This article was originally published by The Hill.
North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and conducted its first nuclear weapon test in 2006. It has conducted four further tests since then. It is thought to be planning another nuclear weapon test in the near future, to which Donald Trump has tweeted, “It won’t happen!”
North Korea has also tested missiles with a longer range and is thought to be working on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching Hawaii and the west coast of the United States. It is thought that North Korea has produced the fissile materials for at least eight nuclear weapons, but is unable at this point to mount them on a ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.
While at present it lacks the technological capacity to directly threaten the U.S., North Korea will likely achieve this capability at some point. Its current nuclear and substantial conventional arsenal threatens South Korea, Japan, and U.S. troops stationed in those countries.
How should the Trump administration react to these threats? There are two possibilities. The first would involve military action by the U.S. against North Korea. The second would involve diplomacy and negotiations.
An important step in analyzing the danger of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is to consider its purpose. Given the size of its arsenal, North Korea could certainly not expect to win a nuclear war against the far more powerful U.S. military forces. What it could reasonably expect its small nuclear arsenal to provide is a deterrent against a preemptive conventional or nuclear attack by the U.S.
Having observed the U.S. take down the Iraqi and Libyan regimes after persuading them both to give up their nuclear programs, North Korean leaders have reason for concern. Each of these cases led to the overthrow of the regime and the death of its leader.
What else do we know about North Korea? It has a strong military of some 1 million troops. It has been ruled by a dynasty since the end of World War II. Its current leader, Kim Jong-un, is in his thirties and is the grandson of the founder of the North Korean regime. Donald Trump has described the young leader as a “smart cookie.” We also know that North Korea is a very poor country with a very bad human rights record.
It can be reasonably concluded that North Korea does not intend aggressive war with its military and nuclear program, but it does threaten to use these forces to protect its regime and leadership from an attack by the U.S. or another country.
For the U.S. to initiate a preemptive military attack against North Korea would be wildly dangerous and could result in a war throughout Northeast Asia, with massive death and destruction not only in North Korea, but also in South Korea and Japan, including U.S. troops in the region. What roles China and Russia would play is uncertain.
Given the massive disadvantages of initiating a preemptive war, including the illegality and immorality of doing so, the U.S. should dial down its threatening rhetoric (“all options are on the table”) and behaviors (sending U.S. warships to the vicinity), and instead seek negotiations with the North Korean leadership on mutual security needs. In addition, as a poor country, there is much that North Korea needs for its people. Food and energy would be high on the list of bargaining chips the U.S. could offer, as well as negotiating an end to the Korean War rather than continuing with the truce set in place in 1953.
The U.S. should actively seek China’s help in getting North Korea to the negotiating table and in participating in the negotiations. Following the path of peace and diplomacy would demonstrate an important step toward maturity for the national leaders of North Korea and the United States.
This article was originally published by The Hill. A segment of the article appears below. Click here to read the full article at The Hill.
“While at present it lacks the technological capacity to directly threaten the U.S., North Korea will likely achieve this capability at some point. Its current nuclear and substantial conventional arsenal threatens South Korea, Japan, and U.S. troops stationed in those countries.
How should the Trump administration react to these threats? There are two possibilities. The first would involve military action by the U.S. against North Korea. The second would involve diplomacy and negotiations.”
May 2-12, 2017 –The First Preparatory Committee meeting for the 2020 NPT Review Conference will be held in Vienna, Austria as we approach the 49th anniversary of one of the most seminal arms control treaties of the Nuclear Age – the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) first signed on July 1, 1968 by the U.S., U.K., the Soviet Union, and 59 other nations and entered into force on March 5, 1970. Currently, the treaty has 191 participating nation-states. Comments: While the Cold War-era world didn’t have to deal with a worst-case scenario of dozens of nuclear weapons states warned about by Democratic presidential candidate John Kennedy during the third Nixon-Kennedy Debate on Oct. 13, 1960, today things have reached a crisis point again. While the nuclear test blasts and ballistic missile tests of North Korea in the last decade and fears of future Iranian nuclear weapons development are legitimate concerns, the campaign rhetoric and recent policy responses by President Donald Trump are equally disturbing. The 45th President’s pre-election statements promoting the idea that Japan, South Korea, and other allies should join the Nuclear Club set U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy back decades. But more frightening are recent U.S. military moves ordered by the President including threats to send a carrier battle group to the waters off North Korea combined with rhetoric about possible U.S.-launched regime change, along with belligerent responses by Kim Jong-un’s government. An attack on North Korea with the intent of destroying their weapons of mass destruction and/or assassinating that nation’s political leadership could purposely or more likely inadvertently break the tripwire that triggers the first use of nuclear weapons in combat since 1945. However, even if no nuclear weapons are discharged, a conventional war between the North and South could heighten U.S.-Russia/China nuclear tensions and result in a tremendous and catastrophic loss of human life. And, while it is possible that North Korean WMD could be eliminated in such a war, the long-term prognosis, like that of the war to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s WMD, could be increased regional chaos and terrorism. (Sources: Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors. “Arms Control Chronology.” Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information, 2002, p.1, United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/npt accessed April 14, 2017.)
May 8, 1999 – The Kargil Conflict between India and Pakistan, which had fought three previous wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971, began on this date and continued until July 26. This war occurred just one year after both countries detonated nuclear explosives, a first for Pakistan. After two months of intense high-altitude fighting in and around mountain peaks and valleys of the Great Himalayan Range, each side suffered more than 1,000 casualties before Pakistan withdrew from contested territory and India regained those mountain posts. While some claim nuclear forces were mobilized by each side, other experts disagree. Nonetheless, it became known years after the war ended that Indian troops were within days of opening another front along the Kashmir Line of Conflict, an act that may have triggered a wider war that would likely have seen the deployment and possible use of nuclear weapons. The threat of a South Asian nuclear conflict increased dramatically again during a military crisis between the two nations from December 2001 through June 2002 after India’s parliament was attacked by Islamist militants who allegedly had ties to the Pakistani government. Yet another tripwire to nuclear war was avoided in 2008 after a terrorist attack on Mumbai, India was linked to intelligence agencies in Pakistan. For a number of years, regular artillery exchanges have been common in the extremely volatile region of Kashmir. India’s nuclear doctrine mandates that if its conventional forces suffer a nuclear attack, it would respond with an all-out nuclear counterstrike targeting Pakistani population centers. Pakistan has threatened to respond in a similar fashion. Comments: A nuclear war in South Asia would have a devastating impact not just on the region but on the planet. With India’s strong ties to the United States and Pakistan’s growing relationship with China, such a war could escalate to a global one. This situation represents yet another paramount reason why global nuclear arsenals should be dramatically reduced without delay and eliminated at the earliest possible opportunity. (Sources: “The Growing Threat of Nuclear War and the Role of the Health Community.” World MedicalJournal. Vol. 62, No. 3, October 2016. http://lab.arstubiedriba.lv/WMJ/vol62/3-october-2016/slides/slide-8.jpg and “The Kargil Conflict.” Encyclopedia of India. Thomson Gale Publishers, 2006. http://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/kargil-conflict both accessed April 14, 2017.)
May 9, 1970 – One of the most notable labor leaders, human rights advocates (and participant in Civil Rights-era protests including the March on Selma in 1965), peace activists (and opponent of the Vietnam War), and anti-nuclear spokesmen of the 20th century was silenced on this date when Walter P. Reuther, along with his wife and a number of friends and colleagues, perished in a plane crash near Pellston, Michigan. Reuther was born in Wheeling, W.Va. on Sept. 1, 1907 and as a young man he moved to Detroit where he became an expert tool and die maker in the auto industry. Later, he was elected president of an influential auto workers’ union local group and led several strikes in 1937 and 1940, became president of the United Auto Workers in 1946, and helped found the Americans for Democratic Action organization. In 1952, he was elected president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and within three years he was a key player in the merger of both unions to form the AFL-CIO. In the 1960s, he marched with Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in Delano, California and also strongly showed his support for the Civil Rights movement by participating in the August 1963 March on Washington led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. The Republican candidate for president in 1964, a staunchly conservative Barry Goldwater, once declared Reuther “a more dangerous menace than the Sputnik or anything Soviet Russia might do in America.” In a Labor Day speech in 1966, Reuther presented a strong case for utilizing rapid technological advances not for war but for improving the human condition: “The question that challenges the wisdom and the sense of human solidarity of the whole human family is the overriding question: To what purpose do we commit the potential power of the 20th century technological revolution? Do we harness the potential power to the madness of nuclear war or can we build a rational and responsible world community and harness the rising star of science and technology to man’s peaceful purposes? The 20th century technological revolution has no ideology and it has no morality. We must bend it to man’s peaceful purposes or we shall perish.” In another speech, Reuther proclaimed, “The people of the whole world are the prisoners of the Cold War and the insanity of the escalation of the nuclear arms race. And that’s why I believe America has the responsibility for providing both the political and moral leadership to try to move the world out of this prison of the Cold War and the arms race towards reductions in the levels of armament because I believe that in the long run, peace is the only condition of human survival.” (Source: The Reuther Library. “No Greater Calling: The Life of Walter P. Reuther.” Wayne State University. http://reuther100.wayne.edu accessed April 14, 2017.)
May 17, 2015 – On this date, Wikileaks published a frightening account of a nuclear whistleblower, a sailor in the British Royal Navy, Able Seaman William McNeilly, whose formal title was Engineering Technician, Weapons Engineer, Submarines. The 25-year old recruit from Belfast was serving onboard one of the UK’s Trident II strategic nuclear submarines, the ones equipped with the D-5 strategic weapons system carrying 16 nuclear-tipped, long-range Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) capable of single-handedly obliterating dozens of targets with multi-megatons of nuclear devastation. Seaman McNeilly blew the whistle on the terrifying vulnerabilities of the UK’s sea-based nuclear submarine force, revealing serious safety and security issues including the Trident force’s susceptibility to possible terrorist attack. He revealed how easy it was to use a Samsung Galaxy II phone to actually obtain top secret information on nuclear safety and security. Not long after these revelations were publicized, William McNeilly was dishonorably discharged from the Royal Navy. He charged that this occurred in order to protect the public image of that military organization, “It is shocking that some people in a military force can be more concerned about public image than public safety.” A year later in June of 2016 more problems with the Royal Navy’s Trident fleet surfaced when the The Sunday Times later revealed that a dummy, unarmed Trident II D5 missile launched from the submarine HMS Vengeance somewhere off the coast of Florida malfunctioned and, instead of heading eastward toward the mid-Atlantic Ocean, was misdirected on a trajectory toward the Florida coast. This misfire was kept secret and not revealed by The Times until after the British Parliament voted overwhelmingly (472-117) on July 19, 2016 to approve $53 billion in funding to continue the UK’s investment in the Trident II system. Comments: The chances of an unintentional, unauthorized, or accidental nuclear war are disturbing enough without also factoring in the risks of nuclear terrorism. For these reasons, the flawed assumptions of nuclear deterrence should be reevaluated, while at the same time global nuclear arsenals should be dramatically reduced. (Sources: “Trident Whistleblowing: Nuclear ‘Disaster’ Waiting to Happen.” Wikileaks. May 17, 2015. http://www.wikileaks.org/trident-safety/, Rob Edwards. “Trident Whistleblower William McNeilly Discharged from Royal Navy.” The Guardian. June 17, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/17/trident-whistleblower-william-mcneilly-discharged-from-royal-navy and Weston Williams. “Trident Missile Misfire off Florida.” Christian Science Monitor. January 22, 2017. http://www.csmonitor.com all accessed April 14, 2017.)
May 21, 1946 – In the early days of the Nuclear Age before automated technologies and heavy shielding made nuclear weapons assembly procedures significantly safer, a number of individuals in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union paid the ultimate price for errors in judgement or merely a slip of the hand and as a result suffered excruciatingly painful injuries and death due to mere seconds of exposure to deadly radioactive materials. On this date, a Jewish scientist from Canada working for the U.S. government became one of these unfortunate casualties. At a laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Louis Alexander Slotin was working with a new beryllium tamper installed around a plutonium bomb core, when he inadvertently allowed the screwdriver separating the tamper from the bomb assembly to fall and land squarely on the assembly which resulted in what is referred to as a “neutron criticality incident” or “blue flash.” Slotin reacted quickly to jerk the tamper off the assembly and drop it instantly to the floor which saved the lives of General Lesley Groves and five other witnesses. However, Slotin received a lethal radioactive dose of 2,100 rems and experienced agonizing pain and suffering until he died nine days later. Comments: Seventy-plus years of nuclear accidents, tests, and experiments have injured or killed countless thousands of individuals, but our species has continued to rely on good fortune to prevent a unforeseen, catastrophic nuclear event which could trigger the deaths of millions or even billions of people (through a Nuclear Winter event after a full-scale nuclear exchange) and send humanity back into the Dark Ages or worse, result in the termination of our species. We can’t rely forever on luck to save the human race. We must affirmatively act now to drastically reduce and eventually eliminate these doomsday weapons before it is too late. (Source: James Mahaffey. “Atomic Accidents.” New York: Pegasus Books, 2014, p. 61-66.)
May 27, 1968 – A 3,500-ton, 252 foot-long U.S. nuclear attack submarine, the U.S.S. Scorpion (SSN-589), after leaving Rota, Spain to escort a Polaris Missile submarine to deep water, was reported lost at sea on this date after being six days overdue at Norfolk naval base and was not found until October 29th of that year lying on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of almost 10,000 feet about 400 miles southwest of the Azore Islands on the edge of the Sargasso Sea. Onboard the nuclear-powered vessel (powered by a S5W reactor) were at least two Mark 45 Astor anti-submarine torpedoes equipped with W34 nuclear warheads. Ninety-nine sailors perished in an accident of undetermined nature including possibly the malfunction and resulting explosion of a conventional Mark 37 torpedo inside the hull or possibly after being jettisoned from the craft. Comments: This deadly incident was just one example of dozens or even hundreds of accidents involving submarines, surface ships, and aircraft involving the loss of nuclear propulsion units and/or nuclear weapons. Some of these nuclear reactors and warheads lost at sea are leaking highly radioactive toxins affecting not only the flora and fauna of the deep but the health and well-being of millions of people. (Sources: William Arkin and Joshua Handler. “Neptune Papers II: Naval Nuclear Accidents at Sea.” Greenpeace International, 1990 and Spencer Dunmore. “Lost Subs.” Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002, p. 140-145.)
This article was originally published by LA Progressive.
In recent weeks, the people of the world have been treated to yet another display of the kind of nuclear insanity that has broken out periodically ever since 1945 and the dawn of the nuclear era.
On April 11, Donald Trump, irked by North Korea’s continued tests of nuclear weapons and missiles, tweeted that “North Korea is looking for trouble.” If China does not “help,” then “we will solve the problem without them.” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un responded by announcing that, in the event of a U.S. military attack, his country would not scruple at launching a nuclear strike at U.S. forces. In turn, Trump declared: “We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier. We have the best military people on earth.”
During the following days, the governments of both nuclear-armed nations escalated their threats. Dispatched to South Korea, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence declared that “the era of strategic patience is over,” and warned: “All options are on the table.” Not to be outdone, North Korea’s deputy representative to the United Nations told a press conference that “thermonuclear war may break out at any moment.” Any missile or nuclear strike by the United States would be responded to “in kind.” Several days later, the North Korean government warned of a “super-mighty preemptive strike” that would reduce U.S. military forces in South Korea and on the U.S. mainland “to ashes.” The United States and its allies, said the official statement, “should not mess with us.”
Curiously, this North Korean statement echoed the Trump promise during his presidential campaign that he would build a U.S. military machine “so big, powerful, and strong that no one will mess with us.” The fact that both Trump and Kim are being “messed with” despite their possession of very powerful armed forces, including nuclear weapons, seems to have eluded both men, who continue their deadly game of nuclear threat and bluster.
And what is the response of the public to these two erratic government leaders behaving in this reckless fashion and threatening war, including nuclear war? It is remarkably subdued. People read about the situation in newspapers or watch it on the television news, while comedians joke about the madness of it all. Oh, yes, peace and disarmament organizations condemn the escalating military confrontation and outline reasonable diplomatic alternatives. But such organizations are unable to mobilize the vast numbers of people around the world necessary to shake some sense into these overwrought government officials.
The situation was very different in the 1980s, when organizations like the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign (in the United States), the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (in Britain), and similar groups around the world were able to engage millions of people in protest against the nuclear recklessness of the U.S. and Soviet governments―protest that played a key role in curbing the nuclear arms race and preventing nuclear war.
So why is there so little public protest today?
One factor is certainly the public’s preoccupation with other important issues, among them climate change, immigration, terrorism, criminal justice, civil liberties, and economic inequality.
Another appears to be a sense of fatalism. Many people believe that Kim and Trump are too irrational to respond to reason and too autocratic to give way to public pressure.
Yet another factor is the belief of Americans and Europeans that their countries are safe from a North Korean attack. Yes, many people will die in a new Korean War, especially one fought with nuclear weapons, but they will be “only” Koreans.
In addition, many people credit the absence of nuclear war since 1945 to nuclear deterrence. Thus, they assume that nuclear-armed nations will not fight a nuclear war among themselves.
Finally―and perhaps most significantly―people are reluctant to think about nuclear war. After all, it means death and destruction at an unbearable level of horror. Therefore, it’s much easier to simply forget about it.
Of course, even if these factors explain the public’s passivity in the face of a looming nuclear catastrophe, they do not justify it. After all, people can concern themselves with more than one issue at a time, public officials are often more malleable than assumed, accepting the mass slaughter of Koreans is unconscionable, and if nuclear deterrence really worked, the U.S. government would be far less worried about other nations (including North Korea) developing nuclear weapons. Also, problems―including the problem posed by nuclear weapons―do not simply disappear when people ignore them.
It would be a terrible thing if it takes a disastrous nuclear war between the United States and North Korea to convince people that nuclear war is simply unacceptable. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should already have convinced us of that.
Congratulations to everyone who entered the 2017 Swackhamer Disarmament Video Contest. After much deliberation, the judges have decided on the following awards:
FIRST PRIZE
A World Built on a Box of Matches by Jonathan Blanton
SECOND PRIZE
2.5 Minutes Till Midnight by Jorge Sanchez
Professor Peter Kuznick, Ph.D., and director Oliver Stone recently gave the prestigious Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future, presented annually by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, California. Previous honorees (all of whom have addressed the dangers of nuclear weapons) have included Daniel Ellsberg, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Professor Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, and Robert Scheer.
Peter Kuznick is director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University and co-author (with Oliver Stone) of the 12-part documentary book and film series, “The Untold History of the United States.” Journalist Jane Ayers conducted several phone interviews with Professor Kuznick over the past month regarding his concerns about the Trump administration’s intention to add to the already existing trillion-dollar budget to modernize and increase the U.S. nuclear arsenals. Kuznick also focused on his serious concerns about the dangers of nuclear engagement with North Korea, Iran, Russia, and Isis by President Trump.
Peter Kuznick (right) delivered the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 16th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future on February 23, 2017, with Oliver Stone (center).
Q: As an expert on nuclear issues, what do you think about the current news that President Trump wants to expand U.S. nuclear arsenals to ensure being at “the top of the pack,” especially after Obama had already allowed a $1 trillion budget to be added to modernize all the nuclear arsenals?
Kuznick: There is no “top of the pack” when it comes to nuclear war. We know that any large scale use of nuclear weapons will be just as suicidal for the nation that strikes first as for the nation under attack – whether or not the latter retaliates. It will just take the citizens of the attacking nation a little bit longer before they feel the effects. Trump’s playground bully mentality reminds me of the kind of insane logic that fueled the Cold War. We are seeing it worldwide right now, with all nine nuclear nations modernizing their arsenals. The U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, Britain, France, North Korea – all of them are making their nuclear arsenals more precise, efficient, and deadly.
But, language aside, Trump’s statement about nuclear weapons is not that much different than Obama’s declaration in Prague in 2009 that helped win him the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama called eloquently for nuclear abolition, but he also indicated that the United States would be the last nation, not the first, to give up its nuclear weapons. The difference is that Obama was not a shallow, rash, impulsive person. Most of us trusted that he understood the consequences of nuclear war and was horrified by the thought of using nuclear weapons. But Trump saying he wants a more modern and efficient nuclear arsenal is terrifying precisely because he does seem so reckless and impulsive. Does anyone really sleep easily at night knowing that Trump has access to the nuclear codes and the ability to launch America’s nuclear arsenals? Does anyone really trust Donald Trump with the ability to end all life on this planet? I certainly don’t.
Q: Doesn’t “top of the pack” mentality increase the likelihood of all nuclear nations (and more non-nuclear nations) to respond by increasing their arsenals too? Doesn’t more buildup in the U.S. and/or Russia equate to more nuclear weapons worldwide, even possibly causing a reaction by terrorists? In his first address to Congress on Tuesday evening, President Trump stated he wants to “demolish ISIS … to extinguish this vile enemy from our planet.” Does this concern you that he might use nuclear options?
Kuznick: Trump reportedly asked what was the point of having nuclear weapons if we can’t use them. Most people would agree and conclude that we should eliminate the nuclear arsenal. Trump, however, draws a different conclusion. He, like Barry Goldwater and George W. Bush, wants to make them more useable. He said that if ISIS attacks the U.S., we should respond with nuclear weapons. He has also said that nuclear proliferation is fine. In fact, he stated that it was okay if Japan, South Korea, and even Saudi Arabia developed their own nuclear arsenals. He even went so far as to inveigh against the nuclear deal with Iran and threaten to tear it up his first day in office. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened.
In endorsing Trump, Bobby Knight, the former Indiana University basketball coach, declared, “Harry Truman, with what he did in dropping and having the guts to drop the bomb in 1944 [sic] saved, saved millions of American lives. And that’s what Harry Truman did. And he became one of the three great presidents of the United States. And here’s a man who would do the same thing, because he’s going to become one of the four great presidents of the United States.” Instead of Trump saying he wouldn’t do that or correcting Knight’s ignorance about the atomic bombings ending the war and saving ‘millions’ of American lives, Trump just gushed, “Such a great guy. Wow, how do you top that? You should be proud of him in Indiana.… That is a national treasure, OK?” I’m still vomiting from that exchange.
Q: Yes, I remember Knight stated that he has “the guts” to drop atomic bombs wherever there is a threat. Is this standard of having guts to use nuclear bombs the proper definition of a “good” president at this time in history, especially in these times of heightened global intensities?
Kuznick: No, just the opposite. We now understand that the 1980s studies of nuclear winter actually underestimated the danger of nuclear war and the threat to the continued existence of life on this planet. But those studies, which warned that the smoke and debris from the nuclear incineration of cities would block the sun’s rays causing global temperatures to plummet, were falsely and erroneously debunked by the 1980s equivalents of today’s ‘experts’ who deny man-made climate change.
The latest research shows that even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons were to be detonated would cause partial nuclear winter and the deaths of up to 2 billion people over the next decade. There are still approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world and most are 7 to 80 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Anyone who talks glibly about using nuclear weapons is a certifiable madman and should be locked up.
Q: Russia has 7300 nuclear warheads, and the U.S. has 6970 warheads. President Trump also is currently stating that he is the first to say that nobody should have nukes, but that the U.S. just can’t fall behind Russia. With the Obama $1 trillion budget for modernizing our nuclear arsenals in place right now, why is Trump wanting to add $54 billion to the military budget? Is all this modernizing budget just a major distraction/ploy that will sabotage the international demand for the nine nuclear nations to aggressively work towards disarmament?
Kuznick: Trump recently said that it would be fine to have an arms race with Russia. It would be fine for the arms manufacturers who used to be aptly called the ‘merchants of death’. But it wouldn’t be fine for the rest of us. As Hillary Clinton correctly pointed out, “Any man who can be provoked by a Tweet should not have his hands anywhere near the nuclear codes.” That would be true whether he had big hands or tiny ones.
The U.S. and Russia, between us, have 93 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. The U.S. spends on its military more than the next 10 nations combined. More military spending is the last thing this country needs. We should be spending that money on schools, housing, health care, roads, bridges, dams, museums, the arts, and scientific research. I would like to see us CUT $54 billion dollars from the military budget each of the next few years. It is absolutely shameful that the U.S. is the only major developed nation that doesn’t offer health care as a right to all its citizens.
Q: President Trump has stated he is “very angry” about North Korea’s recent testing of ballistic missiles. He emphasized the need for our allies (Japan and South Korea) to have the option to accelerate their own missile defense systems. In fact, he also wants to develop a state-of-the-art missile defense system to keep Iran and North Korea from attacking the U.S. What do you think about this?
Kuznick: No one outside of North Korea is happy about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. I would love to see North Korea give up its nuclear weapons. But there is little chance of that happening right now. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, the official communication from North Korea stated that the U.S. would not have invaded if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons. That’s how North Korea sees the world: they believe they need nuclear weapons to keep the U.S. and others from invading them and overthrowing their brutal regime.
So first we need to build trust and nudge them toward reform in a way that won’t heighten their paranoia. That won’t be easy to do, but we need to keep trying. We need to sign a treaty to officially end the Korean War – a war that has been over for 64 years. Using sanctions, threats, and other sticks with North Korea hasn’t worked. We need to collaborate with China to offer more carrots. There’s no guarantee that that would work, but it behooves us to at least make the effort. There is no other reasonable alternative and North Korea’s bellicosity only justifies further right-wing intransigence in Japan and South Korea.
Missile defense in Europe and Asia has been destabilizing on its own. Russia sees missile defense in Romania and Poland as targeted at them, not at Iran. The Chinese see the THAAD system in South Korea as part of a U.S. strategy for undermining the Chinese deterrent. We need to find ways to defuse tensions, not exacerbate them, in this dangerous world. The nuclear experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had very good reason to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock thirty seconds closer to midnight – the nearest the world has been to nuclear war since 1953. With the Trump presidency and the tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Syria, Ukraine, and the Baltics, the danger of war and ultimately nuclear war is very real.
Q: Since North Korea once again tested four more ballistic missiles a few weeks ago, do you think the U.S. response to deploy the anti-missile system, THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), will further enrage China?
Kuznick: The U.S. and North Korea are engaged in a very dangerous game of escalation right now. Each side uses the other’s threats and provocations as an excuse for further threats and provocations of its own. This can only end badly. North Korea’s latest simultaneous launch of four ballistic missiles has alarmed U.S. allies in the region, especially Japan and South Korea. The ability to simultaneously launch multiple missiles suggests that North Korea could overwhelm defensive measures that are being taken or contemplated. The vulnerability of missile defense has always been that it can be overwhelmed with offensive missiles and decoys. The U.S. began to install its THAAD missile system in South Korea recently, despite the fierce opposition of China and the concerted opposition of many inside South Korea. The U.S.-South Korean agreement on THAAD was made with President Park Geun-hye, who is now facing possible impeachment. Opponents say that it has never been adequately debated.
Chinese officials believe that deployment of THAAD in South Korea will weaken their nuclear deterrent and they threaten to retaliate. Right now, China has only around 260 nuclear weapons. They have decided not to build a vast nuclear arsenal like those maintained by the United States and Russia, but they could decide to increase the number they do have. To make matters worse, Abe and other Japanese leaders may use this as an excuse to increase military spending and to install their own THAAD systems, so everyone is ratcheting up their capabilities.
We know that Obama considered a preemptive strike on North Korea to destroy its nuclear weapons program but decided against it for various reasons. Who knows what Trump is cooking up? He says all options are on the table, which means also nuclear options. The situation grows more dangerous by the hour. Neither Kim Jong-un nor Donald Trump is known for statesmanship and restraint.
Q: Trump also criticized the recent Russian deployment of intermediate-range missiles, stating Russia was in violation of the 1987 INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty), an agreement between the U.S. and Russia to curtail the use of intermediate range nuclear missiles. Do you think he is correct in his complaints?
Kuznick: The U.S. has been charging since 2014 that the ground-launched cruise missiles Russia was developing were in violation of the INF Treaty. Now it claims Russia has actually begun deploying the missiles. Russia has made counter-charges about U.S. violations, which the U.S. dismisses as spurious. I take all such charges and counter-charges as serious at a time when there is so much tension and mistrust between the two nuclear behemoths. Don’t forget that the U.S. and Russia have nearly a thousand nuclear weapons pointed at each other on hair-trigger alert. Something must be done about that immediately.
Q: What do you think of President Trump stating that the New START international treaty is a “one-sided deal, just another bad deal”? Five nuclear nations are under international treaty mandated to head toward nuclear disarmament, not to regress. Does this flippant disregard for the New START treaty show Trump’s ignorance in continuing to discredit and undermine complex international nuclear treaties, especially this one signed by Obama, which limits both U.S. and Russia on the number of nuclear warheads they can possess?
Kuznick: This is another reckless move by Trump. The treaty limits both sides to 1,550 nuclear warheads by 2018. That is still well above the threshold for nuclear winter. If that number of weapons were detonated, most complex life forms on this planet would be eliminated. During Trump’s January 28th call with Putin, Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty. Reuters reported that Trump had to pause the call to ask his aides what the New START treaty was. When he got back on the phone, he angrily denounced the treaty. U.S.-Russian relations still haven’t recovered from George W. Bush’s cancellation of the ABM Treaty. Now we have further provocation. Trump must be stopped on this before it’s too late.
Q: What is your opinion concerning the modernization of the nuclear arsenals? Is building new smaller, yet more powerful nukes just giving an appearance of having smaller numbers of nuclear weapons when in reality they will be more dangerous? Is this ‘less is more’ but more modern (more powerful) the smart way to go, or is it a strategy to avoid true change? Doesn’t the modernization category actually allow a country to get around the limits set by New START treaty?
Kuznick: The fact that Barack Obama committed the U.S. to a 30-year $1 trillion dollar nuclear modernization program is sufficient grounds for rescinding his Nobel Peace Prize. What was he thinking? This won’t make the U.S. safer, it will make the world more dangerous. The U.S. will be modernizing every category of nuclear weapons. It will make them more useable. That is a terrible legacy for a man who started out saying he wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons. Shame on him.
Q: What did you think of General Lee Butler, the last Commander in Chief of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, calling for nuclear abolition when he stepped down years ago?
Kuznick: General Butler has been a voice of sanity when it comes to nuclear arms. He has called for their abolition. He considers them “immoral and therefore anathema to societies premised on the sanctity of life.” He urgently wants to scrap land-based ICBMs, which he contends are anachronistic and dangerously vulnerable to preemptive attack. Like William Perry, George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, he believes that nuclear weapons are a scourge upon humanity that must be eliminated.
Q: In closing, President Trump has stated that he wants $54 billion added to the military budget, but he plans to cut non-military programs by the same amount. This includes environmental protections, at a time when climate change has been cited as a national security issue. Do you foresee an increase of nuclear threats if the effects of climate change increase tensions worldwide?
Kuznick: Trump’s assault on the environment is the flip side to his militarism. Both are crimes against the present and the future. Let’s encourage him to do something positive instead. He has said that he wants to improve relations with Russia. That would be a major step in the right direction. Let’s also see him reverse course on China. He has eased his rhetoric a bit on that.
In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt called for “four policemen” to guarantee the peace and stability of the postwar world. We may not need ‘policemen,’ and Britain’s day on the world stage has largely passed, but let’s see the U.S., Russia, China, and Germany work together to ease tensions and move the world down the path of peace and development. Other countries can join in that effort. Abolishing nuclear weapons and initiating a crash program to develop clean energy will be high on that agenda, as will be a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources. Oxfam’s recent report that the richest 8 people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 3.6 billion should also give a clear sign that we have a lot of work to do.
Jane Ayers has conducted interviews with world figures concerning global issues for the Los Angeles Times INTERVIEW page, and for the editorial page (Inquiry Interview) for USA Today. She is a regular contributor to Reader Supported News, and can be reached at JaneAyersMedia@gmail.com
April 3, 2016 – In an interview on this date on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace followed up on statements presidential candidate Donald Trump made previously when he indicated it might be a good idea for U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons by asking the candidate, “You want to have a nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula?” The future 45th president replied, “In many ways the world is changing. Right now, you have Pakistan and you have North Korea and you have China and you have Russia and you have India and you have the United States and many other countries have nukes. It’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them.” Comments: This is just one of many uneducated, irresponsible, and reckless statements the future president made about the nuclear threat, mischaracterizing long-term U.S. and international arms control efforts to limit and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Currently, with thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert status, the world was a dangerous enough place before the Nov. 8, 2016 election that threw an inexperienced but manipulative flim-flam man into the White House with his unstable hands on the nuclear button. The recent moving of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock to 2 ½ minutes to Midnight signaled that other responsible U.S. and world leaders and, most importantly, an educated anti-nuclear global citizenry needs to step up and strengthen greatly efforts to reverse the new Cold War II and the revived nuclear arms race before it is too late. (Source: Judd Legum. “9 Terrifying Things Donald Trump Has Publicly Said About Nuclear Weapons.” ThinkProgress.org, Aug. 4, 2016. https://thinkprogress.org/9-terrifying-things-donald-trump-has-publicly-said-about-nuclear-weapons-99f6290bc32a#.I44ys3h17 accessed March 17, 2017.)
April 4, 1949 – After a communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin Blockade-Airlift, twelve nations including Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the U.K., and U.S. signed the North Atlantic Treaty creating a military alliance, NATO, against the Soviet Union and its communist bloc Eastern European allies. The U.S.S.R. responded on May 14, 1955 with the creation of the eight-nation Soviet-led Warsaw Pact mutual defense agreement. Two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolutions that overthrew pro-Soviet communist governments in Eastern Europe, and eight months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Warsaw Pact alliance broke up on April 1, 1991. Nevertheless, NATO expanded from its Cold War era membership of 16 nations to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in July of 1997. Senator Dale Bumpers (D-AR), a future president of the nonprofit Pentagon watchdog anti-nuclear organization, the Center for Defense Information, prophetically stated after the Senate approved this round of NATO expansion on April 30, 1998 that Russia felt (and today this is even more true) increasingly threatened by a nuclear-armed adversarial military alliance along its western borders. Bumpers stated that, “We’re forcing them to rely more and more heavily on nuclear weapons. And the more you rely on nuclear weapons, the lower the hair trigger for nuclear war.” After adding more Baltic and Eastern European countries in 2004 and 2009, NATO has expanded to its current size of 28-member nations today. Comments: More and more arms control experts and a concerned global citizenry are urging the U.S. to bring home tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, allowing NATO to move to a safer, more secure non-nuclear means of deterring Russian military adventures as occurred during the recent Crimea-Ukraine Crisis. For example, Steve Andreasen and Isabelle Williams, two analysts with the Global Nuclear Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative organization in Washington, DC, recently noted that, “Even taking into account what some perceive to be more “usable” (nuclear) weapons (the B61-11 bomb or its follow-on B61-12), it is hard to envision the circumstances under which a U.S. President would initiate nuclear use for the first time in 70 years with a NATO dual-capable aircraft flown by non-U.S. pilots delivering a U.S. B61 nuclear bomb,” and its seems unlikely that any such mission would go forward “given the political and operational constraints involved.” It is imperative that the U.S. and other nuclear weapon states not only drastically reduce and eliminate tactical nuclear weapons but all such doomsday devices including obviously strategic nuclear warheads and their accompanying launch platforms. (Sources: Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors. “Arms Control Chronology.” Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 117, 125, 132-33 and Steve Andreasen and Isabelle Williams. “Bring Home U.S. Tactical Nuclear Weapons from Europe.” In “Ten Big Nuclear Ideas for the Next President,” edited by Tom Z. Collina and Geoff Wilson, Ploughshares Fund, November 2016.)
April 6, 1993 – A pressure buildup inside a 34 cubic meter stainless steel reaction vessel buried under a building of the radiochemical works at Tomsk-7, Siberian Chemical Enterprise plutonium and uranium processing facility, led to a powerful conventional explosion that blew a hole in the building’s roof. The vessel contained 8,757 kilograms of uranium and 449 grams of plutonium along with a mixture of radioactive waste from a previous extraction cycle. This serious atmospheric release of deadly radioactive contaminants affected an area of at least 120 square kilometers causing entire villages to be evacuated. 160 on-site workers, 2,000 cleanup workers, and tens of thousands of nearby inhabitants were exposed to radiation levels two and a half times the maximum allowed. Comments: Although the Tomsk explosion happened almost 25 years ago, it highlights a continuing, growing global nuclear problem. Paul Brown of Ecologist.org pointed out last year that worldwide stockpiles of plutonium are on the rise with hundreds of tons of the most toxic metal ever produced in current global inventories. A mere spec or microgram of plutonium, if inhaled, can trigger a fatal dose of cancer. Brown points out that, “there is no commercially viable use for this toxic metal and there is increasing fear that plutonium could fall into the hands of terrorists or that governments could be tempted to use it to join the nuclear arms race,” – a prophetic statement as virtually all nine nuclear weapon states plan to spend trillions of dollars in the next 30 years to build more sophisticated and usable doomsday weapons. Brown notes that civilian uses of plutonium, supposedly to address global warming by cutting fossil fuel energy production in favor of nuclear power in fast breeder and commercial reactors, have so far failed to keep pace with the amounts of this highly radioactive metal being produced by approximately 15 nations that run uranium-fueled nuclear power plants. He also points out that, “the small amounts of plutonium that have been used at conventional and fast breeder reactors have produced very little electricity – at startling high costs.” (Sources: “Too Much of a Bad Thing? World Awash With Waste Plutonium.” Paul Brown. TheEcologist.org. Jan. 24, 2016. www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2986959/too_much_of_a_bad_thing_world_awash_with_plutonum.htm and Timeline: Nuclear Plant Accidents. BBC News, July 11, 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2hi/science/nature/5165736.stm both accessed March 18, 2017 and other information available on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s website, https://www.iaea.org)
April 11, 1862 – Henry Adams (1838-1918), a U.S. historian, journalist, and educator who was related to two former U.S. Presidents, after reading the press reports of the terrible slaughter at the Civil War battle of Shiloh, wrote a letter to his brother with this dire prediction, “I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday, science will have the existence of mankind in its power and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.” Comments: 155 years later, some seventy-plus years since Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Adams’ prophetic glimpse into the future seems unfortunately a most accurate assessment of humanity’s present and future living under a Nuclear Sword of Damocles. The choice for Homo sapiens is pure and simple, renounce war and eliminate global nuclear arsenals now and forever or our civilization, our species, and perhaps all higher forms of life on the Earth are on an inevitable slide towards doomsday. Omnicide or nuclear abolition is humanity’s paramount decision to make. (Source: Alfred Kazin. “The Fascination of Henry Adams.” New Republic. August 1, 1983. https://newrepublic.com/article/104616/the-fascination-henry-adams accessed March 17, 2017.)
April 18, 1959 – The radioactive threat posed by naval nuclear weapons and nuclear reactor accidents is a continuing and grave environmental and public health concern over the last seventy years. One of many international examples of this threat is one such incident that occurred on this date when the U.S. Navy responded to a serious nuclear reactor accident by dumping a damaged sodium-cooled liquid metal reactor vessel and other reactor plant components of the submarine U.S.S. Seawolf into the 9,000 feet deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean about 120 miles off the Delaware-Maryland coastline. Comments: In the Atomic Age, eight nuclear submarines, six of them Soviet/Russian and the other two American, have sunk with dozens of nuclear ballistic missiles also lost at sea. Some of the nuclear reactors and warheads in these and other military vessels or aircraft lost at sea are leaking highly radioactive toxins affecting not only the flora and fauna of the deep, but the health and well-being of millions of people. (Source: William Arkin and Joshua Handler. “Neptune Papers II: Naval Nuclear Accidents at Sea.” Greenpeace International, 1990. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/International/planet-2/report/2006/2/naval-nuclear-accidents-arkin.pdf accessed March 20, 2017.)
April 26, 2016 – An article by Kurt Nimmo, “U.S. Plans First Use of Nuclear Weapons Against North Korea,” was published on this date on the Infowars.com website. It quoted Robert Einhorn, a former special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control at the U.S. Department of State, “The U.S. has said that it is prepared, if necessary, to use nuclear weapons first, whether in Europe or in East Asia, to support South Korea and Japan –this remains U.S. policy.” Unfortunately, this opinion is entirely consistent with the long history of U.S. threats to use nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula (and elsewhere) from presidents Eisenhower to Clinton and now to include the 45th President who once during the election campaign horrified the entire planet with the query, “Why can’t we use nukes?” But was this just hypothetical nuclear saber-rattling? Whatever it was, it has been going on for some time. Last October, even the usually diplomatically-focused Council on Foreign Relations advocated using military force to cause regime change in North Korea. More recently, President Trump’s newly confirmed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson mentioned the possible use of U.S. military force against North Korea. In a speech in Seoul, South Korea while standing alongside South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Secretary Tillerson proclaimed, “The policy of strategic patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security, and economic measures. All options (in regards to North Korea) are on the table. If they elevate the threat of their (nuclear) weapons program to a level that we believe requires (military) action, then that option’s on the table.” Adding fuel to this fire is that fact that the Pentagon has, over the last couple decades, publicly discussed (albeit sometimes in a low key manner after an unauthorized leak) using tactical, low-kiloton, ground-penetrating nuclear weapons, like the B-61, to attack Quaddafi’s underground chemical weapons factories in Libya in 1996, to strike Al Qaeda cave bunkers in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan weeks after the 9-11 terrorist attack, and to take out Saddam Hussein’s deep underground WMD and leadership bunkers in the 2003 Iraq War. A strike against “high value” leadership and WMD targets in nuclear-armed North Korea is an even more frightening possibility because of the horrendous resulting fatalities and the tremendous health and environmental impacts on the Korean peninsula and Japan of a so-called “small-scale” nuclear conflict, not to mention the globally catastrophic precedent of breaching the nuclear threshold for the first time since 1945. And it is not too far-fetched to believe that any such supposedly “limited” nuclear war could also precipitate or trigger a larger-scale nuclear Armageddon. (Sources: Prof. Michel Chossudorsky. “Remember Hiroshima: No Danger of Nuclear War? The Pentagon’s Plan to Blow Up the Planet.” Global Research. Oct. 10, 2016. http://www.globalresearch.ca/there-is-no-danger-of-nuclear-war-or-is-there/5500276 and Bill Chappell. “Tillerson Says ‘All Of The Options Are On The Table’ In Dealing With North Korea.” NPR.org. March 17, 2017. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/17/520515168/tillerson-says-all-of-the-options-are-on-the-table-in-dealing-with-north-korea both accessed March 19, 2017.)
April 30, 2015 – “Former U.S. Commander: Take Nuclear Missiles Off High Alert,” an article by Robert Burns that was published in Air Force Times on this date sent some significant shock waves into the foundation of long-held nuclear deterrence theory. This article reported that retired General James Cartwright, who served as the former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) from 2004-07 and later served as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before retiring in 2011, chaired a study panel that concluded that the 450 land-based Minuteman III ICBMs did not need to remain on a decades-long hair-trigger, launch-on-warning alert status. He and his military colleagues proposed that the missiles’ command-and-control system be adjusted to require that it should take at least 24 to 72 hours to prepare the missiles to achieve launch status – thereby giving America (and Russia, if they agreed to reciprocate in this vital task) a breathing space to avoid launching an irreversible, globally catastrophic, possibly species-ending, nuclear war, especially one triggered due to accidental, unauthorized, or unintentional circumstances.
Bruce Blair raises important questions and concerns about hacking nuclear weapons systems in his op-ed in the New York Times, “Why Our Nuclear Weapons Can Be Hacked,” on March 14, 2017. If the U.S. and other nuclear-armed countries continue on the path they’re on, sooner or later, despite the best of intentions, hackers will succeed, leading to unauthorized missile launches, nuclear anarchy and nuclear catastrophe.
Foolproof systems are not possible, particularly when countries are allocating increasingly significant scientific and financial resources to cyber warfare. As Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, pointed out, “Sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof, even in a foolproof system.” The world has narrowly escaped many close calls due to accidents and false alarms of nuclear attacks. This good fortune will not continue indefinitely.
The possibility of cyber warfare is one of the best possible arguments for U.S. leadership to negotiate the abolition of nuclear weapons before they abolish us. Later this month, some 130 countries will be meeting at the United Nations in New York to draft a new treaty to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. Sadly, and dangerously, the U.S. and the other P-5 nuclear weapons states have chosen not to participate in these negotiations. They seem to prefer the false security and political advantages of possessing their nuclear arsenals to ridding the world of the dangers posed by these arsenals. Being hacked is only one of many serious dangers. There are also the ongoing threats of nuclear warfare initiated by accident, miscalculation, intention or insanity.
The accession of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency brings us face-to-face with a question that many have tried to avoid since 1945: Should anyone have the right to plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust?
Trump, of course, is an unusually angry, vindictive, and mentally unstable American president. Therefore, given the fact that, acting totally on his own, he can launch a nuclear war, we have entered a very perilous time. The U.S. government possesses approximately 6,800 nuclear weapons, many of them on hair-trigger alert. Moreover, the United States is but one of nine nations that, in total, possess nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons. This nuclear weapons cornucopia is more than enough to destroy virtually all life on earth. Furthermore, even a small-scale nuclear war would produce a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Not surprisingly, then, Trump’s loose statements about building and using nuclear weapons have horrified observers.
In an apparent attempt to rein in America’s new, erratic White House occupant, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) recently introduced federal legislation to require Congress to declare war before a U.S. president could authorize nuclear weapons strikes. The only exception would be in response to a nuclear attack. Peace groups are rallying around this legislation and, in a major editorial, the New York Times endorsed it, noting that it “sends a clear message to Mr. Trump that he should not be the first since World War II to use nuclear weapons.”
But, even in the unlikely event that the Markey-Lieu legislation is passed by the Republican Congress, it does not address the broader problem: the ability of the officials of nuclear-armed nations to launch a catastrophic nuclear war. How rational are Russia’s Vladimir Putin, or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, or Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, or the leaders of other nuclear powers? And how rational will the rising politicians of nuclear armed nations (including a crop of rightwing, nationalist ideologues, such as France’s Marine Le Pen) prove to be? “Nuclear deterrence,” as national security experts have known for decades, might serve to inhibit the aggressive impulses of top government officials in some cases, but surely not in all of them.
Ultimately, then, the only long-term solution to the problem of national leaders launching a nuclear war is to get rid of the weapons.
This was the justification for the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, which constituted a bargain between two groups of nations. Under its provisions, non-nuclear countries agreed not to develop nuclear weapons, while nuclear-armed countries agreed to dispose of theirs.
Although the NPT did discourage proliferation to most non-nuclear countries and did lead the major nuclear powers to destroy a substantial portion of their nuclear arsenals, the allure of nuclear weapons remained, at least for some power-hungry nations. Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea developed nuclear arsenals, while the United States, Russia, and other nuclear nations gradually backed away from disarmament. Indeed, all nine nuclear powers are now engaged in a new nuclear arms race, with the U.S. government alone beginning a $1 trillion nuclear “modernization” program. These factors, including Trump’s promises of a major nuclear weapons buildup, recently led the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” forward to 2-1/2 minutes to midnight, the most dangerous setting since 1953.
Angered by the collapse of progress toward a nuclear weapons-free world, civil society organizations and non-nuclear nations joined together to press for the adoption of an international treaty banning nuclear weapons, much like the treaties already in place that ban chemical weapons, landmines, and cluster bombs. If such a nuclear ban treaty were adopted, they argued, it would not itself eliminate nuclear weapons, for the nuclear powers could refuse to sign or comply with it. But it would make possession of nuclear weapons illegal under international law and, therefore, like the chemical and other weapons ban treaties, put pressure on nations to fall into line with the rest of the world community.
This campaign came to a head in October 2016, when the member states of the United Nations voted on a proposal to begin negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Although the U.S. government and the governments of other nuclear powers lobbied heavily against the measure, it was adopted by an overwhelming vote: 123 countries in favor, 38 opposed, and 16 abstaining. Treaty negotiations are slated to begin in March 2017 at the United Nations and to be concluded in early July.
Given the past performance of the nuclear powers and their eagerness to cling to their nuclear weapons, it seems unlikely that they will participate in the UN negotiations or, if a treaty is negotiated and signed, will be among the signatories. Even so, the people of their nations and of all nations would gain immensely from an international ban on nuclear weapons―a measure that, once in place, would begin the process of stripping national officials of their unwarranted authority and ability to launch a catastrophic nuclear war.
March 1, 1995 – In an article titled, “Nation of Nitwits,” Bob Herbert reported in the New York Times that a recent Gallup Poll of the American people discovered just a few years after the Cold War (1945-1991) ended, that over 20 percent of respondents “knew virtually nothing about an atomic bomb attack. They didn’t know whether – or in some cases, even if – such an attack occurred.” Presumably that means that fifty years later, a surprising total of at least one-fifth of Americans were unaware of the U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. Comments: It is likely that fewer respondents would have expressed ignorance about the history and current dangers associated with global nuclear arsenals if this poll had been conducted after the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially when the debate concerning the display of the nosecone of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington, DC made the national headlines that summer. At issue was whether that aerospace artifact should include specific historical details on the horrendous human impact, short- and long-term, of the unleashing by the U.S. military of weapons of mass destruction, of a scale previously unforeseen in human history, on populated civilian targets. Today, although much ignorance still exists on the matter of the nuclear threat, even among some of America’s top political leaders, a growing number of global citizenry continue to push for drastic reductions in and the eventual elimination of this manmade Doomsday machine.
March 11, 1958 – A U.S. Air Force B-47 bomber of the 308th Bombardment Wing, flying from Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Georgia to a base in England as part of a four-plane mock bombing exercise called Operation Snow Flurry, accidentally released a 30-kiloton Mark VI nuclear weapon over Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Thankfully the nuclear weapon did not discharge but the conventional high explosives jacketing the nuclear core did explode creating a crater 75 feet in diameter and 35 feet deep which destroyed a farm house and injured several people. Comments: This incident represents yet another example of thousands of nuclear accidents, near-misses, and “Broken Arrows,” only some of which the Pentagon and other members of the Nuclear Club have formally acknowledged. (Sources: The Center for Defense Information. “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents: Dangers In Our Midst.” The Defense Monitor, Vol. 10, No. 5, 1981 and Eric Schlosser. “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.” New York: Penguin Press, 2013.)
March 17, 1953 – The first of eleven nuclear test explosions, conducted March through June of 1953 as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole, occurred on this date at the Nevada Test Site. The 16 kiloton blast was one of seven tower shots in a test series “to find devices for possible inclusion in the nuclear stockpile, to improve military tactics, equipment and training for the atomic battlefield, and to enhance civil defense requirements by measuring and assessing blast effects upon dwellings, shelters, automobiles, and other structures.” Some of this test series involved the participation of approximately 21,000 military service members. Comments: The testing of over 2,050 nuclear devices over the last seven decades by the nine nuclear weapons states has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations especially native peoples and hundreds of thousands of military “participants.” Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people today due to nuclear testing. (Source: Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig. “Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume II, Appendix B.” National Resources Defense Council, Inc. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987, page 153.)
March 23, 1983 – President Ronald Reagan, speaking before a national television audience, announced his dream of making Soviet nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” by proposing the research, development, and deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), later nicknamed “Star Wars” by news media representatives. Over $100 billion was spent in the next two decades researching exotic space-based X-ray lasers and other orbital SDI sensors and weapons. Cost estimates for the program spiraled as high as several trillion dollars as it became clear that a strategic defensive buildup would fuel even more of an offensive nuclear arms race. This led to the program being downsized in the 1990s to tackle shorter-range missile threats from nations such as Iran and North Korea. Under President Clinton, the program was renamed National Missile Defense (NMD) in 1996 and focused on using Ground-Based Interceptors to intercept threat missiles in mid-trajectory. Then, President George W. Bush announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty despite widespread criticism that this move would increase nuclear instability and ratchet up the risk of nuclear war by lifting restrictions on defensive weapons. In late 2002, the Bush Administration announced the newly named Missile Defense Agency (MDA) would, despite inadequate R&D and a large number of test failures, begin building a Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) system. In 2017, after a decade and a half, the program’s price tag is $40 billion and increasing. Its test record is poor, oversight of the program has been wholly inadequate, and according to a plethora of defense experts, inside and outside the government, it has no demonstrated ability to stop an incoming missile under real-world conditions. Comments: There is little doubt that the Republican-controlled 115th Congress and President Trump will probably increase funding for GMD and possibly expand the focus of missile defense back to outer space as President Reagan proposed almost 35 years ago despite risking the violation of the Outer Space Treaty and other prohibitions on the militarization of outer space, not to mention the tremendous waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars. (Source: Laura Grego, George N. Lewis, and David Wright. “Shielded From Oversight: The Disastrous U.S. Approach to Strategic Missile Defense.” Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2016, pp. 1, 6.)
March 28, 1979 – A partial meltdown of two reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg was one of the most serious nuclear accidents in history. It caused a massive release of radioactive products endangering residents in the region in the immediate aftermath and for decades after this incident. The “cleanup” of the accident between August 1979 and December 1993 cost taxpayers approximately $1 billion. The incident came four years after the Norman C. Rasmussen-chaired Nuclear Regulatory Commission-sponsored report (designated “WASH-1400”), which downgraded the nuclear accident consequences noted in previous government and nongovernmental reports. German-American nuclear physicist Hans Bethe (1906-2005) wrote an article in the January 1976 edition of Scientific American, which provided a more realistic threat assessment of a catastrophic nuclear reactor meltdown than the Rasmussen Report. Bethe’s analysis concluded that a serious nuclear accident would claim 3,300 prompt fatalities, create 45,000 instances of early radiation illness, impact 240,000 individuals with cancerous thyroid nodules over a 30-year period, produce 45,000 latent cancer fatalities over the same time period, and trigger approximately 30,000 genetic defects spanning a 150-year period. His estimated cost (in 1976 dollars) of such an accident was $14 billion. Comments: Under President Trump’s Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, there will be a renewed effort to build more nuclear power plants, promote dangerous nuclear energy in other nations, and accelerate the frightening privatization of the handling and disposition of a huge volume of nuclear waste. In addition to the dangerous risk of nuclear power plant accidents like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the tremendously out-of-control civilian and military nuclear waste sequestration, remediation, and permanent storage conundrum, as well as the terrorist targeting potential, the economic unsustainability of civilian nuclear power, and the potential for nuclear proliferation points logically to an accelerated phase-out of global civilian nuclear power plants over the next decade. (Sources: “14 Year Cleanup at Three Mile Island Concludes.” New York Times. Aug. 15, 1993 accessed on February 6, 2017 at www.nytimes.com and various news media reports.)
March 30, 2016 – At a town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wisconsin hosted by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump followed up on frightening comments he made days earlier regarding nuclear weapons. Candidate Trump said that he would “not take nuclear weapons off the table” comparing the use of genocidal Doomsday weapons as mere playing cards in a game. “Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” he queried host Chris Matthews. Awhile later, Donald Trump said, “Look nuclear should be off the table, but would there be a time when it could be used, possibly, possibly.” This led Matthews to ask him point-blank, “Can you tell (the people of) the Middle East we’re not using a nuclear weapon on anybody?” The future President responded, “I would never say that, I would never take any of my cards off the table.” Comments: Although President Barack Obama, other Democrats and even conservative Republicans criticized Trump’s brazenly reckless statements on how he might consider actually targeting people and nations with nuclear weapons and thereby loosen strong international prohibitions, spanning more than seven decades, against using such immoral, illegal, and genocidal weapons, few in the corporate news media countered by proposing that nuclear weapons be significantly reduced or even entirely eliminated! While the future 45th President was rightly criticized, perhaps not strongly enough though, no one criticized the existing flawed nuclear deterrence system and the alleged right of most Nuclear Club members to validate their long-standing first-use policies. Surprisingly, no change in the status quo ante, whereby the risk of nuclear war is continually increasing day-by-day, week-by-week, and year-by-year has been forcefully advocated by the mainstream corporate news media or any of the nuclear powers. (Source: Full Transcript: MSNBC Town Hall with Donald Trump Moderated by Chris Matthews, March 30, 2016 http://info.msnbc.com/_news/2016/03/30/35330907-full-transcript-msnbc-town-hall-with-donald-trump-moderated-by-chris-matthews accessed Feb. 18, 2017.)
Bruce Blair raises important questions and concerns about hacking nuclear weapons systems in his op-ed in the New York Times, “