Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Albert Einstein

  • The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

    Introduction written by NAPF President David Krieger on June 28, 2017:

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, issued in London on July 9, 1955, is one of the greatest documents of the 20th century.  It remains a critical warning to humanity in the 21st century.  As we approach the 62nd anniversary of the Manifesto, it is worthwhile to read it again (or for the first time) and reflect on its message to humanity.  It addresses the choices before us:  “continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom” or “the risk of universal death.”  It was the last public statement Einstein signed before his death.  Of its 9 signers in addition to Russell and Einstein, two were members of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council, Linus Pauling and Sir Joseph Rotblat.  Pauling was a great scientist and two-time Nobel Laureate.  Rotblat was the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project as a matter of conscience.  He was a founder of the Pugwash Conferences and received the Nobel Peace Prize 50 years after the tragic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  At NAPF, we carry on the commitment of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.  We accept its advice: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

    by Bassano, vintage print, 1936

    In the tragic situation which confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in the spirit of the appended draft.

    We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between Communism and anti- Communism.

    Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire.

    We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.

    We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?

    The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not realized what would be involved in a war with nuclear bombs. The general public still thinks in terms of the obliteration of cities. It is understood that the new bombs are more powerful than the old, and that, while one A-bomb could obliterate Hiroshima, one H-bomb could obliterate the largest cities, such as London, New York, and Moscow.

    No doubt in an H-bomb war great cities would be obliterated. But this is one of the minor disasters that would have to be faced. If everybody in London, New York, and Moscow were exterminated, the world might, in the course of a few centuries, recover from the blow. But we now know, especially since the Bikini test, that nuclear bombs can gradually spread destruction over a very much wider area than had been supposed.

    It is stated on very good authority that a bomb can now be manufactured which will be 2,500 times as powerful as that which destroyed Hiroshima. Such a bomb, if exploded near the ground or under water, sends radio-active particles into the upper air. They sink gradually and reach the surface of the earth in the form of a deadly dust or rain. It was this dust which infected the Japanese fishermen and their catch of fish.

    No one knows how widely such lethal radioactive particles might be diffused, but the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.

    Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert’s knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.

    Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.

    The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else is that the term “mankind” feels vague and abstract. People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity. They can scarcely bring themselves to grasp that they, individually, and those whom they love are in imminent danger of perishing agonizingly. And so they hope that perhaps war may be allowed to continue provided modern weapons are prohibited.

    This hope is illusory. Whatever agreements not to use H-bombs had been reached in time of peace, they would no longer be considered binding in time of war, and both sides would set to work to manufacture H-bombs as soon as war broke out, for, if one side manufactured the bombs and the other did not, the side that manufactured them would inevitably be victorious.

    Although an agreement to renounce nuclear weapons as part of a general reduction of armaments would not afford an ultimate solution, it would serve certain important purposes. First: any agreement between East and West is to the good in so far as it tends to diminish tension. Second: the abolition of thermo-nuclear weapons, if each side believed that the other had carried it out sincerely, would lessen the fear of a sudden attack in the style of Pearl Harbour, which at present keeps both sides in a state of nervous apprehension. We should, therefore, welcome such an agreement though only as a first step. Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood, both in the East andin the West. There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

    Resolution

    We invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the general public, to subscribe to the following resolution:
    “In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the Governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

    Max Born
    Perry W. Bridgman
    Albert Einstein
    Leopold Infeld
    Frederic Joliot-Curie
    Herman J. Muller
    Linus Pauling
    Cecil F. Powell
    Joseph Rotblat
    Bertrand Russell
    Hideki Yukawa

  • A Better Mousetrap?

    This article was originally published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

    mousetrapAlbert Einstein noted, “Mankind invented the atomic bomb, but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.”

    We humans have created the equivalent of a mousetrap for ourselves. And we’ve constructed tens of thousands of them over the seven decades of the Nuclear Age.

    In the mid-1980s, the world reached a high of 70,000 nuclear weapons, with more than 95 percent of them in the arsenals of the United States and Soviet Union. Since then, the number has fallen to under 15,000. While this downward trend is positive, the world’s nuclear countries possess enough nuclear weapons to destroy the human species many times over.

    In 72 years, nuclear weapons have been used only twice in warfare—at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. But the United States and Russia have come far too close to using them on many other occasions, including during the tense days of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Nuclear weapons pose an extraordinary risk, one that could result in rapid human extinction. Their use could be triggered by malice or mistake. Either way, the consequences would be catastrophic.

    Nuclear weapons and human fallibility are an extremely dangerous and volatile mix. These weapons test our morality, our intelligence, and our capacity for species survival.

    Nuclear deterrence is not a shield against nuclear weapons. It is a psychological theory about human behavior. If the leaders of nuclear weapon states truly believed in nuclear deterrence, they would not need to build missile defenses for protection against a nuclear attack. And missile defense systems are far from reliable, often failing in test situations. Sometimes, the tests are cancelled because of bad weather or cloud cover. But there is no international treaty requiring nuclear attacks to be conducted only on sunny days.

    There is no physical protection against nuclear weapons. The only strategy to assure against nuclear war is to negotiate the abolition of nuclear weapons—with inspection and verification procedures to make sure existing arsenals are eliminated and never rebuilt.

    Late in March 2017, negotiations for a new treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons will begin at the United Nations. Even though most—perhaps all—nuclear-armed countries will not participate in the negotiations, the talks will be extremely significant for clarifying the illegality of the weapons, and for setting new international norms against the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    In the meantime, Donald Trump has tweeted about wanting the United States to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability”; he’s also told the world that, when it comes to nuclear weapons, he wants the United States to be at “the top of the pack.” In making such statements, he is demonstrating his lack of knowledge about nuclear dangers and, in fact, risking the instigation of a new nuclear arms race.

    Rather than understanding, as President Reagan and other nuclear-armed leaders discovered, that “[n]uclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought,” Trump seems intent on building a bigger and better trap for destroying the human species. His bravado is dangerous. Nuclear weapons are equal opportunity destroyers. Although humans invented the atomic bomb, they are not condemned to being caught in its trap. To avoid the trap, people must demand far more of political leaders, including Trump, insisting that they commence good-faith negotiations now for nuclear zero.

  • Albert Einstein, Scientist and Pacifist

    “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our ways of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophes.”

    “I don’t know what will be used in the next world war, but the 4th will be fought with stones.”

    Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

    Besides being one of the greatest physicists of all time, Albert Einstein was a lifelong pacifist, and his thoughts on peace can speak eloquently to us today. We need his wisdom today, when the search for peace has become vital to our survival as a species.

    Family background

    Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879. He was the son of middle-class, irreligious Jewish parents, who sent him to a Catholic school. Einstein was slow in learning to speak, and at first his parents feared that he might be retarded; but by the time he was eight, his grandfather could say in a letter: “Dear Albert has been back in school for a week. I just love that boy, because you cannot imagine how good and intelligent he has become.”

    Remembering his boyhood, Einstein himself later wrote: “When I was 12, a little book dealing with Euclidian plane geometry came into my hands at the beginning of the school year. Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the altitudes of a triangle in one point, which, though by no means self-evident, could nevertheless be proved with such certainty that any doubt appeared to be out of the question. The lucidity and certainty made an indescribable impression on me.”

    When Albert Einstein was in his teens, the factory owned by his father and uncle began to encounter hard times. The two Einstein families moved to Italy, leaving Albert alone and miserable in Munich, where he was supposed to finish his course at the gymnasium. Einstein’s classmates had given him the nickname “Beidermeier”, which means something like “Honest John”; and his tactlessness in criticizing authority soon got him into trouble. In Einstein’s words, what happened next was the following: “When I was in the seventh grade at the Lutpold Gymnasium, I was summoned by my home-room teacher, who expressed the wish that I leave the school. To my remark that I had done nothing wrong, he replied only, ‘Your mere presence spoils the respect of the class for me’.”

    Einstein left gymnasium without graduating, and followed his parents to Italy, where he spent a joyous and carefree year. He also decided to change his citizenship. “The over-emphasized military mentality of the German State was alien to me, even as a boy”, Einstein wrote later. “When my father moved to Italy, he took steps, at my request, to have me released from German citizenship, because I wanted to be a Swiss citizen.”

    Special and general relativity theory

    The financial circumstances of the Einstein family were now precarious, and it was clear that Albert would have to think seriously about a practical career. In 1896, he entered the famous Zürich Polytechnic Institute with the intention of becoming a teacher of mathematics and physics. However, his undisciplined and nonconformist attitudes again got him into trouble. His mathematics professor, Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909), considered Einstein to be a “lazy dog”; and his physics professor, Heinrich Weber, who originally had gone out of his way to help Einstein, said to him in anger and exasperation: “You’re a clever fellow, but you have one fault: You won’t let anyone tell you a thing! You won’t let anyone tell you a thing!”

    Einstein missed most of his classes, and read only the subjects which interested him. He was interested most of all in Maxwell’s theory of electro-magnetism, a subject which was too “modern” for Weber. There were two major examinations at the Zürich Polytechnic Institute, and Einstein would certainly have failed them had it not been for the help of his loyal friend, the mathematician Marcel Grossman.

    Grossman was an excellent and conscientious student, who attended every class and took meticulous notes. With the help of these notes, Einstein managed to pass his examinations; but because he had alienated Weber and the other professors who could have helped him, he found himself completely unable to get a job. In a letter to Professor F. Ostwald on behalf of his son, Einstein’s father wrote: “My son is profoundly unhappy because of his present joblessness; and every day the idea becomes more firmly implanted in his mind that he is a failure, and will not be able to find the way back again.”

    From this painful situation, Einstein was rescued (again!) by his friend Marcel Grossman, whose influential father obtained for Einstein a position at the Swiss Patent Office: Technical Expert (Third Class). Anchored at last in a safe, though humble, position, Einstein married one of his classmates. He learned to do his work at the Patent Office very efficiently; and he used the remainder of his time on his own calculations, hiding them guiltily in a drawer when footsteps approached.

    In 1905, this Technical Expert (Third Class) astonished the world of science with five papers, written within a few weeks of each other, and published in the Annalen der Physik. Of these five papers, three were classics: One of these was the paper in which Einstein applied Planck’s quantum hypothesis to the photoelectric effect. The second paper discussed “Brownian motion”, the zig-zag motion of small particles suspended in a liquid and hit randomly by the molecules of the liquid. This paper supplied a direct proof of the validity of atomic ideas and of Boltzmann’s kinetic theory. The third paper was destined to establish Einstein’s reputation as one of the greatest physicists of all time. It was entitled On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, and in this paper, Albert Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity. Essentially, this theory maintained that all of the fundamental laws of nature exhibit a symmetry with respect to rotations in a 4-dimensional  space-time continuum.

    Gradually, the importance of Einstein’s work began to be realized, and he was much sought after. He was first made Assistant Professor at the University of Zürich, then full Professor in Prague, then Professor at the Zürich Polytechnic Institute; and finally, in 1913, Planck and Nernst persuaded Einstein to become Director of Scientific Research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. He was at this post when the First World War broke out.

    While many other German intellectuals produced manifestos justifying Germany’s invasion of Belgium, Einstein dared to write and sign an anti-war manifesto. Einstein’s manifesto appealed for cooperation and understanding among the scholars of Europe for the sake of the future; and it proposed the eventual establishment of a League of Europeans. During the war, Einstein remained in Berlin, doing whatever he could for the cause of peace, burying himself unhappily in his work, and trying to forget the agony of Europe, whose civilization was dying in a rain of shells, machine-gun bullets, and poison gas.

    The work into which Einstein threw himself during this period was an extension of his theory of relativity. He already had modified Newton’s equations of motion so that they exhibited the space-time symmetry required by his Principle of Special Relativity. However, Newton’s law of gravitation remained a problem.

    Obviously it had to be modified, since it disagreed with his Special Theory of Relativity; but how should it be changed? What principles could Einstein use in his search for a more correct law of gravitation? Certainly whatever new law he found would have to give results very close to Newton’s law, since Newton’s theory could predict the motions of the planets with almost perfect accuracy. This was the deep problem with which he struggled.

    In 1907, Einstein had found one of the principles which was to guide him, the Principle of Equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. After turning Newton’s theory over and over in his mind, Einstein realized that Newton had used mass in two distinct ways: His laws of motion stated that the force acting on a body is equal to the mass of the body multiplied by its acceleration; but according to Newton, the gravitational force on a body is also proportional to its mass. In Newton’s theory, gravitational mass, by a coincidence, is equal to inertial mass; and this holds for all bodies. Einstein wondered – can the equality between the two kinds of mass be a coincidence? Why not make a theory in which they necessarily have to be the same?

    He then imagined an experimenter inside a box, unable to see anything outside it. If the box is on the surface of the earth, the person inside it will feel the pull of the earth’s gravitational field. If the experimenter drops an object, it will fall to the floor with an acceleration of 32 feet per second per second. Now suppose that the box is taken out into empty space, far away from strong gravitational fields, and accelerated by exactly 32 feet per second per second. Will the enclosed experimenter be able to tell the difference between these two situations? Certainly no difference can be detected by dropping an object, since in the accelerated box, the object will fall to the floor in exactly the same way as before.

    With this “thought experiment” in mind, Einstein formulated a general Principle of Equivalence: He asserted that no experiment whatever can tell an observer enclosed in a small box whether the box is being accelerated, or whether it is in a gravitational field. According to this principle, gravitation and acceleration are locally equivalent, or, to say the same thing in different words, gravitational mass and inertial mass are equivalent.

    Einstein soon realized that his Principle of Equivalence implied that a ray of light must be bent by a gravitational field. This conclusion followed because, to an observer in an accelerated frame, a light beam which would appear straight to a stationary observer, must necessarily appear very slightly curved. If the Principle of Equivalence held, then the same slight bending of the light ray would be observed by an experimenter in a stationary frame in a gravitational field.

    Another consequence of the Principle of Equivalence was that a light wave propagating upwards in a gravitational field should be very slightly shifted to the red. This followed because in an accelerated frame, the wave crests would be slightly farther apart than they normally would be, and the same must then be true for a stationary frame in a gravitational field. It seemed to Einstein that it ought to be possible to test experimentally both the gravitational bending of a light ray and the gravitational red shift.

    This seemed promising; but how was Einstein to proceed from the Principle of Equivalence to a formulation of the law of gravitation? Perhaps the theory ought to be modeled after Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, which was a field theory, rather than an “action at a distance” theory. Part of the trouble with Newton’s law of gravitation was that it allowed a signal to be propagated instantaneously, contrary to the Principle of Special Relativity. A field theory of gravitation might cure this defect, but how was Einstein to find such a theory? There seemed to be no way.

    From these troubles Albert Einstein was rescued (a third time!) by his staunch friend Marcel Grossman. By this time, Grossman had become a professor of mathematics in Zürich, after having written a doctoral dissertation on tensor analysis and non-Euclidian geometry, the very things that Einstein needed. The year was then 1912, and Einstein had just returned to Zürich as Professor of Physics at the Polytechnic Institute. For two years, Einstein and Grossman worked together; and by the time Einstein left for Berlin in 1914, the way was clear. With Grossman’s help, Einstein saw that the gravitational field could be expressed as a curvature of the 4-dimensional space-time continuum.

    In 1919, a British expedition, headed by Sir Arthur Eddington, sailed to a small island off the coast of West Africa. Their purpose was to test Einstein’s prediction of the bending of light in a gravitational field by observing stars close to the sun during a total eclipse. The observed bending agreed exactly with Einstein’s predictions; and as a result he became world-famous. The general public was fascinated by relativity, in spite of the abstruseness of the theory (or perhaps because of it). Einstein, the absent-minded professor, with long, uncombed hair, became a symbol of science. The world was tired of war, and wanted something else to think about.

    Einstein met President Harding, Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin; and he was invited to lunch by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although adulated elsewhere, he was soon attacked in Germany. Many Germans, looking for an excuse for the defeat of their nation, blamed it on the pacifists and Jews; and Einstein was both these things.

    Einstein’s letter to Freud: Why war?

    Because of his fame, Einstein was asked to make several speeches at the Reichstag. and in all these speeches he condemned violence and nationalism, urging that these be replaced by and international cooperation and law under an effective international authority. He also wrote many letters and articles pleading for peace and for the renunciation of militarism and violence.

    Einstein believed that the production of armaments is damaging, not only economically, but also spiritually. In 1930 he signed a manifesto for world disarmament sponsored by the Womans International League for Peace and Freedom. In December of the same year, he made his famous statement in New York that if two percent of those called for military service were to refuse to fight, governments would become powerless, since they could not imprison that many people. He also argued strongly against compulsory military service and urged that conscientious objectors should be protected by the international community. He argued that peace, freedom of individuals, and security of societies could only be achieved through disarmament, the alternative being “slavery of the individual and annihilation of civilization”.

    In letters, and articles, Einstein wrote that the welfare of humanity as a whole must take precedence over the goals of individual nations, and that we cannot wait until leaders give up their preparations for war. Civil society, and especially public figures, must take the lead. He asked how decent and self-respecting people can wage war, knowing how many innocent people will be killed.

    In 1931, the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation invited Albert Einstein to enter correspondence with a prominent person of his own choosing on a subject of importance to society. The Institute planned to publish a collection of such dialogues.  Einstein accepted at once, and decided to write to Sigmund Freud to ask his opinion about how humanity could free itself from the curse of war. A translation from German of part of the long letter that he wrote to Freud is as follows:

    “Dear Professor Freud, The proposal of the League of Nations and its International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation at Paris that I should invite a person to be chosen by myself to a frank exchange of views on any problem that I might select affords me a very welcome opportunity of conferring with you upon a question which, as things are now, seems the most important and insistent of all problems civilization has to face. This is the problem: Is there any way of delivering  mankind from the menace of war? It is common knowledge that, with the advance of modern science, this issue has come to mean a matter of life or death to civilization as we know it; nevertheless, for all the zeal displayed, every attempt at its solution has ended in a lamentable breakdown.”

    “I believe, moreover, that those whose duty it is to tackle the problem professionally and practically are growing only too aware of their impotence to deal with it, and have now a very lively desire to learn the views of men who, absorbed in the pursuit of science, can see world-problems in the perspective distance lends. As for me, the normal objective of my thoughts affords no insight into the dark places of human will and feeling. Thus in the enquiry now proposed, I can do little more than seek to clarify the question at issue and, clearing the ground of the more obvious solutions,  enable you to bring the light of your far-reaching knowledge of man’s instinctive life upon the problem..”

    “As one immune from nationalist bias, I personally see a simple way of dealing with the superficial (i.e. administrative) aspect of the problem: the setting up, by international consent, of a legislative and judicial body to settle every conflict arising between nations… But here, at the outset, I come up against a difficulty; a tribunal is a human institution which, in proportion as the power at its disposal is… prone to suffer these to be deflected by extrajudicial pressure…”

    Freud replied with a long and thoughtful letter in which he said that a tendency towards  conflict is an intrinsic part of human emotional nature, but that emotions can be overridden by rationality, and that rational behavior is the only hope for humankind. The full exchange between Einstein and Freud can be found on the following link: http://www.freud.org.uk/file-uploads/files/WHY%20WAR.pdf

    The fateful letter to Roosevelt

    Albert Einstein’s famous relativistic formula, relating energy to mass, soon yielded an understanding of the enormous amounts of energy released in radioactive decay. Marie and Pierre Curie had noticed that radium maintains itself at a temperature higher than its surroundings. Their measurements and calculations showed that a gram of radium produces roughly 100 gram-calories of heat per hour.

    This did not seem like much energy until Rutherford found that radium has a half-life of about 1,000 years. In other words, after a thousand years, a gram of radium will still be producing heat, its radioactivity only reduced to one-half its original value. During a thousand years, a gram of radium produces about a million kilocalories, an enormous amount of energy in relation to the tiny size of its source! Where did this huge amount of energy come from? Conservation of energy was one of the most basic principles of physics. Would it have to be abandoned?

    The source of the almost-unbelievable amounts of energy released in radioactive decay could be understood through Einstein’s formula equating the energy of a system to its mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, and through accurate measurements of atomic weights. Einstein’s formula asserted that mass and energy are equivalent. It was realized that in radioactive decay, neither mass nor energy is conserved, but only a quantity more general than both, of which mass and energy are particular forms. Scientists in several parts of the world realized that Einstein’s discovery of the relationship between mass and energy, together with the discovery of fission of the heavy element uranium meant that it might be possible to construct a uranium-fission bomb of immense power.

    Meanwhile night was falling on Europe. In 1929, an economic depression had begun in the United States and had spread to Europe. Without the influx of American capital, the postwar reconstruction of the German economy collapsed. The German middle class, which had been dealt a severe blow by the great inflation of 1923, now received a second heavy blow. The desperation produced by economic chaos drove German voters into the hands of political extremists.

    On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor and leader of a coalition cabinet by President Hindenburg. Although Hitler was appointed legally to this post, he quickly consolidated his power by unconstitutional means: On May 2, Hitler’s police seized the headquarters of all trade unions, and arrested labor leaders. The Communist and Socialist parties were also banned, their assets seized and their leaders arrested. Other political parties were also smashed. Acts were passed eliminating Jews from public service; and innocent Jewish citizens were boycotted, beaten and arrested. On March 11, 1938, Nazi troops entered Austria.

    On March 16, 1939, the Italian physicist  Enrico Fermi (who by then was a refugee in America) went to Washington to inform the Office of Naval Operations that it might be possible to construct an atomic bomb; and on the same day, German troops poured into Czechoslovakia.

    A few days later, a meeting of six German atomic physicists was held in Berlin to discuss the applications of uranium fission. Otto Hahn, the discoverer of fission, was not present, since it was known that he was opposed to the Nazi regime. He was even said to have exclaimed: “I only hope that you physicists will never construct a uranium bomb! If Hitler ever gets a weapon like that, I’ll commit suicide.”

    The meeting of German atomic physicists was supposed to be secret; but one of the participants reported what had been said to Dr. S. Flügge, who wrote an article about uranium fission and about the possibility of a chain reaction. Flügge’s article appeared in the July issue of Naturwissenschaften, and a popular version of it was printed in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. These articles greatly increased the alarm of American atomic scientists, who reasoned that if the Nazis permitted so much to be printed, they must be far advanced on the road to building an atomic bomb.

    In the summer of 1939, while Hitler was preparing to invade Poland, alarming news reached the physicists in the United States: A second meeting of German atomic scientists had been held in Berlin, this time under the auspices of the Research Division of the German Army Weapons Department. Furthermore, Germany had stopped the sale of uranium from mines in Czechoslovakia.

    The world’s most abundant supply of uranium, however, was not in Czechoslovakia, but in Belgian Congo. Leo Szilard, a refugee Hungarian physicist who had worked with Fermi to measure the number of neutrons produced in uranium fission, was deeply worried that the Nazis were about to construct atomic bombs; and it occurred to him that uranium from Belgian Congo should not be allowed to fall into their hands.

    Szilard knew that his former teacher, Albert Einstein, was a personal friend of Elizabeth, the Belgian Queen Mother. Einstein had met Queen Elizabeth and King Albert of Belgium at the Solvay Conferences, and mutual love of music had cemented a friendship between them. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Einstein had moved to the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton; and Szilard decided to visit him there. Szilard reasoned that because of Einstein’s great prestige, and because of his long-standing friendship with the Belgian Royal Family, he would be the proper person to warn the Belgians not to let their uranium fall into the hands of the Nazis. Einstein agreed to write to the Belgian king and queen.

    On August 2, 1939, Szilard again visited Einstein, accompanied by Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, who (like Szilard) were refugee Hungarian physicists. By this time, Szilard’s plans had grown more ambitious; and he carried with him the draft of another letter, this time to the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein made a few corrections, and then signed the fateful letter, which reads (in part) as follows:

    “Some recent work of E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into an important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe, therefore, that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following..”

    “It is conceivable that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded  a port, might very well destroy the whole port, together with some of the surrounding territory..”

    The letter also called Roosevelt’s attention to the fact that Germany had already stopped the export of uranium from the Czech mines under German control. After making a few corrections, Einstein signed it. On October 11, 1939, three weeks after the defeat of Poland, Roosevelt’s economic adviser, Alexander Sachs, personally delivered the letter to the President. After discussing it with Sachs, the President commented,“This calls for action.” Later, when atomic bombs were dropped on civilian populations in an already virtually-defeated Japan, Einstein bitterly regretted having signed Szilard’s letter to Roosevelt. He said repeatedly that signing the letter was the greatest mistake of his life, and his remorse was extreme.

    Throughout the remainder of his life, in addition to his scientific work, Einstein worked tirelessly for peace, international understanding and nuclear disarmament. His last public act, only a few days before his death in 1955, was to sign the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, warning humankind of the catastrophic consequences that would follow from a war with nuclear weapons.

    http://www.umich.edu/~pugwash/Manifesto.html

    Here are a few more things that Einstein said about peace:

    “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them.”

    “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

    “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”

    “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

    “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get different results.”

    “Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.”

    “Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent war.”

    “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”

    “Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it.”

    “Taken as a whole, I would believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all political men of our time.”

    “Without ethical culture, there is no salvation for humanity.”

    Albert Einstein, great physicist and lifelong pacifist, we need your voice today!

  • Remember Your Humanity

    This year, 2015, marks the 60th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which contains the following words: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise. If you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    The background for the Russell-Einstein Manifesto is as follows: In March, 1954, the United States had tested a hydrogen bomb at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, was 130 kilometers from the Bikini explosion, but the radioactive fallout from the test killed one crew member, and made all the others seriously ill.

    In England, Professor Joseph Rotblat, a Polish scientist who had resigned from the Manhattan Project for moral reasons when it became clear that Germany would not develop nuclear weapons, was asked to appear on a BBC program to discuss the Bikini test. He was asked to discuss the technical aspects of H-bombs, while the Archbishop of Canterbury and the philosopher, Lord Bertrand Russell, were asked to discuss the moral aspects.

    Rotblat had become convinced that the Bikini bomb must have involved a third stage, in which fast neutrons from the hydrogen thermonuclear reaction produced fission in an outer casing of ordinary uranium. Such a bomb would produce enormous amounts of highly dangerous fallout, and Rotblat became extremely worried about the possibly fatal effects on all living things if large numbers of such bombs were ever used in a war. He confided his worries to Bertrand Russell, whom he had met on the BBC program.

    After discussing the Bikini test and its radioactive fallout with Joseph Rotblat, Lord Russell became concerned for the future of the human gene pool. After consulting a number of leading physicists, including Albert Einstein , he wrote what came to be known as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.

    Russell was convinced that in order for the Manifesto to have maximum impact, Einstein’s signature would be absolutely necessary; but as Russell was flying from Italy to France, the pilot announced to the passengers that Einstein had just died. Russell was crushed by the news, but when he arrived at his hotel in Paris, he found waiting for him a letter from Einstein and his signature on the document. Signing the Manifesto had been the last act of Einstein’s life. Others who signed were Max Born, Percy W. Bridgman, Leopold Infeld, Frederic Joliot-Curie, Hermann J. Muller, Linus Pauling, and Cecil F. Powell, Joseph Rotblat, Hideki Yukawa and Bertrand Russell. All of them, except Infeld and Rotblat, were Nobel Laureates.

    On July 9, 1955, with Rotblat in the chair, Russell read the Manifesto to a packed press conference. The document contains the words: “Here then is the problem that we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall mankind renounce war?… There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death because we cannot forget our quarrels?” Lord Russell devoted much of the remainder of his life to working for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    https://pugwashconferences.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/2005_history_origins_of_manifesto3.pdf

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%E2%80%93Einstein_Manifesto

    http://www.umich.edu/~pugwash/Manifesto.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell

    In 1957, with the Russell-Einstein Manifesto as a background, a group of scientists from both sides of the Cold War met in the small village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia. The meeting was held at the summer residence of the Canadian-American financier and philanthropist Cyrus Eaton, who had given money for the conference. The aim of the assembled scientists was to reduce the danger of a catastrophic nuclear war.

    From this small beginning, a series of conferences developed, in which scientists, especially physicists, attempted to work for peace, and tried to address urgent problems related to science. These conferences were called Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, taking their name from the small village in Nova Scotia where the first meeting was held. From the start, the main aim of the meetings was to reduce the danger that civilization would be destroyed in a thermonuclear war.

    It can be seen from what has been said that the Pugwash Conferences began during one of the tensest periods of the Cold War, when communication between the Communist and Anti-communist blocks was difficult. During this period, the meetings served the important purpose of providing a forum for informal diplomacy. The participants met, not as representatives of their countries, but as individuals, and the discussions were confidential.

    This method of operation proved to be effective, and the initial negotiations for a number of important arms control treaties were aided by Pugwash Conferences. These include the START treaties, the treaties prohibiting chemical and biological weapons, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Former Soviet President Gorbachev has said that discussions with Pugwash scientists helped him to conclude that the policy of nuclear confrontation was too dangerous to be continued.

    Over the years, the number of participants attending the annual Pugwash Conference has grown, and the scope of the problems treated has broadened. Besides scientists, the participants now include diplomats, politicians, economists, social scientists and military experts. Normally the number attending the yearly conference is about 150.

    Besides plenary sessions, the conferences have smaller working groups dealing with specific problems. There is always a working group aimed at reducing nuclear dangers, and also groups on controlling or eliminating chemical and biological weapons. In addition, there may now be groups on subjects such as climate change, poverty, United Nations reform, and so on.

    Invitations to the conferences are issued by the Secretary General to participants nominated by the national groups. The host nation usually pays for the local expenses, but participants finance their own travel. Besides the large annual meeting, the Pugwash organization also arranges about ten specialized workshops per year, with 30-40 participants each. Although attendance at the conferences and workshops is by invitation, everyone is very welcome to join one of the national Pugwash groups. The international organization’s website is at www.pugwash.org.

    In 1995, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Prof. Joseph Rotblat and to Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs as an organization, “…for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and in the longer run to eliminate such arms.” The award was made 50 years after the tragic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    In his acceptance speech, Sir Joseph Rotblat (as he soon became) emphasized the same point that has been made by the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, that war itself must be eliminated in order to free civilization from the danger of nuclear destruction. The reason for this is that knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons can never be forgotten. Even if they were eliminated, these weapons could be rebuilt during a major war. Thus the final abolition of nuclear weapons is linked to a change of heart in world politics and to the abolition of war.

    “The quest for a war-free world”, Sir Joseph concluded, “has a basic purpose: survival. But if, in the process, we can learn to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we can learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity”

    I vividly remember the ceremony in Oslo when the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Sir Joseph and to Pugwash Conferences. About 100 people from the Pugwash organization were invited, and I was included because I was the chairman of the Danish National Pugwash Group. After the ceremony and before the dinner, local peace groups had organized a torchlight parade. It was already dark, because we were so far to the north, and snow was falling. About 3,000 people carrying torches marched through the city and assembled under Sir Joseph’s hotel window, cheering and shouting “Rotblat! Rotblat! Rotblat!”. Finally he appeared at the hotel widow, waved to the crowd and tried to say a few words. This would have been the moment for a memorable speech, but the acoustics were so terrible that we could not hear a word that he said. I later tried (without success) to persuade the BBC to make a program about nuclear weapons and about Sir Joseph’s life, ending with the falling snow and the torch-lit scene.

    The dangers are very great today

    Although the Cold War has ended, the danger of a nuclear catastrophe is greater today than ever before. There are 16,300 nuclear weapons in the world today, of which 15,300 are in the hands of Russia and the United States. Several thousand of these weapons are on hair-trigger alert, meaning that whoever is in charge of them has only a few minutes to decide whether the signal indicating an attack is real, or an error. The most important single step in reducing the danger of a disaster would be to take all weapons off hair-trigger alert.

    Bruce G. Blair, Brookings Institute, has remarked that “It is obvious that the rushed nature of the process, from warning to decision to action, risks causing a catastrophic mistake… This system is an accident waiting to happen.” Fred Ikle of the Rand Corporation has written,“But nobody can predict that the fatal accident or unauthorized act will never happen. Given the huge and far-flung missile forces, ready to be launched from land and sea on on both sides, the scope for disaster by accident is immense… In a matter of seconds, through technical accident or human failure, mutual deterrence might thus collapse.”

    Although their number has been cut in half from its Cold War maximum, the total explosive power of today’s weapons is equivalent to roughly half a million Hiroshima bombs. To multiply the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by a factor of half a million changes the danger qualitatively. What is threatened today is the complete breakdown of human society.

    There is no defense against nuclear terrorism. We must remember the remark of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan after the 9/11/2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. He said, “This time it was not a nuclear explosion”. The meaning of his remark is clear: If the world does not take strong steps to eliminate fissionable materials and nuclear weapons, it will only be a matter of time before they will be used in terrorist attacks on major cities. Neither terrorists nor organized criminals can be deterred by the threat of nuclear retaliation, since they have no territory against which such retaliation could be directed. They blend invisibly into the general population. Nor can a “missile defense system” prevent terrorists from using nuclear weapons, since the weapons can be brought into a port in any one of the hundreds of thousands of containers that enter on ships each year, a number far too large to be checked exhaustively.

    As the number of nuclear weapon states grows larger, there is an increasing chance that a revolution will occur in one of them, putting nuclear weapons into the hands of terrorist groups or organized criminals. Today, for example, Pakistan’s less-than-stable government might be overthrown, and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons might end in the hands of terrorists. The weapons might then be used to destroy one of the world’s large coastal cities, having been brought into the port by one of numerous container ships that dock every day. Such an event might trigger a large-scale nuclear conflagration.

    Today, the world is facing a grave danger from the reckless behavior of the government of the United States, which recently arranged a coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine. Although Victoria Nuland’s December 13 2013 speech talks much about democracy, the people who carried out the coup in Kiev can hardly be said to be democracy’s best representatives. Many belong to the Svoboda Party, which had its roots in the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU). The name was an intentional reference to the Nazi Party in Germany.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/06/state-dept-official-caught-on-tape-fuck-the-eu.html

    It seems to be the intention of the US to establish NATO bases in Ukraine, no doubt armed with nuclear weapons. In trying to imagine how the Russians feel about this, we might think of the US reaction when a fleet of ships sailed to Cuba in 1962, bringing Soviet nuclear weapons. In the confrontation that followed, the world was bought very close indeed to an all-destroying nuclear war. Does not Russia feel similarly threatened by the thought of hostile nuclear weapons on its very doorstep? Can we not learn from the past, and avoid the extremely high risks associated with the similar confrontation in Ukraine today?

    Since we have recently marked the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, it is appropriate to view the crisis in Ukraine against the background of that catastrophic event, which still casts a dark shadow over the future of human civilization. We must learn the bitter lessons which World War I has to teach us, in order to avoid a repetition of the disaster.

    We can remember that the First World War started as a small operation by the Austrian government to punish the Serbian nationalists; but it escalated uncontrollably into a global disaster. Today, there are many parallel situations, where uncontrollable escalation might produce a world-destroying conflagration.

    In general, aggressive interventions, in Iran, Syria, Ukraine, the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere, all present dangers for uncontrollable escalation into large and disastrous conflicts, which might potentially threaten the survival of human civilization.

    Another lesson from the history of World War I comes from the fact that none of the people who started it had the slightest idea of what it would be like. Science and technology had changed the character of war. The politicians and military figures of the time ought to have known this, but they didn’t. They ought to have known it from the million casualties produced by the use of the breach-loading rifle in the American Civil War. They ought to have known it from the deadly effectiveness of the Maxim machine gun against the native populations of Africa, but the effects of the machine gun in a European war caught them by surprise.

    Few politicians or military figures today have any imaginative understanding of what a war with thermonuclear weapons would be like. Recent studies have shown that in a nuclear war, the smoke from firestorms in burning cities would rise to the stratosphere where it would remain for a decade, spreading throughout the world, blocking sunlight, blocking the hydrological cycle and destroying the ozone layer. The effect on global agriculture would be devastating, and the billion people who are chronically undernourished today would be at risk. Furthermore, the tragedies of Chernobyl and Fukushima remind us that a nuclear war would make large areas of the world permanently uninhabitable because of radioactive contamination. A full-scale thermonuclear war would be the ultimate ecological catastrophe. It would destroy human civilization and much of the biosphere.

    One can gain a small idea of the terrible ecological consequences of a nuclear war by thinking of the radioactive contamination that has made large areas near to Chernobyl and Fukushima uninhabitable, or the testing of hydrogen bombs in the Pacific, which continues to cause leukemia and birth defects in the Marshall Islands more than half a century later.

    As we discussed above, the United States tested a hydrogen bomb at Bikini in 1954. Fallout from the bomb contaminated the island of Rongelap, one of the Marshall Islands 120 kilometers from Bikini. The islanders experienced radiation illness, and many died from cancer. Even today, half a century later, both people and animals on Rongelap and other nearby islands suffer from birth defects. The most common defects have been “jelly fish babies”, born with no bones and with transparent skin. Their brains and beating hearts can be seen. The babies usually live a day or two before they stop breathing.

    A girl from Rongelap describes the situation in the following words: “I cannot have children. I have had miscarriages on seven occasions… Our culture and religion teach us that reproductive abnormalities are a sign that women have been unfaithful. For this reason, many of my friends keep quiet about the strange births that they have had. In privacy they give birth, not to children as we like to think of them, but to things we could only describe as ‘octopuses’, ‘apples’, ‘turtles’ and other things in our experience. We do not have Marshallese words for these kinds of babies, because they were never born before the radiation came.”

    The Republic of the Marshall Islands is suing the nine countries with nuclear weapons at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, arguing they have violated their legal obligation to disarm.

    The Guardian reports that “In the unprecedented legal action, comprising nine separate cases brought before the ICJ on Thursday, the Republic of the Marshall Islands accuses the nuclear weapons states of a `flagrant denial of human justice’. It argues it is justified in taking the action because of the harm it suffered as a result of the nuclear arms race.”

    “The Pacific chain of islands, including Bikini Atoll and Enewetak, was the site of 67 nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958, including the ‘Bravo shot’, a 15-megaton device equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima blasts, detonated in 1954. The Marshallese islanders say they have been suffering serious health and environmental effects ever since.”

    “The island republic is suing the five `established’ nuclear weapons states recognized in the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the US, Russia (which inherited the Soviet arsenal), China, France and the UK, as well as the three countries outside the NPT who have declared nuclear arsenals ¨C India, Pakistan and North Korea, and the one undeclared nuclear weapons state, Israel.” The Republic of the Marshall Islands is not seeking monetary compensation, but instead it seeks to make the nuclear weapon states comply with their legal obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the 1996 ruling of the International Court of Justice.

    On July 21, 2014, the United States filed a motion to dismiss the Nuclear Zero lawsuit that was filed by the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) on April 24, 2014 in U.S. Federal Court. The U.S., in its move to dismiss the RMI lawsuit, does not argue that the U.S. is in compliance with its NPT disarmament obligations. Instead, it argues in a variety of ways that its non-compliance with these obligations is, essentially, justifiable, and not subject to the court’s jurisdiction.

    http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/28997-bush-appointed-judge-dismisses-nuclear-zero-lawsuit-marshall-islands-to-appeal

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) is a consultant to the Marshall Islands on the legal and moral issues involved in bringing this case. David Krieger, President of NAPF, upon hearing of the motion to dismiss the case by the U.S. responded, “The U.S. government is sending a terrible message to the world, that is, that U.S. courts are an improper venue for resolving disputes with other countries on U.S. treaty obligations. The U.S. is, in effect, saying that whatever breaches it commits are all right if it says so. That is bad for the law, bad for relations among nations, bad for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, and not only bad, but extremely dangerous for U.S. citizens and all humanity.”

    The RMI will appeal the U.S. attempt to reject its suit in the U.S, Federal Court, and it will continue to sue the 9 nuclear nations in the International Court of Justice. Whether or not the suits succeed in making the nuclear nations comply with international law, attention will be called to the fact the 9 countries are outlaws. In vote after vote in the United Nations General Assembly, the peoples of the world have shown how deeply they long to be free from the menace of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, the tiny group of power-hungry politicians must yield to the will of the citizens whom they are at present holding as hostages.

    It is a life-or-death question. We can see this most clearly when we look at far ahead. Suppose that each year there is a certain finite chance of a nuclear catastrophe, let us say 2 percent. Then in a century the chance of survival will be 13.5 percent, and in two centuries, 1.8 percent, in three centuries, 0.25 percent, in 4 centuries, there would only be a 0.034 percent chance of survival and so on. Over many centuries, the chance of survival would shrink almost to zero. Thus by looking at the long-term future, we can clearly see that if nuclear weapons are not entirely eliminated, civilization will not survive.

    Civil society must make its will felt. A thermonuclear war today would be not only genocidal but also omnicidal. It would kill people of all ages, babies, children, young people, mothers, fathers and grandparents, without any regard whatever for guilt or innocence. Such a war would be the ultimate ecological catastrophe, destroying not only human civilization but also much of the biosphere. Each of us has a duty to work with dedication to prevent it.

  • 2010 Evening for Peace

    The lives of our two honorees, like the lives of so many other individuals in this country and throughout the world, have been deeply affected by war.  

    Reverend James Lawson was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, for which he spent time in prison.  It helped mold his life as a leader in peace and nonviolence, and then as a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Professor Glenn Paige served as an enlisted man and officer in the Korean War and then wrote a book justifying the war.  Later, he would criticize his own book and conclude there was no justification for killing in that war or any war.  

    For both men, the experience of war changed the course of their lives and put them on the path of peace.  

    One of the great myths of our time is that war creates peace.  It does not.  War breeds war, laying the groundwork for future wars.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows….  We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.”  As our 2007 honorees – Peter, Paul and Mary – asked in song, “When will we ever learn?”  

    War kills not only with bullets and bombs.  It also kills indirectly by robbing the world’s people of the resources necessary for survival.  As President Eisenhower emphasized in his Farewell Address, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

    The world is spending more than $1.5 trillion annually on war and its preparation.  While it does so, the United Nations struggles to raise the needed resources to meet its eight Millennium Development Goals: to eradicate poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and build a global partnership for development.

    For only five to 10 percent of global military expenditures annually for the next five years, the world could reach the markers that have been set for these Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015.  Instead, we choose to use our scientific and financial resources to build and deploy ever more powerful weapons.  It is a soul-deadening exercise.

    War and violence are the enemies of humanity.  There is a better way forward as shown in the lives of our honorees, based on nonviolence and nonkilling.  

    At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we believe that nuclear weapons have made peace an imperative of the Nuclear Age.  We must eliminate these weapons, which threaten civilization and the human future, and we must also eliminate war.  That is the work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and we need all of you to join with us to achieve our goals.

    Let me give you a few relevant statistics about the Foundation.  Our membership is over 37,000 people.  More than 30,000 individuals participate in our Action Alert Network, sending messages to elected representatives. 

    Our Peace Leadership Program Director, Paul Chappell, has given over 100 talks or workshops in the past year to high schools, universities, churches, activist organizations, and veterans groups throughout the country.  There are over 2,100 people now in our Peace Leadership Program. 

    Some 700,000 people have visited our WagingPeace.org and NuclearFiles.org websites in the past year.   Our Sunflower e-newsletter is distributed to tens of thousands of people worldwide. 

    We are intent upon breaking down the walls of ignorance, apathy and complacency that surround issues of nuclear weapons and war, and replacing them with new and abundant energy and commitment directed toward peace and human survival.  This is the responsibility to future generations demanded of those of us alive on our planet today.

    With six hard-working and talented staff members and dozens of volunteers, including our dedicated Board, our distinguished Advisors and Associates and our enthusiastic and competent college interns, we are committed to building a safer and saner world.  We educate and advocate to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen international law, and empower new generations of peace leaders.

    Let me conclude with three short quotations from three giants of the 20th century.

    Albert Camus, an existential philosopher and Nobel Laureate in Literature, said, “I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.”

    Albert Einstein, the great scientist and humanist who changed our understanding of the universe, said, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

    Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

    It is in the creative tension between words and actions that we must seek to fulfill our dreams.  May we never lose hold of the dream of peace.  May we choose hope and find a way to change the world.  May we each do our part to pass the world on intact to future generations.

  • A Dialogue Between Socrates and Einstein

    A Dialogue Between Socrates and Einstein

    Socrates was taking a walk through the countryside and he came across Professor Einstein. After the two men greeted each other, Socrates asked Einstein about his famous quotation concerning the atomic bomb: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

    Socrates: I’ve often wondered about this statement. What exactly did you mean by “modes of thinking”?

    Einstein: I meant that the new weapons we have created require us to think in a new way. We can no longer continue to use our old ways of thinking that have brought us this far. Our thinking must change.

    Socrates: How must it change?

    Einstein: To start with, we must recognize that these weapons have the power to destroy everything, including most life on the planet. We must make greater use of our imaginations, and imagine the outcome of a nuclear war. We must be able to imagine the outcome of a war that would end civilization and cause the death of all humans.

    Socrates: This may be difficult for many people to imagine.

    Einstein: I have no doubt that it is difficult to imagine. We tend to project the past into the future, but in the Nuclear Age the future could be very different from the past. But imagining a future without human life, or even all life, may be easier to imagine than it is to prevent such a future from occurring.

    Socrates: You mean imagining a future without a human presence on the planet is the easier part of changing our modes of thinking?

    Einstein: Exactly so, Socrates. But it is very important.

    Socrates: Why do you find it so important?

    Einstein: If you can imagine that we could have a world without human beings, then it should be motivating to do something to prevent this from happening.

    Socrates: Yes, Einstein. I can see that this would be motivating. But why aren’t more people motivated?

    Einstein: First, they aren’t motivated because they can’t really imagine such a world. Second, even if they can imagine it, they can’t figure out what to do.

    Socrates: I think the first problem, the failure of imagination, could be helped with education.

    Einstein: Yes, I think the right kind of education would help greatly.

    Socrates: And what would be the right kind of education?

    Einstein: Education that shows how devastating the use of these weapons would be. I have always felt that scientists should lead in providing this education, but political leaders should also educate in this regard. And also teachers in classrooms must help educate a new generation.

    Socrates: But many people still think that nuclear weapons make them safer.

    Einstein: This is an old mode of thinking. It must be changed through education. Nuclear weapons, rather than making us safer, make the world more dangerous.

    Socrates: But many leaders say that the threat to use nuclear weapons prevents other states from using nuclear weapons against you.

    Einstein: That, too, is an old mode of thinking. It is called deterrence, and it relies upon the rationality of other leaders. I’ve always believed in rationality, but I cannot believe that it makes sense to risk the future of humanity on the assumption that all leaders will act rationally at all times and under all circumstances.

    Socrates: I can’t imagine leaders who are rational all the time.

    Einstein: It would be irrational to believe that all leaders are rational at all times.

    Socrates: Yes, surely there are times when even the most rational leaders act irrationally. This is true of all humans.

    Einstein: Then surely we should not risk the future of the human species due to an unwarranted belief in the nature of rationality.

    Socrates: Do you find spirituality to be more important than rationality?

    Einstein: I find both are important human capacities requiring further development, and such development requires that we should not put the human species at risk of nuclear annihilation.

    Socrates: There is much we can imagine, but also much that is beyond our ability to imagine.

    Einstein: Of course, Socrates. But we must expand our capacity to imagine. Nuclear weapons make this necessary.

    Socrates: You said that even for those who could imagine a world without humans due to our nuclear arsenals, they still may not be able to imagine a way out of the dilemma.

    Einstein: Yes, to imagine a world without humans is only a way to understand that we must act to prevent this.

    Socrates: But some humans may view a world without humans as a positive outcome.

    Einstein: It would mean not only the end of the present and the future – that is bad enough – but also the eradication of all memory of the past, the end of every beautiful thing ever created by humans. There would be no one to appreciate music and poetry, art and architecture, no memory of great or small human triumphs of the past.

    Socrates: There would be no one to remember the heroism and heroes of the past.

    Einstein: It would be a world without humans. It would destroy the mirror of self-awareness that humans hold up to the universe.

    Socrates: That would indeed be a great loss. How can we prevent this from happening?

    Einstein: It will require us to summon our creativity and discipline, perhaps more than we have ever done before.

    Socrates: This is indeed a great challenge.

    Einstein: It is the challenge made necessary by the creation of nuclear weapons.

    Socrates: So it is one burst of creativity that brings on the need for new creativity.

    Einstein: Exactly so. We need new creative thinking. This problem is solvable. It just needs our best thinking.

    Socrates: What do you recommend, Professor Einstein?

    Einstein: We must be bold and meet this new danger with a new way of thinking. War can no longer be a way to settle differences between competing powers.

    Socrates: So you would do away with war?

    Einstein: We must. There is no choice. In a nuclear armed world, war has become too dangerous.

    Socrates: Even though I was a soldier and am proud of it, I understand that wars must end. War was never a healthy way to solve conflicts between contending parties.

    Einstein: You have a far more positive view of war than I do, but I’m glad we agree that nuclear weapons have made war far too dangerous to continue.

    Socrates: For a long time, countries have tried to achieve peace by preparing for war.

    Einstein: But this has never worked as they had hoped. Preparing for war has always led to war. Now we must change this paradigm and seek peace by preparing for peace.

    Socrates: This makes sense. This is the way forward.

    Einstein: There is more. Strong states can no longer prevail in war, as was once the case. With nuclear weapons, even a small extremist group will be able to destroy a powerful country.

    Socrates: All the more reason to end war and to do away with nuclear arms.

    Einstein: There is no global problem that can any longer be solved without global cooperation. That is also an essential new way of thinking that is necessary for global survival.

    Socrates: So we must learn to think as global citizens, owing our allegiance to humanity.

    Einstein: I believe this with all my heart. We must also end double standards, and have a single standard that applies to all countries and all people.

    Socrates: All of what you say makes sense to me, Einstein, but how can it come to pass?

    Einstein: It won’t come from our leaders. They are still leading in the old modes of thinking based on arms and force. They still believe in double standards, and the strong countries seek to impose their will on the weak. Leaders of nuclear armed states won’t give up their weapons without being pressed to do so by their people.

    Socrates: Then the people must be awakened, and they must demand an end to war, and a world free of nuclear weapons.

    Einstein: Yes, Socrates, you are a wise man. You understand the changes in thinking that are necessary.

    Socrates: I doubt that I am a wise man, Einstein, but you restore my belief in humanity. I will help you to awaken humanity to the dangers that now confront us. I will help you to change our modes of thinking.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council.
  • Nuclear Weapons and the Responsibility of Scientists

    Nuclear Weapons and the Responsibility of Scientists

    Nuclear weapons are unique among weapons systems – they are capable of destroying civilization and possibly the human species. Nuclear weapons kill massively and indiscriminately. They are powerful. They are also illegal, immoral and cowardly. They are long-distance killing machines, instruments of annihilation. They place the human future in jeopardy. In spite of all of this, or perhaps because of it, these weapons seem to bestow prestige upon their creators and possessors.

    Nuclear weapons were first created by scientists and engineers working in the US nuclear weapons program, the Manhattan Project, during World War II. The project began simply and, ironically, with a letter to President Roosevelt from a great man of peace and humanitarian, Albert Einstein, who also happened to be the greatest and most celebrated scientist of his time. Later, after the use of the US nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein would lament having written the letter to Roosevelt.

    By examining the subsequent responses of three leading scientists whose earlier work had involved them in significant ways with the creation of nuclear weapons, I will show how they set an example for scientists today. I will seek to answer these questions: Do the scientists who created nuclear weapons have special responsibility for these weapons? Do scientists today continue to have responsibility for nuclear weapons?

    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein is one of great men of the 20th century, and one of the men I most admire. His penetrating intellect changed our view of the world. His understanding of the relationship between mass and energy, as contained in his famous formula E=mc2, gave the original theoretical insight into the power of mass converted to energy. Einstein, however, for all his theoretical brilliance, did not foresee the potential power that might be released by the atom and give rise to nuclear weapons.

    By 1939 Einstein was living in the United States, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, and had a position at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. A fellow physicist and friend, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian refugee from Nazi Germany, became concerned that the Germans would develop an atomic weapon and use it to defeat the Allied powers fighting against Hitler. Szilard came to Einstein, explained his fear, and asked Einstein to sign a letter explaining the danger to President Franklin Roosevelt. The letter that Einstein sent said that “uranium may turn into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future,” and that, while not certain, “extremely powerful bombs of a new type may be constructed.” The letter called upon the President Roosevelt to have his administration maintain contact with “a group of physicists working on chain reactions in America.” The letter led Roosevelt to take the first steps toward what would become the Manhattan Project, a very large US government program to create atomic weapons. President Roosevelt set up an Advisory Committee on Uranium, headed by Lyman J. Briggs, to evaluate where the US stood with regard to uranium research and to recommend what role the US government should play.

    Einstein never worked on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb, and was deeply disturbed and saddened when the bombs were used on Japan. He was reported to have said later, “If only I had known, I would have become a watch maker.” Einstein would join and lend his name to many organizations working to control and eliminate nuclear weapons during the final ten years of his life after the bombs were used. He was also outspoken in his condemnation of atomic weapons. He fought against the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1946, Einstein joined a group of atomic scientists that formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. Einstein and his fellow trustees of the Emergency Committee released a statement at the end of a conference held in Princeton in November 1946 that included the following “facts…accepted by all scientists”:

    1. Atomic bombs can now be made cheaply and in large number. They will become more destructive.
    2. There is no military defense against the atomic bomb and none is to be expected.
    3. Other nations can rediscover our secret processes by themselves.
    4. Preparedness against atomic war is futile, and if attempted will ruin the structure of our social order.
    5. If war breaks out, atomic bombs will be used and they will surely destroy our civilization.
    6. There is no solution to this problem except international control of atomic energy and, ultimately, the elimination of war.

    These six points remain as valid today as they were in 1946.

    The final public document that Einstein signed, just days before his death, was the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. It is an eloquent call to scientists to act for the good of humanity. The document began, “In the tragic situation that confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in the spirit of the appended draft.”

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto is one of the most powerful anti-nuclear and anti-war statements ever written. It expresses the fear of massive destruction made possible by nuclear weapons that could bring an end to the human species. It states: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” Einstein and Russell were joined by nine other prominent scientists in calling upon people everywhere, and particularly scientists, to take a simple but critical step: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

    One of Einstein’s most prescient warnings to humanity was this: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” More than five decades after Einstein’s death, his warning remains largely unheeded.

    Leo Szilard

    Leo Szilard was one of the most remarkable men of the 20th century. He first conceived of the possibility of an atomic chain reaction that could result in atomic bombs while standing at a stoplight in London in 1933. One of the people Szilard credits with influencing his discovery was British novelist H.G. Wells, who talked about atomic bombs in his 1913 science fiction book, The World Set Free.

    Six years later, it was Szilard who encouraged Einstein to warn President Roosevelt about the possibility of a German atomic bomb. Once the Manhattan Project was underway, Szilard would work with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago on creating a controlled chain reaction. The two men succeeded in conducting the first controlled and sustained chain reaction in their laboratory under the bleachers at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942. In doing so, they left no doubt that the creation of an atomic weapon would be possible.

    By early 1945, it seemed clear to Szilard that Germany would not succeed in creating an atomic bomb, but that America would. Szilard became concerned that the US would choose to use its new weapon as an instrument of war rather than as a means of deterring the German use of an atomic weapon. Szilard made frantic attempts to stop the US from using the bomb that he had been so instrumental in creating. He went back to Einstein in an attempt to arrange a meeting with President Roosevelt. Einstein wrote another letter to Roosevelt on Szilard’s behalf. The President’s wife, Eleanor, wrote back agreeing to meet with Szilard in her Manhattan apartment. Szilard received the letter with great excitement, but his excitement was dashed when later in the day the news was announced that President Roosevelt had died. It was April 12, 1945.

    Next Szilard tried to arrange a meeting with the new President, Harry Truman. Truman arranged for Szilard to meet with Jimmy Byrnes, a Senate mentor of Truman’s who would soon be named his Secretary of State. Szilard, along with scientists Walter Bartky and Harold Urey, traveled to Spartanburg, South Carolina to meet with Byrnes. The meeting went badly. Szilard expressed concern about a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Byrnes seemed to be more concerned with the possibility of using the new weapon as a demonstration of military might to make the Soviets more manageable. Szilard made an unfavorable impression on Byrnes. Szilard later wrote, “I was rarely as depressed as when we left Byrnes’ house and walked to the station.”

    Szilard next worked energetically on the Social and Political Committee of the Met Lab scientists working on the bomb at the University of Chicago. The Committee was headed by Nobel Laureate physicist James Franck. The Committee report concluded that the bomb should be demonstrated to Japan before being used against Japanese civilians. The Scientific Committee of the Manhattan Project’s Interim Committee – composed of Arthur Holly Compton, Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer – rejected the report, recommending against a demonstration and for military use of the bomb.

    Finally, Szilard drafted a petition to the President of the United States. The petition, dated July 17, 1945, began, “Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future….” The petition argued against attacking Japanese civilians on moral and practical grounds. It argued that “a nation which sets a precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.” The petition was held by General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach Secretary of Defense Stimson or President Truman until after their return from Potsdam and after Hiroshima had been destroyed by the first attack with a nuclear weapon.

    After the war, Szilard was a leader among atomic scientists in working to alert the public to nuclear dangers. He was a founder of the Council for a Livable World. He remained active in opposing nuclear weapons until his death.

    Joseph Rotblat

    Joseph Rotblat was one of the great men of the 20th century. He was a Polish émigré, who went to London in 1939 to work with Nobel Laureate physicist James Chadwick. Rotblat became concerned about a German atomic weapon, which led him to work on the British atomic bomb project and later in the US Manhattan Project. He believed that an Allied atomic bomb was necessary to deter the Germans from using an atomic bomb. By late 1944, however, Rotblat had concluded that the Germans would not succeed in creating an atomic weapon. He had been shocked to hear from General Groves one evening that the purpose of the US bomb had always been directed against the Soviets, then US allies in the war. As an act of conscience, Rotblat left the Manhattan Project in December 1944 and returned to London. The following August his worst fears were realized when the US used their newly created weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Rotblat would dedicate the rest of his life to working for a nuclear weapons free world. He helped in the creation of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, and was its youngest signer. Two years later, he helped organize the first meeting of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, bringing together scientists from East and West. He would serve as a leader of the Pugwash movement for the rest of his long life, always as a voice of conscience and reason and a strong and uncompromising advocate of nuclear weapons abolition. He was the living embodiment of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, calling for nuclear weapons abolition and the abolition of war.

    In 1995, Joseph Rotblat received the Nobel Peace Prize. He appealed in his Nobel Lecture in part to his fellow scientists. In doing so, he referred approvingly to the statement made earlier that year by former Manhattan Project scientist Hans Bethe on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and he quoted Bethe’s statement in full:

    As the Director of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, I participated at the most senior level in the World War II Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic weapons.
    Now, at age 88, I am one of the few remaining such senior persons alive. Looking back at the half century since that time, I feel the most intense relief that these weapons have not been used since World War II, mixed with the horror that tens of thousands of such weapons have been built since that time – one hundred times more than any of us at Los Alamos could ever had imagined.
    Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.
    Accordingly, I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons – and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.

    Rotblat concluded his remarks to scientists with the following appeal: “At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society, when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role, and conduct themselves accordingly. I appeal to my fellow scientists to remember their responsibility to humanity.”

    In the final words of his Nobel Lecture, he spoke as an elder statesman of humanity: “The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity.”

    Conclusions

    I have discussed the manner in which three important scientists reacted to nuclear weapons. Of course, there have been many other scientists – including Linus Pauling, Eugene Rabinowitch and Andrei Sakharov – who have also joined in publicly seeking to free the world from the dangers of nuclear arms. But there have also been many other scientists who have supported the nuclear arms race and continue to work on designing and improving nuclear weapons.

    Einstein, Szilard and Rotblat believed that nuclear weapons threaten the future of humanity and must be brought under international control and abolished. They sought to eliminate not only nuclear weapons, but war as a human institution. They all contributed to the creation of nuclear weapons, influenced by the threat of a potential Nazi atomic weapon, but they all regretted their part and sought to change the course of history. They believed that scientists had an important role to play in educating the general population about nuclear threats and encouraging the public and political leaders to support effective nuclear disarmament.

    These men have become historical figures, but they lived real and courageous lives. They were all men of conscience, who understood that nuclear weapons cast a dark shadow across the human future. They stood not with the power establishments of their day, but with humanity. They are important role models for young scientists and engineers. Their lives and their words convey a crucial message for the scientists of today: Contribute your talents constructively to humanity, but withhold them from making and improving armaments, in particular nuclear arms.

    The atomic scientists were influential in initiating many institutions that continue to work for a nuclear weapons free world. These include Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Council for a Livable World, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the Federation of American Scientists. To these can be added newer organizations committed to science for social responsibility such as Science for Peace in the UK and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.

    As the scientists directly connected with the World War II US Manhattan Project and the British MAUD Committee have passed on, new responsibilities have fallen to a younger generation of scientists. It remains to be seen, though, whether this new generation of scientists will have the passion and persistence to carry on effectively in fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a positive sign that one of the world’s most renowned physicists, Stephen Hawking, has stated, “As scientists we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects…as citizens of the world we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action to render nuclear weapons obsolete.”

    Today the University of California manages and provides oversight to the main US nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore. These laboratories have designed every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. They have recently designed a new nuclear weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which the US government would like to develop to replace all existing weapons in the US nuclear arsenal. To this enterprise, the University of California lends its prestige and legitimacy. Leaders of the University proudly proclaim that they are performing a national service, and seem to give little thought to the dangerous nuclear nightmare they are perpetuating.

    Scientists everywhere should join together, in the spirit of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, to speak out and demand that Universities, such as the University of California, stop supporting the design, development, testing and manufacture of any weapon of mass destruction, most of all nuclear weapons. They should bring collective pressure to bear upon those scientists who choose to participate in such work. In short, they should follow in the footsteps of Einstein, Szilard and Rotblat, and accept personal and professional responsibility for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    As Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue pointed out in his 2007 Nagasaki Peace Declaration, “[A] major force for nuclear abolition would be for scientists and engineers to refuse to cooperate in nuclear weapons development.” To achieve this end, it will be necessary to apply peer pressure within the scientific community to strip away any semblance of prestige and legitimacy that remains connected to the creation of weapons capable of destroying humanity.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.com).