Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: David Krieger

  • Overcoming Nuclear Crises

    This article was originally published in The Hill under the title “Averting the Ticking Time Bomb of Nukes in North Korea” on May 30, 2017.

    Alarmingly, tensions between the United States and North Korea have again reached crisis proportions. The United States wants North Korea to curtail any further development of its nuclear weapons program, as well as to stop testing its missiles. North Korea evidently seeks to bolster its security by acquiring a sufficiently robust deterrent capability to discourage an attack by the United States. The unpredictable leaders of both countries are pursuing extremely provocative and destabilizing patterns of behavior. Where such dangerous interactions lead no one can now foresee. The risk of this tense situation spiraling out of control should not be minimized.

    It is urgent that all governments concerned make a sober reassessment in a timely manner. The following questions need to be addressed: What can be done to defuse this escalating crisis? What should be done to prevent further crises in the future? What could be learned from recurrent crises involving nuclear weapons states?

    It is discouraging that the White House continues to rely mainly on threat diplomacy. It has not worked in responding to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions for the past few decades, and it is crucial to try a different approach. Currently, there are mixed signals that such a shift may be underway. President Trump has turned to China, imploring that it use its leverage to induce Kim Jong Un to back down, and has even mentioned the possibility of inviting Kim for crisis-resolving talks. Also relevant and hopeful is the election of Moon Jae-in as the new president of South Korea, and his insistent calls for improved relations with the North.

    In the end, no reasonable person would opt for another war on the Korean Peninsula. The only rational alternative is diplomacy. But what kind of diplomacy? American reliance on threat and punitive diplomacy has never succeeded in the past and is almost certain to fail now. We assuredly need diplomacy, but of a different character.

    It is time to abandon coercive diplomacy and develop an approach that can be described as restorative diplomacy. Coercive diplomacy relies on a zero/sum calculus consisting of military threats, sanctions, and a variety of punitive measures. Restorative diplomacy adopts a win/win approach that seeks to find mutual benefits for both sides, restructuring the relationship so as to provide security for the weaker side and stability for the stronger side. The challenge to the political imagination is to find the formula for translating this abstract goal into viable policy options.

    The basic shift is a mental recognition that in the context of the Korean Peninsula any military encounter, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, is a recipe for catastrophe. It is not a win or lose situation. It is lose/lose in terms of human suffering, devastation, and likely political outcome. If nuclear weapons are used by either or both sides, millions of casualties could occur in an unprecedented disaster.

    While there have been suggestions from the Trump administration that the time for talk with North Korea is over, actually the opposite is true. A solution to the present Korean crisis would involve an immediate return to the negotiating table with positive inducements made by the U.S. in exchange for North Korea halting its development of nuclear weapons and missile testing.

    Such incentives could include, first and foremost, bilateral and regional security guarantees to the North Korean government, ensuring that the country would not be attacked and that its sovereignty would be respected. This could be coupled with confidence-building measures. The U.S. and South Korea should halt their joint annual military exercises in the vicinity of North Korea, as well as forego provocative weapons deployments. In addition, the U.S. and possibly Japan could offer North Korea additional benefits: food, medicine and clean energy technology. China could play a positive role by hosting the negotiations, including possibly inviting the new leader of South Korea to participate.

    Beyond resolving the current crisis is the deeper challenge to prevent recurrent crises that pit nuclear weapon states against one another. There is no way to achieve this result so long as some countries retain, develop, and deploy nuclear weapons, and other countries are prohibited from acquiring such weaponry even if their security is under threat. Iraq and Libya arguably suffered the consequences of not having nuclear weapons to deter attacks against them.

    The only way out of this trap is to recognize that the nuclear nonproliferation regime has failed. The treaty provisions calling for nuclear as well as general and complete disarmament negotiations have been neglected for nearly half a century. Outside the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States has acted as an enforcer of a nuclear nonproliferation regime. Such a role motivated the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003 with its disastrous impacts on the country and the entire Middle East. It also underlies the current crisis pitting Washington’s demands against Pyongyang’s provocations. Hard power approaches to such dangerous developments have a dismal record and pose unacceptable risks of regional and global havoc.

    To prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons epitomizes prudence in the Nuclear Age. It is the only way to prevent a crisis between nuclear-armed opponents turning into a nuclear catastrophe. Such behavior would constitute an act of sanity for humanity and its future given the extreme dangers of nuclear weapons, the periodic crises that erupt among nuclear-armed countries, and the growing odds of nuclear weapons being used at some point. Yet for smaller, weaker nuclear weapons states to go along with this approach, the United Nations Charter and international law must be respected to the point that regime-changing geopolitical interventions by dominant states are convincingly rejected as a reasonable policy option.

    Any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic. Depending upon the extent of the nuclear exchange, cities, countries, civilization, and even all complex life, including the human species, would be at risk. Experts anticipate that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons were used against cities would likely cause a nuclear famine taking two billion lives globally. An all-out nuclear war could be an extinction event for complex life, including humanity.

    Nine countries currently possess nuclear weapons (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea). Nine leaders could initiate nuclear war by mistake, miscalculation or malice. The future rests precariously in the hands of this small number of individuals. Such an unprecedented concentration of power and authority undermines democracy, as well as being extremely reckless and irresponsible.

    It is essential to maintain our focus on the challenges posed by the development of North Korean nuclear capabilities. At the same time, while struggling to defuse this crisis endangering the Korean Peninsula, we should not lose sight of its connection with the questionable wider structure of reliance on nuclear weapons. Until this structure of nuclearism is itself overcome, crises will almost certainly continue to occur. It is foolhardy to suppose that nuclear catastrophes can be indefinitely averted without addressing these deeper challenges that have existed ever since the original atomic attack on Hiroshima.

    Richard Falk is senior vice president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University. David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Probabilidad de la Guerra Nuclear

    Traducción de Ruben Arvizu.

    Click here for the English version.

    La mayoría de la gente vive pensando en forma mínima las consecuencias o probabilidad de una guerra nuclear.  Las consecuencias se entienden generalmente como catastróficas. Tal vez por ello se tiende a creer que la probabilidad de una guerra nuclear es extremadamente baja. Pero, ¿es esto realmente el caso? ¿Debe la gente sentirse a salvo de una guerra nuclear basándose sólo en la percepción de que es improbable que ocurra?

    Puesto que las consecuencias de la guerra nuclear podrían ser tan enormes  como la extinción de la humanidad, la probabilidad de tal resultado preferimos que sea cero, pero este no es el caso. Las armas nucleares se han utilizado dos veces en los últimos 72 años, en un momento en que sólo un país las poseía. Hoy en día, nueve países tienen armas nucleares, y hay cerca de 15.000 ojivas nucleares en el mundo.

    La disuasión nuclear, basada en la amenaza de represalias nucleares, es la justificación para la posesión de estas armas. Sin embargo, es una pobre justificación, no es ética, es ilegal y sujeta a un fracaso catastrófico. A lo largo de los 72 años de la era nuclear, la disuasión nuclear ha estado cerca de fracasar en muchas ocasiones, demostrando debilidades en la hipótesis de que la amenaza de represalias nos protegerá indefinidamente contra la hecatombe nuclear.

    Le pregunté a varias personas que trabajaban por el desarme nuclear, todos ellas asociados de la Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (Fundación Para la Paz en la Era Nuclear), sus opiniones sobre la probabilidad de una guerra nuclear.

    Martin Hellman, profesor emérito de ingeniería eléctrica en Stanford, dijo lo siguiente: “Incluso si se pudiera esperar que la disuasión nuclear funcionara durante 500 años antes de que fallara y destruyera la civilización -un período de tiempo que parece muy optimista para la mayoría de la gente- es como jugar a la ruleta rusa con la vida de un niño nacido hoy. Eso es porque la vida esperada de ese niño es aproximadamente un sexto de 500 años. Y, si ese “horizonte nuclear” es de sólo 100 años, ese niño tendría peores probabilidades de vivir su vida natural. No conocer el nivel de riesgo es una falla enorme en nuestra estrategia de seguridad nacional. Entonces, ¿por qué la sociedad se comporta como si la disuasión nuclear estuviera esencialmente libre de riesgos? “

    A continuación, pregunté a John Avery, profesor asociado de química cuántica en la Universidad de Copenhague, por su visión de la probabilidad de una guerra nuclear a finales del siglo XXI. El respondió:

    “Hay 83 años restantes en este siglo.  Se puede calcular la probabilidad de que lleguemos al final del siglo sin una guerra nuclear bajo varios supuestos de riesgo anual. Aquí hay una tabla que lo demuestra:

    Riesgo anual                                            Posibilidad de supervivencia

    1%                                                        43,4%
    2%                                                        18,7%
    3%                                                          7,9%
    4%                                                          3,4%
    5%                                                          1,4%

    “Hay que concluir que, a largo plazo, la supervivencia de la civilización humana y gran parte de la biosfera exige la completa eliminación de las armas nucleares”.

    Finalmente, le pregunté a Steven Starr, un científico de la Universidad de Missouri, quien respondió de esta manera:

    “No estoy seguro si puedo proporcionar cualquier tipo de valor numérico o cálculo para estimar el riesgo de guerra nuclear en un período de tiempo dado.  Pero ciertamente diría que a menos que los seres humanos logren eliminar los arsenales nucleares, y probablemente la institución misma de la guerra, creo que es inevitable que las armas nucleares se utilicen mucho antes de que finalice el siglo. Hay demasiadas armas en demasiados lugares / países. . . Creo que hay cerca de 15.000 armas nucleares, ¿verdad? . . . Y hay demasiados conflictos e injusticias y personas con hambre de poder que tienen acceso y control sobre estas armas. Hay demasiadas posibilidades de error de cálculo, fallas tecnológicas y simplemente comportamiento irracional para imaginar que podemos continuar indefinidamente evitando el uso de armas nucleares en un conflicto.

    “Así que estoy muy feliz de ver que un tratado para prohibir las armas nucleares está siendo negociado en la ONU. Esto me demuestra que hay un gran número de personas y naciones que tienen plena consciencia del peligro nuclear y están tomando medidas para detenerlo “.

    Conclusiones

    Las probabilidades de evitar una catástrofe nuclear no son reconfortantes.

    Estamos jugando una Ruleta Nuclear con el futuro de nuestros hijos y nietos.

    La única forma de asegurar que la probabilidad de una guerra nuclear sea cero es eliminar todas las armas nucleares.

    Una forma de apoyar el objetivo del cero nuclear es apoyar el Tratado de Prohibición Nuclear actualmente en negociación en las Naciones Unidas.

    David Krieger es presidente de la Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

    Ruben D. Arvizu es Director para América Latina de la Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Probability of Nuclear War

    Most people go about their lives giving minimal thought to the consequences or probability of nuclear war.  The consequences are generally understood to be catastrophic and, as a result, the probability of nuclear war is thought to be extremely low.  But is this actually the case?  Should people feel safe from nuclear war on the basis of a perceived low probability of occurrence?

    Since the consequences of nuclear war could be as high as human extinction, the probability of such an outcome would preferably be zero, but this is clearly not the case.  Nuclear weapons have been used twice in the past 72 years, at a time when only one country possessed these weapons.  Today, nine countries possess nuclear weapons, and there are nearly 15,000 of them in the world.

    Nuclear deterrence, based upon the threat of nuclear retaliation, is the justification for possession of these weapons. It is, however, a poor justification, being unethical, illegal, and subject to catastrophic failure.  Over the 72 years of the nuclear era, nuclear deterrence has come close to failing on many occasions, demonstrating weaknesses in the hypothesis that threat of retaliation will protect indefinitely against nuclear war.

    I asked several individuals working for nuclear disarmament, all Associates of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, about their views on the probability of nuclear war.

    Martin Hellman, a professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford, had this to say: “Even if nuclear deterrence could be expected to work for 500 years before it failed and destroyed civilization – a time period that sounds highly optimistic to most people – that would be like playing Russian roulette with the life of a child born today. That’s because that child’s expected lifetime is roughly one-sixth of 500 years. And, if that ‘nuclear time horizon’ is more like 100 years, that child would have worse than even odds of living out his or her natural life. Not knowing the level of risk is a gaping hole in our national security strategy. So why does society behave as if nuclear deterrence were essentially risk free?”

    I next asked John Avery, an associate professor of quantum chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, for his view of the probability of nuclear war by end of the 21st century.  He responded:

    “There are 83 remaining years in this century. One can calculate the probability that we will reach the end of the century without a nuclear war under various assumptions of yearly risk. Here is a table:

    Yearly risk           Chance of survival
    1%                             43.4%
    2%                             18.7%
    3%                              7.9%
    4%                              3.4%
    5%                              1.4%

    “One has to conclude that in the long run, the survival of human civilization and much of the biosphere requires the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.”

    Finally, I asked Steven Starr, a scientist at the University of Missouri, who responded in this way:

    “I’m not sure if I can provide any sort of numerical value or calculation to estimate the risk of nuclear war in a given time period. However, I certainly would say that unless humans manage to eliminate nuclear arsenals, and probably the institution of war itself, then I think it is very likely that nuclear weapons will be used well before the end of the century.

    “But I certainly would say that unless humans manage to eliminate nuclear arsenals, and probably the institution of war itself, then I think it is inevitable that nuclear weapons will be used well before the end of the century.  There are just too many weapons in too many places/countries . . . something close to 15,000 nuclear weapons, right? . . .  and there are too many conflicts and injustices and power-hungry people who have access to and control over these weapons. There are just too many possibilities for miscalculation, failures of technology, and simply irrational behavior, to imagine that we can continue to indefinitely avoid the use of nuclear weapons in conflict.

    “Thus I am very happy to see that a treaty to ban nuclear weapons is now being negotiated at the UN. This proves to me that there are a great many people and nations that are fully aware of the nuclear danger and are taking action to stop it.”

    Conclusions

    The odds of averting a nuclear catastrophe are not comforting.

    We are playing Nuclear Roulette with the futures of our children and grandchildren.

    The only way to assure that the probability of nuclear war goes to zero is to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

    One way to support the goal of nuclear zero is to support the Nuclear Ban Treaty currently being negotiated at the United Nations.

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

  • Message to the Vietnam Memorial Wall

    Dear Wall,

    Your polished surface deceives.

    You appear serene, yet you are bursting with anguish and lost potential.

    You are a wall of great sadness.

    You remember the young, whose lives were engulfed in the flames of war.

    They wanted to live and love, but the cruel war stopped them.

    They had lives before the lies of their leaders took them to war.

    Their mistake was to trust.

    And they never returned to their loved ones.

    Wall, their names are carved into you.

    Their hearts flutter around you.

    These young who died are sentinels, warning of danger,

    Reminding us that war is a fool’s game,

    A game in which everyone loses,

    Except for the arms merchants.

    Wall, you reflect war’s human price.

    Let the old and gray pay the price, if they must.

    But youth, be wary of war.

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

  • North Korea Doesn’t Want War – Trump Needs to Negotiate

    This article was originally published by The Hill.

    North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and conducted its first nuclear weapon test in 2006. It has conducted four further tests since then. It is thought to be planning another nuclear weapon test in the near future, to which Donald Trump has tweeted, “It won’t happen!”

    North Korea has also tested missiles with a longer range and is thought to be working on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching Hawaii and the west coast of the United States. It is thought that North Korea has produced the fissile materials for at least eight nuclear weapons, but is unable at this point to mount them on a ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.

    While at present it lacks the technological capacity to directly threaten the U.S., North Korea will likely achieve this capability at some point. Its current nuclear and substantial conventional arsenal threatens South Korea, Japan, and U.S. troops stationed in those countries.

    How should the Trump administration react to these threats? There are two possibilities. The first would involve military action by the U.S. against North Korea. The second would involve diplomacy and negotiations.

    An important step in analyzing the danger of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is to consider its purpose. Given the size of its arsenal, North Korea could certainly not expect to win a nuclear war against the far more powerful U.S. military forces. What it could reasonably expect its small nuclear arsenal to provide is a deterrent against a preemptive conventional or nuclear attack by the U.S.

    Having observed the U.S. take down the Iraqi and Libyan regimes after persuading them both to give up their nuclear programs, North Korean leaders have reason for concern. Each of these cases led to the overthrow of the regime and the death of its leader.

    What else do we know about North Korea? It has a strong military of some 1 million troops. It has been ruled by a dynasty since the end of World War II. Its current leader, Kim Jong-un, is in his thirties and is the grandson of the founder of the North Korean regime. Donald Trump has described the young leader as a “smart cookie.” We also know that North Korea is a very poor country with a very bad human rights record.

    It can be reasonably concluded that North Korea does not intend aggressive war with its military and nuclear program, but it does threaten to use these forces to protect its regime and leadership from an attack by the U.S. or another country.

    For the U.S. to initiate a preemptive military attack against North Korea would be wildly dangerous and could result in a war throughout Northeast Asia, with massive death and destruction not only in North Korea, but also in South Korea and Japan, including U.S. troops in the region. What roles China and Russia would play is uncertain.

    Given the massive disadvantages of initiating a preemptive war, including the illegality and immorality of doing so, the U.S. should dial down its threatening rhetoric (“all options are on the table”) and behaviors (sending U.S. warships to the vicinity), and instead seek negotiations with the North Korean leadership on mutual security needs. In addition, as a poor country, there is much that North Korea needs for its people. Food and energy would be high on the list of bargaining chips the U.S. could offer, as well as negotiating an end to the Korean War rather than continuing with the truce set in place in 1953.

    The U.S. should actively seek China’s help in getting North Korea to the negotiating table and in participating in the negotiations. Following the path of peace and diplomacy would demonstrate an important step toward maturity for the national leaders of North Korea and the United States.

  • Earth Day 2017

    Be advised: this poem may be interrupted
    by a nuclear war.

    Home is a blue-green planet,
    a pale blue dot in a vast universe,
    a water planet hurtling through space
    with its precious cargo, life.

    If it comes, it is likely to be a short
    but cataclysmic nuclear war.

    Home has been a place not too hot
    and not too cold, a place just right
    for life to flourish.

    Lately, though, we’ve caused our home
    to heat up and the seas to rise.

    In a nuclear war, it is said
    that the living will envy the dead.

    On this day of celebration
    of our only planet, we are in danger
    of being slowly boiled or quickly fried
    or otherwise being made inoperable.

    We have still not learned to share
    with each other, or to love each other
    and our home.  We must try harder.

    Be advised: Earth, even life itself,
    will survive without us.

    It is for ourselves that we must change
    our ways.

  • What Is Wrong With Trump’s Attack on Syria?

    Trump may have acted with insufficient evidence as to whether the chemical weapons attack was actually the responsibility of Assad and the Syrian government.  Would Syrian president Assad be foolish enough to launch a chemical attack against civilians, when a military response from the US would be possible, even likely?  Peter Ford, a former UK ambassador to Syria, speaking on BBC Radio, said, “It doesn’t make sense that Assad would do it.  Let’s not leave our brains outside the door when we examine evidence. It would be totally self-defeating as shown by the results…Assad is not mad.”

    Critics of the US military response have suggested as a possible scenario for the chemical release in Idlib province that the Syrian government attack may have been a conventional bombing that exploded stored weapons in the possession of the Syrian rebels, which may have included chemical weapons.

    Trump did not seek and obtain Congressional authorization for his act of war in attacking a Syrian Air Force base.  Thus, the attack was illegal under US law.  It is not the president’s prerogative to initiate attacks against sovereign nations without Congressional authorization.  By acting without such Congressional authorization, Trump has placed himself and the presidency above the rule of law.

    Trump did not seek and obtain authorization for his attack against Syria from the United Nations Security Council, as is required under international law.  By failing to do so the US has put itself outside the boundaries of the UN Charter, which is also a part of US law, as well as other international law to which the US is bound.

    Trump has further undermined US relations with Russia, and has harmed the chances of the US and Russia working cooperatively in resolving the Syrian conflict.  Increased tensions between the US and Russia in Syria make conflict between these two nuclear powers more likely.

    Trump has demonstrated to the world that in matters of war, as with tweeting, he is impulsive, shoots from the hip and is not constrained by US or international law.  These characteristics are not generally accepted by other world leaders as being preferred qualities in a US president.

    Trump’s impulsivity in ordering the attack sets a dangerous standard for someone in charge of the US nuclear arsenal.  It demonstrates the extreme dangers of allowing a single individual to exercise control over a country’s nuclear arsenal.

    Despite the illegality and inherent dangers of his military response, Trump seems to be getting a favorable reaction from the US media.  Nearly all US mainstream media seems to have accepted the assumption that Assad was foolish enough to have launched a chemical attack, and have not questioned Assad’s responsibility for the chemical attack.  It appears that neither the US government nor media have conducted a thorough investigation of responsibility for the chemical attack, which should have been done prior to a military response.

    Referring to what changed with Trump’s ordering the missile strikes against Syria the evening before, a fawning Fareed Zakaria stated, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States.  I think this was actually a big moment….”  Given Trump’s narcissism, this is the kind of positive response from pundits that is likely to keep him returning to impulsive and illegal uses of military force.

    For his violations of US and international law in attacking Syria with 59 cruise missiles, it is highly likely that Trump will also be rewarded by the American people with an upward bump in his current ground-level job-approval rating.  Too many Americans tend to like their presidents to be fast on the draw and follow the pattern of Ready, Fire, Aim.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).  He is the author of many books, including Zero: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition.

  • A Better Mousetrap?

    This article was originally published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

    mousetrapAlbert Einstein noted, “Mankind invented the atomic bomb, but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.”

    We humans have created the equivalent of a mousetrap for ourselves. And we’ve constructed tens of thousands of them over the seven decades of the Nuclear Age.

    In the mid-1980s, the world reached a high of 70,000 nuclear weapons, with more than 95 percent of them in the arsenals of the United States and Soviet Union. Since then, the number has fallen to under 15,000. While this downward trend is positive, the world’s nuclear countries possess enough nuclear weapons to destroy the human species many times over.

    In 72 years, nuclear weapons have been used only twice in warfare—at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. But the United States and Russia have come far too close to using them on many other occasions, including during the tense days of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Nuclear weapons pose an extraordinary risk, one that could result in rapid human extinction. Their use could be triggered by malice or mistake. Either way, the consequences would be catastrophic.

    Nuclear weapons and human fallibility are an extremely dangerous and volatile mix. These weapons test our morality, our intelligence, and our capacity for species survival.

    Nuclear deterrence is not a shield against nuclear weapons. It is a psychological theory about human behavior. If the leaders of nuclear weapon states truly believed in nuclear deterrence, they would not need to build missile defenses for protection against a nuclear attack. And missile defense systems are far from reliable, often failing in test situations. Sometimes, the tests are cancelled because of bad weather or cloud cover. But there is no international treaty requiring nuclear attacks to be conducted only on sunny days.

    There is no physical protection against nuclear weapons. The only strategy to assure against nuclear war is to negotiate the abolition of nuclear weapons—with inspection and verification procedures to make sure existing arsenals are eliminated and never rebuilt.

    Late in March 2017, negotiations for a new treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons will begin at the United Nations. Even though most—perhaps all—nuclear-armed countries will not participate in the negotiations, the talks will be extremely significant for clarifying the illegality of the weapons, and for setting new international norms against the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

    In the meantime, Donald Trump has tweeted about wanting the United States to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability”; he’s also told the world that, when it comes to nuclear weapons, he wants the United States to be at “the top of the pack.” In making such statements, he is demonstrating his lack of knowledge about nuclear dangers and, in fact, risking the instigation of a new nuclear arms race.

    Rather than understanding, as President Reagan and other nuclear-armed leaders discovered, that “[n]uclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought,” Trump seems intent on building a bigger and better trap for destroying the human species. His bravado is dangerous. Nuclear weapons are equal opportunity destroyers. Although humans invented the atomic bomb, they are not condemned to being caught in its trap. To avoid the trap, people must demand far more of political leaders, including Trump, insisting that they commence good-faith negotiations now for nuclear zero.

  • Hacking Nuclear Weapons Systems

    David KriegerBruce Blair raises important questions and concerns about hacking nuclear weapons systems in his op-ed in the New York Times, “Why Our Nuclear Weapons Can Be Hacked,” on March 14, 2017.  If the U.S. and other nuclear-armed countries continue on the path they’re on, sooner or later, despite the best of intentions, hackers will succeed, leading to unauthorized missile launches, nuclear anarchy and nuclear catastrophe.

    Foolproof systems are not possible, particularly when countries are allocating increasingly significant scientific and financial resources to cyber warfare.  As Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, pointed out, “Sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof, even in a foolproof system.”  The world has narrowly escaped many close calls due to accidents and false alarms of nuclear attacks.  This good fortune will not continue indefinitely.

    The possibility of cyber warfare is one of the best possible arguments for U.S. leadership to negotiate the abolition of nuclear weapons before they abolish us.  Later this month, some 130 countries will be meeting at the United Nations in New York to draft a new treaty to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.  Sadly, and dangerously, the U.S. and the other P-5 nuclear weapons states have chosen not to participate in these negotiations.  They seem to prefer the false security and political advantages of possessing their nuclear arsenals to ridding the world of the dangers posed by these arsenals.  Being hacked is only one of many serious dangers.  There are also the ongoing threats of nuclear warfare initiated by accident, miscalculation, intention or insanity.

  • The Nuclear Weapons Threat to Our Common Future

    David KriegerNuclear weapons are an existential threat to humans and other forms of complex life.  The possibility of nuclear annihilation should concern us enough to take action to abolish these weapons.  The failure of large numbers of people to take such action raises vitally important questions.  Have we humans given up on our own future?  Are we willing to act on our own behalf and that of future generations?

    Nine countries possess nuclear weapons, and the predominant orientation toward them is that they provide protection to their citizens.  They do not.  Nuclear weapons provide no physical protection.  While they may provide psychological “protection,” this is akin to erecting a Maginot Line in the mind – one that can be easily overcome under real world conditions, just as the French Maginot Line was circumvented in World War II, leading to the military defeat and occupation of France by German forces.

    Following a recent test of a nuclear-capable Minuteman III missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Colonel Craig Ramsey, the flight test squadron commander, commented that “efforts like these make nuclear deterrence effective.”  Perhaps they do so in Colonel Ramsey’s mind, but no one knows what effects such tests have on the minds of potential nuclear adversaries.  We can say with certainty that such tests would not deter terrorists in possession of nuclear weapons, since the terrorists would have no territory to retaliate against.  It should be noted as well that U.S. leaders are generally highly critical of similar missile tests by other nations, and do not view these tests as providing an effective deterrent force for them.

    We know from the damage that was caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that these weapons kill indiscriminately and cause unnecessary suffering, both crimes under international humanitarian law. Any threat or use of these weapons would be immoral as well as illegal.  Nuclear weapons are also extremely costly and draw scientific and financial resources away from meeting human needs.  As long-distance killing devices, they are also cowardly in the extreme.

    Are those of us living in the most powerful nuclear weapon state sleepwalking toward Armageddon?  Are we lemmings heading toward a cliff?  Are we unable to awaken from a nuclear nightmare?  We must wake up and demand the good faith negotiations for nuclear zero promised in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved 30 seconds ahead and now stands at 2.5 minutes to midnight.  We have been warned many times and in many ways.  Yet, we remain stuck at the brink of nuclear catastrophe.  The people need to step back from the brink and insist that their leaders follow them in moving away.

    U.S. nuclear policy puts the future of humanity in the hands of a single leader with the codes to initiate a nuclear war.  Should that leader be unstable, unbalanced, erratic or insane, he or she could initiate a nuclear war that would leave the world in shambles, destroying everyone and everything that each of us loves and holds dear.

    The stakes are very high and the challenge is one we ignore at our peril.  I encourage you to join us at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in working to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, a world we can be proud to pass on intact to our children, grandchildren and all children.