Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: US Nuclear Weapons Policy

Senator Edward Markey’s Speech on the Senate Floor

This speech was delivered by Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) on May 26, 2016. A video of the speech appears at the bottom of this article, courtesy of C-SPAN.

Mr. President, tomorrow President Obama will make a historic visit to Hiroshima: the sight of the first atomic bombing. He will become the first sitting president of the United States to do so, and I commend him for this long overdue presidential recognition. Having traveled to Hiroshima in 1985 to witness the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of that atomic bombing, I know from personal experience that any visit there serves as a powerful reminder of America’s responsibility to reduce the risk of nuclear war. That risk remains as real today as it was nearly 71 years ago, when we dropped that bomb that killed 140,000 people in one day.

In the last few decades, important progress has been made to reduce the threat of nuclear war. The United States and Russia have reduced the size of their nuclear arsenals. And the beginning of an additional change is going to happen in 2018—when both the United States and Russia will have no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, after implementation of the New START Treaty. But that progress has come at a cost. In exchange for the support of Senate Republicans for passage of the New START Treaty in 2010, President Obama promised to fund major upgrades to America’s nuclear arsenal. Since then, the extent of these upgrades and their costs has swelled. Today, it is estimated that President Obama’s nuclear modernization plan will end up costing U.S. taxpayers nearly $1-trillion over the next 30 years.

However, this “modernization plan” is little more than a plan to expand America’s capabilities—its nuclear capabilities. It would create new nuclear weapons, including a dangerous nuclear air launched cruise missile that will cost tens of billions of dollars over the next two decades. Nuclear cruise missiles are of particular concern because they are difficult to distinguish from non-nuclear cruise missiles. As a consequence, if the United States used a conventional cruise missile in a conflict with Russia or China, it would lead to devastating miscalculation on the other side—and, as a result, to accidental nuclear war. Worse still, the Defense Department has justified this new nuclear cruise missile by asserting that it is needed for purposes beyond deterrence. The Pentagon explains that the new nuclear cruise missile could be used to respond “proportionately to a limited nuclear attack”. Meaning that this weapon, this nuclear weapon, becomes useable, more useable in a standoff with Russia, or China, or some other country.

When President Obama visited Prague in 2009, he pledged to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security. If the president wants to truly make good on this promise, I think it’s important for him to stop these nuclear expansion efforts. He should cancel the funding for the new nuclear cruise missile, which would make the prospect of fighting a nuclear war more imaginable. In the meantime, Congress can and must act, rather than plunging blindly ahead by spending money on this dangerous new weapon. We can call for a timeout while we evaluate its cost and for its risks. And that is why I have introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would delay any spending on the nuclear cruise missile for one year. So that we can have the full debate on this weapon. So that we can ensure that we understand the consequences of building this new weapon. So that we can understand how the Russians and the Chinese might respond to it. So that each member of the Senate can understand that it in fact has nuclear war-fighting capabilities. It’s not just a defensive weapon; it has the ability to be used in a nuclear war-fighting scenario. How do I know this? It’s because this Pentagon, this Department of Defense says that it is useable, that it can be used in a limited nuclear war. Do we really want to be authorizing here in this Senate that kind of new weapon—the kind of weapon that makes fighting a nuclear war more imaginable?

I think that Americans deserve an opportunity to consider whether tens of billions of their tax dollars should be spent on a redundant and destabilizing new nuclear missile. And they expect that we will ask the tough questions about the need for $1 trillion in new nuclear weapon spending. But they especially want us to ask questions about new weapons that the Pentagon is saying makes possible to contemplate a limited nuclear war. That is a debate which this body needs to have. That’s a weapon system that we should be discussing. This is the tip of the new $1 trillion nuclear modernization program—this new cruise missile with nuclear warheads. We should debate that first. We can examine the rest of the modernization program, the other new nuclear programs. But we should at least have that debate, that vote out here. And we should give ourselves at least one year before we allow it to commence so that we can study it. Then, next year we can have the vote on whether or not we want to commence.

But i don’t think we, as yet, have had the debate, have a full understanding of what the implications of this weapon are. Plans to build more nuclear weapons would not only be expensive, but they could trigger a 21st century arms race with Russia and China—who are unlikely, very unlikely, to stand idly by as we expand our nuclear arsenal. This, as a result, would be a tragic return to the days of the Cold War. Both sides built up ever-greater stockpiles of nuclear weapons as we got closer and closer to the contemplation that both sides could actually consider fighting a nuclear war. Our goal should be to push us further and further and further away from the concept that it’s possible to fight a nuclear limited war on this planet.

The National Defense Authorization Act also contains another misguided provision that would lay the groundwork for a spiraling nuclear weapons buildup. Currently, our policy—the United States policy—states that we will pursue a “limited missile defense”. This approach is meant to protect our territory against missile attacks by countries such as Iran and North Korea, without threatening Russia or China’s nuclear deterrence. As recognized by generations of responsible policy-makers, constructing missile defenses aimed at Russia or China would be self-defeating and destabilizing. Dramatically expanding our missile defenses could cause Russia and China to fear that the United States seeks to protect ourselves from retaliation from Russia or China, so that we can carry out a preventive nuclear attack on China or on Russia. That plays into the most militaristic people inside of those countries, who will then say that they too need to make additional investments. And that cycle of offense and defense continues to escalate until you reach a point where we are back to where we all started: with those generals, with those arms contractors then dictating what our foreign policy is, what our defense policy is. And they were wrong in the 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s—and they are wrong today. That is just the wrong way to go. We have to ensure that we are backing away, not increasing the likelihood that these weapons can be used. We don’t want to be empowering those in our own country—either at the Pentagon or the arms contractors—because they will have the same people in the Kremlin, and their arms contractors, that will be rubbing their hand saying ‘Great, let’s build all of these new weapons—both offensive and defensive’. They would love this. That’s why we have to have the debate out here on the Senate floor.

This generation of Americans deserves to know what its government is planning in terms of nuclear war-fighting strategy. That is what a limited war is all about. That is what this new cruise missile with a nuclear bomb on it—that’s more accurate, more powerful, more likely to be used in a nuclear war—is all about. That’s why the Pentagon wants it. That’s why the arms contractors want to make it. But it’s just a return to the earlier era where every one of these new nuclear weapons systems had blueprints, were on the table over at the Pentagon, or over on the defense contractors, got the green-light: “Build it”. And what happened? Every single time, the Soviet Union said, ‘We’re building the exact same kind of counterpower system’. Was that making us more or less safe? Was that bringing us closer or further away from a nuclear war?’ Which was the correct direction for our country to be headed?

Thank God we began to talk at Reykjavik—President Reagan and President Gorbachev. Thank God we now have a New START Treaty. But as part of the New START Treaty, there was a Faustian deal. And that Faustian deal was that we’re going to build a new generation of usable war-fighting nuclear weapons in our own country. And that Faustian deal is one that will then be lived with with this next generation of Americans and citizens of this planet. So we need to ensure that we can have this debate.

The fears that I think are going to be engendered into the minds of those in China and Russia would result in a new dangerous nuclear competition that would have our new defenses be responded to—by them building new additional nuclear weapons and by putting them on high alert. You would have to put them on high alert if you were in Russia or China, if you thought that we had a defensive system that could knock you down…if our planning included attacking them. And we don’t want either country to be on high alert for a nuclear war. I don’t want that — You don’t want that. That’s where we were in the 1980’s. That’s where we were in the 1970’s, both sides with their fingers on the button. It’s unnecessary, it’s dangerous, it’s a repetition of history and it’s something we should be debating out here. It can’t be something that’s casually added without a full appreciation in our country for what the consequences are going to be long-term.

So we’ve got an incredible opportunity. It’s timely. The president is visiting Hiroshima. It should weigh on the consciences of everyone that we have the responsibility of decreasing and not increasing the likelihood of a nuclear war. I filed an amendment to strike the Provision from the NDAA. I urge all of my colleagues to support it. I think that second amendment is also one that deserves a full debate out here on the Senate floor. If we want other countries to reduce their nuclear arsenals and restrain their nuclear war plans, the United States must take the lead instead of wasting billions of dollars on dangerous new nuclear weapons that do nothing to keep our nation safe.

President Obama should scale back his nuclear weapons build-up. Instead of provoking Russia and China with expanding missile defenses that will ultimately fail, we should work towards a new arms control agreement. As President Obama said in Prague in 2009, “Let us honor our past by reaching for a better future”. A lesson of the past and a lesson of Hiroshima is clear: nuclear weapons must never be used again on this planet.

President Obama did an excellent job in reaching a nuclear arms control agreement with Iran. That was important. Because if Iran was right now on its way to the development of a nuclear weapon, there’s no question that Saudi Arabia and other countries in that region would also be pursuing a nuclear weapon. And we would then have a world where people were not listening to each other, people were threatening each other—with annihilation, with total destruction. And here’s where we are. We’re either going to live together or we’re going to die together. We’re either going to know each other or we’re going to exterminate each other. The final choice that we all have—if that point in the future is reached and those missiles are starting to be launched that have nuclear warheads on board—the least that we should be able to say is that we tried, we really tried to avoid that day.

That’s our challenge here on the Senate floor: to have this debate. To give ourselves the next year to have this question raised, as to whether or not we want to engage in a Cold War-like escalation of new offensive and new defensive nuclear weapons to be constructed in our country. For sure then triggering the same response in Russia and China. And by the way, for sure saying to Pakistan, to India, to Iran, to Saudi Arabia—to any other country that harbors their own secret military desire to have these weapons—that they should not listen to the United States because we are preaching temperance, nuclear temperance, from a bar-stool. We are not in fact abiding by what we say that the rest of the world should do, so we should be debating it right now. We should have this challenge presented to us, to have the words be spoken as to what the goals are for these weapons. If the Defense Department says to us this year, that this leads to a capacity to use nuclear weapons in a limited nuclear war—and they’re saying that to us in the last six months—Do we really want to have these weapons then constructed in our country? Is that really what we want to have as our legacy?

May 26, 2016
President Obama in Hiroshima

President Obama will be the first US president to visit Hiroshima while in office. His visit, on May 27^th, has historic potential. It comes at a time when nuclear disarmament talks with Russia and other nuclear-armed nations are non-existent and all nuclear-armed nations, led by the US, are modernizing their nuclear arsenals. The US alone has plans to spend $1trillion on modernizing every aspect of its nuclear arsenal, delivery systems and infrastructure over the next 30 years.

Hiroshima is the first city ever to be attacked by a nuclear weapon. It is a beautiful, modern city, but at the same time a city that symbolizes the enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, small by today’s standards, and it killed more than 70,000 people immediately and more than 140,000 by the end of 1945. These statistics do not do justice to the suffering and death inflicted on Hiroshima with the bomb the US had nicknamed “Little Boy.”

The city of Hiroshima in 1945 after the U.S. atomic bombing that killed at least 140,000 people.

I have visited Hiroshima many times and also the second atomic-bombed city, Nagasaki. What I have found in these cities are survivors of the atomic bombings who are eager to assure that what happened to their cities never happens to other cities. In these cities, there is a very different orientation toward nuclear weapons than there is in the US.

What we learn in the US about nuclear weapons is a perspective from above the bomb. It could be paraphrased in this way: “The bomb was a technological triumph that we used to win the war.” In this view of the bomb there are no humans or other forms of life – only technological triumph and statistics. The perspective on the bomb in the atomic-bombed cities is just the opposite; it is from beneath the bomb. It is filled with stories of massive destruction, death and human suffering.

When the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it did so with impunity. Japan was already defeated in war and did not have atomic bombs with which to retaliate against us. That was more than 70 years ago. Today there are nine nuclear-armed countries capable of attacking or retaliating with nuclear weapons. Missiles carrying nuclear weapons can travel across the globe in a half-hour. No one is secure from the consequences of a nuclear attack – not only the blast, fire and radiation, but also those of nuclear famine and nuclear winter.

With nuclear weapons, there is no security, even for the attacking country. In addition, nuclear weapons are immoral and illegal. They also undermine democracy and waste financial and scientific resources that could be used to improve life rather than destroy it.

Shortly after assuming office, President Obama said that America seeks the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons and that the US has a responsibility to lead the way to achieve that goal. For those reasons and for the sake of children everywhere, the president must offer a significant proposal for achieving nuclear zero while the world’s attention is focused on him in Hiroshima.

What should he do? I suggest that he bring three gifts to the world with him when he travels to Hiroshima: his courage, his humanity and a plan to end the nuclear insanity. His courage and humanity surely will travel with him; they are part of who he is and will be inherent in any plan to end the nuclear insanity. His plan must be bold, show true leadership, and move beyond rhetoric to action.

I suggest that the plan be simple with one major element: offer to convene the nine nuclear-armed countries to begin good faith negotiations for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament, as required by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law. For the future of all humanity, these negotiations must begin and succeed.

If the president wants to go further and reduce the possibility of accidents or of nuclear weapons being used while negotiations are taking place, he could offer to work with the Russian Federation and the other nuclear-armed countries in reciprocally taking all nuclear weapons off high-alert and in cancelling plans to modernize nuclear arsenals.

President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima may be humanity’s last best chance to step back from the nuclear precipice and to start down the path to nuclear zero.

David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and has served as its President since 1982.

May 20, 2016
On Serendipity, Enlightened Leadership and Persistence

General Lee Butler has generously made the e-book version of his memoirs available for free to NAPF supporters. Both Volume I and Volume II are now available from wagingpeace.org.

Uncommon Cause – Memoirs of General Lee Butler USAF (Ret)

Volume I of General Lee Butler’s elegantly written memoirs covers in highly personal, refreshingly candid detail his origins, upbringing and 33-year stellar US Air Force career. This history of his formative years may not be of compelling interest to non-military readers. However, Volume II is an absorbing, roller-coaster chronicle of Butler’s gradual transformation from top US nuclear warrior to inspiring, uniquely authoritative advocate for a nuclear weapon-free world. It is essential reading for all those who yearn for this – and those who resist it.

Volume II opens with a disturbing discovery. The USAF and US Navy had been allowed to develop and run separate nuclear war machines with no coordination save a compromise Joint Strategic Targeting Planning Staff (JSTPS) that proved to have severe coordination issues of its own. Butler learned this on becoming a three-star General as Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for all US armed forces in 1990, with responsibility for promulgating nuclear weapons targeting guidance from the President and Secretary of Defense to this targeting staff located over a thousand miles away. He was astounded to find that the US Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) created by the JSTPS neither reflected Presidential guidance nor meshed with NATO’s targeting plan. For example,

…in a very large number of cases, U.S. and Allied pilots would have been directed to risk their lives by penetrating Warsaw Pact air defenses in order to strike targets already destroyed by U.S. strategic missiles.

While he and colleagues were ironing out these disconnects between different parts of the nuclear target planning bureaucracy, a momentous instance of serendipity was unfolding in the heart of Europe. The sudden end of the Cold War rendered all their ‘monstrous war plans’ moot.

Butler’s exceptionally perceptive vision – the product of intellectual brilliance and an unusually cosmopolitan world view facilitated by fluency in Russian and French – gave him a swift grasp of the implications and opportunities flowing from the break-up of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. His acceptance of the need to achieve a ‘peace dividend’ through major force reductions fitted comfortably with the ‘informed intuition’ of General Colin Powell, who became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff within weeks of the Berlin Wall coming down in November 1989.

President Bush Senior wanted the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and Italy warned of the impact on NATO of his planned cuts before announcing them in his next State of the Union address. This led to Butler briefing Margaret Thatcher in 10, Downing Street in early January 1990, as the military member of a three-strong US delegation to London, Paris, Bonn and Rome comprising Robert Gates, deputy to Brent Scowcroft, the President’s National Security Advisor, and Lawrence Eagleburger, James Baker’s Deputy Secretary of State. Thatcher, after an imperiously effusive “Welcome, Larry,” allowed Butler an uninterrupted twenty minutes before launching into ten minutes of hard questions. Seemingly satisfied with his responses,

…she turned on Eagleburger. “Well, Larry, all this makes a modicum of sense. You can tell the President that I will, of course, support his initiative; indeed, I have no choice. But, Larry, let us understand each other. This is not consultation. This is take it or leave it.” With that, she stood, smiling, to signal the end of the meeting. She walked us to the door, opened it, and bade us farewell with one final smack of the handbag: “Always good to see you, Larry. You are welcome back at any time. But not on this subject.”

Butler’s controversial recommendation to shift US military preoccupation with the Soviet threat to regional conflicts was soon vindicated by Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Finding himself at the heart of planning the US military response, he was closely involved in top secret research for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney that rejected any use of nuclear weapons, because of their counterproductive effects.

The risk of a chemical-headed Scud missile barrage on Israel was one of his and Powell’s worst fears: ‘No question it would have provoked an Israeli response no matter the damage to our coalition.’ In response to the US blitzkrieg in January 1991, Saddam launched his Scud barrage. Butler sat in on a tense meeting between Cheney and a senior Israeli official, where Cheney had to placate him with sending Patriot anti-ballistic missiles to persuade Israel not to retaliate. US satellites had spotted nuclear-tipped Israeli Jericho missiles deployed ready for launch. While terrified Israelis wearing gas masks cowered in basements, Israel’s nuclear weapons had failed to deter Saddam – but they had coerced the US. The Patriot batteries could not prevent 38 more Iraqi attacks, the Scuds’ conventional warheads luckily causing only minor casualties.

As a relatively young four-star Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC) in 1991-92, General Butler presided over revolutionary changes he had recommended to US President George Bush Senior, including unilaterally taking the strategic B-52 bomber force and their supporting in-flight refueling tanker fleet off quick reaction alert. Strategic Air Command was disestablished, and management of all three legs of the nuclear triad combined under a new joint USAF-USN Strategic Command. This led to massive USAF restructuring, again initiated by Butler. In his final appointment, Butler became the first CINCSTRATCOM, commanding all US strategic nuclear forces from 1992-94. His iconoclastic, yet gently fearless leadership style won over some resistance from among his staff, drawn from hitherto proudly independent USAF and USN nuclear warriors.

On retirement in early 1994, Butler was increasingly dismayed by the Clinton administration’s failure to build on the nuclear disarmament momentum generated by the 1991 mutual initiatives of Bush Senior and Mikhail Gorbachev which he had helped facilitate, and for its ‘dismal’ efforts to improve US-Russian relations.

In 1995, he made a serendipitous decision to accept an invitation to speak on his world view at the annual meeting of members of the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York. This drew him into a CFR Commission, jointly chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex-Defense Secretary Harold Brown, to examine NATO’s post-Cold War role. When Kissinger tried to predetermine that little change was needed, Butler had the temerity to suggest NATO should be stood down while its purposes were rethought. For good measure, he added that

…perpetuating, let alone expanding, NATO is the worst possible signal to send to Russia, a defeated foe whose sensibilities are rubbed raw and which retains an arsenal of nuclear warheads numbering in the thousands.

An apoplectic Kissinger resigned from the Commission, leaving Brown to come up with a unanimous, balanced report on how to rethink NATO’s future.

The ripples from this audacious intervention must have reached John Holdren, chair of another prestigious group, the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences. Having accepted Holdren’s invitation to join them, Butler learned at his first CISAC meeting that the key agenda item was deciding what issue it should study next. He quickly proposed a wholesale review of nuclear weapons policy. Though controversial, with Holdren’s support his persuasive arguments backed by unrivalled experience persuaded most of CISAC to support a sharp critique of nuclear deterrence, and their report recommended that the US should fulfil its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligation to get rid of its nuclear arsenal.

By the time Butler presented CISAC’s views at the National Academy of Sciences to a surprisingly supportive audience, he had been invited to join the Canberra Commission. He chronicles his inside story of that admirable Australian initiative by Prime Minister Keating to explore the elimination of nuclear weapons. There he met, among other commissioners, Robert McNamara, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, British Field Marshal Lord Michael Carver, and Professor Joseph Rotblat, a founder of Pugwash. Butler’s fluent French facilitated an unlikely friendship with Rocard; but this was where he first came up against the more uncompromising demands of the anti-nuclear movement, represented by Swedish ex-MP Dr Maj Britt Theorin, and Sri Lankan disarmament ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala. Sadly, the Commission’s report was ‘dead in the water’ (Butler’s words) because of Australia’s uncritical support for US foreign policy as one of its closest allies.

Butler’s frustration at this outcome spurred him to accept another serendipitous invitation, to be keynote speaker at a gathering of Gorbachev’s State of the World Forum in October 1996. It was here that Butler first fully explained why, in light of his deep inside knowledge and first-hand experience, he had moved from ‘unquestioning acceptance to moral repugnance’ of nuclear deterrence. His goal was

… to make the case that deterrence had driven the Cold War arms race, prompting worst-case planning, immense expenditures, extremely dangerous force postures and monstrous war plans whose destructiveness threatened all life on the planet.

Following his sensational speech, Butler was introduced to veteran former US Senator Alan Cranston. A passionate nuclear abolitionist, Cranston invited him to become spokesman for an international group of ex-military leaders calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons, at the National Press Club in Washington DC. Butler’s account of his ‘coming out’ moment in that ultimate media arena is riveting – not least because of the brutal resistance he now encountered from some former colleagues.

Ex-US President Jimmy Carter invited him to his Atlanta Center. After an intense meeting, Carter wrote to Clinton supporting Butler’s request for all US strategic nuclear forces to be stood down from high alert, and to expedite negotiations for a START III treaty with Russia’s President Yeltsin. Nothing came of it.

Determined to spread his message, Butler flew to Wellington, New Zealand to give the inaugural Erich Geiringer Memorial Oration. In the early 1990s, Geiringer played a crucial role mobilising support for the World Court Project, an international campaign to challenge the legality of nuclear deterrence in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In 1996 the Court confirmed that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal. Butler’s passionately eloquent oration, honed from his earlier speeches, included a searing condemnation of nuclear deterrence. It was a triumph. I was Chair of World Court Project UK, and my New Zealand wife was one of the pioneers of the Project. The next day, I accompanied him on a visit to an island nature reserve, sharing experiences of breaking free from our pro-nuclear deterrence brainwashing.

Butler chronicles how he was buoyed up by responses to his NZ oration: these included supportive meetings with Michael Douglas and Warren Buffet, and an invitation from Michel Rocard to address the European Parliament. While subsequently visiting Paris, Rocard confirmed to him that

… nuclear weapons were still at the core of the [French]nation’s claim to first-tier status on the world stage. That said, I could read between the lines an acknowledgment that, beyond symbolism, their arsenal had no practical use. It simply kept them at the same table with the Americans, the Russians, the British and the Chinese as nations owning the ultimate trump card in international one-upmanship.

On his return home, Senator Cranston and others pressed him to become a fulltime anti-nuclear activist. Butler describes the sobering, hugely stressful experience for him and his wife Dorene after they courageously established their Second Chance Foundation, with a mission to reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The title came from this quote from one of Butler’s speeches:

Mankind escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of diplomatic skill, blind luck and divine intervention, probably the latter in greatest proportion. If we now fail to step back from the nuclear abyss, if we persist in courting the apocalypse, we will have squandered our Creator’s gift of a ‘second chance.’

They now found their carefully focused objectives increasingly compromised by the overly ambitious expectations, demands and tactics of some members of the international anti-nuclear and peace movements, who looked to Butler as their potent new spokesman. While trying to keep them at arm’s length and encouraging them to strategise more coherently, he embarked on a gruelling tour of NATO capitals and NATO HQ in Brussels, where he was left in no doubt of their disapproval. In London

…I spent two days meeting with senior officials of the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence and the Chiefs of the Defence Staff. These discussions served only to highlight the degree to which the Brits followed the U.S. lead on nuclear issues.

Undeterred, Butler persisted, visiting France again, India and China, re-engaging with former colleagues in the US nuclear policy bureaucracy, and meeting US Senators. He was shocked to learn that India’s government had not issued a nuclear weapons policy despite having conducted tests the year before. Worse, it had not involved the military; whereas in Pakistan the situation was reversed. He stunned his Indian military hosts by spelling out the utter impracticalities of implementing nuclear deterrence against Pakistan. Later, they arranged for him to give a top adviser to India’s Prime Minister a tutorial on the intricacies of managing a nuclear war machine. This gave added purpose to a discreet gathering he orchestrated in Omaha of three top retired military officers from India with three from Pakistan, which resulted in

…a mutual recognition of how poorly the two sides understood each other professionally, the frightening misperceptions they had harboured throughout their careers about each other’s actions and intentions and, most importantly, the dangerous path they were on with respect to their nuclear planning and force postures.

Butler’s Beijing visit opened his eyes to China’s dramatic advances. He was deeply impressed by the shrewd judgment and high calibre of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Chief of Military Intelligence, senior diplomats and academics who met him. He believed their assurances that China had no intention of wasting resources on nuclear capabilities that were beyond its perceived minimum needs.

George W. Bush’s unlikely replacement of the discredited Clinton as President precipitated the closing of the Second Chance Foundation. It had been a prodigious personal effort to bring some wisdom to the nuclear weapon debate, but he had failed to prevail against years of pro-nuclear hubris, indoctrination and outmoded thinking.

In his closing chapter, Butler reflects on his withdrawal from anti-nuclear advocacy with little sense of success or closure. He acknowledges the toll exacted on himself and his family by his unflinching stand for integrity, justice and doing what he felt was right, however unpopular or controversial. Further Afterthoughts outline his pessimistic prognosis for any substantial progress towards a nuclear weapon-free world. Nonetheless, he expresses his faith in the potential for serendipity, persistence and unanticipated political developments to offer openings for the international anti-nuclear movement.

General Lee Butler’s incisive arguments are of immense value in convincing military and political decision-makers of the increasingly urgent need to step back from the nuclear abyss. These memoirs ensure that the legacy of his courageous, enlightened leadership will endure.

Robert Green served in the Royal Navy from 1962-82. As a Fleet Air Arm Observer (bombardier-navigator), he flew in Buccaneer nuclear strike aircraft with a NATO SIOP target in Russia, and then anti-submarine helicopters equipped with nuclear depth-bombs. On promotion to Commander in 1978, he worked in the Ministry of Defence before his final appointment as Staff Officer (Intelligence) to the Commander-in-Chief Fleet during the 1982 Falklands War. Now Co-Director of the Disarmament & Security Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand (www.disarmsecure.org), his 2010 book ‘Security Without Nuclear Deterrence’ has been translated into Japanese; and a revised, updated English ebook version is available from www.amazon.com/dp/B00MFTBUZS.

May 3, 2016
Obama at Hiroshima

There are mounting hopes that Barack Obama will use the occasion of the Group of 7 meeting in Japan next month to visit Hiroshima, and become the first American president to do so. It is remarkable that it required a wait of over 70 years until John Kerry became the first high American official to make such a visit, which he termed ‘gut-wrenching,’ while at the same time purposely refraining from offering any kind of apology to the Japanese people for one of the worse acts of state terror against a defenseless population in all of human history. Let’s hope that Obama goes, and displays more remorse than Kerry who at least deserves some credit for paving the way. The contrast between the many pilgrimages of homage by Western leaders, including those of Germany, to Auschwitz and other notorious death camps, and the absence of comparable pilgrimages to Hiroshima and Nagasaki underscores the difference between winning and losing a major war. This contrast cannot be properly accounted for by insisting on a hierarchy of evils that the Holocaust dominates.

The United States, in particular, has a more generalized aversion to revisiting its darker hours, although recent events have illuminated some of the shadows cast by the racist legacies of slavery. The decimation of native Americans has yet to be properly addressed at official levels, and recent reports of soaring suicide rates suggests that the native American narrative continues to unfold tragically.

The New York Times in an unsigned editorial on April 12 urged President Obama to make this symbolic visit to Hiroshima, and in their words “to make it count” by doing more than making a ritual appearance. Recalling accurately that Obama “won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 largely because of his nuclear agenda” the editorial persuasively criticized Obama for failing to follow through on his Prague vision of working toward a world free of nuclear weapons. A visit to Hiroshima is, in effect, a second chance, perhaps a last chance, to satisfy the expectation created early in his presidency.

When it came to specifics as to what Obama might do the Times offered a typical arms control set of recommendations of what it called “small but doable advances”: canceling the new air-launched, nuclear-armed cruise missile and ensuring greater compliance with the prohibition on nuclear testing by its endorsement coupled with a recommendation that future compliance be monitored by the UN Security Council. The Times leaves readers with the widely shared false impression that such measures can be considered incremental steps that will lead the world over time to a nuclear-free world. Such a view is unconvincing, and diversionary. In opposition, I believe these moves serve to stabilize the nuclear status quo and have a negative effect on disarmament prospects. By making existing realities somewhat less prone to accidents and irresponsibly provocative weapons innovations, the posture of living with nuclear weapons gains credibility and the arguments for nuclear disarmament are weakened even to the extent of being irrelevant. I believe that it is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that arms control measures, even if beneficial in themselves, can be thought of as moving the world closer to nuclear disarmament.

Instead, what such measures do, and have been doing for decades, is to reinforce nuclear complacency by making nuclear disarmament either seem unnecessary or utopian, and to some extent even undesirably destabilizing. In other words, contrary to conventional wisdom, moving down the arms control path is a sure way to make certain that disarmament will never occur!

As mentioned, many arms control moves are inherently worthwhile. It is only natural to favor initiatives that cancel the development of provocative weapons systems, disallow weapons testing, and cut costs. Without such measures there would occur a dangerous erosion of the de facto taboo that has prevented (so far) any use of nuclear weaponry since 1945. At the same time it is vital to understand that the taboo and the arms control regime of managing the nuclear weapons environment does not lead to the realization of disarmament and the vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

Let me put it this way, if arms control is affirmed for its own sake or as the best way to put the world on a path of incremental steps that will lead over time to disarmament, then such an approach is nurturing the false consciousness that has unfortunately prevailed in public discourse ever since the Nonproliferation Treaty came into force in 1970. The point can be expressed in more folksy language: we have been acting for decades as if the horse of disarmament is being pulled by the cart of arms control. In fact, it is the horse of disarmament that should be pulling the cart of arms control, which would make arms control measures welcome as place holders while the primary quest for nuclear disarmament was being toward implementation. There is no reason to delay putting the horse in front of the cart, and Obama’s failure to do so at Prague was the central flaw of his otherwise justly applauded speech.

Where Obama went off the tracks in my view was when he consigned nuclear disarmament to the remote future, and proposed in the interim reliance on the deterrent capability of the nuclear weapons arsenal and this alleged forward momentum of incremental arms control steps. What is worse, Obama uncritically endorsed the nonproliferation treaty regime, lamenting only that it is being weakened by breakout countries, especially North Korea, and this partly explains why he felt it necessary back in 2009 to consider nuclear disarmament as a practical alternative to a continued reliance on nonproliferation, although posited disarmament more as a goal beyond reach and not as a serious present political option. He expressed this futuristic outlook in these words: “I am not naïve. This goal will not be reached quickly—perhaps not in my lifetime.” He never clarifies why such a goal is not attainable within the term of his presidency, or at least its explicit pursuit.

In this regard, and with respect to Obama’s legacy, the visit to Hiroshima provides an overdue opportunity to disentangle nuclear disarmament from arms control. In Prague, Obama significantly noted that “..as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” [emphasis added] In the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, the judges unanimously concluded that there was a legal responsibility to seek nuclear disarmament with due diligence. The language of the 14-0 ICJ finding is authoritative: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all aspects under strict and effective international control.” In other words, there is a legal as well as a moral responsibility to eliminate nuclear weapons, and this could have made the Prague call for a world without nuclear weapons more relevant to present governmental behavior. The Prague speech while lauding the NPT never affirmed the existence of a legal responsibility to pursue nuclear disarmament. In this respect an official visit to Hiroshima offers Obama a golden opportunity to reinvigorate his vision of a world without nuclear weapons by bringing it down to earth.

Why is this? By acknowledging the legal obligation, as embedded in Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty, as reinforcing the moral responsibility, there arises a clear imperative to move toward implementation. There is no excuse for delay or need for preconditions. The United States Government could at this time convene a multinational commission to plan a global conference on nuclear disarmament, somewhat resembling the Paris conference that recently produced the much heralded climate change agreement. The goal of the nuclear disarmament conference could be the vetting of proposals for a nuclear disarmament process with the view toward establishing a three year deadline for the development of an agreed treaty text whose preparation was entrusted to a high level working group operating under the auspices of the United Nations, with a mandate to report to the Secretary General. After that the states of the world could gather to negotiate an agreed treaty text that would set forth a disarming process and its monitoring and compliance procedures.

The United States, along with other nuclear weapons states, opposed in the 1990s recourse to the ICJ by the General Assembly to seek a legal interpretation on issues of legality, and then disregarded the results of its legal findings. It would a great contribution to a more sustainable and humane world order if President Obama were to take the occasion of his historic visit to Hiroshima to call respectful attention to this ICJ Advisory Opinion and go on to accept the attendant legal responsibility on behalf of the United States. This could be declared to be a partial fulfillment of the moral responsibility that was accepted at Prague. It could even be presented as the completion of the vision of Prague, and would be consistent with Obama’s frequent appeals to the governments of the world to show respect for international law, and his insistence that during his presidency U.S. foreign policy was so configured.

Above all, there is every reason for all governments to seek nuclear disarmament without further delay. There now exists no geopolitical climate of intense rivalry, and the common endeavor of freeing the world from the dangers posed by nuclear weapons would work against the current hawkish drift in the U.S. and parts of Europe toward a second cold war and overcome the despair that now has for so long paralyzed efforts to protect the human interest. As the global approach to nuclear weapons, climate change, and neoliberal globalization should make clear, we are not likely to survive as a species very much longer if we continue to base world order on a blend of state-centric national interests and dominant actor geopolitics. Obama has this rare opportunity to choose the road not often traveled upon, and there is no better place to start such a voyage than at Hiroshima. We in civil society would then with conviction promote his nuclear legacy as ‘From Prague to Hiroshima,’ and feel comfortable that this president has finally earned the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize prematurely bestowed.

April 27, 2016
From Flint’s Children to Nuclear Weapons, Funding Our Nation’s Priorities

This article was originally published on Common Dreams.

This week our nation funds our national priorities on tax day. In this era of growing discussion about participatory democracy and citizens engaging in the decisions of how their community tax dollars should be allocated it is important for each of us to identify what our priorities are.

The priorities we set provide a moral mirror of our humanity and are the fabric of our nation. From social security to Medicare, education, rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, environmental protection to defense and yes the funding of nuclear weapons programs this is the time we fund each of these priorities. Yet what role does the latter, nuclear weapons really play in our humanity. We now recognize that their use in any way is unacceptable and would forever change our world. Even a “tiny” nuclear war using ½ of 1% of the global nuclear arsenals or approximately 100 Hiroshima size bombs could kill 2 billion people from the climate change that would follow. Any use therefore would be the ultimate “reset” button in this crazy game we play ending life as we know it on the planet. Yet we continue to gamble allowing luck to be the overriding determinant. Luck is not a security policy!

The myth of nuclear deterrence has been one of the greatest driving forces of the nuclear arms race. Because if your country has 1 weapon then I must have 2 and so on and so on. Currently there are 15,375 nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals.

For this 2015 tax year, the U.S. will spend ~$55.9 billion on all nuclear weapons programs. This expenditure effects every single community from the very poorest to wealthiest robbing these communities of vital resources that could provide for their basic needs. The children of Flint, Michigan who have unwittingly become the mine canaries of a society that chose cost savings over clean drinking water will see their city pay $8,781,398.10 for nuclear weapons programs. These weapons due nothing but add to the uncertain future of these children. My community ofVentura County north of Los Angeles, California with a population of 850,536 and per capita average income of $33,308 will spend $155,321,482.10 as our share of these nuclear weapons programs. Our wealthiest American’s from the Zuckerberg’s to the Buffett’s and Gates with their generous philanthropathy will contribute in excess of $6.09 million for every billion dollars income last year. How does this help the world they envision? Is this really the best use of these precious dollars?

Nuclear weapons programs have been allowed to take on a life of their own seemingly without end. We are planning to embark on a $1 trillion dollar nuclear modernization program over the next 30 years.

While the danger of a nuclear disaster is as high as or higher than during the height of the cold war, it is an unexamined assumption that this is what must be. There is much that is happening as peoples, leaders and nations are awakening to the realities of our nuclear world. There is an ever growing awareness of the potential impact and ultimate costs of nuclear weapons and war. The winds of change are blowing.

To date, 127 Nations have formally endorsed the Humanitarian Pledge – a commitment by nations to fill the unacceptable “legal gap” that allows nuclear weapons to remain the only weapons of mass destruction not yet explicitly prohibited under international law. It is time to change the rules!

In June 2015, the American Medical Association passed a resolution urging the U.S. and all national governments to continue to work to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons and has committed to collaborate with relevant stakeholders to increase public awareness and education on the topic of the medical and environmental consequences of nuclear war – what could be called the final epidemic.

On April 24, 2014, the tiny Republic of the Marshall Islands filed landmark lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed nations for failing to comply with their obligations under international law to pursue negotiations for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. This David vs. Goliath effort continues to work through the International Court of Justice.

Rotary programs around the world are now hearing presentations on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear war and more importantly get it and are figuring out how best to deal with this international health risk for which there is no cure.

Pope Francis has also spoken out and called for the elimination of nuclear weapons when he said “A world without nuclear weapons is essential for the future and survival of the human family … we must ensure that it becomes a reality” on 12/7/14.

There is much that is happening and the choice is ours. The time is now! Silence implies consent. It is time to let our voices be heard and let our representatives know what our priorities are. We can and must do better.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. He writes for PeaceVoice.

April 19, 2016
Open Letter to President Obama

Mr. President,

Visit Hiroshima.

It is a beautiful, bustling city.

It will change your view of the world.

You will realize viscerally what nuclear weapons do to people.

John Kerry called it “gut-wrenching.”

It is that and more.

It is a city of warning and Hope.

It teaches lessons that can’t be learned in a classroom.

Civilization is at risk. Humanity is at risk.

All we love and treasure is at risk.

Nuclear weapons must be abolished before they abolish us.

Visit Hiroshima with Peace in your heart.

The people of Hiroshima have already forgiven us.

Visit Hiroshima with determination to end the nuclear weapons era.

Be bold. Take action. Realize your dreams.

This is your chance. Seize it. Yes, you can.

Visit Hiroshima with Hope in your heart.

Let your Hope meet that of Hiroshima.

Open the eyes of the world.

Be the leader we have been waiting for.

Reveal your plan for Nuclear Zero.

Take the first step.

Visit Hiroshima.

April 13, 2016
The Silence of the Candidates

Perhaps the single most important responsibility of U.S. Presidents, and for what we should most closely hold them to account, is nuclear weapons. To those of us aware of the dangers of nuclear weapons, of the costs in both dollars and lives that they represent, the silence of our presidential candidates in this time, when national dialogue on nuclear weapons may be more important than ever, is troubling to say the least. A quick overview of the five remaining major party candidates reveals a disturbing trend of their having little to say on the matter and little of substance in what they do say.

Candidate Clinton has been cagey on her nuclear stance and has neither fully condoned nor sanctioned nuclear deterrence theory. Nor has she been clear with what restraint or in what contexts she would ever use a nuclear weapon. Likewise, although characterizing the particular proposed nuclear modernization plan as not “[making] sense,” she has not explained if she’s for modernization generally; nor has she spoken further on what she meant. That being said, she has stated that she is committed to peace and “a world without nuclear weapons,” and she has promised to build on nuclear reduction efforts with Russia and China and would seek to resolve the Iranian and North Korean nuclear dilemmas. In particular, she has supported reducing Russian and American stockpiles to 1,000 nuclear warheads – down from approximately 8,000 and 7,000 respectively.

Candidate Cruz also hasn’t said much with regards to nuclear weapons but he has emphasized that he strongly supports defense spending and otherwise strengthening U.S. military clout – although he does also believe in Reagan’s dream of “a world where there are no more nuclear weapons.” Nevertheless he clearly supports modernization of some sort, though it is unclear if he supports the current trillion-dollar triad modernization policy, saying, “I’m certainly committed, to ensuring that we provide the funding that is needed . . . for readiness that has been severely degraded under sequestration.”

Candidate Kasich has had the least to say about nuclear weapons of all the candidates. Declaring the nuclear modernization program “vital” to the nation’s defense and its nuclear program, candidate Kasich has clearly aligned himself with the rest of the Republican candidates in taking a hardline stance on nuclear weapons and militarism. That being said, he has offered little other insight into what the implications of this stance are beyond bringing more pressure to bear on North Korea and Iran for their nuclear programs and otherwise “restoring” our Navy and Army. In conjunction with these stances, the nonpartisan political website “On the Issues” reports Kasich believes that there is a “need to promote Western values to win the war of ideas,” which does not bode well for a policy of peace or cooperation.

Candidate Sanders, although saying very little on the subject, is the only mainstream candidate rhetorically committed to supporting nuclear abolition and the only one fully opposing modernization, saying “the goal is to move to get rid of nuclear weapons, not to get into an arms race. We have other, more important things to spend our money on.” In his terms, “we must heed what President Obama has called our ‘moral responsibility’ to lead the way toward reducing, and eventually eliminating, nuclear weapons.” Similarly, he promotes peace and diplomacy as general guideline policies for any presidential candidate, though he does still maintain force and war as last resorts and he has no clear policy on how he would reduce nuclear weapons. Nevertheless in a step hopefully towards greater commitment and articulation of his nuclear stance, Senator Sanders has recently added Joe Cirincione of the anti-nuclear Ploughshares Fund as an advisor. According to Cirincione – although debatable it may unfortunately be true – as it stands Mr. Sanders has “the most complete nuclear policy,” out of all the candidates.

Candidate Trump, unfortunately the most vociferous on the issue, has gone so far as to entertain the possibility of using nuclear weapons against ISIS or in Europe, going so far as to question Chris Matthews of MSNBC “Somebody hits us within ISIS, you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke?” Beyond proposing using our current weapons, however, he has also steadfastly maintained that the US must strengthen its current nuclear stockpile. Although he has said it is “very unlikely” he would ever use the bomb, he has also been one of the most outspoken candidates on nuclear weapons (although that’s not saying much) and has characterized himself as “the most militaristic person,” according to CBS. Indeed, this militarism extends beyond America’s borders and the candidate has even gone so far as to suggest a resurgence of nuclear proliferation internationally, starting with South Korea and Japan. He sums up this position by mildly commenting, according to The New York Times, that “we may very well be better off.”

Observing each of the candidates’ positions, it is utterly discouraging that by and large they barely even have positions on nuclear weapons. Even less encouraging, though, is the amount of time it takes to find out what their positions are. Indeed it is downright shocking to see how little thought they have put into one of the greatest responsibilities they would have as president. The threat of nuclear war is still with us nearly 25 years after the end of the Cold War but you wouldn’t know this by listening to our presidential candidates – even when the threat of nuclear proliferation is at its highest since 1991. None of the candidates even question where else that trillion dollars might be spent, and it is up to the American people to hold them responsible for these failings.

Beyond the relative silence of our candidates, though, the responsibility falls most heavily on the media. They are the supposed bastion of what is newsworthy and of importance. Yet listening to any mainstream news station, one could easily wonder if nuclear weapons, arguably the single most important issue when discussing presidential candidates, are a priority at all or indeed if they even exist anymore! In order to have meaningful dialogue on nuclear weapons and policy, our leaders, the media, and the American people need to bring prominence and sanity to this critical issue once more.

Grant Stanton is a Junior Fellow at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

April 6, 2016
Strange Spectacle: Nuclear Security Summit 2016
At the invitation of President Obama, on April 1 more than 50 leaders of countries, including all states possessing nuclear arsenals except Russia and North Korea, gathered in Washington for the fourth Nuclear Security Summit. The focus was on securing civilian highly enriched uranium (HEU) and similar modest and voluntary steps aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear and radiological weapons. HEU intended for use in civilian nuclear reactors is a small fraction of the total amount of weapons-usable HEU and plutonium in the world.

It was a strange spectacle indeed to have so much political capital invested in limited measures which do not address:
- the estimated 15,000-plus nuclear weapons in the possession of states which say they are prepared to use them; there are no safe hands, state or non-state, for these horrific devices
- the large stocks of HEU and plutonium in military programs
- the large stocks of reactor-grade but weapons-usable plutonium
- ongoing production of HEU and plutonium and construction of new reprocessing plants to yield plutonium
The contrast is stark with the global negotiations on prevention of climate change that culminated in the Paris Agreement last December. While that agreement is only a start, at least those negotiations acknowledged the reality of climate change and sought to address the entire threat.

Also remarkable and deplorable is that the United States and the other nuclear-armed states are boycotting the United Nations Open-ended Working Group on Taking Forward Multilateral Negotiations on Nuclear Disarmament. Established by the General Assembly with the support of 138 countries, the Working Group is charged with discussing legal measures and norms needed to attain and maintain a world without nuclear weapons.

The United States and five other nuclear-armed states (France, Russia, China, Israel, North Korea) have additionally refused the Marshall Islands’ invitation to appear in the International Court of Justice to defend their compliance with the obligation, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law, to pursue in good faith negotiations on the elimination of nuclear arsenals. Only the nuclear-armed states which have accepted the general jurisdiction of the Court, the United Kingdom, India, and Pakistan, are defending their records before the Court in cases brought by the Marshall Islands.

The world would have been far safer if this had been the fourth Nuclear Abolition Summit. It is past time for the United States, Russia, and other states to embrace and urgently implement a broader agenda to achieve without delay a world free of nuclear weapons.
April 4, 2016
The Trillion Dollar Question

[Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?]

Isn’t it rather odd that America’s largest single public expenditure scheduled for the coming decades has received no attention in the 2015-2016 presidential debates?

The expenditure is for a thirty-year program to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal and production facilities. Although President Obama began his administration with a dramatic public commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world, that commitment has long ago dwindled and died. It has been replaced by an administration plan to build a new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities to last the nation well into the second half of the twenty-first century. This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs, and production plants. The estimated cost? $1,000,000,000,000.00—or, for those readers unfamiliar with such lofty figures, $1 trillion.

Critics charge that the expenditure of this staggering sum will either bankrupt the country or, at the least, require massive cutbacks in funding for other federal government programs. “We’re . . . wondering how the heck we’re going to pay for it,” admitted Brian McKeon, an undersecretary of defense. And we’re “probably thanking our stars we won’t be here to have to have to answer the question,” he added with a chuckle.

Of course, this nuclear “modernization” plan violates the terms of the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires the nuclear powers to engage in nuclear disarmament. The plan is also moving forward despite the fact that the U.S. government already possesses roughly 7,000 nuclear weapons that can easily destroy the world. Although climate change might end up accomplishing much the same thing, a nuclear war does have the advantage of terminating life on earth more rapidly.

This trillion dollar nuclear weapons buildup has yet to inspire any questions about it by the moderators during the numerous presidential debates. Even so, in the course of the campaign, the presidential candidates have begun to reveal their attitudes toward it.

On the Republican side, the candidates—despite their professed distaste for federal expenditures and “big government”—have been enthusiastic supporters of this great leap forward in the nuclear arms race. Donald Trump, the frontrunner, contended in his presidential announcement speech that “our nuclear arsenal doesn’t work,” insisting that it is out of date. Although he didn’t mention the $1 trillion price tag for “modernization,” the program is clearly something he favors, especially given his campaign’s focus on building a U.S. military machine “so big, powerful, and strong that no one will mess with us.”

His Republican rivals have adopted a similar approach. When a peace activist questioned Ted Cruz on the campaign trail about whether he agreed with Ronald Reagan on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons, the Texas senator replied: “I think we’re a long way from that and, in the meantime, we need to be prepared to defend ourselves. The best way to avoid war is to be strong enough that no one wants to mess with the United States.” Apparently, Republican candidates are particularly worried about being “messed with.”

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has been more ambiguous about her stance toward a dramatic expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Asked by a peace activist about the trillion dollar nuclear plan, she replied that she would “look into that,” adding: “It doesn’t make sense to me.” Even so, like other issues that the former secretary of state has promised to “look into,” this one remains unresolved. Moreover, the “National Security” section of her campaign website promises that she will maintain the “strongest military the world has ever known”—not a propitious sign for critics of nuclear weapons.

Only Bernie Sanders has adopted a position of outright rejection. In May 2015, shortly after declaring his candidacy, Sanders was asked at a public meeting about the trillion dollar nuclear weapons program. He replied: “What all of this is about is our national priorities. Who are we as a people? Does Congress listen to the military-industrial complex” that “has never seen a war that they didn’t like? Or do we listen to the people of this country who are hurting?” In fact, Sanders is one of only three U.S. Senators who support the SANE Act, legislation that would significantly reduce U.S. government spending on nuclear weapons. In addition, on the campaign trail, Sanders has not only called for cuts in spending on nuclear weapons, but has affirmed his support for their total abolition.

Nevertheless, given the failure of the presidential debate moderators to raise the issue of nuclear weapons “modernization,” the American people have been left largely uninformed about the candidates’ opinions on this subject. So, if Americans would like more light shed on their future president’s response to this enormously expensive surge in the nuclear arms race, it looks like they are the ones who are going to have to ask the candidates the trillion dollar question.

March 21, 2016
Comments on the Manhattan Project National Historical Park

Comments of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance on the
Manhattan Project National Historical Park
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
1 February 2016

The job of a National Historical Park is not only to preserve and commemorate history, but to explain it to future generations. In some cases, the history being preserved and interpreted reflects moments of our nation at its best— as in the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in New York and its story of the long struggle for women’s suffrage.

Other National Historical Parks reflect darker moments in our history—the Kalaupapa National Historical Park in Hawaii tells the story of the physical and cultural isolation of residents suffering from Hansen’s Disease, then called leprosy, who were removed from their families and forcibly relocated and imprisoned on the peninsula. It is a complicated and nuanced story that must be set in the historical context to be understood. Parts of the story sound cruel and barbaric; other parts sound tragic but, in the context of medical understanding in that time, necessary. Even the patients themselves would tell complicated stories—for some the isolation was a refuge.

The Manhattan Project National Historical Park project also presents complicated challenges to the interpreter. On the one hand, it commemorates a truly stunning achievement of human endeavor—scientific and technical, yes, but also engineering and building, social and cultural. It is rooted, at least in part, in a war effort that almost the entire culture embraced as noble. It’s a story of sacrifice and determination mostly by people who had no idea what they were engaged in.

But like most history that warrants preservation, it is also a story that transcends the time and place in which it took place. The Manhattan Project changed the world; the creation of the world’s first atomic weapon which was then used to create incomprehensible human suffering, and which led to the devotion of many trillions of dollars to an arms race which is still with us today, reverberating in headlines daily as other nations consider or embark on their own quest to do what we have done.

The Oak Ridge part of this story has been told for decades at the American Museum of Science and Energy. For the most part, the exhibit there limited the story of Oak Ridge to the creation of the first atomic bomb and it was told in the context of the great secret that enveloped the city and the workers. In the last ten years, the exhibit has expanded somewhat to acknowledge the effects of the bomb once used, and the impact it has had on the entire world.

But the story of the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge is even more complicated than that—there was more than one secret. Like the Kalaupapa story, there is a side wrapped up in that history that is not so easy to tell. If we are to learn what it means for humans to wrest power from nature in ways that inform us not only about the past but also cast a light into the future, we have to tell the whole story.

I have talked over the years with workers from those first years of Oak Ridge. Decades later, their feelings about their work ran the gamut from pride in their achievement to deep sadness and guilt about the results of their labor. I remember one woman telling me about riding the bus home from work at Y12 to LaFollette the day the news of Hiroshima broke—amid the cheering and celebration of her fellow commuters, she said, she sat with her head pressed against the window of the bus thinking, “I don’t belong here.”

But the reason she and I were talking was not because of the bomb, not directly. It was because her life had been profoundly affected by a long series of health problems that, some twenty-five years later, a doctor in Wisconsin who knew nothing of her work history identified as due to radiation exposure.

Most of the workers in Oak Ridge were unaware of the nature of great technical secret they were working on. They were also unaware that they were at risk as they worked. For some, the risk was part of a sacrifice they would have borne willingly if informed; for others, not so much. But in any case, they were not informed; they were not warned; protections were scarce if there were any at all. Even the scientists who knew the technical secret did not understand all the risks in those days before health physics. My friend recalled a day when she was taken from her station, her clothes confiscated, she was showered repeatedly and sent home; her urine was monitored for several days, and she was given no explanation, no information, no additional monitoring, no follow-up care. Asking questions, of course, was forbidden in the secret city.

The Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge kept other secrets. Environmental protection was not high on anyone’s list, really, in the 1940s, and certainly it took a backseat to the effort to win the war. And we were generally ignorant about the impact of contaminants on the environment. It was only later, as people learned more, that decisions were made to keep secrets—the environmental impacts of the Manhattan Project activities—the full effects of radiation releases due to slug ruptures at the air-cooled Graphite reactor—were secret even from the people who knew about them.

But it happened. It is part of the Manhattan Project story. Some of the radionuclides still rest in the sediments of the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers. A health physicist once told me that a person with a sensitive enough Geiger country could measure Oak Ridge in the Mississippi delta.

So—tell the history, all of it. The history of the moment as well as its impact on the world we live in today. Those who come to the Manhattan Project National Historical Park should be informed enough to make their own judgments about the accomplishments and the costs of the project, to decide for themselves what to celebrate and what to mourn.

February 3, 2016