Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Peace

  • Five Years of Failure

    Article originally published on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site

    If George Bush and Tony Blair had presided as CEOs over deceptive and fraudulent practices in the City comparable to those they are guilty of with regard to Iraq, they would have been immediately and unceremoniously sacked.

    Five years on, the legacy of the Iraq war is now clear. Let us look at the balance sheet.

    Based on an extrapolation from the figures of the Lancet study, more than 1 million Iraqi civilians have died – a figure that might even eclipse the genocide in Rwanda.

    In terms of casualties, 3979 US soldiers have died to date, and almost 30,000 have been seriously wounded.

    Four million refugees have been created. Two million of these have fled the country altogether; 2 million have been internally displaced.

    According to Joseph Stiglitz, the combined cost to the UK for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan comes to some £10bn, over £3bn of that having been spent in the last year alone. Based on estimates from the congressional budget office, the cost of the war to the US is in the trillions.

    Massive human rights abuses have been permitted and even perpetrated by the occupying nations. These include the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the Haditha killings of 24 civilians, the use of white phosphorous, the gang rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl and the murder of her family in Mahmoudiya, and the bombing and shooting of civilians in Mukaradeeb.

    Finally, the price of oil has quadrupled since 2002. Today it is almost $110 a barrel.

    What is so astonishing about these stories and statistics is that the politicians responsible for them have not been held accountable, despite the fact that between 65% and 70% of the population in this country opposed the war, and despite the fact that the war has been an unqualified disaster.

    We have entered a dangerous period in world politics, one in which our politicians are not being held accountable for their mistakes or for their lies.

    Tony Blair’s casual attitude to the rule of international law was demonstrated again this week when the foreign secretary, David Miliband, admitted to parliament that Britain assisted in the extraordinary rendition of US detainees to face uncertain treatment by foreign interrogators in foreign jails in 2002.

    We have become complicit in a series of secret, underhand “dirty tactics” in America’s so-called war on terror. This must stop now.

    Iraq was from the outset an immoral, illegal and unwinnable war. We did not provide enough troops or equipment, and we did not provide sufficient resources to back the civilians on the ground.

    We have failed to provide security. We have failed to provide good governance. We have failed in our efforts at reconstruction.

    Iraq today is less secure and less stable than it was under Saddam Hussein, a brutal dictator. Even under him, Iraq did not have 2 million people flee the country and 2 million people internally displaced.

    The failure is such that, according to an Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies poll in December 2006, 90% of Iraqis preferred Iraq under Saddam.

    What are our forces actually doing in southern Iraq? They have not been able to prevent the slaughter of the Iraqi people. The only reason, I would suggest, that Prime Minister Brown remains in Iraq is to provide camouflage for the American presence.

    So we must withdraw, and redeploy our forces somewhere in the world where we are able to do good. Continuing this war will further destabilise this region.

    In January 2006, General Sir Michael Rose called for Tony Blair’s impeachment over Iraq. I would make a different, more modest claim on Blair’s successor: Prime Minister Brown, I urge you and the British government to announce the date of our withdrawal from Iraq, and to do so today.

    I agree wholeheartedly with the statement by Amnesty International this week that on top of a much-needed independent enquiry, the government should unambiguously condemn all “renditions”, secret transfers and the programme of “ghost detentions”.

    History should have taught us by now that we will not bring democracy at gunpoint.

    Surely it is time now to admit that the war was a disaster. I urge Brown to have the strength and the integrity to do the right thing, to admit the mistakes of his predecessor and to withdraw completely and immediately from Iraq.

    At a press conference held to promote the Stop the War Coalition’s fifth anniversary protest march in London tomorrow, I called on the public not to vote for any MP who refuses to give his support to a full parliamentary enquiry. Politicians must be held to account for this colossal failure.

    Bianca Jagger is Chair of the World Future Council.

  • Why Today’s Peace Activists Should Not Be Discouraged: An Example from 1958

    Originally published on History News Network

    After nearly five years of bloody, costly war in Iraq, with no end in sight, many peace activists feel discouraged. Protest against the war and the rise of antiwar public opinion seem to have had little effect upon government policy.

    But, in fact, it is too early to say. Who really knows what impact peace activism and widespread peace sentiment have had in the past five years or will have in the near future? Certainly not historians, who will spend decades pulling together such information from once secret government records and after-the-fact interviews.

    What historians can do, of course, is assess the impact of popular protest on events in the more distant past. And here the record provides numerous intriguing illustrations of the power of protest.

    One example along these lines occurred fifty years ago, in 1958, when the Soviet and U.S. governments stopped their nuclear explosions and commenced negotiations for a nuclear test ban treaty.

    Ever since the first explosion of an atomic bomb, at Alamogordo, in July 1945, the great powers had been engaged in a deadly race to develop, test, and deploy what they considered the ultimate weapon, the final guarantee of their “national security.” The United States, of course, had the lead, and used this with devastating effect upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, in 1949, the U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons was cracked by the Soviet Union. In 1952, the British also entered the nuclear club. As the nuclear arms race accelerated, all three powers worked on producing a hydrogen bomb–a weapon with a thousand times the destructive power of the bomb that annihilated Hiroshima. Within a short time, all of them were testing H-bombs for their rapidly-growing nuclear arsenals.

    The nuclear tests–which, by late 1958, numbered at least 190 (125 by the United States, 44 by the Soviet Union, and 21 by Britain)–were conducted mostly in the atmosphere and, in these cases, were often quite dramatic. Enormous explosions rent the earth, sending vast mushroom clouds aloft that scattered radioactive debris (fallout) around the globe. The H-bomb test of March 1, 1954, for example–which the U.S. government conducted at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands, a U.N. trust territory in the Pacific—was so powerful that it overran the danger zone of 50,000 square miles (an area roughly the size of New England). Generating vast quantities of radioactive fallout that landed on inhabited islands and fishermen outside this zone, it forced the evacuation of U.S. weather station personnel and Marshall Islanders (many of whom subsequently suffered a heavy incidence of radiation-linked illnesses, including cancer and leukemia). In addition, the Bikini test overtook a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, which received a heavy dose of radioactive ash that sickened the crew and, eventually, killed one of its members.

    Recognizing that these nuclear tests were not only paving the way for mass destruction in the future, but were already beginning to generate sickness and death, large numbers of people around the world began to resist. Prominent intellectuals, such Albert Schweitzer, Bertrand Russell, and Linus Pauling, issued public appeals to halt nuclear testing. Pacifists sailed protest vessels into nuclear test zones in an attempt to disrupt planned weapons explosions. Citizens’ antinuclear organizations sprang up, including the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (better known as SANE) in the United States, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Great Britain, and dozens of others in assorted nations. In the United States, the 1956 Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson, made a halt to nuclear testing a key part of his campaign. Antinuclear pressures even developed within Communist dictatorships. In the Soviet Union, top scientists, led by Andrei Sakharov, appealed to Soviet leaders to halt nuclear tests.

    Polls during 1957 and 1958 in nations around the globe reported strong public opposition to nuclear testing. In the United States, 63 percent of respondents favored a nuclear test ban; in Japan, 89 percent supported a worldwide ban on the testing and manufacture of nuclear weapons; in Britain, 76 percent backed an agreement to end nuclear tests; and in India (with the survey sample limited to New Delhi), 90 percent thought the United States should unilaterally halt its nuclear tests. In late 1957, pollsters reported that the proportion of the population viewing H-bomb testing as harmful to future generations stood at 64 percent in West Germany, 76 percent in Norway, 65 percent in Sweden, 59 percent in the Netherlands, 60 percent in Belgium, 73 percent in France, 67 percent in Austria, and 55 percent in Brazil.

    Within the ranks of the U.S. government, this public aversion to nuclear testing was regarded as bad news, indeed. The Eisenhower administration was firmly committed to nuclear weapons as the central component of its national security strategy. Thus, halting nuclear testing was viewed as disastrous. In early 1956, Lewis Strauss–the chair of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the top figure in setting the administration’s nuclear weapons policy–insisted: “This nonsense about ceasing tests (that is tantamount to saying ceasing the development) of our nuclear weapons plays into the hands of the Soviets.” The United States, he told Eisenhower, should hold nuclear tests “whenever an idea has been developed which is ready for test.”

    And yet, other administration officials felt hard-pressed by the force of public opinion. In a memo written in June 1955, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles noted that, although the United States needed a nuclear arsenal, “the frightful destructiveness of modern weapons creates an instinctive abhorrence to them.” Indeed, there existed “a popular and diplomatic pressure for limitation of armament that cannot be resisted by the United States without our forfeiting the good will of our allies and the support of a large part of our own people.” Consequently, “we must . . . propose or support some plan for the limitation of armaments.”

    But Dulles equivocated over specific plans, and the administration increasingly felt the heat. In September 1956, with Stevenson’s call for an end to nuclear testing now part of the presidential election campaign, Eisenhower ordered an administrative study of a test ban, citing “the rising concern of people everywhere over the effect of radiation from tests, their reaction each time a test was reported, and their extreme nervousness over the prospective consequences of nuclear war.” Given opposition from other officials, this study, too, went nowhere. Even so, Eisenhower remained gravely concerned about the unpopularity of nuclear testing. In a meeting with Edward Teller and other nuclear weapons enthusiasts in June 1957, the president told them that “we are . . . up against an extremely difficult world opinion situation,” and “the United States could [not] permit itself to be ‘crucified on a cross of atoms.’ ” There was not only “the question of world opinion . . . but an actual division of American opinion . . . as to the harmful effects of testing.”

    By early 1958, the outside pressures were becoming so powerful that Dulles began a campaign to halt U.S. nuclear tests unilaterally. Having learned, through the CIA, that the Soviet government was about to announce a unilateral suspension of its tests, he called together top administration officials on March 23 and 24 and proposed that Eisenhower issue a statement saying that, after the U.S. government completed its nuclear test series that year, there would be no further U.S. nuclear testing. “It would make a great diplomatic and propaganda sensation to the advantage of the United States,” Dulles explained, and “I feel desperately the need for some important gesture in order to gain an effect on world opinion.” But Strauss and Defense Department officials fought back ferociously, while Eisenhower, typically, remained indecisive. Testing was “not evil,” the president opined, “but the fact is that people have been brought to believe that it is.” What should be done in these circumstances? Nothing, it seemed. Eisenhower remained unwilling to challenge the nuclear hawks in his administration.

    However, after March 31, 1958, when the Soviet government announced its unilateral testing moratorium, the U.S. hard line could no longer be sustained. With the Soviet halt to nuclear testing, recalled one U.S. arms control official, “the Russians boxed us in.” On April 30, Dulles reported that an advisory committee on nuclear testing that he had convened had concluded that, if U.S. nuclear testing continued, “the slight military gains” would “be outweighed by the political losses, which may well culminate in the moral isolation of the United States.” The following morning, Eisenhower telephoned Dulles and expressed his agreement.

    Thereafter, the president held steady. Meeting on August 12 with Teller and other officials, he reacted skeptically to their enthusiastic reports about recent weapons tests. “The new thermonuclear weapons are tremendously powerful,” he observed, but “they are not . . . as powerful as is world opinion today in obliging the United States to follow certain lines of policy. Ten days later, after a showdown with the Defense Department and the AEC, Eisenhower publicly announced that, as of October 31, the United States would suspend nuclear testing and begin negotiations for a test ban treaty.

    As a result, U.S., Soviet, and British nuclear explosions came to a halt in the fall of 1958. Although the French government conducted its first nuclear tests in early 1960 and the three earlier nuclear powers resumed nuclear testing in late 1961, these actions proved to be the last gasps of the nuclear hawks before the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963–a measure resulting from years of public protest against nuclear testing. Against this backdrop, the 1958 victory for the peace movement and public opinion should be regarded as an important break in the nuclear arms race and in the Cold War.

    Thus, if peace activists feel discouraged today by the continuation of the war in Iraq, they might well take heart at the example of their predecessors, who recognized that making changes in powerful institutions requires great perseverance. They might also consider the consequences of doing nothing. As the great abolitionist leader, Frederick Douglass, put it in 1857: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

    Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany.

  • How the Iraq War’s $2 Trillion Cost to the US Could Have Been Spent

    In war, things are rarely what they seem.

    Back in 2003, in the days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon adamantly insisted that the war would be a relatively cheap one. Roughly $50 billion is all it would take to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, it said.

    We now know this turned out to be the first of many miscalculations. Approaching its fifth year, the war in Iraq has cost American taxpayers nearly $500 billion, according to the non-partisan U.S.-based research group National Priorities Project. That number is growing every day.

    But it’s still not even close to the true cost of the war. As the invasion’s price tag balloons, economists and analysts are examining the entire financial burden of the Iraq campaign, including indirect expenses that Americans will be paying long after the troops come home. What they’ve come up with is staggering. Calculations by Harvard’s Linda Bilmes and Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remain most prominent. They determined that, once you factor in things like medical costs for injured troops, higher oil prices and replenishing the military, the war will cost America upwards of $2 trillion. That doesn’t include any of the costs incurred by Iraq, or America’s coalition partners.

    “Would the American people have had a different attitude toward going to war had they known the total cost?” Bilmes and Stiglitz ask in their report. “We might have conducted the war in a manner different from the way we did.”

    It’s hard to comprehend just how much money $2 trillion is. Even Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, would marvel at this amount. But, once you begin to look at what that money could buy, the worldwide impact of fighting this largely unpopular war becomes clear.

    Consider that, according to sources like Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs, the Worldwatch Institute, and the United Nations, with that same money the world could:

    Eliminate extreme poverty around the world (cost $135 billion in the first year, rising to $195 billion by 2015.)

    Achieve universal literacy (cost $5 billion a year.)

    Immunize every child in the world against deadly diseases (cost $1.3 billion a year.)

    Ensure developing countries have enough money to fight the AIDS epidemic (cost $15 billion per year.)

    In other words, for a cost of $156.3 billion this year alone – less than a tenth of the total Iraq war budget – we could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, while making huge leaps in the battle against AIDS, saving millions of lives.

    Then the remaining money could be put toward the $40 billion to $60 billion annually that the World Bank says is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, established by world leaders in 2000, to tackle everything from gender inequality to environmental sustainability.

    The implications of this cannot be underestimated. It means that a better and more just world is far from within reach, if we are willing to shift our priorities.

    If America and other nations were to spend as much on peace as they do on war, that would help root out the poverty, hopelessness and anti-Western sentiment that can fuel terrorism – exactly what the Iraq war was supposed to do.

    So as candidates spend much of this year vying to be the next U.S. president, what better way to repair its image abroad, tarnished by years of war, than by becoming a leader in global development? It may be too late to turn back the clock to the past and rethink going to war, but it’s not too late for the U.S. and other developed countries to invest in the future.

    Craig and Marc Kielburger are children’s rights activists and co-founded Free The Children, which is active in the developing world. Marc Kielburger is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Board of Directors.

  • Research Shows War Isn’t Caused by Instinct

    Originally published in The Missourian

    When writing or speaking on issues of war and peace, it is not unusual for pundits and others to make the case that war is due primarily to a human instinct that causes nation-states to engage in large scale warfare. Underlying that idea is the notion that human beings have pugnacious inner drives that require an outlet for aggressive behavior if they are to achieve their full potential in a highly competitive world in which people have to dominate others to guarantee their own survival. This theory is often linked to the psychologically and physiologically induced fight-flight reaction process, which provides the necessary adrenaline rush when we are aggressively confronted or personally attacked and enables us to stand and fight or, alternatively, to quickly flee the scene. Conventional wisdom often cites this reaction as the underlying cause for the violent, deadly, large group activity called war.

    In 1986, an international team of biologists, psychologists, ethologists, geneticists and others adopted a statement that rejected biology as the primary cause of war. The “Seville Statement on Violence” has been endorsed by innumerable scientific and scholarly organizations around the world. The following are excerpts from its text: “It is scientifically incorrect to say that we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors. … The fact that warfare has changed so radically over time indicates that it is a product of culture. Its biological connection is primarily through language, which makes possible the coordination of groups, the transmission of technology, and the use of tools. Related Articles

    “War is biologically possible, but it is not inevitable, as evidenced by its variation in occurrence and nature over time and space … It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is caused by ‘instinct’ or any single motivation. … Modern war involves institutional use of personal characteristics such as obedience, suggestibility and idealism; social skills such as language; and rational considerations such as cost-calculation, planning and information processing. The technology of modern war has exaggerated traits associated with violence both in training of combatants and in the preparation of support for war in the general population. As a result of the exaggeration, such traits are often mistaken to be the cause of war rather than the consequences of the process.” To retrieve the entire document go to: www.culture-of-peace.info/ssov-intro.html or search “Seville Statement on Violence.”

    If war is not the direct result of instinct, what is it? According to the late anthropologist Margaret Mead, war is a human invention, and the abolition of large scale international violence requires a replacement invention. For the development of that new invention to be undertaken, people and their leaders must be helped to fully understand the nature and characteristics of the old invention. Only then can a new one be created. Scholars have assumed or determined numerous factors that contribute to the onset and prosecution of war. Some of those factors include: the economic benefits of war profiteering; worst-case philosophy war planning which assumes “there will always be wars and rumors of wars;” evil leaders who seek imperial conquests of other nations; mass frustration of basic human needs of large populations, some of whose members engage in systematic terrorism; strife between and within various religious communities; and several other variables. Given the variety and complexity of these factors, it would seem virtually impossible to ever achieve true peace under the rule of law with justice. Clearly such conditions will not be realized in my lifetime or that of the baby boomers. However, we can sow at least one seed of peace for our children and grandchildren.

    One of the world’s finest peace theorists, the late Dr. Randall Caroline Forsberg, believed that “a single ‘modest’ change could serve as an initial step toward the abolition of war and, ultimately, the permanent abolition of war.” That single modest change would be the development of a commitment in the great majority of the world’s public “to the democratic value that violence is never morally or politically acceptable except when used in defense against violence by others who have not accepted this principle, and who have in fact initiated acts of violence.” Based on this underpinning premise, she and other colleagues have developed a creative step-by-step systematic plan for world disarmament education known as Global Action to Prevent War. For details of the program go to globalactionpw.org. Space will not permit a full explanation of how this plan relates to some of the aforementioned theoretical causes of war. However there is no question in my mind that it provides a sound basis for the initiation of the war replacement invention of which Margaret Mead spoke.

    Bill Wickersham of Columbia is an adjunct professor of Peace Studies at the University of Missouri, a member of Veterans for Peace and a member of the U.S. Steering Committee of Global Action to Prevent War.

  • A Tribute to Ethel Wells

    A Tribute to Ethel Wells

    The world lost a remarkable woman when Ethel Wells died on September 2, 2007.

    Ethel was strong, determined, far-sighted and persistent. She took on tough causes with unwavering commitment: anti-smoking, peace, nuclear disarmament, strengthening international law, ending genocide, and the social responsibility of scientists.

    She believed that it is possible to change the world with dynamic strategies and unflinching honesty. Ethel was always a strategic thinker. She looked for points of leverage.

    Let me give one example of her strategic thinking in action, one that gave her great satisfaction. In the mid-1980s the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation coordinated an International Week for Science and Peace. Ethel reasoned that scientists were at the heart of creating constructive or destructive technologies. She decided that the Foundation should offer a prize for the best proposal for using science for constructive rather than destructive purposes. We received proposals from throughout the world competing for the $50,000 prize that Ethel contributed.

    The winning proposal came from the Hungarian Engineers for Peace. It was a proposal to create an International Network of Engineers for Peace that would link engineers working for peace globally. A short time later the Hungarian Engineers joined with a group of like-minded scientists and established the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Due to Ethel’s continued support and stewardship, that organization continues to thrive, working internationally for disarmament, sustainability and high ethical standards in science.

    Ethel often wrote short and pointed letters to the editor, which she sent to major newspapers across the country. Her letters offered solid perspectives on critical issues related to peace, international law and other issues. Here are a few excerpts:

    February 26, 2004: “The rule of international law must be the basis for the settling of differences between the sovereignties of the world in order to have global stability and world peace.”

    September 7, 2004: “The existence of weapons of mass destruction has outlawed war forever, because Global Genocide is not an option.”

    April 26, 2006: “We need to have an International Law Enforcement Corps under the UN to promptly stop the act of genocide on an emergency basis.”

    In a letter to me dated May 13, 2004, Ethel wrote: “Nuclear weapons are weapons of continual annihilation and total insanity.”

    Ethel believed that Peace was the result of turning the negatives of despair, hate, prejudice, avenging and destructive thought into hope, love, understanding, forgiving and constructive thought.

    Ethel played a very important role in the work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and in my life. When difficult issues arose, she was a person I went to for advice. Without her support, the Foundation would be far less prominent than it is today – perhaps it would not even exist. Her support has been at the heart of any success we have had.

    Ethel made a difference in the world because she chose to make a difference. She could have lived a life of luxury. She chose to live a life of service to humanity. Her choices inspire me. I know they have inspired many others.

    In the daily work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, along with that of ASH and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, her spirit will live on. It is a great spirit, as she was a great woman.

    Below are Letters to the Editor Written by Ethel Wells

    April 26, 2006

    Genocide was the first and most important crime against humanity that was to be wiped out by International Law at the Nuremberg Trials. Too many countries have violated this law over too many years. We need to have an International Law Enforcement Corps under the UN to promptly stop the act of Genocide on an emergency basis.

    May 24, 2004

    The violation of basic human rights by the United States government in the prisons of Iraq clearly indicates the need for International Law to protect human beings from atrocities by any national sovereignty including the U.S.A. International law protecting human rights and the global environment must be above national law and national sovereignty.

    May 13, 2004

    Nuclear weapons are weapons of continual annihilation and total insanity. Bombs and missiles are weapons of mass destruction. There is no honor in any of the above, because the playing fields are not level. There are only mass murderers and innocent, helpless victims in that no-win situation. It behooves all of us to insist on replacing the rule of force with the rule of law for the very survival of us all.

    May 3, 2004

    The U.S. Constitution is the highest legal authority in the United States. President Bush promised to uphold the U.S. Constitution when he was sworn into office. He is governed by that constitution the same as the rest of the United States citizens. The separation of church and state is clearly stated in the U.S. Constitution. It does not separate integrity and state, and that is what has to be remedied. INTEGRITY and STATE must INSEPARABLE be.

    February 26, 2004

    The rule of law is the basis for stability within peaceful sovereignties. The rule of international law must be the basis for the settling of differences between the sovereignties of the world in order to have global stability and world peace. President Bush bypassed due process in Iraq by unilaterally choosing the rule of force and the resulting increased anarchy and worldwide terrorism that is now an increasing threat to all of us.

    November 12, 2003

    The Global Economy needs some global guidelines to protect the global environment, and the basic human rights of workers everywhere who are now classified as slave labor. This is essential for establishing a free world trade market with no tariffs.

    September 8, 2002

    Would a greater military budget have prevented the tragedy of Sept. 11? Do we want to divert $48 billion away from education, public health, Social Security, etc.? Isn’t it time to increase the brain power in government in order to replace the rule of force with the rule of law, worldwide?

    September 3, 2002

    Prior to the Gulf War, genocide made Saddam Hussein a violator of international law and subject to being reprehended by an international tribunal to enforce international law. This violation should have illegitimized him as a head of state and categorized him as an international criminal. A temporary head of state would have had to be provided to carry on. Implementation of the above is difficult. However, military action at this time would only bring us to the same crossroads after further devastating innocent people and their land. Let’s focus on these difficult solutions without repeating the horrible devastations of war.

    February 25, 2002

    When a high government official like Donald Rumsfeld states that he did nothing wrong, after killing a number of innocent people who were actually on our side, I, as an American, cringe at the demonstrated arrogance and lack of compassion that is not typical of the average American. In a democracy, we as Americans, have to correct that false impression some of our government officials are portraying to the rest of the world. We also need to monitor the attitudes of these government officials lest they acquire the attitudes of the very terrorists we are trying to eliminate.

    May 18, 1987

    The philosophy of the Defense Department is to maintain the peace by being strong enough to win a possible war. In the Nuclear Age, however, we cannot maintain the peace by preparing for war, because preparing for war is to prepare for annihilation. So why are we continuing on this path of self destruction?

    The answer is economic necessity in our present war economy. Millions of “gainfully” employed people would be out of work today if the defense industry came to a halt. It is this vital economic need for employment that is largely responsible for the strength of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned our country against before leaving office. So how can we get off this expressway to annihilation?

    One possible answer is to modify the philosophy of the Defense Department to maintaining the peace by actively waging peace, rather than preparing for a war nobody can win. Waging peace would need to include shifting from a war economy bent on destruction to a peace economy aimed at full employment for constructive goals. Here is a challenge for our economists, scientists, politicians and industrialists to work on together for the very preservation of life on earth.

    WAGING PEACE

    The process of actively turning negative thoughts, feelings and actions into positive ones.

    PEACE

    The result of turning these negatives into positives.

    NEGATIVES POSITIVES

    Despair into Hope

    Hate into Love

    Prejudice into Understanding

    Avenging into Forgiving

    Destructive into Constructive

     

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org)

  • Is Peace that Difficult?

    Reprinted from The Age, August 28, 2007 edition.

    At the end of the Cold War there was an opportunity for the world to create a new collective security order. In 1991, after decades of blockages in the Security Council, it authorized armed intervention to stop the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. In the same period, Russia and the United States took steps to reduce the number of deployed non-strategic nuclear weapons: the Chemical Weapons Convention was adopted in 1993, the Non-Proliferation Treaty was prolonged indefinitely after renewed commitments by nuclear weapon states to take get serious about disarmament; a Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty was negotiated and adopted in 1996; and at the review conference of the NPT in 2000, countries agreed on 13 practical steps to disarmament.

    But the window of opportunity soon closed. The US embarked on unilateralism. In 2003, the UN Security Council was said to be irrelevant if it did not agree with the US and its coalition of the willing.

    By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, US confidence and trust in international negotiations, particularly in dealing with disarmament issues, was at a record low. And tensions continue to grow. Instead of negotiations towards disarmament, nuclear weapon states are renewing and modernizing their nuclear arsenals.

    In 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear device. After a US decision to place components of its missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia declared its withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. China has demonstrated its space war capabilities by shooting down one of its own weather satellites.

    These developments are worrying and somewhat paradoxical. At a time when there are no longer any ideological differences between the main powers, when the economic and political interdependence between states and regions reaches new heights, and when the revolution in information technology brings the world into the living rooms of billions of people, we ought to be able to agree on steps to restrain our capacity for war and destruction.

    So, where do we go from here?

    There is some movement indicating that key actors may be moving back to multilateral approaches and diplomacy. The failure and vast human cost of the military adventures in Iraq and Lebanon may have demonstrated the limitations of military strategies to achieve foreign policy objectives. The shift in strategy towards North Korea in negotiations over its nuclear program and the resumption of the six-party talks is encouraging. Waving a big stick may be counterproductive. An alternative path, containing suitable carrots, needs to be offered. It remains to be seen if this approach will be taken also in the case of Iran.

    For the past few years, I have chaired the independent international Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, with 14 experts from different parts of the world. In June 2006, I presented our report, Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear Biological and Chemical Arms. We made 60 recommendations on how to revive disarmament and restore the confidence in the international disarmament and non-proliferation regime.

    The commission urged all states to return to the fundamental undertakings made under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The treaty is based on a double bargain: the non-nuclear weapons states committed themselves not to develop nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapon states committed themselves to negotiate towards disarmament.

    So long as the nuclear weapon states maintain that they need nuclear weapons for their national security, why shouldn’t others? The commission concluded that one of the most important ways to curb weapons’ proliferation is working to avoid states feeling a need to obtain nuclear weapons.

    The co-operative approach needs to be complemented by the enforcement of the test-ban treaty, a cut-off treaty on the production of fissile material for weapons, and effective safeguards and international verification to prevent states as well as non-state actors from acquiring nuclear weapons.

    I hope the window of opportunity is not yet shut. There may still be time to wake up and turn back to co-operative solutions to contemporary security challenges.

    The new generation of political leaders has an unprecedented opportunity to achieve peace through co-operation. We do not have the threat of war between the military powers hanging over our heads. Admittedly, there are flashpoints that need to be dealt with constructively — such as Kashmir, the Middle East, Taiwan and so on. But the numbers of armed conflicts and victims of armed conflicts have decreased. Never before have nations been so interdependent and never before have peoples of the world cared so much for the wellbeing of each other. Prospects are great for a functioning world organization devoted to establishing peace, promoting respect for universal human rights and securing our environment for future generations.

    If all can agree that we need international co-operation and multilateral solutions to protect the earth against climate change and the destruction of our environment, to keep the world economy in balance and moving, and to prevent terrorism and organized crime, then should it be so difficult to conclude that we also need to co-operate to stop shooting at each other?

     

    Dr Hans Blix is president of the World Federation of United Nations Association and was director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997.

  • Mourning the Tragic Death of Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh

    Mourning the Tragic Death of Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation mourns the death of Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh, whose life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet. With this tragedy, the world has lost a great peace leader. As the three-term mayor of the last city to suffer atomic devastation, he became a leading spokesperson for a world free of nuclear weapons.

    Mayor Itoh was the vice president of Mayors for Peace and a leader of their global campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020. The Foundation honored Mayors for Peace and the leadership of Mayor Itoh and Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba with our 2004 World Citizenship Award.

    Mayor Itoh played a significant role in the three Nagasaki Global Citizens’ Assemblies held while he was mayor. The most recent of these took place in fall 2006. In his Opening Address to this Assembly, he underscored his deep commitment, and that of the people of his city, that Nagasaki “must be the last place where an atomic bomb is dropped….” He made this a major goal of his life.

    Along with many of my colleagues working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, I had the pleasure and honor of knowing Mayor Itoh. He was a man with an easy smile and open manner, but one with a firm dedication to building a lasting peace. In Nagasaki, he was a gracious host to so many of us who participated in the Nagasaki Citizens’ Assemblies.

    In tribute to Mayor Itoh, we have included a link below to a reprint of the Nagasaki Peace Declaration, which he delivered on August 9, 2006. I urge you to read it as the final testament and call to action by a great man. Let its words sink into your heart, particularly these words: “The time has come for those nations that rely on the force of nuclear armaments to respectfully heed the voices of peace-loving people, not least the atomic bomb survivors, to strive in good faith for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and to advance towards the complete abolishment of all such weapons.” To achieve this goal will require an active citizenry. Citizens of the nuclear weapons states, and particularly the United States, will have to lead their political leaders.

    In closing his speech, he prayed for the undisturbed repose of those who lost their lives in the atomic bombings and proclaimed Nagasaki’s commitment “to continue to strive for the establishment of lasting world peace.” In honoring Mayor Itoh’s life and commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, let us add our own commitment to this cause so critical to humanity’s future.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

  • Time to Give Thanks

    For many of us in Northern Ireland, and our friends around the World, the TV pictures on Monday 26th March, 2007, of Dr. Ian Paisley, and Gerry Adams, sitting at the same table, and agreeing to share power, starting May 8th, was wonderful, and, I believe, was indeed a time to give thanks. The event was historic and will have given hope to not only many people here in Northern Ireland, but people living in violent conflict situations, such as the Middle East, Iraq, etc., that peace is possible, even in the most complex, dangerous and dark situations. The message sent out from the Stormont Meeting on 26th March, was that even those who have widely different cultural, religious, and political viewpoints, can with compromise and courage, through patient all inclusive dialogue and negotiation, begin to solve their problems and work together. Both Dr. Paisley and Gerry Adams, showed leadership and courage, and gave an example of how we, the people of Northern Ireland, can move forward together and build a shared future. I personally wish all the Parties involved, and everyone who has helped bring this process about, every good wish for the future.

    The way ahead will not be easy. Transforming the old politics of division, dissent and destruction, into the politics of reconstruction and reconciliation, will take all our energies but it can be done together. We have been practicing for some years now to learn to embrace the diversity and otherness we encounter here, and practicing too how to heal the ancient divisions and misunderstandings of the past. We have been practicing how to give and accept forgiveness, of ourselves, and of each other, and we have been practicing how to begin to live nonviolence, in our lives, and in solving our problems. These have been hard things for us to learn, and we have only just begun to transform ourselves and our communities through love and action, into a nonkilling, nonviolent society. We have a long way to go, but this is a time to give thanks, for the long way that we have come. This is not only a political journey it is also a spiritual journey. We have the framework in the Good Friday Agreement, and on May 8th a devolved Assembly, power sharing executive, and new First Minister, Dr. Paisley and Deputy Minister, Martin McGuinness, so the institutions are in place to build equality, human rights and justice for all. But what is also needed is that we build trust between not only the politicians, but also all the people. To do this we need to bring the values of love, forgiveness, compassion and reconciliation. It will not be easy, especially for many who have lost loved ones, but what a great testimony to those we have lost, will be the joy of building a future where no one else will suffer the pain of death through violence.

    To build in Northern Ireland a nonkilling, nonviolent, integrated, society is the task now facing us all. To move beyond tribalism, and nationalism, to a larger identity deeply linked to the wider human family and the environment, is indeed a great journey. We cannot leave this only to our politicians, but we as citizens can each take up this challenge to change.

    Many people from other counties in conflict will come to see how the Peace Process works. So perhaps the new Assembly would consider setting up a Ministry of Peace and Nonviolence, so that we can share the lessons of conflict resolution with others in more dangerous situations, and thereby return some of the help we have been given in our long journey to peace.

    I am full of hope for the future as I believe, in time we can be transformed into individuals and communities of love and forgiveness, which will be an example and give hope in a world crying out for peace.

     

    Mairead Corrigan Maguire is a Nobel Peace Laureate and member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Advisory Council. www.peacepeople.com

  • Jakob von Uexkull Speaks on Humanity’s Future

    Jakob von Uexkull, a former member of the European Parliament, recently delivered the 6th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future in Santa Barbara, California. The lecture series, a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, honors Frank K. Kelly, a founder and Senior Vice President of the Foundation.

    The lecture series was created in the belief that humanity’s future deserves our consideration and best thinking. Our future today is imperiled by the power of human-created technologies that threaten civilization and even human survival on the planet. Those who will inhabit the future deserve our advocacy and our stewardship of the planet. Those alive today have no right to threaten the future of humanity by depleting or seriously diminishing the resources of the planet or by destroying the environment of those who will follow. Rather, we have a moral responsibility to preserve the planet and to pass it on intact to future generations.

    Jakob von Uexkull was born in Sweden and currently resides in London. He is one of the world’s leading visionaries, and is a man who has acted upon his vision to create a better world. Understanding the power of the Nobel Prizes, he went to the Nobel Foundation over 25 years ago with a proposal to add two new categories to their award prizes: one for protecting the environment and one for alleviating poverty. He even offered to raise the funds to support these awards.

    After consideration, the Nobel Foundation, which had added only one new award to the initial awards, said no to his request. Von Uexkull then decided to move forward on his own with these new awards, which he named the Right Livelihood Awards (www.rightlivelihood.org). He funded the first awards with the sale of his stamp collection. The first awards were presented in Stockholm on December 9, 1980, the day before the presentation of the Nobel Prizes.

    At first, the Swedish press questioned whether von Uexkull was working for the CIA or the KGB in seeking to undermine the Nobel Prizes. The next year the press ridiculed the awards. But within five years, the awards were being presented in the Swedish Parliament and soon became known as the “Alternative Nobel Prizes.”

    The Right Livelihood Awards have now been presented for more than 25 years, and each year three or four recipients of the Award split a prize of approximately $250,000. Awards have been made to more than 100 leaders throughout the world who are working in the areas of environmental protection and sustainability, development and poverty alleviation, peace and human rights.

    The overwhelming majority of Nobel Prizes go to American and European men, with countries in the southern hemisphere having received only 11 percent of the Nobel Prizes. By contrast, 44 percent of the Right Livelihood Awards have been made to groups and individuals in the Global South. Women have received only five percent of the Nobel Prizes, whereas women, including women-led organizations, have received 34 percent of the Right Livelihood Awards.

    Von Uexkull’s latest innovative project is the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org) . The purpose of the Council is to bring together wise elders, pioneers and youth leaders to be a voice for shared human values and for fulfilling our responsibilities to future generations. The Council will recommend best practices to ensure a positive future for humanity. The first meeting of the Council will take place in Hamburg, Germany in May 2007.

    The title of von Uexkull’s Kelly Lecture is “Globalization: Values, Responsibility and Global Justice.” It will be posted on the Foundation’s www.wagingpeace.org website. A DVD of the talk will also be available from the Foundation. Previous Kelly Lectures on Humanity’s Future by Frank K. Kelly, Richard Falk, Anita Roddick, Robert Jay Lifton and Mairead Maguire can also be found at the www.wagingpeace.org website.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • Congress Must Act to Stop a US Attack on Iran

    George Bush has already lost the illegal war of aggression that he initiated in Iraq. In the process, he has spent enormous sums of money, stretched the US military to the breaking point, undermined international law and the US Constitution, been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as well as more US citizens than died on September 11, 2001, and brought respect for the United States to new lows throughout the world. He now appears poised to initiate a new war against Iran.

    In advance of the war against Iraq, Mr. Bush moved US forces into the region. In an ominously reminiscent set of maneuvers, he has already moved two naval battle groups into the Persian Gulf, and has another battle group on the way. It is likely that Mr. Bush will opt for air attacks against Iran rather than “boots on the ground,” as too many US troops are already tied up in Iraq. There should be grave concerns about Mr. Bush’s inability to think strategically beyond threat and attack, given the dismal consequences of his actions in Iraq.

    Mr. Bush believed our forces would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. One wonders what Mr. Bush thinks will happen if he attacks Iran, a regional power in the Middle East. The US could end up bogged down in the Middle East for decades. There have also been reports by respected journalist Seymour Hersh that the US military has contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, an act of terrorism that could open a global Pandora’s Box.

    Speaking recently to a security forum in Munich, Russian President Vladimir Putin had some strong criticism for the Bush policies. While Mr. Putin’s credentials are far from impeccable, his words bear consideration. “One state, the United States,” he said, “overstepped its national borders in every way.” Putin observed, “It is a world of one master, one sovereign…it has nothing to do with democracy. This is nourishing the wish of countries to get nuclear weapons.” Mr. Putin was particularly critical of the way in which the United States is undermining international law.

    Congress opened the door for Mr. Bush’s attack against Iraq. Congress should now be responsible for closing the door to a US attack on Iran. Congress should go on record before it is too late foreclosing the president from attacking Iran without specific Congressional authorization as well as appropriate authorization by the United Nations Security Council. The hour is late, but not too late, for Congress to assert its Constitutional responsibility. Under the US Constitution, only Congress can declare war and allocate funding for war.

    Senator Robert Byrd has already put forward a resolution that requires Congressional approval of any offensive US military action taken against another country. In introducing Senate Resolution 39 on January 24, 2007, Senator Byrd stated, “I am introducing a resolution that clearly states that it is Congress…not the President – that is vested with the ultimate decision on whether to take this country to war against another country.” He called his resolution “a rejection of the bankrupt, dangerous and unconstitutional doctrine of preemption, which proposes that the President – any President – may strike another country before that country threatens us….”

    As bad as things are in Iraq – and there is no doubt that they are bad – for Mr. Bush to initiate a new war by attacking Iran would only make matters worse for the United States. The US needs to pursue an exit strategy for Iraq, not a preemptive attack against yet another country that has not attacked the United States. Through its actions, the US needs to return to respecting and supporting international law. The Congress of the United States needs to go on record now to assure that Mr. Bush understands this and the limits of his authority under the Constitution.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).