Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Ban Treaty

  • 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.

  • Testimony of a Hiroshima Survivor

    United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination

    New York, 27 March 2017

    Testimony by Fujimori Toshiki, Assistant Secretary General of Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations)

    President Ambassador Whyte, Distinguished Delegates,

    I would like to thank the President for giving me the opportunity to speak.

    My name is Fujimori Toshiki, and I am the Assistant Secretary General of Nihon Hidankyo, Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations. I am one of the people who was exposed to the atomic bomb the U.S. forces dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

    Hibakusha established Nihon Hidankyo eleven years after the bombing. Since then, we have called for “No More Hibakusha” within Japan and abroad. The treaty you will be negotiating today must reflect this call of Hibakusha in express terms so that the world makes remarkable progress towards nuclear weapons abolition.

    I was 1 year and 4 months-old when the bomb was dropped. We were a big family of twelve, consisting of my grandfather, father, mother, six elder sisters, two elder brothers, and myself. Two of my elder sisters and my two elder brothers had evacuated out of the city of Hiroshima to avoid air raids. The eight of us who stayed in Hiroshima were exposed to the bomb.

    My fourth-eldest sister was 13 years old and was in her first year of an all-girls junior high school. She was around 400m from the hypocenter when the bomb was dropped. Together with her teachers and other students, my sister was there to demolish houses to create firesafe areas against air raids. All of 676 of them including my sister were killed instantly through direct exposure to radiation, the heat, and the blast from the bomb. It is said that all together in the city of Hiroshima, 8400 students in the first and second year of junior high schools were being mobilized for similar purposes that day. The lives of 6300 of them were lost.

    I was sick that day, so my mother was heading to the hospital with me on her back when the bomb was dropped. We were 2.3 km from the hypocentre. Fortunately, a two-story house between the hypocentre and us prevented us from directly being exposed to the heat. Yet, we were thrown all the way to the edge of the river bank. My mother, with me in her arms, managed to get to the nearby mountain called Ushitayama. Our family members were in different locations at the time of the bombing, but everyone escaped to the same mountain of Ushitayama, except for my fourth-elder sister. For many days that followed, my parents and my sisters kept going back to the area near the hypocentre to look for my fourth-eldest sister, who was missing. We never found her. We never found her body either. In the meantime, I had my entire body covered with bandages, with only eyes, nose, and mouth uncovered. Everybody thought I would die over time. Yet, I survived. It is a miracle. I am here at the UN, asking for an abolition of nuclear weapons. I am convinced that this is a mission I am given as a survivor of the atomic-bomb.

    Two hundred and ten thousand people died by the end of 1945 due to the atomic bombs the U.S. forces dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hibakusha experienced hell on earth beneath the mushroom clouds. In fact, Hibakusha have continued to suffer for the twenty six thousand one hundred sixty six days until today, March 27th , 2017.

    Nobody, in any country, deserves seeing the same hell on earth again.

    Every year, on August 6th, my mother would gather all of us children and would talk to us about her experience in tears. I once asked my mother why she would speak about it if recalling the experience makes her suffer.

    “I can’t make you go through the same experience.” That was her answer.

    Her tears were her heartfelt appeal. She called, as a mother, for a world with no more hell on earth.

    Three International Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons hosted by Norway, Mexico, and Austria, as well as the Joint Statements on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons at the Preparatory Committee meetings for the NPT Review Conference and the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, repeatedly and strongly reaffirmed the following conclusions:

    That whether intended or not intended, the effects of a nuclear weapon detonation are not constrained by national borders;

    That no state or international body could address its immediate humanitarian emergency or long-term consequences;

    That in the interest of the very survival of humanity nuclear weapons must never be used again; and

    That the only assurance against the risk of a nuclear weapon detonation is the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Many Hibakusha received these messages with thousands of thoughts about the long journey that they had come.

    Nuclear weapon states and their allied nuclear-dependent states are against concluding a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. Despite being the only country in the world that experienced the wartime use of nuclear weapons, the Japanese government voted against the UN resolution 71/258, which established this negotiating conference.

    As a Hibakusha, and as a Japanese, I am here today heartbroken.

    Yet, I am not discouraged.

    Government representatives who are present at this conference, international organizations, and representatives of civil society organizations are making efforts to conclude a legally binding instrument to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.

    In April of last year, Hibakusha initiated the International Signature Campaign, which calls on all state governments to conclude a treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons. We reached out to countries across the world, and last October, we delivered our first batch of five hundred sixty thousand signatures to the Chair of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly. Today, we have over one million seven hundred twenty thousand signatures. We will continue the campaign until 2020, and we aim to collect hundreds of millions of signatures.

    Let us work together to achieve the nuclear ban treaty.

    Thank you very much for listening.

  • More than 120 Nations Convene Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Negotiations at the United Nations

    NUCLEAR AGE PEACE FOUNDATION

    For Immediate Release

    Contact:
    Rick Wayman
    (805) 696-5159; rwayman@napf.org
    Sandy Jones
    (805) 965-3443; sjones@napf.org

    More than 120 Nations Convene Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Negotiations at the United Nations

    New York City–Beginning on Monday, March 27, 2017, for the very first time, negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons in international law are taking place under the auspices of the United Nations. More than 120 nations have gathered to participate in the negotiations.

    A treaty banning nuclear weapons would make using, possessing, developing, and assisting with nuclear weapons illegal under international law and provide a framework for the weapons’ eventual complete elimination. Banning these weapons is the next step in a decades-long effort to ensure that the laws of war are followed and the indiscriminate destruction and unnecessary suffering caused by nuclear weapons is prevented forever.

    David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said, “This is a breakthrough day and week in the Nuclear Age. For the first time ever, nations will be negotiating to ban nuclear weapons – weapons capable of destroying civilization and complex life.”

    The world now faces 21st century threats and challenges — cybersecurity, pandemic disease, and terrorism. These threats cannot be addressed by nuclear weapons or the logic of nuclear deterrence. More ominously, the spread of nuclear weapons, technology, and material only increases the chances of intentional or accidental nuclear detonation by states or terrorist groups.

    The treaty is expected to:

    • Legally bind parties from using, possessing and developing nuclear weapons, and assisting others in those activities.
    • Work in concert with the existing regime of nonproliferation and disarmament agreements.
    • Strengthen the norm against indiscriminate weapons and provide countries a method to meet disarmament obligations.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation will be represented at the ban negotiations by Robert B. Laney, Chairman of the Foundation’s Board of Directors and Rick Wayman, Director of Programs. Wayman will be among the presenters in a discussion on Tuesday, March 28, from 10:00 AM ‘til noon, entitled, “US Nuclear Modernization Under President Trump: Implications for the Ban Treaty Process.”

    Wayman commented earlier on Monday, “In an epic role reversal, this morning we saw U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley protesting outside the UN General Assembly Hall while the majority of the world’s nations, supported by NGOs from around the world, began negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation will continue to support the good faith efforts of those negotiating a nuclear ban treaty and oppose the nuclear weapons states’ efforts to keep nuclear weapons in perpetuity.”

    The negotiations will take place in two sessions; this week in March and three weeks in June/July of 2017 at the United Nations. This week, representatives will meet to begin the drafting process by discussing and submitting language for the various components of the treaty. Between the two meetings, draft text will be produced for negotiation at the June/July meeting.

    With the risk of nuclear detonation higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War, this treaty is an urgent priority for all countries that believe in a future free of nuclear weapons.

    #                                                                             #                                                             #

    If you would like to interview Rick Wayman, please call (805) 696-5159 or email him at rwayman@napf.org

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders. Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations. For more information, visit www.wagingpeace.org.

  • Why Should Trump – Or Anyone – Be Able to Launch a Nuclear War?

    This article was originally published by History News Network.

    The accession of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency brings us face-to-face with a question that many have tried to avoid since 1945: Should anyone have the right to plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust?

    Trump, of course, is an unusually angry, vindictive, and mentally unstable American president. Therefore, given the fact that, acting totally on his own, he can launch a nuclear war, we have entered a very perilous time. The U.S. government possesses approximately 6,800 nuclear weapons, many of them on hair-trigger alert. Moreover, the United States is but one of nine nations that, in total, possess nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons. This nuclear weapons cornucopia is more than enough to destroy virtually all life on earth. Furthermore, even a small-scale nuclear war would produce a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Not surprisingly, then, Trump’s loose statements about building and using nuclear weapons have horrified observers.

    In an apparent attempt to rein in America’s new, erratic White House occupant, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) recently introduced federal legislation to require Congress to declare war before a U.S. president could authorize nuclear weapons strikes. The only exception would be in response to a nuclear attack. Peace groups are rallying around this legislation and, in a major editorial, the New York Times endorsed it, noting that it “sends a clear message to Mr. Trump that he should not be the first since World War II to use nuclear weapons.”

    But, even in the unlikely event that the Markey-Lieu legislation is passed by the Republican Congress, it does not address the broader problem: the ability of the officials of nuclear-armed nations to launch a catastrophic nuclear war. How rational are Russia’s Vladimir Putin, or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, or Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, or the leaders of other nuclear powers? And how rational will the rising politicians of nuclear armed nations (including a crop of rightwing, nationalist ideologues, such as France’s Marine Le Pen) prove to be? “Nuclear deterrence,” as national security experts have known for decades, might serve to inhibit the aggressive impulses of top government officials in some cases, but surely not in all of them.

    Ultimately, then, the only long-term solution to the problem of national leaders launching a nuclear war is to get rid of the weapons.

    This was the justification for the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, which constituted a bargain between two groups of nations. Under its provisions, non-nuclear countries agreed not to develop nuclear weapons, while nuclear-armed countries agreed to dispose of theirs.

    Although the NPT did discourage proliferation to most non-nuclear countries and did lead the major nuclear powers to destroy a substantial portion of their nuclear arsenals, the allure of nuclear weapons remained, at least for some power-hungry nations. Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea developed nuclear arsenals, while the United States, Russia, and other nuclear nations gradually backed away from disarmament. Indeed, all nine nuclear powers are now engaged in a new nuclear arms race, with the U.S. government alone beginning a $1 trillion nuclear “modernization” program. These factors, including Trump’s promises of a major nuclear weapons buildup, recently led the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” forward to 2-1/2 minutes to midnight, the most dangerous setting since 1953.

    Angered by the collapse of progress toward a nuclear weapons-free world, civil society organizations and non-nuclear nations joined together to press for the adoption of an international treaty banning nuclear weapons, much like the treaties already in place that ban chemical weapons, landmines, and cluster bombs. If such a nuclear ban treaty were adopted, they argued, it would not itself eliminate nuclear weapons, for the nuclear powers could refuse to sign or comply with it. But it would make possession of nuclear weapons illegal under international law and, therefore, like the chemical and other weapons ban treaties, put pressure on nations to fall into line with the rest of the world community.

    This campaign came to a head in October 2016, when the member states of the United Nations voted on a proposal to begin negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Although the U.S. government and the governments of other nuclear powers lobbied heavily against the measure, it was adopted by an overwhelming vote: 123 countries in favor, 38 opposed, and 16 abstaining. Treaty negotiations are slated to begin in March 2017 at the United Nations and to be concluded in early July.

    Given the past performance of the nuclear powers and their eagerness to cling to their nuclear weapons, it seems unlikely that they will participate in the UN negotiations or, if a treaty is negotiated and signed, will be among the signatories. Even so, the people of their nations and of all nations would gain immensely from an international ban on nuclear weapons―a measure that, once in place, would begin the process of stripping national officials of their unwarranted authority and ability to launch a catastrophic nuclear war.

  • Seeking Nuclear Disarmament in Dangerous Times

    This article was originally published by In Depth News.

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has championed efforts for nations to make good on their pledges to abolish nuclear weapons. In 2009 he published a five-point proposal for nuclear disarmament, urging nuclear weapons states in particular to fulfill their promises under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to negotiate for the total elimination of nuclear weapons as well as other complementary steps to that end such as banning missiles and space weapons.

    At the end of his term this year, there have been some stunning new developments after years of global gridlock and blocked efforts. At the UN General Assembly First Committee for Disarmament, 123 nations voted this October to support negotiations in 2017 to prohibit and ban nuclear weapons, just as the world has already done for biological and chemical weapons.

    The most remarkable upset in the vote was a breach in what had always been a solid single-minded phalanx of 5 nuclear weapons states recognized in the NPT, signed 46 years ago in 1970 – the US, Russia, UK, France, and China. For the first time, China broke ranks by voting with a group of 16 nations to abstain, along with India and Pakistan, non-NPT nuclear weapons states. And to the great surprise of all, North Korea actually voted YES in support of negotiations going forward to outlaw nuclear weapons.

    The ninth nuclear weapons state, Israel, voted against the resolution with 38 other countries including those in nuclear alliances with the United States such as the NATO states as well as Australia, South Korea, and, most surprisingly, Japan, the only country ever attacked with nuclear bombs. Only the Netherlands broke ranks with NATO’s unified opposition to ban treaty talks, as the sole NATO member to abstain on the vote, after grassroots pressure on its Parliament.

    All nine nuclear-weapon states had boycotted a special UN Open Ended Working Group for Nuclear Disarmament last summer, which followed three conferences in Norway, Mexico, and Austria with civil-society and governments to examine the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, thus opening a new pathway for how we think and speak about the bomb.

    This new “humanitarian initiative” has shifted the conversation from the military’s traditional examination and explanations of deterrence, policy, and strategic security to an understanding of the overwhelming deaths and devastation people would suffer from the use of nuclear weapons.

    Today there are still almost 16,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, with nearly 15,000 of them in the United States and Russia, now in an increasingly hostile relationship, with NATO troops patrolling on Russia’s borders, and the Russian Emergencies Ministry actually launching a sweeping nationwide civil-defense drill involving 40 million people. The US, under President Obama, has proposed a $1 trillion program for new nuclear-bomb factories, warheads, and delivery systems, and Russia and other nuclear-weapon states are engaged in modernizing their nuclear arsenals as well.

    Perhaps one additional way to break the log jam for nuclear disarmament and find a silver lining in the crumbling neo-liberal agenda for globalization evidenced by the Brexit event and the shocking and unanticipated election of Donald Trump in the US, is to encourage Trump’s repeated statements that the US should make “a deal” with Putin and join with Russia to fight terrorists.

    Trump has criticized the NATO alliance, the expansion of which has been very provocative to Russia and was the reason Russia gave, together with the US walking out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and installing a new missile base in Romania, for putting a halt to further US-Russian agreements for nuclear disarmament.

    Trump, who promotes himself as a “deal maker” has also suggested that he would have no difficulty in sitting down and talking with North Korea. These efforts should be encouraged, as North Korea has actually shown it is willing to enter into negotiations to ban the bomb, which is more than the other eight nuclear weapons states have been willing to support.

    Furthermore, North Korea has been seeking an official end to the Korean War of 1953, during which time the US continues to station about 28,000 troops on its borders while trying to starve North Korea out with drastic sanctions all these many years.

    Perhaps Secretary General Ban Ki-moon can leave his office with an important victory at the end of his term by seizing this opportunity and encouraging the “deal maker” in Trump to move forward with a US-Russia rapprochement, clearing a pathway for the elimination of nuclear weapons as well as putting an end to the hostilities on the Korean peninsula.

  • The United Nations Votes to Start Negotiations to Ban the Bomb

    This article was originally published by The Nation.

    In a historic vote on October 27 at the United Nations Committee for Disarmament, what has long seemed to be hopelessly clogged institutional machinery for abolishing nuclear weapons was upended when 123 nations voted to move forward with negotiations in 2017 to prohibit and ban nuclear weapons just as the world has already done for biological and chemical weapons. Civil-society participants broke out into cheers and shouts of jubilation in the normally staid halls of the UN basement conference room, accompanied by beaming smiles and muffled applause from some of the leading government representatives in the room, which included Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico and Nigeria, along with South Africa, who had drafted and introduced the resolution, then sponsored by 57 nations.

    The most stunning realization after the vote was posted was the apparent breach in what had always been a solid, single-minded phalanx of nuclear-weapon states recognized in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed 46 years ago in 1970—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. For the first time, China broke ranks by voting with a group of 16 nations to abstain, along with India and Pakistan, non-NPT nuclear-weapon states. North Korea actually voted yes in support of negotiations’ going forward to outlaw nuclear weapons. The ninth nuclear-weapon state, Israel, voted against the resolution with other 38 countries, including those in nuclear alliances with the United States such as the NATO states as well as Australia, South Korea, and, most surprisingly, Japan, the only country ever attacked with nuclear bombs. Only the Netherlands broke ranks with NATO’s unified opposition to ban treaty talks, as the sole NATO member to abstain on the vote, after grassroots pressure on its Parliament.

    All nine nuclear-weapon states had boycotted a special Open Ended Working Group for Nuclear Disarmament last summer, which was established at the 2015 UN General Assembly following three conferences in Norway, Mexico, and Austria with civil-society and government representatives to examine the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, opening a new pathway for how we think and speak about the bomb. The recently launched humanitarian initiative has shifted the conversation from the military’s traditional examination and explanations of deterrence, policy, and strategic security to an understanding of the overwhelming deaths and devastation people would suffer from the use of nuclear weapons.

    Today there are still 16,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, 15,000 of which are in the United States and Russia, now in an increasingly hostile relationship, with NATO troops patrolling on Russia’s borders, and the Russian Emergencies Ministry actually launching a sweeping nationwide civil-defense drill involving 40 million people. In the United States, President Obama has announced a $1 trillion program for new nuclear-bomb factories, warheads, and delivery systems, and Russia and other nuclear-weapon states are also engaged in modernizing their nuclear arsenals as well. Yet the issue has largely disappeared from public debate in a world lulled by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

    Back in the 1980s, during the Cold War, when there were some 80,000 nuclear bombs on our planet, most of which were stockpiled in the United States and Russia, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) held a series of widely promoted scientific, evidenced-based symposiums on the disastrous effects of nuclear war and were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for their efforts. The Nobel Committee noted that IPPNW “performed a considerable service to mankind by spreading authoritative information and by creating an awareness of the catastrophic consequences of atomic warfare.” It further observed:

    The committee believes that this in turn contributes to an increase in the pressure of public opposition to the proliferation of atomic weapons and to a redefining of priorities, with greater attention being paid to health and other humanitarian issues. Such an awakening of public opinion as is now apparent both in the East and the West, in the North and in the South, can give the present arms limitation negotiations new perspectives and a new seriousness. In this connection, the committee attaches particular importance to the fact that the organization was formed as a result of a joint initiative by Soviet and American physicians and that it now draws support from the physicians in over 40 countries all over the world.

    On October 15, at Tufts University in Boston, just two weeks before the historic UN vote to begin negotiations in 2017 to outlaw nuclear weapons, the US affiliate of IPPNW, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), with the sponsorship of all the city’s medical schools as well as nursing schools and state and local public-health institutions, revived PSR’s distinguished heritage at a symposium modeled after the earlier ones that had put nuclear disarmament front and center in the public consciousness and led to the largest demonstration in history when over 1 million people showed up in Central Park in 1982 in NY and called for a nuclear freeze. In this new millennium, the symposium was organized to address the links and similarities between nuclear war and catastrophic climate change.

    Dr. Susan Solomon, of MIT, delivered a brutal overview of projected environmental catastrophes from the effects of growing carbon emissions—air pollution, rising sea levels, more frequent and severe droughts, the destruction of the very fertility of our soil…—noting that in 2003 more than 10,000 people died in Europe from a protracted and unprecedented heat wave. She demonstrated the inequality between haves and have-nots with evidence that 6 billion people in the developing world produce four times less CO2 than the 1 billion people in the developed world, who, with fewer resources, will unjustly be unable to protect themselves from the ravages of climate change—more floods, wildfires, soil erosion, and unbearable heat.

    Dr. Barry Levy, at Tufts University, demonstrated the devastation that would be wreaked on our food and water supplies, with rising cases of infectious diseases, mass migrations, violence, and war. Dr. Jennifer Leaning, at Harvard University, explained how the war and violence in Syria was initially caused by a drought in 2006 leading to massive crop failures that precipitated mass migrations of over 1 million northern Sunni Syrian farmers to urban centers populated by Alawite and Shia Muslims, creating unrest and the initial impetus for the devastating war now raging there.

    Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org which encircled the White House to protest global warming and organized marches with millions of people around the world to halt climate change, reflected, via Skype, that with the coming of the bomb, humanity’s relationship to the earth changed from the vision of the Old Testament’s book of Job— how weak and puny man was in relation to God. For the first time, humanity has achieved overwhelming power to destroy the Earth. Nuclear war and climate change are our two greatest existential threats, since both of these man-made catastrophes, for the first time in history, could destroy the human species.

    Dr. Zia Mian, at Princeton University, outlined the frightening prospects of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, which is more likely now that climate change is already affecting their access to clean water. The 1960 Indus Water Treaty regulated the three rivers flowing out of Kashmir between the two countries. India and Pakistan have had a series of wars and skirmishes since 1947, and after a recent attack on India by Pakistani terrorists, the Indian government warned that “blood and water cannot flow together,” threatening to block Pakistan’s access to the rivers.

    Dr. Ira Helfand, xhair of PSR’s Security Committee, presented a gut-wrenching cascade of facts demonstrating that even the use of only 100 nuclear weapons would cause a steep drop in temperature, causing crops to fail and producing global famine and the death of possibly 2 billion people. Helfand has presented these shocking facts to governments examining the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war in the series of international conferences that led to this week’s UN vote to hold negotiations to ban the bomb.

    PSR’s executive director, Dr. Catherine Thomassen, presented information on the medical responsibility to act. She noted a poll that showed that from a list of professions the American public selected nurses, pharmacists, and doctors as those they respected the most. She urged the participants that this was all the more reason for them to take action.

    John Loretz of IPPNW, whose Australian affiliate initiated the campaign to outlaw the bomb in 2007, www.icanw.org, reviewed the stalled “progress” in nuclear disarmament over the years leading up to this week’s historic vote. Adopting a resolution to ban nuclear weapons, just as we have banned chemical and biological weapons as well as landmines and cluster bombs, may be the most significant development since the end of the Cold War. It will stigmatize the bomb in a new way and put grassroots pressure from their parliaments on other states in the US nuclear alliance who are being heavily lobbied by the United States to resist this initiative—NATO members as well as Japan, South Korea, and Australia—to come out in support of the ban, as just occurred this month with Sweden, which was persuaded to vote in favor of starting the ban talks, or to abstain from voting against the ban, as the Netherlands did, even though it is part of the NATO alliance that relies on nuclear weapons in its security policy.

    One way citizens in the nuclear-weapon states can support the ban is to check out a new divestment campaign from institutions that rely on nuclear weapons manufacturers, Don’t Bank on the Bomb. For those in the United States, Loretz urged that we start a debate on our military budget and the obscene trillion-dollar projection for nuclear weapons over the next 30 years. It is still clear that if the ICAN campaign actually fulfills its goal for the successful abolition of nuclear weapons, we need a change in the current US-Russian relationship which has deteriorated so badly in Obama’s second term. One reason the Nobel Prize was awarded to the IPPNW physicians in 1985, as set forth in the citation, was “the fact that the organization was formed as a result of a joint initiative by Soviet and American physicians and that it now draws support from the physicians in over 40 countries all over the world.” While IPPNW still has an affiliate in Russia, the Russians physicians have been inactive on this issue. Just as the US affiliate, PSR, has only recently refocused on nuclear issues through the ban campaign and the new humanitarian initiative, efforts will be made to renew relationships with Russian physicians, and to also develop possibilities for meetings with physicians in the Asian nuclear-weapon states that took the world by surprise when four of them broke with the big-power nuclear consensus, to block negotiations on a nuclear -weapons ban, by either voting to abstain on the resolution or by actually voting in favor of moving forward with the talks.

  • Nuclear Weapons – The Time for Abolition is Now

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Nuclear weapons present the greatest public health and existential threat to our survival every moment of every day. Yet the United States and world nuclear nations stand in breach of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which commits these nations to work in good faith to end the arms race and to achieve nuclear disarmament. Forty eight years later the efforts of the nuclear nations toward this goal is not evident and the state of the world is equally as dangerous as it was during the height of the Cold War and arguably more dangerous with current scientific evidence on the catastrophic effects of even limited regional nuclear war.

    This year’s presidential campaign has once again done little to focus on the dangers of nuclear weapons focusing more on who has the temperament to have their finger on the button with absolutely no indication of any understanding of the consequences to all of humanity by the use of these weapons even on a very small scale. In addition to tensions between Russia and the U.S. in Ukraine and Syria, there is a real danger of nuclear war in South Asia which could kill more than 2 billion people from the use of just 100 Hiroshima size weapons.

    The rest of the world is finally standing up to this threat to their survival and that of the planet. They are taking matters into their own hands and refusing to be held hostage by the nuclear nations. They will no longer be bullied into sitting back and waiting for the nuclear states to make good on empty promises.

    At the United Nations this past week, 123 nations voted to commence negotiations next year on a new treaty to prohibit the possession of nuclear weapons.  Despite President Obama’s own words in his 2009 pledge to seek the security of a world free of nuclear weapons, the U.S. voted “no” and led the opposition to this treaty.

    Rather than meet our obligations under international law, the U.S has proposed by stark contrast to begin a new nuclear arms race spending $1 trillion dollars over the next 30 years to modernize and rebuild every aspect our nuclear weapons programs. A ‘jobs’ program to end humanity. Each of the nuclear nations is expected to do the same in rebuilding their weapons programs continuing the arms race for generations to come.

    The myth of deterrence is the guise for this effort when in fact deterrence is the principle driver of the arms race. For every additional weapon my adversary has, I need two and so on and so on to our global arsenals of 15,500 weapons.

    Fed up with this inaction and doublespeak, the non-nuclear nations of the world have joined the ongoing efforts of the world’s NGO, health and religious communities in demanding an end to the madness. Led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a global partnership of 440 partners in 98 countries, the International Red Cross, the world’s health associations representing more than 17 million health professionals worldwide along with religious communities including the Catholic Church and World Council of Churches they are calling for a treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.

    The effort to ban nuclear weapons has several parallels to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines led by Jody Williams, recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. This effort was dismissed and called utopian by most governments and militaries of the world when it was launched by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in 1992 only to succeed in 1997 through partnerships, public imagination and political pressure resulting in the ultimate political will. The nuclear ban movement has been vigorously fought by the nuclear nations trying desperately to hold onto their weapons and pressuring members of their alliances to hold the line.

    Unfortunately these weapons and control systems are imperfect. During the Cold War there were many instances where the world came perilously close to nuclear war. It is a matter of sheer luck that this scenario did not come to pass by design or accident. Our luck will not hold out forever. Luck is not a security policy. From a medical and public health stance based on our current evidence-based understanding of what nuclear weapons can actually do, any argument for continued possession of these weapons by anyone in untenable and defies logic. There is absolutely no reasonable or adequate medical response to nuclear war.

    As with any public health threat from Zika, to Ebola, Polio, HIV, prevention is the goal. The global threat from nuclear weapons is no different. The only way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons is to ban and eliminate them. Our future depends upon this.

    President Kennedy speaking on nuclear weapons before the U.N. Security Council in September 1961 said, “The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us”. Our children’s children will look back and rightly ask why we the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons remained on the wrong side of history when it came to abolishing nuclear weapons.

  • What Would a Nuclear Ban Mean in the U.S.?

    greg_melloA ban treaty would be the natural culmination of the decades of brilliant civil society work that have brought us to this point.

    Such a treaty would be voluntary and non-coercive, yet ever more normative as more countries joined.  It would grow in importance only in the most democratic manner. It would affect nuclear arsenals in an indirect and therefore flexible manner, and only according to the evolving unique security circumstances of each state. It would not conflict with any existing or future disarmament or nonproliferation agreement or treaty, but rather would support them all. It would not add new obligations for NPT non-nuclear weapon states that are not in nuclear security relationships, which is most of the countries in the world. All these states have nothing to lose in a ban — apart from whatever nasty forms of leverage some nuclear weapon states (like the U.S.) and their allies might try to apply.

    A ban would stimulate and empower civil society in many countries, with benefits across humanitarian issues.

    Here in the U.S., a ban treaty would tremendously empower everything we are doing against nuclear weapons. I would like to explain this further because many people think that a ban would have no effect on U.S. policy, given that the U.S. won’t sign it.

    Nuclear policy in the U.S. is not made in a smooth, top-down, confident manner. There are many reversals and problems. The nuclear weapons establishment has many adversaries inside government and outside, not least its own bureaucrats and fat-cat contractors, who struggle to hide the scandals and ongoing fiascos. Key mid-career people are quitting early at facilities we know from job frustration, taking their knowledge and experience with them. Retirements left one plant (Y-12) without knowledge of how to make a critical non-commercial material at industrial scale. At the only U.S. nuclear weapons assembly plant, in Texas, snakes and mice infest one or more key buildings, which date from World War II. Rain comes through the roofs and dust through the doors. In Oak Ridge, huge pieces of concrete have fallen from ceilings and deep cracks have appeared in a structural beam in a key building. All this infrastructure may, or may not be, fully replaced. It is contested in many cases, difficult, and expensive.

    At Los Alamos, the main plutonium facility has been largely shut down for almost three years because of inadequate safety and staffing. Approximately seven attempts have been made since 1989 to construct a new factory complex for producing plutonium warhead cores — all have failed.  It might just be that nuclear weapons production, in the final analysis, is not compatible with today’s safety and environmental expectations and laws. Transmission of nuclear weapons ideology and knowledge under these conditions is a difficult challenge.

    A growing ban would reach deep into the human conscience, affecting everything, including career decisions. It would affect corporate investments as well as congressional enthusiasm for the industry. I have spoken with nuclear weapons CEOs who know it is a “sunset” field with only tenuous support in the broader  Pentagon, despite all the nuclear cheer-leading we see. Modernization of the whole nuclear arsenal is very likely unaffordable, even assuming current economic conditions hold (they won’t).

    A ban would also affect the funding, aims, and structure of the U.S. nonprofit universe and think-tank “ecosystem,” as well as media interest and coverage.

    Beyond all this, I believe a ban would also help decrease popular support in the U.S. for war and war expenditures in general. Why? There is a tremendous war-weariness in the U.S., right alongside our (real, but also orchestrated) militarism. A growing ban on nuclear weapons would be a powerful signal to political candidates and organizations that it is politically permissible to turn away from militarism somewhat, that there is something wrong with the levels of destruction this country has amassed and brandished so wildly and with such deadly and chaotic effects. Ordinary people here in the U.S. are seeing greater and greater austerity and precarity. They work extremely hard and have less and less to show for it. Polls (decades of them) show the public has never really supported the scale of nuclear armaments we have. One 1990s poll disclosed that most Americans think we have more than ten times fewer warheads than we actually do, more like the U.K., France, and China! Our economy is in bad shape and our infrastructure is visibly declining, sometimes with fatal results. A ban could help this benighted country recognize its folly, at least to some degree. It would be a wake-up call signalling that widely-held U.S. assumptions about our place in the world might need just a teensy bit of adjustment.

    I hope this helps fill in the picture somewhat for those far away who may not see why a ban would be powerful here in the U.S.

    The case for such a simple, totally flexible, and powerful treaty, with relatively low diplomatic cost for most states, is to our eyes unassailable.

  • A Nuclear Weapons Ban Emerging

    United NationsEvery moment of every day, all of humanity is held hostage by the nuclear nine. The nine nuclear nations are made up of the P5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and their illegitimate nuclear wannabes Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan spawned by the mythological theory of deterrence. This theory has fueled the nuclear arms race since its inception wherein if one nation has one nuclear weapon, its adversary needs two and so on to the point that the world now has 15,700 nuclear weapons wired for immediate use and planetary destruction with no end in sight. This inaction continues despite the forty-five year legal commitment of the nuclear nations to work toward complete nuclear abolition. In fact just the opposite is happening with the U.S. proposing to spend $1 trillion dollars on nuclear weapons modernization over the next 30 years fueling the “deterrent” response of every other nuclear state to do likewise.

    This critical state of affairs comes as the 189 signatory nations to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) concluded the month long Review Conference at the U.N. in New York. The conference was officially a failure due to the refusal of the nuclear weapons states to present or even support real steps toward disarmament with an unwillingness to recognize the peril that the planet faces at the end of their nuclear gun and continuing to gamble on the future of humanity. Instead presenting a charade of concern, blaming each other and bogging down in discussions over a glossary of terms while the hand of the nuclear Armageddon clock continues to move ever forward.

    The nuclear weapons states have chosen to live in a vacuum, one void of leadership. They hoard suicidal nuclear weapons stockpiles and ignore recent scientific evidence of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons that we now realize makes these weapons far more dangerous than we thought before. They fail to recognize that this evidence must be the basis for prohibiting and eliminating them.

    Fortunately there is a powerful and positive response coming out of the NPT Review Conference. The Non-Nuclear Weapons States representing a majority of people living on the planet frustrated and threatened by the nuclear nations have come together and demanded a legal ban on nuclear weapons like the ban on every other weapon of mass destruction from chemical to biologic and including land mines. Their voices are rising up. Following a pledge by Austria in December 2014 to fill the legal gap necessary to ban these weapons, 107 nations have joined them at the U.N. this month committing to do so. That means finding a legal instrument that would prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. Such a ban will make these weapons illegal and will stigmatize any nation that continues to have these weapons as being outside of international law.

    Costa Rica’s closing NPT remarks noted, “Democracy has not come to the NPT but Democracy has come to nuclear weapons disarmament.” The nuclear weapons states have failed to demonstrate any leadership toward total disarmament and in fact have no intention of doing so. They must now step aside and allow the majority of the nations to come together and work collectively for their future and the future of humanity. John Loretz of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said, “The nuclear-armed states are on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of morality, and the wrong side of the future. The ban treaty is coming, and then they will be indisputably on the wrong side of the law. And they have no one to blame but themselves.”

    “History honors only the brave,” declared Costa Rica. “Now is the time to work for what is to come, the world we want and deserve.”

    Ray Acheson of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom says, “Those who reject nuclear weapons must have the courage of their convictions to move ahead without the nuclear-armed states, to take back ground from the violent few who purport to run the world, and build a new reality of human security and global justice.”

  • Time to Ban the Bomb

    Alice SlaterGlobal momentum is building for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons! While the world has banned chemical and biological weapons, there is no explicit legal prohibition of nuclear weapons, although the International Court of Justice ruled unanimously that there is an obligation to bring to a conclusion negotiations for their total elimination. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970, required the five existing nuclear weapons states, the US, Russia, UK, France and China (P-5) to make “good faith efforts” to eliminate their nuclear weapons, while the rest of the world promised not to acquire them (except for India, Pakistan, Israel, who never signed the NPT). North Korea relied on the NPT Faustian bargain for “peaceful” nuclear power to build its own bomb, and then walked out of the treaty.

    More than 600 members of civil society, from every corner of the globe, with more than half of them under the age of 30 attended a fact-filled two day conference in Vienna organized by the International Coalition to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), to learn of the devastating consequences of nuclear weapons from the bomb and from testing as well, and of the frightening risks from possible accidents or sabotage of the nine nuclear arsenals around the world. The meeting was a follow up to two prior meetings in Oslo, Norway and Nayarit, Mexico. ICAN members, working for a treaty to ban the bomb, then joined a meeting hosted by Austria for 158 governments in the historic Hofburg Palace, which has served as the residence of Austrian leaders since before the founding of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

    In Vienna, the US delegate, delivered a tone-deaf statement on the heels of heart-wrenching testimony of catastrophic illness and death in her community from Michelle Thomas, a down winder from Utah, and other devastating testimony of the effects of nuclear bomb testing from the Marshall Islands and Australia.  The US rejected any need for a ban treaty or a nuclear convention and extolled the step by step approach (to nuclear weapons forever) but changed its tone in the wrap-up and appeared to be more respectful of the process. There were 44 countries who explicitly spoke of their support for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, with the Holy See delegate reading out Pope Francis’ statement also calling for a ban on nuclear weapons and their elimination in which he said, “I am convinced that the desire for peace and fraternity planted deep in the human heart will bear fruit in concrete ways to ensure that nuclear weapons are banned once and for all, to the benefit of our common home.” This was a shift in Vatican policy which had never explicitly condemned deterrence policies of the nuclear weapons states although they had called for the elimination of nuclear weapons in prior statements.

    Significantly, and to help move the work forward, the Austrian Foreign Minister added to the Chair’s report by announcing a pledge by Austria to work for a nuclear weapons ban, described as “taking effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons” and “to cooperate with all stakeholders to achieve this goal.” The NGO strategy now as presented at the ICAN debriefing meeting right after the conference closed, is to get as many nations as we can to support the Austrian pledge coming into the CD and the NPT review and then come out of the 70th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a concrete plan for negotiations on a ban treaty.   One thought about the 70th Anniversary of the bomb, is that not only should we get a huge turnout in Japan, but we should acknowledge all the victims of the bomb, illustrated so agonizingly during the conference by Hibakusha and down winders at test sites. We should also think about the uranium miners, the polluted sites from mining as well as manufacturing and use of the bomb and try to do something all over the world at those sites on August 6th and 9th as we call for negotiations to begin to ban nuclear weapons and eliminate them.

    Only a few days after the Vienna conference, there was a meeting of the Nobel Laureates in Rome, who after meeting with Nobel Prize winning IPPNW members Tilman Ruff and Ira Helfand,  continued the momentum created in Vienna and issued a statement which not only called for a ban on nuclear weapons, but asked that negotiations be concluded within two years!

    We urge all states to commence negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons at the earliest possible time, and subsequently to conclude the negotiations within two years. This will fulfill existing obligations enshrined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which will be reviewed in May of 2015, and the unanimous ruling of the International Court of Justice.  Negotiations should be open to all states and blockable by none. The 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2015 highlights the urgency of ending the threat of these weapons.

    One way to slow down this process to negotiate a legal ban on nuclear weapons would be for the NPT nuclear weapons states to promise at this five year NPT review conference to set a reasonable date to bring to a conclusion time-bound negotiations and effective and verifiable measures to implement the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Otherwise the rest of the world will start without them to create an explicit legal prohibition of nuclear weapons which will be a powerful taboo to be used for pressuring the countries cowering under the nuclear umbrella of the nuclear weapons states, in NATO and in the Pacific, to take a stand for Mother Earth, and urge that negotiations begin for the total abolition of nuclear weapons!

    Alice Slater is NY Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and serves on the Coordinating Committee of Abolition 2000.