Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Daisaku Ikeda

  • Message to the Symposium from Daisaku Ikeda

    Message to the symposium

    “The Fierce Urgency of Nuclear Zero: Changing the Discourse”
    Santa Barbara, USA

    It is a great honor to be able to hold this international symposium “The Fierce Urgency of Nuclear Zero: Changing the Discourse,” here in Santa Barbara, this beautiful city set between the mountains and the sea. On behalf of Soka Gakkai International (SGI) members in 192 countries and territories worldwide, I would like to express our most heartfelt gratitude to all participants and all those whose support has made this event possible.

    For years, Dr. David Krieger has led the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) with unyielding energy and vision as it has developed a broad range of activities for peace. In addition to this symposium, it has been our pleasure to support and collaborate with NAPF on a number of projects, including the collection of some 5 million signatures for the Nuclear Zero campaign and cosponsoring an event calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons held in The Hague. Allow me to take this opportunity to express again my deepest respect for Dr. Krieger and all our esteemed friends at NAPF.

    In light of the continued spread of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of related threats, there is shared and growing concern about the inhumane nature of these weapons. We see this in the increasing number of countries supporting the “Humanitarian Pledge” as a path to resolving this issue. Within global civil society, there is a rising chorus of voices calling for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons, with new forms of action being increasingly taken up by members of the younger generation.

    Against this backdrop, this past August, the United Nations Open-ended Working Group adopted a set of recommendations calling for the holding of a conference in 2017 to negotiate a legally binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons. It is imperative that this conference be held next year, decisively strengthening momentum to bring the age of nuclear weapons to a close.

    The enduring inspiration for the SGI’s efforts for nuclear abolition is the declaration made by the second president of the Soka Gakkai, Josei Toda, in 1957, at the height of Cold War tensions, in which he denounced these weapons as an absolute evil and called for their elimination. To quote that declaration: “Although a movement calling for a ban on the testing of atomic or nuclear weapons has arisen around the world, it is my wish to go further, to attack the problem at its root. I want to expose and rip out the claws that lie hidden in the very depths of such weapons.”

    As Buddhists who regard the sanctity of life as a paramount value, we have worked with people and organizations who share our commitment, engaging in a wide range of activities in venues throughout the world. These have included mounting exhibitions and creating a variety of forums for dialogue and learning.These activities have been rooted in the conviction that the key to breaking through the current deadlock lies in fostering global solidarity among ordinary citizens, unleashing the power of change and ushering in the dawn of a new and hope-filled era.

    The challenge of nuclear weapons abolition must be a shared global enterprise, engaging all states and civil society actors. It is a struggle to counter the core pathology of contemporary civilization—the all-too-casual disregard for life, its value and sanctity. The struggle for nuclear abolition is an effort to redirect the world toward an authentically human orientation. Today is United Nations Day, and I am confident that the elimination of nuclear weapons must be a vital milepost toward the enduring realization of the ideals of the UN Charter: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person.”

    We must bring this nuclear age to an end. To achieve this, we are committed to continuing our efforts, with unflagging energy and alongside our respected friends, to expand the global popular solidarity for nuclear weapons abolition.

    In closing, I offer my best wishes for the health, well-being and success of all the participants in this symposium.

    Daisaku Ikeda
    President, Soka Gakkai International (SGI)
    October 24, 2016

  • Daisaku Ikeda’s Perseverance and Passion for Peace

    David KriegerDaisaku Ikeda is a man with a great heart and a great vision for humanity’s future.  I admire not only his passion for peace, as expressed in his annual Peace Proposals, but also his perseverance.  He does not give up.  He has a deep well of creativity.  His words have power because he is a man of conviction and action.


    This year’s Peace Proposal is titled, “Toward a World of Dignity for All: the Triumph of the Creative Life.”  I share a passion for the world Daisaku Ikeda envisions, a world of dignity for all.  I once rewrote the US Pledge of Allegiance as a World Citizens’ Pledge.  It said, “I pledge allegiance to the Earth and to its varied life forms; one world, indivisible, with liberty, justice and dignity for all.”  We should not be satisfied until the least among us is able to live a life of dignity.


    Daisaku Ikeda has correctly highlighted the importance of the eight Millennium Development Goals.  These goals are not sufficient, but they are necessary steps on the path to “dignity for all.”  If they are to be fulfilled, we must stop spending so lavishly on the world’s military forces and transfer a reasonable percentage of these resources toward ending poverty and disease while promoting education, environmental protection and the rights of women.


    I agree strongly with Daisaku Ikeda about leadership: in the “absence of international political leadership, civil society should step in to fill the gap, providing the energy and vision needed to move the world in a new and better direction.” 


    In recent weeks, we have seen wonderful examples of tens of thousands of people in Middle East countries taking to the streets and providing the leadership to oust dictators and demand new governments capable of assuring dignity for all citizens.  These citizen leaders have inspired each other and people throughout the world with their courage, compassion and commitment.


    The goal of abolishing nuclear weapons should be high on the agenda for achieving human dignity.  These weapons, with their implicit threat of indiscriminate mass murder, devalue the human species by their very existence.  They have also taken precious financial and human resources from human development goals. 


    I agree with Daisaku Ikeda’s perspective that “it is necessary to thoroughly challenge the theory of deterrence upon which nuclear weapons possession is predicated.”  Nuclear deterrence is a theory of human behavior, and it has many flaws that could result in the catastrophic use of nuclear weapons.


    Recently, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation held a conference on “The Dangers of Nuclear Deterrence.”  Out of that conference, we created a “Santa Barbara Declaration,” a call to action to reject nuclear deterrence.  The Declaration lists eight major problems with nuclear deterrence and states, “Nuclear deterrence is discriminatory, anti-democratic and unsustainable.  This doctrine must be discredited and replaced with an urgent commitment to achieve global nuclear disarmament.  We must change the discourse by speaking truth to power and speaking truth to each other.”


    Nuclear weapons have no place in a world that values human dignity.  My great goal in life is to see these weapons totally abolished.  This would represent a change of heart and orientation for humanity.  It would mean that we had come together in common cause to assure that these weapons could not destroy the civilizations we have so painstakingly built and maintained over many millennia. 


    I concur with Daisaku Ikeda and his mentor, Josei Toda, that nuclear weapons represent an “absolute evil,” one that cannot be tolerated if we are to fulfill our responsibility to ourselves and to future generations.  Ikeda points out that standing between our existing world and a world free of nuclear weapons are “walls of apathy.” 


    Our great challenge today is to break down these walls of apathy and replace them with gardens of creativity.  Upon such creativity can be built a shining world of “dignity for all,” one in which nuclear weapons exist only as a historical memory and powerful lesson about humanity’s capacity to overcome great threats by joining hands in common purpose.

  • 2010 United Nations Day Keynote Address

    Thank you to the San Francisco Chapter of the United Nations Association for organizing this celebration of the 65th anniversary of the United Nations and for bringing together such an impressive group of leaders for this event.  Thank you also to Soka Gakkai International for hosting this event in your Ikeda Auditorium.  

    I want to draw attention to the beauty of the flower arrangements on the dais.  They are filled with sunflowers, and sunflowers are the universal symbol of a world without nuclear weapons.  Whenever you see a sunflower, I hope you will think of the need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.  Sunflowers are beautiful, natural and nutritious.  They turn toward the sun.  They stand in stark contrast to the manmade missiles that threaten death and destruction on a massive scale.  Sunflowers remind us of the importance of preserving the natural beauty of our planet and ending the manmade threats of massive annihilation with which we currently live.

    My subject today is nuclear disarmament.  The United Nations Charter was signed on June 23, 1945.  The first nuclear weapon was tested successfully just over three weeks later on July 16, 1945.  The United Nations sought to save the world from the “scourge of war,” among other high ideals.  Nuclear weapons threatened to destroy the world.

    The subject of nuclear weapons is one that many people, perhaps most, understandably would like to put out of their minds.  Assuring a human future demands that we resist that temptation.

    We know that a single nuclear weapon can destroy a city and a few nuclear weapons can destroy a country.   Scientists also tell us that an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on cities, such as could occur between India and Pakistan, could result in a billion fatalities, due to blockage of sunlight and crop failures leading to mass starvation, in addition to the blast, fire and radiation.  A full scale nuclear war could destroy the human species and most complex forms of life on Earth.  

    Given such high stakes, why do we tolerate nuclear weapons?  I believe that there are two major reasons.  First, we have been misled to believe that nuclear weapons actually protect their possessors.  They do not.  These weapons can be used to threaten retaliation, to retaliate or to attack preventively in a first-strike, but they cannot protect.  

    Second, we have grown far too complacent about these devices of mass annihilation over the period of 65 years since their last use in warfare.  But the odds of catastrophe are too high for complacency.  According to Stanford Professor Emeritus Martin Hellman, an expert in risk analysis, a child born today has at least a ten percent chance over the course of his or her expected lifetime of dying in a nuclear attack and possibly as high as a fifty percent chance.  These are clearly unacceptable odds.

    Any use of nuclear weapons would be a crime against humanity.  These weapons cannot discriminate between soldiers and civilians, and the unnecessary suffering they cause is virtually boundless and can continue through generations.  The International Court of Justice, in its 1996 landmark Advisory Opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, described the unique characteristics of nuclear weapons as “their capacity to cause untold human suffering, and their ability to cause damage to generations to come.”  The Court wrote: “The destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time.  They have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.”

    The use, even the threat of use, of nuclear weapons is morally abhorrent.  The possession of nuclear weapons should be taboo.  No country has the right to possess weapons that could destroy our species and much of life.  They threaten our true inalienable rights – as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to life, liberty and security of person.  Nuclear weapons are the negation of these rights.  They are an extreme manifestation of fear and militarism, reflecting the most destructive elements of the human spirit.

    The generations who are alive today on the planet are challenged by the imperative to end the nuclear weapons era and strengthen our common efforts for achieving the global good as reflected in the eight Millennium Development Goals.  This will require leadership.  At present, this leadership has resided primarily with the United Nations and with civil society organizations.  The UN and its supporting civil society organizations have provided vision and direction for social responsibility on disarmament, demilitarization and improving the lives of the world’s people.  

    The key to achieving a world without nuclear weapons lies in a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  But agreement on such a treaty will require a far greater commitment by the governments of the world, including the nine nuclear weapon states.  The United States, as the most powerful of these governments, will need to be pushed from below by its citizens.  Each of us needs to embrace this issue, along with whatever other issues move us to action.  It is an issue on which the future of humanity and life rest.  

    I’d like to share with you a reflection from my new book, God’s Tears, Reflections on the Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It is called, “The Final Period?”

    The Final Period?

    “Scientists tell us that the universe was created with a “Big Bang” some 15 billion years ago.  To represent this enormous stretch of time, we can imagine a 15,000 page book.  It would be a very large and heavy book, some 50 times larger than a normal book.  In this book, each page would represent one million years in the history of the universe.  If there were 1,000 words on each page, each word would represent 1,000 years.  

    “Most of the book would be about the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang.  Our solar system would not occur in this history of the universe until page 10,500.  It would take another 500 pages until the first primitive forms of life occurred on Earth some four billion years ago.  The slow evolution of life would occupy the book nearly to its end.  It would not be until page 14,997 that human-like creatures would appear on the planet, and it would not be until just ten words from the end of page 15,000 that human civilization would make its appearance.  

    “The Nuclear Age, which began in 1945, would be represented by the final period, the punctuation mark on the last page of the 15,000 page book.  This small mark at the end of the volume indicates where we are today: inheritors of a 15 billion year history with the capacity to destroy ourselves and most other forms of life with our technological achievements.  It is up to us to assure that the page is turned, and that we move safely into the future, free from the threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity and all forms of life.”

    Let me conclude with these thoughts: As the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have warned us over and over, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.”  We must choose, and we are fortunate that we still have a choice.  In another great war, such as World War II, the war that gave birth to both nuclear weapons and the United Nations, that choice could be foreclosed.  Or, it could be foreclosed in less dramatic ways, by a nuclear accident or nuclear terrorism.  

    Now, today, we have the opportunity to turn the page of that great book that documents the development of our universe, the evolution of life and the history of humankind.  Let us seize that opportunity with all our hearts and all our capacities by working to abolish nuclear weapons, strengthen the United Nations and international law, and put the missing Millennium Development Goal, disarmament, to work in achieving the elimination of poverty and hunger, and the promotion of education, health care, opportunity and hope for all of the world’s people.

  • A Message to Youth: Live to Your Full Capacity and Save the Planet

    This speech was delivered to the youth of Soka Gakkai International in Japan on February 8, 2010.

    I want to talk with you as youth, as a group of youth who care about our world.  One thing is certain: You will inherit the world.  It will not be either the strong or the meek who will inherit the Earth; for better or for worse, it will be the youth.  You will inherit what we, the older generation, leave to you, and you will hopefully do better than we have done in preserving this beautiful planet and the diversity of its life forms.  You will hopefully do better in achieving and maintaining peace on our planet.  You will also have the eventual responsibility, as each generation does, to pass the world on in tact to the next generation.  

    New generations of youth keep coming, like waves against the shore.  Now it is your turn to reach the shore.  As animals once left the sea for the land, you now come of age to take responsibility in the world.  And you come of age at a time of great challenge.  The generations of your parents and grandparents have left you a world that is fraught with dangers and inequities.  The test of your generation will be in the way you create a more just and decent world.  But you will have another challenge as well.  You will have to navigate the dangers of nuclear weapons – weapons capable of ending civilization and destroying most life on Earth.

    The human future is not guaranteed.  That is the most profound meaning of the Nuclear Age.  It is an era in which we have created weapons that are capable of omnicide, the destruction of all.  Omnicide is an extension of suicide and genocide to the entire world.  We live in a time when it is possible to destroy everything.  We have proven our cleverness in creating tools of destruction.  Now it is up to us, and to you as youth in particular, to find the means to assure that these tools are not used and are abolished.

    How will you do this?  To start with, you must recognize the nature of the problem.  This is no ordinary problem that can be left to work itself out.  It requires a plan.  Who will create and implement such a plan?  Who will take the lead in assuring that we are progressing toward zero nuclear weapons?  The problem could become much worse than it is today.  Instead of nine nuclear weapon states, imagine a world in which there are 20 or 50 or 100.  What kind of world would that be?  

    We have a Non-Proliferation Treaty that seeks to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons.  That treaty has a provision for nuclear disarmament, so that there will not be permanent classes of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”  Everyone recognizes that such a world would not be fair, so Article VI of the treaty requires that the nuclear weapon states engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament.  The International Court of Justice interpreted this clause in its 1996 Advisory Opinion on the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.  They said, “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    I would like to share with you some additional reasons to abolish nuclear weapons:

    1. They are long-distance killing machines incapable of discriminating between soldiers and civilians, the aged and the newly born, or between men, women and children.   As such, they are instruments of dehumanization as well as annihilation.

    2. They threaten the destruction of cities, countries and civilization; of all that is sacred, of all that is human, of all that exists.  Nuclear war could cause deadly climate change, putting human existence at risk.  Here is what one researcher, Steven Starr, concluded from reviewing the recent literature on nuclear weapons and climate change: “The detonation of a tiny fraction of the operational nuclear arsenals within cities would generate enough smoke to cause catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of the protective stratospheric ozone layer.  Environmental devastation caused by a war fought with many thousands of strategic nuclear weapons would quickly leave the Earth uninhabitable.”

    3. They threaten to foreclose the future, negating our common responsibility to future generations.

    4. They make cowards of their possessors, and in their use there can be no decency or honor.  This was recognized by most of the leading US generals and admirals of World War II, including Dwight Eisenhower, Hap Arnold, Omar Bradley, and William Leahy.  Admiral Leahy, chief of staff to President Truman, said: “The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

    5. They divide the world’s nations into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” bestowing false and unwarranted prestige and privilege on those that possess them.  

    6. They are a distortion of science and technology, siphoning off our scientific and technological resources and twisting our knowledge of nature to destructive purposes.  On the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a senior Manhattan Project scientist, Hans Bethe, called upon “…all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons – and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.”  

    7. They mock international law, displacing it with an allegiance to raw power.  The International Court of Justice has ruled that the threat of use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal and any use that violated international humanitarian law would be illegal.  It is virtually impossible to imagine a threat or use of nuclear weapons that would not violate international humanitarian law by failing to discriminate between soldiers and civilians, causing unnecessary suffering or being disproportionate to a preceding attack.  

    8. They waste our resources on the development of instruments of annihilation.  The United States alone has spent over $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems since the onset of the Nuclear Age.

    9. They concentrate power in the hands of a small group of individuals and, in doing so, undermine democracy.  They give over to a few individuals, usually men, greater power of annihilation than at any previous time in history.

    10. They are morally abhorrent, as recognized by virtually every religious organization, and their mere existence corrupts our humanity.  If we are willing to tolerate these weapons and their indiscriminate power of annihilation, then who are we?  What do these weapons say about our humanity, our human decency?

    I think it should be clear that one primary goal for youth should be to act and to lead in abolishing nuclear weapons.  

    Later this year, in May, there will be an eighth Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.  This is the only treaty that has provisions requiring the nuclear weapon states to pursue the goal of nuclear disarmament.  It will be an important meeting after the failure of the last NPT Review Conference in 2005.  To give you an idea of how much there is to accomplish, I want to share with you the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s priority recommendations for the conference:

    1. Each signatory nuclear weapon state should provide an accurate public accounting of its nuclear arsenal, conduct a public environmental and human assessment of its potential use, and devise and make public a roadmap for going to zero nuclear weapons.

    2. All signatory nuclear weapon states should reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies by taking all nuclear forces off high-alert status, pledging No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear weapon states and No Use against non-nuclear weapon states.

    3. All enriched uranium and reprocessed plutonium – military and civilian – and their production facilities (including all uranium enrichment and plutonium separation technology) should be placed under strict and effective international safeguards.

    4. All signatory states should review Article IV of the NPT, promoting the “inalienable right” to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, in light of the nuclear proliferation problems posed by nuclear electricity generation.

    5. Each nuclear weapon state should comply with Article VI of the NPT, reinforced and clarified by the 1996 World Court Advisory Opinion, by commencing negotiations in good faith on a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons, and complete these negotiations by the year 2015.

    The problems may seem complex, but the bottom line is this: Nuclear weapons threaten the human future, and they must be abolished.  This is a human issue that is every bit as consequential as was the movement to abolish slavery in the 19th century.  There are some acts that cannot be tolerated, and slavery and the threat of nuclear omnicide are among them.

    You can be a voice for abolition by learning more, supporting the hibakusha, and speaking out for a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.  Don’t be satisfied with anything less than a clear commitment to a world with zero nuclear weapons, and demand more from political leaders who say that the goal is too difficult or cannot be achieved within their lifetime.  

    In addition to working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, your generation faces many other challenges as well.  There is no major international problem in our world that does not require international cooperation to solve.  Thus, we need to work together.  With modern communications and transportation, your generation is well equipped to cooperate across all borders.  Really, borders exist primarily in our minds.  They are not drawn upon the Earth, only on maps.  And all borders are permeable to ideas and trade, as well as to pollution and disease.  The bottom line is that we live in a single unitary world.  We all share one Earth, and we can make of it a paradise or a nightmare.  We choose – by our actions or inaction.    

    We live in a world of some 200 nation states.  Most of these spend far too much on their military forces, so that in total the world spends some $1.5 trillion a year on its militaries.  We know that for a relatively small proportion of this amount – five or ten percent – it would be possible to make enormous progress on the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals.  These goals include ending poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.  The achievement of these goals would reflect real advances in human security, and with relatively small reductions in global military expenditures we could make them happen.

    As you go through life, you will have many challenges.  Each of you will have to find your own way in the world.  I want to share with you 12 ideas on how to meet these challenges.  These involve using all your miraculous gifts to live to your full capacity as human beings.

    1.    Learn from others, but think for yourself.  (Use your mind and judgment.)

    2.    Decide for yourself what is right or wrong.  (Use your conscience.)

    3.    Speak out for what you believe in.  (Use your voice.)

    4.    Stand up for what is right. (Use your power as an individual.)

    5.    Set goals and be persistent in working for them.  (Use your vision and determination.)

    6.    Live by the Golden Rule.  That is, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  (Use your feelings as a point of reference.)

    7.    Recognize the miracle that you are.  You are unique in the universe.  (Be spiritually aware.)

    8.    Never harm another miracle.  Choose to solve conflicts without resort to violence.  (Be nonviolent.)

    9.    Believe in yourself.  (Be trustworthy, even to yourself.)

    10.    Help others.  (Be giving.)

    11.    Be a citizen of the world.  (Be inclusive and embrace all life.)

    12.    Be a force for peace and justice.  (Be courageous and committed.)

    I hope you will find joy in life and also contribute to creating a more just and decent world.  If you care about life and recognize its preciousness, you are needed to create a better future.  Albert Camus, the great French writer and philosopher, said: “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”

    Camus responded to the first atomic bombing in this way: “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only battle worth waging. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments – a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”  I stand with Albert Camus in choosing to wage peace.  I hope you will as well.

    As you may know, I engaged in a dialogue with SGI President Daisaku Ikeda.  We espoused the principle of choosing hope, rather than succumbing to ignorance, apathy or despair.  Hope gives rise to action, and action, in turn, gives rise to hope.  Our shared hope includes the goal of building a more peaceful world, free of nuclear weapons – a daunting but essential goal.  I stand with Daisaku Ikeda in choosing hope.  I’m sure that you stand with him as well.

    You are the future.  May each of you choose hope, wage peace, and live your lives fully and with a full measure of joy.  I wish you all much success.

    Let me conclude with a poem that I wrote for a Soka High School graduation some years ago.  I think its message remains valid today.

    ADVICE TO GRADUATES

    Always remember this:
    You are a miracle
    Made up of dancing atoms
    That can talk and sing,
    Listen and remember, and laugh,
    At times even at yourself.

    You are a miracle
    Whose atoms existed before time.
    Born of the Big Bang, you are connected
    To everything – to mountains and oceans,
    To the winds and wilderness, to the creatures
    Of the sea and air and land.
    You are a member of the human family.

    You are a miracle, entirely unique.
    There has never been another
    With your combination of talents, dreams,
    Desires and hopes.  You can create.
    You are capable of love and compassion.

    You are a miracle.
    You are a gift of creation to itself.
    You are here for a purpose, which you must find.
    Your presence here is sacred – and you will
    Change the world.

  • Steps Toward a Nuclear Free World

    This article was originally published by The Japan Times.

    In recent years there has been a growing chorus of calls for a world free from nuclear weapons. The Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference scheduled for this May will be a crucial test of the international community’s ability to unite toward this goal.

    Two keys to realizing a breakthrough will be creating institutional frameworks for pledges of nonuse of nuclear weapons and establishing clear norms for their prohibition.

    We should work, based on the existing NPT system, to expand the frameworks defining a legal obligation not to use nuclear weapons, in this way laying the institutional foundations for reducing their role in national security, while establishing international norms for their eventual prohibition. This can challenge the thinking that justifies nuclear weapons — the willingness to eliminate others for the sake of one’s own objectives — clearing the way for their abolition.

    U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has stated that nuclear weapons are immoral and should not be accorded any military value. As this indicates, nuclear weapons are not only an absolute evil, entirely impermissible from a humanitarian perspective; they epitomize the military spending that continues to absorb vast amounts of the world’s limited human and economic resources — resources that are needed to respond to the common challenges facing humankind, such as poverty and environmental destruction. Their continued existence represents a fundamental threat to humanity.

    Today, the thought of the possession, much less the use, of chemical or biological weapons inspires widespread revulsion in the international community. We need to give concrete form to a similar recognition regarding nuclear weapons, which are undoubtedly the most inhumane of all.

    As a concrete step toward this, I urge that the Statute of the International Criminal Court be amended to define the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons as a war crime. The objective here is obviously not to punish the actual use of nuclear weapons but to establish a clear norm that such use is always and under any circumstance unacceptable. This could in turn open the way to the eventual adoption of a convention comprehensively banning nuclear weapons.

    An indispensable aspect of this effort must be a redefinition of security policies. The nuclear-weapon states must develop a shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons and break free from the spell of deterrence — the illusory belief that security can somehow be realized through threats of mutual destruction and a balance of terror. A new kind of thinking is needed, one based on working together to reduce threats and creating ever-expanding circles of physical and psychological security until these embrace the entire world.

    In this context I urge the nuclear- weapon states to undertake the following three commitments at this May’s NPT Review Conference and to work to fully implement them by 2015:

    1. To reach a legally binding agreement to extend negative security assurances — the undertaking not to use nuclear weapons against any of the nonnuclear-weapon states fulfilling their NPT obligations.

    2. To initiate negotiation on a treaty codifying the promise not to use nuclear weapons against each other.

    3. Where nuclear-weapon-free zones have yet to be established, as a bridging measure, to declare these as nuclear nonuse regions.

    Declaring nuclear nonuse regions would encourage progress toward global denuclearization. It could be part of a comprehensive system to prevent the proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction and forestall the dire possibility of nuclear terrorism. The key aim would be to encourage shared efforts to reduce threats, which would in turn reduce motivations for countries to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.

    If progress can be made toward these goals, it will make even more obvious the benefits of participating in existing frameworks, as opposed to the further deepening of isolation on the outside. Overlapping assurances of physical and psychological security can encompass not only countries relying on the nuclear umbrellas of nuclear-weapon states, but also North Korea and Iran as well as countries such as India, Pakistan and Israel that are currently not part of the NPT framework.

    None of this will be easy. But no matter how great the divide between our ideals and reality, there is no need to give up hope or accept this with resignation. Instead, the ordinary citizens of the world should come together to create a new reality. The prohibitions on land mines and cluster weapons that have been realized in recent years are the fruit of such solidarity.

    To quote U.S. President John F. Kennedy: “There is no single, simple key to this peace — no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.”

    We must remember that there is always a way, a path to the peak of even the most towering and forbidding mountain. Even when a sheer rock face looms before us, we should refuse to be disheartened, and instead continue the patient search for a way forward.

    What is most strongly required is the imagination that can appreciate the present crises as an opportunity to fundamentally transform the direction of history. Mustering the force of inner will and determination, we can convert challenges into the fuel for positive change.