Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Peace

  • Afghanistan: The War Turns Pathological – Withdraw!

    Richard Falk


    This article was originally published on Richard Falk’s blog.


    The latest occupation crime in Afghanistan is a shooting spree on March 11 by a lone American soldier in the village of Balandi in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province of Afghanistan. 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children, were shot in their homes in the middle of the night without any pretense of combat activity in the area. Such an atrocity is one more expression of a pathological reaction by one soldier to an incomprehensible military reality that seems to be driving crazy American military personnel on the ground in Afghanistan. The main criminal here is not the shooter, but the political leader who insists on continuing a mission in face of the evidence that it is turning its own citizens into pathological killers.


    American soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters, Koran burning, and countryside patrols whose members were convicted by an American military tribunal of killing Afghan civilians for sport or routinely invading the privacy of Afghan homes in the middle of the night: whatever the U.S. military commanders in Kabul might sincerely say in regret and Washington might repeat by way of formal apology has become essentially irrelevant.


    These so-called ‘incidents’ or ‘aberrations’ are nothing of the sort. These happenings are pathological reactions of men and women caught up in a death trap not of their making, an alien environment that collides lethally with their sense of normalcy and decency. Besides the desecration of foreign lands and their cultural identities, American political leaders have unforgivably for more than a decade placed young American’s in intolerable situations of risk, uncertainty, and enmity to wage essentially meaningless wars. Also signaling a kind of cultural implosion are recent studies documenting historically high suicide rates among the lower ranks of the American military.


    Senseless and morbid wars produce senseless and morbid behavior. Afghanistan, as Vietnam 40 years earlier, has become an atrocity-generating killing field where the ‘enemy’ is frequently indistinguishable from the ‘friend,’ and the battlefield is everywhere and nowhere. In Vietnam the White House finally speeded up the American exit when it became evident that soldiers were murdering their own officers, a pattern exhibiting ultimate alienation that became so widespread it give birth to a new word ‘fragging.’


    Whatever the defensive pretext in the immediacy of the post-9/11 attacks, the Afghanistan War was misconceived from its inception, although deceptively so. (to my lasting regret I supported the war initially as an instance of self-defense validated by the credible fear of future attacks emanating from Afghanistan) Air warfare was relied upon in 2002 to decimate the leadership ranks of Al Qaeda, but instead its top political and military commanders slipped across the border. Regime change in Kabul, with a leader flown in from Washington to help coordinate the foreign occupation of his country, reverted to an old counterinsurgency formula that had failed over and over again, but with the militarist mindset prevailing in the U.S. Government, failure was once again reinterpreted as an opportunity to do it right the next time! Despite the efficiency of the radical innovative tactic of target killing by drones, the latest form of state terror in Afghanistan yields an outcome that is no different from earlier defeats.


    What more needs to be said? It is long past time for the United States and its NATO allies to withdraw with all deliberate speed from Afghanistan rather than proceed on its present course: negotiating a long-term ‘memorandum of understanding’ that transfers the formalities of the occupation to the Afghans while leaving private American military contractors—mercenaries of the 21st century—as the outlaw governance structure of this war torn country after most combat forces withdraw by the end of 2014, although incredibly Washington and Kabul, despite the devastation and futility, are presently negotiating a ten-year arrangement to maintain an American military presence in the country, a dynamic that might be labeled ‘re-colonization by consent,’ a geopolitical malady of the early 21st century.


    As in Iraq, what has been ‘achieved’ in Afghanistan is the very opposite of the goals set by Pentagon planners and State Department diplomacy: the country is decimated rather than reconstructed, the regional balance shifts in favor of Iran, of Islamic extremism, and the United States is ever more widely feared and resented, solidifying its geopolitical role as the great malefactor of our era.


    America seems incapable of grasping the pathologies it has inflicted on its own citizenry, let alone the physical and psychological wreckage it leaves behind in the countries it attacks and occupies. The disgusting 2004 pictures of American soldiers getting their kicks from torturing and humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib should have made clear once and for all to the leaders and the public that it was time to bring American troops home, and keep them there if we cared for their welfare.  Instead punishments were inflicted on these hapless young citizens who were both perpetrators and victims, and their commanders resumed their militarist misadventures as if nothing had happened except an unwelcome ‘leak’ (Donald Rumsfeld said as much) What this pattern of descretation exhibits is not only a criminal indifference to the wellbeing of ‘others’ but a shameful disregard of the welfare of our collective selves. The current bellicose Republican presidential candidates calling for attacks on Iran amounts to taking another giant step along the road that is taking American over the cliff. And the Obama presidency is only a half step behind, counseling patience, but itself indulging war-mongering, whether for its own sake or on behalf of Israel is unclear.


    President Obama recently was quoted as saying of Afghanistan “now is the time for us to transition.”  No, it isn’t. “Now is the time to leave.”  And not only for the sake of the Afghan people, and surely for that, but also for the benefit of the American people Obama was elected to serve. 

  • War Is Not Inevitable

    David KriegerThere have not always been wars; and there need not always be wars.  Before the onset of civilization, there may have been tribal skirmishes but there was not organized warfare between competing military forces. 


    It was not until agriculture allowed for societal specialization, hierarchy and the generation of a warrior class loyal to a military or political leader or social system that wars began in earnest.  Agriculture required defense of boundaries and crops.  Such defense required the specialization of a warrior class organized into military forces.  Such forces required organization and a willing youthful pool of potential soldiers.  But legitimate purposes of defense can also be turned to offensive uses.  Leaders throughout history have been adept at justifying aggressive war in terms of defense. 


    War is a byproduct of civilization, and it is made more likely by having distinct competing social entities, such as city-states or today’s nation-states.  In the 20th century, wars became global or nearly so.  In World War I, soldiers mostly slaughtered other soldiers.  In World War II, however, with the development of modern air warfare, cities and civilians became targets of warfare.  Some 20 million people were killed in WWI and some 50 million in WWII. 


    The technology of warfare has increased in sophistication and lethality.  WWII ended with the destruction of two unprotected Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by two US atomic bombs, one dropped on each city.  This opened a new era, the Nuclear Age, in which it became possible to destroy civilization and complex life, including human life, on the planet.  By our own cleverness, we humans have created instruments capable of destroying ourselves.  The creation of nuclear weapons has made the world too dangerous for warfare. 


    Warfare requires a high level of social organization, but peace requires an even higher level of social organization.  The United Nations Charter prohibits the use of force between nations except under very limited conditions of self-defense or when the Security Council authorizes the use of force.  Of course, this prohibition against the use of force has not been very successful, largely because the major powers have relied upon the law of force rather than the force of law. 


    We have created a situation in which either warfare or humanity is obsolete.  We humans can choose.  We can choose to put an end to warfare, or we can continue to run the risk of warfare putting an end to us.  This is the way that Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein put it in a 1955 statement calling for an end to warfare due to the power of thermonuclear weapons: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.”


    But people must face this alternative.  Peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age.  It is both a right and responsibility.  The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can get on with the necessary task of abolishing nuclear weapons and building a warless world.  In doing so, we will free up vast resources that can be used to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals to end poverty, improve health, protect the environment and better the lives of people everywhere.


    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

  • The Menace of Present and Future Drone Warfare

    Richard FalkAfter the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the colossal scale of devastation disclosed, there was a momentary embrace of sanity and rationality by world leaders and cultural commentators. There was a realization that living with such weaponry was at best a precarious journey into the future, and far more likely, an appointment with unprecedented human catastrophe if not apocalypse. This dark mood of foreboding did produce some gestures toward nuclear disarmament tabled initially by the U.S. Government, but in a form that reasonably struck others at the time, especially the Soviet Union, as a bad bargain—the U.S. was proposing getting rid of the weapons for the present, but retaining the materials, the technology, and the experience needed to win handily any nuclear rearmament race. In other words, the United States offered the world a Faustian Bargain that rested on bestowing trust upon the dominant geopolitical actor on the global stage, and depended crucially on Soviet willingness to go along on such a basis, an option that never seriously tempted the Stalinist approach to world order.


    It should not seem surprising then or now that given the political consciousness of those running the strongest and richest modern states, that this kind of one-sided deal was not an attractive response to nuclear weaponry. Even the governments most closely allied with the United States in World War II, the United Kingdom and France, were unwilling to forego the status and claimed security benefits of becoming second tier nuclear weapons state. And of course, America’s rivals, first, the Soviet Union and later China, never hesitated to develop their own nuclear weapons capability, interpreting security and global stature through the universal geopolitical optic of countervailing hard power, that is, maximizing military capabilities to defend and attack. Thus disarmament faded into the obscurity of wishful thinking, and in its place a costly and unstable nuclear arms race ensued during the whole of the Cold War, with an array of situations that came close to subjecting humanity to the specter of a nuclear war. That this worst of all nightmares never materialized provides little reassurance about the future, especially if public and elite complacency about the risk of nuclear warfare persists.


    What is less appreciated than this failure to eliminate the weaponry in the immediate aftermath of World War II was the adoption and implementation of a Plan B.  The United States pushed hard for the negotiations that led in 1968 to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which was successfully marketed to most states in the world. The NPT represented a one-sided bargain in which non-weapons states agreed to give up their weapons option in exchange for two commitments by nuclear weapons states: to share fully the non-military benefits of nuclear technology, especially relating to producing energy that was early on expected to be both clean and cheap; and to undertake in good faith efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament as the earliest possible time, and even to go further, and to work toward the negotiation of general and complete disarmament. This nonproliferation agreement over the years, although a success in Western realist circles, has experienced a number of discrediting setbacks: a few countries with nuclear weapons ambitions stayed outside the treaty and managed to acquire the weaponry without adverse consequences to themselves (India, Pakistan, Israel), while others (Iraq, Iran) have been attacked or threatened because they were suspected of seeking nuclear weapons; there has been a virtual failure of will to seek nuclear disarmament despite a unanimous World Court reaffirmation of the NPT obligations in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on The Legality of Nuclear Weapons; and there has been a discriminatory pattern of geopolitical management of the NPT, most notably ignoring Israel’s nuclear weapons program while treating Iran’s alleged pursuit of a breakout capability as justifying recourse to war.


    This nonproliferation approach has been accompanying by three massive forms of deception that continues to mislead public opinion and discourage serious debate about the benefits of nuclear disarmament even at this late stage: First, the fallacious implication that the states that do not possess nuclear weapons are currently more dangerous for world peace than the states that possess, develop, and deploy these weapons of mass destruction, and have used them in the past; secondly, that periodic managerial moves among nuclear weapons states, in the name of arms control, are steps in the direction of nuclear disarmament—nothing could be further from the truth as arms control aims to save money and stabilize reliance on nuclear weaponry by way of deterrence, and is generally averse to getting rid of the weaponry; thirdly, the phony claim, endorsed by Barack Obama in his Prague speech of 2009 on the theme, that obtaining a world without nuclear weapons is to be sure an ‘ultimate’ goal to be affirmed, but that it is not a political project that can be achieved in real time by way of a phased and verified nuclear disarmament treaty. In actuality, there is no genuine obstacle to prudently phasing out these weapons over the course of a decade or so. What blocks the elimination of nuclear weapons is only the dysfunctional refusal of the nine nuclear weapons states to give up the weaponry.


    It should be appreciated that this two-tier approach to nuclear weaponry is a departure from the approach taken to other weapons of mass destruction—that is, either prohibiting a weapon altogether or allowing its use in a manner consistent with the principles of customary international law bearing on the conduct of war (proportionality, discrimination, necessity, and humanity). Regimes of unconditional prohibition exist with respect to biological and chemical weapons, and are respected, at least outwardly, by the main global geopolitical actors. Why the difference? The atom bombs dropped on Japan were to a degree, despite the havoc, legitimized because used by the prevailing side in what was claimed to be military necessity and perceived as a just war. The contrast with the prohibition of chemical weapons widely used by the German losing side in World War I illustrates the lawmaking role of geopolitically dominant political actors that impose their will on the evolution of international law, especially in the security domain.


    The U.S. reliance on attack drones to engage in targeted killing, especially in third countries (Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, Pakistan) has raised controversial international law issues of sovereign rights in interaction with lethal acts of war, especially those far removed from the zone of live combat. The increasing reliance on drones during the Obama presidency has produced unintended deaths, civilians in the vicinity of the target and attacks directed at the wrong personnel, as with the NATO helicopter attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers who had been deployed near the Afghan border on November 25, 2011, provoking a major international incident (although not a drone attack, it was linked by angered Palistani officials to similar mis-targeting by drones). There are also unconfirmed reports of drone follow up raids at sites of targeted killing that seem directed at those who mount rescue operations or arrange funerals for prior victims. As with the Bush torture debate the political leadership in Washington has turned for justifications to government lawyers who have responded by developing drone legal briefs that seem somewhat analogous to the notorious Yoo ‘torture memos.’ There are, however, some differences in the two contexts that work against equating the two controversies about post-9/11 war making.


    For one thing, torture has a long history, having been practiced by governments for centuries, and its relatively recent prohibition is embedded in a clear norm criminalizing torture that is contained in the International Torture Convention of 1984. Torture is also enumerated as one of the Crimes Against Humanity in the statute of the International Criminal Court. Drone technology adapted to serve as a battlefield weapon is, in contrast, of extremely recent origin. Nothing in international law exists that is comparably specific with respect to drone attacks to the legal repudiation of torture. There is some resemblance between efforts by Obama law officials to stretch the conception of self-defense beyond previously understood limits to justify targeted killing and the Bush lawyers who claimed that water boarding was not torture. Expanding the prior understanding of the legal right of self-defense represents a self-serving reinterpretation of this core international legal norm by the U.S. Government. It seems opportunistic and unpersuasive and seems unlikely to be generally accepted as a reframing of the right of self-defense under international law.


    Perhaps, the most important difference between the torture and drone debates has to do with future implications. Although there are some loopholes involving extraordinary rendition and secret CIA operated overseas black sites, torture has been credibly prohibited by President Obama. Beyond this, the repudiation of torture has been understood in a manner that conforms to the general international consensus rather than the narrowed conception insisted upon by the Bush-era legalists. In contrast, drones seem destined to be central to operational planning for future military undertakings of the United States, with sharply escalating appropriations to support both the purchase of increasing numbers and varieties of drone. The government is  engaging in a major research program designed to make drones available for an expanding range of military missions and to serve as the foundation of a revolutionary transformation of the way America will fight future wars. Some of these revolutionary features are already evident: casualty-free military missions; subversion of territorial sovereignty; absence of transparency and accountability; further weakening of political constraints on recourse to war.


    Future war scenarios involve attacks by drones swarms, interactive squadrons of drones re-targeting while in a combat zone without human participation, and covert attacks using mini-drones. A further serious concern is the almost certain access to drone technology by private sectors actors. These musings are not science fiction, but well financed undertakings at  or beyond the development stage. It is in these settings of fhere, especially, where the analogy to nuclear weapons seems most pertinent, and discouraging. Given the amount invested and the anticipated profitability and utility of drones, it may already be too late to interrupt their development, deployment, and expanding sphere of use. Unlike nuclear weaponry, already some 50 countries reportedly possess drones, mainly adapted to surveillance. As with nuclear weaponry, the United States, and other leading political actors, will not agree to comprehensive prohibitions on the use of drones for lethal purposes.


    If this line of reasoning is generally correct, there are two likely futures for attack drones: an unregulated dispersion of the weaponry to public and private actors with likely strategic roles undermining traditional international law limits on war making and public order; or a new non-proliferation regime for drones that permits all states to possess and use surveillance drones within sovereign space and allows some states to make discretionary use of drones globally and for attack purposes until a set on constraining regulations can be agreed upon by a list of designated states. That is, drone military technology will perpetuate the two-tier concept of world order that has taken shape in relation to nuclear weapons, and reflects the consensus that both nuclear disarmament and unrestricted proliferation of nuclear weaponry are unacceptable. In this regard, a counter-proliferation regime for drones is a lesser evil, but still an evil.


    The technological momentum that has built up in relation to drones is probably too strong to be challenged politically. The military applications are too attractive, the technology is of a cutting edge fantasy quality, the political appeal of war fighting that involves minimum human risk is too great. At the same time, for much of the world this kind of unfolding future delivers a somber message of a terrifying unfolding vulnerability. At present, there seems to be no way to insulate societies from either intrusive and perpetual surveillance or the prospect of targeted killing and devastation conducted from a remote location. It may be contended that such an indictment of drones exaggerates their novelty. Has not the world lived for decades with weapons of mass destruction possessed by a small number of non-accountable governments and deliverable anywhere on the planet in a matter of minutes? This is superficially true, and frightening enough, but the catastrophic quality of nuclear weaponry and its release of atmospheric radioactivity operates as an inhibitor of uncertain reliability, while with drone their comparative inexpensiveness and non-apocalyptic character makes it much easier to drift mindlessly until an unanticipated day of reckoning occurs by which time all possibilities of control will have been long lost.


    As with nuclear weaponry, climate change, and respect for the carrying capacity of the earth, we who are alive at present may be the last who have even the possibility of upholding the life prospects of future generations. It seems late, but still not too late to act responsibly, but we will not be able to make such claims very much longer. Part of the challenge is undoubtedly structural. For most purposes, global governance depends on cooperation among sovereign states, but in matters of war and peace the world order system remains resolutely vertical and under the control of geopolitical actors, perhaps as few as one, who are unwilling to restrict their military activities to the confines of territorial boundaries, but insist on their prerogative to manage coercively the planet as a whole. When it comes to drones the fate of humanity is squeezed between the impotence of state-centric logic and the grandiose schemes of the geopolitical mentality.

  • How to Strengthen the UN’s Ability to Maintain International Peace and Security

    This article was originally published by the History News Network.


    Lawrence WittnerConservative politicians often portray the United Nations as a powerful monster, poised to gobble up the United States and other countries and put them under alien rule.


    The reality, of course, is quite different. When it comes to international peace and security, the United Nations is notably lacking in power. Its resolutions along these lines are often ignored or go unenforced. Frequently, they are not even adopted. This situation leaves nations free to pursue traditional practices of power politics and, occasionally, much worse.


    The weakness of the United Nations was illustrated once again on February 4, when Russia and China joined forces to veto a UN Security Council resolution dealing with Syria. The resolution was designed to halt eleven months of bloodshed in that nation, where more than 5,400 people had been massacred, mostly by government military forces. Backing an Arab League plan for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, the resolution was supported by 13 members of the Security Council. But, with Security Council rules allowing even one great power to veto action, the resolution was defeated.


    The rules establishing a great power veto were formulated late in World War II, when three Allied nations (the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain) agreed to create a UN Security Council to maintain international peace and security. The Security Council would have 15 members, but just 5 of them would be permanent members (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China), and each of these members would be empowered to veto any resolution or action. Thus, from the start, the great powers made sure that each of them had the ability to frustrate any venture of which they disapproved. And this, in turn, meant that, like the League of Nations, the United Nations was woefully weak when it came to enforcing international peace and security.


    In the first decade of the postwar era, the Soviet Union led the way in drawing on the veto to defend what it considered its interests. But, in later decades, the United States surpassed the Soviet Union (and its successor, Russia) in use of the veto to block international security action. Indeed, since the establishment of the United Nations, all of the permanent members have relied upon the veto, which they have used hundreds of times to frustrate the majority in efforts to maintain international peace and security. As in the case of two Security Council resolutions dealing with the mass killing in Syria, this includes action to protect civilians in an armed conflict.


    The result has been a dangerous world in which, all too often, rulers of nations (especially, the rulers of the great powers) simply go their own way—squandering their resources on never-ending military buildups, invading other nations, and massacring civilian populations.


    In the context of this continuing disaster, wouldn’t it make sense to eliminate the veto in the Security Council? After all, there is no justifiable reason why great powers—and particularly individual great powers—should be legally accorded the right to frustrate the wishes of virtually the entire international community. Although scrapping the veto is no panacea for conflicts among nations, it seems likely to result in a more equitable and more secure world.


    Furthermore, even if the veto were abolished, the great powers would still hold onto their permanent seats in the Security Council, thus ensuring that they would retain—albeit in a more democratic fashion—some influence over world affairs. And if, as supporters of the current structure insist, it is important to match authority with power, why not elevate additional great powers to permanent membership in the Security Council? Nations that have sometimes been mentioned as useful additions to that UN entity include Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan.


    Plagued by dangerous arms races, bloody wars, and human rights violations, the world desperately needs an alternative form of governance. The great powers have the power to provide it, but not the legitimacy to do so, while the United Nations has the legitimacy but not the power. Hasn’t the time finally arrived to supplement the legitimacy of the United Nations with enough power to maintain international peace and security?

  • Tone Deaf US Foreign Policy Announcements Create New Provocations in Asia

    This article originally appeared in the January 2012 newsletter of the Global Network Against Nuclear Weapons and Power in Space.


    Alice Slater


    On UN Day, at a panel on Nuclear Disarmament, Secretary General Ban-ki Moon spoke about his 2008 five point proposal for nuclear disarmament, including the requirement for negotiations to ban the bomb.  It was dismaying  when the next speaker, a retired US Air Force General, Michal Mosley, breezily assured  the audience and his fellow panelists that it certainly was now possible to rid the world of nuclear weapons, since atomic bomb technology is thoroughly out of date.  He boasted that today “we” have long range attack weapons of such “unbelievable precision and lethality” that we no longer need nuclear weapons in the US arsenal.  Our conventional weapons are ever so superior to those of any other nation.  He said this as his fellow co-panelists, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors, took in the full import of his braggadocio, to my extreme embarrassment as a US citizen.  Did the General consider for a moment the effect his words were having on the Ambassadors and the other non-US participants in the meeting?  His astonishing disregard for the effect of such provocative war talk on our fellow earth mates seems to be a major failure of our “tin ear” foreign policy.


    Hillary Clinton proclaimed a similarly tone-deaf policy in an article in November’s Foreign Affairs, “America’s Pacific Century”,    remarking that now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were winding down, we were at a “pivot point”   and that “one of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will be to lock in a substantially increased investment—diplomatic economic, strategic and otherwise—in the Asia-Pacific region.”  Calling for “forward-deployed” diplomacy, she defined it to include “forging a broad-based military presence” in Asia…that would be “as durable and as consistent with American interests and values as the web we have built across the Atlantic…capable of deterring provocation from the full spectrum of state and non-state actors” She added that just as our NATO alliance “has paid off many times over…the time has come to make similar investments as a Pacific power”.


    Citing our Treaty alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand as the “fulcrum for our strategic turn to the Asian-Pacific”, she also spoke of the need to expand our relationships to include India, Indonesia Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Mongolia Vietnam, and the Pacific Island countries.  While acknowledging “fears and misperceptions that “linger on both sides of the Pacific”, stating that “some in our country see China’s progress as a threat to the United States; some in China worry that America seeks to constrain China’s growth” she blithely asserted, “we reject both those views …a thriving America is good for China and a thriving China is good for America”.  This said as the United States aggressively lines up a host of new nations in an expanded Pacific military alliance, providing them with missile defenses, ships, and warplanes, encircling China.   What is she thinking?


    Shortly after Clinton’s article appeared, Obama went to Australia to open up a new military base there with a token 250 US soldiers, and a promise of 2500 to come with plans for joint military training, promising that “we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” He also adopted the “Manila Declaration”, pledging closer military ties with the Philippines and announced the sale of 24 F-16 fighter jets to Indonesia. Clinton just paid a visit to Myanmar, long allied with China, to re-establish relations there.


    In her article’s conclusion Clinton bragged, “Our military is by far the strongest and our economy is by far the largest in the world.   Our workers are the most productive.   Our universities are renowned the world over.   So there should be no doubt that America has the capacity to secure and sustain our global leadership in this century as we did in the last.”  Didn’t anyone tell her that the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest in the 52 years the census bureau has been publishing those figures?  Or that the United States deteriorating transportation infrastructure will cost the economy more than 870,000 jobs and would suppress US economic growth by $3.1 trillion by 2020, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers?  


    The tone-deaf quality of US foreign policy pronouncements is like an infant who pulls the covers over his head to play peek-a-boo, thinking he can’t be seen so long as he can’t see out.  China has responded as would be expected.  A Pentagon report warned Congress that China was increasing its naval power and investing in high-tech weaponry to extend its reach in the Pacific and beyond. It ramped up efforts to produce anti-ship missiles to knock out aircraft carriers, improved targeting radar, expanding its fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and warships and  making advances in satellite technology and cyber warfare.   What did we expect?  And now, having provoked China to beef up its military assets, the warmongers in the US can frighten the public into supporting the next wild burgeoning arms race in the Pacific and what appears to be endless war.


    This month, Mikhail Gorbachev, in The Nation, observed the US elite’s “winner’s complex” after the end of the Cold War, and the references to the US as a “hyperpower”, capable of creating “a new kind of empire”.  He said, “[t]hinking in such terms in our time is a delusion.  No wonder that the imperial project failed and that it soon became clear that it was a mission impossible even for the United States.”  The opportunity to build a “truly new world order was lost.”  The US decision to expand NATO eastward “usurped the functions of the United Nations and thus weakened it. We are engulfed in global turmoil, “drifting in uncharted waters.  The global economic crisis of 2008 made that abundantly clear.” 


    Sadly, the powers in control of US public policy and their far-flung global allies appear to have learned nothing from the extraordinary opportunity we lost for a more peaceful world at the Cold War’s end.  We are now repeating those expansionary designs in Asia, and “thus we continue to drift towards unparalleled catastrophe” as Albert Einstein observed when we split the atom which “changed everything save man’s mode of thinking”.

  • Wishes for the New Year

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.


    David KriegerMay we embrace peace with justice.  May we speak for it and stand for it.  May we make our voices heard and our presence felt.


    May we awaken to the possibilities of our greatness if we stop wasting our resources on war and its preparation. 


    May we end all war in the new year.  Wars always end.  May we end them sooner and lessen the toll of death and suffering.  May we refrain from initiating new wars.


    May we dramatically reduce military spending and reallocate the funds to meeting social needs – the needs of the poor, the hungry, the homeless and those without health care.


    May we end the arms trade, and make pariahs of those who profit from it and from war.


    May we stop provoking a new nuclear arms race with the Russians by the expansion of NATO and deployment of missile defense installations up to their borders in Europe.


    May we recognize the omnicidal threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity and all life.  May we take these weapons off hair-trigger alert, declare and enforce policies of No First Use, and begin negotiations for a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.


    May we uphold and strengthen human rights for all people in all places.  May we seek justice for the oppressed. 


    May we stop to appreciate the beauty and abundance of our amazing planet, our most important common heritage.  May we make it a healthy planet for all life by restoring the purity of its air and water, the lushness of its forests and the richness of its soil. 


    May we demonstrate a decent respect for the lessons of history and for all who have preceded us on our unique planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life.


    May we show by our actions that we take seriously our role as trustees of Earth for our children and their children and all children of the future – that they may enjoy a peaceful and harmonious life on our planetary home.

  • The End of Another War

    The Iraq War, from its outset, disgraced America by its flaunting of international law.  Now the war is over, but the disgrace, destruction and trauma live on. 


    After nearly nine years, America declared an end to the war and withdrew its last troops in December 2011, leaving behind a fortress embassy, mercenary guards and a country in shambles. There is no way to paint a happy or proud face on this war.  It was unnecessary.  It was illegal.  It was immoral.  And it was cruel.


    There was never a link between Iraq and 9/11 or between Iraq and al Qaeda.  Iraq had no program to develop weapons of mass destruction.  Our leaders were told this by the United Nations weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq.  When George W. Bush initiated the war against Iraq in March 2003, he did so with lies and a “shock and awe” attack on Baghdad.  He had no authorization from the United Nations Security Council. 


    During the nearly nine years the war dragged on, 4,487 American soldiers were killed and more than 32,000 were wounded.   By the Pentagon’s count, more than 100,000 Iraqis were killed and, by other counts, more than a million Iraqis died as a result of the war.  Some five million Iraqis were displaced from their homes. 


    America financed the war on credit, borrowing approximately $1 trillion to pursue it.  Some economists predict that the full costs of the war – with ongoing medical care for veterans and interest on the increase in the national debt due to the war – will run to three to four trillion dollars.  It is a war that is adding to our economic woes now and for which our children and their children will continue to pay far into the future. 


    It was Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell’s war, all individuals who bear the burden lightly.  In a just world, they would each have a place on the docket reserved for the worst criminal cases, for aggressive war – as pointed out at the Nuremberg tribunals – is the worst of crimes.  But this is not a just world.  It is a world where innocent children suffer for the arrogance of smug and mendacious leaders. 


    This war was possible because too many Americans are complacent and, without fully realizing what is at stake, are misled into war.  It was possible also because we have a volunteer military that can be manipulated and abused into committing the atrocity of aggressive war – what at the Nuremberg tribunals was called a “crime against peace.”


    When I think of the Iraq War, many different images come to mind, but two stand out: One is of George Bush’s clueless and self-satisfied smirk; the other is of the sad and frightened face of Ali Ismail Abbas, a 12-year-old Iraqi child who lost both of his arms and his father, his pregnant mother, his brother and 13 other members of his family in the war.  Here are two poems, written during the course of the war, one for Mr. Bush and one for Ali Ismail Abbas.





    GREETING BUSH IN BAGHDAD


    “This is a farewell kiss, you dog.”
      — Muntader al-Zaidi


    You are a guest in my country, unwanted
    surely, but still a guest.


    You stand before us waiting for praise,
    but how can we praise you?


    You come after your planes have rained
    death on our cities. 


    Your soldiers broke down our doors,
    humiliated our men, disgraced our women.


    We are not a frontier town and you are not
    our marshal.


    You are a torturer.  We know you force water
    down the throats of our prisoners.


    We have seen the pictures of our naked prisoners
    threatened by your snarling dogs.


    You are a maker of widows and orphans, 
    a most unwelcome guest.


    I have only this for you, my left shoe that I hurl
    at your lost and smirking face,


    and my right shoe that I throw at your face
    of no remorse. 


       David Krieger





    TO AN IRAQI CHILD


      for Ali Ismail Abbas


    So you wanted to be a doctor?


    It was not likely that your dreams
    would have come true anyway.


    We didn’t intend for our bombs to find you.


    They are smart bombs, but they didn’t know
    that you wanted to be a doctor.


    They didn’t know anything about you
    and they know nothing of love.


    They cannot be trusted with dreams.


    They only know how to find their targets
    and explode in fulfillment. 


    They are gray metal casings with violent hearts, 
    doing only what they were created to do. 


    It isn’t their fault that they found you. 


    Perhaps you were not meant to be a doctor.


       David Krieger





  • Vietnam Ambush

    This article was originally published by Truthout.


    David KriegerIn the 1960s, the United States of America conscripted young men into its military forces.  The head of Selective Service, which imposed conscription, was General Lewis B. Hershey.  Assisted by local Draft Boards, he gobbled up young men and put them in uniforms.  Then they were trained to kill.


    Most young men were edgy and wary about conscription, particularly after it became apparent that the military’s destination of choice was the jungles of Vietnam.  To receive a deferment and remain beyond the military’s clutches, one had to stay in college or graduate school.  Dick Cheney, one of the subsequent great warmongers of our time, successfully used college deferments to stay out of the military until he qualified for a marriage deferment and then a deferment for having a child.  He always managed to stay one step ahead of the military’s grasp.


    Other means of escaping being drafted into the military were failing one’s physical examination, claiming to be gay and conscientious objection.  All were difficult.  One rumor at the time was that if you drank enough Coke fast enough it would raise your blood pressure to the point you’d fail your physical.  This seemed more like an urban legend than fact.  Not many young men were secure enough to use homosexuality as a reason for staying out of the military, and the criteria for conscientious objection were rigid and based in traditional religious practices that objected to killing.  The truth was that most of us were naïve and hadn’t given much thought to avoiding military “service.”  That changed as the war in Vietnam heated up and expanded.


    The generation before us had fought in World War II, which seemed like a good war, pitting democracy against fascism (Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo).  More recently, there had been the war in Korea, which was touted as a fight for democracy against communism.  There was precedent for young men to go docilely into the US military and do its bidding.  And then, along came Vietnam, and Lyndon Johnson’s lies about the Tonkin Gulf incident and General William Westmoreland (“General Wastemoremen”) always seeing a light at the end of the tunnel – all he needed was more conscripts.


    The net of conscription ensnared many of us.  I was one.  Another was Daniel Seidenberg, Jr., who received his draft notice at the age of 19 in the winter of 1967.  He was just out of high school and was a surfer.  When his notice came, he thought about escaping to Canada, but, after visiting Canada, decided against it.  Instead, he joined the regular army, having been promised by the recruiter that he would not be sent to Vietnam.  Despite the promise, after being trained as an infantryman, he was sent to Vietnam.  He ended up with near-fatal head wounds that have left him disabled for life. 


    In 2010, Seidenberg published a book he wrote about his military experience in Vietnam.  The book, titled Vietnam Ambush, confirms the worst fears of those of us who didn’t go to fight in that needless, reckless and lawless war.  It is a well-written account of the war from the perspective of a soldier in the field.  It should be read by every young American who thinks war might be glorious.  In fact, it is a cautionary tale that should be read by young people throughout the world.  It takes the adventure and heroics out of war and tells it like it really is, a dirty business in which the old send the young to fight, kill and die in far-off lands – in the case of the Vietnam War, to fight in humid jungles, which US military planes were busy defoliating with the poisonous chemicals napalm and Agent Orange. 


    Here is how Seidenberg describes his dilemma as a US soldier in Vietnam on the opening page of his book:



    I was a combat infantryman in Vietnam.  We were shooting dice for our souls.  Our very spirits were on the line, if we survived.


    No one could say what we were fighting for.  The consensus was that our purpose was to simply survive it all.  I knew that merely surviving would not be enough.  I had to make sure that I survived with a clean conscience.


    What good is living, if you wind up hating yourself?  And I didn’t want to be responsible for any crimes.


    In a war fought entirely in cold blood, keeping a clean conscience was not easy.  Simply staying alive was not easy.


    Although today there is no longer conscription, there is instead a “poverty draft,” which makes the military an economically-attractive option for escaping poverty.  Being put into a killing zone makes it difficult to not become a killer, if only to stay alive oneself.  Should we allow ourselves to be used as tools in war?  Should we not fight against militarism and those who, like Dick Cheney, promote it?  Should we not refuse to subordinate our consciences to leaders who lie us into war? 


    Vietnam Ambush is a short book.  It is written in simple prose.  It tells the truth.  It reminds us that our society has corrupted its youth with war.  It reminds us that war steals from the young – their youth and their conscience.  It reminds us about the importance of having political leadership that is decent and truthful, not deceitful and dishonest.  It reminds us that war is not a game played on a field of battle; it has consequences that last for lifetimes.  War traumatizes young men and women.  It kills and maims soldiers and civilians alike.  It reminds us to choose peace.

  • Occupy Peace

    David Krieger


    This article was originally published by Truthout.


    The Occupy Movement is demonstrating its durability and perseverance.  Like a Japanese Daruma doll, each time it is knocked off balance it serenely pops back up.  The movement has been seeking justice for the 99 percent, and justice is an essential element of peace. 


    For decades, our country has been in permanent preparation for war, spending over half of the total annual discretionary funds that Congress allocates on “defense,” our euphemism for war.  World military expenditures exceed $1.5 trillion annually, and the US spends more than half of this amount, more than the rest of the world combined.


    The US has been engaged in wars around the globe from Korea to Vietnam to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya.  In all of these wars, many in the one percent reap financial gains.  Many large corporations, such as Halliburton, formerly led by Dick Cheney, are the beneficiaries of lucrative government contracts that support war, while it is mainly the poor who are enlisted to fight, kill and die in our wars.  War is a surefire way of transferring wealth up the social ladder. 


    It is time to wake up to being used as tools in warfare while others profit.  War is not an effective or reasonable way to settle disputes.  It uses up resources and destroys human lives.  In war, people are expendable.  Civilians all too easily become “collateral damage.”  In the Nuclear Age, civilization itself could become collateral damage.


    As President Eisenhower pointed out in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”  How little our politicians have responded to the deep concern of this former military leader.


    War is costly not only in dollars, but on our national psyche.  We slaughtered innocent men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then celebrated our prowess.  We went to war in Vietnam based on lies, killing millions of Vietnamese and dropping Napalm and Agent Orange on them, while they struggled for their freedom and independence.  Ultimately, after the death of more than 58,000 Americans, we withdrew in defeat, declaring victory.  We seemingly learned little that is meaningful from the experience, as we continue to send our soldiers to fight and die in far-off lands, and still based on lies.  Enough is enough. 


    How do we occupy peace?  First, we change our modes of thinking and stop basing our self-worth as a nation on our military prowess.  Second, we bring our troops home from exploitative foreign wars.  Third, we seek peaceful solutions to conflicts.  Fourth, we make our priority justice, and peace will follow.  Fifth, we work to end deaths due to starvation and preventable diseases rather than inflicting deaths by high altitude bombing and drone attacks.  Sixth, we take the lead in abolishing nuclear weapons so no other cities or countries will suffer the fate of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Seventh, we reallocate our resources to health, education and ending poverty rather than continuing to gorge the military beast until it is too fat to move.


    War is a place of fear and fear is a place of borders.  Fear requires us to dehumanize our enemies and, in the process, to dehumanize ourselves.  Borders should not provide a justification for dehumanization.  That is a trick of militarists, who are in need of enemies, real or imagined, to make the war system work for them.  But there is another way to deal with enemies, and that is to turn them into friends by our actions.


    We need to stop fearing each other and treat each other with kindness.  Consideration for the 99 percent does not stop at a country’s border.  We are all humans together and we need each other to be fully human.  We need to embrace our common humanity.  In the Nuclear Age, war is far too dangerous, having the potential to end civilization and most life on the planet.  Peace is an imperative.  We need to find a way to occupy peace, which begins in our hearts and must expand to encompass the world. 

  • 2011 Evening for Peace Message

    Our theme tonight is “From Hiroshima to Hope.” 


    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the end of a terrible war, more costly in human life than any previous war in human history.  The atomic bombings also marked the beginning of the Nuclear Age, an age characterized by its immense destructive power, a power that could leave civilization in shambles.


    In a mad arms race between the US and USSR between 1945 and 1990, nuclear weapons were created and tested that were thousands of times more powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the height of the nuclear arms race in 1986, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, with humanity precariously balanced on the rim of a nuclear precipice.  Today, more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, there are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine countries.


    Nuclear Age Peace Foundation


    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was created in 1982 to confront the challenges of this new era dominated by nuclear threat.  Our mission at the Foundation is: “To educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders.” We do this in many action-oriented ways, including through our Action Alert Network, Peace Leadership Program and this Evening for Peace.


    We hope that all of you with us this evening, and particularly the students, will be inspired to become Peace Leaders.  We need you and the world needs you.


    In this past year, the Foundation held a conference on the Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence at which we took a hard look at the myths surrounding nuclear deterrence and developed the Santa Barbara Declaration, Reject Nuclear Deterrence: An Urgent Call to Action. This Declaration was placed in the Congressional Record by Representative Lois Capps.


    We also worked with the Swiss government in holding a conference at the United Nations in Geneva on the need to lower the alert status of nuclear weapons.  There are still some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.  This is truly MAD.


    We held another conference in Geneva this year supported by the government of Kazakhstan on the need to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force.  President Clinton signed this treaty in 1996, but the Senate voted down ratification in 1999 and still has not ratified it 15 years after it was signed. 


    The Foundation’s membership has grown to nearly 50,000. We have more than 2,500 participants in our Peace Leadership program. More than 600,000 unique viewers visit our websites annually. We have sent more than 70,000 messages on timely nuclear issues to political leaders this year through our Action Alert Network, and we’ve had some recent successes, including stopping a missile launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the International Day of Peace.


    We have also networked with like-minded organizations throughout the world on our common goal of achieving a more peaceful and nuclear weapon-free world.  In addition, 12 hardworking and committed interns from around the country have participated in many aspects of the Foundation’s work in 2011.


    The Hibakusha


    In all our work at the Foundation, we have taken strength from the spirit of Hiroshima and its survivors, the hibakusha.  Hiroshima is more than a city. As the first city to be attacked by a nuclear bomb, it is a symbol of the wanton destructiveness of nuclear weapons.  Along with the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki three days later, some 220,000 people died by the end of 1945 as a result of the two atomic bombings.


    The survivors of the bombings, the hibakusha, have had an unconquerable spirit of hope and commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons. They have not only rebuilt their flattened cities and their lives, but they have taken it upon themselves to speak out so that their past does not become the future of some other city or of humanity as a whole. The hibakusha have said, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist.” They have stood firmly for a human future, seeking the abolition of all nuclear weapons. 


    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation we share the passion, commitment and hope of the hibakusha for achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. 


    Shigeko Sasamori, thank you for all you’ve done.  Your life and the lives of Kaz Suyeishi and Kikuko Otake, and all the other hibakusha you represent this evening give us hope and strength to persevere. 


    So does the life of our next honoree.


    Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba


    It is now my privilege to introduce Tadatoshi Akiba, the recipient of the Foundation’s 2011 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.  In his early career, he was a professor of mathematics at Tufts University and later a professor of humanities at Hiroshima Shudo University.  He served in the Japanese Diet, Japan’s House of Representatives, from 1990 to 1999.  He then served as the Mayor of Hiroshima from 1999 to 2011.  During his 12 years as mayor, he served as the president of Mayors for Peace, and oversaw the growth of this organization from some 440 members to nearly 5,000.  Under Mayor Akiba’s leadership, Mayors for Peace initiated the 2020 Vision Campaign, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons by the year 2020, and also the campaign, Cities Are Not Targets, a petition drive that asserts, “No!  You may not target cities.  You may not target children.”
    For his work for peace, Mayor Akiba has received many awards, including the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Award, also known as the Asian Nobel Prize.


    I have known Mayor Akiba since shortly after he became mayor, when I visited him in Hiroshima.  I have admired his energy and eloquence on behalf of the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Mayors for Peace.  He has given leadership to mayors throughout the world to take a stand for abolishing nuclear weapons.  He is an honorable man who is dedicated to eliminating the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. 


    On behalf of the Directors and members of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, I am pleased to present the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2011 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award to Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba.