Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Congress

  • Presidential First Use vs. Congress

    This article is part of a series from the November 2017 Harvard University conference entitled “Presidential First Use: Is it legal? Is it constitutional? Is it just?” To access all of the transcripts from this conference, click here.

    What are the constitutional limits on the president, if any, when it comes to using nuclear weapons? What kind of decision making comes into play when we think of the unthinkable: nuclear war? I say “unthinkable” because for over 70 years the idea around nuclear deterrence has been that we have these terribly destructive nuclear weapons in order to make sure that we do not use them. They used to call this MAD—“mutually assured destruction”—and it is mad. It is totally insane. But this idea remains the international framework for restraint.

    The nuclear disarmament treaties of the last decades have been bilateral and multilateral. Such treaties have significantly decreased the number of weapons in the US and Russian arsenals; eliminated nuclear aboveground testing and nearly all belowground testing; prevented nearly all countries from acquiring or developing nuclear weapons; and restrained those nations that have nuclear weapons from acquiring new ones. These were no small accomplishments. Congress has enshrined most of these into US law, either by ratifying treaties or by authorizing and funding nonproliferation programs. I firmly believe that Congress would not have acted in these ways without a very engaged citizenry.

    And now here we are today. Speaking for myself, I don’t believe that I’ve ever been so worried about a possible nuclear confrontation in my life. Nuclear weapon use can be triggered very quickly and then can escalate so rapidly that before we know it we’re in a nuclear war. The national command authority is very simple. The president makes the decision to use nuclear weapons and the secretary of defense executes the order. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you right now, I don’t know what will. Once the decision is made and in the process of being carried out, our systems of checks and balances don’t apply. Congress couldn’t stop it. The Supreme Court couldn’t stop it. The way it’s set up, not even the secretary of defense in theory has the authority to stop it.

    This is far from what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they drafted and adopted the document as the foundation of all our laws and democratic institutions. The framers gave the power to declare war to Congress. That is why H.R. 669 and S. 200, the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, was introduced by Congressman Ted Lieu of California and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, in January 2017. This bill prohibits any and every president from using US armed forces to carry out a first-use nuclear strike unless Congress has declared war and authorized such a first strike. I’m proud to be the very first cosponsor of the House bill, H.R. 669, which currently has 77 cosponsors: not a bad beginning.

    Requiring that Congress authorize a nuclear first strike shouldn’t be a Democrat or Republican issue. This is a commonsense issue. The bill clearly defines a first strike as meaning that the enemy has not launched a nuclear weapon against the United States or an ally of the United States. If another country launches a nuclear weapon at us, the President does have the right to proportionate self-defense under international law.

    Some might argue that prohibiting the United States from striking first with a nuclear weapon ties the president’s hands and makes the country vulnerable to attack. However, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, a true champion of rational nuclear disarmament, has noted that in any imaginable scenario, the US military could rely on our conventional arsenal alone to deliver a first strike of devastating force. That conventional arsenal includes our B-2 bombers, our cruise missiles, our Tomahawks, our nonnuclear ICBMs, and a huge range of weaponry. We’ve seen the destructive capacity of those conventional first-strike weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Limiting a first strike involving nuclear force does not leave us weak or vulnerable.

    Democrats were strongly pushing President Obama to adopt a no-first-strike policy when he was in office. This is not just about President Trump. We have been contemplating this policy for quite some time. But it will take many more cosponsors for this bill to have any chance of moving in the House or the Senate. It will take the Republican leadership of Congress being a lot more nervous about the possibility of the president actually launching a nuclear strike. Meanwhile we have the President backing away from hard-won international agreements to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranians. We have him exchanging ever more heated taunts with nuclear-armed North Korea. This is why the Markey-Lieu bill is so absolutely necessary.

    Congress needs to assert its Constitutional authority when it comes to war, and especially when it comes to the catastrophic possibility of nuclear war. I’m proud to have also joined with Senator Markey and Representative Conyers to introduce bipartisan, bicameral legislation to reaffirm Congress’s constitutional power over first strike on North Korea. H.R. 4140, the No Unconstitutional Strike against North Korea Act, was introduced last October with 60 co-sponsors. Two of them are Republicans. The bill restricts any funds from being used to launch a military strike against North Korea without prior approval from Congress. That’s any strike, not just a nuclear strike. Because war is war is war is war, and only Congress has the right to declare and authorize it.

    I worry that President Trump actually believes that we have some kind of missile defense system able to knock all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons out of the sky if they were to launch a nuclear weapon. No such thing exists. We cannot guarantee the protection of ourselves and our allies.

    These current crises, threatening and as frightening as they are, speak to the underlying and long-unresolved crisis of nuclear weapons themselves. President Obama began a program of so-called nuclear modernization, which would update, not just maintain, the current US nuclear arsenal, and replace older nuclear weapons with modern versions. President Trump has doubled down on that proposal to modernize and update our current nuclear weapons, and is proposing to create new nuclear weapons.

    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with a report that estimated the cost of President Trump’s plans to maintain and replace the US nuclear arsenal over 30 years at $1.24 trillion. That is $200 billion more than the last estimate. When you factor in inflation the price tag soars to $1.7 trillion. These costs are simply unsustainable. They threaten the entire federal budget, including the rest of the military budget.

    The CBO report also laid out several different options for improving our military force structure that are much more cost-effective. This is important, because the Pentagon sometimes likes to paint its proposals in very stark terms: either give us everything we ask for or we’re all gonna die. That’s a false choice, as the CBO report makes abundantly clear.

    However, I fervently believe that the best choice the United States can make, and that the world can make, is to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether. I realize that this can’t be done in a day. I’m not a fool. But my fear right now is that there has been a shift in thinking among the nuclear powers—not just the United States and Russia but also France, the UK, and China, not to mention India, Pakistan, and North Korea—that nuclear arsenals must be protected, updated, and increased, all with an eye to the inevitable use of a nuclear strike against an enemy in the foreseeable future.

    While the nuclear powers are hunkering down, the rest of the world is moving toward a demand for total nuclear disarmament. Not too long ago that was at least a future goal of nuclear powers: careful, verifiable, incremental disarmament, while assuring that no other nation acquired nuclear weapons capabilities. I fear for the current moment. We have members of Congress who think using a nuke against North Korea or Iran is not just something we should think about; they believe it is something we should do.

    I think it’s time to get moving again. It’s time once again to remind our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers that these are issues that affect every single American family, every single one of us. In a very busy world, where families are focused on picking up their kids from school, wondering how the economy is going to affect their jobs and their grocery bills, there is one more sure thing that we all need to remember: a nuclear war will kill us all. Quickly or slowly, it will kill all of us. Nuclear war not only devastates the people where it falls. Over time, it would devastate the world as we know it. That was once a commonly understood fact, but it’s been forgotten because so many other crises and hardships have moved to the forefront.

    It is time to remind everyone, including every single member of Congress, what the reality is. It is time to rebuild this movement across ages, across regions, cities, towns, suburbs, and rural communities, across genders and races, because a nuclear war will devastate us all. It’s important to remember, though, how different the times are now than when the freeze movement was organized. We no longer have a Democratic Congress. We don’t even have a moderate Republican Congress. We have a very conservative Republican-controlled House and Senate that have never moved forward any legislation outside their own narrow agenda. And we have a very unstable, volatile, erratic White House.

    In 1978 I was a college intern in the office of Senator George McGovern (no relation but one of my heroes). I had the privilege of attending a debate that he had with William F. Buckley Jr. at Yale University. The debate was entitled “Resolved: That the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Are in the Interest of US National Security.” Senator McGovern concluded by referring to a 1963 debate on a limited nuclear test ban treaty. And here’s what he said that night at Yale:

    Senator Everett Dirksen took the floor to close the debate. He said that he had just reread John Hersey’s Hiroshima, the description of what happened to that great city, the morning after. The scene of one family sitting charred around the breakfast table; out in the yard, bits and pieces of children’s clothing; the broken arm of a doll; toys and debris scattered over the landscape. And he said, “I thought about that scene, and I said that someday Everett Dirksen will be buried in Illinois, and when that happens, I don’t want them to put on my gravestone, ‘He knew about this, and he didn’t care.’”

    We need to show that we care. We need to build this movement. Time is of the essence.

  • Open Letter to Members of the U.S. Congress: Act to Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe

    To add your name to this Open Letter, click here.

    This may be the most dangerous time in human history.  The Roman emperor Nero is remembered for having fiddled while Rome burned.  We may be witnessing the far more dangerous Nuclear Age equivalent to Nero’s fiddling in the form of the nuclear threat exchanges between Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

    The U.S. has elected a man to its highest office who is erratic, impulsive, thin-skinned and generally imprudent and insufficiently informed on nuclear and foreign policy issues.  As president, he possesses unrestricted authority to threaten and use the weapons of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which could lead not only to the destruction of our country but to dire consequences for the entire world.

    The president has already caused widespread national and global alarm by his behavior in office, including his participation in a dangerous and irrational escalation of threats directed at the erratic leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, which if executed would produce a monstrous catastrophe of untold consequences.  James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, a normally cautious civil servant, has described the president’s behavior as “downright scary and disturbing.”

    There are currently no restraints on the president’s ability to use the insanely powerful weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including using them in a first-strike attack rationalized as preventive war.  To allow this set of conditions to persist would be a perilous, perhaps fatal, abdication of Congressional responsibility, posing severe dangers to the peace and security of the country and world.

    What can be done?

    Having shown himself to be unfit for office, the president should be impeached and removed from office by the Congress as a matter of most urgent priority, or possibly removed from the presidency by recourse to procedures under the 25th amendment.

    Congress should also independently act to put unconditional restraints on any president’s ability to threaten or order a nuclear first-strike.  One approach would be enactment of the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act,” introduced by Senator Ed Markey and Representative Ted Lieu, which would prohibit the president from initiating a first-strike nuclear attack without a Congressional declaration of war expressly authorizing such strike.  We would urge even stronger legislation that would make illegal any U.S. nuclear first strike and threats to do so.

    We do not suggest that the Markey-Lieu legislation would cure a nuclear first-strike of its essential immorality and illegality under international law.  This legislation would, however, broaden the long-standing, dangerously centralized U.S. decision-making authority over a nuclear first-strike and could lead to a U.S. commitment never again to use nuclear weapons except in retaliation against a nuclear attack.

    While this proposed legislative initiative on first-strikes is a responsible effort to limit  presidential authority with respect to nuclear weapons under present conditions, we urge a parallel framework of restraint with respect to any contemplated threat or use of nuclear weapons by a U.S. president.  Additional legislation to this end needs to be proposed and enacted by Congress after appropriate vetting through hearings and public discussion as a matter of supreme national interest and for the benefit of global security.

    Furthermore, we would hope that in due course the United States would join with the majority of countries in the world in supporting the recently negotiated UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

  • Senator Edward Markey’s Speech on the Senate Floor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Statement Against Nuclear Air-Launched Cruise Missile

    Rep. Earl BlumenauerToday, the House of Representatives voted on my amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2015 that would have prevented a $3.4 million down payment on a new nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) and redirect that funding towards the cleanup and removal of unexploded military ordinance that litters every state in the country.

    This amendment looks modest, only redirecting $3.4 million. Allowing this seed money to go forward, however, commits us to billions down the road, without a reason or rationale for doing so.  The new ALCM does not yet have an official price tag, but estimates range from $20 to $30 billion.  A rebuilt nuclear warhead to go on it adds another $12 billion. That’s over $40 billion. Based on our past experience with runaway costs for nuclear weapons development, it is very likely that cost is going to increase over time.

    We don’t need a new nuclear cruise missile, especially when our current arsenal is good through the mid-2030s. We certainly don’t need both a bomber armed with new air-dropped nuclear bombs that taxpayers just finished paying for, and a nuclear cruise missile to meet our deterrence requirements and those of our allies.

    What’s worse, a mass U.S. deployment of new nuclear cruise missiles could renew an arms race we’ve already agreed to end, pushing China, Pakistan and others to seek this capability.

    This $3.4 million is just the beginning.  My amendment would have stopped the momentum for this wasteful program that does nothing to keep America secure. It would have instead used that money for the accelerated cleanup of unexploded bombs on US soil, something that would actually keep our families and communities safe, while returning land to productive economic use at the same time.

    My amendment to rein in spending on nuclear weapons didn’t pass, which is disappointing, but I’m not going to stop working to convince Congress and the American people that we need to get our priorities straight, make our communities safer, and stop expanding our already bloated nuclear programs.

  • The Legacy of Christina Taylor Green

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.


    Ruben ArvizuWhen Jared Lee Loughner cowardly shot a group of people gathered exercising a fundamental act of democracy, his mission was to cause death, havoc and dismay.  Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was conducting an open dialogue with her constituents outside a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona, when she was gravely wounded and remains in stable but critical condition. There were 11 other people gravely wounded.


    The list of dead includes John M. Roll, a respected federal judge, Dorwin Stoddard who shielded his wife, Mavanell, with his own body, Phyllis Schnell, a widow and great-grandmother,  Gabe Zimmerman,  Congresswoman Gifford’s assistant director of community outreach, who was 30 years old and engaged to be married,  Dorothy Morris, a lady of 76 years. And Christina Taylor Green, only nine years old.


    Christina’s passage through life was short, yet full of enormous significance, as exemplified by her optimism, her joy for life, nature, her love for family, friends and her interest in learning how to better serve her country. Christina went to the Gifford event to learn more about the political process.


    Being one of the 50 babies born on the day of the fateful 9/11/2001 featured in the book Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11, she and those other babies represent a glimmer of hope after one of the most tragic events in U.S. history.  She knew the meaning of being born on a date that marked a radical change in politics and international relationships. Her desire to learn how to conduct a democratic life led her to be a member of the student council and became a leader in her school, Mesa Verde Elementary. Her parents have said she wanted to eliminate hatreds and prejudices that divide us rather than unite us. Her life, as defined by her father, John Green,  “she was vibrant,  she was the best daughter in the world, and beautiful in her nine years of existence.”


    Christina was part of the new generation born in this 21st century that could  lead us towards a path to make urgent changes we need in a society increasingly apathetic and selfish.


    We at NAPF firmly believe that being free of nuclear weapons is the primary mission to safeguard the human race, and we pay a humble tribute to this lovely little girl filled with love for her family and all who were fortunate enough to know her. Her legacy should be a positive example for all of us who live now and for future generations.

  • Rethink Missile Defense Plan

    Most Americans would agree that the country faces multiple threats.

    Osama bin Laden remains at large. North Korea is pressing ahead with its nuclear program, and Iran is likely to become the newest member of the nuclear club. In Iraq, the stubborn insurgency takes a daily toll on American forces and has stretched the Army thin.

    Refusing to set priorities in this dangerous world would qualify as the “failure of imagination” the 9/11 Commission warned about. And yet that’s what the White House and Congress are showing as they rush to deploy a faulty missile defense system against a threat that, for now, is relatively low.

    That’s not to say that missile defense is without future value or that the threat is nonexistent. Intelligence sources say North Korea may have an untested missile that could reach the United States, and in time, other countries will acquire that capability. But deploying a missile defense program before it’s proven won’t deter enemies, and it drains funds from more urgent priorities.

    Even if last week’s $85 million test of an interceptor missile had worked – which it didn’t – the White House would still fall short in its rationale for spending $11 billion a year on the system. That’s double what the Clinton administration spent on its policy of “robust research and development” of missile defense, and it comes at a time when the federal deficit is out of control.

    The system being developed would rely on interceptor missiles in California and Alaska and aboard ships to attack enemy missiles at liftoff. Airborne lasers would fire at warheads re-entering the atmosphere.

    As Ronald Reagan learned from his “Star Wars” proposal, a missile defense system wouldn’t stop a massive attack from a super power. It’s intended, instead, to stop a very small number of missiles from rogue nations such as North Korea or Iran.

    But weigh the program against other threats that compete with it for funding:

    . Loose warheads . A terrorist group obtaining nuclear warheads or chemical and biological weapons from the former Soviet Union’s tattered arsenal could strike the United States by smuggling a bomb across our porous borders. A rogue state might also prefer that method of attack since, unlike a missile, a suitcase bomb leaves no “return address.”

    . New threats . The military has a term for the new threats it faces: asymmetric warfare. Building a military with the size, speed and flexibility to defeat new enemies means restraining spending on old threats such as Cold War-era ballistic missiles.

    . Short-range missiles . The threat from short-range missiles fired by Iran or North Korea is very real, as the Israelis and Japanese well know. But the missile defense program does little to protect U.S. allies or troops stationed abroad.

    As for the ballistic missile threat from rogue nations, the potential danger is real enough to warrant continued research but not premature deployment.

    Deploying a system that repeatedly fails sends a message that missile defense is more about politics than protection. This is not the time for a lapse in imagination.

  • Increasing the Nuclear Threat: A Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post

    In his Nov. 16 op-ed piece, “New Threats, Old Weapons,” retired Adm. Robert R. Monroe said that to have a more effective deterrent against rogue states and terrorist groups, we need a new generation of nuclear weapons.

    His notion that a leaner nuclear arsenal will deter rogue states and terrorist groups from using nuclear weapons to harm us presumes that we are dealing with reasonable adversaries. Given the tactics that terrorists use, that is a naive assumption.

    Further, the Bush administration’s January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review stresses the importance of being prepared to use nuclear weapons in an offensive manner and against a wider range of countries, even those that are not nuclear. In my view, the president’s initiatives to develop additional nuclear weapons are not about deterrence but about adding a tool to our military arsenal.

    Adm. Monroe said that we must have nuclear weapons with “greatly increased accuracy,” “specialized capabilities” and “tailored effects.” But according to Stanford University physicist Sidney Drell, the effects of even a small nuclear bunker buster would be disastrous. A one-kiloton weapon detonated 20 to 50 feet underground would dig a crater the size of Ground Zero and eject a million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the air.

    Our reopening the nuclear door to a new generation of weapons will only encourage proliferation. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent statement that Russia is developing new nuclear missile systems is testimony to that effect.

    This year Congress eliminated funding for new nuclear weapons programs in the recent appropriations bill. This was the right move because, to make our nation safer from nuclear threats, the best investment we could make is to secure nuclear materials at facilities around the world while insisting that other nations follow us down the path of nonproliferation.

    Dianne Feinstein U.S. Senator (D-Calif.) Washington

  • Congress Says No to New Nuclear Weapons

    Congress Says No to New Nuclear Weapons

    It is not often that we are able to report a victory in the effort to chart a new course for US nuclear policy, but we can do so today.  Since the Bush administration began pursuing research on new and more usable nuclear weapons, we have said that this sends the wrong message to the world and violates US obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The administration has been pursuing new “bunker buster” nuclear weapons and “mini-nukes,” also referred to as low yield nuclear weapons.  It turns out that Congress agrees with those of us who oppose new nuclear weapons.  In a bipartisan show of support, Congress denied funding for nuclear bunker busters and advanced concepts research on new nuclear weapons designs that could have included low yield nuclear weapons.

    Congress passed the Omnibus Appropriations Bill on November 20, 2004 with no funding for new nuclear weapons.  In this Bill, Congress also slashed the administration’s request for funds for a new facility to build plutonium pits for new nuclear weapons from $29.8 million to $7 million.  This represents a major defeat for the Bush administration and its efforts to pursue new and more usable nuclear weapons.

    Chairman David Hobson (R-Ohio) of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee played a major role in removing funding for the administration’s pursuit of new nuclear weapons.  Strong support in the Senate came from Senator Dianne Feinstein.

    This year, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation launched its Turn the Tide Campaign to chart a new course for US nuclear policy.  The Campaign Statement begins: “The US government has the paramount responsibility to assure a more secure and far safer environment for its citizens.  In continuing its long tradition of demonstrating world leadership, the US government can protect Americans and their families, as well as people throughout the world, by significantly reducing and eliminating the threats posed by nuclear weapons.”

    Stopping all efforts to create dangerous new nuclear weapons and delivery systems is the first policy that the Turn the Tide Campaign calls for the President and all members of Congress to immediately implement. The Congressional action on the Omnibus Appropriations Bill is an important step toward achieving this end.

    The Turn the Tide Campaign Statement contains 13 points, including securing fissile materials around the world and canceling plans to build new nuclear weapons production plants.  For a copy of the full Campaign Statement and information on becoming involved in the Turn the Tide Campaign, visit the Action Page at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s web site.

    David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • US Defense Bill Funds Study for a New Nuclear Weapon

    On November 12, 2002 Congress approved the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2003, H.R. 4546; a bill that authorizes funds for the Defense Department and for the nuclear weapons activites of the Energy Department. Though the final version of this defense bill still contains some serious setbacks for nuclear disarmament, several dangerous aspects of the original version of the bill that was originally approved by the House of Representatives were ultimately removed.

    The defense bill funds a request by the administration for $15 million to begin the first year of a three-year feasibility study on another new nuclear warhead, called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), or “bunker buster.” Though the Senate had deleted the funds in its original version of the defense bill, the funding was ultimately approved in conference. The proposed study of this new weapon is chilling because creating more “usable” tactical nuclear weapons increases the chance that the United States will eventually break the taboo on nuclear weapons use.

    The bill does require the Defense Department to submit a report before it will have access to the funds. The National Academy of Sciences will conduct a study for Congress on the short-term and long-term effects of using a nuclear earth penetrator on the nearby civilian population and on U.S. military personnel who may carry out operations in the area after such use.

    The final authorization bill fully preserves the current prohibition on developing nuclear weapons with yields of less than five kilotons, also known as “mini-nukes.” The original House version of the defense bill threatened to weaken the 1993 Congressional ban and would have allowed research to begin on developing these new nuclear weapons.

    The final bill also toned down language originally approved by the House that would have required the Energy Department’s Nevada Test Site to be able to resume nuclear testing within 12 months. Instead, the final bill simply requires the administration to prepare cost estimates of being able to resume testing within 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. Test readiness continues to be an issue of great concern, particularly as Defense Secretary Edward Aldridge has recently urged the nuclear weapons laboratories to reassess the need for nuclear testing.

    The significant initiative for advancement of nuclear weapons technologically over the course of this defense bill’s negotiation was startling. That the Democratically controlled Senate had a clear impact on toning down the nuclear weapons language of this year’s defense bill is of equal concern. The Republican-controlled Senate may not have the same influence on the 2004 military spending bills.

  • A Bleak Day for America

    A Bleak Day for America

    Today is a bleak day for America, and for all Americans. Congress, in its fear and conformity, has voted to grant authority to the President to conduct a preemptive war against another nation. Congress has joined the President in assuming an imperial mantle, granting powers above and beyond our obligations under international and domestic law.

    Would that Congress had heeded its wiser and saner voices, such as Senator Robert Byrd, who cautioned restraint and warned that the vote to authorize the rush to war undermined our Constitution. Only Congress has the power to declare war under the US Constitution. It cannot legally give this power over to the president.

    “We are at the gravest of moments,” Senator Byrd told his colleagues. “Members of Congress must not simply walk away from their Constitutional responsibilities. We are the directly elected representatives of the American people, and the American people expect us to carry out our duty, not simply hand it off to this or any other president. To do so would be to fail the people we represent and to fall woefully short of our sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution.”

    International law, as imbedded in the United Nations Charter, allows for war under two tightly circumscribed conditions. First, a nation may engage in force for self-defense when an attack occurs or is imminent, but only if there is not time to take the matter to the United Nations Security Council and only until the United Nations Security Council assumes control of the situation. Second, a nation may engage in force when duly authorized by the United Nations Security Council after all efforts to secure the peace by peaceful means have failed.

    Despite the congressional vote of false authority to the President, neither of these conditions of authorization to engage in war has been fulfilled. There is no evidence that an attack by Iraq on the United States or any other nation is imminent. Nor have the peaceful means to resolve Iraq’s compliance with earlier Security Council resolutions calling for dismantlement of weapons of mass destruction been pursued since the United Nations, under pressure from the United States, pulled its inspectors out of Iraq four years ago. Iraq has indicated its willingness to resume inspections, but the Bush administration has been reluctant to take Yes for an answer and accept their offer of compliance.

    September 11th will be remembered in America as the tragic day terrorists made evident the vulnerability of even the world’s most powerful nation. October 11th should be remembered as the day that Congress meekly and uncourageously gave to the President of the United States the illegal authority to commit preemptive war. Such war, in the context of World War II called “aggressive war,” is what Nazi and Japanese leaders were held to account for at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials following World War II.

    Such war is far from the proud traditions of America dating back to its Declaration of Independence. This is not the way that America should be leading the world, for it will result in international chaos, instability and increased insecurity. Now it is up to ordinary Americans to take to the streets and by their presence make it known in Washington and throughout the world that the American public does not support putting the face of Saddam on the innocent children of Iraq; nor does it support high-altitude bombing and other of acts of aggressive warfare in the name of a false and Orwellian peace.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His latest book is Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age.