Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Bush

  • Nuclear Folly

    According to recent news reports and as hinted in the president’s State of the Union Address, the neocons who dominate the Bush administration are gearing up for another pre-emptive military attack, this time upon Iran. The ostensible reason for such an attack is that the Iranian government is developing nuclear weapons.

    In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which regularly inspects Iran’s nuclear operations, has not found any signs of nuclear weapons. Although the IAEA has reported that Iran has produced enriched uranium–which can be used for either civilian or military purposes–such production has been halted thanks to a November 2004 Iranian agreement with France, Germany, and Britain. Thus, although it is possible that Iran might produce nuclear weapons some time in the future, this is hardly a certainty. Nor is it clear that the Iranian government has ever planned to produce them.

    Ironically, in the midst of this delicate situation, the Bush administration is busy dismantling the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This treaty, signed in 1968 by officials of the United States and of almost all other countries, obligates non-nuclear nations to forgo development of nuclear weapons and nuclear nations to take steps toward nuclear disarmament. The Bush administration reveres the first obligation and wants to scrap the second.

    In late December 2004, news accounts quoted an administration official as saying that the final agreement at the NPT review conference in 2000–which commits the declared nuclear weapons states to an “unequivocal undertaking” to abolish nuclear weapons–is a “simply historical document,” which does not reflect the drastic changes in the world since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Thus, he said, the Bush administration “no longer supports” all of the thirteen steps toward disarmament outlined in the 2000 agreement and does not view it as “being a road map or binding guideline or anything like that.”

    For those who have followed the Bush administration’s nuclear policy, this position should come as no great surprise. The administration has not only abandoned efforts toward negotiating nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements with other nations, but has withdrawn the United States from the ABM treaty (signed by President Nixon) and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (signed by President Clinton).

    It has also championed a program of building new U.S. nuclear weapons, including so-called “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes,” and of facilitating the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing. Only an unexpected revolt in Congress–led by Representatives David Hobson and Pete Viclosky, the Republican chair and ranking Democrat of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Committee–blocked funding for the Bush administration’s proposed new nuclear weapons in 2004. Political analysts expect the administration to make another effort to secure the funding this year.

    For the Bush administration and its fans, this evasion of U.S. obligations under the NPT makes perfect sense. The United States, they believe, is a supremely virtuous nation, and nations with whom it has bad relations–such as Iran–are “evil.” In line with this belief, the U.S. government has the right to build and use nuclear weapons, while nations it places on its “enemies” list do not.

    As might be expected, this assumption does not play nearly as well among government officials in Iran, who seem unlikely to fulfill their part of the NPT agreement if U.S. officials flagrantly renege on theirs. At the very least, the Bush administration is offering them a convenient justification for a policy of building Iranian nuclear weapons.

    Other nations have drawn this same conclusion. In the fall of 2004, Helen Clark, the prime minister of New Zealand, warned: “First and foremost we need to keep before us the essential bargain that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty represents. While we will willingly contribute to non-proliferation and counter-proliferation initiatives, those initiatives should be promoted alongside initiatives to secure binding commitments from those who have nuclear weapons which move us further towards the longer-term goal of nuclear disarmament.”

    Much the same point was made in early January 2005 by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the IAEA. Calling upon all countries to commit themselves to forgo building facilities for uranium enrichment and nuclear reprocessing for the next five years, ElBaradei added: “We should not forget the commitment by the weapons states to move toward nuclear disarmament.”

    In fact, ElBaradei’s evenhanded approach to nuclear issues has angered the Bush administration, which is now working to deny him reappointment as IAEA director.

    The responsibility of all nations under the NPT will undoubtedly receive a good deal of discussion at the NPT review conference that will convene at the United Nations this May. Certainly it will be interesting to see how the Bush administration explains the inconsistencies in its nuclear policy.

    Unfortunately, by then we may well have another bloody military confrontation on our hands. Like the war in Iraq, it will be sold to us on the basis of the potential threat from a nation possessing weapons of mass destruction. And, also like the war in Iraq, it will be unnecessary–brought on by the arrogance and foolishness of the Bush administration.

    Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition (Stanford University Press).

    Originally published by the History News Network.

  • The Revolt Against the Bush Administration’s Nuclear Double Standard

    In late November, when Congress refused to appropriate money to fund so-called “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes,” this action represented not only a serious blow to the Bush administration’s plan to build new nuclear weapons, but to the administration’s overall nuclear arms control and disarmament policy.

    That policy has been to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by nations the Bush administration considers “evil.” The military invasion of Iraq, like the gathering confrontation with Iran and North Korea, reflects, at least in part, the administration’s obsession with preventing nations potentially hostile to the United States from acquiring a nuclear capability. This focus upon blocking nuclear weapons development in other countries has some legal justification for, in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, non-nuclear nations agreed not to develop nuclear weapons.

    But the NPT also calls for nuclear nations to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons they possess. Indeed, in the meetings that fashioned the treaty, the non-nuclear weapons states demanded a commitment to nuclear disarmament by the nuclear powers. And they received it — not only in the form of the treaty’s provisions, but in the formal pledges made by the nuclear powers at the periodic treaty review conferences that have been held since the NPT went into effect.

    It is in this area that the Bush administration has revealed itself as the proponent of a double standard. At the same time that it has assailed selected nations for developing nuclear weapons, it has withdrawn the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, effectively destroyed the START II treaty, and refused to support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has also raised the U.S. nuclear weapons budget to new heights and proposed the building of new U.S. nuclear weapons, including the “bunker busters” and “mini-nukes.” As Senator Kerry pointed out during the recent presidential campaign, this is not the kind of policy that will encourage other nations to abide by their commitments under the NPT.

    The surprising congressional move to block the Bush plan for new nuclear weapons is but one of numerous signs that this double standard cannot be sustained. As a special high-level U.N. panel has just warned: “We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.” Nor is the breakaway from the NPT limited to the non-nuclear nations. Just the other day the Russian government announced its development of a new nuclear missile. Appropriately enough, the U.N. panel condemned the nuclear powers for failing to honor their commitments, and called upon them to restart the nuclear disarmament process.

    Furthermore, of course, terrorists have been actively seeking nuclear weapons, and might well obtain them. Thousands of tactical nuclear weapons — many of them small, portable, and, therefore, ideal for terrorist use — are still maintained by the U.S. and Russian governments. No international agreements have ever been put into place to control or eliminate them. In fact, it remains unclear how many of these tactical nuclear weapons exist or where they are located. In Russia, at least, they are badly guarded and, in the disorderly circumstances of the post-Soviet economy, they seem ripe for sale or theft.

    The revolt against the Bush administration’s double standard could come to a head in May 2005, when an NPT review conference opens at the United Nations, in New York City. Nuclear and non-nuclear nations are sure to exchange sharp barbs about non-compliance with NPT provisions. Furthermore, more than a hundred mayors from the Mayors for Peace Campaign, which has drawn together the top executives from 640 cities around the world, are expected to come to the U.N. to lobby for nuclear disarmament. They will be joined by United for Peace and Justice, the largest peace movement coalition in the United States, and over 2,000 organizations in 96 different countries. Together, they have launched Abolition Now, a campaign calling on heads of state to begin negotiations in 2005 on a treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

    Ultimately, then, the Bush administration might be forced into accepting a single standard for dealing with the threat posed by nuclear weapons — one designed to lead to a nuclear-free world. Certainly, there are plenty of signs that people and nations around the globe believe that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.

    Mr. Witnner is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition (Stanford University Press).

    This article was originally published by the History News Network.

  • Contesting Iran’s Nuclear Future

    Iran continues to challenge international efforts to hold it accountable for its suspicious nuclear activities. Later this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors will meet to address the issue against the backdrop of growing fear that time to contain the country’s nuclear ambitions is running out. This leaves little doubt that Iran will be high on the Bush administration’s foreign-policy agenda in the months to come.

    To date, the IAEA has relied on public shame to force Iran’s compliance. In the past two years, agency inspectors laid bare much of Tehran’s nuclear program. But suspicions remain that Iran’s ruling mullahs have not revealed all. Should Iran continue to waffle, the international community must decide if it must take more aggressive steps to force the revolutionary state to accede. The following options suggest that there is no clear path.

    The most benign approach would be to continue current IAEA efforts. Arguably, agency inspections and quarterly public reports will, in time, embarrass Iran to resist the nuclear-weapons temptation. This butts against two facts, however. First, suspicions persist that Iran has not come clean about all its nuclear activities. Second, Iran’s enrichment and reprocessing endeavors make no sense apart from nuclear weapons. For example, the solitary power reactor Tehran hopes to initiate in 2005 or 2006 does not justify the economic investment in facilities to recycle nuclear fuel into weapons-grade material.

    Believing that diplomacy had not run its course, Britain, France and Germany opened a dialogue with Iran outside the IAEA framework. In October 2003, the three European powers sent their foreign ministers to Tehran. The diplomats offered economic carrots and peaceful nuclear-energy assistance as a quid pro quo for Iran to halt its developing enrichment program. The meeting prompted cautious optimism: Tehran announced that it would suspend the manufacture of nuclear centrifuges. Nine months later, the mullahs reversed themselves.

    Chagrined, the Europeans renewed the dialogue. The Iranians stonewalled. They declared that “no country has the right to deprive us of nuclear technology.” The Europeans remain undaunted. They continue to try. Today, for instance, they are sitting down with the Iranians in Paris, where they will likely continue to dangle economic incentives in exchange for Tehran’s promise of a halt to Iran’s enrichment program. Tehran’s probable, coy response: It might suspend – again – its enrichment activities, but just for a short time, to give diplomacy a chance.

    Unimpressed, the Bush administration remains convinced that Iran is using diplomacy to buy time for its nuclear ambitions. For months, the administration has pushed the IAEA to declare Tehran in violation of its nuclear nonproliferation obligations. The result would place the matter before the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.

    But this is another path to nowhere. Iran’s critical vulnerability to sanctions – reliance on the hard currency earned through oil exports – is a double-edged sword. The United States is unlikely to generate Security Council support for measures that will restrict the already tight oil market. Washington also is stuck on its own petard – the Iraq WMD intelligence debacle. In the absence of a nuclear weapons “smoking gun” – certified by the IAEA – the Security Council is unlikely to issue more than a rhetorical slap on the wrist that calls upon the mullahs to reconsider their transgressions.

    Among the dwindling options is confrontation. One option would galvanize members of the Proliferation Security Initiative – which includes a core group of a dozen or so nations that have agreed to intercept WMD contraband – to isolate Iran until it disgorges its nuclear weapons capacity. However, building the PSI into a serious new “alliance of the willing,” in the absence of a clear and present danger, is unlikely.

    Then there is military action. Only military occupation can guarantee Iran’s nuclear disarmament; limited military strikes will not destroy hidden nuclear facilities. But, in the Iraq aftermath, either option would be a hard sell to the American public. On the other hand, Israel, which considers Iran a mortal enemy, does not require a sales job. Jerusalem repeatedly has declared that it will not allow Iran a nuclear weapons capacity. But Israel is in no better position than the United States to destroy the program.

    This leaves two factors that may impact Iran’s nuclear future. One is peaceful regime change. Although there is some hope that a new generation of Iranians – who might be more nonproliferation compliant – will replace the mullahs, there appears to be little prospect in the short term. In time, impetus could come from a thriving democratic Iraq. Unfortunately, Baghdad’s political future will not be resolved anytime soon.

    On the flip side, the United States and its allies could concede that little can be done to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. By accepting this prospect, the challenge will be to keep the nuclear peace. The solution must include an explicit warning to Tehran from Washington and Jerusalem: Any Iranian nuclear threat or act – or any complicity in a terrorist nuclear act – would result in the elimination of the revolutionary regime by any and all means. The time to issue this warning is now, before the mullahs realize their nuclear ambitions. The result might have a sobering impact as Iran weighs a nuclear armed future.

    Bennett Ramberg served in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

    First published by the San Francisco Chronicle.

  • An Eleventh Hour Succession for the Kerry Campaign

    It is a little late but there is still time for John Kerry and the Democratic party to offer the electorate a genuine alternative to a continuation of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

    The Kerry proposal might go like this:

    We cannot afford the continuing, even increasing, loss of life among American troops, nor the financial drain which is piling high the national debt and denying us the funds to improve the nation’s education, public health and repair to our crumbling infrastructure of highways, bridges, dams and mines.

    The Bush administration promises nothing but more of the same. It talks of another four or five years of war. This is madness. The only way out now is to admit that the Bush policies, that the invasion of Iraq, were terrible mistakes. We must acknowledge our chagrin, our embarrassment in admitting that our policies, our military intervention was a mistake. We must extend our apologies to those we misled and who suffered our rashness and our mistakes. This is not cowardly but is the courageous and honorable thing for us to do.

    My administration’s first move will be to name a panel of military experts from those retired top officers who from the beginning have criticized the Iraqi war, the administration’s lack of planning and the use of its limited forces.

    This panel would plan the immediate withdrawal of our forces in Iraq with the goal of bringing the last soldier home within six months. A portion of those soldiers who wish to volunteer, would be sent on to bolster our forces in the real war against the terrorists in Bin Laden’s home ground of Afghanistan.

    The rest of the brave and courageous troops, who bear the great brunt but none of the responsibility for the failure of the Bush Iraqi policy, will be welcomed home as the heroes they are. The bands will play and the people will cheer as they parade down the Broadways and Main Streets of America’s cities.

    Those thousand and more who have given their lives in this lost cause will never be forgotten by a grateful nation. They should get their own memorial aside those of other wars on the Washington mall.

    And those other thousands maimed as they did their duty will be honored and not forgotten. Special programs will help them become useful citizens and will assure their financial support the rest of their lives. Those returning soldiers who do not wish to remain in the regular armed forces will be given full educational opportunities similar to the GI Bill for World War Two veterans.

    For those professional people and self-employed who were called up with their National Guard and Reserve units- and held overseas overlong- we will provide financial help for them to resume their pre­Iraq careers.

    As for the Iraq government, we will extend it limited help in supplying its armed forces. We will leave behind for it billions of dollars of military equipment – to the degree that our military panel believes it will be useful.

    However, our financial aid to Iraq will primarily be on the humanitarian side. We will supply bounteous funds to aid in the restoration of housing and vital services, most particularly hospitals and other medical facilities. These funds will be administered by the American Red Cross and other such organizations to isolate them from any U.S. political interests.

    We will declare a new policy toward Iraq. We will not pretend a dominant role there. Our representation will be the normal peacetime embassy. We will clearly proclaim our abandonment of any suggestion that we seek to profiteer in the nation’s rebuilding. We shall make that clear by not only welcoming but urging the nations that once were prominent in Iraq’s economy to return without any interference from the United States. If our industry wishes to invest there, it will be in fair competition with the interests of other nations.

    If the United States is to share in Iraq’s oil treasure it will do so with clearly recognized and enforced federal rules that ensure our fair and honest participation.

    This revolution in our Iraq policy will be accompanied, of course, by a redefinition of our general foreign policy. The Democratic administration will not totally abandon the Bush policy of preemptive war against a threatening nation. The growing profusion of nuclear and biologic weapons of mass destruction conceivably could justify such action. But this administration would rebuild, with the programs outlined above ­its alliance with our long-time friends overseas whose confidence in us was destroyed by the Bush administration’s arrogant and nearly solitary aggression. Having regained the faith and trust the world once bestowed upon us, we also will hasten to repair the damage our solo performance in Iraq caused to the prestige of the United Nations. We will lead in strengthening it as the one body that could establish and enforce world peace.

    This policy – the Kerry promise would note – is the answer to the Bush administration’s policy that promises only the continued waste of so much American and Iraqi blood and the waste of billions of dollars that will be denied to the strengthening of America and the recovery of Iraq.

  • Nuclear Proliferation: One Cheer for Kerry

    George Bush and John Kerry both agreed during their first debate in Miami on September 30th that nuclear proliferation is the single greatest threat to American national security.  They are undoubtedly correct. The late U.S. Senator Alan Cranston liked to say that if a single nuclear warhead detonates a single time in a single city in the world, all other issues will become instantly trivial by comparison.

    On the small nuclear questions Kerry is far superior to Bush. But on the big nuclear question, Kerry might as well be Bush. Because neither Bush nor Kerry have come close to challenging the single greatest stimulant to nuclear proliferation: The nuclear double standard. Our nation’s nuclear narcissism. America’s nuclear hypocrisy.

    “Nuclear proliferation,” said Kerry immediately when asked by Miami debate moderator Jim Lehrer to describe the greatest security threat facing the United States. Nuclear proliferation.” “I agree with my opponent,” said Bush moments later, “that the biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network.”

    These declarations were accompanied by many comments about the present or potential nuclear capabilities of Pakistan, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Russia, and unspecified “terrorist enemies.” But though both candidates said a great deal about the frightful dangers stemming from nuclear weapons in the hands of others, neither said a single word about the 10,455 operational nuclear warheads currently in the hands of ourselves.

    NORTH KOREA: ROGUE STATE OR THREATENED STATE?

    On the question of North Korea’s nascent nuclear arsenal, the candidates during the first two debates engaged in a dispute so arcane that it almost seemed like a Saturday Night Live parody. Their argument about the costs and benefits of bilateral vs. multilateral negotiations (Bush favors the latter, Kerry favors both) was undoubtedly above the heads of at least 99% of the viewers, and likely swayed not a single swing state voter. Neither candidate came close to addressing the underlying issue: the motivation behind Kim Jong-Il’s quest for a nuclear arsenal.

    Consider the view from Pyongyang. America maintains a breathtaking military superiority over their country (or any country) in both the nuclear and conventional realms. George Bush announces a doctrine of launching unilateral, illegal, preventive wars against any nation his Administration subjectively determines might become a threat sometime down the road. He singles out three countries as constituting an “axis of evil,” (and gratuitously reiterated that characterization at the second debate in St. Louis.) He actually starts a war against one of the three — decapitating its regime, killing the supreme leader’s sons, and driving the leader himself into a pathetic hole in the ground.

    Given this track record, is it wholly unreasonable for North Korean decisionmakers to worry that the United States intends to invade their country, decapitate their government, and drive their leaders into a spider hole of their own? And is it wholly irrational for them to seek to acquire the one tool that could conceivably deter the awesome power that America can wield over them – a couple of atomic bombs?

    THE PRECARIOUS NUCLEAR DOUBLE STANDARD

    The basic predicament, from the perspective of other countries, cannot be expressed more simply: Why can we have them when they can’t? How come the United States and a handful of countries can have thousands of nuclear warheads, but other countries can’t have even one? What’s the principle? What’s the argument? It is never said. To the rest of the world this is sanctimonious and self-righteous, and appears based on the condescending notion that some are responsible enough to be “trusted” with these weapons, while others are not.

    President Bush himself, perhaps unwittingly, has managed to expose and illuminate this conceit of cultural superiority. “We owe it to our children,” he said in August of 2002, “to free the world from weapons of mass destruction in the hands of those who hate freedom.” Well that pretty much settles it, doesn’t it? Nuclear weapons in the hands of those who “hate freedom” are impermissible; nuclear arsenals in the hands of the Lovers of Freedom are, apparently, just fine with us. And just who will determine who “hates freedom” so much they must be denied the nuclear prize? Why the Freedom Lovers, of course, in whose hands nuclear weapons already presently reside.

    The trouble with that is that it’s not going to be entirely up to us. When we insist that nuclear weapons are vital to our security, other countries are bound to conclude that nuclear weapons will enhance their security as well. “There is an irrefutable truth about nuclear weapons,” says Ambassador Richard Butler of Australia, who spent much of the 1990s searching for nuclear weapons in Iraq. “As long as any one state has them, others will seek to acquire them.” Far from preventing nuclear proliferation, our nuclear arsenal is in fact the greatest provocation for it.

    This is especially true when the original Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is understood in its original context. The NPT of 1970 was not just a framework to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. It was, instead, a grand bargain — where the great many “nuclear have-nots” agreed to forever forego nuclear weapons, while the few “nuclear haves” agreed eventually to get rid of theirs. The World Court concluded unanimously in 1996 that the NPT and other international legal precedents had created “an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.” Moreover, the United States recommitted itself to the grand bargain at the 30-year NPT Review Conference in the spring of 2000, where the NPT’s nuclear signatories pledged “an unequivocal undertaking … to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

    If anything seems certain about the political landscape in the decades to come, it is that the nuclear status quo cannot last. We can seriously commit ourselves to fewer nuclear weapons and fewer nuclear states, or we can resign ourselves to more and more nuclear weapons floating around the world and more and more nuclear states. Stay the course, and we’ll likely witness a presidential debate 20 or 30 years hence where candidate Lindsay Lohan argues with candidate Hilary Duff — about how to deal with a world of 20 or 30 nuclear states. Continue down the same road, and our reward will be a vice presidential debate between candidates Mary-Kate Olsen and Lil’ Romeo — where each of them lectures Brazil or South Korea or Egypt or Indonesia or Japan about going nuclear, but neither says a word – any more than did Bush and Kerry — about the United States remaining nuclear.

    THE FALLACY OF BEAN COUNTING

    One thing the peace and disarmament left must begin to challenge is the notion that bean counting makes any meaningful difference on the fundamentals of nuclear security. Under the Moscow Treaty of 2002, the Bush Administration has committed to reduce our active nuclear inventory to 2200 operational warheads by the year 2012. But the Moscow Treaty is probably the emptiest disarmament agreement ever signed. It’s bad enough that the warheads and missiles we have agreed to decommission will simply be put into storage – likely available for redeployment within a matter of days. (As the Italian commentator Bruno Marolo put it: “A subtle distinction is now emerging between deployed nuclear weapons and set-aside weapons, piled up in a cellar so they can age like a good wine for the next generation.”) It’s bad enough too that the treaty allows for immediate withdrawal without cause – meaning that we could move some 8000 warheads into storage between now and 2012, and then immediately redeploy them the day after the treaty expires, as if it had never existed at all.

    But suppose that we do in fact actually destroy about 80% of our present nuclear arsenal, and do indeed retain only about 2200 warheads by the year 2012. What would this do to reduce the actual dangers posed by nuclear weapons? In what way exactly would 2200 warheads instead of 10,455 diminish the possibility that some simmering international impasse will spin out of control, and result – like the Cuban missile crisis nearly did — in global thermonuclear war?  What does bean counting do to eliminate the unfathomable danger of accidental atomic apocalypse (as opposed to dealerting the thousands of missiles we still incomprehensibly maintain on hair-trigger, poised to be launched with less than five minutes notice)? How does our stated intention to reduce our nuclear inventory to 2200 by 2012 make North Korea or Iran feel safer today (or, for that matter, in 2012)?

    Perhaps most importantly, how does simply cutting numbers reduce the risk that some malevolent creature will someday smuggle a nuclear warhead into the heart of an American city, and commit the greatest act of mass murder in all of human history? What could 10,455, 2200, or a single American nuclear warhead have done to stop Mohammed Atta – a non-state actor with nothing to deter and nothing to lose?

    Our nuclear bombers and missiles and submarines were not only irrelevant to Mohammed Atta, they make a nuclear Mohammed Atta more likely to eventually emerge. Why? Because our nuclear weapons make other nuclear weapons all around the world more likely to eventually emerge, and more likely to eventually fall into the wrong hands. And because – let’s face it – it’s not impossible to suppose that someone might steal or bribe their way into getting their hands on one of ours someday. Even an extraordinarily unlikely event, over a long enough period of time, becomes virtually inevitable.

    If an American city is someday obliterated by a 15-megaton nuclear device, it will matter little to the dead whether the offending warhead came from a stockpile of 10,455 or 2200. John Kerry, however, has said nothing to indicate that he would reopen negotiations on the basic outlines of the Moscow Treaty – even though he undoubtedly envisions 2012 as the final full year of his presidency.

    THE KERRY ADVANTAGE

    There is little doubt that John Kerry would be a far better president on nuclear issues than George Bush. It’s hard to argue for any higher priority than securing nuclear materials and warheads in Russia – the remains of the USSR’s 4 ½ decades of preparations for global thermonuclear war. Kerry seems to understand this, and his pledge during the Miami debate to complete the destruction of 600 tons of fissile material in Russia before his first term is out should be unequivocally applauded. Bush, on the other hand, is spending fully 12 times as much on new nuclear weapon research than on efforts to secure and dispose of loose nuclear materials worldwide.

    Kerry was a staunch supporter of the nuclear freeze movement which blossomed after Ronald Reagan’s saber-rattling and victorious presidential campaign in 1980. The freeze, in fact, was one of the central planks of Kerry’s initial and victorious run for the U.S. Senate in 1984. George Bush opposes ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, while John Kerry has consistently supported it. Kerry has promised to toughen export controls, strengthen law enforcement, and work through the United Nations to make trade in WMD technologies an international crime.

    And while Kerry has not categorically rejected missile defenses, it is clear that he is much less enthusiastic about them than Bush. The Administration apparently intends to declare the first elements of its ballistic missile defense operational before the end of this year. It was Bush, of course, who unilaterally withdrew the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, a move that Kerry declared would “welcome an arms race that will make us more vulnerable, not less.”

    Perhaps most significantly, Kerry has directly challenged Bush’s plan to build a brand new nuclear weapon: the “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.”  This bomb, a good five times the size of the Hiroshima device, is being designed to burrow deep into the earth to seek out and destroy subterranean command complexes. Unlike traditional nuclear weapons that detonate above ground, this one would likely cast hundreds of tons of radioactive rocks and dirt and dust high into the sky, likely exposing thousands to slow and agonizing deaths from radioactive fallout.

    So much for Republicans calling themselves the party that is “prolife.”

    “Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars  to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons,” said Kerry in the Miami debate. “You talk about mixed messages. We’re telling other people, ‘You can’t have nuclear weapons,’ but we’re pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using. Not this president. I’m going to shut that program down.”

    This is certainly a good thing, and something the left should unapologetically applaud. But it is one thing for John Kerry to oppose the development of new types of nuclear weapons, another altogether to put the thousands we already possess on the table. Kerry needs to understand that the “mixed message” on nuclear weapons isn’t just about the new weapons that the Bush Administration has begun to pursue. For decades now, the United States has said to other countries, “We need them, but you don’t. They’re good for us, but no good for you. We can have them, but you can’t. ” What kind of message does that send?

    THE NUCLEAR SWORD OF DAMOCLES

    Earlier this year IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei delivered a blistering speech that squarely placed the blame for his difficulties stemming nuclear proliferation on the nuclear double standard. The time has come, he said, to “abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue nuclear weapons but morally acceptable for others to rely on them.”

    Nuclear weapons pollute the psyche with the arrogance of insuperable power. They create delusions of domination. With their calculations of mass casualties, they dehumanize our adversaries … and consequently ourselves. And in the age of American hyperpower, they provide American decisionmakers with very few additional policy options or political/military benefits.

    This is why Ambassador Paul H. Nitze, one of the great hard-line cold warriors who died this month at 97, concluded toward the end of his life that our atomic arsenal is “a threat mostly to ourselves,” that he “can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the U.S. to use nuclear weapons,” and that “the simplest and most direct answer to the problem of nuclear weapons has always been their complete elimination.”

    As we stand poised, perhaps, to elect a second JFK to the presidency on November 2nd, Kerry himself would do well to recall the words of the first, spoken in his first address before the UN General Assembly in 1961: “Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness. These weapons of war must be abolished — before they abolish us.”

    As the decades of the 21st Century march forward, it will become apparent that only two nuclear options will present themselves to humanity. One choice is a world of a dozen, two dozen, five dozen nuclear weapon states – and god knows how many nuclear non-state actors (i.e., terrorists). The other choice is to figure out how we can at least begin to move toward a world of zero nuclear states and zero nuclear weapons. But the notion that a handful of states can forever maintain a nuclear oligarchy, and forever frustrate the nuclear yearnings of others, is nothing but a forlorn fantasy.

    It would make an enormous difference if an American president would simply state, unambiguously, that abolition is our ultimate objective. That moving to 2200 warheads by 2012 is part of a longer-term plan, or even simply an aspiration, to eventually move to zero. That when we demand that Iran and North Korea forego their own nuclear aspirations, we assure them that the double standard is not something we expect them forever to endure.

    But when’s the last time you heard any American president, Democrat or Republican, say anything like that?

    ” If you expect to be part of the world of nations,” said President Bush during the Miami debate, “get rid of your nuclear programs.” He directed that sentence explicitly at the mullahs who rule Iran. But if he wants them to actually listen, it wouldn’t hurt for us to begin to direct it at ourselves.

    Tad Daley, who served as chief deputy to the late Senator Alan Cranston (D-Cal, 1969-1993) after he retired from the Senate, was Issues and Policy Director for the presidential campaign of Congressman Dennis Kucinich.  He is now Senior Policy Advisor for Progressive Democrats of America,www.pdamerica.org.

  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Examining the Policies of Bush and Kerry

    Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Examining the Policies of Bush and Kerry

    President Bush and Senator Kerry agree that nuclear proliferation is the top national security threat facing the United States . Given this agreement, it is worth examining the solutions each candidate is offering to solve the problem.

    The issue of Russian “loose nukes” has been at the forefront of the non-proliferation agenda since the end of the Cold War. A January 2001 Report Card on the Department of Energy’s Nonproliferation Programs with Russia concluded: “The most urgent, unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction of weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home.” This bipartisan report called for the US to develop and implement a ten-year $30 billion plan to bring Russian nuclear weapons and materials under control. The Bush administration has been spending at a rate of less than half this amount and has made little progress. Senator Kerry calls for completing the task in a four-year period.

    In Northeast Asia, North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and claims to have nuclear weapons. Under the Bush administration, the US has been engaged in periodic six-party talks on security issues with North Korea , South Korea , Japan , China and Russia . These talks have made little progress. By initiating its war against Iraq on the basis of purported weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration has provided incentive to countries such as North Korea to develop nuclear deterrent forces against US attack. Adding to this, Bush has labeled North Korea as part of his “axis of evil” and referred to its leader as a “pygmy.” Senator Kerry has indicated that he would intensify the process of stopping North Korean nuclear proliferation by engaging in bilateral talks, as well as six-party talks, with the leaders of North Korea on the full range of issues of concern.

    In the Middle East, the Bush administration has enraged Arab populations by initiating its war against Iraq on false pretenses. Further, President Bush branded both Iraq and Iran as part of his “axis of evil.” The administration has put pressure on Iran to cease its uranium enrichment, which Iran claims is for peaceful purposes, but thus far with little effect. The US is widely viewed in the region as hypocritical for failing to apply equal pressure on Israel to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Senator Kerry has set forth a plan to create a consortium to supply Iran with the fuel it needs for peaceful purposes with the agreement that Iran would return the spent fuel to the consortium, thus eliminating the threat that this material would be converted to use for weapons.

    In South Asia, both India and Pakistan have developed nuclear weapons capabilities. Following the nuclear tests by both countries in 1998, the US placed sanctions on them. However, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has largely removed the sanctions and has developed close ties with Pakistan . President Bush claims to have “busted” the network of A. Q. Khan that was supplying nuclear materials and technology around the world. In fact, Khan was pardoned by Pakistani President Musharraf and has never been questioned by US intelligence agents. Senator Kerry has promised to work multinationally to toughen export controls and strengthen law enforcement and intelligence sharing to prevent such non-proliferation breaches in the future. Further, he has called for working through the United Nations to make trade in nuclear and other technologies of mass destruction an international crime.

    The United States has itself been engaged in a program to create new and more usable nuclear weapons, weapons for specific purposes such as “bunker busting,” and smaller nuclear weapons that are about one-third the size of the Hiroshima bomb. The Bush administration has supported this program, while Senator Kerry has said that he would end it because seeking to create new nuclear weapons sets the wrong example when we are trying to convince other nations not to develop nuclear arsenals.

    Both candidates recognize the dangers of nuclear proliferation and of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. The Bush administration has set up the Proliferation Security Initiative that allows for boarding ships at sea to inspect for nuclear materials. Senator Kerry has pointed out that this initiative allows for inspecting on short notice only 15 percent of the 50,000 large cargo ships at sea and has less than 20 full participants. He plans a comprehensive approach that would not rely only on “coalitions of the willing,” but would create a broad international framework for preventing nuclear proliferation. Senator Kerry would also appoint a Presidential Coordinator to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism and make the issue a cabinet-level priority.

    In evaluating the candidates in regard to their willingness and ability to deal with the threats of nuclear proliferation, we should consider also the commitments made in 2000 by the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including the US , to achieving 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. These steps include ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the strengthening of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the creation of a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, making nuclear disarmament irreversible, and an unequivocal undertaking to achieve the total elimination of nuclear arsenals. These steps are important not only because they are international obligations, but because the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the non-proliferation regime in general rests upon the nuclear weapons states as well as the non-nuclear weapons states fulfilling their obligations.

    In nearly all respects President Bush has failed to meet these obligations. He has opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, opposed verification of a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, made nuclear disarmament entirely reversible under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty and, rather than demonstrating leadership toward the elimination of nuclear arsenals, has sought to create new nuclear weapons.

    It is difficult to imagine any US president achieving so dismal a record on so critical an issue. It is time for presidential leadership that will restore US credibility in the world and not betray the national security interests of the American people.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and co-author of Nuclear Weapons and the World Court.

  • Who Will Make Us Safer from the Biggest Threat Facing the US?

    If you watched or heard about the first Presidential debate on September 30th, then you probably already know that one thing both presidential candidates agree upon is that nuclear proliferation poses the biggest threat to the US. What you might not know is which candidate will actually make Americans far safer and more secure. Understanding how the presidential candidates will deal with nuclear proliferation is essential in allowing US citizens to make an informed decision on who is best suited to lead this great country.

    One thing President Bush failed to mention is that, despite calls from past Presidents, nuclear weapons have assumed a far more central role in US security policy. The new, more “usable” role that the US government has assigned to nuclear weapons and its doctrine of pre-emptive warfare can encourage other nations to obtain nuclear weapons (and other weapons of mass destruction) in pursuit of their own security needs. These policies diminish US national security and attempts to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction, increasing the risk that other countries and terrorists will obtain and use nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against the US.

    So, let’s take a moment to examine exactly where President Bush and Senator Kerry stand on just four key policies that would protect Americans and their families.

    Oppose creating dangerous new nuclear weapons that will lead others to follow our example.

    President George W. Bush requested some $36.6 million in the 2005 Budget for research on dangerous new nuclear weapons, including the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator or “bunker-buster” and “mini-nukes.”

    John Kerry has stated, “As president, I will stop this administration’s program to develop a whole new generation of bunker-busting nuclear bombs. This is a weapon we don’t need. And it undermines our credibility in persuading other nations. What kind of message does it send when we’re asking other countries not to develop nuclear weapons but developing new ones ourselves?”

    Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and continue the current moratorium on nuclear testing, which are essential elements to promoting the international non-proliferation regime and protecting American security.

    President Bush opposes ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, already ratified by 115 countries, and has proposed $30 million in the 2005 Budget for reducing the time to resume nuclear testing from 24 months to 18 months.

    Senator Kerry supports ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and has emphasized its importance in promoting the international non-proliferation regime.

    Cancel funding for and plans to deploy offensive missile “defense” systems that could ignite a dangerous nuclear arms race and offer no security against terrorist weapons of mass destruction.

    In 2001, President Bush unilaterally withdrew the US from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the former Soviet Union in order to deploy a missile “defenses.” He is seeking to deploy an inadequately tested missile defense system this year, and has requested a budget of more than $10 billion for this unproven system in 2005.

    Senator Kerry has stated that he believes in further missile defense research, but he does “not believe in rapid deployment of a system that hasn’t been adequately tested.” He has stated that “to abandon [the ABM Treaty] altogether is to welcome an arms race that will make us more vulnerable, not less.”

    Work with Russia to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both countries and ensure that nuclear weapons and materials stay out of the hands of terrorists or countries seeking to acquire nuclear capabilities.

    President Bush signed a treaty with the Russians that calls for bringing down the number of deployed strategic weapons to between 2,200 and 1,700 by the year 2012. The treaty, however, does not provide for verification and does not make the reductions irreversible. The treaty also terminates in the year 2012. Since weapons taken off active deployment will be kept on the shelf in reserve, they will be a tempting target for terrorists. President Bush has also called for reductions of more than nine percent in the funding for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to secure nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union.

    Senator Kerry has stated that the treaty that President Bush entered into “runs the risk of increasing nuclear theft by stockpiling thousands of warheads.” He further stated that “if we are to make America safer, and we must, it will take more than cosmetic treaties that leave Russia’s nuclear arsenal in place.” Kerry has called for increased joint efforts with the Russians to dispose of stocks of existing nuclear materials. He has stated that he will make securing nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union a priority in relations between the US and Russia and work with our allies to establish global standards for the safekeeping of nuclear materials.

    It is up to us voters to elect a President who will make us safer from the biggest threat facing the US. If you want to see the US implement more responsible nuclear policies, then visit www.chartinganewcourse.org to learn more and take action today.

    Carah Ong is the Development and Communications Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

  • Truths Worth Telling

    Kensington, California – On a tape recording made in the Oval Office on June 14, 1971, H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, can be heard citing Donald Rumsfeld, then a White House aide, on the effect of the Pentagon Papers, news of which had been published on the front page of that morning’s newspaper:

    “Rumsfeld was making this point this morning,” Haldeman says. “To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say, and you can’t rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the president can be wrong.”

    He got it exactly right. But it’s a lesson that each generation of voters and each new set of leaders have to learn for themselves. Perhaps Mr. Rumsfeld – now secretary of defense, of course – has reflected on this truth recently as he has contemplated the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. According to the government’s own reporting, the situation there is far bleaker than Mr. Rumsfeld has recognized or President Bush has acknowledged on the campaign trail.

    Understandably, the American people are reluctant to believe that their president has made errors of judgment that have cost American lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the only way for the public to get such evidence is if a dedicated public servant decides to release it without permission.

    Such a leak occurred recently with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was prepared in July. Reports of the estimate’s existence and overall pessimism – but not its actual conclusions – have prompted a long-overdue debate on the realities and prospects of the war. But its judgments of the relative likelihood and the strength of evidence pointing to the worst possibilities remain undisclosed. Since the White House has refused to release the full report, someone else should do so.

    Leakers are often accused of being partisan, and undoubtedly many of them are. But the measure of their patriotism should be the accuracy and the importance of the information they reveal. It would be a great public service to reveal a true picture of the administration’s plans for Iraq – especially before this week’s debate on foreign policy between Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry.

    The military’s real estimates of the projected costs – in manpower, money and casualties – of various long-term plans for Iraq should be made public, in addition to the more immediate costs in American and Iraqi lives of the planned offensive against resistant cities in Iraq that appears scheduled for November. If military or intelligence experts within the government predict disastrous political consequences in Iraq from such urban attacks, these judgments should not remain secret.

    Leaks on the timing of this offensive – and on possible call-up of reserves just after the election – take me back to Election Day 1964, which I spent in an interagency working group in the State Department. The purpose of our meeting was to examine plans to expand the war – precisely the policy that voters soundly rejected at the polls that day.

    We couldn’t wait until the next day to hold our meeting because the plan for the bombing of North Vietnam had to be ready as soon as possible. But we couldn’t have held our meeting the day before because news of it might have been leaked – not by me, I’m sorry to say. And President Lyndon Johnson might not have won in a landslide had voters known he was lying when he said that his administration sought “no wider war.”

    Seven years and almost 50,000 American deaths later, after I had leaked the Pentagon Papers, I had a conversation with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two senators who had voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution in August 1964. If I had leaked the documents then, he said, the resolution never would have passed.

    That was hard to hear. But in 1964 it hadn’t occurred to me to break my vow of secrecy. Though I knew that the war was a mistake, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president. It took five years of war before I recognized the higher loyalty all officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, the soldiers in harm’s way or their fellow citizens.

    Like Robert McNamara, under whom I served, Mr. Rumsfeld appears to inspire great loyalty among his aides. As the scandal at Abu Ghraib shows, however, there are more important principles. Mr. Rumsfeld might not have seen the damning photographs and the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba as soon as he did – just as he would never have seen the Pentagon Papers 33 years ago – if some anonymous people in his own department had not bypassed the chain of command and disclosed them, without authorization, to the news media. And without public awareness of the scandal, reforms would be less likely.

    A federal judge has ordered the administration to issue a list of all documents relating to the scandal by Oct. 15. Will Mr. Rumsfeld release the remaining photos, which depict treatment that he has described as even worse? It’s highly unlikely, especially before Nov. 2. Meanwhile, the full Taguba report remains classified, and the findings of several other inquiries into military interrogation and detention practices have yet to be released.

    All administrations classify far more information than is justifiable in a democracy – and the Bush administration has been especially secretive. Information should never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating. But in practice, in this as in any administration, no information is guarded more closely.

    Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence – as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don’t repeat my mistakes. Don’t wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims.

    Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.

    Daniel Ellsberg is the author of “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers” and a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Advisory Council.

    Originally published by the New York Times.

  • Ending the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity: New Thinking and Effective Campaigns are Needed

    Ending the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity: New Thinking and Effective Campaigns are Needed

    We need new thinking and effective campaigns if we are to succeed in quelling the growing nuclear dangers in the world. The existing nuclear weapons states are failing to fulfill their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT, and claims to have become a member of the nuclear weapons club. Iran is enriching uranium for what it claims are peaceful purposes. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently reminded the world that there are forty countries capable of converting their “peaceful” nuclear programs to weapons programs.

    There are still well over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world, perhaps closer to 30,000, mostly in the arsenals of the US and Russia. These two countries also continue to maintain over 2,000 nuclear weapons each on hair-trigger alert, creating the ongoing and increasing possibility of an accidental nuclear launch. Other nuclear weapons states include the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and likely North Korea .

    Throughout the world, terrorism is on the rise with groups such as Al Qaeda openly expressing a desire to obtain nuclear weapons. Should such a group succeed in this quest, they could not be deterred from using these weapons, since deterrence implies being able to locate the attacking party in order to retaliate. Thus, existing arsenals of thousands of nuclear weapons cannot deter a small group of terrorists from attacking the cities of the militarily most powerful states.

    The US attacked Iraq because of Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, and has made threats of preemptive action to North Korea and Iran based on their nuclear arsenals. For geopolitical reasons, the US has turned a blind eye to Israel ‘s nuclear weapons and those of other allied nations, while attacking Iraq, a country that it falsely accused of having such weapons. The US has basically adopted a “do as I say, not as I do” strategy of nuclear arms control. Such a strategy, based on clear double standards, is extremely dangerous and destined to fail.

    The world is walking a dangerous tightrope, while facing harsh prospects of potential nuclear disaster. The only way to prevent a nuclear 9/11 is to dramatically reduce the nuclear weapons, technologies and materials in the world and to bring the remaining ones under international control. This will require US leadership as the world’s most powerful country. Without US leadership, the world will continue its flirtation with nuclear disaster, increasing the likelihood that the US itself could become the victim of its own double standards.

    Unfortunately, the US, under the Bush administration, has not only failed to show leadership to prevent nuclear terrorism and nuclear double standards, but has actively sought to improve its nuclear arsenal. It has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is moving toward lowering the time needed to resume nuclear testing. It has been allocating funds to research “bunker busting” nuclear weapons and “mini-nukes.” And it has forged ahead with deployment of untested missile defense systems that have caused Russia and China to make offensive improvements in their nuclear arsenals in order to maintain their deterrent capabilities.

    If we are to avert future nuclear catastrophes it is necessary to change the course of current nuclear policy. In order to do this, we need a new way of thinking about nuclear weapons that reflects the view that they undermine rather than enhance our security. This is the conclusion reached by General George Lee Butler, the former head of the US Strategic Command. General Butler was once in charge of all US strategic weapons. He stated, “Sadly, the Cold War lives on in the minds of men who cannot let go the fears, the beliefs, the enmities of the Nuclear Age. They cling to deterrence, clutch its tattered promise to their breast, shake it wistfully at bygone adversaries and balefully at new or imagined ones. They are gripped still by its awful willingness not simply to tempt the apocalypse but to prepare the way.”

    Nearly fifty years ago, Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20th century, argued, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Shortly before Einstein’s death, he joined Bertrand Russell in issuing a short manifesto signed by themselves and nine other prominent scientists, including Joseph Rotblat , the one scientist who left the Manhattan Project when he realized that the Germans would not succeed in developing a nuclear weapon. The document, known simply as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, set forth the case that nuclear weapons make the abolition of war necessary. “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? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.”

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was Einstein’s final warning and plea to humanity. The manifesto urged that humanity has a choice: “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?” The document went on to urge: “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.”

    To succeed in ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity, ordinary people must engage in the issue and it must become a top priority issue. At present, most people are not engaged in this issue, or may even incorrectly believe that nuclear weapons provide prestige and enhance rather than undermine their security. What is needed is a massive, well-funded campaign of public education and advocacy in order to arouse ordinary people and officials everywhere to action.

    I will mention two encouraging campaigns that are in their early stages. The first is the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons. 1 This campaign seeks to activate mayors around the world to engage their populations to pressure their national leaders to begin in 2005 negotiations on eliminating nuclear weapons, to complete these negotiations by 2010, and to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2020. This campaign, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , holds promise, but at this point in time it remains dramatically under-funded. Nonetheless, it is moving forward with the expectation that more than 100 mayors and deputy mayors will state their case for nuclear disarmament at the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations. The Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign is receiving support from Abolition 2000, which has created Abolition Now! to help further the Mayors Campaign. 2

    A second campaign now underway is called Turn the Tide. 3 It was created by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to focus on changing US nuclear policies. It is a campaign that reaches out to US citizens via the internet and urges them to communicate with their elected representatives to support actions set forth in their 13-point Campaign Statement:

    1. Stop all efforts to create dangerous new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
    2. Maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
    3. Cancel plans to build new nuclear weapons production plants, and close and clean up the toxic contamination at existing plants.
    4. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No Use of nuclear weapons against any nation or group that does not have nuclear weapons.
    5. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nations possessing nuclear weapons.
    6. Cancel funding for and plans to deploy offensive missile “defense” systems which could ignite a dangerous arms race and offer no security against terrorist weapons of mass destruction.
    7. In order to significantly decrease the threat of accidental launch, together with Russia , take nuclear weapons off high-alert status and do away with the strategy of launch-on-warning.
    8. Together with Russia , implement permanent and verifiable dismantlement of nuclear weapons taken off deployed status through the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).
    9. Demonstrate to other countries US commitment to reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons by removing all US nuclear weapons from foreign soil.
    10. To prevent future proliferation or theft, create and maintain a global inventory of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons materials and place these weapons and materials under strict international safeguards.
    11. Initiate international negotiations to fulfill existing treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the phased and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
    12. Initiate a moratorium on new nuclear power reactors and gradually phase out existing ones, as these are a primarily means for the proliferation of nuclear materials, technology and weapons; simultaneously establish an International Sustainable Energy Agency to support the development of clean, safe renewable energy.
    13. Redirect funding from nuclear weapons programs to dismantling nuclear weapons, safeguarding nuclear materials, cleaning up the toxic legacy of the Nuclear Age and meeting more pressing social needs such as education, health care and social services.

    There is no magic formula for accomplishing these goals or, for that matter, for changing the world in any direction. Change often occurs one person at a time. The problem with the nuclear weapons threat is that there may not be time for such a progression of involvement. People must immediately change their thinking and they must engage in this issue as if their very lives depended upon it because they do. Many people think that this will probably not happen until another major city has been destroyed by a nuclear weapon. It would be a terrible failure of imagination if the destruction of a city is required to move us to take significant action to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    We know that the danger is lurking in the dark recesses of our collective consciences. Why else would we give our tacit assent to nuclear weapons programs, even in our most prestigious universities where the next generation of leaders is being educated? We must bring the hidden fears and dangers of the Nuclear Age into the light and act with resolve to change the course of history, which sadly now seems to be racing toward inevitable future nuclear catastrophes, unless there is a real awakening.

    David Krieger is a founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

    1 See http://www.mayorsforpeace.org
    2 See http://www.abolitionnow.org
    3 See https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com

  • The Domino Effect: Preemptive Wars on the Rise

    When the Bush administration initiated the invasion of Iraq arguing that preemptive war was a justifiable action, the Pandora’s Box was opened. Russia has just announced that its armed forces will conduct preemptive strikes against terrorist bases in “any region of the world.” How will the UN or NATO or any government dispute the argument of the right that Russia or any other nations would have to defend its security after the actions of the United States?

    Russia has not demonstrated accuracy or capability in dealing with previous terrorist attacks in its country. For example, there was a terrible massacre in the Moscow Theater on October 23, 2002. 129 hostages perished mostly due to the use of narcotic gas that the Russian Special Forces used to subdue the Chechen attackers. This shows incompetence in trying to solve such critical situations. Many mistakes were committed during the siege of the school in Beslan, in North Osetia bordering Chechnya . At the same time, what is happening in Iraq – anarchy, terror and chaos – demonstrates that the Bush administration is incapable of re-establishing peace and order in the afflicted Arab nation. The casualties of American soldiers continue to mount as well as innocent Iraqi citizens.

    How will the world accept any preemptive attack when this action depends on the information from “intelligence” sources like that which was collected by the American and British intelligence prior to the war in Iraq ? The flaws, mistakes and misinformation are not in the open.

    If Putin’s administration is not just trying to intimidate the Chechen separatists by launching preemptive attacks with the excuse of defending Russia , then very soon we could expect similar events from any nation with military power to try to vindicate past or present feuds with the terrible results that such actions will cause. More than one can play this game.

    *Ruben Arvizu is Director for Latin America of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.