Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: US Nuclear Weapons Policy

  • Nuclearism and the Legacy of U.S. Media Coverage of Hiroshima

    Presented at the “Think Outside the Bomb” National Youth Conference on Nuclear Issues, Washington DC, April 21, 2007

    On August 6, 1945, the bomb that we are trying to think outside of here today was used as a weapon of mass destruction for the first time in history. The United States, engaged in a fierce war with Japan, dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, destroying it almost entirely. The blast, heat, and radiation killed more than 140,000 people. The White House delivered the dramatic news about the dawn of the atomic age through a press release of a presidential statement. The press release set the tone for much of the media coverage to come in the final days of the war and the months after. It emphasized vengeance as a motive for bombing Hiroshima. It focused on the technological achievement in producing the bomb. At the same time it omitted any mention of radiation, a key feature of the new weapon. The White House also implied that Hiroshima had been targeted because it had an army base, but failed to mention that the aiming point for the bomb had been the center of a city of more than 300,000 civilians. [1]

    After the White House statement, came 14 press releases from the War Department. [2] This concerted government media campaign anticipated the possibility of public controversy. As General Leslie Groves, head of the secret project to build the bomb, put it, “it may be necessary to control the situation by the issuance of carefully written press releases.” [3]

    Controlling the situation was exactly what General Groves did. A few months earlier he had hired the New York Times science reporter, William Laurence, to become the bomb’s publicist in waiting. Groves’s investment paid off handsomely. Laurence crafted press releases and stories, many of them rhapsodic, about the exciting dawn of a new scientific age, about the heroic effort to produce and use the bomb, and about the positive aspects of atomic energy. Laurence, perhaps the first fully embedded journalist in history, helped shape how we Americans came to think about nuclear weapons and energy. He and other members of the media helped put in place a narrative that legitimized the use of nuclear weapons and absorbed the bomb into American life. They did this by accepting government control of information about atomic power, downplaying the dangers of radiation and marginalizing the civilian victims, obscuring the fact that President Truman could have avoided the bomb in forcing Japan’s surrender, and, in other ways, normalizing the existence of nuclear weapons.

    There has always been a tension between national security and press freedom [4]—one can see this, for example, in how the Bush administration in its early years enjoyed limited critical scrutiny from the press, mostly because of 911 and the threat of terrorism. The limited scrutiny made it easier for the administration to go to war, despite a case for war that was as weak then as it is now. The same tension between security and freedom held true in World War II. The project to build the atomic bomb was understandably never discussed openly. But the Truman administration kept the existence of the bomb a secret until its combat use.

    The administration could have chosen a different path. For example, many scientists recommended that the administration disclose the existence of the bomb and at least attempt to force Japanese surrender through a nonlethal demonstration of the bomb’s power. But despite the efforts of some scientists and the misgivings of some Truman administration and military officials, the US dropped the bomb on an unsuspecting enemy. Once they used it, the administration had to justify its use and this is where the American media came in.

    Much of the coverage of the first few days after the Hiroshima bombing bore the stamp of William Laurence’s work. [5] Either directly through his New York Times byline or through newspaper stories based on material handed to journalists that Laurence had crafted, the media reflected to a large degree an uncritical pro-bomb viewpoint. News reports noted, for example, that the bomb had obliterated an army base, that science had now harnessed the power of the universe, and that revenge had finally been visited on the Japanese. Initial editorial opinion was almost uniformly supportive of the use of the bomb. [6]

    As the Washington Post commented, reflecting a widespread view, “However much we deplore the necessity, a struggle to the death commits all combatants to inflicting a maximum amount of destruction on the enemy…” [7] It wasn’t until eight years later that the Post appeared to take back these words: On the day of his retirement in 1953, Washington Post editor Herb Elliston told a reporter that he had many regrets as he looked back over his tenure. “One thing I regret is our editorial support of the A-bombing of Japan. It didn’t jibe with our expressed feeling [before the bomb was dropped] that Japan was already beaten.” [8]

    All in all, the initial coverage of the atomic attack was remarkably faithful to the official, pro-bomb viewpoint. [9] As General Groves commented, “most newspapers published our releases in their entirety.” [10] Perhaps not surprisingly (and reflecting the uncritical wartime mood), the Washington Press Club, soon after the Hiroshima bombing, responded to the news by offering its members a new drink, an Atomic Cocktail. [11]

    But Laurence represented a-bomb championing at its most vigilant and enthusiastic. He heralded the bomb in poetic, at times biblical terms. And with his descriptions he helped set the predominant image of the a-bomb and of the atomic era—an enormous, powerful mushroom cloud that held viewers in awe—an image that photography and film cemented through repetition. In Laurence’s atomic portraits, the victims simply didn’t merit attention, but the mushroom cloud did. In his eyewitness account of the Nagasaki bombing, for example, he described the explosion in terms of wonder and incredulity:

    “Awe-struck, we watched [the pillar of purple fire] shoot upward … becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the clouds…. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes…. [J]ust when it appeared as though the thing has settled down … there came shooting out of the top a giant mushroom…. The mushroom top was even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam… As the first mushroom floated off into the blue it changed its shape into a flowerlike form, its giant petal curving downward, creamy white outside, rose-colored inside.” [12]

    In his long New York Times article, which included eight paragraphs on individual crew members and others on the mission, [13] Laurence said virtually nothing about the victims. When he did, it was just to dismiss them:

    “Does one feel any pity or compassion for the poor devils about to die? Not when one thinks about Pearl Harbor and the Death March on Bataan.”

    Laurence’s dismissal of the victims of the first use of nuclear weapons was not uncommon. Media focus on righteous vengeance, supposed necessity of the bombings, and the technological accomplishment of American and Allied science pushed the dead and dying out of the spotlight. [14] Government censorship aided in this marginalization, especially through censorship about radiation and of visual evidence.

    The first photograph of Japanese victims appeared in Life magazine about two months after the end of the war. [15] But the magazine used a caption to undercut the power of the photos. The caption stated that the photographer “reported that [the] injuries looked like those he had seen when he photographed men burned at Pearl Harbor.” [16] For the most part, photographs of the human cost of the atomic bombings seldom appeared in the American media until the 1950s, [17] by which time they would have had little influence on nuclear policy, which had fully absorbed nuclear arms and power into American military planning and civilian life.

    The early media neglect of Japanese victims was reinforced by the lack of emphasis on radiation In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, due partly to censorship. The first serious attempt at explaining what had happened in Japan came from an Australian journalist, Wilfred Burchett. Almost a month after Hiroshima had been bombed, Burchett arrived there and understood the horror of the bomb for the first time. Initially supportive of the bomb’s use, Burchett ultimately rejected nuclear weapons because of what he had seen in Hiroshima. Reporting from the scene of the devastation, his account differed dramatically from that of other journalists:

    “In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly—people who were uninjured in the cataclysm—from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague.

    “Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.” [18]

    A war correspondent who had reported from many battlefronts, Burchett compared Hiroshima with what he had witnessed elsewhere: “In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war…. When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around for twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made destruction.” [19]

    Burchett’s reference to the atomic plague immediately moved the War Department into action. At first they ordered Burchett to leave Japan. Then the camera he had used in Hiroshima mysteriously disappeared. The US occupation authorities claimed that Burchett had been taken in by Japanese propaganda about radiation. [20] They decided to let him stay in Japan and opted instead to deal with his charges about atomic sickness by simply denying that radiation had caused any problems. As a result, a New York Times reporter who had a week earlier reported witnessing sickness and death due to the lingering effects of the atomic bomb simply reversed the truth. He now reported that according to the head of the US atomic mission to Japan the bomb had not produced any “dangerous, lingering radioactivity.” [21] The Washington Post uncritically noted that the atomic mission staff had been unable to find any Japanese person suffering from radiation sickness. [22]

    To drive home the point that radiation was not a problem, General Groves invited thirty reporters out to the New Mexico site where the bomb had first been tested two months earlier. This effort paid off with a banner headline in the New York Times: “U.S. Atom Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales; Tests on New Mexico Range Confirm That Blast, and Not Radiation, Took Toll,” [23] Life magazine concluded after the escorted tour in New Mexico that no Japanese person could have died as a result of lingering radiation. [24]

    In fact, radiation killed thousands of Japanese in the months after the bomb was dropped. The 1960 population census in Japan estimated that the leukemia mortality rate for persons entering Hiroshima within three days of the bombing was three times higher than it was in all of Japan. [25]

    The ease with which many reporters went along with official tales about the bomb is evident as well in their acceptance of the bomb’s necessity for ending the war. Necessity in this case had three aspects: vengeance, war-driven inevitability (which was sometimes regrettable), and absence of other reasonable means for ending the war. The last aspect has survived most tenaciously up to the present. According to this view, Truman simply didn’t have any choice except to use the bomb; if he had not, somewhere between half and one million American casualties would have resulted from an invasion of the Japanese homeland. I won’t address this issue here, except to say that historians have picked apart this myth over the years, so much so that even the former chief historian of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls the bomb vs invasion view of history a myth. [26]

    As the media helped to cleanse the new weapon of criticism, it also exalted the benefits of nuclearism to American life. A few months after the bombing, Atlantic magazine commented that “Through medical advances alone, atomic energy has already saved more lives than were snuffed out at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” [27] Life magazine regularly featured picture spreads and stories about the beauty and splendor of atomic energy and the glory of atomic miracles such as a Million Volt Cancer Treatment. [28] The magazine did this hand in hand with the government. For several years after the war, the photos of atomic images that Life published came mostly from the Army or the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than from its own photographers. [29] In the imagery and narrative that unfolded over time, the magazine implicitly urged its readers to set aside residual fears of atomic weapons—just as the arms race was heating up—and instead focus on the benefits and benevolence of the nuclear establishment. [30] Thus the dual nature of most media coverage—limiting the negative view of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while playing up the positive aspects of nuclearism—not only eased the bomb into American life, but it also eased the way for an all out arms race with the Soviet Union.

    As the bomb got absorbed into American life and military planning, the media largely continued to toe the administration’s line about nuclear issues. Nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands and in the American heartland—in places like Nevada—produced little scrutiny. As the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been marginalized, so were the radiation victims in the Marshall Islands and the downwinders at home.

    To be sure, the mass media did pose some challenges to the official narrative—John Hersey’s Hiroshima is the premier example. News outlets did publish contrary opinion and information occasionally. [31] But there was no concerted effort to investigate government claims and challenge the view of nuclear weapons that settled into place after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    * * * * * * * *

    Having laid out this rather bleak story, I do want to end with a quote from Wilfred Burchett, who along with Hersey and a few others, showed what the media was capable of doing when it sided with humanity rather than with official narratives and nuclear glory: As Burchett put it,

    “In visiting Hiroshima, I felt that I was seeing in the last days of [World War 2] what would be the fate of hundreds of cities in a [World War 3]. If that does not make a journalist want to shape history in the right direction, what does?” [32]

    Uday Mohan is the Director of Research for American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute.

    Footnotes

    [1] Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York: Grossett/Putnam, 1995), 5.

    [2] Ibid., 10. Compare Lifton and Mitchell’s account with the Department of Energy’s account of the Manhattan Project’s public relations campaign (www.mbe.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/public_reaction.htm).

    [3] Quoted in ibid., 12.

    [4 See, especially, Jeffery A. Smith. War and Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power (New York: Oxford University Press,1999).

    [5] For Laurence’s impact, see ibid.; Beverly D. Keever, News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004); and Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).

    [6] Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 24.

    [7] Quoted in ibid., 24.

    [8] “Elliston Reviews Post’s Role in Tackling Public Problems,” Washington Post, April 20, 1953, 7. For more on journalistic dissent, see Uday Mohan and Leo Maley III, “Orthodoxy and Dissent: The American News Media and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb Against Japan, 1945-1995,” in Cultural Difference, Media Memories: Anglo-American Images of Japan, ed. Phil Hammond (London: Cassell, 1997), and Uday Mohan and Leo Maley III, “Journalists and the Bomb,” op-ed distributed by the History News Service (HNS) in 2000 and published in several US newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution (published as “Blasting the A-Bomb,” 8/7/00, A11). HNS version available at www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/2000/080100a.html.

    [9] An important issue not addressed here is the sense of dread the atomic bomb introduced into American life. News coverage and commentary reflected this sense of dread, but a public conversation about nuclear weapons never developed, partly because the media helped justify the atomic bombing of Japan and legitimize the existence of nuclear weapons.

    [10] Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 10.

    [11] Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 27.

    [12] William L. Laurence, “Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki Told By Flight Member,” New York Times, September 9, 1945, 1 and 35.

    [13] Keever, News Zero, 70-71.

    [14] This media emphasis was perhaps understandable given the wartime mood, hatred of the Japanese, and government censorship. But at the same time, there were dissenters who suggested that a different perspective was possible regarding the use of the bomb. See references in endnote 8 and Leo Maley III and Uday Mohan, “Time to Confront the Ethics of Hiroshima,” op-ed for History News Service (www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/2005/080405b.html) published in 2005 in various U.S. newspapers; Uday Mohan and Leo Maley III, “Hiroshima: Military Voices of Dissent,” op-ed for History News Service (www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/2001/072601b.html) published in 2001 in various U.S. newspapers; and Leo Maley III and Uday Mohan, “Second-Guessing Hiroshima,” op-ed for History News Service (www.h-net.org/~hns/articles/1998/072998a.html) published in 1998 in various U.S. newspapers.

    [15] George H. Roeder Jr., “Making Things Visible: Learning from the Censors,” in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 93.

    [16] Quoted in ibid.

    [17] Ibid.

    [18] Quoted in Richard Tanter, “Voice and Silence in the First Nuclear War: Wilfred Burchett and Hiroshima,” in Ben Kiernan, ed., Burchett Reporting the Other Side of the World, 1939-1983 (London: Quartet, 1986), 18.

    [19] Ibid.

    [20] Amy Goodman with David Goodman, “Hiroshima Cover-Up: How the War Department’s Timesman Won a Pulitzer,” in Goodman with Goodman, The Exceptions to the Rulers (New York: Hyperion, 1994), 295.

    [21] Lawrence’s September 5, 1945 article quoted and described in Goodman with Goodman, “Hiroshima Cover-Up,” 299-300. However, Lawrence does note in his later article that the atomic mission chief confirmed that some Japanese had died because of low counts of white corpuscles, rather than from blast- or burn-related wounds: William H. Lawrence, “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin; What Our Superfortresses Did to a Japanese Plane Production Center,” New York Times, September 13, 1945. 4. Three days earlier, Lawrence had largely dismissed Japanese claims of the lingering dangers from the atomic attack, but did note that a Dutch medical officer had confirmed that “some persons” (presumably referring to Allied POWs) had died from a “mysterious relapse” and that four Dutch soldiers had died both of their wounds and uranium after-effects: Lawrence, “Atom Bomb Killed Nagasaki Captives; 8 Allied Prisoners Victims– Survivor Doubts After-Effect,” New York Times, September 10, 1945, 1.

    [22] “Radioactivity at Hiroshima Discounted,” Washington Post, September 13, 1945, 2.

    [23] William L. Laurence, “U.S. Atom Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales; Tests on New Mexico Range Confirm That Blast, and Not Radiation, Took Toll,” New York Times, September 12, 1945. 1 and 4.

    [24] Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 52.

    [25] Tanter, “Voice and Silence in the First Nuclear War,” 26.

    [26] See J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 5-6. For detailed accounts of the decision to use the bomb, see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 1995) and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005).

    [27] Quoted in Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon), 123.

    [28] Peter Bacon Hales, “The Mass Aesthetic of Holocaust: American Media Construct the Atomic Bomb,” Tokyo Daigaku Amerika Kenkyu Shiryo Senta Ninpo 17 (March 1996): 10.

    [29] Ibid., 10.

    [30 Ibid., 11.

    [31] A few U.S. officials and leaders responded to these challenges with an article intended to silence the critics. Henry Stimson, who had been secretary of war under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, responded with a seemingly authoritative essay (written with the assistance of General Groves, Harvard University President James Conant, and others): “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” published in the February 1947 issue of Harper’s. For background on the intent behind and drafting of this article, see Barton J. Bernstein, “Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Diplomatic History 17 (Winter 1993), 35-72; James Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Knopf, 1993), 279-304; and Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 445-492.

    [32] Quoted in Tanter, “Voice and Silence in the First Nuclear War,” 37.

  • The ABCs of Nuclear Disarmament

    The chilling announcement that our government is preparing to replace our entire nuclear arsenal with new hydrogen bombs comes on the heels of a call for nuclear abolition by no less a peace activist than Henry Kissinger, joined by old cold warriors Sam Nunn, George Schultz, and William Perry in a recent Wall Street Journal Editorial.
    We’ve been pushing our luck for more than 60 years since the first and only two atomic bombs to be used in war were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 214,000 people in the initial days, and causing numerous cases of cancers, mutations and birth defects in their radioactive aftermath, new incidences of which are still being documented today. During these sixty years of the nuclear age, every site worldwide, involved in the mining, milling, production and fabrication of uranium, for either war or for “peace”, has left a lethal legacy of radioactive waste, illness, and damage to our very genetic heritage. Bomb and reactor-created plutonium stays toxic for more than 250,000 years and we still haven’t figured out how to safely contain it.
    For the world to have a real chance to deal with nuclear proliferation and avoid a tragic repetition of Hiroshima, it’s clear that we must eliminate the bombs as well as the nuclear power reactors that too often serve as bomb factories for metastasizing nuclear weapons states. On the 20th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Gorbachev called for the phasing out of nuclear power and the establishment of a $50 billion solar fund.
    There are nine nuclear weapons states in the world today. The original five, the US, UK, Russia, China, and France, in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) promised to give up their nuclear weapons in return for a promise from all the other countries of the world not to acquire them. To sweeten the deal, the NPT promised all the other countries an “inalienable right” to “peaceful” nuclear technology, which Iran is now relying on as a member of the treaty. Only India, Pakistan and Israel, refused to go along, India arguing that the treaty was discriminatory. Since the NPT was signed, India, Pakistan, Israel, and now North Korea, have joined the nuclear club. It has been noted by several distinguished Commissions that so long as any one country has nuclear weapons, others will want them.
    There are 27,000 nuclear bombs on the planet today, 26,000 of which are in the US and Russia, with the remaining 1,000 located in the seven other nuclear weapons states. To make progress on nuclear abolition, the US and Russia will have to cut their enormous stockpiles and then call all the other nations to the table to negotiate a treaty for nuclear disarmament. They are all on record as willing to enter disarmament negotiations if the US and Russia get serious. There is an offer on the table from Russia to the US to discuss further cuts in the US-Russian arsenals. Putin called, several years ago, for cuts to 1,500 or even less nuclear weapons each, which would be a signal to the seven other nuclear weapons states to join the talks. Gorbachev tried to convince Reagan to abolish all nuclear weapons but rescinded his offer because Reagan wouldn’t agree to give up his Star Wars program and keep weapons out of space. China, repeatedly calls in the UN for negotiations to begin on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. In June, 2006, Putin called again for negotiations on new reductions.
    The silence from the US has been deafening. Rather, it is has rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, while pressing to plant our missiles right under Russia’s nose in Poland and the Czech Republic, despite promises given to Gorbachev when the wall came down, that if he didn’t object to a reunified Germany entering NATO, we would not expand NATO. This fall, the US was the only country in the world to have voted against negotiations for a treaty banning weapons in space, as we adhere to our brazen space mission to “dominate and control the military use of space to protect US interests and investments”. The newly announced hydrogen bomb to replace the entire nuclear arsenal is the product of an $8 billion annual program for the development of new nuclear weapons, and we have revised our nuclear weapons policy to include the right to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear attacks.
    A Plan for Avoiding Nuclear Proliferation
    Civil Society has produced a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, drafted by lawyers, scientists and policy makers in the Abolition 2000 Global Network for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which is now an official UN document. It lays out all the steps for disarmament, including how to proceed with dismantlement, verification, guarding and monitoring the disassembled arsenals and missiles to insure that we will all be secure from nuclear break-out. It’s not as if we don’t know how to do it! Congresswoman Lynne Woolsey has proposed a resolution calling on the president to negotiate a treaty to ban the bomb.
    So here’s the plan.

    1. The US must honor its own NPT agreement for nuclear disarmament by putting a halt to all new weapons development and taking up Putin’s offer to negotiate for deeper US-Russian cuts..
    2. Once the US and Russia agree to go below 1,000 bombs, take up China’s offer to negotiate a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons and call all the nuclear weapons states to the table..
    3. As part of the negotiation, agree to Russia and China’s annual proposal in the UN to ban all weapons in space. Other countries will not be willing to give up their nuclear “deterrent” so long as the US continues its massive military buildup to achieve “full spectrum dominance” of the planet through space..
    4. Call for a global moratorium on any further uranium mining and nuclear materials production..
    5. Close the Nevada test site just as France and China have closed their sites in the South Pacific and Gobi Desert.
    6. Restrict the role of the nuclear-industry dominated International Atomic Energy Agency to only monitoring and verifying compliance with nuclear disarmament measures, and prohibit any further commercial activity to promote “peaceful” nuclear technology.
    7. Establish an International Sustainable Energy, which would supercede the NPT’s promise of an “inalienable right” to “peaceful” nuclear technology as we phase out nuclear power. Since every one of the earth’s 442 nuclear power reactors is a potential bomb factory, we wouldn’t be dealing with a full deck if we thought we could eliminate nuclear weapons, without dealing with their evil twins, nuclear reactors.
    8. Fund the International Sustainable Energy with the $250 billion in tax breaks and subsidies now going to the fossil, nuclear, and industrial biomass industries, and jump-start a 21st Century sustainable energy future.
    9. Reject plans for international “control” of the civilian nuclear fuel cycle. It’s just so 20th Century– a top-down, centralized model, to be run by preferred members of the nuclear club which will set up another hierarchical and discriminatory regime of nuclear “haves and have nots”, contribute to more radioactive pollution and health and terrorism hazards, and is doomed to fail. Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates recently indicated they are trying to get in under the wire and develop their “peaceful” nuclear technology before the US and its colonial old boys network establishes another discriminatory regime of nuclear apartheid. To prevent proliferation and the possibility of nuclear war as well as fossil-fuel driven climate catastrophes equal to nuclear war in destructive power, sensible folks know we must deal holistically by eliminating nuclear weapons as we phase out nuclear power and mobilize for safe, clean, sustainable energy–negotiating an end to the nuclear age.
    10. Establish the Bronx Project to clean up the mess created by the Manhattan Project, by isolating nuclear materials from the environment and providing a rational containment system during the eons their radioactivity will co-exist with us on earth.

     

    Alice Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a founder of the Abolition 2000 Global Network for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

  • 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).

  • The Nuclear Elephant in the Room: Why No One Talks About the U.S. Nuclear Threat

    Imagine a scene where a family is anxiously gathered in their living room to discuss a growing problem with their neighbors. It seems that one of their more troublesome neighbors has been threatening them, and lately set off a large explosion to validate the threat. Yet another of their neighbors has been threatening them with malicious mischief, and making ingredients for high-explosives in blatant contempt for the law. The neighborhood is in danger of spinning out of control. Several neighbors have been actively making and demonstrating explosives in contempt of the neighborhood’s determination to disallow such dangerous and threatening activities.

    The family discussion centers on what to do about these aggravating neighbors, and several strategies are on the table. One suggests legal action to confiscate or render the neighbors’ high-explosives inoperative. Another suggests a punitive stealth attack to ruin the neighbors’ explosives making capabilities. These strategies involve serious risks, because existing laws prohibiting the creation of high-explosives may not be applied or obeyed, and any one-sided attacks will demand extreme measures that will implicate the family in illegal violence. The family has importantly decided that it cannot speak to these troublemakers directly, but must rely on other neighbors to negotiate an acceptable surrender from their foes. The situation is at an impasse.

    In our imaginary scene, one brave family member chimes in to remind everyone that this family is the original inventor and user of the high-explosives in question. Not only that, the family has, on numerous occasions, demonstrated its neighbor-threatening destructive capabilities by exploding scary weapons, first in the atmosphere and then below ground, in public displays designed to intimidate. The family has built and hoarded an enormous hidden arsenal of high-explosives that no one, even most family members themselves, is allowed to know about or discuss. The not-so-secret past of this family, our courageous protagonist reminds, includes the well-known destruction of two of their neighbor’s homes, and the incessant, often-exhibited threat of destroying the entire neighborhood at their whim. He suggests that, just perhaps, the threatening posture of his own family may have created the situation with the neighbors, and by admitting and changing its behavior the family may finally win a much desired peace in the neighborhood.

    These brave observations, instead of presenting an eye-opening epiphany to the family, are greeted with silence, then derision, and then outright criticism. The brave observer is now regarded as a traitor. His assertions are unwelcome and prohibited from discussion. Family members whisper that he must have gone crazy, or that his idealism has gotten the better of him, or that he has a secret agenda to destroy the family.

    No one will acknowledge the truth — that the threat now posed by their neighbors originates with this family and is perpetuated by their own exclusive-minded threatening. This truth is the obvious and commanding reality that cannot be discussed, the proverbial “elephant in the room”. The family behaves as if this prominent actuality doesn’t matter and, for solving their current problem with the neighbors, they regard it as irrelevant.

    Before we leave this too-obvious analogy, it should be mentioned that the family has currently concluded the sale of its explosives-making technology to another neighbor it regards as “friendly”. In the past, the family has encouraged and helped several of its “friends” to make and store high-explosives, despite the overwhelming consensus of the neighborhood — including generations of this family — that such explosives are dangerous and unwelcome. The utter hypocrisy and immorality of such activities is lost on the family members, who cannot discuss or even acknowledge the “elephant in the room”.

    Unfortunately, this analogy is not a mere abstraction. The Bush Administration has imposed its famous love of secrecy on all matters pertaining to U.S. production, storage, and deployment of nuclear weapons. The American people, whose “security” is asserted as the reason for the enormous U.S. nuclear arsenal, are now prohibited from knowing about the size, content, deployment, or status of this world-threatening arsenal built in their name, even in historic terms. (Note 1)

    The imposition of a secretive “security” regime regarding nuclear weapons is nothing new. It has been employed since the beginning of the nuclear age to both ensure the unfettered development of nuclear weapons and to silence knowledgeable critics. One only has to regard the history of Robert Oppenheimer’s purge from the nuclear establishment, or the sneering persecution of Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, to understand the current reluctance of scientists and media professionals to speak openly about the threat implied by American nuclear weapons. The nuclear “security” regime is notoriously good at keeping its secrets, oversensitive to criticism, and vindictive towards its critics.

    Nevertheless, over decades of daunting challenges, the persistent efforts of anti-nuclear advocates finally brought the United States, in 1968, to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and embrace its vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. With its endorsement of the treaty, the United States acknowledged its responsibility to cease proliferating, and to negotiate “in good faith” for the elimination nuclear weapons from the world. The achievements of the NPT have largely been ignored and abandoned by Bush II’s Administration. (Note 2)

    The recent demonstration of nuclear capabilities by North Korea, and the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons implied by Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, have laid bare the sanctimony and bad faith of the United States in its nuclear proliferation policies.

    Although the single nuclear explosion recently orchestrated by North Korea stands in stark contrast to the 1,054 nuclear tests conducted by the United States, none of our political leaders seem able to grasp the contradiction inherent in their stern admonishments that North Korea’s nuclear explosions are illegal, immoral, and must not be allowed.

    In the sensationalized U.S. media reports surrounding the North Korean nuclear explosion, scant mention is made of the numerous U.S. nuclear weapons targeting Pyongyang. Even though North Korea has demanded that such U.S. threats cease as a prerequisite for meaningful talks about abandoning their nuclear weapons program, the posture of the Bush II administration is that the threat posed by American nuclear weapons is inviolable and cannot be negotiated, even as a topic of discussion. Although President Bush allowed himself to say that U.S. policy sought “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula”, no admission or explanation of the United States’ role in amplifying nuclear tensions there has been forthcoming.

    The uranium enrichment activities undertaken by Iran, ostensibly for “peaceful” nuclear power generation, are the source of urgent diplomatic threatening. Iran, a NPT signatory, has endorsed, defended, and offered to strengthen the NPT. Nevertheless, the Bush II administration’s profitable sale of nuclear enrichment technology to India, with no credible pretense that such technology will be used for “peaceful” purposes, is lauded as a wonderful step forward in U.S./India relations. India has steadfastly refused to sign or endorse the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The U.S. Congress, which approved the deal, is, again, unable to make the link between the proliferation of nuclear technology to India and U.S. obligations under the NPT. The impending threat posed by Iran’s disdain for international opinion and obligations under the very same treaty is regarded as an international crisis, demanding sanctions or worse; while the sale of nuclear enrichment technology to India, a nuclear “rogue state” in NPT terms, is regarded as a blessing.

    There is a black-out in effect for the U.S. news media regarding the number one contention of the Iranians regarding their nuclear ambitions — that their sworn enemy, Israel, has, for decades secretly built and amassed nuclear weapons to threaten the region, especially Iran. The furtive secret of Israel’s nuclear capabilities has been hypocritically approved by, and may even have been abetted by, the United States. The U.S., following Israel’s policy, has staunchly denied the existence of well-known Israeli nuclear capabilities, and prevents any discussion of this important concealment in international forums or Arab/Israeli negotiations. Israel has never signed, and does not endorse, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    On Bush’s watch, “atomic weapons have been revalued – not quite to the point of legitimacy, perhaps, but certainly upward, as sources of influence, national pride, and anti-American defiance.” The posture of this Administration regards the NPT as irrelevant, and argues, “it is time to embrace an updated system of the deterrence and threats of massive retaliation that prevailed during the Cold War.”

    The solution to the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation is to engage the imagination and will of the world’s people who stand to win their future, or lose it catastrophically, depending on the outcome of the project of making nuclear weapons illegitimate. These “people” are not only North Korean dictators or Iranian zealots, Russians, Israelis, or Pakistanis, but United States citizens. The international project of making nuclear weapons illegitimate — active since the first days of the Nuclear Age — is currently embodied in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The unique position of the United States, as both the inventor, single user, and chief propagator of these world-threatening weapons, makes this nation especially responsible to ensure that they are never used again.

    Until Americans can recognize our own role in this dangerous situation, and come fully and honestly to grips with our responsibility to change our own awareness and behavior, “the elephant in the room” will continue to prevent any meaningful change. To turn away from this responsibility, to continue to erode the decades of positive work manifested in the NPT, to willingly fail in our critical duty, would be far more irrational and irresponsible than any calculation made by North Korea or Iran. It is time to acknowledge the brave and discerning actions of those who seek to bring the people and government of the United States, reluctant though they may be, to an honest recognition of their own accountability.

    It is time to challenge all the citizens of the world to stop denying it is we ourselves who created this life-threatening situation and perpetuate it; and it is also we who have the power and ability to change it. If we can simply awaken to our true responsibility, “the elephant in the room” will disappear –really, and not just by our denying it. Only by changing ourselves can we hope to change the world.

    1. NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE (Vol. 12, #33; 24 August 2006): According to a report released in August, 2006 by the National Security Archive (NSA), the Pentagon and the Energy Department have reclassified as national security secrets historical data relating to the size of the American nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.
    The NSA report details for the public the number of Minuteman missiles (1,000), Titan II missiles (54), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (656) in the historic U.S. Cold War arsenal – information that had previously been public through the administrations of four Secretaries of Defense in the 1960s and 70s but is now blacked out. Security classifiers have also redacted from documents deployment information relating to the number of American nuclear weapons in Great Britain and Germany — information that was first declassified in 1999. Also blacked out — details regarding the nuclear deployment arrangements with Canada, even though the Canadian government has declassified its side of the arrangement.

    2. Consider the sanctions imposed under the authority of the NPT, and the real accomplishments of its police force, the IAEA, in Iraq, where, after years of a rigorous inspection regime, and in spite of militant arguments by the Bush Administration to the contrary, Iraq was found to be free of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

    3. Coll, Steve (October 23 2006). “Nuke Rebuke”. The New Yorker, p 31.

    4. Ibid.

    James Dinwiddie is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Doomsday Clock Reset for an Alarming World

    Be afraid. Be more afraid.

    For the first time in five years, the elite board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the minute hand on their Doomsday Clock closer to the fatal hour of midnight.

    The clock – a symbol of the perils facing the human race – is expected to shift two minutes, from the current seven minutes to midnight to five, a figure the Bulletin would not confirm before its news conference today.

    “This is a sober and highly alarming judgment by a group of people who are knowledgeable and experienced,” said Nobel laureate John Polanyi, a faculty member in the University of Toronto’s chemistry department.

    “The most immediate hazard we face is also the most easily addressed, namely the thousands of nuclear-armed weapons aimed at Russia and the United States, and left pointlessly in a state of high alert. The fact that they are is an appalling failure to step back from the brink.”

    The clock, which hangs in the University of Chicago, was first set 60 years ago to focus on the danger of nuclear weapons. But for the first time it will take into account the perils posed by global warming, which has sparked renewed interest in building nuclear power plants.

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded by former Manhattan Project scientists who turned against nuclear weapons after developing the first atomic bomb.

    “The major new step reflects growing concerns about a ‘Second Nuclear Age’ marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing launch-ready status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks,” said a statement released before a news conference today.

    The clock was first set in 1947 at seven minutes to midnight, and plunged to an all-time low of two minutes in 1953, when the United States and Soviet Union both tested hydrogen bombs. Since then India, Pakistan, North Korea and, it is believed, Israel have developed nuclear weapons and Iran is enriching uranium that could potentially be used to fuel an atomic bomb.

    The clock was set furthest from midnight – 17 minutes – in 1991, when Washington and Moscow signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

    But it has crept steadily nearer since then as global military spending increased, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to pave the way for its missile defence program, and reports spread of terrorists seeking nuclear weapons.

    American non-proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione said today’s movement of the Doomsday Clock’s hand was a “measurable indicator of how bad things are. If some of the world’s smartest scientists are saying we are now closer to doomsday, it should focus attention on both the problems, and the urgency of finding solutions.”

    And, he said, U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration has made the dangers faced by the planet worse.

    “They came in determined to make a radical change and they made it. It was a complete disaster. Every member of what they call the ‘axis of evil’ is a greater threat now than it was before they came to power. They thought they could use the blunt instrument of military might to overthrow evil regimes. But instead of intimidating countries, they made things worse.”

    And global warming is also worse, said Cirincione, a senior vice-president at the Washington-based Center for American Progress.

    “We lost six years when we could have been taking steps to fix the problem.”

    Last week, the once-hawkish former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and three other American former officials, declared that reliance on nuclear arms was “becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective,” and called for Washington to lead in creating “a world without nuclear weapons.”

    The group, which included former defence secretary William Perry, said “North Korea’s recent nuclear test and Iran’s refusal to stop its program to enrich uranium – potentially to weapons grade – highlight the fact that the world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era.”

    Ernie Regehr, a policy adviser for Waterloo-based Project Ploughshares, agreed that the trends “are all in a dangerous direction, and the notion of a nuclear renaissance, the spread of nuclear power, is making (them) more so.”

    Even a modest movement to revive nuclear power, he added, was perilous.

    At the same time, Regehr said, not only the United States but Britain and France are helping to stoke the fires of nuclear proliferation by refusing to give up their deadly arsenals, or even signalling that they will update them.

    “Britain could have pointed the world in the direction it needs to go, because it is a secure country that doesn’t need nuclear weapons. …

    “Yet, in defiance of all that, it has indicated an interest in modernizing the arsenal, which is a heavy blow to non-proliferation.

    Published on Wednesday, January 17, 2007 by the Toronto Star

  • A Bipartisan Plea For Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    A Bipartisan Plea For Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    An amazing and important commentary appeared in the January 4, 2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal, co-authored by four high-level architects of the Cold War: George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn. The article, entitled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” was amazing not so much for what it proposed, but for who was making the proposal. The four prominent former US officials reviewed current nuclear dangers and called for US leadership to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. Their argument was as follows:

    1. Reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.
    2. Terrorist groups are outside the bounds of deterrence strategy.
    3. We are entering a new nuclear era that will be more precarious, disorienting and costly than was Cold War deterrence.
    4. New nuclear weapons states lack the safeguarding and control experiences learned by the US and USSR during the Cold War.
    5. The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty envisioned the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
    6. Non-nuclear weapons states have grown increasingly skeptical of the sincerity of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
    7. There exists an historic opportunity to eliminate nuclear weapons in the world.
    8. To realize this opportunity, bold vision and action are needed.
    9. The US must take the lead and must convince the leaders of the other nuclear weapons states to turn the goal of nuclear weapons abolition into a joint effort.
    10. A number of steps need to be taken to lay the groundwork for a world free of nuclear threat, including de-alerting nuclear arsenals; reducing the size of nuclear arsenals; eliminating tactical nuclear weapons; achieving Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and encouraging other key states to also do so; securing nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials everywhere in the world; and halting production of fissile materials for weapons, ceasing to use enriched uranium in civil commerce and removing weapons-usable uranium from research reactors.

    For many of us committed to the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons, there is nothing new in their arguments. They are arguments that many civil society groups have been making since the end of the Cold War. Other former officials, such as Robert McNamara and General George Lee Butler, former head of the US Strategic Command, have also made such arguments. What is new is that these former Cold Warriors have joined together in a bipartisan spirit to publicly make these arguments to the American people. This means that the perspectives of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the Global Security Institute, the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and other dedicated civil society groups are finally being embraced by key former officials who once presided over Cold War nuclear strategy.

    The bipartisan advice of Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn to abolish nuclear weapons will require a full reversal of the current Bush administration nuclear policies. The Bush administration has thumbed its nose at the other parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, behaving as though the US had no obligations to fulfill its commitments for nuclear disarmament under the treaty. The administration has largely opposed the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to by consensus at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

    If the administration wants to demonstrate leadership toward nuclear weapons abolition, it could immediately submit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification; call for negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty; reach an agreement with Russia to begin implementing deeper cuts in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries, which Russia supports; and call for a summit of leaders of all nuclear weapons states to negotiate a new treaty for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

    If the United States becomes serious about leading the way to a world free of nuclear weapons, as called for by the former US officials, it can assume a high moral and legal ground, while improving its own security and global security. Each day that goes by without US leadership for achieving a nuclear weapons-free world undermines the prospects for the future of humanity. There is no issue on which US leadership is more needed, and there is no issue on which the US has more to gain by asserting such leadership.

    The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” The truth that if we are to have a human future the US must lead the way in abolishing nuclear weapons has been frequently ridiculed and violently opposed. The commentary by Shultz, Perry, Kissinger and Nunn suggests that this truth may now be entering the stage of being self-evident.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.
  • Public Policy and Good Citizenship

    Public Policy and Good Citizenship

    Public policy in any society has both normative and empirical dimensions. The normative dimension tells us who we want to be, while the empirical dimension tells us who we are. The difference between these two dimensions may be thought of as the gap between desire (or pretense) and reality.

    Let me give a few examples. Our normative goal is to provide a good education for every American. When we take an empirical look at how we’re doing, however, we find that many young people are not, in fact, getting a good education. Classes are overcrowded, many students drop out of school early, and many who stay in school slide through without even learning the basics: reading, writing and arithmetic. Even worse, many students leave school without having developed skills in critical thinking, which has profound consequences for our democracy.

    Another normative goal in our society is for every person to receive equal justice under the law. But when you look at the statistics, it seems to me that the rich get far better treatment in our legal system than the poor. Death rows are filled with poor people, while the rich who commit similar crimes are often saved from paying the ultimate penalty, and sometimes from paying any penalty at all, by the work of high-priced lawyers. It is rare that corporate executives who are caught cheating the public and their employees are brought to account for their crimes.

    Still another normative goal of this country is embodied in the words of the Declaration of Independence, where it talks about “all men being created equal.” We know that even as the Declaration was being written most of the founders of the country were slaveholders and the only people allowed to vote were the same color, gender and social class as the founders, that is, white male landowners. It has been a painful struggle in this country, and the struggle continues, to reach the normative goal of treating people equally under the law.

    It seems to me that citizens in a democracy should take on the challenge of examining where we fall short of achieving our stated goals and should develop strategies to move our society from where we are to where we profess we wish to be. In developing such strategies, it is necessary to identify and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving our stated goals.

    A number of stated goals of our country are set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution, arguably our most important founding document. I’d like to read you this one paragraph Preamble:

    “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

    This paragraph provides an excellent starting point for considerations of public policy. It tells us first, who it is that seeks to accomplish these goals: “We the people.” That is where the ultimate power to achieve these goals should reside. It is a power that can be delegated to elected representatives, but it cannot be given away. Without a watchful, caring and astute citizenry, democracy will wither and fade. So, each of us, as a part of that civic body “We the people,” has a share of the responsibility for the future of our country and also the world.

    The goals in the Preamble are lofty: “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” We should note that it is possible for these goals to be in conflict or at least to compete for resources. For example, there is certainly tension between providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare. This is an area of public policy that deserves particular attention. The Congress currently allocates to the military more than half of the portion of the budget that it has discretion to distribute each year, while many Americans lack adequate nutrition, shelter, healthcare and education. In addition to the more than $500 billion that goes to the military directly, there are also the resources needed to support the maimed and traumatized veterans and to pay the ongoing interest on the large portion of the national debt attributable to past wars.

    We also need to ask ourselves the question of whether the “common defense” can be maintained by military means alone. The world has changed since our country was founded in the 18th century. Today terrorism is a far more realistic threat to the people of the United States than is the military force of another country, but we are still behaving in many respects as though our security can be assured by military force. If a terrorist group were successful in obtaining a nuclear weapon and transporting it to an American city, it could destroy the city, just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed more than 60 years ago. That is why I am a strong proponent of a public policy that seeks total nuclear disarmament. This would have to be done in a phased, controlled and verifiable manner, but doing so is virtually the only way to assure that nuclear weapons will not end up in the hands of terrorists who will use them against US cities.

    I want to say a few more words about nuclear weapons because I feel that they are they greatest threat to our common defense, common welfare and common future. Our leaders argued until recently that our country maintained nuclear weapons in order to deter a potential adversary from attacking us with nuclear weapons. Obviously, if we could succeed in abolishing nuclear weapons worldwide, these weapons would not be needed for deterrence. Further, equally obviously, these weapons provide no deterrence value against terrorists who cannot be located to retaliate against, or who are suicidal and don’t care if they are retaliated against.

    A few things that are not so obvious about nuclear weapons are that they are anti-democratic, extremely costly and cowardly. Nuclear weapons concentrate power in the hands of a single individual. Mr. Bush talks about using them preemptively. What if he decided to use a nuclear weapon or to initiate an all-out attack with nuclear weapons? There would certainly be no democratic checks and balances once the missiles were launched.

    The US alone has spent over $6 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems since the onset of the Nuclear Age. I think its worth considering what this country might be like and how it might be viewed in the world if even a modest portion of this enormous amount had been spent in improving the common welfare and helping other countries to improve theirs.

    Finally, nuclear weapons may be the most cowardly weapon ever created. You deliver them from afar, and in reality a country would only choose to use them on a country unable to retaliate in kind. These weapons kill massively and indiscriminately: men, women and children; young and old; healthy and infirm; civilians and combatants. They are certainly a coward’s weapon, and that is a bad match if you happen to have cowards and fools in high office, which experience suggests cannot be rule out.

    In the end, it is not weapons or technology that makes a country great. Greatness exists in ideals and in people. We are a country with great ideals, but we are not living up to them and too many of our people do not have the dignity of having their basic needs met. It is a disgrace that the administration would request and the Congress would provide tax cuts for the rich while more than 40 million Americans are without healthcare. If we truly want to be a great people, we must invest in our people and we must be more generous in our interactions with the world. Our greatness will not be measured by wealth or military might, but by healthy and well educated citizens. The most important measure of a country’s greatness is the way it treats the least among them: the poor, the homeless, the dispossessed.

    We have made it public policy in our country that international law is part of the law of our land. You’ll find this in Article VI(2) of our Constitution, where it says that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land.” One such treaty to which the US is a party is the United Nations Charter, in which it makes war illegal except in cases of self-defense (and then only for a limited period of time before turning the matter over to the UN itself) or when authorized by the United Nations Security Council. In the case of the war against Iraq, neither of these conditions was met and therefore the war was and remains illegal. Our young men and women are being sent to fight and die in an illegal and aggressive war. This is a tragedy for the families of these young people, and shameful for our country. It is bad public policy to allow leaders to commit aggressive warfare without any repercussions. Leaders should be held to account.

    Another treaty that is the law of our land is the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which we agreed to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. In the year 2000, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty agreed unanimously to 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. Unfortunately, the United States under its current leadership not only has not fulfilled any of these 13 steps, but it has been the major obstacle in the world to progress on achieving them.

    Other treaties that should be the law of the land, but which this administration has refused to support are the Kyoto Accords on Global Warming, the Treaty for an International Criminal Court, and the treaty banning landmines. By our lawless and unconstructive behavior in the international community, the United States has lost much of the respect and good will it had earned by its earlier support for the United Nations, by its generosity in the Marshall Plan, and by its support for international law in general and human rights law in particular.

    Our public policies say a lot about us. They tell us who we are as opposed to who we pretend to be. Thomas Jefferson thought that each generation must have its own revolution. I think that we need not go that far, but that each generation must rethink its values and decide what it wants to be. Because of our might and background, US leadership is needed in the world, but it must be leadership that reflects the best of who we are onto a broader stage. We need leadership that is rooted in law, diplomacy and human dignity. We need a society in which force is not a first resort, but a last resort. To achieve such a society we need citizens who are educated to think for themselves and to think critically, and we need leaders with wisdom and humane values who will emerge from such a thoughtful citizenry.

    Public policy should encourage a good public education for all citizens and the development of good citizens who take civic responsibility seriously. To move our society in this direction, we need to make some important changes in public policy that will include the following points:

    1. Devoting more of our public resources to public education, with the goal of creating an informed citizenry capable of making intelligent decisions on issues of public importance.

    2. Campaign finance reform, with the goal of taking the influence of big money and corporate preferences out of politics.

    3. Increasing the accountability of public officials who violate the public trust.

    4. Imposing appropriate legal penalties for white collar crime, with the goal of encouraging integrity in corporate leaders.

    5. Providing an economic safety net for all citizens who fall below the poverty line.

    6. Being good international citizens by providing leadership in both word and deed in upholding international law, including the United Nations Charter, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Principles of Nuremberg, the International Criminal Court, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and many other important treaties.

    The battles for the future of our country will be fought not in far-off lands and not with weapons of mass destruction, but on the field of public policy within our country. The leaders in these battles will be those who accept the responsibilities of citizenship and leadership. I encourage you to be courageous, compassionate and committed in playing your part.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.

  • The Middle East and the World Five Years After 9/11

    This is an excellent moment to evaluate what has happened since September 11, 2001. Five years have passed since the dramatic attacks on the highly symbolic American targets, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The US Government has launched wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. A third war, with likely graver consequences, is threatened in the months ahead against Iran. In a speech given in Atlanta, Georgia in early September, President Bush declared that “America is safer” than it was five years ago, “and America is winning the war on terror.” Bush also insisted that this is not only a war against Islamic extremism, but is also “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” a struggle that “threatens all civilized nations.” The American president claimed that “today the civilized world stands together to defend our freedom..to defeat the terrorists” and thereby “secure the peace for generations to come.” A sober appraisal of the facts do not support the American president on any of these contentions.

    Much of the world, including the peoples of the Middle East and countries long allied do not share such a self-congratulatory interpretation of the American role in the post-9/11 world. According to independent polls taken in a variety of countries the Bush approach to world order is not popular elsewhere. When asked if they approved of the American ‘global war on terror,’84% in Egypt, 77% in Turkey, and 74% in Jordan responded ‘No.’ Similar results were found among America’s traditional allies. 76% of those polled in Spain and 57% in France expressed their overall disapproval of the American response to September 11th. A reliable survey of world opinion also found that in recent years that far more people fear the role of the United States in the world than that of al Qaeda.

    What has troubled thoughtful observers more than anything else has been the stubborn American insistence that the only viable response to the 9/11 attacks was to declare ‘war’ on a violent adversary such as al Qaeda, a shadowy transnational network without either a distinct territorial base or allegiance to any specific state. This mistake was further compounded by extending the orbit of the war far beyond al Qaeda to encompass all forms of non-state violence within the operative definition of the ‘terrorist’ threat. Such an extension of the conflict by the US Government encouraged such countries as Israel, Russia, and China to treat self-determination movements within and near their borders as belonging to the war against terror. Both the futility and injustice of treating the Palestinians, the Chechens, and the people of Xingiang as part of the same struggle as that unleashed by the 9/11 attacks was to distort and deflect a more genuine and focused pursuit of security for the United States, as well as give governments around the world an unconditional mandate to engage in uncontrolled violence and oppression against non-state movements seeking human rights and self-determination.

    Additionally, two closely linked counter-terrorist policies were enunciated by President Bush that further escalated and spread the war zone: states that ‘harbored’ terrorists within their borders would be held as responsible as the terrorists, and would be regarded as legitimate targets for attack; and if a state does not join the US in the counter-terrorist war, then it will be viewed as an enemy (“You are either with us or you are with the terrorists). This logic was initially applied, with some plausibility, to justify attacking Afghanistan, and overthrowing its Taliban government. This seemed reasonable to many moderate oberservers at the time, although stretching the limits of international law, because Afghanistan did seem to provide a safe haven for the leadership of al Qaeda, as well as providing the site for extensive terrorist training facilities that led more or less directly to the 9/11 attacks. It did seem necessary at the time to destroy this al Qaeda base of operations to lessen the prospect of future attacks. Waging war against Afghanistan as a whole was always more problematic, especially if considered a precedent for future wars. It is true that the Kabul government had few friends among governments, and the Taliban regime had surely committed some severe Crimes Against Humanity that shocked the world. The American claim that it was rescuing the people of the country from oppression and famine seems much shakier after five years than it did at first. The latest reports indicate the highest ever production rates of narcotic drugs, a revival of the Taliban and armed struggle, and much evidence of corruption and warlordism arising from the American-led occupation. Beyond this, the main rationale for the war was the opportunity to capture the al Qaeda leadership so that it could not plan and carry out further terrorist attacks, a mission pursued so incompetently as to ensure failure. Five years later al Qaeda is still a potent force, although its operational base has mutated in some respects, relying on likeminded extremist groups around the world, and Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri are still at large.

    But worse than Afghanistan, in many respects, was Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was undertaken despite the absence of a connection with the perpetrators of 9/11, a conclusion now even acknowledged by US governmental investigations. The argument that Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed an intolerable threat because of its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction never convinced either the UN Security Council, world public opinion, or most of America’s most trusted allies, and yet the invasion of this country went ahead. The attack on Iraq was widely regarded as illegal, immoral, and imprudent in the extreme. This impression was reinforced by the subsequent failure of the invaders to find any weapons of mass destruction, despite pre-invasions claims of hard evidence that such arsenals existed. Criticism of the Iraq undertaking also mounted as the brutality and incompetence of the occupation became unmistakably clear. Instead of liberation, what ensued under the American-led occupation seemed crudely abusive of the Iraqi people and their culture. Rather than diminish 9/11 kinds of activities, the Iraq experience has significantly strengthened anti-American violent extremism in the region. Three years after the invasion, Iraq remains ravaged and war torn, caught in an escalating spiral of violence that threatens to spill over its borders, dangerously agitating relations throughout the region between Sunnis and Shi’ias. In going forward with its Iraq policy, and refusing to acknowledge the failure of the occupation, the United States has damaged its credibility as a global leader, as well as weakened the authority of the United Nations and of international law generally. The precedent of recourse to war in a situation other than self-defense fundamentally rewrites the Charter restrictions on aggressive war that were such a central aspect of the laudable effort to construct a world order after 1945 that was less prone to war. This resolve to prevent future wars was led by American diplomacy after World War II, which also featured the punishment of surviving German leaders at Nuremberg for their role in planning and waging aggressive war.

    Most regrettable is the missed opportunity to react in a constructive fashion to the 9/11 attacks. Immediately after these attacks there was a world display of solidarity with the United States, including even demonstrations of support in Tehran and the Palestinian Territories. Had the United States taken advantage of this climate of opinion it could have pursued those charged with violent acts, including those of 9/11 by reliance on greatly enhanced law enforcement, sustained by much improved transnational framework of police and paramilitary cooperation. Looking back on the five years, most of the success in weakening al Qaeda, and preventing further terrorist attacks, has resulted from police and intelligence efforts. In contrast, the war paradigm has proved dysfunctional, wasting enormous resources and lives, undermining the legitimacy of the struggle, and inducing many young persons to opt for political extremism.

    The recently concluded Lebanon War gives added weight to this set of conclusions. Israel launched an aggressive war against Lebanon, implicitly relying on the American doctrine that a territorial state will henceforth be held fully responsible and punished for the acts of non-state actors that operate within its borders. The real adversary of Israel was supposedly Hezbollah, which was historically a resistance movement dedicated to the removal of the Israeli presence from Lebanese territory. It should be recalled that Hezbollah was formed in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and its refusal to withdraw from the southern part of the country. As the 2006 war demonstrated anew, military superiority often cannot be translated into political outcomes when the adversary, as was the case with Hezbollah, was a well-entrenched, indigenous political movement, with a strong base of popular support. Israel managed to cause much destruction and suffering, but in the end Hezbollah was not defeated. It emerged stronger, and Israel’s military credibility was weakened. American support for Israel’s war, and its role in neutralizing efforts to obtain an early ceasefire in the UNSC added a vivid new justification to those forces opposing the post-9/11 tactics adopted by the United States, and now imitated by Israel with American backing.

    The tactics relied upon in Lebanon represent more than practical failures. They represent a long step backward with respect to international law and morality. What Israel claimed it was entitled to do was to launch a full-scale war against a relatively defenseless state on the basis of a routine border incident. Because of the difficulty of using war as an instrument against armed resistance forces, the Israel/American policy relies on disproportionate and indiscriminate force to intimidate an adversary, inflicting massive doses of collective punishment on civilian societies. This is essentially a terrorist logic: inflicting so much suffering on the government and people of Lebanon that it will be compelled to decide on the basis of its self-interest that it must surrender to Israeli demands with respect to Hezbollah. But the logic backfired, and the political leverage of Hezbollah within Lebanon is probably greater than it was before the war began.

    My main argument is that war and excessive force have been ineffective in achieving their goals and dangerously destructive of world order. The United States and Israel have persisted with such an approach in the Middle East since 9/11 despite this record of unsuccess. There are three main explanations. The first explanation has to do with the outlook of political leaders. Major states are governed by individuals with a military mentality who are not sensitive to the limits of power when dealing with the sorts of conflicts that exist in the contemporary world. Because of this constricted imagination, the more military efforts prove unable to reach their anticipated goals, the more ardent will be their pursuit. Instead of adjusting to the failure, and switching to more effective political means and police efforts, the tendency as in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza is to intensify the military approach, and expand the war zone.

    The second explanation is the unwillingness of the leadership in Washington to address the legitimate grievances that give rise to political extremism. Far more expedient than attacking countries, would be exerting pressure on Israel to reach a fair outcome of the conflict with the Palestinian people. Ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, as agreed unanimously in the Security Council almost forty years ago, would diminish the appeal of extremism in the region, and greatly reduce the resentment of the American role that is so widely felt by the people of the Islamic world.

    The third explanation is the most important, yet difficult to document. The response to 9/11 established a political climate that allowed the neoconservative foreign policy advisors of President Bush to implement their long advocated grand strategy in the Middle East in conjunction with the conduct of the global war on terror. This grand strategy pre-existed 9/11, and focused on the shift from Europe to the Middle East as the main strategic battleground to shape the future of the world. This outlook led to giving the highest foreign policy priority to gaining hegemonic authority in the region to safeguard control over its energy resources, to guide its ideological evolution, and to prevent anti-Western political behavior by its leading governments. Neoconservatives, in collaboration with right-wing Israelis, had believed for many years that their long-term interests in the region could only be protected by achieving ‘regime change’ through military intervention in a series of countries they regarded as problematic including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and most of all, Iran. 9/11 created the political mandate that had been previously lacking. Among the problems with this approach was an over-estimation on the role of military superiority, and the tension between a successful counter-terrorist policy and the grand strategy objective of controlling the region. But despite the setbacks in Iraq and Lebanon, this policy has not been abandoned by the Bush administration, and underlies the intensifying confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program.

    From these perspectives, there never should have been a global war on terror, and there certainly should not have been an American/Israeli partnership to reconfigure by force of arms the internal political governing arrangements in a series of countries perceived as hostile. Unfortunately, the region and the world are more dangerous than five years ago, and future prospects are not encouraging. Whether internal political change in the United States can generate a more constructive approach will determine whether the decline in global security of the past five years can be reversed in the next five.

     

    Richard Falk is the Board Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

  • Why are There Still Nuclear Weapons?

    Why are There Still Nuclear Weapons?

    I recently received a letter from long-time nuclear disarmament activist from Sweden, which he began by quoting something that I had said earlier this year: “A powerful state, such as the US, has everything to lose and very little to gain from the possession of nuclear weapons.” He indicated his wholehearted agreement, and then posed these questions that he has wrestled with: “Why are there still nuclear weapons? Or, more philosophically: To what need in society, in citizens and in leaders are nuclear weapons the answer?” I think that these are important questions, for which there are no easy answers, but they are certainly questions worthy of our time and thought.

    I would begin by arguing that there are still nuclear weapons because US elites are not enthusiastic about nuclear disarmament and have not provided necessary leadership to achieve it. Of course, this leads to the question: Why hasn’t this leadership from US elites been forthcoming? To this question I would offer the following reflections:

    1. US elites remain caught up in old patterns of thinking, such as, “The more powerful the weapon, the greater the security it provides.”
    2. US elites continue to think and act as though nuclear weapons provide security as well as leverage in the international system. Nuclear weapons may be viewed by elites primarily as weapons of last resort. But they may also be viewed by elites as weapons easy to pull out for more mundane threats, and the very fact of their existence is likely perceived as sufficient in most circumstances to keep another country in line.
    3. US elites are caught up in the false notions that there is prestige in possessing these weapons and that they contribute to the national image of “the superpower” state.
    4. US elites may be influenced by the concept that technology is non-reversible; once created it cannot be “uncreated.” Or, as it is sometimes put, “The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.”
    5. US elites may not understand or believe in leadership that is not based on force, threat of force or economic manipulation.
    6. These elites may also be distrustful of nuclear disarmament efforts due to concerns with potential cheating by other states. They currently seem to be distrustful in general of verification measures.
    7. Certain corporations and individuals continue to profit from maintaining the US nuclear arsenal.
    8. There remains no substantial public or outside pressure on these elites to change US nuclear policy, even policies that threaten preemption or prevention. Consequently, there is little impetus to change.

    One psychological concept that may be worth further consideration is that nuclear weapons are seen by elites as a tool of dominance between countries. Much like a master-slave relationship, nuclear weapons are tools of absolute power. They may represent the whip once held by the master. The whip, once its use has been demonstrated, need only be threatened to assure obedience from the slave population. Of course, slavery in general and the whip in particular breeds anger, resentment and rebellion in the oppressed population.

    In a time of terrorism, as we have seen repeatedly, this anger may take the form of attacks against vulnerable elements of the population. There is also a psychological tendency in the oppressed (for example, the abused child) to adopt the methods of the oppressor and thus terrorist groups seek to obtain nuclear weapons.

    The worst nightmare of US elites would be an attack or potential attack with nuclear weapons by a suicidal, unlocatable terrorist organization, against which US nuclear weapons would have no deterrent value. Perhaps a blind spot in the psyches of US elites and citizens results in an inability to understand that reliance on nuclear weapons and failure to provide leadership for nuclear disarmament is moving the world in the direction of nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear disaster.

     

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort for a world free of nuclear weapons.

  • The Modern Nuclear Threat

    In Washington, DC, A 10 kiloton nuclear weapon, half the size of the one used in Nagasaki, has just been detonated next to the US Capitol. In less than a second, the Capitol Building, the congressional offices and everything within a quarter mile is enveloped in a fireball measuring at 7,000 degrees centigrade. The blast from the bomb travels in one direction across Massachusetts Avenue towards Union Station demolishing everything in its path. In the other direction it goes towards the Washington Monument. The area between Union Station and the Washington Monument is blanketed in fire. Fifteen thousand people are killed instantly. Soon, 15,000 severely wounded will overwhelm the local hospitals. In the coming months, many of those who did not perish in the initial bombing will succumb to the effects of radiation poisoning.

    Good Morning. Thank you for asking me to speak today. My name is Nickolas Roth. I am the Director of Research and Advocacy for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. What you just heard is the scenario that experts have developed if one of the smallest nuclear weapons available today is detonated in Washington, DC.

    The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a tragic chapter in the history of the human race. These bombings not only demonstrate the cruelty that humanity can inflict upon itself, but they also foreshadow a terrifying future if we do not halt nuclear proliferation and embrace nuclear disarmament. It has been 61 years since nuclear weapons were first used in war. I wish I could say that the world has learned the lesson that the survivors, the hibakusha, have been trying to teach us since then: The lesson that humans and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.

    Unfortunately, all evidence points to the contrary. The world is a far more dangerous place than it was 61 years ago. The world is a far more dangerous place than it was 10 or even 5 years ago. The likelihood that countries will seek nuclear weapons and the likelihood that countries will use nuclear weapons has increased.

    Today, I would like to give a very brief overview of the nuclear threat that we currently face. I will start by describing what would happen if a nuclear missile were detonated over Washington, DC. Then, I will explain how recent policy changes by the United States are putting a strain on arms control efforts. Finally, I will suggest ways the US can help minimize the probability of nuclear weapons use.

    To begin, nuclear weapons have become far more lethal since 1945. The 21 kiloton bomb used at Nagasaki is considered miniscule by modern standards. Today, there are thousands of missiles tipped with nuclear warheads hundreds of times more powerful. A full nuclear war would likely bring about the end of the human race. But, even the amount of suffering and destruction that would result from the detonation of just one of these nuclear weapons over a populated area is unprecedented. A book published in 2004, titled Whole World on Fire by Lynn Eden, details the heat and blast effects of a moderate-sized 300 kiloton weapon detonated over the Pentagon.

    It would create a fireball more than a mile in diameter producing temperatures of more than 200 million degrees Fahrenheit-about four to five times the temperature at the center of the sun.

    In Pentagon City, asphalt and metal would melt, paint would burn. Offices and cars would explode into flames. The blast wave would create 750 mile per hour winds tossing burning cars into the air.

    On the edge of the Potomac the fireball would be 5,000 times brighter than a desert sun at noon. It would melt the marble at the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. Four seconds after detonation, these structures would collapse from the blast wave that followed.

    On Capitol Hill, the House and Senate office buildings would burn. The blast would shatter exterior windows and level surrounding buildings.

    Within tens of minutes, everything within approximately three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half miles of the Pentagon would be engulfed in a massive fire. The fire would extinguish all life and destroy almost everything else.

    For decades, the international community has tried to prevent countries from causing this level of destruction. The cornerstone of these efforts has always been international agreements that encourage arms control. The most important of these is the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT has three key provisions. It guarantees countries the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful means. It prohibits the passing of nuclear weapons technology to, and the development of nuclear weapons by, non-nuclear weapons states. Most important, it requires countries with nuclear weapons to negotiate nuclear disarmament. The treaty establishes an effective framework discouraging more countries from developing nuclear weapons. When the treaty was signed in 1968, there were five nuclear weapons states. The NPT has not been perfect and currently there are nine, but without it there would likely be more.

    Today, the international anti-nuclear framework set forth in the NPT is unraveling. There are countries such as Israel, India and Pakistan that have never signed the treat, and developed large-scale programs. North Korea has broken away from the NPT in order to develop nuclear weapons. Iran may be in the early stages of a weapons program. These countries are endangering themselves and their neighbors, as are the original five nuclear weapons states.

    One of the most dangerous recent developments is in Russia. Russia is currently building up its own nuclear arsenal, in significant part, in response to a US missile shield. Recent articles in the Nation and Foreign Policy magazines have argued that, given the state of Russia’s infrastructure, such a build-up is extremely dangerous. The Russian government is not investing in proper safety mechanisms to prevent catastrophes such as accidental launches. There has already been a near miss. In 1995, the world came within minutes of nuclear Armageddon when the Russian early warning systems confused the launch of a Norwegian weather rocket with a preemptive nuclear attack by the United States. Boris Yeltsin had nuclear launch codes in front of him and would have retaliated had the mistake not been caught at the last minute. Russia’s early warning system has only further deteriorated since then. There are massive holes in its detection capabilities. Russian commanders rely on antiquated radar rather than satellite technology to detect possible launches.

    Together, the United States and Russia have 26,300 nuclear weapons. They possess the ability to carry out precision nuclear strikes anywhere in the world. They have hundreds of nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert, pointed at each other, that could be fired in a matter of minutes. An accidental nuclear launch by Russia and the retaliatory response by the United States would result in the deaths of millions of people.

    But let’s not forget the biggest nuclear player and the destabilizing effect it has on non-proliferation regimes. In 2002, the United States placed increased emphasis on the role that nuclear weapons play in its foreign policy. The Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review states:

    1. Nuclear weapons play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States, its allies, and friends.
    2. Nuclear weapons can be used to achieve political or strategic goals.
    3. US policy now supports preemptive attacks, possibly nuclear, on countries with Weapons of Mass Destruction or hardened targets.

    The United States is relying now, more than ever before, on nuclear weapons. It also has lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. In the past five years, the Bush administration has ignored many important international arms control treaties. It has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all forms of nuclear testing. It has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. It has invested billions of dollars into a missile shield program; an action seen by many other countries as an aggressive gesture.

    In violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has attempted to develop nuclear weapons that can be used more readily in combat, such as the “bunker buster.” It has also attempted to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal with the implementation of the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program. Most recently, it has negotiated a “deal” with India that allows the exchange of nuclear technology.

    By steering around international treaties that encourage arms control, attempting to build new weapons and then seeking to use them for political or strategic goals, the United States is encouraging other countries to do the same. As more countries go down this road, the likelihood of nuclear weapons use will only increase.

    Although the only way to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again is through total disarmament, there are ways to stop proliferation and minimize the risk of nuclear weapons use. In order to be effective, these efforts must have the support of the United States. As the world’s most powerful nation in possession of thousands of nuclear weapons, and as the only country that has used nuclear weapons as an instrument of war, the United States is ethically obligated to pursue non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament. This effort must begin with the following three steps:

    1. Altering US current nuclear policy. The US must de-legitimize the idea that nuclear weapons are an effective way to achieve political or strategic goals by declaring that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in war.
    2. Ratifying and complying with the provisions set forth in international treaties such as the Non Proliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, and the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties that promote non-proliferation and disarmament.
    3. Abandoning our policy of preemptive attacks, which further emboldens countries like Iran to pursue nuclear weapons.

    Despite the dangers that we now face and despite all that needs to be done to make the world a safer place, I am hopeful. I am hopeful because historically, anti-nuclear activism in the United States has been incredibly effective. Anti-nuclear activism was a significant factor in bringing an end to nuclear testing in the US and around the world. Activism was influential in slowing the nuclear arms build up in the 1980s. History has shown that our government listens to the public about nuclear weapons. If the people of the United States work together to tell our government that the creation and use of nuclear weapons is not acceptable, we can actually change nuclear policy to make the world safer. I strongly encourage you to find a way to get involved in anti-nuclear work.

    Nuclear weapons are the most significant threat to the future of the human race. As long as they exist, no human being is safe. Today, more and more countries are adopting dangerous nuclear policies. It is imperative that we pressure our government to bring the world back from potential nuclear anarchy. Only then, can we prevent proliferation and prevent future Hiroshimas and Nagasakis.

    Nick Roth is Director of the Washington, DC Office of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation