Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: complacency

  • Fear of Nuclear Weapons

    David KriegerI was recently asked during an interview whether people fear nuclear weapons too much, causing them unnecessary anxiety.  The implication was that it is not necessary to live in fear of nuclear weapons.


    My response was that fear is a healthy mechanism when one is confronted by something fearful.  It gives rise to a fight or flight response, both of which are means of surviving real danger.


    In the case of nuclear weapons, these are devices to be feared since they are capable of causing terrifying harm to all humanity, including one’s family, city and country.  If one is fearful of nuclear weapons, there will be an impetus to do something about the dangers these weapons pose to humanity.


    But, one might ask, what can be done?  In reality, there is a limited amount that can be done by a single individual, but when individuals band together in groups, their power to bring about change increases.  Individual power is magnified even more when groups join together in coalitions and networks to bring about change.


    Large numbers of individuals banded together to bring about the fall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of apartheid in South Africa.  The basic building block of all these important changes was the individual willing to stand up, speak out and join with others to achieve a better world.  The forces of change have been set loose again by the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement across the globe.


    When dangers are viewed rationally, there may be good cause for fear, and fear may trigger a response to bring about change.  On the other hand, complacency can never lead to change.  Thus, while fear may be a motivator of change, complacency is an inhibitor of change.  In a dangerous world, widespread complacency should be of great concern. 


    If a person is complacent about the dangers of nuclear weapons, there is little possibility that he will engage in trying to alleviate the danger.  Complacency is the result of a failure of hope to bring about change.  It is a submission to despair.


    After so many years of being confronted by nuclear dangers, there is a tendency to believe that nothing can be done to change the situation.  This may be viewed as “concern fatigue.”  We should remember, though, that any goal worth achieving is worth striving for with hope in our hearts.  A good policy for facing real-world dangers is to never give up hope and never stop trying.


    Nuclear weapons threaten the future of the human species and other forms of complex life on the planet.  Basically, we have three choices: active opposition to nuclear weapons, justification of the weapons, and complacency.  These are three choices that confront us in relation to any great danger. 


    It is always easier to choose, often by default, justification or complacency than it is to mount active opposition to a danger.  But dangers seldom melt away of their own accord and there is no reason to believe that policies of reliance on nuclear weapons will do so.  These policies need to be confronted, and such confrontation requires courage.  Fear can be most useful when it gives rise to the courage and commitment to bring about change for a safer and more decent future for humanity.

  • Our Salvation Requires that We Grasp the Danger of Nuclear Weapons

    This article was originally published by Project Syndicate.


    Gareth EvansOne of the most dispiriting features of today’s international debates is that the threat to humanity posed by the world’s 23,000 nuclear weapons – and by those who would build more of them, or be only too willing to use them – has been consigned to the margin of politics.


    U.S. President Barack Obama did capture global attention with his Prague speech in 2009, which made a compelling case for a nuclear weapon-free world. And he did deliver on a major new arms-reduction treaty with Russia, and hosted a summit aimed at reducing the vulnerability of nuclear weapons and materials to theft or diversion.


    But nuclear issues still struggle for public resonance and political traction. It would take a brave gambler to bet on ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the U.S. Senate any time soon.


    The film “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Academy Award, led to a Nobel Prize for Al Gore, and attracted huge international attention to the disastrous impact of climate change. But “Countdown to Zero,” an equally compelling documentary, made by the same production team and making shockingly clear how close and how often the world has come to nuclear catastrophe, has come and gone almost without trace.


    Complacency trumps anxiety almost everywhere. Japan’s Fukushima disaster has generated a massive debate about the safety of nuclear power, but not about nuclear weapons. Fear of a nuclear holocaust seems to have ended with the Cold War.


    Indeed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem an eternity ago; new nuclear-weapons states have emerged without the world ending; no terrorist nuclear device has threatened a major city; and possession of nuclear weapons, for the states that have them, seems to be a source of comfort and pride rather than concern or embarrassment. With only a handful of exceptions, the current generation of political leaders shows little interest in disarmament, and not much more in non-proliferation. And their publics are not pressuring them to behave otherwise.


    Few have worked harder to shake the world out of its complacency than four of the hardest-nosed realists ever to hold public office: former U.S. Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. In a series of opinion articles over the last five years, they have repeatedly sounded the alarm that the risks of nuclear weapons outweigh any possible usefulness in today’s security environment. Moreover, they have called for a complete rethinking of deterrence strategy, in order to minimize, and ultimately eliminate, reliance on the most indiscriminately destructive weapons ever invented.


    Last week in London, the “gang of four” convened a private meeting with leading think-tank researchers and a worldwide cast of some 30 former foreign and defense ministers, generals, and ambassadors who share their concern and commitment. But our average age was over 65, and the limits of our effectiveness were neatly described by former British Defense Minister Des Browne: “People who used to be something really want to tackle this issue. The trouble is that those who are something don’t.”


    No quick fix will turn all this around. Getting the kind of messages that emerged from the London meeting embedded in public and political consciousness is going to be slow boring through hard boards. But the messages demand attention, and we simply have to keep drilling.


    The first message is that the threat of a nuclear weapons catastrophe remains alarmingly real. Existing global stockpiles have a destructive capacity equal to 150,000 Hiroshima bombs, and in handling them there is an omnipresent potential for human error, system error, or misjudgment under stress.


    Pakistan versus India is a devastating conflict-in-waiting, and North Korea and Iran remain volatile sources of concern. We know that terrorist groups have the capacity to engineer nuclear devices and would explode them anywhere they could; we simply cannot be confident that we can forever deny them access to the fissile material they need to fuel them.


    The second message is that Cold War nuclear-deterrence doctrine is irrelevant to today’s world. So long as nuclear weapons remain, states can justify maintaining a minimum nuclear-deterrent capability. But that can be done without weapons on high alert, and with drastically reduced arsenals in the case of the U.S. and Russia, and, at worst, at current levels for the other nuclear-armed states.


    The third message is that if the existing nuclear powers sincerely want to prevent others from joining their club, they cannot keep justifying the possession of nuclear weapons as a means of protection for themselves or their allies against other weapons of mass destruction, especially biological weapons, or conventional weapons. Indeed, the single most difficult issue inhibiting serious movement toward disarmament – certainly in the case of Pakistan versus India, and Russia and China versus the United States – are conventional arms imbalances, and ways of addressing them must rise to the top of the policy agenda.


    The final message is that neither piecemeal change nor sloganeering will do the job. Nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and civil nuclear-energy risk reduction are inextricably connected, and they call for sustained commitment around a comprehensive agenda, and detailed argument. Sound bites and tweets are an unlikely route to nuclear salvation.


    Kissinger is no idealist icon. But he’s always worth listening to, and never more so than with respect to the question that he has been asking for years: When the next nuclear-weapons catastrophe happens, as it surely will, the world will have to respond dramatically. Why can’t we start right now?

  • What Nuclear Weapons Teach Us About Ourselves

    David KriegerNuclear weapons are the most fearsome and destructive killing devices yet created by the human species.  They have the capacity to destroy cities, countries and civilization.  Yet, although these weapons give rise to some concern and worry, most humans on the planet are complacent about the inherent dangers of these weapons.  It is worth exploring what our seeming indifference toward these weapons of mass annihilation teaches us about ourselves, and how we might remedy our malaise.


    1. We are ill-informed.  We appear to go about our daily lives with a self-assured degree of comfort that we will not be affected by the dangers of the weapons.  We need more education about the extreme dangers and risks posed by nuclear weapons.


    2. We are tribal.  We divide ourselves into national tribes and identify with our own tribe while demonizing “the other.”  We need to be more global in our thinking.  We need to think as members of the human species, not as members of a national tribe.


    3. We are self-serving.  We see our own nuclear weapons and those of our allies as being positive and useful, while we view the nuclear weapons of our enemies as being negative and harmful.  We need to realize that nuclear weapons, as instruments of indiscriminate mass destruction, are illegal, immoral and dangerous in any hands, including our own.


    4. We are arrogant.  We seem to take perverse pride in our cleverness at having created such overwhelmingly powerful weapons.  We need to take pride in constructive uses of our science-based technologies, and recognize the inherent dangers and immorality of their destructive uses.


    5. We are pathological.  We rely for our protection upon these weapons that threaten to kill millions of innocent civilians.  We need to realize that true security cannot be based upon the threat of mass murder of innocents.


    6. We are deluded.  We believe that we will not survive threats from “the other” if we do not rely upon these weapons of mass annihilation for our security.  We need to engage “the other” in dialogue until we realize that our common humanity supersedes our differences, and our common future demands our unity.


    7. We are reckless.  We are willing to bet the human species and the human future that we can keep these weapons under control.  We need to stop playing Russian roulette with the human future.


    8. We are foolish.  We trust our leaders to act responsibly, so as to keep nuclear weapons under control.  We need to realize that this is too great a responsibility for any person and that all leaders do not act responsibly at all times.


    9. We are timid.  We do not challenge the status quo, which gives rise to such extreme dangers.  We need to confront the challenges posed by nuclear weapons and give voice to our legitimate fears of the weapons themselves.


    10. We are adolescent.  As a species, we have not matured to the point of taking responsibility for, and directly confronting, the nuclear threat to ourselves and future generations.  We need to grow up and take responsibility to assure our common future for ourselves and generations yet unborn.


    Individually and collectively, we are threatened by nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine countries. If we fail to act expeditiously to abolish these arsenals, the consequence is likely to be nuclear weapons proliferation to other countries and eventually their use.  The question that confronts humanity is: Can we end the nuclear era and ensure our survival as a species?  To do this, we will need to change our thinking about the weapons and about ourselves.  I think this is what Albert Einstein was alluding to when he said, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  Preventing such catastrophes must begin with changing our thinking, followed by engaging in actions to end the danger.  Species-wide threats must be faced with species-wide awareness and engagement.


    The further question that awaits an answer, assuming we can change our modes of thinking, is whether we are sufficiently powerful to control and eliminate the threats posed by the weapons.  Individually we are not and nationally we are not.  But collectively and globally we have the potential to assert a constructive power for change that is far greater than the destructive power of the weapons themselves.