Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Joseph Rotblat

  • Joseph Rotblat- The Conscience of this Nuclear Age

    Abstract

    Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat was one of the most distinguished scientists and peace campaigners of the post second world war period. He made significant contributions to nuclear physics and worked on the development of the atomic bomb. He then became one of the world’s leading researchers into the biological effects of radiation. His life from the early 1950s until his death in August 2005 was devoted to the abolition of nuclear weapons and peace. For this he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. His work in this area ranked with that of Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell and this article is an attempt to summarise his life, achievements and outline his views on the moral responsibilities of the scientist. He is a towering intellectual figure and his contributions to mankind should be better known and more widely understood.

    Early life and times in Poland Joseph Rotblat was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland on November 4 1908 one of seven children (two not surviving child birth). His father, Zygmunt built up and ran a nationwide horse drawn carriage business, owned land and bred horses. His early years were spent in what was a prosperous household but circumstances changed at the outbreak of the First World War. Borders were closed and horses requisitioned leading to the failure of the business and poverty. After the end of the War he worked as a domestic electrician in Warsaw and had a growing ambition to become a physicist. Without formal education he won a place in the physics department of the Free University of Poland gaining an MA in 1932 and Doctor of Physics, University of Warsaw, 1938. He held the position of Research Fellow in the Radiation Laboratory of the Scientific Society of Warsaw and became assistant Director of the Atomic Physics Institute of the Free University of Poland in 1937. During this period he married a literature student, Tola Gryn. Before the outbreak of war, he had conducted experiments which showed that in the fission process neutrons were emitted. In early 1939 he envisaged that a large number of fissions could occur and if this happened within a sufficiently short period of time then

    considerable amounts of energy could be released. He went on to calculate that this process could occur in less than a microsecond and as a consequence would result in an explosion. The idea of an atomic bomb occurred to him in February 1939 (this is discussed in ‘My early years as a physicist in Poland’ reprinted in ‘War and Peace: The life and work of Sir Joseph Rotblat’ p39-55). Also in 1939 he was invited to study in Paris (through Polish connections with Marie Curie) and with James Chadwick at Liverpool University winner of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the neutron. Chadwick was building a particle accelerator called a ‘cyclotron’ to study fundamental nuclear reactions and as he wanted to build a similar machine in Warsaw he decided to join Chadwick in Liverpool.

    Liverpool University

    Rotblat travelled to England alone in 1939 as he could not afford to support Tola there. At Liverpool University, Chadwick awarded him the Oliver Lodge Fellowship and now, with sufficient funds, returned home in the summer of 1939 with the intention of bringing his wife back to England. He planned to return to England in late August 1939 but Tola fell ill and he returned to Liverpool alone with the expectation that she would follow. However, war broke out as Poland was invaded by Germany on September 1 1939 and Tola was stranded. Rotblat made increasingly desperate attempts to bring her out of Poland through Belgium, Denmark or Italy but these attempts failed as borders closed across Europe. She is believed to have died in the inhumane conditions of the Warsaw Ghetto. This event affected him deeply for the rest of his life.

    Towards the end of 1939 he began experiments in Liverpool that demonstrated that the nuclear bomb was feasible, but it would require a massive technological effort to produce sufficient quantities of the Uranium isotope required to manufacture a bomb.

    Rotblat was wrestling with his conscience during this period and when back in England asked himself the question “What should I do? Should I begin to work or not ?” clearly meaning working on the bomb (see ‘Leaving the Bomb Project’ reprinted in Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace’ p281-288). He considered himself a ‘pure scientist’ and it was not right to work on weapons of mass destruction. However, he was well aware that other scientists need not necessarily share his convictions and in particular German scientists. Put simply, if Hitler had the bomb he would win the war. When Poland was overrun he decided to work on the bomb. His belief was that we needed to work on the bomb in order that it should not be used. In other words, if Hitler can have the bomb, then the only way in which we can prevent him from using it against us would be if we also had it and threatened to retaliate. And this was the argument which he used at the time to enable him, in all conscience, to begin to work. In the beginning of 1944 Rotblat went with the Chadwick group to Los Alamos, New Mexico to work on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. He was to return to Liverpool in late 1944 and in 1945 to become Director of Research in Nuclear Physics following a series of dramatic and life changing events.

    Manhattan Project

    Rotblat arrived at Los Alamos in March 1944 and soon became ambivalent about his involvement and he made no significant contribution to the development of the bomb and even complained of having nothing to do (this is discussed in the British Library recorded interviews and stated explicitly by Brian Cathcart in his obituary in ‘The Independent’ 2 January 2002). However, this time at Los Alamos was the pivotal intellectual experience of his life while the loss of Tola can be seen as the central emotional experience. He said “I was in Los Alamos for less than a year. Well, I came in the beginning of 1944, and left by the end of 1944. As soon as I came to Los Alamos, I realised that my fear about the Germans making the bomb was ungrounded, because I could see the enormous effort which was required by the American(s), with all their resources practically intact, intact by the war – everything that you wanted was put into the effort. Even so, I could see that it’s still far away, and that by that time the war in Europe was showing that Hitler is going to be defeated, and I could see that probably the bomb won’t be ready; even that Hitler wouldn’t have it in any case. Therefore I could see this from the beginning, that my being there, in the light of the reason why I came to work on it, was not really justified. But nevertheless, I could not be sure that the Germans would not find a shortcut maybe and they could still make the bomb. Therefore I kept on working together with the other people, although I was very unhappy about having to work on it. But as soon as I learned, towards the end of 1944, that the Germans have abandoned the project, in fact a long time before, I decided that my presence there was no longer justified, and I resigned and I went back to England.”(see ‘Leaving the Bomb Project’ reprinted in Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace’ p281-288).

    Chadwick was highly concerned that a Briton was the first to leave the Manhattan Project and the Americans regarded him as a security risk. An incompetent effort was made to ‘fit him up’ as a Russian spy, fearing that he would fly to Russia (he had learned to fly while in America) and divulge the secrets of the bomb. The Americans continued to regard him as a security risk and he was denied an entry visa for many years.

    St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College

    Rotblat was appalled at the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps as a part of his reaction to the horrors of the atomic bomb he became interested in the medical uses of nuclear radiation. In 1950 he was appointed Professor of Physics to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College until retirement in1976. During this period he made significant contributions (together with Professor Patricia Lindop) to the understanding of the effects of high energy radiation on mice. He built a 15 MeV electron linear accelerator to enable the study of the biological effects of high energy gamma rays on living organisms. He made significant contributions to the understanding of the effects of radiation on living organisms, especially those of fertility and aging. He also became interested in the effects of radiation from the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. In particular he researched the hazards associated the bone seeking isotope Strontium 90 with a view to establishing safe levels of exposure. He researched the nature of the fallout from the American nuclear test at Bikini Atoll and made public the type of bomb used (a fission fusion fission device) and the large amounts of radiation released. Rotblat became increasingly more politicised resulting in his growing involvement in the campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons, for which he is best known.

    Pugwash and Nuclear Disarmament

    In 1946, Rotblat took the lead in setting up the British Atomic Scientists Association to stimulate public debate and included many leading scientists. It adopted a non-political agenda and was wound down and ended in 1959, but Rotblat went on to be a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He collaborated with Bertrand Russell and helped launch the “Russell-Einstein Manifesto” in 1955. Russell had written to Einstein saying that “eminent men of science should draw the attention of world leaders to the impending destruction of the human race” (The Russell-Einstein Manifesto reprinted in ‘Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace’ p263-266). The ‘Russell-Einstein Manifesto’ called for a conference of scientists to discuss nuclear disarmament and the abolition of war. This led to the first Pugwash conference in July 1957, funded by a Canadian railway millionaire, Cyrus Eaton, on the condition that it met at Eaton’s home in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. Twenty-one international scientists attended, together with a lawyer, from ten countries, East and West.

    Conferences followed almost once a year with most participants being distinguished scientists from Great Britain, the USA and Soviet Union. The key founding principle was that participants attended as individuals and not representatives of government. Observers, however, from organisations such as the United Nations, UNESCO were welcome. Rotblat was Secretary-General of Pugwash from 1957 to 1993, Chairman of British Pugwash from 1980 to 1988 and President of Pugwash from 1988 to 1997.

    Pugwash has never cultivated extensive publicity but has been highly influential and, for example, was instrumental in achieving agreement on the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. Also, Pugwash can be credited with helping to establish links between the US and Vietnam in the late 1960s, the negotiation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Rotblat can claim credit for these landmark achievements.

    Conclusions

    Joseph Rotblat made massively important contributions to science, to combating the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the promotion of peace. Bertrand Russell, in his

    autobiography, summed up his work with these words: “He can have few rivals in the courage and integrity and complete self-abnegation with which he has given up his own career (in which, however, he still remains eminent) to devote himself to combating the nuclear peril as well as other, allied devils”. His achievements were recognised with the award in 1992, with Hans Bethe, of the Einstein Peace Prize. In 1995 he was elected to The Royal Society and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the same year shared with the Pugwash Conferences. He was appointed KCMG in 1998. However, he could well have been most proud of Mikhail Gorbachev’s statement that Pugwash conferences and papers helped guide foreign policy resulting in the reduction in temperature of the Cold War.

    Joseph Rotblat at 89 said, “We scientists have to realise that what we are doing has an impact not only on the life of every individual, but also on the whole destiny of humankind…all of us who want to preserve the human race owe an allegiance to humanity; and it’s particularly the job of scientists, because most of the dangers to the world result from the work of scientists.” From his Nobel Lecture in Oslo, “the quest for a war free world has a basic purpose, survival. But if in the process, we learn to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion, if in the process, we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an excellent incentive to embark on this great task. But above all, remember your humanity (J. Rotblat ‘Remember Your Humanity’ reprinted in ‘Joseph Rotblat: Visionsry for Peace’ p315-322). Joseph Rotblat was a truly great man and the conscience of the Nuclear Age.

    References and sources

    Joseph Rotblat’s papers (some 4 tonnes in weight !) are currently being processed by the University of Bath and the archives will reside in Churchill College, Cambridge. I am told that this process will take about 2 more years to complete.

    I have used 2 sound archive resources:

    British Library Sound Archive (call number F7208). This is an exhaustive, some 20 hours, series of interviews given to Katherine Thompson in his own home between May 1999 and 2002. An invaluable source although full transcripts, to my knowledge, are not available.

    National Security Archive-Cold War Interviews (November 15,1998, Episode 8, SPUTNIK). This is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation of scientists and journalists providing a ‘home’ for former secret U.S. Government information obtained under The Freedom of Information Act. Full transcripts are available on the internet.

    ‘War and Peace: The Life and Work of Sir Joseph Rotblat’ edited by Peter Rowlands and Vincent Attwood. Liverpool University Press 2006.

    ‘Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace’ edited by R. Braun, R. Hinde, D. Krieger, H. Kroto, and S. Milne. Wiley-Vich 2007.

    ‘Joseph Rotblat: Influences, Scientific Achievements and Legacy’, Physics Education, 40, October 2008, in press.

     
    Dr. Martin Underwood is a member of Pugwash UK and was a colleague and friend of Joseph Rotblat.
  • Remembering Joseph Rotblat, Remembering Our Humanity

    Remembering Joseph Rotblat, Remembering Our Humanity

    Joseph Rotblat was one of the great men of our time. As a young physicist from Poland, Rotblat realized that it might be possible to create an atomic weapon and worried that the Germans might succeed in developing such a weapon before the Allied powers. Due to this realization and his belief that the Allied powers needed a deterrent to a possible Nazi bomb, Rotblat agreed to work during World War II on the British bomb project and then on the US Manhattan Project.

    When it became clear to him in late 1944 that the Germans would not succeed in creating an atomic weapon, Rotblat resigned from the Manhattan Project and returned to London. He was the only Allied scientist to resign from the bomb project as a matter of conscience. The following August, he read with shock that the American atomic weapons had been used on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He decided to devote the rest of his life to seeking the abolition of these terrible weapons. He would never again work on a weapon project. Instead, he found work as a nuclear physicist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.

    Joseph Rotblat was the youngest signer of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955. Most of his colleagues who signed the document were already Nobel laureates, and Bertrand Russell told Rotblat the he was sure that Rotblat would someday receive the prize. Rotblat was a founder and leader of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which began in 1957 to bring together scientists from East and West. In these conferences, Rotblat carried forward the spirit of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”

    Rotblat did indeed receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for his years of dedicated effort in seeking a world free of nuclear weapons. He was 87 years old at the time. He continued to speak out and be a powerful voice for abolishing nuclear weapons until his death in 2005 at the age of 96.

    I had the pleasure to know Joseph Rotblat and work closely with him. He was a man of enormous optimism. He believed in humanity and trusted that we would live up to our potential. He said on many occasions that his short-term goal was to abolish nuclear weapons, and his long-term goal was to abolish war. He believed that a world free of nuclear weapons was both desirable and feasible, and he patiently explained to all who would listen why this was so.

    November 4, 2008 marks the centennial of his birth. It is a good opportunity to pause and remember a man of great compassion and humanity. Above all, Joseph was kind and decent and was unwavering in his commitment to create a better world – a world in which humanity’s future was not threatened by the nuclear weapons that he had helped to create.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org).
  • Nuclear Weapons and the Responsibility of Scientists

    Nuclear Weapons and the Responsibility of Scientists

    Nuclear weapons are unique among weapons systems – they are capable of destroying civilization and possibly the human species. Nuclear weapons kill massively and indiscriminately. They are powerful. They are also illegal, immoral and cowardly. They are long-distance killing machines, instruments of annihilation. They place the human future in jeopardy. In spite of all of this, or perhaps because of it, these weapons seem to bestow prestige upon their creators and possessors.

    Nuclear weapons were first created by scientists and engineers working in the US nuclear weapons program, the Manhattan Project, during World War II. The project began simply and, ironically, with a letter to President Roosevelt from a great man of peace and humanitarian, Albert Einstein, who also happened to be the greatest and most celebrated scientist of his time. Later, after the use of the US nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein would lament having written the letter to Roosevelt.

    By examining the subsequent responses of three leading scientists whose earlier work had involved them in significant ways with the creation of nuclear weapons, I will show how they set an example for scientists today. I will seek to answer these questions: Do the scientists who created nuclear weapons have special responsibility for these weapons? Do scientists today continue to have responsibility for nuclear weapons?

    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein is one of great men of the 20th century, and one of the men I most admire. His penetrating intellect changed our view of the world. His understanding of the relationship between mass and energy, as contained in his famous formula E=mc2, gave the original theoretical insight into the power of mass converted to energy. Einstein, however, for all his theoretical brilliance, did not foresee the potential power that might be released by the atom and give rise to nuclear weapons.

    By 1939 Einstein was living in the United States, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, and had a position at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. A fellow physicist and friend, Leo Szilard, a Hungarian refugee from Nazi Germany, became concerned that the Germans would develop an atomic weapon and use it to defeat the Allied powers fighting against Hitler. Szilard came to Einstein, explained his fear, and asked Einstein to sign a letter explaining the danger to President Franklin Roosevelt. The letter that Einstein sent said that “uranium may turn into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future,” and that, while not certain, “extremely powerful bombs of a new type may be constructed.” The letter called upon the President Roosevelt to have his administration maintain contact with “a group of physicists working on chain reactions in America.” The letter led Roosevelt to take the first steps toward what would become the Manhattan Project, a very large US government program to create atomic weapons. President Roosevelt set up an Advisory Committee on Uranium, headed by Lyman J. Briggs, to evaluate where the US stood with regard to uranium research and to recommend what role the US government should play.

    Einstein never worked on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb, and was deeply disturbed and saddened when the bombs were used on Japan. He was reported to have said later, “If only I had known, I would have become a watch maker.” Einstein would join and lend his name to many organizations working to control and eliminate nuclear weapons during the final ten years of his life after the bombs were used. He was also outspoken in his condemnation of atomic weapons. He fought against the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1946, Einstein joined a group of atomic scientists that formed the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. Einstein and his fellow trustees of the Emergency Committee released a statement at the end of a conference held in Princeton in November 1946 that included the following “facts…accepted by all scientists”:

    1. Atomic bombs can now be made cheaply and in large number. They will become more destructive.
    2. There is no military defense against the atomic bomb and none is to be expected.
    3. Other nations can rediscover our secret processes by themselves.
    4. Preparedness against atomic war is futile, and if attempted will ruin the structure of our social order.
    5. If war breaks out, atomic bombs will be used and they will surely destroy our civilization.
    6. There is no solution to this problem except international control of atomic energy and, ultimately, the elimination of war.

    These six points remain as valid today as they were in 1946.

    The final public document that Einstein signed, just days before his death, was the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. It is an eloquent call to scientists to act for the good of humanity. The document began, “In the tragic situation that confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in the spirit of the appended draft.”

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto is one of the most powerful anti-nuclear and anti-war statements ever written. It expresses the fear of massive destruction made possible by nuclear weapons that could bring an end to the human species. It states: “Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” Einstein and Russell were joined by nine other prominent scientists in calling upon people everywhere, and particularly scientists, to take a simple but critical step: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

    One of Einstein’s most prescient warnings to humanity was this: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” More than five decades after Einstein’s death, his warning remains largely unheeded.

    Leo Szilard

    Leo Szilard was one of the most remarkable men of the 20th century. He first conceived of the possibility of an atomic chain reaction that could result in atomic bombs while standing at a stoplight in London in 1933. One of the people Szilard credits with influencing his discovery was British novelist H.G. Wells, who talked about atomic bombs in his 1913 science fiction book, The World Set Free.

    Six years later, it was Szilard who encouraged Einstein to warn President Roosevelt about the possibility of a German atomic bomb. Once the Manhattan Project was underway, Szilard would work with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago on creating a controlled chain reaction. The two men succeeded in conducting the first controlled and sustained chain reaction in their laboratory under the bleachers at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942. In doing so, they left no doubt that the creation of an atomic weapon would be possible.

    By early 1945, it seemed clear to Szilard that Germany would not succeed in creating an atomic bomb, but that America would. Szilard became concerned that the US would choose to use its new weapon as an instrument of war rather than as a means of deterring the German use of an atomic weapon. Szilard made frantic attempts to stop the US from using the bomb that he had been so instrumental in creating. He went back to Einstein in an attempt to arrange a meeting with President Roosevelt. Einstein wrote another letter to Roosevelt on Szilard’s behalf. The President’s wife, Eleanor, wrote back agreeing to meet with Szilard in her Manhattan apartment. Szilard received the letter with great excitement, but his excitement was dashed when later in the day the news was announced that President Roosevelt had died. It was April 12, 1945.

    Next Szilard tried to arrange a meeting with the new President, Harry Truman. Truman arranged for Szilard to meet with Jimmy Byrnes, a Senate mentor of Truman’s who would soon be named his Secretary of State. Szilard, along with scientists Walter Bartky and Harold Urey, traveled to Spartanburg, South Carolina to meet with Byrnes. The meeting went badly. Szilard expressed concern about a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Byrnes seemed to be more concerned with the possibility of using the new weapon as a demonstration of military might to make the Soviets more manageable. Szilard made an unfavorable impression on Byrnes. Szilard later wrote, “I was rarely as depressed as when we left Byrnes’ house and walked to the station.”

    Szilard next worked energetically on the Social and Political Committee of the Met Lab scientists working on the bomb at the University of Chicago. The Committee was headed by Nobel Laureate physicist James Franck. The Committee report concluded that the bomb should be demonstrated to Japan before being used against Japanese civilians. The Scientific Committee of the Manhattan Project’s Interim Committee – composed of Arthur Holly Compton, Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer – rejected the report, recommending against a demonstration and for military use of the bomb.

    Finally, Szilard drafted a petition to the President of the United States. The petition, dated July 17, 1945, began, “Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future….” The petition argued against attacking Japanese civilians on moral and practical grounds. It argued that “a nation which sets a precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.” The petition was held by General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach Secretary of Defense Stimson or President Truman until after their return from Potsdam and after Hiroshima had been destroyed by the first attack with a nuclear weapon.

    After the war, Szilard was a leader among atomic scientists in working to alert the public to nuclear dangers. He was a founder of the Council for a Livable World. He remained active in opposing nuclear weapons until his death.

    Joseph Rotblat

    Joseph Rotblat was one of the great men of the 20th century. He was a Polish émigré, who went to London in 1939 to work with Nobel Laureate physicist James Chadwick. Rotblat became concerned about a German atomic weapon, which led him to work on the British atomic bomb project and later in the US Manhattan Project. He believed that an Allied atomic bomb was necessary to deter the Germans from using an atomic bomb. By late 1944, however, Rotblat had concluded that the Germans would not succeed in creating an atomic weapon. He had been shocked to hear from General Groves one evening that the purpose of the US bomb had always been directed against the Soviets, then US allies in the war. As an act of conscience, Rotblat left the Manhattan Project in December 1944 and returned to London. The following August his worst fears were realized when the US used their newly created weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Rotblat would dedicate the rest of his life to working for a nuclear weapons free world. He helped in the creation of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, and was its youngest signer. Two years later, he helped organize the first meeting of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, bringing together scientists from East and West. He would serve as a leader of the Pugwash movement for the rest of his long life, always as a voice of conscience and reason and a strong and uncompromising advocate of nuclear weapons abolition. He was the living embodiment of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, calling for nuclear weapons abolition and the abolition of war.

    In 1995, Joseph Rotblat received the Nobel Peace Prize. He appealed in his Nobel Lecture in part to his fellow scientists. In doing so, he referred approvingly to the statement made earlier that year by former Manhattan Project scientist Hans Bethe on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and he quoted Bethe’s statement in full:

    As the Director of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, I participated at the most senior level in the World War II Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic weapons.
    Now, at age 88, I am one of the few remaining such senior persons alive. Looking back at the half century since that time, I feel the most intense relief that these weapons have not been used since World War II, mixed with the horror that tens of thousands of such weapons have been built since that time – one hundred times more than any of us at Los Alamos could ever had imagined.
    Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.
    Accordingly, I call on 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.

    Rotblat concluded his remarks to scientists with the following appeal: “At a time when science plays such a powerful role in the life of society, when the destiny of the whole of mankind may hinge on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent on all scientists to be fully conscious of that role, and conduct themselves accordingly. I appeal to my fellow scientists to remember their responsibility to humanity.”

    In the final words of his Nobel Lecture, he spoke as an elder statesman of humanity: “The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity.”

    Conclusions

    I have discussed the manner in which three important scientists reacted to nuclear weapons. Of course, there have been many other scientists – including Linus Pauling, Eugene Rabinowitch and Andrei Sakharov – who have also joined in publicly seeking to free the world from the dangers of nuclear arms. But there have also been many other scientists who have supported the nuclear arms race and continue to work on designing and improving nuclear weapons.

    Einstein, Szilard and Rotblat believed that nuclear weapons threaten the future of humanity and must be brought under international control and abolished. They sought to eliminate not only nuclear weapons, but war as a human institution. They all contributed to the creation of nuclear weapons, influenced by the threat of a potential Nazi atomic weapon, but they all regretted their part and sought to change the course of history. They believed that scientists had an important role to play in educating the general population about nuclear threats and encouraging the public and political leaders to support effective nuclear disarmament.

    These men have become historical figures, but they lived real and courageous lives. They were all men of conscience, who understood that nuclear weapons cast a dark shadow across the human future. They stood not with the power establishments of their day, but with humanity. They are important role models for young scientists and engineers. Their lives and their words convey a crucial message for the scientists of today: Contribute your talents constructively to humanity, but withhold them from making and improving armaments, in particular nuclear arms.

    The atomic scientists were influential in initiating many institutions that continue to work for a nuclear weapons free world. These include Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Council for a Livable World, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the Federation of American Scientists. To these can be added newer organizations committed to science for social responsibility such as Science for Peace in the UK and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.

    As the scientists directly connected with the World War II US Manhattan Project and the British MAUD Committee have passed on, new responsibilities have fallen to a younger generation of scientists. It remains to be seen, though, whether this new generation of scientists will have the passion and persistence to carry on effectively in fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a positive sign that one of the world’s most renowned physicists, Stephen Hawking, has stated, “As scientists we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects…as citizens of the world we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action to render nuclear weapons obsolete.”

    Today the University of California manages and provides oversight to the main US nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore. These laboratories have designed every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. They have recently designed a new nuclear weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which the US government would like to develop to replace all existing weapons in the US nuclear arsenal. To this enterprise, the University of California lends its prestige and legitimacy. Leaders of the University proudly proclaim that they are performing a national service, and seem to give little thought to the dangerous nuclear nightmare they are perpetuating.

    Scientists everywhere should join together, in the spirit of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, to speak out and demand that Universities, such as the University of California, stop supporting the design, development, testing and manufacture of any weapon of mass destruction, most of all nuclear weapons. They should bring collective pressure to bear upon those scientists who choose to participate in such work. In short, they should follow in the footsteps of Einstein, Szilard and Rotblat, and accept personal and professional responsibility for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    As Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue pointed out in his 2007 Nagasaki Peace Declaration, “[A] major force for nuclear abolition would be for scientists and engineers to refuse to cooperate in nuclear weapons development.” To achieve this end, it will be necessary to apply peer pressure within the scientific community to strip away any semblance of prestige and legitimacy that remains connected to the creation of weapons capable of destroying humanity.

    David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.com).

  • Sir Joseph Rotblat: A Legacy of Peace

    Joseph Rotblat was one of the great men of the 20th century. He was a man of science and peace. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1908, he was one of those rare individuals who, like Rosa Parks or Nelson Mandela, comes to an intersection with history and courageously forges a new path. In Joseph’s case, the intersection with history arrived in 1944 while he was working on the Manhattan Project, the US project to develop an atomic bomb.

    Joseph had worked as a scientist toward the creation of an atomic weapon, first in the UK at the University of Liverpool and then at Los Alamos, New Mexico. When he learned in late 1944 that Germany would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, he believed there was no longer reason to continue work on creating a US bomb. For him, there was only one reason to create an atomic weapon, and that was to deter the German use of such a weapon during World War II. If the Germans would not have an atomic weapon, then there was no reason for the Allies to have one. Joseph was the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds.

    He was the last living signer of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, one of the great documents of the 20th century, and he often quoted its final passage: “We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open for a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    He was convinced that countries needed to abolish nuclear weapons and he devoted his life to achieving this goal, as well as the goal of ending war as a human institution. Just prior to his 90th birthday, he said that he still had two great goals in life. “My short-term goal,” he said, “is the abolition of nuclear weapons, and my long-term goal is the abolition of war.”

    Joseph was for many years the General Secretary of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and later served as president of the Pugwash Conferences. In his work with Pugwash, he was instrumental in bringing together scientists from East and West, so that they could find common ground for ending the Cold War with its mad nuclear arms race. In 1995, Joseph and the Pugwash Conferences were joint recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

    He began his Nobel acceptance speech by saying, “At this momentous event in my life…I want to speak as a scientist, but also as a human being. From my earliest days I had a passion for science. But science, the exercise of the supreme power of the human intellect, was always linked in my mind with benefit to people. I saw science as being in harmony with humanity. I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science.”

    In his speech, he reasoned that a nuclear weapon-free world would be safer than a world with nuclear weapons, but the danger of “ultimate catastrophe” would still exist. He concluded that war must be abolished: “The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task.”

    When Joseph came to Santa Barbara in 1997 to receive the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Peace Leadership, I asked him, “What gives you hope for the future?” He responded, “My hope is based on logic. Namely, there is no alternative. If we don’t do this [eliminate nuclear weapons and engender more responsibility by scientists as well as citizens in general], then we are doomed. The whole existence of humankind is endangered. We are an endangered species now and we have to take steps to prevent the extinguishing of the human species. We owe an allegiance to humanity. Since there is no other way, then we must proceed in this way. Therefore, if we must do it, then there is hope that it will be done.”

    Earlier this year, Joseph made an appeal to the delegates to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, held in May at the United Nations in New York. “Morality,” he wrote, “is at the core of the nuclear issue: are we going to base our world on a culture of peace or on a culture of war? Nuclear weapons are fundamentally immoral: their action is indiscriminate, affecting civilians as well as military, innocents and aggressors alike, killing people alive now and generations as yet unborn. And the consequence of their use could bring the human race to an end.” He ended his appeal with his oft-repeated plea, “Remember your humanity.”

    I visited Joseph at his home in London just a few months ago. He had been slowed down by a stroke and was disturbed that he wasn’t able to be as active as he’d been accustomed. But his spirit was strong, and he was still smiling and looking forward. He was as committed as ever to his dual goals of achieving a world without nuclear weapons and without war – goals to which he had devoted the full measure of his energy, intellect and wisdom.

    Joseph has left behind a strong legacy of peace. It is our job now to pick up the baton that he carried so well and passionately for so long, and continue his legacy.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and the Deputy Chair of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.inesglobal.org).

  • The Political Rehabilitation of Joseph Rotblat

    By the time of his death, which occurred on August 31, 2005, Joseph Roblat was a revered figure. A top nuclear physicist, Rotblat received—among many other honors and awards–a British knighthood and, together with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (an organization that he had helped to found), the Nobel Peace Prize (1995). As the president of the Pugwash conferences recalled: “Joseph Rotblat was a towering figure in the search for peace in the world, who dedicated his life to trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons, and ultimately to rid the world of war itself.”

    But Rotblat’s steadfast support for nuclear disarmament and peace did not always receive such plaudits, as I discovered when I conducted two interviews with him and did extensive research in formerly secret British government records.

    Born in Warsaw in 1908, Rotblat moved to Britain in 1939, where he became a promising young physicist. During World War II, when he feared that Nazi Germany might develop the atomic bomb, he came to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project, America’s own atomic bomb program that he—like many other scientists—hoped would deter Germany’s launching of a nuclear war. But, in late 1944, when Rotblat learned that the German bomb program had been a failure, he resigned from the Manhattan project and returned to London to engage in nonmilitary work. This decision, taken for humanitarian reasons, plunged him into hot water with the authorities. Shortly after telling his U.S. supervisor of his plan to leave Los Alamos, he was accused by U.S. intelligence of being a Soviet spy. The charge, totally without merit, was eventually dropped.

    Back in Britain, Rotblat engaged in peaceful research and, in the postwar years, helped to organize the Atomic Scientists’ Association (ASA), which drew together some of that country’s top scientists. Much like America’s Federation of American Scientists, the ASA promoted nuclear arms control and disarmament. However, British government officials, then more interested in building nuclear weapons than in eliminating them, looked askance at its activities. In 1947-48, when the ASA organized an Atomic Train to bring the dangers of nuclear weapons (and the supposed benefits of peaceful nuclear power) to the attention of the British public, Prime Minister Clement Attlee objected strongly to plans for government cooperation with it. In March 1948, when Rotblat invited Attlee to visit the Atomic Train during its stay in London, the foreign secretary and the defense minister advised the prime minister to reject the offer, which he did.

    Rotblat’s relations with the British government continued on a difficult course in the 1950s. Working closely with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, Rotblat signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of July 9, 1955, which warned nations that if they persisted in their plans for nuclear war, civilization would be utterly destroyed. This venture, in turn, led to the Pugwash conferences—so named because they began in 1957 at a private estate in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. Designed to bring together scientists on both sides of the “iron curtain” for serious, non-polemical discussions of the nuclear menace, these conferences were low-key operations, with little publicity outside of scientific circles. Nevertheless, British officials were deeply suspicious of the Pugwash conferences and of Rotblat, who did most of the organizational work for them and, in 1959, became Pugwash secretary-general.

    Convinced that “the Communists” wanted to use the 1958 Pugwash conference “to secure support for the Soviet demand for the banning of nuclear weapons,” the British Foreign Office initially sought to promote an attitude of skepticism toward it. But, when Rotblat asked J.D. Cockcroft, a member of Britain’s Atomic Energy Authority, to suggest who might be invited to it, Cockcroft and the Foreign Office decided that a better strategy would be to go with the flow and arrange for the participation of a staunch proponent of the British government’s position in the meeting, which they did.

    Although one British diplomat noted that the conference “passed off quietly enough, and not too unsuccessfully from our point of view,” the British government remained on guard. Learning of plans for another Pugwash conference, in Vienna, the Foreign Office warned of the possibility “that this will be more dangerous from our point of view than its predecessors.” Communist participants might launch “a major propaganda drive against nuclear weapons,” and “the organizing committee consists of Lord Russell and Professor Rotblat.” From the British government’s standpoint, the Pugwash conferences were little better than “Communist front gatherings.”

    But British policy gradually began to shift, as the government grew more interested in nuclear arms controls. Asked by Rotblat if he would like to join the advisory body of the British Pugwash committee, Cockcroft referred the matter to the Foreign Office, which responded that he should do so, as it would help prevent Pugwash from “being exploited for propaganda purposes.” Although the Foreign Office did not think he should attend the next Pugwash conference, in Moscow, during 1960, it reversed course that summer and urged him to recruit additional politically reliable scientists to attend. Indeed, it now sought to take over the Pugwash movement for its own purposes. In response to a suggestion by Cockcroft, a Foreign Office official opined that “it would be most helpful if the Royal Society could be persuaded to sponsor British participation . . . and if this were to lead to the winding up of the present Pugwash Committee.”

    But the plans for a takeover failed. When the British government suggested topics for Pugwash meetings and more government officials who should be invited to them, Rotblat resisted, much to government dismay. In October 1963, a Foreign Office official complained that “the difficulty is to get Prof. Rotblat to pay any attention to what we think. . . . He is no doubt jealous of his independence and scientific integrity.” Securing “a new organizer for the British delegation seems to be the first need, but I do not know if there is any hope of this.”

    Nonetheless, despite lingering resentment at Rotblat’s independence and integrity, the British government had arrived at a positive appraisal of the Pugwash conferences. As a British defense ministry official declared in January 1962: Pugwash was “now a very respectable organization.” When the Home Office, clinging to past policy, advised that Pugwash was “a dirty word,” the Foreign Office retorted that the movement now enjoyed “official blessing.” Explaining the turnabout, a Foreign Office official stated that “the process of educating” Soviet experts is “bound to be of some use to us.” Furthermore, “we ourselves may pick up some useful ideas from our own scientists . . . and are not likely to be embarrassed by anything which they suggest.” Finally, “if there is ever to be a breakthrough, it is not inconceivable that the way might be prepared by a conference of this kind.”

    In fact, there soon was a breakthrough: the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963—a nuclear arms control measure that the Pugwash conferences played a key part in generating. The British government had no doubt about the connection, and in 1964 it honored Rotblat with a CBE—Commander of the British Empire—for his organization of the Pugwash conferences.

    And so it goes. Today’s dangerously peace-minded heretic is tomorrow’s hero. Abraham Lincoln—that staunch critic of the Mexican War—became America’s best-loved President. Robert LaFollette—reviled and burned in effigy for his opposition to World War I—emerged as one of this nation’s most respected senators. Martin Luther King, Jr.—condemned for his protests against the Vietnam War—is now honored as this country’s great peacemaker.

    Perhaps today, when governments promise us endless military buildups and wars, opposition politicians should take note of this phenomenon.

    Lawrence S. Wittner, a Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Associate, is Professor of History at the State University of New York at Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press). He is a member of POTUS, HNN’s presidential history/politics blog.

  • To the Inheritors of the Manhattan Project

    In national research laboratories, such as Los Alamos or Livermore in the USA, Chelyabinsk or Arzamas in Russia, and Aldermaston in the UK, many thousands of scientists are employed doing pure and applied research for specific purposes, cloaked in secrecy, purposes that I see as the negation of scientific pursuit: the development of new, or the improvement of old weapons of mass destruction. Among these thousands there may be some scientists who are motivated by considerations of national security. The vast majority, however, have no such motivation; in the past they were lured into this work by the siren call of rapid advancement and unlimited opportunity. What is going on in these laboratories is not only a terrible waste of scientific endeavour but a perversion of the noble calling of science.

    The Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe, who was a most distinguished physicist, and one-time leader of the Manhattan Project, said:

    “Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.

    Accordingly, I call on 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.”

    I would like to see an endorsement of this call by the scientific community. I will go further and suggest that the scientific community should demand the elimination of nuclear weapons and, in the first instance, request that the nuclear powers honour their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Let me, in conclusion, remind you that the basic human value is life itself; the most important of human rights is the right to live. It is the duty of scientists to see to it that, through their work, life will not be put into peril, but will be made safe and its quality enhanced.

    Joseph Rotblat

    About Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat KCMG, CBE, D.Sc., FRS, Nobel Peace Laureate, 1995: Professor Rotblat, now 97 years old, was born in Warsaw in 1908, and has been a British citizen since 1946. He is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of London, and Emeritus President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. During World War II, Professor Rotblat initiated work on the atom bomb at LiverpoolUniversity, and later joined the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. When it became clear that Germany was not working on the bomb, he resigned from the project, the only scientist to do so before the bomb was tested. He then changed his line of research to medicine and was Chief Physicist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. He is the only living signer of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955. He has devoted his life to averting the danger posed by nuclear weapons, working with the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, the organization he helped to found, and with which he shares the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the author of some 400 publications. Professor Rotblat can be reached at Pugwash Conferences On Science And World Affairs, London Office, Ground Floor Flat, 63A Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3BJ, tel 020-7405, fax 020-7831 5651, e-mail: pugwash@mac.com website: www.pugwash.org

    Background to the letter: In Geneva in April 2003, Pamela Meidell mentioned to Professor Rotblat that she once told the story of his walking away from the Manhattan Project in an interview with New Mexico Public Radio. She asked any nuclear scientist who was listening to the show to listen to his/her conscience and follow in Professor Rotblat’s footsteps. He was very eager to know if anyone had responded. Sadly, she didn’t know. Perhaps this message directly from him will bring forth a response.

    On 6 July 2005, the Atomic Mirror wrote a letter to Professor Joseph Rotblat, the only nuclear scientist to walk away from the Manhattan Project, asking if he would like to send a message back to Los Alamos for the 16 July remembrance of the birth of the nuclear age. He graciously responded with the message above.

  • War No More: A Book Review

    War No More: A Book Review

    War No More by Robert Hinde and Joseph Rotblat.
    London: Pluto Press, 2003. 228 pages.

    This book is a service to humanity. It makes the case that war is no longer a viable way of resolving conflicts and that the institution of war must be abolished. Both of the authors are scientists who have given considerable thought to the role that science and technology have played in increasing the dangers of war and bringing humanity to the brink of annihilation. The authors bring broad experience and wisdom to their task of finding a way out of the culture of war.

    Joseph Rotblat was a Manhattan Project scientist during World War II. He left the project in its latter stages when he understood that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb and, therefore, that a US atomic bomb would not be necessary to deter them from using one. Under the circumstances of World War II, he was willing to help create an atomic weapon to deter the Nazis, but he was not willing to contribute to the creation of such a weapon for any other purpose. He was the only scientist to leave the project as a matter of conscience.

    After walking away from the US project to create an atomic weapon, Rotblat has spent more than 50 years working against nuclear weapons and against war. In 1955, he was one of the original eleven signers of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto that tried to warn the world about the extreme dangers of continuing the nuclear arms race. Shortly after this, he was instrumental in forming the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists that has worked diligently to bring to the public scientific perspectives on the dangers of the nuclear arms race and other manifestations of militarism. In 1995, Rotblat and Pugwash were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

    On his 90th birthday, Professor Rotblat announced that his short-term goal was to abolish nuclear weapons and that his long-term goal was to abolish war. You have to admire this vision and determination in someone entering his tenth decade of life.

    Robert Hinde, who served as a Royal Air Force pilot in World War II, is a distinguished professor at Cambridge University and long-time participant in the Pugwash movement. He is noted for his work in biology and psychology.

    This book grew from a Pugwash Conference at Cambridge in the year 2000 on “Eliminating the Causes of War.” The authors describe the book as an attempt to disseminate the message of the conference more widely. It is also, of course, a concrete step in attempting to realize Professor Rotblat’s long-term goal of a world without war.

    The authors believe that to bring the institution of war to an end, it is necessary to understand it better. They pose the questions: “What are the factors that contribute to the outbreak of war? Why are people willing to go to war? What can be done to prevent war?” The book then provides important facts, figures, charts and perspectives in an attempt to answer these questions. In the first major section of the book the authors deal with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, making it abundantly clear why 21st century wars jeopardize the future of civilization and humanity itself.

    In the second major section of the book, the authors explore the factors that make war more likely. In doing so, they look at the role of political systems and political leaders, culture and tradition, resources, economic factors and human nature. The authors find that none of the traditional explanations are sufficient in and of themselves to an understanding of why wars occur. They suggest that insights may be found in the complex interrelationships between nations, political and economic systems, and the personalities of political leaders. One of their conclusions is: “Every war depends on multiple, interacting causes, but one factor is essential – the availability of weapons.”

    In the third major section of the book, the authors examine what should be done to eliminate war. In this section they delve into possible solutions to ending war, including factors that stop countries from going to war, arms control, peace education, organizations (from the United Nations to civil society groups), and intervention and means of conflict resolution. This section offers a fascinating overview of the direction in which humanity must move if it is to succeed in ending “the scourge of war.”

    In the final chapter in the book, an epilogue on “Eliminating Conflict in the Nuclear Age,” the authors offer a sense of how far we are from realizing the noble and necessary goals they seek. “At the time of writing, in 2003,” they state, “the general world situation is far from being a happy one; indeed, as far as the nuclear peril is concerned it is much worse than would have been expected 14 years after the end of the nuclear arms race…. To a large extent this is a result of the policies of the only remaining superpower, the United States of America, particularly the George W. Bush administration.” The authors express concern that the Iraq War, “threatening the guidelines of…morality in the conduct of world affairs and adherence to the rules of international law,” may be “a portent of the shape of things to come.”

    The authors plead that this must not be allowed to happen: “We cannot allow the products of billions of years of evolution to come to an end. We are beholden to our ancestors, to all the previous generations, for bequeathing to us the enormous cultural riches that we enjoy. It is our sacred duty to pass them on to future generations. The continuation of the human species must be ensured. We owe an allegiance to humanity.” They recognize that it is in the competing allegiances, to the nation and to humanity, that a solution to the immense problem of war may be found. They argue that “a process of education will be required at all levels: education for peace, education for world citizenship.” This is undoubtedly the greatest challenge of our time: how can we educate the people of the world to give their loyalty to humanity and withdraw their consent from war?

    I have only two concerns regarding the book. First, I think the subtitle, “Eliminating Conflict in the Nuclear Age,” is not quite accurate. It is likely that there will always be conflicts. The challenge is assuring that these conflicts are resolved by peaceful rather than violent means. Second, I fear that the book will not reach a wide enough audience. Its message is so critical to our common future that it deserves as broad a readership as possible.

    This book can play a role in the process of education. Were I to teach a course on Peace and War, I would happily select this book as a text. It would be an exciting prospect to explore with students the issues of peace and war set forth by Professors Hinde and Rotblat. The book is a challenge to our political imaginations, to our understanding of the world, and to our personal responsibility for exercising, in the words of the authors, “our paramount duty to preserve human life, to ensure the continuity of the human race.” But reaching students is not enough; the ideas in the book must reach ordinary citizens throughout the world and, through them, their leaders.

    A short Foreword to the book was written by Robert McNamara, who was the US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. McNamara offers this advice: “It is not good enough to leave it to the politicians. The politicians are in reality servants of the people, not their masters.” In the film, “Fog of War, Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara,” this important insight about the role of citizens in relation to politicians does not make it into the eleven lessons. Yet, it may, in fact, be McNamara’s most important insight.

    I would like to see a filmmaker such as Errol Morris, who was responsible for the McNamara documentary, prepare a similar film on Rotblat and Hinde. The lessons they set forth in War No More, if understood broadly enough, just might save our world.

     

    *David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and the Deputy Director of the International Network of Scientists and Engineers for Global Responsibility (INES).

  • An Allegiance to Humanity

    https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/wagingpeaceseries/rotblat.pdf