Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Peace

  • Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight

    Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight

    A couple months ago, I was discussing Sadako Peace Day with Sandy, and this Japanese proverb came up as we were talking about the themes and symbolism of our evening. The proverb is “Nana korobi, ya oki” which means “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” It means choosing to never give up hope, and to always strive for more. It means that your focus isn’t on the reality in front of you, but on a greater vision that may not be reality yet.

    I don’t want to make the mistake of oversimplifying this proverb with the wrong words—I don’t have the words to fully capture the strength, courage, and even defiance of choosing to stand up again after being knocked down. And I know that this community understands, very personally, what it feels like to stand up again. We’ve all chosen to stand here at La Casa de Maria today, after everything that it and our community have endured over the last few months. And we’ve also all chosen to stand here on the 73rd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and the unimaginable devastation that’s wrapped up in that. Santa Barbara and Montecito are standing up again, just as the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stood up again.

    Whether it’s through natural disasters or man-made ones, falling seems to be part of life’s cycle. I can understand why some people, fearful of falling down again, decide to limit their dreams, and live their lives close to the ground. But I think that those who have changed the world most deeply are people who chose to stand up again, even though they knew that they might also fall down hard again.

    12-year-old Sadako continued to dream big and ask for more, even as cancer made her weaker and weaker. Even though she wasn’t healed, and didn’t see peace in her lifetime, she boldly stood up despite the possibility of falling. But I’d say that even though she didn’t live to see what she hoped for, she continues to stand, through those who remember her dream, and honor her memory.

    So thank you for standing here today. Thank you to the people of La Casa de Maria for standing up again. Even through recent knockdowns, you’ve given our community so much. Thank you all for standing with NAPF through our ups and downs and the world’s ups and downs, as we pursue a just and peaceful world, free of nuclear weapons.

    To me, our work gets its meaning from the people who believe in it with us. We stand taller because of you.

    Nana korobi, ya oki. Fall down seven times, stand up eight. Today, we celebrate standing up again.

  • Sadako Peace Day 2018: Welcome

    Sadako Peace Day 2018: Welcome

    Good evening. My name is Rick Wayman. I’m the Deputy Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 24th annual Sadako Peace Day commemoration.

    It is good to be back here today. Thank you so much to the staff of La Casa de Maria for your outstanding efforts to make this year’s event possible. Thank you to the staff, volunteers, and donors who are giving everything they can to rebuild this special place.

    As humans, we face two clear existential threats: nuclear weapons and climate change. For the first 23 Sadako Peace Days, we remembered the victims of nuclear weapons: the hundreds of thousands who were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the countless people around the world who have been impacted by nuclear weapons development and testing. We also remember all innocent victims of war.

    This year, we find ourselves standing in Sadako Peace Garden at an unexpected ground zero of climate change. So today, we also remember those who lost their lives in the debris flow back in January.

    In our community, we have been living through radical uncertainty from forces of nature amplified by manmade climate change. NAPF President David Krieger wrote about this in The Hill.

    He wrote, “Death and destruction did not discriminate. Nature only did what nature does. It was mostly beyond our control.”

    He continued, “But we also live daily with the radical uncertainty of nuclear survival, which is not a force of nature, but rather a man-made threat. It is a threat entirely of our own making, and it can be remedied by facing it and doing something about it.”

    It is inspiring to see the determination and resilience here at La Casa de Maria and throughout Montecito to recover from an inconceivable tragedy.

    A friend and role model, Setsuko Thurlow, was 13 years old when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on her city of Hiroshima. As an adult, she has dedicated her life to working for the abolition of nuclear weapons so that no one would ever again have to experience what she did. In December 2017, Setsuko was on the stage in Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She, like so many hibakusha, refuse to accept the idea that nuclear weapons and humanity can co-exist. She is determined, she is resilient, and it is inevitable that her goal – our goal – of a nuclear weapons-free world will be achieved.

    With both climate change and nuclear weapons, we have individual and collective responsibilities to change our behavior. At NAPF, we offer many ways for you to stand up, speak out, and join in the movement to abolish nuclear weapons. Please visit our information table after this evening’s program to find out what you can do, including adding your voice in support of a forthcoming Santa Barbara City Council resolution to make Santa Barbara a nuclear-free zone.

    Thank you for being here this evening. And thank you for demonstrating the determination and resilience of our community.

  • Swamp Infrastructure Construction Kinetics

    Swamp Infrastructure Construction Kinetics

    Now being planned and built in Washington, D.C., which is already just about coated in monuments to wars and particular warriors, are monuments to: World War I, the Gulf War, Native American fighters in wars, African Americans who fought in the U.S. war for independence, and the War on Terrorism, as well as one to Eisenhower the Warrior.

    That War on (make that “of” — an easy alteration) Terrorism monument is supposed to be built by 2024, and the war it glorifies is due to end sometime in the next millennium or, as war planners like to say, “imminently.”

    Most countries glorify their deeds, but many also mourn and regret and warn against repetition of their worst crimes. Not the good old USA, no sir. George Bush the elder said he’d never apologize and didn’t care what the facts were. That’s telling ’em.

    I’m glad to be involved in planning to protest and prevent a weapons parade on November 10th. But the wave of new war memorials in Washington, D.C., deserves all the opposition that Trump’s parade is receiving, 1,000-fold. The memorials will last much longer than the parade — assuming that the militarism they glorify doesn’t put an end to all of us.

    One year after the deadly rally in Charlottesville, the memorials denounced there as racist still stand. They stand because of a Virginia law forbidding taking down war memorials. Once any monstrosity is erected, if it’s for war, it’s here for eternity. That is sure to be true in Washington, D.C. as well. Can you imagine trying to get one of these desecrations of all that is decent removed after it’s up?

    If you’re wondering, Virginia does not have a law banning the removal of peace memorials. You can take one down if you can find one.

    How does Congress get away with dumping the majority of discretionary spending into militarism each year? How does  Trump get away with telling European nations to spend on war based on the size of their economies? Part of the answer is a culture of war. We ought to take a little more seriously the danger that lies in what we choose to glorify.

    These war monuments do not mourn the dead. They omit the vast majority of the dead entirely. The Vietnam Memorial alone would eat up the space being used by several others if it included the names of everyone killed in that war. The war “on terrorism” has been a one-sided slaughter, illegal, immoral, counter-productive, and environmentally and fiscally and culturally catastrophic. Of the tiny percentage of deaths you’re supposed to care about, the majority have come by suicide. The monument will mention nothing of any of that.

    That they are now building monuments to particular demographic groups’ participation in wars threatens all remaining trees and sidewalks left intact thus far in Washington, D.C. But that’s not the worst of it. They’re making a monument to the participation of the remnants of nations destroyed by genocidal U.S. wars — their participation in later wars against other victims. And they have yet to build a monument to the victims of the wars against the native peoples of the continent.

    They’re building a monument to black fighters in the U.S. war for wealthy white male independence that will not only not mention the role of that war in advancing continental genocide, but also omit its role in preserving slavery. The African Americans who fought on the British side for actual independence cannot be expected to show up in monumental glory. And where is the monument to slavery, whose lasting legacy is certainly what has spared us an enormous pro-union Civil War monument eating up half the National Mall?

    The tiny, hidden monument to the imprisonment of Japanese Americans is proving entirely insufficient to the task it takes on with its “never again” language. The absence of any serious peace monuments is killing us.

    Will the Gulf War monument include babies taken out of incubators? I know I say that at the risk of giving them ideas, but I’m sure they’ve already thought of worse. Slaughter of thousands of retreating troops maybe? Decades of brutal blowback perhaps?

    And World War I? What is that about? The total lack of World War I-justifying mythology in our culture, the surrender to its obvious insanity, makes WWI a weak link in the case for World War II’s status as the most glorious mass-killing in history, given the impossibility of World War II having happened without World War I. But now they want to remind us of World War I?

    Clearly the idea is that all war must be glorious regardless of what idiots started it for what nonsensical, sadistic, narcissistic, greedy, cowardly, dishonest reasons. That seems to me exactly the wrong message to be surrounding the White House windows with right now.

    This article was originally published by World Beyond War.

  • How Citizens Helped to End the Cold War: Inspiration for Today

    How Citizens Helped to End the Cold War: Inspiration for Today

    Thirty years ago, when Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and said that he no longer considered the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” many observers began declaring that the Cold War was over. While the important roles of Reagan and Gorbachev in the ending of Soviet-American enmity are widely remembered, it is often forgotten that Soviet and American citizens played active roles in overcoming the suspicion and hostility that had marred relations between the two countries for decades. Today, when American-Russian relations have deteriorated so badly that many now speak of a “new cold war,” it is important to remember how citizens made a difference in the ending of the old Cold War.

    Even before Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time at Geneva in November 1985, many Americans and Soviets launched initiatives to try to ease tensions between their nations. American and Soviet citizens were thus not merely observers of the end of the Cold War; they helped to make it happen in their own homes and communities.

    In 1982 Betty Bumpers, wife of Senator Dale Bumpers, founded Peace Links, based in Arkansas, which grew to have scores of affiliates across the United States and more than 150 supporters among congressional spouses. In 1985 Bumpers invited the Soviet Women’s Committee to send a delegation of fifteen women to the United States, where they split into groups of three that each visited several cities. Further Peace Links exchanges followed. As one Soviet participant later recalled, the dialogue and friendships that developed helped foster the climate that led to the end of the Soviet-American stalemate.

    Moved, like Bumpers, by worries about nuclear war, in 1982 a group of Silicon Valley professionals and housewives formed an organization called Beyond War, with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. It rapidly expanded to have local groups in 25 states and 18,000 subscribers to its newsletter. After sending small delegations to the Soviet Union for several years, in 1987 Beyond War collaborated with prominent Soviet academics on a book about “new thinking” concerning nuclear weapons and Soviet-American relations. Fifteen thousand copies of the book were sold in the U.S. and 30,000 copies were printed in the U.S.S.R. The Soviet and American authors then promoted the book with ambitious tours across the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in 1988 that led to the publication of hundreds of articles and editorials in newspapers about the possibility of a dramatic change in thinking about international relations. (Beyond War later deposited many of its papers at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.)

    Many other organizations became involved. They included the US-USSR Youth Exchange Program, which organized joint Soviet-American wilderness adventures and educational exchanges; the Center for Soviet-American Dialogue; the Chautauqua Institute, which sponsored major exchanges of government officials and opinion leaders; and Sister Cities International.

    The explosion of citizen diplomacy, especially from 1987 to 1989, led to hundreds of thousands of face-to-face encounters between Americans and Soviets that often challenged their preconceptions about their erstwhile enemies and frequently led to the forming of fond friendships. The impact of the individual encounters was magnified by extensive coverage on the front pages of local newspapers and in numerous broadcasts by local and regional radio and television stations who treated the Soviet visits as major news stories.

    The most ambitious of the many citizen diplomacy projects was the “Soviets Meet Middle America!” project. This was a joint effort by the Center for U.S.-U.S.S.R. Initiatives (CUUI), the Soviet Peace Committee, and non-governmental activists in the Soviet Union that brought 400 Soviet citizens to 240 towns and cities across the United States between January 1988 and early 1989.

    Participants in the “Soviets, Meet Middle America!” project – including many in southern California — believed that they were playing important roles in the broader process of warming American- Soviet relations. After a grass-roots “mini-summit” in July 1988, for example, the editor of the Ojai Valley News glowed: “The people of the Ojai Valley probably accomplished more in the past two weeks than President Reagan did on his recent visit to the Soviet Union.”

    Long before the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991, then, citizen diplomacy broke down many Americans’ and Soviets’ negative stereotypes of the other people, erased old barriers of suspicion, and dissipated longstanding hostility. Remembering how American activists helped to dispel images of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and to encourage a dramatic expansion of communication between the two countries offers important inspiration for today, when American politicians have reverted to calling Russia’s leader “evil” and have made it more difficult for the two nuclear-armed nations to engage in dialogue about their differences.

  • Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula

    The Panmunjeom Declaration was issued by North and South Korea on April 27, 2018, following an historic summit between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in.

    During this momentous period of historical transformation on the Korean Peninsula, reflecting the enduring aspiration of the Korean people for peace, prosperity and unification, President Moon Jae In of the Republic of Korea and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea held an Inter-Korean Summit Meeting at the ‘Peace House’ at Panmunjom on April 27, 2018.

    The two leaders solemnly declared before the 80 million Korean people and the whole world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.

    The two leaders, sharing the firm commitment to bring a swift end to the Cold War relic of long-standing division and confrontation, to boldly approach a new era of national reconciliation, peace and prosperity, and to improve and cultivate inter-Korean relations in a more active manner, declared at this historic site of Panmunjom as follows:

    1. South and North Korea will reconnect the blood relations of the people and bring forward the future of co-prosperity and unification led by Koreans by facilitating comprehensive and groundbreaking advancement in inter-Korean relations.

    Improving and cultivating inter-Korean relations is the prevalent desire of the whole nation and the urgent calling of the times that cannot be held back any further.

    1) South and North Korea affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord and agreed to bring forth the watershed moment for the improvement of inter-Korean relations by fully implementing all existing agreements and declarations adopted between the two sides thus far.

    2) South and North Korea agreed to hold dialogue and negotiations in various fields including at high level, and to take active measures for the implementation of the agreements reached at the summit.

    3) South and North Korea agreed to establish a joint liaison office with resident representatives of both sides in the Gaeseong region in order to facilitate close consultation between the authorities as well as smooth exchanges and cooperation between the peoples.

    4) South and North Korea agreed to encourage more active cooperation, exchanges, visits and contacts at all levels in order to rejuvenate the sense of national reconciliation and unity.

    Between South and North, the two sides will encourage the atmosphere of amity and cooperation by actively staging various joint events on the dates that hold special meaning for both South and North Korea, such as June 15, in which participants from all levels, including central and local governments, parliaments, political parties, and civil organisations, will be involved.

    On the international front, the two sides agreed to demonstrate their collective wisdom, talents, and solidarity by jointly participating in international sports events such as the 2018 Asian Games.

    5) South and North Korea agreed to endeavour to swiftly resolve the humanitarian issues that resulted from the division of the nation, and to convene the Inter-Korean Red Cross Meeting to discuss and solve various issues, including the reunion of separated families.

    In this vein, South and North Korea agreed to proceed with reunion programmes for the separated families on the occasion of the National Liberation Day of Aug 15 this year.

    6) South and North Korea agreed to actively implement the projects previously agreed in the 2007 October 4 Declaration, in order to promote balanced economic growth and co-prosperity of the nation.

    As a first step, the two sides agreed to adopt practical steps towards the connection and modernisation of the railways and roads on the eastern transportation corridor as well as between Seoul and Sinuiju for their utilisation.

    2. South and North Korea will make joint efforts to alleviate the acute military tension and practically eliminate the danger of war on the Korean Peninsula.

    1) South and North Korea agreed to completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air and sea, that are the source of military tension and conflict.

    In this vein, the two sides agreed to transform the demilitarised zone into a peace zone in a genuine sense by ceasing as of May 2 this year all hostile acts and eliminating their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets, in the areas along the Military Demarcation Line.

    2) South and North Korea agreed to devise a practical scheme to turn the areas around the Northern Limit Line in the West Sea into a maritime peace zone in order to prevent accidental military clashes and guarantee safe fishing activities.

    3) South and North Korea agreed to take various military measures to ensure active mutual cooperation, exchanges, visits and contacts. The two sides agreed to hold frequent meetings between military authorities, including the defence ministers meeting, in order to immediately discuss and solve military issues that arise between them.

    In this regard, the two sides agreed to first convene military talks at the rank of general in May.

    3. South and North Korea will actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. Bringing an end to the current unnatural state of armistice and establishing a robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is a historical mission that must not be delayed any further.

    1) South and North Korea reaffirmed the Non-Aggression Agreement that precludes the use of force in any form against each other, and agreed to strictly adhere to this agreement.

    2) South and North Korea agreed to carry out disarmament in a phased manner, as military tension is alleviated and substantial progress is made in military confidence-building.

    3) During this year that marks the 65th anniversary of the Armistice, South and North Korea agreed to actively pursue trilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the United States, or quadrilateral meetings involving the two Koreas, the United States and China, with a view to declaring an end to the war and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime.

    4) South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realising, through complete denuclearisation, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

    South and North Korea shared the view that the measures being initiated by North Korea are very meaningful and crucial for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and agreed to carry out their respective roles and responsibilities in this regard.

    South and North Korea agreed to actively seek the support and cooperation of the international community for the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

    The two leaders agreed, through regular meetings and direct telephone conversations, to hold frequent and candid discussions on issues vital to the nation, to strengthen mutual trust and to jointly endeavour to strengthen the positive momentum towards continuous advancement of inter-Korean relations as well as peace, prosperity and unification of the Korean Peninsula.

    In this context, President Moon Jae In agreed to visit Pyongyang this fall.

    April 27, 2018

    Done in Panmunjom

    Moon Jae In
    President
    Republic of Korea

    Kim Jong Un
    Chairman
    State Affairs Commission
    Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

  • Attacking Syria Again

    At this stage it seems reasonable to wonder whether Syria was attacked because it didn’t use chemical weapons rather than because it did. That may seem strange until we remember rather weighty suspicions surrounding the main accusers, especially the White Helmets with their long standing links to the U.S. Government.

    A second irreverent puzzle is whether the dominant motive for the attack was not really about what was happening in Syria, but rather what was not happening in the domestic politics of the attacking countries. Every student of world politics knows that when the leadership of strong states feel stressed and at a loss, they look outside their borders for enemies to slay, counting on transcendent feelings of national pride and patriotic unity associated with international displays of military prowess to distract the discontented folks at home, at least for awhile. All three leaders of the attacking coalition were beset by such domestic discontent in rather severe forms, seizing the occasion for a cheap shot at Syria at the expense of international law and the UN, just to strike a responsive populist chord with their own citizenry—above all, to show the world that the West remains willing and able to strike violently at Islamic countries without fearing retaliation.

    Of course, this last point requires clarification, and some qualification to explain the strictly limited nature of the military strike. Although the attackers wanted to claim the high moral ground as defenders of civilized behavior in war, itself an oxymoron, they wanted to avoid any escalation with its risks of a dangerous military encounter with Russia. As Syrian pro-interventionists have angrily pointed out, the attack was more a gesture than a credible effort to influence the future behavior of the Bashar al-Assad government. As such, it strengthens the position of those who interpret the attack as more about domestic crises of legitimacy unfolding in the now illiberal democracies of United States, UK, and France than about any reshaping of the Syrian ordeal.  

    And if that is not enough to ponder, consider that Iraq was savagely attacked in 2003 by a U.S./UK coalition under similar circumstances, that is, without either an international law justification or authorization by the UN Security Council, the only two ways that international force can be lawfully employed, and even then only as a last resort after sanctions and diplomatic means have been tried and failed. It turned out that the political rationale for recourse to aggressive war against Iraq, its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction was totally false, either elaborately fabricated evidence or more generously, a hugely embarrassing intelligence lapse.

    To be fair, this Syrian military caper could have turned out far worse. The entire attack lasted only 3 minutes, no civilian casualties have been reported, and thankfully, there was no challenge posed to the Russian and Iranian military presence in Syria, or to the Syrian government, thus avoiding the rightly feared retaliation and escalation cycle. More than at any time since the end of the Cold War there was sober concern abounded that a clash of political wills or an accidental targeting mistake could cause geopolitical stumbles culminating in World War III.

    Historically minded observers saw alarming parallels with the confusions and exaggerated responses that led directly to the prolonged horror of World War I. The relevant restraint of the April 14th missile attacks seems to be the work of the Pentagon, certainly not the White House. Military planners designed the attack to minimize risks of escalation, and possibly an undisclosed negotiated understanding with the Russians. In effect, Trump’s red line on chemical weapons was supposedly defended, and redrawn at the UN as a warning to Damascus.

    Yet can we be sure at this stage that at least the factual basis of this aggressive move accurately portrayed Syria as having launched a lethal chlorine attack on the people of Douma? Certainly not now. We have been fooled too often in the past by the confident claims of the intelligence services working for the same countries that sent missiles to Syria. There is a feeling of a rush to judgment amid some strident, yet credible, voices of doubt, including from UN sources. The most cynical are suggesting that the real purpose of the attack, other than Trump’s red line, is to destroy evidence that would incriminate others than the Syrian government. Further suspicions are fueled by its timing, which seem hastened to make sure that the respected UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), about to start its fact finding mission, would have nothing to find.

    To allay reactions that these are ideologically driven worries it is notable that the Wall Street Journal, never a voice for peace and moderation, put forward its view that it was not “clear who carried out the attack” on Douma, a view shared by several mainstream media outlets including the Associated Press. Blaming Syria, much less attacking it, is clearly premature, and quite possibly altogether false, undermining the factual basis of the coalition claim without even reaching the piles of doubts associated with unlawfulness and illegitimacy.

    Less noticed, but starkly relevant, is the intriguing reality that the identity of the three states responsible for this aggressive act share strong colonialist credentials that expose the deep roots of the turmoil afflicting in different ways the entire Middle East. It is relevant to recall that it was British and French colonial ambitions in 1917 that carved up the collapsed Ottoman Empire, imposing artificial political communities with borders reflecting European priorities not natural affinities, and taking no account of the preferences of the resident population. This colonial plot foiled Woodrow Wilson’s more positive proposal to implement self-determination based on the affinities of ethnicity, tradition, and religion of those formerly living under Ottoman rule. The United States openly supplanted this colonial duopoly rather late, as the Europeans faltered in the 1956 Suez Crisis, but made a heavy footprint throughout the region with an updated imperial agenda of Soviet containment, oil geopolitics, and untethered support for Islam These priorities were later supplemented by worries over the spread of Islam and nuclear weaponry falling into the wrong political hands. As a result of a century of exploitation and betrayal by the West, it should come as no surprise that anti-Western extremist movements emerged throughout the Arab World in response.

    It is also helpful to recall the Kosovo War (1999) and the Libyan War (2011), both managed as NATO operations carried out in defiance of international law and the UN Charter. Because of an anticipated Russian veto, NATO, with strong regional backing launched a punishing air attack that drove Serbia out of Kosovo. Despite a strong case for humanitarian intervention it set a dangerous precedent, which Iraq hawks found convenient a few years later. In effect the U.S. was absurdly insisting that the veto should be respected only when the West uses it as when protecting Israel from much more trivial, yet justifiable, assaults on its sovereignty than what a missile attack on Syria signifies.

    The Libyan precedent is also relevant to the marginalization of the UN and international law to which this latest Syrian action is a grim addition. Because the people of the Libyan city of Benghazi truly faced an imminent humanitarian emergency the UN case for lending protection seemed strong. Russia and China, permanent members of the UNSC, temporarily suspended their suspicions about Western motives and abstained from a resolution authorizing a No Fly Zone. It didn’t take long to disabuse them. They were quickly shocked into the realization that real NATO’s mission in Libya was regime change, not humanitarian relief. In other words, these Western powers who are currently claiming at the UN that international law is on their side with regard to Syria, have themselves a terrible record of flouting UN authority when convenient and insisting on their full panoply of obstructive rights under the Charter when Israel’s wrongdoing is under review.

    Ambassador Nikki Haley, the Trump flamethrower at the UN, arrogantly reminded members of the Security Council that the U.S. would carry out a military strike against Syria whether or not permitted by the Organization. In effect, even the veto as a shield is not sufficient to quench Washington’s geopolitical thirst. It also claims the disruptive option of a sword to circumvent the veto when blocked by the veto of an adversary. Such a pattern puts the world back on square one when it comes to restraining the international use of force. Imagine the indignation that the U.S. would muster if Russia or China proposed at the Security Council a long overdue peacekeeping (R2P) mission to protect the multiply abused population of Gaza. And if these countries then had the geopolitical gall to act outside the UN, the world would almost certainly experience the bitter taste of apocalyptic warfare.

    The Charter framework makes as much sense, or more, than when crafted in 1945. Recourse to force is only permissible as an act of self-defense against a prior armed attack, and then only until the Security Council has time to act. In non-defensive situations, such as the Syrian case, the Charter makes clear beyond reasonable doubt that the Security Council alone possesses the authority to mandate the use of force, including in response to an ongoing humanitarian emergency. The breakthrough idea in the Charter is to limit as much as language can, discretion by states to decide on their own when to make war. Syria is the latest indication that this hopeful idea has been crudely cast in the geopolitical wastebasket.

    It will be up to the multitudes to challenge these developments, and use their mobilized influence to reverse the decline of international law and the authority of the UN. The members of the UN are themselves to beholden to the realist premises of the system to do more than squawk from time to time. Ending Trump’s boastful tweet with the words ‘mission accomplished’ unwittingly

    reminds us of the time in 2003 when the same phrase was on a banner behind George W. Bush as he spoke of victory in Iraq from the deck of an aircraft carrier with the sun setting behind him. Those words soon came back to haunt Bush, and if Trump were capable of irony, he might have realized that he is likely to endure an even more humbling fate. 

  • Although Two Out of Three Americans Oppose Increasing U.S. Military Spending, the U.S. Government Is Boosting It to Record Levels

    Early this February, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed new federal budget legislation that increased U.S. military spending by $165 billion over the next two years.  Remarkably, though, a Gallup public opinion poll, conducted only days before, found that only 33 percent of Americans favored increasing U.S. military spending, while 65 percent opposed it, either backing reductions (34 percent) or maintenance of the status quo (31 percent).

    What is even more remarkable for a nation where military spending has grown substantially over the decades, is that, during the past 49 years that Gallup has asked Americans their opinions on U.S. military spending, in only one year (1981) did a majority of Americans (in that case, 51 percent) favor increasing it.  During the other years, clear and sometimes very substantial majorities opposed spending more on the military.

    Although the Gallup survey appears to be the only one that has covered American attitudes toward military spending in 2018, reports by other polling agencies for earlier years reveal the same pattern.  The Pew Research Center, for example, found that, from 2004 to 2016, the percentage of Americans that favored increasing U.S. military spending only ranged from 13 to 35 percent.  By contrast, the percentage of Americans that favored decreasing U.S. military spending or continuing it at the same level ranged from 64 to 83 percent.

    This opposition to boosting U.S. military spending became even stronger when pollsters provided Americans with information about the actual level of federal government spending and arguments for and against particular programs.  In March 2017, before opinion polling began by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Integrity, it distributed a rough outline of the federal budget and a series of statements about spending programs vetted for fairness by opposing groups.  The result was that a majority of survey respondents reported that they favored cutting the military budget by $41 billion.

    Current public opinion on military spending has a clear partisan dimension.  In its February 2018 polling, Gallup found that, among Republicans and independents leaning Republican, 54 percent said that the U.S. government was spending too little on the military.  Conversely, among Democrats and independents leaning Democratic, 53 percent said the federal government was spending too much on it.  Today, with Republicans dominating both Congress and the White House, it’s not surprising that U.S. military spending is once again soaring to record heights.

    It’s hard to say, of course, where the current vast U.S. military buildup will lead.  Critics―and there have been many―predict war, bankruptcy, or both.  Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action, the largest grassroots peace organization in the United States, remarked:  “Our tax dollars pay for military policies that spur a global arms race―one that increasingly endangers our country’s security and undermines its economic viability.”

    Americans might also want to ponder the fact that, with $700 billion per year now being pumped into the Pentagon by U.S. taxpayers, military spending consumes 54 percent of the federal discretionary budget.  And, if President Trump’s official recommendations for future years are followed, the military’s share of the federal budget will surge to 65 percent by fiscal 2023.  Combined with the huge budget deficits that will be produced by the GOP tax cuts for the wealthy and their corporations, this will almost certainly lead to devastating slashes in federal spending for education, healthcare, parks and recreation facilities, food distribution, jobs, infrastructure, and other public programs.

    Of course, there are possibilities for blocking the current flood of military spending and its consequences.  The political mobilization of the widespread, but thus far latent, constituency against increased funding for the Pentagon, coupled with enough Democratic victories at the polls in 2018 to return of the House of Representative to Democratic control, would slow―and perhaps halt―the drift toward an overwhelmingly military-oriented public policy.

    Short of these developments, however, it seems likely that the U.S. government’s discretionary spending will be devoted primarily to preparations for war.

    Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

  • Christine Ahn Delivers the 2018 Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future

    Christine Ahn Delivers the 2018 Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future

    Christine Ahn delivered the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 17th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future on March 7 in Santa Barbara.

    Christine Ahn is the founder and international coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War, reunite families, and ensure women’s leadership in peace building. She is co-founder of the Korea Peace Network, Korea Policy Institute, and Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island.

    Audio

    Introduction by Rick Wayman

    Christine Ahn’s speech

    Q&A with the audience

    Video

    Video of Christine Ahn’s speech

    Photos

    View a collection of photos from the lecture on the NAPF Flickr page

  • Congress and the Citizenry

    This article is part of a series from the November 2017 Harvard University conference entitled “Presidential First Use: Is it legal? Is it constitutional? Is it just?” To access all of the transcripts from this conference, click here.

    Citizens have always been at the forefront of reducing the risks of nuclear weapons. In the 1980s, the US nuclear freeze movement and the Committee on Nuclear Disarmament in Europe arguably helped to end the Cold War and subsequently reduce US and Soviet arsenals by 80 percent. Before that, in the 1950s, a citizens’ movement aimed to stop atmospheric nuclear testing. Doctors had found strontium 90 from radioactive fallout in babies’ teeth and in mothers’ breast milk. Citizens, outraged that weapons testing programs could harm them directly, came out on the streets to protest, resulting in the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty.

    Even before the first test of an atomic bomb, near the end of World War II, a movement of citizen scientists was born at the University of Chicago in 1945. The scientists who helped build the atomic bomb understood that these weapons could incinerate masses of people and cause untold damage. Led by James Franck, they wrote a report to the government arguing that these indiscriminate weapons should not be used on civilians, and that before dropping them, they should first be tested in a demonstration to show the Japanese leadership how terrible they were. These scientists also established the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, to publish information about nuclear weapons so that citizens could understand the dangerous consequences of this new form of energy.

    Most recently we’ve seen another private group of citizens, nongovernmental organizations allied as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, organize the world to devise a new treaty that would ban nuclear weapons under the auspices of the United Nations. For their efforts, the Campaign received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

    Citizens have had enormous success in reducing the risks from nuclear weapons, but until very recently, with the introduction of the Lieu-Markey bill to prohibit presidential first use of nuclear weapons, it has been difficult to see how Congress has actually attempted to check the executive power to build and potentially use nuclear weapons.

    What has prevented Congress in the past from acting on clear citizen preferences for nuclear weapons reduction? Experts offer two reasons why congressional members have been kept from having a say in nuclear weapons policy.

    The first is speed. Experts suggest that in order to retaliate against a surprise attack or even to deter a surprise attack, leaders need to act very quickly, and that the executive and the military are the only entities able to do that. Congress is a deliberative body set up to take many views into account, and, the argument goes, a legislature cannot possibly respond quickly to a dire emergency.

    The second is secrecy. Since the development of the bomb, the expert community and the military have tried to prevent enemies from learning about our plans. The irony is that our enemies quickly managed to get that information. In reality, secrecy has never been maintained. The Russians tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949 and their first thermonuclear weapon in 1955. The knowledge was there, and there wasn’t much being kept from them.

    On the other hand, secrecy has prevented citizens and their representatives from gaining the knowledge we need about nuclear weapons capabilities and costs; about war plans; and about mistakes and accidents. This secrecy further empowers the executive branch. Citizens and their representatives are kept in the dark, our enemies know a lot, and the executive enlarges its power.

    The result of all of this is that the people have no voice in the most significant decision the United States president can make: whether to destroy another society with weapons of mass destruction and in turn risk us being destroyed ourselves. Elaine Scarry brilliantly and rightly calls this a “thermonuclear monarchy”; Garry Wills refers to it as “Bomb Power.” Robert Dahl, a political scientist from Yale, in his 1985 book Controlling Nuclear Weapons, argued that these policies treat citizens as children who, lacking expertise and knowledge, have no right to participate in how nuclear weapons are developed and deployed. He suggests that this turns the people into wards of the state who can exercise only the rights assigned to them by the “guardians of the arsenal.”

    Without congressional deliberation and citizen participation in the gravest decisions of life and death, democracy is greatly diminished. Indeed, can we even call ourselves a democracy at all when our rights to life and liberty are so abridged? If citizens and our elected representatives cannot make decisions about the most fundamental and consequential issues of war and peace, life and death, then we are disempowered and delegitimized.

    What are the remedies? We can begin by reducing the speed at which these decisions are made. There is no longer any need, if there ever was, for the kind of speed that people argued was required during the Cold War, when we were worried about a surprise attack from the Soviet Union. We should take weapons off of high-alert status. Former nuclear missile launch officer Bruce Blair and former Secretary of Defense William Perry have also said that we need to reduce launch readiness. This would allow more people to participate in the decision about what to do in the face of an attack.

    We should also reduce secrecy. If we’re going to make decisions about nuclear weapons, we need to have information about them. In April 2015, the US State Department finally declared the numbers of weapons in our arsenals. In May 2016, the Defense Department did the same thing. Thanks to experts in the scientific community, since 1987 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published estimates of nuclear weapons in a feature called the Nuclear Notebook. The Notebook’s current coauthors, Hans Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, of the Federation of American Scientists, and their predecessors should be given a Nobel Prize for making these estimates available; the estimates are the only reason that the public knows roughly how many weapons the US, Russia, China, North Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, India, and Pakistan have.

    We can also reduce secrecy by requiring that congressional members and outside experts participate in the nuclear posture review—a process to determine what role nuclear weapons should play in US security strategy—that the executive branch and the military conduct from time to time. If citizens are to participate in decision-making, then we have a right to know about these war plans.

    A move toward congressional participation is suggested in a September 2017 Washington Post article by former Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. They argue that the chairs and the ranking minority members of key committees in both houses should review and oversee relations between US and Russia. They are modeling this proposed new body on an earlier Senate Arms Control Observer Group, established in 1985 by Senators Robert Byrd and Bob Dole, a Democrat and a Republican.

    That group met with the secretary of state and with arms control negotiators in Geneva when the US was dealing with the Soviet Union. The group also had opportunities to meet unofficially and informally with the Soviet delegation. The experience provided congressional members with much more information and a sense of what was at stake in those negotiations. It improved their ability to talk to their Senate colleagues about the treaties being discussed and about other foreign policy matters. It is high time that an observer group be established to oversee the US nuclear posture review.

    Finally, we must return to Congress the authority to declare war. The proposed legislation to limit the president’s first use of nuclear weapons is a necessary first step. But to move to what I would call nuclear democracy will take more than simply limiting the president’s ability to launch nuclear weapons first.

    I began by citing the long history of successful citizen opposition to nuclear testing, proliferation, and secrecy. I want to end with a quote from Garry Wills that alerts us to the long arc of bomb power and thermonuclear monarchy. He writes:

    The whole history of America since World War II caused an inertial rolling of power toward the executive branch. The monopoly on use of nuclear weaponry, the cult of the Commander in Chief, the worldwide web of military bases to maintain nuclear alert and supremacy, the secret intelligence agencies, the whole National Security State, the classification and clearance systems, the expansion of state secrets, the withholding of evidence and information, the permanent emergency that has melded World War II with the Cold War, and the Cold War with the war on terror—all these make a vast and intricate structure that may not yield to efforts at dismantling it. Sixty-eight straight years of war emergency powers (1941–2009) have made the abnormal normal, and constitutional diminishment the settled order.

    Wills describes a complex national security system that denies democratic accountability and will require heroic efforts to dismantle. But citizens and their representatives are awakening to its dangers and consequences. It is time to take advantage of that awareness to move toward nuclear democracy.

  • We Call BS

    This speech was delivered at a rally on February 17, 2018, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

    We haven’t already had a moment of silence in the House of Representatives, so I would like to have another one. Thank you.

    Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see. Since the time of the Founding Fathers and since they added the Second Amendment to the Constitution, our guns have developed at a rate that leaves me dizzy. The guns have changed but our laws have not.

    We certainly do not understand why it should be harder to make plans with friends on weekends than to buy an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. In Florida, to buy a gun you do not need a permit, you do not need a gun license, and once you buy it you do not need to register it. You do not need a permit to carry a concealed rifle or shotgun. You can buy as many guns as you want at one time.

    I read something very powerful to me today. It was from the point of view of a teacher. And I quote: When adults tell me I have the right to own a gun, all I can hear is my right to own a gun outweighs your student’s right to live. All I hear is mine, mine, mine, mine.

    Instead of worrying about our AP Gov chapter 16 test, we have to be studying our notes to make sure that our arguments based on politics and political history are watertight. The students at this school have been having debates on guns for what feels like our entire lives. AP Gov had about three debates this year. Some discussions on the subject even occurred during the shooting while students were hiding in the closets. The people involved right now, those who were there, those posting, those tweeting, those doing interviews and talking to people, are being listened to for what feels like the very first time on this topic that has come up over 1,000 times in the past four years alone.

    I found out today there’s a website shootingtracker.com. Nothing in the title suggests that it is exclusively tracking the USA’s shootings and yet does it need to address that? Because Australia had one mass shooting in 1999 in Port Arthur (and after the) massacre introduced gun safety, and it hasn’t had one since. Japan has never had a mass shooting. Canada has had three and the UK had one and they both introduced gun control and yet here we are, with websites dedicated to reporting these tragedies so that they can be formulated into statistics for your convenience.

    I watched an interview this morning and noticed that one of the questions was, do you think your children will have to go through other school shooter drills? And our response is that our neighbors will not have to go through other school shooter drills. When we’ve had our say with the government — and maybe the adults have gotten used to saying ‘it is what it is,’ but if us students have learned anything, it’s that if you don’t study, you will fail. And in this case if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it’s time to start doing something.

    We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because, just as David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting. Just like Tinker v. Des Moines, we are going to change the law. That’s going to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas in that textbook and it’s going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students. The students who are dead, the students still in the hospital, the student now suffering PTSD, the students who had panic attacks during the vigil because the helicopters would not leave us alone, hovering over the school for 24 hours a day.

    There is one tweet I would like to call attention to. “So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities again and again.” We did, time and time again. Since he was in middle school, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter. Those talking about how we should have not ostracized him, you didn’t know this kid. OK, we did. We know that they are claiming mental health issues, and I am not a psychologist, but we need to pay attention to the fact that this was not just a mental health issue. He would not have harmed that many students with a knife.

    And how about we stop blaming the victims for something that was the student’s fault, the fault of the people who let him buy the guns in the first place, those at the gun shows, the people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic, the people who didn’t take them away from him when they knew he expressed homicidal tendencies, and I am not talking about the FBI. I’m talking about the people he lived with. I’m talking about the neighbors who saw him outside holding guns.

    If the President wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.

    You want to know something? It doesn’t matter, because I already know. Thirty million dollars. And divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the one and one-half months in 2018 alone, that comes out to being $5,800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump? If you don’t do anything to prevent this from continuing to occur, that number of gunshot victims will go up and the number that they are worth will go down. And we will be worthless to you.

    To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you.

    If your money was as threatened as us, would your first thought be, how is this going to reflect on my campaign? Which should I choose? Or would you choose us, and if you answered us, will you act like it for once? You know what would be a good way to act like it? I have an example of how to not act like it. In February of 2017, one year ago, President Trump repealed an Obama-era regulation that would have made it easier to block the sale of firearms to people with certain mental illnesses.

    From the interactions that I had with the shooter before the shooting and from the information that I currently know about him, I don’t really know if he was mentally ill. I wrote this before I heard what Delaney said. Delaney said he was diagnosed. I don’t need a psychologist and I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that repealing that regulation was a really dumb idea.

    Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa was the sole sponsor on this bill that stops the FBI from performing background checks on people adjudicated to be mentally ill and now he’s stating for the record, “Well, it’s a shame the FBI isn’t doing background checks on these mentally ill people.” Well, duh. You took that opportunity away last year.

    The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice to call BS. Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.

    If you agree, register to vote. Contact your local congresspeople. Give them a piece of your mind.