belief that nuclear deterrence would be jeopardized by de-alerting existing nuclear weapons systems.


    Progress on de-alerting and NWC negotiations could be enhanced by promoting them not as the immediate end to nuclear deterrence, but as processes which lower the role of nuclear weapons gradually while simultaneously strengthening strategic stability.


    In this context, progress on de-alerting will make NWC negotiations more feasible. Equally, the initial exploration by NWS of the legal, technical and political elements of a nuclear-weapons-free regime (achieved through a NWC) will generate greater confidence in the possibility of security without nuclear deterrence, making the immediate de-alerting of nuclear weapons more palatable.


    There are many reasons to focus on de-alerting in the short term while simultaneously considering and promoting NWC negotiations.


    The U.S. and Russia, with 95% of the world’s nuclear weapons, still maintain high-alert postures which permit each of their Presidents to order the launch of more than 1000 strategic nuclear warheads in a matter of a few minutes. Both nations remain frozen in their Cold War nuclear confrontation, constantly poised to unleash massive nuclear forces in response to a perceived nuclear attack from the other side.


    Fear of a surprise nuclear attack is what causes leaders in the nuclear weapon states to keep their nuclear forces ready to “Launch On Warning” of attack. Although both the US and Russia deny that they would employ a “Launch On Warning” strategy, it is clear that they retain the capability and option to do so.


    The maintenance of launch-ready, high-alert nuclear weapons allow these two states to almost instantly initiate an accidental nuclear war though technical or human error, miscalculation, madness or stupidity. This is true, because a false warning of attack – believed to be true – has the potential to trigger a nuclear “retaliation” which in fact would be a nuclear first-strike.


    High-alert nuclear postures create a universal fear of impending nuclear incineration, and thereby prevent any fundamental change in the doctrine of nuclear deterrence.  As long as nuclear forces remain on high-alert, the elimination of nuclear weapons remains impossible and accidental nuclear war remains possible.


    The Nuclear Weapon States must accept that an instant nuclear strike is not a fundamental component of deterrence. Such a change in mindset would open the way to a variety of practical steps which would prevent a nuclear launch.


    The current high-alert postures in the US and Russia, which  in reality are supported by an unofficial policy of Launch On Warning, could be changed, without any risk, to an official policy of No Launch Before Detonation (NLBD).  Under NLBD, the launch of nuclear forces in response to a warning of nuclear attack, comprised only of electronic data from Early Warning Systems, would be prohibited.  The launch of nuclear forces could not then be triggered by a false warning generated by cyberwarfare, a failure of technical systems, computer hackers, or the launch of non-nuclear warheads carried by strategic missiles.


    NLBD could be almost immediately instituted via Presidential decree (without negotiation, legislation, and minimal expense) and should be used as a confidence building measure as part of a de-alerting process.  Accidental, unauthorized or unintended nuclear war caused by a false warning of nuclear attack would become impossible through this simple change in policy. 


    The actual elimination of high-alert forces would make it physically impossible to launch upon electronic warning of attack. There are many possible ways to de-alert nuclear weaponry in a verifiable, stepwise manner, which are on record and require only sufficient political will to implement.


    While the U.S. and Russia  choose to maintain high-alert postures (and the Launch-On-Warning capabilities that high-alert weapons confer), none of the other NWS (whose nuclear arsenals number in the hundreds of weapons) maintain states of high operational readiness. China has never had high-alert weapons, France and England have each made conscious decisions not to maintain ground-based launch-ready nuclear forces. Furthermore, it has been reported that U.K nuclear forces require days to launch, and French nuclear forces require some hours to fire. Such a change, if made to US and Russian nuclear arsenals, would do much to remove the threat of an accidental apocalypse from the global agenda. The French and UK militaries should be encouraged to talk to their US and Russian counterparts with the aim of persuading them of the merits of a similar change in posture.


    For France and the UK, missiles could be removed from submarines without altering a policy of minimal deterrence. The international context does not need a possibility of rapid nuclear strike from either of these two Nuclear States. In case of terrorist attack (generally considered to constitute the most likely danger of producing a nuclear detonation), a nuclear retaliation from a submarine is absolutely not appropriate. No nuclear strike is appropriate for a non-state sponsored terrorist attack.


    The real change required here is a change of mindset, of imagination and spirit. Nuclear war should no longer be held up as the instant solution for “national security”, especially when our best scientists warn that nuclear war can end human existence. Our “security” depends primarily upon our ability to understand the problems we face in common; we are a single species threatened with imminent nuclear extinction.


    De-alerting is the first step of the Convention. Without de-alerting the Convention is impossible to be accepted. The change of mindset is the first step for the abolition of nuclear weapons. De-alerting makes this change.

  • Launch-Ready Nuclear Weapons: A Threat to All Nations and Peoples

    2011_06_24_starr.pdf

  • Nuclear Weapons: 20 Facts They Don’t Want You to Think About

    Nuclear arsenals: who wants them? – A coterie of politicians.


    Why do they want them? – For the illusion of power and to feed their egos.


    How do they keep them? – By fostering a culture of fear.


    How do they do that? – By positing a Threatening and Unknown Future.


    There are 5 primary nuclear weapons states (and four others from proliferation). The politicians of these 5 nuclear states put the future of the citizens of all the other 187 states of the UN at risk as well as their own citizens because of their insistence in keeping their nuclear arsenals.


    In no case have the citizens been asked if they want these arsenals.


    The reason these politicians want these Armageddon weapons is because they believe it gives them stature and power; makes them players; gets their feet under the top table. For this perceived personal benefit they are prepared to put the survival of the human race at risk.


    Nuclear arsenals are the ruthless tools of power-fixated individuals.


    In order to keep their arsenals, these individuals must keep the citizens in ignorance. We have a vague dread of these things and what they can do. Humanity has a residual group memory of the unspeakable suffering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But this is very scary. We don’t want to think about it. And that suits the power junkies just fine. Ignorance is power – for the junkies – but not the citizens.


    If the truth about nuclear weapons was known there would be millions demonstrating in cities round the world. The arsenals would be dismantled. (By ‘known’ is meant really known; not just an idea in our heads. Known in the way we know a loved person has died or we have been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease).


    The effects of nuclear explosions on people defy the imagination and our ability (and willingness) to contemplate such degrees of human suffering. But how can we make rational judgements if we do not face the nightmarish facts?


    Reciting facts will not ensure the necessary degree of knowing. But it is a start – the basis for critical evaluation.


    So here are 20 facts they don’t want you to think about:-



    1. There are at least 23,000 nuclear weapons (1) in existence: sufficient to wipe out the entire human population of the planet many times over.

    2. Of the 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence around 2,500 are on High Alert (2). This means they are ready to be launched at a moment’s notice.

    3. The missiles delivering nuclear weapons to their target travel at faster than 1000 miles in 4 minutes (3).

    4. The only way our armed forces have of knowing if a nuclear attack is in progress is through an electronic early warning system. This system, like all electronic systems, is subject to malfunction.

    5. When the electronic warning system signals that a nuclear attack is in progress the military chiefs of staff have a matter of minutes to decide if the warning is true or false.

    6. If the chiefs of staff instruct the Prime Minister/President that an attack is in progress he has a matter of minutes to decide if this information is reliable and to press the button launching a retaliatory strike.

    7. Central London would be utterly destroyed by a single megaton bomb (4).

    8. One such bomb would, due to the blast alone, cause 98% deaths from Westminster to the City of London and from Lambeth to Marylebone (4).

    9. A modelled attack on Detroit (5) (when the population was 1.32 million) predicted that a single 1 megaton bomb exploded above the city would cause up to 630,000 deaths and injuries from blast alone. 83% of the population would be immediately killed or injured. Many of the remaining population would die or suffer terribly from the effects of radioactive fallout.

    10. One 5 megaton nuclear bomb has as much explosive power as all the explosives used in the second world war (6).

    11. If a nuclear power station or nuclear waste disposal site were the target of a nuclear attack it has been estimated that the resulting contamination would cover an area nearly 3 times that of Wales (7).

    12. Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki referred to the pain and suffering as ‘indescribable’ and ‘hell on earth’. Eventually some survivors of Hiroshima arrived in hospital elsewhere. Such was their degree of suffering that when a nurse entered the ward they screamed for her to kill them (8).

    13. There have been various crises since 1945 when the world came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war. Our luck will run out. The system is held primed at all times.

    14. In one crisis a single man saved the world from destruction. If Stanislav Petrov, in 1983 had told his Russian superiors that his electronic monitors were signalling a massive nuclear attack from the US there would have been a global nuclear war (9). He did not tell them and the signals turned out to have been due to a malfunction.

    15. A nuclear war would cause a blanket of particles in the atmosphere that would blot out the sun’s rays and result in the death of the vegetation on which life depends. This would be in addition to the death to people, animals and plants caused by the explosive power, the radiation and the shockwaves.

    16. Each of the weapons carried on the UK Trident submarine is 7 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb which killed 140,000. The UK Trident submarine carries 16 Trident missiles. Each missile can contain 3 No. 100 kiloton weapons. A single submarine is designed to carry over 300 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.

    17. The nuclear weapons on a single Trident submarine can destroy over 40 million people (extrapolating from Hiroshima).

    18. The UK nuclear arsenal alone has the destructive power to destroy over 80% of the 195 capital cities of the world (10, 11).

    19. We in the UK have 4 Trident submarines; our ally, the US, has 14 (12).

    20. Trident renewal will cost the taxpayer 97 thousand million pounds yet it is totally useless in opposing any real existing threat (13).

    We ignored the threats from the banking system until the first banks started to collapse. Then we took emergency action.


    We are behaving in the same way with the immeasurably more dangerous nuclear weapons arsenals. If we wait till the first nuclear weapons are launched no emergency action will help the millions of dead and dying. Our power-obsessed politicians will have done their irretrievable worst.


    1.  http://www.abolition2000uk.org/Blackaby%208%20final%20complete%20with%20cover.pdf


    2.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-alert_nuclear_weapon


    3.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:James_Kemp/Trident_missile


    4.  Based on medact report ‘The medical consequences of nuclear weapons’,     http://www.medact.org/content/nuclear/Medical%20Consequences%20of%20Nuclear%20Weapons%2007.pdf


    5.  Medact report, p21


    6.  http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/ethics/basics/granoff_nuclear-weapons-ethics-morals-law.htm


    7.  Medact report, ‘The medical consequences of nuclear weapons’


    8.  See film ‘White |Light, Black Rain’ by Japanese director Steven Okazaki and book ‘Hibakusha’ by George Marshall and Gaynor Sekimori


    9.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov


    10.  http://geography.about.com/od/countryinformation/a/capitals.htm


    11.  http://www.abolition2000uk.org/Blackaby%208%20final%20complete%20with%0cover.pdf


    12.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(missile)


    13.  http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/peace/trident-costs-are-running-out-control-20090917


     

  • How Many Nuclear Weapons Still Threaten Humanity?

    David KriegerThe Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is one of the most authoritative institutes in the world on issues of war and peace. The recently-released 2011 SIPRI Yearbook provides estimates of the number of nuclear weapons in the world.  It finds that only four countries have deployed nuclear warheads, by which it means warheads placed on missiles or located on bases with operational forces. Two of these countries are the US and Russia, which have 2,150 and 2,427 deployed nuclear weapons, respectively. Under the terms of the New Start agreement, ratified in 2010, each country is required to reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 by the year 2017. The other two countries with deployed nuclear weapons, according to SIPRI, are the UK with 160 deployed weapons and France with 290 deployed weapons. 


    The total number of deployed nuclear weapons in the world stands at 5,027 in 2011. Of these, SIPRI estimates that some 2,000 are kept on high operational alert, ready to be fired within moments of an order to do so.


    In addition to its deployed nuclear weapons, the US has 6,350 additional weapons for a total of 8,500. Russia has 8,570 additional weapons for a total of 11,000. The UK has an additional 65 weapons for a total of 225. France has an additional 10, for a total of 300. Four other countries have only non-deployed nuclear weapons, according to SIPRI: China with 240; India with 80-100; Pakistan with 90-110; and Israel with 80. 


    SIPRI does not list North Korea among the countries having a stockpile of nuclear weapons, although relatively small nuclear devices have been tested by North Korea in 2006 and 2009. SIPRI acknowledges that there is a widespread belief that North Korea has separated enough plutonium for a small number of nuclear weapons, but indicates there is controversy over the amount of plutonium they have separated and the yield of their nuclear tests. They also point out that “doubts persist about whether North Korea has the design and engineering skills needed to manufacture a fully functional operational nuclear weapon.” It seems highly likely to me, however, that North Korea possesses a small number of nuclear weapons and is the ninth nuclear weapon state.


    Between 2010 and 2011, the US reduced its nuclear stockpile from 9,600 to 8,500. During the same period, Russia reduced its stockpile from 12,000 to 11,000. While the US and Russia were reducing their arsenals, the UK, France, China and Israel were holding steady at lower levels. India and Pakistan, on the other hand, were increasing the sizes of their arsenals: India from 60-80 to 80-110, and Pakistan from 70-90 to 90-110. Overall, the total number of nuclear weapons in the world decreased from 22,600 to 20,530. 


    The trends are these: modest reductions by the US and Russia, indicating a continuing commitment to maintaining their nuclear arsenals at a relatively high level of overkill; no reductions by the UK, France, China and Israel, indicating a continuing commitment to retaining their arsenals at current levels, at least until more substantial progress in reductions is made by the US and Russia; and increases in the arsenals of India and Pakistan, indicating a continuing nuclear arms race in South Asia. 


    The modest reductions made by the US and Russia and the further reductions agreed to by the two countries in the New START agreement are offset by their commitments to modernizing their nuclear arsenals and improving their systems of delivery. A SIPRI media statement pointed out that “both countries currently are deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced programs to do so, and appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals into the indefinite future.”


    Regarding India and Pakistan, the SIPRI statement pointed out that they “continue to develop new ballistic and cruise missile systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons” and that both countries “are also expanding their capacities to produce fissile material for military purposes.” Other experts have done simulations of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan with 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons and have estimated that it could lead to a blocking of sunlight and lowering of temperatures, causing widespread drought and crop failure, resulting in some one billion deaths around the world.


    While there are some ten percent fewer nuclear weapons in the world from 2010 to 2011, it is not time to breathe a sigh of relief at what has been accomplished. The overall trend is toward fewer nuclear weapons, but weapons and delivery systems that are more highly modernized – what the US refers to for itself as a “safe, secure and effective nuclear stockpile.” In reality, the only type of stockpile that will meet the criteria of being “safe, secure and effective” will be a global stockpile of zero nuclear weapons. Any number other than zero will continue to present unacceptable risks to humanity. What is needed now is a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the “safe, secure and effective” elimination of all nuclear weapons. The US and Russia, the countries with the largest nuclear arsenals, should be providing the leadership to achieve this goal.